Theology in the Raw - The Real Story Behind the Nicene Creed. Dr. Bryan Litfin

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Check out the Theology in the Raw Patreon community for bonus content, extra episodes, and discounted event tickets! Register now for Exiles 26! April 30-May 2 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Check this page for more info! Watch this episode to hear all about how The Council of Nicaea went down, and how we got the Nicene Creed. Find out why the doctrine of the Trinity is so important, and why it took a couple times to get the Nicene Creed just right.My guest is Dr. Bryan Litfin. Bryan Litfin is Professor of Bible & Theology in the Rawlings School of Divinity at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. Previously, he served for 16 years as Professor of Theology at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and 3 years as an editor and writer at Moody Publishers.Bryan received his PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia and a Master of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. His undergraduate work was at the University of Tennessee in the field of Communications.Bryan is married to Carolyn, and they have two adult children. Bryan enjoys teaching, hiking in the mountains, writing, and investing in the lives of students, especially when he gets to take them on study abroad trips in the lands of church history. Bryan and Carolyn worship at Rivermont Evangelical Presbyterian Church.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If Christ is only similar, but potentially beneath, or in some way, his deity is like God the Fathers, but not quite as good, you know, as the defenders of Nicaea like Athanasia would say, well, the gospel comes crumbling down at that point. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and Rom. My guest today is Dr. Brian Litvin, who is professor of Bible and theology at the Rawling, or in the Rawling School of Divinity at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He previously taught for 16 years as a professor of theology at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and three years he spent as an editor and writer at Moody Publishers. Brian received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia and a master of theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. Brian is the author of several books, including the recently released the story of the Trinity,

Controversy, Crisis, and the Creation of the Nicene Creed, which is the topic of our absolutely fascinating conversation. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only, Brian Litvin. Hey, Brian, thanks for being on Theology and I would love for you to give us the background of the Nicene Creed. Most people are probably aware of the basic gist of what it is, the content, but a few people, including myself, don't really know the nitty-gritty details about

how the Nicene Creed came about. Yeah. Well, it's actually a long story in the book. I kept thinking, well, I'll start here, and then I kept having to go back in time. So it's a question of where do you want to start this? Because I actually started with, in the book, I started with basically cavemen and asked the question, why is there even belief in a deity at all? That may be really, really early. That might be a little early. How about take us, I don't know, like late third century. I know there's a lot of persecution going on at Christians. You have the, is it the edict of Milan in, I think, 313, conversion to constantine. Take us into that general area. And let's go from there. Okay. I will. And that's in a sense, you know, the end of the

story because all my point in saying, you know, Caveman or the Old Testament or the New Testament or the Gospels, is to say this, this is not something invented in the fourth century or the third century. We can start the story there, but this was something that was inherent in scripture. It's actually inherent to any human trying to understand who is the divine, how do I relate? So that's why there is a long backstory. But to your point, you know, the earliest church fathers, by which we mean both men and women, really, but we mean the figures that followed, let's say, after the apostles. had to try to make sense of the biblical evidence or biblical and or what had been received

in sometimes living memory from those who knew Christ or walked with Christ or maybe knew some who knew Christ. And you have these different data points about who Jesus was. Is he the son of God? Okay. Is he equal to God? He said himself, you know, I and the Father are one. And yet, you know, the earliest Christians were Jews, and then, of course, even when Gentiles began to convert, they knew they were worshipping the one God of Israel. So you have this like, no way, we're monotheists. We don't do what the pagans do when they put three little deities or have multiple deities. We don't do that.

We have one God, but we're worshiping Christ, but we're worshipping His father, and we're baptizing in the name of the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit. So that's the background that leads up to the immediate precursors of the council. Okay, okay. So in short, like they were trying to make sense of their monotheistic faith with this three persons that, you know, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, worshiping Jesus. So they're trying to bring together these two seemingly incompatible, or at least there's some tensions and bring those together. One, you know, a critic might even say it's just a flat out contradictory. Right. You could say that. It could be super logical. And yes, that was exactly the issue, especially

Jesus. I mean, they really at first weren't even debating about the Holy Spirit. And you're right. I mean, do you want to talk a little bit about Constantine and some of these specific run-up to the council? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Good. Good. Okay. So, well, what happens is, as you pointed out, there's persecution, and that's not universal in the ancient church. It's not every single day. But it happened enough where they kind of kept a lower profile and didn't necessarily gather in big groups and draw attention to themselves. But when Emperor Constantine did come to power and I think genuinely converted and had a kind of baby faith, you might say, but he wanted to follow God and he wanted to follow the Jesus whose powerful sign was the cross. And this is in the

early fourth century. So like 312 is when he won a major battle by aligning himself with Jesus. And then in 313 is the edict of Milan. Sometimes that's overplayed what it actually accomplished. But it was a statement of the emperor's desire in his lands to, to tolerate all faiths and to give Christianity kind of an equal footing. So he wanted to support that. So as kind of the years went on, Emperor Constantine wanted to unify the Roman Empire around this faith that had one God and one emperor now. He defeated his other enemies. And so there's one emperor and one God. Right then, he discovers that the Christians had split into two major factions.

And so Constantine calls the Council of Nicaea to say, guys, I don't know how you're going to answer it. But I want you to answer it. Get on the same page so we can have one faith. Was this split like east and west or what were the two branches of Christianity at that time? Yeah, well, there was kind of an east-west split, but that wasn't really it. It was really, it was a split in Egypt. And so you have a split where the bishop named Alexander said God and his son are co-eternal and equal. And one of his pastors, you might say, by the name of Arias, sort of rose up or was hearing when his bishop said, you know, they're the same.

