Truth Unites - The Nicene Creed: Every Word Explained

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Gavin Ortlund gives a word-for-word commentary on the Nicene Creed. Credo: https://credomag.com/Sola Media: https://solamedia.org/Pro Ecclesia Conference: https://www.pro-ecclesia.org/2026Gavin’s defense of the Trinity: https://youtu.be/gYIBb5SDybg?si=7IeCfGee2VX-WOupGavin’s video on heaven: https://youtu.be/POwtTZVrxes?si=S6zRzcZFrKRjtRuZTruth 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/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

This video is a word-for-word commentary on the Nicene Creed, probably the most widely used confession of faith in the Christian world. I've worked very hard to prepare this, both research and then condensing it down, organizing it. If you watch this video all the way to the end, what you'll get is a walk-through of the whole Creed, including three key differences between the Latin and Greek versions of the Creed. One is trivial, one is interesting, one is hugely divisive. You'll know the meaning of key theological terms like consubstantial, begotten, spying, Cyration, procession. These are essential for understanding the Holy Trinity, which is the mystery at the heart of the Christian faith that will occupy us for all eternity. It is worshipful to think about these words. I hope this video will have a devotional feel. It's certainly studying it drew me up into worship myself. I hope you'll experience that on your end as well. And by the end, you'll understand how orthodoxy hangs upon this tiny little Greek letter, a single iota, that separates these two words, homo usias and homo, usias, and homo. homoi usias, that's a dramatic story that we'll get into. There's so much to explore here.

My favorite part of the creed is the phrase, God from God, light from light, true God from true God. I could spend the rest of my life just studying that little phrase, light from light. Those words whisper to us what's been going on for all eternity past, and I can't wait to unpack that more fully. We're going to work through every single word, 224 words in English, 139 in Latin, 175 in Greek. Leave a little wiggle room on those last two. And this is not the kind of video that'll go viral, but I hope it will serve. And so please help me share this, like it, get it out there. That really helps.

Five preliminary remarks before we dive into the words. Number one, why do creeds matter in the first place? And this, I don't want to assume this, because sometimes Christians have an anti-creed mentality today, especially some modern Protestants. But the fact is, creeds have been used all throughout church history for teaching for what we call catechises, especially in preparation for baptism, but also for the communal liturgy and worship of the church. And that's true for Protestants as well. Sometimes you'll hear the idea of no creed but the Bible. That problem with that is there are creeds in the Bible. Even back into the first

century, you can see creeds used in the apostolic age that make their way into the New Testament, like the two that you can see on screen, for example. So from the dawn of church history, all the way up to recent times, Christians have used creeds, and though Protestants don't view them as infallible, they're still incredibly valuable. In fact, I think creeds are especially helpful in the world right now, because we're in a time where there's such chaos and just a feeling of slipperiness in the modern world, and there's this ache in so many hearts for substance and for boundaries and for time-tested ancient truth. And creeds today can help us, like, they're like food to hunger, like a map to those who are wandering. I hope you'll feel that as we go. Preliminary remark number two,

why the Nicene Creed specifically? In other words, if we're going to do a deep dive into a creed, why this one? Well, I've already done the Apostles' Creed, and we're going to do the Athanasian Creed later on maybe next year. But stated simply, this Creed, the Nicene Creed, is arguably the most important creed in all of church history. It eloquently sums up the core of Christianity, and it can function as a rallying point for different Christians, different Christian traditions today. So it can be a unifying point amidst other differences. And it's, of course, much in discussion right now because from the time of my recording this, it happened 1,700 years ago this month in the year 325 AD. And basically, I just want to strongly encourage use of the Nicene Creed in

churches and other contexts today. I hope this video will serve that and encourage that. And here are three other resources for those who want to go deeper. Perhaps you know of the Credo magazine and podcast. Matthew Barrett and others are doing great work, retrieving classical Christianity for the sake of Reformation in the church today. And the Credo conference happened in May 2025, not long ago from my recording this, and was specifically on the Nicene Creed. And you can look for those resources coming out from Sola Media. This is another great group doing work serving Reformation in the church today. rooted in church history. So if you want a Protestantism that's historically robust and rooted,

you need to know about resources that Mike Horton and others are putting out at Solar Media. I also want to mention the Pro Ecclesia conference. This is coming up in January, 2006, in Birmingham, Alabama, and again, it's all on the Nicene Creed. And it has these brilliant theologians like Matthew Levering and Kevin Van Hooser. So that conference has a bit of an ecumenical interest. Highly recommend checking it out. If you want Historic Protestant theology. These are three groups you need to know about, Credo, Sola, Media, Proeclesia.

Again, the proeclacia is really focused on ecumenical work with other traditions as well. Links to all three in the video description. Nobody's paying me to say that. I just like those groups. Third preliminary remark, is the Nicene Creed biblical? The intent of the Nicene Creed was not to invent a new doctrine.

I want to say this because I think people have this worry sometimes that we're getting these. later abstract categories that are not biblical. But the intent of the Nicene Creed was simply to reaffirm and clarify the apostolic faith of the church, responding to a new heresy that had arisen. So in the early 4th century, there's a priest in Alexandria named Arias, and he begins teaching that Jesus Christ was a sort of semi-divine creature. Okay? Here, Arias, this is why it's tricky. He had a high view of Jesus, but he ultimately taught that Jesus was not eternal, but was created by God the Father. The famous phrase from the Ariens was, there was a when when he was not.

In other words, there was a time that the Son of God did not exist. And as this teaching is spreading, around 318 bishops gather at Nicaea in modern-day Turkey, summoned by the Emperor Constantine, to respond to this threat. And they produce what we call the Nicene Creed. Now, what I want to emphasize here is that what is new is not the substance of the doctrine of the Trinity that is affirmed in the Nicene Creed. This was a more developed and technical understanding of what was already present, already with, you know, albeit with errors and with misunderstandings at points. But what was really newer was Arias' teaching. Granted, Arias had some precursors as well. But you don't

find there was a when that he was not in the New Testament. Okay? You look through Matthew to Revelation. You're never going to find that Aryan slogan, but you will find in the New Testament the disciples worshiping Jesus and calling him God. So it's true they didn't use Nicene terminology like Homo Ucian, a term will define in a moment. They're responding to those terms come in response to Aryanism. But what I'm trying to suggest here is that the Nicene theology that, that comes out in the fourth century is a clarification and re-articulation of what was present prior to that. Okay? There's certainly development from first century to fourth century, but there's a continuity in the substance of the faith. Now that's very complicated to make that

case. I say more about that in my video, the Trinity is apostolic, not an accretion, where I'm trying to highlight this organic development. So you can see that link in the video description. Preliminary comment number four. When we speak of the Nicene Creed, we're actually speaking about the product of the second Ecumenical Council in 381, because what happens is after the Council of Nicaea in 325, there continues to be raging controversy about this throughout the 4th century. Actually, at times, it seems as though the Aryans are going to win. But in the year 381, over 50 years after the Council of Nicaa, the world's bishops meet again, this time in the city of Constantinople, and they expanded upon the Nicene Creed that was originally crafted in 325,

and it's that expanded version that we're dealing with here. So technically we can call it the Nicino-Constantinoplatan creed, but that has too many syllables. So let's just call it the Nicene Creed here for short. That's what is often done. And what we want to highlight is some of the expansions. So we'll talk about, you know, how much more there is about the Holy Spirit in 381, as opposed to 325, and we'll explain why. So, by the way, if you want a fascinating time of church history and such a watershed time to study, study the fourth century.

The fourth century is such a pivotal time in the history of the church for this reason and others. Final preliminary comment. Let's talk about the structure of the creed. Let's just zoom out and get the forest before we get the trees, because we're going to get into a lot of detail. We want to see the big picture.

The Nicene Creed has some overlap with the earlier Apostles' Creed, which I've also done a video on, by the way, if you want to check that out. And like the Apostles' Creed, it has a Trinitarian structure. So you can see in red on screen here the three objects of belief that organized the bulk of the creed, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And what is immediately evident here is the length of time spent on the second member of the Trinity, the Son of God. And this is mainly because the person of the Son is what is in dispute, as we've just recounted. But it's also because the Creed unpacks the work of the Son of God in his incarnation. The incarnation means when God the Son became man. So you can say

that the Trinity is the skeleton of the creed, but the incarnation is the heart. And we want to take some time to unpack these 10 verbs underlined in red here and work through each one of them. typically what we sometimes emphasize is just the death and resurrection of Jesus, but you get a fuller, more holistic account of the work of Christ here that's really helpful to think through. And it's striking how little is confessed in the creed beyond the Trinity. You get the final section here following the Holy Spirit, these primary three articles here, church, baptism, and resurrection, which you can see in red on screen. But there's not a lot beyond that. There is nothing in the Nicene Creed about predestination or the rapture. or marriage or the Lord's Supper or so many other important things, but we're just getting a portrait of the core of the Christian faith.

