A CREED FOR THE AGES
THE APOSTLES’ CREED AND TODAY’S CHRISTIAN
By Nick Peters
Preface
The motivation of writing this Ebook has been the men and women of The Point in Knoxville, TN, and our Pastor, Matthew Peeples. This church has treated us like family and made the two Aspies that we are feel incredibly welcome. Through the Point, Allie has found joy in her Christian walk and I have found a church where my apologetics gifts can be used to serve the community. We are thrilled to be a part of our Point Family and may God bless our church further as we seek to fulfill the Great Commission.
-Nick Peters
Foreword
The Holy Scriptures record the first evangelism call in Genesis 3. God came calling, calling Adam and Eve back to himself, back into conversation with himself. God had introduced himself to humankind in Genesis 1 while the scene was still dark. He talked light – and everything else that exists – into existence. He talks his way through the entire Old Testament as he sent prophets forth with his words for his chosen people Israel and for other nations within earshot. In the New Testament God, after speaking earlier through the prophets, spoke through his Son (Hebrews 1:1-3), whom the Evangelist John called “the Word made flesh” (John 1:14).
So Christians, like all human beings created in God’s image, talk. They continue the conversation launched and carried on through them by the God of conversation and community, who identifies himself as Creator and who comes to humankind as Redeemer and Sanctifier, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christians like to talk to God in prayer, and they like to talk of him and for him in their public confession of their faith, of the message of the Bible, of the Scriptural description of reality. In human words God introduces himself to us, and he tells us who he made us to be as well.
Christians have recognized the need to summarize the message of the Bible throughout the history of the conversation with the Creator. The ancient people of Israel confessed as a summary of their faith, “The Lord, our God, is one Lord” (Deut. 6:4). The Apostle Paul records what was probably a creed composed by the earliest believers in Christ, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and was buried; he was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures and appeared” to many (1 Corinthians 15:3-5). Within two centuries of Paul’s ministry, congregations of Christians throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond had begun to construct their own summaries of the faith, that began with the words, “I believe,” in Latin “credo” – a creed.
By the third century a common creed began to emerge in the Roman Empire, more than a century before toleration and legalization of the Christian faith emerged. The Apostles Creed, not written by the apostles (as was believed in the Middle Ages) but expressing the message they had proclaimed and recorded in the New Testament, spread and matured as a common text for Christians around the Mediterranean. It sketched the narrative of God’s creation from its creation through the saving work of Christ and projected its subsequent history after the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost all the way to the final resurrection of the dead and life everlasting.
The Apostles Creed confesses that the one and only God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It confesses his work of creation, liberation or redemption from sin by Christ, and the sanctification that the Holy Spirit bestows through the various forms of God’s Word of promise in the gospel of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation on the basis ofChrist’s death and resurrection. As Christians have carried out Christ’s command to make disciples by baptizing and teaching, they have turned to this Creed as a good summary of the life-giving message they have to share.
In the following commentary on the Apostles Creed, Nick Peters talks his way through the content of the Creed, confessing his faith in our twenty-first century North American context. He engages thinkers of our time, Christian, non-Christian, anti-Christian, in conversation. His conversation with us, his readers, gives witness to the faith that makes him and us alive and restores our relationship with the God who made us and who re-creates us on the basis of his work on the cross and out of the empty tomb.
Nick’s words deliver the Biblical message through the summary of the Apostles Creed. His confession in these comments commands our attention as we listen to his testimony.
Robert Kolb
Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis
The Nativity of our Lord Jesus 2014
*****
I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell:
The third day he rose again from the dead:
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead:
I believe in the Holy Ghost:
I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:
The forgiveness of sins:
The resurrection of the body:
And the life everlasting. Amen.
*****
I Believe.
What does it mean when we say that we believe?
To answer this question, we need first to talk about faith. Too often, when people say that we are to have faith, they usually mean that we are to just believe. Believing for the sake of believing, however, is not a virtue. Rather, it is foolishness.
Faith more properly understood is trust. It is trust in that which has been shown to be reliable. Read the atheist literature and you’ll get something completely different. Richard Dawkins and others say it is belief without evidence. Peter Boghossian says it is pretending to know things you don’t know.
