Nicene Creed: Dealing with the Arians

Had there not been controversies surrounding the Person of Jesus Christ, we likely would not have the Nicene Creed or the Athanasian Creed, for that matter. However, we see that already that even in the time of the Apostles, there were misunderstandings about Jesus that led the church to believe in a Jesus that was different from the Scriptural Witness. John, in his Epistles writes of some people who denied Jesus having come in the flesh and others denied Jesus was the Son of God.

As I said in the very first post about the Nicene Creed, The Apostles’ Creed, though correct, could be said by many of these types of people. Words and meaning could be manipulated leading many astray. This became very apparent in the days of Arius, who held to a view that Jesus was a creature and not the “very God of very God, begotten, not made, being one substance with the Father.”

There needed to be a preciseness concerning the words chosen to confess the Scriptural understanding of the Lord Jesus. They had to stay with what Scripture said about Him, or utilize words that conveyed the same meaning. To combat against Arius’ teaching and a host of other’s the Orthodox Christian church fathers went on to write the 2nd article in such a way that would not allow for a follower of Arius to confess it. Arius and his followers would say Jesus a son of God, made but not begotten. Arius would say, “There was a time when the Son was not.” The argument came from Proverbs 8, where personified Wisdom speaks, “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old.” That sounds as if Wisdom is a created being, being the first thing created. The problem with this approach is that we should never take one verse of Scripture and interpret it without looking at other verses concerning the same idea. John, for instance, in the first chapter of His Gospel says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Jesus, also in the Gospel of John says, “Before Abraham was I am.”

The great church Father Athanasius took great pains to defend the Orthodox and Scriptural position of the Lord Jesus Christ being the very Son of God as well as the Son of Mary. Athanasius and his fellow brothers in arms utilized the word homoousias (same substance with the Father) against what Arius liked (homoiousias, similar substance, but not the same substance). The term homoousias is not found in the Scriptures but it conveys the point of Jesus’ eternality with the Father as presented to us in John 1, for instance.

The 2nd Article of the Creed then lays down the line of the position of the Orthodox and Scriptural confession and says to the followers of Arius, “You cannot confess a different view of the relationship between the Son and Father, and call yourself Orthodox.”

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO