August 15, 2025 Show with Dr. Thomas J. Nettles on “Baptists Should Love the Council of Nicea Too”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 15th day of August 2025, and I am thrilled to have back on the program one of my favorite guests to interview,

Dr. Thomas J. Nettles, renowned Baptist historian and prolific author with 38 years of teaching experience, including his 17 years at the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, as professor of historical theology.

And he is going to be addressing Baptists Should Love the Council of Nicaea II.

One historian reflects on the immense value of this council after the 1700th anniversary of its completion in July 325, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Tom Nettles. It's a delight to be here, and particularly to participate with you and the insight that you give to things simply by your questions and by the nature of the topics that you have, and also this particular topic we're dealing with today, it's so important.

Well, as I just mentioned, last month was the official anniversary of the conclusion of the

Council of Nicaea in 325, also specified as the first Council of Nicaea, and I think you would agree that it's important for any of our listeners who may be starting to Google Council of Nicaea that they do not mistaken our conversation supporting the

Council of Nicaea for the second Council of Nicaea. Am I correct? Yes, you're correct.

We went from affirmation of the deity of Christ to affirmation of the worship of images. Right. The seventh council, the second

Council of Nicaea, was a little bit wide of the mark of the integrity of the one that was held in 325.

Well, can you tell us as much about the background of this council as you can, starting with all of the major issues that were hammered out?

And even actually before that, there are fundamentalists and other kinds of professing

Christians who may agree with us on many things, but they are council -phobic, and they want to put little emphasis on church history, especially church history that goes back that far.

And they want to, it seems, remain frozen in time from the 19th century on, and they get the heebie -jeebies when we start talking about councils because of something—among the other reasons, some of it comes from what you just mentioned.

There are heretical councils, like the second Council of Nicaea.

But can you explain why Christians should not be paranoid over the study and use and benefiting from some solid councils that even your average fundamentalist

Baptist is going to agree with the majority of what has been laid out in some of those councils?

Well, I think we have to recognize that in the same sense that those who are

Bible believers today want to be very careful about who they listen to and what kinds of preaching is coming from the pulpit, what kinds of songs are being sung.

A person today who is, we might say, who is a fundamentalist, and in many senses

I am also, but a person today who would hear a song or a hymn being sung that had denials of the deity of Christ or denials of substitutionary atonement would want to take issue with that and would want to give a corrective to it.

But we have to recognize that these councils were emerged out of contemporary situations.

There were persons who investigated the sermons and the beliefs and the confessions of other people, and when they saw these confessions that had erroneous doctrine in them, had doctrine that was a denial of the necessity of the cross or denial of the of the deity of Christ, they wanted to make sure that they could do everything they could to stop that teaching from taking over the church in the same way that 19th century liberalism, which denied the deity of Christ and denied the inspiration of scripture, many times denied the trinity or the resurrection or denied the reality of hell, people who saw these things wanted to correct that.

And so you have theological movements and the writing of confessions and so forth that seek to correct that.

Well, that's the same thing that's going on in the third and the fourth century when these councils in the first ecumenical council is called such because it gathered people together from all over the world to come together, mainly from the eastern part of the empire.

But it was to settle a deeply important theological issue concerning the question is whether or not

Jesus Christ is God. Was Jesus of Nazareth God in the flesh?

Was he eternally the Son of God as well as temporarily the

Son of Mary and generically the Son of Man? So this is a council that is seeking to deal with a very important theological issue.

And I think it is based upon a principle that we have in scripture that it is certainly legitimate to reduce important theological ideas to succinct confessions of faith.

We can look at Deuteronomy 6. Here, O Lord, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the

Lord is one. That is a confession of faith. And you shall worship the

Lord your God and him only shall you serve. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Well, that is a command based upon a very succinct confession of faith. Or you get into a passage like 1

Timothy 3, verse 16, where Paul says, Great is the mystery of godliness.

And he gives us a sixth article confession of faith that is set forth in what we might call a chiastic fashion.

It begins with he appeared in a body. And then it goes, he was vindicated by the

Holy Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up into glory.

And you look at that in the first article that says he appeared in a body is joined with the sixth article, which said he was taken up in glory.

The second article, which says he was vindicated by the

Spirit, is then joined with the fifth article, which says believed on in the world, which calls for a special act of the

Spirit to convince the human of his sin, to convince the human sinner of his need for salvation, and to convince the human sinner that Jesus Christ is the only one who can save him.

And so, articles one and six. Then we have article three, was seen by angels.

And we can trace that all the way through from the announcement of the angels of his birth in Bethlehem, even the announcement of the angels to Joseph and to Mary, that a son was going to be born to Mary, and this son would be of the

Holy Spirit. Angels appeared, angels appeared during the ministry of Jesus and comforted him.

Angels appeared at the tomb. Angels were at the resurrection. But who is it that gets to preach to the nations?

Well, it's the apostles. He was seen by angels, but he was preached among the nations by the apostles.

And so, this is a very full confession of faith we have in First Timothy. Three, going all the way from the incarnation to his ascension with corresponding articles, articles two and five and articles three and four, that give us a very full theology.

So, we have other confessions of faith. And so, we see that in order to solidify certain points, the

Bible gives us the example of these confessions. And it expects us, since these are revealed confessions of faith, and they are condensations of other points of revelation, it expects us to believe them.

So, we're not without warrant in Scripture to try to take very important points and reduce them to credible, memorable statements that can be learned by the church in order to protect us from saying stupid things on the one hand and heretical things on the other.

Now, I don't know if I've ever asked you this question, but I know

I've asked it at some point on the program to a guest. I have heard—and

I was wondering if you would agree with this definition or comparison as I have heard it.

