Systematic theology is all over the ancient creeds and confessions of the early Christian church and here, with the Athanasian creed, as it discusses the unity of the person of Jesus, it’s as dense as it gets.
What are we to make of those places in the New Testament when it’s clear that Jesus is on the same level as the Father and then, in other places, is not as great as the Father? Is it fair to just toss up our hands and pronounce the charge of inconsistency within the text?
Depending on your Christian perspective and background, it’s sometimes easier to think of Jesus being God than it is to think of him being an actual person.
In the Athanasian Creed, the writers were doing their best to describe the Jesus found in the New Testament with as much clarity as possible. They did this by means of introducing a description that we may have never used when thinking or talking about Jesus.
It’s often said that we need to put Christ back in Christmas. And that’s said as a way to lament the fact this Christian celebration has largely been lost to the world. This is probably true, but the question is: What should we do about it?