John 5:17ff: X

In the Verily, verily [Amen, amen; Truly, truly] passage of John Chapter 5 Jesus proclaims His Divinity; He is God. Yet, do Christians view Him as God? Do they worship Him as God?

In 1937 Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a play titled, The Zeal of Thy House. In a letter of October 4, 1937 to Father Herbert Kelly, in which she discusses aspects of the play, she writes:

But it was interesting to discover, as I did, how many people (whether nominal Christians or not) either were Arians, or believed that the Church taught a purely Arian doctrine. [Arius was a 3^rd – 4^th Century priest who taught that Christ was not consubstantial with God; that is, Christ was not God the Son though He was the Son of God] However often they had heard or recited the Creeds, it had obviously never sunk into their minds that Christ was supposed to be God in any real sense of the word. The Good and Suffering Man was a familiar idea to them; but the idea of a Suffering God was a staggering novelty. This isn’t exaggeration – some of them quite simply and innocently told me so – especially some of my own actors, who, having seen the play through two months of rehearsal and ten performances had plenty of time in which to chew over it. I explained as much as I could…that Christ was… equally God and Man.

I wonder if perhaps we should not speak these words of the Athanasian and Nicene creeds to one another?

The Athanasian Creed:

For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.

The Nicene Creed:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.