He was hearing what was called the heresy of modalism, that the father is the son and sort of just collapsing them into the same being. So that's what Arias heard. And he said, no, bishop, no, you're wrong. There's got to be some distinction between the father and the son, which we agree. Like today, that's what we do agree. but what he said this distinction was is to lower the sun to demote the sun to the stature of a creature

exalted glorious as Colossian says first born of all creation a really great creature the first one made by God but made by God but what does that mean if he's made by God as area says

then there was a time when he was not there was a time he didn't exist and so his deity he was inferior and he was a preacher. So that was the split that was plaguing the church. So that was area. I think most people are familiar with, yeah, Aryanism, kind of diminishing the person of Jesus, or at least a lesser kind of God or lesser kind of being.

How widespread was Aryanism at that time? Was it a big part of the church? Well, at first, you know, just before the council or in the, the few years in the run-up for the council from 318 to 325 AD, it wasn't big at first. It was just a split right there in Egypt, in Alexandria. And Arius wouldn't back down. And his bishop said that's, actually, the issue at stake was the gospel. It's not just some minor point of minutia.

It's actually a statement about how does the gospel function. And so when he got excommunicated for not backing down, he went to the, you know, Palestine. He went to the eastern. And so by then, it spread quite widely. And that's why the emperor said, okay, we, we got to call a council. I'll pay for it. You guys come in to a nice town in 325, but figure it out. So the council of Nicaea, is it in modern day Turkey? Yeah, it's the city of Iznique in Turkey. Isneek. Okay. And who how many people were invited, who was invited and who determined and who would be invited and who wouldn't be invited? It was just all the collective like bishops of all the regions or was it more selective than that?

It wasn't, it doesn't seem to be very selective. I mean, Emperor Constantine wanted it to be what it has come to be called, which is ecumenical, which means worldwide. And it's the first. It's considered the first ecumenical council, meaning people came from all over. Before there were regional councils, but the emperor said, Everybody can come. I'll pay for it, you know, and they had a travel system where you could use the imperial system and kind of go a day's journey, stay in an imperial inn, get up the next day. And so people did come. People came from Britain. People came from Rome. Well, the bishop of Rome sent representatives. I mean, people came from Spain.

Most of the people came from the eastern part because it was in Turkey. And so the number that you hear is 318 bishops. So let's just call it, you know, around. 300 bishops and their retinue and stuff. So you had a couple of thousand people converging on the little town of Nicaea, the city of victory is what that means. And what roughly, what percentage would be more on the Aryan side and what percentage would not be at the council? You know, I'm not sure if we know that because you only know the final vote, which was like Arias and two people got kicked out.

So like everybody else sided with the emperor. What they came in, I mean, generally, I'll put it this way. A lot of the bishops in, like, Israel or Palestine, were beginning to side with Arias. In Egypt, where Alexander was, they didn't, the bishop of Rome. Most of the West was siding with Alexander from Egypt. So I would probably say the majority coming in were anti-Aryan, but there was a strong Aryan faction. and one of the most powerful bishops, his name was Eusebius. Well, actually, there's two Eusebius.

There's the famous one, the church historian. And he was kind of like sitting on the Aryan fence. But even more was Eusebius of Nicomedea, which was the imperial capital. And his power base was right there in the imperial household. So he was a staunch area. And so even if they weren't numerically superior, they were powerful. in terms of their political connections. I didn't realize Eusebius, the historian, had some Aryan leanings.

I did not know that. Yeah, I mean, he's famous, right? I mean, everyone's like, oh, the church history, like, we would know vastly less if we didn't have Eusebius. But he was from Caesarea, and so, you know, that was the part that Arias was affecting. And Eusebius was more or less aligned with the Aryan view. he didn't agree to go with it when the creed finally came out but he he kind of like signed it with his own like by that I actually mean so he's a little bit of a guy that you know kind of tested

the winds and once they went the other way he he got a little more on board so constantine you said in passing he wasn't neutral he was against the arians no no he was more neutral I think I mean his agenda was unity and it wasn't In fact, when this first broke out, he wrote to the Egyptian church a stern letter, I quote from it in the book, where he's like, guys, this is not a big enough issue for you to figure it out, stop, because this is minutia. Well, politely, they wrote back and said, well, Your Highness, thank you, but it's not. I mean, one thing we should probably talk about today is that a certain view of the gospel hinges on your view of the Trinity. That's why it matters. It's not just, you know, debating, like people debate, you know, Calvinism and Armenianism or something like that.

It's the gospel. So he might, the Constantine may have been hoping for some kind of like unifying position, some kind of concessions. He didn't really expect, he didn't expect one side to completely went out and the other side to be labeled as heretics. That wasn't what he was necessary planning or? I think he would be fine with like one winning, one losing. but he probably thought, you know, find a middle ground. And that's what the subsequent history does show. Like on his deathbed, Emperor Constantine is baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedea, the leader of the Aryans.

So in the years after between the council and when he dies in 337, it's still, it's like the council of Nicene 325 doesn't end the batter. And in fact, Aryanism grows much, much stronger, almost wins the day. And it takes a second counsel in 381 to finally, like, cause the Nicene view to win. And the creed that we say today is the creed from 381, from that council, not from the council. Oh, really? Yeah. Because the one that came out in 325, it has a number of shortcomings, including it doesn't say anything about the Holy Spirit, except we believe in the Holy Spirit. It gives no pneumatology.

It has these anathemas at the end. And anybody that says, you know, there was a time when he was not, we curse. The Catholic Church curses. And, you know, if you were having to say that creed every Sunday, you'd be having to curse people. And you wouldn't be really confessing much pneumatology. And so that Nicene creed that we have today from the Council on 381 is a much more satisfactory creed to be recited today. So is that, so the 381 version of the Nicene Creed, is that the same thing as the Council of Constantinople, the Constantinopleian Creed? Okay, so it was just kind of rebranded.