And what it holds before us is a series of truths that we never could have guessed. If we were inventing our own religion, I very much doubt we'd come up with a Trinity or an incarnation or a crucifixion or a bodily resurrection. But these are the truth that have been revealed by God. This is not a human philosophy. This is the very truth of God. And as we dive in, I just want to recall to our minds what some of you will remember from this

Rich Mullins song, which has a fascinating story behind it, how he wrote that. And it's really about the Apostles' Creed as drawn from G.K. Chesterton's book, Orthodoxy. But it will service us well here as we get into this. He says, I did not make it. No, it is making me is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man. As we go, I hope you'll feel something of this sense of, I did not make it, it is making me. This is this great truth that has been revealed by God, and it is absolutely worshipful. It will make pastoral applications as well, but I hope you experience this as this sense of

this robust truth that is objective and outside of us and worthy of our belief. With that backdrop in mind, let's dive in, and we're going to break it down into 20 chapters. Chapter 1. I believe in, or we believe in. Now, right out of the gate, we face the first difference in the Latin versus the Greek versions of the creed, where interestingly, the Greek typically has the plural first person, we believe, and the Latin has first person singular. I believe. Now, I don't think we need to see this as a matter of right versus wrong, as both are fitting for different usages in different contexts. For example, corporate liturgy, liturgy versus an individual baptizant reciting the creed. And I kind of like that both

have been used because saying, I believe, highlights the personal nature of this confession, but saying we believe highlights the communal nature, and both are appropriate. Now, the word believe here means more than just an expression of opinion like, I believe, the 1980s, San Francisco 49ers were the best football team of all time, which they were. But that's an opinion, and you can debate that. And you're just stating your mental assent there to something. In English translation, we say, I believe in. So you have that English preposition there.

And this verb involves more than just an intellectual assent or opinion. It means allegiance. It means trusting devotion. It means a sense of reliance upon and consecration to what is being believed. in saying, I believe you're planting your flag in the soil. You're saying this is the team I'm on. I'm choosing a side. And I just want to say before, I know this is a simple point, but boy, this helps, I think,

to say, just to encourage people how thrilling it is to give yourself to something in this way. I hope you know how good it feels to say, I believe. You know, this is the pathway to freedom where you're giving yourself to something bigger than yourself. And in a time in which there's a lot of talk about my truth and huge emphasis upon personal liberty and so forth, saying, I believe, is the path to true freedom. This is the secret that makes life work. When you don't live for yourself, but you give yourself to a reality that is bigger than yourself. And when we affirm the Nicene Creed, we are giving ourselves to the biggest and most radical movement in human history, the Christian story. Here's a happy thought.

I talked about this in my video on the Apostles Creed. Just imagine all the people who've before us in history and said these same words that we're uniting ourselves to them by saying them. You know, think of an old farmer in Corinth who's reciting these words at the end of his life, having come to faith. Think of a wealthy merchant living outside Rome who comes with his family to the waters of baptism, and he says these same words. Think of an actress in Antioch, who becomes a Christian after a licentious lifestyle and declares these words, and her life is totally changed. Think of a young child in a remote village in ancient England, converted through Augustine's missionary labors there around the 6th century.

And this child comes to Christ. Think of all these different people saying words like crucified under Pontius Pilate, begotten from the Father before all ages, the resurrection of the body, etc. These words have been said by so many who come before us. And I don't mean to make too much of this, but just think of it like this. If you feel lost in this world, I invite you to do. join all these, this ancient chorus of voices who have come before us. Let them be your brothers and sisters in the faith. Give yourself to this system of belief. We all long for a place of belonging.

I invite you to find your place of belonging in this great noble religion we call Christianity. Something is going to find our allegiance. Let it be the content put forth by the Nicene Creed. And I will say, last thing, there is absolutely no joy imaginable, like crossing that threshold into belief and just complete surrender with the words, I believe. Nothing can meet it, no experience can match it. Chapter 2. One God, the Father Almighty, by the way, I'm going to put Latin and Greek up each time with each phrase at each chapter, so you can see every word as we go.

Today, we talk about monotheism, which is belief in one God, as though it's something fairly standard fair, but commitment to one God was a battlefront for the early church. It was theologically and politically revolutionary in the context of the Roman Empire to believe in one God, because this meant you're refraining from worshipping all these other gods, including sometimes the emperors who claim to be gods, and this meant a tremendous amount of persecution.

This is why the early Christians were called atheists. Because in the second century, for example, you find Justin Martyr explaining this rejection, he's talking about why Christians reject the demons involved in pagan worship. And he says, hence, we are called atheists, and we confess that we are atheists so far as gods of this sort are concerned, but not with respect to the most true God. and then he mentions Father's Son and Spirit. There are some wrinkles in Justin Martyr's Theology of the Trinity, full disclosure. Now, the one God here in the creed, but again, I'm trying to always drop the emotional components of this.

Do you feel the nobility of this radical commitment? We're not going to worship any of these other gods, only this one God. Think of, you know, a husband and wife committing themselves to this one partner. Monotheism was a battle for the early church like this. It's just helpful to remember that. Now the one God, this is a tricky part, here is identified as the Father Almighty. We've got to talk about this phrase. It's more complicated than you might think.

First of all, this is not unique to Christian usage. This is a well-known phrase in the pagan world, the epic poem, the Ieneid, frequently uses this phrase for the god Jupiter. Let's explore a little bit what the Christians meant by using this phrase to describe God. Now, by the way, my favorite commentary on the Nicene Creed is this newer book from Baker Academic by Jared Ortiz and Daniel Keating. This is a really great book. Highly recommend it. And they discuss this phrase. And they point out that basically, originally, it was likely there was a comma between these two words, the Father, comma, the Almighty.

By the time you get to Nicaea, they had become a unit. And we want to ask three questions about that. Number one, why use the term Almighty? If you're going to pick out right here out of the gate one attribute, why omnipotence rather than say omnipresence or something else? But as I study this, again, it draws your heart up into worship. The term Almighty here is translated from the Latin omnipotains and the Greek pontocrator, which etymologically breaks down as ruler of awe. This is a word that's used all the time, that Greek term, Ponto Crotor, in the book of Revelation.

And it's in connection to God's kingly rule and the worship of God. So I think I can say this. The meaning of this term, Almighty, has a range of nuance that goes a little bit beyond just a strict focus on power that what involves that. Don't think of this term as isolating one divine attribute, okay? Think of this term as conveying the full lordship of God. Remember that phrase, ruler of all. So this term can draw to our minds the categories of supremacy and sovereignty and unrivaled authority, the Father Almighty, ruler of all, overall.

Second question, what does the term Father mean here? Ortiz and Keating have a good discussion of this. Again, you start tapping on these words and looking into them and you realize how complicated things are, you might just blow over. That's why I try to do in a commentary, you try to pull up all the little nuances of meaning. So we understand it more, so our hearts and our lives are drawn more into worship. Now, they discuss, first of all, how this is not sexist, but rather fitting, to use this term, rather than speaking of the first two members of the godhead as mother and daughter.

On page 54, they have a great discussion of that. And then they note six ways that the early Christians spoke of God as Father, which you can see on the screen here. These are all drawing from Scripture. And what they all have in common is the notion of God as source. but what is ultimately in view here in the Nicene Creed is the fifth meaning God is the source of Jesus Christ his son. So in other words, the word father has a Trinitarian meaning here. It's identifying the first member of the godhead, the father of Jesus Christ.

Now immediately, this raises the third question we need to address. And this is tricky. Does this mean Unitarianism, meaning belief in one divine person? Because Unitarians point to this language and say, look, the one. One God is the Father who creates heaven and earth. It doesn't say the one God is the Father, Son, and Spirit. In response, we can say four things. Number one, obviously Unitarianism was not the intention of the Creed since just a few words later

we're going to get and in one Lord Jesus Christ as a parallel object of belief, and he's going to be called homooseon, meaning consubstantial. So if the bishops of 325 or 381 had intended, unitarianism, they wouldn't have used this word and then immediately contradicted it by what comes right after and, in fact, is the whole intention of the creed. Second, the use of the term father here is instructive because the word father implies the existence of a son. Otherwise, there's no one that he is fathering. The Aryans restricted God's fathering to his creative work. And they say, basically prior to creation, there's no one to father. But the Nicene Christians, like Athanasius,

said, no, fathering is eternal. It pertains to the divine essence, not merely to his external works. Here's how Leo the Great would put it later in the fifth century. He's commenting on this phrase, Father Almighty. He says, when there is a belief in God and the omnipotent father, then the son is shown to be co-eternal with him. In no way differing from the Father because he was born God from God, the omnipotent from the omnipotent, the co-eternal from the eternal, et cetera. Remember those phrase omnipotent from omnipotent. We'll come back to that X from X formula in a second. So if that's the case, though, then you say, well, why use language like this? If father implies son, why do they say one God, the father? Third comment, we can call, and this is the basic answer,

we can call each person of the Godhead, the one God. That's the basic answer, I think. So For example, I can say, I believe in one God who came into the world and died on a cross. Now, in that sentence, the one God means God the Son. But I'm not denying the divinity of, say, the Holy Spirit in that sentence. Or I could say, I believe in one God. In fact, that one God dwells within me. And there, the term one God refers to the Holy Spirit. Fourth comment, and here's just one level deeper.

