A Medicine For Our Times

The Nicene Creed is a medicine for our times. We live in an era when many say you have your truth and I have my truth, suggesting that truth is malleable. The Nicene Creed is an affirmation that the Truth of our faith is firm and timeless, just as set today as it was when the Creed was written more than 16 centuries ago.

The Creed is especially vital if one meditates with open mind on the obvious pro-life implications of this 223 word text.

It invokes the Trinitarian God as the creator of everything:

• Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. [God.]
• Through him all things were made. [Christ.]
• The giver of life. [Holy Spirit.]

God made our very visible physical bodies at the instant of fertilization. 

He made our invisible spirit.

We were made through Christ.

The Holy Spirit breathed life into us.

Something made by a Divine God must be pretty important. This is the big idea presented by Jared Ortiz and Daniel Keating in their new book, “THE NICENE CREED: A scriptural, historical & theological commentary.”

In an interview with Catholic World Report, the authors flesh out this big idea that shines an uncomfortable light on the act of abortion:

“God created us to share in his divine life or, as it says in 2 Peter 1:4, “to become partakers of the divine nature.” This is what the Christian tradition calls deification or divinization. This is the goal and fulfillment of our existence.”

But this fulfillment of our existence doesn’t exist without Christ. As Ortiz and Keating explain it:

“… if Christ is not truly God, then we cannot partake of the divine nature through him. If Christ is really just the greatest of creatures, then we can only be “creaturized” rather than divinized. But if Christ is divine then he can lead us into the heart of the Trinity. And that is what we call heaven.”

In other words, at the instant of our conception the spark of the divine dwells within us.

Abortion is a profound rejection of the divine, carrying serious moral implications. Ortiz and Keating characterize the Nicene Creed as “medicine for our times.” Each of its declarative statements builds on the majestic truth of Christianity.

We recently experienced Good Friday, when Pontius Pilate asks the timeless question:

“What is truth?”

The Nicene Creed provides the confident response.

Pray it will confidence.