Link to part 1 (30 AD - 325 AD).

Link to my intermission reflection.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen. Hello and welcome back to part 2 of What the Nicene Creed Actually Means: Christology Wars. In the first part, I covered the pre-history to the Arian conflict, and then the Arian controversy itself from 300 to 325 AD, through the first council of Nicaea. If you haven’t watched that yet, I encourage you to do so because that video has important context. This video will now continue through Arian Controversy from 325 AD until 381 AD, when the controversy was finally resolved at the council of Constantinople, and the Nicene Creed we use today was finalized. Hope you enjoy this video, and please subscribe, like, and comment what you think about the presentation.

Christology Wars: The Arians Strike Back (325-360 AD)

So when we last left off, we had just finished the first council of Nicaea in 325, which produced an anti-Arian creed and condemned Arius and his doctrine. So, we would expect the conflict to be over right? Well, in fact, no, the conflict would be far from over, and as we will see Nicaea faced strong rejection in the following decades as the Arians returned to power.

A Critical Error in the Nicene Creed of 325

So this all happened because the Nicene Creed of 325 contained a critical error in one of its anathemas. So stepping back, if you’ll remember, we had four broad camps of proto-Orthodoxy going into the council of Nicaea: Arianism, Semi-Arianism, Orthodoxy, and then Modalism. So Arianism was basically condemned by the three other camps working together; however, those three camps themselves had substantial differences between themselves, which became more apparent after the council of 325 and brought disunity to the church as well as suspicion on the creed that had been produced. So the critical error is in this sentence: “[those] who allege that the Son of God is of another hypostasis or ousia...these the Catholic and Apostolic Church condemns”. So specifically, the error is with the word hypostasis. We had previously covered the words ousia and homoousios, in terms of declaring the nature of Jesus to be completely equal to the nature of the Father’s. However, this word hypostasis goes a step too far, because hypostasis basically means an existence or a manifestation, of like a nature in concrete reality. So basically, this sentence is saying that Jesus and the Father share the same existence, which is very problematic if you think about it. It’s basically saying that Jesus and the Father are the same exact being or person. As Hanson notes, this anathema was “a confusion of terms so disastrous as to render its eirenic function virtually worthless”, which is very crazy and unfortunate. And the problem is that this basically leads to the heresy of Modalism. Remember…”that’s modalism Patrick!”. Now, the funny thing is that, unknowingly, many of the bishops who signed the creed actually had substantial theological differences with each other. For example, some of the Nicenes were actually modalists, such as Marcellus and Eustathius. So if you could imagine how crazy this would be, that several of the bishops sat through Nicaea actually believing that God was only one person, and as they’re sitting there nodding and agreeing with everything that is said, it’s going completely over their head that everyone else in the room actually thinks God is three people. And also remember that the Creed completely failed to clarify the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. So as this meme explains: there was actually a diversity of views amongst the people who signed the creed. “Eustathius I can explain; you think the Holy Spirit is God? You think the Holy Spirit is a person? You guys think God is more than one person?”.

Modalism Explained

So yeah, this is the diagram explaining how modalism works. Pretty easy to understand, God is just one person, who manifests as the Father, Son, and Spirit depending on the situation. And he also assumed a human nature from Mary, when He came down to Earth as Jesus. So obviously, there’s a lot of problems with this heresy. First of all, we run into the same situation as in Arianism, where God basically exists alone by himself for all eternity before creation. Which is such a dark, depressing, and lonely existence and I don’t think portrays a God whose fundamental nature is love. But then it gets even worse, because not only is God alone in eternity past, he’s also pretty much alone even after creation as well. When you look in the Bible, there are just so many beautiful expressions of love between the persons of the Trinity. You have so many of the psalms, were Jesus, prefigured by David, is just calling out to God the Father for help, for rescue, for vindication, and just has the total faith and assurance in that relationship, and the patience and humility to wait for the Father. And then just in the gospels themselves there are so many beautiful moments featuring the Trinity, such as the baptism of Christ, and then just Jesus praying in the garden, begging God the Father for another way, but then saying “not my will, but your will be done”. “Not my will but your will”. Think about how much these narratives get destroyed in modalism. In the Garden Jesus may as well just said “not my will but MY will”. You know? And then all these times in the gospels that portray Jesus as praying to the Father, he’s just praying to himself and then pretending to pray to another person, just to trick his disciples or something, but in reality there’s no real relationship there. So modalism really just robs a lot of the beauty of Christianity and the inter-personal relationships of the Trinity. And unlike a lot of the heresies in this presentation that don’t overtly appear today, Modalism is still very much alive and I encounter people in the Church all the time who believe some variety of this heresy. And I bet this negatively impacts our spiritual lives in some ways. Like, I believe that modalism could strongly prevent you from fully understanding and experiencing the love of God, just because you don’t think of the Godhead community as loving each other, and really seeing that as the fundamental reality that then spills over into our own lives in the ways God loves us and we love each other. I also wonder if modalism really prevents us from relating properly to all the members of the Trinity. For me personally, I think for most of my life I only prayed to God the Father, I would say for most of my childhood and even through college. It’s actually only relatively recently that I even intentionally direct prayers to Jesus or the Holy Spirit, and these are such different experiences that I think we are all supposed to have, because the Godhead functionally relates to us differently in each of the persons. So yeah, I would encourage you to think about whether you feel echoes of Modalism in your own spiritual life.

Arianism 2.0: Semi-Arianism

So because the first Nicene Creed was compatible with Modalism, many bishops actually ended up rejecting it, and as a result this opened the door up to Semi-Arianism to become more dominant in the Church. And yes, Semi-Arianism is a huge generalization and in fact there were several different schools of thought in this camp, but we don’t have time to go into all of those so I’m just calling them all Semi-Arianism. So Semi-Arianism can basically be thought of as Arianism 2.0, because it has a similar philosophical basis as Arianism in terms of protecting God from condescending or suffering. However, this heresy is particularly lethal because it actually avoids the third rail that Arius constantly ran into, which is claiming that the Son is a created being. And so Semi-Arianism says that the Son is also eternally pre-existent, just a lesser form of Divinity than the Father. This theology sounds palatable to most people because it sounds like it is giving proper honor to the Father in His uniqueness, without sounding too irreverent of the Son because Jesus is still called eternal.

Semi-Arianism Trinity & Cosmology

So looking at the Trinity and cosmology diagrams, we can see the similarities and differences between Semi-Arianism and Arianism. Semi-Arianism holds that the Father eternally generates the Son, just as Nicaea does, however the Son is a lesser gradation of divinity compared to the Father. In general, most Semi-Arians believed that the Holy Spirit was a created being.

Why Not Just Read Scripture?

So at long last, let’s focus on the issue of Scripture in this entire conflict. Why didn’t they just read the Bible? After all, shouldn’t scripture clearly say that Arianism and Semi-Arianism is false? After, John 1:1 says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”, right? Well…it’s not that straightforward. Let’s look at one example of how Arians responded. In John 1:1, the word used for “God” is theos, which can actually have a semantic range of meanings from God, to gods, to lesser divinities, and everything in between. So if the intended sentence were actually “and the Word was a god”, then this would look exactly the same in the Greek. There’s a very relevant quote from RPC Hanson’s book on this: “It must be understood that in the fourth century the word ‘God’ (theos, deus) hadn’t acquired the significance which in our twentieth-century world it has acquired (mainly in fact as the result of the creed of 381 having, so to speak, entered the bloodstream of European culture), viz. the one and sole true God. The word could apply to many gradations of divinity and was not as absolute to [4th century Christians] as it is to us.” So in other words, whenever something is called “God” in the Bible, this is not guaranteed to mean, “exactly equal to God the Father”. Rather, it can be a title of honor for a being that is less than God, and in the ancient world they accepted these different gradations of divinity. It’s only now, since we live in a post-Nicene world, that today when we read “God” in the Bible we strongly interpret this as exact equality with God the Father. However if we are strictly just looking at the scriptural evidence itself, without the benefit of presuming Nicaea to be true (since that is the exact topic of the Arian controversy), then it does not specifically follow that all instances of Scripture that call Jesus “God” are claiming consubstantiality. And also, just a disclaimer, this is just one out of many arguments employed by Arians to explain the high Christology passages. They had other tricks as well and we don’t have time to go into all of them.

The (Semi-)Arian Prooftexts

Okay so on the other hand, Arians and Semi-Arians had long lists of prooftexts that they would rattle off to prove the Son’s inferiority to the Father. I’m not going to go into all these verses in depth, but needless to say the Arians and Semi-Arians found an abundance of verses that seem to say the Son is not eternal, or not omniscient, or inferior to the Father, or not impassable, etc. etc. And the Nicenes had to do all sorts of mental gymnastics to explain why these verses didn’t imply the meaning of their face value interpretation. For example, some ascribed the weakness and inferiority of Jesus only to his body and not to him himself. Or some others like Hilary of Poitiers, a Western Nicene, said that Jesus was just pretending not to be omniscient, or pretending to be suffering, when in fact as a divinity he wasn’t any of these things. So this is even revisiting some Gnostic forms of docetism, that say Jesus didn’t really have a physical body or wasn’t really fully human. There’s this relevant RPC Hanson quote, “We have seen into what exegetical mazes [the Nicenes] were led to dealing with those texts which indicate Jesus Christ as weak or fearful or ignorant.” So really, the question isn’t how Semi-Arianism was able to persist in spite of scripture. Actually in many cases Semi-Arians had Scripture on their side! The better question is how the Nicenes were able to persist in lieu of, or even in spite of, Scripture.

Orthodoxy’s Anchor: Athanasius and theosis!

Okay we’ve waited long enough. Let’s introduce the hero of the entire saga. So remember Athanasius, who was Alexander’s deacon at Nicaea? In the decades following Nicaea when the Creed became widely rejected, Athanasius remained the staunchest supporter of the Creed and helped Nicene theology stay alive. He very well may be the most impactful person in Christian history outside of the Bible, and I mean that seriously. If not for him specifically, Semi-Arianism may very well have won and become the faith we profess today. We’ll explore more about his character and personal achievements in a bit. But what I want to look at now is how Athanasius’ theology really strongly motivated the Nicene Creed, and why the pro-Nicenes were so desperate to preserve the equality of Jesus and the Father. So Athanasius and the Alexandrian school in general cared very much about the theology and tradition of theosis. So theosis literally means “becoming divine” or becoming like God, and the basic idea is how God conforms us more to his personal attributes and holiness. So these things that make God God, like omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternality, all-lovingness. The idea is that through theosis we ourselves can participate somewhat in those divine energies. So like, we can get some of God’s power, e.g. like the apostles performing miracles. And we can get some of God’s knowledge, so like supernatural revelation of his mysteries and who he is. And we basically get more imbued with love, wisdom, holiness and ultimately immortality. And this is also why most theologians in the 4th century also taught praying to saints. Because saints have gone through theosis, they have gone on to have a more intimate communion with God after their death, and are able to convey the prayers and intercede for those still on earth. So God’s ultimate plan for salvation is through theosis. Theosis is hinted at in the Bible but not explicitly described exactly in detail as completely as Athanasius postulated. So for example, we have this mysterious reference in 2 Peter 1:4, “Thus he has given us…his precious and very great promises, so that through them you…may become participants of the divine nature.” So Alexandrian Christians really latched onto these brief, mysterious references in the New Testament talking about theosis. This idea is really evidenced in what is probably Athanasius’ most famous work, On the Incarnation, which is honestly this foundational treatise in Christian history. I’d encourage you to read it if you have the chance, it’s not a super long read and is still relatively easy to understand. But he has this very memorable quote from this work, which is “He [that is Jesus] was made man that we might be made God”. So just for comparison, in the 21st century evangelicals often summarize the gospel as, you know, “The Son became a man in order to die on our behalf and satisfy the Father’s wrath for our sins.” However, if you traveled back in time to 4th century Alexandria, they might be confused at the emphasis on this formulation. Instead, they’d probably describe the gospel as something like “The Son became a man in order to heal human nature by re-imprinting it with the image of God.” And this is a really creative and striking doctrine, because it almost moves Jesus’ death on the cross out of the center of attention, and actually says that his entire life, from conception to birth, to growing as a child, to living in Nazareth, and then eventually his three year ministry, all of it is necessary and contributes directly to our salvation. Just in the mere fact of God existing on earth as a man. And then baptism is the literal moment where we metaphysically join ourselves to the Incarnation, and then begin this process of theosis. So there are some analogies that Athanasius uses to describe theosis. He says that it’s like we are faded portraits originally created with the image of God, but we’ve become corrupted over time. But because God comes down as a man, he kind of re-imprints his image on our nature and then by extension that allows us to be restored to the image of the original person. Another analogy is like a king coming to visit a city and staying in a single house in the entire city. But because the king is just in one house, the entire city is filled with this kingly glory and then blessed by extension, even as the king just resides in one home. So this is like God the Son coming to inhabit one single human body on earth, but then this causes all of us with human nature to be blessed by his glory by extension. So this was doctrine that was the heart and soul motivating the entire defense of Nicaea.

