The following argument operates from two non-negotiable, scriptural premises. First, that the apostle Paul is the sole authority for the doctrine of the body of Christ in this present administration of grace. Second, that the word of God must be rightly divided, recognizing the distinction between Israel's prophetic program and the secret of the body of Christ. Any refutation that does not operate from within this framework is not a refutation, but a change of subject.
Here is proof that Arianism is a salvation issue because its Christ is a legal alien with no standing to act as humanity's federal head. Therefore, his death is a void transaction.
1. The Unassailable Legal Framework of the Evangel
The Arian, and his many accommodating defenders, may claim that the concept of "federal headship" is a "Christian concept, not a biblical one," and that the forensic language of Paul is merely one of many metaphors. This is a deliberate and strategic misreading designed to create a theological fog in which the sharp, legal requirements of the Evangel can be dissolved. I will dispel this fog with the harsh light of the text itself.
Paul's argument in Romans is, from beginning to end, a legal brief. The vocabulary he employs is not the language of poetry or sentiment; it is the precise terminology of the courtroom and the legal system. To deny this is to be willfully ignorant of the Greek language.
Let us examine the key forensic terms Paul uses to build his case:
Justification (dikaiōsis - δικαίωσις): This is the central legal act of the Evangel. It does not mean "to make righteous" in a moral sense. It is a legal term, derived from the root dikē (δίκη), which means "justice" or "a judicial sentence." [see G1349] Dikaiōsis is the verdict of the judge. It is the declaration that a person is legally in the right. [see G1347] Paul uses it in Romans 4:25 and 5:18. [see occurrences] The related verb, dikaioō (δικαιόω), means "to declare righteous," "to acquit." It is the act of a judge rendering a favorable verdict. [see G1344] When Paul says we are "justified by faith," he is not describing a psychological state; he is describing a change in our legal standing before God.
Condemnation ( This is the legal opposite of justification. It is the adverse sentence, the verdict of "guilty." [see G2631] Paul uses this exact term in Romans 5:16 and 5:18, placing it in direct parallel to justification. [see occurrences] He says that through Adam's one offense, the result was katakrima for all men. This is not a description of a general state of unhappiness; it is a specific, legal sentence.
Righteous Act / Just Award (dikaiōma - δικαίωμα): This term is crucial. It can mean a "righteous requirement" of a law, or a "righteous act" that satisfies a legal standard. [see G1345] Paul uses it in Romans 5:18 in direct opposition to "offense" (paraptōma - παράπτωμα). [see G3900] He sets up a perfect legal parallel: "as it was through one offense (paraptōma) for all mankind for condemnation, thus also it is through one just award (dikaiōma) for all mankind for life's justifying." This is not poetry. This is the language of a legal transaction, where one act of legal failure is nullified by another act of legal success.
Righteousness (dikaiosynē - δικαιοσύνη): This is the state of being legally in the right, the result of a favorable verdict. [see G1343] It is the legal standing that is "reckoned" or "imputed" to the believer (Romans 4:3-6). The verb for "reckon," logizomai (λογίζομαι), is an accounting term. It means to calculate, to credit to an account. [see G3049] Our righteousness is not a moral quality we possess; it is a legal status that God credits to our account because of the work of Christ.
The vocabulary is airtight. This is the language of a divine courtroom. To dismiss it as a "metaphor" is to engage in a deliberate act of exegetical sabotage.
Furthermore, the structure of Paul's argument in Romans 5 is that of a legal equation. It is a series of perfect, balanced parallels.
"For if by the offense of the one, the many died, much rather the grace of God and the gratuity in grace, which is of the One Man, Jesus Christ, to the many superabounds." (Romans 5:15 CLV)
"For if, by the offense of the one, death reigns through the one, much rather, those obtaining the superabundance of grace and the gratuity of righteousness shall be reigning in life through the One, Jesus Christ." (Romans 5:17 CLV)
"For even as, through the disobedience of the one man, the many were constituted sinners, thus also, through the obedience of the One, the many shall be constituted just." (Romans 5:19 CLV)
This is not a loose analogy. It is a precise, one-for-one legal substitution. The status of the entire race is legally tied to the action of its representative head. The legal standing of Adam determined the legal standing of his descendants. The legal standing of Christ determines the legal standing of those He represents.
