Exploring the Athanasian Creed

[00:00:02] Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our father and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:11] So today's trinity, Sunday, holy trinity. [00:00:17] The Trinity might seem like a definition for God, right? Like, tell me about God. Well, he's three in one, right? Like trinity in unity, three persons, one God. [00:00:36] That tells you a little something about God. Kind of. [00:00:40] But I want to say it's less of a definition and more of a definition against saying wrong things about God. [00:00:53] Somebody told me once, the athanasian creed is the most beautiful document or something like that, and I think it's just the opposite. [00:01:04] Not really. Not that it's not at all beautiful, and it speaks of the most beautiful thing. But what I mean is that it's a very complex technical document. [00:01:17] The goal of it isn't to, like, lead us deeply into the knowledge of the Trinity. It's to guard us from speaking wrongly about God. [00:01:34] You see what I mean? So it has a very technical purpose. [00:01:39] The athanasian creed, it wasn't written by Athanasius. It's a tribute. It's called that in honor of Athanasius, because Athanasius was the bishop of Alexandria in much of the fourth century, well, like 44 years. [00:01:57] And he was very instrumental in helping to form the Nicene Creed, which we say every other Sunday. [00:02:09] And so he was at the council of Nicaea in 325, to which all the bishops in the empire pretty much came. [00:02:18] And they all almost unanimously, like, two people didn't sign it, you know, but out of hundreds of bishops, they all, this is what they decided on, the Nicene Creed. And then actually part of the Nicene Creed, like the third part on the Holy Spirit, that was actually developed at the, the count, the first council of, second, 1st Council of Constantinople in 381. So anyway, just to say, like, this is all rooted in a lot of history, you know, a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into the formulation of these creeds. And it wasn't pretty either. You know, Athanasius himself, he was exiled from Alexandria like he was the bishop of Alexandria, but he was exiled from Alexandria, had to flee, hide. [00:03:11] Five times. Five different times, somebody else would come in power and say, no, what you're doing is right. Come on back. You know, so five times during the 44 years that he was bishop, he had to flee. This was not a fun game, but it's named after Athanasius in honor of the fight that he led to defend the true faith against people who had begun to teach things that were wrong. I'll just throw out a name. Arius the main guy who, he was going around, he was a deacon, and he was going around teaching that Jesus isn't God, that he's created, but he's maybe like the best of God's creatures. And, yeah, he's not equal with the father. This was a really big problem, and he was a really good teacher of it. And so Arius would go around and he would make songs, catchy songs, so that people could learn it all the better. And so the bishops of the church, whose job is to watch over the teaching, to guard people in the true faith, they're saying, well, what do we do about this? We need to have a, we need, we need a good way of speaking about these issues that we can all unite around and say, this is the true teaching of the faith. This is how we speak about God rightly, according to scripture. [00:04:44] And then they can say this, that they're saying doesn't match with this. They can use it as a rule to say that's outside of the teaching of the church. Don't listen to it. [00:04:58] Now, today, our society sees, our postmodern culture sees any kind of a rule or any kind of an authority trying to impose rules around speech or behavior as oppressive. Right? Have you heard this? I was hearing it yesterday. I was at a. A conference in Chicago on the early church, this kind of stuff, and somebody gets up and presents a paper saying, St. Chrysostom in the fourth century. He was such an oppressive leader, just trying to have influence on everybody's behavior and things like that, which is my job as a pastor, speak God's word to you, so that God's word shapes you, shapes your life, your beliefs. And we don't see that as oppressive because we recognize God graciously coming to us through Jesus Christ, enlightening us by his holy spirit and giving us his gifts. [00:06:01] But if you're not christian, you don't see that, then it feels oppressive. So it was really fascinating to, she was talking about how St. Chrysostom preached, and I was thinking, like, oh, yeah, I gotta preach that, you know? And she's saying, like, that's so oppressive and everything like that. But so the truth is not obvious to everyone. [00:06:26] It's hidden. Jesus kind of says that to Nicodemus. [00:06:32] He says, the wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. [00:06:47] So you have been born again from above by the spirit and by faith. You see things differently than the world around you sees things. [00:06:57] You hear God's word and you feel it trying to shape you. You feel the Holy Spirit convicting you of sin, saying, you've done wrong, and you accept that and you repent