The Bible and the Church Part One: A False Opposition

In an Anglican Facebook group, the same one that I mentioned in the introduction to my last essay, I recently saw the question posed of whether the Bible gave us the Church or the Church gave us the Bible.  These alternatives were presented in such a way as to make clear the underlying assumption that they are mutually exclusive and that it must be one or the other.  Anyone fortunate enough to have studied under the late Dr. Chuck Nichols will remember how fond he was of posing questions like this then answering them with “yes.”  I was very much tempted to follow his example but instead replied by saying that both positions are wrong, that the right way of looking at it is that God gave us both the Bible and the Church.  In thinking more about it I realized that rather than having recourse to an undefined “we” a better way of wording it would have been to say that God gave the Bible to the Church.  Since this was yet another Protestant versus Catholic dispute among orthodox Anglicans who for some reason or another are unwilling to accept that the Anglican Church is both Protestant and Catholic, but a different kind of Protestant from 5-point Calvinist Presbyterians and Baptists and a different kind of Catholic from the followers of the Patriarch of Rome, this answer would probably not have satisfied either side although it ought to satisfy both.  Either side can accept the wording, depending upon how the word Church is defined.   If Church is defined as a synonym for the word “Christians” then the Protestants would have no problem with “God gave the Bible to the Church.”  If Church is defined more narrowly as the society of Christian faith founded by Jesus Christ through His Apostles and continued to the present day under the leadership of the three-fold ministry established in the Apostolic era then the Catholics would have no problem with “God gave the Bible to the Church.”  As to the question of which definition of “Church” is the right one, in Dr. Nichols’ memory I shall give the answer “yes.”

 

Both the Bible and the Church possess authority.  These authorities differ in kind rather than degree so it is pointless to argue about which is the higher authority.  Both derive their different types of authority directly from God rather than the one from the other.  The Bible’s authority comes directly from God because the Bible is the written Word of God.  When you read the Bible or hear it read what you are reading or hearing is God speaking.  The Bible is the written Word of God, not because the Church says it is or somehow made it to be so but because the Holy Ghost inspired its human writers, not just in the sense in which we say Shakespeare was inspired, but in the sense that the words they wrote were not just their words but God’s words as well.  This is not just the Protestant view of the Bible.  The Roman Catholic Church officially declares this to be its view of the Bible in its Catechism, indeed, it even uses the “fundamentalist” language of the Bible being “without error.” (1)  The Eastern Orthodox view of the Bible, whatever David Bentley Hart might have to say about it, is no different.  Liberals in each of these ecclesiastical groups reject this view of the Bible, but this is because liberalism is unbelief wearing a thin guise of faith and so their defection does not take away from the Scriptures as the written Word of God being the common view of Christians.  The point, however, is that the Bible’s authority comes from the fact that it is God speaking, the written Word of God, and that it is God Himself and not the Church that makes it such.

 

The Church, however, also gets her authority directly from God.  When it comes to Church authority, we can speak either of the authority of the Church, that is to say, authority vested in the Church as a whole, organic, society, or we can speak of authority in the Church, which is the authority exercised in that society by the Apostolic ministerial leadership that Christ established.  The distinction is not hard and absolute because for the most part the authority of the collective body is exercised through the ministerial leadership in the body.  Those who erroneously think that the King of all creation, the King of Kings, established His Church as a type of democratic republic, think, equally erroneously, that authority in the Church is delegated to the ministers from the larger body.  This is clearly not what is depicted in the Scriptural history of the Gospels and the book of Acts.  This same Scriptural history testifies to the Church’s receiving her authority directly from God.  God the Son commissioned the Apostles before His Ascension, God the Holy Spirit descended upon them and empowered them on the first Whitsunday, and they exercised this authority and power long before the New Testament which testifies to all this is written.  

 

The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 is a key event when it comes to grasping this.  The Council took place around the year 50 AD, almost two decades after the events of the Gospel and the birth of the Christian Church.  While the Gospel of St. Matthew was probably written already at this point in time, at least in the Hebrew or Aramaic form attested to by the Church Fathers, (2) and possibly St. Mark’s Gospel as well, the only book of the New Testament about which we can say with anything like certainty that it predated the Council is the epistle of St. James.  This is because St. James writes in that epistle as if the Church was a Jewish body that had yet to experience any significant influx of Gentile converts.  It was the first such influx that generated the controversy that the Council of Jerusalem, over which St. James presided, convened to address.  It is therefore extremely unlikely that St. James wrote the epistle after the Council.  All of St. Paul’s epistles were written after the Council, however.  Chronologically his first epistle was 1 Thessalonians which was written in his second missionary journey at some point in the time period covered by the seventeenth chapter of Acts. The book of Acts itself was obviously written in the ‘60s because it ends with the arrival of St. Paul in Rome which took place around the year 60.  St Luke wrote his Gospel first but probably just prior to writing Acts and so that Gospel can be dated to the late 50’s or early 60’s.  The epistle of St. Jude seems to have been written around the same time as St. Peter’s second epistle which was written shortly before his death around the year 67.  St. John’s writings were the last of the New Testament books to be written, traditionally ascribed to the very end of the Apostle’s ministry in the last decade of the first century.  The bulk of the New Testament was written after the Council of Jerusalem and most of it at least a decade later.

 

The Council of Jerusalem was not the first time the Apostles exercised the authority that Jesus Christ had given them in the Church.  They had exercised that authority, for example, to establish the order of deacons within the first year or so of the Church as recorded in the sixth chapter of Acts and to convert the existing office of presbyter (elder) into an order of ministry in the Church beneath themselves and above the deacons as attested by SS Paul and Barnabas ordaining such over the Churches they planted on their first missionary journey leading up to the events of the Council and by their association with the Apostles in the Council, thus completing the three tiers of ministry of the Christian Church corresponding to those of the Old Testament Church.  In the Council of Jerusalem, however, we find the Apostles, in council with their presbyters, exercising not merely their authority in the Church, but the authority of the Church, in order to settle a major controversy.  The controversy was over whether Gentile converts to Christianity had to also become Jews in order to become Christians.  After the fall of Jerusalem, 70 AD, the rabbinical leadership of those Jews who rejected Jesus as the Christ would redefine Judaism in such a way that a Jew who was baptized into the Christian faith ceased to be a Jew.  Clearly such rabbis were on the same wave length as the synagogue leaders who drove the Apostles and their converts out in the book of Acts.  In the century or so after the Council of Jerusalem the possibility of being both a Jew and a Christian was removed by the leadership of the Jewish side.  In 50 AD, however, two decades before the fall of Jerusalem, the Church had to contend with the question of whether her Gentile converts had to become Jews by being circumcised and agreeing to follow the ceremonial requirements of the Mosaic Law (the kosher dietary code, the Sabbath, etc.)  The controversy broke out first at Antioch, from where SS Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem to consult the Apostles, who after hearing their case and the arguments of the other side, hotly debated the matter until St. Peter addressed them and made the case for the Gentiles not being made to become Jews based upon his account of the conversion of Cornelius the centurion and how that had been brought about and upon salvation being by grace rather than Law.  SS Paul and Barnabas then added their testimony about their ministry among the Gentiles to his and St. James, who as bishop of the Church of Jerusalem had presided over the council and in ruling spoke for the council and the whole Church, ruled against the Gentiles being made to become Jews.