I can't even remember who told me this. It may have been more than one source. But I have heard that creeds, such as the

Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, and so on, are intended to be short and contain only those things that the

Christian church believes universally. It would include a much wider, broader spectrum of Christians that may disagree over a whole lot of other things, but the creed would have the core beliefs, whereas a confession is a more detailed document that would be separating more clearly those with more unique beliefs to their own group.

Like, for instance, as you know, we have the Westminster Confession of Faith, which includes articles defining baptism, where infants are eligible for this sacrament.

And in contrast, we have the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is nearly identical to the

Westminster and also has elements of the Savoy Declaration in there, but makes clear that we believe that baptism is only for believers and it is to be only conducted by immersion in water and so on.

And there are other things involving ecclesiology and polity and so on. But do you agree with that differentiation between a creed and a confession?

Yeah, in general, I do. I think that's a very nice distinction, because a creed is something that every person who professes to be

Christian should be able to say. And that's one of the things that, when

I talk about Baptist identity, the first element of Baptist identity,

I say, you cannot be a Baptist unless you're a Christian. And so Baptists are orthodox.

That is, we believe, at least the first four ecumenical councils and the creeds that arose out of those, because those define very clearly the doctrine of the

Trinity and the person of Christ and even affirm the necessity of Christ's death for sinners.

So every Christian should believe that. But now, as you've indicated, when we get into confessions and we're seeking a sort of a more robust union within a denomination or within a local church, we may have a confession of faith that takes very strong stances on some disputed practices or some doctrines that are stated in different ways in different denominations.

So I think that that is a good distinction. I think that all those, all confessions of faith, however, should agree in those early articles on the principles of orthodoxy.

And of course, Protestant confessions of faith should agree in soteriology out of the Reformation with justification by faith and sanctification by the

Spirit and so forth. And then once you get into issues of baptism, you're going to have some differences that arise out of dynamics at present within the

Reformation, the relationship of the church to the state and the magistrates. You're going to have some differences on that.

But at least all Christian confessions of faith should be orthodox, and we should agree on those.

All Protestant confessions of faith should be both orthodox and soteriologically sound.

And then there must be distinctions created in confessions of faith so we can know what our differences are and how to discuss these differences meaningfully.

Yeah, so I can tell you one thing that always makes me do a little bit more investigation, if not a lot more investigation, when listeners to Iron Trump and Zion Radio ask for church recommendations in a particular city and state or even foreign country, and the lists that I have may not include that specific area where they live, so I have to do a little bit more homework.

And it drives me nuts when a church website… Was that what did it? Yeah, I think that happened long before then.

But it drives me nuts when I look at a church website and they will only say something like, our church can be defined by our belief in the

Apostles' Creed, and perhaps they'll even include the Nicene Creed. That drives me nuts because it's such a broad group of people professing to be

Christians who believe in those creeds, and some of those people we believe have a false gospel, such as the

Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. So, obviously,

I'm assuming you agree that for churches to identify with the

Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed, which my church where I'm a member does, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

We have even recited during worship services both of those creeds, but that's not all that we have, because even though both of those creeds contain the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, which are essential elements of the gospel, there is not an adequate, detailed explanation and definition of the gospel that would differentiate false churches like Roman Eastern Orthodoxy from Biblical Reformational Christianity.

Am I making sense? Absolutely. I agree 100 percent. Now, I also say that I do think that it is possible for people within those of Catholic groups, the

Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic, that if they are there and the truths that they're reciting in the

Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed, if they really grab their hearts and they realize that they're setting themselves forth to worship a triune

God and a triune God who for us men and for our salvation has come down and was made flesh and was made man, that there is something in that truth that can transform their heart.

I think they're in a church that is a false witness to the gospel, but there is enough clear

Biblical truth within those confessional statements that I think there may be genuinely converted people within those congregations.

Yes, I agree with that, and most people that I've ever met, at least those that I hold in high esteem, do not rule out that there are truly regenerate born -again believers in false churches, because they believe in the truth of the gospel and the person and work of Christ and in the

Trinity and so on, and they believe essential truths for salvation in spite of the falsehoods that their churches officially teach.

Yeah, when they get in through all the sacramental system and your sins are forgiven through baptism or your sins are forgiven, you receive the

Holy Spirit in confirmation and you must go to confession and you must do satisfaction and all of that, that's when you get into all kinds of substitutes for the finality of the work of Christ, and if a person gets caught up in that, that sort of blurs the whole gospel story for them.

Yes, my mother was Roman Catholic all 70 years of her life, and during the last six weeks of her life while she was dying of pancreatic cancer, she renounced prayer to Mary and the saints.

She was totally trusting in Christ alone for her salvation. She was not trusting in any of her goodness at all, any of her works, rites.

But I am assuming, I don't know this for a fact, but I'm assuming if somebody said to her in her last breath,

Virginia, are you Catholic? I'm assuming she didn't make any kind of formal conversion to Reformed Baptist or Protestantism, but she believed in the true gospel and renounced the heresies and idolatries of Rome.

Yeah, well, the naked soul knowing its sinfulness and knowing that Christ is the only answer and trusting in Him alone and professing that,

I mean, that's what we're after, isn't it? The longer a person lives, the more of truth we want them to embrace, the more fullness we want them to see in the genius there is, in the fullness of divine revelation.

We want that for every Christian. But trusting Christ alone, by faith alone, in the righteousness of Christ alone, that is what constitutes and gives evidence of a genuine work of the

Spirit to bring a person to forgiveness of sins through Christ. Amen, and we have to go to our first commercial break, and when we come back, we can begin to focus more on the heresies that had risen up in the church at large in the fourth century that created a need in the minds of many of these

Christians who gathered at the Council of Nicaea to hammer out some of the truths that they laid out for us 1 ,700 years ago, and more details about what is contained in this first Council of Nicaea.

