Truth Unites - The Athanasian Creed: Christianity’s Most Controversial Statement of Faith

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Gavin Ortlund explains the Athanasian Creed, tracing its history, theology, and lasting importance for how Christians understand their faith.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

The Holy Spirit is not a second son. We shouldn't think of the Trinity as though there's a father and then there's the son and then there's the younger brother of that son. So you have the father and two sons. Rather, the manner by which the spirit is produced by the father and the son is totally distinct. So we don't call the third person of the Trinity a son. Christians often speak of the three great ecumenical creeds or the three great universal creeds, the Apostles Creed, which I have done this video on,

the Nicene Creed, which I've done this video on, and the Athanasian Creed, which is the subject of this present video. This is perhaps the most neglected of these three creeds, and yet of the three, it's the fullest and most detailed statement about both the Trinity and Christology. And basically the Trinitarian and Christological Orthodoxy that emerged in the early church, it goes further than the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed in more detail, as you will see, details. Things come up in the Athanasian creed that didn't come up at all in the first two. And as we'll see, it's the most controversial of the three. I love the Athanasian creed. I find it fascinating. I hope that by the end of this video, you'll have an understanding of what it teaches,

how it came about, why it's important, and perhaps you'd be motivated to use this creed in your own life or in your local church. Let's go in three sections. First, we'll do just a general introduction. Second, we'll give a history of reception, because that is fascinating, and it will help us understand it better. And then we'll give a commentary, not super detailed, but somewhat detailed. First, I want to do a book recommendation. I was just reading this today after I looked back on it, before I did my video on whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Sam Storms' Understanding Worship, link in the video description to this. Great book. I gave a endorsement of his book, Understanding Prayer. Some of you bought that book as a result of that. I hope you'll consider this one as

well. Really helpful book. I love Sam's writing. And this is, it's devotional as well. You know, we all struggle sometimes with worship being a source of joy. Sometimes we, even the idea of what it means to worship God, I've discovered many Christians are confused by this. We don't really know what it is that we're doing when we say, I worship you, O Lord, and we can struggle to enter into it, both corporately and individually. This book is really helpful. It walks you through everything, and it has really helpful treatment of how worship relates to spiritual warfare. The difference between worship in the old covenant and new covenant, it does treat, has an appendix on do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?

It talks about, you know, practical things, physical postures like raising our hands or kneeling. What is their role in worship? Is their pleasure in worship? Okay. And what other emotions are involved in worship? Talks about the sacraments, questions like spontaneous baptisms. Lots more. It's really helpful.

Check it out. Link in the video description. All right, let's start with a general introductory. I want to make three observations about the Athanasian Creed to start off with. First, the Athanasian Creed was written perhaps in Gaul, today what we call southern France, in the late 5th century or early 6th century, probably written in Latin originally, and we don't know the author. This is maybe the most important thing to say, someone's going to accuse me in the comments of having Athanasius on the thumbnail. They're going to say, it's not really,

written by Athanasius. Oh boy, if only the comments, we'd watch the video first. That's okay. But yes, so it's not written by Athanasius. We only call it Athanasian in the sense that like a later theological text could be Bartian, even if it's not written by Bart or there's no connection to Bart. So this is a description of its theology. Though as we'll see, many people thought it was written by Athanasius wrongly in church history. The earliest documentation of the Athanasian Creed comes from sermons of Caesarius of Arl, who preached the basics of Christianity using this creed as his foundation. Some have suggested that Caesarius or someone in his circle may have written the creed, that that is uncertain. We don't know the author. The important point

to highlight that's going to be relevant to its contents is that it is coming up in the West. This is a Western creed, and we'll talk about how that plays out in its reception. Second first sort of introductory comment here is that this is not originally designed as a confession of faith in the sense that the apostles and Nicene creeds were. There's no introductory, I believe, or we believe. Rather, it appears to have been used as a catechetical tool, so that means for teaching, and then also in worship. Perhaps originally as a canticle or hymn, it's often subsequently been set to music and used. liturgically, but it wasn't the same kind of, it didn't serve the same kind of purpose as the apostles and Nicene creeds. Of course, that doesn't mean that we can't use it as a confession of faith today. Number three, first introductory comments here, the essential content of the

