Early Church Trinitarianism

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All right, well, welcome back to our study of the doctrine of the Trinity, and if you look at the top of your handout, you'll see that it says Lesson Series, the Doctrine of the Trinity, the Historical Support of the Doctrine.
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In the list of the lessons, this is actually Lesson Three, but in this series, this is Lesson Seven, because we've taken three lessons per, or three sessions per lesson so far.
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And what this is, this is a breakdown of the book that I put together many years ago.
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I believed, and as I still do today, I believe that the Doctrine of the Trinity is one of the things that the church is woefully ignorant about, and doesn't like to touch the issue.
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Doesn't like to address the issue.
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They're satisfied in many places, in many ways, simply satisfied with saying, well, we just don't know.
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Well, our forefathers in the faith, our predecessors, our Christian ancestors, were not satisfied with just saying, well, it's a mystery, or we just don't know.
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They dug into the Word of God, and they sought to understand who God is.
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And even though we know that the human mind cannot grasp the fullness of God any more than you could put the entire Atlantic Ocean into a thimble, even though we know that such a thing is not possible to grasp the immensity of who God is and the full completeness of His being, they sought to deepen their minds about the nature and character of God.
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And I think that if we could classify our modern generation by one word, and I don't say this to be ugly or certainly to put myself on any pedestal, I certainly wouldn't want to get knocked off of it, but if we could classify our modern generation, I think the word shallow might come into play.
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Our desire for learning, our desire for knowledge, our desire to go deeper really has kind of gone away and we're satisfied with a very shallow surface level understanding of truth.
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And our ancestors did not have such an attitude.
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And so tonight we are going to go into the subject of the historical support of the doctrine of the Trinity, because we have already looked at what the doctrine says.
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We've already looked at what the scripture says about what the doctrine says.
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And so now we're going to take a step past that and say, OK, how have the men of old, how has the church in the last 2000 years understood this doctrine and how have they expressed it to us through their writings and through their teachings? How many of you are familiar with the Peanuts cartoon? Charles Schultz, Charlie Brown.
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Some of you have heard me tell this story before.
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It's one of my favorite comics of all time.
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And the Peanuts cartoon, Charlie Brown's sister is writing a paper on church history.
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Charlie Brown comes over to it and goes, what are you writing? And she says, I'm writing on church history.
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And the very next square on the cartoon is a thought bubble.
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It's her writing.
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And she says, my pastor was born in 1952.
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And that's when church history began, you know, because that's the way she thought.
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And that's the way a lot of people thought.
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I think a lot of people think that church history ended at the Book of Acts and picked up again when Billy Graham started preaching.
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And somewhere in that 2000 year period, there was stuff going on, but it really didn't have anything to do with now.
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And you would be surprised how much you have been influenced as a society, as a culture, even as a church.
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By the last 2000 years of history and understanding how that influence has come about and what it has influenced is vital when we're talking about something as foundational as the Trinity.
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So tonight we're going to look back at history.
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I do want to again remind you, though, of the three pillars or the three foundation stones of the Trinity.
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For those who don't remember, there are three foundational principles for the Trinity that everyone needs to understand.
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One is that there is one God.
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There is one God.
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We are monotheists.
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The second one, there are three who are called God.
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And I should have put there are three persons.
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There are three persons who are called God.
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So you have the monotheism as affirmed in the first statement.
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There is one God.
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There are three persons who are called God.
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The father is called God, both in the Old and New Testament.
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The son is called God in the New Testament and in the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament.
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And the spirit as a person.
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Remember, that was our last lesson, the personality, the Holy Spirit, the spirit is called God.
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And so the three persons who are called God, these three are co-equal, meaning they share equality.
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They're co-eternal, that means there wasn't a time when the father was and the son was not, or the father and the son was and the spirit was not.
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But they are all three eternal.
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They're co-equal, co-eternal.
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And what's the last word? Distinct.
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And why do we add that word? The word distinct makes us not modalists.
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Modalists would say that there is one God who is father, son and spirit, but just not at the same time.
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He was the father at one point, he was the son at one point, he was the spirit at one point.
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But there's not a distinction to be made between the three because they're all the same person.
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Modalism says there's one God and one person, but he shows himself in three modes of being.
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That is not what the Bible teaches because the Bible makes a distinction between the father and the son.
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Jesus himself made a distinction between himself and the father.
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He says, I have not come to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
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Right.
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And the spirit's job is not to point to himself, but to the work of the son.
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And and so there's a distinction that's made.
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So that's why I add that word distinct is a very important word, not to say a difference in nature or essential nature.
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For they're all three God and there is but one God, but there is a distinction to be made between the father and the son and the spirit.
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So that being said, we are now going to look at some history and we're going to be reading or I'm going to be reading to you some quotes from the early church.
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If you look at your notes, the very first line you'll see it's Trinitarianism in the early church, Trinitarianism in the early creeds, Trinitarianism and the later confessions.
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And so if you want to kind of break down a timetable, not times tables because I'm really bad at those, but a timetable, we could say if you start with the cross, which would have been somewhere around 30, you know, 80, 30 would have been the time of the cross.
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You go out to 80, 70 and what happens in 80, 70, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and Emperor Titus comes in and wipes out Jerusalem.
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So you have the destruction of the temple.
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And essentially, I call this the watershed moment of Jewish history because it's the last time when there is a sacrificial system that is living and active in Jerusalem.
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It's done.
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After that, it doesn't happen again.
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So in 80, 70 through 80, 95, you have the time of the last apostle who was John.
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OK, so he dies somewhere around 80, 95, approximately.
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After that, you have the beginning of the second century.
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It's the 100s.
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It's called the second century because the 0 through 99 was the first one.
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So the second century is the 100s, and then you have from 100 to 325, this is called the period of the early church, the early church period.
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Now, you could say, OK, well, that includes this, but this is we would say the apostolic period.
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The apostolic period is to the death of the last apostle.
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After that, you have the time of the early church, which there is some bleed over here.
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But you have the early church, which goes to 325.
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What happens in 325 that changes the game? The Council of Nicaea, the Council of Nicaea changes the game.
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Emperor Constantine has a experience that he says is a conversion.
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Now we can debate whether or not he was truly a convert.
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Not my issue for the evening as to whether or not he was genuinely converted man.
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But he did take out the illegal nature of Christianity and made it legal to worship.
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I want to say that was around 311, but I could be wrong on that date.
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But shortly thereafter, he had a meeting of bishops in Nicaea and some 318 bishops come to Nicaea to do decide, not decide rather.
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That's a bad word because they weren't really seeking to make a decision.
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They were seeking to make a judgment on an error.
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It's not as if it's sort of like when you decide on the color of the carpet, you don't decide whether or not God's eternal.
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You know, that's the difference.
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You know, they were coming together to make a judgment about a heresy man by the name of Arius had come on the scene and he was teaching that Jesus Christ, though divine, was not fully God.
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And this had created such a division in the kingdom of Constantine that he wanted that to be put away.
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He wanted a decision to be to be arrived at, if you will.
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So he calls together the bishops.
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Bishops come from all areas, Athanasius and others come from various areas.
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And they make a statement regarding Arius.
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Arius is condemned as a heretic, which he was.
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He's considered the arch heretic, Arius, which if you get arch heretic, you know, you're doing wrong.
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I mean, this is the anyway, Arius becomes the heresy is known and the church takes a stand in 325.
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There are several other councils that follow the Council of Nicaea, none being as foundational, though counts Nicaea become sort of a foundational.
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OK, we're going to come together and talk and come to a judgment on this and it becomes an issue.
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Was this the first church council? Well, if you believe that in Acts 15.
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When the question of whether or not Gentiles are to be accepted into the church or whether or not they had to become Jews, Paul comes in and Peter's there and James stands up and makes a judgment, it is my judgment, you know, this thing that acts 15, we could argue is the first church council.
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But this is what we would call the first council that is ecumenical and that churches from all areas are coming together.
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So it's bringing together the leaders of all where the church had spread all through Asia Minor in different places now and all into the West are now coming together for this this this conversation.
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After this, you have other councils that come along.
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And through this, you have the rise of Roman Catholic heresies, which really take hold during the Middle Ages.
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And you have in 1056, I believe it is the division between the Eastern Church and the Western Church that would have been the Eastern Orthodox.
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You've heard of Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.
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There was a divide and it was a question of doctrine that caused that division.
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Then.
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So in here, in this time is where we're talking about the early creeds, the early creeds.
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This is the early church.
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And then later in the lesson, which will probably be next week or the week after, we're going to get to the later confessions.
