An Introduction to The Creeds

Chapter 1. Introduction to The Creeds.

One of the most powerful things at work in our lives is also something that we are, in the main, totally unaware of its existence. This is our worldview.

Our worldview totally controls the way we think. It acts as a filter giving interpretation to everything we experience. Our worldview “makes sense” of the world for us so that we can function as rational, sane people.

Every person has a worldview. To the degree that the person’s worldview is able to explain reality more or less consistently that person is able to function in life.

Question: What is a world view?

Definition: A worldview is a set of presuppositions/assumptions that we hold consciously or subconsciously about the basic makeup of the world.

A worldview is an understanding of the universe fashioned by words and concepts that work together to provide a more or less coherent frame of reference for all thought and action.

Sire:

“A Worldview is more basic, more foundational than formal studies in philosophy or theology. Few people had anything approaching an articulate philosophy. Even less have a carefully constructed theology. But everyone has a worldview. It is only the assumption of a worldview that allows us to think at all. To discover one's own worldview is valuable - a significant step towards self awareness, self knowledge and self understanding.”

What do we mean by “an assumption”?

An assumption is something we assume to be true – event though we may not have even thought about it.

For example: We assume that something exists. All worldviews assume there is something rather than nothing. This assumption is so primary that most of us don’t even know we are assuming it.

This is just the point. If we do not recognise our basic assumptions, we get nowhere. Many simple facts stare us in the face but their significance may be tremendous.

E.g. the apprehension that something is there is the beginning of conscious life and leads to two branches of philosophy: metaphysics - the study of being; and epistemology - the study of knowing.

Recognising something is there does not necessarily recognise what that something is, and here is where worldviews begin to diverge. Is it one thing or many? If one: matter or soul?

The worldview is composed of basic presuppositions, more or less self consistent, generally unquestioned by each person, rarely if ever mentioned by friends, and only brought to mind when challenged by a foreigner from another ideological universe.

The importance of looking at Worldviews.

Because our worldview is such a controlling factor in our lives God is very interested in the Worldview we hold.

Romans 12:1,2.

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind”.

Our Worldview controls the way we understand reality, the very way we think – and it does this at a subconscious level. It happens automatically in such a way that we are not aware of it. But what if there are elements in our worldview that are opposed to Christianity and Christian ways of thought? What if our whole worldview turned out to be anti-Christian? How would that affect our ability to live as Christians?

This is in fact the case. The Bible is very clear that the minds of unbelievers are “in darkness”.

2 Corinthians 4:4.

“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that

they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the

image of God.”

The Bible is not trying to say here that non-Christians are totally ignorant, or know nothing, but that what they know is darkness, as opposed to the light of the Gospel. The inability of non Christians to see the truth of the gospel is caused by a way of thinking – a worldview – that makes assumptions contrary to the gospel and so render the gospel – at least in the eyes of the non Christian – to be “foolishness”.

1 Corinthians 1:17,18.

“(I)… preach the gospel - not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

So the gospel message doesn’t make sense in the minds of unbelievers – unless God opens their minds. And the primary reason for this inability to understand the gospel is because of a “mind-set”, a “way of thinking”, a “world-view”.

There are many “worldly worldviews” and each one of them is, to a large degree, mutually exclusive of the other worldviews – and of the gospel. Each worldview “makes sense” in itself to some degree – but if one holds to a particular worldview then ideas found in another worldview may seem absolutely crazy.

This is the case with the gospel – it is a worldview in itself.

1 Corinthians 1:30.

“It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God- that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.”

In this passage of scripture Paul is using the word “wisdom” in a very full Greek sense. He does not just mean “a bright idea” or “a good theory”. What he means is a whole way of thinking – a metaphysic, a worldview. Paul goes on to elaborate on this a few verses later:

1 Corinthians 2:6-8

“We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.

None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

Paul contrasts Christ here with “a wisdom of this age” – and it is clear that this “hidden wisdom” gives meaning to the whole of life and eternity.

When someone in the world comes into contact with the gospel they are assuming a different worldview – and the gospel just doesn’t make sense in their worldview. Such people are not being difficult when they argue with us Christians – they are acting out of a worldview that seems consistent to them and inside that worldview what we are saying sounds like nonsense.

