The following guest post is from Bishop Timothy Whitaker. Bishop Whitaker was elected to the United Methodist episcopacy in 2001, and led the Florida Annual Conference. He retired in 2012.
The first half of the second article of the Nicene Creed is considered to be the most important expression of orthodox Christology: We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven; was incarnate of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, and became truly human.
While the first half of the second article is undoubtedly the most significant expression of the church’s confession of the truth of the incarnation to communicate that salvation through Jesus Christ is from God, the final statement in the second article is also an extremely important statement about the identity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. This final statement is eschatological (“the last things”) whereas the first half of the second article is mostly protological (“the first things”). The final statement is, He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
The statement itself literally comes from the annunciation of the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary in the infancy narrative of St. Luke. Luke 1:33 contains the divine promise to Mary and the world, He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end (NRSV).
Behind this citation of Luke 1:33 is a story of the church attempting to get right its conception of Christology and Trinitarian theology and also rejecting the theology of one of the stalwarts of the Council of Nicaea.
The Council of Nicaea rejected as heresy the theology of Arius, the Alexandrian presbyter, that the Son was a creature of God the Father. If Arius were right, then the church was committing idolatry in worshiping Jesus Christ. When the Eastern creeds began to include the teaching, and his kingdom will have no end, they were rejecting the Sabellian heresy of another and more recent teacher, Marcellus of Ancyra.
Marcellus had been a member of the Council of Nicaea who strongly supported the inclusion of the hoomousion and who was a friend of the great champion of Nicene orthodoxy, Athanasius of Alexandria. According to Marcellus, the Word of God did not become the Son until the incarnation and therefore the name of “Son,” like the names of “Christ” and “image,” were properly applicable to him during the incarnate state of the Word. Sonship in the deity would disappear when the purposes for which the Word became incarnate had been finally accomplished. Jesus Christ the incarnate Son was indeed promoted, as it were, to divine status, but Marcellus thought the Son would ultimately be absorbed into God’s Being as the divine energy of God, the Word (Logos) of God.
Marcellus denied that the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, would have no end. The idea that Christ’s kingdom would be everlasting makes no sense if there were no further role for the incarnation of the Word as the “Son” or the “Christ” when the purposes of the incarnation are consummated. The story of Marcellus is just another illustration of the perennial fact that the scriptures are subject to plausible interpretations that do not fit the doctrine of the church when interpreters are guided by presuppositions that differ from those of the church. There is no end to speculation and theologizing, but the scriptures belong to the church, and the church itself is guided by the Holy Spirit, including tradition which is the product of the illumination of the mind of the church by the Spirit.
The church in the fourth century was repelled by Marcellus’ teaching, and that is why the Nicene Creed includes the clause, and his kingdom will have no end. The reason the church so strongly viewed Marcellus’ teaching as dangerous is because the idea that there will be an end to Christ’s kingdom is tkingantamount to the idea that there will be an end to the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God–which, indeed, is what Marcellus thought. What was at stake in the theology of Marcellus was nothing less than the ontological status of the identity of Jesus Christ as the only Son of God. Since Marcellus had supported the first half of the second article of the Nicene Creed, as it was expressed in the Creed of Nicaea, as a member of the Council of Nicaea, his rejection of the everlasting kingdom of Christ proved that endorsing the first half of the second article did not guarantee orthodox Christology and Trinitarian theology. Thus the clause, and his kingdom will have no end, had to be included in the creed to rule out any misunderstanding of the first half of the second article.
This confession at the end of the second article of the Nicene Creed is as important as the protological section in the first part of the second article. To claim that the Son’s kingdom will have an end is to claim, in effect, that the Son himself will have an end and that God is not triune. The confession, and his kingdom will have no end, underscores that the only Son of God, who is the same as the Lord Jesus Christ, has his own hypostasis eternally distinct from that of God the Father, and that God is not a solitary Monad who manifests himself in transient modes of being, but God is the superabundant, ineffable, eternal communion of three Persons of the same Being. Thus the kingdom of God is the kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, for the Father always has with him the Son and the Spirit.
The explication of the Nicene Creed by the World Council of Churches, Confessing the One Faith, observes that “from the beginning of his earthly mission, Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of his Father (Mark 1:15),” and so “his own kingdom can never be anything other than to prepare and bring about the kingdom of the Father.” Indeed, his kingdom is precisely “to persuade and lead everyone and everything into submission to the Father, just as the Son submits himself to the Father.” Consequently, because Christ’s kingdom is all about seeking the rule of the Father, his kingdom “will have no end” (Luke 1:33). The import of confessing the kingdom of Christ is that “it implies criticism of systems and ideologies” and the “unmasking of the false claims” of all the kingdoms of this world. The church bears witness to the true kingdom and provides the earthly kingdoms “with a perspective of their ultimate destiny and with a criterion of what will be expected of them by the coming Judge. World history should be moulded with that judgement in mind–that is, in the light of the kingdom of the Pantocrator [the Almighty], the Ruler of all creation.”
The church of Jesus Christ lives between the first and future comings of its Lord. This eschatological tension entails having to walk a fine line between being in the world, which involves a responsibility to be in solidarity with the world and its well-being, and not being of the world, which involves learning the skills of maintaining the integrity of the church’s distinctiveness as God’s messianic people. Thus the church prays for the nation in which it exists and seeks to be a constructive contributor to society. At the same time, the church never endorses without reserve or even objection all of the values and ways of the state and society of which it is a part. This difficult, but never uninteresting, task of living as the church in the world will continue until the end of history because the church confesses of Jesus Christ: and his kingdom will have no end—his kingdom, not any of the kingdoms, nations, tribes, or agendas of this world.