In the wilderness, most likely Western Arabia, the Hebrews are heading towards the promised land. Avoiding the land of Edom, the descendants of Esau, Jacob’s (Israel’s) brother, they travel West towards the Red Sea. Along the way, we hear a common refrain: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” (Exodus 21:5b) The people constantly grumble against Moses and Aaron, but chiefly against the Lord, who sent them.
In response to their First Commandment sin, God sends fiery serpents among them. The snakes bite and kill people. The people repent and ask that Moses pray that the serpents be removed. God does not take them away. He commands Moses to set up a bronze serpent on a pole (a carved, formed, or graven image). If anyone sees it, he will live.
Two very important details stand out here. First, the serpents remain, presumably biting and even killing. The temporal consequence of sin can and often does remain with us. Jail sentences remain, even in the face of forgiveness before God. The physical damage from chemical abuse doesn’t easily go away.
Second, seeing is not the same as looking. The “seeing” here is a passive reception of God’s forgiveness and setting aside the punishment. The Hebrews were given a gift to see and from which to receive. Jesus recalls this too, prefiguring His crucifixion in one of the least well-known passages of Scripture. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15)
The Bronze Serpent God commanded Moses to form and place for the Hebrews to see is the image of the punishment for sin. Our sin against God, like theirs, demands a price. For the Hebrews, their deliverance came from seeing the serpent. The image God gave them of their punishment, taking away their punishment, prefigures Jesus being raised up in punishment for our sin.
By faith, we see a dead thing on a tree. The death of Jesus is the moment of our salvation. It was finished when sin’s price was paid for you. In the same way, the congregation of Israel saw that serpent’s image, we should also revel in the image of the crucifix, Jesus on a pole for our salvation.
Let us never recoil at the image of our salvation,
Do you remember our Lutheran churches teeming with life? Do you remember infants, children, young people, young families, and folks of all ages? To some degree or another most of us remember the better times that preceded our current season in the church. From our demographic peak in the LCMS around 1970 and right now, each year has been less populous than the one before. Now that I’ve turned the corner of 50, I remember very well the church in about the middle of that decline, which was far better than today.
In order to look clearly at the individual partial causes, we need to look clearly at the broad demographic change. Someone will certainly look at this data and its analysis, finding offense. I intend no offense, nor personal criticism. However, we cannot hide our heads in the sand in the face of evidence which must be acknowledged.
Around 1970, the LCMS consisted of about 2.79 million members, dispersed among around 5,745 congregations, at an average of 485 per congregation, with Sunday attendance around 180. These congregations had 1,400 parochial elementary schools distributed among them, with 156,000 pupils, averaging 111 per school.
Around 2025, the LCMS consisted of about 1.67 million members (-40%), dispersed among around 5,794 congregations (+1%), at an average of 288 per congregation (-40%), with Sunday attendance around 95 (-47%). These congregations had 660 parochial elementary schools distributed among them (-47%). The number of pupils for parochial elementary schools isn’t readily available since that current data has been mingled with early childcare center (ECC) data. But, we can extrapolate in the most generous way. Using the 111 per school average, which is certainly higher than the current average, there are no more than 74,000 pupils among our parochial elementary schools (consistent with the 47% decline).
While that’s dire data, it’s common among American Christian churches. In particular, our neighbors in the ELCA have seen a 49% drop between 1988 & 2024, compared to our 40% drop from 1970-2025. The exception here is the sudden growth within the Roman and Eastern Orthodox churches.
(Data sourced by Grok AI using: concordiatheology.org, thearda.com, adcrucem.news.org, christiancyclopedia.org, & 2026 convention lcms.org)
We are recipients of a perfect storm: a birth rate problem, interfaith marriage, parochial elementary school closures, urbanization, and sheep poaching.
The same problem we are observing nationally also affects the LCMS, the Texas District, Circuit 23, and our own congregation. The replacement birth rate is 2.1 children per woman. That means family sizes of 1 to 3 kids, calculated together with all of the zeros, like my family, put our synodical birth rate below 2.1. That has caused, and will continue to cause, our churches to shrink. Church population increases primarily by birth rate, not by conversion. Now, combine that with the known retention rate of 67% when Dad brings kids to church by himself, and 39% when Mom brings children to church by herself, and we get a colony collapse level of reduction.