1 Corinthians 2:14.

“The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

But this “darkness” does not suddenly disappear when we become Christians. Our way of thinking, our worldview, our basic assumptions about reality, do not miraculously change overnight so that we now full understand and think inside a Christian worldview. Rather the old remains in place until we root it out and allow God to “transform our minds”. That is why we are urged by Paul to “be transformed by renewing our minds”. And the fundamental level of this is the area of our worldview.

The problem is that it is extremely difficult to unearth what ones worldview is. It is, by very definition, something that is largely unconscious, hidden. It is absorbed while we grow up is such a way that we don’t even know we are accumulating it.

To renew our minds at this level required a lot of hard work, and it is a task Christians regularly avoid. But it is an area Christians throughout the ages have thought deeply about.

The awareness has come now in the theological arena, in the missionary arena and in the evangelistic arena, that if we are going to make an impact on the world we need to not only discover what the Christian world view is, as an alternative, but also the worldviews of the world. We need to know how to recognise them and answer them. And we need to demonstrate, as Christians, an alternative worldview.

Sire: To discover one's own worldview is valuable--a significant step towards self-awareness, self-knowledge and self-understanding.

Basic Content of a Worldview.

One might think that there are an infinite number of world views. In actual fact there are only a few ingredients to a worldview and only a limited number of options for each of these ingredients. All worldviews are made up of a mix of a very few options.

A worldview includes basic answers to the following questions:

1. What is prime reality? Answers: God, the gods, the material universe.

2. Who is man? Answers: material or personal/the image of God (but what sort of God?)

3. What happens to man at death? Answers: personal extinction, transformation to a higher state, or departure to a shadowy existence.

4. What is the basis of morality? Answers: the character of God (Theism), the affirmation of men (society), the impetus toward physical or cultural survival (evolutionary), Personal opinion (Hedonism or anarchy).

5. What is the meaning of human history? Answers: the purposes of God or the gods, to make a paradise on earth, nothing, etc.

Other issues often arise:

1. What is the nature of the external world?

2. Who is in charge of this world? God, man, both, no one?

3. Is man determined or free?

4. How can we know and how can we know what we know?

5. Is man alone the maker of values?

6. Is God really good?

7. Is God personal or impersonal?

8. Does God exist at all?

So a worldview has the following elements:

1. A theology – this is fundamental, a way of interpreting ultimate reality.

2. A philosophy – a way of interpreting life.

3. An Ethic and Law – a way of behaving in the light of theology and philosophy.

4. A Psychology – a way of understanding self.

5. A Sociology and Politics – a way of understanding society.

6. A History and Economic – a way of understanding the meaning of events and where they are headed.

7. An epistemology – a theory of knowledge – what is truth?

Thus it is easy to see that Christianity is a distinct worldview that addresses all of these areas.

Question: So what has this got to do with the Creeds?

In coming to study the Creeds of the Christian Church, it is important to understand the reason why they were originally written. We are so far removed from the events of history that the rationale behind the Creeds is commonly not realized. The Creeds are often seen as an historical anachronism, an irrelevancy, and a statement of fossilized doctrine that has no present relevance. When we understand the initial reasons for the Creeds being written then we come to see that the Creeds have vital importance for us today.

Purposes of the Creeds.

The Creeds were written for three primary purposes:
1. As a missionary statement, to state what Christian belief is as opposed to other belief systems. Thus they are a statement of a worldview.

2. As a defense against wrong teaching in the church, a definition of what is universally agreed Christian doctrine.

3. To be a clear statement of Christian belief for the purpose of catechismal instruction.

1. As a missionary statement.

The Early Church were aware that, if the gospel was true, then reality was to be understood in a quite different way to how it was commonly seen. Thus the formulation of the creed at Nicaea was undertaken in the realization that the exact words used, and their definition, were a challenge to the prevailing worldview, not just in religion, but also in philosophy, science, and other fields of human knowledge. The Creed is thus to be understood as a missionary challenge to ways of human thought.

This has to be seen as the primary motivation for the writing of the original creed at Nicaea. Creeds, including the Apostles Creed, already existed as catechisms – but the Creed of Nicaea has this extra element.

