“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” is one of my all-time favorite Christmas carols. And not just for Felix Mendelssohn’s brilliant score. The lyrics, penned by Charles Wesley and modified by George Whitefield, are thick like a richly satisfying holiday dessert. Embedded in every line is enough solid theology to keep you tuned up for the rest of your life.
Implanted in the second verse, which begins with “Christ by highest heaven adored!”, are a couple of loaded phrases easy to glide by. But they capture meaning beyond expression and the history of more than a century of culture wars that had lasting impact on Christmas.
The second line in the verse reads, “Christ, the everlasting Lord.” About halfway through is “Hail the incarnate Deity.” You’d think such phrases would be standard fare when referencing the Christ Child. Think again. “Everlasting” and “Deity” were fighting words that wracked an empire and divided a church struggling to show a unified front to a hostile world.
Here’s the setting. It’s the waning days of the Roman Empire, 300 years after Jesus was born. Emperors are competing with each other and with pagan invaders from the north. Think Goths and other Germanic peoples. The church is finally gaining respectability after long being outlawed, though persecutions continue intermittently for some time.
Constantine, originally a pagan, comes to power as emperor in 306, and by 324 reunites all of the empire under one ruler – himself. Probably through the influence of his Greek mother, he begins to favor Christianity, as early as 312. But he’s concerned how deeply divided the church is over doctrine.
Constantine isn’t that concerned about doctrine – as a political ruler, he barely understands it. But he is concerned about division, division that weakens empires. The church is becoming a force to be reckoned with, and a deeply divided church has political consequences. So, in 325, he convenes the First Council of Nicaea.
This council is tasked with producing a unifying statement about what the church believes. Enter the Nicene Creed, which became the standard on the doctrine of the Trinity.
Low church evangelicals and Pentecostals, my corner of Christianity, tend not to emphasize the Nicene Creed, just because it is a creed. But this creed forms the theological foundation for all Christianity, even us low church types. All our doctrines and all that we count as right belief have their firm footing in the Nicene Creed. It’s like gravity; you may not think about it on a given Sunday, but it is there, anchoring you to all that makes you a biblical Christian, to put modern slang to it.
Creeds are about doctrines – and doctrines are about theology. And theology is the study of God. Who God is and how God is are at the heart of the Christian faith.
We testify that Jesus is the Son of God. What do we mean by that? Don’t the scriptures affirm our belief in both the divinity and the humanity of Jesus and in the triune nature of God, beliefs that are core to the Christian faith? Well, though we can find basis for these beliefs in our Bibles, it took centuries and some serious church councils to sort it all out – this Council at Nicaea being the first.
Ideas about God were front and center in these discussions. Certain beliefs – what we call heterodox – had to be jettisoned as not being truthful. To get into the word weeds for a moment, hetero in Greek means “other” or “different.” It’s where we get the word heterosexual as in “not the same sex.” Dox in Greek means “belief” or “opinion.” Thus, heterodox means other or strange belief. Ortho, in Greek, means “straight” or “correct,” so orthodox means correct belief.
For the first few hundred years after Jesus, Christian leaders sorted out what was true (orthodox) and what was not true (heterodox) about God. It took some serious wrestling. Their conclusions had a profound impact on both Church history and on the way in which we live out our faith today, including how we celebrate Christmas.
But didn’t we get our God concept already packaged from Judaism? Certainly, the Jews spent centuries hammering out their understanding of God until enshrining this defining statement they call the Shema: “The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)
All well and good.
But then Jesus comes along and how does he fit in? As the Apostle Paul writes, “there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.” (1 Corinthians 8:6)
So how does that work?
By the 300s (think 4th century AD), church leaders were going to the mat over this. The big ideas church thinkers were wrestling with were, How does Jesus fit in with God? Was God one or three? Was Jesus really fully God, divine that is? Or was he merely human? They’d eventually resolve all these questions, but by 318, the battle was only getting going.
Enter Arius of Alexandria (Egypt). He taught that God the Father and the Son of God did not always exist together eternally. The Son of God had been begotten of God sometime pre-history. Other teachers went even beyond Arius in disputing the Trinity, their teachings getting all wrapped up in what we call Arianism. With Arius, the issue came to a boiling point.
If that seems a bit weedy to you, understand it was weedy to a lot of people back in the day as well. At the same time, everybody – even those who couldn’t track it all – were getting involved. Common believers and Roman emperors alike joined the fight. The battle raged for much of the 4th century.
Now hold on a minute! Hadn’t the Bible settled the matter, and didn’t these people believe the Bible? Chapter-and-verse summations come to mind.
