The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Rod Dreher wrote “to order the world rightly as Christians requires regarding all things as pointing to Christ”
Christ is the One in Whom in all things consist and humanity is not the measure of all things. If a defining characteristic of the modern world is disorder then the most fundamental act of resistance is to discover and life according to the deep, divine order of the heavens and the earth.
In this series we want to look at the big model of the universe that the Bible and Christian history provides.
It is a mind and heart expanding vision of reality.
It is not confined to the limits of our bodily senses - but tries to embrace levels fo reality that are not normally accessible or tangible to our exiled life on earth.
We live on this side of the cosmic curtain - and therefore the highest and greatest dimensions of reality are hidden to us… yet these dimensions exist and are the most fundamental framework for the whole of the heavens and the earth.
Throughout this series we want to pick away at all the threads of reality to see how they all join together - how they all find common meaning and reason in the great divine logic - the One who is the Logos, the LORD Jesus Christ - the greatest that both heaven and earth has to offer.
Colossians 1:15-23
The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Episode 98 - The Word that Made Christian History: Homoousios at Nicaea 325 AD
The 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea marks a watershed moment in Christian history that still shapes how believers understand God today. This episode tackles the fascinating philosophical and theological background of the Council's most crucial contribution: the declaration that Jesus Christ is "homoousios" (of the same substance) with God the Father.
Far from being a straightforward affirmation, this Greek philosophical term arrived at Nicaea with complex baggage. We unpack why many orthodox Christians were initially hesitant to adopt language that had previously been associated with both Gnostic teachings about spiritual emanations and Sabellian beliefs that Father, Son and Spirit were merely different modes of a single divine person.
The conversation travels from Plato and Aristotle's philosophical concepts of "being" through Philo of Alexandria's attempts to express biblical truths in Greek philosophical language, revealing how these intellectual currents created the theological climate that produced both the Arian controversy and its Nicene solution. The word "homoousios" could mean either "the exact same thing" or "the same kind of thing" – a distinction with profound implications for Trinitarian theology.
Through explanations of these complex philosophical ideas, we demonstrate why getting the language right about God matters so deeply. The Nicene Creed didn't invent new doctrine but provided precise language that has become Christianity's gold standard for orthodox belief, regardless of denomination or tradition.
Whether you're fascinated by church history, theological development, or simply want to understand one of Christianity's most fundamental doctrines better, this episode offers valuable insights into how ancient debates continue to shape Christian faith and practice today. Join us as we examine the language that helped define who Christians believe Jesus is in relation to God the Father.
The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore
Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ Centre, cosmic Civilisation. And now we're going to turn our attention to the Council of Nicaea from 325 AD, because, of course, it's the 1700th anniversary of this amazingly important moment in global church history and it was a council that happened at this place. Well, nowadays it isn't called Nicaea, it's Iznik and the Lake Iznik, because it's on a lake, which meant that the weather's more predictable and it was a more pleasant location for the Emperor Constantine to call this global council of Christians from all over the world, all the continents and this converging together, to summarise as best as they were able, the scriptural teaching about the Trinity. The scriptural teaching about the Trinity, particularly in reference to God the Son, in response to the particular debates that had arisen through a guy called Arius. Now, what we want to do it's going to take us some time, we're going to do several episodes on this to try and pick away at the language that's used and to also understand what the significance of that was, what people understood by the language at the time, how that's come to be understood, understood by the language at the time, how that's come to be understood, some of the complexities of it and the usefulness of this creed and how it's ended up becoming the standard for global Christianity. Really, there's all kinds of diversity of church all around the world, but really the gold standard for whether you truly are a Christian church or not is whether people can confess this creed. The Nicene Creed, all the other ecumenical councils, none of them occupy this level of universal acceptance.
Speaker 1:So how is it that this creed that is formulated at Nicaea, how did it come to have that level of buy-in? Did it have that level of buy-in at the time it? How has it come to to occupy this status? And that, if we are desiring to think accurately about the living god, father, son and holy spirit, is it, is it OK to only rely, to rely just completely on this language of Nicaea, or is it that we? It's a useful conceptual framework, but it isn't necessarily the only kind of way that we should talk about the Trinity. Well, look, we're running ahead of ourselves a little bit here.
