This article was adapted from Brandon Crowe’s essay in a forthcoming book from Lexham Press’s We Believe series, tentatively titled We Believe: Confessing the Biblical Faith of the Nicene Creed. Printed with permission.
Truth We Confess
The Nicene Creed devotes significant attention to Christology, and particularly to the divinity of Jesus Christ. The Nicene Creed was written in large measure as a response to the heretical teaching of Arius, a church leader from Alexandria in Egypt. In response to Arius, who argued that there was a time when the Son was not, the Nicene Creed emphasizes the true divinity of Jesus Christ, as well as his true humanity. The Son never had a beginning.
The second paragraph of the Creed, concerning “the Lord Jesus Christ,” focuses on the divinity of the Son. All that God is, the Son is. There are no gradations of divinity. There is therefore no difference in essential being between the Father and Son (and Spirit). The Son is the eternal Son of God; he never became the Son of God. He exists eternally as the Son of God and is eternally begotten by the Father. Eternal begottenness is different from having been made.
Eternal begottenness (sometimes called eternal generation) is quite difficult for us to understand and articulate, and we don’t have human categories that map onto this exactly. In human terms, a son is begotten of his father in a way that requires a before and after. That is not the case with the Son. The Son is eternally the Father’s Son; he has no beginning. He is eternally begotten from the Father, but this does not entail subordination of the Son to the Father in his essential being. The Father and the Son (and the Spirit) are the same in power and glory, but they are distinct persons. The Son’s personal property—what distinguishes him among the three persons—is his being eternally begotten. In other words, only he is the Son.
Further emphasizing the divinity of the Son is the Creed’s line that all things were made by the Son. Only God is Creator; for the Son to be Creator requires that the Son is divine. Basic to Christian theology is understanding the distinction between the Creator (only God) and creation (everything else).
The Creed speaks of the Son as “light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.” The language of “consubstantial” (Greek: homoousios) is quite significant. This is contrasted with a similar term, of only one letter difference: homoiousios (“of similar substance”). But the difference of one letter reveals a significant theological difference. By homoousios the Creed intends an identity in essence shared by the Father and the Son. This is the correct, biblical teaching. Both Father and Son are equally divine. An erroneous teaching would be to say that Jesus is “of similar substance” (homoiousios) with the Father. But this terminology does not do justice to the Son’s full divinity and does not reflect the Creator-creature distinction noted above.
But the Creed not only addresses the divinity of the Son; it also addresses the incarnation of the Son, which can be seen in the following part of the second paragraph of the Creed. The incarnation refers to the Son taking on (or assuming) human nature. This portion of the Creed emphasizes the true humanity of Jesus. It is the eternal person of the Son of God who has assumed a human nature in time; to speak about Jesus Christ incarnate is to speak of the incarnation of the Son of God. Notice how much the Creed has to say about the true humanity of Jesus. Jesus was incarnate, was born of Mary, he was crucified, he suffered, and was raised, and he ascended into heaven. These elements of the Creed speak to the true humanity of Christ in the incarnation.
Admittedly, for some people the precise language of the Creed may sound speculative and more complicated than it needs to be. But in what follows I want to show how this precise language is necessary to defend the biblical portrait of who Christ is as truly God and truly man.
Biblical Basis and Confessional Development
Biblical Basis
The clearest exposition of Christ in the Bible is found in the New Testament. Even so, since Christ is the eternal Son of God, and the prophets spoke of him beforehand by the Spirit of Christ (1 Pet. 1:10–12), we should not be surprised that the Old Testament has much to say about Christ as well. The Gospel of John identifies Jesus as the eternal Word, by whom all things were made (John 1:1, 3). The work of creation in Genesis is therefore the work of the Son (though it is also important to understand that all the works of God in relation to creation are trinitarian works). And the work of creation is necessarily a divine work. Paul’s letters also address Jesus’s role in creation. In Colossians 1:15–16, Jesus is identified as the one by whom and for whom all things are created.
Sonship is also important in the Old Testament, which anticipates the fuller revelation about Jesus’s sonship in the New Testament. Adam was made in God’s image, which entailed Adam’s sonship (Gen. 1:26; 5:1, 3). The nation of Israel collectively was God’s covenantal son (Exod. 4:22–23). Later, the Psalms speak about a coming son of God who would reign over the nations (Ps. 2:7–8). This son of God would be the son of David who would fulfill the Davidic Covenant, which promised that a son of David would rule forever (2 Sam. 7:12–15; Ps. 132). This coming son of David would be Son of God and would boast a reign that outlasted David’s own.