If you have a question for Dr. Tom Nettles, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence, and send your questions to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Don't go away.

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I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme, Can We Trust the

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, our guest today is a returning guest, one of my favorite guests,

Dr. Thomas J. Nettles. And we are discussing the immense value of the

Council of Nicaea right after its 1700th anniversary, which was in July of 325, when that council first concluded.

And one of the things that I asked you before the break, Dr. Nettles, was that there was a particular heresy that had arisen known as Arianism that provoked the creation of this council.

And that is typically throughout history why councils and even creeds and confessions have been created, because something seriously heretical or some kind of theological threat to biblical faithfulness and orthodoxy rises up.

And so Christians who are considered leaders in the faith and those who have biblical wisdom and so on gather together to hammer out what they believe are the main elements of true

Christianity. Now, obviously, when any gathering of Christians fails to be

Berean, you have a situation that rises up 360 years later, like the

Second Council of Nicaea, as you mentioned before, which was advocating idolatry.

Of course, they didn't use that term to defend what they were doing, but that's exactly what they were doing.

So obviously, the Berean approach of making sure everything that we believe is faithful to the

God -breathed, perfect, inerrant words of Scripture. But if you could tell us more about Arianism, who

Arius was, and why this provoked the First Council of Nicaea.

Oh, sorry, I got you on mute still. I'm sorry. Okay, maybe they don't want to hear what

I have to say. But Christianity came into a world that was dominated by Rome and its paganism, its idolatry.

And the two things that the apostles Jesus dealt with was the paganism of Rome and then the

Jewish system, which had become a worked righteousness system, and who had built up such a view of their expectations of political power in the

Messiah that they couldn't recognize Jesus as the one who was actually the Messiah. And so very early, you have the church, people like Justin Martyr and Tertullian, writing against paganism and writing against the rejection of Christ as Messiah, writing things to correct some of the seeking to correct some of the

Jewish misperceptions about the Messiah. Then you have a lot of Greek philosophy that was present in Gnosticism, which denied the true flesh of Christ, denied his true humanity had come in.

And so you have Tertullian and you have Irenaeus and others that are writing against that. And in the midst of that, you have developing what was known as the rule of faith, which was a very short statement about the incarnation, about God the

Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, and about the resurrection of the flesh.

And so this apostles' creed, as the rule of faith developed into, becomes something of a foundation for the creedal confessions of the church.

So the errors that Arius made were couched within the framework of the apostles' creed.

He sought to set forth his faith in a way that would at least mimic the apostles' creed so he could be seen to be in harmony with the church before him.

But there were several significant denials that he made that actually were destructive of the revelation of the

Christian faith that we have in Scripture, and certainly the revelation that God gave of his son,

Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ gave of himself. This controversy began in Alexandria, where Arius, who was a presbyter in that church, began to oppose the teaching of the bishop.

The bishop was a man named Alexander. And so Arius wrote a letter to Alexander around the year 320.

He had begun teaching his views around 318. He had began teaching them to the dockhands, the people who worked on the ships there in Alexandria.

And he put them in the form of little hymns and of like worship ditties.

And he would count some of the key ideas of his theology within these. So he was teaching some of the less educated people in the church his theology through these rhythmical and melodious songs.

And of course, you know how songs get into your brain and get into your mind, and you begin to explain your theology in terms of those.

And just recently when I've had someone ask me, do you feel hopeless? And I said, no, I don't feel hopeless.

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. So I express my hope in terms of a hymn.

And that's what Arius was doing. And so when he wrote Alexander in 320, this is the letter that he wrote him as he began to oppose the teaching of Alexander and how

Alexander was trying to correct the viewpoints that Arius was setting forth in these songs that were called

Thalia, T -H -A -L -I -A. Here's what he said.

But as we say, at the will of God, created before times and before ages, and gaining life and being from the

Father, who gave subsistence to his glories together with him. So he's speaking of the

Son there, and you notice that he says he was created before times and before ages.

And so he was created before everything else. Then he goes on to say, for the Father did not, in giving to him the inheritance of all things, deprive himself of what he has ingenerately in himself, for he is the fountain of all things.

That is, the Father is. And so he is the fountain of all things, including the

Son, not by eternal generation, but by creation. So he goes on to say, thus there are three subsistences, and God, being the cause of all things, is unbegun and altogether soul.

By that, he means the Father. The Son, the Father is the only one who is unbegun, that is, eternal, and he is altogether soul.

He stands alone in that particular characteristic. But the

Son, being begotten apart from time by the Father, so he says he was before time, and it's in this way that he calls him unbegun and calls him not a product of, not in time, because the

Son was created by the Father before time. And he says, and being created and founded before ages was not before his generation.

So he did not exist before the Father generated him. So this says we've got to do something about this word generation or this word begotten, and we'll see that as the creed of Nicaea begins to develop.

But being begotten apart from time before all things alone was made to subsist by the

Father, for he is not eternal or co -eternal or co -originate with the

Father, nor has he his being together with the Father, as some speak of relations introducing two ingenerate beginnings.

Wherefore, also he is the Son. So he is the

Son of God generated by the Father by creation. And then he says there are two, there are three subsistences.

He includes the Holy Spirit in this as coming even after the Son. So this is the kind of thing he was teaching.

He was teaching that the Son was the one who has created all things by giving, having been given creative power by the

Father, and therefore he is rightly called creator. But he is not eternal.