Now if either one of these was what faith was, faith would be something to be condemned. Do I think many Christians unfortunately espouse a faith like this? Yes, I think they do.
The sad reality is that when this definition of faith is given, it is never given with evidence that this is how the biblical writers used the term. One could say for Boghossian that he is pretending to know something he doesn’t know.
Here on the other hand is a source that does say what it means.
Faith/Faithfulness
“These terms refer to the value of reliability. The value is ascribed to persons as well as to objects and qualities. Relative to persons, faith is reliability in interpersonal relations: it thus takes on the value of enduring personal loyalty, of personal faithfulness. The nouns ‘faith’, ‘belief’, ‘fidelity’, ‘faithfulness,’ as well as the verbs ‘to have faith’ and ‘to believe,’ refers to the social glue that binds one person to another. This bond is the social, externally manifested, emotionally rooted behavior of loyalty, commitment, and solidarity. As a social bond, it works with the value of (personal and group) attachment (translated ‘love’) and the value of (personal and group) allegiance or trust (translated ‘hope.’) p. 72 Pilch and Malina,Handbook of Biblical Social Values.
The Greek word for this is pistis. What Boghossian and Dawkins and others never ask is, “Did the ancient writer mean by pistis what modern Christians would use if they were using the same word?” If not, then these authors have fallen into a bit of postmodernism. What one has to do with a text is take it the way they believe the author intended.
So then, what does it mean when we say webelieve?
To be fair, I don’t think faith is exactly what is being meant in the creed in the modern sense. Faith properly understood is not a means of knowing but is rather a response to what one knows. One shows faith on the basis of what one believes or knows. (Yes. You can have knowledge and still have faith. Why? Simple. How many times have you known something but still had to act on it to counter, say, an emotional hang-up?)
For the creed, what this is saying is, “The following are statements that I hold to be true and I am willing to make a commitment to them.” One could compare it to a marriage. When you walk down the aisle, you have no way of knowing the future and sadly, too many marriages end in divorce, but you are saying “I believe that this person is someone I can trust and spend the rest of my life with.”
What I’d like for us to remember is that there is evidence for what we believe. This is a real shock to too many Christians unfortunately, but really think about what that means. That means that if you hold to the physical resurrection of Jesus, this means that Jesus really did live among us and walk and do miracles teach and He really did die and rise again.
Whether you’re an atheist or a Christian, this should be agreed upon. This is something truly incredible. If you were an atheist and found out this was true, it should change everything. If you’re a Christian and find out this is false, it should change everything.
So really, when you say this you are making a grand claim. You are claiming that something is true. Really consider that and then consider the ramifications. If I really think that God exists and that Jesus rose from the dead and everything else in the creed, what does that mean?
Suppose you received word today that you had $100 million in your bank account. Everything was legal and you had undeniable proof that it was true. Would your lifestyle change differently? You bet it would!
You’d be out there buying a lot of things you’ve been wanting. You’d be donating to your church and several ministries. (And hopefully you’d be keeping my own ministry in mind.) You’d be setting up college funds for your children. You’d be living in a much better house and driving in a much better car. You would probably quit your job.
Now suppose you find out that Christianity is true? How will that change everything? How much your worldview changes depending on finding out Christianity is true or false shows how much it means to you.
When you recite this creed in a church service, please keep in mind what you are saying. You are saying “I hold the following to be true.” If that is the case, then the next question you have to answer is “How will you live differently knowing this is true?”
That is an important question isn’t it?
*****
In God.
What should we think about when we think about God?
God. The word can evokes a number of attitudes and emotions. For some people, it means to mind a pristine holiness. They are filled with love and awe when they think about God. For another crowd, there is thought about the cosmic energy of the universe. They look within and think about what they see there. They seek to be one with the world around them. For yet another group, there can almost be a hatred. The thought of anything to do with God is automatically absurd and if this God exists, they’d rather go to Hell than be with Him.
