The Creeds

Welcome! Today we take a one-week break from our series on Samuel and Saul to look at the creeds of the early church. One reason we are doing this today is because this afternoon we will have a family meeting to discuss, among other things, a proposed change to our Statement of Faith. We are proposing this change because Great Commission Churches, of which we are a part, has recently revised their Statement of Faith, and we would like our Statement to mirror theirs.

You may wonder why Great Commission Churches has revised their statement of faith. Well, the short answer is that there is a standing “Doctrinal Team” of elders, and although they did not find any significant errors in the previous version, they felt it was not “wordsmithed” as carefully as it could have been, and so they set on a three-year task to go through it very carefully, revisit everything freshly, and make it as excellent as possible. (The previous version was written about 25 years ago, by the way.)

What I thought I would do today is talk about creeds and confessions and statements of faith in general and also to look into some depth into the early creeds. First of all what is a creed? Well, the word comes from the Latin word credo which means “I believe.” So a creed is any kind of statement of faith, of what a person or group of people believe.

Is there any Biblical support for the use of creeds? Absolutely! In fact, you see evidences of the use of creed-like sayings in Scripture itself. One example is in I Corinthians, one of the very earliest writings in the New Testament. In it, Paul quotes an even older saying, or creed:

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 Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters 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. - I Cor. 15:3-8

It’s hard to know exactly where the saying ends and Paul’s discussion resumes, but it is not terribly important for us to know this either. I would think the “most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep” is Paul’s addition, certainly along with the part about Paul. Perhaps the saying is simply the following:

Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried. He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

In any case, this is a creed, a statement of belief. It highlights that Christ died, was buried, and was raised and seen. But it goes beyond just an eyewitness account in that it says that Christ died for our sins. These three words say so much! It tells us that we are sinners, that sin is real and significant and has major consequences. It means Jesus’ death was His choice, and that He chose to die to save us from the consequences of those sins – which would have been eternal separation from God. That’s a big chunk of the gospel message right there.

Another related example is the first of the five “trustworthy sayings” of Paul. Five times Paul uses the words “This is a trustworthy saying.” That’s not in contrast to the rest of Scripture, which is, what? Untrustworthy? No, it is in contrast to the wisdom of the world, and the sayings of people who don’t know what they are talking about or who deliberately try to lead Christians astray. They have sayings too, but Paul’s are trustworthy, literally, faithful (pistis).

So what is this first trustworthy saying of Paul? Here it is:

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. – I Tim. 1:12a

The context in I Timothy was that Paul was telling Timothy (who had the difficult task of leading the church in Ephesus and reaching out to the sin-addicted, anything-goes people who lived there) to hold on to this saying. Jesus came into the world to save sinners! Paul went on to give himself as exhibit A of such a sinner. Paul sees himself as chief of sinners, because he oversaw the persecution of believers – he was responsible for it! Yet, he tells Timothy, look at the grace God has shown me! And so this creedal saying was especially powerful, because it reminded Timothy (and us) that nobody is too far gone for Jesus to save. The gospel is for everyone, especially flagrant sinners!

By the way, the other four “trustworthy sayings” are I Tim. 3:1, I Tim. 4:7-9, II Tim. 2:11-13, and Titus 3:3-8. Here is that final saying, which I really think starts with the third sentence:

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying. – Titus 3:3-8

This saying gets to the heart of the gospel – that we cannot earn salvation; it is a gift of God. This salvation, this saving, comes through the Holy Spirit which came through Jesus. This doesn’t get into the details, but it is because Jesus died on the cross for our sin that all this is possible. It touches on the idea of justification, which is explained in depth in Romans, it gets to the fact that this work is a work of grace, undeserved and unmerited favor, and it explains that we become heirs and will experience eternal life with Him.

Here is an additional example of a creedal statement from I Timothy:

He [Jesus] appeared in the flesh, 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. – I Timothy 3:16b

There’s so much summarized so concisely here! Jesus appeared physically, in the flesh. That statement alone was a refutation of what some in the time this letter was written were saying, that flesh and physical forms were bad in and of themselves, so if Jesus was all-good, He couldn’t have really been in the flesh. Paul says no, He appeared in the flesh. Then He was vindicated by the Spirit – there are multiple ways to understand this. One is how the Holy Spirit came and settled on Him as a dove in His baptism. Another is that He promised His disciples that they would receive the Holy Spirit, and at Pentecost in that room together in Jerusalem as explained in Acts 2, they did, and the result was an instant church of believers of several thousand people! As for seen by angels, the word angel means messenger, but in this case I think it is really talking about angels. A multitude of angels praised God at His birth. Angels ministered to Jesus after His temptation in the desert. An angel strengthened Him and ministered to Him in the Garden of Gethsemane. An angel met the women after His resurrection. And an angel directed the disciples after His ascension. He was preached among the nations and believed on in the world. We take this for granted, but this was the fulfillment of prophecy after prophecy in the Old Testament going back to God’s pronouncement to Abraham that nobody could understand. Wasn’t God the God of the Jews only? In a word, No! As Paul and others began to spread the gospel – the good news about Jesus – around as far as they could travel, and gentiles were coming to faith, this was an astounding change in the history of the works of God. And He rose from the dead, and after meeting with His disciples over a period of days, rose up into heaven before them, up into the clouds. All this is described in this short statement.

And one last example, this one from Philippians 2. It starts with an exhortation to have the same mindset as Christ Jesus in our relationships with one another, and continues:  

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. – Phil. 2:6-11

This one clearly expresses the deity of Christ but also His humanity. It describes His choice to humbly serve up His own life in accordance with the will of God the Father. And as a consequence His name is raised up above all other names, and all people, all angels, and even it would seem all demons, will bow before Him.

And so each of these statements were summary statements expressing compactly key truths about the gospel, the nature of God, and related matters.

Now why did Paul and others use these creedal statements? Well, again and again they are accompanied by warnings to not follow false doctrines and exhortations to not allow oneself to be led astray. The creedal statements helped people to remember the truth and thereby be able to quickly reject the false.  I’m just going to give you one example of such an exhortation:

So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. – 2 Thess. 2:15

This particular exhortation is interesting in light of our current discussion because it includes teachings by word of mouth. This seems to specifically imply some sort of memorized creed-like set of statements.

Now in the history of the church after the times of the New Testament, there have been several occasions in which creeds have been written. I am going to talk about two of them. To put these events in context, I am going to give the briefest summary of church history. The period of time we are talking about is called the Ante-Nicene period (where ante means before), roughly from 66 AD to 325 AD.

During this period the final books of the New Testament were written, and quickly sets of these were gathered together and copied and passed around the ever expanding church. From the beginning there was a clear understanding of which books were “inspired” (with one or two exceptions). The formal conclusion of what books belonged in the canon, or set of books, did not occur until around 200 AD, but it was only a question of authorship of a few books that was in doubt. Long before this, a set very close to our New Testament was being passed around as a fairly standard collection. We know this because of writings of church fathers during this time.

During this period, church leadership and governance also began to change. Rather than just a set of elders in each local church of which there might be many in a large city, leaders with connections to the original disciples tended to be given a more over-managing role, and came to be called bishops. By 160 AD, many larger communities had such a bishop. Eventually even more structure began to appear; the bishop of a capital city of a province became known as the central authority of all churches in that province. These bishops became known as metropolitan bishops.

At this point, bishops had freedom of interpretation, which was good and bad. Some bishops “went off the rails” so to speak with false doctrines, but as a whole there was a respect of scripture and of generally biblical interpretation. Bishops began to call meetings together to discuss differences of doctrine in gatherings called synods as early as 160 AD (although you could technically call the meeting in Jerusalem about what to “do about” Gentile believers in Acts 15 the first such meeting).

Now no discussion of the early church would be reasonable without discussing persecution. Post-Acts, the early persecution was localized, but eventually it became empire-wide. Early-on Christianity was poorly understood and seen as a bizarre sect of Judaism, which was a very old religion (and therefore a moderately respected one even if its adherents had a nasty habit of refusing to include the Roman gods in their beliefs or practices). But later, as Christianity continued to spread, it was seen as far more dangerous, seen as a “superstitio,” a practice that was corrosive to society and made men go insane. Because Christians were persecuted, they tried to meet together in secret, and this only added to people’s mistrust, leading to wild rumors that they committed cannibalism (eating the blood and body of Christ) and incest (calling one another brothers and sisters).

From the gospels we see that although the Roman government participated in the trials and crucifixion of Christ, they were, as a whole, somewhat unwilling participants, dragged into this by the Jewish mobs. Until the time of Nero in 64 AD, the Romans tended to stay out of “internal Jewish squabbles,” punishing all involved when things got out of hand. But when a great fire in Rome burned much of the city and rumors arose that Nero was to blame, he in turn blamed Christians and began persecuting them. Nero’s persecution likely led to the deaths of Paul and Peter. Additional bouts of localized persecution occurred under various successive emperors. The number and severity of persecutions increased greatly as time went on. There were periods of relative peace, but even during these periods, local persecutions continued to occur. Despite (or perhaps because of) this persecution, the church continued to grow rapidly. The worst and most widespread persecution was under Diocletian from 303-313 AD. This was a genocidal-level attempt to completely wipe out Christianity from the Roman Empire. To learn more about these persecutions and those who faced death if they did not forsake Christ, I encourage you to read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

Persecution came to an end with the rise of Constantine the Great as Emperor, who re-unified the Roman Empire as its sole ruler. Constantine was the first Roman Emperor to claim conversion to Christianity. He was responsible for the Edict of Milan in 313 which was an agreement to treat Christians benevolently within the entire Roman Empire. This was a dramatic change for the early church. Constantine himself, however, went beyond “tolerating” Christianity to actively promoting it. However, Constantine’s personal faith is difficult to determine – there were signs that he still may have worshiped other gods, and there are questions about the degree to which his Christian proclamation of faith really affected his life.  

Constantine became involved in the church councils, the gatherings of bishops described earlier, and desired that they meet to take positions on controversies that were dividing the church. This ultimately led to his summoning the Council of Nicea (in Turkey) in 325 AD.  He did not preside as a leader over this meeting, but did want them to come to some conclusions about the controversial issues.

Now through the growth of the early church, the persecutions tended to root out those who sought to be known as Christians for personal power, influence, or financial gain, although not always. But when peace came to the Empire under Constantine, the number of self-declared Christians exploded, and with them came false teachers who gathered increasing influence. The Council of Nicea was a reaction to this. Constantine invited all 1800 bishops at this time to this meeting. Of course travel was difficult, and it was unrealistic to expect the majority to come. But about 300 came, and there was representation from all parts of the Roman Empire, even Britain.  

One of the key questions to be settled (from Scripture) was regarding the nature of the Jesus the Son in relationship to God the Father. Was the Son begotten from the Father from His own being, and therefore having no beginning, or was He created out of nothing, having a beginning? The side arguing the latter were called Arians, followers of Arius, a bishop in Egypt. At stake was the question of whether Jesus was really God. There is evidence that Constantine himself didn’t care what the answer was – he only wanted all conflict to go away.

The result was the Nicene Creed. It was modified slightly in the Second Ecumenical Council in 381. The main changes were that direct anti-Arian statements were viewed as no longer needed and removed. Here is the creed:

“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 men 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.”

Would we today agree with this creed? Generally, yes, although we would likely choose different wording for some parts and maybe deemphasize some things that are emphasized because of misunderstandings of what these things mean or imply. For example, in the first third, I’m not sure we would say Light from Light, although John 1 does clearly call Jesus the true light that came into the world. I don’t know that we would word the part about the Virgin Mary the way it is worded, because of how the Catholic Church has inappropriately worshiped Mary and prayed to her.