This is the very definition of federal headship. To say it is "not in the Bible" is to confess that one has not read Romans 5 with any attention to its plain, logical structure.
The Arian, and his many accommodating defenders, cannot withstand this evidence. They are forced to reject Paul's entire legal framework because they know their Christ, a celestial alien, a foreigner to the Adamic race, is not a legally qualified representative. Their only escape is to declare that the courtroom does not exist, that the law is a poem, and that the verdict does not matter.
2. The Unalterable Requirement of Racial and Legal Kinship
The legal framework of the Evangel is not a human invention; it is a divine one. God Himself established the legal precedents for redemption in His law, and Paul applies these precedents on a cosmic scale. To understand why the Arian Christ is disqualified, we must first understand the law under which he is being judged.
The principle of redemption in scripture is not a vague, sentimental concept. It is a precise legal mechanism. In the law of Moses, God established the role of the Goel, the kinsman-redeemer. The qualifications were absolute and non-negotiable:
"In case your brother is reduced to poverty and sells use of some of his holding, then his kinsman redeemer, one near to him, will come and redeem his brother's sold land-use." (Leviticus 25:25 CLV)
The redeemer must be a kinsman, a legal member of the same family. A stranger, however wealthy or well-intentioned, had no legal standing to redeem the family's inheritance. The narrative of Boaz and Ruth is a perfect illustration of this legal reality. Boaz could not redeem Ruth and her inheritance until the nearer kinsman, who had the first legal right, formally relinquished his claim (Ruth 4:1-6). Redemption is a family matter, governed by the laws of kinship.
The apostle Paul, a master of the law, takes this established legal principle of kinship and applies it to the entire Adamic race. His arguments in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 are a cosmic legal brief.
"For since, in fact, through a man came death, through a man, also, comes the resurrection of the dead." (1 Corinthians 15:21)
"For even as, through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, thus also, through the obedience of One, the many shall many be constituted just." (Romans 5:19)
The parallel is perfect and legally binding. The problem was introduced into the Adamic race by a man, the first federal head. The solution, therefore, must be provided by a man from that same race, a second federal head. The Last Adam must be a man of the Adamic race to legally act as our representative. A being of a different race does not inherit the Adamic condemnation and, therefore, has no legal standing to reverse it on our behalf. He is not a party to the original legal case.
To prevent the Arian from dismissing this as an "obsolete Old Testament law," the author of Hebrews confirms that this principle of kinship is the very foundation of Christ's priestly, atoning work.
"since, then, the little children have participated in blood and flesh, He also was very nigh by partaking of the same... Whence He ought, in all things, to be made like the brethren, that He may be becoming a merciful and faithful Chief Priest in that which is toward God, to make a propitiatory shelter for the sins of the people." (Hebrews 2:14, 17)
The logic is inescapable. Christ's legal qualification to be our High/Chief Priest and make reconciliation is predicated on His being "made like unto his brethren." His shared racial identity, his kinship, is not an incidental detail; it is the prerequisite for His entire salvific work.
The Arian, cornered by this legal and scriptural case, will make a final, desperate appeal to God's omnipotence. "Can't God just appoint a celestial to be our kinsman? God is not bound by bureaucracy."
This is a misunderstanding of God's nature. God's sovereignty is not the power to be arbitrary or to violate His own established legal principles. His power operates in perfect harmony with His righteous character. He does not save us by breaking His laws; He saves us by fulfilling them perfectly. They will often point to two figures, Ruth and Melchizedek, as supposed precedents for God working outside these established legal lines. This is a misunderstanding of both.
Ruth: The inclusion of Ruth, a Moabitess, in the Messianic lineage is not a suspension of the kinship rule; it is an expansion of the definition of the family. Through covenant and faith, she was legally incorporated into the nation of Israel. Her story is a testament to God's grace to include the Gentiles in His plan, but it upholds the principle of redemption through kinship, as she still required a kinsman, Boaz, to redeem her.
