God the Father: we believe in God the Father

Sherif Fahim's plenary session focuses on the Creed's opening confession: we believe in God the Father. It considers what the church confesses about the first person of the Trinity.

Sherif Fahim, “God the Father: we believe in God the Father,” plenary session, Nicea Conference 2025, Istanbul.

Opening

What a great joy and a privilege to be with you all. My heart is already warm, very warm from what I have seen. I will begin with you by reading part of the Scripture a famous chapter or part of a chapter and it’s a prayer. So I would like you to join me as I read this in the Spirit of prayer. I will read it prayerfully from Ephesians chapter 3 starting from verse 14. Very famous prayer for the Apostle Paul.

Ephesians 3

For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us. To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. [Ephesians 3:14–21]

From Athanasius’s city

As I told you what a privilege to be here with all these pastors, elders, church leaders from all over the world to see the amount of countries represented in this room. I had only one main impression. The first impression I got Christ is king.

Christ is king. He’s fulfilling his promises. The kingdom is being built and one day it will be consummated. In fact, studying the Nicene Creed is a witness of God’s faithfulness. Right? For 1700 years the church has been faithful to see to this words the words of the Bible to what we have just read about the Father the Son and the Spirit holding fast to the Nicene Creed what it teaches the doctrine that it teaches 1700 years and we believe in the same things the same words maybe those who are coming from the west for you the Apostles’ Creed would be more famous in the east the Nicene Creed is the creed if I may say is the creed. This is what the Christians would recite always. This is the creed. And I know that this event may be special to all of you that 1700 years we are in the same place.

Yesterday we went to the same city. Very special. But I would argue that it is even way more special for me. Way more special for me. For a simple reason that I am from the country from which the most known figure who was behind this creed was from Athanasius.

In fact, I’m not just from the same country, I’m from the same city, Alexandria. So to think of it that I’m from the same city, same country where Athanasius came from, very humbling. And when I read this man’s work, it makes me more humble how brilliant this man was and how the Lord used him mightily u to answer an amazing attack against the gospel. A furious attack against the gospel about the divinity of Christ, the dity the deity of Christ.

My trust today is in the Lord the one who used Athanasius 1700 years would use people like us to continue to defend the faith. I have been assigned to speak about God the Father in the Nicene Creed. And while the council of course and while the creed main focus was to defend the full deity of Christ against Arianism but one of the most important ways to defend the divinity of Christ or the deity of Christ is to explain who the Father is. That’s why he begins or the Nicene begins.

We believe in one God, the Father

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible. And my goal this evening is to reflect on these statements about the Father. Just these statements about the Father and I will take them one statement at a time. We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. First of all, we believe in one God.

The matter that Nicea was all about, it was about the nature of God we worship. It was about God himself, the triune God. And this is the most important thing the church can think of or can talk about or can care about. Who is our creator? Who is the one we worship? What kind of salvation does he offer? If God is not a triune God, there is no Christianity. There is no salvation.

Herman Bavinck notes this about the creed and about Athanasius. Listen what he says. Quote, Athanasius understood better than any of his contemporaries that Christianity stands or falls with the confession of the deity of Christ and the Trinity. He was not fighting for a philosophical problem but for the Christian religion itself for the revelation of God and the teaching of the apostles the faith of the church that’s how evaluated the whole issue evaluated Athanasius that’s why I will quote Athanasius a lot this evening as Nicea as the creed confronted the Arian heresy they began with this assertion we believe in one God And this affirms the foundational truth of monotheism. Christians are not polytheists. We are not tritheists. We believe in one God.

And this echoes the shima of Israel. As we have heard this morning, hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Arianism, Arius, they claim to defend this oneness in Deuteronomy 6 by asserting that the Father alone and in absolute sense was the one true God defending a form of solitary deity.

