Transcript

Alright, thanks for coming back, and in our last hour we talked about the Council of Nicaea.

And now in this hour we're going to talk about the Creed of Nicaea, and the Council of Constantinople, and then the Creed that we've finally come to call the Nicene Creed.

So, if you don't already, you should have in front of you the handout that has three columns, the Creed of Eusebius, the Creed of Nicaea, and then the Nicene Creed.

And the only reason I didn't call it the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed in that third column is because that wouldn't all fit at the top.

So, in this hour we're going to look at the development of the Creed.

What we call the Nicene Creed is really the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed.

It was begun at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325. And it was finished at the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381. And as I said, you should all know the date, 325 for the Council of Nicaea.

You should also know the date of 381 for the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople.

Again, I don't expect you to memorize a lot of dates, but these are dates that everyone should know whether they care or not I want to begin by looking at the Creed of Eusebius, the first column on the handout.

This is the one that Eusebius of Caesarea brought with him to Nicaea in order to clear his own name, to show that he was Orthodox, or at least Orthodox enough.

And as I mentioned, there is nothing objectionable in this creed, and so he was declared to be Orthodox.

But the Creed is not really specific enough to get into the issues surrounding the area of controversy.

So, for example, it does not say that the Son is eternally preexistent, or eternally generated, or anything about substance or essence.

So let's just take a look at that, and if you'll indulge me, I'll go ahead and read it.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, both visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God from God, Light from Light, Life from Life, the only begotten Son, the firstborn of all creation, begotten of the Father before all ages, through whom also all things were made, who for our salvation was made flesh, and lived among men, and suffered, and rose again the third day, and ascended to the Father, and shall come again in glory to judge the living and dead.

And in the Holy Spirit.

So you see what we've got there.

We've got our three-point outline.

We've got a little bit on the Father.

We've got more on the Son.

And we know there is a Holy Spirit.

Right?

So that's about it right now.

And let me just say up front, yes, I know that these creeds are going to use the word men in the inclusive sense.

Just bear with me.

It does mean humans.

Okay.

So... What I want you to notice about the Creed of Eusebius is this.

Notice that Jesus Christ is called the Word of God.

I highlighted some of these things in blue there.

This is certainly biblical, obviously, from the first chapter of John, but notice that he's not called the Son of God.

And remember that for adoptionists, the Son is only the Son after his baptism, not before.

So he's not the Son of God in any eternal sense.

And so here he's not even called the Son of God.

Also notice the quotation from Colossians 1.15. He's described as the firstborn of all creation.

Obviously, this is also biblical, but it's too open to an Arian interpretation.

The firstborn of all creation, the Arians would interpret that as meaning that he was the first created being.

So, you can see where this is going, but that's going to have to go, because it's unclear.

Now, this Creed does say that he was begotten of the Father before all ages.

But that does not necessarily mean he is eternally begotten or eternally generated.

And so that phrase could be interpreted as if it's saying he was simply created before the rest of creation, before time itself.

But it would not necessarily have to be taken as that he is co-eternal with the Father or eternally generated.

Notice the phrase, was made flesh.

Again, very biblical.

The word became flesh.

John chapter 1 also.

However, it will soon not be good enough to say that he was made flesh.

Because the use of the word flesh there leaves the door open for something that we're going to look at later when we talk about Apollinarius.

But it leaves the door open for a Christology that has less than full humanity.

In other words, imagine if I said that Jesus was a spiritual being who just sort of put on a suit of flesh.

but wasn't really fully human for whatever reason, and we'll talk about that later.

So, it's not going to be enough to say that he took on flesh.

Again, that is biblical, but it's not going to be enough because it could leave the door open for a Christology that had less than a full humanity.

So, eventually we're going to have to say not just flesh, but that he was made human, as in fully human.

Now, in the text, it's going to say he was made man, But man there means human, fully human as opposed to simply made flesh or put on a suit of flesh.

So anyway, that's the creed of Eusebius.

That's the creed that Eusebius of Caesarea brought with him to the council of Nicaea, and it's the creed that got him off the hook.

And it's the creed that the council will use as a template, but by itself it's not going to be good enough, right?

So now we're going to look at the Creed of Nicaea.

Now remember, this is not the Nicene Creed as we know it.

That's coming.

This is simply the Creed of Nicaea.

This is the Creed as it was written in 325. That's the middle column on the handout.

So this is just the development of the Creed to the Nicene.

Yeah, so basically the Council of Nicaea took the Creed of Eusebius and said this is a good start, but we've got to tweak this.

We've got to add to it to make it more specific to really refute Arianism.

Because as it was, the Creed of Eusebius does not refute Arianism.

And let's face it, Eusebius himself leaned in that direction, so why would he?

So we're going to have to add to this.

Alright?