Okay. Well, it's debated. Like, what is the relationship of the two creeds? It was, is kind of hotly debated. Like, does the second creed simply restate as actually not a lot, a huge amount of verbal overlap? But it was, it was understood. to be a restatement of the original creed of 325. And really, the key word is in both of them,

which is homo usias or consubstantial, meaning the father and the son have the same substance, which means they're both eternal and their deity is equal. And by having that word in the 325 creed and then the one we say today, that father and the son are considered to be equal. And that's the fundamental distinction between Aryanism and Nicene Trinitarianism. Is it, uh, isn't the other word homo eustias or something like they're like the same subs? It comes down to that just a tiny, tiny, I think one letter in the Greek or something that changes

at the other than that. Yeah. No, that's right. It's, it's exactly right. So you, so homo ucias while we're on this subject, homo means same or, you know, unified usia means substance. So, in Latin-based words, that's consubstantial, like the father and the son have the same substance. If you do introduce the Iota, as people say, like, it doesn't make one Eota's difference. And, you know, like, this is where, like the Yoda made the difference, you know?

And so Hama means same. Homo, with an Eota, means, like you said, similar. But if Christ is only similar but potentially beneath or in. some way his deity is like God the fathers, but not quite as good, you know, as the defenders of Nicaea like Athanasia would say, well, the gospel comes crumbling down at that point. If Jesus is a similar but not the same, or even some of them said on him away, dissimilar. That was the most radical position. He's dissimilar from the father.

And the gospel unravels at that point. So that's funny, when you were saying the Nicene Creed, when they labeled the Aryans more heretical that they ended up growing as a movement. It's almost like, it made me think of today, like, when someone gets canceled, they often get a much bigger platform after. Yeah, I don't know if that was the issue, but I think it was more political, which maybe that's part of the canceling thing. Because despite the council, the UCBs of Nicomedea and the political movers and shakers, were able to catch the ear of Constantine and his successors, like Constanches, who was for their view, because all of this was wrapped up in, like, competition between cities and sort of

imperial factions. We don't like that aspect of it, but it's true. So at one point, Jerome, the church father Jerome says that, you know, the whole world woke up one day and groaned and realized, you know, everybody has become an Aryan. I mean, like, we, we, human least speaking, church history came really close to going with the view of areas that Christ was merely a creature. And it was only because of a few figures like Athanasius and the three Cappadocian fathers, who kind of, three great figures who kind of came in and carried the flag. And they say about Athanasius, contra mundum against the world. He was one short. He was a small little man, feisty, described as dark-skinned because he was native Coptic. And he was like, for a while

there was one man against the world, contramundum. And then he was joined by the Cappadocians. And then the Nicene Creed won the day. You're speaking about Athanasius, right? Athanasius. Athanasius is the one that was, yes, small and Coptic. So he's just a little guy, but he fought for for the doctrine. And it won. It won the day. Creatine is one of the best supplements that you need to take. And contrary to popular opinion, creatine is not just for getting Jack. Okay, so creatine is essential for your strength, but it also helps with focus, recovery, aging, and cognitive performance. But quality is everything when it comes to supplements like creatine, which is why I use Creepure creatine by Momentus.

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What happened? What do we know? Happen was a lot of yelling and screaming and debates back and forth? Or what was going on during that council? We know less than you might think. part of what I do is I write fiction and I have a Constantinian trilogy in which

that event is part of it. So I have my imaginations, but in your podcast you probably want to know what we actually know, which is fairly little. In fact, we don't even know this site. I mean, so there's debate about like where did it happen and they used so Nicaea Isnique sits

on a lake, beautiful little lake town and I remember not that long ago I would take students and they had near the lake shore, they had a little sign it said Senatu Sarai, which is like Senate Palace, and they pointed to the jumble of rocks, and they said, these are the rocks that were left over from this seaside place where the council was held.

That sign's not there anymore. And so now they say we think it was inside the city somewhere. And have you encountered at all the sunken basilica? Are you familiar with the underwater basilica? No. It's a side note here. But PBS did a special on this just recently. recently. A couple years. There's a, there, um, not that long ago, airplanes were flying over

the lake and somebody spotted because of dropped water levels, hey, there's the shape of a church down there. And sure enough, they went and looked and it's currently being, you know, excavated as we speak. And, um, there was a fourth century basilica that was on land on the coast of the lake on the shore, but the water line has moved up over it, and so now the ruins are underwater. So it's sunk in or underwater. And there's a big debate about, was it there in 325? Did they have council sessions there? Actually, I don't think they did. I think it was probably a martyrs church, but not likely to be a place where sessions were held. So to answer your question, You can go to the city, but you can't really find, like, the spot, you know, like the Wittenberg door where the, you know, the 95 pieces.

You can't, you can't drill in that close, but you can get the town. And it didn't happen all summer. It was a summer. So, yeah, so how long was the council? Do we even know how long it was or what happened during it? Yeah. So it lasted for the summer of 325, which were kind of commemorating this year in 2025, so 1700 years. ago. And what we know a lot about is the opening session, actually, because Constantine came

and paraded in. And the bishops were there, and Constantine is in all of his, like, imperial array. Like, this is a major thing. Like, he's treating it as if, you know, a head of state, like the biggest, most official thing ever. And these bishops are kind of shocked that, remember, many of them had endured persecution. In fact, the sources say many of them, many of them came with their hands twisted from fire and torture or their eye had been gouged out. One of them named Paphneutius had an empty eye socket because he had been in the minds and to work to death in the minds and they gouged out the eye. They cut his hamstring and then the persecution passed and he was released and they say

Constantine came and he kissed the empty socket of Paphneutius's eye. So the bishops that were there were sort of like these almost like zombies like limping in and, you know, their arms aren't working because they had survived the great persecution. And then suddenly they're there seated at this event with the emperor in his diadem and his purple robe. And he comes in and he says, you know, brothers, may I sit among you? And they say, yes. And so then he takes a seat. I mean, it's just, it's just remarkable, the changeover that has happened. And so he calls it to attend, calls it into session. And then we don't know much about the debating, but we know the outcome, which is, you know, the views of Arias were repudiated.