Oh boy, skip this one if you don't want to get a head. headache or you don't have any aspirin handy. This is a little tricky, but I want to say it. I've learned not to skim over the surface. People want depth. I've learned that. So let me not skip over this. Let me throw out a term and you can read a longer definition on the screen and that's the term appropriation. You really want to go into Trinitarian doctrine. This is helpful. Essentially, appropriation is when certain names or qualities or operations are attributed to one person in the godhead while recognizing that they're not exclusive to. that person. A person of the Trinity may be identified with reference to a particular action

because his eternal trinitarian character is instructively related to that action or similar. So you might say, for example, you might consider the father as particularly characterized by omnipotence, but you're not denying that the son is omnipotent, or you might speak of the son as particularly characterized by wisdom, but you're not denying that the spirit is wise, or the spirit is characterized by love, but you're not saying the father isn't loving, and so on and so forth. For a fuller case on this and the fittingness of this kind of language, see Thomas Aquinas, Sumo Theologica, Part 1, Question 38, Article 7.

Fred Sanders is also a great Trinitarian theologian. I've interviewed him, but in the meantime, also check out this book on the Trinity as an example to go deeper. chapter three maker of heaven and earth of all things visible and invisible again we can glide by these words there's a lot packed in here this is a total rejection of nosticism you know but it's helpful to just pause and work through each word and say what's really why is it worded in this way right essentially here what we have is a further identification of god the father by means of this activity of creation. And this is significant because creation is what grounds our relationship with God. Nothing else about sin or salvation will make sense unless we have this category of

createdness. He made us and therefore we are accountable to him. But creation is especially relevant to the heart and purpose of the Nicene Creed because in just a moment the creed is going to contrast createdness with begottenness. We'll get to that in just a moment. But we need to know what creation means because it's an alternative to that and because this frames everything else about our relationship to our God. Now the phrase creator of heaven and earth is using Amerism when it says heaven and earth that draws from Genesis 1-1. A merism is just a rhetorical device that uses two contrasting elements to refer to the whole. So if I say I worked day and night, day and

night means I worked all the time, right? I worked continuously around the clock. me, I worked at all times. Similarly, heaven and earth is just an ancient way of saying everything. A modern parallel could be the universe, something like that. But then the creed adds, of all things visible and invisible, and this is a rejection of the Gnostic idea that the physical realm is bad and there has a separate understanding for how it is created and the invisible realm, the spirit realm is good. And the creed is saying, no, God made both of those. The language here draws from Colossians 116, which is actually talking about the sun's role in creation, which we'll get to. But just what a happy thought that even the invisible realm of angels was brought into being by God.

I love thinking about this. You know, when we say the Aryan phrase, there was a when when he was not, that doesn't apply to the sun, but it does apply to the angels. So Michael and Gabriel, and Raphael and these other mighty angels, there was a point at which they did not exist, and then God brought them into being. I don't think we can even imagine in our minds what the creation of an angel would look like, or we're saying it's invisible, so you can't even imagine that, but in terms of visual, what it looks like, unless you're speaking metaphorically or something. But just think about like this, like there's this massive distinction between Jesus and the angels. If you see Michael or if you see the risen Jesus, either way you might hit the floor.

But in the one case, you're seeing a creature. In the other case, you're seeing eternal God. Jesus is not a mere angel in the sense of a created being. Now, again, the question arises here is why is God the Father specifically identified as the Creator? The answer is appropriation. That's why I went into that. I feel like that's a sticking point for some people. And to know that, all you need to do is keep reading, because we're going to get to the son's role in just a moment, which you can see on the screen. there, we've actually already referenced that in Colossians 116, speaking of which, let's move on to the sun, the second major article of the creed chapter 4. Here you can see these words,

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ. Every word matters here. While I leave this phrase up on the screen, let me note two things. First of all, you can see there's no verb here in the Greek and Latin, if you know Greek or Latin, the word and carries over the previous verb, which is emphasizing that the father and son are the parallel objects of belief here. I believe in God the Father, and I believe in this second object of belief, one Lord Jesus Christ. Second of all, note that the biblical and covenantal language comes first, the Lord Jesus Christ. These are very concrete historical terms. Only after that, as a qualification of it, do we get one of the more philosophical terms like Homo Usian, for example.

So stemming from this, we want to make a general observation here that insofar as the Nicene Creed does use more technical and abstract and philosophical language, it's doing so as a pastoral necessity to clarify prior language that's more biblical but is potentially more ambiguous, as we'll see. Even the word God is kind of ambiguous, as we'll see. These, in other words, the 318 bishops at Nicaea are not just trying to sound smart, okay? They don't just like philosophy. They're arriving upon this vocabulary to clarify the truth in contrast to a particular error that has a written.

I like how C.S. Lewis puts this, good philosophy must exist if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. Some people don't like technical terms, but you have to have technical terms. if heretical ideas are being put out there with technical terms. You have to meet that challenge on its own terms, right? I've been doing some dialogues with Mormons lately. You can see my discussion with Jacob Hanson, or you can see response videos like this one, which I really enjoyed watching.

I hope I can talk to those people sometime. And I know one of the concerns that they will feel, which I want to try to respect and honor and appreciate and also just interact with as best as I can in a good faith way, is the concern about how technical the doctrine of the Trinity is. And there's concern here. Is this like a theology quiz and so forth? And just to explain a little bit from my perspective,

I would say as a Trinitarian Christian, these technical terms come along as a matter of pastoral necessity. You can get to heaven without ever hearing of the word Homo Ucian or knowing what it means or even being wrong about it, you know, if you just have a misunderstanding. Just think of Thomas, and he's just using the word God, which, but as we'll talk about, that word is kind of ambiguous. That's why we need to clarify it. but it's not wrong or bad to simply call Jesus God, as Thomas does.

It's only when the Aryans are taking over a huge portion of the sheep in the church and teaching them falsely that clarification is needed. And sometimes there's just no way to get the clarification without the technicality. So the heart of the Trinity is not just technicality for its own sake. It's for the sake of worshiping the God who actually is, as opposed to an idol or a human abstraction of our own imagining. Because we believe that the triune God is the one who is actually there. The Father of the Son and the Spirit are the real God.

And a false God or an idol can't save us because it doesn't exist. And so the point being, I'm trying to say these technicalities come in as a matter of a pastoral response to error. If you, I know others, my Mormon friends will disagree with that. I know, but I'm trying to explain why this, for my, our vantage point is by no means just a technicality. It's really important from a pastoral angle. Okay. So here we have the terms, one Lord Jesus Christ. Now the word Jesus is a name. This is the Aramaic version or one Aramaic variant of the name Joshua, which we know from the Old Testament. But Christ is not a name. It's not like Jesus's last name. This is a title

meaning Messiah or anointed one. What's really easy to blow over here is the adjective Lord, one Lord Jesus Christ. This is a very significant term, though also, again, like the word God, it's ambiguous. Frequently in the New Testament, the word God is used for the father, and the word Lord is used for the son, as in 1st Corinthians 8, 6, which is a very significant text, which I believe will return to. But there are exceptions to that usage, but the word Lord can have a couple different meanings. So sometimes it translates the Hebrew word Adani. Other times it translates the divine name given to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3. Typically there, many English translations will use all four letters capitalized in that case. And then you have the Greek word, Curias, meaning Lord,

and that can be used for a lot of different things. You know, you could have a soldier speaking to his commanding officer saying, my Lord, what do you command? Or something like that. But the most basic and primitive confession of Christianity that Jesus is Lord is going beyond merely a title of respect or some lesser claim than one that is fully divine. And that can be seen in many passages. But I think Philippians too is one of the most powerful for reasons I explain in this video. What I do there is I try to explore the Old Testament background to this language of every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, which is drawn from Isaiah 45. And you can see the video. for the full case, I will just put how N.T. Wright puts it at the whole point of Isaiah 40 to 55

is to emphasize that the God of Israel does not share his glory, and yet according to Paul, Jesus participates in the very identity of this one God. See that video for the full case there. Chapter 5. The only begotten son of God, born of the father before all ages. Now with this word begotten, we're getting into it. A little, one level deeper here. The creed is going to go deeper and deeper and deeper to ward off any possible misunderstanding, and with each level we'll try to worship God as we go. Now, first of all, when we hear the title, Son of God, here's another ambiguous phrase. It's kind of paradoxical because we almost always think of Jesus' divine nature when we hear Son of God. But in the Bible, it's more common that the term Son of Man refers to Christ's divinity, drawing from Daniel

chapter 7 and the title son of God references his humanity drawing from psalm 2 and other texts where that phrase has a messianic thrust it's kind of ironic you know son of man usually references divinity son of god humanity this is what terminology is so tricky because the terms and the substance can be very different that son of god is used all the time for the king of Israel basically But sometimes in the New Testament, the title Son of God does have a divine thrust, for example, at the Transfiguration in Matthew 17, the divine voice, for example. And this is the meaning of Son of God that is in view here in the Nicene Creed. This is the divine sun. Now, the word only begotten is monogenes in Greek.

The Latin translation here of the Greek is a little bit quirky, but no difference of meaning was intended. the Greek word is used frequently just to describe the only child that is born to a particular person. It's really not too complicated in that sense. There is dispute about this term. But just to be clear here, here's an example of Gyrus from Luke 8, who says he has an only daughter, monogenes daughter. Okay. Now, Philip Carey, this is another helpful book on the Nicene Creed, he points out that if we had an English equivalent to this usage of this term in Greek, it might be something like only born.

