The Athanasian Creed Explained: The Trinity, Jesus Christ, and Salvation | Lutheran Sermon

The Athanasian Creed

A Sermon by Pastor James Huenink

The Athanasian Creed (Part One)

Please stand as we confess the Athanasian Creed.

Whoever desires to be saved must above all hold the Catholic faith, and the Catholic faith is this:

We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Holy Spirit is another.

But the Godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one: the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.

The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, the Holy Spirit uncreated. The Father infinite, the Son infinite, the Holy Spirit infinite. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Spirit eternal. And yet there are not three eternals, but one eternal.

Just as there are not three uncreated or three infinites, but one uncreated and one infinite. In the same way, the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, the Holy Spirit almighty. And yet there are not three almighties, but one almighty.

So the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. And yet there are not three gods, but one God. So the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is Lord. And yet there are not three lords, but one Lord.

Just as we are compelled by the Christian truth to acknowledge each distinct person as God and Lord, so also are we prohibited by the Catholic religion to say that there are three gods or lords.

You may be seated.

Sermon

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

As we talked about before, we are going to look at the Athanasian Creed today and talk through its teaching part by part, so let's dive in.

Let's begin with a little history. The Athanasian Creed is, oddly enough, not actually written by Athanasius. Good naming, right? It seems like it originated in France in the fifth century, and over time began to be accepted across Western Christianity, so that by the time of the Reformation it was accepted across the entire Roman Catholic Church, and by the Reformation had about equal authority with the Nicene Creed. It's also in our Lutheran Confessions as one of the three great creeds that we affirm as a congregation, and that pastors are supposed to teach and promote within the Christian church, so I thought today let's dive in and take a look.

This first section of the Athanasian Creed takes a look at God as the Trinity — the unity — and describes each person of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the things that they share, that they are all this divine essence, but that we must separate the persons. It says: We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons, nor dividing the substance. That is, the persons are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an individual person. They are not confused with one another. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit isn't any of them — but they aren't three, they are one.

Don't think about this too hard; it will hurt your brain. That's because nothing in all of creation is like this. The Father, Son, and Spirit are unique in all the universe in that they can be simultaneously three persons and yet one God. You cannot create a metaphor that describes this. There is no way of comparing the unity and the Trinity to anything in all of creation, because nothing that exists in creation is both three and yet one.

What this section describes are all the shared qualities that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all eternal — they have no creation. They are all uncreated — no one made them. They are all infinite, which means they extend beyond all things. There is no limit to them. They are all almighty — they have all power. And it summarizes by saying that each one is both God and Lord.

What this is trying to express is perhaps one of the more challenging concepts in Christianity: that our God is beyond creation, beyond anything that we experience. Many of us, when we think about our God, have to imagine someone. If you do that, you probably go back to your Sunday school days, when you drew the bubble cloud, and then there was a bearded man on the cloud looking down from heaven, and that was God. Each of us sort of secretly has that impression of who God is, in our heart of hearts.

This creed reminds us that that is really just the kind of thing you tell kids, and it really doesn't have anything to do with who our God is. He is not a man floating in heaven. He is not someone who looks down and is part of creation and interferes occasionally. He is not someone waiting on you to pray before he intervenes in your life. God fills all things, extends beyond the limits of the universe. All of creation runs inside of him. If you want to use a computer metaphor: he is the hardware, we are the software. This is beyond our capacity to fully understand. Yet we still must accept it, because he is the source of all being. This is a mystery that the holy scriptures tell us — that God is greater than all things and extends beyond all things.

The Athanasian Creed (Part Two)

Please stand.

The Father is made of no one, neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone, not made nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son, not made nor created nor begotten, but proceeding.

So there is one Father, not three fathers; one Son, not three sons; one Holy Spirit, not three holy spirits.

And in this Trinity none is before or after another; none is greater or less than another. But all three persons are co-eternal with each other and co-equal, so that in all things, as has been stated above, the Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity is to be worshiped.

You may be seated.

Sermon (continued)

So this second section describes some of the internal differences between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It begins with the Father, who is not made nor created nor begotten by anyone. Then the Son is begotten of the Father. The Holy Spirit is not begotten like the Son, but proceeding.

You're going to say to me, Pastor, what in the world does that mean? And you know what I'm going to say to you: I have no idea. These are the words that Holy Scripture gives us to describe the Trinity — that the Son is begotten of the Father, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son — but what they mean in an explanation that would make sense to us, honestly, I do not have one for you.

Every time I try to read through this, it seems like the people who want to explain all of these words want to pierce the veil of this great mystery of who God is and explain it in terms that human beings can understand, and it never quite makes sense to me. So we use these words — begotten and proceeding — but I'm not sure exactly what they mean. I accept them, I teach them, but really it is, I think, a great mystery.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each have different descriptors that Scripture gives us. When we look at the Son and it says begotten, normally that phrase in Scripture means a biological begetting — when you look in the genealogy, you see things like "Abraham begat Isaac." We get and understand that. But that doesn't quite work for a Son who is uncreated. And the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son — we use that because John 15 talks about it that way. Jesus says, "When the advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me." But it doesn't really define that word, other than being sent in some way. So we believe them, even if they are a mystery, and these words help us understand how the persons of the Trinity are distinguished from one another, and yet united as one.

This section focuses at the end on the fact that even though the persons have different roles and descriptors, neither is greater than the other, none are less than the other. They are all still God, all equal in authority and power and might.