Melchizedek: Melchizedek is a type of Christ's eonian priesthood, which is not based on Levitical lineage. His lack of a recorded genealogy is the point of the typology. He is not a type of a non-racial redeemer. To use him as such is to misread the entire argument of Hebrews 7.
God's solution to the Adamic problem was not to appoint a foreigner. It was to raise up a redeemer from within our own race, a true kinsman, the man Christ Jesus. To deny this is to deny the very legal framework of the Evangel.
3. The Irrelevance of their Incarnation Process:
The Arian Christ is a created celestial being. This is his origin, his nature, his race. He is a legal foreigner to the Adamic race. They attempt to solve this problem with two unscriptural fictions.
The first and most common defense of the Arian is what we will call the Incarnation Fiction. When confronted with the fact that their Christ is, by origin, a celestial alien, they protest: "But he was born of Mary, so he is human!"
This argument sounds plausible only because it is built on a shallow, sentimental understanding of what it means to be human. It confuses the biological process of birth with the legal and racial reality of origin.
A being's legal race and identity are determined by its origin, not its method of birth. A celestial being whose origin is not of Adam, who is then gestated in and born from a human woman, does not become a member of the Adamic race. He remains a celestial being who has undergone a biological process. Mary is the host, the vessel; she is not the source of his personhood. To claim that birth through a human mother makes a celestial being "of the Adamic race" is a biological and legal absurdity. He is a celestial, born of a human. He is not a man. This is a crucial distinction. The Arian Christ is not our kinsman by nature; at best, he is a foreigner who has acquired a human body.
The scripture defines the two Adams in terms of their origin. "The first man was out of the earth, soilish" (ek gēs choikos); the second Man is the Lord out of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:47). The first Adam's identity is terrestrial. The Arian Christ's identity, by their own admission, is celestial. He is not the second Man in the Pauline sense. He is a different kind of being entirely. The Arian has been forced to create a new, unscriptural category: a "celestial-man," a theological chimera that is neither truly celestial nor truly man. This is not the Christ of the Evangel. It is the Christ of Greek philosophy, a demigod who walks among men.
But the religious mind, conditioned by the Arian and Trinitarian traditions, sees the phrase "out of heaven" and immediately leaps to the conclusion of pre-existence.
The phrase "out of heaven" does not refer to Christ's origin before His birth. It refers to His nature and origin after His resurrection.
Let us be precise. Paul is not contrasting two different men who existed at the same time. He is contrasting two successive federal heads of humanity and two successive states of humanity. The entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 15 is about the resurrection of the dead. Paul is explaining the nature of the resurrection body. He is not giving a treatise on Christ's pre-incarnate state. To rip this verse out of its context and use it as a proof-text for pre-existence is an act of exegetical violence.
Paul's argument is a sequence.
"But not first the spiritual, but the soulish, thereupon the spiritual." (1 Corinthians 15:46)
The "soulish" (psychikos) state is the mortal, Adamic state. The "spiritual" (pneumatikos) state is the immortal, resurrected state.
"The first man was out of the earth, soilish" (ek gēs choikos). This is the soulish man, Adam, and our current state.
"The second Man is the Lord out of heaven." This is the spiritual man, the resurrected Christ, who is the pattern for our future, heavenly state.
Our future, resurrected bodies will be "heavenly." Christ, as the firstfruit of the resurrection, is the prototype of this heavenly man. His "from heaven" status is not a statement about His origin before He was born, but a statement about His nature after He was raised from the dead.
The Arian reads "out of heaven" and sees a proof of his celestial alien. A careful exegete reads the entire passage and sees a description of the glorified, resurrected man who is the pioneer of our own heavenly destiny.
The author of Hebrews is emphatic: "in all things, to be made like the brethren" (Hebrews 2:17). The Arian Christ is not like his brethren in the single most fundamental aspect: his origin. He did not begin where we begin. He is an outsider, a visitor. The chasm between a created celestial and a man of the Adamic race is absolute. To be "made like unto his brethren," He would have to share their Adamic origin. The Arian Christ fails this test. His "humanity" is a costume, not a shared identity.
