Nicene Creed: Part 5

The Heavenly Banquet

In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia take a look at the section of the Nicene Creed that addresses the Church and try to unpack the wealth of meaning there that can almost be obscured by our familiarity with the text.

The sound quality for this episode falls far from our own expectations. Charlotte called in to record from what sounds like the bottom of a trashcan, and we'll not let that happen again.

Charlotte: The church is one. How is the church one? It sure seems like there’s a lot of division and confusion within the church, right? But the church is unified by acknowledging one Lord, confessing the same faith, or the core of the same faith, maybe the faith as described within this very creed. The church is born of the same baptism, and so forms a body and gains its unity through the unity of the Trinity. That’s its strength. But, like the Trinity, within that unity is a multitude or great diversity that mirrors the diversity of humanity, so saying that it’s one doesn’t mean that it’s uniform.

Chad: I was thinking of keeping that same thread we started in the first episode of God being one, this idea that the divine love is always one, does not change. Divine goodness does not vary. Divine mercy and justice are not incompatible, but they’re one. The divine intention for a good creation is one. It never changes. And so that opening statement reflects that unity and tells me that is the divine intention for the corporate body of the faithful as well- this idea that the effect, in some significant sense, resembles the cause or reflects the cause. The one, holy church is- this might be controversial- is one and holy insofar as it is unified in love and reflects the nature of the divine goodness that never changes and brings it into being.