The Apostles’ Creed

I often heard it said in my youth, “No book but the Bible!” “No Creed but Jesus.” This was uttered by well-meaning religious people who wanted to protect themselves and me from a “cold orthodoxy.” The thinking was that “dogma” or specific truth statements like creeds and confessions were divisive, and we just needed to do away with highbrow theology and have some “nice religion.” The only problem with this plan was that when we abandoned the historic creeds, like the Apostles’ Creed or Nicene Creed—chaos happened. As Dorothy Sayers says in Creed or Chaos, “It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism.”There it is––I hope I have your attention, because this summer at St. Patrick we are going to examine, line by line, the liturgy we say every week, The Apostles’ Creed.  Why do we do this? What good does it accomplish to take these ancient borrowed words and say them publicly and together? Should we do this at all? All of these are good questions to which I hope we find answers as we talk this summer about things we believe are truth. Why the Apostles’ Creed? The creed we recite every week as a family is described well by Ben Meyers. “The creed comes from baptism. It is a pledge of allegiance to the God of the gospel—a God who is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; a God who is resent to us in the real world of human flesh, creating, redeeming, and sanctifying us for good works.” (The Apostles’ Creed) No one knows the exact origins of the Apostles’ Creed, as we do other great creeds. Most people in our day believe that, in general, creeds were written as political documents, cunning inventions of people to control or exploit the masses and to enforce their understanding of what the Christian faith really is. That charge might be leveled at other great creeds which in fact were created by religious councils, but not the Apostles’ Creed. While on one hand, its origins are a mystery; on the other hand, they are not. Indeed, the Apostles’ Creed was not part of a theological strategy at all. Rather, “It was a grassroots confession of faith. It was an indigenous form of the ancient churches’ response to the risen Christ, who commanded his apostles to ‘make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit.’” (Matthew 28:19-20)So, rather than being some esoteric statement written by the learned clergy or philosophers who had their head in the clouds and were out of touch with humanity, the Apostles’ Creed is a statement of what we believe about God and the universe. It doesn’t say everything, but it says enough. It is both brief and profound, and it is anything but dull. In fact, what we confess in the Creed every week is the stuff of which romance is made. Every fairy tale ever written is but a pale imitation of these words we speak almost without thought and reflection each week. These words speak of the origins of the universe, claiming that behind all created matter and the very bodies we inhabit is not some impersonal prime mover or random accident, but rather a loving Father! Seriously, how can it be anything but thrilling to imagine that what set this whole world in motion is not just any god, but a Father God who can be known? How can that be dull, compared to believing that you are just a cosmic accident, and love is nothing more than chemicals firing in your brain?The Creed also makes statements about redemption. (This is what makes the creed a romance!) It says that Jesus, God’s Son, became a mere mortal, entering the world as mundanely as everyone else, and was fully human without ceasing to be God. While he was a man, he was hung on a cross. The very creatures that a loving Father created, actually crucified God Almighty. This drama of God being both victim and hero is told in the Creed and is the story of how God submitted to the conditions he had laid down, didn’t pull rank, and chose to die and suffer hell rather than lose his lost creatures. Seriously, every story that moves our soul is built on this story. We might even say the Apostles’ Creed, in an economy of words, gives the formula and outline of the story that our hearts were built for—rescue and redemption.So, this summer we are going to take an in-depth look at the words we so blithely recite. The Apostles’ Creed is anything but a placeholder, or words of “vain repletion.” Just as the Pledge of Allegiance we learned in elementary school firmly anchors us to our nation and identifies us as citizens of the United States of America, so the Apostles’ Creed anchors us to our Christian faith and identifies us as citizens of heaven and members of God’s household on earth. One of the reasons we are doing this study is because we live in an age that discounts truth in favor of consensus or the “no harm” principle. We live by things we agree on, meaning we do whatever we want as long as it doesn’t harm or offend others. The Apostles’ Creed is a direct assault on that kind of thinking (or non-thinking, I should say). Jesus said, “truth sets us free.” Truth matters… period! Fruitfulness and thriving are built on the truths we acknowledge and submit our lives to. Another reason we are going through the creed is to see that the sharp edge of truth is anything but dull! I’ll let Dorothy Sayers have the last word on this one because I can’t say it better, “If this is dull, then what, in Heaven’s name, is worthy to be called exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore; on the contrary, they thought Him too dynamic to be safe.” (Creed or Chaos)