If you’ve been saying the words of the Nicene Creed for most of your life, you’ll have some sense that this ancient creed is profound and important, and that it summarises something basic and unifying about the Christian faith.
But why and how does it do that, exactly? Why is the Nicene Creed a big deal? Why have Christians been saying these words for around 1700 years? And what difference does it actually make to our Christian lives? Tony Payne talks to Mark Thompson, Principal of Moore College, who recently attended a conference celebrating the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea, when the Nicene Creed was first written.
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Runtime: 36:23 min.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript has been checked against the audio and lightly edited, but still may contain errors. If quoting, please compare with the original audio.
Introduction
[00:00:15] Tony Payne: “We believe in one God, the Father, the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.” If, like me, you’ve been saying those words and the rest of the words of the Nicene Creed for most of your life, you’ll have some sense that this ancient creed is profound and important, and that it summarises something basic and unifying about the Christian faith.
[00:00:40] But why and how does it do that, exactly? Why is the Nicene Creed a big deal? Why have Christians been saying these words for 1700 years or thereabouts? And what difference does it actually make to our Christian lives? Well, that’s our topic on this week’s edition of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast.
[Music]
[00:01:15] Tony Payne: Well, hello again, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast. I’m Tony Payne. It’s great to be with you here again. And on today’s episode, I’ve got the boss sitting in the chair opposite me: I’ve got Mark Thompson, the Principal of Moore College. Welcome, Mark.
[00:01:29] Mark Thompson: Thank you. Good to be here.
[00:01:30] Tony Payne: I’ve already told everybody who you are, but tell us a little bit about what you do here at Moore College.
[00:01:33] Mark Thompson: Well, as the Principal, I’m responsible for ensuring that the College actually stays on track and does what it does, and keeps the main game the main game. So I’m responsible to care for the faculty, to provide leadership to the College and a strategic direction, in partnership with the Governing Board of our College, and also I teach Doctrine. So one of the great privileges of being a Principal in this place, as opposed to being a Principal in some larger seminaries in other parts of the world, is that I still get to teach, which is great; I don’t spend all my time on the road.
Establishment of the Centre for Christian Living
[00:02:05] Tony Payne: And one of the things that you’ve done—one of the initiatives you’ve taken, oh, it’s going back, probably, to 2015 or 2016—
[00:02:11] Mark Thompson: Yeah, a bit earlier than that, I think.
[00:02:12] Tony Payne: —was to initiate the Centre for Christian Living. Why did you launch the Centre for Christian Living and how does it fit into what the College is doing? Why have you led us to have a Centre for Christian Living? Let me put it that way.
[00:02:22] Mark Thompson: Well, I probably should make sure that I don’t take credit for things that I didn’t do, and I didn’t set up the Centre for Christian Living; it was already set up. I inherited it. It was set up originally so that the ethical teaching in the College, which students found so helpful, might not be confined to the walls of the College, but actually might enrich and help people in churches. We have several centres, and each of those centres are meant to take the things that we teach here at College and from which our students benefit, and take them to the churches so the churches might benefit more widely.
[00:02:53] And so, this particular centre is saying, “How do we help the churches? How do we resource the churches with good theological thinking as they seek to advance the gospel message of Christ, but also live as Christian disciples in a world like ours, with the unique challenges that our world throws at us?”
[00:03:13] Tony Payne: Fantastic. And that’s certainly what we’ve been trying to do at the Centre for Christian Living—well, I’ve been involved in it a few years ago—and then back again this year is to bring the kind of way we teach morality and ethics and think about the Christian life—bring it further afield to the Christians of Sydney and beyond—to model how we do that: how to think from the Bible—to our lives, and how to think from our lives back to the Bible and inform them that way. And particularly, how to address some of the thorny things that come up and that baffle us as Christians.
Background to the Nicene Creed
[00:03:41] Tony Payne: What I want to talk to you about today is sort of starting from the Bible and theology-end towards the Christian life, rather than from some topic or issue in life and back towards how we think about it theologically—and that’s to talk to you about the Nicene Creed, of all things, because I know that you recently went on a trip to Turkey—to Constantinople, or sorry, Istanbul, it’s called these days, isn’t it?
[00:04:02] Mark Thompson: Yes. Yeah, that’s right.
