The Athanasian Creed Explained (Mostly the Beginning and the End)

The Holy Trinity

May 26, 2013

The Athanasian Creed Explained

(Mostly the Beginning and the End)

In the name of Jesus.

Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all else, hold to the true Christian faith. Whoever does not keep this faith pure in all points will certainly perish forever.

Whoever wishes to be saved must have this conviction of the Trinity.

It is furthermore necessary for eternal salvation truly to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ also took on human flesh.

Those who have done good will enter eternal life, but those who have done evil will go into eternal fire.

This is the true Christian faith. Whoever does not faithfully and firmly believe this cannot be saved.

I.

These are all sentences from the Athanasian Creed. A statement of belief is called a creed (credibility and credence are words that mean something is believable). It was written to stand up against the false teachings of 400s AD. These false teachings are mentioned in the creed. False teachers were mixing God together. They were preaching that there was a time when God's Son did not exist. They talked about the Holy Spirit as though He were a ancient cosmic energy to be used like a Jedi using the Force or Harry Potter using magic.

So faithful pastors and theologians were tired of having their fellow believers deceived by these lies. So they wrote the most precise statement of the Trinity possible based on what has been revealed about the Trinity in the Bible.

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! (Deuteronomy 6:4 NASB)

God is one. But also three Persons. In the beginning God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26 NASB)

And at the end of Jesus' time on earth, He commanded the Church and her pastors, Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19 NASB)

So any statement of faith that did not confess that God is three distinct and equal Persons in one God is not a good confession. In fact it would be a lie. So in the middle of Athanasian Creed it is correctly stated that,

Whoever wishes to be saved must have this conviction of the Trinity.

This conviction of the Triune God, the Three-in-One God, is beyond intellectual understanding. It is goes beyond our imagination. No one could have dreamt this up. The human mind can conceive of a single entity. It can imagine hundreds or millions of little gods. But a Trinity is absurd. And we have this conviction of the Trinity only through Christ alone.

II.

No one can believe in the Trinity without the Son. He is the only way to the truth, and He says so,

I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. (John 14:6 NASB)

Our Way to Life is Jesus and this Divine Son became a man. He did this so that He might die for us. If Jesus is not a true man, He could not have died to save us.

[God the Father] made [His Son] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in [Him] we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV2011)

To deny Jesus' humanity is to claim that Jesus did not take on our sin. This means that without this conviction in God becoming a man, a person is outside the Christian faith and is lost. The writers of the Creed knew this and stated,

It is furthermore necessary for eternal salvation truly to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ also took on human flesh.

Rejecting Jesus' humanity leads to eternal damnation.

III.

Those who have done good will enter eternal life, but those who have done evil will go into eternal fire.

This statement often troubles Lutherans because it rings of the papacy and Roman Christianity. But again this statement sums up what God says about the role that good works, the works of the Law, have in our lives. To put it simply, good works do not save us, but they are evidence of faith. The works of believers are the only works that Jesus considers good; the good works of unbelievers are no good at all.

Jesus said for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. (John 5:28-29 NKJV)

Well, fine, yoy might say. Jesus said it, but why say it in a statement of faith that someone might misunderstand. Again, these Athanasian Christians were talking exactly like Jesus. Instead of running away from good works they embraced them as evidence of belief, evidence that will be judged not by humans, but by Christ.

The creed writers were also following in the footsteps of St. Paul in the opening chapters of Romans. Paul wrote: [God] will repay each one according to his works: eternal life to those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality… glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does what is good. (Romans 2:6-7, 10 HCSB)

But of course, there is a puzzle because Paul goes on to say in no uncertain terms that good works never cause salvation.

There is no one who does what is good, not even one. (Romans 3:12 HCSB) And again no one will be justified in His sight by the works of the law. (Romans 3:20 HCSB)

But Paul does not dilute the need for good works. He praises them and calls on Christians to obey God's law.

For we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law… Do we then cancel the law through faith? Absolutely not! On the contrary, we uphold the law. (Romans 3:28, 31 HCSB)

Therefore, it is more than appropriate to declare that doers of good deeds go to heaven because only Christians can do good deeds.

IV.

Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all else, hold to the true Christian faith. Whoever does not keep this faith pure in all points will certainly perish forever… This is the true Christian faith. Whoever does not faithfully and firmly believe this cannot be saved.

The Athanasian Creed is condemning those who deny and reject these vital scriptural truths. Those who reject the doctrine of the Trinity and the true deity of Christ are not Christian.

But here's the wonderful part. Believers—whether the very young who haven't learned how to express trust in Jesus' promises or the very old who have lost their ability to think and speak of their Savior—will be saved. Even many lifelong Lutherans will be saved, even though they ceased studying God's Word when they were 14. The creed is not condemning simple Christians whose knowledge and understanding is incomplete. We do not have to be able to explain complex scriptural doctrine in order to be saved.

We confess one God in three Persons and three Persons in one God. And He came down from heaven to earth to live with us and to tell us about His Father and about His Spirit. They love us and He has died for us.

He's risen! He's risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.