And you've probably heard who, yeah, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, you've probably heard who supposedly punched Arias. That's what, that's a question I was going to ask. Yeah, yeah, I want to know if that's true or not. I wrote a blog on that years ago during Christmas time and somebody says, that's not really true. And I said, well, I read it online somewhere. Yeah, well, so, so the, if you want to talk about it, the, um, Nicholas of Myra is a great saint from the Turkish city of Myra, now Turkey, it's near Tarsus.

And he was someone who cared for like orphans and trafficked children and things like that. And so he would give gifts to them and take care of them and show love. And so the legend of Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, Jolly St. Nick, it all sort of is morphing out of like centuries of this Nicholas. legends but he was a real figure and he was at the council and so the tradition develops that somebody hit areas punched him and then it kind of becomes Nicholas was the one who punched him and so it's not it's not early enough in the records to think oh that's likely that's probably what happened but it's not made up in like 2015 or something I mean like the Eastern Orthodox Church icons to depict Arias being punched by Nicholas. In other words, it has enough history behind

it, medieval hagiography and folklore, to say that, you know, like it's believed, but it doesn't really go back to sources that you can ground in the actual time of 4th or 5th century. So it's not corroborated, we can't say for sure, but it's also not just completely mythical. We can't say it didn't happen, nor can we say for sure. that it did. It's not like an internet meme that cropped up recently. Right. Because like you'll see these things and it'll show, Nicholas punching and it says, ho, ho, ho, homo usias. So it's like, H-O-ho, homo-uosias. And so the internet has run with it, but it has some history behind it as far as like medieval history. I just, I just want to believe that if you deny the Trinity this Christmas,

Jolly old Santa Claus might punch you in the face. I don't know. There's something to that that I just, I kind of want to maintain. But I will make sure I put some footnotes to that if I repeated it again. Yeah. Okay. So the council,

we're not sure exactly what went on during those months, but the what we now would call the Orthodox Trinitarian View one out. And they excommunicated. He said Arias and one other guy. That's it. Two other Libyans who, two Libyan bishops that supported him, kind of Libya being near Alexandria was he was from Libya so he was their homeboy but most

including even both of the Eusebius's the UCBE signed it with kind of like they say like you know like reluctant hand like like I'll sign this but in my mind when it says I actually mean and then they immediately went to work undercutting it which is which is why so we signed it because we were under duress but immediately it blah into, scholars don't even like to call it Aryanism. That's kind of, that's what Athanasius called it because he lumped it all together as if it was all one satanic enemy. But modern scholars don't really think of it as Aryanism because Arias passes off the scene. And the people that held these non-Nicine views aren't necessarily holding the same view as each other.

Like to Athanasius, he thought that you're all one enemy because you deny consubstantial. But they all had slightly different. Is he dissimilar, different permutations? And they didn't all trace themselves to Arias himself. Have you ever heard how Arias died? No. So in the process of Arias getting rehabilitated by some of his supporters, he had come up to Istanbul, well, Constantinople, which is now Istanbul.

And he was heading to church to try to serve communion, which was going to be controversial. But along the way, he suddenly said, can somebody, somebody point me to a latrine quickly? And over there. And so he goes, and this is multiple sources attest this. And he, like, explodes. His rectum falls out. Blood comes out. organs come out in the toilet and he dies.

Oh, my God. And I'd say that and the people of those days for years afterwards would say, see that public, see that public bathroom? That's where Arias, you know, it's where God struck him. And the meaning of it is, and they compare it to like a Judas, right? Like the traitor against Jesus, his bowels, he splits open and his bowels fall out. Like he's a, he's a Judas or he's a. a herod who got who's burst open with worm you know like divine disfavor is the theme some some people

say he was poisoned because it's a there's a lot of politics writing on this so some some would say you know they took him out with poison and that's that's where it was but anyway that's that's his his death um speaking speaking of politics like i you know i've heard and i now want to make sure I represent this correctly. Like I've heard from critics of Christianity, and I can't think of an exact quote or anything, but, you know, that in the fourth century, Nica, other, you know, councils and creeds, that it was kind of a political power move. You had people that had a lot of political power and they got together and decided what would be Orthodox Christian theology, but it wasn't, the motivation wasn't simply, you know, a desire to read the text correctly. It was, you know,

was like we want control of the church the church now has political power with the conversion to constantine like is there is there some truth to that i mean when you're talking about the bishop showing up mangled from persecution that doesn't sound like a bunch of comfy men trying to just maintain power it sounds like people who really took their face seriously so what how much politics were involved in the council of nicaa well a lot i mean and and i think it's an interesting thing, not that we want to talk about modern times, but maybe, but it is the case that, like, many times a godly desire and, like, this is how I read the scripture and I want to read and I want to believe this way. And because I do, it leads to one kind of worldview,

which includes issues of justice and how one lives that out in the public square. And it's like to say those things aren't connected. is to bifurcate things that actually do belong together. And so I will, of course, be honest and say, yes, there were politics. And certainly at the emperor level, you know, like when you get like a theodosius that declares that this has to be the view that you cannot be called a Catholic Christian if you do not hold to the Trinity. I mean, that's a kind of mandate.

And anybody else from then on, this is after 381, is going to feel the pain of exclusion. That's part of it, and it can't be denied. But is it also mangled bishops standing firm for their Jesus? Yes. Is it textual? Oh, my word. You can't even engage in this topic at all. And when you do, you see very little political treatises, but you see massive barrageses of exegesis and counter exegesis.

