Up the Chain of Command

Truth

An old friend has recently fallen for some cultish garbage on the net. The following is part of a reply to him posted elsewhere.

I was wondering when you'd get around to denying the Trinity and/or Christ's Deity. Didn't take long. You did both.

This is what gnostic heresy does each time it appears. First, there is a dualism introduced between the physical and spiritual.

Next, this is extended to a false antithesis between Law and Gospel. The attack is always on the Law. This is because God's Law-word is the expression of His Sovereignty. Men wish to be as God for themselves, and antinomianism (even when cloaked as "being led by the spirit"--see homo ordaining Bishops, for example) is a denial of God's ownership and Lordship over not only themselves, but creation.

Following this will be an attack on the Church. This is because it is to the Church that God has given His Law-word, and also the "power of the Keys." The Church as Christ's body is the means by which he exercises His Sovereignty in the world.

Next will always come an attack on God Himself in various ways, be it some Christological heresy like docetism or Arianism or a denial of the Trinity.

So, the assault is up the chain of command: denying the nature of the Creation, denying God's eternal lordship over it by His Law, denying the validity of the Church which He promises never to forsake, and finally denying God Himself.