[00:04:03] Tony Payne: To a conference that was celebrating the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea. And I thought it would be good to explore this ancient creed—the creed that we say in our churches—we’ve been saying it in our churches for centuries and centuries—to understand why it might be worth commemorating and important, and why it makes a difference to the Christian life. Because if part of our mission here is to think, “How does the theology of the Bible actually change the way we live?”, here’s a big moment in the history of the Christian Church where we grappled with a particular piece of theology, a particular theological issue. What was it? And how has it changed the way we live the Christian life?
[00:04:40] Mark Thompson: Well, it’s interesting you say that: people who have written about the creed in the 20th century/21st century have talked about it as an irreversible landmark in the history of Christian theology. Once you’ve understood what the creed was trying to say—particularly about Jesus—you can’t go back. In fact, if you won’t affirm what the creed says at its most controversial point, then you’ve abandoned the Christian faith.
[00:05:05] Tony Payne: Oh, that’s pretty big.
[00:05:05] Mark Thompson: That’s serious.
[00:05:06] Tony Payne: That’s pretty big. Yes.
[00:05:07] Mark Thompson: Yeah. So at the heart of the creed is the affirmation that Jesus is as much God as the Father is. The Son is as much God as the Father is, and incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth. But to say that the Son is as much God as the Father is, once you’ve got to that point, if you deny that, and there was one little Greek word that sort of summed that up: “of one being”, we translated it as. But if you deny that, you deny the New Testament witness to Jesus, because that was a way of summing up the New Testament witness: by saying, “He is God. He’s not another God. He’s not something like God. He actually is the one God who exists in three persons.”
Alexandrian controversies
[00:05:47] Tony Payne: So for the council to have gathered and to have debated this question and come up with this creed, this must have been, obviously, a live issue. Tell us about the issue at the time and why was the council called? When was it called?
[00:05:59] Mark Thompson: Right, so we’re talking the fourth century AD. And in the early fourth century in Egypt, a controversy arose between the local bishop, a man called Alexander of Alexandria—that’ll confuse you every time: Alexander of Alexandria, who is the bishop, and one of his presbyters—one of his elders, a man called Arius.
[00:06:19] And Arius was teaching that there is only one God. He wanted to protect the idea that God is unique and one, and there is no one like God. And so, he ended up saying that God is one and the Son—when we speak about the Son or the Word, or we’d say the incarnate Son in Jesus Christ, we’re talking about one who has the honorific title of “Son”. But he’s not as much God as the Father is. He’s a created being—the first of the created beings. And so, he has a particular honour. It’s very much the view that you find among some Jehovah’s Witnesses today: he has a great deal of honour, but you can’t treat him the same way you treat God.
[00:07:00] Tony Payne: Would it be fair to say it’s, in a sense, almost how Islam also views Jesus?
[00:07:04] Mark Thompson: Yes.
[00:07:05] Tony Payne: So someone worthy of great honour. Someone—one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the prophets and next to Muhammad and so on, but not God: you don’t want to compromise the oneness of God. And was this Arius’s concern as well?
[00:07:16] Mark Thompson: Yeah, that’s right. So, I mean, hardly anybody wakes up in the morning and says, “I want to be a heretic”, right? Nobody does that! He actually thought he was defending something worth defending—something that was important and something that is important. There’s only one God. And he didn’t want us to start talking in such a way that sounded like we were saying there’s more than one God. There’s the Father and the Son, there’s another God, and eventually the Spirit is a third god. He didn’t want that. Just saying, “No, there is only one God. Everything else is created.”
[00:07:44] And so, the Son is created. He’s the firstborn of all creation. He had a biblical verse—kept citing the Bible all the time. You know, he’s the firstborn of all creation. So he’s part of the created order. Firstborn, though, in that particular text means he has the inheritance rights of the entire creation and was a misunderstanding of the verse, I think by Arius.
[00:08:03] But he pushed that point hard, and one of the ways in which he could push that point was to say, “Well, the implication of this is that there was a time when the Son was not.” He was a prototype advertising consultant, so he could give you the slogan to say—so his little slogan was, “There was a time when he was not”, and it would be sung in pubs and taverns and all sorts of things, and it would be graffitied all over Alexandria.