The Stakes of the Controversy: The Theology of Salvation

So throughout this presentation so far, we’ve tried to get inside the heads of all these different heretical groups, to find out the reasons for why they believed what they believed. Now it’s time to get inside the heads of our predecessors, the Nicenes, to understand why they felt so strongly about the tradition which they passed down to us today. It comes down to this. If Christ is not consubstantial with God, then we aren’t saved. If Christ is not consubstantial with God, then we aren’t saved. And this specifically follows from the theosis framework. Because only God himself, not any lesser being, can directly touch us to restore the image of God in us. So Athanasius outlines this argument in De Synodis Chapter 51, which more or less says that if Jesus were something less than God, he would actually be powerless to save us, because the grace he has from God is barely enough to cover himself, much less any other person. In other words, God doesn’t safeguard himself against the world, but comes in closest contact with it! The implications of this doctrine are enormously important and impact everything about Christianity today. When we talk about having a personal relationship with God, this is why. Having a personal relationship with God is not possible under Arianism. We Christians today believe that God loves us. We don’t believe that God loves his Son, and then his Son loves us. God loves us. When we think about songs like, “He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy”, and “heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss”. This is all very intimate language, and it’s the most important experience in our faith today. That regardless of all the denominational disputes, all the theology, whether or not you want a drum set in worship or not; at the end of the day, are you personally experiencing God or not? And that’s the most important thing that every Christian tradition has prioritized: are you personally experiencing God or not?

Athanasius: The Good and the Bad

So I want to talk about Athanasius of Alexandria specifically. Because he had the biggest role in ensuring the Nicene Creed’s success. Again he was enormously influential on the faith we have today. He uniquely holds the title “The Father of Orthodoxy” in both the East and West. He played a strong role in determining the canon of scripture, in fact he was the first Father to declare the exact 27 books of the NT we use today. He was remarkably resilient and zealous, being exiled and returning five different times due to supporting Nicaea. So he was very stubborn, very courageous, as we will see. He was also very charismatic and popular amongst Alexandrian Christians. However, however, I need to be honest. The goal of this entire presentation is to be historically accurate and just to honestly give the full facts and nothing but the facts on the development of Nicaea. So I have a duty to you to tell you the bad things about Athanasius as well as the good. Yes, for hundreds and hundred of years he’s been venerated and adored as this shining anchor of Orthodoxy, who could do no wrong. But, but recently, there’s been newly discovered historical texts, that unfortunately do reveal that Athanasius had a dark side. And they reveal that Athanasius basically instigated mob gangs of his followers to attack and beat Christians he saw as heretical, to destroy their churches, and in some cases just run them out of town so they were forced to live in the wilderness. So he used violence to enforce the theology he deemed to be correct. And then, when was charged at various councils for these crimes, he lied about it. He lied about using mob violence, flagrantly and repeatedly. And in fact, for hundreds of years his lies were believed at face value because after all, he’s the Father of Orthodoxy, and all Christians for hundreds of years have basically considered him innocent. Well today we know that he was not so innocent, and he did in fact have a dark side. I’m telling you this because, as Christians, we are just a very bad witness to the world when we try and gaslight people and basically try to cover up the mistakes of the past, and pretend they didn’t happen. We need to be honest, and apologetic, for the evil things the Church has done in the past. But then we also understand that God uses that brokenness in order to bring about his will. So just keep that all in mind as we go forward.

Athanasius (and Friends) Against the World

So let’s fast forward through the history of what happened immediately after the council of Nicaea in 325. Even starting the very next year, 326, there was widespread discontent of Nicaea’s apparent modalism. And in the next few years, emperor Constantine actually restored many of the Arians who had been exiled at Nicaea. Nevertheless, Athanasius still refused to accept them and basically continued to be the most outspoken champion of Nicaea. So then what happened in 337 is actually that emperor Constantine dies, and his son Constantius, who was an Arian, became emperor. In the next few years, there are several, I think like 10, different councils who try to come up with alternative creeds to Nicaea, ranging from Arian to modalist to everything in between. Through all this, Athanasius is like the lone voice advocating that the Church still holds to the original creed of Nicaea. And he actually becomes this very annoying stick in the mud, and Constantius basically sees Athanasius as a threat to the unity of the church and the empire, because he’s the only voice still trying to push Nicaea while Semi-Arianism is starting to become the more mainstream view. In 356, imperial soldiers sent by Constantius actually barge into Athanasius’ church in the middle of a worship service basically to try and arrest him. And there’s this dramatic event that we actually have firsthand accounts of, where Athanasius’ followers protect him from the soldiers and manage to help him escape amid the chaos. Like I said, he was very charismatic and genuinely very popular, so his followers were willing to put their lives on the line for him. And so Athanasius actually escapes into the Egyptian desert, and hides out there for the next several years while imperial troops continue to search for him, as this picture shows. But they never find him, because he’s actually protected by a group of monastics known as the Desert Fathers. So anyways, while Athanasius is in exile and there isn’t really anyone to lead the Nicene resistance, Constantius takes moves of his own to basically try and force Semi-Arianism as the dominant version of Christianity in the world. So he organizes councils of 560 bishops which sign a Semi-Arian creed rejecting Nicaea. Then finally in 360 the Semi-Arian creed is officially made imperial policy at a council in Constantinople, under penalty of excommunication. This is a side note but I realized I never actually clarified in my last video that Constantinople at this point had become the new capital of the Roman empire, instead of Rome. So yeah Constantinople had become the political center for power by now, which is why so many events of the 4th century revolve around it.

Orthodoxy’s Darkest Hour: 360 AD

So let’s just pause the clock in the year 360, and consider just how astonishing this picture is 35 years after the council of Nicaea. Athanasius, the main defender of Nicaea, is basically exiled and hiding in the desert, along with most other Nicene fathers. And 560 bishops produce a semi-Arian creed. Remember, at Nicaea there were 300 bishops, so almost double have now turned around in order to reject Nicaea and accept semi-Arianism. And this is just a line from the creed they signed: “We affirm that the Son is similar to, not equal but similar to, the Father, as the divine Scriptures say and teach…concerning the word nature (ousia)...we have decided to abolish it and never again make reference to ousia concerning God.” Remember ousia is the essential word basically proving equality of the Father and Son, so the majority of the church is now trying to undo that. And even the Pope of Rome, Liberius, has signed and rejected Nicaea. And imperial decree enforces affirmation of the creed under penalty of excommunication. So there’s this very memorable quote from St. Jerome: “The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian.” So this is a really crazy moment in time for Christian history. Because if you had gone back to this moment and paused time, it would be almost certain that Semi-Arianism would win and Nicaea would be rejected. However, despite all the factors in favor of Semi-Arianism, all the human reasoning, political power, church support, the Holy Spirit said “no, it will not be so”. And we’ll see how that happened.

Christology Wars: The Return of the Nicenes (360-381 AD)

Okay, finally. Let’s get to episode 6. The Return of the Nicenes.

The Cappadocian Fathers

So now we’re in the endgame. And the Cappadocian fathers are going to bring us home. So the Cappadocian Fathers are a close group of three friends who were the spiritual successors of Athanasius. And naturally because they worked out the doctrine of the Trinity, there are three of them. They looked up a lot to Athanasius and were influenced significantly by his leadership. Now unlike Athanasius, as far as I can tell the Cappadocian Fathers were wholly good, upstanding men, with no dark side to their characters. And unlike Athanasius, they had the philosophical and theological framework in order to finally answer the question of how God is simultaneously one and three. So first we had Basil of Caesarea. He was the eldest and pretty much the leader of the trio. And he has the rare distinction of having established the Basileias, which was the world’s first public, non-profit hospital. So basically, we have Basil to thank for the idea of hospitals which has continued to the present day. Then, we have Gregory Nazianzen, who was Basil’s best friend. I think he was the best philosopher and orator of the group. Most of the really good, cogent, just really banger quotes come from Gregory Nazianzen. Finally we have Gregory of Nyssa, who was Basil’s younger brother. He has the distinction of being the first Christian in history to condemn all forms of slavery as intrinsically sinful. Which was a hugely radical position to hold in the time, because remember this is still the Roman Empire where slavery is literally just a part of life and tied intrinsically to the economy. So these are three, just really virtuous and incredible people, who in addition to discovering the ideas of hospitals and slavery being wrong, are also the first to explain how the Trinity makes sense. And they literally solve the entire conflict. So let’s see how they did that.

“One ousia, Three hypostases”

So this is the fundamental formulation that solves the entire debate. One ousia, Three hypostases. One ousia, Three hypostases. One ousia, Three hypostases.

Okay, so homoousios was the most important slide of the presentation. This is the second most important slide. If there are only two slides you remember, it’s these two. So what does One ousia, Three hypostases mean? So let’s start with this quote from Basil. “That relation which the general has to the particular, such a relation has the ousia to the hypostasis.” “That relation which the general has to the particular, such a relation has the ousia to the hypostasis.” Okay so ousia is basically like the general abstraction, literally “nature”. For example, mankind. And then hypostasis is an individual concrete instance, literally “existence”. So like Peter, Paul and Mary who are all specific individual of mankind. So now I’m going to go ahead and turn off the presentation for a second and give a visual example. So I have these three chairs setup in my living room. And you can see these are very different chairs, one is taller, one is folding, one has a curved back. But even though these are all different instances of chairs, you can conceptualize of some abstract perfect idea of a chair that all these specific chairs exemplify. So we might think of the nature or ousia of “chairhood” being something that is functionally used for sitting, and it has legs and then some kind of back. The all these specific chairs are hypostases of the ousia of “chairhood”. So three hypostasis of chairs, one ousia of “chairhood”. Now going over here, these chairs more accurately represent the Trinity as we will see. Because while it’s the same analogy, three individual instances of one general nature, in the Trinity all three persons have the exact same nature and attributes, without any attenuation or distinction. So the Trinity is more like this situation, where you still have three hypostases and one ousia, but they also all happen to be identical with each other. And then let’s say that you put a coat on this one chair here. That’s like how one of the persons, the Son, is also clothed with a human nature. He has a human nature, but fundamentally he’s also still a chair. So he has both natures at the same time without compromising either. Again this is all just an analogy and an illustration and it’s imperfect, but I hope it gets the point across. Okay so coming back to the slides. You can see why the anathema of Nicaea was so problematic. “…those…who allege that the Son of God is of another hypostasis…these the Catholic and Apostolic Church condemns.” Well it turns out, this was exactly the key to the entire debate. The Son is a different hypostasis from the Father. So the Cappadocian Fathers basically realized they had to go against this line from the original Nicene Creed, which is really gutsy if you think about it. But they needed to do so in order for the Trinity to make logical sense.

From Athanasius to the Cappadocian Fathers

So now let’s look at the history following the low point of Orthodoxy in 360, passing from Athanasius to the Cappadocian Fathers. So in 361 AD, Constantius dies, which temporarily pauses the Semi-Arians’ bid for control. However, the next emperor is Julian the Apostate, who is actually a pagan and resumes some persecutions of Christianity. Nonetheless, Athanasius is able to return as bishop of Alexandria, and the Arian bishop who had been replacing him while he was in exile was actually killed by a mob. And we have to note something very specific here. Athansius didn’t order the killing, but he didn’t prevent it either. He didn’t order the killing, but he didn’t prevent it either. So this is what I was saying, Athanasius very much had a dark side and could behave wrathfully towards people he considered heretics. So emperor Julian dies, and then another Arian Valens comes to power. Valens again exiles Athanasius and other Nicene bishops. However, Valens isn’t as hardheaded as Constantius was, and amidst popular outrage from commoners he actually reinstates Athanasius and the other Nicenes. Now in 370, the Cappadocian Fathers become bishops and start to unite the Church around the “one ousia, three hypostases”, and they are actually somewhat successful at this. So just by talking with people and having that dialogue, they’re able to win over some people who had been Semi-Arians, to actually support the Nicene Creed. Because they’re the first ones who can actually demonstrate a way for the Father and Son to be equal, without implying modalism. So they really do seem to have hit the perfect formulation, that people are able to now say “ah, I can get on board with that”. Now unfortunately, in 373, Athanasius does die, and now it’s up to the Cappadocians to finish the work of uniting the Church around Nicaea.

A New Challenger Has Appeared! The Spirit Fighters!

Oh what’s this? A New Challenger Has Appeared?