Speaker 1:Let's actually begin with the word that's at the center of the Nicene Creed, because the the creed says that the son is homoousios with the, with the father of the same being, of the same being, of the same substance, of one substance, with the father. That's often how we might confess it on a sunday, if we do stand to confess the nicene creed usually people use the apostles creed but if you do use the nicene creed, or when you use it, because sometimes in the year you're required to use it in many churches we would say that the Son is of the same substance as the Father, and it was that phrase that is right at the heart of the controversy that Nicus is seeking to solve, and the word homo, meaning same usios being the same being. So the son is the same being as the father. Now we have become so acclimatized to just saying that, and I remember listening to theologians who just assert oh, the sun is homoousius. That is totally obvious, totally straightforward, and they almost assume that everyone previous to the Council of Nicaea really probably thought this and spoke like this. But that isn't true. And it is a genuine innovation to say this, to believe that the Father, son and Spirit have always existed, that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, the Son is eternally breathed out by the Father, that they are all divine, truly divine, and whatever it means to be God, they are all equally that. Yeah, that is easy to show that people previously believed that and that people in the Scriptures believed that, and especially Moses. Going right back to Moses, that there are these three, that are all the Lord. Yeah, all that's possible.
Speaker 1:But this particular way of expressing it, of Greek philosophical terminology, to articulate biblical teachings and then to kind of impose that upon global Christianity is not totally straightforward and we just need to be careful that we can understand what it is. That was achieved at Nicaea. So the Emperor Constantine effectively imposes this solution of this word because there was a lot of hesitation and worry about using this word. Why? Why? Because we today would go well, it's obviously the right word. Any idiot can tell that. Nah, yeah, you see again, that is that problem of not understanding the complexities of that word and its historical background.
Speaker 1:There's a quotation I have here from millard erickson who says there was some suspicion of the word homoousios on the part of Orthodox Christians because it had been used earlier by Gnostics and Manichaeans. So that is something we're going to have to get to grips with, the fact that this word is not, when you look back at the history of the usage of this word before Nicaea, one. It's not a particularly common word, certainly not in Christian theology and worship, and when it is used in wider writings, pagan writings or even by heretics and things, it isn't obviously a helpful word Like, let's just take, I'll start with this and then we'll bring PJ in from the Global Church History Project, like, if you, let's just think of this Homo Ossiop the same being, the same nature, the same substance. Now, there's two obvious meanings that that could have. You're saying it's the same individual thing. They are two things, like trying to say, like, for example, I might say well, let me first of all just flag up to this. There's meaning it's the exact same thing. So homoousios might mean it's the exact same thing, or it means it can mean that some two things or more are the same kind of thing. So is it? Are we saying that they are the same kind of thing or the exact same thing?
Speaker 1:So, for example, we're using a microphone to record this podcast now and I could say PJ and I, the microphone we're using is Homoousios. Now, in that sense, we're saying we're using literally the exact same microphone. We have one microphone that both of us are using. So you know, pj uses it when he's talking, I use it when I'm talking, but it's just one single microphone. So the microphone we're using it's the exact same microphone, but he has a microphone in his own study and it's the same kind of microphone, it's the same. It may not be the same model of microphone, but let's say it is for same kind of microphone, it's the same. It may not be the same model of microphone, but let's say it is. For the purposes of this we could say it's the same model of microphone.
Speaker 1:Now, in one sense, both of those usages could be homoousios the same thing. Is it the same thing as in the exact same thing, or is it the same kind of thing? And that's relevant because the usage of homoousios uh, there's background to that and it we know. We find it going back to Aristotle, and then from Aristotle and Plato we get to someone like Philo and then also Gnostics. So let's ask PJ to help us understand something of, first of all, going right back to, say, aristotle or Plato and these characters. How is that helpful? What can we learn there to help us on this journey, to get to understand why we end up confessing something like this word?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Plato and Aristotle kind of have these ideas that the language we speak inherently represents. So it comes from the mind and they believe the mind has, like the most, reality in it and therefore you can think about language and that will tell you more truth than evidence around you will. So, because the word usia and that being, it's just a participle of to be, it's just so the way we use these words and, like you know, even the way the bible you know, like when someone confesses jesus is the messiah, that is expressing identity. When we thought about these two, you know you can have an identical. So is there being jesus is being the mess? It's not that there's a category of Messiah and he's one, it just means he is the one.
Speaker 1:There's only one Messiah, and he's it. Yeah, and rather than well, you could say he is a Jew yeah. There's many Jews, and he is one of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there is in a sense. So. The bible, though, doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about the different definitions of the word to be, because it's not important, as opposed to like, actually, who jesus is. But then, like in greek philosophy, it is. So when their people would try and syncretize Judaism and Christianity to Greek paganism, then they would try and make God all about stress over these two definitions of the word to be, whereas the actual God of the Bible doesn't seem to care all that much. And when he says it to Moses, he's just like oh, I am the God of Abraham, isaac and Israel, and he just says that, and he doesn't say look, I am the god of abram, isaac and israel, and he just says that and he doesn't say, and by am I mean he just expects roughly moses gets what the word am yeah, that's true, it's a very straightforward conversation, whereas we can think of, like in modern times, where jordan peterson is asked what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1:oh, it depends what you mean by the word is, and then he gets incredibly stressed about the word is. And greeks would do that then, because they'd be oh it depends what you mean by the word is yeah, whereas um moses is just like yeah. No, I know what you mean, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so even usia appears in the bible, like if someone gives from what he owns. Typically in the bible it says he gave of his substance is yes yeah.
Speaker 2:So even that is like something you possess, but it's not identical with you and all of that. So all these different senses exist in the Bible, but the Bible doesn't worry about it, because it probably expects that you'll pick up from context what is being meant and that all these things aren't referring to the same thing. But anyway, these Greek philosophers, they aren't so chilled about it, and partly it's because they haven't had this revelation that Moses had, and so they're just trying to figure out the truth all on their own. But then Socrates says demons tell him stuff. So then that's worrying and early church fathers notice this and go literally.
Speaker 1:He's admitting to getting stuff off demons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that is always worrying. So socrates did receive a revelation, but not necessarily from goodly spirits, but uh, so anyway, that that's like where the categories are the real thing, and for plato it's that categories are the most important thing, they're the only thing that's real, and all instances are just shadows of categories.
Speaker 1:And then aristotle has it the other way around and they're just debating over what the word to be means so it's really, is the idea of something the most important thing, or is just an actual example of something the most important thing? And then one of them's like oh, it's the idea of something's more important. And then the other one's like, oh, it's the idea of something's more important. And then the other one's like no, like the only thing that you let's start with the real examples of things. And so it's like that, um, and so they're like theorizing about that. But what happens? So Philo? Because he then ends up using Greek language. So how would Philo end up affecting this Homoousios language?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he tries to describe the biblical creation story in language that Greek pagans would understand, so we can evangelize to them, and he does successfully evangelize quite a lot of people, and he and his family are made citizens by Caesar. And then we also think there's other people who are related to Philo that we see in the Gospels and so on, that have come to believe through his preaching. So he's this amazing preacher we do love.
Speaker 1:Philo, 30 BC to 50 AD guy.
Speaker 2:He's incredible. So, yeah, we do love him, and just like we love Augustine, but recognise some of his weaknesses, in that he tries to adopt the language of the pagans around him so he can express Christians' truths to them. But perhaps sometimes pagan language isn't always ideal and it can cause these problems. So Philo tries to describe the creation story and he tries to describe why. So he says, the father is so pure he can't interact with creation. So we've, in a previous episode, thought about how ancient Jews and Christians seemed to believe that the world always existed but was like a chaotic mess of mixed up substances.
Speaker 2:And so Philo believes that, and he believes that idea of mess and confusion and things not being where they're supposed to be, that is sin, and the Father can't stand sin and can't interact with it. And jesus can go into sin and mess and fix it. But then they say, like even he, because he does keep himself pure from so even he then has to use angels which are made of his substance. And so he uses this sort of phrase, that of the same substance, and I think he used a different word for substance, but from the context it's clear he's meaning the same thing he makes angels of his own. What he is to use them as gloves. He uses I think I think he used the analogy, or maybe it's a commentary on Philo that does but basically as gloves, so he doesn't get himself dirty going into the mess to save the world from the mess it's gotten into, and that's what creation is so angels are the kind of gloves by which he's able to interact with physical things.
Speaker 1:But he says that the angels are of the divine substance. Yeah, so he's trying to say the angels are kind of an extension of God's activity and his agency.