Texts such as these, which speak of sonship in a redemptive-historical context, look forward to a greater fulfillment. They often drip with anticipation: one wonders how any son of David could rule forever, or how any son of David could be called “Mighty God” (Isa. 9:6; see also Ps. 45:6). Psalm 110:1 is another text that seems too marvelous for any natural son of David, for in this text the LORD speaks to “my Lord” and tells him to sit at his right hand until he makes his enemies his footstool. The picture that emerges collectively from these texts is that someone who is greater than David—someone who is identified as God (Isa. 9:6; Ps. 45:6)—is going to sit on David’s throne and reign forever. Jesus is not only Son of God like Adam, Israel, or David. More fundamentally, Jesus is the eternal Son of God who, as the eternal Son, uniquely fulfills the redemptive-historical contours of sonship in the Bible.
The Old Testament does not explain all this, but New Testament revelation adds greater detail. The angel Gabriel tells Mary that she would bear a son who would reign forever (Luke 1:31–33). Jesus employs Psalm 110:1 to explain that he was not only David’s Son, but David’s Lord (Mark 12:35–37). Jesus comes from the line of David in the context of redemptive history in the incarnation, but he exists eternally and is superior to David even before the incarnation.
Jesus is the true Son of David and the true Son of Abraham (Matt. 1:1). He embodies and fulfills the hope of the nation of Israel as the obedient Son of God (see Hos. 11:1; Matt. 2:15; 4:1–11). Jesus also comes as the Son of Man, the new Adam who reigns over God’s kingdom (Dan. 7:13–14). The designs for God’s son(s) from the Old Testament find their goal and completion in the life of the Son of God incarnate.
The letter to the Hebrews explains that Jesus is the Son of God (Heb. 1:2), who is indeed God (Heb. 1:8, quoting Ps. 45:6). The one who comes in time as the Son of David is the eternal Son of God. It is fitting that the one who is the eternal Son comes in the context of redemptive history as the covenantal son of David to reign forever.
How does he reign forever? He does so by the power of an indestructible life (Heb. 7:16). He is the divine Son of God who rises from the dead and proves he is the true Son of God (Acts 13:33). As the Son, Jesus has the authority to lay down his life and has the authority to take it up again (John 10:17–18, compare John 10:30). As the resurrected Lord of all (Acts 10:36), Jesus is the root of David (Rev. 5:5), the ruler of the kings of the earth (Rev. 1:5). He is exalted as the risen Son of Man (Rev. 1:12–16) and sits on the throne with God the Father and is worshiped as only God is to be worshiped (Rev. 4–5). Significantly, Revelation speaks of the throne of God and the Lamb (Rev. 22:1, 3; see also 5:6, 13; 7:9–10, 17).
The above observations show us how the eternal sonship of Christ relates to his coming in the context of redemptive history. He comes in time as the Son of David, but he does so without ceasing to be the eternal Son of God. In the fullness of time the Son came, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law (Gal. 4:4). In the incarnation, Jesus remains what he always has been (the unchangeable, divine Son of God), but he assumes a human nature and becomes what he was not previously (truly human).
The Nicene Creed discusses the Son’s eternal begottenness. I noted earlier this might sound speculative, but this language reflects the teaching of Scripture, and it is derived from Scripture. It reflects the truth that Jesus is the divine, eternal Son of God, who never became the Son of God. One of the key texts is John 5:26, which says that just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. Since “life in himself” is a divine characteristic (self existence, or aseity), then the Son’s having life in himself seems most likely to refer to the eternal reality of Jesus’s divine sonship (though some take this to refer to Jesus’s incarnate state). If so, then John 5:26 would also provide support for the language of “God of God” from the Nicene Creed—Jesus is the divine Son who is eternally begotten of the Father.
Also in John, the language of “only-begotten” (Greek: monogenēs) is found in texts such as John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18. This term is often translated “one and only” today (e.g., ESV), but a strong case can be made for the translation “only begotten.” In John 1:18, the best manuscripts read “only begotten God,” which refers to the divinity and sonship of Jesus in short scope. Though the translation of the term monogenēs is debated, the eternal reality of the sonship of Christ is quite clear in John and elsewhere in Scripture.
Basic to Christian theology is understanding the distinction between the Creator (only God) and creation (everything else).
Additional scriptural support for eternal generation has been gleaned from a number of texts, including Proverbs 8:22–25, which speaks of Wisdom being brought forth or begotten before the world was created (see 8:25 in the Greek translation of the Old Testament). Also from the Old Testament is Micah 5:2, which speaks about the coming forth of the shepherd of Israel from of old, from ancient days, which has often been taken to refer to eternal generation. The same can be said of Psalm 2:7, where “today” the Son of God is begotten, which has often been taken to refer to an eternal “today” of eternal generation. Some of these texts (such as Psalm 2 and Proverbs 8) seem better taken to refer to anticipations of a fuller realization of the category of Wisdom and the Davidic King, but Micah 5:2 may speak more directly about eternal generation.
