June 29, 2025 - Pastor Message
July 1, 2025JUBILEE 2025 THE NICENE CREED (cont.)
JUBILEE 2025
THE NICENE CREED (cont.)
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him, nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-5, 14).
“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man” (Nicene Creed).
Continuing our Jubilee Year reflection on the Nicene Creed, promulgated 1700 years ago at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, we look this week at how the council responded to the heresy of Arianism. Remember that Arianism proposed that Jesus was not divine but only human, albeit a unique and very special human. In response, the council issued the Nicene Creed, which boldly professes that Jesus is simultaneously both fully human and fully divine. But how can such an anomaly be?
The answer is what theologians refer to as the hypostatic union. The term “hypostatic” literally means “placed under” and refers to a foundation, but ancient Greek theologians adapted it to mean a reality that underlies the appearance of something. In the case of Jesus, they applied it to mean the union of Christ’s humanity and divinity that lay beneath the appearance that he was only human, as was promoted by Arianism.
They explained that this underlying union was a union of two natures within a single person. By “nature” they meant what something is, and by “person” they meant who someone is. So, for example, what I am is human, and who I am is Fr. Marc. In the case of Jesus, what he is both human and divine, and who he is the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, Jesus Christ. By making the distinction between the “what” and the “who”, these ancient theologians made sense of the seeming contradiction that Jesus is both human and divine. He is one in his singular person, Jesus Christ, eternally divine and one with the Father, God, and born in the flesh as human 2000 years ago in Bethlehem. This is what we profess every time we pray the Creed.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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