The more sophisticated Arian, recognizing the weakness of the "human costume" argument, retreats to a more complex and speculative defense: the Kenotic Fiction. He will claim that the pre-existent celestial Christ underwent a "full Kenosis," a literal "transformation" where he "emptied himself" of all celestial nature and memory to become "100% man."
This argument, while more intricate, is even more desperate and unscriptural than the first. It is a work of pure theological science fiction.
The entire narrative of a celestial being undergoing a change of species is a complete invention. We must challenge the Arian: "Show us the verse." Where in scripture is there any account of this cosmic, ontological transformation? Where is the precedent for a celestial being annihilating its own nature to become a different kind of being? It does not exist. It is an ad hoc "rescue hypothesis," a piece of speculative machinery invented to save their unscriptural premise of pre-existence from its own fatal contradictions.
The Kenotic Arian has created a philosophical problem from which he cannot escape. If the celestial Christ was "transformed" and had "no celestial nature left," what happened to the original being?
If the celestial being ceased to exist and a new human being was created in its place, then the person who died on the cross did not pre-exist. His personhood began at conception. This conclusion, while scripturally correct, completely destroys the Arian system.
If the celestial being's identity or "personhood" somehow survived this transformation, then he is not "100% man." He is a celestial consciousness, a celestial "I," inhabiting a human brain, likely with a case of divinely induced amnesia. This is not a man. This is a case of cosmic identity theft. It is a more elaborate and deceptive version of the human costume argument.
The Arian posits a pre-existent celestial Christ to give Him a higher status, to make Him the agent of creation and the sustainer of the universe. But the Kenotic Arian then claims this being "emptied himself" of all this. So, while on earth, he was a "100% man" with no cosmic power or memory. The Kenotic Arian, in his desperate attempt to make his Christ human enough to die, has destroyed the very reason for his pre-existence. He has created a savior who is a celestial before birth, a mere man during life, and a celestial again after his resurrection. This is not a single, coherent person. It is a sequence of different beings. It is a system at war with itself.
Both the Incarnation Fiction and the Kenotic Fiction are desperate, unscriptural attempts to solve a problem that only exists if you begin with the unscriptural premise of pre-existence. They are the elaborate, creaking machinery of a failed theological system.
The simpler, scriptural solution is to abandon the premise. The Christ of the Evangel is not a celestial alien in a human costume, nor a shapeshifting amnesiac. He is the man Christ Jesus, our kinsman.
The Arian has reversed the scriptural sequence. The Evangel says the man Christ Jesus became a vivifying spirit at His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:45). The Arian says a spirit being became a man at His birth. This reversal is a substitution of the very subject of the Evangel.
4. The Legal Consequence: A Void Atonement and a Powerless Gospel
Because the Arian Christ is a legal alien, he has no standing to act as our federal head. He cannot legally represent a race to which he does not belong. His death is the death of a foreigner. It is a noble act, but in the courtroom of divine justice, it is a legally void transaction. It has no power to reverse the sentence passed on the sons of Adam.
At this point, the Arian, having been driven from every scriptural and logical stronghold, makes his final, desperate retreat. He abandons exegesis for emotion. He will say, as Drew Costen has, "as long as one actually believes Jesus died, it doesn’t matter if they also believe something that makes it impossible for Him to have died." Or, as Liam has argued, "As long as someone believes that the man Jesus Christ died, and was unconscious in death, then they’re a believer."
This is the great sincerity defense. It is the argument that the psychological state of the believer can override the ontological reality of the object of his belief. It is the most dangerous and pervasive lie of the religious system.
To expose this sentimental fog for the poison that it is, let us use a precise analogy: the analogy of the key.
The Door is salvation, inclusion in the body of Christ.
The Lock is the legal mechanism of the atonement, built on the non-negotiable requirements of federal headship and kinship. It is a lock of steel, designed by God.
