The purpose and value of the Athanasian Creed: ‘all truth’
John 16 v. 13
We are here today because we believe certain things about God and Jesus.
If we did not believe them we would be in a different place, a different church.
If we did not believe any of them we wouldn’t be in a church at all.
So, how or why do we believe what we believe?
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If we were going to buy a car or a washing machine
we would need to believe it was right for us and good value for money,
so what would we do?
Just believe the seller, or check the specifications,
or speak to someone who owned the same model?
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One of the reasons why we are here must be
because we checked this church out and what it stands for
at some time in the past,
and this is what the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds are for,
to check beliefs against the Bible,
so anyone wanting to join a church knows what it believes and stands for.
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Today is Trinity Sunday;
the day when we especially confess our belief in One God in Three Persons,
and because it is Trinity Sunday we recite the Athanasian Creed,
an ancient Statement of Trinitarian doctrine and Christology
which is held to and proclaimed by all the mainstream branches
of the One, Holy, Catholic or Christian, and Apostolic Church.
The Athanasian Creed is the least used in public worship
of the three Ecumenical Creeds, and in the Lutheran church,
this Creed is generally only used on Trinity Sunday as a confession of our faith.
It is the first creed in which the co-equality of the three persons of the Trinity
is explicitly stated, and this is why it was constructed and promulgated,
to oppose the heretical teachings of the Arians,
who denied that Jesus was co-equal with the Father.
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It is often attributed to Athanasius (293-373 AD), bishop of Alexandria,
because he was a staunch defender of the divinity of Jesus Christ
and of the Trinity,
but most church scholars believe this Creed was written much later,
because it was not mentioned at all in early church councils.
It differs from the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds in the inclusion of anathemas,
or condemnations of those who disagree with it.
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The three Ecumenical Creeds are very important
because they were written in defence of the true teachings of Scripture
and to reject doctrinal errors that were present at the time they were written.
Creeds are firm and clear statements of the faith
that rest on the clear statements of Scripture alone
even when we are not able to understand them or explain them rationally.
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The chief difference between the Athanasian Creed
and the other two Creeds is one of emphasis.
The Nicene Creed emphasized the full deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit
and only implies the Oneness of God,
but the Athanasian Creed, leaving nothing to be assumed,
stresses the idea of the absolute Oneness of God
(in other words, that there is only one God, not three)
and this is repeated throughout the entire Creed.
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The Athanasian Creed also deals with an important error or heresy;
a controversy which divided the Church about the person and nature of Jesus;
that He was and is True God from eternity, equal to the Father,
as Scripture clearly teaches, that Jesus, who is True God from the ‘Beginning’,
became fully human through Mary, at a point in human history.
Not 50-50, but 100% both God and 100% man.
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Because this is not logical to us humans,
some attempted to rationalise these clear statements of Scripture,
but all of the rationalisations, in one way or another,
either removed from Jesus his true humanity or his true divinity
or the idea that there was just one Jesus who was both true God and true man
at one and the same time.
Because each of these departures from the true teachings of Scripture
touched upon the article of our redemption,
undermining the believer’s assurance of salvation,
a defence of the Truth was needed,
and so the Athanasian Creed was produced
and accepted into the ‘symbols’ of the worldwide Church.
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The Athanasian Creed especially countered the claims of Arianism,
(now basically Jehovah’s Witnessism)
which said that Christ was a created being
and NOT equal with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.
It was the Church’s way of combating two errors
that undermined Bible teaching.
One denied that God's Son and the Holy Spirit are of one being or Godhead
with the Father,
and the other denied that Jesus Christ is true God and true man in one person.
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So, although it is ancient, the Athanasian Creed
continues to serve the Christian Church as a standard of the truth,
and declares that whoever rejects the doctrine of the Trinity
and the doctrine of the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ
is without the saving faith.
In other words, they are going to Hell!
The Gospel is good news for those who believe it
but bad news for people who don’t.
This Creed makes it clear that Christianity is not a hobby or pastime,
that Church is not a club or weekend activity,
but something with literally eternal significance and consequence.
