The Origin of Creeds
The NT contains many short professions/declarations of the content of Christian
faith (e.g., Romans; Philippians 2. 6-11; 10.9-19; 1 Timothy 3.16). They are
short summaries of the faith, drawing on the OT background (but enlightened
by the new reality Christ has brought) - proclaiming Jesus as Messiah,
vindicated by God in his death and resurrection. Such formulas are
particularly associated with baptism.
Expansion of Credal Formulas
Listing of the facts about the work of Christ (e.g., 1 Corinthians 15 or
the opening of Romans).
Insistence that notwithstanding the recognition of the divinity of Jesus
after his resurrection, Christian faith is still in the One True God of
Israel revealed as his Father.
Trinitarian trends are clear but less is said in the earliest period about the Holy
Spirit - his activity is described more than speculated about. Matthew 28.19 (the
command to baptize in the Triune Name) is the crystallization of the trinitarian
faith and shows its connection with baptism.
Creed and Catechism
By the end of the 3 rd century we find writers referring to a ‘Rule of Faith’ used
at baptism, with the later three articles (God the Father as Almighty Creator,
the Son and his mysteries of salvation and the Church as the place of the
Holy Spirit’s operation) put as questions, with the response, ‘I believe.’ There
must have been detailed instruction beforehand, though the best evidence for
that is from after the 4 th century. By then the creed was called the Symbolum
(‘Symbol’ from the Greek word to ‘throw things together’) – it was the token of
membership of the Christian community. In the preparation for baptism there
was a delivery of the text from the bishop to the candidate (the catechumen)
and its solemn return through repetition before the baptism itself.
Credal Forms
They varied before the accession of Constantine as emperor – yet the
substantial identity of forms from all the local churches is striking though
here was only one “Rule of Faith.” Originally, the purpose of such forms was to
demonstrate commitment to the one faith.
However, with the rise of the Arian heresy after 325AD, the Creed of Nicaea
became a standard to be invoked in controversy, a defence of the truth against
heresy. The ‘Nicene Creed’ had been produced to provide such a fixed
standard of belief. It was not intended to replace baptismal creeds (it says
almost nothing about the Spirit or the Church) but primarily intended to allow
bishops to demonstrate their orthodoxy by subscribing to it.
It retained this role though N.B. expanded and replaced by the longer Niceno-
Constantinopolitan Creed after the Council of Constantinople in 381AD,
(ratified at the 4 th Council, Chalcedon, 451AD, as a fuller statement of the
Nicene faith), still used today. In the East it supplanted all other creeds, entering
the liturgy in the late 5 th century. In the west, the baptismal creed remained
central - the Nicene Creed only entered the liturgy in the Middle Ages
(expanded with an extra word filioque, ‘and the Son’ - about the Son eternally
breathing forth the Holy Spirit along with the Father, an idea rejected in the
East).
The Use of the Creed
The original purpose of credal forms had been to enable candidates for baptism
to affirm the Church’s faith – the tradition (i.e., what was delivered or handed
on). It was the common syllabus of the Church’s faith. But heresy had called
forth the need for greater precision of language, especially re. the central core of
the faith, the person of Christ. The so-called ‘Nicene Creed’ still stands as the
pattern of sound teaching and key statement to the Church’s members, and to
the world, of what the Church has held from Scripture, since the beginning.
Creed and Scripture
The early Church’s Creed was its summary of the scriptural witness to God’s
revelation, most of it drawn from Holy Scripture. One objection to the word
homoousios (‘one in substance’) was that it was not a biblical word – but its
defenders insisted that it captured the meaning of the biblical witness to Christ,
the core of which is that the living God (revealed in the OT through a
particular people as a God of righteousness and mercy) is Creator of the
world, living and active within it; humanity needs the intervention of God’s
grace for salvation; God acted to destroy sin and death in the death and
resurrection of Jesus, proclaimed as the Christ; salvation is realized
through faith in him by the Holy Spirit, in and through the community the
Church; the transforming power of God leads to the future transformation
of the world.
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