The Key is the object of our faith: the person of the Savior.
The Evangel of Paul gives us the precise specifications for this key. It must be forged from metal (the substance of humanity) and cut to a specific shape (the racial and legal identity of the man Christ Jesus, the sinless Last Adam).
The believer who affirms these essential facts holds the correct key. He may believe it is steel, or silver, or titanium, minor errors in non-essential attributes, but the key is still of the correct substance and shape. It will open the door.
Now, consider the Arian. He comes to the door not with a key of metal, but with a counterfeit forged from ice. His Christ is a celestial being, a different substance entirely. To make it fit, he has created a theological fiction, a "transformation," shaping the ice to look like the true key. He approaches the lock with absolute sincerity. He insists, with all his heart, that his key will work. He believes in the process of turning the key.
But sincerity does not change the substance of the key. When the pressure of turning is applied, the demand for a true, legal, representative death, the ice key shatters. An immortal, celestial being cannot die. A legal alien cannot turn the tumblers of kinship. The lock does not open.
His faith is not saving faith. It is sincere idolatry. He has placed his trust in a counterfeit key.
The Arian will then make his final protest: "You are making salvation a theology exam! What about the thief on the cross? He had no perfect Christology!"
This is their most cherished "gotcha," and it is a spectacular own goal. The thief on the cross proves our case, not theirs. Whom did the thief believe in? He looked at the bloody, dying figure beside him and said, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." He placed his faith in the man on the cross next to him, the one proclaimed "King of the Jews." He did not believe in a celestial alien who had undergone a cosmic transformation. The thief, in his simple, uneducated faith, had the right key. He believed in the man. The Arian, with all his sophisticated, speculative theology, has the wrong one.
The Verdict
The Arian does not believe that our legally qualified kinsman, the man Christ Jesus, died for our sins. He has confessed, through his own teachers, that the very legal framework of Paul's atonement is a "Christian concept, but not a biblical one." He has been forced to abandon the engine of the Evangel to make room for his philosophical Christ.
He believes that a legal alien, a being of another race, having undergone a series of unscriptural transformations, died in a well-intentioned but ultimately powerless act. He is the man holding the ice key, sincerely turning it in the steel lock, wondering why the door will not open.
The Arian, having no scriptural or logical ground left, will make his last appeal, not to exegesis, but to a pious-sounding agnosticism. He will say, "It is not for us to determine who is or is not a member of the body."
This is not humility. It is a dereliction of apostolic duty. Paul commands us to do exactly that:
"Mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them" (Romans 16:17).
We do not judge a man's heart or his final standing before God. That is not our place. We are commanded to judge a man's public doctrine against the unalterable standard of the Evangel. The objection is a refusal to obey this command. It is the choice to sacrifice the integrity of the Evangel for the comfort of a compromised fellowship.
Our love for our brothers is not in question. Paul himself had such a great love for his kinsmen that he could wish himself accursed for their sake (Romans 9:3). But that same Paul also said that if anyone, even an angel from heaven, preaches a different gospel, "let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8).
This is the final, painful test of allegiance: is our love for our brothers greater than our love for the truth of the Evangel? The Christian religion, in its sentimental fog, will always choose the former. It will create a "peace" and a "unity" built on the compromise of the essential facts.
The body of Christ is called to a higher, more difficult love. It is a love that refuses to call a counterfeit key the real thing, no matter how sincerely it is held. It is a love that understands that the most unloving act of all is to allow a brother to place his faith in a legally powerless savior.
The conclusion is severe. It is tragic. But our feelings about the conclusion do not alter the facts of the case.
Therefore, our conclusion is not a presumptuous judgment of a soul. It is a necessary act of doctrinal discernment, performed in obedience to the apostle.
This is not a secondary error in metaphysics. It is a fundamental failure to present a legally valid savior. It is a different gospel because it has a different Christ. The Arian preaches a different Christ, a legal alien whose death is a void transaction. His gospel is another gospel. That is why, in obedience to the apostle, we must mark Arianism as contrary to the faith and recognize that the one who holds it is disqualified from the body of Christ.
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