[00:08:28] His opponents would alter the graffiti: they just put the word “never” in. “There was never a time when he was not.”
[00:08:33] Tony Payne: He was not!
[00:08:34] Mark Thompson: And he—there was a time when he was not.
[00:08:36] But why was he saying that? Because only the Father is eternal. Only the Father is almighty, he was saying. The Son is created at a point in time, or he was happy to use the word “begotten” at a point in time. But that doesn’t mean that he is of the same essence as the Father or has the same honour as the Father.
[00:08:57] And Bishop Alexander and his deacon Athanasius, who becomes the great champion of that position, saw that this was not only a danger to how you viewed God, but it was a danger to how you lived as a Christian as well. And so, the 20th-century theologian that I was paraphrasing earlier on said, “This is an irreversible turning point. Once you’ve got to the point where you have to say this this way, the way to understand the New Testament is, when it talks about Jesus as God, is saying that as much God as the Father is, and he’s the same, in essence, as the Father is.” Once you’ve said that, if you say no to that, you’ve walked away from the New Testament’s witness to Jesus. And so, it’s that serious.
The Council of Nicaea
[00:09:40] Tony Payne: And so, this controversy is happening in Egypt between Arius and his bishop, and Athanasius, as part of the deal there. How did we then come to have a council? And who came to the council?
[00:09:49] Mark Thompson: Right. Well, the controversy erupted in Alexandria, and Alexander condemns Arius for saying this. Arius starts to write to other bishops in other places to plead his case. And he has a number of bishops who agree with him. And suddenly, what is a local little dispute starts to have big ramifications.
[00:10:11] Now you’ve got to understand in the fourth century, theology and politics are always interwoven. You’ve got to disentangle them somehow. So at that time, in the fourth century, Constantine—the emperor Constantine—who unites the empire in 313—312/313, around there, he has just united the empire under his rule. He wants to have a unified empire with no divisions, and this idea of a big theological dispute raging across the eastern portion of his empire is a threat to that unity.
[00:10:45] So he wrote to Arius and Alexander to get them to try and make up and be friends. That doesn’t go anywhere. And so, he and his bishop Osius decide, “Let’s get all the bishops together”, and this has never been done before—trying to get bishops from a whole range of different places together to actually decide on the issue.
[00:11:05] So they sent out an invitation to bishops. Most of them came from the eastern portion of the Empire; only one or two from the West. And there’s uncertainty of how many bishops. The number 318 kept being used. But that’s a sort of throwaway to an Old Testament picture of—where 318 soldiers that—friends that Abraham took with him to get back Lot. And was it—
[00:11:29] Tony Payne: And was it actually that number?
[00:11:30] Mark Thompson: Was it actually that number? “Did Constantine actually call the council?”, is another debate people had. Was he the one who called it, or was it Osius who called it? Because it would be, you know—it was a landmark thing that an emperor would involve himself as much as he did.
[00:11:44] Whether he called it or not, he actually went to the council. He sat in the chair in the middle. He told them all that they couldn’t leave the room until they’d come to a common decision.
[00:11:51] Tony Payne: Sort this out, right.
[00:11:52] Mark Thompson: There’s a wonderful little article written recently by a Cambridge theologian called Mark Smith, in which he points out what was said by Athanasius, who attended the council—he wasn’t a bishop, but helped out his bishop—what he said about how the council progressed, ‘cause we don’t have any records of the council. Like other councils, they would create a minutes of their council, and you can still read them. The only way you know what happened in the council is by reading Athanasius’s record, and Athanasius was a victor, so he probably paints himself in a more positive light.
[00:12:22] Tony Payne: The victors write history. Yeah.
[00:12:23] Mark Thompson: Yeah, he’s writing the history. But Athanasius’s point is that when they first got together, it was all about looking at the New Testament. It was an exegetical workshop in its first couple of days. But whenever Alexander would put up a text, Arius would understand it in a different way, and they were just banging heads all the time.
[00:12:44] And so, in the end, they had to think, “What is the way of expressing what the New Testament says that prevents you from distorting it in the way Arius would?” And they came up with the phrase in English “of one being”. “He is of one being with the Father”. He’s not of a similar being. He’s not of a different being. He’s of one being with the Father.