So, Eusebius' Creed was the template or the starting point, but it was modified by the bishops at the Council of Nicaea in 325. So the Creed of Nicaea is the Creed of 325. So let's take a look at that, and I'll read through that.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible.

Not too much different so far.

And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, That is, of the essence of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same substance with the Father, through whom all things were made, both in heaven and on earth, who for us men in our salvation descended, was incarnate, and was made man.

But wait, there's more.

Those who say there was a time when he was not, and he was not before he was begotten, and that he was made out of nothing, or who maintain that he is of another hypostasis, So in other words, the Creed of Nicaea ends with a fourth paragraph of anathemas in effect saying, A curse on you if you believe any of this stuff.

So if you didn't get the anti-Aryan argument from the main body of the Creed, here it is stated another way.

So let's look at the details of the Creed of Nicaea.

First thing to notice, firstborn of all creation is removed, because again, that is too open to invariant interpretation.

What's added is the phrase, not made.

Begotten, not made.

Because remember, one of the points of debate in the Arian controversy was, what does begotten mean?

For the Arians, begotten means created.

For the Orthodox, the Nicenes, we'll call the Orthodox the Nicenes, the Nicene party.

For the Nicenes, begotten means generated, but not created.

And so, here we add the phrase begotten, not made.

Also, notice the addition of the essence language, and it actually occurs twice in this version of the creed.

First, it says, after the only begotten of the Father, that is, of the essence of the Father.

And I put the Greek in there.

And then later, of course, the word homoousios, of the same substance or of the same essence with the Father.

So you've got that essence language in there to emphasize that the unity of Father and Son is not simply a unity of cooperating wills, but it is a unity on the level of substance.

It is an ontological unity.

And so of the same substance is that word homoousios.

Notice also the word descended is added there to emphasize the Christology of descent.

Christ is not a man who became a god, but a god who became human.

Now, also notice, was made flesh is now changed to was made man.

And again, man there means human, to emphasize the full humanity of Jesus Christ.

So, it's not enough to say that he's flesh because that could leave too much possibility to interpret that as something less than fully human.

Now, notice that the paragraph, and I should put air quotes around paragraph, the paragraph on the Holy Spirit is still just the one line.

So, after the Council of Nicaea, we still don't have a full-fledged pneumatology here.

We know that there is a Holy Spirit.

And then finally, the anathemas, again, designed specifically to address Arianism and to So this whole, before the Holy Spirit, they're just like saying, it's there, we just don't know what it is.

Yeah, you know, the thing is, it's not that, I don't think they would go so far as to say we don't know what the Holy Spirit is, because we have Fertullian and Novation who have already written on the Holy Spirit in the West, and others in the East, so they know more about the Holy Spirit It's just not the issue of debate yet.

Now, between the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople, it absolutely will be the issue of debate.

And so that's when we have to add more to the creed to clarify some things.

The question hasn't really been pressed yet.

Any other questions about the Council of 325 yet before we go on?

After the Council of Nicaea, there was a tennis match of opposing smaller councils.

And remember, I started this whole thing tonight by saying, you know, what do you do when you have opposing councils?

You have one big uber-council, right, that's supposed to be a worldwide council that's supposed to override all of them.

And you'd think that would have worked, but it really didn't, because after the Council of Nicaea, you have a series of smaller regional councils Depending on who is in control, what group of bishops is in control, they either try to cancel out what Nicaea did or reinforce it.

So in 327, you have synods in Antioch and in Nicomania that are presided over by Arian bishops and that affirm their support for Arius and his followers.

And in fact, they try to depose the pro-Nicene bishops and replace them with Arian bishops.

And this is going to happen throughout the East, where any time either an Arian or a Nicene bishop gains power, they're going to try to get their friends into other positions of authority.

So, the synods in Antioch and Nicomedia are supporting Arius and his followers and are trying to get Arian bishops into positions of power.

And Arius himself appealed to the Emperor Constantine and agreed to accept the word homoousios, again, probably thinking that he could interpret it in some way that wouldn't force him to change his beliefs.

But Constantine said, okay.

And Constantine, the emperor, told Bishop Alexander of Alexandria to go ahead and readmit Arius to communion, and Alexander refused.

Constantine ordered him to do it, and Alexander still refused.

Arius complained again to Constantine and threatened A schism threatened to go off and start his own church and got Constantine mad at him because remember who Constantine is.

You can be on his good side until you threaten unity.

Then he's going to be mad at you.

In 328, I believe Constantine shows his true theological colors because at this point, The bishop who's been his right-hand man all along, Osius of Cordova, is now out.

And replacing him is, guess who, Eusebius of Nicomedia.

So Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian bishop, who just a little while ago, Constantine told the church of Nicomedia to get themselves a new bishop, because he wasn't playing by the rules.

Now Eusebius of Nicomedia becomes Constantine's closest advisor.

And after this, the exiled Arian bishops are allowed to return to their sees and regain their office as bishop.