Speaker 1:They're not divine persons in the way that the Father is with his logos and spirit, but they are divine, and Philo does call them divine they are gods, well even the scriptures, like we use that language, yeah, of these angelic beings, so philo's like, yeah, they are, so they have a divine substance to them, so they, so he would. He could say that they are homoousios of the same substance.
Speaker 2:And he has an idea which becomes quite influential and maybe he doesn't invent it because there may be a biblical basis for it, but he certainly takes it in a platonic direction that the angels are given charge over certain categories and things. So we see in Revelation that there's one angel that's given charge over all fire and he lives in the sun, and so God is obviously in charge of all fire and everything. So this is something about God he's given to an angel, but this angel only has one thing, so it kind of has it as if like he delegates, as if, like the father delegates all authority through the son, but then the son kind of delegates this out to all these angels.
Speaker 1:So he's like obviously he is the divine emperor and he has all authority over everything. But then he'll say to this like archangel, you administer like fire under my authority. And then here's someone else who can, another one can. So it's delegating out all his authority through angelic intermediaries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so the difference between like a God, like an angel, and the God. So he does refer to the father, son and spirit as all the God, and then the son is like second God, and you know all of that the difference between them. Jesus has all the fullness of the day in him, whereas this archangel that has fire has just like the fire power, a piece of the divinity?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Jesus has all the fullness of the divinity. The angels have fragments of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that becomes a very influential idea, not without its problems, because Gnosticism seems to use a lot of the same language, right so Gnosticism is a development.
Speaker 1:You get it really even in the second century, don't you? Yeah, I mean, I've heard people trace it back to the first century, but we definitely have got full-blown Gnosticism going on in the second century. Why is that relevant? Because they have a complicated view of cosmology and that is relevant to this, isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 2:so in philo's creation story we see it's all about jesus. So he's managed to because he loves jesus. He's always talking about jesus and how he saves people, and so we usually call him, you know, second god, the word and the angel of the divine high priest, the great angel, this kind of thing yeah yeah, so he loves all those terms um biblical terms yeah for the second person, yeah, so he, yeah, he loves jesus, so he tells a creation story like it's him saving people and everything.
Speaker 2:So in his view creation's a good thing because it was made good, because Jesus saves it. So he quite likes creation. But Gnostics want to move and that's because Philo is really a believer but he's having to use pagan language to try and evangelize, and successfully evangelizes loads of people. So that's his kind of background and that's what he's trying to do. So he stays within, loving Jesus and telling the gospel, even as he's talking about everything like creation, everything. But Gnostics then take this idea and their basis. Their heart is in Greek paganism. But then they're enthralled by the way Philo's described creation in a much more coherent way than Plato and everything did. So they love that cosmology, but then their heart is in Greek paganism. So they do have to find a much more complicated. With Philo it's quite easy. It's like you've got the three persons that are totally good and they've got to save this world, so then they send jesus and then he creates the angels they you know, and it all makes sense. It all is a linear story. But then for them it's like they get the idea god's got to, god's got all this fullness in him and he can break off fullness into, like you know, little bits that are like divine, but then only a bit of the divine, and and they often like the imagery of light and everything, as does Philo, because like light is like one thing that's full, and then you can break it off into the different colors, but then you can't just get to white light which has got all the fullness in it just from red. You couldn't put loads of red together and get while you know, I mean it is totally broken off, but like all the fullness is in it originally, and that sort of idea they. So they quite like their language of light. Philo liked it for good reasons, they probably like it for wrong reasons and they like all that.
Speaker 2:So they talk about aeons because they think the god, that all the instantiated stuff like materiality, the world around us, is all. I think for Plato it's more of a distraction than being evil, whereas they have it as evil, because if you're trying to found a religion, you need a good v evil story, you need clear guidelines, and so if it's not good, it's got to be evil. That's what they go with, the world's evil. And as we thought last time as well, when we were talking about Gnosticism in the last episode. It's because they hate Jesus and Jesus became part of the world. And then they're like, well, you know, because they hate Jesus, even though they say they love jesus, they actually hate jesus. So then they say the world is evil, so they can reject the real jesus. So that goes on.
Speaker 2:So then they have god create aeons. They have to come a different word, because angels are the messengers of the creator of the world. But they have to say the creator of the world is evil and is not the real god. So then they say say angels are sevens of that. And then they come up with another word, aeons, because the Bible does talk about that.