You can see him saying that on the screen. So that's what we're thinking here. So here what we're told is Jesus Christ, the one Lord Jesus Christ is the only born of God the Father. Now what we have to understand is that doesn't mean he came into being at a certain point in time. Just because we'll often think of human children being born. This is where the father's son imagery,

which is a wonderful way to think about, the first two persons in the Godhead that has been revealed to us, in the New Testament especially. But we just want to be so clear to not think of this as like a human father, beginning a human son, where the father pre-exists the son. And we know this because of the very next clause here, born of the father before all ages. Now, the Greek word translated age can mean world, but it normally carries the sense of a period of time. Some older translations, will say before all worlds, but the idea is before time began. So for example, you can see, I think the best biblical precedent for this language is actually from Jude 25, where what is

translated there as before all time is literally before all the ages in the plural. So the point is that this act of generation or beginning, those are roughly parallel terms, by which the father produces the son does not have a before and after. This is unlike a human father's son relationship where the father exists before the son. In this divine beginning, this father's son relationship, the relationship of beginning simply is. This is what is first and primal. It never started. It's always been going on. Okay, that's what before all ages means before time began. I mean, just let this thought land upon you. Again, this will draw us to worship. The generation of the sun is more real than time and space. What little we can understand about ultimate reality, about what is first and

most basic and explains everything else, is that it is more like a relationship than anything else. Now, again, we have to be so careful because our terms and our thoughts are finite and they're not going to wrap around the divine reality, which is infinite. Nonetheless, we can follow divine revelation and using these categories and speaking of this truly, even though we do so in a chastened way. And what we're saying is when we peel back the curtain and see what is really there, what exists eternally and necessarily, not just what happens to come to be, what is at the rock bottom of reality. It is not something that is static and impersonal. It is not a mere power. It is a father beginning a son. In other words, in a Trinitarian vision,

What is ultimate and what produces everything else is love. No words to describe the wonder of it. And we'll talk more about that as we get to the Holy Spirit who is that love. Chapter 6. God from God. Light from light. True God from true God. Now, if you can read Greek, you'll notice the second difference between the Latin and Greek

version of the creeds here. And that is the Greek does not have God from God. It did in 325, but by the time you get to the 381, creed, it was omitted in Greek. However, this difference is not hugely significant in terms of the substance of theology here because you do have true God from true God. Now, I think the reason this is my favorite phrase is because it's a simpler and more vivid way to capture what is conveyed with bigger and more technical words like consubstantial and begotten. The son of, put it like this, the son of God is both God and from God. In other words,

He's of the same essence as the father, but he's generated or begotten from the father. You can capture the second person of the godhead accurately, and quite simply, with these basic words, he's both God and he's from God. Okay? So put those on the screen, and what we want to do is highlight how each of these three words is important. So he's God from God. That highlights his nature. He's God from God, which highlights his relationship. of generation or begottenness. He's from something, and he's God from God, which highlights the

source of his divinity, and that's God the Father. Now, why do we add light from light? This may draw from Hebrews 1-3 and the language of the sun as the radiance of the glory of God. Francis Turriton explocates this language in terms of the sun as the image of the Father. He says he is the light of light, and God of God and bears the most express image of the person of the Father in himself, which of course we see in passages like Colossians 115, Christ is the image of the Father. But now this language, because this language is so fascinating to me, light from light, and it moves me so much to worship to think of this, light from light. I did some digging on this.

Turns out the phrase X from X, remember you saw earlier in the Leo quote, Omnipotence from Omnipotence, was used in prior local creeds. So wisdom from wisdom, immortal from immortal, this kind of thing. What I've been unable to tell is whether this language was also being appropriated by the Aryans such that the Nicene Christians are trying to turn this very language back on them for all my digging. I basically don't have any results on that yet. Let me know in the comments if you can help me on that.

I've been looking around. But what we can say from this X from X formula is that this is a pithy way to describe begottenness, the father-son relationship. And we can use this for other attributes. So we can say the son of God is omnipotence from omnipotence and glory and so on and so forth. And this is the nature of begottenness or generation, this relation that we think of as father's son, whereby one person is producing another, and yet in such a way that they share the same nature. So it's God from God, not something less than God from God. And hopefully you feel the excitement of how we're tapping into, again, what is at the heart of reality,

here, God from God. Now, why do we have this expanded phrase, true God from true God? What is that additional adjective true adding on? Again, this is because the word God is unfortunately kind of ambiguous. You know, all throughout the scripture, and both, you know, certainly in the Old Testament, you see angels called God pretty frequently, Psalm 82, and this kind of thing. So followers of areas could use the term God to refer to the sun. But often he would be thought of as kind of of a lesser deity. And so this is what is the creed is ruling out by saying he is true God. John Bear notes that this expansion specifically excludes any attempt to speak of the Son as being a lesser God than the Father, a second divinity or some kind of intermediary demiurge.

Rather, in whatever way the Father is thought of as God, this is to be held also of the Son. In other words, the Son is not inferior. By the way, there's nothing wrong with being a son. Sonship is not derogatory. Indeed, the son is true God. He's the same kind of God as the Father. So, in other words, when you get to New Testament passages that simply call Jesus God, like John 1 and Hebrews 1 and many others, it's not pivoting to some new, different, inferior meaning of the term God that's been used elsewhere for the Father. That's what the creed is saying, true God of true God. And the practical cash value here is when you get on your knees and worship Jesus, You're worshiping eternal God. Wonderful to think.

Chapter 7. Begotten not made. Now, what's going on here? The words beget and create refer to two distinct ways of producing something. So begetting means producing something of the same essence or nature. So, for example, a human father begets a human son. They're both human. but a man might create a house or a painting.

That's creating something of a different nature. And the creed is contrasting these two methods of production, Createdness versus begottenness. By the way, that word begotten is the same that has previously been used for only begotten. And it's doing this to try to ward off any possible misconstrual of language that the Aryans could attempt. Because the thing about it is the Aryans could affirm so much but simply mean the words differently.

So they were prepared to say that Jesus was brought into being before all ages. Okay, he's kind of the first creature by which God made all the rest. And the creed is saying, no, it's not enough to say he was created before all worlds. You have to say he wasn't created at all. And what this does is decisively situate all reality on one side or the other, creator or creation. You have this thick, qualitative, absolute distinction. There is no intermediary standing between God and creation that's somehow like, you know,

halfway point or something like that. You're either on one side of the line or the other. Everything that exists is either a creature or homo-usian. We'll get to that word in a minute. And that's why it's so important to put Jesus on the right side of that line. You know, that's why so much is at stake here. Because if you try to put Jesus in the middle, you end up actually robbing him of his divine majesty because he slides into the category of creature.

Chapter 8. Here's the heart of it. Consubstantial with the father, through him all things were made. Now here in red, you can see the key word of the entire creed. Homo Ucian, sometimes translated consubstantial. What it means is of the same being or of the same essence. It's better probably to translate it of the same being rather than one in being or something like that, use the word same rather than the word one, just to ward off any possible misunderstanding.

Some translations will use the words of the same substance, and you can see that drawn from the Latin term there. But that could be confusing in modern day English to people, because we sometimes use the word substance for a material, like a chemical substance or something like that. Essence or being, probably better terms at this point. But as the, oh, by the way, terms are so important, right? As the tradition develops, the word nature will often be used similarly to the word Ucia, though it's a different Greek term. So, for example, Homo Uzias will be used at Calcedon to describe Christ's full humanity. So we'll often say he's one with us in nature, right? He had a full human nature. So we're just trying to be clear about these terms. But the term Homo Ucian entails that the

son of God is equally divine with the Father. All that the Father has with respect to deity, the Son has. The son does not have a lesser deity. They have the same divine attributes, for example. They are of the same essence or being. And this term is diametrically opposed to the Aryans. A lot of the other language in the Nicene Creed can be misappropriated by the Aryans in various ways, but there is no evading this word. This is the fork in the road. Even so, Philip Carey suggests, that we might distinguish between a more modest versus a more ambitious construal of the Homooseon. Quote, the modest sense is what everyone who confesses the Nicene Creed is committed to, that the son does not have a different kind of divine being from the Father.

The strong sense is how you end up using the term when you carefully think through the consequences of applying it to God rather than to creatures, that every divine attribute in the Son is exactly the same thing as in the Father. Now, this is the term that becomes the battlefront between the 325 creed and the 381 creed, especially from the 340s to the 370s. And the Aryans are saying, look, this term is not in the Bible, which is true. They're also saying this term has a mixed legacy in the first several centuries of church history, and that's also true. It had been used in an orthodox sense by Christians in the third century, for example, but it had also been used by Gnostics even earlier to describe an idea of emanation from one divine being to another.