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Now, the later confessions come as a result of the Protestant Reformation, when churches that are coming out of the Catholic Church and establishing foundational movements, Lutheranism, Methodism, Baptist churches are writing their confessions.
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They're having to deal with the Trinity, too, because has the Roman Catholic Church been wrong all this time? They've been wrong about other things.
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They've been wrong on justification.
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They've been wrong on how to be saved.
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Could it be that they were wrong about the Trinity? So in their confessions is written for us an understanding of this doctrine as well.
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So we'll look at all that.
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We're going to look at 2000 years of history in two or three weeks.
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So we're going to we're going to jump over a few things, but but we're going to look at early church, early creeds and later creeds or confessions, rather.
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Later creeds and confessions, which will really be the 1500s and following.
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So that's sort of the timetable.
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Are we skipping a big, huge part? Yes.
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Not a lot of theological.
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Well, I'm back that up because somebody will send me an email.
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I was going to say not a lot of theological things are happening in the Middle Ages.
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Well, what I mean by that is a lot is happening in Rome in the Middle Ages.
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A lot of bad things are happening in the Middle Ages.
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But there's also things like plagues and thousands are dying and a lot of other things are coming up.
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So the issues of whether or not the Trinity is true in these things are not the the focal point of a lot of people's lives.
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So that's why you see a downturn in scholarship during that period and an upswing in scholarship when the Renaissance happens.
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And again, that's around the same time as the Reformation.
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So you sort of do see a downswing.
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And that's why in this period of time, you're not getting as much historically pulling out of that of church councils and things.
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Well, you're getting some councils.
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But there was a time in history where there were councils as to whether or not who should be the pope.
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There was a time where there was three guys who all believe they were the pope.
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There was so much.
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What's it called when a politician acts like corruption? Yeah, there was so much corruption that there was a time when there were three guys who were all saying they were the pope and they were excommunicating one another.
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What do you do about that when you're following this guy who thinks that he's, you know, Jesus is a mediator in the world and you got another guy over there who thinks he's Jesus the mediator.
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And he he he he kicked that guy out and that guy kicked your guy out.
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It's a rough.
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So, like I said, in this period of time, there's a lot of negative going on.
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Not to say that nothing of value happened, much of value happened.
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But in this particular subject, the early church, the early creeds and the later confessions are really where we're going to focus our our attention.
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So Trinitarianism in the early church, most of you who are familiar with church history know that in the first two centuries of the church's existence, it was under horrible persecution.
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Men like Nero in the first century brought acts of terror against Christians that are too heinous for us even to imagine.
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Under Nero, Christians were crucified, sewn into animal skins and fed to dogs, frequently nailed to posts covered with pitch and lit on fire.
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It was a time of tremendous, unbelievable terror the first two centuries of the church.
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And it's quite understandable that during that time, the churches were mostly underground in homes, out of the sight of the the the watching world, as it were.
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Christians were seen early on as not even being its own religion, but a sect of Judaism and a rebellious sect at that, because where the Jews might be in league with Rome and being obedient, the Christians would not be obedient to, say, Caesar Coriath, Caesar's Lord.
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They would rebel and say, no, Jesu Coriath, and then off with their head, you know.
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So it was a much different atmosphere for the believer in Christ than it was for everyone else.
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Paul Washer tells the story of Imagine Yourself, and I've told this before, but imagine yourself, you're there working on some type of a building or something.
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Maybe you're a early laborer and you're just there working as a laborer.
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And here come the men expecting you to pay homage to Caesar with a with a pinch of incense and everybody else just sort of walks over and throws a pinch of incense in.
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But you're the lone believer in Christ who is not going to, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, you're not going to bow down to that statue.
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You're not going to bow down to Caesar.
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What's next? Death.
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This is why Paul tells us in Romans, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved, because in that day and at that time, it wasn't like in in your Southern Baptist Church of today where you go in and call on the name of the Lord, everybody claps, you get baptized and everybody sings just as I am.
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Now, at that time, if you said Jesus is Lord, if you were baptized publicly, it was a mark of.
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Death for you, it was separation from your family, it was a it was a it was a true stepping away from all that you had, possibly business, possibly livelihood, certainly family.
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And this is what they were doing.
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And I'm only telling you this because it's important in regard to the Trinity.
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Because not a lot of of creedal statements are being written in this period in time, not a lot of of of things that you might expect are coming out of this period of time.
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But you're looking at a church that is still dealing with with persecution.
