What do we believe?
Creeds as the invisible string between ancient Christians and us
Happy February, Warranted readers!
Days are undoubtedly starting to get longer, and we’ve made it through (what feels like) the longest and darkest month of the year. Praise God!
I hope the second month of 2024 (which still seems like too big of a number to be a year) finds you well so far.
Lately, I’ve been interested in a piece of the church’s past and present that hasn’t been part of my personal experience until very recently: the creeds. Well-known in Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and some branches of Protestantism, creeds of ancient Christianity are a unique connection to the history of Christianity that shed light on how our theology grew and developed over the years.
Since the topic piqued my curiosity, I thought it would be a great subject to discuss on this forum. Read on for my thoughts.
What is a creed?
Put simply, a creed is a statement of belief. Most often associated with Christianity, creeds were a tool that the early church used to combat specific heresies and verbally, communally affirm what adherents to this new religion believed.
Even if you’re not familiar with the creeds that the early ecumenical councils put together hundreds of years ago, you’ve likely come across what is believed to be one of the earliest Christian creeds. It’s preserved for us in Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, and it reads as follows:
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received:
that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
that he was buried,
that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.”1 Corinthians 15:3-5
Since 1 Corinthians dates to roughly AD 55, we can safely assume that the statement of belief Paul repeats here is an even earlier tradition; in The Son Rises, William Lane Craig traces a pattern of reasoning that dates this particular creed before AD 36, meaning that Christians were proclaiming this message within 5 years of Jesus’ death and resurrection. These succinct but theologically packed statements of faith have been essential to Christianity since its earliest days.
Another early creed that you may be familiar with as it’s still regularly used in both Catholic and Protestant worship today is the Apostles’ Creed, which likely developed over several hundred years between the second and ninth centuries. Here’s one version of the full text, translated by the English Language Liturgical Consultation:
“I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,1
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.”
Christian creeds may be recited during worship, sung as hymns, said as prayers, or used during the sacrament of baptism as a way for believers to state and affirm their faith.
Why do creeds matter?
If I’ve learned anything in the last year, it’s that there’s not much I can say that C.S. Lewis hasn’t already said better.
That’s not a bad thing in the slightest—I feel extremely lucky to not only live in a time when I have access to Lewis’ writings, but also to share the same Christian heritage as him and be able to look to him as a guide as I disentangle the complexities of what it means to walk with Christ.
Book 4 in Lewis’ Mere Christianity is a theological exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity. In the first chapter of the section, Lewis mentions that he was advised against getting too theological in case it deterred the “ordinary reader” from continuing. Lewis (and I, as an “ordinary reader” all these years later) disagreed. “Theology means ‘the science of God,’ and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available,” Lewis says. “You are not children: why should you be treated like children?”
He continues with an example likening the creeds and other theological formulations to a map. Here’s what he says:
“I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, ‘I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!’
“Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper…
“…Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experiences of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map.”
As expected, this illuminates the significance of creeds and similar symbols for ancient and modern believers alike. Some sects of Christianity deny the need for creeds, claiming that a “relationship with Christ” or a “proper” interpretation of scripture suffices. But it seems to me that this attitude misses the whole purpose of the creeds themselves.
No, even the most thorough creeds and confessions don’t answer every theological question, and the ones they do answer are certainly not always to the satisfaction of all Christians everywhere. The introduction to the book I’m reading now, N.T. Wright’s How God Became King, highlights that the most well-known statements of Christian belief ignore the whole “middle” of Jesus’ life on earth, i.e., the things he did after his birth and before his death and resurrection.
But that’s not to say that they’re not extremely useful as tools for believers regardless of denomination, geographical location, or period of history. To sum Lewis’ Mere Christianity sentiments up, they serve two main purposes:
1. They serve as a record of the theological efforts of believers throughout history.
Lewis goes on to point out that “a great many of the ideas about God which are trotted out as novelties today are simply the ones which real Theologians tried centuries ago and rejected.”
This is an experience I and the other members of my book club have had often as we try to reason through the finer details of our faith—often, just when someone in the room feels as though we’ve made a breakthrough, someone else hesitantly pipes up with a reminder that, unfortunately, that is a heresy. (We often joke that you’re not really a member of the book club until you’ve accidentally rediscovered and pioneered an ancient heresy of your own.)
But, in all seriousness, the creeds can serve as a powerful connection to that “great cloud of witnesses” that has gone before us, providing guard rails as we seek to continue their mission of understanding and obeying God.
2. They provide direction for believers seeking to know more about God (which is, by definition, all of us!).
Interested in learning about theology, but don’t know where to start? Why not use one of the creeds as your guide?
Take the Apostles’ Creed, written above, as an example. In ~18 short lines of text, you get affirmations of: creation; the trinity; incarnation; crucifixion; resurrection; ascension; salvation; and more. Each line of the creed is an invitation for believers to dig in and really understand the inner workings of the faith. Imagine not only being able to recite the Apostles’ Creed, but to be able to understand and explain each line with confidence and clarity. That’s a noble goal.
I hope these words will encourage and inspire you as we step into the second month of 2024.
Now, LMK:
How have creeds and confessions shaped your worship and walk with Christ, if at all? How do you incorporate them in your day-to-day? I want to figure out how to do the same, so let me know!
And a recommendation:
I listened to this podcast last week and thought it was so beautiful and encouraging. And, at any rate, it’s always cool to hear from an actual astronaut—especially one who loves Jesus! Listen here.
The lowercase “catholic” here indicates that the line refers to the “universal” church, not exclusively the Roman Catholic (notice the uppercase C) church.