and you give thanks to God that he came after you and didn't let you turn away from him, but that he came after you and brought you back, led you back to a right orientation, right? Looking to God to receive from him and to be ordered and shaped by him. You don't see that as oppressive. You see that as a gift, because God loves you enough to not let you just live a sinful, rebellious life apart from him, thinking that you're going toward life when really you're driving yourself out of existence. [00:07:45] You know that God loves you, and so you take his rebuke as loving discipline, like a father. But discipline doesn't always look fun. It doesn't look good by appearances. [00:07:58] I don't want to be disciplined. I don't want to be constrained in how I speak or how I act on the surface. But by faith, we see that God loves us. We see that he's given us Jesus Christ and that he's promised us life, and so we trust him wherever he leads us. [00:08:16] It's not obvious, but we know by faith that it's good for us. [00:08:24] This, you know, appearances, like it appears one way, but we know that there's something hidden behind it. That's how it is with discipline. Children obeying, obeying parents, they should trust that their parents have their best interest in mind. And sometimes that's hard because they don't understand, right? [00:08:45] There's a lot that they don't understand even as they grow in understanding. This is kind of a theme throughout the readings. [00:08:57] In the Old Testament reading, Isaiah finds himself in the throne room of God, but he doesn't see God fully. It's not like, ah, there he is. Cool. Hey, God, you know, it's. [00:09:16] He says, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. [00:09:22] It's like, okay, he saw the train of his robe filling the temple, right? [00:09:28] That's a little, you know, a little snippet like, you. You see something, right? But God is revealed, right? There he is sitting on the throne, and the train of his robe fills the temple. But he's also. He also remains in mystery. [00:09:42] See, there's something that Isaiah comprehends about God, but there's a whole lot, infinite, that remains in mystery. [00:09:54] That's how it is with our faith that's how it is with this creed. This creed is guarding the mystery of God. It's not telling us, like, hey, if you want to know what God's, you know, if you want to know all about God, just study this creed, and then you'll have wrapped your mind around him. [00:10:12] God doesn't work that way. You can't wrap your mind around God. [00:10:17] You can't understand God like that. [00:10:21] He defies explanation. [00:10:24] So all of our illustrations, if you want to describe God with an apple with the skin and the core or the seeds in the flesh or something like that, like, see three things in one thing and that kind of like, you know, none of it actually works. You gotta keep that in mind, right? But the Trinity and the athanasian creed, it's all, it's guarding the mystery. [00:10:49] So we refrain from speaking beyond what we ought to speak, right. [00:11:00] And revere the mystery. Right. But the wonderful thing is that God has, he's revealed himself to us. How has he revealed himself to us, Father, Son and Holy Spirit? [00:11:13] That the Father sent us his son so that believing in him, we would come to know God. So that seeing Jesus, we see the Father. [00:11:25] He came to us to draw us to himself in order to lead us back to God, and he gives us his spirit. And it's the spirit of Jesus Christ. It's the spirit of God. [00:11:38] And by the spirit, we have the mind of Christ. [00:11:41] We are enlightened and made holy. The spirit is working in us so that Paul can say in Philippians two or three, you know, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it's God who works in you, both to will and to work like God is working in you to want to and to do it. [00:12:05] He's enlightened you, and he's making you holy. Right? So these are all just, this is how we can talk about God. It's how he's revealed himself to us. But it leaves God in mystery. [00:12:15] And that's okay. [00:12:20] This is just the way reality works. We are constantly surrounded by a lot that we don't understand. [00:12:27] And maybe you see it more obviously with children just have more to learn maybe than we do. But the reality is when you come to be an adult, you realize it's not really true, you know, that we have just as much to learn as they do. Right. But that we live in a world that we can grow to understand more and more, always, right. All our life, we're learning and coming to understand things more and more, but there's a whole lot that remains a mystery to us, there's a lot that's above our heads. [00:13:06] So children. [00:13:08] Children have people to sort of guide them, right? And not just people, but traditions. [00:13:16] They have traditions like, well, some traditions, a lot of traditions that we don't follow anymore, you know, some. Some that I don't, that I'm trying to understand. And some of you, I've heard from some of you, for example, like, children should be heard or should be seen and not heard. Somebody has said that, okay? And I think there's probably value in that. And just