In fact, Arianism accused Athanasius and the Nicene fathers or the Nicene orthodox Christianity of being polytheistic. They said if you believe that the Father is God and the Son is God this is polytheism and we hear this a lot in our context in the Middle East. One of the claims of the Arians is that if the Father is equal to the Son there must be two gods.

But Athanasius turned this logic on its head. For if the Son is created as the Arians claim and yet still worshiped and adored, then the Arians incur the charge of polytheism, not the Nicenes. Athanasius insisted that the unity of God does not rest on the singularity of person but on unity of essence. In his defense of the Nicene faith, he appealed to Jesus’ own words in John 14. And by the way, Athanasius was very rich in Scripture.

Jesus says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” This Alexandrian theologian commented that here Christ was showing the identity of godhead and the unity of essence. As he defends this unity of essence, Athanasius was careful, very careful to retain the simplicity of God. God is not three gods. It’s he’s not composed of parts. Simplicity of God, one God. At the same time, he’s avoiding Sabellianism, modalism, which conflated the Father and the Son into one person. Listen what Athanasius wrote. Quote, “For the Father and the Son are one, not as one thing divided into two parts, nor as one thing twice named, so that the same becomes at one time father, at another his own son. For this Sabellius holding was judged a heretic. But they are two because the Father is father and is not also son and the Son is son and not also father but the nature is one.

End quote. For Athanasius the Son and the Spirit they share the Father’s very being. Wherefore the unity and the relational richness of the divine being are preserved. His trinitarian faith can be summarized in the following magnificent statement. Listen to this.

For there is but one form of Godhead, which is also in the word, and one God, the Father, existing by himself, according as he is above all, and appearing in the Son, according as he pervades all things, and in the Spirit, according as in him he acts in all things through the word.

This theology is precisely what the Nicene Creed reflects when we confess that we believe in one God, the Father. The Father eternally begets the Son. Thus, the creed teaches a monotheism belief that is not numerical simplicity but a unity of essence and will within the eternal communion of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. By beginning we believe in one God. The creed asserts all the Christian faith, all the Christian worship, all the Christian salvation.

They assert that this salvation and faith flow from one divine source who exists eternally in triune life. In the very beginning of the creed, Christians affirm we believe in one God. But then he says the Father almighty and this simple phrase is very rich in the creed having confessed believe in one God they identify this one God as the Father almighty and I know as we read the word father if I tell you this evening I’m going to speak about God the Father maybe the first impression that you’ll have oh this will be about adoption maybe about God being our Father and all these things are true. But the Nicene fathers when they said we believe in one God the Father his fatherhood to us was not the primary thing that they were thinking of and I will show this to you from the writings of Athanasius.

Father here refers to who the first person of the Trinity is regardless of his creation even before creation. The Father is the Father. To call God father is to confess his eternal relation to the Son. His fatherhood is not defined primarily from his relationship to creation or to us the children of God but from eternity. For he has eternally begotten the Son of the same essence. Listen what Athanasius says as he expresses this reality. It is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call him father than to name him from his works only and call him unoriginate. The Arians thought that there was once when the Son was not. We have heard this from Dr. Duncan this morning which means that the Son was a creature according to the Arians.

The Son is not eternal according to Arius. Consequently, God was not always a father. He became father when he created the Son. Therefore, the Father’s fatherhood was not eternal but something he became which necessarily demands a mutable god.

That is a god who changes. Since God is immutable, god never changes. This means that there was no time where the Father was not a father. Which also means that there was no time when the Son was not.

For Athanasius, denying the full deity of the Son necessarily denies the full deity of the Father. You cannot talk about a divine Father without talking about a divine Son. If the Father was once not a father, this means that God was perfected when he created the Son.

Again, Athanasius writes this, “Forever was the essence of the Father imperfect, and what is proper to it should be added afterwards.” And then he adds, “For if the word is not with the Father from everlasting, the triad is not everlasting, but a monad was first, and afterwards by addition it became a triad.” And so as time went on, it seems what we know concerning God grew and took shape. A triad once with deficiency and then complete. Deficient before the Son was originated, complete when he had come to be. Denying the deity of the Son means the Father was not God as well.