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A lot of those things happen after three twenty five once the persecution is lifted.
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But before that, we have to rely a little bit more on things that are written and things that are preached that we still have copies of.
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And what I want to share with you, because I don't have a creedal statement before three twenty five that says there is one God and there are three persons that are called God and these three persons are equal, eternal and distinct.
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We don't have that prior to the well, really prior to the Athanasian Creed.
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But what we do have is we have snippets of writings and sermons from men who lived in this period.
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And I just want to share with you some of those, because I think this proves, if nothing else, that these men believed that there was one God, that there were three persons who were called God and those three persons are equal, eternal and distinct.
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The first one is Justin Martyr.
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Justin Martyr lived in the hundred to one sixty five A.D.
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And this short sentence doesn't say a lot, but what it does say is is rather powerful.
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Justin Martyr would have lived at a time where he was just on the other side of the apostles.
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He would have been a first or second generation from the apostles as far as a leader and believer in the church.
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And he writes, he says, The father of the universe has a son who being the logos and first begotten is also God.
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This is in his first apology, chapter sixty three, verse fifteen.
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He says Jesus is God's son and he is also God.
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That's clear, right? I mean, that it's not a lot.
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It's not it's not enunciating all of this, but it certainly tells us something about what he believed about Christ.
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The father of the universe has a son who is himself also God.
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Irenaeus, who lived from one thirty to two hundred, called Jesus, he says he's speaking about Jesus, he said, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord and God and savior and king, according to the will of the invisible father.
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This was in his writing against heresies.
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And he says Jesus is our Lord and God.
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Remember, we talked about this with Thomas.
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What did Thomas say when he was when we said, I won't believe if I don't see the nail marks in his hand and the side.
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And when Jesus came to me to see my hands and as I touched my side and what did Thomas say? My Lord and my God.
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So we see that here, Irenaeus saying the same thing, and he's not writing a doctrinal treatise.
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It's just in the midst of his against heresy.
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He's writing against the heresy and he says, this is Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God.
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Well, before, by the way, the reason why I make it such an issue of this is there are people who will tell you.
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People who Dan Brown fanatics and people who like the Da Vinci Code and all that that garbage, I'm trying to find nice words.
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They'll say that nobody believed Jesus was God before three twenty five.
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They'll tell you that Dan Brown, well, not Dan Brown, they'll say that Constantine wanted the people to follow him.
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So he created the divinity of Christ as a reason to get people to obey him because he was the he was the representative of Christ and as the emperor.
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And so if you can get people to worship the deity through you, they give you more power, you know.
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So they say nobody believed that Jesus is God before three twenty five.
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And that was a construction of Constantine.
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Well, this is proof that that's not true.
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Number one, the scripture is proof because the scripture predates it by 300 years.
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But on top of that, you have this these things, Clement of Alexandria.
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This is what Clement of Alexandria, 150 to 215.
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Both as God and as man, the Lord renders us every kind of help and service as God, he forgives sin and as man, he educates us to avoid sin completely.
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And then he says he says he's God and man.
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And though we say about Jesus that he's fully God and fully man, the hypothetic union, that he's God and man.
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And what does he say? He says, as God, he forgives sin and as man, he showed us how to live without sin.
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So he's both amazing.
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And this is, again, 100 years, 110 years before Nicaea.
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Hippolytus said this.
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Hippolytus.
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Hippolytus.
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This is great.
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I wish I had a board like with these written on because I would be writing on it and stuff.
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But let me just read.
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Hippolytus writes a commentary on John's gospel.
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Remember, we looked a few weeks ago was the beginning of John's gospel in Archaian Halagos and the beginning was the word.
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Kailagos and Prostantheion and the word was with God.
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Kailagos and Halagos and God was the word or and the word was God.
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Right.
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That's the beginning John's prologue.
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Hippolytus writes a commentary on that.
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He says when he says in the beginning was the word word was with God and the word was God, if then the word was with God and the word was also God, what follows? Would one say that he speaks of two gods? I shall not say that he speaks of two gods, but of one of two persons, however, and of a third economy, the grace of the Holy Ghost.
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This is the closest we have so far what we've read to what we have said.
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It's not two gods, but it's two persons, three, actually, because we include the Holy Spirit.
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This is again, this is 170 to 236.
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This is well over 100 years before Nicaea.