because it's a tradition from the past, we should pay attention to it because there's a reason that that was, that that was. I mean, it sounds kind of oppressive, doesn't it? Right? But, you know, you read Laura Ingalls WildEr and it's like, well, that's how it was. And, well, maybe that produced respectful, humble people who respected authorities and recognized that they ought to listen and learn from their elders, whatever. [00:14:11] So there are all kinds of traditions like that, like eating dinner around a table. Why do we eat dinner around a table? [00:14:18] Well, I don't know, so forget it. Well, then you miss out, right? Just because you didn't understand why eating dinner around a table is helpful, then you stopped doing it. Well, then you didn't get the benefits of it. But the alternative is to listen to the wisdom of the past and to let it guide and guard us and recognize that there's wisdom in it, maybe even if we don't, even if we don't know exactly why it is. That's what our life in the church is. Obviously, we have lots of traditions, and some of them we're, we're playing out right now, right? We are following many traditions right now. And you could say, like, well, why do we do that? Or why do we do that? And I'm growing in my understanding of why we do everything that we do, right? And then, like, why do we say the athanasian creed? And why do we, why do we listen to that? And the thing is, if we only did what we understand, right? Like, well, I don't understand that, so forget it. We're going to do something we do understand that would really shrink the world in which we have to grow, right? Like the world that we don't understand, that we can grow to understand, that can shape us even though we don't totally understand it. Do you see the contrast between what we understand and what's yet to be understood that we can grow in understanding of? [00:15:44] This is the mystery, what we're talking about ultimately, then, is the mystery of God, and he draws us up into himself. It's not that the mystery is completely incomprehensible. It is at some level, but that he draws us up gradually into understanding and awe in the mystery of himself. And while he always remains beyond our comprehension, he's always drawing us further and further, well, to himself. Right. [00:16:21] Understanding of himself and of reality that he's created, then. [00:16:26] So there are going to be things in this creed, the Athanasian Creed, that we don't understand. [00:16:33] And if you ask me questions about it, I could explain some of the historical context of the arguments, and I could maybe explain to you, you know, why. Why certain things are said. [00:16:47] I'm still, you know, I'm growing in understanding of it. This is the kind of stuff that I was taught so that what I say, so that my speech would be constrained, you know, in order to protect you and me. Right, all of us. [00:17:03] But the beauty is that is that we are not. We are not in this christian faith by ourselves. [00:17:12] Our understanding and practice of the christian faith, it's not limited by what we can figure out by ourselves. [00:17:23] We have. [00:17:26] Well, we are the church. [00:17:29] Not just some church, but the Church of Jesus Christ that's led by his spirit, that he promised to his church to lead them into all truth. You know, you see the entire church gathering. There was just one church then, right? You see the entire church gathering for the council of Nicaea and putting out a document and saying, you know, we and the Holy Spirit believe, you know, this is. This is the faith that. This is the christian faith. Sorry, I don't remember the exact line in what they put out, but. [00:18:01] But they say it's not just us but the Holy Spirit. This is all of God's people together guided in a right way of speaking. And we get to live within that tradition. We have teachers, good teachers, led by the Holy Spirit. [00:18:18] And so we gladly submit to these creeds. Lutherans, we have documents that we submit to that guide our guide, our thinking and our speaking and our faith. Not because. [00:18:32] Not because they go beyond scripture or something like that, but because, well, we all need teachers, right? And we all have teachers, whether we know it or not, we want to have the right teachers. And so we've. We've submitted ourselves to the three ecumenical creeds. The creeds that the whole church. That's what ecumenical means. The whole church came together and developed these creeds, the apostles Creed, or at least adopted them, the apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the athanasian creed. [00:19:04] So when we say this creed. Just recognize that you are submitting to. We are submitting to, well, the teaching of the christian church. And here it said Catholic. Right? And Catholic means universal. It means ecumenical. It means the whole church. [00:19:26] We're submitting to the teaching of the church. Right. And that's a gift. That's a gift. Because it means we're not alone in this. And it means we have good teachers whose teacher is the Holy Spirit by the word, in Jesus name. Amen. [00:19:46] So let's say it, and then you can ask me questions later. [00:19:51] All right, let's stand.