Athanasian creed is an exposition of both the Trinity, how was God both three and one, as well as Christology, or the doctrine of Christ. There was some treatment of the incarnation and work of Christ in the apostles and Nicene creeds, especially the work of Christ, but the Athanasian Creed goes much further into those topics, and that is not surprising. This reflects its later context coming along after the third and fourth ecumenical councils, Ephesus and Calcedon in the 5th century, 431, 4351, because those deal with Christology. So the Athanasian creed is coming on cohering really with all four first ecumenical councils, and that is partly why it is going to go further than the Nicene Creed,

and it's going to serve us in ways, therefore, that these other two creeds don't, which is why it's a bummer that it's been neglected. The Athanasian creed is thoroughly Nicene, thoroughly Calcedonian, and used regularly to oppose Aryans and semi-Arians and other groups. like this. So, summing up these first three comments, we're saying that the context is late-patristic, early medieval West. The purpose of the Athanasian Creed is both catechesis and worship, and the content is basically a summation of the Orthodox Trinity and Christology that were worked out in the early church. So you can see this is going to be a really useful

creed for us to use. Before we work through it, let's talk about how it's been historically received because this is a really interesting story and I want to highlight four episodes in particular of the reception of the Athanasian Creed. First, in the early medieval period, I want to highlight an episode here involving a young girl named Ingund. And this can be a sort of example, representative example of its early reception. Around the time that the Athanasian Creed was likely written, and after that as well, especially, Southern Gaul was ruled by the Visigoths, who were a Germanic people who had been previously evangelized by an Aryan missionary. And so the Aryans had their own missionaries going out,

and then you have all these Aryan groups. And Martin Davies' book, by the way, I'm going to reference a draw from for this video a fair amount. He's an Anglican giving an exposition of the Athanasian Creed, helpful book. He has a great discussion of this. He talks about how the Visigoths believed that the sun was inferior to the father, and the spirit was inferior to the sun. And so they veered into a kind of tri-theism because they distinguished the three persons as three different kinds of beings in some sense or another

as a result of being evangelized by an Aryan. That was their theology. And so there's a lot of a lot of the things that had been settled were still flaring up like this in other parts of the world. And this is going on in sort of the western edges of Christendom here, these battles between the Nicene or uppercasee-C Catholic Christians, those who would adhere to Council of Nicaa, Council of Calcedon as examples, and then Aryan groups and other rival groups, and they're fighting and feuding, and it's pretty nasty at times. Well, by the end of the sixth century, or near the latter half of the sixth century, there's a Frankish princess named Ingun, who was married to a Spanish Visigoth prince named Hermann Guild. You have to love these

medieval names. They're so funny. I won't even read you all the other ones. I'll put these two up on screen, though the spelling varies greatly for both of these. Here's a 17th century painting of Hermann Guild's baptism. Now, what happens is it's an arranged marriage. Ingund is 12 years old. Unfortunately, there's a lot of these child marriages that are arranged royal marriages in the ancient world happens all the time. Ingund is Nicene in her theology. This 12-year-old girl who holds to Council of Nicaea, and she's been instructed in this. Harmon Guild is Aryan, and so the sparks are going to fly. And the story is narrated by a historian named Gregory of Tour, who lived around this time, latter half of the sixth century. He died in 594. He's sometimes called the father of French history.

