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Sunday, June 03, 2007

Trinity Sunday 6/03/07 Text: Athanasian Creed

Trinity Sunday
6/3/2007
Text: Athanasian Creed
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday. It is that time of the year when we recite the Athanasian Creed. Some people, if they remember, will not attend the worship service on Trinity Sunday because they know they will have to read the creed and it is just takes too much time.
There are a lot of Lutheran churches that do not even recite it anymore because their members do not like because it is so long. It makes the service longer. And making the service longer means that they have gone past the time allotted to God on Sunday. It is a shame for the creed is a wonderful creed, exactly stating the Christian faith.
There is not getting around it the creed is long. It takes about 5 minutes to read it, as compared to the Apostles Creed, one of the first Christian creeds which only takes about 1 minute to read, and the Nicene Creed, the second official creed written which takes about 2 minutes to read.
It is long and boring because most people have not taken the time to study it verse by verse they do not understand it. When something is not understood it usually is boring and thus avoided.
I understand that, for, remember I sat out in those pews for 50 years. I do not remember anyone ever taking the time to explain to me the reasons it was written or the meaning of those confusing words. That is why this morning I am going to talk about the Athanasian Creed. It is my prayer that by the time I am through you will have a much deeper understanding of the creed, so when we confess it you will not be turned off by it.
Let me set the stage first before I get into the actual creed itself. It was written as a response to a pastor named Arius who had begun teaching that Jesus Christ was not truly God. He taught that Jesus was a created being and thus could not be equal to God.
As most heresies go, he attracted many followers, which made people doubt the teachings of the church, which of course meant that they were then doubting God’s Holy Word.
The heresy was not new, for while Jesus was alive some, in fact a lot of people did not consider him equal to God. The Christian church by the 2nd Century had pretty much resolved the problem, that is, until Pastor Arius began teaching that Jesus was not God because he was created.
Who wrote it has been lost to time, but by the 6th Century it was accepted by the Christian Church as a clear defense of Christ’s divinity, equality, and unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
While the creed addressed the heresy, the same old heresy continues to be taught today by some Christian pastors.. I say they are Christian because that is how they are known. Thus it still remains a problem for the Christian Church today.
It is not hard to see why it is taught, for it is just part of human sinfulness to want to believe that Jesus was only a man, or at the very most a god created by the Father, which of course would make him less than the Father.
Now if you just stop and think about it for a moment you will see the problem. If it is true that Jesus was created there would be no more 3 persons in one Godhead who are in unity.
In preparation for this Sunday I have been talking about the unity of the Father and Jesus for the past 3 Sundays and I hope by this time that you understand that Jesus always made it clear that he and the Father were one. The Father’s thoughts were Jesus’ thoughts and Jesus’ thoughts were the Father’s thoughts. There is unity in the Father and the Son.
In the Athanasian Creed there are several thoughts and words that are hard to understand, especially the word begotten. We need to look at those particular thoughts and words as they were understood then, if we have a chance of understanding the creed.
If you have not already pulled out your service folder, please do so as I tell you of some things that you need to know about it.
First of all you need to remember that this creed is confessing something that is impossible to logically figure out. We have to accept what is said in faith, just as we must accept what many parts of the Bible say in faith.
Let’s get started. Notice the beginning and the end of the creed say essentially the same thing. You must believe these things or you are doomed. Those are harsh words and more than likely your first thought is, “How dare they say that.”
Well, to be honest with you, they can say it, we can confess it because it is true, as you will see as we read it in a few minutes. You cannot be saved unless you believe in the Triune God as God has presented him in the Bible. It might grate on you, but it is true.
The most troublesome words are found about half way through the creed, particularly number 20 through 22. it is important that to understand that the writers had to try and find human words that would closely describe an indescribable thing, the unity of the Trinity.
Let’s look at a few of the words. The normal usage of the word “begotten” refers to the relationship one has to say an earthly father.
What they are saying here is that the Father always existed and that the Son, Jesus always existed. It is written this way because the Son is seen as the second person of the Trinity. When something is referred to as being second, it is usually taken as being less than. The writers wanted to make it perfectly clear that the Son always had the same relationship with the Father, and since the Father always existed the Son always existed.
Where it is talking of the Holy Spirit proceeding, it means by that word that the Holy Spirit has always continued in a certain state in the relationship with the Father and Son. That means that since the Father, and the Son have always existed in the same relationship, the Holy Spirit has also always existed in the same relationship.
In line 27 the Creed also says that not only does one have to believe the statements above are true, but that one has to believe in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Now, all that means is that you have to believe that the 100 % God Jesus became the 100% human Jesus while remaining 100% God.
The creed then goes on to state how that can be. The word, “substance” in line 29 refers first to the sameness, the co-eternalness Jesus has to the Father and then refers to the sameness that he has to his earthly mother in that he is human.
In verse 30 the part of the creed where it states, “perfect God and perfect man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh means that he is 100% God while being 100% human. The part about the rational soul refers to the human Jesus.
We can tell this by looking at line 35 where it states the same thing in a slightly different way. You might say okay, I think I am getting it now, but why do they keep saying the same thing over and over again. That is what is confusing.
Well, in one sense they are saying the same thing over and over again, but in another sense they are not for what they are doing is filling in all the loopholes that this pastor Arius and his followers would try to slide through.
Oh, I almost forgot. The word, “catholic” has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic faith. It means universal. Please join me in confessing our Christian faith using the words of the Athanasian Creed.