The Apostles' Creed

The Apostles' Creed (3rd Century, or thereabouts) says this:

I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth:

And in Jesus Christ his only 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 sitteth on 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;
The holy Catholic Church;
The Communion of Saints;
The Forgiveness of sins;
The Resurrection of the body,
And the Life everlasting.
Amen.

What I find interesting about this creed is not necessarily what it says, but rather what it doesn't say, and what is implied from the things it does say. Of course - and this will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog - I don't agree with all of it. Its not necessarily that I disagree with all of it, but just that I think some of it is treading on that shaky ground where I'm happy to say 'I don't know' and not happy to land on one side or the other.

Most of the 'I believe' statements actually need some unpacking. When it says 'I believe in the Holy Ghost' what does that mean? For example, it doesn't say 'I believe that the Holy Ghost is the third person of the Trinity'. Its more like 'I believe that there is something or someone called The Holy Ghost', but it tells me nothing about what the claimant believes about the Holy Ghost.

And what about the 'Communion of Saints' - we say these words, but what do we actually mean by them? As I understand it, Catholic teaching traditionally means that there is some mystical unity between Christians who are currently alive and those who are currently in Purgatory or Heaven. But I've never, ever, in nearly 40 years of church-going heard this preached upon, and I very much doubt that the majority of Evangelical Christians actually believe this, although they might repeat these words in Church every now and again.

What else? Well, why is the virginity of Mary such an important point here? If I believe all of this, except the virginity of Mary, does that mean that my salvation is lost? I doubt it, so why specify it? Even more than that, why include 'under Pontius Pilate'? The only conceivable reason for mentioning Pilate here is that, at the time the creed was formulated, there must have been some debate - some voices must have been claiming that Christ died at some other point in history, and this creed was aiming to stamp out the heresy.

And what about the 'descended into hell' bit? Is there a hell that is a physical place? Is it below? Was it there 2000 years ago or is it a future thing, like Revelation seems to imply? So much of Jesus's teaching relates to lifestyle-choices which will keep you out of hell, surely he is the least likely person ever to have gone there, if such a place even existed?

But what doesn't it say? It says nothing about how to live, it says nothing about love, relationship, service of others, acts of generosity or sacrifice. It doesn't acknowledge that Jesus did or said anything during his earthly life. The only thing he was born to do was suffer and die, if this is any kind of basis of faith. His commands were clearly not fundamental to faith.

The more I think on these issues, the more annoyed I get. I reject this creed and all others.

The Westminster Confession of Faith

I was raised in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. This and a few other denominations hold the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) as their basis. I just read through the thing online. Its longer than I remember from my youth.

And I certainly don't base my faith on it anymore.

I went to the document with an agenda. I have been listening a lot lately to teaching from The Meeting House church in Canada. They are an Anabaptist church and consider themselves neither Catholic nor Protestant. They have a different perspective. And I must say, the more I hear, the more closely aligned to my perspective their views seem (except the actual baptism issue, but maybe we'll get there in the end). Anyway, they as Christians point primarily to the teachings of Christ as a basis for faith and lifestyle. They had previously pointed out (and I blogged about) that many of the Creeds of the church jump straight from the (virgin) birth of Jesus directly to his death and resurrection, completely missing the things that he said during his ministry. I wanted to see if the WCoF did the same thing.

It does. As far as this confession of faith is concerned, Jesus may as well not have had a ministry at all. His only role on this planet was to die.

I can't subscribe to that. The message of the gospels is that the one eternal God somehow incarnated himself as a man and walked among us for years. He had a 'gospel' to share - good news for all men.

Wow. Just think about that. This wasn't some prophet bringing the message of God to us second-hand. This was God himself speaking. And we have four different accounts of the things he said and did - a pretty good account of his teaching. Should we not listen primarily to what he had to say? Apparently not, for many who claim to follow him, his words have become something secondary. Indeed, if the WCoF is to be taken at face value then the words of Paul carry so much more weight than the words of Jesus - the majority of citations in there are from the epistles, not from the gospels.

A Christian should follow Christ... right? That's what the word means. So why don't we follow his teachings?

There were plenty of other issues raied by my reading of the WCoF, but I'll hold the rest back for another posting. That's enough for now.

Creeds and divisions

I'm currently reading 'The End of Religion' by Bruxy Cavey. I'll post a longer article on the book when I'm further into it, but its raised a few issues in my mind which I'll comment on in a few posts here.

In the chapter I read last night, he spoke about the council of Nicaea, the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed in passing. And made two points which I'd never thought of before.

I'd always thought that the point of the creeds was to affirm the common beliefs of Christians, to reinforce our unity in Christ. And I suppose both the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed do this, but go back to 325AD. There were many Christians, each trying to follow Christ in some way or another, and they had some form of communion with each other. OK, so they may not have agreed on every point, but they were all Christians and (as far as I can tell) generally viewed themselves and each other as such. Then the creed was devised and agreed by the majority of folk at the council. This instantly marked a minority of those present as heretics. All of a sudden, two Christians who agree on almost everything relating to how to live and how to worship their Lord are divided. One becomes a heretic, the other is affirmed. Is this a good thing?

Are any of the creeds good things if they underline divisions and separate Christians into two groups, the orthodox and the heretics?

If someone is seeking to follow the example of their Lord, live according to his teachings and is filled with his Spirit, does it actually matter if they consider him to be not of the same substance as the Father or not? I suspect not. And yet, this was one of the things which separated the orthodox from the heretics back then.

Another thing that I had never really noticed about the creeds is that they say nothing about what Jesus said or did during his life on earth. They jump straight from 'born of a virgin' to 'suffered under Pilate' - nothing about Jesus's life at all in there. That seems a bit lacking to me.