Salvation can come only at God’s initiative, we said. That is why Jesus had to be clothed in divinity and portrayed as “God incarnate” (and ultimately even as the second person of the Trinity). If Jesus were not God, the rescue effort would not work, for human beings cannot save themselves from the effects of both original sin and “the fall.” Salvation requires that Jesus be not just the agent of God, be not just of “similar” substance with God, but be of the “identical” substance of God. That was at least the conclusion drawn by the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, when a new creed was adopted to
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