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So if you ever have those knuckleheads come to your door and they want to talk to you about Jehovah and they want to tell you that nobody believed Jesus was God before 325, you tell them that dog don't hunt.
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This is not true.
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And that's what they do.
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That's why nobody believed this until Nicaea.
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It's not true.
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It's it's easily disproven.
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We move on.
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Tertullian 150 to 225, the only God has also a son, his word who has preceded from himself by whom all things were made and without whom was nothing made that this was sent by the father into the virgin and born of her, both man and God, son of man, son of God.
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Again, this is 225 A.D., 100 years before Nicaea.
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And he says both man and God.
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My favorite one, my favorite one.
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It's from Melito of Sardis.
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One day I may print this on a plaque.
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I think it would look great in a home.
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It's just very wordy.
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So I don't know that anyone would stop and read it.
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It's not quite like footprints, but, you know, but this is so amazing.
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This was in 180 A.D.
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So we're looking at 325 for Nicaea.
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So 180 would have been a hundred and forty five years prior to Nicaea.
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And I'm going to read it.
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This is a sermon that he preached.
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If I remember correctly, this was his resurrection sermon, the sermon for the resurrection season, what we call Easter season.
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But I would have to look to see if I'm correct on that.
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But this is what he says.
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And listen to this.
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Listen to what he says about Jesus one hundred forty five years before Nicaea.
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And so he was lifted up upon a tree and an inscription was attached indicating who was killed.
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Who was it? It is a grievous thing to tell, but a most fearful thing to refrain from telling.
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But listen, as you tremble before him on whose account the earth trembled.
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He who hung the earth in place is hanged.
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He who fixed the heavens in place is fixed in place.
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He who made all things fast is made fast on a tree.
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The sovereign is insulted.
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God is murdered.
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The king of Israel is destroyed by an Israelite hand.
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This is the one who made the heavens and the earth and formed mankind in the beginning.
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The one proclaimed by the law and the prophets, the one in flesh and a virgin, the one hanged on a tree, the one buried in the earth, the one raised from the dead and the one who went up into the heights of heaven, the one sitting at the right hand of the father, the one having all authority to judge and say through whom the father made the made the things which exist from beginning of time.
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This one is Alpha and Omega.
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This one is beginning in the end, the beginning indescribable and the end incomprehensible.
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This one is the Christ.
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This one is the king.
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This one is Jesus.
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This one is the leader.
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This one is the Lord.
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This one is the one who rose from the dead.
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This one is the one sitting on the right hand of the father.
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He bears the father and is born by the father to him be glory and power forever.
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Amen.
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First of all, that is awesome, but it also speaks to what does he say? He said he who hanged the earth is hanged on a tree.
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He who stretched out the heavens is stretched out on the cross.
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I mean, he says these things about Christ.
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Don't ever let anyone fool you.
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To say that the deity of Christ was constructed in three twenty five.
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It's a false statement.
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It's not true.
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These few excerpts prove that beyond, in my mind, any shadow of any doubt.
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So that takes us then with all of those various writers up into three twenty five.
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And I want to begin at least for a time to look at the early creeds, because we're not going to get through all of them tonight, but we can at least look at one.
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And then in the weeks to come, we're going to look at the others.
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If you have your sheet, I gave you a creedal sheet and it has the the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed.
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Sometimes when I mention creedal statements, I get really strange looks because.
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I went to a Baptist seminary and people say, why do you get that? It's a hard time because I sort of am one.
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So I mean, I went to their school.
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I feel like I sometimes give them a little hard time, you know, but the Baptists that I know in general, not reformed Baptists and not all Southern Baptists, but a lot of a lot of Baptists will sort of push back against the creedal statements.
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One of the things that you'll hear in some churches is we don't have any creed, but Christ and I'll say, that's your creed.
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They don't like that, but that's it.
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If you say no creed, but Christ, that's a creed.
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They say no book with the Bible, that's a creed.
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As soon as you make that kind of a statement, that's not a biblical statement, you're making a creed, you're establishing some kind of statement on which you're basing everything else.
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It may be a short one, but it is one.
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So don't say you don't got one, just like people who say they don't have a liturgy.
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Everybody has a liturgy, you know what a liturgy is, right? The liturgy is your order of worship.
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Now, some churches have a very structured liturgy.
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You come in, everybody's got a book and you got to follow the book.
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Very structured.
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You read, everybody stands up.
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You quote, everybody's, but somebody said, we don't have liturgy.