2. As a defense.

In the Early Church Christ was confessed as Lord and as Son of God. However what these two titles meant was not clearly defined or understood. There was a wide range of meanings in the Roman Empire for each of these titles. To call Jesus "The Son of God" did not mean to most hearers, "Son by birth" as we assume today. It ranged in meaning from "miracle worker" through to "King" to an “angelic being”. Similarly "Lord" had a range of meanings from the general title, "Sir", through royalty to divine beings. This fluidity of meaning meant that the preaching of the Church was variously interpreted, both within and outside the Church. This led to various heretical ideas about the nature of both Christ and the Spirit. The formulation of the Creeds was the end product of nearly 400 years of debate as to what exactly was meant by the Bible statements. From our vantage point today, looking back with our Church assumptions, we assume a particular meaning of the Bible statements as being self evident, but this is not the case. The Nicene Creed was the definitive statement of the whole Church in the face of heresy as to the nature of God.

What is not often realised is that the Nicene Creed was qualified with a particular interpretation endorsed by the Council of Constantinople. Freedom was not given to interpret the creed as one saw fit, it was a definitive statement with a definitive interpretation. However this definition was worked out over a period of 80 years of debate and was grounded in a particular understanding of the person and work of Christ as expounded by Athanasius, Hilary and the Cappadocian fathers in particular. The interpretation given to the phrases in the Creed by these men was endorsed by the council as being the correct and only interpretation allowable, allowing for only minor differences between them. This was implicitly an affirmation of their basic theological position also, as opposed to other schools of thought in the church.

Often the position taken by these men is radically different to what is commonly understood by the church – particularly in the West. It will be the aim of this series of studies to try to bring out the ideas in the background behind the Statements of the Creed, as what they had to say was tremendously powerful.

3. As Catechism: an instruction.

The Creeds are designed to be summaries of Christian doctrine, an outline of the basic truths that we hold as Christians. They were used to form a framework for teaching people the truths of the Christian faith. We need to realise, however, that this was not usually in the context of a New Christians class, as we understand catechism today, but in the context of an “Enquirers class”.

In the Early Church the normal practice in the Gentile Mission in evangelism was quite different to our practice. Public preaching of the gospel in a Gentile context was not normally accompanied with an appeal to salvation; rather an invitation was made to those interested to attend catechism classes. Throughout the Roman Empire this was the normal practice, and was the practice of Judaism in attracting proselytes and also of every other religious group. Catechism classes varied in length depending on local factors extending from periods of three to 15 months. At the end of the prescribed period of instruction the invitation was given for the Enquirer to become a Christian. This then was a decision of informed choice. Those that then chose to become Christians were baptized, baptism being universally seen to be the point of conversion to Christ.
The Creeds were the outline, if you like, which were expanded into the catechism instruction. Hence the Creeds were primarily considered to be an evangelistic tool.

So we need to realise that the Creeds were never originally thought of as something to be enshrined into the church and its life, but were rather seen universally to be the key point of the encounter of the church with the world in a missionary or evangelistic sense – as an evangelistic tool and as a challenge to other worldviews.

It is the purpose of these studies to attempt to look at the Creeds from this viewpoint. The aim will not be to define Christian doctrine in depth from them, rather it is three fold:

1. To state the Christian position.

2. To describe the background of ideas against which this position was stated.

3. To show how the Christian position still has a clear alternative to current world thinking.

The History of the Creeds.

1. The Nicene Creed.

We do not need to know all of the details of history; these are available in any book on Church history. It suffices for us to know the immediate lead up to the Council at Nicaea.

The Church had been faced with repeated heresies concerning the person of Christ. The decisive "Battle" came when a presbyter from Alexandria, called Arias, said that Jesus was a created being, thus not fully God – being of like nature to the Father, but not of the same nature as the Father.

Arias was working out of a philosophical background of Greek metaphysics, a world view which dominated the known world of the time in one form or another. The Fathers of the church, in particular Athanasius, saw clearly that if Arias’ position was adopted then Christianity would be absorbed into the prevailing world view, and would quickly cease to exist. Much of the debate over an 80 year period centred on exposing the radical difference between the Greek/pagan world view and the Bible world view. Athanasius very clearly demonstrated that the two were totally incompatible.

