Theologian wants Nicene Creed to help task force do its work
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, October 25, 2002
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Replacing his ailing mother as a member of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity, theologian P. Mark Achtemeier took center stage Thursday (Oct. 24) during his first meeting with the group.
Achtemeier, who teaches systematic theology at Dubuque Theological Seminary in Iowa, led the task force in a consideration of the Nicene Creed – both because of its content and the process engaged in by fourth-century theologians in reaching their determination that Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine.
Regarded by many as one of the leading evangelical theologians in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Achtemeier is the son of Elizabeth “Betty” Achtemeier, a retired professor of Old Testament at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va.
After Betty Achtemeier became ill and unable to attend meetings, members of the task force asked the three moderators who appointed the panel to ask her son to take her place, and they did.
He opened with a flourish, a 2½-hour lecture on the Nicene Creed with an appeal to other members of the task force to frame their discussion of issues dividing the church on the crux of the Nicene Creed and the way theologians looked at other issues in light of that creed.
He warned the group that its consideration of the doctrine in the Nicene Creed runs contrary to the times.
“Having a doctrinal discussion is a peculiar thing to do in this culture,” he said. “Doctrine is a real unpopular thing in this culture and, I suspect, in our churches as well.”
But doctrine, he said, quoting the Capodicean fathers, “is a means of ascent in going up to God. The point [of doctrine] is communion with the living God.”
Many churches leave doctrine to the experts, but John Calvin “had this peculiar idea that every single Christian ought to become a theologian,” he said, noting that Calvin’s Geneva included schools of doctrine for all ages, “from the little bitty toddlers to the old people.”
The heart of Christian doctrine is the knowledge of God, he said. “Young people, when they fall in love, have this hunger for interaction. I think this is what’s behind Calvin’s instinct in trying to train every member of the church in Geneva. Calvin doesn’t think you can love God without knowing God completely.”
In the fourth century, there arose a great debate – and near schism – over the person and work of Christ. Was he both divine and human, both God and man?
Arius, a Christian with missionary zeal, began teaching that Jesus could not be both man and God and the Council of Nicea was summoned to settle the matter. Its conclusion was the Nicene Creed, which Achtemeier called “the ecumenically binding creed in Christendom that is recognized as authoritative across more branches of the church” than any other.
“I would argue that it contains the key affirmation from which all of the rest of classic Christianity flows,” he added. That affirmation is that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully God – as the creed says, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one Being with the Father; through him all things were made for our salvation.”
The Nicene Creed is one of 11 confessions in the Book of Confessions of the PCUSA.
“The tradition we are talking about is not ours,” Achtemeier said. “It doesn’t belong to the church fathers or mothers, doesn’t belong to the experts in seminaries, doesn’t belong to the preachers … It aims to be the truth about what God has done.”
Thus, he said, the development of the Nicene Creed was a search for the truth about God. He contrasted that search with modern “religious sensibility grounded in my own gut, my own preferences,” which produces “a chaos and cacophony than cannot possibly support community.”
Achtemeier said Arius – like many Presbyterians today – did not want to acknowledge that Jesus is fully divine and fully human. Instead, Arius believed Jesus was “a bridge to God.”
But Christians in the fourth century were praying to Jesus – which, the Nicene fathers concluded, would be idolatrous if Jesus were not God.
Achtemeier said the Nicene Council turned to Scripture to resolve the issue and saw themselves “as confessing the apostolic faith.”
In their conclusion, the Nicene fathers also realized they had to abandon concepts of God that had come from Plato and Greco-Roman religions “because that did not fit with what they had confessed. I think that’s what semper reformanda we Presbyterians wave about all of the time is what we are about.”
He urged the task force to “take everything we thought we knew – about families, about power, about sexuality – and reevaluate it and rethink it in light of what God has done in Jesus Christ.”
Achtemeier’s presentation drew support and some anxiety.
Dr. Milton J. “Joe” Coalter warned against elevating the Nicene Creed above the authority of Scripture.
“That doesn’t take the place of Scripture,” Achtemeier said. “It preserves Scripture.”
Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary, said, “The closer you get to the truth of what God has done, the more danger you are in to use it in justifying yourself.” Besides, she added, “How did they know at Nicea that this was worth selling the farm for?”
Later, Wheeler added, “I’m not sure there is any resolution to this question of where you look for light next. We do search for truth. Sometimes, by God’s grace and only by God’s grace, we find it … but there’s just no one answer where truth is.”
Achtemeier referred to a book by William J. Abraham, Canon and Criterion in Early Christianity. That book “lifts up this kind of tension, longing for a magic bullet that is going to solve all the problems.”
That longing for answers has resulted in shortcuts, he added, such as the “infallible pope” for Catholics and an inerrant Bible for Protestants. “Don’t read this book if your Protestantism is shaky,” Achtemeier said.
Again, he appealed to the Nicene Creed for some guidelines on how to search for truth – or, more pointedly, where not to search for it.
He cited the “Definition of Chalcedon,” written in 451, which affirmed the oneness of Jesus and God and said other truth about God was not found “by confusing the two natures, without transmuting one nature into the other, without dividing them into two separate categories, without contrasting them according to area or function.”
Sometimes, Achtemeier suggested, the church needs to decide where the truth is not.
Task force member Victoria “Vicky” Curtiss of Ames, Iowa, asked the group a number of questions for reflection during its break-up later into small groups.
“What might it look like for us to say where the truth is not?” she asked. “Are we choosing to proclaim a central truth at the expense of mission? How do you create a safe space for experiment?”