The Second Helvetic Confession
CHAPTER XI
Of Jesus Christ, True God and Man,
the Only Savior of
the World
CHRIST IS TRUE GOD. We further believe and teach that the
Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, was predestinated or foreordained from
eternity by the Father to be the Savior of the world. And we believe that he
was born, not only when he assumed flesh of the Virgin Mary, and not only
before the foundation of the world was laid, but by the Father before all
eternity in an inexpressible manner. For Isaiah said: “Who can tell his
generation?” (Ch. 53:8). And Micah says: “His origin is from of
old, from ancient days” (Micah 5:2). And John said in the Gospel: “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,”
etc. (Ch. 1:1). Therefore, with respect to his divinity the Son is coequal and
consubstantial with the Father; true God (Phil. 2:11), not only in name or by
adoption or by any merit, but in substance and nature, as the apostle John has
often said: “This is the true God and eternal life” (I John 5:20).
Paul also says: “He appointed the Son the heir of all things, through whom
also he created the world. He reflects the glory of God and bears the very
stamp of his nature, upholding all things by his word of power” (Heb. 1:2
f.). For in the Gospel the Lord himself said: “Father, glorify Thou me in
Thy own presence with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was made”
(John 17:5). And in another place in the Gospel it is written: “The Jews
sought all the more to kill him because he…called God his Father, making
himself equal with God” (John 5:18).
THE SECTS. We therefore abhor the impious doctrine of
Arius and the Arians against the Son of God, and especially the blasphemies of
the Spaniard, Michael Servetus, and all his followers, which Satan through them
has, as it were, dragged up out of hell and has most audaciously and impiously
spread abroad in the world.
CHRIST IS TRUE MAN, HAVING REAL FLESH. We also believe and
teach that the eternal Son of the eternal God was made the Son of man, from the
seed of Abraham and David, not from the coitus of a man, as the Ebionites said,
but was most chastely conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the ever virgin
Mary, as the evangelical history carefully explains to us (Matt., ch. 1). And
Paul says: “he took not on him the nature of angels, but of the seed of
Abraham.” Also the apostle John says that woever does not believe that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is not of God. Therefore, the flesh of
Christ was neither imaginary not brought from heaven, as Valentinus and Marcion
wrongly imagined.
A RATIONAL SOUL IN CHRIST. Moreover, our Lord Jesus Christ
did not have a soul bereft of sense and reason, as Apollinaris thought, nor
flesh without a soul, as Eunomius taught, but a soul with its reason, and flesh
with its senses, by which in the time of his passion he sustained real bodily
pain, as himself testified when he said: “My soul is very sorrowful, even
to death” (Matt. 26:38). And, “Now is my soul troubled” (John
12:27).
TWO NATURES IN CHRIST. We therefore acknowledge two
natures or substances, the divine and the human, in one and the same Jesus
Christ our Lord (Heb., ch. 2). And we say that these are bound and united with
one another in such a way that they are not absorbed, or confused, or mixed, but
are united or joined together in one person the properties of the natures being
unimpaired and permanent.
NOT TWO BUT ONE CHRIST. Thus we worship not two but one
Christ the Lord. We repeat: one true God and man. With respect to his divine
nature he is consubstantial with the Father, and with respect to the human
nature he is consubstantial with us men, and like us in all things, sin excepted
(Heb. 4:15).
THE SECTS. And indeed we detest the dogma of the
Nestorians who make two of one Christ and dissolve the unity of the Person.
Likewise we thoroughly execrate the madness of Eutyches and of the Monothelites
or Monophysites who destroy the property of the human nature.
THE DIVINE NATURE OF CHRIST IS NOT PASSIBLE, AND THE HUMAN
NATURE IS NOT EVERYWHERE. Therefore, we do not in any way teach that the divine
nature in Christ has suffered or that Christ according to his human nature is
still in this world and thus is everywhere. For neither do we think or teach
that the body of Christ ceased to be a true body after his glorification, or was
deified, and deified in such a way that it laid aside its properties as regards
body and soul, and changed entirely into a divine nature and began to be merely
one substance.
THE SECTS. Hence we by no means approve of or accept the
strained, confused and obscure subtleties of Schwenkfeldt and of similar
sophists with their self-contradictory arguments; neither are we
Schwenkfeldians.
OUR LORD TRULY SUFFERED. We believe, moreover, that our
Lord Jesus Christ truly suffered and died for us in the flesh, as Peter says (I
Peter 4:1). We abhor the most impious madness of the Jacobites and all the
Turks who execrate the suffering of the Lord. At the same time we do not deny
that the Lord of glory was crucified for us, according to Paul’s words (I Cor.
2:8).
IMPARTATION OF PROPERTIES. We piously and reverently
accept and use the impartation of properties which is derived from Scripture and
which has been used by all antiquity in explaining and reconciling apparently
contradictory passages.
CHRIST IS TRULY RISEN FROM THE DEAD. We believe and teach
that the same Jesus Christ our Lord, in his true flesh in which he was
crucified and died, rose again from the dead, and that not another flesh was
raised other than the one buried, or that a spirit was taken up instead of the
flesh, but that he retained his true body. Therefore, while his disciples
thought they saw the spirit of the Lord, he showed them his hands and feet which
were marked by the prints of the nails and wounds, and added: “See my
hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see, for a spirit has not
flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39).