Interfaith marriage was once loosely forbidden among us Lutherans in the LCMS. I’ve even heard anecdotal reports of parents forbidding dating outside the Wendish community in central Texas. That devolved into requiring a suitor to convert to the LCMS. Then, commending the kids to find a faithful Christian, someone who goes to church, someone who’s at least Christian, someone who “believes,” and so forth. We have raised up at least two generations of Christian families without attendance habits in the better examples. In worse cases, kids are left to decide for themselves whether to follow Mom’s, Dad’s, or no faith tradition. Spoiler: most of those kids choose apostasy (falling away from the faith), agnosticism, or atheism.
During this same timeframe, we’ve closed 47% of our parochial elementary schools. Parochial education is the forward-facing loss to the church. We’ve also lost the community impact of professional church workers. Even a tiny school with two teachers could easily inject ten or more committed Lutherans into a church and a town. That impact is especially strong in rural and small-town communities.
The quality of education is another concealed loss. Propagandists question the quality of parochial and homeschool education. Another spoiler: parochial and homeschool students consistently outperform public school students. For the families that can access it, private school is a far better option.
For a time, Sunday School became a standard feature of our churches. (We borrowed the concept of Sunday School from the Methodists, who had no parochial elementary school tradition). While it’s a laudable side item, Sunday school doesn’t begin to fill the void left by closing a parochial elementary school.
What about preschools? ECCs are a good service for us to provide. But they do not have an effect on the vitality of a congregation like that of a parochial elementary school. It’s also unfair of us to expect a similar effect from such a narrow span of time and such a distant memory for the kids involved.
We also suffer from urbanization. Humans tend to follow employment opportunities, which often revolve around cities. For rural and small-town churches and their communities, the migration depletes our stock of young families. It’s an unstoppable force. Outside of industry setting up shop in our area, there’s very little that can be done in that fight.
Even in these massive urban centers, sheep poaching is still a problem. You may have noticed that Lutheran mega-churches are practically non-existent in rural and small-town areas. In urban metro areas (Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Denver, Chicago, et al.), large congregations can and have grown to enormous size by directly or indirectly, deliberately or accidentally, poaching members from competing congregations.
These churches will often cite the “unchurched” in their membership numbers. That’s not entirely accurate. For the most part, these unchurched folks are members/former members of local neighborhood congregations, who’ve been drawn in by the big show. The megachurch has a well-documented membership life cycle: discovery, membership, involvement, volunteerism, burnout, and departure. The sad aspects of that cycle are these: most new members come from recent activity at an existing congregation. The average span of membership is about five years. And, worst of all, people departing tend to leave Christianity altogether. The megachurch system is largely a vacuum, sucking people from neighborhood churches into apostasy.
What can we do? Start evangelism programs, youth groups, or outreach events? Those external activities came into Lutheranism amid the steady decline. They changed nothing at that time, when they were the “bigger, better” new deal.
Is this a hopeless situation? Certainly not. We have good metrics to help us reverse some trends. There aren’t enough children. We need to encourage marrying young, remaining faithful, and having lots of babies. Consider this: informally adopt a young family in your church. Buy them some groceries. Give them some gas money. Help mothers caring for their children. Encourage and chastise fathers to lead their families to church. Establish and fund a parochial elementary school, with a generous active-member family discount. Use that as a “bribe” to bring in and retain families in church attendance during the elementary years. Focus on the central part of Christianity: Sunday morning worship. That’s the actual prize, the unique feature of the faith. That’s where the Lord gathers us in His presence, delivers the forgiveness of sins, and strengthens us in the faith. The house of the Lord is where Christianity dwells.
The times are tough, but not hopeless,
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Sole Pastor Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX
We name the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, and the Commandments as the command of the Lord from Mt. Sinai, written by the finger of God on two tablets of stone in Exodus 20:1-17, in different ways. There is a numbering system used by modern Jews from the Talmud. Western Christianity, up to and through the Reformation, numbers the commandments another way. And, reformed Christians following the Reformation use yet another system of numbering the commandments.