Here's a statue of Gregory. And he delivers the following account. Her stepmother, Goiswinswins, yes, I told you these names are too good. There's so many like this. Receive. her, that's Ingun, very warmly, but it was soon apparent that she had no attention of allowing her to remain Catholic. She talked with her in a kindly way and tried to persuade her to be rebaptized in the Aryan heresy. Ingood had the courage to refuse. This, and I mentioned she's just a little girl, which makes this remarkable if we can trust Gregory's account, at least in the broad form, and he records Ingun's words as follows, quote, it is enough for me that I have been cleansed once for all from original sin by a baptism that will save my soul. So she's saying, I don't want to

get rebaptized with an Aryan baptism, and that I have made clear my belief in the Holy Trinity, one and indivisible. I hereby confirmed that I believe this with all my heart, and I will never go back on this article of faith. So here we get, and then, according to Gregory, the queen and her mother-in-law, seizes the girl that's Ingunned by the hair and throw her to the ground. Then she kicked her until she was covered with blood, had her stripped naked, and ordered her to be thrown into the baptismal pool. Talk about, you know, some of us have bad relationships with our in-laws, but at least it's not God like this, hopefully for you. Nonetheless, this is just one episode here. By the way, what eventually happens is Ingun, with the help of others and a lot of time, persuades her husband to become

Catholic, that is Nicene, in his view of the Trinity. So there's a kind of Nicene party in Spain at this time that is helping them. And then after their deaths, the struggle between the Nicenees and the Ariens continues in Spain for quite some time. But the Nicene Christians make further advances after that. So these are the kinds of theological disputes that lie behind the Athanasian Creed, and you saw Ingan's words there, the Holy Trinity won and indivisible. So I share this episode as one representative example of the sort of context in which the Athanasian Creed came to be deployed. As these lingering fights are working themselves out between the Nicene Christians and other rival groups like Aryans and semi-Arians that are lingering on and so forth,

you know, these groups didn't completely die out at this time. And so hopefully that gives a sense of how the Athanasian creed was relevant as it's serving as a kind of litmus test for Nicene and Calcedonian orthodoxy over and against these remaining alternative heretical views. And as the medieval era goes forward, the Athanasian creed is used widely as an authoritative document. it's quoted at the fourth council of Toledo in 633, then again at the Council of Aoutun in France in 670, the first canon of that council, this is a local council, requires adherence to the Athanasian creed by various clergy and others. So you have, pretty early on, it's getting used authoritatively in the 8th and 9th centuries, it's used widely, it's turned to music, it's used in liturgy,

It's used for the training of ministers, and then it's used sort of expands once you get into the high middle ages. Part of that is because people think it was written by Athanasius himself. Okay. So it's expanding in its role. Now, the second thing I want to highlight is when you get to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, it is retained. So in the Lutheran tradition, the Book of Concord included it alongside the apostles and Nicene creeds, calling them the three great ecumenical or universal creeds. in the Anglican tradition, Article 8 of the 39 articles, right after the prior articles on Scripture, says the three creeds, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasius Creed, and what is commonly called the Apostles' Creed,

ought thoroughly to be received and believed, for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture. In the reformed tradition, you find the Athanasian Creed affirmed and used in the Gallican Confession, in the Belgian confession, in the canons of the Synod of Dort. I'll put up an example here from the Gallican Confession of 1559 as an example. So basically the point is, 16th century comes along, the Protestants come along. They're protesting things, but this is not one of them. They retained the Athanasian creed alongside the apostles and Nicene as the three great creeds that they regarded as universal and to be maintained.

However, in the 17th century, use of the Athanasian creed began to decline a bit, and then it sort of fades out as you go forward, especially in the 20th century. It really declined in certain contexts. Davy has a good discussion of that in the Anglican Church. He's looking at that history. And there's a couple of reasons why it starts to decline as early as the 17th century. First, you begin to get awareness that it did not have Athanasian. as the author. Now, some doubts had already existed about that previously. I think Erasmus raised that question and a few others, but it was really in the 17th century that that became more firmly established. A second reason is something that we were returned to, and that is the Athanasian creed is seen as too severe because of its consigning to eternal damnation, those who don't adhere to its contents. And that's especially true in more recent times. A third reason it begins to decline is that some object to its language as too complicated and too technical. You know, the Nicene Creed is a little more compact.

