Athanasian Creed
St. John 3:1–17
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There’s an old story about a group of blind men encountering an elephant for the first time: the first blind man felt the elephant’s trunk and said, “This creature is like a thick snake.” The second blind man touched the elephant’s ear and said, “No, this creature is like a thin fan.” A third wrapped his arms around a leg and said, “This animal is like a pillar or a tree trunk.” Another blind man touched the elephant’s side and said, “It’s like a big rough wall.” Another felt the elephant’s tail and said, “It’s like a small rope.” The last blind man touched the elephant’s tusk and said, “No, this creature is smooth and sharp like a spear.” Of course, they are all wrong, and this story shows the incompleteness and inadequacy of human knowledge.
But, to put a little spin on the story, what if the elephant could speak? What if the elephant said, “I am an elephant,” and then went on to describe himself to the blind men? Our God is the God who speaks. We cannot fully and truly know Him from our own investigation, thoughts, or feelings. He reveals Himself to us. He tells us who He is and what He does. He says, “I am one God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
No human would manufacture something so incomprehensible. No other religion has ever come up with a deity so unfathomable. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, We speak of what We know, and bear witness to what We have seen, but you do not receive Our testimony.” That “We” is none other than the Holy Trinity, and that “We” speaks. Christians receive the testimony of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We stick to what the Triune God has revealed and we worship Him. We worship this God like the seraphim do around His throne in Isaiah 6, with their wings humbly covering their faces. We worship Him like St. Paul did in Romans 11, rapturously bursting in praise: Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! (Romans 11:33). The Athanasian Creed does not say that we must UNDERSTAND the Trinity. It says that we WORSHIP one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.
This Creed that we confessed was named after the great north African bishop and teacher, Athanasius. This Creed was not written by him but it explains what he so clearly taught and defended during one of the greatest controversies of the Church. In the early 300s there was another north African pastor named Arius, who taught that Jesus was the first and most powerful creation of God but not true God. He taught that there is no Trinity. This false teaching was corrected in the year 325 at the Council of Nicaea with the formulation of the Nicene Creed, which confesses Jesus to be begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.
Unfortunately, in the decades after Nicaea, the followers of Arius actually grew in number to the point that they began to outnumber the faithful followers of the Nicene Creed. In fact, it seemed at times, that Athanasius was the only one to stand up for the Trinity. Later, he was called “Athanasius against the world.” Despite the opposition, Athanasius defended the catholic faith, which we still confess today. And to say, “the catholic faith,” means “the faith that the true Church of all times and all places has confessed.” Athanasius stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, whole and undefiled, at a time when it looked as if all the civilized world was slipping away from Christianity into the religion of Arius—into a sensible, understandable, man-made religion, (and we still have lots of those today). It is to Athanasius’s honor that he did not move with the times. It is his reward that his teaching based on God’s Word now remains, even when those times have passed away (C.S. Lewis, Introduction to On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius, p.9).
I said that we still have many sensible, understandable, man-made religions today. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are basically the modern-day followers of Arius. They deny the Trinity and claim that Jesus is a creation of God but not true God.
Islam and Judaism are religions that get connected to Christianity, and many even assume all three religions worship the same God. Judaism, of course, shares the Old Testament Scriptures. And Islam shares some of the same Biblical figures like Abraham and even Jesus. But ever since the Jews rejected the Messiah Jesus, Judaism ceased to be a true religion and they no longer worship the one true God. They do not have God the Father, because their god does not have a Son. There’s a similar problem with Islam: they deny the Trinity and believe Jesus is merely a man and a prophet. The god of the Muslims is Allah and he is not the same as the Trinity. Once again, you can’t call Allah God the Father because this god has no Son.
And then in our country you have lots of references to “God” without ever giving Him a proper name. Many Christians assume that saying “God bless America” or “one nation under God” is a reference to the Holy Trinity, but it’s not that specific, especially nowadays, when people want to be inclusive. If you come to the Memorial Day program tomorrow (and you should come), you’ll notice that I will pray a Christian, Trinitarian prayer: it will begin in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and it will be prayed to the Father through the Son and in Spirit. There will be no doubt that this is a Christian prayer to the Christian God.
But the most common of the sensible, man-made religions today is a blending of many religions, called universalism—the idea that all religions lead to the same place. Universalism would say that the blind men feeling the elephant are all explaining the same thing but from different perspectives, so in other words they all get some part of God, and they’re all right in their own way. But the fact remains, they all get the elephant wrong, they still don’t know what an elephant is!
The Athanasian Creed states whoever does not keep the faith whole and undefiled will without doubt perish eternally. I know that makes us uncomfortable, or at least sad. In some way, I think we all want to be universalists, we want to believe that everyone will go to heaven, or at least no will be punished in hell for eternity. But we can’t think that way—it is sinful, and goes directly against what God has said in Scripture. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he CANNOT enter the kingdom of God.” Or in the verse following our reading today, Jesus continued by saying, “Whoever believes in the Son is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is CONDEMNED ALREADY, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18). There is one true God, and for those who do not believe in Him there is judgment. This is not popular. But we must stand with Athanasius against the world and confess that if you don’t have the Trinity, you don’t have salvation.
Still, we often struggle to explain what the Trinity is. It is a concept that our minds cannot completely grasp. But the good news is that we know something better than concepts or stuff about the true God. We know the true God Himself because we know what He does for us. The way the Trinity works is simple: the Father sends His only-begotten Son to save the world. The Son sends the Holy Spirit. The Spirit grabs us, giving us faith and bringing us to know the Son. And then the Son brings us and presents us to His Father. Notice how at the center of the Trinity’s work is the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We know the one true God, and more importantly we know the one true God loves us, because we know Jesus. For God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Jesus is the only-begotten Son of the Father and the Giver of the Holy Spirit. Knowing Jesus is how we know the Trinity.
And once again, when I say “know,” remember I don’t strictly mean “understand.” Above all, we worship the Trinity. Or in other words, we go to the Trinity as the Giver of all good gifts and we get the gifts from the three Persons who are one God. Our banners might be helpful here: on the one side of the nave we have the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. On the other side we have the gifts. First, Baptism: we are born again of water and the Spirit, baptized into the Son and so adopted as children of the Father. Then the Word: we hear the Word that the Father speaks through His Son and that the Spirit caused to be written down. And then the Lord’s Supper: we eat and drink the body and blood of the Son that was offered up to the Father in payment for our sins and is now given to us to forgive, strengthen faith, and keep us in the unity of the Spirit. By receiving these gifts we worship the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So that in all things, as has been stated above, the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is to be worshiped.
In the Holy + Name of Jesus. Amen.
