Wesley Uniting Church, Melbourne

The Nicene Creed, Study 2

Two fundamental beliefs

There are two fundamental beliefs that distinguish a Christian belief from any other belief. One is the doctrine of the Trinity: the belief that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct from each other, yet they are one God. The other is the doctrine of the Incarnation: that Christ, who is truly divine and co-eternal with the Father, became truly human, so that we can come to Christ in great confidence that he knows and understands our weakness and our frailty, having experienced the same himself.

Those two beliefs define the Christian faith. After the Nicene Creed appeared, people started to call it the Orthodox Faith. Any body of belief about God that does not include the Trinity and the Incarnation is not a form of the Christian faith. It is something else.

We considered the doctrine of the Trinity in the first study. We spoke of the three persons. We stressed that God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons, who share one purpose of love for humanity. The Son and the Spirit are co-eternal with the Father, and eternally proceed from the Father.

Jesus' real divinity

Now we look at the longest section of the Nicene Creed, which spells out both Jesus' real divinity and his real humanity.

First it stresses his real divinity. As we said in Study 1, this Creed was a response to a time of major controversy about the Christian Faith. A person called Arius had proposed the view that Christ was an exceedingly powerful kind of spiritual being created by the Father. He was a god in the Greek sense, but hardly in the Christian sense.

The Nicene Creed calls Christ "the only son of God", as most creeds before it had done, but now this was not enough. The Arians could say "we agree with that", because they did not understand "Father" and "Son" literally. So this was no longer enough, it had to be expanded.

Begotten or Created?

To understand the next part of the Creed, you have to be clear about the difference between creating or making something, and begetting someone. When you create something, you might take wool and make some clothing, or take wood and make a table, or take canvas and paint a picture. What you make is quite different from yourself. You can look at that table, and really you cannot learn anything about the person who made it. That person might make quite a different table next week.

On the other hand, when you beget something, that is a matter of sexual union, resulting in giving life to a new person who is the same kind of being that you are. So humans beget humans, horses beget horses, and fish beget fish.

So the Nicene Creed says that the Father is "maker of heaven and earth", and the Son is the one "through whom all things were made". God made the Universe, God made nature. This means the Universe is not God, and nature is not God, it is something else.

On the other hand, the Nicene Creed says is that Christ is the begotten Son of the Father, whereas the Arians had said he was a created son. Now they are not talking about his conception and birth in the womb of the Virgin Mary. They are talking about his being begotten of the Father in eternity, prior to any creation of the Universe.

Now look at the wording of the creed. At first sight it looks as if the record got stuck at this point.

"the only son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God," (that is: "God, begotten from God")
"Light from Light,
True God from True God,"
(and in case you still haven't got the point, it says)
"begotten, not made,
of one being with the Father,
through him all things were made."

Now almost all of that was echoing expressions used of both the Father and of Christ, somewhere in the New Testament. But there was one expression that the people framing the Nicene Creed invented, and that was the term "of one being (homo-ousios) with the Father". The point was that, just as horses beget horses, birds beget birds and fish beget fish, so if the Father is truly God, then the Son must also be truly God, and not some other kind of being.

Became truly human

So having spelt out the real divinity of Christ, the Creed goes out to spell out his real humanity in the story of salvation.

For us and for our salvation,
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary,
and became truly human.

Notice the emphasis on Christ’s other-centred love. Christ did not become human to satisfy any need that he had, but out of love for us. This is the heart of the whole matter. The Creed is seeking to safeguard a faith in the utterly selfless love of God, who is willing to accept humanity to Godself, and to do so at great cost to God, by the Son becoming human for us.

Let us say some more about what true humanity means. It means that Christ emptied himself of all of all Divine knowledge, so he really had to start from being a baby and work out how to talk, and how to walk, and everything else the growing child learns. It means he felt pain and fear, felt emotional turmoil, temptation and personal struggle, as we all do. It means he felt sexual feelings. It means the emotional struggle of facing death would be as huge for him as it would be for anyone else.

And the one who has felt our sorrow and pain, is the one who prays on our behalf, for he knows the struggles, the fears and the doubts that we feel.

The Virgin Birth

Some people would have a question about the Virgin Birth. Let me make three points about that quickly.

First, note why people have questions about the Virgin birth. A significant number of scholars in the various Protestant traditions, and some in the Roman Catholic tradition, would question the Virgin Birth. For some it is an issue of science, that this is not possible, and they don’t believe that God disrupts the normal order of the Universe. For others, it is more a question of New Testament scholarship, They point out that the virgin birth is first documented late in the New Testament writings. It is mentioned only twice, in the opening stories of Matthew and Luke. There is no trace of it in earlier sources like Mark’s Gospel or Paul’s letters. For others it is a matter of theology. For instance, Karl Brunner argued that a Virgin birth means that Jesus lacked true humanity, and that the whole area of sexuality and conception is not redeemed by Christ’s coming if his own conception bypassed normal human conception by sexual union.

Second, the Virgin birth is not the main point that the Nicene Creed was making here. The expression "born of the Virgin Mary" in all the ancient creeds, was intended to make the point that Jesus did not just appear out of nowhere. No, he was a real human being who began life as a baby, born to a real human mother who had a name, a mother who was known to people who lived in that neighbourhood. That was the main point that the framers of the Creed were trying to make.

Third, however, I believe there are still significant reasons why we should continue to accept the Virgin Birth of Jesus. We should not be put off because it is the story of a miracle. Matthew and Luke understood very well that they were describing something that could not normally happen. It would seem that Matthew and Luke both wanted to make an important theological point. They both wanted to stress that the world does not create its own saviour, that God brings Christ into the world in ways that would not otherwise be possible. It seems to me that they is saying something important that we should not simply dismiss.

Christmas as the Festival of the Orthodox Faith

In December we will celebrate the festival of Christmas, and will sing the great hymns that celebrate the birth of Christ. It is worth noting that there is very little evidence that Christmas was celebrated in the first three centuries of the Christian era. Easter was very important, but little mention of Christmas. It suddenly became very prominent, following the adoption of the Nicene Creed. Why was this?

This happened because Christmas is the festival of the Orthodox Faith. Christmas celebrates the entry of the Son of God into human life as the dawn of the new day; the day that God is with us, the day that God has accepted humanity, the day that the heavenly light enters the world again.

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