Confessing Christ
This is summarized well when, in Matthew 16, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” The Apostle Peter answers in what would become one of the early confessions of the Church. He says, “You are the Christ the Son of the Living God” (Matt. 16:16). The early church confessed with Peter that Jesus is Lord. But what did they mean by this? Scripture makes clear that the Apostles understood this confession to mean that Christ Jesus is consubstantial with the Father—that is of the same essence or nature as the Father. Christ is “true God from true God” as the Nicene Creed would summarize.
For the early Christians, the entirety of Christ’s work makes no sense apart from his oneness with God. Even further, though, the Apostles also understood that as the divine Son is eternally “from the Father”, his “begottenness” communicates that the Son’s sonship says something more than just his incarnation or work, but identifies his nature and relation to the Father. As the Creed would render it, the Son is “begotten of the Father before all ages” as Light proceeds from Light. He is the “radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb 1:3). When we see Jesus, the Apostle John tells us, we see the glory of the Father whom the Son has revealed. So following the Apostles, who passed along what they learned from Christ to the Nicene Fathers, when we confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, we are confessing what we mean by this is that Christ Jesus is eternally generated from the Father, co-equal together with the Father and the Spirit in all dignity, power, and authority.
Who is Christ?
But we need to be clear. We don’t confess this because it’s one approach among many in the early Church, nor do we confess it because this tradition happened to win out in the end at the councils. Rather, the basis for this comes from Christ’s own teaching about himself from the Scriptures, which he showed were from start to finish all about him:
- He is the Davidic messiah come to rule over Israel as the Divine Son.
- He is the Son of Man, the Ancient of Days who wields God’s power and authority.
- He is the Creator of all that is made, worthy of worship with the Father.
- He is the Giver of God’s Spirit in fulfillment of the New Covenant.
Jesus himself understood and delivered the confession of his identity as one with the Father, full of grace and truth.
Receiving the Confession by the Rule of Faith
So the Early Church received this confession through the teaching of the Apostles via their writings in inspired Scripture. The Early Church also received this confession through the “rule of faith.” This is the reading of Scripture handed down as the logic of Scripture to guard as the right understanding of God’s self-revelation through Christ’s own words of life by which he made known that all Scripture is really about Him. It is by this self-revelation of God and his work in redemptive history that the early church confessed in the Apostles Creed, the story of the Christ event:
I Believe in God, the Father, Almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived of by Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to Hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended to heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty.
From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.
The challenge of the early church was to guard the confession through articulating the boundaries of the faith according to this logic of Scripture. The road to Nicaea, understood as the early church’s consensus concerning Scripture’s own teaching of Christ’s true divinity and full humanity, runs right through Alexandria. For out of Alexandrian came:
- Athanasius, addressing the challenge of Arianism—Christ is not subordinate to the Father in essence or relation.
- Cyril, addressing the challenge of Nestorianism—Christ is fully like us without loss or change of his full divinity, both natures united perfectly in one Person.