So if you say, what of the writings that have survived from the participants, what are they talking about, it's the meaning of scripture again and again. Proverbs 8, Colossians 1. Just to the participants, it was about the scripture. But like we've been saying, underneath that, what is the gospel? How are we saved? And I think that's what drove the churchmen who were behind this, maybe not the politicians who had a stake in it. I want to, in a second, I do want to ask about the relationship between the Trinity and salvation. But before that, I want to back up just slightly,

were trinitarian conversations happening prior to Nicaea? Like, was this something that for the first couple hundred through 300 years after the New Testament was a live conversation? Because I know, I think I remember Clement of Alexandria, was he, second century-ish? I mean, he had a pretty robust

trinitarian statement, didn't he? Well, it's not, it's not Clement, who's known as Tertullian, maybe, who's more known. Oh, Tertullian, Tertilian, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And he's my bro. I did my master's thesis and my doctoral thesis on Tertullian, although not on these particular issues, but I like Tertullian. And he was the first that we have recorded, who writes in Latin. And so he, therefore, is the one who uses the term trinitas, which means a three,

a threefold. The Greek is triad. That was being talked about. So this was there from the beginning, because of the baptismal formula, go and baptize in the name. So, you know, Sunday morning practice is living out the Trinity. When you come into the faith, you come into the Trinity through Christian baptism in the threefold name. So it's just stamped on the Christian mind or the Pauline benediction, you know, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, you know, be with you all, you know, there's this

threefold, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. So it's there and like we were saying before what do we do with the fact that Yahweh sits on high like even Israel understood this even the Israelites and the Jews they understood this that Yahweh sits on high but somehow his inner ruach his spirit and his debar his word come forth and are here interacting and so Yahweh is enthroned in the heavens and doesn't come down like pagan gods he doesn't come down like Zeus. and, you know, ride in a bull and rape people or whatever. He sits enthroned in the heavens, but he's not distant because his inner word and his inner breath, even in creation, where you have the father creating, you have the command of the word, let there be light, and you have the spirit hovering over the water. So this was just intrinsic to Judaism. It's intrinsic to Christians because the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

So there's the Debar or the Logos now infleshed and living as a man and the spirit of God. So, yes, it was being debated a figure like Tertullian, who's writing around 125 years before the Council of Nicaea, does a really great job of getting most of that doctrine correct because he uses the term, one substance, three persons. Right. And he uses the term Trinity. What he fails on, and this is why you kind of had to complete it. at the councils and so forth. What he fails on is that he thinks that the second person of the Trinity didn't become a son until God sent him forth.

So he was like word. He was the second. But at a point, he became son, which then made Godfather. And so origin instead talked about eternal generation. So origin is also before the council. And he says, no, we have to think of the son. the father's son relationship as intrinsic to the Trinity and eternal. So some of those issues were still being worked out.

Okay. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe that's a little too complicated. How would you, in your book, you do talk about the, that the Trinity is a doctrine essential to salvation in so many words. I don't know, put words, but something like that. Does that mean somebody needs to believe that? the Trinity to be saved? Or are you talking about, and I'm only a little bit into your books and maybe you worked us out? Or are you saying that the doctrine of Trinity is sort of objectively essential

for the doctrine of salvation, if I could put like that? So there's a subjective, it's a ladder. Okay. It's the ladder. So it's not like you, you know, you have to get people, you know, to figure out Homo Uzias before they could get to heaven. Like, heaven wouldn't be full very much if we expected that. Even in our own churches today, probably. That's why I wrote the book is to, like, help people understand what they think they believe, but have to study. That's what the average Christian is not going to be, I would say the majority, if you said, explain to Trinity, they'd probably be spouting off all kinds of heresy unintentionally. You know, it's a complex thing.

Analogies. Yeah, it's a complex, but in some ways it's not. I mean, the basic idea is that one God, that the one God exists in three persons, and they're not the same person. They can't be collapsed, and yet we're monotheists. So the ideas are simple, but how both can be true, that is a challenge.

But, no, it's not that you say, well, you've got to get there mentally. Now, I will say if somebody, you know, it's not mandated to confess the Trinity to sort of get into heaven, but if somebody is believing in, intentionally in a Jesus who is not eternal and is a creature, like what this is what Latter-day Saints holds, is what Jehovah's Witnesses hold about Jesus.

I would say you're not confessing belief in the actual name, Jesus Christ. So if someone is intentionally denying the deity of Christ or calls him a creature, then I would want to make sure, like I'd be more suspicious about their salvation confession. In fact, I'd be very suspicious about it. Here at Theology and Raw, we don't shy away from big questions. Week after week, we dive into thoughtful, sometimes hard discussions around what it means to live out our faith in the world. Now, here's the thing. Those kinds of open, honest conversations shouldn't just happen on a podcast. They can and should happen around our dinner tables and our small groups and with our

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in the wrong. Talk to me about your thoughts on the lasting relevance of the Nicene Creed and maybe other so-called Orthodox creeds. And my question, what's underlying my question is, you know, these are the foundation of Christianity, right? I mean, this is what determines what is Orthodox, what is not.

At the same time, there is like a situation natural nature to the formulation. They were addressing certain heresies that were pertinent during their time. We may have different things we need to address today. Like, you know, so it is the Nicene Creed something that, yeah, does it have a universality lasting, obviously lasting relevance, but is it the once and for all benchmark that should never be revisited again if that, there's probably several questions baked into there, but. Yeah, but they're very good, important questions. I've been thinking about them literally for decades. So I'm glad you asked.

So, I mean, the Nicene Creed is in some ways an abnormal creed, even though it's the most widely agreed upon by the Orthodox and Catholics and Protestants. But it's abnormal because it is this kind of situational creed that it kind of bubbled up at a moment as part of a council, like sort of let's draft it here, everybody drafting it together. But even when they did that, ostensibly, they were doing what they were just putting forward what the church had always understood creeds to be, which is not something related to like a moment in time. So what creeds were originally, which is what gives them their lasting value, is that they are actually organically welling up from the practice of baptism. And we think of crees as things you should, I talk about this in the book, you should say them in church on dry land. but the original place where you said a creed was down in water.