Also in 328, Alexander of Alexandria died and Athanasius succeeded him, became the next Bishop of Alexandria.

So now we have Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, who as you know is going to become the major proponent of the pro-Nicene or the Orthodox camp here in his writings.

Arius has the nerve to complain to Constantine about Athanasius becoming the next Bishop of Alexandria, and so Constantine got mad at him again, and this time Constantine ordered that all of Arius' writings should be burned.

So notice, that didn't happen simply as a result of the council, simply as a result of Arius being declared heretic.

His writings were ordered to be burned because he kept annoying the emperor.

But that also meant that Eusebius of Nicomedia and the other Arian bishops are now out to get Athanasius.

They're out to get him deposed and removed from his seat.

In 335, a synod was held in Jerusalem that readmitted Arius.

The Arians accused Athanasius of various crimes, extortion, murder, treason, all of this was not true of course, but he was thrown out of Alexandria.

And over the course of the time, until his death, he would be kicked out of Alexandria and reinstalled in the Sea of Alexandria five times.

When he was kicked out of Alexandria and an Arian bishop was installed in his place, the good people of Alexandria rose up into a frenzy and an angry mob killed the Arian bishop.

So Athanasius is in and out like five times.

When he's out, who do you think he goes to for support?

The Bishop of Rome, Bishop Julius at this time.

So notice what's happening here.

When the pro-Nicene, or the Orthodox bishop of Alexandria is thrown out of his city by the Arians and can't go back, where does he go?

He goes to Rome.

And I'll just sort of give you the bottom line here, and that is that we know who's going to win, right?

We know that the Nicene party, the Orthodox party, is going to eventually come out on top.

this is the party that Rome sided with, this is the party that sided with Rome, and once again, Rome is on the winning side.

In fact, that becomes a pattern.

Constantine died in 337. Now, Constantine has one thing he's got to do before he dies.

Anyone remember what that is?

Get baptized, exactly.

So who do you think baptized Constantine?

Eusebius of Nicomedia, the Arian bishop.

Now, I'm going to spare you a lot of the details here, but when Constantine died, his empire was divided up among his three sons, but eventually, it remained in the hands of his one son, Constantius.

Constantius, named after his grandfather, right?

So, Constantius made Eusebius of Nicomedia Bishop of Constantinople in 338. So remember that rule of Nicaea against the translation of a bishop from one seat to another?

Well, this is going on all over the place.

And the new emperor, Constantius, makes Eusebius of Nicomedia the bishop of Constantinople.

And so this also means that an Arian bishop is in the position of highest ecclesiastical authority in the East.

Because remember, Constantinople is going to be the number one metropolitan in the East.

So then, when missionaries are trained and commissioned to go out and convert the barbarian tribes of northern and eastern Europe to Christianity, they're going to be trained and commissioned by the Arian bishops.

So, when these missionaries go out to the barbarian tribes, they will convert them to an Aryan version of Christianity.

And so that when these barbarian tribes then come into southern and western Europe, not only are they barbarian, but they're also heretics.

And we are going to have an interesting span of time in western Europe where you have a sort of religious minority, Aryans, ruling over a Catholic majority in places like Spain.

And so this is how Arianism will move west, even though it's supposedly dealt with already in the east.

So it's ironic because At the Council of Nicaea, not very many Western bishops came because Arianism wasn't really an issue in the West.

And so, theoretically then, the Council of Nicaea is supposed to deal with Arianism, and yet Arianism migrates West through Arian bishops gaining power in Constantinople and through the barbarian tribes.

So we'll talk a little bit more about that later when we talk about the effect of Arianism in the West.

Because Constantius himself will try to promote Arianism even in the West.

But as I mentioned before, The pressure from bishops like Eusebius of Nicomedia and from the Emperor will highlight the differences between that version of Arianism and some of these other factions and will cause the other factions to join with the Nicenes and will eventually help the Nicene party win the day.

But remember that in these controversies, The bishop of Rome is siding with and supporting the Orthodox, the pro-19 bishops like Athanasius.

And remember that the bishop of Rome claims the authority of the seat of Peter, the city where Peter was at least traditionally the first bishop.

Now, when the bishop of Rome supports Athanasius, That act is taken by some of the Easterners as an act of defiance against the East, because if they've got some of these smaller eastern synods that excommunicate or try to depose Athanasius, Athanasius goes to the West and the Bishop of Rome supports him, then that is taken as an act of defiance against these eastern synods.

But it also is, again, another step on the way of the evolution of the authority of the Bishop of Rome.

And I think I may have mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating that as time goes on, With five metropolitans in the East, there is no one bishop who rises to the top of a pyramid.

We have a tradition of putting its authority more in councils of bishops than in one person at the top of a pyramid, or one point of highest authority.