As we'll see, the Athanasian Creed goes pretty deep and is really fallen away, especially more in the most recent times. But what I'm trying to say is that that's not a Protestant thing. That's just a more modern reality. Sometimes people don't distinguish between particular traditional. trajectories that happen here or there within Protestantism and Protestantism as such. And you say the same thing with the Baptist tradition and other specific Protestant traditions. You know, I talk about this a lot with Baptist views of the sacraments. People say, well, that's the Baptist view.

But actually, it's just a trajectory that describes the last 200 years of Baptist views, not the first 200 years of Baptist views. You can critique that trajectory, but just recognize we're not circumscribing around the entire tradition. with what we observe. The fourth aspect of the reception of the Athanasian Creed that I want to highlight real quick is just its eastern reception, because this is complicated. At some point in the early medieval period, it became known in the East, at least here and there. So for example, around 808 AD, certain Frankish monks are living in Jerusalem, and they're charged with heresy

for believing in double procession. That's that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the sun. This is a huge point of contest between the East and the West, and they appealed to the Athanasian Creed, among other things, in their defense. This, if you've heard of the Filiocque clause, which was added to the Nicene Creed, you're familiar with this general theological issue. Well, line 23 of the Athanasian Creed affirms double possession, and so this was appealed to by these and by other theologians favoring the Western view. You can see that, I'll put that up on the screen. And over the course of the medieval period, there are a few occasions like this where the

Athanasian creed surfaces and is interacted with in the east. But it is never used, it is never formally received, it's never put into the liturgy. It's generally rejected because of issues like that. But there's a period in the late 14th and early 15th centuries where some Byzantine theologians attempted to defend it as genuinely written by Athanasius. And so what they will say is that this particular line that has double procession in it, either will be softened or omitted, and often it will be, the idea will be that that was a later edition.

Athanasius didn't write that. Okay, so you have a, that's a little wrinkle in the history there. But what happens is with the rise of modern scholarship in 17th, 18, 19th centuries, it's getting more and more clear to all sides everywhere that Athanasius could not have been the author of this document. And so it is ultimately regarded as sort of a Western innovation tied to the filialque in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, for example. So this is a Western creed. It's affirming that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. That gives us a little backdrop. Let's just work through a little bit of the contents. At the big picture, you've got two sections. So you've got 44 lines. Lines

1 through 28 are about the Trinity. Lines 29 to 44 are about Christology. And we're not going to cover each line. This is an introductory video, not exhaustive. I really did a deep dive with the apostles and Nicene Creed's videos. Those were like over an hour. I'm just, I'm just going to introduce this. I just want to promote its knowledge, promote some basic facts, encourage it to be used, introduce its theology, and highlight some of its features. Let's just highlight three aspects as we give sort of commentary on the Athanasian Creed here, three sort of general observations that will work through. First, let's talk about the damnatory clauses, which are the most striking thing probably about the Athanasian Creed. They frame the whole document, and they

give it an intensity. I'll put up on the screen the first couple sentences here, at least the first sentence I'll put up, I'll put up the last sentence, line 44, and I'll also put from right in the middle, the hinge between section one and section two from the Trinity to Christology. This is also present where it is very clearly a point of emphasis in the Athanasian creed being hammered home, you must believe this to be saved. If you do not accept this creed, you are not worshiping God and you cannot be saved. So that is quite striking. Now, you saw there at the beginning, the Catholic faith.