Keep in mind that the Bible hadn’t yet been passed down as a finalized book ready to sit on your coffee table. The scriptures were written as individual scrolls and at first passed around separately, like letters, over time gathering in collections in various forms. Consensus may have been crystalizing early on, but the final form of the New Testament was not decided until AD 393, well after the Arian controversy had been settled by church council.
Still unclear? Take a minute and watch this video: https://youtu.be/nFEBwfYZBJY
Back to Arianism. As I said, Arius was from Alexandria. His chief opponent on this issue was a fellow Alexandrian named Athanasius. Arius believed he was trying to protect the Oneness of God (think the Shema). Athanasius believed Arius was reintroducing polytheism (multiple gods) and, with it, implications for salvation. Arius lost the battle at Nicaea and the Nicaean (or Nicene) Creed was written and approved, clearly Trinitarian and with Jesus co-eternal with God the Father.
But the war continued, consuming much religious and political energy for decades to come. There were other great thinkers involved in the battle. As this is the Christmas season, I’d like to give a shout out to two December guys: Saint Nick of Myra and Saint Ambrose of Milan.
Yesterday, much of the Christian world celebrated the Feast of Saint Nicholas, the bringer of gifts. Many of us know him as Santa Claus, a derivative of the saint’s Dutch name, Sinterklaas, and we’ve moved our Santa stories from December 6 to Christmas Eve, baptizing them in American folklore. Yes, Santa Claus is a real person, though he lived in Turkey, not the North Pole.
It’s hard to drill down to the facts about the real Saint Nicholas, buried as they are in centuries of storytelling. At minimum, he was a Christian bishop of Greek descent. He gained a reputation for doing amazing things and for his generosity.
But he also seemed to have picked up a pugnacious reputation, not exactly the jolly guy in the red suit. He was deeply committed to what he believed to be the truth that Jesus is the eternal Son of God. There is some disagreement as to whether Nicholas was actually at the Council of Nicaea, but reports were he went fisticuffs with Arius, beating him with his staff.
Regardless of what role Nicholas might have played, Arianism was condemned by the Council of Nicaea. However, the discussion was far from settled in the broader church world, and debate continued to rage before the battle was settled in favor of the Nicene Creed and against Arianism.
Enter Saint Ambrose. Today, December 7, is his feast day. He was proclaimed a bishop of the Church on this date in 374, a mere 1,650 years ago, well after Saint Nicholas was off the scene. Though we don’t normally connect Ambrose with Advent or Christmas, his life and ministry have much to do with why and how we celebrate the Christ born Immanuel, God with us.
Ambrose was made a bishop even before he was a baptized Christian – while serving as Roman governor in Milan, no less. Granted, he had grown up in a Christian family and was a person of faith.
The previous bishop of Milan, an Arian named Auxentius, had died, and a conflict over succession loomed. Ambrose, as governor, went to a church meeting to elect a new bishop just to keep peace. Instead, the assembly, including the Arians, appealed to him to take the bishopric. Ambrose, known to be a Nicene Christian, had also been charitable toward the Arians, so he appealed to both sides.
At first, he refused the office of bishop, fleeing into hiding. Finally at the urging of the emperor, Gratian, he was baptized, ordained, and consecrated as the new bishop of Milan – all within a week. He took it all quite seriously, adopting an ascetic lifestyle, giving everything he owned to the poor and to the Church.
This man who had come lately to the ministry and not through the usual channels of theological training helped fight Arianism through his diplomacy, writing, preaching, and hymn writing. He played a crucial role in Arianism’s decline, by building bridges with those who held to Arian beliefs, even as he stood firmly on the Nicene Creed. His theological writings and teachings were instrumental in articulating and defending the Creed’s positions. And his hymns helped relate Trinitarian doctrine to the common people.
Ironically, paintings depict Ambrose striking heretics with his staff. More likely the imagery is symbolic, as it probably was with Nicholas. But Ambrose had a way of speaking to those in power, including both church leaders and emperors. His firm resolve, coupled with respect drawn from both sides, enabled him to navigate from a position of strength.
Ambrose was no lightweight. The fight for correct teaching was as much on the streets in Ambrose’s hymns and homilies as it was in the filtered air of church councils.
So, how does all this impact the way we celebrate Christmas? Well, in short, it means that the babe lying in that Bethlehem manger is not just a mere mortal. Jesus, the Christ Child, is God eternal come to be with us as one of us. And because of that, as Wesley wrote in the carol, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” God’s saving power can be displayed in us, restoring our ruined nature, stamping God’s image in us, and reinstating us in his love. You can hear all about it right here.
Get notified of more advent reflections to come. In case you missed it, here is the first reflection, “And so we wait.”
Public domain photos by Nheyob: (L) St. Nicholas of Myra, Saint Martin of Tours Church, Louisville, KY; (R) St. Ambrose of Milan, Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Indianapolis, IN
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