He is to be worshipped in a subordinate way, not the same way as the Father is. And so in seeking to define the

Christian faith, what Arius introduces is another kind of paganism, not as extremely polytheistic as Roman paganism, but he still has us worshipping someone who was created, who is not eternal

God. Also, he did not believe that he was truly man, that he had a soul that could identify with humanity, but he was not truly incarnate as a full human being.

And so trying to explain Christianity, what Arius does is he denies the deity of the

Son, he denies the true humanity of the Son, and he has us worshipping a created being.

How much further could you miss what Christianity is than Arius did in his teaching?

And he thought he was protecting the true monotheism of the church.

So it's into that kind of atmosphere where you have Gnosticism, you have paganism, you have inadequate views of the person of Christ, you have even tri -theism, which is taught by Sibelius, who begins to teach that the

Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, and they are three separate entities.

No, I thought Sibelius was a modalist. He was not a modalist? Yeah, I'm sorry, you're right.

He was a modalist. He has the Father appearing in three different modes. Anyway, he has three different gods, the person

I'm thinking of, but you're exactly right. Forgive me for that error. Sibelius was indeed a modalist.

So he doesn't have a Trinitarian being, but he has three names given to God in Father, Son, and Spirit.

So the empire was divided. Constantine has supposedly become a Christian. He wants to see the empire cohere around Christianity.

And so in order to try to create some sort of unity, he is the one who calls the Council of Nicaea.

And this was a council that was designed to create unity within the church.

Arius comes, Alexander comes. There are 318 bishops that come to this, and Arius' creed is presented.

Another bishop named Eusebius of Caesarea, who was a friend of Constantine, sees that Arius' creed could present some problems, but Eusebius was not too far away from Arius in his own theology, but he presents another creed.

And then as these bishops discuss these things, it becomes clear that the creed of Eusebius is one that can be used if there are some additions that are made to it.

Now, there is some dispute as to how much credibility and how much participation

Athanasius actually had in the council, because Alexander was the bishop of Alexandria.

But Athanasius was there, and Athanasius already had engaged this issue in writing a book called

On the Incarnation. He had been writing apologetic literature, he had been writing against paganism, and he wrote this book,

On the Incarnation, in which he seems to engage some of the critical issues that were set forth by Arius.

And so from reading On the Incarnation, it seems to me that Athanasius was very active in this, at least in suggesting ideas to Alexander as to what kinds of corrections needed to be made in the creed of Eusebius in order to make it acceptable as an orthodox creed.

By the way, could you have been thinking of John Philoponus, who is a sixth century tritheist?

No, that's not who I'm thinking about. I'm sorry. That's all right. It's left me discounted to my decades.

But yeah, there was one who actually was setting forth what could be called a tritheism, but you're exactly right.

It was not the modalism of Sibelius. What were you doing? So we're presented with this idea of the creed of Eusebius of Caesarea, and how it is to be used.

What we can see in the creed of Nicaea is not that it solves all the problems, but it does identify particular areas in which greater clarity needs to be stated.

Even after the creed of Nicaea, there are some inadequate views that pop up in these years, and Athanasius himself was exiled five times for his orthodoxy.

So these intervening years, before we get to the Council of Constantinople in 381, the creed of Nicaea helps us identify areas in which this greater clarity is needed.

So that is one of the things that I think is so pivotal and helpful about the creed of Nicaea is how some of the affirmations that it made are affirmations that certainly last and must be affirmed, but it also showed how greater definition was needed on some of these words.

Now, can I take some time to point out the elements of the creed of Eusebius and then how additions were made to that creed in order to clarify?

Yeah, you have six minutes to do that before we go to a break. Okay, I can get started on that.

Anyway, so the creed begins, We believe in one

God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible. This is a part of the

Apostles' Creed. It's sort of the beginning of all the creeds. And then it goes on,

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the

Father, the only begotten. And then this phrase is added,

That is of the essence of the Father. Now, this is not the homoousios phrase.

The reason that this was added is Athanasius knew, and he argues in his writings after the

Council of Nicaea against the Arians, he argues very strongly that the Father is always

Father. Therefore, he must always have had a son. It is of the essence of the

Father that he is Father. And so the Son is Son of the Father, that is of the essence of the

Father. The Father is always Father. Therefore, the Son is always Son. And this relationship between them is something that makes it necessary that they be co -eternal.

And so that phrase was added, that is of the essence of the Father. And then it says,

God of God. And later it's added at Constantinople, true

God of true God, because they wanted to get away from the idea that there could be diminished deities of any sort.

So God of God, true God of true God. And then this very important phrase, and I'll look at this one a little bit, and then

I'll give it over to you for a break here. But it is begotten, not made.

Now, this is a key issue because what we began to come to in seeing the necessity of begottenness is the idea of eternal generation, that the

Son is eternally generated by the Father, because the Father is always Son, the

Son is always Son. Arius had interpreted the idea of begotten as being created.

If the Son is begotten, therefore there must be when he was not.

If he was begotten, there was when he was not. But that meant he must be created.

And so Athanasius wanted to add this phrase, not made, in order to define begotten in such a way that removed it from the idea that it could be defined in terms of creation.

And so within the first three or four lines of the Creed of Eusebius, we have these phrases added, of the essence of the

Father, and then begotten, not made. The next one that is in there is called of one substance with the

Father, and that's the famous word homoousios, that is, of the same substance.

And that is a phrase that has survived through all the permutations of the creeds.

It's something that's seen as necessary because whatever God is in himself, whatever his substance is, the

Son must be also. He cannot be of an inferior quality. He cannot be of a quality that is in any sense diminished from that essence that constitutes what

God is in himself. And so this is the course they were taking, having adopted the

Creed of Eusebius of Caesarea, because they knew this would please

Constantine, but now adding these critical phrases that would give an orthodox interpretation to those words.