Okay, it's going to, in line three, it's about to say, here's what we mean by, the Catholic faith. Just sometimes people get tripped up by this. Hopefully you're aware of this, that in that context, this is not referring to, you could honestly just sort of think of it as like Jude III, the faith that's been delivered, the deposit of divine revelation. But in this context, in the 5th and 6th centuries, for example, the alternative to this wouldn't be like the Eastern Orthodox tradition or something like that. There isn't a division

there yet, and all throughout, and even after the division, the Eastern Orthodox Church will also call itself the Catholic Church. The alternatives in this context would include groups like the Aryans and other groups that rejected the Trinity and the Christology that's about to be developed. So when you hear that word Catholic here, let's just define that as the Creed defines it, and see who's being rejected by that claim. It's these other heretical groups that were around at that time. All right. A further note on line two here, by the way, this is part of the initial damnatory clause. Which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled. Without doubt, he shall perish everlastingly. The words whole and undefiled here mean that from the perspective of the creed,

it is not sufficient to say, well, I believe some parts, but not others. And then, and therefore I can kind of give a general sign-off to the Athanasian creed. Or you might say something like, well, I affirm the big picture, but not all the details. Well, that's the kind of mentality that's being worded off here by these words whole and undefiled. Sometimes in modern subscription to doctrinal standards, you can sort of take an exception to a certain clause or that kind of thing. But the creed is saying, no, you cannot pick and choose from the contents of this creed. So it's making a very strong claim that I think we do well to really let that land on us.

And even if you don't agree with that, at least to try to understand why they would say this. You know, and why this would take hold and become authoritative for so long among so many. The people who identified this theology as essential for salvation were not just mean people. You know, they had a framework. They had reasons why they were doing this. As harsh as it sounds to us, in principle, it is biblical to set boundary markers, to set a boundary and say, you know, this is Christianity. And this isn't. If we never do that, if we don't have any what I call first-ranked doctrine, okay, that determine the boundaries of orthodoxy, then Christianity becomes a very amorphous religion. And it's really hard to say what is Christianity, because there's no edges that determine what it is and what it isn't.

But this is biblical in the New Testament. We find lots of anathemas. Galatians 1 gives anathemas for a contrary gospel. There's actually several other anathemas as well. And so just to understand here, the creed is saying that, the creed is channeling that same apostolic urgency. and saying, this doctrine is necessary. Now, in other contexts, I've given my reasons for arguing that the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, one of those points in this creed, is a first-rank doctrine. It is essential. And I've engaged with Mormons and Unitarians who disagree very strongly with me, and I respect where they are coming from.

But I would say this is my view. This is why I think is really true. And I would say I'm following in a great tradition. Christian reflections, such as one of the great ecumenical creeds of the church in saying that. And my reasons that I gave in my dialogue with Jacob Hanson are essentially, and I talked about this also in my video on whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. For me, what it boils down to is that the doctrine of the Trinity determines both which God we worship and how we worship him. But let's see what the Athanasian creed has to say about this a little more. Second thing I want to

highlight in terms of the contents of this creed. Let's talk about the Trinity. First, here's where it immediately picks up from what you've already seen after that initial damnatory clause. Line three, and the Catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. Okay, so line four there, as you just saw identifies two possible errors. The error of confounding the persons there is a reference to subalianism or modalism, which basically says the father, the son, and the spirit are not distinct persons within the Trinity, but are different modes or manifestations of the same divine being. And this was a view in the early church. A lot of contemporary Christians, unfortunately,

and often unintentionally lapse into some version of this. If you've ever heard someone pray, you know, God, thank you. Father God, thank you for dying on the cross for my sins, this kind of thing. That's getting into trouble in this manner. So the creed is saying we cannot detract from the threeness of these persons, but then the other error in the other direction is we also cannot detract from the oneness of the substance, dividing the substance is the other error that's identified there. And that error would include Aryan and semi-Aryan ideas

that the son and or the spirit are divine in an inferior sense to the Father. The creed is basically saying, we want to get the threaness and the oneness right. You can't puncture the threaness of the persons, but you also can't puncture the oneness of the substance. The son and the spirit are full, God and possess the same Godhead as the Father. Now the next two lines give us the positive declaration of this truth over and against those heretical alternatives.