Now, not that there aren't going to be people who are skeptical of the councils, because with all these back and forth councils, you know, canceling each other out, there is going to be some skepticism about the ability of a council to accomplish anything.

But overall, the Eastern Church will place its, or will look to councils more for its authority.

Whereas the Western Church, the Western Church with only two metropolitans, one of which is the clear leader, And that being the Bishop of Rome that now takes on this authority of supporting the Orthodox bishops, even if that means opposing some Eastern synod, the West will defer more to the authority of the Bishop of Rome as that one person at the top of the authority pyramid.

Well, we've got another couple of small synods.

In 341, there's another synod in Antioch.

The Eastern bishops are angry with Rome, and the Arian bishops are in the majority there, and so they write an Arian version of the Creed.

In 342, 343, there's another council in the city of Sardinca.

And this is the first time that Western bishops outnumber the Eastern bishops.

And Athanasius shows up as part of the entourage of the Bishop of Rome.

And the Eastern bishops refuse to even sit down at the table because Athanasius is there, and his very presence to them represented the West's claim of supremacy over the East, the Bishop of Rome's claim of supremacy over the Eastern metropolitan bishops.

So the eastern bishops kind of bailed and the western bishops were left to do whatever they wanted pretty much.

And what that council decreed was that the bishop of Rome is basically the last court of appeals for disagreeing bishops.

So that if you have opposing bishops, or if you have one bishop who is deposed by another, the deposed bishop can appeal to the bishop of Rome, and the bishop of Rome is the authority who can make the decision.

And so, you know, this is sort of something that plays out with Athanasius and others.

And obviously the eastern bishops would never have agreed to this if they had stayed at the council, but that's what the council decreed.

Now, Over the next few decades, the questions that have been asked of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is the Son divine in the same way that the Father is?

Is the Son eternal?

Is it appropriate to worship the Son?

All those questions that were asked of the Son will now be asked about the Holy Spirit.

So now the question is called, well, what about the Holy Spirit?

And so the same questions that came up with regard to the Son of God, as a result of the Aryan controversy, are now going to come up with regard to the Holy Spirit.

And even to the point where some of the people who were originally Aryans, or semi-Aryans, who come over to the 19th side, Some of those folks are going to say something to the effect of, okay, we'll give you the divinity of the Son, but we can't buy into the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

So they're going to be sort of there.

Now you're going to hear more about this when we have a lecture on the Cappadocians, and so I'm not going to say too much about it now.

For now, it's enough to note that the Cappadocians are three bishops, from the region of Cappadocia, in what is now Turkey or Asia Minor.

And again, we're not going to go into detail because you're going to hear more about them later, but For now, basically, it's enough just to note that the Cappadocians are the ones who helped the Eastern Church answer these questions about the Holy Spirit.

And they also helped the Eastern Church settle on the Greek equivalent of Tertullian terms The Cappadocians also helped the Eastern Church settle what Greek words would be used to talk about the three persons and the one substance of the Trinity.

So in other words, how do you translate Tertullian's persona or personae and substantia into Greek?

What Greek words are you going to use for those concepts?

And the problem is that you have people using the same words to talk about different things, and using different words to talk about the same things, and so the semantics really got in the way for a long time, and the Cappadocians helped sort all that out.

and paved the way for the next ecumenical council.

And so again, I'll leave the rest of the detail on the Cappadocians for later.

But eventually it became clear that another council was going to be needed.

Just like the Council of Nicaea had to override the earlier opposing councils, now we needed another ecumenical council, another worldwide council Override all of the back and forth of the smaller councils that were going on since the Council of Nicaea.

And by this time, thanks in part to the Cappadocians, the Eastern Church was ready to accept the Creed of 325 and also expand on it relative to the Holy Spirit.

So, just like the First Ecumenical Council was convened by an emperor, Constantine, The Second Ecumenical Council was also convened by an emperor.

This time it was our old friend Theodosius I. Now remember Theodosius I? I told you that Constantine was not really the emperor who made Christianity the only legal religion or who outlawed all other pagan practice.

That was Theodosius.

He's the one who did that.

He's the one who made Christianity really the official religion of the empire.

Granted, Constantine made it the favorite religion of the Empire, but then they had that whole problem of Arianism, and Constantine, and certainly in some, means for Arianism.

Theodosius is the one who made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, and I already told you that in 380, he issued the edict that said that If you're going to ask what you mean by Christianity, or which Christianity is the official religion of the Empire, it is Catholic Christianity.

It is the Christianity that, according to the edict, that Peter delivered to the Romans.

So again, this highlights the privacy of the city of Rome and its claim to apostolic succession from Peter.

So, in the year 381, We have the Second Ecumenical Council, the Council of Constantinople, and 381 is a date you should all remember whether you care or not.

And what the Second Ecumenical Council did at Constantinople was, first of all, it confirmed the Creed from Nicaea, the Creed 325, and it updated it.