CHRIST IS TRULY ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN. We believe that our
Lord Jesus Christ, in his same flesh, ascended above all visible heavens into
the highest heaven, that is, the dwelling-place of God and the blessed ones, at
the right hand of God the Father. Although it signifies an equal
participation in glory and majesty, it is also taken to be a certain place
about which the Lord, speaking in the Gospel, says: “I go to prepare a
place for you” (John 14:2). The apostle Peter also says: “Heaven
must receive Christ until the time of restoring all things” (Acts 3:21).
And from heaven the same Christ will return in judgment, when wickedness will
then be at its greatest in the world and when the Antichrist, having corrupted
true religion, will fill up all things with superstition and impiety and will
cruelly lay waste the Church with bloodshed and flames (Dan., ch. 11). But
Christ will come again to claim his own, and by his coming to destroy the
Antichrist, and to judge the living and the dead (Acts 17:31). For the dead
will rise again (I Thess. 4:14 ff.), and those who on that day (which is
unknown to all creatures [Mark 13:32]) will be alive will be changed “in
the twinkling of an eye,” and all the faithful will be caught up to meet
Christ in the air, so that then they may enter with him into the blessed
dwelling-places to live forever (I Cor. 15:51 f.). But the unbelievers and
ungodly will descend with the devils into hell to burn forever and never to be
redeemed from torments (Matt. 25:46).
THE SECTS. We therefore condemn all who deny a real
resurrection of the flesh (II Tim. 2:18), or who with John of Jerusalem,
against whom Jerome wrote, do not have a correct view of the glorification of
bodies. We also condemn those who thought that the devil and all the ungodly
would at some time be saved, and that there would be an end to punishments. For
the Lord has plainly declared: “Their fire is not quenched, and their
worm does not die” (Mark 9:44). We further condemn Jewish dreams that
there will be a golden age on earth before the Day of Judgment, and that the
pious, having subdued all their godless enemies, will possess all the kingdoms
of the earth. For evangelical truth in Matt., chs. 24 and 25, and Luke, ch.
18, and apostolic teaching in II Thess., ch. 2, and II Tim., chs. 3 and
4, present something quite different.
THE FRUIT OF CHRIST’S DEATH AND RESURRECTION. Further by
his passion and death and everything which he did and endured for our sake by
his coming in the flesh, our Lord reconciled all the faithful to the heavenly
Father, made expiation for sins, disarmed death, overcame damnation and hell,
and by his resurrection from the dead brought again and restored life and
immortality. For he is our righteousness, life and resurrection, in a word, the
fulness and perfection of all the faithful, salvation and all sufficiency. For
the apostle says: “In him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell,”
and, “You have come to fulness of life in him” (Col., chs. 1 and 2).
JESUS CHRIST IS THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WORLD, AND THE TRUE
AWAITED MESSIAH. For we teach and believe that this Jesus Christ our Lord is
the unique and eternal Savior of the human race, and thus of the whole world, in
whom by faith are saved all who before the law, under the law, and under the
Gospel were saved, and however many will be saved at the end of the world. For
the Lord himself says in the Gospel: “He who does not enter the sheepfold
by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a
robber….I am the door of the sheep” (John 10:1 and 7). And also in
another place in the same Gospel he says: “Abraham saw my day and was glad”
(ch. 7:56). The apostle Peter also says: “There is salvation in no one
else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must
be saved.” We therefore believe that we will be saved through the grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ, as our fathers were (Acts 4:12; 10:43; 15:11). For Paul
also says: “All our fathers ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the
same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock which followed
them, and the Rock was Christ” (I Cor. 10:3 f.). And thus we read that
John says: “Christ was the Lamb which was slain from the foundation of the
world” (Rev. 14:8), and John the Baptist testified that Christ is that “Lamb
of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Wherefore, we
quite openly profess and preach that Jesus Christ is the sole Redeemer and
Savior of the world, the King and High Priest, the true and awaited Messiah,
that holy and blessed one whom all the types of the law and predictions of the
prophets prefigured and promised; and that God appointed him beforehand and sent
him to us, so that we are not now to look for any other. Now there only remains
for all of us to give all glory to Christ, believe in him, rest in him alone,
despising and rejecting all other aids in life. For however many seek salvation
in any other than in Christ alone, have fallen from the grace of God and have
rendered Christ null and void for themselves (Gal. 5:4).
THE CREEDS OF FOUR COUNCILS RECEIVED. And, to say many
things with a few words, with a sincere heart we believe, and freely confess
with open mouth, whatever things are defined from the Holy Scriptures concerning
the mystery of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and are summed up in
the Creeds and decrees of the first four most excellent synods convened at
Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon — together with the Creed of
blessed Athanasius [The so-called Athanasian Creed was not written by Athanasius
but dates from the ninth century. It is also called the "Quicunque"
from the opening word of the Latin text.], and all similar symbols; and we
condemn everything contrary to these.
THE SECTS. And in this way we retain the Christian,
orthodox and catholic faith whole and unimpaired; knowing that nothing is
contained in the aforesaid symbols which is not agreeable to the Word of God,
and does not altogether make for a sincere exposition of the faith.
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