… And in one Lord, Jesus Christ …

So far in this series on the Nicene faith, we’ve been taking things very slowly, one phrase at a time. Today, I’ll be taking a bigger bite because the next few lines, while all using unique and nuanced terminology, amount to much the same thing: That Jesus is God with exactly the same quality of divinity as the Father is God.

The relevant text reads:

… And [we believe] in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
The Son of God, the Only-Begotten (monogenes),
Who was begotten of the Father before all ages,
Light from light, true God from true God,
Begotten not made,
Who is of the same essence (homoousios) as the Father,
Through whom all things exist.

Each of these lines is important and could certainly use its own post — wars have been fought over some of these words — but I’m tackling them all today because it’s a case of the question at hand being so important that the authors of the Creed answered it in as many ways as they could, to reinforce the one major point they were making.

The first two lines in this section would not have been controversial. It would have been common ground for all Christians in the fourth century. In addition to belief in God the Father, we also put our faith in God the Son, who is uniquely identified with the man Jesus Christ, whom we call ‘the Lord.’ The term Lord (kyrios), had a huge semantic range, referring to anything from a simple honorific (to this day it’s the Greek equivalent of ‘Mister’), to describing a master-slave relationship (as in ‘the lord of the house’), to, in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), being the most common substitution for YHWH, the mysterious divine name which no one uttered. Here in the Creed, I am certain that it was meant in the strongest sense possible. This is the same ‘one LORD’ (YHWH) from the Shema that was referenced in the first line of the Creed about belief in ‘one God’. But just as we saw with fatherhood, it is also important to remember that Jesus flips the language of lordship on its head; it is not about domination but using one’s power and authority to serve others.

On its own, the term ‘Son of God’ is also ambiguous; in fact, ‘sons of God’ is one of the most common ways people of faith are described in the New Testament. This is where the strange word, monogenes, ‘Only-Begotten’ comes into play to disambiguate things. In everyday language, it was used to describe an only child, or as a way of distinguishing a legitimate child from an illegitimate one. (The New Testament uses this second sense when talking about Isaac and Ishmael — both are sons of Abraham, but Isaac is ‘the only-begotten’ (Hebrews 11.17-19).) So, in addition to picking up the language of John 3.16, calling Jesus the ‘only-begotten Son’ here in the Creed reinforces that he is God’s Son in a unique, special way. He is the only one to has a ‘rightful’, ‘natural’ claim to call God ‘Father,’ the rightful heir to all that the Father has and is.

But what exactly does this mean? Now we enter the territory at the heart of Arian Controversy, which was the reason why the First Council of Nicaea gathered in 325. The controversy emerged when a priest named Arius began teaching that the language of ‘God the Father’ and ‘God the Son’ demands that the Father come before the Son; and therefore the Son is in some way ‘made’ by the Father, in time. As a popular Arian hymn put it, “There was a time when the Son was not.” This teaching arose at the same time as the pagan philosophical system known as Neoplatonism was becoming popular (its first major proponent, Plotnius died in 271 and his successor Porphyry around 305). This system imagined the world in terms of hierarchies of being, in which creation was viewed as a series of emanations of divinity, growing weaker and weaker, until you end up in the end with matter. It’s easy to see how Arius’ ideas about Jesus might easily fit in with such a system. It would mean that, proceeding from the Father, the Son would be slightly less divine than the Father. He was therefore of a similar essence (homoiousios), but not an identical one to the Father. Arius’ thought was all very logical and caught on like wildfire throughout the Church. He was apparently a charismatic preacher and had a knack for songwriting that put his theology on the lips of thousands. But, this theology was not acceptable to everyone. The opposition, eventually led by St. Athanasius of Alexandria, held that Arius was taking the language too literally, and that the mystery of the Trinity defies such syllogistic reasoning. And moreover, at the time, Christian understanding of salvation was deeply incarnational, understanding that humanity is saved by God taking on human nature. This was not a new teaching; we find it as early as the late second-century in the thought of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, who wrote: “[T]he Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ … through His transcendent love, became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself” (Against Heresies, vol 5). As articulated by Athanasius in the midst of the controversy, “He was made human so that he might make us sons of God” (On the Incarnation 54,3). This idea — the basis of Christian spirituality at the time — would fall apart if the Son was not actually fully divine.

One may argue that Athanasius was being just as literal as Arius’ was, but it became a question of what one was willing to be ‘literal’ about. Bound as we are by the limits of human reasoning and language, if we cannot express the mysteries of our faith perfectly, do we privilege philosophical and logical coherence or do we privilege spirituality and experience? As strange as it may be to us, with its specific and hard-to-understand terminology, the Creed took the second approach: Theology was to serve spirituality, not philosophy. (As it happened, Neoplatonism was just beginning and the relationship between its ideas and Christian faith would drive theological debate for close to a thousand years.)

At any rate, each line of this section of the Creed affirms and reaffirms its opposition to Arius’ reasoning, insisting that Jesus was divine with the same divinity as the Father:

• “Who was begotten of the Father before all ages:” i.e., There was not a time when ‘the Son was not’.
• “Light from light, true God from true God:” Just as how, if you light one torch from another, they shine with the same fire, so too is the Son ‘true God’ from ‘true God’ without diminishing his divinity in any way.
• “Begotten not made:” This breaks the link Arius made between the Father begetting the Son and creating the Son. The Son is begotten of the Father and is therefore rightfully the Father’s Son; if we who were created by God are considered God’s children, it is through adoption, not ‘begetting.’
• “Who is of the same essence (homoousios) as the Father:” This is probably the most famous line in the Nicene Creed because the debate centered on these two terms, whether Jesus was homoousios, divine with the same divinity as the Father, or homoiousios, divine with a similar (but slightly less perfect) divinity as the Father.
• “Through whom all things exist:” One of the implications of the Arian controversy was whether the Son of God is rightfully considered to be the Creator or to be part of creation. The Creed comes down firmly against Arius and insists that the Son is Creator just as much as the Father is. (I go into some of the reasoning for this in my post last year on the Trinity and in an older post on logos theology.)

So this is Nicene Christology, but what does it have to do with spirituality? Well, as I’ve hinted at already, it has everything to do with spirituality, for its language was intended to defend the Christian experience of salvation. For Christians, it all depends on Jesus’ divinity. Whether you understand salvation in terms of the ancient incarnational scheme, or prefer the later ideas of substitutionary atonement, both depend on the man Jesus also being fully divine. What the more ancient, incarnational, understanding adds, though, is a sense of vocation. We don’t passively receive salvation, but actively live into its gifts.The ancient line I mention so often, “We become by grace all that Christ is by nature” is the corollary of Athanasius’ “He was made human so that he might make us sons of God.” ‘All that he is’ is not just about eternal life, it’s about living the divine life in the here and now. And that means living as he lived, living an other-oriented life of service, making room for outcasts and outsiders, and doing the right, compassionate and just thing, especially in the face of opposition. The mystery of the incarnation, and therefore of Christian spirituality, is that the more we become like Jesus, the more we become simultaneously more like God, most fully human, and most fully ourselves.

This is Nicene spirituality through and through.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-Begotten,
Who was begotten of the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true God,
Begotten not made,
Who is of the same essence as the Father,
Through whom all things exist.