[00:13:08] And by using that phrase, which is one word in Greek: “homoousios”, once you’ve used that word, and Arius says he could not possibly agree to that word, you realise you’ve got the word that’s summing up the New Testament in a way that can’t be bent.
The Nicene Creed
[00:13:23] Tony Payne: And so we have some sense from Athanasius later reflections on what happened. And we have the actual documents that came out of the council. We have the creed and we have some canons, and other bits and pieces that come out of the council.
[00:13:35] Mark Thompson: Yes.
[00:13:36] Tony Payne: Although an interesting historical quirk: the creed that we say in church that we call the “Nicene Creed”, although it has this key line in it, and it’s sort of based on the Nicene Creed, it might not actually be the one that they came up with at the council. Is that correct?
[00:13:48] Mark Thompson: That’s right. So what happened is, is they ended up with a creed and they ended up with this word in it, and everybody signed except two bishops. And they were quickly deposed and excommunicated and sent away. So you can imagine, everybody signed it. The two people who haven’t have been excommunicated—not everybody who signed it was really on board. They just felt they had to sign it.
[00:14:09] Tony Payne: Yes.
[00:14:09] Mark Thompson: So it’s not going to end the debates. So the debate rolled on throughout the fourth century. And at one point, it seemed like Arius and his ideas were going to win. So that debate rolls on.
[00:14:20] By the time you get to the end of the fourth century, it’s clear that no, Arius’s views are not in line with what the New Testament says, and the creed needs to be reaffirmed. And at the Council of Constantinople, they reaffirmed the Nicene Creed, but they augment it. They stretch it. The original creed is much shorter than the creed that we say in church. All it says about the Holy Spirit is, “And in the Holy Spirit, we believe one Lord”. “And in the Holy Spirit”. It didn’t say anything else about the Spirit! So when we say, “the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and”, all of that’s later, and it’s added in in Constantinople, and the Son bits added in a bit later than that, in order to say the creed needs to be a bit fuller on those things to support that central affirmation that Jesus is of the same essence as the Father.
[00:15:10] Tony Payne: So that central affirmation, I’ll just read it for those of you just can’t quite remember what the Nicene Creed says. I mean, it’s the sort of thing you’ve said in church heaps of times. But here it is: it’s
[00:15:18] We believe in one God, the Father almighty, the maker of heaven and Earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
[00:15:22] 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.
[00:15:38] That’s that key phrase that you were talking about.
[00:15:40] “Through him, all things were made”, and then it talks about his work: “for us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven and was incarnate” and so on, “and rose again according to the Scriptures”, and so on. So the story of Jesus’ life and his death, his resurrection, his coming judgement.
[00:15:54] “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life”, that section. And finally, “we believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic church, one baptism, resurrection of the dead, the life of the world to come” and so on.
[00:16:03] Mark Thompson: Yes, but it’s much shorter in 325. So 325 is when the Council of Nicaea affirms the creed. Much shorter then, and some of the sayings about the Son were sort of repeated a couple of times. So there was a bit of editorial slimming. It was sort of your—you would have had a great time.
[00:16:19] Tony Payne: It’s in my line.
[00:16:20] Mark Thompson: It’s your line of things here. You would’ve had a great time, editing the creed in 381.
[00:16:24] Tony Payne: Tell you what, I would have edited the Athanasian Creed, which comes later on.
[00:16:27] Mark Thompson: Oh yeah.
[00:16:27] Tony Payne: I think I would’ve had a good job editing that one.
[00:16:28] Mark Thompson: That’s right, yes!
[00:16:29] Tony Payne: That goes on forever.
[00:16:30] Mark Thompson: It does indeed. It’s why we don’t say it as often. So 381 modifies the creed to tighten some of the statements in the section on Jesus, to add material on the Holy Spirit and the church, and that’s what, if you were technically going to speak about it; let’s see if I can say it properly: the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. But that’s such a mouthful, nobody ever says it.
[00:16:53] Tony Payne: We just say the Nicene Creed.
[00:16:54] Mark Thompson: We just say the Nicene Creed.
[00:16:55] Tony Payne: Because it builds upon and affirms Nicaea.
