Feast of the Holy Trinity + Athanasian Creed + May 27
Grace
and Peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Trinity
Sunday is the only Feast day in the entire church calendar which is not about a
specific event in the life of Christ. Instead, it is a day set aside for us to contemplate
in a deeper way what we confess every other Sunday of the year: the catholic
faith. Not the Roman Catholic faith. Just catholic, meaning universal. The catholic
faith is not bound to one specific place, even Rome. The catholic faith is this:
that we worship one God in Trinity and
Trinity in Unity.” One God. Three persons. Each person coeternal,
uncreated, and incomprehensible. That’s the unity. But there is a distinction
of persons within the unity. The Father is unbegotten. The Son is begotten of
the Father from all eternity, of the same substance as the Father, while the
Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. You see this ineffable
doctrine the most clearly in your baptism. You were baptized in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The name is singular. You are
not baptized into three names but one name. But that one name encompasses three
persons. Since in Holy Baptism He saves us from our sins, washes us of our
guilt, and adopts us into His family, this teaches us that God the Holy Trinity
is the God who saves sinners. It is good to have a day like this in which we
contemplate the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the catholic faith.
But
a day like this is becoming more necessary as the world, and portions of the
visible church, attack the true God through ignorance and unbelief. Just this
week I saw an example of an attack on the Trinity based what I hope is
ignorance. A church marquee read “Trinity: God in three ways.” I’m sure the
preacher didn’t realize what he’d done. In describing the Trinity as God “in
three ways” he has revived the ancient heresy of Sabellianism. Sabellius taught
that there was one God who manifested Himself to different people in different
ways. To the Israelites of the Old Testament, God appeared to them as the
Father. To the Jews of the first century He appeared to them as Jesus of
Nazareth, God’s Son. At Pentecost the One God appeared to men as the Holy
Spirit. The God of Sabellius was not one God is three persons, but one God who
manifested Himself in three different modes or ways. This is similar to the
three modes of H2O. It can manifest itself and a solid and be ice, as a liquid
and be water, or as gas and be steam. This is not the God of Holy Scripture,
who is one God but who exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Sabellius taught,
and was condemned, in the 220s A.D. Here we are, in the 21st century
and his teaching is still alive.
Others
claiming to be Christian attack the true God out of spite and unbelief. Some
boast that the church knew nothing of a Triune God before the time of
Constantine the Great in the early 4th century. They teach that
Constantine cooked up the doctrine of the Trinity and forced it upon the
church. They imagine that Christ is not truly God’s son but a creature made
before the creation of the cosmos. They willfully ignore that Scripture calls
Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of the Father. If there was a time when the
Son was not, then that means that God has not always been Father, so that there
was a change in God’s essence at some point before the creation. If there was a
change in God, then He was not perfect before He begot His Son. Scripture
testifies that Christ is “the brightness of
His glory and the express image
of His person” (Hebrews 1:3). The Son is to Father as
brightness is to light. Light without brightness ceases to be light. These
scoffers know not the Scriptures, neither do they know a bit of history, for
Constantine did none of the things which are often claimed about him. The
church spoke of the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and their
distinction, for generations before Constantine was born.
As the visible church struggles in her confession of
God the Holy Trinity, she is confronted by the Mohammedan faith which confesses
that there is one god, Allah, who has no son, and who demands mankind abide by
his laws or else he will cast them into the fires of Hell. Confronted with this
teaching, there are many in our day who teach that Christians, Jews, and
Muslims worship the same God because all three faiths claim Abraham as their
father. The Jews reject their Messiah, God’s own Son, even as the Mohammedans
do the same and craft an idol after the image of their hearts. But we do not
worship the same God as the Mohammedans do, just as the Christian God is not
the God of the Jews. Both reject God the Son who said, “No one comes to
the Father except through Me” (John 14:6), and “He who does not
honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him” (John 5:23). The world insists upon blending and
melding all religions into one, even as we see today in many of the mainline
denominations. This makes a day like today, and our confession of faith that
God is One God in three persons, all the more important.
But
there’s more to it than that. The second half of the Athanasian Creed moves to
another topic. “Furthermore, it is
necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe faithfully the
incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right faith is that we believe
and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man.” Jesus’
true divinity is necessary for our salvation. Christ is no mere man as the
Mohammedans claim. Christ is no mere creature of God, as the Jehovah’s Witness
and others teach. He is true God and true Man. True Man, so that as a man God
might die according to the flesh. True God, so that by His sacrificial death
upon the cross He might be what St. John calls Him, “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the
whole world” (1 John 2:2). The Savior we worship is not only a man. That
would be idolatry. Yet Christ never rebuked anyone who worshipped Him. He is
true God and true man for you and your salvation. If He is not true God, you
remain in your sins. But since He is true God from all eternity, “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses
us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
Dear
saints of God, it is tempting to imagine that since this article of faith are
so mysterious, we ought not to contemplate it but rather downplay it and ignore
it. And many take that path to their detriment. You, however, confess this
article of faith because you have been born again of water and the Spirit in
Holy Baptism. You bear the very name of God because you were baptized in the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. You will not fully
understand such a mystery and that is the way it is supposed to be. If you
could fully comprehend God in His essence you would be God. But you are not.
You are His creatures. Better than that though, you are sons of God the Father
through holy baptism. You are brothers and sisters of Christ, co-heirs with Him
of all the heavenly blessings. You are temples of God the Holy Spirit, for He
proceeds from the Father and the Son to dwell in your hearts by faith so that
He can daily teach you out of the Scriptures. This is the catholic faith, the
universal, apostolic faith of Scripture: that there is One God in three
persons. God the Father, who sent His only-begotten Son to become flesh and
bear your sins upon the cross, so that God the Holy Ghost might give you those
gifts the Son earned for you, and by working and sustaining faith in your heart,
reconcile you with God the Father. This is the catholic faith, taught by
Scripture, and believed for your eternal salvation. Amen.
May
the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding guard your hearts and
minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.