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We just come in and sing music, pray and preach.
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Well, you got a liturgy.
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It's just got three parts.
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It's a liturgy.
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It's what it is.
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You got a creed.
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You got a liturgy.
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It's there.
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You just don't got one that's as thought out as the other guy.
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It's still there.
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Same thing with creeds.
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What we need to understand is if we're truly to understand our faith, we need to understand the faith of the people who came before us because we need to understand how our faith has been influenced by the ones who came before us.
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And in regard to the doctrine of the Trinity.
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These creeds are really where we find the thoughts of our ancestors, the thoughtful writings of our ancestors are held in these creeds.
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Um, how many of you have read the canons of Dort? Okay.
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I see one head shaking.
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Everybody looks at Richard.
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Richard's read the cans of Dort.
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Okay.
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How many of you, I better not ask that question.
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I might be disappointed.
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I was going to say, how many of you would call yourself Calvinist? I would say, how many of you, how many of you know what Calvinism is? How many of you know what the five points of Calvinism are? Okay.
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A lot of people will say, well, that's a canons of Dort.
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The five points of Calvinism.
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It is not.
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Canons of Dort.
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It's so much longer than five points of a tool.
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The canons of Dort are such powerful pastoral writings that came out of that council in Dorchic, which was the Armenians versus the Calvinists and what happened as a result of that.
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Um, and so the same thing happens here with, with Trinitarianism.
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There's a lot more to Nicaea than just, just what we're going to talk about, but the Nicene Creed came out of Nicaea.
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And we're going to look at the Nicene Creed in just a moment.
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But before we look at the Nicene Creed, I want to talk about the Apostles Creed.
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How many of you, and some of you, I think one person in the room for particularly, but how many of you, uh, have been to a church or maybe in a church where you recite the Apostles Creed regularly? Okay.
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You've been in a church like that, Mr.
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Richard.
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And I was thinking you as well, dear.
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Cause I figured, do you guys still do it? Don't, but you've been in a church that does.
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Okay.
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And I say that because a lot of times in liturgical churches, ones that when I alter to the church, cause I just said that, but in specifically high church liturgy, they'll have a reading of a creed.
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And one of the creeds that's considered to be universal, every Christian can recite it is the Apostles Creed.
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Um, and, and we're going to talk about some of the, the distinctions in it in a moment, but the reason why most people don't have a problem with it is it's pretty old, we don't know how old some people believe that it actually went back to the time of the apostles, which would mean it's the oldest extra biblical creed.
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Um, that's why I put it before the Nicene Creed.
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Cause we don't know.
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There are some people who argue that it's as late as 500.
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I really don't think it's as late as 500 by the time 500 rolls around.
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If the Apostles Creed would have just been written, then it wouldn't have made an impact because it's not deep enough after Nicaea.
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It's not deep enough after these other creeds are made their rounds.
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And so this is an opinion and opinions are like ears.
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We all got at least two, you know, no, no, no, what I'm saying, their opinions don't matter, but my opinion is, is it pre-Nicene because it's basic.
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It doesn't address what the Nicene Creed addresses.
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And if I think if it would have come after Nicaea, it would have been, it would have had less of a foothold.
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It's a pretty good opinion.
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Somebody else could make another argument and maybe, maybe a better one.
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But my opinion is it's pre-Nicene.
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So that would put the, the one that we're looking at now, which is the Apostles Creed would have fallen probably somewhere before 325.
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It gets its name, of course, from the Apostles.
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There are those who believe that the Apostles put it together.
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Some even believe that it has, it has 12 articles and thus each, each one of the Apostles included an article.
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I don't, I think that's a little high thinking.
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I think that's a little overthinking, but there are some people who do believe that.
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But one of the things to note is it's not specifically Trinitarian.
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He said, well, why are you sharing it on a dot on the doctrine of the Trinity lesson? Well, read it with me and I'll, I'll explain, go to the Apostles Creed in your notes.
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It says, I believe in God, the father almighty.
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Now this is a modern version of the Apostles Creed.
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The, the older version is a little, a little more, just a little worded, a little different, but it's the same thing.
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I believe in God, the father almighty creator of heaven and earth.
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I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
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He descended to the dead on the third day.
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He rose again.
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He ascended into heaven.
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He is seated at the right hand of the father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
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I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
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Amen.
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Now, earlier I said, I think all Christians could affirm that.