The Father and the Son
[00:16:57] Mark Thompson: Yeah, that’s right. And it’s the very thing that Nicaea was most concerned about—that we’re identifying the Son as of the same substance as the Father—have not been different. There’s not a slither of difference in the godness of the Father and the godness of the Son. That’s there in 381, just as much as it was in 325.
[00:17:18] Tony Payne: And is that why it has this phrase, eternally begotten of the Father?
[00:17:22] Mark Thompson: Yes.
[00:17:22] Tony Payne: And it emphasises that: “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made”. What’s it driving at there and emphasising—this begotten idea rather than made?
[00:17:37] Mark Thompson: So “begotten, not made” says that he’s not part of the creation, in that sense. So the Son is not part of the creation. Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Son, is part of the creation. He’s got a human nature. But the Son himself is not part of the creation. He’s begotten, not made. His sonship with the Father is different from our sonship with the Father. So we are sons of the Father by adoption. He is a Son of the Father by nature. And so, the begotten language becomes very important. It’s biblical language to start with, but it’s saying a father begets a son who shares his nature, shares his DNA. We would talk about those sorts of things. And it’s that sort of close natural relationship they’re talking between the Father and the Son—although not material in the way we talk about human life.
[00:18:29] Still, that relationship is not one of—the Father doesn’t create the Son by his will. Or he creates everything else by his will. God chooses to create a world. He chooses to populate it in this way. It all is a result of God’s will.
[00:18:44] The Son is not a product of the Father’s will. The Son is a product of the Father’s nature. He is of the same being as the Father. That was critically important. But it becomes even more important, because if he is just part of the creation, then he needs to be saved like the rest of the creation. He can’t be the saviour.
[00:19:05] So the implication of the Nicene Creed is more than just about talking fancy words about who Jesus is; it’s actually talking about is he able to be our saviour? Because if he is not, if he is part of the creation, then the creation itself bears all these marks of the Fall, and he would need to be saved, just like you and I need to be saved.
[00:19:27] So what Athanasius and others in the early fourth century recognised was that who Jesus is impacts what Jesus did. And so, if we are going to benefit from the work of Jesus, he has to be not just one of us. He has to be one of us. But he has to be not just one of us. And that’s why you need the creed saying he is every bit as much God as the Father is. Only God can save.
[00:19:51] Tony Payne: Only God can save, and he can only save us as, quote, “both God and man”.
[00:19:56] Mark Thompson: Yes.
[00:19:56] Tony Payne: He can only stand in for us as man. He can only present a sacrifice of sufficient value if—if I can put it that way, a sacrifice of infinite value. If he’s God—if God puts forward God to die in our place.
[00:20:09] Mark Thompson: Yeah. So a later Bishop Anselm once said, we are the sinners. We are the ones who deserve to bear the judgement. But we can’t save ourselves. We actually can’t pay the price for our sins. The only person who can pay the price for our sins is God himself.
[00:20:24] So how do you solve that? We are the ones who should be paying. God is the only one who can. The only way you solve that is by God becoming man—the incarnation of the Son, Jesus of Nazareth.
[00:20:35] Tony Payne: Both truly God, God from God.
[00:20:37] Mark Thompson: Yeah.
[00:20:38] Tony Payne: And truly incarnate of the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary.
[00:20:41] Mark Thompson: And in the century after Constantinople, between 381, which is when the Council of Constantinople reaffirmed the Nicene Creed, and the middle of the next century, the great debate was how do you talk about both those things? The debate up to 381 is how do you talk about Jesus’ relation to the Father—the Son’s relation to the Father? The debate after that is, as much as anything else, a debate on how do you relate Jesus to humanity? How can he be both God and a man? And you end up with the Chalcedonian Definition in 451.
[00:21:15] But in the fourth century, which we’re talking about, the issue was, is he God like the Father is? Can he be worshipped? That’s another thing. ‘Cause if you’re worshipping a creature rather than the creator—
[00:21:26] Tony Payne: That’s idolatry.
[00:21:27] Mark Thompson: That’s idolatry. So you don’t want to get into that problem. So is he God? Can he be worshipped? Yes. Is he God? Can he save us? Yes. And if he was a creature, he shouldn’t be worshipped. And if he was a creature, he couldn’t save us.
[00:21:40] Tony Payne: So this is a big deal.
