Hello! Welcome back. Sorry for the lack of posting, there have been quite a few things happening that needed attention and sadly my posting suffered. Hopefully I can get back on track with a somewhat weekly update here.

In this post, I want to focus on the following section of the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
    the only Son of God,
    eternally begotten of the Father,
    God from God, Light from Light,
    true God from true God,
    begotten, not made,
    of one Being with the Father.

To keep things in small, bite sized portions, we'll discuss the opening two lines. 

Recall that a focus of the Creed was to formulate who Jesus Christ is and to help explain his relationship with God. Was Jesus a human being who was given some special knowledge from God? Was Jesus a spirit who appeared to us as a human? Or was Jesus actually God who simply came to earth in human form and afterwards returned to his non-human state? These had all been theories advanced (and some people to this day hold variants of one or more of these ideas as true), so what's a Christian to do? After all, there are consequences for the believer depending on which of these ideas is true. 

For me, this is one of the harder sections to wrap my head around though it starts off pretty simply:

 We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
    the only Son of God,

The beginning makes two statements about Jesus Christ:

1. He is Lord, in fact "one Lord" which implies he is the only Lord for Christians. This is actually a bigger statement than it might first appear. The thought questions at the end of this post will explore some of the consequences of this statement.

2. He is the only Son of God. That is, there is a relationship between Jesus and God and this relationship is unique. One thing to call out here, he is the Son of God. This means there is some distinction between Jesus and God, but let's be a little careful. Some people might want to jump to the conclusion "If Jesus is the Son of God, then Jesus is not God". That is not what is said here. This distinction is between God the Father we saw at the opening of the Creed and Jesus. They are not the same though they have a relationship. 

An interesting note: If we take the opening of the Nicene Creed ("We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty..." along with this opening we are getting a restatement of what Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 8:6, so at least it seems to follow directly from Scripture. 

Now here is where things can get a little difficult. What does it mean that Jesus is the only "Son of God"? For humans it is easy to think of what it means to be a son. A son is a male offspring. Thus a son is not the same person as the father or the mother, but he would have some inherited aspects of them both. For Jesus, it's a little more complicated than that. If we take this simple human idea of what it means to be a son and try to apply it to God Almighty, what would that even mean? To the best of our knowledge God doesn't have an explicit physical form, so what kind of attributes would be able to pass on? And if God is non-corporeal (doesn't have a physical form or body) what does that mean about Jesus, is he half-spirit, half-physical human? The remainder of this passage will try to clear some of this up for us. We'll get into that next time.

In Christ,

Michael

Some questions:

1. According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, a Lord is "one having power and authority over others,a ruler by hereditary right or preeminence to whom service and obedience are due". If Christians believe "in one Lord, Jesus Christ", what does that mean? Digging a little deeper, the Creed doesn't say "a Lord, Jesus Christ" but "one Lord, Jesus Christ". How should that shape our relationship not only with him, but with other people and things in this world?

2. Taking the definition above for Lord as one we can work with, notice that it says this Lord is one "to whom service and obedience are due". As a Christian, how can we know that the services we say we are doing in the name of Jesus are proper services he is due? Similarly, how do know that we are actually obeying Jesus? 

3. When we think of "obedience" we often think it means just doing what you're told because you're told to do it. Consider verses like John 14:23 and 1 John 5:2-4. For a Christian, is obedience to be done simply because God is more powerful than us? Even when the commands are hard, how should a Christian approach them?

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We believe

Welcome back! Now it's time for us to start working our way through the Nicene Creed . Recall that a creed is a statement of accepted beliefs and we see this in the structure of the Nicene Creed. Notice that over and over we make a statement about something we believe: We believe in one God... We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ... We believe in the Holy Spirit... We believe in one holy catholic and  apostolic Church...  Let's take a moment and think about the first two words of the creed, "We believe". We If you read various sources you will find some presentations of the Nicene Creed with "I believe" in place of the "We believe" in our reading. Why is this? Well, there actually is a technical reason for the two different presentations. The original statement of the Nicene Creed was written in Greek and actually used the Greek phrase for "We believe" (" pisteuomen" or " πιστεύομεν" if you want to get fancy). When it ...
Read more

Nicene What?

 Welcome back! As we start our conversation about what some call the  Nicene Creed , I think it is important we cover a few important terms and concepts. Too often in religious discussions we just use terms thinking everyone knows what we are talking about and that they agree with what we think we're talking about. So, let's investigate a little and develop a common understanding of what it is we'll be discussing. In the future I hope to go into detail on the following topics, but for now we'll just try to develop a functioning vocabulary for the immediate future by working through a few questions: What is a creed? The Nicene Creed is a creed (obviously) ,  so what does that mean? Well, the word  creed  comes from the Latin word  credo  which means  I believe . So when we talk about creeds we are talking about some type of statement of beliefs. There is more to this but let's keep it simple for now. OK, what is a Nicene? Throughout Church History,...
Read more

Where to Start?

Hello and welcome to my blog. I know most sites start with some type of biographical sketch of the author. Quick and easy, but I hate talking about myself so I don't think I will go that route. As this is a site about theology, I will introduce myself gradually through my posts. I know, I know... for Biblical or theological sites people want to read a short biographical sketch and then a detailed doctrinal statement to see if the author is worthy of their time, but where's the fun in that? Often in seminary an ongoing assignment throughout your theology classes is to take the information you learn and write your own statement of beliefs. I like that idea, so my first few posts will be talking about Christian theological beliefs, starting with what is usually considered the "common denominator" statement shared by most Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, and Catholics, the  Nicene Creed . (Note: If you want to read it and click the link you will see three versions of t...
Read more