First, are the commandments actually numbered at all? No, in the scriptures, there are no numbers given to the commandments themselves. They are simply the “commandments” or the “command of Moses.” There is, however, a distinction between the first and second tables of the law. “And [Jesus] said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.'” (Matthew 22:37-40)
[Second, must there be ten? We are certainly wise to stick with ten, not only for the benefit of children and catechumens of all ages, but also in keeping with the scriptures speaking within themselves. The Decalogue, The Ten Words, or the The Commands, depending upon translation, are the way scripture names the tablets of Moses that are to be taught. (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13; Deuteronomy 10:4; Exodus 24:12; Matthew 19:17-19) The particular categorization of the ten has been debated within Christendom (edit thanks to Nathan Jastram).]
The majority of variance exists between the first two and the last two commandments. The Talmudic numbering begins with “I am the Lord your God.” (Exodus 20:2) That differs from the Western Christian and Reformed Christians’ “You shall have no other gods.” (Exodus 20:3)
Both Talmudic and Western Christian systems group “You shall have no other Gods” with “You shall not make for yourself any carved image.” (Exodus 20:4) The Reformed alone make Exodus 20:4 into its own 2nd commandment. You may ask, what’s the difference?
There is a reason to retain the Western Christian grouping of other gods and carved (graven) images together. (Exodus 20:3-6) Just a little while later, in Exodus 36-38, Moses describes “graven” (unliving) images in great detail for the tabernacle. The distinction here is between images for the house of the Lord and “for yourselves.” The images for the house of the Lord are specifically commanded, not forbidden. So, the prohibition against images for yourselves must reside under the command to have no other gods.
A little later still, the congregation of Israel will be set upon by fiery serpents. God doesn’t take away the serpents from among them. He gives them a thing to see. “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” (Numbers 21:8-9) The lifeless image of a serpent on a pole is the life-preserving gift of God against the punishment for their grumbling. God does not break His own commandments here. He gave Israel an image that reminded them of the work of the Lord.
In a similar pattern, there’s no disagreement about grouping Exodus 20:8-11, concerning the sabbath/the holy day together. This serves to reinforce rather than detract from the v. 3-6 grouping. Things concerning having other gods and the sabbath day are in a similar group for teaching.
This more expansive teaching of the commandments is in line with the way the Lord Jesus Christ also teaches us to hear them concerning the fifth & sixth commandments. “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. … You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28)
For the ninth & tenth, we could easily go either way. All coveting could easily go together. My neighbor’s wife, livestock, or anything else I may seek to deprive from my neighbor. But pursuing it is certain to cause trouble. (Exodus 20:17) Or, we could retain the distinction in the name of the catechetical benefit of the 10 commandments rather than more or less.
Unsurprisingly, I think the text itself, the way Moses and Jesus present them to us, and the common division we have received best support the Western Christian numbering of the commandments: 1) No other Gods, 2) No misuse of God’s name, 3) Remember the sabbath (holy) day, 4) Honor father and mother, 5) No murder, 6) No adultery, 7) No theft, 8) No false witness, 9) No coveting neighbor’s house, & 10) No coveting neighbor’s wife or anything else.
In good practice, numbering the commandments provides a helpful way to teach them. We have a shared understanding of how to recall them and their content for a current application. We learn them by heart, and have the commandments always with us.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Sole Pastor Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX
Preamble: This article is a touchy subject and may require a little framing. First, this is an introspective instruction to me from myself as I begin thinking about my future retirement. Second, it may be good for my brother’s pastors to hear and receive. Third, it may be useful for congregations to consider when begging Pastor Hollenschlickerstein to stick around after he retires. – end preamble.
I’m a good fifteen years out from retirement. I still think about how we pastors ought to conduct ourselves in those years, and how congregations could encourage good behavior from the departing men. Too often, the retired guy is a noticeable drag on the ministry of the new man.
“I, a poor, miserable sinner…” We confess this way every Sunday, or at least often. But, like so much of the faith, we struggle to believe it. A small part of us (the sinner we drown daily) still thinks he’s just a “little better” than somebody else. We might think to ourselves, “Yes, I’m not a great pastor. But I’m a little better than this guy. (Specifically, after we retire) He needs to listen to my ‘good’ advice.”
