The above photo is the recent deep field image by the James Webb Telescope, which readers may access here Zoomable Image: Deep Field SMACS 0723 (NIRCam) | Webb
Introduction and Review of the last post:
As we have begun our attempt to expound the Nicene Creed in lieu of its 1700th anniversary, we have so far noted the following of its statements, with blog posts devoted to each one. The links below are for the previous two posts to this current one.
"We Believe" here Growing Christian Resources: Post #4 1700 Years of the Nicene Creed - "We Believe"
"in One God, the Father Almighty" here Growing Christian Resources: Post #5 1700 Years of the Nicene Creed - "One God, the Father almighty"
The Nicene Creed begins first with the Person of the Father. Interested readers may read more about past posts I've written on the person of the Father as taught in the Old Testament here Growing Christian Resources: Post #41 The Doctrine of God: The Old Testament and Jesus' Teaching On God the Father's Deity And His Relationship To The Son . and Jesus' teaching on God the Father here Growing Christian Resources: Post #42 The Doctrine of God: The Old Testament and Jesus' Teaching On God the Father as Creator And Redeemer.
The 19th century Baptist theologian J.P. Boice summarizes the importance of the Person of the Father in the doctrine of the Trinity:
"God is revealed to us as the Father; not merely in the general way in which he is called the Father of all created beings, and they his sons; nor in that in which he is the Father of those who are his sons, in virtue of the adoption, which is in Christ Jesus; but the Father as indicative of a special relation between him and another person whom the Scriptures call his only begotten Son."
The Creed's confession of God as Father points to what will come later in the Creed, namely the confession of the second Person of the Trinity, The Son. Additionally, the God of revealed Scripture is One in essence, personal, and omnipotent.
The attribute of Divine omnipotence or God the Father being "Almighty" is a summary and representative perfection of what it means to be God by nature.1 The Father's work of creation is inseparable from the Son and Holy Spirit's union with Him as the Triune God. Rufinas, in his sixth century commentary on the Apostle's Creed (which begins nearly word-for-word like the Nicene Creed), notes about the Father and the Son in the work of creation:
"God is called Almighty because He possesses rule and dominion over all things. But the Father possesses all things by His Son, as the Apostle says, By Him were created all things, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers. And again, writing to the Hebrews, he says, By Him also He made the worlds, and He appointed Him heir of all things. By 'appointed' we are to understand 'generated'. Now if the Father made the worlds by Him, and all things were created by Him, and He is heir of all things, then by Him He possesses rule also over all things."
Throughout today's post, even though we will focus primarily on God the Father, I will show how we cannot go long without including His eternal relationship to the Divine Persons of the Son via "filiation" and Holy Spirit via "spiration".
God the Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth, of things visible and invisible
You'll notice in the wording of this particular part of the Creed that it utilizes what is called a "chiasm". That is, there is mention of a term, then a second term, and then those same terms or associated ideas are repeated in reverse order. This poetic device reminds us that the Creed's structure is designed for recitation and ease of memory in worship. I'll depict how this part of the Creed is operating as a "chiasm" below.
"We believe in God, the Father almighty
("A1 line") maker of Heaven
("B1 line") and earth
("B2 line") of things visible
("A2 line") and invisible."
As you can see, reference to God the Father making "Heaven" or what is beyond our sight, and "Earth" or what is within our sight (borrowing from Genesis 1) is placed in parallel lines. The Creed then does the reverse order, namely what we can see ("visible") and cannot see ("invisible") (borrowing from Colossians 1:16-20).
The beauty of the Creed here captures the point that God the Father's actions in creation are comprehensive, originating from His power and plan (compare Isaiah 46:10; Ephesians 1:11). As we saw in previous posts, the whole Nicene Creed confesses the Three Persons of the Trinity. Thus, we cannot expound on the Father's work in creation without the reminder that He did so inseparably from the Son and the Spirit.2
Why the doctrine of creation alone makes sense of the origin of the universe
In the history of human thought, religion, and Biblical revelation, various options have been put forth for the universe's origin or what is called "cosmogeny". I'll just mention three.
The first is most famously represented by thinkers such as Aristotle and the Greeks, namely that the universe is eternal. In antiquity, the Greeks and Romans, as well as most polytheistic systems, taught that the universe was eternal, or existed in primordial chaos, with the gods and goddesses emerging and then battling for supremacy.
The second option for the origin of the universe or "cosmogeny" is that the universe created itself or came forth out of nothing. Secular theories of origins, such Big Bang cosmology and its variants postulate the universe sprang forth by itself, undergoing sudden inflationary cosmic expansion, whether out of nothing or from a pre-existing state of matter or another universe. Cyclical models of cosmogeny portray an infinite chain of "big bangs" and "big crunches", with the ultimate origin arising from inert matter or chance fluctuations in a quantum vacuum.
The third option is that God created the universe as the all-powerful, intelligent Creator. The Nicene Creed based its statement on the Creatorship of God the Father off of roughly sixty passages in the Bible that affirm Biblical creation. For example, Genesis 1:1 begins the entire Bible: "God created the Heavens and the Earth". All three Persons of the Trinity had their involvement in the creation of all things, hence God the Father (Psalm 19:1-2; Revelation 4:11), God the Son (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2-4), and God the Holy Spirit (Psalm 104:30; Job 26:13; Isaiah 40:13; 1 Cor 2:10).
