For us and for our salvation

I’ve been returning to some of my roots, reading the Nicene Creed a lot lately. In preparation to teach on the life of Athanasius — to our high school group, in a series called INSPIRED — I’ve been contemplating the first official church creed (AD 325). Here’s the modern wording of the Nicene Creed (edited again in 381 at Constantinople and of course translated into English, after the Reformation):

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father [and the Son].
With the Father and the Son
he is worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. AMEN.

(I grew up saying it every week in church, but only in the last decade have my eyes been open to realize the significance and truth found in the words of this creed. Thankful the words were memorized from a young age, and are becoming to me more colorful and beautiful now.)

Athanasius (c. AD 296/98 – 373) has long been my favorite figure in church history, and he may be the single most influential person in church history since Christ and the Apostles. Not as well known as so many others — Augustine, Jerome, Luther, etc. But beloved by God and greatly used by Him. I’ve learned in studying church history that  those who are the most used by God for the sake of the Gospel of His Son, are (1) not lazy, and (2) realize their life’s work does not depend upon them. This is one of those great "happy tensions," where the influence is supernatural and beyond the finite limits of a single life — like Paul writes in Col. 1:29 — all of God’s energy at work in us. Our story is part of His.

We owe so much to Athanasius and his writings, that through great weakness of body and five trips into exile he persevered to give us a deeper vision of the Worth, Work and Ways of Jesus the Christ than the church was swimming in during his days. Oh, the purity and others-directed service of his life! He simply thought about himself less, and made much of Jesus while providing for the poor and widows, preaching about the worth, work and ways of Christ, and even praying for and reaching out to Arius. Arius is the poor theology student who while 42 years Athanasius’ elder — and fellow pastor in the same city and church — was greatly confused and left the biblical vision of Christ. He taught that if Jesus were a Son, then He must have had a beginning, and since there is only one God — who eternally Is — that must be God the Father alone and the Son and Spirit must be secondary creatures. He denied the mystery of the Trinity, because he wanted to worship a God he could fully understand. Arius did not deny Christ, he simply dethroned the Savior, saying he was created (against the clear teaching of passages like Col. 1:15-23 and John 1:1-16). He was in essence the original Jehovah’s Witness, and so many of the church leaders in that day were swayed to this heresy.

Thus the nickname of our hero, "Athanasius Contra Mundum " (against the world). There is a great irony in God’s providence of greatly using a man and his writings — Athanasius — while he was exiled five times by various Roman Emperors. Without those banishments (much like the Apostle Paul in prison), this world would be a less glorious place — and the Gospel would not have spread so well. The emperors had no idea what they were doing, thinking that banishing him would led to the spread of the politically expedient Arianism. Instead, the people of Alexandria considered Athanasius their bishop for 45 years, especially the 17 he spent in the deserts as a fugitive. From the desert his writings sounded forth with the accuracy and weight of scholar and the pastoral tone of of a man who possessed deep love of Christ and truth. The sufferings were worth it: for him, for them, and for us. Young Athanasius came against Arian and his views with the patience of a true saint, and the endurance of a man set on fire by Christ and by truth. I’ll post some links to good summaries and some of his writings when my talk is complete.