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I know there would be some who maybe take issue with a few parts.
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One of the issues that is often brought up is the original says descended into hell.
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And there's a question as to whether or not did Jesus go and was he punished in hell? I don't believe that he was, but the term going into hell is also a reference for going into the grave.
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So there's a question as to what that meant in the original.
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So if we can all agree that it's referring to the grave and not into hell, then we could say, OK, everybody could affirm that.
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There's nobody died.
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Nobody doubts that.
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The second part is a little more just simply a matter of language.
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It talks about one Holy Catholic Church.
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We.
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Or maybe I should rather say I, because I don't want to always speak for everyone, but as a church, I know that I have taught there is only one church and it is the Catholic Church.
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But Catholic means universal.
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That's what the word means.
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There is only one body of Christ, and if you're a member of another church, what's your church name again? I forgot.
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Yeah, you're a member of grace.
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You're a member of another church, but we're both part of the same body of Christ.
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Now, we are members of different local churches and there is a distinction to be made between the church universal.
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And the church local, because in the church local, you have elders, you have leaders, you have people that you are ministering with and to among the gifts, just like the church in Ephesus was not the church in Corinth, there were different elders, but they're all in the same body of Christ.
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That's what we call the Catholic Church.
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It's the universal church that all believers are made part of.
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As soon as they are born again into the family of God, they become part of the universal church.
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Now, here's where Rome stole our use, because we would still use that term today.
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But now when you hear the word Catholic, you think Roman Catholic.
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Roman Catholic is actually an oxymoron, because oxymoron, two words that go together mean different, mean something different, right? Well, Rome is a place on the globe that's not universal.
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It's in one spot.
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Catholic means universal everywhere.
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You can't be Roman and Catholic, but they do.
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You can't be Rome and universal at the same time, but they have established that.
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And so now most Christians are not comfortable, if they're not Roman Catholic, identifying themselves as part of the Catholic Church.
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I would say I am.
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I'm part of the universal church of Christ that he paid for with his own blood.
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And thus I would have no issue reciting this creed.
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So let's now for a moment step back and say, why are we talking about this when it's not necessarily Trinitarian? I would argue that it is.
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I would argue that the Apostles' Creed, though not a statement.
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On the nature of the Trinity in regarding of the ontological nature of the Trinity, that is that there is one God, there are three persons who are called God, and these three persons are co-equal, co-eternal and distinct.
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The Apostles' Creed was not intended to address the ontological nature of the Trinity, but it addresses the economic nature of the Trinity in that each person in the Trinity exists and has a role in redemption.
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The father sends the son who completes the work of redemption and the spirit applies the work of the son to the believer.
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And all three are mentioned in this earliest creed.
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You say, well does it prove the Trinity? No, but it certainly proves this.
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It proves from the earliest part of the church, believers understood that there was a role for all three persons of the Trinity.
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And all three persons of the Trinity were involved in salvation.
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You see, that's why I'm making the point, is when we talk about the Trinity, it's not because when we get to the Nicene Creed, that's when we start getting into the ontological nature of the Trinity.
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The homoousia, same substance, father and son are of the same substance.
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That's when it begins to get a little deeper and more philosophical.
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This is the practical side.
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There's God the Father, there's God the Son, there's God the Holy Spirit.
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And all three persons are active in your salvation.
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I got to thinking last night, I'm going to end with this because I know we're over time.
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I got to thinking last night, do I love the Trinity? Not the doctrine, because I love the doctrine because I enjoy teaching it, but what I meant, in my mind, I was actually sitting in my living room thinking about this thing about teaching this lesson.
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And I got to thinking, you know, we think all the time, do you love God? The Bible says you should love the Lord your God with all your heart.
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God is Trinity.
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So do I love the Trinity? We don't think of it in those terms.
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We don't think of it that way.
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But when I say I love God, I'm saying I love the Father and I love the Son and I love the Spirit who are all God and He is one.
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I know it's hard for us to wrap our minds around, but when we say we love God, we're saying more than the Muslims.
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We're saying more than even the Jew who doesn't understand these things.
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We're saying we love the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, all three who are God.
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So as you worship this week and as you pray this week, think about that in your prayers that you pray and you worship God who is Triune.
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Next week we'll start right in with the Nicene Creed.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word and for the opportunity to study tonight.
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I pray that it's been helpful for your people and a time of comfort and encouragement for them.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.