AR 571 [1, 2]
. . . it is blasphemy
to deny the Lord's Divinity present in His humanity,
the
reason is that someone who denies it
goes against the creed
accepted
throughout the Christian world
called the Athanasian Creed,
which
plainly says that in Jesus Christ,
God and man -
which is to say, the
Divine and the human -
are not two but one,
and that they constitute one
person,
being united as soul and body.
Consequently people who deny
the
Divinity in the Lord's humanity . . .
think of the Lord's humanity by itself
as being
like that of any other man,
and do not think at all then
of His Divinity
from eternity.
. . . it is blasphemy not to draw
the
doctrine of the church from the Word,
but to hatch it from one's own
intelligence,
the reason is
that the church is founded on the Word
and
its character is such
as its understanding of the Word,
and the doctrine that faith alone -
that is, faith apart from works of
the law -
justifies and saves,
comes not from the Word,
but from a
single saying of Paul (Romans 3:28),
falsely interpreted.
Moreover,
every doctrinal falsity takes it origin
from no other source than
people's own intelligence.
For what is more universally taught in the
Word
than to refrain from evil and do good?
And what is more evident
there
than the precept that God is to be loved,
and the neighbor also?
Who does not see, too,
that no one is capable of loving the neighbor
unless he lives in conformity
with the works of the law?
Also, anyone
who does not love his neighbor
does not love God either,
for it is in
love for the neighbor
that the Lord conjoins Himself with a person
and
that a person conjoins himself with the Lord;
that is to say,
that it is
in that love
that God and man join together.
What, then, is it to love
the neighbor
except to refrain from doing evil to him,
in accordance
with
the commandments of the Decalogue?
And to the extent a person wills
not to do evil to the neighbor,
to the same extent he wills to do good to him.
. . . people who so deny the Lord's Divinity
cannot enter heaven,
as the
Lord's Divinity
is everything
in everything
connected with heaven,
and
anyone who rejects the Word
rejects everything connected with religion.
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