The Nicene Creed Q&A #1: On Creation and Jesus as Lord

On the “nothing” that existed before creation along with God…
These thoughts were inspired by a great question asked by Betsy after sermon #2 in the series (on God as “Creator of all things visible and invisible”). This gets quite head-spinning, but it’s worth meditating on in a spirit of humble contemplation.

Before creation was brought into being, all that was (all that existed) was God. When Christians claim that God “created out of nothing” (Latin: ex nihilo), the “nothing” in that phrase does not mean “empty space” that God decided to “fill” with creation. No! As strange as this sounds, “empty space” is still something, and nothing truly means nothing! In other words, the entirety of what existed prior to God’s act of creation was only God’s eternal and perfect being. This adds an amazing layer of depth and profundity to the act of creation, because it means that all things are truly here only because of the gracious will of God, who brought even the space itself in which we live into being. I can’t help but think of Acts 17, and Paul’s use of the phrase “in whom we live and move and have our being” to describe God. This doctrine of creation also adds a helpful layer of clarity regarding the “boundary” between created-things and creator-God, because it drives home the point that all the “things” that did not exist before creation are not God! This also sets up the foundation for the biblical understanding of idolatry, which is when humans fall into false worship and devotion of the “things” God created, rather than worshipping the one God who existed eternally before all those “things!” Idolatry is dangerous, and has dangerous and destructive effects in creation. True worship is to be given to God, the Creator, and God alone.

Is “Adonai” plural or singular? Should it be “Lords” or “Lord”?
This is to add some clarity to my discussion of the language the Bible uses, particularly the Hebrew language of the Old Testament. If you don’t care about technical language details, please feel free to skip this paragraph! But I spoke (in sermon #3) about how the sacred name of God (YHWH) could be written in the text, but not spoken out loud, and the Hebrew word “Adonai” was an appropriate "substitute" for it. It was mentioned in discussion that the term is plural (which can mean “Lords”) and that “adon” is the singular form. Technically, this is true, but there’s another very-technical layer here to clarify, which is that there’s a difference between the “syntactical plural” and the “respectful/honorific plural.” The “syntactical plural” is the form that we use in mundane words to indicate multiples, but the “honorific plural” is what is used for important or exalted titles (think in English of the “royal we”). The context of the word “Adonai” in most Old Testament uses is an honorific plural. To drive this point further, it is also frequently linked directly to singular-form verbs in the same passage. All that to say, the term “Adonai” is an honorific plural, but is rightly rendered in English as simply “Lord” or “the Lord.” The text is not calling God “Lords.” Commonly, in the Old Testament, when a human character is given the title “Lord,” like King David, a slightly-different form is used: “adoneinu.”

On the use of the title “Lord” for humans in the Old Testament
I didn’t have time to respond to Vic’s comments near the end of the gathering, and wanted to offer some clarity here, for those interested. Vic pointed out that the term “Lord” is applied to human characters in the Old Testament, which is absolutely true (see 1 Samuel 16:16 for an example, in which King Saul is called “our lord.”), though a broad thrust of my sermon was to argue that the term “Lord,” in a holistic biblical sense, is rightfully reserved for “the One Lord Jesus Christ.” So, how do we make sense of this tension between human “lords” in the bible, and the One Lord Jesus Christ? This is where I believe I could have been more precise in my presentation in the sermon. When I used the term “biblical” to argue for ascribing the title “Lord” only to Jesus Christ, I did not mean that the bible never refers to humans as “lords,” nor even that it was inappropriate for that to happen. The term “lord” (Greek “kyrios”) was a common designation of status and authority, and Jesus himself had characters in his parables call other humans “kyrios,” when appropriate (see Matthew 13:27 for an example). The broader point I was trying to make is that there’s a trajectory in the full scriptural story towards recognizing that Jesus is the ultimate “Lord of all lords.” We can (and should) give due respect to earthly authority figures, but should never confuse that with the ultimate authority and respect due to God the Son. Jesus himself said, “no one can serve two kyrios.” (Matthew 6.24) This is what I was driving at yesterday, that the salvific power and authority we put all our hope and trust in can only belong to one Lord. This is repeatedly expressed in Paul’s writings, perhaps most clearly in 1 Corinthians 8:6, in which he writes “for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord (kyrios) Jesus Christ, through whom all things came, and through whom we live.”