To be sure, these Old Testament texts are harder to adjudicate given their earlier position in redemptive history. The Old Testament does not reveal Christ as fully as he is revealed in the New Testament. We are on firmer ground to find in the New Testament clear teaching about the eternal sonship of Christ—he has always been the divine Son of God, and always will be. This is one way to understand what the language of “begotten of the Father before all worlds” in the Nicene Creed is referencing.
We have already seen how the New Testament refers to Jesus as God in Hebrews 1:6, but to this could be added many other texts (e.g., John 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Titus 2:13; 2 Pet. 1:1; 1 John 5:20). One of the key texts in this regard is Phil. 2:6–11. This speaks of Jesus being in the form of God, that is, equal to God (2:6), but also of Jesus humbling himself by assuming a human nature and suffering to the point of death (Phil. 2:7–8). God in himself cannot die, which means the divine Son of God in himself cannot die. It is only by taking a human nature that the Son of God is able to die on the cross. The incarnation is unique in world history, though already in the Old Testament mysterious anticipations of the coming of God in the flesh may be found—for example, in Jacob’s wrestling with God (Gen. 32).
The uniqueness of the Son of God taking flesh can be found in the Gospel of John. The Gospel opens by emphasizing that the Word was in the beginning with God, and the Word is by nature God (John 1:1). John goes on to explain that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). The same one who is the eternal Son is the one who became incarnate. Later, Jesus says that he and the Father are one (John 10:30). In this context, Jesus’s discussion of “oneness” and the identity of God likely draws upon the OT confession of God’s oneness in Deuteronomy 6:4: Jesus is not merely one with God in will or in power; he and the Father are one God. This means the Father and the Son are the same in essential being—they are homoousios. Toward the end of John, Thomas rightly confesses that the resurrected Jesus, the same one who died, is his Lord and his God (John 20:28).
As the one who has taken on human nature, Jesus is the second and last Adam. This is implicit in the Son of Man title used for Jesus, but is also explicitly stated by the Apostle Paul. In Romans 5:12–21, Paul summarizes all of world history (and all of covenant history) around two covenant heads: Adam and Christ. These two men and their actions have universal significance: all people are either in Adam or in Christ. Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul identifies Jesus as the second man and the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45–47).
Jesus was not born by ordinary means but was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of Mary (Matt.1:18–25; Luke 1:26–38). As such, Jesus was not represented by Adam when Adam sinned and plunged all of humanity into sin with him. Instead, Jesus’s incarnation marks a new beginning for humanity, one in which the holy Son of God as true man obeys fully, even to the point of death, to deliver all those who look to him in faith. After his death, he was raised bodily and ascended to heaven, and he will return one day to consummate his work as Judge of the living and the dead.
Confessional Development
The Nicene Creed marks a significant juncture in the creedal affirmation of who Jesus is, but it is not the first time that the church confessed Jesus to be truly divine and truly human. These truths were often, in various ways, challenged in the early church, but the orthodox believers from the earliest recoverable days of the church have always confessed Jesus to be truly God and truly man.
The Apostles’ Creed, anticipated by the Rule of Faith in the early church, bears a trinitarian structure focusing on God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The starting assumption is the divinity of the Son, and it is this Son who became incarnate and suffered for the salvation of his people.
Further, a multitude of early Christian writers affirm the true divinity and humanity of Jesus. They are too numerous to mention here, but these core affirmations are found in such writers as Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, the Epistle to Diognetus, the Epistle of Barnabas, Clement of Rome, 2 Clement, Melito of Sardis, Origen of Alexandria, and Tertullian of Carthage. This is just a sample of the many church fathers who affirmed these truths prior to the Council of Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea did not invent these truths, but articulated them with care and precision.
Nor is the Nicene Creed (that is, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed from AD 381) the final word on the divinity and humanity of Jesus. In AD 451, the Chalcedonian Definition added more detail about the unity of the two natures in the one person of Christ. With increasing precision, the church affirmed that there is only one person in Christ, but in the incarnation this one person has two natures: divine and human. These two natures are not divided, nor are they mixed or confused. Instead, each nature retains its own characteristics, and the two natures are united in one person. This is what is known as the hypostatic union: the union of two natures in one person.
The Chalcedonian Definition has become standard for later confessional developments, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith many years later that clearly articulates the unity of two natures in one person (see WCF 8.1–3, 7). In the incarnation, Jesus acts according to both natures, though in such a way that it is always the one person who acts (WCF 8.7). In other words, the human nature is not a human person, but is a human nature assumed by the person of the Son of God, who always continues to be the Son of God. Yet, for example, the same person (Jesus Christ) in the incarnation can both know the future and not know the future, depending on which nature is in view (Matt. 24:36). Even so, we must not divide the natures from one another or neglect to understand that in the incarnation it is the God-man who acts, not an abstract nature that acts. Creedal and confessional statements such as these wrestle with the complexity of biblical texts and seek to speak clearly about what we can say about mysteries that are beyond us.