 

St. James referenced the Scriptures in his ruling.  He quoted Amos 9:11-12, a Messianic prophecy in which the Gentile nations are said to be called by the name of the Lord.  When he instructed the Gentile Christians to abstain from the pollution of idols, fornication, and eating things strangled and blood, these prohibitions come from the moral Law (both tablets of the Ten Commandments are represented) and from the Noachic Covenant made with all mankind after the Deluge.  The purpose of these Scriptural references, however, was not to show that the Council had found the answer spelled out for them in the pages of the Old Testament.  The Council had not found their answer there because it was not there to be found, at least not in the way one would think it to be if certain extreme versions of the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura were correct.  The Scriptural references are to show that the Council’s decision was in accordance with the Old Testament, in harmony with the Hebrew Scriptures, rather than contradictory to them or seeking to overturn them.

St. Paul in his epistles would provide a doctrinal foundation for the Church’s ruling on this matter.  The Mosaic Law had been a wall of separation between the Jews and the Gentiles.   Jesus Christ had nailed the Law to His cross and in His death had removed the wall, uniting Jews and Gentiles to each other and Himself in His one Body, the Church.  That Jews and Gentiles were to be united in this way had been a mystery in the previous age before Christ had come, but now that Christ has come it is revealed.  In the unity of the Church, on those external and ceremonial matters where the Law had previously separated Jews and Gentiles, liberty was now to reign.  These ideas are taught by St. Paul throughout his epistles.  The Church’s ruling in the Council of Jerusalem had preceded the writing of these epistles, however, and it did not include this sort of doctrinal explanation.

 

This illustrates how the authority that God has given the Church and the authority of the Bible with differs in kind.  The authority of both pertains to doctrine.  Doctrine comes in two basic kinds, doctrine regarding the faith, and doctrine regarding practice. Regardless of whether it consists of truths to be believed and confessed, or commandments to be followed or done, sound doctrine comes from God through revelation.  It is through the Scriptures that this revelation comes because the Scriptures are the very words of God which the Holy Ghost inspired the human writers to write.  This is the nature of Scriptural authority.  The truths about Christ removing the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles and uniting them in one body were written by St. Paul in his epistles rather than declared by edict of the Church at the Council of Jerusalem because St. Paul was writing Scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. 

 

This is not the nature of the authority given to the Church.  St. Jude speaks of the faith has having been “once delivered to the saints.” The faith, the body of truths which we believe and confess as Christians, was delivered to the Church by Jesus Christ in the days of the Apostles.  She was charged with safeguarding it which is the effect of St. Jude’s injunction to “earnestly contend” for it and so charged was vested with all the authority necessary to carry out this task. This includes the kind of authority on display in the Council of Jerusalem. 

 

A controversy had arisen.  It was a doctrinal dispute, having to do primarily with matters of practice although it also touched upon matters of faith particularly with regards to salvation.  The Church heard both sides, deliberated, and issued a judicial ruling.  While her ruling was not taken from the Scriptures in the same sense it would have been as if the dispute had been about whether or not one is allowed to help himself to his neighbour’s belongings and the ruling of no was taken from Exodus 20:15 she did cite the Scriptures to show her ruling was in harmony with them.  Despite not being taken directly from the Scriptures, neither did her ruling add to the teachings of Scriptures in a revelatory way in the way St. Paul’s epistles later would. 

 

The Church has no revelatory authority to add to the faith she has been entrusted with.  She can however exercise her judicial authority in safeguarding the faith to define it, and she has been called upon to do so time and again, especially in the centuries after Scriptural revelation had been completed in the first.  This includes identifying heresy as heresy, such as when she defined Arius’ doctrine (that there was a time when the Father was without the Son) as heresy.  It includes clarifying sound doctrine, such as when she issued the Definition of Chalcedon explaining that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, Who in the Incarnation added a complete and perfect human nature to Himself in such a way that He remained the one Person He had always been, but with two natures that retained their differences and distinctions, but were now in His Person indivisible and inseparable.  It also involves summarizing the truths that are de fide, of the faith in such a way that rejection places one outside the faith, such as was done in the Apostles’ and Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creeds.  None of this added anything to the content of the Apostolic faith and we should be very grateful that the Church put this effort into contending for the faith rather than saying something to the effect of “eh, they have the Bible, that’s good enough, they don’t need us to do anything about it.”

 

The two types of authority clearly complement each other.  It is wrong to pit them against each other as is so often done by both sides in these “Protestant” vs. “Catholic” disputes.  Since they differ from each other in kind, it is also wrong to try and rank them as if the difference were one of degree.  Neither the Bible nor the Church gives the other to us.  God has given us the Christian faith.  The “us” to whom He has given the Christian faith is not merely “us” as individuals but also and even more so “us” as the community of faith that is the Church.  We, both as individual Christians and as the Church, have been charged with sharing the Christian faith with the world through evangelism.  The Church has been charged with keeping the faith with which she has been entrusted safe from error. To assist her in keeping this charge, God has given the Church the necessary tool of His own written Word, the Bible.  The Bible was primarily given to the Church as a society rather than Christians as individuals.  Protestantism tends to see it otherwise, but it was not until the eve of the Reformation that the printing industry developed the technology that would make it practical for every Christian to have a personal copy of the Bible.  Ancient Israel had received her Scriptures from God as a national community and in the time of Christ’s earthly ministry they were read, heard, and studied as such, or sung in the case of the Psalter, in the communities known as synagogues.  It was no different for the Christian Church when she inherited these Scriptures from Israel as her Old Testament and as the Apostolic teachings were written down and received by the Church as the New Testament that completed her Scriptures they were received as writings to be read and heard and studied as a community in just the same way.

 

In Part Two we shall look at the how the proper view that God has given the Bible to the Church relates to the question of how we know what belongs in the Bible.  This question is frequently raised by those arguing for the “Church gave us the Bible” position.  Usually when this question is raised in this way it is canon that is in view.  When the question is presented with a narrow focus on canon it becomes “which books belong in the Bible?”  Canon is not the only aspect to this question, however. There is also the matter of text.  The two largest examples will illustrate what I mean by this.  Do the long ending of St. Mark’s Gospel (16:8b-20) and the Pericope de Adultera (John 7:53-8:11) belong in the Bible or are they interpolations? They are found in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts as well as the ancient translations and in quotations by the Church Fathers but are missing from a couple of very old manuscripts.  Does the age of these manuscripts outweigh all the other evidence?  The question of text and the question of canon are two sides to the same question of what belongs in the Bible. We shall, Lord willing, see how the matters discussed in this essay inform the answer to this question in Part Two.