And we're going to look at that in a minute.

The other thing it did, and I've already mentioned this, is that it decreed that the city of Constantinople, as a metropolitan, was The second highest authority after Rome.

So, in a sense, the canon of Constantinople that decreed this was meant to elevate the status of Constantinople to the position of first church of the East, right?

But in doing so, it also acknowledged that it's second to Rome, and basically made Rome first church of the world.

And so this obviously just further strengthens the position of the metropolitan of Rome, and it weakens the positions of the other Eastern metropolitans, like Antioch and Alexandria, Any questions at this point before we take a look at the creed from the Council of Constantinople?

Go back to your handout, the third column, where it says the Nicene Creed, and of course, as I said, it's really, technically speaking, the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed.

If you can say that three times fast, you deserve a prize.

So, again, if you'll indulge me, I will just go ahead and read it now.

Some versions of the creed say we believe, some say I believe.

As you know, the word credo in Latin means I believe, but of course the creed itself would have been written in Greek originally.

But anyway, we believe or I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, through Him all things were made.

For us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.

Hold that parenthetical phrase off for a minute.

Who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.

And I believe in one holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.

I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

Alright, so that's your 19 Creed, and there are variations depending on the translation, but that's basically it.

That is from 381. So that is the Creed of 381. Thanks for pointing that out.

So notice now that finally the phrase Word of God has been replaced with the phrase Son of God.

This is to emphasize that Jesus Christ is always Son of God.

not by adoption, not just starting in his baptism, but by his very nature, eternally Son of God.

And remember Alexander and Athanasius' slogan that was meant to counter Arius' slogan.

Arius' slogan was, there was a time when he was not, and the Alexandrian slogan was, always a father, always a son.

So here he is as the only begotten Son of God.

Now, consubstantial is still in here, and the word consubstantial is just another translation of the same substance.

That's not really a change, it's just a change in the English.

But notice that the first reference to the essence language is taken out.

This was probably a concession To some of those factions who were on the fence, these semi-Aryans, who may still have been uncomfortable with the essence language, and so this is probably a concession, well, you know, we'll take that out, but we're leaving the homoousios word in there.

And then they could get on board with that.

The phrase, before all ages, is back.

Born of the Father before all ages.

But of course now the assumption would be that it's supposed to be clear that this means eternal generation.

It doesn't simply mean that he was created before the rest of creation, but it means that he was eternally generated.

And so this born language is not meant to imply that he has a beginning to his existence.

I mean, even Novation uses that born language, although in Latin, when he's talking about eternal generation.

So it doesn't mean that he has a beginning to his existence.

In fact, just the contrary, it means that he's eternally generated.

It's not as clear as I might like it to be, but that's the assumption there.

Another way to say this is eternally begotten and in some translations that is exactly what it says, eternally begotten.

Notice the addition of Mary.

He was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary.

So we have the addition of the Holy Spirit in here before we even get to the paragraph about the Spirit, and we have the addition of Mary.

Now we're going to talk a little bit more about the role of Mary in Christology.

You may be tempted to think that it's about Mary, Notice also the addition of Pontius Pilate.

And I don't know if you remember the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar.

Remember that one?

In Jesus Christ Superstar, there is a song that Pilate sings.

Now, in the Gospels, Pilate's wife has a dream and says to Pilate, don't have anything to do with the Jesus guy.

In the Gospel according to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, it's actually Pilate who has the dream, and he sings this song, and there's a very poignant line in the song where he sort of sees into the future, and he sees millions of people blaming him for the death of Christ.

And of course that's a reference to his name in the Creed.

It isn't simply a matter of finding a scapegoat here, though.

The inclusion of the name of Pontius Pilate anchors the Christ event in history.

In other words, Pontius Pilate is a real historical character who really lived and who really was procurator of Judea from the years 26 to 36. So we can date this.

We can date this event.

And that's important because The Christian faith is a historical faith, in the sense that we believe God intervened in human history in the person of Jesus Christ.

Just as God intervened in human history in the Exodus, and the Jewish believers believe that, we also believe that God intervened in human history.

This is not a faith based on cosmic events that happened before the dawn of time on Mount Olympus or something.

This is historical.

Pontius Pilate here is mentioned to anchor the whole event in history.

The phrase, in accordance with the Scriptures, really means according to the Scriptures.

Possibly there's some embarrassment about the extra-biblical word homoousios in there, but this is to say all of this happened according to the Scriptures and is consistent with the Scriptures.

In some translations you get the phrase, in fulfillment of the Scriptures.

And while the early Christians certainly did believe that there was a lot of prophecy in the Old Testament that related to the events of Jesus' life, ministry, death, and resurrection, it's not really about the fulfillment of prophecy here.

It's more in the sense that this is a reference to the Gospels.

That's what's going on here.

