Arians, Aliens and Body Snatchers

They call this “re-interpretation”. They will recite the Nicene Creed with a pompous voice, “God from God, Light from Light, Very God of Very God, Consubstantial with the Father” but when they are pressed they will smile and say, “Jesus Christ was surely the best man who ever lived. So good, in fact, that he reveals to us what God is like.”

These folks are like the victims of the body snatchers. They look just like the Christian next door, but they are aliens and Arians.

How to sniff them out? I reckon they’re the ones who are respectable just as they were in the fourth century. They hold secure and comfortable chairs of theology in academia. They have money. They have prestige. They have political places. They have climbed the greasy pole in the church. They sit comfortably in this world and follow a religion that is watered down, with the supernatural power of God and the scandalous belief in the Incarnation conveniently excised.

Give me Athanasius instead. Persecuted, exiled, scorned and mocked for his tenacious adherence to the true faith, he fought the Arians and eventually prevailed.

The same struggle continues in the church today with those who would make Christianity easy and comfortable, for those who would tear down the true faith and substitute a “sensible and believable” alternative.

Let truth be told: Comfortable Catholicism and Cafeteria Catholicism will die out.

Because comfortable Catholicism aka Arianism is not strong enough to endure persecution. If they gave up the true faith for a comfy job, respectable friends and a good career path does anyone imagine they will stand up and be counted when  trouble comes?