It’s the Spirit Fighters! So the Cappadocian Fathers faced a new opponent, the Pneumatomachi, which literally means Spirit Fighters. And they basically resisted equating the Holy Spirit with God, or in some cases even seeing him as an individual person instead of a generic force or influence. There was one group that said that the Holy Spirit isn’t God, and another group that said the Holy Spirit isn’t even a person, but God’s abstract presence or influence. So the Spirit Fighters will turn out to be the surprise final boss on the way to the final Nicene Creed.

Spirit-Fighter Trinities

So these are examples of Trinities according to the Spirit Fighters. The first group that held the Spirit to be a lesser created yet still divine being basically worshipped the Father and Son alone, while holding the Spirit to be this lesser being that dwells in us to allow us to commune with the other two. The second group that held the Spirit to be this impersonal force were basically binitarian vs. trinitarian, and the Spirit is literally just the presence of the Father and the Son dwelling in us, and not its own person at all.

Spirit Fighter Arguments

And the Spirit Fighters were actually hard to argue against, even for philosophical and theological geniuses like the Cappadocian Fathers. Because, as it turns out, arguing that the Spirit is equal to the Father and the Son from Scripture alone is pretty difficult. For example, the Nicenes would argue that the Holy Spirit does things in the Bible that only God does, like divine revelation, miracles, forgiving sins, being mentioned alongside God. But the problem is, for every single one of those attributes, you can find another example in the Bible of God giving a created being that attribute as well. Such as prophets, angels, apostles, and so on. Nicenes might argue that the Holy Spirit is listed in Trinitarian formulas, such as “baptize and make disciples in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit”, right in Matthew, right? But here’s the problem with THAT one. There are formulas in the Bible, that list the Father, the Son, and then X, where X is something other than the Holy Spirit. For example, 1 Timothy 5:21 says “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I warn you…”. So you might argue, why do we accept some of the formulas as Trinitarian, but not others? Why do we accept the verses that list the Holy Spirit as indicative of his divinity, but then not the other verses when it comes to angels? Okay, finally, certain books like John seem to portray the Holy Spirit as a person. E.g. the Spirit is the helper, he blows where he wills, etc. But in these cases, the Spirit Fighters would appeal to the majority of Scripture that doesn’t portray the Holy Spirit as a person, and chalk the rest up to metaphor or personification.

The Insufficiency of Scripture Regarding the Spirit?

So this is going to be the controversial slide. However…this really is the historical thought process that the Cappadocian Fathers went through, and so I need to present it accurately. The overall problem is that a face value reading of Scripture seems insufficient to prove the full divinity of the Holy Spirit. Let me read from Hanson: “Basil is, however, troubled by his realization that it is impossible to find in the Bible full and wholly adequate support for the doctrine that the Holy Spirit is a separate hypostasis within the Godhead comparable to the hypostasis of the Son. The Cappadocians had enough understanding of the Bible to realize that even the very loose and subjective methods of interpretation employed by almost everybody in the fourth century could not derive any and every doctrine from the pages of Scripture.” Nonetheless, the tradition of theosis strongly motivated the Cappadocian Fathers to uphold the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

The Cappadocian Fathers on Tradition

So. How did the Cappadocian Fathers handle this challenge? Well, they appeal to tradition apart from Scripture as the proof to the Holy Spirit’s divinity. I will just read their thoughts verbatim. So Basil of Caesarea in his work, “On the Holy Spirit”, says the following: “Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us in a mystery by the tradition of the apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have the same force.” Okay. Now, Gregory of Nazianzen. “The Old [Testament] openly proclaimed the Father, but the Son mistily. The New [Testament] manifested the Son, but sketched the Godhead of the Spirit. The Spirit is now resident and active among us supplying a clearer manifestation of himself…You perceive periods of illumination gradually enlightening us and an order of revelation which it is better for us to preserve, neither appearing in a single burst nor maintaining secrecy to the very end.” And then Nazianzen also appeals to John 16:12, where Jesus says “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” So basically, he’s saying that the Old Testament is to the New Testament, as the New Testament is to the life and tradition of the Church. And that the Holy Spirit is active in the life and tradition of the Church to reveal doctrines that are not directly clear in Scripture. Almost like the traditions of the Church are themselves a third testament of Scripture. So even though Scripture doesn’t worship the Holy Spirit, the Church tradition of the first four centuries certainly did. For example, and this is the case Basil explicitly refers to, a central part of the liturgy was saying “Glory be to the Father, with the Son, with the Holy Spirit”. And the very prayer I started this presentation with says that as well: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” So even though Scripture does not worship the Holy Spirit or call it uncreated, the Church had kind of organically done it on its own just through the development of its own worship. And the Cappadocian Fathers basically say that the cause of this tradition is the Holy Spirit working in the hearts of everyday believers and basically pointing everyone in the same direction. And in fact, the Cappadocians were pretty successful in using tradition to support the Spirit’s divinity, because to be fair most Christians already practiced this anyway.

The Cappadocian Trinity

So now let’s look at the final Trinity, which is the Cappadocian Trinity. We see finally the full picture we are familiar with today. We have three consubstantial persons, all possessing the Godhead, all originate from the Father. And the Son also assumes humanity from Mary. And we can see how this model resolves the fundamental confusion of whether God is three or one. How is God three? God is three because there are three distinct hypostases or persons of the Godhead. How does this avoid subordinationism? Because all three hypostases have identical ousia or nature. None is intrinsically superior to the others. So then how is God one? Because there is one God the Father, who eternally communicates his own divine Godhead to two other persons, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Basil used an analogy of like a king, and a statue of the king. Just because you have the king, and then the king’s image in something else, doesn’t mean you suddenly have two kings. It’s the same with God the Father and the communication of the Godhead. But to be clear, the analogy breaks down because a statue of a king is ontologically inferior to the king itself. In the Trinity, all three persons are equal. Finally, how does this avoid modalism? Because to avoid modalism, you need to point to some way in which the three persons are distinct from one another. And the Cappadocians said, yes you can clearly say they are distinct, not through their internal nature, but through their inter-relationships. So even though all three persons are identical, you can still point to differences between the persons in terms of their relation of origin. You can say, “oh, the unoriginate person”. That’s God the Father. Or, “oh, the begotten person”. That’s God the Son. Or “oh, the one who proceeds.” That’s the Holy Spirit. So for the first time in history, the Cappadocians are able to logically explain how God can be three and one at the same time, while avoiding both Arianism and modalism. Which is an astounding achievement and really lets the doctrine of the Trinity click in place for a lot of people and gain acceptance.

Cappadocian Cosmology

And of course, finally we have the cosmological timeline that we are familiar with today. All three persons of the Godhead existing in perfect relational love for all eternity, originating from the Father, participating in all creative and redemptive actions together.

The Road to Church Unity

Okay so now we’re in the home stretch! Okay so from 373 to 378 AD, the Cappadocians are actually able to drive some consensus on the Son’s divinity in the Church. Just through talking with people, their formula of one ousia and three hypostases just lets people get on board with Nicene theology. However at the Nth hour the Spirit Fighters raise the issue of the Holy Spirit’s divinity. Now in 378, Valens, the Arian emperor, dies in battle and is succeeded by Theodosius who happens to be a pro-Nicene. Then unfortunately, in 379 Basil dies at the age of only 49 years old, having struggled with health difficulties his entire life. So the two Gregories now continue his work. Gregory Nazianzen actually starts a “schismatic” Nicene house church in the mostly Semi-Arian Constantinople. So ironically this is actually the same crime that Arius first committed in Alexandria at the beginning of this conflict. But now Nazianzen is playing an uno reverse and now creating a schismatic church, but this time against the Semi-Arians. And through public sermons in Constantinople he’s actually able to convince many people in Constantinople to become Nicene. In 380 AD, Theodosius declares Nicene Christianity to be the official theology of the empire, and makes Nazianzen the bishop of Constantinople, displacing the Semi-Arian bishop. So basically, Gregory’s church which had been “schismatic” now becomes the dominant church. And finally, at long last, Theodosius convenes the Council of Constantinople, which would produce the Nicene Creed that we know today. So I know this is a deep cut, but for anyone who watched the second part of Death Note, “Separately, neither of us could equal Athanasius. But together, the three of us can surpass the greatest Father ever to live.” So this is like Gregory of Nyssa, or Near, talking about Athanasius, or L. Okay.

The Council of Constantinople (381)

So already just by public and ecclesial discourse the Cappadocians had succeeded in practically unifying the empire around Nicaea. So therefore the council of Constantinople ran smoothly and all were of one mind, right? Well, not exactly…

So 150 bishops, again mainly from the East, met at Constantinople with Nazianzen presiding over the council. However, the city was pretty rife with gossip and dissent. There’s this hilarious quote from Gregory of Nyssa I had to include: “If you ask for change, the man launches into a theological discussion about begotten and unbegotten; if you enquire about the price of bread, the answer is given that the Father is greater and the Son subordinate; if you remark that the bath is nice the man pronounces that the Son is from non-existence”. So a lot of these chaotic discussions are going about all throughout the city. And unfortunately the meetings themselves were dominated by Church politics and territorial disputes, and not the significant theological issues at hand. In the words of Nazianzen: “I finished my speech; but they squawked in every direction, a flock of jackdaws combining together, a rabble of adolescents, a gang of youths, a whirlwind raising dust under the pressure of air currents, people to whom nobody who was mature either in the fear of God or in years would pay any attention…”. So halfway through the council, Nazianzen actually just straight up ragequits and resigns both as president of the council and bishop of Constantinople. And he returns home. So then this hilarious thing happens where they literally pick this random guy Nectarius, who is basically a layperson bystander off the street, and say, “you! You be the bishop of Constantinople!” And he’s very quickly ordained and put in charge. And as Hanson says, “Till Warren Harding was elected President of the United States in 1920, few people can have been less qualified for greatness suddenly thrust upon them.” To be fair he actually ended up doing a pretty decent job and he’s venerated today as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox church. And his name is signed at the top of the Council of Constantinople.

The Nicene-Constantinople Creed of 381

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

And in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Only-begotten, begotten by his Father before all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father, through whom all things came into existence, who for us men and for our salvation came down from the heavens and became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became a man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures and ascended into the heavens and is seated at the right hand of the Father and will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and there will be no end to his kingdom;

And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, who spoke by the prophets;

And in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church; We confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We wait for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the coming age. Amen.

…those…who allege that the Son of God is of another hypostasis…these the Catholic and Apostolic Church condemns.

…Every heresy is to be anathematised and in particular that of the Eunomians or Anomoeans, that of the Arians or Eudoxians (forms of Arianism), that of the Semi-Arians or Pneumatomachi (Spirit Fighters), that of the Sabellians, that of the Marcellians (forms of Modalism)...

So the actual events of the Council of Constantinople were not all that significant, and somewhat chaotic. But that’s okay, because most of the consensus around Nicaea had already been developed in the years building up to this point. And sometime during the two months of the Council, they produce this creed that we say today. Again I’ll go over the exact wording in another video. But the most important part is that the word consubstantial or homoousios reappears to describe the Son. And we have the exact doctrine of the Spirit fully fleshed out: “who proceeds from the Father, who is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son”. So making the Holy Spirit equal to the Father and the Son. Then we can see they deleted the section where they anathemize those who say God is more than one hypostasis, because in fact the Cappadocians relied on the Godhead being in three hypostases. And finally, in one of the canons of the Creed they anathemize a long list of heresies, which includes all the three other camps of the Christology Wars. So they anathemize Arians, Semi-Arians, Spirit-Fighters, and Modalists.

Unity in the Church (For Now)

So finally, at long last, we have unity in the Church. And when you look at the context of history, this was an absolutely astonishing achievement. Because if there’s anything the Church likes to be, it is divided. In fact I would submit that this period of time between the 4th and 5th centuries was the first, and last period of true Church unity since Pentecost. Because if you look at a chart of Church history, we can see that initially Christianity was unified in Jewish Christianity, but then quickly split into competing groups which fought until the fourth century, and as we known the Pre-Nicene group itself was divisively split on the issue of Christology. But then at 381, we have this beautiful, unified, one single form of Christianity that is the basis of everything we believe in.