As noted earlier, the Nicene Creed recognizes the importance of confessing Jesus as both truly God and truly man. The logic of this is laid out in confessional documents such as the Westminster Larger Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism, which address why it is necessary for the Redeemer to be God, and why it is necessary for the Redeemer to be man.
Our Redeemer must be God, because only God can lift us out of the pit of sin and grant us eternal life (see HC 17; WLC 38). We need a Savior who is divine to bear the wrath of sin and complete a work that is infinitely valuable on behalf of others. At the same time, our Redeemer must be man because a man must pay the penalty for sin and obey in human nature, which was required of Adam in the beginning (see WLC 39; HC 16). If we are to be saved from our sin, then our Savior must be truly human in all that it means to be human (sin excepted). The church father Gregory of Nazianzus famously wrote, “For that which he [the Son] has not assumed He has not healed” (Ep. 101). If the Son did not take a true human nature, or only appeared to be human, then he would not be the Savior of humanity. For example, if Jesus did not have a human mind or soul (which was denied by Apollinarianism), then our minds or souls would not be saved. But the true humanity of Jesus means that God the Son became just like us, apart from sin, that we can be saved entirely. Our Redeemer is true God and true man.
Truth for Worship, Life, and Mission
The truths about Christ that we confess in the Nicene Creed must be stated with precision because they are so valuable. At the same time, the depths of these truths transcend what we can comprehend. Who can understand the depths of divine love that the eternal, glorious, divine Son of God would willingly come to earth to suffer and die for those who had rebelled against his law? And who can understand the wonderful riches of the grace of Christ who not only saves us from sin, but lavishes on us riches beyond measure? Understanding the truths about Christ should lead us to worship and thankfulness, that we who are unworthy should receive so many wonderful blessings in the gospel.
The Nicene Creed’s careful statements about Jesus are not simply for classrooms and academics. These statements are necessary to guard the truth of the gospel message itself. To get Christology wrong is to get the gospel wrong. To get the gospel right, we must understand who Jesus really is. Christological heresies don’t teach that Jesus is truly God and truly man—in some way, they are off on the details. Maybe they teach that Jesus has a slightly different nature than we do. But if so, that would mean Jesus could not save us entirely because he was not truly like us. Others may deny that Jesus is truly God, but that also leads to a perversion of the gospel, because then we would not have a Savior who is truly able to save us.
Understanding who Jesus really is also speaks to how to understand the exclusive claims of Christianity— namely that Jesus is the only way to be saved (Acts 4:12)—in a pluralistic world in which many messages are promulgated. The logic of Christianity is not that Jesus is a great moral teacher who offers us one plausible option for salvation although others may also exist.
No indeed! The logic of Christianity is that Jesus is the Son of God, the Creator of all people, and he has authority over us. The true God is the trinitarian God. And only Jesus is the second person of the Trinity who has come to earth and taken human nature as the second and last Adam, and this has universal significance. He is the true, sinless man, the one in whom we have the answer to Adam’s sin. The logic of the exclusivity of Christ is indissolubly intertwined with the Christological affirmations such as we find in the Nicene Creed: only Jesus is the eternal Son of God, who took a true human nature, free from sin, and inaugurated a new humanity. Only Jesus has perfectly obeyed God’s law as the God-man in the incarnation, and only Jesus has the authority to lay down and take up his life. Only Jesus has been raised from the dead as one over whom death and sin had no claim, and only Jesus reigns at God’s right hand and will return as the Judge of the world.
These are not opinions of Christians that they came up with over the years; these are revealed truths from God himself, and they are articulated, preserved, and
protected in the Nicene Creed. The history of the incarnation really matters: Jesus has proven himself to be the Son of God, and he has demonstrated this preeminently by rising from the dead.
What other religious teacher is the Creator of the world and all people, who also came to earth and lived a perfect life? What other religious teacher has risen from the dead on the basis of his own authority? Only Jesus. There is none like him. No other religious teacher is the second person of the Trinity, and no other religious teacher is worthy of worship.
The truths about Christ in the Nicene Creed should lead us to worship, but also to share this good news with those around us. There is no one for whom the message about Jesus is irrelevant. He is the universal Lord and the one who will return as Judge of all. He is also the one in whom we have forgiveness of sins. It does not matter what we have or have not done; nothing disqualifies us or qualifies us for the gospel message. The gospel is for all who would come, regardless of history, ethnicity, social status, or any other distinguishing factor we might come up with in our world.
The Nicene Creed is not about stale truths; it is about the living truth of the living Lord who has authority over all people and is coming again. He is truly God and truly man.