 

 (1)   Catechism of the Catholic Church: Revised in Accordance with the Official Latin Text Promulgated by Pope John Paul II, 2^nd Edition (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 107.

(2)   Eusebius of Caesarea, the “Christian Herodotus” or father of Church History said that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew prior to leaving the Holy Land (Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.24.6).  This would date the Hebrew original to about a decade prior to the Council of Jerusalem.  There is a general Patristic consensus that St. Matthew’s was the first Gospel written  which is an excellent commentary on the worth or lack thereof of Modern scholarship which disagrees and says St. Mark wrote first.  There is also a Patristic consensus that St. Matthew’s Gospel was written in Hebrew – they may have meant Aramaic although St. Jerome who saw the original in the library of Caesarea (De Viris Illustribus, 3) would have recognized the difference – before being translated into Greek.  St. Irenaeus, however, said that both SS Peter and Paul were in Rome at the time of its composition (Adversus Haereses, 3.1.1) which would have be 60 AD or later.  Although St. Irenaeus was talking about the original Hebrew composition he could have gotten the time confused with that of the Greek composition. 

Against the Extreme Ecclesiastical Provincialism of Hyper-Protestantism

 In my last essay I made use of the following syllogism to demonstrate that one cannot logically object to the expression Θεοτόκος (Theotokos) or “Mother of God” for the Virgin Mary without either denying the deity of Jesus Christ or denying that Mary is the Mother of Jesus (by saying, for example, that she is the mother of only one of His natures rather than of Jesus as a Person, which is the heresy of Nestorianism):

 

Premise A: Jesus is God.

Premise B: Mary is the Mother of Jesus.

Therefore:

Conclusion (C): Mary is the Mother of God.

 

One Hyper-Protestant took exception to this.   Posting as “Anonymous” he lumped me in with “filthy papists” (I recognize neither the Patriarch of Rome’s claim to universal jurisdiction over the entire Church, not his claim from Vatican I on to infallibility) and described my syllogism as “anti-trinitarian”.   This proved to be deliciously ironic in that he then offered up the following two alternative syllogisms:

 

The Father is God and not born of Mary so Mary is not the "Mother of God." The Holy Spirit is God and not born of Mary so it is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost to call her "Mother of God." 

 

Now, these are not proper syllogisms in form, of course.   Both attempt to draw their conclusion from a single compound premise and the second introduces a concept into the conclusion “blasphemy against the Holy Ghost” that is not present in the premise.   This is what “Anonymous”’ first syllogism would look like cleaned up:

 

Premise A: The Father is God.

Premise B. Mary is not the mother of the Father.

Therefore:

Conclusion (C):  Mary is not the Mother of God.

 

Substitute “The Holy Spirit” for “The Father” as the Middle term in both Premises and you have the cleaned up version of his second syllogism.

Can you see why these syllogisms are invalid?

 

For either of these syllogisms to be valid, that is, for the conclusion to necessarily follow from the premises, the Major Term, “God” would have to be a closed set, including only the Middle Term of the syllogism (“The Father” in the case of the first syllogism, “The Holy Spirit” in the case of the second syllogism).  Yet this is precisely what a Trinitarian cannot claim.   The Father is God, yes, but not to the exclusion of either The Son or The Holy Ghost.   The same is true, mutatis mutandis, of the other Persons.   God is One in Being, but Three in Person.   “Anonymous”’ syllogisms require God to be One in Person as well as Being.  This is Unitarianism not Trinitarianism.   Or, since he made the same argument with both the Father and the Holy Spirit, it is the heresy of Sabellianism.

 

By contrast, in my original syllogism both the Minor Term (Mary) and the Middle Term (Jesus) are as individual Persons closed sets, but there is no need for the Major Term (God) to be similarly closed, for the conclusion to necessarily follow from the Premises.    My syllogism allows for the Trinity, it is “Anonymous”’ syllogisms which do not, and which are therefore the anti-Trinitarian syllogisms.

 

Of course, considering that “Anonymous”’ post consists almost entirely of bitter, acidic, vitriol it is clear that he was writing from a standpoint of high emotion rather than reason.    Later in the comments, however, Jason Anderson, who like “Anonymous” defends the Nestorian position, responded to my remarks in the essay about the implications of his claim that Jesus “disowned” Mary.   Mr. Anderson had made this claim originally in the comments on an earlier essay “Be a Protestant BUT NOT A NUT!”  The claim, obviously, is an attempt to get as far from Rome as possible on the subject of Mary.  Like the base Nestorian position, however, it has Christological implications, in this case that Jesus broke the fifth commandment.   Mr. Anderson’s response to my pointing this out is more level-headed than “Anonymous”’ comments.   Is it more rational however?

 

He begins by saying:

 

What does "they went out to lay hold on him" mean if not "kidnapping"? If they were cops it might mean "arrest" but being private citizens it means "kidnapping." 

 

Note that his question is written from the position that his interpretation of these words of St. Mark’s is the default correct one unless some other interpretation is proven, a rather bold position to take with regards to an interpretation that is novel with him.   Especially since it involves a concept that would have been nonsensical to anyone in the first century – the idea of someone being “kidnapped” by his own people.   This is not a nonsensical concept to us, because in our day where liberal, individualistic, rights is a concept that is almost universally taken as axiomatic, and family break-ups are common, one parent kidnapping a child from the other parent to whom the court has awarded custody is, sadly, not unknown.   In the first century nobody believed in liberal, individualistic, rights.   What was universal then was the idea that the family had authority – almost absolute authority – over its members.   The idea that a family detaining one of its own constituted a “kidnapping” was completely foreign to that world.   So, for that matter, was the form of law enforcement Mr. Anderson suggests as the alternate possibility.   Since the explanation given in the text is that they thought He was “beside himself”, i.e. had become mentally disturbed, the correct interpretation is that they, based on an erroneous presumption, were doing what was expected of the family of someone who had become mentally unstable, as evinced elsewhere in the Gospel narratives.   In my essay, I described this as a “misguided intervention”, but I at least acknowledged the anachronism of using “the parlance of our day” in such a way.    Certainly the description is accurate if anachronistic.   The family was doing what society expected of them under such circumstances and doing so out of love for Him, to keep Him safe.   That they were mistaken in thinking Him to be “beside himself” does not change this into a “kidnapping” and it is obscene to suggest that it could justify breaking the fifth commandment.

 

Mr. Anderson goes on to say:

 

Now whatever other construction you try to put on it is the same as how pastors frequently claim calling your mother "woman" was magically respectful in that one society and time despite never being so anywhere or time else.