Reflections on Nicaea: Denominational Tensions

Okay, this is the slide where I’m going to make everyone angry. But I mean, I just want to be accurate to the historical facts as far as I can tell. And in the name of “objectivity”, I will do my best to make every tradition equally angry with me. So first of all, the development of the Nicene Creed creates some tensions with Protestantism. In general, most Protestants do hold the Nicene Creed to be dogmatically true as a distinctive Christian belief. The problem is, Protestants also believe in sola scriptura and the sufficiency of Scripture. But frankly speaking, the Nicene Creed does not necessarily seem to follow from Scripture. For one thing, the entire controversy occurred exactly because Scripture seems to be ambiguous in some areas and might not have one clear or “best” interpretation. But even more than that, we know the Creed doesn’t follow from Scripture alone, because the people who made it said it didn’t! The people who made the Creed, said it didn’t follow from Scripture alone! For the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the Cappadocian Fathers explicitly said it needed to be proven through the traditions of the Church, apart from Scripture. And in the bigger picture, the entire Nicene Creed was motivated by this theological framework of theosis that isn’t clearly in Scripture, and isn’t widely emphasized in Western Christianity today. So I think Protestants have a tension whereby they might not have a basis to accept the Nicene Creed as authoritative, if they also want to hold to the sufficiency of Scripture. Okay, now Catholicism and Orthodoxy are not off the hook either. In my understanding, Catholicism really emphasizes magisterial authority revolving around the Pope of Rome, and Canon law, as the sort of almost legal framework that authoritatively proves doctrine. However, in the fourth century conflict, none of this was helpful towards eventually determining the Nicene Creed! The Pope of Rome certainly played no significant part in the theological development of either of the councils. But beyond that, the proper legal and ecclesial rules regarding bishops and authority and territory were routinely broken by both sides whenever it suited them. The emperors often directly intervened and replaced bishops however they liked, which I don’t think according to the laws of the Church they’re even supposed to be able to do. For Athanasius, even though he was repeatedly condemned and excommunicated by the vast majority of bishops in the Empire, he felt no obligation whatsoever to submit to the rulings of the Church. Athanasius also played political games trying to pit bishops from different territories against each other, and frequently tried to overstep territorial authority when it was convenient to him. And like look at what happened right before the council of Constantinople. Gregory Nazianzen took it upon himself to set up a schismatic church in Constantinople, a city where he had no authority, and openly rebelled against the properly appointed Semi-Arian bishop of that city. Which is the same “sin” that Arius originally committed in Alexandria, but on the opposite side. So even though none of this is, like, a concrete contradiction with Catholicism, the process as a whole to get to the Nicene Creed looks very non-Catholic, at least to me. And then also, just the fact that the original Creed did not have the Filioque clause, and that the Holy Spirit only proceeded from the Father alone, not the Son, is very significant. Okay, now Eastern Orthodoxy also has problems with it. Yes, the beloved Eastern Orthodoxy is not off the hook. Actually, if any Eastern Orthodox are watching this video you’re probably angry at me for pointing out Athanasius’ character flaws, and not treating him very reverently. And not being very reverent as to the proceedings of the councils. Okay, look, for all the Orthodox watching, I’m very sorry, but I’m just trying to be historically accurate. The biggest problem with Orthodoxy revealed in this conflict is that Nicene theology was not mainstream or a widely held tradition before the fourth century, but itself was a development. Because Orthodoxy basically prides itself as the only branch of Christianity to hold properly to the original Apostolic traditions without any loss or innovation. But historically, this was simply not the case here. Theology needed to evolve, adapt in new ways, and incorporate new ways of thinking, to finally do away with the idea that the Son is subordinate to the Father. And I think a really big tension in Eastern Orthodoxy is that the denomination just doesn’t have much self-awareness or a formal mechanism to allow for the fundamental development of doctrine. They basically need to dogmatically assert that everything they believe today was believed since the apostles in some form, which is not provable from history. But anyways, I just wanted to go through this slide, because I think it’s interesting that, retrospectively, the actual historical facts of Nicaea does create some tensions with every tradition today.

Alright, well thank you so much for watching! If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much! You’re a champ! Please hit all the buttons below that help me, please like and subscribe, and leave a comment telling me your thoughts. I’d love to hear your feedback, either positive or negative. Because I really value constructive debate, because this is the only way to grow, is to be in dialogue with people you disagree with. Anyways, I hope this presentation of Nicaea was informative and edifying to you, and I wish you peace in the name of the Triune God! God bless, and hope to see you at my next video!

As I’ve been reflecting on part 1 of my Nicene Creed series, and am about to record part 2 which will go up sometime this week, I realized I made a mistake when comparing the theological errors of Arianism to Orthodoxy. I said that Arianism makes God more unapproachable, because it postulates the necessity of a less-divine mediator “God” who can stand between us and the Father. And Orthodoxy makes God more approachable by recognizing that the fullness of His Godhead comes to directly touch human nature.

But in a way, the opposite is true. In a sense, it is easier to approach God through a mediator (as Arianism says) than it is directly. And coming into direct contact with God is a terrible and overwhelming prospect. Look at some of these quotes from Eastern fathers talking about the fearful and awesome weight of God’s infinite love:

‘You see, Lord, that I cannot bear more and would die,’ for man is compassed about and cannot carry the fullness of grace. - St. Silouan

That unapproachable light, that unbearable glory…My mind is completely astounded. I tremble with fear. - St. Symeon

Love for Christ is something else. It is without end, without satiety. - St. Porphyrios

I think also of the story of St. Mary of Egypt, who could not bear to enter a church to celebrate the Exaltation of the Cross, held back by some invisible force inside her. She realized it was the weight of her sins compared to the infinite purity and grace of Christ which prevented her from entering. Only by praying for grace and humility could she eventually bring herself to cross the threshold of the church.

Because I think there’s something in our broken, sinful nature that makes the perfect love of God completely foreign and unbearable. We naturally want there to be a mediator, so we don’t need to look at God directly in the face, but can keep ourselves and our sins hidden from him. I look at the example of the Prodigal Son. When he finally returned to his father, his plan was to go back not as a son, but as a servant. “I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands” he said. Because there is something safe about a transactional relationship. It’s easier to say to yourself, look, I’m putting in the work to make up for what I did, I’m contributing to cover my sins and fulfilling my rightful role. Because by keeping some distance between us and God, we can avoid full vulnerability and maintain some guise of safety and control, which is what we as humans naturally understand and desire. But God isn’t here to make a contractual relationship with us. The Father runs right up to the Prodigal Son, embraces and kisses him, and restores him to full direct relationship as beloved son. And that is profoundly uncomfortable for us to understand. And our egoistic and self-centered nature pulls away from that. The Prodigal Son himself cannot understand: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son”. Because there is something to that pure, infinite love that reveals all the darkness of who we are, and without grace we naturally resist and deny that love.

There are some Eastern fathers who theorize that Heaven and Hell are actually the same place, and just different manifestations of how different souls experience the infinite love of God. The humble and contrite soul can freely receive God’s love with eagerness and joy, and experiences Heaven; but to the self-centered egotistic soul, the all-present, inescapable love of God is pure agony and Hell. And I think there might be something to this idea. After all Psalm 138:8 (LXX) says: “If I should ascend into heaven, You would be there; If I should descend into Hades, You would be there”. This idea also makes sense of the descriptions of God as an all-consuming fire, while simultaneously describing Hell as a place of fire. So no matter the state our soul, each person’s fate is to stare straight in the face of an infinite and all-loving God on Judgement Day. There’s nowhere we can go to escape His love.

So I think this is something we should recognize. The Orthodox idea that God directly comes into contact with humanity makes him less approachable, not more. Not because he is lacking in grace; but because we are overflowing with sin and pride. Because how can a self-centered and prideful ego possibly come into direct contact with the infinite love of God?

The key is, in the words of St. Silouan, to “keep thy mind in hell and despair not.”

Glory be to the Father, and to the son, and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen. Today we will dive into what that confession actually means, and hopefully we will be able to describe the Trinity more accurately than Saint Patrick did. In this first presentation on what the Nicene Creed means, I will cover the history of the Arian Controversy from 318-381 AD, and the background context of how we got the final creed the Church uses today. In a separate presentation, I will go through the Nicene Creed line-by-line and explain what it means in detail.

Disclaimer

So first, some disclaimers! I am a layperson; not a historian or theologian! So feel free to take everything I say with a grain of salt and fact check me. For my personal bias, I am a self-described “non-Orthodox with Eastern Orthodox leanings”, but I do my best to be “objective”. So do with that as you will. Now, most of the content is from the book The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God by RPC Hanson (1988). When I was looking up books to read on Nicaea, I picked this book because it seems to be considered very reputable and the foundation for modern historical analysis on the Arian Controversy and Nicaea. And according to SciSpace it is still the most cited work on the Arian controversy. Information on early Christianity from 30-300 AD is from Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman. Now since I’m trying to move fast, some generalizations are made for the sake of time. Hopefully I can point these out when I make them. Finally, quoted scriptures are from the NRSV Updated Edition, which is the most recent modern critical scholarly translation of the Bible.

Introduction

So let’s begin by introducing Nicaea. According to Pew Research, more than 95% of Christians profess the Nicene Creed, and its doctrine of the Trinity. Christian groups who don’t profess the Nicene Creed include Mormons, Unitarians, probably some sects of Protestantism, etc. In fact, many Christians consider the Nicene Creed the dividing line of what makes someone a Christian or not, so arguably 100% of Christians profess the Nicene Creed! Now, it is my opinion that Nicene Trinitarian theology is very beautiful and elegant, and I hope that this presentation will help you understand and appreciate it. However, as we will see, the process to get to the Nicene Creed was not all that beautiful and elegant, and was often chaotic, circuitous, and confusing. And often it looked like the Arians were going to win! So really, my takeaway is that the process to develop Nicaea is a story of God’s providence against human wisdom and all odds! Because it really is crazy and providential that we were able to land on the theology we did. And so that’s why I think it’s important to just keep in mind the ultimate basis of our faith, which is the resurrection. He is Risen! We know that the apostles witnessed the resurrection, spent their whole lives proclaiming Christ, and died for their beliefs. Because of their testimony, we know that Jesus is Lord, and that we can trust in his promise to guide His Church with the Holy Spirit. As John 16:13, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth”. And 1 Timothy 3:15 calls the Church “the pillar and bulwark of the truth”. Because we know Jesus is God, and he sent his Holy Spirit, we can trust that the Nicene Creed, which has basically been accepted by every Christian over the last 1700 years, is true and guided by the Holy Spirit.

Why Start With History?

So why start with history? The Nicene Creed is not merely a statement of belief. It was intentionally written to be the boundary separating Christianity from non-Christianity. And this is only clearly apparent when you understand the full historical context, and the exact beliefs it was trying to fight against. What the Creed does not say is just as (or more) important than what it does say. And also these historical heresies continue to reappear in various forms today. As the saying goes, to be ignorant of history is to be doomed to repeat it. By better understanding the historical heresies, we can be on our guard to avoid them when they reappear in our lives today. Finally, I think it’s so important to understand the exact process by which the creed developed from 318-381 AD, because it is such a vivid demonstration of God’s providence through the Church. So when our world seems chaotic today and God’s presence seems hard to find, we can have the assurance and the understanding that God is using circumstances for his overall plan, and we are a part of that.

Addressing Common Misconceptions About Nicaea

So first I want to address some common misconceptions I often hear about Nicaea. People often say that the council of Nicaea determined the canon of scripture, which is completely untrue. In reality, there was no church-wide council that ever determined the canon of scripture. The canon actually just organically developed over time as all Christians more or less just accepted the same books of the Bible. That’s a story for another time. But actually all sides of the dispute more or less agreed on around 20 of the core books of the NT. And the more controversial books, like Revelations, didn’t really play a core role in the dispute. So it wasn’t like the Nicenes accepted one book of the Bible and the Arians didn’t. In reality, all sides agreed on what scripture was, the dispute was the interpretation of scripture. Secondly, I often hear that the Arians believed that Jesus wasn’t God, and that we had to have Nicaea to prove that Jesus in fact was God. This isn’t true. All parties already agreed that Jesus was “God”. The dispute was in what way Jesus was God. And we’ll see more of this in the presentation, because saying more than one thing is God can mean different things to different people, especially in antiquity. Next, we often hear this story that once Nicaea met in 325, everything was resolved and everyone knew for sure what the correct doctrine of the Trinity was. In reality this was not true. Nicaea actually raised more questions than answers, and the dispute raged on for more than 50 years until the council of Constantinople in 381 was able to bring more consensus, and produce the Nicene creed used today. Finally, one misconception I want to correct is this idea that the exact doctrine of the Trinity was always known since the apostles, and then Arianism came along and was this crazy heresy that distorted it, until Nicaea was able to correct the Church back to the original view. In reality, Orthodoxy was not widely agreed upon before the 4th century, and for 300 years a diversity of views of the exact divinity of Jesus existed side by side, and the specific formulation of Nicaea did not exist and was not finalized. So Nicaea was as much a development as Arianism was. This will become more clear in the presentation. There’s this really important RPC Hanson quote I want to highlight, which is “Orthodoxy on the subject of the Christian doctrine of God did not exist at first. The story is the story of how orthodoxy was reached, found, not of how it was maintained”.