Speaker 2:Aeon means world and the Bible does talk about, you know, before all worlds, before all ages. You know you have, and he created all the worlds and all of that language. So then there's another word for something that seems quite important and intrinsic to the universe, that is, an angel that's created like right at the beginning or before the beginning maybe. And so they use that and they go with Aeon then. So then they think angels are created by the god of this world because clearly they are associated with saving this world and intervening in material matters and things. So they say angels are the evil ones and something to them, archons, because also archon, you know, michael, is called the great archon in daniel. So then they associate that with the world, the demiurge, the one who made the universe, and then aeon. They have with all their goodly ones in their mind. Goodly, which means immaterial, are just categories which, they said, make them more real let me just like clarify all of this, just so, as we so.
Speaker 1:The idea, then, is that there's, um, the the gnostics have the idea that there are two sort of mighty gods. One is the source of material things, which obviously are bad, and then there's the slight, supreme God, who's spiritual, the physical God, the one who's into material things, produces angels to rule over physical things, and they're like angels are bad. And then there's the supreme, spiritual God, and so he has an equivalent of angels, and they're called aeons, and so he has an equivalent of angels, and they're called aeons, and all Gnostics are trying to kind of draw on biblical language.
Speaker 1:And then these aeons, these spiritual angels you know the goodly one that they have, oh yeah, the spiritual ones, aeons. And then they have names like peace, righteousness, love, goodness, because the idea is that that spiritual God has embodied aspects of his divinity into the aeons. So, under this Gnostic idea, physical versus spiritual, that's the kind of basic division and that's evil physical, good spiritual. And then there are two gods a god associated with the evil, physical, and then there's a good god associated with the spiritual, and then the good god has aeons, and and they and, and then there's the evil god has angels.
Speaker 1:Now, the relevance of this is that the gnostics would say, ah, now this good god, who's into the spiritual stuff, as he has these aeons that are created out of him, formed out of him, and, like rpc, hansen, a famous historian of early church history, says, like Hippolytus, one of the church leaders quotes Gnostics as using the word homoousios. So the Gnostics would say, ah, these aeons, like beings that are created out of the spiritual God, are homoousios. They have the same substance as god. Is that fair?
Speaker 2:yeah, and so they use it in two ways. When, if you describe like, as you say, hope and peace, if they're described as homoousios, it describes equality. But when they say they're homoousios with the monad, then the one that has the fullness is obviously greater. And so, and of those meanings, one that implies equality and one that implies great inequality, are both important for later usage of the word in more Christian circles.
Speaker 1:And so there's that idea that they are made of the same kind of stuff. So if we remember the two original meanings, homoousios could mean the exact same thing or it can mean the same kind of thing. So the Gnostics would say all the aeons are homoousios with each other, they're made of the same sort of stuff. But they may not have said that they are of the same stuff as the, like monad, the supreme god, god, but they are with each other. But the point being is that that word homoousios was a word that was used and people used it. But gnostics used it to describe the way that all the aeons share the same basic, they're of the same kind. But I want to just deal with sibilianism, because that's the other use.
Speaker 1:Isn't it like if the, if there is a use of homoousios that's got history, and in one this we've looked at one way in which it means the same kind of thing, and gnostics use that to describe the way that aeons or angel beings are all of the same kind of divinity, and so that makes the word seem bad. Because if you say, oh, I think I'm going to use the word homoousios in relation to Jesus, you can see why people are like whoa, hang on. That word is the sort of word Gnostics use, so it's got a suspicion to it. But if we use it the other way, they might use homoousis to mean the exact same thing. Remember so and now, in that this Sabalianism was tell us about that, and that's the idea that the father and the son are actually the exact same thing, if God is synonymous with the father in the son are actually the exact same thing, if God is synonymous with the father in some biblical context, then you should also be able to say Jesus is the father.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's how they kind of go about it, or you know, they have different ways of arguing and everything, but I think that makes sense.
Speaker 1:So for them, they go yeah, if you say, do you believe in the father, son and spirit, they go oh, yeah, it was first the Father, then that God becomes the Son and then that God becomes the Spirit, kind of thing. So they're all the same, they are all God, because they're all the exact same thing. So in a way the Sibelians would go if you said to them do you believe that the Son is homoousios with the father? They'd be like oh, totally, yeah, absolutely. They would totally like that phrase because for them they're just saying the son is the father and the and and is the spirit. They are absolutely the same thing.
