The Apostles' Creed

Truth with Passion

Bayes

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781498272575
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Throughout the centuries churches all over the world have confessed their faith in the words of The Apostle's Creed. The Creed is a brilliant summary of the essence of biblical truth. But, as this book shows, the Creed is not just a dry statement of abstract doctrines. It is an expression of passion. As they composed the Creed, the earliest Christians were giving voice to their passion for the God who has made himself known in the person of Jesus Christ. The Creed stands as an invitation to believers of every generation to that same passionate commitment which has marked our predecessors in the faith.This book expounds the Creed phrase by phrase, and seeks at every point to apply its teaching to the life of believers in the world of today. Taking the Creed as his starting point and framework, Jonathan Bayes presents a wide-ranging account of Christian theology. His reflections on the Creed lead to some challenging and stimulating meditations on various aspects of biblical teaching.

1

Introduction

One Sunday after the evening service I was chatting to a member of my congregation whose background is Anglican. He suggested that the Anglican practice of regularly reciting the Apostles’ Creed is one that we would do well to imitate in our Independent Evangelical Churches. His reason was that anyone who can say the Apostles’ Creed and genuinely mean it is a real Christian.

I suspect he is right. If you can repeat the words given to us in this creed from the heart with joyful and unreserved seriousness, it is hard to doubt that God has done a true work of grace within you.

Although this creed has become known as the Apostles’ Creed, it was not written by the apostles. It is true that a legend grew up in the early centuries, claiming that each of the apostles (including Matthias) contributed his own clause, and that all twelve clauses were put together to form the creed. However, the legend began to be questioned in the fifteenth century, and was largely discredited by the seventeenth. Most probably the Apostles’ Creed grew out of a statement of faith in use in the church at Rome in the second century.1 It had attained its present form by the end of the sixth century.2 Because the Apostles’ Creed is not authentically apostolic, William Cunningham argues that it “is not entitled to much respect, and is not fitted to be of much use as a summary of the leading doctrines of Christianity.”3

However, this assessment seems unduly negative. It is not unfair to recognize in the Apostles’ Creed a concise summary of genuinely apostolic doctrine, a distillation of the essence of the apostolic writings of the New Testament. Moreover, as Christopher Stead points out, the usefulness of the creed is the link which it provides between our own age and “the historic faith of Christendom.”4 That is something from which we, as Reformed Evangelicals, can benefit. We have a tendency to look no further back than the eighteenth century heyday of the evangelical movement, or than the Reformation period at best. To be reminded that we, like our Reformed and Evangelical forefathers, stand in an ongoing heritage of faith stretching back across twenty centuries of godly reflection on the inspired documents of Scripture, must give us a fuller and fresher perspective on the faith which we profess.

Certainly, our Reformed predecessors were far more aware than we have become of their fellowship with the saints of earlier ages. For that reason they gave their sanction to the Apostles’ Creed, in which they found a “consistent guide” for “their identification of fundamental teachings of the faith.”5

Calvin, for example, writes:

The Apostles’ Creed . . . states the leading articles of redemption in a few words, and may thus serve as a tablet in which the points of Christian doctrine most deserving of attention are brought separately and distinctly before us. . . . It gives, in clear and succinct order, a full statement of our faith, and in everything which it contains is sanctioned by the sure testimony of Scripture.6

The Heidelberg Catechism dissects the Apostles’ Creed clause-by-clause and expounds its meaning in detail, labeling it “our universally acknowledged confession of faith.”7 The Westminster Assembly included the Apostles’ Creed in an appendix to its work, describing it as “a brief sum of the Christian faith, agreeable to the Word of God, and anciently received in the churches of Christ.”8

Our concern is the teaching of the creed. Kelly rightly sees the creeds as “theological manifestos, shot through with doctrinal significance,” and the Apostles’ Creed as “a compendium of popular theology.”9 What did each clause mean to those who first used it? What did it come to mean as the Church had to cope with the challenges thrown at it with the passage of time? How did the Reformers understand the creed in their writings, and especially in their Confessions of Faith? And what does the Apostles’ Creed still mean for us today? The answers to these questions are not necessarily identical, because there is truth in Alexander Stewart’s remark that “a form of words may remain the same and yet the meaning attached to it vary from time to time.”10

But we do not wish to be merely theoretical. Friedrich Schleiermacher was right when he said, “The dogmatic procedure has reference entirely to preaching, and only exists in the interests of preaching.”11 These studies of the creed will, without apology, be sermonic.

The most important question of all is this: given that the Apostles’ Creed summarizes our Christian faith, how should we then live in the twenty-first century world? God has placed us here now in this heritage of faith to know him and to live for him in our time and place. What do the insights of our spiritual ancestors imply for our discipleship today? How does the form of words which they have handed down to us inspire us in our knowledge of God in Christ by the Spirit?

Stewart is correct to say that “the Apostles’ Creed . . . comes down to us from long past ages. It has sustained and cheered thousands of Christian hearts.”12 May our study of this creed prove to be sustenance to our souls too and a source of cheering encouragement in our Christian walk.

1. See Kelly, Creeds, 172–81, 404–20.

2. Quasten, Patrology, Vol. 1, 23, 27; McGiffert, Creed, 3.

3. Cunningham, Historical Theology, 90.

4. Stead, “Apostles’ Creed,” 10.

5. Muller, After Calvin, 51.

6. Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.18.

7. Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 22.

8. Westminster Confession, 704.

9. Kelly, Creeds, 131.

10. Stewart, Creeds, 52.

11. Schleiermacher, Christian Faith, 88.

12. Stewart, Creeds, 63.

2

I believe

In his expositions of the Apostles’ Creed and it...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: I believe
• Chapter 3: In God
• Chapter 4: The Father
• Chapter 5: Almighty
• Chapter 6: Creator of heaven and earth
• Chapter 7: And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord
• Chapter 8: He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary
• Chapter 9: He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried
• Chapter 10: He descended to hell
• Chapter 11: On the third day he rose from the dead
• Chapter 12: He ascended to the heavens
• Chapter 13: And sat down at the right hand of God the Father almighty
• Chapter 14: From there he will come to judge the living and the dead
• Chapter 15: I believe in the Holy Spirit
• Chapter 16: The holy catholic church
• Chapter 17: The communion of saints
• Chapter 18: The remission of sins
• Chapter 19: The resurrection of the flesh
• Chapter 20: Eternal life
• Chapter 21: Amen
• Bibliography