Christology Wars: The Prequels (30-300 AD)

So before diving into Nicaea, let’s rewind the clock and look at the prequels to Christology Wars. That is the first three centuries. What were the range of beliefs that Christians had about Jesus and God?

Why Did the Arian Controversy Not Arise Until the 4th Century?

And why did the Arian Controversy not arise until the 4th century? Why did it take so long for the exact issues of Jesus’ divinity to be fully worked out? Well, one reason is that, in the first three centuries, constant persecution prevented the organizational stability of the Church for debating these nuanced theological issues. If you think about it, if the church has to operate underground, and can’t hold public debates or publish theological treatises, and the leading bishops and theologians can just be arbitrarily killed by the authorities, this isn’t very conducive for being able to work out theological details. The focus is more on the raw basics of the gospel and survival. Which, you know, has some pros but it also has some cons. But in addition, in the first three centuries, “proto-orthodoxy” faced larger threats from other branches of Christianity than from within. Notice that I’m calling it “proto-orthodoxy”, which is a term many scholars use to talk about the branch of Christianity from the first three centuries that was the predecessor for the Christianity we follow today. In reality, proto-orthodoxy was not the only or even the most dominant form of Christianity in the first three centuries, depending on the specific time and place. There were at least two other branches, Jewish Christianity, and Gnosticism. And it’s not like at the time, proto-orthodoxy was necessarily the obvious “correct” branch. We only really know this from retrospect, since it’s the only branch that survived to be passed down today. And these branches had vastly different understandings of Jesus and God, so that the proto-orthodox were more focused on correcting the major errors of these other branches, instead of internally arguing about details in their own camp. So very broadly speaking, and this is one of the times I’m making broad generalizations, Jewish Christianity believed that there is one God, and that Jesus is not that God but an exalted human. Proto-Orthodoxy of course believed that there is One God and Jesus is that God. And Gnosticism believed that there were two Gods, a good and an evil God, and that Jesus is the good God. So each of these branches had their own churches, traditions, and scriptures, and recent archaeology has found that the non-orthodox branches were more widespread than previously thought. So it’s fortunate that proto-Orthodoxy is the one that survived and turned out to be correct, which I think we can assume is the work of the Holy Spirit.

What Did Jewish Christians Believe?

So let’s dive into these heretical branches, starting with Jewish Christianity. To start with, Jewish Christianity believed that Paul was a false apostle. And to kind of get into their head and stand in their shoes, it kind of makes sense why they would think that. After all, Paul was someone who converted to Christianity years after the original 12 disciples, and he actually never met Jesus personally. So it kind of makes sense why some people would be suspicious of Paul, especially since he strangely had the most radical teaching in terms of allowing uncircumcised Gentiles to join the Church. Imagine how differently Christianity would look if you took out Paul. First of all you’d need to get rid of a lot of books of the NT, as well as rewrite some of the gospels which are written by authors who were influenced by Paul. So Jewish Christians believed that the OT Law (Torah) continued to be the boundary for God’s covenant. As Psalm 111:9 says, “he has commanded his covenant forever”, and there are a lot of other verses in the Old Testament about God’s law remaining forever, about circumcision being an everlasting covenant, and so on. So the Jewish Christians were on strong scriptural standing here. So naturally, they believed Jesus was the human messiah predicted in the Old Testament, and that Jesus himself, as a Jew, upheld the mosaic law in his teachings. After all, he said things like “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law”, “not one iota of the law will pass away”, and so on. As all Christians did, Jewish Christians believed Jesus had died, resurrected, and would one day return to judge the world. So the interesting thing is that Jewish Christianity in some form was the earliest Christian denomination, and gentile Christianity really took off later in the first century in large part due to the apostle Paul and the council of Jerusalem. Even then, Jewish Christianity was still very significant for the rest of the first century, and we have texts in the Bible itself kind of describing the tensions between Jewish and Gentile Christians, such as Paul’s letter to the Galatians. And they continued to be a presence until the 4th century, though they eventually faded into obscurity. So even though Jewish Christianity didn’t directly survive until today, I think the underlying heresy still has overarching themes that continue to appear to us. The main problem with Jewish Christianity is that it raises unnecessary barriers for believers joining the Church that God himself no longer imposes. This is basically what Paul calls “justification” in Galatians, which is the outward proclamation of one’s internal status before God. And the only thing we should really use to outwardly determine who is in the community of the Church is faith in Christ Jesus, and not anything unnecessary. And I suggest we think about what ways we add unnecessary barriers today to who is part of the Church. Do we only accept people who look similar to us, who talk and behave similarly to us? Do we only reach out to people with the same political beliefs as us? I know there are many churches in America that say you need to vote Republican if you’re truly a Christian. But that’s completely against what Paul says in Galatians. I think political beliefs shouldn’t be a barrier for who is in the Church or not. For me personally, I confess that I’ve struggled welcoming people in different age groups or life stages from me, but that’s really wrong because the Church is supposed to be welcoming of the entire diverse body of Christ, from all walks of life and situations. So yeah, for this particular heresy, think about ways we put up invisible barriers within the body of Christ. I do want to say, I think the New Perspective on Paul has basically done away with the outdated caricature that Jewish Christians were legalistic, and that the problem is they tried too hard or followed too many rules to get to God. That’s just not an accurate view of second temple Judaism or Jewish Christianity. Jewish Christians definitely showed great effort in living out their faith, but in the words of John Mark Comer, God isn’t opposed to effort, he’s opposed to earning. Having rules of life and faith are not bad things if these are things that the Spirit has led the church into as practices that give medicinal value to our spiritual lives. But they are bad if they themselves become the barriers gating membership to the Church, and they’re also bad if they are not things instituted by the Spirit at all, like cultural or political or demographic barriers. And that’s the issue we need to address with this particular heresy.

What Did Gnostics Believe?

Now, gnostic Christianity is interesting. It basically believed that the physical universe was created by an evil God, and therefore the world is sinful and fallen. Gnostics believed that the God of the Old Testament is evil, after all he’s often portrayed as wrathful, jealous, angry, and often commanding very questionable things such as the Canaanite conquests, very strict punishments for laws and not keeping the Sabbath, etc. On the other hand, there is a good God who appears in the New Testament who is compassionate and merciful and loving, who has sent Jesus in order to save us by his secret teachings. Jesus was a fully divine being without a physical body, because physical bodies are bad, and he only pretended to be human. And through Jesus’ secret teachings (gnosis), our souls can be liberated from our fallen physical bodies. Similar to proto-Orthodox Christianity, Gnosticism started to pick up in the second half of the first century, and we see certain parts of the New Testament like John and Paul’s letters trying to counter various Gnostic beliefs. Gnosticism was probably the biggest threat to proto-Orthodox Christianity because recent historical evidence has shown that there were actually parts of the world, such as Egypt, where Gnostics actually outnumbered proto-Orthodox Christians for some periods of time. Its dominance probably peaked in the 2nd and 3rd centuries but then eventually by the 4th century it was on the decline and not very relevant. And no branches of gnostic Christianity survived continuously to today. Nonetheless, we can still ask, what is the core spirit of this heresy that still reappears in our lives today? I would say the biggest problem with Gnosticism is that it really just degrades our physical and holistic nature, and focuses completely on the mind and knowledge. In reality, God created the world and our bodies to be good and to worship him. Being in a body is a good thing, cuz afterall Jesus came as a physical flesh and blood human to redeem our bodies. One thing to note is Gnostics were actually known for being very promiscuous and hedonistic, because they felt that as long as they had the saving secret knowledge, what they did with their bodies didn’t matter. That sounds a lot like the emphasis our culture has put on having a “saving knowledge” of Jesus, while often many nominal Christians don’t change their behavior or feel a need to stop sinning in their every day lives. Another way I’ve often seen Gnosticism play out in churches today is a shift towards very heady, sermon-heavy services that have a lot of teaching, but not very much worship, and certainly not very much fully embodied worship. If you ever have the chance to visit an Orthodox or a Catholic church, there are parts of the service where they are literally bowing, prostrating themselves, positioning themselves towards different parts of the room as the liturgy requires. And these more traditional churches try to create a fully holistic experience relating to all five senses; for example, smell, they will light candles and incense. Sight, they very intentionally beautify different parts of the church with artwork intended to instill reverence and awe. Taste, is obviously intentionally, well prepared, high quality wine and bread for communion. After all, the verse is “taste and see that the Lord is good”, and the Eucharist is supposed to be a celebration. So in my personal experience, fully embodied worship of the five senses is really what we are created to do in a church context. And to be fair, there are ways in which certain Protestant and non-denominational churches have been realizing how to return to this in recent years. But maybe you want to apply this outside of Sunday morning worship and consider whether you are dutiful in your everyday life to serve God with your entire body. One thing I think about is mental and emotional health. God created our mind and emotions as good things to be experienced and then used to worship him, but so often we shove mental and emotional wellbeing to the side for the sake of higher productivity and the daily grind. And that’s not really the only thing we were created to do. So I think having a high degree of awareness of your entire body and psychology, and how your overall wellbeing is either being blessed or is in need of God, and then turning that around in worship, is very important to do. Personally, these are things I only really started being aware of in the last few years, and once I did I realized the reason why I often seemed to be stuck in so many spiritual ruts often had to do with my physical and mental rhythms. So I would encourage you to think about how Gnosticism could be affecting you today, because I really think the modern church in America often suffers from this. Maybe one thing to also think about is whether your faith is all head-knowledge based, or if it actually expresses into your embodied existence, and changes your behavior and interactions with others. Finally, another notable thing about Gnosticism is how it denied the goodness of the Old Testament God, which I got to say does carry over to Christianity today. More often than not, we find the New Testament very relatable and exciting, but we just see the Old Testament as some dusty old, hard to understand books that don’t impact our faith all that much. But remember, 75% of the Bible is the Old Testament, which means all the crucial information for understanding God, the same God of Jesus and the entire Bible, has to come from the Old Testament. So yeah, maybe think about whether Gnosticism still impacts us today in terms of our preference to skip reading the Old Testament.

Why Was Proto-Orthodoxy “Victorious” by 300 AD?

So out of all these branches of Christianity, why was proto-orthodoxy victorious by 300 AD? Because by about 300 AD, proto-orthodoxy was the main relevant branch still remaining and the others were on the decline. Well, for Jewish Christianity, it just turned out that Mosaic Law was too great a burden for most Gentiles to accept. It’s very hard to get circumcised, not work on the sabbath, not eat certain foods, etc. Now for proto-orthodoxy, our ancestors, they were basically able to organize themselves into a global network of bishops, strongly structuring the faith. Now when I’ve heard this topic covered before in the past, I’ve noticed some protestants ask “bishops? Like Catholic bishops?” Well back then, all churches were under the governance of bishops. In fact, bishops are a term in the Bible, such as 1 Timothy 3:2, “Now a bishop must be above reproach…”. It’s the same word in the Greek for bishop, or episkopos. And universally across the board, all proto-Orthodox churches accepted a system where all churches in the city were governed by a singular bishop, who basically had sole teaching authority, could excommunicate members, could appoint or depose priests and deacons, etc. So this was a very powerful position, but also had an important unifying effect to protect the continuity of the teaching handed down through generations. If you’re ever interested to hear about the rationale of why the system of bishops was developed, you can read Ignatius of Antioch’s letters which explain how the single office of bishop prevents squabbles and minor disputes from tearing the church apart, and also protects from dissident voices and heresies polluting the faith. Now yes, in Evangelical America we would consider bishops to be authoritarian, but back then they were really a necessity and were very effective at their intended function of preserving unity. I also want to point out that it’s not as if bishops had no checks on their power; as we will see later in this presentation, part of the job of bishops was to communicate with other bishops in this global network, and in cases of conflict rebuke or even excommunicate other bishops who have gone astray in hopes of bringing them back to the correct path. Another factor with proto-orthodoxy was that it strongly emphasized perseverance and martyrdom, and the idea that bodily suffering brings sanctification. After all, we serve Jesus who suffered and died for our sanctification, and then told us to take up our own crosses daily. And this is why we have just so many martyrdom accounts from the first few centuries, of Christians holding to their faith even under torture and death. Proto-orthodoxy also strongly discouraged apostasy, for example there are various passages in Hebrews that from a historical perspective basically indicate that denying your faith is an unforgivable sin. And this was a reason why the book of Hebrews remained so controversial for so long. Now the later church tradition that has received Hebrews also said that the book needs to be interpreted such that there is a chance for repentance after apostasy, but this wasn’t the literal reading in the first three centuries. There’s another early Christian text called the Shepherd of Hermas that, similarly, restricted forgiveness for apostasy. On the other hand, gnosticism discouraged the notion of hierarchy, because they felt that no one person has a claim to what the “truth” is, and that anyone in their own minds can access gnosis. But as a result, Gnostic sects failed to gain any true unity, and were often diverse and discordant with each other. So they weren’t able to expand meaningfully. Gnosticism also didn’t value perseverance or martyrdom, because they basically held that bodily suffering is meaningly, because the body is sinful. So a lot of their converts gave up under persecution and weren’t very stable. So because of these factors, which I think the Holy Spirit guided under providence, Proto-Orthodoxy ended up as the mainstream Christianity by the 4th century.