We struggle especially as retirement nears. What shall I do? Where shall I go? Will I be remembered? The answers are harsh but simple: 1) assist if and only when asked, 2) away, and 3) ultimately, no.
“But, I have laid down roots in this community.” Yes, and there’s time to do the same elsewhere. In the same way you cleaved into the community you used to serve, you can become a different part of another. Did you stay on the current call too long to remember how? How is today different than yesterday? Yesterday, you would have prayerfully considered any call that came your way, even one that might uproot your family from this place. Why is retirement, during which you’ll continue preaching at least, not more of the same?
Do not interfere with or meddle in the current man’s Divine Call. Seriously, he is called to serve; here you are not. EVERY thought, direction, or piece of unsolicited advice has to pass through that filter. I’m not using “meddle” hyperbolically. Any unsupportive word, a less-than-defensive comment, or a mildly critical observation undermines the man whom God has called to serve this place. Your years or decades of service and goodwill give your words an unintentional weight.
Bona fides aren’t always helpful. I’ll share mine with you nonetheless. I’m the son of a family of generational church workers. I’ve observed the joys and sorrows of ministry from the inside since childhood. I’ve been an active member of 9 congregations in 7 districts of the LCMS. I spent formative years on one Concordia College campus and one Concordia Seminary campus. I attended another one of each. I’ve served two more congregations as a fieldworker, vicar, and pastor, adding an 8th district to my list. That’s 11 congregations and 8 districts in the LCMS for those keeping score.
My observations are anecdotal. They still come from a breadth of experience and situations. In those years, at those many places, and others as well, I know of only one long-serving retired pastor who benefited from the ministry of the man who followed him. There are countless detrimental examples. I’m not talking about 6 or 8 cases. I’m drawing from at least 50.
My mother had a wonderful conversation with a friend of hers at a congregation decades ago. Her son and my sister were both planning weddings. Mom asked something like, “What sort of planning are you doing?” The son’s mother grinned and said, “I’m the mother of the groom. My job is to wear beige and keep my mouth shut.” That whimsically hyperbolic expression is still wise for all to hear.
“How could that possibly apply to the office of the Holy ministry?” Well, everyone has a role to play. If you think you can stick around at your former call, let this inform your behavior.
In the wilderness, God instructed Israel through Moses, in the book of Numbers, about their conduct among themselves. “And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘This applies to the Levites: from twenty-five years old and upward they shall come to do duty in the service of the tent of meeting. And from the age of fifty years, they shall withdraw from the duty of the service and serve no more. They minister to their brothers in the tent of meeting by keeping guard, but they shall do no service. Thus shall you do to the Levites in assigning their duties.’” (Numbers 8:23-26) This is certainly not normative to us in our conduct in the House of the Lord. Still, we can take note of some of the functions; men may not serve at just any age. Men retire from active full-time ministry.
The last direction is a useful thought. The priests, after they had served, were tasked to guard their brothers. That can direct us wherever we go in retirement. Guard your brothers; defend their every word and deed against grumbling and discontent. Your words have weight because of your age and experience. In the same way that criticism carries an unseen impact, your defense and encouragement can protect a man without an ally.
The one pastor I remember who did well remained a member of the home congregation and kept the same address. He attended about once a month, including pulpit supply for vacations. The rest of the time, he attended other LCMS churches and served as a pulpit supply at those churches. He only wore his collar when serving, a dramatic wardrobe shift. He would answer every call for advice or counsel the same way, “You should call your pastor.” He conducted no baptisms or weddings. He remained silent in Bible class.
The LCMS call has limits. By ordination, a pastor remains a pastor while serving, between calls, and after retiring. The call, however, is THE authorization to serve in this place. He has it. If he taps you to serve pulpit supply, you may do so. If you cover a vacancy, you may do so. Just like your former calls, those duties have limits. They are for a season, and then the season ends.
Mentorship is a gift to you, not from you. It hurts our pride when folks don’t seek our advice. That doesn’t give us permission to violate the social contract. A man seeks a mentor. With very little variance, a voluntary mentor will be rejected. They may even be heard without being listened to or accorded deference. The point being, some men are sought for advice and counsel, and some are not. Which of those we are is given to us.