 

Here Mr. Anderson has compounded the error of his first two sentences with a basic inductive error that anyone who has ever studied philosophy or logic could identify after their first class.   In his time and in his culture, calling your mother “woman” is disrespectful, so he extrapolates this onto all other cultures in all other societies and times – for he has not investigated every single culture, in every single society, in all times, to support his claim, I guarantee you that – to dismiss those who say that “woman” was not a disrespectful form of address in the first century.   One does not have to go outside of the text of the Gospel of John to show that the pastors he so dismisses are right and that there is no magic involved.

 

γύναι, the vocative form of the Greek word for “woman”, is used as a common form of address throughout the Gospel.   In addition to Mary in the second and nineteenth chapters, Jesus addresses the Samaritan Woman this way in the fourth chapter when telling her that the time is coming that those who worship the Father will do so neither in the Samaritan mountain nor Jerusalem, address the woman taken in adultery when asking her where the accusers He had just rescued her from were in the Pericope de Altera at the beginning of the eighth chapter, and Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection in the twentieth chapter.   There is no hint of disrespect in any of these passages.   In the last mentioned, the vocative is joined to the question “why weepest thou?” which, if the form of address was disrespectful, would be absolutely bizarre, as the question and the moment are ones of tender kindness.   Note that only a couple of verses earlier, the angels at the empty tomb address her in the same way.    Clearly this address was both a) common and c) not perceived as disrespectful, within the context of the Gospel according to St. John. 

 

The Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Luke provides additional confirmation of this.  Jesus addresses the woman He heals from an eighteen year infirmity in the synagogue on the Sabbath this way in the thirteenth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel, and the Canaanite woman who asked Him to cast the demon out of her daughter in the fifteenth chapter of St. Matthew.   Note with regards to the latter, that this address is not part of the earlier portion of the conversation, but when Jesus is praising her faith and granting her request in the twenty-eight verse.   For the record, γυνή is the basic Greek word for “woman” and “wife”, and in the vocative, was used as a term of affection rather than disrespect, comparable to “Ma’am” and in some cases even “My Lady” in English.  William Barclay in his commentary on St. John’s Gospel writes:

 

The word Woman (gynai) is also misleading. It sounds to us very rough and abrupt. But it is the same word as Jesus used on the Cross to address Mary as he left her to the care of John (John 19:26). In Homer it is the title by which Odysseus addresses Penelope, his well-loved wife. It is the title by which Augustus, the Roman Emperor, addressed Cleopatara, the famous Egyptian queen. So far from being a rough and discourteous way of address, it was a title of respect. We have no way of speaking in English which exactly renders it; but it is better to translate it Lady which gives at least the courtesy in it.

 

To the examples of classical literature he cites might be added Euripides’ Medea.   It is how Creon addresses the title character, while trying to soften the blow of her exile, following Jason’s betrayal.   This is the first example Liddell & Scott give of the affectionate use of the term.

 

Does Mr. Anderson have anything more to back up his claim that Jesus “disowned” His Mother other than the vile accusation that she was “abusive”?

 

No, not really.   The rest of his response is an entertainingly arrogant form of the Argumentum ex Silentio.    Here is the first part of it:

If he did not disown her, why is she never mentioned by Paul? Not by name, only as "made of a woman"---again that word woman not mother. To Paul she is just a "woman" as to Jesus she is just a "woman." Paul doesn't speak of any "Mother of God." It proves she was disowned. 

 

So, according to Mr. Anderson, if St. Paul never mentioned Mary, the first explanation to come to mind is that Jesus disowned her.    I would have thought that a more rational explanation was that St. Paul in his epistles was addressing specific situations in the Churches to which he was writing and explaining specific doctrines of the faith rather than trying to be comprehensive.   Then, however, I am not trying to take a position as far removed from Rome’s as possible and then impose that position on the text of the Bible whether it supports it or not.    Mr. Anderson is mistaken in saying “Paul doesn’t speak of any ‘Mother of God.’”   St. Paul says that Jesus was “made of a woman” (Gal. 4:4), which points to His having a Mother.   St. Paul says that Jesus is God (Titus 2:13 among many other verses).   Therefore St. Paul speaks of a Mother of God.   It is comical that he writes “It proves she was disowned”.   His Argumentum ex Silentio is not even evidence, much less proof.   Nor does it become any stronger when he compounds it by adding SS Peter, John, James and Jude.

 

Indeed, he would have been wiser to have left St. John out of it.   He writes “Nor Peter or John (and she is called John's mother, but even he doesn't assert that she is ‘Mother of God’) nor Jude nor James.”   A) Everyone who asserts that Jesus is God, asserts that Mary is the Mother of God by doing so, for Mary is the Mother of Jesus.   St. John asserts that Jesus is God in the very first verse of his Gospel.  B) The passage in which Jesus tells Mary to behold her son in St. John, and St. John to behold his mother in Mary, far from being the disowning that only a most reprobate mind would see in it, is the demonstration of filial affection and care that is universally, even by Hyper-Protestants other than Mr. Anderson, seen to be, C) It is by no means established fact that St. John was silent about Mary outside of his Gospel.   St. John is acknowledged, by conservatives at any rate, to be the author of the Book of Revelation.   In the twelfth chapter of this book a woman is mentioned who gives birth to a male child:

 

And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne. (v. 5)

 

There is no significant disagreement as to who this child was/is.   This is Jesus.   Who the woman is, however, is hotly contested.   There have been multiple candidates put forward but the ones that deserve serious consideration can be reduced to four – Mary, Eve, national Israel and spiritual Israel (the Church).   Mary is an obvious candidate because she literally gave birth to Jesus.   I will defer Eve until later.   Israel is a candidate because of the description of the woman in the first verse (the sun, moon, twelve stars alluding to Joseph’s dreams in Genesis) and because of the reference back to Isaiah’s “unto us a child is born” sign, which reasoning can be used for Israel either in the sense of the nation (not the state that goes by that name today but the ethnicity), or in the sense of the Congregation of the Lord, which is in the New Testament the Church.   Hyper-Protestants like Mr. Anderson will detest the thought that Mary is in view here, especially since this chapter if referring to her completely undermines the foundation of their complaints against most of the honours Rome has bestowed upon her including the title “Queen of Heaven” (the first verse of the chapter depicts the woman as wearing a crown in Heaven) but it is impossible to rule her out.   The biggest argument against viewing the woman as the Church, spiritual Israel, is that Jesus built the Church but here the woman gives birth to Jesus.   This is not a fatal argument in that while the Church in the New Testament began at Pentecost the Old Testament Church – the spiritual Congregation of the Lord within national Israel – was folded up into her at Pentecost, and so there is a continuity there.   Understanding her to be national Israel would seem to commit one to a dispensationalist view of Revelation, or at least something very close to it.   The best interpretation is that the woman is a compound symbol.   She is indeed Mary, the literal Mother of Jesus, but not merely in her own person but as the symbolic representative of Israel, certainly in the spiritual sense – note how believers are described as “the remnant of her seed” in the seventeenth verse – and perhaps in the national sense as well, and as the New Eve who gave birth to the New Adam.   This last image, Mary as the New Eve, is strongly suggested in the chapter in which Satan appears as the dragon who is “that old serpent”, i.e., the one that deceived the original Eve, and makes war against the woman and her “seed”.