Christology Wars: A New Creed (300-325 AD)

So now this brings us to Nicaea itself. Starting with Christology Wars episode IV, a New Creed.

The Conversion of Constantine (312 AD)

So definitely the most significant event that precipitated the Arian Controversy and the ensuing councils is the conversion of Constantine to Christianity, and the subsequent legalization of Christianity in Rome. So Constantine was the son of the previous emperor who had died, but the succession of power wasn’t clear and Rome was in a period of civil war with multiple people vying for the throne. And Constantine had actually been raised as a pagan. But before going into one of the battles, Constantine suddenly had a vision of a cross in the sky, and the words in Latin, “in this sign, you will conquer”, which is what the image on the left depicts. So Constantine had his men paint a Christian symbol on their shields, which you can see in the image on the right. See how it looks like an X and a P? Well these are the letters Chi and Rho in the Greek alphabet, which are the first two letters of Christ, and this was a common Christian symbol back then. Well Constantine actually ended up winning the battle and becoming emperor, and as a result converted to Christianity and brought the entire empire of Rome with him. And from all accounts, he was genuine in his faith. Like this was an honest vision that he had, which he honestly believed and then spent the rest of his life legitimately trying to foster the growth of Christianity. Now I’ve often heard the legalization of Christianity painted as a bad thing, and as the start of when people began being more lukewarm in their faith. I personally see it as more of a mixed bag. There were definitely many good things that came from the legalization of Christianity. The number of Christians in the Roman Empire jumped from 10% to 50% almost overnight, which is the largest increase in such a short period of all time. I’ve heard some people say that the growth of Christianity slowed down after legalization, but this is misleading. If anything, the growth slowed down because they literally ran out of people to convert. So there was definitely a benefit in terms of spreading the gospel. Now of course the downside was the unfortunate mixture of Church and State, which began now and would never be challenged until the United States and the first amendment in 1791. Obviously, the mixture of Church and State has led to a lot of terrible things in Christian history, many of which we will see in this presentation. But in fact, once in a while the emperor ended up being a good thing for Christianity. As we will see, the emperors could help facilitate Church-wide councils in order to resolve disputes, and could be a real stabilizing force amidst times of conflict. And the emperors, while powerful, were not all-powerful. Even though some emperors tried their hardest to enforce their particular version of Christianity, the Church and the Holy Spirit proved to be very resilient, and the emperors simply could not have lasting success unless most or all of Christians were already on board.

4 Christological Camps in Proto-Orthodoxy

So the explosive growth and legalization of Proto-Orthodox Christianity finally brought attention to the core Christological disputes that had gone unspoken for hundreds of years. There were at least 4 broad camps, again a generalization, that had scriptural support and had traditions stretching back into the first 300 years. And to give a brief high level overview, these were Arianism, which believed Jesus was a lesser divinity created by the Father, Semi-Arianism which believed Jesus was a lesser divinity than the Father without being created, “Orthodoxy” which was that Jesus is an equal divinity to the Father, and Modalism which was that Jesus is an identical divinity to the Father. Now note that “Orthodoxy” is in quotes. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can call this party “Orthodox” because it was eventually the group that emerged victorious. However, as we will see at the time it was not all that clear that the idea that Jesus was equal to the Father would receive widespread support in the long term. Now, clearly Arianism was on the radical side of the spectrum in terms of claiming that Jesus was created, which was a doctrine that made all the other groups angry. As RPC Hanson says, “The part of Arius’ doctrine which most shocked and disturbed his contemporaries was his statement that the Father made the Son ‘out of non-existence’”. The “out of non-existence” part is important; I think for hundreds of years many Christians had already had this idea that God produced Jesus out of his own divine nature somehow, and we’ll look at this doctrine more in detail later, but Arius took it a step further by saying that the Father actually produced the Son out of nothing, which basically put the Son on the same level as all other creatures in creation, which were made out of nothing as in the creation story in Genesis. So even though Arianism was just one view amongst many emerging out of proto-Orthodoxy, it attracted the most controversy because of this specific doctrine of the Son’s creation.

Traditional Precedents to (Semi-)Arianism

Now the reason I’m explaining all this is because I want to dispel this notion that I’ve heard that Orthodoxy had been clearly taught in the Church all along, and then Arius suddenly came along in the 4th century out of nowhere and started teaching the Son’s creation. This portrayal is just really inaccurate and strawman’s Arianism. I think whenever you are looking at history and just portray people as complete idiots, radicals, or heretics who were clearly wrong and should have known better, this is just really arrogant and does a disservice both to history and to yourself. The reality is that every viewpoint that has ever developed had its own internal justification and rationale, that made it convincing and caused it to gain followers. And the same is true of Arianism, so in this presentation, I first want to build up Arianism and explain what made it so appealing, before tearing it down and explaining all of its errors. When we do this, we have a much better picture of history, and then we can learn much better and apply the lessons to our own lives, and see how to avoid heresies in our own day no matter how appealing they might be. So when looking at the precedents to Arianism and Semi-Arianism, there were several theologians in the first three centuries who had some conception of the Son being less than the Father or the Son being created. First is Origen, who was by far the biggest and most influential theologian of the early Church. As seen in this quote, he clearly had this idea of the Son being less than the Father, and that while the Father perfectly knows the Son, the Son doesn’t perfectly know the Father, so there is an asymmetry in that way. Dionysius of Alexandria is super explicit, and says the Son is a creature. In fact, there’s this important RPC Hanson quote that “virtually every theologian, East and West, accepted some form of subordinationism at least up to the year 355; subordinationism might indeed, until the denouement of the controversy, have been described as accepted orthodoxy.” So Arianism definitely did not pop out of nowhere, but had firm precedent, so it’s easy to see where it came from.

Arianism Explained

So this is a diagram that explains the Trinity according to Arianism. The famous Arian line is “There was when he was not”, basically calling the Son a created being by the Father. This means for eternity past, God the Father existed alone by himself as a solitary God. Then, at some point “before all ages”, the Father created the Son as His first act. And the Son is “God”, but a lesser Divinity than the Father. And then sometime after that point before all ages, the Son created the rest of creation, including the Holy Spirit. There is still a Trinity, but a hierarchy of Divinity. The different shades of gold basically indicate different degrees of Divinity.

Arian Cosmology

And this timeline basically describes Arianism cosmology. Now the standard verse to counter Arianism is John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word…”, which means that Jesus, the Word, always existed for eternity past. However, Arians had a way to explain this, rooted in scripture. The key Arian text is Proverbs 8:22. Now Proverbs 8 is describing a personification of Wisdom; however, Christianity has a long tradition of equating Wisdom in Proverbs with Jesus from the New Testament. Because, you know, Jesus is the Word or Logos, and therefore Jesus is Wisdom as well. And yes, this interpretation may seem strange, but realize that all fathers at this period in time all agreed that Proverbs 8:22 is talking about Jesus, and in fact this tradition has continued to modern day in both Catholicism, Orthodoxy, but Protestantism as well. So Proverbs 8:22 says, with the important texts highlighted, “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth…when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker.” So looking on the timeline, this is basically saying that the Father existed alone for all eternity, and then at some point “ages ago” or “before all ages” the Father created the Son. And then after this was the real beginning where the Father and Son work together to make the rest of creation. So this is consistent with John 1:1, because “the beginning” refers to this point when the universe was created, not “before all ages” when the Son was created. Now think about what the implications are of this cosmology. We basically see that the Father alone existed all by himself for eternity past. Think about how dreadful and lonely a God this is. Because eternity literally means eternity. Like it’s a long, long time. Like imagine how long a millisecond is compared to the age of the entire universe. Eternity, is like that but even infinitely bigger. So from God’s POV, the existence of the entire universe is barely a blip in his consciousness, and the vast, vast majority of his experience of existence is just himself, sitting there, alone. Like, think about how terrible that is. Does that feel like a loving or good God? Or is it a depressing, dark, lonely God? Just something to think about.

The Rationale of Arianism

Also, there is a strong philosophical rationale behind Arianism. In Greek metaphysics, God was this holy and infinite and perfect being which simply could not directly interact with our imperfect reality. As this Arian quote goes, “He does not condescend to human contacts nor human flesh”. Aristotle had this thought where the perfect being can only have perfect thoughts and actions, and by definition then all his thoughts and actions have to be about himself, because as soon as he starts thinking about something else in creation then he’s basically not using his mind to only think about perfect things, which then makes him imperfect. So to solve this problem you need a lesser diety who is still divine and perfect and worth acting on, but doesn’t have all the same constraints as the full God in terms of contaminating himself with reality. And so Arians basically thought this lesser diety was Christ, and you know there’s even scriptural support for this in passages that talk about Christ being our only mediator to God. And then this lesser deity could suffer and die for our sins, as this other quote says “Let them answer then how this passable and mortal person could be consubstantial with God who is beyond these things: suffering and death.” So I think even though Arianism is no longer directly around today, there are still aspects of this heresy that sneak in our faith today and impact us. I would ask you to consider this; in what ways do you feel God is too holy and too far removed from you to connect with? Do you ever experience what seems to be a lack of God’s presence, and then deceive yourself that maybe he doesn’t care about you at all? Or maybe you feel like the sins you’ve committed are too great, too despicable, that you’re irredeemable and you can’t bring yourself to face God. I know I’ve definitely felt this at times in my own experience, like I’ve been stuck in the same ruts over and over, and I’m a failure to God and just don’t feel his presence. I think at times like this we hear echoes of the Arian heresy all the way back from the 4th century, reappearing now. But thanks to Nicaea, we know that there’s nothing separating God from directly reaching down into the world and touching our lives. And he desperately desires to and continuously does so.

Duel! Arius vs. Alexander of Alexandria (315-325 AD)

So anyways, let’s do a speed run of the controversial events involving Arius that led to Nicaea. The two main players of the conflict were Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, and Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria. As we have seen, Arius’ teaching that the Son was created alarmed many in Alexandria. Alexander eventually excommunicates him. However, Arius finds considerable support from other bishops in Egypt and adjoining Palestine. These other bishops urge Alexander to re-admit Arius. Alexander refuses. Arius then sets up a parallel schismatic church in Alexandria. We see at this point the dispute bubble over into the public sphere in the form of public disturbances, brawls, and riots, and lawsuits between different factions of believers. At this point, news of the conflict reaches Emperor Constantine. He unsuccessfully attempts to reconcile Arius and Alexander. Then, other bishops meet at a council in Antioch, Syria, supporting Alexander and condemning Arius and his allies.

The Council of Nicaea (325)

At this point, Constantine calls for a church-wide council in Nicaea. This council is attended by about 300 bishops, mostly from the east but a few from the west, the largest council ever at that time. And these are bishops from all camps of Christianity: Arianism, Semi-Arianism, Orthodoxy, and Modalism. Alexander’s deacon Athanasius is also present. Remember Athanasius, he will later become the main character of this entire saga.

Proceedings of the Council of Nicaea

So let’s take a look at what happened at Nicaea. Going into the council, most bishops expected to compromise with Arianism. You know, because the doctrine of Christ’s divinity had never been concretely settled before this point, and most held some sort of subordinationism. Arius by this point had learned to avoid the “created out of non-existence” rhetoric, and used other phrases like the Son was “established”, “appointed”, etc. Nonetheless, Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian, stood up and read a statement: it is absurd to consider the son consubstantial with the Father; instead “from Scripture…we learn that the Son was created…”. As soon as he said the word “created”, most bishops were immediately outraged. He had basically stepped on the third rail. The bishops ripped Eusbius’s papers out of his hand and ripped them up. So at this point, the attitude of the council shifted away from trying to make a compromise, and became decisively anti-Arian. And the interesting thing is, because they wanted to specifically make an anti-Arian creed, and Eusbeius had specifically said he could not tolerate the term homoousios or consubstantial, they decided to put this exact word in the creed. I will explain more about this word homoousios in a bit. But as Ambrose says, “the Fathers placed…the term homoousios in the Statement of Faith, because they saw that it caused alarm to their opponents.” Arius and two bishops refused to sign the creed, and were exiled by Constantine.

The (First) Nicene Creed of 325

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things, seen and unseen.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten as only-begotten of the Father, that is of the nature (ousia) of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father, through whom all things came into existence, both things in heaven and things on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and became man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the dead.

And in the Holy Spirit.

