CHURCH AND CREED. CHURCH and creed were born together. The creed is essentially a confession of faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Saviour of men. Peter may be said to have uttered the first Christian creed when he said: "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God."* On this account he was named by the Messiah the Rock of the Church. The first confessor was given the keys of the kingdom of heaven. The creed was at first that confession of faith in the Messiah which was necessary to Christian baptism and to participation in the supper of the Lord in the Church. The apostolic commission, "Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," gave the outline of the Trinitarian creed: "I believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." So soon as the Church was organized and provision was made for the training of converts in preparation for the sacra ments, this simple outline of the creed was enlarged, so as to embrace the essential doctrines of the Christian religion as conceived by the ancient Church. This enlargement of the creed was made independently in the different churches established in the provinces and cities of the Roman Empire; but gradually a consensus was attained, such as we find in the so-called Apostles' Creed and in the Nicene Creed, the latter differing from the former chiefly in that it was enlarged by the Council of Nice in 325 A.D. so as to exclude the Arians from the Church. We have to distinguish, in the Apostles' Creed, between the older form, in which there was a consensus, and the later additions to it; just as we have to distinguish between the original Nicene Creed of 325 and the Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 with the western additions. We shall arrange these in parallel columns, giving the later additions in brackets, but not attempting to *Matt. xvi., 16. restore to their original form the clauses that have been transposed. The parentheses show the Latin additions.* Apostles' Creed. 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty [maker of heaven and earth.] 2. And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord; 3. Who was [conceived] by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary ; 4. [Suffered] under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, [dead], and buried; 5. [He descended into hades]; the third day he rose again from the dead; 6 He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of [God] the Father [Almighty]; 7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. 8. And [I believe] in the Holy Ghost. 9. The holy [catholic] Church; [the communion of saints]; Nicene Creed. 1. We (I) believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker [of heaven and earth, and] of all things visible and invisible. 2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, 3. Who, for us men, and for our 5. And the third day he rose again 6. [And] ascended into heaven [and 7. From thence he shall come [9. (And I believe) in one holy cath- * See Schaff's "Creeds of Christendom," pp. 12 et seq. Apostles' Creed. Nicene Creed. 10. The forgiveness of sins; [10. We (1) acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.] 11. The resurrection of the body [11. And we (I) look for the resurrec [flesh]; [12. And the life everlasting.] tion of the dead ;] [12. And the life of the world to come.] The damnatory clauses of the Nicene Creed I have not given. They ought never to have been used with the creed. They may be appropriate as the judgment of the council, but they are not proper in public worship. These two primitive creeds have been taken into the liturgies. of the Christian Church and are a part of the public worship of Christendom. The House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States and the Lambeth conference of the Bishops of the Church of England and her daughters did wisely when, in their plan for the reunion of Christendom, they proposed these two liturgical creeds-" the Apostles' Creed as the baptismal symbol, and the Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith." It should be the aim of all Christians to rally about this position as the essential doctrinal basis of Christendom. I take no exception to any statements of these two creeds. Some of the later additions seem to me to express important doctrines. At the same time, it is my opinion that, if we could reduce these two creeds to their primitive form by striking out all the bracketed clauses, many minds would be relieved of difficulties in subscription and nothing essential to Christianity would be lost. They would still give "the sufficient statement of the Christian faith." These two creeds are suited to public worship in form and in substance. Their language is chaste and beautiful, they are devotional and easily become choral. The Christian world, with very few exceptions, heartily unite in them, and in their one harmonious faith realize the blessedness of "the communion of saints." The later creeds of the Church express division and schism. They set forth doctrinal variations which are of great importance in the science of theology, but which are not essential to Christian faith and life. The Creed of Chalcedon and the pseudo-Athanasian Creed are accepted by the great body of orthodox men in the Christian Church, but both of them have been severely criticised by devout and honored theologians. What they have added to the two ancient creeds has not tended to the harmony of Christendom. The Church of Christ for 1,500 years lived and grew and accomplished its greatest triumphs, destroying the ancient religions, transforming the Greek, Roman, and oriental civilizations, winning the Celtic, Germanic, and Slavonic races to Christ, without any other creeds than these. But in the sixteenth century the throes of liberty and reformation divided the Church, and large numbers of creeds, catechisms, and confessions of faith. were framed in order to define the differences and to emphasize the discord of Christendom. The Greek Church produced a number of confessions and catechisms to vindicate its orthodoxy over against Rome and Wittenberg. The Protestant churches set forth their faith in the Augsburg Confession and in national symbols. The Roman Catholic Church defined the orthodox faith in the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent. All variations of Protestantism also found expression in confessions of faith and in catechisms of various kinds. These modern symbolical documents differ greatly in form and character from the ancient creeds. 1. They are not so much creeds, expressing the real faith of the people of God, as systems of orthodox doctrine, to be taught by theologians. 2. They are not designed for the worship of the people and are therefore not in the liturgical form. They are for instruction in the class room; catechisms for children; larger catechisms for adults and confessions of faith for the ministry. 3. They do not set forth in plain terms the essential doctrines of Christianity, but in learned language they give a complete exposition of Christian doctrine or else a full statement of certain particular doctrines with regard to which there have been division and debate. If it was necessary to organize the various Protestant national churches of northern Europe, it was also necessary that these churches should define their faith in symbolical books. This made it necessary also for the Roman Catholic Church to define its position at the Council of Trent. So also when the non-conforming churches separated from the national churches there was the same historic necessity for additional symbols of faith. These symbolic books were designed for the most part as public expressions of the faith of the national churches or of the denominations using them. They were not ordinarily intended to bind the consciences of the people or even to compel the ministry to blind subscription to all their dogmatic statements. Subscription to creeds was forced on the ministry of the British churches by the authority of the state in the interests of civil order. It was not a natural evolution of Protestantism itself. It was rather an unwholesome check to the development of Protestantism, its doctrine and life. The symbolic books of Protestantism culminated, on the continent of Europe, in the Lutheran Form of Concord and in the Reformed Canons of Dort. The Form of Concord became a form of discord in the Lutheran churches. Dr. Schaff has well said: "During the palmy period of Lutheran scholasticism, the Formula of Concord stood in high authority among Lutherans, and was even regarded as inspired. Its first centennial [1680] was celebrated with considerable enthusiasm. But at the close of another century it was dead and buried."* The Canons of Dort excluded Arminianism from the reformed churches, and made a division which has continued until the present time. Dr. Schaff says: "The Canons of Dort have for Calvinism the same significance which the Formula of Concord has for Lutheranism; both betray a very high order of theological ability and care. Both are consistent and necessary developments. Both exerted a powerful and conserving influence in these churches. Both prepared the way for a dry scholasticism which runs into subtle abstractions, and resolves the living soul of divinity into a skeleton of formulas and distinctions. Both consolidated orthodoxy at the expense of freedom, sanctioned a narrow confessionalism, and widened the breach between the two branches of the Reformation." The Westminster Confession was later than the two scholastic symbols just mentioned. It was the fruit of the second Refor mation in Great Britian, and as such full of life and vigor and thereby less scholastic than the Form of Concord and the Canons of Dort. But in some respects it is having a history similar to that of these two older symbols. As I have elsewhere said: "It was a splendid plan to unite all parties in the three national churches of Great Britain about common symbols. But, unfortunately, + Ibid., p. 515. Creeds of Christendom," p. 336. |