Line five, for there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit, three persons. Line six, but the Godhead of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. So line six here, one of the things that's interesting is that the terms glory and majesty are linked with the one divine substance. So we can say that the sun and the spirit don't have a different glory or a different majesty unique to themselves. Rather, there is one divine glory and majesty that is equally shared by the three persons of the godhead. And this emphasis is going to draw up what is implicit here already, and what will be worked through here

is the doctrine of divine simplicity that God is without parts. That's being, here's why I say that's implicit. You'll see as we go, this emphasis on what is shared by the three persons is further elaborated in line 7 through 12 by referencing other divine attributes, such as the father is,

such is the son, and such is the Holy Spirit. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated and the Holy Spirit uncreated, the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Spirit Eternal, and yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal, as also there are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible. So what the Creed is doing here is emphasizing the unity of the divine substance by referencing various divine attributes like eternality or incomprehensibility and noting that there are not three different versions or expressions or instantiations of

those attributes. And what is implicit in that is the doctrine of divine simplicity, which is the idea that God is not made up of different parts or divisible qualities. His attributes like eternality are identical with his one indivisible being. So when I say, for example, God the Father is omnipotent, the word omnipotent is not referencing a different omnipotence than that which is possessed by the son. The son has the exact same omnipotence. There's only one divine power. And as the creed says this about the divine attributes, it also says the same about the divine

names in lines 13 through 20. And I hope you see the unity of the Godhead that is being worked out here. line 13 so likewise the father is almighty the son almighty and the holy spirit almighty and yet there are not three almighty's but one almighty so the father is god the son is god and the holy spirit is god and yet they are not three gods but one god so likewise the father is lord the son lord and the holy spirit lord and yet they are not three lords but one lord for like as we are compelled by the christian verity to acknowledge knowledge every person by himself to be God and Lord, so we are forbidden by the Catholic religion to say there are three gods or three Lord's. So what is very clear here is that the

father does not have a rich divinity, whereas the son's divinity is slightly diluted, something like this. Each person of the Trinity is fully God. And the observation that I would make here is just how foundational divine simplicity is to all of this. Lots of Christians find that doctrine confusing. By the way, I have a whole video on divine simplicity. I also, if that's of interest to you, I also have a shorter one. If you only have five minutes to spare, you can watch my five-minute video instead. I also did a debate with Ryan Mullins, who's a very good philosopher. So he's written on these things. So if that interests you, you can check out that as well. What I would want to encourage is basically for Christians who maybe haven't worked through the doctrine of God or

theology proper, very much. Just not to underestimate these classical doctrines that are part of classical theism like divine simplicity, divine impassibility, what I observe is that many Christians today, especially many evangelicals, are quick to jettison these because at first they seem so weird. And my pastoral burden about this, my theological burden about this would be to encourage Christians to be patient to try to understand why these doctrines have been so foundational in church history. Metaphor I use is think of a bridge, and there's a certain part of the bridge down underneath that is holding the whole thing together. And you can't really see it that well, but it's there. And if you take out that piece of the bridge, it visibly won't look different, but it'll collapse when you go over it.

That's something, maybe too strong a little, but that's something like, like how I feel about doctrines like divine simplicity. They don't seem that important on first glance, but they're holding so much together. And hopefully you can see that a little bit in how the Athanasian Creed expounds the unity of the Trinity. Now, in the next section, lines 21 to 26, the Athanasian Creed covers how the persons are related to each other. What are their distinct relations? The father is made of none, 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, neither 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 a fore or after another. None is greater or lesser than another. But the whole three persons are co-eternal and co-equal. Now, what I, so what you can see, here's where you get double procession. Hopefully you notice that in line 23 there. The Holy Spirit's proceeding from the father and the son. If you're curious about that doctrine, I'm not going to cover that much here. You can see my interview with Fred Sanders, who is a great Trinitarian theologian. He helps us understand that. But what I want to point here, something I actually didn't notice before this round of studying the Athanasian greed, isn't it interesting from what I'm

I emboldened. I don't know if you notice this or not. Let me go back up on my notes here and see where, what is it, line 23, same line, line 23, that begottenness and procession are distinguished. Okay, the manner of production of the sun and the manner of production of the spirit are different. So the Holy Spirit is not begotten of the Father. Now, hopefully we understand that Createdness and begotteness are different. So these are already, hopefully distinct in our minds. To create is to produce something unlike yourself. To beget is to produce something like yourself.