Okay, before we go to the midway break, let me give another shot at it. Was it

Macedonianus, the fourth century tritheist? Yes.

Thank you very much. That's okay. Macedonianism. I had written that out here somewhere and just didn't come up with it.

And we are going to our midway break right now. If you do have a question for Dr. Tom Nettles, please submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence. Dr. Nettles, did you want to continue your train of thought from before we went to the midway break, or do you want me to take a listener question?

Well, let me continue this a little bit, then we'll go to some questions. I think if I can just get through the additions that were made, that we can have a more substantial background for some of the answers that may be given.

We had talked about homoousios being of the same essence as the

Father. We had also talked about Jesus being the same essence, being out of the essence of the

Father. This means the co -eternity of Father and Son, and the co -substantiality of Father and Son.

In his work on the Incarnation, one of the reasons that I think that Athanasius was active at the

Council of Nicaea is because this is one of the points that he makes very strongly, is that the

Fall made it necessary for God not to fail in his reason of creation.

The Fall made it necessary that one who had equal dignity with the

Father and equal purpose with the Father, who understood the Father's purpose in creation and so forth, be the one who would restore the integrity of that purpose.

The Father could not simply overlook sin, because that would destroy his character. He couldn't allow creation to perish, because that would defeat his purpose.

And so, it necessitated one who was of the same nature as the

Father, also taking our nature to himself and reversing the effects of the

Fall. This was to be done in two ways. One, it was through a perfect obedience of the

Son, so that the purpose of absolute conformity to the moral requirements of God would be fulfilled in humanity.

And two, that the death that God had promised upon disobedience would also be done.

And three, that God's purpose and God's power was beyond that of death and beyond that of Satan, who had led humanity into sin.

And so, there's all of this involved in the ways in which Athanasius thought through the kinds of words that needed to be added.

And so, for example, when he's speaking of the true humanity of Christ, this is set forth in the

Creed, Nasia, in these words. The Creed goes on to say,

By whom all things were made, speaking of Christ, who is of one essence with the

Father, both in heaven and on earth, who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, or incarnate, and was made man.

Now, people had the idea that you could be made flesh, you could take upon yourself human flesh, but without sharing full human nature.

Now, Athanasius knew that. He knew that the full human nature needed to be taken if God's purpose for humanity was to be fulfilled.

And so, he added that phrase, made man. He was made flesh, not just flesh, but made man.

The entire psychological, psychosomatic understanding of what humanity is.

And so, in his human nature, he himself was made in the image of God. In his divine nature, he was the image of God.

In his work on the incarnation, Athanasius has certain, he talks about our human nature, that Christ took our human nature.

He says he restored the whole nature of man. He says, By the word made man, death has been destroyed and life raised up anew.

He said that he was manifested as man. He says, Not lonely man, but God the word.

He says, The word of God in his human nature. He says,

As man, he was living a human life. And he goes on to say,

It was right that they should be attributed to him as man. Certain actions that he did, his worship, his prayers, and so forth, these should be attributed to him as man in order to show that his body was a real one and not merely an appearance.

So he is very keen on this idea that there had to be a whole human nature in the one who was to be our

Redeemer. We could not be rescued from death and we could not fulfill God's original intention for humanity unless it was a genuine human that was living up to the expectations that God originally had for those that were created in his image.

So, was made man is an important addition that we have to the Creed of Nicaea 325.

Then he goes on to say, He suffered and the third day he rose again, which is in the

Creed of Eusebius and in the Apostles Creed. Ascended into heaven, from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

And then it has this simple phrase, And in the Holy Ghost. Now, that phrase had to be expanded later because there were those who denied the deity of the

Holy Spirit. And so there had to be an expansion of that. And that took place in 381 at the

Council of Constantinople. But then added to this creed, there were a series of anathemas that were set forth on Arian teaching.

For example, he says, But those who say there was when he was not and before being begotten, he was not and he was made out of things that were not.

That is, ex nihilo, or those who say that the Son of God was from a different substance or being.

Then he uses two words, hupostasis and ousia that need to be defined more carefully in the years to come, or that he was a creature or capable of change or alteration.

These, the Catholic Church anathematizes. And so there we learn something about the particular views that Arius was teaching because those are peculiarly anathematized in this last section of the

Creed of Nicaea. Now, as I said, this does not answer all the questions because there's still some words that need to be defined.

There's some ideas that need to be expanded. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit needs to be made commensurate with that of the

Son, but this is a great start. This has isolated some of the theological problems that were now being consolidated by Arius.

And Alexander, the bishop, with the help of his young deacon,

Athanasius, are setting forth these additions to this creed in order to give more precise biblical definition to the person and the work of the

Son. So this is a concern about the nature of his person, as we mentioned, whether or not this person is created or whether he is uncreated and eternal, and whether he is truly

God or some sort of a subordinate deity, and then also whether or not he is truly man, that he had a full human nature in order to do the particular thing for which the

Father sent him. So that is, I think, something of the value of the

Council of Nicaea, and then we'll look at a little bit more at this when we can get back to it.

So I'm ready if there are some questions that people are asking. I hope I might be helpful in that.

Great. Okay. We have Colby in Sourland, Alabama, and Colby asks, you were talking about Arian believing that Jesus was created and yet not a human.

Did he believe in the virgin conception and birth of Christ, even though he did not believe that he was either deity or human?

