We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father. On our service sheet, the Nicene Creed is usually set out as three paragraphs. Yet the original statement was formulated as a single sentence. The translation in our older prayer book reflects this: And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds. Neither translation is perfect, but the older one should remind us that we do not believe in three things, but in one. For God is one. Even when we talk of the three persons of the Trinity, we must remember that these three are inseparable.
The Creeds shed light on the nature and work of Jesus. We often forget that the word "Christ" has a meaning of its own - the person anointed by God to usher in God's reign. But "Jesus" and "Christ" are so closely joined in our minds that it is a surprise to discover that in Luke's gospel, the two words never appear together - though Luke makes up for this in the Acts of the Apostles!
Jesus is our Lord, and Jesus is God's Son. "Lord" (in Greek kyrios) was the polite way of addressing someone, like "sir", but for Jesus and his followers, it was also the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew adonai, the word used to pronounce the very name of God. When Thomas gasps "My Lord and my God," or when Paul talks of confessing Jesus as Lord (Rom 10:9, Phil 2:11), they are recognizing Jesus as divine.
Our Creed affirms this. Jesus is the one Lord, Jesus is God. Later we also call the Holy Spirit Lord. Again we must remember that we are not talking of three Lords, but one Lord.
After seeing Jesus from the human side, looking up, we meet him from the heavenly side, as Son of God. We shall look more deeply at the word "begotten" next month. For the time being we should recall the relationship of father and son - idealized in the way it was in Jesus' time.
Sometimes "son" simply implies membership of a tribe, or descendant, like Son of David. Jesus refers to himself often as Son of Man - the one who was truly human, the true member of the people of Adam. As Son of Man Jesus identifies himself with the whole race. But when he says: "No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him," then we have an insight into a deep and intimate relationship.
This is a relationship in which we too can share. The expression "only son" is a compromise between two possible translations of the Greek, which can mean "only-begotten", or "of a unique kind", and the word "his" has crept in from other contexts. In Jesus, we too are adopted as children, and we too can call God Father, with the same deep and intimate knowledge.
This relationship did not begin when the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary "in the days of Herod the king." It began "before all ages", before time, or beginning, had any meaning. "Eternally" is a good word, if we can get the idea of a watchmaker's guarantee certificate out of our mind, and remember that it means "outside time".
So far the Creed has said nothing of the man born in Bethlehem, the Galilean crucified on Golgotha. And this is good, for we should recall that the Good News is the news of our atonement with God in Christ. The Good News has an earthly dimension, but a heavenly one too, and we need to focus our eyes clearly on Jesus, our heavenly Lord, for this is the Way we are going.
HD