Begetting describes how the father produces the son. But hence the fittingness of the terms father and son, by the way. But let's just remember, that's an eternal production. It is never not happening. It always moves me to worship to think that, you know, if the doctrine of the Trinity is true, as we believe it is, then rock bottom reality more real than time and space itself is these relations, which we can't fully understand in our mind, but we repeat the language of scripture to try to understand them. And we can say, understanding the

limitations of our words, that love is more real than time, because love exists in the triune relations before there is such a thing as time. But here's what I want to focus here. The Athanasian Creed goes even further than just the distinction between createdness and begottenness. It's distinguishing begottenness and procession. Okay. What that means is the Holy Spirit is not a second son. We shouldn't think of the Trinity as though there's a father and then there's the son and then there's the younger brother of that son. So you have the father and two sons. Rather, the manner by which the spirit is produced by the father and the son is totally distinct. So we don't call the third. third person of the Trinity, a son. Now, how is beginning different from procession? I have a great

answer to that. Oh, this is an answer that theologians often have to give, and that is I have absolutely no clue. I cannot possibly put any more texture on it than that. But we still need to know that they are different, even if we can't articulate how. And I think that's a defensible position that Christians have often arrived upon. John of Damascus back in the 8th century said, we have learned that there is a difference between generation and procession, but the nature of that difference we in no way understand. The creed then stipulates the necessity of that for right worship and salvation. So all that it's just unpound is that you got to believe all this to worship the true God and to be saved. Then it pivots to Christology, which will take a moment

to describe here as well. And this also, the first thing that is said is that this is insisted upon for salvation and for right worship of the Trinity. And then it's defined. Line 30, for the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before all worlds, and man of substance of his mother born in the world. Perfect God and perfect man of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting, equal to the father as touching his godhead, and inferior to the father as touching his manhood. By the way, that last little phrase about equal versus inferior helps us understand the verse. If earlier, when we said earlier the father and the son and the spirit, none is greater than the other, and you said, what about the

verse in John where Jesus says the father is greater than I? Hopefully line 33 helps you understand that a little bit. We're talking there about the human nature. Now, the emphasis here in this section is on the two natures of Christ, the human nature and the divine nature. When we get in line 32 that he is perfect man, that is not designating moral perfection, that Jesus is sinless. Now, that is also the case, but that's not what is in view here. This is a comment on the way in which he is. is man, saying he's not a half man, he's not a hybrid, he's not part human or something like that, he's fully human. To use the language of the New Testament, Jesus was made like his brothers in every respect, Hebrews 2, 17, every respect. I just taught on this on Sunday at our church,

I was just glorious to think about, you know, Jesus knowing what it's like to be underslept, Jesus knowing what it's like to get the flu, Jesus knowing what it's like to have a toothache, Jesus knowing what it's like to get food poisoning, you know, everything we go through in this life except for sin, he is a sympathetic awareness of, as he relates to us now as our high priest. That's wonderfully encouraging to think about. But here I want to just expound this language that you saw there of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Okay, what is going on here? When we get that word reasonable, we're not just saying Jesus was a reasonable guy. You know, you could argue with him and he would hear you out, a very reasonable person in the colloquial

sense of that. Rather, the creed here is ruling out an early heresy called Apollinarianism, which held that Christ had a human body and soul, but a divine mind rather than a human rational mind. The divine logos is sort of taking the place of a human mind. And by the way, as a side note, But this clause also seems to be assuming dualism, which is a view of human constitution that says human beings are a compound of both body and soul. If you're familiar with that debate, some people say it's body, soul, spirit. Okay, some people say, no, it's just body, soul. That's dualism. And that's the dominant view in the tradition. A lot of people today want to sweep body, uh, soul off the table altogether and say, in some sense, there's different versions of this.