[00:21:41] Mark Thompson: That’s why it’s such a big deal.
[Music]
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[00:23:25] Tony Payne: And now let’s get back to our program.
What the Nicene Creed is not
[00:23:28] Mark Thompson: One of the things about 325 and the Nicene Creed, none of the 318 or however many bishops were there thought they were producing a piece of liturgy—Christian liturgy. They never thought that this was something that people were going to be reciting in churches the way that we do.
[00:23:43] Tony Payne: For the next 1700 years.
[00:23:44] Mark Thompson: For the next 1700 years, indeed! No. And they didn’t think they were producing a framework for which you might understand Scripture, which some people today suggest. Here’s a hermeneutical guide for understanding Scripture, providing the boundaries of our authorised interpretation. They weren’t thinking in those sort of categories at all.
[00:24:04] I don’t even think they thought they were summarising the faith, because if they were summarising the faith, there were some massive holes in their summary. Like it says, nothing about justification. It says nothing about Scripture. It says, as I said, very little about the Holy Spirit: “and in the Holy Spirit”. So they weren’t trying to produce a summary.
[00:24:22] What were they producing? In the first instance, they were producing a technical test of bishops and their orthodoxy. If you wanted to know whether this bishop actually did believe the New Testament faith and he affirmed the Nicene Creed. That’s the original purpose.
[00:24:40] But as well as that, I think the reason why it’s useful for us today to keep saying the creed is that it was a confession of not everything that could be said about the Christian faith, but the most important things—the heart of the Christian faith: the godness of God, and the godness of the Son, and the godness of the Spirit; that we have one God who not only creates us, but saves us and sanctifies us. All of that is important.
[00:25:06] And when we say the creed today, we confess with them and with their successors over 1700 years the core of the faith without thinking we’ve said everything. I still want to talk about justification by faith alone. And the Nicene Creed says nothing about that.
[00:25:22] Tony Payne: It doesn’t. It doesn’t mention the word. Does it mention the word “faith”?
[00:25:25] Mark Thompson: I don’t think so. Except “I believe”.
[00:25:28] Tony Payne: “I believe”. “I believe”. “We believe”. “We believe”.
[00:25:30] Mark Thompson: Yes.
Should we keep saying the Nicene Creed?
[00:25:30] Tony Payne: It’s a confession of faith. That’s important, isn’t it? Because I was going to ask you should we keep remembering and saying this creed, and why? And I think you’ve started to answer that, because yes, in the sense that it’s a way of confessing our ongoing faith in this great line of succession—in this great orthodox creed—that we believe this about who Jesus is and about the core of Christian belief and the nature of the Son, because it’s so important to stand and confess those things.
[00:25:58] But are you suggesting that when we stand and confess those things, and it’s great that we do so, it’s not as if we’re confessing a complete summary of the whole faith.
[00:26:06] Mark Thompson: No.
[00:26:06] Tony Payne: Or that everything that is important is being summarised in these few words.
[00:26:10] Mark Thompson: No, that’s right. That’s true. It’s not saying everything that could be said about the faith. It’s not even a full-orbed summary in the sense that still being a summary document covers all the basics. It doesn’t cover all the basics.
[00:26:22] But it actually goes to the very heart of the dispute in the fourth century, which remains so critically important for us: unless Jesus is Lord—unless he is God—and we can confess him as the Son of the Father, we’re not confessing the New Testament faith. And I think that’s an important thing.
[00:26:38] When I went to Turkey, the subtitle of the paper that I gave was something like, “Let’s celebrate the Nicene Creed, but not too much”. And the reason for saying “not too much” is to say the creed doesn’t exist alongside the Scriptures.
[00:26:52] Tony Payne: Yes.
[00:26:53] Mark Thompson: It exists under the authority of the Scriptures.
[00:26:55] Tony Payne: It’s a way of expressing the truth of the Scriptures.
[00:26:56] Mark Thompson: Yeah, that’s right. So I believe that Jesus is as much God as the Father is, because that’s what the testimony of Scripture is. And the creed summarises that in a nice, succinct way for us. And so, us actually saying that says now I stand where the Bible stands on who Jesus is. So the Nicene Creed is a great, helpful, wonderful confession that we can share with 1700 years of Christians. But it’s not inspired in the same way that the Scriptures are.
