By: Amy Beange

A theologian wrote that Jesus of Nazareth “was a created being who was neither eternal nor equal to the divine” and that you and I “can become Sons of God just like he did”. These statements could be taken from today’s disputes about just who Christ was, but they were made by Arius, a church leader from the 4th century AD. His teachings about Jesus being a created being whose righteous deeds garnered Him God’s special praise were so significant that an ecumenical (world-wide) council was convened in the city of Nicaea (modern day Turkey) to investigate them, firstly in 325 AD and again in 381 AD.

In my previous blog “Can You Articulate What You Believe?”, I referred to the Nicene Creed as a useful tool for teaching content – the fundamentals of the faith. I suggested a small group or Sunday School class or family work through the creed statement by statement, discussing why each concept was important. So now we’ll look more closely at the importance of a particular concept.

Christ’s identity was an important issue in the Patristic era (the several hundred years after the lifetime of the apostles) for a couple reasons. Firstly, Emperor Constantine had made Christianity a favoured religion of the Roman Empire. Being a Christian was now a good thing, opening doors for work within the church and within the state. Instead of a persecuted minority faith, it was becoming a force to be reckoned with. So, it was in the best interests of the state that the Church be united. Internal disputes had the potential of dividing not only the church but also the wider society. 

Secondly, Christianity was a distinct sort of religion in that it dealt with matters of history – God was believed to have entered human history Himself – Jesus Christ, God’s son – in order to achieve his plan of redemption. How exactly that happened was a matter of deep concern since it dealt with matters of eternal consequence. God was believed to have revealed Himself in scripture and in the person of Jesus. So, it was critical that His followers have an accurate understanding of who He was and what He did. Inaccurate teachings about Jesus could lead to a false gospel being presented to people, putting their salvation in jeopardy. 

The council of 325 saw representative church leaders from across the Empire meet and discuss this and other matters for an entire month. In the end they composed the Nicene Creed which articulated their consensus on the nature of Christ – the creed specifically says the Christ is “true God from true God, begotten not made, of one essence with the Father” in order to make clear to all that Christ was indeed divine, equal to the Father and not a lesser, created being.

But does it really matter whether or not Jesus was divine? Or is discussing this question akin to arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Let’s start by examining what the scriptures tell us about how to be saved.

Christ came onto the scene with a simple message: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” His command “repent” had a rich history related to the Jewish people, in which God established a covenant with Abraham: “I will make you a great nation…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:2-3). The covenant was expanded in the time of Moses when God gave the Law – the regulations that showed the people what it meant to follow God: “If you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people…and you shall be to Me a kingdom of Priests and a holy nation.” The covenant was clear that if the people broke the covenant by not obeying God, He would bring punishment on them, but that repentance was the key to regaining His blessings (Leviticus 26:14-33; 2 Chronicles 7:14). God was not simply interested in individual relationships – the covenant was about kingdom. Society itself was to reflect His goodness. 

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But the people failed to live up to the covenant many times. God had made provision for his people – when they sinned, they could offer blood sacrifices, “for the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul” (Lev 17:11). But these animal sacrifices were not truly capable of taking away sin (Hebrews 10:4; 9:12) – a new and better sacrifice was needed and that came in the form of Jesus Christ. Only a human life can atone for human sin. So, Christ’s humanity is certainly necessary. 

But was it necessary He be divine as well? Consider: a person who sins owes his life and we are all immortal beings. As Christ said to Nicodemus, “Whoever has the Son has life but whoever does not have the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on Him” (John 3:36). A solitary human life is not sufficient to satisfy God’s justice – there is no way a human can atone for himself and then be reconciled to God since he owes his whole unending existence – Jesus warns that sinners “go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched” (Mark 9 43).

But it was in His divinity that Christ could offer as sufficient sacrifice without losing Himself. His death on the cross, a divine being, was great enough to atone within a limited rather than an eternal frame of time. In God’s economy there is an equivalency between a limited being suffering an unlimited time or an unlimited being suffering for a limited time. The book of Hebrews tells us “Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands (the earthly temple), which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us…once at the end of the ages, he has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Hebrews 9:24, 28). Having purged our sins with His own death, “on the third day He rose again, in fulfillment of 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” (Hebrews 8:1; 2 Timothy 4:1). 

It is critical for our salvation that Christ was not merely a human being but also a divine being, in order to offer a suitable sacrifice. So, the Nicene Creed did well in clearly expressing what Christ’s nature is, in response to a view that would compromise the heart of the gospel. In which case, the creed is a good place to start our instruction. We may first learn, statement by statement, what it is that we believe. And then we may learn, statement by statement, why we believe these things. As we do so, we train our minds to recognize where ideas about God or Jesus or human nature or salvation deviate from the truth, as did those of Arius long ago. We can then engage with others about those deviations so that both they and we will not be taken in by them.