And so in light of that, this term had actually been condemned by the Council of Antioch in 268, local council, though it was being used in a different sense there by a man named Paul of Samo Sata, who is advocating for a particular heresy. So it's a totally different context. Nonetheless, the word has some baggage. Paul was the patriarch of Antioch. It's a completely different discussion, but nonetheless, the point is this term, has some baggage. So in light of this, a different term was proposed, homoi usias, meaning like in nature. And this is where so much hangs on that little iota, right? Is the son of the same being as the father or merely of a similar being to the father? Is he the same or identical with respect to essence or being or nature or not my favorite term substance? That, that. That is the same. That, That is the question at the nerve center of this controversy and the 381 creed is saying, we need the Homo

Ucian. Homo Yusian is not enough. And Athanasius really leads the charge on this. He's pointing out that a son who images and expresses his father is not merely of a like nature. But by definition, the one who is image and expression is of the same nature as his father. As he put it in his treatise on the Council of Nicaea in the mid-350s, Christ is not different in kind as if he were something foreign and dissimilar that is mixed in with the essence of the father. But if the son is word, wisdom, image of the father, and radiance, then it follows reasonably that he is one in essence. This is the position that ultimately prevails at Constantinople 1, with no small thanks to Athanasius for that. Finally, this section of the creed indicates that all

things are made through the sun. That's taught in many passages of the New Testament. We've already seen Colossians 116. You can see John 1 3 here on the screen. And this further links the father to the son by emphasizing that they both have a role in the creation of all things. In light of that, go back to this amazing text, 1 Corinthians 8.6. Sometimes this is deployed against Trinitarians, but note the final phrase here. This is Trinitarian because you've got both the father and the son involved in the creation and sustenthians. of all things. It's certainly consistent with Trinitarianism. Okay, chapter nine, moving on from the person of Christ to the work of Christ. If you need to pause the video and take a break at any point,

please do so. In fact, I'm going to take a break to get some water before I keep recording. This may be the longest video I've ever recorded, so if you stick with me to the end, it'll mean a lot to me. Let's pick up with this phrase, for us, men, and for our salvation, he came down from heaven. Now, this section is not initiating a new sense. This is a relative clause, just further elaborating the one Lord Jesus Christ in whom we just confessed belief. And what is being highlighted by that is that the eternal generation of the sun is foundational to his incarnate activity.

The person of the son grounds his work. It's the only begotten who is born of the Virgin Mary. It's the God from God who is crucified under Pontchus Pilate and so forth. We want to hold these things together. Now following the subject, who here are ten, verbs, which give us kind of a skeletal structure of the incarnate and ascended work of Christ. Starting from the moment Mary became pregnant and the divine and human natures are united, and concluding with a vision of the eternal state inaugurated by Christ's second coming.

Now, these ten verbs are not exhaustive and they sometimes overlap. The first of all, the first eight of them are in the past tense, and number nine is present, Christ's heavenly session, we say. and then number 10 is his second coming in the future. Zooming out, you could schematize this into two movements, Christ's descent and assent, or what sometimes theologians call his humiliation and glorification. And the one thing that's actually omitted here, which is interesting, is his descent into hell, which is in the Apostles Creed, so watch my video for more on that. But before we go through each of these 10 activities, let's not rush past this introductory phrase too quickly, for us, men, and our salvation. The word men there just means all human beings, men and women.

And this is very significant because sometimes, you know, the creed is often seen as this over the abstract philosophical construction. But the nature of God and the nature of Christ is foundational to the gospel message. It's foundational to what Christ does for us. It's foundational to Christian experience. Everything else that we confess in the creed, including the word homo-usian, is relevant to this purpose for our salvation. Interestingly, the phrase, for our sake, will recur with Christ's crucifixion.

But already here at the outset, all of Christ's incarnate work is done for our salvation. Sometimes we only focus on the death of Christ, and we forget that all of Christ's activity from the moment he is born and even now, for example, Christ's intercession for us in heaven. And Hebrews 7 is spoken of as a saving activity. Jesus is saving us right now as he intercedes for us. salvation, that's appropriate to describe that activity. And I've done more on the work of the intercessory work of Christ elsewhere, if that's of interest to you. What is so fascinating is then to consider how all these different parts of the work of Christ fit together, and that's what I try to trace out in my

video on the atonement. But the point is, sometimes we reduce the focus to Jesus' death and resurrection. We want to say that all that Christ does for us is for our salvation from the moment he was born. Now let's probe this phrase, he can't. down from heaven. This is a deceptively tricky little phrase because what we want to emphasize is that this is metaphorical language. And that's appropriate because it's following the language of Scripture. So, for example, John 313, Jesus speaks of himself as the one who descended from heaven, the son of man. In John 638, Jesus says, I have come down from heaven. Language of dissent is fitting for the incarnation because the incarnation was an act of genuine humility,

as Paul teaches in Philippians too. But we want to be especially careful here because so many misunderstandings crop up. The incarnation of the Son of God is not a movement from one geographical location to another. So you can travel from Chicago to New York. When you do that, you've left Chicago and then you arrive in New York. But heaven was not abandoned in the incarnation. The Son of God did not come into foreign territory that he was previously unfamiliar with. No, he came into his own creation that he's sustaining at every moment. In him, all things hold together, Colossians 1. The second member of the Trinity is permanently God.

Okay, here's how Augustine put it. He is said to have come to us not from place to place through space, but by appearing to mortals in mortal flesh, he came to a place where he was already. Even more succinctly, here's how Gregory of Nazianzis puts it, he remained what he was and took up what he was not. Gregory's little phrase, he remained what he was, is really important because some strands of thought in Christian history have tended toward a conodicist understanding of the incarnation.

Canosis basically means that the Son of God abandoned or relinquished something of his full deity in the incarnation. I'm dismayed how common this way of thinking is. And so what we want to understand is that in assuming a human nature, the Son of God, remained fully God. On the one hand, he's sleeping among the donkeys, okay? He's swaddled tightly, held by Mary. At the same time, he's filling and sustaining the universe.

He's adored by the heavenly angels at the same time. So Hebrews 1-3 says he upholds the universe by the word of his power. He doesn't take a break from doing that. from 1 to 30 AD or something like that. He's continuing to sustain the universe during the incarnation. This topic comes up again in Lutheran versus Reformed disputes, and I've written more about that elsewhere, and I have one video that talks about this a little bit,

but let's not annoy the Lutherans or get into anything. Let's make this an ecumenical video, so let's move on. Chapter 10, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man. Now, what we want to understand here is that the word incarnate, this word may draw to our minds John 114, which says the word became flesh. What we want to understand is the word incarnate or incarnation is a technical term. This must be distinguished from metaphorical usages of this term to just mean embodiment. So, for example, we'll hear talk about incarnational ministry and things like that. I don't think that's wrong to use that language, if provided you know what

you mean by that. But the incarnation of the Son of God is totally different. The word of God did not merely mediate his presence through a human agent in some way. He actually became a man. He assumed a genuine human nature. And that's specified by the following phrase here. He became man. The role of the Holy Spirit here signals that although the incarnation is a work of the entire Trinity, emphasis on the agency of the Holy Spirit is fitting because of his identity and work elsewhere in creation and redemption and even the title that he's going to be given later in the creed the giver of life recall that in Luke 1 the angel tells Mary she'll have a baby despite being a virgin because the most high will come upon you and the power of the Holy Spirit will come upon

you power of the most high will overshadow you the word overshadow is the same way word used for the cloud of the transfiguration, overshadowing them. This perhaps brings to mind the spirit's work at creation hovering over the waters, Genesis 1 through 2. And the point here is that it's fitting to emphasize the role of the Holy Spirit, the giver of life, as being instrumental in Mary becoming pregnant. Now, before going on, let's just pause and reflect on the wonder of this. I mean, sometimes I think we neglect to really think about the incarnation. We will be thinking about the incarnation a billion years into heaven, and it will still be just as wondrous. This is absolutely unique and unprecedented in eternity or all of created history for a divine

and human nature to be united in one person. My own clumsy and imperfect way to articulate this is to say, this is not just a miracle. This is the miracle of miracles. This is to other miracles as special as miracles are to the non-miraculous. I don't know how else to put it, that that's a clumsy way to put it. We can say that the incarnation is as pivotal a change to reality as creation itself. When you first have creation, now you have something other than God. But at Mary's conception, now you have a union between God and creature, which has never been seen before, absolutely unique, unprecedented, and mind-boggling.

Let's never lose our wonder for it. Chapter 11, for our sake, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. he suffered death and was buried. Now the creed doesn't give you a theory of atonement here, just has those words, for our sake. It doesn't get into the mechanics of that. You'll get that a lot more later in medieval church history, for example, more dispute about that, about how and in what sense it is for our sake.

But it does mention Pontius Pilate, and you wonder about that. I was talking about this in my talk at the creedo conference. You know, why is Pilate in the creed? He's the only other non-divine person mentioned other than Mary. who's the Godbearer. So it's fitting for Mary, but why is Pilot in here? And I think the answer is that Pilot is not important in himself, in like his person, but he functions as a historical reference point, because this is how it's used in the New Testament. Three times in speeches in the book of Acts, there will be reference to Christ's crucifixion under Pilate. The same you'll see in

1st Timothy 6. Pilot is, so the phrase crucified under Pontius Pilate is signer. Christ's crucifixion as a public historical event in the context of the Roman Empire, it's on the books. It really happened, you know. And what this is telling us, this is what I was trying to belabor at the Credo conference, is that the incarnation is not just a philosophy or a principle or a slogan. It's an event. This really happened, you know.