Yes. Yeah, he believed that. He believed that there was a special action of God that sort of inserted the

Son into the womb of the Virgin Mary, that he was created before the incarnation, that he already existed, that he was a creator of all things, but then his appearance among men was not as a true human, but Mary was simply sort of a pipe through which he was sent into this world.

So he was not truly human, not of the essence of the

Father, nor of the essence of true humanity. Okay, we have

Daphne in East Lyme, Connecticut, and Daphne says, the cult known as the

Jehovah's Witnesses are often described by evangelicals as Arians.

To your knowledge, if you have great depth of knowledge about the Jehovah's Witnesses, do they pretty much believe most of what

Arius taught, and do you think that the teaching of Jesus' lack of deity is also a sign that they believe in polytheism to some degree or another, because they are worshiping more than just the

Father alone? Well, I have to say that my depth of knowledge of the

Jehovah's Witnesses is not really great. I do know this thing that she has said, that they do not believe in the essential deity of Christ.

That is true. They believe that he was a creature, and to the degree that they see him as one who is to be followed,

I don't think that they ever affirm that Jesus is to be worshipped like Arius did.

And so I don't think I would necessarily say they are polytheists or that they are involved in idolatry, but I think they certainly have a terribly inadequate view of who

Christ is as a created being, and their essential

Unitarianism puts them certainly outside the pale of Orthodox Christianity and makes him as someone who could possibly be a

Savior completely inadequate. So that's where they would part company from Arius in that they, as you just mentioned, do not worship

Jesus as Arius did. Yes. Okay.

And before I go to another question, I just wanted to ask you something that is amazing to me.

Do you have any explanation, other than the divine work of the

Holy Spirit himself, for the church being rescued out of this heresy?

Not, of course, completely, since we even have Arians today, but when

Athanasius was protesting these heresies, the church had nearly entirely collapsed in its leadership to the

Arian heresy, and that's where we get the phrase Athanasius contra mundum,

Athanasius against the world, which might even be more accurately said, Athanasian against the established church or the bishops.

But how did this reversal come about in an earthly sense?

How did Athanasius become so popular that they reversed themselves?

In fact, even if you want to start before then, how did Arius become so popular and his teachings become so popular that they were nearly universally adopted by bishops?

Well, I think that Arius became popular for two reasons. He said things that seem to just be common sense.

You know, what do we have? If we beget someone, then they come after us. And so he looked at begetting as creating a chronological order.

And if there's a chronology in begetting, then this means that the son, as begotten to the father, must be later than the father.

He cannot be co -existent. And that seems to make just common sense. Well, that is until you begin to do a deep dive into the whole concept, the biblical concept of begetting.

And so when Adam begets a son, it goes on to say, in his own likeness.

Begetting is not something that is synonymous with created. Begetting is something that a being is produced that is of the same nature.

Now, the fact that our sons come after us is sort of an accident of our temporality, that when we beget, we beget in the way that God has ordained through our own sexuality and what he has ordained should be, and therefore our sons come after us.

But they're not of a different nature from us. And this is something that Athanasius was very insistent on in the works that he did subsequent to the

Council of Nicaea. While he was in exile, he wrote four books against the Arians.

And one of the things that he does is trace out this whole idea of begottenness, of begetting, and shows that it has to do with the transfer of nature from one being to another, not the creation of one being from another.

And once you establish that, then you understand that when Jesus is his only begotten son or his son, this shows that he has the same nature.

He is the only begotten son. He is the unique son of God. So this drives us into deep

Bible study. So that one answer is that all of these heresies and attempts to define what should be truly orthodox, just from a human standpoint, we have a divine revelation that consists of words, that consists of context, that consists of the ability to compare

Scripture with Scripture, that consists of the analogy of faith. And the more we compare Scripture with Scripture, then we can use our literary understanding to come to a grasp of the meaning of certain phrases in words.

And so that, I think, the idea that we have a divine revelation, we have a canon of Scripture, it is

God's revelation to us that Athanasius took that seriously, that he engaged in thorough biblical interpretation.

That is the thing, from a human standpoint, as you've indicated, that drew

Christianity out of these insufficient, immature sort of extrapolations of ideas out of Scripture, thinking they were being scriptural, but creating theological views that were not scriptural, just like the view of begottenness.

So that's one issue that I think is important. Also, Athanasius was a theological thinker.

Also, he begins to see how you can apply theological ideas. You derive a theological idea from your exposition of Scripture, and then because you have an assumption that Scripture is consistent throughout, you apply that theological idea and show that that helps you in your hermeneutics.

For example, when Jesus says, I am the Father, or one, or he that has seen me has seen the

Father. Or John says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was

God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. And then

Jesus says, I came to do the will of him who sent me, or the Father is greater than I.

How do you reconcile all of those ideas? Well, it is through seeing them in context, and it's through extrapolating from theological ideas that are within that, and applying those theological ideas as a part of your hermeneutics that shows the non -contradictory nature of Scripture, and you begin to see it as a massive theological treatise that is to be studied with great devotion and with a great sense of its non -contradictory nature.

And so the exegetical issue, the issue of the theological and hermeneutical importance of doctrine,

I think, are things that Athanasius employed in his resistance to Arianism, and it is that which eventually brought the church into a much more broad, uncontested view of what orthodoxy was.

Amen. We have Arthur in Sandpoint, Idaho, who asks,

If the Arians did not believe Jesus was either God or man, do they believe, like Jehovah's Witnesses do today, that he was an angel?

Yeah, they believe that he was an angelic sort of being, but he was above the angels. He himself created the angels, so he is something of an angelic being in that he is not

God and he is not generated from human beings.

And so he is sort of in a position of being an inferior deity of sorts, an angelic being, but not of the angels themselves.