 

Now, the concept of Mary as the New Eve was spelled out in so many words very early in Church history.   It first appears in Justin Martyr’s writings, specifically his Dialogue With Trypho which dates to the middle of the second century (this is also our oldest source identifying St. John the Apostle as the John who wrote Revelation).   It is then expounded upon at length in Adversus Haereses, written two to three decades later by St. Irenaeus, a second generation disciple of St. John (his teacher was St. Polycarp, who was taught directly by the Apostle).   It is significant that this connects the concept to those most directly influenced by St. John, with whom the Blessed Virgin lived out the rest of her life as he himself records, and the author of Revelation in which this image so strikingly appears.  It is next found in De Carne Christi, written in the early third century by Tertullian.

 

It is also however suggested by the very wording that Mr. Anderson finds so disparaging.   Here is the very first Messianic prophecy in the Old Testament:

 

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (Gen. 3:15)

 

Note that this verse speaks merely of “the woman”.   There is a double reference here, obviously, to Eve, who is named later in the chapter (v. 20), and to Mary who actually gives birth to the seed that bruises the serpent’s head.   When St. Paul, whose epistles spell out the concept of Jesus Christ as the New Adam (Rom. 5, 1 Cor. 15), describes Jesus as “made of woman” in Galatians 4:4, this is an allusion to this prophecy, and not the dismissal of her importance that Mr. Anderson assumes it to be.

 

Perhaps you are wondering why I have wasted so much time and space answering this sort of thing.   It is to once again show that Hyper-Protestantism is a dangerous path to tread.

 

Hyper-Protestantism, remember, is the form of Protestantism that is not content to disagree with the Roman Catholic Church merely on the matters that led to the Reformation (Rome’s rejection of the supremacy of Scriptural authority over the authority of Church and tradition and her rejection of the assurance of salvation in the Gospel to all who believe leading her to compromise the freeness of salvation as the gift of God to man in Jesus Christ) or even on these and the claims of the Roman Patriarchy that were disputed in the Great Schism (mainly Rome’s claim to universal jurisdiction, despite this being denied by the canons of the Ecumenical Councils) all of which have to do with errors and claims made by Rome specifically and relatively late in Church history.   Hyper-Protestantism opposes and rejects, at least in part, what is truly Catholic, as well as what is distinctly Roman.   That which is Catholic is that which belongs to the entire Church, everywhere she has been found, from Apostolic times to the present day as opposed to what is distinctive of the Church in one specific place, or one specific time.

 

Doctrinally, the most important part of what is Catholic is the Creed, the original version of which most likely was drafted by the Apostles themselves, which underwent regional variation as the Gospel spread, with one such regional version, the Roman Baptismal Symbol, evolving into what is now called the Apostles’ Creed, and another regional version being modified by the first two Ecumenical Councils, into what is now called the Nicene Creed, more properly the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, and which is the most widely used and accepted confessional statement in Christianity.   The Creed is the essential Christian faith. All ancient Churches confess the Creed.  Next to the Creed in importance is the Definition of Chalcedon, which clarifies the doctrine of the One Person and Two Natures of Jesus Christ – that He is fully God, co-equal with the Father and Holy Spirit, and fully Man, with the same nature as us, except no sin, that these two Natures remain distinct, but are permanently united in His One Person so that what is true of Him in either of His Natures is true of Him in His Person.     While some ancient Churches dissent from the Definition of Chalcedon, they do not seem to teach what is condemned by Chalcedon.   The heresies condemned at Chalcedon are Nestorianism, which separates Jesus’ natures from His Person, and Monophysitism, which teaches that Jesus’ human nature was swallowed up into His divine nature so that Jesus is fully God but not fully Man.   The Non-Chalcedonian Churches, such as the Coptic and Armenian, do not accept the “two natures’ language of Chalcedon, but do teach that Jesus was fully God and fully Man and call their position “Miaphysitism” rather than Monophysitism.    All ancient Churches therefore, even the ones that don’t accept the Definition of Chalcedon, reject the heresies condemned at Chalcedon.   There are other doctrines and practices that are Catholic in that they have been taught and practiced in all the ancient Churches since the earliest times but they are of varying degrees of lesser importance to the truths in the Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon.

 

The Roman Catholic Church, that is to say, the portion of the Church that recognizes the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Rome, claims to be the Catholic Church confessed in the Creed.   All Protestants reject that claim, as, of course, do the Eastern Orthodox, and the other ancient Churches.   A Protestant, therefore, should never refer to the Roman Catholic Church as the Catholic Church without the Roman, or refer to members of her Communion as “Catholics”, for this concedes the claim which we contest.   The Roman Catholic Church is a particular Church – like the Church of Corinth or the Church of Galatia mentioned in the New Testament.   Indeed, you could say that she is a very large version of the Church of Rome that is mentioned in the New Testament.  She is not the whole Church, however.   A Protestant must insist on this.  A Hyper-Protestant will either call her the Catholic Church and her members Catholics, thus accepting Rome’s claim while rejecting that which is Catholic, or alternately and inconsistently deny her claim to be Catholic at all even in the sense of being a particular Church within the Catholic Church by accusing her of teaching things that would place her at odds with the Nicene Creed.   Rome does not claim to teach these things.  Rome confesses the Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon.   Hyper-Protestants maintain, on the basis of some Roman practices they object to – in some cases the objections are justified, in some cases not – that these other things are what Rome really teaches and what the members of her Communion really believe, even though they say they don’t teach and believe those things.   This is, of course, a form of the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi, and it is also a violation of any number of Scriptural commandments, including the eighth of the Ten.   None of the doctrines that ordinary Protestants contended with Rome over in the Reformation touched on the truths in the Creed or the Chalcedonian Definition.   

 

The Catholic doctrines, those held by all ancient Churches, everywhere, since ancient times, are the first tier of Christian truth.  Within this first tier, the core truths are those confessed in the Creed and the Chalcedonian Definition.    Ordinary Protestants, or better, orthodox Protestants, do not contest Catholic doctrines. The doctrines emphasized in the Reformation – the primary of Scriptural authority over ecclesiastical authority and tradition, the freeness of salvation as a gift, and the assurance of salvation in the Gospel – belong to a second tier of Christian truth.   Now, some of these may be more important than some doctrines of the first tier outside of the core faith in one sense.  The freeness of salvation, for example, is more important than anything that might be believed universally throughout the Churches about angels.   The ranking of the two tiers is based on that which is common to all (Catholic) being generally more important than that which is particular to the part (Protestant, Roman, etc.)   The essence of the faith, remember, belongs to that core part of the Catholic tier.   Hyper-Protestants tend to major on differences with Rome that are of lesser importance than the core doctrines of the Reformation.   This would make them third tier at best.   Yet Hyper-Protestants use Rome’s differences from themselves on these points to deny Rome, which confesses the first tier of Christian truth, a place within Christianity at all.   In doing so, they often compromise their own adherence to the first tier of Christian truth.   The error of Hyper-Protestantism could be described, therefore, as an extreme form of ecclesiastical provincialism.

