The Athanasian Creed is the Creed for our worship this morning. If you haven’t flipped over to it yet, it’s the really, really, long creed that we use pretty much just once a year, on Trinity Sunday. It is a creed which was written in the 6th century in what is now Spain, in order to defend the Christian faith against some false teachings– heresies–which had arisen.
This creed, although virtually unknown today, teaches us what is important about the relationship of the Trinity to the Christian life, through Baptism. After all, it is Baptism where the name of the Holy Trinity is bound to you for life. The real question is why it is important to have the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit on you. To that end, we’re going to consider just what the Trinity is and then why it’s important that God reveals Himself as Triune.
Consider our Gospel for today: “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:16-20 ESV)
Baptism is described in this passage as being part of the disciple-making mission of the Church. Baptizing and teaching. That’s what the job of making disciples consists of. Not just the baptizing, but the teaching is also important. Sometimes it’s easy to get lazy as Christians and give up on hearing the taught Word of Christ, to give up on occasions for learning the Word in favour of doing other things.
At last weekend’s library book sale in Morden, I picked up a few books. One of them was an older volume entitled Lutheran Churches in the World. The chapter about Scandinavia had the following startling statistics about the Church of Sweden, as of the mid 1950s–94% of adults in Sweden were confirmed members, and of that group, about 15% had received communion 5 times or more in their lifetimes. Those were the statistics then; the situation, needless to say, fifty years later, has not improved. A country which was officially and fully Lutheran by their official doctrinal statements and Baptism records, which has contributed greatly to the study of God’s Word over the centuries, let slip the teaching and preaching and the result has now become one of the most liberal and irreligious countries in the world. Of course, we don’t need to go that far afield. If everyone who was confirmed in this churches who still lives in the area was active and involved, we’d have much larger worship attendance, larger Sunday Schools because they and their children would be here, and so forth.
So it is important that after Baptism we continue in the teaching, because the Word of God is what gives faith, because without faith Baptism becomes emptied, because Christ Himself commands His church to teach. Our creeds serve as part of this need to teach. All three of the Creeds ultimately confess the basic truths of the Christian faith.
As such, let’s go through what the Athanasian Creed means as the basis for our meditation this morning, keeping in mind that what it serves to do is point out just who God is who makes us His own in Baptism, and what it means to worship Him. It is important to believe the right way about God because our God is a God of truth. There are wrong things to believe and to say about God. We need to avoid those, in order to prevent our witness to God and His work for our salvation from being broken, not to mention for the health and well-being of our souls.
The catholic faith. Note that it’s a small c. St Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:4-6 that “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Our contemporary sensibilities make us want to have a multiplicity of ways. It’s somehow more comforting to think of there being a bunch of different options. How unloving it seems to the unbelieving world to insist that Jesus Christ alone brings salvation, that the way is narrow that leads to eternal life. But it is what God’s Word tells us. The word catholic simply means “belonging to the whole”. There is only one true faith, when it comes down to it—that’s the catholic faith that trusts in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. All other faiths end up pointing a person somewhere other than Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection for their salvation.
This is why the first sentence of the Athanasian Creed points out that in order to be saved, you have to have the right faith in Christ—the small-c catholic faith. This faith involves believing in the True God, the Trinity in Unity. One God, three persons. All three persons in the Trinity are equally and fully God. Verses 6 to 18 of the Athanasian Creed serve to point this out in painstaking detail, closing off every loophole and angle that was used by those who taught false doctrines about God. Chief among these was the Arian doctrine, that Jesus was the first-born of creation and almost totally God, yet not quite on par with God the Father. This false teaching persists today in groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Versions of this Arian false teaching sparked both the Nicene and Athanasian creeds to be written and proclaimed.