So creeds are actually, what they are is what you've been taught, especially if you're a pagan and you have no worldview that aligns with Christianity, the gods and the mythology of that is your story. And it's a re-story, it's a re-narrative to bring people into a different to the biblical storyline. And you're taught that in catechesis, prior to baptism. And then when you memorize it and confess it, you are choosing to end. into yourself into Israel's story, into God's story, into the New Testament, the church story. And that's why they last forever.

It's not because a council produced them, but because the ministry of the church, it's evangelistic and incorporational ministry, is bringing its people through confession and baptism into God's story. And that's why, you know, like baptism and creeds, it's like you cross through water and you leave behind Satan. And you cross through to the promised land. And when you came up out of that water after saying the creed, they gave you milk and honey because you just left Egypt. You just came into the promised land. And so the creed was administered down in the water as part of making a new story leading

behind the old. You were naked when you did it because you just robed everything from your past. You went into the water. You crossed through from west to east, just like the Red Sea. And you came up at sunrise in the east. into the welcoming arms of the church, into the bishop who kissed you and gave you milk and honey, who clothed you in a new white garment and said, you know, go forth from now on into newness of life. So creeds are the way, like when people reaffirm their marriage vows or they go back

and get baptized in the Jordan. It's a way of regularly reaffirming the story that you still are in and that you entered in baptism. Do you think, just made me think how different things are today. We baptize people pretty, yeah, we don't put a lot of like, there's zero strings attached kind of to get baptized. Right, you actually should be way more strings attached. Yeah. Yeah.

You should do your job right, pastor. Wow. Well, that's all. Yeah. So, what are your, I guess, since we're here, just sort of, everybody can forward and confess Jesus and people come forward. I believe in Jesus. Let's baptize you. No. Okay. So why why do you think that that's not a good idea? Because baptism is far too holy and precious to, and it's not, I'm not saying it's efficacious.

That's not my point at all. But it's too much of what I just described for you to do it without making sure under pastoral responsibility that you are giving this thing to someone who actually has done it. They didn't just make an emotional snap decision. They weren't just manipulated by something that happened or they just a day they felt like doing like they you've tested you've approved you know that they're willing to walk the burden of christ you know that their confession is not the jesus they think they're getting baptized in is actually just a jolly giver of blessings or you know like you're really following with the burdens and responsibilities of entering into the church coming under pastoral oversight all of that you you have a responsibility pastor to make sure

that you only give the holy water of the Lord, again, not like Catholic holy water, but just the holiness of what baptism is to someone that you have tested to make sure their gospel proclamation and confession is true and we'll stand the test of time. The counter argument would be in the New Testament. You see people getting baptized pretty quickly, the Ethiopian eunuch. I'm sure there's some of the gospels. It's not. You did not hit some of the gospels.

And gospel baptism isn't the same anyway because the baptism of repentance of John is not a baptism into the risen Christ. Christian baptism only starts when Jesus says, go into all the world, baptizing them into the name of the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit, now that I've been resurrected

and testify as eyewitnesses to what you've seen, the risen Christ. So gospels don't count. And even that one case where, you know, here is water, what is keeping me? So in that case, you do see that. But you also see Paul, you know, sort of being set aside until Anonias goes and finds out and tests him and only then is he baptized. And so like

the Ethiopian eunuch probably isn't a good, that did happen, sort of a quick baptism. And the Lord testified that he was truly saved. But as far as wise pastoral practice, should ascertain the confession before you give the water of the Lord. Well, and the eunuch had a running start too, didn't he? I mean, he was reading the scriptures. He seemed to be some kind of Gentile. A sympathizer with Judaism. So even in the first century, I've often said this. Let me cross-check it with you because you know more about this than I do. People in the first century had a really kind of a cultural pre-understanding, really of what baptism meant.

I mean, it was a convert, it represented, symbolized a conversion to a different countercultural way of life. So they had a, yeah, a cultural pre-understanding of the significance of baptism, right? Well, there's these different threads that come in. So, like, that's part of it where you have like proselyte baptism, where you have like a centurion or something who's going to, like, identify with Israel's God. So then that is a conversion baptism. But there's also ties to sort of ritual washings and cleansings that Jews did at the Mikva or something. And so there's these different themes. But part of it is that conversion.

But for Christians, it certainly was that. It always has been, you know, even today in Muslim countries, like, you can kind of like say that you believe in Esau and it's okay, but you get baptized and, okay, you're in trouble now. So ever since Christianity came on the scene, baptism has been seen as this kind of like watershed, literally watershed moment. And didn't, I think Clinton Arnold wrote an article on this, and I've seen other people address it since, but in the early church, when someone would be. became what was baptized, became a Christian, didn't they go through like extensive, like three-year catechism, like hours a day of like, yeah. And was that pretty widespread, that practice? So three years is mentioned in the handbook, the didache, which is a baptismal manual or apostolic traditions. Like there's these sources that tell pastors basically manual, how to baptize.

Three years is mentioned where it's more of an intense thing. But some people went, you know, much of their life. Now, that's probably not a good idea to stay a catacumen for most of your life, but it was common practice. A catacuman is someone who's professed Jesus, but has not yet taken baptism. The martyr perpetua was a catacuman when she testified to Jesus, but it was only when she was baptized that she was thrown into jail and martyred. So, yes, that process, once it began in earnest, like it's a build-up for, like a date has been set for your baptism. It was an intensive period of instruction in both doctrine and the moral life, the two ways. How do you live? The way of Christ or the way of the world. And memorization of a creed, which is what got us on

this topic, is you memorized a little synopsis that is called the rule of faith, or it's very similar to what the Apostles' Creed is today, which is a different creed than Nica. And so it's very similar in content. But what it really is is a meta-narrative. It's not theology in the abstract. It's theology in the raw. If you want to be honest, it's theology in the nude. So you've got theology in the wall.