Let’s be clear at the start of the discussion about God. The question matters. If you look at the question of God’s existence and think it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever to the nature of the world or how you view it, you’re not taking it seriously. This in fact is the problem with Bertrand Russell’s teapot illustration or with comparing God to unicorns, fairies, leprechauns, etc.
And if you think there is a God, knowing what He is like is extremely important as well. Is He a pantheistic concept that is all of us? Is He a distant deistic being who is off playing a round of cosmic golf while we toil away on this Earth? Is He Allah inspiring Muslims to do acts of terror all around the world? Or is He the one who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ?
C.S. Lewis in his A Grief Observed said in there that it wasn’t his fear that God did not exist in his grief. He was sure of the existence of the divine being. It was a worse fear for him. It was the fear of “He exists, and this is what He’s really like!”
But why would the Apostles’ Creed start with belief in God? Isn’t that a given? Doesn’t everyone know Christians believe in God?
Well, no. Not really.
Okay, maybe there is some postmodern stuff in our world today that allows you to have a definition of God and believe in Him and somehow still be an atheist, but surely the charge of atheism like that is new. (And no, I can’t even think of how someone would be able to pull off a claim like that, but in our postmodern age, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has or someone will.)
But no, the charge of atheism is in fact an old one. The early Christians were accused of being atheists.
What?
The early church lived in a world where polytheism was the norm. In this world, everyone believed in multiple gods, with the exception being the Jews. Yet Christians show up on the scene and say, “Not only are we not going to worship pagan gods, those gods don’t even exist.” This was a charge to not only the pantheon of the time, but to Caesar as well, who was seen as a god. I agree with Crossan who says that Mark 1:1, which tells us about the beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Son of God, could be read as saying “In your face, Caesar.” This was a direct challenge since Caesars could have their own reigns described this way.
The Christians refused to buckle under pressure and let Jesus be included in a pantheon of gods. They were monotheists to the core. Now how that fits in with Jesus and the Trinity will be discussed later on in this look at the creed, so if that is your concern for now, hold on to it.
The God question matters and always has. If you are a theist reading this, think about how much your worldview would change if you found God did not exist. If it wouldn’t make much of a difference to you, perhaps you should ask yourself if God makes much of a difference to you now.
On the other hand, if you are an atheist, what would it mean to you if you found undeniable proof that God existed? Would it seriously change your worldview? If it would not, then perhaps you are not taking the question seriously right now.
And if you are a theist, really think about what you are saying. My wife was watching the Science Channel with the “Are We Alone?” week on there discussing aliens. For you as a theist, the answer is, “No. We are not alone.”
Depending on your view of theism, you also have to ask how it is that God has interacted with the world of if He has. Do you hold that miracles are possible? Do you hold that everything around you is existing because of the existence of this one being? Do you hold that this being entered the world in the person of Jesus and died on a cross and rose again somehow?
Think about the question of God and realize it matters. If you had to make a case for theism, could you do it? If you disagree with theism and had to make a case for atheism, could you do that?
And what difference would it make if either of you were wrong?
***
The Father.
What does it mean when we talk about God the Father?
Many people will say they believe in God, but God can be so vague as to mean anything that they want. But when we say God is Father, we have now introduced a personal element. We can rule out a pantheistic viewpoint at this stage. God is someone who can be treated as a person. Perhaps in some cases we could view out deism unless we want to assume God is some sort of deadbeat father.
The term Jesus used when He spoke about the Father was often, abba. This was a term that would also show familiarity and access. Jesus was one in a special position of access to the goodness of the Father due to His being the only begotten Son.
On the other hand, Jesus would often say “Abba, Father” which would include the familiar as well as the respect. In our modern age, we like to emphasize the familiar term, which we have all right to use, but may forget about the respect term. God is not often respected.
I look at this as the concept of how we treat Christ especially as the buddy Jesus. Unfortunately, this too often has us not treat Christ as someone who is our sovereign king and is our sole connection to the Father through the Holy Spirit.
We can do the same with the Father. God can be treated casually instead of as the strong reality that He is, and we’re all guilty of it. This is why the belief system of many young people today in regards to Christianity is described as morally therapeutic deism. God is there, but God’s purpose is to make sure you’re happy and that you feel good, especially about yourself.