President Stuckwisch on the Nicene Creed

Resting and Rejoicing in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

It was 1700 years ago that bishops from around the known world were gathering together in Nicaea for what would come to be recognized as the Church’s first great “Ecumenical Council.” If you’ve not had a chance to check out the May issue of the Lutheran Witness, which focuses on the Council of Nicaea and its enduring significance for the Church on earth, I encourage you to do so, as it is certainly appropriate to remember the work of the Council and thank God for it.

To this day, seventeen centuries later, the Church around the world confesses the Nicene Creed week after week throughout the year. Notwithstanding the difference in the way the Eastern and Western churches confess the Third Article (whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father “and the Son,” filioque), the Nicene Creed is the most ecumenical confession of the faith across denominations. (And as the Third Article was not finalized until the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381, the Christian legacy of the Council of Nicaea remains universal.)

As we look forward to our District Convention in just a few weeks (the 19th and 20th of June), we live and work in continuity with our fathers in the faith who gathered to confess and give witness to the self-revelation of the Holy Triune God in the Person of the incarnate Son, Christ Jesus, and to the divine testimony of the Holy Scriptures. To be sure, our District Convention does not have the magnitude or significance of the great Ecumenical Councils, yet we should not underestimate the importance and value of our own confession of the faith once delivered to the saints. In each and every generation the Church on earth is called upon to do so, in the face of every heresy and falsehood, to the praise and glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Because we love and trust His Word to us, we confess that Word with confidence, knowing that it has power and authority vis-à-vis all the deceptions and enticements of the devil, the world, and our own fallen flesh.

The confession of God’s Word and faith by each individual Christian, regardless of age or eloquence, is truly meet, right, and salutary. So, too, the confession of the Nicene Creed by the congregations of God’s people in the Divine Service each Lord’s Day is a powerful word in the world, in the midst of this present evil age, and is itself an act of worship of the Holy Trinity, in whose Name we are baptized, and in whom we have life in body and soul, both now and forever.

Even as we remember and give thanks for the bishops who assembled in Nicaea 1700 years ago, in May and June of A.D. 325, we also rest and rejoice in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as we observe and celebrate the Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord, the final days of Eastertide, and the upcoming Day of Pentecost. These high and holy days of the Church Year are deeply and eminently Trinitarian in their character and content. That is of course true of all aspects of the Christian faith and life, for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not a matter of “divine trivia,” nor is it merely incidental to anything at all in all of creation. But as the Son of God in human flesh humbled Himself in faithful obedience to His God and Father in going to the Cross, so has God also raised Him from the dead and highly exalted Him at His right hand, by whom and through whom He pours out His Spirit generously upon His Church. The Son of God, who came down from the Father in heaven to bear our sin and be our Savior, has also returned to the Father with us in tow, that we should live and abide in and with Him as beloved and well-pleasing children of God. To these ends, He freely bestows the Holy Spirit upon us through His Ministry of the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins in His Name – from His Cross and in His Resurrection from the dead – even to the ends of the earth and the close of the age. As the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were openly revealed in the Baptism of our Lord, so are all three Persons of the Holy Trinity actively present and at work in His Cross and Resurrection, in His Ascension, and in His Church.