But those who say, “there was a time when he did not exist” and “Before being begotten he did not exist”, and that he came into being from non-existence, or who allege that the Son of God is of another hypostasis (existence) or ousia (nature), or is alterable or changeable, these the Catholic and Apostolic Church condemns.

So this is the first creed that they came up with at the council of 325. Keep in mind this is not the final creed said in churches today and in fact has significant differences. So I’ve bolded the most significant parts of the Creed I want to hone in on. Specifically, we believe “in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten as only-begotten of the Father, that is of the nature (ousia) of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father. Basically, this is saying that Jesus is exactly equal to the Father, and everything that the Father is, Jesus is as well. 100% God in every way. And then the anathemas at the end of the creed specifically exclude Arianism, and the idea that Jesus was created. Unfortunately, they also anathemize anyone who claims that Jesus is a different hypostasis or existence from the Father, which will turn out to be very problematic later.

Homoousios

So let’s look at this extremely important word homoousios. This is the most important slide of the entire presentation. If you don’t remember anything else, just remember this slide. This word, meaning consubstantial, was inserted into the creed specifically because Arians could not profess it. Arians could accept other words or phrases about Jesus, like he had a “similar nature”, or was “like in all things” to God, because in the Bible these phrases are also applied to created beings. However, they absolutely could not accept the word consubstantial, or homoousios. Homo means exactly the same, ousios means nature or substance. Therefore, homoousios means that Jesus has exactly the same nature as God. In practicality, this means that every attribute that can be said of the Father can also be said of the Son, for example the Son is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, all-loving, etc. just as much as the Father is.

The 325 Nicene Creed Trinity Explained

So this is a diagram explaining the Trinity as outlined at the council of Nicaea. The gold color indicates Godhead or the divine ousia or nature. Godhead is basically a term from old English for “God-hood”, that is, the attributes and state of being God. Similar to how you have person-hood, parent-hood, childhood, you have Godhood or Godhead. Now in evangelical contexts I’ve often seen Godhead used to refer to the Trinity as a whole. This is not the main purpose of this word and using it to refer to the entire Trinity can be imprecise and problematic as we will see. Green indicates human nature. So the first line of the Creed, “We believe in one God, the Father…”, identifies the one true monotheistic God as being the specific person of God the Father. What this means is that God the Father is the sole unoriginate entity in all existence, and the only producer of the Godhead substance that then flows to the Son. I will explain more about this specific doctrine on the next slide. But anyways, the next phrase, “...God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made…” indicates that the Father eternally generates the Son, so basically takes everything in his own existence and gives it to the Son, so that the Son has the exact same attributes that he has. Very important is that this process is not initiated at a point in time, but has happened at every point for eternity past. So therefore this is not God the Father creating God the Son, but rather God the Father generating or begetting God the Son. Again, I will explain this more on the next slide. Now the key phrase, “consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father”, means that the Son has the exact same nature/substance as the Father, with absolutely no attenuation. Then we have “came down and was incarnate and became man”, which is basically that the Son also assumed a human nature from Mary in addition to his divine nature, so he is both fully God and fully Man. And finally, we have the phrase “And in the Holy Spirit”, which basically leaves the matter of the Holy Spirit completely explained in the Nicene creed. So we have the Spirit floating here in an unknown state.

325 Nicene Cosmology

Taking a look at the cosmological timeline, we see that the Father and Son exist together at all points in eternity past and eternity future, the Son continuously flowing out of the Father. Together, the Father and Son create the universe, and then at some point the Son comes down into creation and is incarnate of Mary. Again, we don’t know what the Holy Spirit is doing yet. Now already, look at how much more compelling a God this is compared to the Arian situation. Instead of existing in complete loneliness for basically his entire existence, God instead exists as a community of two people, in perfect, familial love for each other. Again, to portray the whole scale of eternity. Compare the size of a grain of sand to the size of the entire universe. Eternity is that big, but then infinitely more so. Our minds cannot even fathom how long eternity is. So the vast majority of God’s existence is just this community of Father and Son, just existing and loving each other. And you know what, I think that’s a very beautiful thing. You know, I was recently reflecting on this with my 3 month old son, Oliver. Oliver is at this perfect age where every morning, when he sees me for the first time, he just locks into full eye contact and gives me the biggest, brightest smile you could ever imagine. And every single time I see that, my heart just melts without fail. I think that’s just a fraction of the love that the Father and Son experience together. And you know, if my eternal existence was just me, my wife, and my son, looking into each other’s eyes for all eternity and smiling, you know that would be a pretty awesome existence. And this realization actually made me very sad in a way, because I think this smiley period of Oliver is going to be too short, it will probably be over in months, and in the bigger picture I’m only going to have like 18 years in his life until I see him a lot less. I think I get very jealous of the Trinity, and how they just get to exist in perfect love together, forever. And so I think just this idea of an eternally existing community of love is such a beautiful picture of who God is and what the fundamental reality of our universe is. It’s amazing.

Note on Eternal Generation of the Son

So just a note on the eternal generation of the Son. So during this time period, everyone unanimously asserted that God the Father was the sole unoriginate entity, and that the Father continuously and eternally generated the existence of the Son. And the reason for this is that in classical monotheism, there can only be one unoriginate entity. So let’s say that you didn’t have this continuous begetting relationship and instead the Father and Son just existed forever together in eternity past. Well according to monotheism, you can’t have that, that’s really polytheism and a no-no. So the Son has to be dependent on the Father for his existence. This doctrine is known as “Monarchy of the Father”, and is summarized in this quote by Gregory of Nazianzus, who worked on the final version of the Creed: “when we look towards the Godhead and the first cause and the monarchy One [the Father] appears to us, but when towards those in which the Godhead subsists and which derive timelessly and with equal honor from the first cause, there are Three to be worshipped.” And anyways this is supported by scripture by many verses that talk about the Son receiving his nature from the Father, such as John 5:26 - “For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” An analogy of this that the fathers used is that of a light eternally emitting a ray of light. So imagine that you have some eternally existing light source; because it is a light source, it is in its very nature to then have to emit light, so that means at all points in eternity past you have the light source existing as well as the ray of light flowing out from it. And yes, I realize this was one of the bad analogies covered in the St. Patrick video. The difference is that, to the ancients, a light source and a ray of light had the same substance as each other, and this process happens eternally in time, so the ray of light is equal to the light source and isn’t said to be created in any way. I know in the modern mind we know the light source is something like a combustion reaction or electrons moving, and that the light ray is photons, but put yourself in the ancient mindset. To them, these things were the same substance.

So They All Lived Happily Ever After, Right?

Well, no they didn’t! In fact, in the following decades we will actually see a widespread rejection of the council of Nicaea in the church, and the retaliation of the Arians to take back control. However, we will cover this in part II and for now pause the presentation. I will be posting part II shortly which will follow the historical events involving the pushback against Nicaea, and then eventually the vindication of Nicaea at the Council of Constantinople. Hope to see you there, and God Bless!

That’s right, we might actually know Jesus Christ’s blood type.

Not figuratively, literally. It’s type AB.

Well that is, if the evidence pans out. For context, last week notable internet agnostic Joe Schmid, known for his collaborations with Alex O’Connor (aka Cosmic Skeptic), announced his conversion to Catholicism. Given Schmid’s fame as an outspoken critic of Christianity and Catholicism, this turnaround was shocking, to say the least. It’s been pretty amusing to see the atheist/agnostic kneejerk reaction to the conversion in real time, which attribute Schmid’s conversion to anything from trolling, to mental illness, to attempting to grift off of internet Catholics. But it’s also been hopeful too see glimpses of atheists/agnostics questioning their own views and considering Christianity with an open mind. Most internet apologists are rejoicing (with some notable exceptions like Gavin Ortlund of Truth Unites), and the future prospects look bright for Joe Schmid to be a powerful voice reaching out to atheists and agnostics. In his own words “I was the skeptic! I was the skeptic! So I’ve been in their situation, I know how to appeal to them, and I can empathize with them. I can love them. I was there, with you, struggling.”

According to Schmid, the evidence for miracles (especially in the Catholic tradition) weighed heavily in his decision to convert. I personally am intrigued and open-minded to these claims, but not yet fully convinced. Miraculous claims always sounds convincing when only one side is heard; I would want to hear a full, in-depth debate where both sides are given before making judgement. I spent multiple years studying the Resurrection of Jesus, and I know from that experience that the evidence always seems extremely convincing at first glance, but often weakens under critical analysis. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe there is sufficient evidence to believe in the Resurrection, but I wouldn’t call it a slam dunk. Perhaps the inevitable debate Joe Schmid has with Alex O’Connor will be a good proving ground to see if these Catholic miracle claims hold up or collapse. (Yesterday Schmid posted his 10 hour video detailing the evidence for Catholic miracles, for anyone who wants to dive in).

Eucharistic Miracles

However, amongst these miracle claims, one that caught my attention were eucharistic miracles that had undergone medically rigorous blood testing. For those unfamiliar with eucharistic miracles (I was in this boat having been an evangelical Protestant most of my life), these are cases in which the communion elements appeared to spontaneously produce blood and human tissue. This aligns with the Catholic belief of transubstantiation, that the communion elements become the real body and blood of Christ. There are multiple instances of such apparent miracles that also have supporting medical analysis to confirm the presence of human blood, namely:

• Lanciano (Italy, 8th century)

• Tixtla (Mexico, 2006)

• Buenos Aires (Argentina, 1996, witnessed by Pope Francis himself!)

I personally haven’t made my mind up completely about the validity of these miracles. Again, you can watch Schmid’s miracle video above and the additional resources he links, and likely there will be future debates hashing out these claims. Nonetheless, a few key details stand out to me:

• Of all the eucharistic miracles for which the “blood” material was tested, all turned up the same result: type AB blood (+/- was never established).

• Type AB blood is the rarest blood type, occurring in just 4% of people. The chance that three separate eucharistic miracles spread across continents and times would yield the same blood type at random is pretty low.

• Based on my limited research, this doesn’t seem to be an instance of confirmation bias. In other words, there was never a test for a potential eucharistic miracle that yielded a blood type other than type AB, which was subsequently discarded due to the mismatch. On the contrary, the Vatican reports all blood types of eucharistic miracles/passion relics that return positive for human blood, and they all happen to be type AB.

• Also based on my limited research, this doesn’t seem to be a case of systematic classification bias. It’s not as if type AB is particularly more likely to appear in false positive human blood tests compared to other types. Skeptics of the eucharistic miracles point to possible bacterial or antigen explanations as opposed to human blood. Whether that is the case is debateable; however, this does not explain why all the tests from the substances across times and places end up resolving specifically to type AB.

A Deeper Meaning?

If the eucharistic miracles are indeed real, and our Lord’s blood type is indeed AB, I wanted to write this article to make an observation that I haven’t seen talked about much regarding this issue. Type AB blood has the interesting property of being the universal plasma donor, and the universal red blood cell recipient. (I know Type O is the universal red blood cell donor; the situation is switched for plasma, as opposed to red blood cells.) Let’s break that down.

Plasma is about 90% water and contains essential proteins, antibodies, electrolytes, nutrients, and hormones for life; in short, the building blocks for keeping us alive and healthy. Plasma infusions are needed in cases of severe injuries, or certain diseases where the patient’s body cannot heal itself. Relating this to Jesus, there are countless verses associating him with the waters of baptism, through which we obtain healing from him as the ultimate physician:

“No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” - John 3:5

“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, so that she may be holy and without blemish.” - Ephesians 5:25-26

“And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” - 1 Peter 3:20-21

Of course, there is also the association with the stream of water that flowed from Jesus’ side after he was pierced by the spear following his death. So what does it mean that Jesus’ blood type is AB (universal plasma donor)? It means that the grace of his healing, through baptism, is freely given to all humanity for all those who believe. In the same way a universal plasma donor can provide a healing infusion to any person regardless of their genetics, Jesus can heal any person regardless of their specific diseases or addictions.

On the other hand, red blood cells transport oxygen throughout the body, and give blood its signature red color. In the Bible, the color red is often a symbol for sin and bloodguiltiness:

“If your sins are like scarlet, will they become like snow? If they are red like crimson, will they become like wool?” - Isaiah 1:18

Applying this to Jesus’ AB blood type (universal red blood cell receiver), this means: He freely receives the sins of all humanity into his body for all those who believe. (1 Peter 2:24). In the same way a universal red blood cell receiver can receive blood from any other person regardless of genetics, so too can Jesus receive the sins of any other person onto himself, regardless of the number or severity of sins. Another way of saying this is, His blood is capable of dissolving all of our sins, by the washing those who believe:

“they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” - Revelation 7:14

How Then Shall We Live?