As a bonus example, I had a predecessor who left to serve another call a few hours away. He had served here for many years. For about half of my 70 funerals, he would call a few days before the funeral. He expressed his condolences and kept me in his prayers for good service to the grieving family. He wasn’t generally available to attend funerals. But he would always ask permission to attend the visitation. “I want to be certain that I don’t interfere with your ministry there. With your permission, I’d like to attend the visitation.” He didn’t need my permission. He was just extending a great courtesy to me and my call, each and every time.
As an increasing number of baby-boom-generation pastors retire, there will be a similar increase in vacancies. That means more chances to behave poorly. Financially preparing for retirement can also help us all fight the temptation to meddle. When retirement dawns for us, let’s all strive to serve the heirs of our office well, pray for them, be a benefit to them, and flee from the temptation to meddle.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Sole Pastor Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool La Grange, TX
[Eighth in a series of posts on how to read the Bible]
Anachronism is taking any historical custom, person, object, or event into a time period other than its own. The Biblical narratives exist in time. (Narratives are those passages that relay specific events as a narrated story). They are to be heard and read from within their contextual window.
There was a common refrain around twenty years ago: What Would Jesus Do? The notion was that Jesus, as revealed in the scriptures, could serve as a moral guide to aid your decision-making. If you would just imagine Jesus in your situation, the correct answer would become clear.
The anachronistic fallacy here is that Jesus does not walk the earth in my time. By trying to drag Him into my situation here, I’m ignoring the teachings in their context. And I’m about to put my words into Jesus’ mouth somehow to sanctify my choices into biblical truth.
Let’s try another fitment. “Jesus was a socialist, distributist, capitalist, or anarchist.” Jesus lived 1800 years before most of the codified economic systems we know developed. His experience with taxes, market forces, production, and consumption looked far different from our own. The application we should pull from “render unto Caesar” is simply: be a faithful Christian first and the best citizen, resident, or alien you can be second. Anything further pulls Jesus into our temporal context.
For a more timely application that will likely age poorly, would Jesus wear a mask? He came healing the sick. So, surely, that means that he would wear a mask. Again, our specific time and concerns applied to Jesus. We couldn’t discern the answer to that question.
This one dials in more tightly upon the problem with that question. It’s not a good question. Jesus came to heal the sick, give sight to the blind, cast out demons, and forgive sin as signs of what was to come. These signs demonstrate the fullness of God in human flesh subsisting. Jesus healed, recreated, forgave, and even raised the dead to life again to teach what His death meant. Jesus died to forgive the sins of the world. All the brokenness and other evidence of the corruption of sin will fade away in the blinking of an eye at the resurrection of all flesh. His life and ministry testify to that. Who cares what political system, hand sanitizer, or chicken sandwich he may or may not have preferred?
Dear Baptized, let us abandon anachronism and bless the Lord of time and eternity! Thanks be to God!
The legacy of Saint Athanasius is one of standing firm in the face of opposition to the word of God. Throughout his 45 years as Bishop, including 17 years in exile, he stood unwaveringly against the errors surrounding him. The Arian heresy, denying the divinity of Jesus, and all the derived and adjacent heresies are still with us. But we have a firm confession from the Word of God to fall back on in defense of the faith. That is the continuing gift given to us by Athanasius and those of his theological tradition. “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:25-30)
Alexandria in Egypt, the bishopric of Athanasius, is no longer a center of Christendom. Augustine of Hippo, who owes much to Athanasius, and is a father for us in the western church, presided over a region of North Africa that is no longer a center of Christianity. It’s wise for us to remember, but the centers of Christianity Today may not be the centers of Christianity tomorrow.
The concluding remarks of the Athanasian Creed can give us pause. While reinforcing the bodily resurrection, the creed seems to assert works righteousness.
“He will come to judge the living and the dead. At His coming, all people will rise again with their bodies and give an account concerning their own deeds. And those who have done good will enter eternal life, and those who have done evil into eternal fire.”