The Father Almighty

But the creed doesn’t only say we believe in one God the Father. It says the Father almighty. Almighty. The Father almighty. God is not only personal but he also all powerful and these two realities belong together. The title almighty in the Greek Pantokrator is tied in our minds again with creation which is true but this almightiness is inseparable from his eternal fatherhood.

God’s power is not abstract or detached. It is the living power of the eternal Father who begets the son of his own essence and who through the Son and the Spirit sustain all things. Athanasius contrasts divine and human fatherhood. He says there’s a difference between human fatherhood and divine fatherhood which has to do with the almightiness.

Listen what he says. Quote, “Men being incapable of self-existence are enclosed in place and consist of God. But God is self-existent, enclosing all things, and enclosed by none within all according to his own goodness and power, yet without all in his proper nature.” So men’s generation is in one way and the Son is from the Father is another. To be an earthly father is different from being the eternal Father.

In other words, God’s power to beget is not a temporal but an eternal reality. His almightiness is not something he gains. It’s who he is. As the Father Almighty, he has eternally had the power to beget the Son and bring forth all things into existence through him.

According to Nicea, this is the very nature of God. The Father Almighty. The Father eternally begets the Son. This begetting is not by will or by act. It’s by nature. It’s who he is. An important illustration which you will see in the creed and I’m sure my brothers will talk about it later on is the illustration of the light and if you read Athanasius his writings are full of this illustration. He uses it again and this is where we see this phrase light from light. See how Athanasius is going to talk about the Son being light from light.

This is what Athanasius writes. For the saints have not said that the word was related to God as fire kindled from the heat of the sun which is common but out which is commonly put out again. So if a heat comes out of the sun it can be put out. And then he continues, “If it’s just a heat, it’s an external work and a creature of its author.

But the old preach of him as radiance, the saints preach of Christ as the radiance of the Father, thereby to signify his being from the essence, proper and indivisible, and his oneness with the Father. This also will secure his true unchangeableness and immutability. For how can these be his unless he be proper offspring of the Father’s essence. So to speak of the Son as the light of light means that this is something eternal. You cannot have light without the radiance.

To sum up Athanasius’s argument, denying the full deity of the Son necessarily denies the full deity of the Father. And to know God as the Father necessarily demo de demands the full deity of the Son. The Father can never exist as he is without the Son.

God’s very being includes eternal relation. Father beitting begetting the Son. In the very first few words in the creed as we confess the Father the deity of the Son is inescapable. And this is brilliant. Think of it. Even before going to the article that says we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ. Even before confessing this, just confessing that we believe in the Father almighty, it says the argument the Son is divine.

But speaking of the Father almighty does not only highlight the power the powerful god, it also highlights his goodness, his love. By beginning with this phrase, the Father Almighty, Nicea not only refuted Arianism in its denial of God’s immutability, but it also affirmed God’s omnipotent goodness and love.

Arius defended a transcendent but distant deity, a god who was powerful but not eternally overflowing with goodness and love. The creed proclaims instead that divine omnipotence is inseparable from divine fatherhood. You cannot talk about God’s power without remembering that he’s father.

For God to be father almighty means that his almighty power is not cold or impersonal but rather of eternal goodness and love. This fatherly goodness, power and love overflow in creation. Where the Father creates through the Son, it also overflows in salvation. Where the love of God, the love of the Father is revealed through the Son’s incarnation and redemptive work.

Because God is good. Because God the Father is love, we are saved. God did not need to create to love and to be loved. He’s eternally overflowing with his love to his son. He’s eternally love and good. If God only became father later, then his love had a beginning.

As Athanasius describes the Son, he highlights the goodness of the Father. Listen what he says again. But God the Son possesses true existence and is not composite who proceeds in his goodness from the Father as from a good fountain.