The particularity of the gospel. It has a when and aware and a concrete. to it. And it's very significant that the creed references not merely Christ's death here, but his burial. This is the part that moved me most in thinking through the work of Christ in preparation for this video and my talk at Cretto is Jesus not only died, he stayed dead for a period of time. The Westminster Shorter Catechism categorizes this as part of Christ's humiliation, because he's continuing under the power of death for a time. And we can ask, you know, why did it have to happen this way? You can certainly imagine it happening differently. You might

have had Christ die, but then immediately get resurrected, shattering the cross into a thousand pieces. Everybody sees it. It's public and obvious right there. But the burial of Christ is important. It needed to happen this way. It highlights Christ's full solidarity with us in our human condition, from womb to tomb. Gregory of Nisa put it like this. He who had determined once for all to share the nature of man must pass through all the peculiar conditions of that nature, seeing then that the life of man is determined between two boundaries, that's birth and death, had he, having passed the one not touched the other one that follows, his proposed design would have remained only half fulfilled from his not having touched that second condition

of our nature. That second condition is our death. So what he's saying is you have to have a Christ, a savior. By the way, can I just put it like this summing up, trying to, because I don't want this video to go too long. A lot of research has gone into this. I'm trying to distill it down. Here's the point. We have a perfect savior. He did everything that needed to be done. He passed through all that needed to be passed through in order to bring us a full and complete salvation. This is exactly the Savior that we need. Nothing that needed to be done was left undone. If I could just make a personal reflection here of how this moves me at an emotional level,

just imagine what it would have been like to hold the lifeless dead body of Jesus. I've thought about this so much. It moves me every time. The Gospels tell us that. Joseph of Arimathea acquired the body of Christ and prepared it for burial with linen and spices and then laid it in a tomb. And John's account, interestingly, tells us that Nicodemus joined him. So here you have these two wealthy, educated members of the Sanhedron who, you know, these are the upper echelon of society. They typically were not involved in the burying of dead bodies. That was typically

more menial labor. So I pictured that, I don't think they were doing this on a typical weekend. I picture these two well-dressed, wealthy, educated, important men struggling with the shroud, trying to get it right, you know. And because this is not something they do very often. Just imagine you're Nicodemus. You're thinking back on that conversation from John Chapter 3 with this amazing man who changed your life. And you've kind of been a secret follower of him. And now you look down and you're holding his dead body. Lifeless eyes are staring up at you.

The body is heavy and limp and cold. When a human body dies, it normally starts changing pretty quickly. The person stops breathing, their heart stops beating, and so you no longer have blood pumping through the body, and the body can no longer get rid of wastes, and it gets cold, and the limbs get stiff, and the eyes change, and there's all kinds of other things. I won't get into too much here. The point is, God incarnate did even that for us. Imagine holding the dead body of Jesus.

This is God incarnate. he's dead. Now, to be clear, the divine nature does not die. But Jesus, the body is dead. And, you know, just imagine if you're Nicodemus or you're Joseph of Varamathia and you put him in the tomb, imagine the emotional impact of the stone rolling into place. And you just think, what a dramatic story the gospel is. Thankfully, of course it doesn't end there. Chapter 12 and rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. Now, I've done a lot of work on the resurrection of Christ. It's my favorite topic to think about. Specifically, I love that Christ's resurrection is called the first fruits of our resurrection in 1st Corinthians 15. And what this tells us is that the

resurrected body of Christ is a foretaste of God's final redemption. This is not just a one-off stunt. This is a picture of what is to come. If you want to understand the nature of redemption that all the world will know after the second coming of Christ and those who are in Christ will know as well, consider that the resurrected flesh of Christ is there and he can eat fish, as he does in Luke, to say, I'm not a ghost, I can eat, he can digest food, he's got a stomach, he's got teeth, and yet Hebrews 716 says he has an indestructible life. So unlike other resurrected people who had to die twice, you know, Lazarus had to die twice. But Jesus rose never to die again. He rose to a new kind of life. And the resurrected body of Christ gives us

the blueprint. It's like the new heavens and new earth thrown back into the middle of history to tell us what is to come. And here the creed specifies that Christ's resurrection is in accordance with the scriptures. And this reminds us that although the creed makes no mention of events prior to the incarnation, you could think some people criticize the creed as being too abstract and having no narrative to it. But that is implicit in what it says here. Because the activity of the Son of God is the fulfillment of the hopes of Israel and the Old Testament scriptures that prophesied a coming Messiah and therefore the God who is at work throughout the Old Testament is identified by the Creed as none other than the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Chapter 13, He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. Sometimes we mush together the resurrection and the ascension of Christ, but it's a distinct event separated by 40 days, according to Acts 1-3. So you've got this 40-day period. I mean, can you imagine that? What an interesting time to interact with Christ. And, of course, he's teaching the disciples and so forth. I think it's Bovink who says the disciples learned more in those 40 days than they did in all three years prior. What we want to understand about the ascension is that just as the incarnation is not a geographical movement, neither is the ascension. Thomas Torrance says, as in the incarnation, as in the

incarnation, we have to think of God the Son, becoming man, without ceasing to be transcending God. So in his ascension, we have to think of Christ as ascending above all space and time without ceasing to be man or without any diminishment of his physical historical existence. In other words, think of this. Amazing. Jesus not only took on a body. The Word of God, let's say the Word of God, the Word of God, the Word of God not only took on a body, he retained that body.

his return to heaven. So the word became flesh, but now that flesh is in heaven. It might seem strange to some of us, but remember that Enoch and Elijah are already there. Heaven can receive a physical body. So what that means is right now in heaven there is physical flesh. There is a human brain, a human heart, human feet, etc., in heaven at the seat and governance of the command center of heaven is a physical body. And that's very significant for us. Finally, this section of the references Jesus' current heavenly session. The phrase sitting at the right hand of God is not a literal place. It's about regal power. This is an image for kingly, sovereign authority. Seated here means enthroned. This recalls the language of Psalm 110, for example. So what we want to emphasize

is that the risen Christ is active right now. You know, the heavenly session of Christ is not a second rate part of his salvation. In 2025, Jesus is active as our prophet, priest, and king. Sending his spirit, interceding for us, ruling the nations, fulfilling the Davidic covenant, subduing his enemies, advancing God's kingdom, and so on and so forth. There's so much we could say about this. One encouraging application is to remember that through our union with Christ, we are seated with him in the heavenlies, according to Ephesians chapter 2. And this should encourage prayers like this beautiful prayer from the Anglican prayer book, which essentially says, may we also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell,

who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. There is a sense in which we're already in heaven with Christ, through our union with Him. We can truly say, like the character in the last battle, jewel, that's my true home. That's where I really belong. Chapter 14. We'll try to finish off quickly. I'll go as fast as I can, but there's a lot of richness here, too. We don't overlook. Here we find he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. Now, it's interesting that though the first advent of Christ was cast as a descent. Remember that? He came down from heaven. There's no language of dissent with the second coming. There's nothing about coming down or something or emptying himself, nothing like that. On the contrary, it's associated with glory. He will come again in glory. So we can highlight the differences between the two advance of Christ like this.

The first is humble in its nature and saving in its purpose. The second is glorious in its nature and judging in its purpose. And that purpose of judging is reflected in the words here to judge the living and the dead. The idea of a judgment of both living and the dead, by the way, was to some extent a unique contribution of Christianity. This is a familiar idea to most of us, so we might not appreciate just how happy it is. Because in pagan literature, you can find human kings who go to judge the underworld or something like that. And the idea of a judge of all humanity, both living and dead, what that calls to our minds and hearts is a perfect restoration of justice. What Christians

believe is the world will be made right. Every wrong will be righted. Every score will be settled. I don't know how I live without this, honestly, because you live enough, I mean, I'm not even that old. I'm 41. Okay, I turned 42 in a couple weeks. Who, it feels old to me, but I know it's not that old, but I've already lived enough to know some pretty horrific things happen in this world. And there are times where, you know, if I didn't have my Christian faith, I wouldn't know what to do with some of the evil that I see, because you'd get so angry, and you'd get so upset. Now, it still should make us angry, but there's a hope that we have in knowing, God sees everything, and when Jesus comes back, he's going to settle every score. He will judge the living and the dead. We should be happy that we

have a God who judges, because that will restore justice. That's good. But if there's anybody out there who worries, well, what if I get judged? The answer to that is Jesus took that on the cross, on our behalf for all who trust in him. So if you want to be a Christian, all you have to do is surrender your life to Christ and ask for his forgiveness, and the judgment that you deserve will have fallen on him instead. That's what the cross is all about. So this gives us a very particular and wonderful hope. When we languish in under evil in this world, we should pray, come Lord Jesus. We should pray for the second coming, almost like we're trying to usher it in and speed it up. And how happy it is to think when it happens, he will get all the glory he deserves. Every knee will bow,

every tongue will confess. Now the phrase, his kingdom will have no end was not originally included in the 325 creed. And it may have been added to reject views such as that of Marcellus, a bishop of Ankhira. He, drawing from the language of the son being subject to the father in 1st Corinthians 1528, held that the incarnation was merely temporary and that in some sense the sun would sort of merge back into the father at some point down the line in the future. And the creed is disallowing that and saying, no, the kingdom of the sun shall have no end. By the way, it's a majority of view in the reformed tradition and many other theologians that the Son of God will never shed his human nature, and therefore, for all eternity, he will be the God man. Just think about that.