And then the addition of the phrase, his kingdom will have no end, I think this is a reference to the fulfillment of 2 Samuel 7. Here we do have an allusion, I think, to the Old Testament, where in 2 Samuel chapter 7, there is a promise of the sort of eternal dynasty of the Davidic line, and so Jesus is that eternal king who will reign forever.

Okay.

So, as you can see, the anathemas are removed, thankfully.

I'm too glad we don't have to recite that in worship.

But we do have, of course, the expanded paragraph on the Holy Spirit.

And so, if the question is, and it was, the question is, is the Holy Spirit divine?

The answer is yes.

The Holy Spirit is the Lord And the giver of life, no less than Jesus Christ himself.

Lord is clearly a divine title, equivalent to Adonai, as the replacement for the divine name in the Old Testament.

So we see Jesus Christ called Lord in the second paragraph, now we see the Holy Spirit also called Lord.

And giver of life.

And so it speaks to the divinity of the Spirit.

Question?

Yes?

Yeah, but holy doesn't necessarily mean divine.

And there were people, and we'll talk about this more when we hear about the Cappadocians, but there was a group In the early church, that went by various names, but during the fourth century especially, who questioned the divinity of the Holy Spirit and wanted to talk about the Holy Spirit as a created being or essentially an angel or something like that.

So we're going to hear more about that.

So yeah, there was a debate over the divinity of the Spirit.

And again, that begs the question, if the Spirit is divine, If we're questioning the divinity of the Spirit, we also have to question whether it's appropriate to worship the Holy Spirit.

And again, the answer would be yes, because we see the Spirit who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, and also who is spoken to as prophets.

So speaking of the Spirit is also eternal in the sense that the Spirit was there in the Old Testament.

Now notice that the Spirit proceeds.

We've talked about this a little bit already in the context of when we were talking about the Trinity and the doctrine of inseparable operation and appropriation and I was saying that there's really a very limited amount of words that describe only one person of the Trinity, right?

The Father is unbegotten.

The Son is begotten and incarnate, and then the Holy Spirit proceeds.

And it's sort of almost like the church ran out of words and proceeds with the only word left.

In fact, in the Apologists, Proceeds is the word we're going to use to speak specifically of the Holy Spirit, and specifically of the way in which the Holy Spirit is given to the Church, to humanity, So, it means, in a lot of ways, kind of the same thing as begotten, but it's not exactly the same thing.

Because begottenness leads to sonship.

So, the Son is begotten, therefore the Son is the Son.

But the Spirit is not another son of the Father.

So you can't just use the word begotten again.

We need another word, and that word is proceeds, and that speaks to the way in which the Holy Spirit is the gift of God to the church and to humanity.

Now, we've set aside that phrase, and the Son, because originally the Creed of 381 did not have that phrase in there.

Originally it only said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, period.

And I'm going to talk about that in a minute.

There were some of the Eastern theologians who were saying that we could say the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, but this concept of proceeding from the Father and the Son is different.

It's called double procession.

And I'll get to that in a minute, but first let me finish the creed here.

Now, we have a fourth paragraph, but it, again, thankfully doesn't curse anyone.

This fourth paragraph is what is often referred to as the four marks of the church.

The four things that make the church the church, the body of Christ.

And so, we now kind of actually have a four-point outline because we have a paragraph on the Father, a paragraph on the Son, a paragraph on the Spirit, and a paragraph on the church.

Because the understanding was, you want to get to the Father, you've got to go through the Son.

You want to get to the Son, you've got to go through the Church.

You thought I was going to say Spirit there, but I didn't. You've got to go through the Church.

So that's kind of how it works.

So the four things that make the Church the Church are that it is one, there is only one Church, Paul talks about this in Ephesians, one body, one baptism, that kind of language.

It is holy because it is created by God, instituted by Christ.

It is Catholic, meaning that it is universal or worldwide.

And this goes with the oneness, too, because if the church is to be one, it has to be worldwide.

You can't have one church of the East and one of the West.

Now, obviously you know we're going to get there, but it's supposed to be one, it's supposed to be worldwide.

And the fourth mark of the church is that it is apostolic.

It is connected to the apostles and through them to Jesus.

So, the oneness and the universality, or the world-wideness, of the Church are made manifest in the one baptism.

That is really how the Church is one.

Theoretically, the one table also, but...

The fourth one is that it is apostolic.

It is one, holy, Catholic, apostolic.

But then notice it goes right on to say, that there is one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and so it is in the one baptism that theoretically ensures the oneness of the church, the unity of the church.

And I would argue that even to this day, baptism is the closest thing, and perhaps the creed itself also is the closest thing we have that keeps us one in spite of our denominational differences.

And finally, as members of the Church, as the body of Christ, the Creed ends with our hope of eternal life.

So that is the Creed of 381, the Creed that we call the 19th Creed.

Now before I go on, are there any questions about that specifically?

