There are four sections of the Nicene Creed, each dealing with one of the major dogmas of our faith: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit and God’s Holy Church.

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A dogma is an essential and unchanging truth of the Catholic faith proclaimed by the Church to be divinely revealed, and must be believed by all Catholics.

 

The Creed begins with:
I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

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The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) says, “Our profession of faith begins with God, for God is the First and the Last, the beginning and the end of everything. The Credo begins with God, the Father, for the Father is the first divine person of the Most Holy Trinity; our Creed begins with the creation of heaven and earth, for creation is the beginning and the foundation of all God’s works.” (CCC 198).

 

We believe in one God in three Persons. We do not believe in three Gods. God reveals Himself to us as “Father”, and so we are His children. He invites us to have a personal relationship with Him.

 

Our belief in a God who is Almighty means that God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing) and omnipresent (present in all places at all times).

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As we read in the Catechism, “God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: ‘Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand.’” (CCC 293, quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas).

 

God the Father creates everything from nothing – everything that we can see (such as the earth, stars, trees, everything around us) as well as all things that we cannot see (such as Heaven, angels, our souls and
everything in the spiritual realm).

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In the next section of the Nicene Creed, we profess:

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.

 

This section of the Creed describes the nature of Jesus, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. It was written to counter the Arian heresy which arose in the 4th century, based on the ideas of Arius, a priest from Alexandria, Egypt, who taught that Jesus was not divine, but rather a created being. Although Arius was excommunicated by the bishops of Egypt in 319, he continued to teach this error and gathered a significant group of followers, including some clergy. As a result, the Arian heresy spread throughout much of the Eastern and Western Roman empires. 

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As mentioned earlier, the bishops called the Councils of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381 to clarify the nature of Jesus and thus refute the false teaching spread by the Arian heresy.

 

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ

By professing that we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, we are affirming that Jesus is God. The Hebrew word, adonai, meaning “Lord”, was used by the Jewish people when they referred to God since they considered the name of God too holy to be spoken. The use of the word “Lord” also echoes the Apostle Thomas’ profound declaration of faith: “My Lord and my God!” upon encountering the Resurrected Jesus (John 20:28). 

 

the Only Begotten Son of God

In John 3:16, we read, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whomsoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life." Jesus is begotten by God the Father, not created. God creates other creatures such as angels, human beings and animals.

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In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis distinguishes between begetting and creating:

“To beget is to become the father of: to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers…. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes…say, a statue….What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man.”

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The Nicene Creed, in saying that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, directly rejects Arianism as this statement clearly affirms that Jesus is truly God and is not created by God.

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In addition, the Creed states that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, which shows that Jesus is the Son of God in a different way than our being called children of God: we are created by God and  invited to be his adopted sons and daughters through the Sacrament of Baptism.

 

born of the Father before all ages

The Arian heresy claimed that Jesus was created by God at a specific time in history. The statement, “born of the Father before all ages”, clearly indicates that the Son is begotten by the Father before all time. He has no beginning. There was never a time when the Son and the Father did not co-exist.

  

God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,

begotten, not made

These statements continue to emphasize that Jesus is fully God, begotten by the Father, equal in divinity to the Father.

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In the Bible, light is often used to describe God (e.g. Psalm 27:1: “The Lord is my light and my salvation…”), and Jesus is described as “true God” (1 John 5:20: “…Jesus Christ is the true God and eternal life.”).

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These statements along with the rest of this section show that Jesus is not of a lower status than God, but he is God, equal in divinity to the Father.

 

consubstantial with the Father

Consubstantial, the English translation of the Latin word  “consubstantialis”, means “of the same substance or essence”.

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“Consubstantial with the Father” means that Jesus shares the same divine nature as the Father, the same substance, and is thus equal to the Father. This phrase shows that Father and Son are not two different gods; neither is each a “part” of God, which together add up to one God. Jesus is equal to, yet distinct from, the Father as he is of the same substance as the Father.

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There is no ambiguity about the nature of Jesus when we profess that he is consubstantial with the Father.

 

through him all things were made

All creation was made through Jesus, the Eternal Word of God, as noted in John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:1-3)

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We move on to the next section of the Nicene Creed, wherein we profess:

For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.

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As the previous section of the Nicene Creed affirms the divinity of Jesus, this next section affirms his human nature and explains why he became man.

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Through original sin and our personal sins, we are separated from God, and there is nothing we can do to bridge this gap between God and humanity. We need a saviour to restore our relationship with God. To fulfill God’s plan for our salvation, Jesus came down from heaven and took on human nature.

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The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives us four reasons why Jesus became man (CCC 457-460):

i) To save us by reconciling us to God.

ii) That we might know God’s love

iii) To show us the way to Heaven, to be our model for holiness.

iv) To make us partakers in God’s divine nature through grace and the Sacraments. Through Baptism, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us, and we become adopted children of God.

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Jesus humbled himself to share in our humanity. We call this the Mystery of the Incarnation, one of the central mysteries of our faith. The word “incarnate” means “to take on flesh”. The Incarnation refers to Jesus taking on human nature while still retaining his divine nature.

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At the Annunciation, the Archangel Gabriel said to the Virgin Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.” (Luke 1:35). Mary responded with her fiat, her yes to what God was asking of her: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38).

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Jesus, God the Son, took on human nature when he was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

 

Through the Incarnation, Jesus is simultaneously fully God and fully man in all things but sin. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15).

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The fully human nature of Jesus is evident in the Gospels. Some examples are:

• He was born a child, developed, and grew into a man. “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” (Luke 2:52).

• He experienced human emotions like joy and sadness. “Jesus began to weep” at the death of his friend, Lazarus. (John 11:35).

• He suffered thirst and hunger. “He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.” (Matthew 4:2).

• He got tired and rested. “But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion.” (Mark 4:38).

• He endured temptation. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” (Matthew 4:1).

 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives this comprehensive explanation of the union of two natures, human and divine, in the one Person of Jesus Christ:

“The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.” (CCC 464).

 

During the profession of the Nicene Creed, we bow our heads when we say “and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary” out of reverence, honoring the Mystery of the Incarnation : that Jesus, the Son of God, took on human nature and became man for our salvation, so that we might have eternal life.

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“The Nicene Creed explained” continues next week.

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