 

The matter discussed in my last essay and in the first section of this one illustrates this point. There is a huge difference between Protestantism and Hyper-Protestantism when it comes to their disagreement with Rome over the Virgin Mary.   In the Reformation, the dispute between Rome and the Magisterial Reformers, both continental and English, was almost entirely a dispute over practice rather than doctrine.   The Reformers all thought that the cult of the Blessed Virgin, like that of the saints in general, had been taken to idolatrous excess in the late Medieval Roman Church.    They reformed this in the Churches they led, usually by eliminating the cult altogether, but they did not take a hard stand against the doctrines Rome taught regarding Mary. 

 

These are called the Marian Dogmas.   There are four of them, all of which were taught by Rome at the time of the Reformation, two of which did not become dogma – doctrine officially binding on members of a Communion, in this case the Roman – until long after the Reformation.   The Marian Dogmas are that Mary is the Mother of God (Theotokos), her Perpetual Virginity, her Immaculate Conception, and her Bodily Assumption.    The first two of these are truly Catholic, having been held by the entire Church since the earliest centuries.   The first, moreover, is integral to sound Christology, and cannot be denied without either denying the deity of Jesus Christ or separating His deity from His Person, both soul-damning heresies, and so the first Marian Dogma is not only Catholic, but belongs to “the faith once delivered unto the saints”, that core element of the first tier of Christian truth.   This cannot be said of the other three, even the other truly Catholic doctrine.  The Immaculate Conception – this means the idea that Mary herself was protected from the taint of Original Sin in her conception, do not confuse it with either the Miraculous Conception or Virgin Birth of Jesus - was declared dogma by the Roman Church in 1854, and the Bodily Assumption in 1950, less than a century ago.  Neither can be said to be truly Catholic.   The Eastern Church, although she teaches that Mary was kept by grace from personal sin, rejects the Immaculate Conception (that she was kept from Original Sin) and while the Eastern Church does teach a form of Assumption (that Mary was taken bodily into heaven) in her theology, which emphasizes the Dormition (literally “falling asleep” i.e., in death) of the Theotokos, the Assumption is understood as a resurrection rather than a rapture, to borrow a concept from dispensationalist eschatology, whereas the Roman dogma is worded in such a way as to allow for the latter possibility and perhaps suggest it.  The Hyper-Protestants reject the last three of these, usually claiming not only that they cannot be proved from Scripture but that they are disproved by Scripture, and, as we have seen, many Hyper-Protestants reject the first one, that one cannot reject without embracing Christological heresy of one sort or another, as well.   This is a remarkable contrast with the Protestant Reformers who believed, almost unanimously, in the first two, the truly Catholic ones, and in some cases held to all four.

 

The Lutheran Reformers, following Dr. Luther’s lead, were the strongest proponents of the Marian doctrines.   Mary as the Mother of God and her Perpetual Virginity are both affirmed in the Lutheran Confessions.   An argument for Mary’s being the Mother of God is even placed in the Formula of Concord (Epitome VIII.xii, Solid Declaration VIII.xxiv), while her Perpetual Virginity is affirmed by the use of “Ever Virgin” in the Smacald Articles I.iv.  Dr. Luther also taught a form of the Immaculate Conception in which Mary’s physical conception was normal but her ensoulment was miraculously protected so that the effects of Original Sin touched only her body and not her soul.  The English Reformers were usually as conservative as the Lutherans if not more so.   In this case, they – Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Coverdale, Jewel, et al. -  all personally affirmed their strong belief in the first two Marian doctrines, the genuinely Catholic ones, but did not make them binding on the Church of England, except in that the orthodoxy of the Creed and Chalcedon is binding, which brings the first Marian doctrine along with it.   Interestingly, William Perkins, the Elizabethan era clergyman who is generally regarded as a moderate member of the Puritan party – the original Hyper-Protestants – was a strong defender of the Catholic Marian doctrines.    Even more interesting was the situation with the non-Lutheran Continental Reformers.   On many issues, John Calvin was closer to Dr. Luther and hence “more Catholic” than the other leaders of the Reformed tradition.   When it comes to Mary, however, Calvin was the odd man out in the other direction.   Zwingli, Bullinger, even Calvin’s own protégé Beza, all affirmed in the strongest possible terms the Catholic Marian doctrines.   The Perpetual Virginity made it into the Reformed Confessions, albeit in Bullinger’s Second Helvetic Confession (XI.iii) rather than any of the Three Points of Unity, and was later defended by the Calvinist scholastic Francis Turretin.   Calvin himself, however, was equivocal.   On the Mother of God, he defended the theological soundness of the title but disapproved of its common use.  Regarding the Perpetual Virginity, he maintained that it cannot be proven either way, although his specific refutation of Helvidius’ claims that it can be disproven by the Gospel of Matthew and his commentary on St. John’s Gospel to the effect that those identified as the brethren of Jesus were His cousins, strongly suggests he personally held to it.

 

Clearly, in their belief that antidicomarianism is the only true Protestant position and that anyone who accepts any of the Marian dogmas, even the one you cannot reject and consistently hold to the Hypostatic Union, is a closet “papist”, the Hyper-Protestants are out to lunch way off in left field on some other planet.   More importantly to the point at hand, however, is the fact that with the exception of Mary’s being the Mother of God, none of these doctrines belongs to the essence of the faith.   That essence, again, is the Creed, the basic confession of the truths all Christians believe, the formal expression or Symbol of “the faith”.  Mary’s being the Mother of God belongs to the essence of the faith, because it is primarily a Christological doctrine, and only secondarily about Mary.   It is in the Creed because Jesus having been “born of the Virgin Mary” is part of the Creed as is His being “God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God…being of One Substance with the Father”, making Mary’s being the Mother of God, that is, of Jesus Christ Who is God, part of the Creed.    None of the other Marian doctrines can be found in the Creed, even in its expansion into the Athanasian Symbol that guards against every possible way of misconstruing the Trinity and brings the clarifying affirmations of Chalcedon into it.    Only one other of these doctrines, the Perpetual Virginity, belongs to the first tier of Christian truth – that which is Catholic in that it is held by all ancient Churches, everywhere, from the most ancient times.  The other two are neither first tier, nor are they, in either their affirmation or rejection, second tier, that is to say, belonging to the key truths of the Reformation.   These are third tier doctrines at best, which Hyper-Protestants, who in their rejection of these doctrines often go so far as to place themselves in serious doctrinal heresy by also rejecting the one that belongs to the Creedal essence of the first tier, elevate to a level of undue importance by writing people who sincerely confess the Creed out of the Church and out of Christianity, dismissing them as pagans or worse, for affirming these lesser doctrines that the Hyper-Protestants deny.