We should always hear these words of judgment within the context of Jesus’ work of Salvation for us. The accounting of our deeds is not done according to human reason. Just as Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. So, by faith, we receive eternal salvation. Let’s consider the sheep and the goats.
The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, chapter 25: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats … Then the righteous [sheep] will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? … Then [the unrighteous goats] also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’”
Neither the sheep nor the goats can make any sense out of this accounting. Those who are righteous by faith are ever more aware of their sin and their need for salvation day-by-day. Those who condemn themselves by their sin and persistent unbelief are ever self-justifying and judging themselves to be “good” by their own standard apart from faith. And Saint Paul gives us this useful nugget.
The epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 2: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
The good works are credited to us, sheep. These works themselves are produced by faith, which is from God, alien to our nature. And those works are prepared for us beforehand. The works we set out to do may not even be among them. Dear Christians, live in the Word and in the Christian faith. The Spirit produces faith and good works from the Gospel of salvation in Christ Jesus.
Dear Baptized, let us celebrate the faith credited to us as righteousness!
The errors faced by the early church in Alexandria were not just about the Trinity. There were also Christological confusions. Saint Athanasius was present and attentive for the decisions of the First Council of Nicaea (325 AD). Concerning the person and nature of Jesus Christ, the term, ὁμοούσιος (homoousios — of the same substance), was used to sort out the heresies. But the wisdom of man thinks itself wiser than the wisdom of God.
The third section could almost be its own creed. It deals with Jesus’ incarnation. The two natures in the one person of Christ are on full display here.
In the Athanasian Creed, we reject Eutychianism, that Jesus’ human and divine natures merged into a new, different nature. We also reject Nestorianism, that the two natures of Christ are not unified in His person. And, we reject the Gnostic notion that we will be free from matter and our bodies, specifically in the next life. These heresies or errors generally arise from an attempt to fill in the blanks of the mysteries of God with our human reason. That is not a good practice we should engage in. Some things are known to us. And some are not yet revealed.
The Eutychians held that Jesus’ human and divine natures merged into a new nature. In their intent to firmly affirm the unity of God and man in Christ, they created something different. The Eutychian Jesus must be separate from the Trinity because he is of a different substance. His human and divine natures make him a new, unique thing that is neither God nor man. Since it is not either, it cannot be truly God.
“But pastor, why does that matter?” That’s a perfectly fair question. Only God can atone for all the sins of all of mankind. We know that Jesus died for our sins, each and every one, and all together. So, our understanding of the nature of Christ has to allow for that truth to remain constant. Instead, we confess, “our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is at the same time both God and man.”
The Nestorians found the other ditch. Like the brilliant Vizzini from the movie: The Princess Bride, “clearly I cannot choose the cup in front of you.” If the complete unity of the two natures into a new nature is wrong, then the two natures of Christ must not be unified in His person. This creates a host of new potential misunderstandings. Does Jesus retain his humanity? Did Jesus remain human throughout His ministry, life, death, and resurrection? Did God depart from the man, Jesus, at any point? The answers to those questions, in many cases, are their own unique error, which we may discuss at another time.
The rubber meets the road here. On the cross, God turned his back on Jesus, who is also God. On the cross, God the Son died for our sins. And God the Son was raised to life again. All of the hows, whys, and wherefores are not for us to know. We’re given exactly what we need to understand and trust completely that our sin was atoned for on Calvary.
“He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ: one, however, not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity into God; one altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.”
The Gnostics had a notion that we will be free from matter and our bodies one day. Specifically, we will be only spiritual in the next life. The taking up of Enoch and Elijah bodily into heaven speaks against this. Job’s confession that he will see God face-to-face with his own eyes does so. Mary Magdalene confesses the resurrection to Jesus just before he restores Lazarus to life. In the resurrection, Jesus eats and drinks with His disciples and invites them to touch Him. He is with them bodily, not spiritually.
In the Christian faith, we live with the certainty that the resurrection promises we will be whole and complete. This is a challenge, especially at the time of the death of our own loved ones. We want to know that everything is complete for them. We want to know that they are “in a better place.” Yet the Bible teaches us it isn’t quite done. The promise of salvation isn’t full and complete until we are resurrected in our bodies to eternal life. We confess the resurrection of our bodies! “At His coming, all people will rise again with their bodies.”