Again, the evidence in favor of the eucharistic miracles may or may not pan out. Maybe future debates with Joe Schmid and Alex O’Connor will be enlightening. Nevertheless, there is something so poetic about Jesus possibly having the AB blood type that stirs my heart: He offers life to all (universal plasma donor), and offers to take on the sins of all (universal red blood cell recipient). In any case, I think this is a good opportunity to reflect on the way we experience Christ’s saving power in the Lord’s Supper, regardless of faith tradition. In Christ’s blood is simultaneously healing and life, as well as cleansing and removal of sins. Since my wife and I have been in newborn care mode, it has been almost two months since we have gotten to participate in the Eucharist at the Anglican church we attend. I’ve never felt so famished for this sacrament before, and I so look forward to partaking in it when we finally return in September after our son receives his immunizations. No matter what type of church you attend, and your exact views on the Lord’s Supper, don’t take this sacrament for granted but let it imbue you with the significance of Christ’s healing and redemptive power.

She had endured a long, stressful labor (more on this in a future post). But after 39 weeks of pregnancy punctuated by more than 20 hours in the hospital, her tears of pain turned to tears of joy the moment Oliver emerged. “It was all worth it for you, I would do it all again in a heartbeat” she said.

Obviously I was overjoyed at the birth and beyond excited to finally see my son. But my “imprinting” moment came about 12 hours later.

Fast forward to noon the next day. I was sitting in the recovery room with my wife and her family, with Oliver on my lap. I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. I had slept for 4 hours in the last 2 days, with still no chance for sleep yet on the horizon. My wife was not out of the woods yet, battling an infection and recovering from significant injuries inflicted by the delivery process. Oliver’s temperature had been low, sparking concerns that the infection had spread to him as we struggled to keep him warm. And we were bombarded with a non-stop firehose of new information from nurses and orderlies, covering everything from how to properly change his diaper and swaddle him, to making sure he doesn’t suffocate in his sleep. I have ADHD and often struggle with holding my focus; combined with the sleep deprivation and the adrenaline of the labor process wearing off, this resulted in me making mistakes (e.g. not fully wiping off poop from a dirty diaper) for which I was scolded by the nurses.

Minutes earlier I had locked myself in a bathroom, sitting on the ground with my head in my hands, just to find breathing space and trying (unsuccessfully) to put my nervous system out of fight-or-flight mode. I was shaking. My mind was a fog. I can’t do this. I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t deserve to be a father. Nonetheless, I was forced to emerge shortly after without finding respite, because Oliver had completed his latest feeding and needed to be burped. I picked up Oliver from my wife and then sat down in a chair to attempt one of the burping positions the nurses had taught me.

But as I held him in my arms, I experienced something I will never forget. First, he opened his eyes and looked at me in an expression of pure helplessness and trust, like this (picture taken days later but captures the same expression):

Second, my father in law began singing “He’s got the whole world in His hands, He’s got the whole world in His hands…”.

My spirit was instantly overwhelmed with an indescribable wave of peace, joy, and love. I was struck by three simultaneous observations:

1. At that moment, Oliver was my whole world. I loved him completely and utterly.

2. This is the exact same love God the Father has for the Son. I was experiencing the divine communion within the Trinity itself.

3. This is also the exact same love God has for us. As much as I saw my son’s helplessness and utterly desired to protect him, so too is God’s heart for us. I felt the suffocating stress of the situation momentarily lift off my shoulders.

For an instant, the shared gaze between me and my son produced an infinity mirror effect where I saw, recursively, him, myself, God the Son, and God the Father in alternating succession; I had to fight back tears. Later on, when I was alone with my wife, the tears came. “I promise you, I will do anything for our son” I choked out through sobs. I knew that the unconditional love (agape) I felt for Oliver would abide in me for the rest of my life.

1. The Experience of Unconditional Love

Over the past few weeks, I’ve reflected on how strange the parent-child relationship is compared to other interpersonal relationships. Most human relationships involve some give-and-take, and/or mutual respect and admiration. For example, I love my wife because of specific traits she manifests: spiritual wisdom, kindness, intelligence, etc. (this is a long list). We also have specific shared experiences over the course of a ten year relationship that we bond over. And we mutually support each other through our married life.

My relationship with Oliver is missing these concrete elements. His personality hasn’t developed yet, we don’t really have many memories together, and our relationship is pretty one-sided in that I provide everything for him for nothing in return. Nonetheless, I love him fully and unconditionally, so much that I would die for him. There is no underlying reason for this love, except the sake of love itself. His purpose of existence is to receive love and nourishment, and ours is to give it, and it is a beautiful thing.

I have faith that the human ability to feel agape love comes from the image of God (Imago Dei) given to us at creation. While I acknowledge there is probably an evolutionary explanation providing a mechanical reason for why this love exists, this doesn’t concern me. I care about the teleological reason (the why), not the mechanical reason (the how). God in his providence is capable of orchestrating any physical process, evolutionary or otherwise, towards his ultimate creative purpose.

2. The Divine Communion of the Trinity

Not only is the parental, nourishing love I experienced a defining trait of God’s divine energy; this is exactly the type of love God the Father actively expresses for God the Son. We know from Nicaea that the One God, the Father, eternally generates God the Son out of his divine nature:

“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…”

In other words, there is a causal relationship between the Father and the Son, a doctrine known as eternal generation or Monarchy of the Father. The Nicene fathers rooted these doctrines in scriptures such as John 5:26, Proverbs 8:25, and Micah 5:2. Saint Gregory Nazianzen, one of the architects of the Nicene Creed in its completed form, elucidates this doctrine in his Fifth Theological Oration:

“when we look towards the Godhead and the first cause and the monarchy One appears to us, but when towards those in which the Godhead subsists and which derive timelessly and with equal honor from the first cause, there are Three to be worshipped.”

(Note that eternal generation of the Son is not the same as creation of the Son, which would imply Arianism (“there was a time when the Son was not”), the heresy the Nicene fathers staunchly opposed. The Father and Son always existed together in eternity past.)

The doctrine of Monarchy of the Father protects the Trinity from collapsing into polytheism by rooting the Trinity’s existence in God the Father, who alone out of the three persons is agennetos (unbegotten; in Catholic theology this is a se). Furthermore, this doctrine profoundly reveals the love expressed in the inner community of the Trinity. The “One God, the Father” (per Nicaea) is completely self-sufficient and complete in his own individual being, lacking nothing. Nonetheless, for no sake other than the sake of love, He still spontaneously and eternally generates the Son, Jesus, as his own exact, undiminished image (Hebrews 1:3). And the Father does not perform any action in the universe alone, despite being perfectly capable to do so; he does EVERYTHING with and through his Son (Hebrews 1:2). To the theologian Fr. Zizioulas, this proves that:

“love is not an emanation or ‘property’ of the substance of God…but is what He is, the one God. Thus love ceases to be a qualifying—i.e. secondary—property of being and becomes the supreme ontological predicate. Love as God’s mode of existence ‘hypostasizes’ God, constitutes His being.”

This love within the trinity has direct parallels within human parenthood. Becoming a parent doesn’t increase the dollar amount of output I produce in the economy, enable me to make more creative works, or give me more time and energy to pour into my community. In fact, parenthood reduces my capacity in each of these areas. So you could say my wife and I were “self-sufficient” in these areas, yet for no sake other than love still decided to have a child. As a result, we have the opportunity to completely pour into and nourish (in a manner of speaking “generate”) a developing human soul. And even though my wife and I could continue doing our activities in life apart from our son, by contrast we look forward to doing things “with and through” our son (even if technically we may do these things “worse” as a result). For example, I look forward to teaching my son about work, about music, and about God and the Church. The point isn’t necessarily that I or my son achieves highly in these areas (although this is still a hope). Getting to do these things in relationship IS ITSELF the joy and the beauty. Love is, as Zizioulas says, “the supreme ontological predicate”.

3. Receiving God’s Love through the Incarnation

The divine and human agape loves are not confined to these parallel lines. For those of us adopted into God’s family, we have assurance that the Father extends the same love to us as he does towards his Son. The moment of adoption occurs at the moment of our baptism, together with a profession of faith, which St. Paul states is the mechanism by which we enter into Christ:

“Or do you not know that as many of us were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection.” (Romans 6:3-5).

Having entered into God’s family through faith and baptism, we are called to abide through continual repentance from our sin (Romans 6:12-13).

As an aside, this view on baptism as literally salvific is called Baptismal Regeneration, which many evangelical readers may disagree with (preferring to take a symbolic view). I will not fully justify Baptismal Regeneration in detail here (maybe I will do so in a future post). However, to summarize, all the rhetoric regarding baptism in the Bible categorizes it as a literal, salvific and regenerative act, and nowhere is the ritual called symbolic. From history, we clearly see that all Christians from the second century onward regarded baptism as literally regenerative. Furthermore, the historical scholarly consensus actually pushes the regenerative view of baptism back into the first century to the Biblical authors themselves. To quote historian Bart Ehrman:

“For Paul the act was not simply significant as a symbolic statement that a person’s sins had been ‘cleansed’ or that he or she had entered into a new life. The act involved something that really happened. When people were baptized, they actually experienced a union with Christ and participated in the victory brought at his death (in the immersion under the water; see esp. Rom 6:1-11).”

So when most historians read Romans 6, they see that Paul views baptism as an efficacious act that literally binds one to Christ, and not as merely symbolic. In my opinion, we should use the historical authorial intent as the starting point when interpreting scripture.

The literal regenerative view of baptism explains why Jesus himself needed to be baptized. Jesus did not go to John the Baptist to be baptized for his own benefit, as he had no sins to be forgiven. On the contrary, his baptism prefigured and eternally blessed the sacrament of baptism for us; typologically, this maps to Moses leading the Israelites through the waters of the Red Sea (1 Corinthians 10:2). Baptism becomes the grounds in which we can encounter the Incarnation firsthand, refreshing the Imago Dei in us. St. Athanasius describes this in On the Incarnation:

“For as, when the likeness painted on a panel has been effaced by stains from without, he whose likeness it is must needs come once more to enable the portrait to be renewed on the same wood: for, for the sake of his picture, even the mere wood on which it is painted is not thrown away, but the outline is renewed upon it; in the same way also the most holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came to our region to renew man once made in His likeness, and find him, as one lost, by the remission of sins; as He says Himself in the Gospels: ‘I came to find and to save the lost.’ Whence He said to the Jews also: ‘Except a man be born again, not meaning, as they thought, birth from woman, but speaking of the soul born and created anew in the likeness of God’s image.’”

Therefore, when we are baptized today we literally join ourselves to Christ, meet him in the moment where he emerges from the waters, and alongside him equally receive the words “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”. The exact same agape love from the Father to the Son has been commuted to those of us who are baptized.

How Then Shall We Live?

My son is 1 month old now, and while some days are harder than others, I consider every moment joyful. Seeing even the smallest developments from him, whether starting to giggle and make facial expressions to exhibiting better neck control, make all the 3am feedings, lack of sleep, diaper changes, and blowouts instantly worth it. I know these little moments with my son will never get old.

For anyone with kids, parents, or family: cherish every little moment you get in this life to experience agape love. It is a gift from God and something truly sacred.

For baptized Christians: no matter the circumstance, know in your heart that the Father’s face shines on you with the same love he has for his Son. You are beloved.

For un-baptized Seekers (specifically, Catechumens): May your faith journey be blessed as you follow God’s call to completion. In the words of St. Cyril of Jerusalem:

Already there is an odour of blessedness upon you, O you who are soon to be enlightened : already you are gathering the spiritual flowers, to weave heavenly crowns: already the fragrance of the Holy Spirit has breathed upon you: already you have gathered round the vestibule of the King's palace ; may you be led in also by the King! For blossoms now have appeared upon the trees ; may the fruit also be found perfect!…Great is the Baptism that lies before you : a ransom to captives; a remission of offenses; a death of sin; a new-birth of the soul; a garment of light; a holy indissoluble seal; a chariot to heaven; the delight of Paradise; a welcome into the kingdom; the gift of adoption!

For non-Christians: thank you so much for taking the time to read this theological blog post! I hope you found it interesting, and I am happy to discuss more with you and answer any questions at theosizing@substack.com! God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4), and therefore extends to you the invitation to join his family. My hope is that you will one day join the Church of the apostles, become baptized, and come to know Christ. I will end with an exhortation from St. Silouan the Athonite:

“The soul that is surrendered humbly to God’s will invisibly beholds God every second, yet finds no words for all this even to herself and cannot describe it, but only by experience learns to know the mercy of God and know when the Lord is with her. The soul is surrendered to Him like a little child who receives food every day but is ignorant from whence comes this food. Thus it is with God the soul feels all is well but cannot explain this. Oh Lord by Thy Holy Spirit enlighten thy people that all may know Thy love!”