End quote. The Father therefore is not a distant deity but the living fountain of divinity eternally communicating his own life to the Son and through the Son and spirit gives existence to all creation. This is what it means when we say we believe in the Father almighty. This eternal fatherhood explains the love of God not only in creation but also in salvation.

The fatherhood of God shows the very heart of God from which salvation flows. He is the everlasting fountain of love and life. We do not believe in an angry father who doesn’t want to save and in a loving son who just want to save these people and he’s trying to get this salvation from this angry father.

The most famous Christian verse, John 3:16. For God the Father so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. It’s out of love of the Father that the Son was given to die for sinners.

God’s love as a father is the source of the atonement, not its result. For the Father to be the fountain of love and life is not foreign to him. Again, listen what Athanasius writes. Quote, “Life and wisdom are not foreign to the essence of the fountain, but are proper to it, nor were at any time without existence, but were always.” Is it not then irreligious to say, “Once the Son was not.” For it is all one with saying, “Once the fountain was dry, destitute of life and wisdom.”

But a fountain it would then cease to be. For what beggetth not from itself is not a fountain. And our Father is a fountain of goodness and love. That’s why he is the Father. Being an almighty Father, he works all things according to the counsel of his will. And as eternally loving Father, he has sent his only begotten Son that he may bring many sons to glory. And this takes me to the last phrase about God the Father in the creed. Maker of all things visible and invisible.

Maker of all things

If you read the Apostles’ Creed, it will say maker of heaven and earth. And if you read the Nicea Constant Constantinople creed, it will say maker of heaven and earth, things visible and invisible. But here in 325 which I’m staying with, it says maker of all things visible and invisible. Because the Father is eternally almighty, his power and love overflow in the act of creation. The creed having confessed the Father as the eternal source of life now turns to his outward work as maker of heaven and earth. What God is in himself from all eternity, the living fountain of love and life expressed in his eternal relationship with the Son is now revealed in time through the creation of all things. So the creation is not a necessity imposed on God but the free and loving expression of his almighty fatherhood.

And the creed moves on to confess God’s work of creation using this phrase maker of all things visible and invisible. The word maker highlights that God is the one who made all things. This confession stands in contrast to competing concepts of creation both ancient and modern.

Athanasius in his very famous work on the incarnation argues against many wrong views of creation. One of them is the what we call the Epicurean view of creation in which all things have come into being of themselves and in a chance fashion and Athanasius and the Nicenes they said no God makes make he God he made all things and it’s striking that it is very similar to modern atheistic existentialism which sees creation as accidental purposeless. And against this view of creation, the creed declares that the world exists within the loving purpose of its maker whose wisdom ordered all things for his glory. But the creed is not just answering Epicurian view of creation.

As it says, he’s maker of all things. It excludes nothing. This creedal assertion refu refutes what we call the platonic idea of creation that God has made the world out of matter previously existing and without beginning. Against such views the creed upholds to the biblical doctrine of creation. From the very first verse in Scripture we learn that God freely and sovereignly created the heavens and the earth. All things, not from pre-existing matter, but what theologians call ex nihilo out of nothing. And he created through his word and by his spirit. This biblical doctrine that the creed holds to you can find it in all Scripture, old testament, new testament.

And as I said, the creed in Nicea, the Nicene Creed expands what the apostolic creed says. Not just maker of heaven and earth, maker of all things visible and invisible. This change emphasizes the totality of God’s creative act. Nothing lies outside his sovereignty and power. All things whether material or spiritual visible to our eyes or invisible came to being by the will of the almighty Father through the Son and by the Spirit all things.

And for God to be the creator of all material things refutes the teaching of what we call Gnosticism which believe that the matter is evil. On the contrary, Athanasius and the creed teach that creation is good because it comes from the good father through his word.

Athanasius writes of this omnipotent goodness of God as foundational to the doctrine of creation. He says, quote, “For God is good, or rather is essentially the source of goodness, nor could one that is good be niggardly of anything, when grudging existing existence to none. He has made all things out of nothing by his own word, Jesus Christ our Lord.