Speaker 1:So in for the Salians, there's no problem at all in the divinity of the sun, it. But the problem is, is a dislike, believing that the sun and the spirit are in some ways different. Yeah, and we're going to have to come to that in a future episode to emphasize the difference, why it's? It's not only important to assert the sameness, but you must also and this is what the nicene creed does assert the difference between the father, son and spirit. Because if that, what, what, how, we, what language do we have to say that? So the sabalians are like yeah, we like homoceon, because the father is the son, is the the spirit. They are all the exact same thing. Now, that was no good, that had to be condemned and that had been condemned. No, that's not correct. They are not the identical same thing. They're the same kind of thing. But how does that take us to this Paul of Somersota, and then to Arius.
Speaker 2:One very important thing to note is he's the teacher of a guy called St Lucian the Martyr, who then is the teacher of Arius.
Speaker 1:So Paul of Somersota is the grandfather, spiritually speaking or theologically speaking, of Arius, and that's important because Paul of Somerset gets condemned by well, it's called the Council of Antioch, but there seems to be a number of councils of Antioch that run from 264 to 269 over a five-year period, and for the Council of Antioch, in 268, they condemn the use of the word of homoousios because it feels ossebalian.
Speaker 2:The thing is, people who try and write polemics at the time against paulism, um, either try and defend the divinity of the sun, which only makes sense if he's using the. You know, it only makes sense if homoousius in some way means the sun isn't divine, which makes sense in that gnostic way. But other people do, as you say, they try and use the same polemics they use against sabalianism, against paulism, which means they clearly seem to think that so, yeah, yeah. So it's quite hard to make sense of exactly what he's teaching, in the sense because people because we only know about it because of people's reaction to Paul and people have these two totally opposite reactions where they're like saying, but both of them say he's using homoousius the wrong way, or that, like at that time no one had ever used it the right way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he might be saying that the son, that jesus, is like a, an emanation, so we use he might be using the gnostic language, or it could be that he's saying something more like there is only one, like that God, the Father, god the Son and God the Spirit are all the exact same thing homoousios, like that, and that what Jesus is is kind of adopted by the one God. And so there's this guy who follows him called Lucian, and then Lucian gives right to Urius and then when we arrive with Urius, he has this idea that there is this like the father is really God, and then Jesus is like an emanation, yeah, like he is like an. So in one sense, arius might have used the word homoousios, certainly in relation that he's got the same substance as the other aeons, but Arius would have struggled to say that the son has the same, is homoousios with the father. And the difficulty is why? Why use a word? Because that's what the purpose of this episode has been is to show that people did use the word homoousios. Gnostics used it in relation to the aeons all being of the same being.
Speaker 1:Unitarian modalists might have used it saying that the Father, the Son and the Spirit are homoousios, meaning they're all the exact same thing, that the Father, son and Spirit are the exact same thing. There's just one person who is God and the Father, son and Spirit are the exact same thing homoousios. And then remember the other one, the Gnostics would go well, there are divine beings and they are homoousios, but they are creatures and they're divine creatures that are homoousios with each other. So you can see, if you were a person who is being called along to this council at Nicaea and people are saying we're thinking of using the word homoousios to describe the Trinity, if you've had experience of meeting Gnostics, you might be like oh, I don't think that's a good idea at all. That word is well dodgy because that's how Gnostics use that word to describe aeons and angels and things. I don't think that's the best word, so you might be hesitant about it for that reason.
Speaker 1:Or if you've had a lot of experience of sabalianism unitarians who would say oh, the father, son and spirit are homoousios, they're all the exact same thing and there aren't three. There's just one who is like just god, and that the father is the son and is the spirit. So if you've had that sort of trouble, you might be like oh, I'm not certain we should be using homoousios, because that sounds a bit like unitarian if you're not careful. I think it's important that the father begets the son and breathes out the spirit, and they are three separate persons. So what we've wanted to do in this episode is just flag up some of the complexity with this word, why its history is a little bit complicated and why people arriving at the council and I said not everybody was totally happy to use this word, and that's something we might want to look at more in our next episode.