The creeds and Scripture
[00:27:23] Tony Payne: Well, that’s important to say, isn’t it? Because sometimes, I’ve certainly heard the argument that, oh, look, let’s not divide and have arguments about things that aren’t in the creeds. Let’s just say the creed. If we all believe the creeds together, surely that’s orthodox Christianity. And anything that’s not in the creeds is kind of, you know, we can agree to disagree.
[00:27:41] But that’s kind of almost placing the creed on the level of Scripture and saying it’s such a complete and orthodox summary of all that is necessary to believe that if there’s anything that’s outside of here, we just must agree to disagree, because there’s a bunch of things that are outside there, as you, as you mentioned.
[00:27:56] Mark Thompson: Hmm. I think that’s right. And similarly with the idea that this is a hermeneutical grid or boundary that helps you to properly interpret the Scriptures. When you talk like that, the risk is that you’re put in a creed alongside the Bible as well—as authoritative as the framework is as authoritative as the content within the framework.
[00:28:15] Tony Payne: Yes.
[00:28:16] Mark Thompson: There’s all that danger. So much better to say this is a confession of the faith. It’s a confession of the New Testament faith. It’s not everything that the New Testament says, but the heart of it about who God is: Father, Son and Spirit. And we can joyfully confess that, along with 1700 years of Christian brothers and sisters.
Why the Nicene Creed is still important today
[00:28:34] Tony Payne: And it’s important today for a couple of reasons, isn’t it? And that’s where I want to move to. It’s important because, although there are not many people in our contemporary society who would know what an Arian is or what who Arius was, there are many people, as I think back over my Christian life, both broadly within the Christian kind of Christendom and certainly outside it, who are very happy to give Jesus a lot of honour—to say that he was the greatest of men, that he was worthy of listening to and following his teaching—but who stopped short of being able to affirm that he is God in the flesh, that he is true God from true God, that he was of one being with the Father. And I’m thinking not only of the whole s swath of liberal Christians with liberal Christianity, which is reluctant to affirm that, but also just your average Aussie who kind of often thinks quite positively of Jesus, but hasn’t thought through the implications of what it means to say that he is or isn’t God.
[00:29:27] Mark Thompson: Yeah. He’s a good bloke. You can learn lots by looking at his example and listening to his teaching. But the core of the New Testament faith is that he saves us. He’s our Lord who saves us. And he can only do that because he’s God, ‘cause none of us can actually extract ourselves from our own involvement in sin in order to save ourselves or anyone else. That can only be done by God.
[00:29:49] Tony Payne: And so, for us as believers who stand and affirm this summary of the core teaching about Jesus, what difference does this belief make to our ongoing Christian lives? We’re the Centre for Christian Living; what difference do you think this makes to the way we live our Christian lives?
[00:30:04] Mark Thompson: Well, it actually keeps your focus clearly on Jesus. The fact that the biggest portion of this creed is on the person of Jesus and his work, and so to turn Christian life into a system of living—even an ethical or moral system of living—rather than relation to this unique person, would be a distortion of the Christian life. So a Christian life is focused on Jesus: who he is and what he did. And this creed keeps reminding you of that. So when we go to church and we recite the creed, if we recite the creed, no matter what else is being said—sermon might be on something else entire—you’re reminded that the heart of the Christian faith is the person of Jesus and what he did. So it’s really significant in that way, I think.
[00:30:52] But it also says to us that it is not a matter of us following just Jesus’ example. One of the things that Arius was quite happy to say was that Jesus is the example for us to follow. And just as we can freely follow him, we can be saved, right? So an exemplarist view of salvation.
[00:31:15] Tony Payne: Of who Jesus is and of what he came to do.
[00:31:16] Mark Thompson: Yeah, that’s right. But what the creed reminds you is he’s not just an example to follow, ‘cause you can’t be God in the way that he is God. But he’s unique and he is the one who comes down in order to save us. For us, then, and for our salvation, he was born from heaven.