This phrase also teaches that God is the creator of the unseen creation. All the angelic hosts, all souls, all spiritual powers, they are made by him. This phrase reminds us that God’s sovereignty extends over all things visible and invisible things. The Nicene Creed does not believe in dualistic view of existence or of creation.

God rules over the seen and the unseen realms and his authority and power extends over them all. It doesn’t leave any space for any dualistic view that raises any power to be rival to our Father. What a comfort thought. As they are writing this creed, they know that even their opponents, even evil powers that may be behind wrong teachings, they’re not rival to our Father.

Our Father is sovereign. He’s almighty. He’s the maker of heaven and earth, of all things. Everything apart from God is created and sustained by his will. This father created all things visible and invisible by and for his son.

Father before Creator

But what about Arianism? Does this statement has anything to do with Arianism? The statement of maker of all things visible and invisible. Well, Arianism denied such teaching of creation. For Arius the Son was a creature and thus part of the created order.

However, the creed intentionally affirmed the fatherhood of God before his work of creation. And this is very noticeable. The arrangement of the articles was intended. We believe in one God, the Father almighty before the creation. He’s the Father almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible. He is the Father who begets the Son before making anything. The Son is not part of this creation.

The Father is the Father of the Son. Before being maker of all things before he created anything, he’s eternally father. The eternal word and wisdom of God is with God from eternity. Without this generative nature of God, there could be neither word or wisdom and thus no creation at all.

Listen what Athanasius again says as he explains this idea. Quote, “But if there be not a son, how then say you that God is a creator? Since all things that come to be are through the word and in wisdom, and without this nothing can be, whereas you say he hath not, that in and through which he makes all things. For if the divine essence be not fruitful itself, but barren, as the hold, the Arian holds, as a light that lightens not, and a dry fountain, are they not ashamed to speak of his possessing framing energy?

Not only does the Arian theology present a contradictory doctrine of creation, but it also presents a cold and a distant deity. A god further removed from his creation even than the god of the deists. Such a God would have no communion with creation.

He would not have any concern for its redemption. If the Father is not the Father, if the Father does not beget the Son from eternity, we are talking about a cold god, distant who doesn’t care. In contrast, Athanasius teaches that creation is the overflowing expression of God’s love and goodness.

Speaking of the creation of man, Athanasius says out of former normal state of non-existence, men were called into being by the presence and loving kindness of the Word. This same divine love is displayed in redemption. When this creation was judged due to sin. When death reigned over men because of sin, God the Father in his great mercy sent his only begotten Son to save us.

If it were not worthy of God’s goodness that the things he had made should waste away, God would never leave men to waste away. He’s a father. The Father who made and sustain all things through his word is the same father who restores all things through the through his incarnate word.

So the confession says he’s the maker of all things visible and invisible. And this statement does not only proclaim the mighty power of God but also reveals his fatherly love. The love that creates, the love that sustains, and the love that redeems.

Conclusion

In the opening words of the Nicene Creed, the church confesses the majesty and beauty of our one true God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. In just few words, the very few articles of the creed, we confess our true Christian faith against all false views of God.

In these few words, the creed refutes Arianism, polytheism, gnosticism, deism, materialism, and many other isms. In these few words, we encounter God the Father, who is both transcendent in majesty, but near in love, who from eternity begets his Son, who through this son freely creates all things out of nothing, and who through the work of this son incarnate will bring many sons to glory.

This father is almighty. He’s eternally overflowing with love and goodness. He’s the fountain of life. He’s the Father of the only begotten Son whom he did not spare but gave him for us all. So I will invite you now to read with me again prayerfully the prayer that we begin with in Ephesians 3 seeing our Father the loving Father and seeing the Son who came and saved us and the one who is working in our lives by his spirit. Let’s read this prayer again.

For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us. To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. [Ephesians 3:14–21]