Wesley Uniting Church, Melbourne

The Nicene Creed, Study 3

The third section

In these studies, we have seen how this Creed was produced in 325 AD, in the time of the Emperor Constantine. This should have been a time of peace for the church after centuries of being an illegal movement, but which became a time of dispute over the Arian controversy. We have seen how it was based on earlier creeds used as questions in the baptism service, such as the early Roman Creed. We have also seen how it was expanded especially to emphasise that Christ is the begotten Son, of one being with the Father, and not a created being.

The last two studies have stressed that the essential points the creeds were making was to emphasise the Trinity and the Incarnation. The Trinity is the conviction that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are each truly God, three persons sharing one purpose. The Incarnation is the conviction that the Divine Son became truly human for us and for our salvation.

This study comments on the third section of the Creed, which speaks of the Holy Spirit, the Church and the resurrection of the dead. The original Nicene Creed ended with a simple statement about belief in the Holy Spirit. Most of this section was added by the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD, drawing on similar statements in various local creeds.

In Study 1 that we spoke of the writer Hippolytus about 200 AD, who gives us the earliest documented form of the Roman Creed. The third question in that service was:

"Do you believe in the Holy Spirit,
in the holy Church,
and in the resurrection of the flesh?"

The Creed of the Church in Jerusalem is probably the basis of the Nicene Creed. It had a larger third section, which said,

"and in one Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who spoke through the prophets,
and in one baptism of repentance for the remission of sins,
and in one holy catholic church,
and in the resurrection of the flesh and the life everlasting."

The Nicene Creed puts forward four essential issues of belief here: On the Holy Spirit; On the Church; On baptism and forgiveness of sins & On the resurrection of the dead. Each one of them could be a sermon in itself, and no doubt each one of them will be at some point.

The Holy Spirit

On the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God who comes within us to nurture life, to encourage faith in God and love for others, and to give us the particular gifts that we have. Every new deepening of our faith, every success in overcoming problems in our own behaviour, is due to the indwelling welcoming, life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit.

It is sometimes claimed that the Holy Spirit has been the neglected person of the Trinity throughout Christian history. This is not so. Whether you look at the history of theology, whether in the Eastern Orthodox or the Roman Catholic traditions, or in the Lutheran, Reformed or Methodist traditions, you find a rich emphasis on the Holy Spirit. This emphasis was largely lost by the 19th Century liberal Protestant movement, which tended to reduce the faith to ethical principles, and so had little to say about the Holy Spirit. This was a barren path, which only placed a burden on people by telling them what they should do, but not telling them where they find the strength to do it.

We should banish any thought that the Holy Spirit is only at work in Christians. Just as God eagerly loves all people, so the Holy Spirit is at work to bring out good in all people. When we see people of all religions or none acting to do good in the world, there is a sign of the Holy Spirit at work.

But the Holy Spirit never compels a person's obedience. God created us with free choice, and we can harden ourselves and resist the life-giving presence of the Spirit. Sadly, many people do.

The Spirit is divine, and the Creed says "who proceeds from the Father", echoing John 17. In this way, it makes the point that the Holy Spirit is also of one being with the Father and the Son.

The one holy catholic and apostolic Church

On the Church. This is not the local church, but the worldwide community of believers. In the Creed we affirm that we are the one family with all who gather in Christian worship throughout the world. When we worship in a congregation of the Uniting Church, we are not seeking to establish a sect that will try to be different to other churches, we are seeking to follow the one Christian Faith. The Basis of Union is very strong about that.

In the Creed, the Church is described as "one holy, catholic and apostolic church". Think of the weight of each of those words. "One church" means that there is one community of Christian believers throughout the world, and as far as possible we are in fellowship with the whole Christian community. Now of course, that is true more in hope and belief than in reality, as we find the actual church splintered into many denominations, and factions within denominations, and new splinters seem to appear every year.

To believe in one church means that we pray for the overcoming of such difference, for the reunion of the Church, and that we seek to be an expression of the Christian faith as such, rather than a highly distinctive, Uniting Church, style of being church.

The word "catholic" makes the same point. The word "catholic" means "universal"; that our loyalty is to the whole church, not to the church in our particular place. We should not be put off by the way the word "catholic" has tended to become the name of one church. All churches should be "catholic", just as all churches should be "uniting", and all churches should be "orthodox". Equally all churches should be "baptist" and all should be "churches of Christ".

The Church is also described as "holy". Now this makes us think, because we can all name times when our experience of the Church has been most unholy, when actions have been done by people claiming to act in the name of the church.

When we say that the Church is holy, we do not mean that it is as good as it can be. It should be seeking to improve, but it always lives with the reality that we are all sinners, and when people meet the church, they are meeting questionable people like ourselves. When people leave the church because it lacks holiness, one often finds that the same lack of holiness soon appears in the new churches they form, and further fragments occur.

So what do we mean when we say that the church is holy? At the end of the day, we mean that the worship and community of the church, informed by the reading of the Scriptures, is the community in which you encounter God. Of special importance is the gathering round the Lord's Table to receive the bread and the wine of the Holy Communion, receiving the forgiveness of sins in the sharing of Christ's body and blood freely given for us. It is this encounter with God that the holiness of the church is all about. And the encounter with God makes the faults of the church even more glaring when we encounter them.

And finally, the Nicene Creed says that the Church is "Apostolic". That means it continues the tradition of the apostles, as received from the writings of the New Testament, and continually allows its life to be challenged and corrected by the Apostolic teaching.

Baptism

Thinking about the Church leads to the way that we enter the Christian community, which is internally by believing in Christ, and externally by being baptised. Small children can be and should be baptised, because Christ has died for them, and such baptism commits the parents and the church to teach them the faith, and looks forward to the day they will believe for themselves.

Notice how the Nicene Creed says, "we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins". A person is baptised once. It may never be repeated. If a person is baptised with water, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, then the person is baptised, and the church should never rebaptise a person baptised in some other community of the Christian Church. In Australia, the Anglican, Lutheran, Roman Catholic and Uniting Churches seek to make this clear by using the same baptism certificate, which any one of us may issue on behalf of all four churches.

The resurrection

And finally, the Nicene Creed concludes with the affirmation, "we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come".

What is the resurrection of the dead. Often the Christian hope in life beyond death is thinned down to simply a Hellenistic-type belief that the soul is immortal. Forget about the body. Our belief is much more than that. Life with a body is a good gift, created by God. Jesus Christ became human for us as a whole human being, and was raised from the dead as a whole human being, not leaving a body behind. Now of course, our body goes back into soil or ashes after our death, but the resurrection is the hope of restoration in the world to come as a whole human being, not simply as a disembodied spirit.

To look for the resurrection is to recall that God created us as whole bodily human beings, and that Christ was raised from the dead as a whole bodily human being. Therefore we believe that God will raise us from the dead as whole bodily human beings in the life of the world to come. Belief in the resurrection is belief in the creative power of God, who will not have finished renewing us at the time of our death.

---