I can look at you, and I'm hearing you say, "Thanks, Pastor, for explaining this so well. We can all understand this now." But this is the challenge of having a God that is greater than us. The Greek gods are easy to understand. The gods of the Romans, the Sumerians — they are all just part of creation and live and look and act like us. What we have is a God who is greater than creation, whom nothing can affect, and all things work according to his might. You have to have this kind of mystery, this kind of expansive and infinite and beyond-our-understanding God, to be able to get a God who can affect creation the way our God promises he can. So while we struggle to understand this mystery, I think it's very important to accept it. Without this, the promises of God would not work out for us. God would not be able to accomplish the things that he says he can do, were he not able to control all things and be beyond all things. So even if we don't understand, we still accept.

The Athanasian Creed (Part Three)

Please stand.

Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation that one also believe faithfully in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is at the same time both God and man.

He is God, begotten from the substance of the Father before all ages; and he is man, born from the substance of his mother in this age: perfect God and perfect man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh.

Equal to the Father with respect to his divinity; less than the Father with respect to his humanity.

Although he is God and man, he is not two, but one Christ: one, however, not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity into God; one altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.

For as the rational soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ.

You may be seated.

Sermon (continued)

This next section of the creed focuses on the incarnation of Jesus Christ. As it says, it is necessary that one faithfully believe in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ — that is, the eternal Son of God became a human being.

The Athanasian Creed points to some of the challenges as people try to explain what it means that God could be both God and man. These things are just as strange as the idea that God could be both three and one. Because to be God is to be infinite, eternal, uncreated, and divine. To be a man is to have a beginning, to be finite, created, and human — a creature. And Jesus is both. Which means he is finite and infinite at the same time.

There are a number of ways that people try to explain how this might work. One is to say that what happened is God changed into a human and became no longer God — that is, a conversion of the divinity into human flesh. But that's not what happened. The incarnation means that Jesus, the eternal Son of God, took on human flesh. He became a human without renouncing his divinity. He was always the Son of God, and yet when Mary became pregnant, that Son of God became a human being.

Everything that is human, he was. Everything that is the Son of God, he was — all at the same time. Every way that you can describe me as a human being: he had a body, a soul, a spirit, a mind, a will, just like you do. While also being every way that you can describe God. Both God and man.

This is very important for us, because the entirety of our salvation rests on God coming down to man — to you and me — and uniting us with him, to bridge the gap that was created when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden and brought death into the world. To sanctify and make holy all of humanity, God had to become a human being. Without that, there is no salvation.

But what happens then is that in Scripture we get confusing things. We will think about Jesus as God, and yet he will say things like "The Father is greater than me," and then a little bit later he says things like "Before Abraham was, I am." How does this all work out? The Athanasian Creed explains it to us: by his divine power he is equal with the Father, but because he is also human he is less than the Father. Which means simultaneously he is equal and less. More contradictions, more mystery — but this explains all of the places in Scripture where Jesus talks about having a God. Because he's human, just like us, just as we worship the Father, Jesus the human worshiped the Father. But unlike us, he is also divine, co-equal with the Father, eternal and full of power and might, the same as the Father and the Spirit.

This mystery must be held onto, because without each part of it there is no salvation. We need him to be divine, and we need him to be human, or else humanity could not be saved.

The Athanasian Creed (Part Four)

Please stand.

Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose the third day from the dead. He ascended into heaven, he sits at the right hand of the Father God Almighty, from whence he will come to judge the living and the dead.

At his coming all people will rise again with their bodies and give an account of their own works. And those who have done good will enter into eternal life, and those who have done evil into eternal fire.

This is the Catholic faith; whoever does not believe it faithfully and firmly cannot be saved.

You may be seated.

Sermon (continued)

Here we come to the great event of our salvation — a Savior who suffered, died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. Everything that comes before this is pointing to this moment where the God and man suffered and died for you.

Without this death on the cross, without the work that Jesus came to do, there would be no salvation. This is the heart of our Christian faith: the God who became man and died for you. His humanity was necessary for him to be mortal — he could not die on a cross without the humanity. His divinity is necessary so that that death on the cross, and the virtue and merit won for us there, could be given to all the world. His infinite sacrifice is made infinite by his divine power. All of that is necessary for us to be saved, to connect every human being to God, to give us this eternal life that we so desire — the reason that brings us here now.

There's also a line that we talk about every time we read the Athanasian Creed, and someone always comes up to me after church and asks me about it. It's this one: "And those who have done good will enter into eternal life, and those who have done evil into eternal fire."

Every good Lutheran goes: "Hey, wait a second, Pastor. That's not what Luther says. You don't earn eternal life. You don't get into heaven by being good. You get it because of Jesus." And that's right — this is not trying to say that we earn eternal life. You'll notice it comes right after Jesus's suffering, death, and resurrection. What it's doing is saying that doing good — just like when John says that God's command is that we believe in Jesus — begins with faith in Jesus Christ, because without faith it's impossible to please God.

Doing good is the fruit of this life that we have as Christians. It leads us to do the good that we see and need in the world, when the Holy Spirit transforms our hearts and causes us to delight in God's will. So when Jesus returns and all of us are judged according to our deeds on the last day, those who have done good will be Christians, and those who have done evil will be the non-Christians. Because the good begins with Christ, and can only be through Christ. And no matter how good or nice or wonderful they are, people cannot be good before God without Christ.

When Jesus comes back to judge the living and the dead, it will be those who believe in him who will rise on the last day, who receive eternal life through his name, because there is no salvation without faith in Jesus's name.

Amen.