Council of nicaea
By Fr. Bryan Small
Celebrating the solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul reminds the American church that we're very much in the midst of summer. Culturally we're conditioned to believe that summer is the opportunity to rest and unwind despite the summer vacation being rooted in agrarian labor. Logistically however for some portion of the population summer also means a time of transition and moves, and it's at this moment that I appreciate one of the virtues of monastic life: the idea of never having to move ever again.
It's one thing to move your life and process all the nostalgia created by unsealing boxes from two moves ago as you look to the future. It’s another thing entirely to move the possessions of a loved one who has recently passed. Processing the life of an ancestor Inevitably brings something new to your own self-understanding, a transference. We’re a link in a chain.
I have to believe on a deep level, Paul had to be at least a little envious of Peter; certainly not a personality trait but for the simple reason that he had shared at least a few bottles of wine while fishing with Jesus of Nazareth. Conversely, it’s its own testament to Paul’s faith that he could believe in the Risen Christ without being a first-hand witness.
In faith we state this was made possible through the Holy Spirit, but tangibly that meant the living witness of disciples. Paul’s journey to faith through witness (and not firsthand [positivist] experience) it was disposes him to the Damascus moment and thus creates the spiritual template that will become the means in which the early Jesus movement survived generationally beyond eyewitnesses.
As anyone who has thrown back three energy drinks for breakfast and skips lunch comes to realize, conviction and moxie only get you so far. By the time these communities have passed the threshold of the fifth century, their individual baptismal professions inscribe the unpinning of the three-fold nature synaxis: we celebrate what God HAS done, we celebrate what God IS doing, we celebrate what God WILL do.
As powerful (and important) as that is, there’s more emphasis on DOING without reflecting on exactly who God IS.
When in the 320’s the toddler church finds itself with more than just growing pains. As communities grow and new ones founded, so does plurality and deviations. On the macro level the sense of Imminent eschatology waned somewhat while at the same time with the Edict of Toleration, the once underground and countercultural community is transitioning to a consistent place in the public sphere.
Leaving the polemics of Nicaea to someone else, it’s worth noting that before it could ever hope to understand itself, the Church had to be able to not only come to a deeper, collective understanding of the mystery they were proclaiming but also articulate it in such a manner that it would be portable. Not the portability we think about today with going across devices and systems. Across language, time, and culture.
It is not lost on me that many consider the Creed to be the religious version of the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem, something to be mumbled through in obligatory postures. While the teen masses of the early 90’s and beyond imported many aspects of evangelical worships that might grate the liturgical sensibilities of some, the elevation of the Profession of Faith in that experience is a reminder that somethings are worth more than a mumble.
The Creed of Nicaea/Constantinople is not a mission statement. It’s a declaration against chaos and apathy. We are not an organization; we are a living body animated by the spirit and only able to reproduce when it lives out it’s mandate to rise by dying. The Creed declares us to be adopted foster children in the Divine Household; no longer dead to sin but living with a sense of past, present, and an eschatological future.
The council fathers added to the baptismal creeds of the previous centuries a certain absolutism about their understanding of the Trinity. While that might come across as staunch and dogmatic, perhaps it’s a way to create the foundation of understanding the trifold God as absolutely BEING, absolutely GIVING, absolutely REDEEMING.
The Fourth Gospel has Jesus reminding us that the cure to our sense of dread and anxiety is to have faith in the person of Jesus and his Father and to follow in the Way. (John 14) The Creed is our roadmap to and along the Way. And we do so, in every generation, able to proclaim not just what God has done, but who he is.
Celebrating the solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul reminds the American church that we're very much in the midst of summer. Culturally we're conditioned to believe that summer is the opportunity to rest and unwind despite the summer vacation being rooted in agrarian labor. Logistically however for some portion of the population summer also means a time of transition and moves, and it's at this moment that I appreciate one of the virtues of monastic life: the idea of never having to move ever again.
It's one thing to move your life and process all the nostalgia created by unsealing boxes from two moves ago as you look to the future. It’s another thing entirely to move the possessions of a loved one who has recently passed. Processing the life of an ancestor Inevitably brings something new to your own self-understanding, a transference. We’re a link in a chain.
I have to believe on a deep level, Paul had to be at least a little envious of Peter; certainly not a personality trait but for the simple reason that he had shared at least a few bottles of wine while fishing with Jesus of Nazareth. Conversely, it’s its own testament to Paul’s faith that he could believe in the Risen Christ without being a first-hand witness.
In faith we state this was made possible through the Holy Spirit, but tangibly that meant the living witness of disciples. Paul’s journey to faith through witness (and not firsthand [positivist] experience) it was disposes him to the Damascus moment and thus creates the spiritual template that will become the means in which the early Jesus movement survived generationally beyond eyewitnesses.
As anyone who has thrown back three energy drinks for breakfast and skips lunch comes to realize, conviction and moxie only get you so far. By the time these communities have passed the threshold of the fifth century, their individual baptismal professions inscribe the unpinning of the three-fold nature synaxis: we celebrate what God HAS done, we celebrate what God IS doing, we celebrate what God WILL do.
As powerful (and important) as that is, there’s more emphasis on DOING without reflecting on exactly who God IS.
When in the 320’s the toddler church finds itself with more than just growing pains. As communities grow and new ones founded, so does plurality and deviations. On the macro level the sense of Imminent eschatology waned somewhat while at the same time with the Edict of Toleration, the once underground and countercultural community is transitioning to a consistent place in the public sphere.
Leaving the polemics of Nicaea to someone else, it’s worth noting that before it could ever hope to understand itself, the Church had to be able to not only come to a deeper, collective understanding of the mystery they were proclaiming but also articulate it in such a manner that it would be portable. Not the portability we think about today with going across devices and systems. Across language, time, and culture.
It is not lost on me that many consider the Creed to be the religious version of the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem, something to be mumbled through in obligatory postures. While the teen masses of the early 90’s and beyond imported many aspects of evangelical worships that might grate the liturgical sensibilities of some, the elevation of the Profession of Faith in that experience is a reminder that somethings are worth more than a mumble.
The Creed of Nicaea/Constantinople is not a mission statement. It’s a declaration against chaos and apathy. We are not an organization; we are a living body animated by the spirit and only able to reproduce when it lives out it’s mandate to rise by dying. The Creed declares us to be adopted foster children in the Divine Household; no longer dead to sin but living with a sense of past, present, and an eschatological future.
The council fathers added to the baptismal creeds of the previous centuries a certain absolutism about their understanding of the Trinity. While that might come across as staunch and dogmatic, perhaps it’s a way to create the foundation of understanding the trifold God as absolutely BEING, absolutely GIVING, absolutely REDEEMING.
The Fourth Gospel has Jesus reminding us that the cure to our sense of dread and anxiety is to have faith in the person of Jesus and his Father and to follow in the Way. (John 14) The Creed is our roadmap to and along the Way. And we do so, in every generation, able to proclaim not just what God has done, but who he is.