We're just fundamentally made of one thing. We're not a lot of. a compound of body and soul. We'll come back to that, but the important point for here is that the emphasis in this section is on Christ having a human rational mind, contrary to the teaching of Apollinaris in the early church. So that's the emphasis here, distinctness of these two natures, and then the next section emphasizes the unity of Christ's person, who although he is man and God yet is not two, but one Christ. One, this is an interesting phrase we'll unpack, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person, for as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God

and man is one Christ. The danger of being opposed in this section is Nestorianism, and that there's some dispute about how widely that term can function to refer to things. But the most common referent is the idea that there are two persons in Christ in some sense, so that the unity of the person of Christ is punctured. And here the Athanasian Creed is drawing from Council of Calcedon in 451. What is fascinating, though, in how it opposes this. And it shows how much further the Athanasian Creed goes, than the Nicene is the way unity is discussed in line 35. One, not by conversion of the godhead into the flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God. Okay.

So when the divine and human natures are united in Christ, the divine was not converted into humanity, leaving deity behind. Rather, the human was taken up into the divine. Now, don't, I mean, that's the language, taking up, taking, you know. So, in other words, don't think of the human, by the way, this is going to become relevant for how theosis or participation in God is rooted in the incarnation. That's an interesting discussion. For now, think of it like this.

Don't think that there's the human nature in one end zone of a football field, the divine nature's in the other end zone, and so they, they come towards one another and they meet at the 50-yard line and are there united. That's not it. Rather, the union is fully personal in the divine son. It is the eternal son of God who unites the two natures so that the human nature of Christ does not in any way constitute a person apart from that union with the divine son. And the technical way to put this is that the human nature is impersonal in itself,

and hypostatic, but personalized by union with the divine, that's n-hypostatic. I put that out there because I know people sometimes want to go into these nitty-gritty things. That is fast, there is so much involved in that discussion. So much. That's fascinating. It's also interesting in line 37 that dualism, the human person being both body and soul, is an analogy here for the hypostatic union. So the mysterious way that Christ is one person with two natures, fully God and fully man,

as you see on screen here, is described with reference to how the human person is composed of these two different elements, the body and the soul. This is one reason why I have concerns, strong concerns about how much dualism is falling away today. It's very trendy in certain circles. This part of the Athanasian Creed is a reminder to us of how, embedded dualism is to the Christian tradition. Here it is at a fundamental juncture explaining Christology in one of the great ecumenical creeds. The final lines of the creed expound the work of Christ. I won't dwell on this because I've done very similar phrases in my earlier commentaries on the apostles and Nicene creeds, but I put them up in case you want to read through them,

and you can note what I've emboldened here. I just want to point out that phrase, the Father, God Almighty is still being used here. So if people, the Unitarians want to say, oh, that phrase is somehow at odds with the Trinity, we can just observe that, you know, the Trinitarians themselves did not perceive that language to be necessarily problematic. All right, that's, I'm going to leave it there. What else, oh, you can see, by the way, by what I put up on screen, it does affirm the descent of Christ to the dead, so that's interesting. Hopefully this video has served as an introduction. this has been useful to you to just make you want to do further research. There's so much more to unpack, but the Athanasian Creed really does have some unique advantages. It pushes the ball

further down the field in certain respects than the Apostles and Nicene, and it's often neglected today. So I hope that you would consider using the Athanasian Creed in your church, in your personal life. It can be used liturgically. It can be used for teaching. It can be used devotionally, even, but this is a wonderful creed that has been too often neglected in the church today. Hopefully this video will help us be motivated to incorporate it more in our lives individually and corporately. All right, thanks for watching, everybody.