But it is important that the creed emphasizes that Christ is of the “same substance” as God the Father. This is a way of saying that God and Christ are absolutely equal. Christ is “true God,” not a subordinate deity secondary to God the Father. And as the anathemas indicate, it is now a heresy to claim there ever was a time when Christ did not exist (or before which he did not exist), or to say he was created like everything else in the universe “out of nothing,” or that he does not share God’s very substance.