Now, you may remember a notorious heretic who began as orthodox and Reformed, Harold Camping.

He had a teaching that Jesus was Michael the archangel, but he simultaneously did believe in the deity of Christ.

Does that have any basis in history as far as biblically sound

Christians affirming that understanding that Jesus was Michael the archangel? You got me on that one.

I don't know. I've heard that same interpretation, and I've seen people argue it from different places, where it gives characteristics of Michael the archangel and what he does and the battles that he fights and so forth.

But then there are other passages where it seems that this is not an eternal being, not the

Lord Jesus Christ. And so it's a point that should be explored very carefully, but I don't know of any systemic orthodox thinker that tries to argue that point with any kind of insistence.

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, says, I hope this isn't far too off the topic, but I was wondering if you are aware of what period in Christian history where the church began to execute people who had heretical beliefs?

Well, it was close to this time. The Constantine exile people, they were seen as worthy of being exiled, but it's not until probably after the

Council of Chalcedon in 451 that you begin to have some executions of those who are considered heretics.

Of course, this becomes something that is then much more prominent during the

Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church in the

Middle Ages, and so it would be very rare, I think, although not absent. After the

Council of Chalcedon, more during the Middle Ages, you began to have executions of people for heresy.

And so that is a part of the difficulty of the union of church and state, and the idea that you cannot have a unified state unless you have a unified religion.

And so anyone that is not consistent with your unified religion must also be seen as some threat to the unity of the state, and therefore executions.

This is the reason that the church claims, the Roman Catholicism claims, that it did not execute people.

They simply relaxed people into the arms of the state, and the state would execute them, but it would be at the request and almost the command of the church that they were executed.

Now, there are Christians today, even amongst some of the

Reformed Christians who share a lot of what you and I believe, but they have affirmed that it's legitimate to execute heretics, because in their minds, heresy sends people to hell, which makes it the worst sin, even more grievous than murder.

So therefore, they believe it's completely legitimate to execute heretics.

My longtime, very dear friend, Dr. James R. White, strongly opposes that notion, and I think there's even a debate in the works where he is going to be debating a professedly

Reformed Christian who advocates that the execution of Servetus was legitimate, and even though Dr.

White strongly opposes the heresies of Servetus, he does not believe that Christians should ever condone that or participate in that.

What's your view on that? Well, I would agree with you and James White on that entirely. I don't think the state has any of any competence to make judgments over the truth of a person's religion, that as long as they obey the civil laws, that they are not responsible.

I think the magistrate is completely incompetent to judge of the truthfulness of a person's religion.

That is for God to do, and that is for the church in its proclamation of the gospel.

But the church is not to be involved in setting forth the execution of people for religious beliefs.

Now, if they violate the commands, thou shalt not kill, then by man shall that person's life be taken.

There's a civil code, but this doesn't have to do with heresy. God is the one who judges that, and God is the one who will purify his church in the ways that he purifies it.

But in my view, it is not within the realm of competence or of command for the magistrate to be judged over the consciences of men.

Well, before we go to our final break, do you have anything else that you'd like to add to the information that you've provided about this valuable council of history?

Yeah. Well, as you said, this didn't solve all the problems, which shows that there was more work to be done, more definition to be done.

The fact that this is the case we see and the problems of unity of church and state under Constantine, who had exiled all the

Arians and was going to bring Arius back into the church in 337, because he saw that this was something that was creating greater confusion.

He sought to bring Arius back into the church, and Arius died on the day that he was to be brought back in, and he fell into a latrine.

Constantine thought, well, maybe he was a heretic after all. And then he exiled

Athanasius, who, of course, was not exiled as long as Constantine thought that the

Council of Nicaea was going to solve the problem of unity. And then he was exiled again under Constantius, and then he was exiled under Julian the

Apostate. Things became so confused that one of the nephews of Constantine became emperor, and he wanted to take the nation back into paganism, which again shows the complete incompetence of the magistrates in order to decide what true religion is.

And as a result of that, he brought Athanasius out of exile in order to create confusion and to create division in the church.

And then Athanasius was so effective that he exiled him again, and he sent troops after Athanasius to try to capture him, to execute him.

And Athanasius was escaping, and he was on a boat. And so these people sent by Julian were sailing down the river to get

Athanasius, and Athanasius' boat turned around, came back the other way, passed one, and people yelled from the boat that was getting

Athanasius, Athanasius the heretic, do you know where he is? And then

Athanasius himself ends up saying, yes, he is not far from here. Athanasius was able to escape because they thought they needed to pick up their speed and go catch up with the boat.

He had turned around and passed by them on the way. So this just shows that the magistrate cannot be responsible for that.

That has to be up with the church. We have to have confessions of faith. We have to be faithful in our exposition of Scripture.

We have to warn people that sin will take us to hell and that God is right and just in deciding things that way.

But we trust in the power of the Word and the power of the Holy Spirit, not in the magistrate, to convert people.

Okay, we're going to our final commercial break right now. And once again, if you'd like to join us with your own question,

I would strongly urge you to send it immediately because we are rapidly running out of time. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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We have a question for you, Dr. Nettles, from Joey in New Rochelle, New York.

By the way, thank you, Joey. Recently, he was very generous to Ironsharpensironradio with a gift on our website app at ironsharpensironradio .com.

Thank you very much for that. And Joey has two questions. Were you earlier implying a creedal distinction between substance and essence?

And then he has one more question you can answer after this one. No. Substantia is the word that comes from the

Latin. Essence is an English translation of usia, which is Greek.

So substance and essence I see as the same thing. They're talking about a thing as it is in itself, bearing all of those characteristics that distinguish it from other things.