The Nicene Creed thus primarily arose in the context of heresy as a defense of the gospel against Arianism. The Nicene Creed was formulated by a Council of the whole Church at Nicaea, and has the distinction of being the only Creed endorsed by the whole Church. It was subsequently ratified with minor changes at another "All Church Council" at Constantinople. It is thus often called "The Nicene--Constantinople Creed".

Torrance: “The Council of Nicaea of 325 AD has a unique place in the history of the Christian Church as the "Great Ecumenical Synod", to which all subsequent Ecumenical councils looked back as their normative basis. The creed framed by the fathers at Nicaea secured the apostolic and Catholic faith against distortions in a decisive form that eventually commanded and unified the whole Church, grounding it in the self-revelation of God the Father through Jesus Christ his Son and in the Spirit. The essential connections of the gospel and inherent unity and structure of the faith were brought to light in a simple and succinct way, so that afterwards Nicaea was regarded as a work of the Holy Spirit. Tradition increasingly honoured the Nicene Creed as an unalterable determination of the Church. The Nicene interpretation of the Apostolic message and the evangelical godliness of its confession of faith left and enduring mark on the understanding of the Church. This was apparent at Constantinople 381 where the Nicene Creed was reaffirmed and finalised in the definitive form which made it the Supreme Ecumenical Creed of the Church. Nicene theology became the basis on which subsequent Councils took their stand.”

2. The Apostle’s Creed.

The exact origins of the Apostle’s Creed are not known. It appears to have been the confession of the Church in Rome. Thus it was probably their catechism outline. Because of its association with the Church in Rome, the Apostle’s Creed has become widely accepted as a definitive Creed in the Western Church. However it does not have the same standing and authority as the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed is the definitive Creed of the Church.

The Language of the Nicene Creed.

Because the debates were primarily about the difference between two metaphysical positions much of the debate used technical terms taken from Greek philosophy. Some of these were used in the Creed, but not without radical redefinition.

Torrance:

“When the Church spread from Judea it came up against a radical philosophical dualism of body and mind that pervaded every aspect of civilisation, fracturing human experience and affecting fundamental habits of mind in religion, philosophy and science - action and reflection, event and idea, becoming and being, material and spiritual, possible and invisible, temporal and eternal. This was built by Ptolemy into a scientific cosmology that dominated European thought for 1000 years. The effect of this dualism was to shut God out of the world. The Christian gospel quickly became a sharp conflict point… Hellenistic verses Hebraic ways of thought, myth verses the idea of God acting in history… Also transcendent notions of God--a vast difference between Creator and creature….

In its struggle with prevailing dualistic assumptions which distorted the Christian message, the Church found that it had to transform the very foundations of Graeco--Roman thought, and in so doing at laid the basis for a very different approach to the created universe and eventually for empirical science. This was secondary to evangelism, but it consumed strenuous intellectual activity for 600 years….

The Church concentrated upon the primacy and centrality of the Father/Son relation, for it was on and around that relation that everything else in the gospel seemed to be built…

The Arian heresy threatened to cut this relationship and thus undermine belief in the deity of Christ. In answer to this the Council of Nicaea put forward a precise and exact statement of the oneness in being between the incarnation Son and the Father, for that was the central issue upon which the whole confession finally depended.”

The theologians of the Church, in their attempt to explain the mystery of Christ in human language, were forced into borrowing words from Greek philosophy. However this should not be seen to be a corruption of the gospel with Greek philosophy. Even though the words were borrowed, the concepts of Greek philosophy were not. The words were thoroughly redefined by the Church to exclude the philosophic concepts they originally held. As we go through the creed we will talk more about this.

Was it a victory for Hellenism - turning the gospel into a metaphysic?

Partly this is true, but the real Hellenism was the philosophy of Greece behind the Arian metaphysic, which the Church rejected.