Only this One God as "maker of Heaven and Earth", initially confessed as "The Father", explains the evidence we have from science and the Divine revelation in the Bible.3
Why is God the Father emphasized as "the maker of heaven and earth, visible and invisible"?
So why is God the Father emphasized by the creed as "maker of Heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible?" In Trinitarian theology, a pair of doctrines work to explain how each Person of the Trinity is ascribed an aspect of either creation or redemption in our world, what is called "the doctrine of appropriations" and "the doctrine of inseparable operations".
The first of these doctrines is the "doctrine of appropriations", meaning that whatever is "proper" to each Person of the Godhead, a certain aspect of creation or redemption is assigned to that Divine Person. The Father is the "principle source" who communicates or "conveys" the Divine nature indivisibly, infinitely, and eternally to the Son, and with the Son does this same relating activity to the Holy Spirit. In the Father's begetting of the Son and spiration of the Spirit we what are called "two eternal relations of origin" or two eternal relating activities that distinguish what other otherwise the three co-eternal and co-equal persons of the Godhead.
Therefore, as the Father is the eternal font or uncaused principle within the Trinity, Scripture assigns to Him in creation as being the "Causer principle" by His decree of the lesser effects of material and immaterial realities (see Isaiah 45:6-7; 46:10; Acts 17:25-28). That's the doctrine of appropriations.
The second doctrine is "the doctrine of inseparable operations", meaning that the Father never does anything apart from the Son and the Holy Spirit. Thus, we know that the Father planned creation through His decree as just described. The Son, we could say, "put together" creation by the Word of His power (Hebrews 1:3). Then as to the Holy Spirit, He "placed the finishing touches" upon the creation by infusing our world with life (Genesis 1:2; Psalm 104:30). What both these doctrines do is highlight how the Triune God in His Personal distinctions and eternal union demonstrates who He is as the Creator.
Final applications of "Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible
We have delved into the second line of the Nicene Creed, which stated the Father's involvement in the creating of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible. As we close out this post, I refer to Thomas Aquinas' commentary on the Apostle's Creed, wherein he offered five benefits of reflecting on the statement concerning God the Father's work in creation (reminding ourselves that we cannot separate Him from the Son and the Holy Spirit, all being One God).4
(1) "We are led to a knowledge of the divine majesty. Now, if a maker is greater than the things he makes, then God is greater than all things which He has made."
(2) "We are led to give thanks to God. Because God is the Creator of all things, it is certain that what we are and what we have is from God: 'What do you have that you did not receive?' [1 Cor 4:7].
(3) "We are led to bear our troubles in patience. Although every created thing is from God and is good according to its nature, yet, if something harms us or brings us pain, we believe that such comes from God, not as a fault in Him, but because God permits no evil that is not for good."
(4) "We are led to a right use of created things. Thus, we ought to use created things as having been made by God for two purposes: for His glory, 'since all things are made for Himself' [Prov 16:4]
(5) "We are led also to acknowledge the great dignity of man. God made all things for man: 'You subjected all things under his feet' [Ps 8:8], and man is more like to God than all other creatures save the Angels: 'Let us make man to Our image and likeness' [Gen 1:26].
Endnotes:
1. The Nicene Creed uses the Greek term for almighty, "pantokratora" (παντοκράτορα) and the Latin term whence our English "omnipotence" (omnipotentem). This term in the Greek is used on a number of occasions to refer to the Universal Sovereign of the universe (see 2 Co 6:18, Re 1:8 4:8 11:17 15:3 16:7, 14 9:6, 15 21:22.)
As I expounded more at length on this term in the last post, "Almighty" is representative shorthand that includes all perfections that come with being God by nature. The Father is without origin by nature as God, and communicates this unoriginated nature to the Son and the Spirit, resulting in the One God revealed in three Persons of sacred Scripture.
2. John Calvin in His "Institutes of the Christian Religion, chapter 14, section 1, describes God as Creator:
"Hence God was pleased that a history of the creation should exist—a history on which the faith of the Church might lean without seeking any other God than Him whom Moses sets forth as the Creator and Architect of the world."
The 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith puts it this way:
"In the beginning it pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, to create or make the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good."
3. A self-created universe is a contradiction, since the first two laws of thermodynamics tell us that matter cannot be created or destroyed on its own and that all usable energy in the universe is in a state of "entropy" or continuously becoming more and more disorganized. The second law of thermodynamics tells us the universe began in a highly organized, perfectly balance set of initial conditions; and the first law tells us that energy in the universe is constant, meaning that on its own it could not had derived outside energy from a material source.
Those two laws of science alone tell us the universe had a beginning, and it could not had begun itself, thus we have that confession: "I believe in God, the Father maker of Heaven and Earth, of things visible and invisible".
4. This is from a combined commentary featuring the sixth century church father Rufinas and comments from the eleventh century theologian Thomas Aquinas' commentary on the Apostle's Creed entitled "Exposito super Symbolum Apostolorum" ("Commentary on the Apostle's Creed"). See more about the resource here apostles-creed-wm.pdf