Okay. Second, Joey asks, can you shed light, can you shed any light on whether the scriptural application of the term begotten to Christ refers either to his birth or his resurrection, i .e.

tangential to the creedal use? Well, the way it's used in the creeds, because he's called the only begotten

Son of God and is seeking—like 1

John 5 says, he that is begotten of God does not sin because the one begotten of God keeps him.

So you have begotten used for two different realities, but implying the same thing.

The one who is begotten of God does not sin means that if we are begotten of God, we have holy propensities, and so we do not continue in sin, and our eventual position will be that we will be holy like God himself is.

Because the one begotten of God, that is, Jesus Christ himself, and it's very clear there that he is the one begotten of God, keeps him.

And so though there is resurrection to begottenness related to the resurrection, the chief way that these confessions use it is that it is the continuation of nature, that one is begotten, shares the nature of the one who begot him.

And I think that the reason that you have so many begotten, begotten, begotten, begotten, this man begot this man, and this man begot this man, is that begetting is not creating.

Begetting is getting one in our own nature, by the way it is defined in Genesis when it says,

Adam begat a son in his own nature. So the majority use, in the creedal tradition anyway, is that it determines the unity of nature of father and son.

Thank you, Joey, and thanks again for your generosity to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. We have

Adrian in East Quag, Long Island, New York, and Adrian says,

I was just curious how you define the phrase forgiveness of sins in the

Nicene Creed. I confess one baptism for forgiveness of sins, and in other translations of the creed it says remission of sins.

How can anyone outside of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Church of Christ and other similar groups that believe in the necessity of baptism and water for salvation utter those words?

It's a very good question. Yeah, it is, and all of your people who ask questions are perceptive people, and they're challenging questions.

Well, let me give two answers. One is that a confession or decree is not the

Word of God, and if we come up with biblical reasons as to why we think that a particular phrase should not be used, then we are free to reject that.

A second way is to interpret it in a way that is legitimate for the language, like baptism for the remission of sins can be baptism on account of the remission of sins.

Baptism is that which is a picture of death, burial, and resurrection. Our death, burial, and resurrection with Christ, which is the only thing by which we have forgiveness of sins.

Just like if your doctor says, take two aspirin for your headache, he doesn't want to give you a headache.

He's saying, take two aspirin because of your headache. That's right.

Yeah, and so I think that's a very easy interpretation to give to the creed and still say, yeah,

I believe in baptism for remission of sins. Because I have remission of sins, I want to picture that in my union with Christ.

Let's see here. I just got a text from—actually, it's a question on Messenger from Brian, and he doesn't give his city and state.

I'd appreciate you providing your city and state, Brian, as we always ask. Your show today, you made a comment about anathema, and I'm wondering if there's a good sermon about where you draw the line, like Jesus told his disciples to leave the guys alone that were doing miracles, but at the same time, we are told not to give people the time of day, per se, who are not of the flock.

I apologize. I forget the wording used. I'm at work listening.

Thanks, Brian. In fact, if you also, just a reminder, let us know where you're writing from, what city and state or foreign country.

Do you have an answer for Brian? Yeah, Paul used the word anathema in Galatians 1 when he's talking about let them be condemned, because he was talking about those who were denying the gospel, denying justification by faith.

It wasn't up to him to condemn anyone. God is the one that does that, but he is saying that is the kind of position for which people will be condemned.

I think we need to recognize that there is eternal condemnation coming for those who are not born again, who do not have trust in Christ for salvation.

You cannot have trust in Christ for salvation if you deny his deity. You cannot have trust in Christ for salvation if you deny his true humanity.

Those are anathematizing realities, although the council did not claim the right that they had the divine prerogative of actually sending someone to hell.

Only God has that, but they're warning those who read these confessions that there are certain doctrines that indicate that you cannot possibly have true faith in Christ if you believe those things.

So that's the reason the anathemas are there, is because they serve as very sober warnings.

And I just found out that Brian is from Duncannon, Pennsylvania. Okay, he responded.

Thank you for your question, Brian, and I believe—I might be wrong—that you're a first -time questioner.

If so, give me your full mailing address, and that goes for everybody who listened and has submitted a question.

That's a very important part. If you've submitted a question and it's your first -time question, you have won a free

New American Standard Bible, and our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cbbbs .com,

will ship that Bible out to you if you give us your full mailing address. Well, I'd like you to conclude today's show,

Dr. Nettles, with a summary of what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners about the Nicene Council.

The Nicene Council set forth some issues that needed to be clarified in the church concerning the person of Christ and the necessity of this affirmation of the person of Christ—both God and man in one person—for our salvation, for us men and for our salvation.

And so only one who is both God and man could make a sufficient atonement. People might be interested in looking at the

Council of 381, where these things were reaffirmed, and a more full doctrine of the

Holy Spirit was set forth. And also at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, where the issue of the person of Christ was dealt with very thoroughly, because it seems like you have both

God and man, that you've got two persons. And the mystery is that you have two natures but one person.

And the foundation of the personhood of Christ is His eternal personhood as the Son of God. And so that's an important addition or clarification that Chalcedon in 451 presented.

What is at stake here is not just intellectual integrity, although that is at stake.

It is not just true doctrine, although that is at stake. But what is at stake here is true faith that does result in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

Amen. And I want to thank you for doing such an extraordinary job as you always do, Dr. Nettles.

I'm looking forward to your return to the program. If you want to look up the books that Dr.

Nettles has written that are in print, go to amazon .com, type in Tom Nettles or Thomas J.

Nettles, and you'll find everything that he's got to offer. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

I hope you all have a safe, blessed, and Christ -honoring weekend and Lord's Day.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater