creedal – uSeminary

The historic creeds of the church have their origins in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Although the Bible contains no formal creedal statements, it contains affirmations of faith that have something of the character of the later Christian confessions. These rudimentary biblical statements were primarily acts of worship, as opposed to tests of doctrinal orthodoxy. The historic creeds have their place in traditional Christian worship, often following the sermon as a response to the proclamation of the Word of God.

Biblical Confessions of Faith

Biblical “creeds” are not precise definitions of doctrinal issues but rather acts of worship in response to God’s revelation of himself through deeds of salvation and covenant faithfulness on behalf of his people. Yahweh’s character as a God who reveals himself through historical events, especially through his deliverance of Israel and his granting of the covenant with his people, means that Israel typically affirms its faith by telling the story of these events. An example of this type of confession appears in Deuteronomy 26:

Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down to Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labor. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil, and oppression. So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders. He has brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Deut. 26:5–9)

The fact that this affirmation of faith occurs in the setting of worship (the offering of the firstfruits) underscores its nature as an act of celebration, rather than as a theological norm.

Such confessions of faith are related to the structure of the biblical covenant, which has the form of the ancient treaty between a great king and his servant ruler. These treaties often contain a preface or prologue narrating the previous relationship between the partners and especially the deeds of the granter of the treaty in behalf of the recipient. At Mount Sinai, Yahweh begins the declaration of the covenant commandments with a brief prologue of this type, identifying himself to the people in terms of what he has done for them: “I am [Yahweh] your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod. 20:2 nasb). In Israelite worship, which in its essence is the renewal of the covenant, this historical recital can become an extended narrative. This occurs in Deuteronomy 1–4, the prologue to the renewal of the covenant prior to the death of Moses. Some of the psalms (Pss. 78; 105; 106; 136) rehearse the history of Yahweh’s deliverance and judgments in the same creedal fashion, and often in Psalms one hears the invitation to “give thanks,” which really means to “make confession” (hodu) of the Lord’s deeds of deliverance in faithfulness to his covenant oath: “Confess Yahweh, that he is good; for his covenant love is forever” (Ps. 136:1 author’s translation; cf. Ps. 100:4–5). There is a sense in which the historical narrative of the Bible as a whole, as the record of God’s dealings with humankind, has this same celebrative character as a confession of faith, revealing its intrinsic association with the sphere of worship.

The familiar Shma‘ of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” is often called the creed of Israel, an affirmation of the distinctive monotheistic stance of biblical faith. However, it is not really a statement about the being of Yahweh but a summons to covenant loyalty, as its continuation shows: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart … ” (Deut. 6:5). A better translation might be “Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone!”

New Testament “creeds” have the same confessional and narrative character as the Israelite recitals. The primitive and distinctive Christian confession is “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:11); the context in which Paul inserts this phrase reveals its function as an act of worship as well as a Christological precept, for the apostle envisions the time when “every knee should bow, … and every tongue confess” the dominion of the Messiah Jesus. The affirmation that Jesus is both Lord and Christ is the heart of the apostolic proclamation, or kērugma, and the affirmation is grounded in a narrative of the events in which the messianic identity of Jesus has been made evident. Thus Peter, preaching on the day of Pentecost, announces that “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36) through the events of the Crucifixion and Resurrection (Acts 2:22–32; cf. Acts 3:14–21; 10:36–41). This early affirmation is anticipated by confessions of Jesus’ messianic identity in the Gospel narratives, by disciples such as Peter (Matt. 16:16), Nathanael (John 1:49), and Thomas (John 20:28). Echoes of this early confession occur in the Epistles (1 Cor. 12:3) and in the phrase “king of kings and lord of lords” (Rev. 19:16; cf. Rev. 17:4; 1 Tim. 6:15).

As the Lord’s deliverance of Israel in the Exodus from Egypt formed the heart of the Old Testament creedal narrative, so the New Testament confession of faith centers in the narrative of the resurrection of Jesus, the pivotal act that has brought into being the “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17), the community of the new covenant. It is the Resurrection that substantiates the confession “Jesus Christ is Lord”; the earliest Christian affirmation of faith in narrative form may have been a recital of the Resurrection appearances of Jesus, similar to that of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. (1 Cor. 15:3–8)

The witness of the New Testament is that the resurrection of Christ is the “non-negotiable” element of Christian confession. Paul’s words to the church in Rome indicate that confessing the resurrection and messiahship of Christ was part of the process of becoming “saved,” or a member of the community of the new covenant; he declares “that if you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9).

It was through the Resurrection that the new community came into being. Clustering around the confession of the lordship of the risen Christ, therefore, are other affirmations that are corollaries to the Resurrection. Thus, Paul affirms “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5). Interestingly, the context of this phrase reveals an incipient Trinitarian creedal structure of Spirit, Lord, and Father, similar to that which was to emerge in the classic creeds of the church:

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Eph. 4:4–6)

Paul records another confession, the “mystery (revelation) of godliness,” in his first letter to Timothy. It takes the form of a listing of events associated with the appearance of Jesus Christ, climaxing in his exaltation:

He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory. (1 Tim. 3:16)

The letter of Jude speaks of contending “for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3) in terms that suggest a focused and recognizable body of beliefs. The words of the author of the letter to the Hebrews similarly suggest that the “confession of our hope” (Heb. 10:23 nasb) was a definite cluster of convictions; his listing of the “elementary teachings about the Christ” (Heb. 6:1–2) may indicate something of what he had in mind.

Historic Creeds

The creedal material of the New Testament is rudimentary in form and is presented in interaction with practical issues facing the early Christian communities. The study of these materials provides insight into the process by which the tenets of Christian orthodoxy came to the surface: the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Jesus Christ, his atonement for sin, his death and resurrection, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the judgment of the world, and the catholicity and basic unity of the church. The formation of actual creeds, as tests of orthodox belief, occurred in the post-apostolic period largely as a response to the spread of heterodox doctrines. Such summaries of belief began to appear in the second and third centuries with the work of theologians such as Irenaeus and Tertullian. Although a number of statements of faith were formulated by ancient councils of the church, the most important in contemporary usage is the Nicene Creed; the Apostles’ Creed, which was not the work of an ecumenical council, is the other historic creed in common use in the Western church.

The Apostles’ Creed. The Apostles’ Creed is the oldest creed in continuous use in the church. Although its ascription to the twelve apostles is legendary, dating only from the late fourth century, most of its content dates from the middle of the second century. It was never used in the Eastern church but originated in Rome, whence it spread to other churches of Western Christendom. The “Roman Symbol,” as it was originally called, was a baptismal creed, intended as a basis for the instruction of candidates for Christian initiation; it was not formulated as a comprehensive statement of Christian doctrine. The Apostles’ Creed is Trinitarian in structure, an expansion of the baptismal formulary given by Jesus in the great commission (Matt. 28:18–20). The central section, confessing faith in God the Son, retains the narrative form of the creedal material found in both the Old and New Testaments.

The Apostles’ Creed was a counter to the influence of Gnostic teaching, which advocated a dualistic view contrasting the pure realm of the spirit with the evil material world. Thus Gnosticism denied that the Creator God of the Old Testament was the supreme God, the Father of the Lord Jesus; it held that Christ had not been born, suffered, and died in real human flesh but had only appeared to do so; and it rejected the concept of the resurrection of the body, whether of Christ or of his followers. The Apostles’ Creed refutes these precepts point by point with statements based on scriptural teaching. The exact meaning and scriptural basis for the statement “He descended into hell” has occasioned debate in recent centuries, and some churches have modified or omitted it; broadly conceived, however, the phrase may be related to the baptismal origins of the creed and the symbolic identification of the believer with Christ in his death as well as in his resurrection (Rom. 6:3–4). The full text of the Apostles’ Creed, in its traditional English wording, is as follows:

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.

The Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed was formulated at the Council of Nicaea in a.d. 325. Whereas the Apostles’ Creed was a baptismal confession, the Nicene Creed was promulgated to combat the views of Arius (circa 250–336), an Alexandrian preacher who denied the eternity of God the Son and his full deity as of “the same substance” with the Father. (Some historians, however, are of the opinion that the Nicene Creed derives ultimately from the baptismal confession of the Jerusalem church.) The creed was later revised and enlarged; although ancient sources ascribing this revision to the Council of Constantinople in a.d. 381 are of uncertain value, the creed is often termed the “Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.” It was this larger version that came to be used in the liturgy. The Nicene Creed was the first ecumenical creed of the church, both Eastern and Western; in the Western church, the opening word of the creed was later changed from “We believe” to “I believe” (contemporary liturgical usage has restored the original wording), and in the sixth century the word meaning “and the Son” (filioque) was added to the clause concerning the Holy Spirit’s proceeding from the Father.

The Nicene Creed was introduced into the liturgy of the Eucharist by the patriarchs of Antioch (in a.d. 473) and Constantinople (in a.d. 511); in the West, its use in the liturgy began with the Spanish Visigoths after the Third Council of Toledo (a.d. 589), and in the eleventh century it was introduced into the Roman rite under Pope Benedict VIII. In the Eastern churches, the Nicene Creed is recited just before the consecration of the Eucharist and is one of the acts of the Lord’s Table or “liturgy of the faithful.” In the West, it came instead to be placed after the Gospel and sermon, as a conclusion to the service of the Word.

The Nicene Creed, though longer, follows the same Trinitarian outline as the Apostles’ Creed, and its central section assumes the same form of the recital of historic events associated with the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. Like the Apostles’ Creed, it is based on scriptural concepts, though it presses beyond biblical language, especially in its formulation of the divinity of the Son and his relationship to the Father (“God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God … being of one substance with the Father” [traditional wording]). As it was not set forth as a baptismal confession, the Nicene Creed omits the statement “He descended into hell.” The text of the Nicene Creed, as found in many contemporary liturgies, is as follows:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The historic creeds of the church mark Christianity’s transition from the Semitic culture in which the Bible took shape to the culture of Greco-Roman civilization. In the biblical perspective, “truth” is a relationship, the integrity of the covenant between God and his people. The true “word” is that which creates and maintains this living relationship. The formulation of creeds results from the adoption of another concept of “truth,” that of ideas that must somehow correspond to objective facts. Here the true “word” represents agreement with a rational concept rather than an expression of personal commitment. Paul warned his disciple Timothy about getting embroiled in “quarrels about words” (1 Tim. 6:4). In formulating the creeds, the ancient church was responding to heterodox teaching. If this was a necessary step, it was also one that carried it further from a purely biblical perspective. Something was gained, and something was lost.

The recitation of the history of Yahweh’s redemptive acts forms the basis for creed, liturgy, and preaching in the Old Testament. The Christian church took up the format of historical recital in its hymnic and creedal affirmation of God’s actions in Christ.

Israel’s Creedal Statements

Gerhard von Rad has isolated several creedal statements in the Old Testament which, he has argued, stand at the level of primary tradition. Among these confessions is the Deuteronomy passage:

My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labor. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. (Deut. 26:5–9)

For this writer the creedal character of these verses cannot be denied. The emphasis of these creedal statements is historical: Egyptian bondage, salvation from that bondage by Yahweh, the occupation of the land. Moreover, one cannot escape the fact that these affirmations are in plural address—“we” were in Egyptian bondage, “we” were redeemed by Yahweh, “we” were given this fertile land. Each time this affirmation was recited, the worshiper bridged the time and space gap and became identified with that never-to-be-repeated salvation: he or she actualized, contemporized, re-presented history.

Another example of historical recitation is found in the antiphonal liturgies in Joshua 4:6–7 and 24:14–28. Although the liturgical form has been clouded by the context of historical narration, the liturgy may be easily reconstructed:

The priest:     What do these stones mean?
The congregation:     They mean that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of Yahweh; when it passed over the Jordan, the waters were cut off.
The priest:     So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.

Liturgical Affirmation of Yahweh’s Kingship

H. J. Kraus has suggested that these liturgical foundations emanated from Gilgal, a center of worship that carefully preserved the Jordan crossing and the conquest traditions. In these liturgies the reader is in touch with historical recital of the re-creation of history, a means of allowing the existential involvement of later generations in those acts of Yahweh that effected salvation and that continue to effect salvation.

Or one may cite a central thrust of the Jerusalem worship community, namely the liturgical affirmation of the Psalter—Yahweh has become/is king. Despite the discussion this affirmation has evoked, no thought of a dying-rising Yahweh is intended; nor was the kingship of Yahweh predicated in an annual cultic renewal ceremony. Nevertheless, in the Jerusalem temple, this liturgical affirmation brought the worshiper face to face with the reality of Yahweh’s kingship, not a theological abstraction, but an experiential and existential encounter that demanded a response. Indeed, one may posit that just such a worship encounter underlies the temple sequence in Isaiah 6, an encounter with the cultic reaffirmation of Yahweh’s kingship, which redirected the prophet’s life. Thus, in some sense, in the Jerusalem worship community, Yahweh’s kingship was reactivated in worship, and he “became king” for those who entered into the experience. Cultic recital provokes existential identification.

Historical Recitation in Preaching

To be sure, Israel’s worship was not limited to creedal and liturgical confessions—a flexibility developed within the cult, as witnessed by the book of Deuteronomy. In fact, Deuteronomy is a gigantic cultic actualization. Deuteronomy 5:3 reads: “It was not with our fathers that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, all of us who are alive here today.” This passage perhaps originated between the eighth and the sixth centuries, a time far distant from the Sinai event; nevertheless, centuries later Israel could corporately and culticly confess that the present generation stood anew at the foot of the holy mountain. Moreover, historical recitation and re-presentation give way to preaching, a fact that explains Deuteronomy’s homiletic or parenetic (that is, preaching) character. The creed is expanded into an injunction and a call for obedience as each generation is recalled to affirm Israel’s ancient faith, to bridge the time and space gap, to participate existentially and creatively with those events that culminated in the covenant. Thus, Deuteronomy, with its pattern of creedal recitation and homiletic expansion, sets the pattern for Christian preaching.

Historical Recitation in Christian Hymn and Creed

These examples of Israelite historical recitation illustrate the means by which Israel sought to re-create her history by liturgical re-presentation. Small wonder that the early church also presented its message by historical re-presentation. The early Christian hymns and creeds contained in the Pauline corpus (1 Cor. 15:3–7; Phil. 2:6–11) are harmonious with the Israelite pattern of historical recitation and re-presentation, for their emphases are on the historical, concrete memories of our Lord’s life and death. Even more illustrative is the creed in 1 Timothy 3:16: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up into glory.

The death and resurrection of our Lord was a once-for-all, unique, unrepeatable historical event, and the early church, following the pattern of its spiritual ancestor, constructed similar historical recitations. In worship they stood again at the foot of the cross, by which they bridged the time and space gap, by which the Christ event continued in contemporaneity through cultic re-presentation.

And the church continued to formulate creeds. To be sure, such classic creeds as the so-called Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed were formulated to preserve dogmatic integrity; nevertheless, the basic character of these creeds is rightly historical. Of course, Israel would not have opened her creeds with the theological abstraction of God’s “almightiness,” nor would she have spoken of the outset of creation. Nevertheless, when the Apostles’ Creed begins the article of Jesus Christ, the Hebraic cultic pattern is maintained: “born of the virgin Mary,” “crucified under Pontius Pilate,” “died, was buried, raised on the third day.” To give audible expression to the Apostles’ Creed in worship is not an intellectual exercise in dogmatic assertion; in this audible expression something should happen—the worshiper should encounter anew the historical elements of our faith, and in some sense, experience the sacramental contemporaneity of our Lord with the worshiper. If one is to take the Israelite worship community seriously, then one is confronted with the demand to reactivate the purpose of re-presentation by historical recital, to view creedal affirmations not as tests of theological soundness, but as a means of existential identification with the past, as a means of bridging the time and space gap, as a means of re-creating the original event and existentially participating in those events that have accomplished our salvation.

Undoubtedly, many Protestant evangelicals have eschewed creedal statements primarily because the basic purpose has been lost; nevertheless, from the example of Israel’s worship community, such creedal re-presentations should be restored to Christian worship in order that the church may possess a more vital sense of its history, that it may become more aware of its corporate relationship with the church of all ages, and that it may participate in God’s saving act in Jesus Christ and recognize the demands that event makes on the individual. The loss of historical identification undercuts the dynamism of the Christian faith; Israel’s cultic pattern has pointed the way to a recovery of that historical involvement in Christian worship.

Biblical and Early Church Models of the Creed (Affirmation of Faith)

Biblical Worship and Historical Recital