The Virgin Mary, well, I don't know what to say, there isn't too much to say about it other than the incarnation here is described in more detail, and so we get, again, based on the Gospels, We get the mention of how it is he came down from heaven.

So we still have the came down language, and I know it's descended in the creative 325 and then came down, but again, it means basically the same thing.

It's not really a change.

So we still have the came down language.

And we still have the became man and became fully human language, but I think to emphasize the full humanity, we also have that he was actually born of a woman.

So this is not some Gnostic phantom who just appeared on the earth.

He had a physical birth, which speaks to his real humanity.

On the other side of that coin is that his birth is still unique in the sense that it is a virginal birth with a conception by the Holy Spirit.

So, you know, we sort of have both the divine and human natures elaborated here a little bit.

It's almost like, well, it's not like that.

It's not like, what's that word, masculine, masculine, masculine, masculine.

Well, yeah, you don't want to go there because it's a full humanity and a full divinity.

Right.

I guess when we say full humanity, because we think of humanity as conception as a man and woman.

The Holy Spirit is not a man.

Right.

So that's where I'm going there.

When I say full humanity, the virginal conception doesn't negate the full humanity.

It's actually good that I'm clarifying this because You don't see the word full, actually, in the Creed, do you?

So why do I keep throwing it in?

It's important that it's a full humanity, because just like Christ must be consubstantial with the Father in order for Him to be that divine intervention that makes salvation possible, He also must be consubstantial with humanity In order to be our representative and to die for us in our place.

So that's what I mean by a full humanity.

That he is also consubstantial with humanity and that will be clarified more later.

So we're not quite there yet.

But again, I think the addition of physical birth from a woman is moving in that direction.

Good question though.

Okay.

Alright, so let me go on from here just a bit.

Even the Council of Constantinople and the updating of the creed did not completely make Arianism go away.

There's two things you have to remember.

The first thing is that it was Arian bishops, like Eusebius of Nicomedia, who commissioned the missionaries to the barbarians, and the barbarian tribes moved into Europe.

I'm talking about the Goths, the Vandals, these guys, right?

The barbarian tribes move into Western Europe and many of them are Aryan and some of them will take over certain areas and this is when the Roman Empire in the West starts to break down and it's the beginning of Europe as separate kingdoms under barbarian chieftains and some of these barbarian chieftains are Aryan Christian, if you can call them Christian.

And so we have an Aryan minority ruling over a Catholic majority in some of these areas.

And so there's going to be that influence that is going to bring Aryanism into the West.

So that's one reason why Aryanism doesn't simply go away.

The second thing to remember is that anyone who leans toward adoptionism It's going to look at the Orthodox middle, and it's going to look like the other extreme to them.

It's going to look like modalism to them.

In other words, if you're an adoptionist or an Arian, and you hear the word consubstantial, consubstantial with the Father, that is going to sound to you like there's too much unity in the Trinity, too much unity between Father and Son, like it's saying that the Father and Son are one and the same.

And so the Arians If the Arians are out there arguing for more of a distinction between father and son, So that the relationship between father and son is a relationship of cooperating wills, but it's not an ontological sameness or anything like that.

If the Arians are out there arguing for a greater distinction between father and son, what are the Orthodox going to do?

They're going to counter by arguing for more unity between the father and son.

And especially if you're in some place like Spain, where you have Aryan barbarians ruling over you.

That rhyme was just a coincidence, by the way.

So, what that means is that the Orthodox, the pro-Nicene, especially in the West, want to emphasize the unity between the father and son even more because they're afraid of the, you know, So you put these two things together, the invaders are Aryans, and the need to emphasize the unity and equality of the father and son, and you get the double procession of the spirit.

Let me show you how that works.

Basically, St. Augustine, who we'll talk about later, but Augustine will write that the Holy Spirit doesn't proceed just from the Father, but the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son.

And this was a way to emphasize the unity and the equality of the Father and Son.

And let me show you what I mean.

Now, to be fair, It's biblical.

If you look at especially the Fourth Gospel, we can find passages where the Father sends the Spirit, and we can find passages where the Son sends the Spirit.

So the idea, the concept in itself is not problematic.

But you're going to see where the problem is going to come in in a minute.

But let me just draw a little crude diagram here.

We're used to thinking in terms of a hierarchy of the Trinity that looks like this, right?

In fact, going back to the apologists, the Father takes the first place, the Son takes the second place, the Holy Spirit takes the third place.

We're used to this kind of a hierarchy.

But what Augustine and others will propose is something that looks more like an upside-down triangle.

So let's put Father here, Let's put Son here, and let's put the Holy Spirit here.

So that, in a sense, what they're saying is that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son to humanity, to the Church.

This emphasizes the equality and the unity of the Father and Son.

Now, it's not saying that there isn't also the same equality and unity with the Holy Spirit.

It's not saying that the Holy Spirit isn't consubstantial.