Not only when you first get to heaven, but a million years into heaven, you can still see the holes in his wrists, and we'll have all eternity to thank him and praise him. Now we come to the third great article of the Creed concerning the Holy Spirit and God's continued work in the world today. If you need to pause the video and take a break, feel free. I know is long, but this is so important because without this, nothing that has come before is complete. You need the Holy Spirit to have authentic Christianity, and we'll see that as we go here. So chapter 15, I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life. Now we've got two sections here, just like the second article covered Christ's person and then work. Here you've got the Holy Spirit,

and then his work among us in the world today. That's one way to read these final terms about church, baptism, and resurrection, kind of as the outflow of the Holy Spirit. Or you could just read it as sort of a final conclusive section, drawing from all three. Now, in this section on the Holy Spirit, we see the greatest expansion from the 325 Creed to the 381 Creed. As you can see on the screen, all the 325 Creed said is, I believe in the Holy Spirit, which obviously leaves a lot of blank, like, what do you mean by the Holy Spirit? What occasioned this is that between Nicaa 1 and Constantinople 1, in the 350s, starting then,

a new controversy erupts about whether the Holy Spirit is God. And this controversy is not as famous as the controversy concerning the Sun, but it's just as important for defining the Christian faith. The Holy Spirit is absolutely essential for authentic Christianity. We tragically neglect the Holy Spirit too much. So, first of all, let's do call him the Holy Spirit. There's the older phrase, the Holy Ghost. Philip Carey notes that back in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer,

the standardized term for the Holy Ghost that came in there, so back in that the book of common prayer, you could also speak of ghostly counsel to refer to spiritual counsel. You see, the word ghost simply meant something different in the English language back then. So don't use this word today because it's going to give, I've learned as a pastor, this does not help. Where we already neglect the Holy Spirit, this doesn't help, especially children. Children get scared if you're talking about the Holy Ghost.

Furthermore, the word spirit is appropriate. It's ambiguous, but it's within the range of what will work to get the idea across. In both Greek and Hebrew, the word translated spirit has a range of meanings. It can mean wind, or it can mean breath, or it can mean the spirit that is the animating life principle within a person. Okay? So think of Jacob, when it says in the Old Testament, I think of that Genesis 45, the spirit of Jacob revived upon learning that Joseph was still alive. This term is fitting to use for the third member of the godhead. In conceptualizing the spirit, I hope I don't go too far here, I think this is right. Our minds are not moving in the wrong

direction, to be thinking in categories of energy and life and dynamism and vitality, okay? Just as with the Son of God, we're moving in the right direction if we're thinking in categories of rationality and thought and wisdom and expression. Thomas Aquinas states why the term spirit is fitting. Quote, the name spirit in things corporeal seems to signify impulse and motion, for we call the breath and the wind by the term spirit. Now it is a property of love to move and impel the will of the lover toward the object loved. By the way, you see the reference to love there. In the Western tradition, there's a tradition of thought that develops in which the Holy Spirit

is understood in terms of the love that is shared between the Father and the Son. You see that in Augustine, you see that in Anselm, many other places. I'll put an example from Anselm's pro slogion, the one love common to you, that's the Father and your son, that is the Holy Spirit, who proceeds for you. from you both. Now, why is the Spirit called here the Lord and Giver of Life? Thus far, we've just said the term Holy Spirit is appropriate and fitting. Why is this added on? Well, there was a group called the Macedonians, 30 of whose bishops showed up at Constantinople 1, only to depart when they realized how staunchly Gregory of Nazianzus and others were committed

to the full deity of the Holy Spirit. And they had opposing views. about the Holy Spirit. And some have suggested that the careful wording of the Spirit in the creed was an attempt to affirm the full deity of the Spirit, but in such a way that might draw the Macedonians back in. So they could affirm it. That didn't happen. But in any event, it's clear that there's an attempt to follow biblical language here. So calling the Spirit Lord draws from First or, sorry, Second Corinthians three, where Paul twice says the Lord is the Spirit. whereas the title giver of life may be drawing from John 663. It is the Spirit who gives life.

This is my favorite single word, lifegiver. The giver of life is a translation of the word zoopoion, which you could render as lifegiver. The Lord and Lifegiver, you can see on the screen there. And I love this term. It's so fitting for the Holy Spirit. You know, it doesn't say the Holy Spirit who is Lord. exalted or Holy Spirit Lord and Revealer of Mysteries it's Holy Spirit Lord and Lifegiver how fitting for that to be the first activity by which the Holy Spirit is identified

again we think of the Spirit and his role in the resurrection of Christ as you can see in on the screen from the book of Romans and it will also be the Spirit who raises our bodies we've also talked about the Spirit's role in the Virgin Birth I wish I could talk about this pastorily for 20 minutes But suffice to say just this much for now. If you're a Christian, if you trusted in Jesus Christ, you have God, the life giver dwelling within you. And what a tragedy when we fail to reflect upon that and draw the comfort and strength

that we should from it. Chapter 16, Who proceeds from the Father and the Son? Now, in red there you can see the issue. This is, by the way, first, before we get to the Filiocque, which is the first, the third great difference between the Greek and Latin versions, which we will discuss and has been hugely divisive. Let's just mention procession here. This is a technical term describing the manner in which the father produces the spirit. Kind of parallel to the term begotten for the manner in which the father produces the son. Even though verb produce makes me a little nervous, though it's

been used in the tradition. So let's just say procession and begottenness. Now the manner in which the Spirit proceeds from the Father is often spoken of as spiration. So we'll say the Father begets the Son, but he spirates the Spirit. And we get this not only from Jesus in John 1526, which is on the screen, and there's a reference to the Spirit proceeding from the Father, but also perhaps from 1st Corinthians 212, and Paul's reference to the Spirit who is from God. Now, we don't fully know what this means. You know, someone says to me, how exactly is begetting and spay rating different. Chart, chart that out on a graph or something like that.

The answer is, I don't know, I cannot do that. And I think we're wise to just be cautious and leave this open as something that our minds can't fully understand. I really like Gregory of Nazianzis's caution. He says, what then is proceeding? You explain the ingeneracy, that means not generated, of the father. And I will give you a biological account of the son's beginning and the spirit's proceeding. and let us go mad the pair of us for prying into God's secrets. So you see what he's saying there.

He's saying, don't go further than the human mind can go. Let's be faithful to what God is revealed, but recognize we're dealing with mysteries that go way beyond our ability to understand here. But let us never be so, here's the thing. Our thoughts are finite. Our words are finite. They do not exhaust the plenitude of divine being. But let us also remember, that our limitations are not God's limitations. So we can have a sheet of paper and we can put the words, Father and Son and Spirit,

on the paper, with the appropriate arrows and terms of relation. But those are just words and arrows. The fact that we can't really go too much beyond that in understanding this doesn't mean that that's all it is. As though, you know,

in other words, our words and our terms don't capture the joy and the life and the glory that exists in the Holy Trinity. let us never think that the Holy Trinity is sort of blank and stale just because we can't fathom all that is going on. In other words, we should never say, well, God has just been beginning and spirating for all eternity, and that's all he does. You know, as though that's boring or something. It's like, no, in these activities, there's an infinite glory that we cannot know. And if we trust in Jesus,

we will grow slowly in our enjoyment of it for all eternity, but even each other. eternity will not exhaust it. But at this point, we arrive upon this divisive issue of the filioque, Latin for and from the sun, and as many of you know, this question of whether the spirit proceeds from the father and the son is one of the great dividing issues between the east and the west. And as one who affirms the filioque, it must be admitted that on historical grounds, the east is right in objecting that this was not original to the creed. It originated after the council in local usage in Spain and spreads elsewhere and so forth. Now, how early the theology reflected in the phrase is, is another matter. As a Protestant, I follow in the footsteps of others

like Francis Turriton who argue that this doctrine is not a matter of orthodoxy versus heresy and should not have been the occasion for schism. And you can see his position on the screen there. Francis Turriton is no lightweight or doctrinal minimalist, okay? But he's saying, look, this doesn't need, and unfortunately it has been cast as that frequently, they're not always throughout church history. I'm very interested in ecumenical healing at this point, and I wonder if perhaps the language of from the father through the son, which has been acceptable to many Eastern thinkers like Maximus the Confessor, is one possible way forward. A lot of work is being done in this area. Too much for us to canvas here.

But if you want more on the fili-oque, see my interview with Fred Sanders, who helps us understand this doctrine. Chapter 17, who with the father and the son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. Now that soon that you see put in red there in the Greek verbs is repeated in two of the verbs there. That means with, but what you have here is compound verb verbs. You could almost render this as who with the father and the son is co-adored and co-glorified. What's being emphasized here is that the Spirit gets the same divine honors as the Father and the Son. We don't worship the Spirit less. Sadly, sometimes actually we do in actual practice, but we shouldn't.