 

You have probably noticed that I have not directly addressed in this essay the question of what the Scriptures have to say, one way or another, about the Perpetual Virginity.   I shall address that, Lord willing, in a future essay, although not necessarily my next one.    All I will say about it here is that doctrines that are truly Catholic – held by the ancient Churches since ancient times – are not of the essence of the faith unless they are also tenets of the Creed, but should be presumed true unless proven otherwise from Scripture.   This is the orthodox Protestant position.   Hyper Protestantism reverses the onus.   I have also not addressed in this essay the position of those who would write the Roman Church and others which confess the Creed out of Christianity for disagreeing with the Protestant position on what I have called the second tier of Christian truth, the core doctrines of the Reformation.   This too, Lord willing, I shall address in a future essay.   Suffice it to say for now, that the core soteriological disagreement between the Reformers and Rome, boils down to the question of whether St. James interprets St. Paul (in Romans) or the other way around, that the evidence suggests, conclusively in my opinion, that it is St. Paul who interprets St. James, but that either way, the Protestant Reformers were not guilty of the antinomianism Rome accused them of, nor was Rome entirely guilty of the Galatianism the Reformers accused her of, that Rome went too far in anathematizing the Protestant position in the Council of Trent, and the Reformers went too far in applying the term Antichrist to a Church that, in error though it be, confesses Jesus as Christ and Lord.

The Third Article – God Became Man

As we have seen in the first Article of the Creed we confess our faith in God the Father and in the second Article we confess our faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.   We looked at how in the longer conciliar version of the Creed, the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Fathers took care to use such precise language with regards to the deity of the Son of God as to preclude any interpretation that would make His deity a lesser sort than that of the Father.   In the third Article of the Creed, which is our subject today, we confess our faith in the Incarnation, that God – more specifically God the Son – took human nature upon Himself and became a Man.

 

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed was published and revised in the two ecumenical Councils of the fourth century.   The primary heresy with which those Councils had to contend was Arianism which denied the co-equality and co-eternality of the Son with the Father and declared the Son to be a created being.    This was a heresy concerning the deity of Jesus Christ.   There were also heresies that concerned His humanity.    Docetism, for example, denied His humanity by denying that He had a physical human body and teaching that He had the mere appearance of one.   In the century that followed the century that gave us the conciliar Creed the foremost Christological heresies that the Church contended with pertained to the relationship between Christ’s deity and humanity.     Nestorius, who was Patriarch of Constantinople until he was condemned and deposed by the third ecumenical Council held in Ephesus in 431 AD, sought to settle a theological dispute older than himself pertaining to the use of the title Θεοτόκος in reference to the Virgin Mary.   This word means “God-bearer” and is more usually rendered “Mother of God” in English.   Some objected to the title on the grounds that Mary was not the source of Jesus’ divine nature but of His human nature.   This fact was not in dispute – nobody claimed that Mary was a divine being or that Jesus derived His deity from her – but the reasoning used to derive the objection to the title Θεοτόκος from it was problematic.   Nestorius, by seeking to mediate in the dispute, ended up lending his name to the side which rejected the title and to the problematic Christological doctrine that was formally condemned as the heresy Nestorianism.   The problem with Nestorianism was that the Virgin Mary was the Mother of Jesus, Who is a Person not a nature.   That Person, Jesus, is God.   Therefore Mary was the Mother of God.   Of course, Jesus Christ, God the Son, always was God from eternity past, and derives His deity through Eternal Generation from the Father and not from His Mother, but to object to the title on these grounds is to divide what was forever united in the Incarnation – deity and humanity in the One Person of Jesus.  

 

The condemnation of Nestorianism at Ephesus did not end the Christological disputes of the fifth century.   Indeed, it opened the door to a new heresy.   Eutyches, who had been a priest and monk under Nestorius in Constantinople where he was in charge of a monastery, strongly supported Cyril of Alexandria who presided over the condemnation of Nestorius at Ephesus.   He took Cyril’s position to an extreme, however, and taught that in the Incarnation the humanity of Jesus Christ was swallowed up in the ocean of His deity so that not only was He One Person but had only One nature as well.   This too was problematic because it was a denial of Christ’s true and full humanity and so twenty years after Nestorius was condemned and deposed Eutyches was himself condemned as a heretic at the fourth ecumenical Council at Chalcedon.   His heresy sometimes bears his name, Eutychianism, but is more commonly called Monophysitism.

 

In the Council of Chalcedon the Church did not more than just condemn Eutychianism.   It also issued a statement that positively affirmed what the orthodox Church did believe regarding the Person and Nature of Jesus Christ as opposed to both the heresies of Nestorianism and Eutychianism.   This statement is sometimes called the Chalcedonian Creed although since it was not intended as a revision of the Creed nor is it a full statement of the Faith but is rather a supplement to the Creed it is more properly and more usually called the Definition of Chalcedon.   It asserts that the Incarnate Jesus Christ is One Person, Who has Two Natures, and so that One Person is both fully and truly God and fully and truly Man.   (1)    As a positive affirmation of faith the Chalcedonian Definition has been more valuable than all the anathemas pronounced against the myriad of heresies that in one way or another take away from His deity, humanity, or unity of Person.   It came with a cost, however, in terms of the unity of the Church.   Six centuries before the Greek speaking and Latin speaking Churches followed the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Rome in mutually disfellowshipping the other, the Definition of Chalcedon produced a major and lasting break in Communion between the ancient Churches which confessed Christianity in accordance with the faith of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.   While most Churches affirmed the Chalcedonian Definition, four ancient Churches (2) rejected it because they thought the language of two Natures was too close to Nestorianism for their liking.  (3)  The Chalcedonian Churches have historically regarded these Churches as Monophysite although they have always maintained that they rejected the heresy of Eutyches.   Of themselves they say that they follow the faith as taught by St. Cyril of Alexandria, that the Incarnate Jesus Christ is One Person with One Nature but that this One Nature is such that He is fully Man as well as fully God, His deity and humanity being united into a single Nature in such a way that His humanity is not lost in His deity.   They call their position Miaphysitism.  In recent years dialogue has opened up between these and other Churches and the Chalcedonian Churches, especially the Eastern Orthodox have been more willing to take seriously their claim that their position is not the heresy condemned at Chalcedon.

 

It is the third Article of the Creed which asserts the truth the implications of which were debated in these fifth century controversies.