But baptism was naked, and theology in the nude is creeds. So that's what it was. So you're saying I should be doing my podcast naked for the full effect on. Maybe. Maybe. You're naked before the Lord, but clothed in Christ, right? How do people have the time to spend hours a day going through catechism for years, possibly? Like I just think of the practice, because I think like today, could that work today?

I'm like, well, people have time. Like, what are you talking about? People have like full-time jobs and families. And how they're going to spend several hours a week going through catacumen? Did they have extra time on their hands back then? No, they're just more devoted. So what would happen, usually most of them were slaves or many were. slaves. So it wasn't the case that they had more time to us. They had less time than us,

maybe more commitment because then they would get up even earlier. Like the master wants me at work at dawn. So I'm going to get up at 3 a.m. go be instructed. And about the time that the light is cracking the horizon, my catechesis is over and my day of labor begins. I mean, it was that kind of a thing. It's like we forget the level of commitment. And again, you're being instructed on the possibility of your martyrdom. So I don't, I don't, I think we can compare it to our lives today. Do you think, okay, do you think that we should recapture some glimpse of that today? And have you seen churches do that?

My ministry for 20-some years has been devoted to trying to put these things in front of people, you know, through writing and through teaching. I taught at Moody Bible Institute for many years and now at Liberty University. and my writing ministry has focused on that. So it's part of a broader movement within evangelicalism. It's called Resource Mall. I mean, actually, the Catholics had a resource mall, which is a resourcing in the writings of the fathers. And then it kind of got discovered by evangelicals around the 1990s,

this patristic, which means church fathers. And resource mall is a French word, but it means to rejuvenate or to resource or to, rediscover your roots. And there's been an evangelical blossoming of that. And with that goes, you know, sort of a different view of like, how should we do baptism? How should we think about historic practices of the church? And what ought we learn from the ancients? And yes, I mean, like you said, should we get a glimpse of it? I think we should stare it right in the face and allow the beauty of it to permeate our pastoral and our spiritual practices in the church today.

and we'll be the richer for it. If we look back to the fathers instead of business techniques or cultural icons, we're going to be doing better, I think. Practically speaking, for pastors listening who are like, wow, I wonder if I could start to think through this a bit more. Like, what would integrating a more robust post-conversion catechesis look like? Like, practically speaking, what have you seen churches do that is effective? And realistic, maybe that's not even a term you even want to use.

But yeah, what are some steps you think pastors can take to integrate this? That's such a good question. I'm so glad you asked me that. Like, I mean, there are churches that are sort of intentionally doing this. You know, like I don't want to name a bunch. I've heard of a church in Atlanta called Church of the Apostles. And there are people that are, and there's actually a huge movement within Southern Baptist life. It's called Baptist Catholicity.

So I think it does begin with embracing. the concept of Catholicity, really understanding what that word means with a little C and embracing the spirit of Catholicity that these figures are not simply, you know, sort of heretics from the past or non-Protestants, therefore, to be rejected or something, as if those debates were on the table in the second, third, fourth, this century. And instead, having a little C Catholic spirit to embrace them as your own people. That's the first step. To get to know the church fathers, and the church mothers as your own spiritual ancestors. And once you do that, and once you encounter them, it starts to reshape, well, like I supervised

the guy's dissertation, and he's a pastor, and he's a Baptist pastor, and it was on Justin Martyr, the church father, Justin Martyr, and how he did Eucharist, how he did communion. And out of that guy's dissertation, he led his church, this is a Baptist church, he led it into a weekly Eucharistic celebration with a kind of high church. Now, he didn't depart from, you know, fundamental views of, you know, presence of Christ in the elements or something. But he just led his church worshipfully and pastorally into the weekly celebration of Holy Eucharist, which has been universal in the Christian faith

until Protestantism. I'm saying to do that for sure. But, like, once you engage and once you become little, see Catholic yourself, you begin to see, well, the ancient practice or the historic practice is this. I need more liturgy. Maybe we need icons in the church, not to worship like idols, but to picture the saints who have run the race before us. And I guess there's a whole host of things like that to discuss. What about, what about like modern day catechesis or training in the Christian faith so that after a few years after conversion, people are actually just saturated

with the narrative of scripture and orthodox creedal reflection. Yeah, yeah, that would be a big part of it, where you would have your church, of course you should be doing like good deeds and service to the world. Of course you should be practical and evangelistic. Of course, you should have fellowship and potlucks or whatever. But the thing that isn't done as much, which is also part of historic practice, is instruction in the historic Christian faith. It's like, oh, it's like people don't really need that.

Like even the Trinity. It's like, it's a mystery, a three, one. I'm good with that. But, hey, let me go witness. Or let's have a small group Bible study where we just all reinforce each other's ideas and mostly fellowship, you know, whatever. I'm not meaning to be critical. But it starts from the pulpit and also intentionality built into the life of the church

that you're going to catacize your people. You're going to teach them the deep things of the Lord. the doctrines of the faith. And why not go through the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed? Why not go through it clause by clause? And so that your people, because what you're getting there is a Christian worldview and an anti-Satan, to be honest, an anti-Satan worldview. You're rejecting the occult and paganism.

My church right now, it's an ECCC church, evangelical covenant church. And we're memorizing Apostles Creed. And every Sunday, one of the pastors takes like a word, or a phrase and spends like five minutes unpacking that. So the whole, I think for the rest of the year, we're kind of just memorizing it and slowly walking through it, kind of inch by inch. Yeah, that's great. So that's a church that's doing it.