We can get more nit-picky as well. A number of theologians are not a fan with the very first words, “We believe.” This seems to weaken the statement. It matters less what you believe (especially in our modern culture which says believe whatever you want to as long as it works for you) than what is actually true. From all the creedal statements we saw in scripture, none started with “We believe.” They just proclaimed truth. The same is true in the Old Testament; for example, the Shema (Deut. 6:4): “Hear O Israel, The Lord, our God, the Lord is One.”

In the second part, I have my greatest concern. I’m not sure I would say or even agree with that part about how the Holy Spirit is worshiped with the Father and Son. I think their intention was to clearly portray the Trinitarian nature of God, but there simply aren’t examples in Scripture of specifically worshiping the Holy Spirit. We are to worship in the Spirit (and in truth) but that a very different thing from worshiping the Spirit. This might not be a big deal to you, but I think it illustrates the difficulty of trying to write a creed that is 100% Biblically correct.

In the third part, you may be wondering about that phrase “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” Well, the term catholic (with a lower-case “C”) refers to the universal church, all who have placed their faith in Christ for salvation. As for “apostolic,” at the time the creed was written, that would have meant that it was built on the teaching of the apostles. In later times the Roman Catholic church redefined both of these terms – by catholic they took it to mean them specifically, and by apostolic, they used it to claim the principle of apostolic succession, that the original apostles had special authority that they passed on to others and so on down the line to the modern Roman Catholic church. There is no support for this idea, biblically, or historically.

What about “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins”? Some have used the creed to argue that the early Christians believed that water baptism was necessary for salvation. But there is no evidence that the early church fathers (and bishops) believed this. Certainly there is no Biblical support this idea – I think of how Paul wrote “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” This clearly communicates that personal acceptance and belief of the gospel, not baptism, is necessary for salvation. So what did it mean? The answer may surprise you. The problem was that, in repudiating Arianism (and also Montanism and Donatism, which we don’t have time to talk about today), you had whole parts of the church (such as in Egypt) whose leaders were now being corrected for error. If you were an average Joe Christian in such a place, a natural question to ask was “Should I be baptized again?” Now a tradition of the early church was to have a person agree to a creed of some kind right before being baptized. If the creed changed, did that mean they had to get baptized again? The answer was a resounding “No.”

On top of this was the question of whether someone who walked away from their faith or who, under persecution, recanted their faith, should be baptized again. This question even comes up today, especially among those who may have been baptized as children before they really believed. The answer is no, one baptism is appropriate but no more.

What about for “forgiveness of sins?” It’s not that the bishops believed that baptism was necessary to be forgiven, it’s just that it was a universal step new believers took upon entering into the faith. Baptism was seen not only as an entry into the new Christian life, but also as a dying to the old life, a life almost universally (for Gentile believers) that had been previously devoted to worshiping many false Roman gods. Baptism was such a universal part of conversion that if anyone were to skip the step, they would be strongly suspected as being non-believing spies intent on getting names of people to arrest. This is true even today in Muslim areas where Christians are persecuted. Both the Muslims and the believers see baptism as a step beyond which there is no return. As a result, Muslim converts are generally slow to get baptized because they know that they will no longer be people, that, if captured, will be asked or tortured to get to recant their faith; instead, they will likely be simply killed. A Muslim convert does not get baptized until he is absolutely certain that Christ means more to him than even his life.

In our last few minutes I want to show you one more creed, known as the Apostles’ Creed. This creed is shorter. Early versions of this creed definitely came prior to the Nicene Creed, perhaps just a generation after the resurrection of Christ. But there are many versions, with various minor differences. The version I am showing you may have actually been completed after the Nicene Creed – it is hard to know for sure. In any case, here is the creed:

“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, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.”

This creed has fewer and less significant potential problems than the Nicene Creed. It says nothing controversial about the Holy Spirit and does not talk about baptism. But it is also less clear about the nature of Jesus.

I realize this has been a very different kind of message than what we typically do, but I hope it has helped you to understand the history and content of the early creeds; to see that, despite imperfections, there is value in having creeds or statements of faith; and perhaps most of all to see that we are part of a continuing, unbroken story of God’s building his Church until He returns.