 

In the Apostles’ Creed the third Article is qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine which is rendered in the English of the Book of Common Prayer as “who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary”.   Grammatically, this is part of the same sentence that begins with the second Article and it begins a relative clause that continues through the seventh Article in Latin.  The English inserts a sentence break after the fourth Article but this does not affect the meaning in any way.   The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is, as usual, longer here than the Apostles’ Creed.   It asserts τὸν δι' ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν καὶ σαρκωθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα, which in the English of the Book of Common Prayer is “who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man;”.   Note that the English translation in saying that Jesus was “incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary” follows the Latin text which uses “ex” instead of “et” where the Greek text reads καὶ (“and”). 

 

We have already discussed how the conciliar Creed arose in a century in which theological controversy centered around the deity of Jesus Christ.   This focus can be detected in the different way in which the Creeds word this Article.  The Apostle’s Creed speaks of the Incarnation in terms of two events which are common to all descendants of Adam and Eve – conception and birth.   Thus, although these were miraculous and supernatural in that the conception was the work of the Holy Ghost and so Mary gave birth to Jesus as a Virgin, this wording emphasizes Jesus’ sharing fully in the human experience.   In the Nicene-Constantinopoltian version the same three Persons appear – the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus Himself – but the events are condensed into a single word, the participle σαρκωθέντα which, with the meaning it has here, is hardly a word that is used of common human experience.  (4)    It means what John 1:14 means when it asserts that “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us”.   This manner of speaking about the Incarnation throws the emphasis back upon the deity of the One Who was made flesh.   Note that it is an ancient custom in many Western Churches to genuflect both at this point in the recitation of the Creed and when John 1:14 is read in the reading of the Gospel.   Where the Nicene Creed stresses what God the Son became rather than what He always was is in the words καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα – “and was made man”.

 

In this Article the Nicene Creed states that Jesus “came down from heaven.”   This is, of course, something that can be inferred from the Creed’s declaration that Jesus is the eternally begotten Son of God Who was made man, but clearly the conciliar Fathers thought it important to state it explicitly, as Jesus Himself did in His interview with Nicodemus (John 3:13).     When, later in the Article we affirm that Jesus “was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man” we affirm the aspect of the Incarnation in which Jesus’ role was passive.   He “was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary”.   In the wording of the Apostles’ Creed the passivity of Jesus in the Incarnation is particularly emphasized.    That people do not get an active choice in their own conception and birth is proverbial.   By saying that Jesus “came down from heaven”, however, we affirm another aspect of the Incarnation, one in which Jesus was indeed active.

 

The Gospel account of all that Jesus did for us has often been expressed in terms of a two-part journey.   In the first part, His Humiliation, He started at the highest place (Heaven) and went to the lowest place (Hell).   The second part of the journey, His Exultation, begins in the lowest place with His Triumphant entry into Hell as conquering Victor and ends with His return to the highest place in His Ascension back into Heaven.  Both Creeds include the Ascension in the sixth Article, as well as the most important things Jesus did on earth in both parts of the journey.      The beginning of the journey – His leaving Heaven to come down to earth – and the pivotal point where His Humiliation ends and His Exultation begins, do not appear together in the Creeds.   The one appears here in the third article of the conciliar Creed, the other appears in the fifth Article of the Apostles’ Creed.   The fullest picture of the Son of God’s entire Gospel journey, therefore, requires both Creeds.

 

In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed this Article – and the longer relative clause of which it is the start – begins by stating the purpose for which the Son of God became Incarnate and did all that He did.   It was “for us men and for our salvation”.   In Greek and Latin “us men” is “ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους” and “nos homines” respectively.   ἄνθρωπος and homo are the Greek and Latin words that mean “man” in the sense of “human being”, as opposed to ἀνήρ and vir which are the words that mean “man” in the sense of “male adult human being”, so all people are the intended beneficiaries and not just males, not that there has ever been much confusion about this contrary to what the politically correct advocates of “gender neutral language” would have you believe.   Salvation, like the Greek word it translates, basically means “deliverance”, i.e. from some sort of danger and “preservation”, with implications, depending upon the context, of health, well-being, safety, security, and freedom.   In a spiritual or religious context, it has a specialized meaning derived from these more basic meanings, of deliverance from sin, the curse that sin brought upon Creation, including the evils of death and hell.  

 

This part of the third Article is of particular importance because it shows that what we affirm in the Creed is the very Gospel itself.   That the historical facts of the Gospel are affirmed in the Creed is not in dispute.   The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which St. Paul declares to be the Gospel in the fifteenth chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians, are affirmed in the fourth and fifth Articles, and the Articles before these provide the necessary context to these events by affirming Who Jesus Christ is.   What makes the Gospel the Gospel - the Good News that Christians and the Church are to proclaim to the world – is that everything that Jesus did He did for our salvation.

 

The Article about the Incarnation was a very appropriate place to put this because it is the Incarnation that made everything else Jesus did for our salvation possible.   “For there is one God”, St. Paul wrote, “and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (I Tim. 2:5).   Jesus could be such a mediator because He was both God and man.   Jesus saved us by dying for our sins.   He had to become man in order to do so, because God qua God cannot die, and because it having been man who sinned payment was required from man.   Only the sinless God-Man could be the Saviour.

 

 

 (1)    This is called the Hypostatic Union from the Greek word ὑπόστασις.   At one time this word was basically a synonym for οὐσία which means being, essence, or substance.   In the theological disputes leading up to and including those of the first four ecumenical Councils it took on a different meaning.   In the context of discussing the Trinity οὐσία was used for the way in which the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are One, while ὑπόστασις came to be used to denote the way in which they are distinct from each other.   In the Christological context it denotes that of which the Incarnate Christ is One.   In English we use the word Person for this, from the Latin words persona that came to be used in the place of ὑπόστασις in Latin theological discussion.

(2)   These are the Coptic Orthodox Church, founded by St. Mark the Evangelist, the Syriac Orthodox Church which grew out of the Church of Antioch in the book of Acts, the Armenian Apostolic Church founded by the Apostles Bartholomew and Jude, and the Indian Orthodox Church which was established by St. Thomas.   There is also an Ethiopian Orthodox Church and an Eritrean Orthodox Church both of which belong to this type of Church – they are collectively called the Oriental Orthodox Churches – but these were part of the Coptic Orthodox Church at the time of the Chalcedonian Controversy.   The Ethiopian Orthodox Church became autocephalous when it was given its own Patriarch by the Coptic Pope in 1959.   In 1993 the Eritrean Orthodox Church, which up to that point had been part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, also became autocephalous with its own Patriarch.

(3)   Earlier, the ancient Assyrian-Persian Churches which like the Indian Orthodox Church trace their origins to St. Thomas, broke fellowship with the other ancient Churches over the Council of Ephesus which they condemned and canonized Nestorius as a saint.

(4)   The Greek verb σαρκόω means “to make flesh”.   Ordinarily this word was used for situations like when a smaller, weaker, person gets bigger and stronger or when flesh grows to fill in a wound.   In the Creed it is used with the very specialized meaning of a spiritual being having been given flesh.