everything that is believed for the sake of eternal salvation. It's called the
SERMON 212
AT THE HANDING OVER OF THE CREED
Date: 410-4151
Brief exposition of the Symbol
1. It's time for you to receive the Symbol2 in which is briefly contained everything that is believed for the sake of eternal salvation. It's called the Symbol because of a certain similarity; the word being transferred from com¬ mercial transactions, because merchants make agreements among themselves, called symbols, which guarantee their loyalty to the terms of their association. And your association is concerned with spiritual merchandise, so that you may be like dealers looking for a good pearl (Mt 13:45).3 This pearl is the charity, which will be poured out in your hearts through the Holy Spirit, who will be given to you (Rom 5:5).4
One arrives at this as a result of the faith which is contained in this Symbol, as a result of your believing in God the Father almighty, invisible, immortal, king of the ages, creator of things visible and invisible,5 and whatever else genuine reason or the authority of holy scripture can fittingly say about him. Nor must you separate the Son of God from this absolute perfection and supe¬ riority. These things, you see, are not said about the Father in such a way as to be inapplicable to the one who said, 1 and tfie Father are one (Jn 10:30), and about whom the apostle said who, since he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God (Phil 2:6). Robbery, of course, means the seizing of what belongs to someone else, while that equality is his very nature; and thus, how will the Son not be almighty, through whom all things were made (Jn 1:3), since he is also the power and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24), the wisdom about which it is written that while she is one, she can do all things (Wis 7:27)?
But that nature is also invisible, in the very form in which it is equal to the Father. By nature, of course, the Word of God is invisible, which was in the beginning with God, and the Word was God (Jn 1:1); and in that nature he also remains altogether immortal, that is totally unchangeable. I mean, the human soul is also after a fashion said to be immortal; but it can't be true immortality in something so changeable, which can fall away and make progress; so that its death is to be estranged from the life of God by the ignorance that is in it (Eph
SERMON 212 137
4:18), while its life is to run to the fountain of life in order in the light of God to see light (Ps 36:9). It is to this life that you too by the grace of Christ are being revived from a kind of death which you are renouncing.
The Word of God, however, which is what the only-begotten Son is, always lives unchangeably with the Father; it neither falls away, because permanence cannot diminish, nor makes progress, because perfection cannot increase. He too is king of the ages, creator of things visible and invisible, because as the apostle says, In him all things were established in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones or Dominations or Principalities or Powers; all things were created in him and through him, and all hold together for him (Col
1:16-17). But since he emptied himself, not losing the form of God, but taking the form of a servant (Phil 2:7), through this form of a servant the invisible one was seen, because he was born of the Holy Spirit and from Mary the virgin. In this form of a servant the almighty became weak, because he suffered under Pontius Pilate-, through this form of a servant the immortal one died, because he was crucified and buried-, through this form of a servant the king of ages on the third day rose again; through this form of a servant the creator of things visible and invisible ascended into heaven from where he had never departed; through this form of a servant he is seated at the right hand of the Father, whose arm he is, of which the prophet says And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? (Is 53:1). In this form of a servant he is going to come to judge the living and the dead, the form which he chose to share with the dead, though he is the life of the living.
Through him the Holy Spirit was sent to us from the Father and from himself, the Spirit of the Father and the Son, sent by both, begotten by neither, the unity of both, equal to both. This Trinity is one God, almighty, invisible, immortal, king of the ages, creator of things visible and invisible. Nor, you see, do we say that there are three Gods, or three almighties or three creators or anything else that can likewise be said about God's absolute supremacy, because they are not three Gods, but one God. Although in this Trinity the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son; but the first is the Father of the Son, the second the Son of the Father, the third the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. Believe, in order to understand, because unless you believe, you will not understand (Is 7:9).
From this faith you must hope for the grace by which all your sins will be forgiven.6 By this grace, you see, you will be saved—not of yourselves, but it is God's gift—not by works, lest perhaps any one should preen himself The fact is, you will be his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in the good works which God has prepared, for you to walk in them (Eph 2:8-10); so that laying aside all that is old and stale, and putting on the new self {Eph 4:24), you may be a new creature (1 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15), singing the new song (Ps 144:9; Rv 5:9), ready to receive an eternal inheritance in terms of the new covenant. On the strength of this, you must also hope, after the death which has spread to all human beings, which was owed and actually paid to the stale old age of the first man, you must