One God. That’s all there is. One God, and yet three persons in that one God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all equally, totally, and entirely this one God and yet they are not identical in person. If you find such a mystery nearly incomprehensible, that’s perfectly reasonable. It doesn’t fit the rules of human logic, but it does fit the revelation of the Scriptures. After all, Jesus said “I and the Father are one”. In the institution of Baptism, our Gospel text for today, the word “name” is singular even though it is referring to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At Creation, our Old Testament reading for today, God (singular) said “Let us make man in our own image.” (plural) One God, three persons. It doesn’t make logical sense but it does make Scriptural sense. As Lutherans we are careful to stake our claim on what the Scriptures say, and not go beyond them.
Each person in the Trinity has a distinct identity and role within the Trinity. The Father is the person of the Trinity who has priority, as it were, above the other members; He is neither created nor made nor begotten nor proceeding. He is the Great I Am. He is the One who creates and preserves what He has created. The Son is begotten of the Father, not made, not created. He is the one who redeemed creation. The Holy Spirit is of both the Father and the Son, proceeding, not made, created, or begotten. His role is to bring the work of the Son into the lives of the ones hearing the Word and to make God’s people holy.
They are truly distinct; it’s not a matter of God appearing as Father at some points, Son at others, and Holy Spirit at others, as some teach today. Otherwise, who would Jesus have prayed to in His ministry, in the Garden of Gethsemane, and on the Cross? At Jesus’ own Baptism we see the whole Trinity represented; the Father in the voice from heaven, Jesus in the water, and the Holy Spirit lighting as a dove on Jesus’ head.
All of this is so much fancy theological footwork without the “why” for it all. The reason we believe in and celebrate the Trinity is very practical. Knowing that God is Trinity means we can be certain of our salvation, because we can see how God has worked out salvation for us down through the ages.
The why for it all is God’s fundamental nature. There are several ways people speak of God. Many Christians view God’s primary nature as being His sovereignty, that God does everything because He is the supreme ruler of the universe. That He is. But see how God self-identifies in Exodus 34: The LORD passed before [Moses] and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7 ESV)
Merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, yet also punishing those who sin against Him. That’s the kind of God He is. That’s why from eternity He has had the best interests of His creation at heart, even before it was created. Ephesians 1 tells us that before the foundations of the world, God already had chosen us to salvation in Christ, that is, He already had the plan of salvation in place, He was already Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and already was prepared for Adam and Eve’s sin and the need for the Saviour. We might like to know the why, but God doesn’t give us that. It is enough that He promises us His grace and mercy.
And He is triune so that He can deliver those to us. Jesus came to this earth, true God taking on human flesh, two natures, divine and human, in the one God-man, Jesus Christ. He came so that He could live the perfect life you and I could not live, and satisfy the demand of holiness that God the Father has for all His creation, and die on the cross to take away our sins. God does what God demands so that Man can benefit! And then Jesus sends the Holy Spirit so that those who hear of His death for their salvation can believe and be saved, even those who were not part of God’s chosen people Israel.
In Baptism we are connected to this Triune God, this God who does all things so that His people would know, love, fear and trust in Him above all things. We are connected to this Triune God in order to serve Him in this world and to carry His good news. The closing part of the Athanasian Creed reflects this, in its mentioning of the final judgment. It is true that all men will be judged, and their works will be on display. However, as the Scriptures also indicate, in Matthew 25, the parable of the sheep and the goats, for those who are in Christ, all their sins and evil works are removed from the record and only the good that they have done is left to their account. Those who are not in Christ will be called to account for their evil, for without the Holy Spirit not even the finest of human works can overcome the debt of sin.
As such, the Athanasian Creed stands as a call to remember our Saviour and what He has done for us, to remember the good news that Jesus is God the Son who took on flesh in order to save us from our sins, so that we might not be held in judgement but might live. It is a call to live as people who respect their Creator and to take care of His world. It is a call to live under the Holy Spirit and by His guiding rather than in the ways of the devil, the world, and our sinful nature. It is a call to be who God has made us to be in Baptism—His very own adopted sons and daughters, heirs of the kingdom of Heaven. God grant that we live according to the grace God has given us, this Trinity Sunday and always! Amen.
Last updated May 2008 by the webmaster.