Instead of intellectualizing the complex in a way that makes sense, we are better served by acknowledging the witness of scripture. Some things are clear and known to us. Other mysteries are not revealed to us in this life. But, we can know with certainty that all of the things pertinent to our Salvation are clear and known.
Dear Baptized, let us praise the one Christ, truly God and truly man, for our salvation!
The exact date and author of the Athanasian Creed are unknown. It derives its name from the theological tradition of Saint Athanasius. It is typically dated to the late 4th or early 5th century AD. Augustine’s On the Trinity (415 AD) has very similar language to the creed. Athanasius’ lifelong battle against the heresies prevalent in the early Christian church in North Africa helped shape a theological tradition that heavily influenced the Western church.
“Just as we are compelled by the Christian truth to acknowledge each distinct person as God and Lord, so also are we prohibited by the catholic religion to say that there are three Gods or Lords.”
In the second section of the creed, we confess the personhood of the Trinity, each distinct from the other. This rejects Modalism, which holds that God changes masks, appearances, or functions but remains the same in person in each case. Rather, we confess that the individual persons of the Triune God possess unique attributes to the exclusion of the others.
This distinctness of a person also describes the divine economy. That is economy in the sense of interrelationship, not of money. Within the Trinity, there is an economy of relationship between the persons. The Father is eternally neither made nor begotten. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. The Holy Spirit is eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son, neither created nor begotten.
These expressions of the Christian understanding of the Trinity push back against modalism by affirming the concurrence of personhood. It is impossible for the Father to put on a Son mask. He is eternally the Father, and His personhood is unique from the Son. The Son cannot put on a Holy Spirit mask because His attributes in His person are distinct from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot wear the attributes of the Father because they are unique from His own attributes. All of these attributes are eternally the attributes of the persons of God.
But these immutable characteristics do not make a hierarchy. All persons of the Trinity are equally God. And, none is before or after another.
The Father is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Son. The Son is not the Father. The Holy Spirit is God. The Son is God. The Father is God, coeternal and coequal.
Dear Baptized, the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity is to be worshipped!
Saint Athanasius was bishop and patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt (under Roman control) from 328 to 373 AD. He attended the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD as secretary to his predecessor, Alexander. Athanasius was ordained as bishop and patriarch after Alexander’s death. In his 48 years presiding over the region, he was exiled five times, by four different Roman emperors, for 17 years, over theological controversies in North Africa.
Each of the three sections of the creed begins with a similar language. The Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds start with “I believe…” But the Athanasian Creed takes a different approach. Rather than solely confessing together with one voice. Here, we also exhort one another, “Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith.” Then, in each section, we confess the catholic faith.
We Lutherans need not fear the word “catholic.” The term catholic does not refer to the modern Roman Catholic Church, but to the universal, invisible, orthodox, faithful church of Christ on earth. We retain the use of the term “catholic” in the Athanasian Creed in opposition to the papal church of Rome. “Catholic” simply means “universal,” and as such, we boldly confess it from our Lutheran identity.
The first section addresses the unity of our Triune God. He is uncreated, infinite, and eternal, “not three gods, but one God.” This language rejects Subordinationism, that the Son and the Spirit are less God than that Father is God. Rather, God is of one substance. Subordinationism was, in part, an overcorrection for the error of modalism. Subordinationists were seeking to clarify the distinctness of the person within the Trinity. Their over correction created a theological position that hedged upon tritheism. To protect our understanding from merging God into just one thing of only one sort, they created an understanding where God can easily be three things of three sorts. And these three loosely connected God characters have a hierarchy within their pantheon. This is an error.
The modalist error is also addressed by the second section of the Creed. This serves to remind us that the opposite of an error isn’t always a truth. Sometimes the opposite of an error can simply be an error in the opposite direction.
“But the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.” The God-ness of the Trinity is whole and one. The attributes of God in His unity are shared and are one: uncreated, infinite, eternal, and almighty. But these are not a dozen attributes, four of each, unique to each person. There are four attributes that each person possesses as one. There are not three gods, but one God. There are not three lords, but one Lord. There are not three eternals, but one Eternal. We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.
