The Church and Truth BACCALAUREATE SERVICE
NIGERIAN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, OGBOMOSO
28 May 2000The President, Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso, Prof. Y.A. Obaje, The Deptuy Presitdent, Members of the Board of Governors, Faculty and Staff members, the Graduants and Students, distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.
A launching is a means devised by Nigerians to propel a project to rapid success. Your graduation is a kind of a launching for the Church and the nation.
Normally at a launching big men make big contributions to a project. At this launching the contributions are not money but men. You are making a donation of yourselves for the Church's multifarious service to Nigeria. How much is your donation worth? It cannot be measured in financial terms. All we can point to is the general principle is that the greatest asset of any business or other kind of organization is not its buildings, not its equipment, not its investments and financial portfolio, but its personnel.
Good personnel! Your worth includes your youth, good health and energy. It includes the talents and expertise you learned from your parents, friends, teachers and by yourself. It includes the training you received in this seminary. And above all it includes your faith in God and good character, with the ability of leadership in your family and in your church.
Many of you will be pastors in villages where there are few Christians. You will be challenged to minister to non-Christians, to dialogue with them in their own language and at their level of understanding, to help them in their needs, and, as God provides the opportunity, to lead them to the Christian Faith. The work is difficult, with deprivation of many amenities, and often discouraging. I know so many pastors who want to run out of the villages and go to a more flourishing setting. Yet primary evangelization is the only job Jesus gave the Church: "Go out and preach to all nations" (Mt 28:19). "Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel" (1 Cor 9:16). [The hireling runs away... Return to Kaduna... Mission is, from the human point of view, working hard with the greatest efficiency, and from the divine point of view, total abandonment to Providence.]
Many of you will be pastors of big flourishing churches. There you face the special problems of modern life, how to guide the family, the youth, professionals in living their faith in a technical, secular society. They are exposed to an onslaught of temptations from everything in the world: "disordered bodily desires" to indulge in drugs, promiscuity etc., "disordered desires of the eyes" to grasp at titles, recognition and public office to magnify their own ego, and "pride in possession" to get rich quick by fraudulent means (cf. 1 John 2:16).
Those who minister to people in such a setting often find that their loyal members take up so much of their time that they cut yourselves off completely from non-Christians and have no time for evangelical outreach. Of course, one person cannot do everything, and you have committees and voluntary assistants to accomplish the heavy and diversified work of a parish.
Some of you will be called to the special ministry of teaching, even at this very seminary. Time was, in the 1970s, when seminary or university teaching was a coveted job. The successful Nigerian was the one who went overseas, got a doctorate and came back to an academic post. Pastors could not be tied down to their parishes when they found a chance to go out for further studies. That is no more. Illiterate business men pity and even mock their academic brothers and offer to help support their children. A pastor of a city parish does better than a university professor. He does not even have to touch his salary or buy food, since all that he needs is brought up in thanksgivings every Sunday. And the really successful pastor is the one who is a prophet and runs a miracle centre. For him, "the earth is the pastor's and the fullness thereof".
So now it is a real sacrifice to bury yourself in books and go to teach in a seminary where you have no adulating flock to support you, but only indigent students. It is a very special and important vocation because, as I will explain, good and sound teaching is going to make the difference for the Church in Nigeria.
In spite of the discouraging situation of tertiary education in Nigeria, it is amazing how this seminary keeps up its standards and is so highly rated by the staff of the U.I. Department of Religious Studies and by the Faculty Deans and other officers who have had anything to do with it. I know that, before affiliation, your original plan was to get direct accreditation from N.U.C. In the context of your projected university, I hope that plan will finally be realized. This seminary would become the theological faculty of the university. And your excellent hospital and dental centre would become the nucleus of a medical school. I am convinced that well run church schools and universities will be the way out of our present educational mess.
Such a university will require many well trained and committed people. They will be specialized in many areas, but one thing they should have in common is a good understanding of their Christian Faith. Many people are being led astray by hand-clapping preachers of the gospel of prosperity. Many pastors of main-line and aladura churches see their members running to the new pentecostal preachers and think that the best way to stem the tide is to beat them at their own game: to sing, clap and shout louder, to expose and expel more demons, to claim more miracles. This may have a short term effect, but churches that build only on emotions and only on the delivery of material well-being are building on sand. The economy and the politics of the country can shift and such churches will shift with it.
The ultimate battleground for the solidity of the Church and its appeal to non-Christians is in the truth it proclaims. "The truth will set you free" (John 8:32). We can never win if we do not have sound teaching. That means non only knowing the Bible well, but also knowing some of the important landmarks of Christian thinking. The first five centuries of the Church saw many controversies over the Trinity and who Jesus is. These resulted in several ecumenical councils which, under the title of "we and the Holy Spirit" (Acts 15:28), issued credal statements to settle the controversies. There is a rich literature of the Fathers of the Church which can be instructive for all Christians, since they wrote before the big splits between East and West, and Catholics and Protestants.
One such text I would like to read to conclude this talk is the "Quicumque" or Athanasian Creed. Though long attributed to St. Athanasius, it was written by an unknown Western author after Chalcedon and no later than the early 6th century, when Caesarius of Arles used it. It became very popular in the Western and Eastern churches because it is such a good summary of orthodox teaching.
THE ANTHANASIAN CREED Whoever wishes to be saved, needs above all to hold the catholic faith; unless each one preserves this whole and inviolate, he will without a doubt perish in eternity.
But the catholic faith is this, that we venerate one God in the Trinity, and the Trinity in oneness; For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit; but the divine nature of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one, their glory is equal, their majesty is coeternal. Of such a nature as the Father is, so is the Son, so also is the Holy Spirit.
The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, and the Holy Spirit is uncreated; the Father is immense, the Son is immense, and the Holy Spirit is immense; the Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, and the Holy Spirit is eternal: and nevertheless there are not three eternals, but one eternal; just as there are not three uncreated beings, nor three infinite beings, but one uncreated, and one infinite.
Similarly the Father is omnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, and the Holy Spirit is omnipotent; and yet there are not three omnipotents, but one omnipotent.
Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and nevertheless there are not three gods, but there is one God; so the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is Lord: and yet there are not three lords, but there is one Lord; because just as we are compelled by Christian truth to confess singly each one person as God and Lord, so we are forbidden by the catholic religion to say that there are three Gods or Lords.
The Father was not made nor created nor begotten by anyone. The Son is from the Father alone, not made nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made nor created nor begotten, but proceeding.
There is therefore one Father not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits; and in this Trinity there is nothing first or later, nothing greater or less, but all three persons are coeternal and coequal with one another, so that in every respect, as has already been said above, both unity in Trinity, and Trinity in unity must be venerated. Therefore let him who wishes to be saved, think thus concerning the Trinity.
But it is necessary for eternal salvation that he faithfully believe also the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accordingly, it is the right faith that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man. He is God begotten of the substance of the Father before time, and he is man born of the substance of his mother in time: perfect God, perfect man, consisting of a rational soul and a human body, equal to the Father according to his Godhead, less than the Father according to humanity.
Although he is God and man, yet he is not two, but he is one Christ; one, however, not by the conversion of the Divinity into a human body, but by the assumption of humanity in the Godhead; one absolutely not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person. For just as the rational soul and body are one man, so God and man are one Christ.
He suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, on the third day arose again from the dead, ascended to heaven, sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty; thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead; at his coming all men have to arise again with their bodies and will render an account of their own deeds: and those who have done good, will go into life everlasting, but those who have done evil, into eternal fire.
This is the Catholic faith; unless every one believes this faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.
May the Lord help us to understand our Faith and preach it to others.