[00:31:34] Tony Payne: This is a big debate, actually, in the world of Christian ethics and understanding morality, not just at the popular level, but also at the more academic and theoretical level. What is the place of example and imitation? Is it possible to become more godly—to put on more virtue by looking at a virtuous person and seeking to repeat and do what they do—to follow their example? Is that possible? And the two sides of that debate really revolve around the fact that if you don’t affirm that, at one level, for us, that kind of accumulation of virtue is impossible, apart from Jesus and that the Christian faith is not just a matter of trying to become like someone you admire, but is in fact a work of God from God, not only saving you, cleansing you, justifying you, but making you a new person, regenerating your whole self, your whole heart and mind and soul, giving you a new spirit and a new relationship with God in Jesus—that this is the whole basis upon which some form of imitation and growth can happen. But apart from that, it can’t. And in fact, apart from that, you get locked in a kind of self-perpetuating, self-achievement, self-focused kind of program of trying to become a better person, which, on its own, fails.
[00:32:50] Mark Thompson: Yes, particularly if you think that that program of self-improvement is going to somehow save you. So as a response to a salvation that is won completely by God—that Christianity is a rescue mission at its very heart—as a response to that, seeking to follow the example of Jesus’ teaching and life. That’s a good and positive thing, isn’t it?
[00:33:12] Tony Payne: Well, we’re supposed to keep all his commandments until he comes again.
[00:33:15] Mark Thompson: Yeah. So you want to say, “Yes, that’s good. Imitation’s good. Paul says, ‘Imitate me as I imitate Christ.’“
[00:33:20] Tony Payne: Exactly.
[00:33:20] Mark Thompson: Imitation and example are good things. But they’re in a different category altogether than salvation. Salvation is not about what you do, but about what he did, at its core.
[00:33:30] Tony Payne: And that flows over into our imitation in that even in the life we live in response to his salvation, it’s him at work in us by his Spirit, forming us to be like himself. And so, at every point, it’s his work. Even at those points when we’re working hard to imitate Christ and to put on a virtuous life and a virtuous way of living, even at that point, his godness and the unity of his godness and his humanity is what draws us into becoming more like Jesus. Even in that, it’s the work of God in us.
[00:34:01] Mark Thompson: Yes, indeed. And also, you can see why Constantinople was right to expand the article on the Holy Spirit, who we just—
[00:34:09] Tony Payne: The Lord, the giver of life.
[00:34:10] Mark Thompson: Yes. So he’s the one who enables us to respond.
Conclusion
[00:34:14] Tony Payne: Mark, thanks so much for coming and opening this up to us. And I hope, dear listener, you can see that these ancient words, which many of you’ll know so well from having said them every week, or said them regularly in your churches, that they’ve almost just become part of you—that these ancient words are so important because of what they summarise.
[00:34:30] And perhaps those of you who are listening who aren’t so familiar with this creed, who perhaps don’t say the creeds in your church so much, go and dig out the Nicene Creed and meditate on it in your Quiet Times, and pray over it, and say it in your churches, because it summarises something about the nature of who Jesus is and how Jesus is himself God and of one being with the Father, which is the very centre of our faith.
[00:34:51] Mark Thompson: And I would encourage you to ask yourself, “Where do I find this in the Bible? Where does it tell me that he is the Son of the Father?” And you’ll find plenty of evidence.
[00:35:01] Tony Payne: Thanks so much, Mark. And thanks for being with us on this episode of the Centre for Christian Living.
[00:35:04] Mark Thompson: Thank you!
[Music]
[00:35:20] Tony Payne: Well, thanks for joining us on this episode of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast from Moore College. For a whole lot more from the Centre for Christian Living, just head over to the CCL website. That’s ccl.moore.edu.au, where you’ll find a stack of resources, including every past podcast episode all the way back to 2017, videos from our live events, and articles that we’ve published through the Centre.
[00:35:46] And while you’re there on the website, we also have an opportunity for you to make a tax-deductible donation to support the ongoing work of the Centre here at Moore College. We’d also love you to subscribe to the podcast and to leave a review so that people can discover our podcast and our other resources. And we always love and benefit from receiving your feedback and questions. Please get in touch. You can email us at [email protected].
[00:36:15] Many thanks to Karen Beilharz from the Communications Team here at Moore College for all her work in transcribing and editing and producing this podcast; to James West for the music; and to you, dear listeners, for joining us each week. Thank you for listening.
[00:36:29] I’m Tony Payne. ‘Bye for now.