You know, a lot of it depends on if you're Catholic or Orthodox is going to happen for sure. If you're Protestant, it depends on which strand of the reformation you're part of. So if you've got the Anglicans, the Church of England, there's four strands. If you've got the Anglicans, yeah, it's going to happen there as long as it's not. too unbiblical of a, you know, as long as it's a confessing Anglican church, you're going to get that. Lutheran, same thing. You're going to get it there. The reform, the Presbyterian, you're going to get it there. Maybe a little more focus on, you know, 16th century figures,

but you're going to get creedal instruction. It's the fourth branch that tends not to do this, which is the Anabaptist, the non-dunational, the baptistic, where it's like no creed but the Bible. And all of that sounds good until individual people start making. up their own biblical views. So in particular, it's the strand of the Reformation that's not the magisterial reformation, but it's the free church. It sometimes looks down its nose on historic Christianity. And I'd be an advocate for not embracing everything that some medieval bishop had to say,

but like, resourcing yourself in the historic church is a huge, a huge blessing. Going back to the Nicene Creed, is this the only, or is this, well, is this the only benchmark for determining what is Orthodox and what is heresy? Or given different issues that we face through different time periods of the history of the church, are there other issues that come up that also need to be addressed as, you know, this is heresy, this is not. yeah yeah well i mean sorry a footnote to that you know the nicene creed doesn't address justification by faith it doesn't address you know like i don't think it doesn't mention like penal substitutionary atonement big debate today like is that essential the gospel part of it not of any of it or doesn't address issues of like orthopraxy sexuality which is obviously a massive topic facing the church today um yeah yeah

Yeah. Well, no, that's a great question. And that's a good point. It's like the gospel is actually what's in the creed, which is the confession of the risen Christ. It's not like the details of things like justification by faith, even though that's what I believe. And it's biblical. But the gospel is the proclamation of the risen Christ and then casting one's allegiance with that good news for yourself. So, you know, something like heresy, I mean, Trinity and Nicene Trinitarianism is a matter of heresy or not. I thought a word that I want to, heresy is not a word I want to take out of the language or take out of the church. Like, you can be a heretic. And if you say that Jesus is merely a man, you are. If you say that the Trinity is not, you know, three equal persons or something, then you are. Some of these other things like justification by faith, which a wholeheartedly believe, but I'm not going to call heresy if someone, you know, sort of thinks of it this way. Certainly these issues of sexuality.

Again, you have these commitments and you say this is biblical. biblical, but it's not the same as historic heresy. And there are things about which Christians have to agree to disagree, such as in-times views, or infant baptism versus adult. I'm believers, baptism person, but I attend a church that baptizes infants. So, you know, there's like the inner core of heresy, of orthodoxy, then there's debated matters, then there's heresy. So you would want to maintain the historical meaning of the word heresy while not downplaying the significance of believing certain things, you know, a certain understanding of justification by faith. They might say that's significantly off, but I'm still not going to say you're a heretic if you maybe frame it in a different way than the reformers did or something. Yeah, that's what I would say.

I mean, heresy means to make a choice. And it sort of like instead of coming under. So a big part of, like, heresy orthodoxy is what has the church, as Vincent of Lorenz said, the quadubiquet, what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all. And so the historic confession of the Christian church is a big part of what you call heresy. And so to make a choice is to say, here in 2025, I'm going to go off over here where this is what I think. This is what the Bible to me seems to say. And heresy is like, but wait, friend, this, the historic confession of the meaning of the church.

Not that you put tradition over scripture, but you say the collective wisdom of the church has read the scriptures this way. That should incline you to not make the choice you're making. But again, like you said, there are some areas where we do have to agree to disagree and where you draw the, the, the, the, heresy versus orthodoxy versus gray areas is like, it's, it's hard to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Your book, the story of the Trinity, is incredibly well written. I mean, what I was reading, I was like, this guy's obviously a scholar. This is a very thorough or at least well-researched book. But man, it reads so fluidly. When you said you're a fiction writer, I'm like, oh, okay, that makes sense because it reads like somebody who knows how to

Right. Is that, like, do you love the art of writing? Like, it seems like you would really enjoy it. Yeah. They're very kind. And it's funny you say that because, like, my editor who acquired it was like, that's kind of what he said. Like, I want this book because it's just, I didn't have to edit it. Like when I turned it. He's like, I just gave it to the printer more or less. Like, I don't know if that's true. But, you know, it's, it's, you're kind. I really appreciate that. I feel like that's, that is meaningful to me. Is it that I love to be a writer? no the core thing is I love to be a teacher and so just putting it on a page I'm not putting on a page something that I'm not already and haven't been for decades sort of bubbling up out of me to college students you know and so it's just and again the teacher it's not the

I have all the knowledge it's so ego stroking to sort of inform you the great teachers are just like they love what they want to talk about they want other people to enter into it And they've learned how to bubble forth with it in ways that people say, I want to get in that bubble bath, you know, pour it on me, prof. So it's more teaching like that.

And teaching college students, you can't, it's not like you're sitting there with seminarians that are already, already bought in. You know, you have to make a case to an 18-year-old. And I think a good teacher, whether it's verbally or through writing, like, could put themselves. in the shoes of the people they're writing to. Because the author, it's like, everything makes sense to us. We're writing. We could have a sentence that's like, you know, five lines long. And it's just, it's crystal clear.

But put yourself in the shoes of somebody else who's reading it for the first time, who hasn't, you know, been absorbing this stuff for, you know, years or decades. It's like, it's to be able to see how is this going to be understood by the other person? It's actually, it's incredibly hard to do. to remove yourself as the author and read your stuff or listen to your, you know, your lectures from the perspective of someone who's not giving them, you know.

Well, like when you're a podcaster, you're getting one, like you are here, you're getting one face who's engaged with you and already knows. You're a teacher for decades. You can see when the, when what you're saying,

the faces are responding and when they're not. And so by the time you've been teaching as long as I have, you've learned this is this is where people are and this will help them grow from where they are well brian thanks so much for being a guest on the show again i would encourage people to pick up the story of the trinity it is a delightful read very informative so thank you for your work on this book and the other books that you've written and thanks for being a guest on the show well i'm very honored preston it's i know you're a leading figure in this in this sphere and i'm really honored and humbled to be here. Thanks for having. Thank you.