The Holy Spirit should be given full divine glory, full divine worship as divine. And I think this is a good, you know, basically put it as simple as this. Do you worship the Holy Spirit? Do you pray to the Holy Spirit? Tragically, many Christians neglect the very one who is, sort of most intimately available to us at an existential level because he indwells us. In the New Testament, he's called the paraclete, meaning counselor. There is a particular intimacy that we should pursue with the Holy Spirit,

and we should cultivate adoration and worship to him. Consider Basel's warning. What reason is there for robbing of his share of glory, him whom is everywhere associated with the Godhead? For there is not even one single gift which reaches creation. without the Holy Spirit. That's a theme in John Owens' Trinitarian theology. Absolutely nothing happens in our relationship with God except that which occurs through the Holy Spirit. Now, why add who has spoken by the prophets here? I love this little phrase, and it's significant

because, again, it draws into view the history of Israel, even if that's not explicitly laid out. But it's implied by phrases like this. And the word prophets here should call to our minds. the entirety of Scripture, not just the prophetical books proper. Sometimes one portion of scripture will be referenced with a view to all of Scripture, like Paul will speak of the law, for example, as like the Old Testament. The idea here is that the inspiration of Holy Scripture is through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and we see that in many passages. Old Testament prophets will speak after the Spirit falls upon them, as in Ezekiel 11-5. The New Testament will refer to Old Testament scripture as the author speaking in the Holy Spirit, as Jesus speaks of David and

Mark 12, that's inspiration. Sometimes an Old Testament passage will simply be cited as the Holy Spirit says, dot, dot, dot. And you see that throughout Hebrews, for example. What this says to us is something wonderful, the life giver is also a word speaker. The Holy Spirit is rational. And that's significant. Not every religion has a God who can speak in rational, finite words, especially in Eastern religions. You'll often get this idea that the divine is kind of nameless and supra rational, above reason. But not the Christian God, not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can literally use Aramaic and Greek in Hebrew words and inspire them and speak through a human agent in these particular languages. If you ever find yourself forgetting the personality of the Holy Spirit,

just remember that he speaks. I love this thought. The Holy Spirit could literally speak to you in English right now. He could say, hello, the English word, hello. He's a rational person who can speak words. And many of us think he does speak, though, in a subordinate way under scripture today. Chapter 18. I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. Now here we move into this final section of the creed, which is fitting to follow the Holy Spirit, especially since we live in the spirit age. Since the day of Pentecost and Acts 2, this is the era of history characterized by the Holy Spirit. You think of, you know, Jesus and then he sends the Holy Spirit. Interestingly, it appears that reference to baptism and the church and the

resurrection, these final three topics, that you could split up the resurrection into resurrection and eternal life, were not occasioned by controversy, which makes their inclusion all the more impressive in a way, because usually it's the controversial stuff that needs to be spelled out. But this is truly just a summation of basic Christian doctrines that these Christians felt important to include, and they were following the 325 Creed in doing that. First, the creed affirms belief in the church, and then there is a list of the four so-called marks of the church, one holy, Catholic, and apostolic. These marks are not merely aspirations or ideals. They are realities currently true about the church in all her imperfection.

To confess that the church is one is to believe Jesus did not die for multiple brides. He died for one. There are not two or three different churches. There is one church. Although, tragically, her unity is very imperfectly expressed right now, and there are all manner of wrens and schisms within her that we should work to try to heal. Even where we disagree, we should, I often pray in my dialogues that the healing love of Jesus Christ would be present,

that there'd be the sense of, you know how it is when your body heals, there's like a wound and that it's healing. That's what we should pray for in the church today where there are schisms. Of course, we can't fully solve all the problems, but we can take small steps toward it. The word holy means set apart.

and the word Catholic means universal. The church is holy because of the work of Christ on her behalf. He, in Ephesians 5, for example, died that he might sanctify her. Sanctify the same word here. The church is Catholic because she extends to all places over all the world and includes people from every tribe and language and people and nation. The word apostolic draws to mind passages like Ephesians 220, and the foundational role of the apostles in establishing and launching the church, above all,

in their teaching. Now, Christians today disagree on the implications of these terms, and what I would want to stress is that our disagreements post-date this creed in important respects. We're in a different historical context. In that historical context, these adjectives more commonly served to demarcate the church from pretty wildly heretical groups, say various Gnostic groups, for example, and then some of these other major doctrinal controversies that come up. We're in a different time in history, where things like the filiocque have been a dividing point. And other, there have been other, even just the Christological divides of the next century, the fifth century, are more, there's a lot of misunderstanding in them, and they don't go as deep. There's a lot of verbal misunderstandings,

as opposed to substantial disagreements. So I think it's unhelpful to press these terms to try to favor one group over another that results from these different schisms. What I always emphasize is there's different kinds of schisms. Not every schism is of the same rank. And I've said more about that elsewhere, but let me just put it to this. Trying to focus on what's constructive for the sake of this video. What a happy thought that this Catholicity of the church extends back through time,

that anyone today who trusts in Jesus is a part of this sacred group that has recited this creed before us. We are a part of the people from every tribe and language and people and nation. Chapter 19, second to last chapter, I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Now the proper verb here is confess. Some older translations have acknowledged that's, I think, less helpful. The reference to one baptism recalls Ephesians 4. where one baptism has referenced to the broader unity of the faith. It's not as though we have two baptisms where you get an initial baptism for one purpose and then a subsequent baptism for another purpose or something like that.

There's one baptism even as there is one God and one faith. Now the phrase forgiveness of sins is often leveraged against those who don't affirm baptismal regeneration. And I've heard people say, oh, if you don't believe in baptism or regeneration, you can't recite the Nicene Creed. And I've even heard some people in Baptist context or low church context hesitate about the Nicene Creed for this reason. And I think this is a real tragedy. First of all, this phrase is straight out of Scripture. It's a phrase every Christian should not hesitate to use. It comes from Acts Chapter 2 and Peter's speech at Pentecost. Now I explain more fully in my video on the Baptist view of the Nicene Creed that historically Baptists have always affirmed the Nicene Creed. And

I give examples of historic Baptist catechisms like Hercules Collins, for example, and the interpretation of this language that he offers there. Baptists have not historically affirmed baptismal regeneration in its technical sense. Baptism as the cause of regeneration, but they absolutely affirm that baptism is for the forgiveness of sins. Baptism is an effective sign of that which it conveys. And for more on that, I say that I talk about this all the time, and I always recommend this book by Stan Fowler, which is helpful, so I'm not going to go down to the rabbit trail here. That's something I talk about so much elsewhere, and this has already been a long video.

Chapter 20, the last chapter. And I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. The verb look forward here could also be translated, hope. And this might seem to be the part of the creed that would be least controversial among Christians today. But interestingly, this would have been the most controversial part, not the most point of these last couple points. Certainly one of the more controversial parts of the creed for many people in that broader historical context. Because to affirm the resurrection of the body is not a generic religious belief. That's a very specifically Christian hope, relatively rare in world history,

and it was a rejection of Gnostic alternatives as well as other religious views in the ancient world. And it did earn ridicule. In Acts chapter 17, for example, you can, you know, this point that earns the mockery of Paul's listeners in his speech in Athens. But this is part of the creed that, though it would have been embarrassing for maybe some Christians in certain contexts to affirm, you know, if you'd leave 100 years ago in the 1920s, they're saying, I believe in the virgin birth, is going to be maybe pushing against the prevailing pressure at that time. But in the second century, saying, I believe in the resurrection of the body would have been pushing against pressure.

There will always be pressure points against us. To be a Christian, you have to be able to resist the pressure because there will always, truth and the world are always intention in some way, because the world is always changing and the truth is unchanging. There will always be something that we have to stand against. The resurrection of the body was one of those points

for the early Christians. So let's not take it for granted. Also, this is such a happy doctrine. You know, it shows how God cares about all that he is made, including the physical world. We see, just think about this. It won't just be your soul that is redeemed. Your very physical body will live forever. And this affirms the goodness of creation, just as the incarnation has as well.

And it's not just our bodies. God will renew the world. Note that the creed expresses hope in two realities, the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come. The whole world indicates God's redemption is not just about individual people getting plucked out of the world. Actually, the Bible teaches that all of creation will be caught up into the redemption of the children of God, as you can see from Romans 8 on the screen here. The word life here, eternal life, the life of the world to come, doesn't just mean consciousness. It has to do with the quality of life, as in John's Gospel, for example.

And I love this statement from the Heidelberg Catechism that teaches us that life, eternal life, has already begun. It says, what comfort do you receive from the article about the life everlasting? Answer, since I now already feel in my heart the beginning of eternal joy, I shall after this life possess perfect blessedness, such as no I has seen, no ears heard, etc. That's true. Christian salvation, eternal life begins now.

there's a sense in which we're not waiting to experience that. Now, there are no words for how wonderful this will be. I love to think that, I love that this is in the creed, eternal life, you know. The only way I can try to convey the joy of it is in the Narnia stories and how at the very end of the last battle, there's this reference to the story that goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before. If you are ever afraid of heaven, I know Christians sometimes don't look forward to heaven. They feel like it's threatening. One thing that we can understand is the joy of heaven will be ever expanding and growing.

And I talk about that in this video on heaven. Link in the video description for that if you want to learn more about that. Longest video of all time, we made it to the end. Five final comments. Number one, if you made it to the end, let me know in the comments. I'll heart your comment. Number two, if you want to read further, I highly recommend these two books that I leaned a lot on in my preparations.

Philip Carey's book, and Ortiz and Keating's book. Number three, I will do one more video like this on the Athanasian Creed, but it might be six months to a year. These videos take a tremendous amount of time to prepare, not just because I'm studying, but then I try to collapse it down into accessible, organized, video-friendly expression. Number four, if you want to support Truth Unites, you can do that via the website or through Patreon, only do that if it's a source of joy for you, and most of all just pray for this ministry to advance gospel assurance through depth and beauty. And number five, I will just leave you and sign off with the words of this great hymn. Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Spirit, three we name thee, though in essence only one undivided God

we claim thee, and adoring bend the knee while we own the mystery.