But that's not really the point at this point.

The point right now is to emphasize the unity and the equality of Father and Son, because by putting the Son, by taking the Son from here up to here, is a way of refuting this ongoing area inside.

Arianism wants to draw the line here.

Everything above this line is uncreated, and God, and everything below the line is created.

Well, the Orthodox don't want to draw the line there.

They want to draw the line here, and say, here's humanity, and so everything above the line is uncreated and God, and everything below the line is created.

That's where the Orthodox want to draw the line.

So in order to erase the line from here, they take the Son and put him up on the same level as the Father, and so we have a new kind of, we still have this hierarchy in theory, in terms of the authority internal to the Trinity, but now we sort of have a new way of looking at the Trinity that says the Holy Spirit proceeds equally from both Father and Son.

And I'm hoping that you get that the whole point of that is to refute Arianism, right?

So, what we have then is when Arianism is finally overcome and sort of dies out in some of these areas, like in Spain, and when the Orthodox then can control the councils, They're going to make sure Arianism doesn't come back.

How do you make sure Arianism doesn't come back?

You stick into the creed a little phrase, and the Son.

The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, and the Son.

We're going to stick that in there.

Now, this is the West, so we're doing Latin now.

So the phrase, and the Son, in Latin, is actually only one word.

The word is filioque.

Filio is sun, que is and, and when you use the word and in this way you can tack it on the end of the word as a suffix, and you don't need the word the a lot of times in Latin, so and the sun is one word, filioque.

And this will come to be known as the filioque controversy, because when the Easterners get wind of the fact that the Westerners have added a word to the creed, they're going to be upset.

Now, in debates between Eastern and Westerners, I sometimes hear Easterners argue that filioque is heretical.

And I would argue that the problem is not that filioque is heretical.

The problem is The question of whether the Westerners had the right to change a creed that was created at the Ecumenical Council.

And the Easterners will argue that the Westerners did not have that right.

So anyway, starting in Spain, The word filioque is added to the creed and eventually in the Middle Ages under Charlemagne, it will get permanently added to the Nicene Creed in the West.

And this is going to be another sore spot in the relations between East and West and another thing that leads to the eventual split between the Eastern and the Western Christians.

So keep that tucked in the back of your mind because we're going to bring it back up later.

But I wanted to show you that that's where this goes.

And so when you say the creed, if you belong to a tradition that says the creed, and I hope you do say the creed, when you get to the phrase, and the Son, know that your Eastern brothers and sisters don't say that.

Of course, they're probably saying it in Greek, but, I mean, translation aside, The Creed is actually something that should unite all Christians, but unfortunately we have this one difference.

But other than that, we all say the same Creed, we all have the same Creed, and we all operate on the assumption that the Creed defines the boundaries of When the Western and the Eastern groups meet together, how do they overcome this obstacle when they decide to create together?

Western and Eastern Christians don't really get an opportunity to worship together because in the ancient traditions like the Eastern Orthodox traditions or the Roman Catholic, liturgy centers so primarily around the Eucharist and they can't share the Eucharist.

You don't see that kind of ecumenical service.

In our world, you can do Thanksgiving and have an ecumenical service or something like that, but it's difficult to do that across East and West.

So, it doesn't happen.

I mean, not that I'm aware of.

Yes?

In my town of Mishalaka, there's a Greek Orthodox church that is what they call in communion with the Pope.

Is that...

Something like what you're talking about, some of them have done something to get back in line with the Pope or something.

The Catholic priest might fill in for There are certain Eastern Rite churches that are in communion with the West, but they still use the liturgy from the East and the traditions from the East.

I'm not really personally up on that.

I would love to learn more about it.

It's a bit of a mystery to me, but I know that it happens.

In those cases, though, I had a visit for a class and every single word of their whole Mass was in Greek.

I understood nothing.

But they were real friendly.

Did you get to sit down much?

No. They dropped a little communion thing into their mouth like little birds.

Yeah, so we have on occasion taken groups to visit Greek Orthodox or other traditions, Eastern traditions.

The Greek Orthodox is a beautiful service, but if you don't know Greek, you're kind of left out.

Okay, any other questions at this point?

Could you repeat the one phrase you said, the creed defines the boundaries of Orthodoxy?

Theoretically, for East and West, apart from the Filiogeo edition, the Creed should be the thing that unites us, and that unites us in the sense that it defines the boundaries of what correct belief is, or orthodox belief.

It's in a sense saying, if you want to call yourself a Christian, You have to accept this.

This is it.

These are the boundaries here.

And so we share that with Christians worldwide, again except for the addition of that one word.

Yes?

You said it was added in the West and spread in Spain.

When was that?

Good question.

When was that?

I want to say...

One of the things Charlemagne tried to do was standardized liturgy, so it was either going to be in or out for everybody at that point.

Anything else?

Alright, I decree that you should go home.