We Believe: Of One Being with the Father
Can you spot the difference between these two Greek words: homoousion and homoiousion? The first word, homoousion, means “of one being.” The second word, homoiousion, means “of like being.”
These words may be distinguished by only a single letter, but their meanings are far apart. If Jesus is homoousion with the Father, then they are a unified divine being. If Jesus is homoiousion with the Father, then Jesus is not God. That’s a big iota of a difference!
Sponsored
Nicea’s Core Controversy
The core controversy that led to the Council of Nicaea was whether or not our Lord Jesus Christ is God in the same way that the Father is God. For Arius and his supporters, the idea that the Son is truly God was a denial of Christianity’s core commitment to monotheism. After all, if the Son is God and the Father is God, doesn’t that mean that we have two gods rather than one?
Alternatively, if both the Son and the Father are God, but we only have one God, doesn’t that lead to heresy of modalism, in which the Father and Son are merely different instances or appearances of God? And if that is the case, that would mean that the Father died on the cross, which makes him something less than God. So, Arius and his supporters concluded that the Son may be divine in some sense but is not truly God. Instead, they said, the Son is a created being who the Father begot at some point before the rest of creation. One of Arius’ famous slogans at the time of the controversy was, “There was a time when the Son was not.”
The Disposition of Arius
Alexander, Arius’ bishop, immediately saw the problems with this line of reasoning. In his Disposition of Arius, Alexander notes that if the Son is a created being, then God was not always a Father. The Son is not truly the Word of the Father or the Wisdom of the Father, for some other word or wisdom of the Father would have created him. The Son would also be subject to all the changes and variations that other rational creatures are. How would a created being be worthy of worship? How would he be worthy to be the savior of the world?
Furthermore, if the Son is not truly God, how can he truly save us? How can the Son perfectly represent both God and man if he is not truly God and truly man? If the Son is not God, then humanity can have no true fellowship with God. We cannot be reconciled to the Father. This belief thus reduces salvation to following Christ’s example. And if we only follow his example, why did Christ have to die for us?
The Son Must be God
No, in order for salvation to be effective, the Son must be God. The Son and the Father must share the same essential Godhood. What is true of the Father as God must also be true of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In Article 1 of the 39 Articles of Religion, we describe this essential Godhood like this:
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
In his divine nature, our Lord Jesus shares these essential qualities of the Godhead; in his divinity, the Son is the living and true God. Jesus is everlasting and eternal. He is infinite in his power, wisdom, and goodness. He is the maker and preserver of all things.
The Historic Heritage of “One Being”
In denying the Son’s divinity, Arius’ ideas about the Lord Jesus clearly departed from those received by the Church from the Apostles. This was not the “faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Yet, articulating the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit was indeed a difficult thing to do. Approximately 100 years before Nicaea, in his work Against Praxeus, the theologian Tertullian had described the Trinity as “una substantia… tres personae” for the Western (i.e., Latin-speaking) part of the Church. It wouldn’t be until the turn of the 5th century that the Greek terminology would be finalized for the whole Church. But the Council of Nicaea made the first steps, as the orthodox bishops wrote in the Creed that the Son is homoousion with the Father.
Homoousion is a Greek term that adds the prefix homo (one) to ousia. Ousia has been translated into English in a variety of ways, including “essence,” “being,” and “substance.” As such, English translations of the Nicene Creed have translated homoousion in a variety of ways, such as Christ being “consubstantial,” “coessential,” “of one substance,” or “of one being” with the Father. It is the latter that our 2019 edition of the Book of Common Prayer uses.
Of Like Being?
After Nicea, the remnants of Arius’ followers tried to circumvent the term homoousion by adding the Greek letter “iota” to it, coining the term homoiousion, meaning “of like being.” Historians such as Edward Gibbon have argued that the two terms are so similar in meaning and appearance (literally only one iota of difference) that further controversy was unnecessary and destructive. Shouldn’t the orthodox bishops have accepted this compromise?
Yet, the “compromise” really wasn’t one. It was merely a more sophisticated form of the same heresy. If the Son is God, then it is wrong to say that he is merely like God. If the Son is merely like God, it is blasphemous to say that he is God. And if the Son is merely like God, then the problem of salvation remains. No, we need the Son and the Father to be homoousion if we are to be saved in truth.
Significantly, the Scriptures do not use homoousion themselves, something that the Arians were quick to point out. Indeed, because ousia could be rendered into Latin as either substantia (substance/being) or persona (subsistence/person), the Arians thought the Creed’s use of homoousion left the door open to the old heresy of modalism. Eventually, the Cappadocian Fathers would articulate for the Eastern (Greek-speaking) part of the Church that the Trinity is one ousia and three hypostases. At the Council of Nicaea, this clarity of terminology was still several decades away.
One with the Father
Nevertheless, we see the concept of the Son as “of one being with the Father” expressed throughout the New Testament.
In John 1:1, the Evangelist says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We see something similar in Colossians 1:15-20, which describes Jesus as “The image of the invisible God… For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” Also, Hebrews 1:1-4 describes Jesus as “the radiance of the Glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.”
Furthermore, we have the end of the “Good Shepherd” discourse in John 10, when Jesus says that no one will snatch Jesus’ sheep from his Father’s hand, nor will anyone snatch them from Jesus’ hand; after all, the Father has given the sheep to Jesus. Then, in verse 30, Jesus clarifies the relationship, saying, “I and the Father are one.”
In all these passages, the greater context paints a picture of Jesus as equal and united to, but differentiated from, the Father. Indeed, in John 10, we even have the unity of the Father and the Son as essential for the assurance of our salvation. No one will snatch us from the Father’s hand because no one will snatch us from the Son’s hand.
The Unity of God
So, we see that the doctrine of the Trinity, including technical language like “being” and “person,” is essential for our salvation. The consubstantiality of the Father and the Son isn’t merely an academic exercise. Later in this series, we will explore how the Holy Spirit is related to the Father and the Son. But for now, we can see that the unity of Persons is a core belief of the Christian faith. Indeed, it is through the unity of Father and Son that our unity with the Son brings us into unity with the Father.
Image by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels, courtesy of Canva.
We Believe: God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, Begotten, Not Made
In 1994, my sister died from heresy. That’s not hyperbole. It’s not a metaphor. It’s the plain truth. Leslie had contracted HIV from a botched artificial insemination procedure in the late 1980s. She kept it hidden from most everyone, and in the secrecy of her illness, she searched desperately for healing. Leslie tried everything—strict diets,…
We Believe: The Only-Begotten Son of God, Eternally Begotten of the Father
A friend of mine grew up in a church that did not recognize the Nicene Creed’s definition of the Trinity. For them, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were three labels that could be interchangeably applied to the one God. She and her family had since moved on to a church that confessed the Trinity, but…