Don’t let yourself be dismayed or discouraged by these complicated understandings. They were intense struggles for the early church and remain intellectual difficulties for us today. The big takeaway from the Athanasian Creed is that we can never fully understand the Trinity. We can, with the help of the fathers of the faith before us, identify those things that are outside the proper understanding.
Dear Baptized, let us celebrate the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity!
On Trinity Sunday, most Lutheran churches confess the Athanasian Creed together. The creed was composed in keeping with his theology about the Trinity, though not by St. Athanasius himself. The creed flagrantly uses the term “catholic” in a way that can startle us sensitive snowflakes of the Lutheran tradition.
St. Athanasius? Catholic? Are we Romanists, now?
No, we are not now, nor do we desire to be a part of the Roman Catholic church. “But, Pastor, we just said the ‘catholic faith,’ like three times in the Athanasian Creed last Sunday.” Yes, yes, we did. And I have good news! At Mt. Calvary, we confess it again on several Sundays throughout the church year.
Our Sunday bulletin at Mt. Calvary included this little note concerning our catholicity. “catholic faith* — The term catholic does not refer to the modern Roman Catholic Church, but rather to the universal, invisible, orthodox, faithful church of Christ on earth. We retain the use of the term “catholic” in the Athanasian Creed in opposition to the papal church of Rome. “Catholic” simply means” universal,” and as such, we boldly confess it from our Lutheran understanding.”
There are Christians who eschew the use of creeds in the church. They’ll say things like, “No creed but Christ” and, “no book but the bible.” But those statements are creeds of their own. We derive the English word creed from the Latin credo, which means, “I believe.” So, our friends in the “no creeds” crowd are creedingly creeding a creed against the use of creeds. (The large majority of the global Christian community is from credal faiths like ours.)
The three ecumenical creeds are: The Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. Creeds, as a whole, exist to speak contrary to positions held outside the faith. Each of these creeds exists solely to communicate the faith we all hold in opposition to a novel heresy against the faith. Ecumenical refers to that which pertains to the whole Christian church. The ecumenical creeds are embraced and confessed by all of Christendom.
The Athanasian Creed speaks primarily against the Arian sect of the early Christian church. Arius, for whom the sect is named, struggled with the stuff of which God is. He taught against the idea that God the Father and God the Son are of the same substance.
Now, the Nicene Creed says, “… of the same substance with the Father…” After the first ecumenical council in Nicea (325 AD), the notion that there are differences in substance should have been put to bed with all the subordination it entails. But Arianism remained a problem for the church.
The creed can be treated as two or three parts. Three parts will work adequately for this discussion. The first part deals with the unity of our Triune God. He is uncreated, infinite, and eternal, “not three gods, but one God.” This language rejects Subordinationism, that the Son and the Spirit are less God than the Father, who is God. Rather, God is of one substance, not “three gods or lords.”
In the second section, we confess personhood, each distinct from the other. This rejects Modalism, which holds that God changes masks, appearances, or functions but remains the same in person in each case. Rather, we confess that the individual persons of the Triune God possess unique attributes to the exclusion of the others. The Father: unbegotten, The Son: begotten, and the Holy Spirit: proceeding, are all unique in function for us Christians. There are not three of any, but one of each person within the Trinity in Unity.
The third section deals with Jesus’ incarnation. The two natures of Christ are on full display here. The Son is “equal to the Father with respect to His divinity, less than the Father with respect to His humanity.” We reject Eutychianism, that Jesus’ human and divine natures merged into a new, different nature. “He is God, begotten from the substance of the Father before all ages; and He is man, born from the substance of His mother in this age: perfect God and perfect man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh; equal to the Father with respect to His divinity, less than the Father with respect to His humanity.” We also reject Nestorianism, that the two natures of Christ are not unified in His person. “He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ: one, however, not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity into God; one altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.”
The third section also rejects the Gnostic notion that we will be free from matter and our bodies, specifically in the next life. On the contrary, we confess the resurrection of our bodies! “At His coming, all people will rise again with their bodies.”
Dear Baptized, let us celebrate the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity! Thanks be to God!