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Obviously a Statement of Faith, while important to us,
is not something that can be proved scientifically,
which is why today’s Gospel reading is so appropriate,
for as Jesus, God the Son, and member of the Holy Trinity, said:
‘When he, the Spirit of Truth, meaning God the Holy Spirit,
another member of the Holy Trinity, would come,
which he did when he fell on the apostles and first Christians
on the Jewish Festival of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2,
then he, God the Holy Spirit, would guide God’s people into all truth,
in other words reveal what was right and necessary to believe
in order to attain salvation and eternal life,
which could never be achieved or merited by one‘s own works or efforts,
which ties in with today’s Epistle reading where Paul in Romans 5 wrote:
‘We have been justified by faith’.
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Paul then explains how we can have access to God the Father’s grace
through faith in God the Son, and only that,
and how God’s love comes to us by and through the ministry
of God the Holy Spirit,
who in the Old Testament book of Proverbs, chapter is called ‘Wisdom’.
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In the Athanasian Creed
each person of the Trinity is described as uncreated (increatus),
limitless (Immensus), eternal (æternus), and omnipotent (omnipotens).
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While ascribing the divine attributes and divinity to each person of the Trinity, thus avoiding subordinationism,
(that’s the doctrine that any one or two are less important than any other),
the first half of the Athanasian Creed also stresses the unity of the three persons in the one Godhead, thus avoiding a theology of Tri-theism,
that we believe in 3 gods, which we don’t and never will.
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The Creed makes it clear that we believe in only ONE God,
although in that one Godhead,
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit
are distinct from each other,
for the Father is neither made nor begotten;
the Son is not made but is begotten from the Father;
and the Holy Spirit is neither made nor begotten
but proceeds from the Father and the Son.
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The important thing to note today
is that unlike the other two Creeds that we use in our Services,
at various points the Athanasian Creed calls attention
to the penalty incurred by those who refuse to accept any of the articles
therein set down.
Whoever that hopes to be saved, must believe in the Trinity,
whether they understand it or not.
This we agreed with when we recited words such as: (quote)
“And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting,
and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.
This is the Catholic or Christian Faith, which except a man believe
faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.’ (Unquote)
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Only the Athanasian Creed contains warnings like this,
pronouncements of penalties
which follow the rejection of what is stated there
that we must believe if we call ourselves ‘Christians’.
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So, the Creed states in a very plain and precise way
what the Catholic or Christian Faith is,
and it asserts with equal plainness what will happen to those
who do not believe in these revealed truths.
Our Lord Jesus himself said:
"He that believeth not shall be condemned",
which means eternal damnation is the fate of those
who reject Christ's words and teachings,
even though we don’t like to think of the fate
that awaits our relatives and friends who do NOT believe.
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Most people don’t like Christians making dogmatic statements like these,
for most people either think God loves everybody, so everybody will be saved regardless of what they did or did not believe, ‘Universalism’
but according to the Creed and the doctrines of the Church
we are all sinners, and to be saved we must repent and believe
the testimony and teaching of Christ,
and that God in His righteousness will inflict punishment
on those who reject Christ and the Holy Spirit and persist in their sin. ............................................................................................................
Our fundamental beliefs,
the things we need to believe and confess if we wish to have eternal life
are not based on man’s logic and man’s teaching,
but on revelation of the Holy Spirit, recorded in the Holy Bible,
and expressed in the Creeds.
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The idea of One God in 3 Persons is very difficult to explain,
but if we had the intelligence or wisdom to know everything about God,
wouldn’t that make US more or less equal to God.
I am the first to admit that the Creed we recite today
is quite ‘technical’ and ‘scholarly’
but the three Creeds are there to help us (1) to believe in something
or rather Someone
much greater than ourselves or any other mortal,
and to trust that Someone, that One in 3 Persons,
for our salvation and eternal destiny,
and (2) they are tools we can use to share our faith with others
whenever we get the chance to sit down with someone
and go through the belief statements line by line,
and (3) they make it clear that WE are not preaching
what WE as individuals believe,
because we are as flawed as anyone else and could be wrong.
We preach and proclaim the ‘all truth’ which the Holy Spirit inspired
just as Jesus said in John 16 verse 13 that He would.
We pass on that message, that teaching, that warning, to others
because we love them and are concerned about where THEY will spend eternity,
on the basis of divine and apostolic teaching and 2,000 years of tradition,
in Jesus’ name and the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God the Father.
Amen.