Three points:

1. We all have a metaphysic.

I.e. a world-view, a way of understanding and interpreting the world which enables us to “make sense“ of life. We arrive at this metaphysic usually by absorbing the prevailing ideas of our culture. World-views are important in that they control how we act and think without our realising it. They are a subconscious power in our mind out of which everything we believe, think and do is controlled. Clearly then, the command to “renew our minds and not be conformed to this world’s way of thinking” (Rom 12:1,2) demands that we unearth our world view and alter it where necessary if we are to live successfully as Christians. This is hard work as our metaphysic is unconscious in the main, we do not even know it is there or how it is controlling us.

2. We all have a starting point.

Athanasius has a concern for the simplicity of the gospel, Arias does not.

Arias was the one trying to build on Hellenistic metaphysics – to try to reconcile the Gospel to the prevailing worldview. Athanasius, on the other hand, was trying to express the Bible understanding in contradiction to the prevailing worldview. Arias believed he could define the being of God philosophically and from this drew speculative conclusions about God and the world. Athanasius believed we could only know God in and through his revelation in Christ, thus he took his starting point here. We are faced with the same choice – derive our own ideas about God from our own philosophical basis, or understand him as revealed in Christ.

In looking at the Creed we are tempted to say. “Why go for all that theology and hard words?” The fact of life is that every belief system has to be clearly articulated, and this involves hard thought. When we understand the Creed we will see that it is indeed a very simple statement of the Christian position. We need to be able to do the same today.

3. We all live in danger of losing it.

The process of Hellenisation is more complex than it seems - it moved in both directions:

(i)Theology was influenced by Greek ideas and questions.

(ii) This was an essential part of the movement of the gospel into the culture by which culture is claimed and transformed by the gospel.

A dialectic has to exist between Word and culture. In Athanasius we see the corrective aspect of this dialectic.

The 4th Century development is not a move away from the essence of the gospel but a radical re-examination of its roots in the face of the issues raised by Arias, i.e. by the world-view of the time.

Torrance:

“It was due to Athanasius that a complete Hellenising of Christianity was prevented. In making use of Greek thought forms Christian theology radically transformed them into making them vehicles of fundamental doctrines and ideas quite alien to Hellenism. In fact the mission of the Church had the effect of altering the basic ideas of classical Hellenism, Nicene theology was not the Hellenism of Christianity, but the Christianising of Hellenism.”

This is the point today - we must either go the way of Athanasius or the way of Arias- Christianity must transform our culture, or our culture will transform Christianity into something that is not Christ at all. We are constantly faced by the same tension. To be relevant in today’s world we need to be aware of the questions, needs and problems of the world and work towards bringing God’s answer to them. Thus we will need to speak in words and concepts that today’s people can understand.

The danger here is that the Gospel can be taken over by another philosophy. It is a constant risk we must take. But on the other side we need to be aggressively taking the Gospel of God into a world that has been claimed by the Devil, and to reclaim the world for Christ.

There was, however, an infiltration of wrong philosophy into part of the Church as a result of this process. This fact of history and theology is not clearly known or understood. What happened was that the debates and definitions at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople were carried out in the Greek language, and the Creed was formulated in Greek. The Latin delegates to the Council understood this redefinition, however when they returned to the West they were unable to convert the newly defined concepts into Latin because there were not equivalent terms in Latin. The result has been that the Western Church has accepted the Nicene Creed as definitive, but has not understood the redefinition of terms. Thus the West has grafted the original Greek philosophic concepts onto the Creed in a way that the Council never intended. The outcome of this has been that the West has struggled with concepts such as the Trinity, the humanity of Christ, and the Spirit in a way that the Eastern Church has never had problems with.

The Present Challenge of the Creeds.

We are faced, in the 21st century, with the same situation the Early Church was facing:

1. We now live in a society where there is little or no substratum of Christian belief and understanding. When we preach the gospel we find little response, and what response there is comes usually from among those who have some contact with the Church. People cannot accept and believe the gospel if they do not understand it. We are actually wrong to ask them to make a commitment to Christ when they do not understand what they are being asked to do and counted the cost of commitment. This is why courses such as “Alpha” are becoming so popular. One can ask a non-Christian acquaintance to a series on Christianity where they learn what we believe, and what faith entails. A decision can then be made on an informed basis. For us, as Christians, to encounter the non-Christian world effectively we need to return to the model of the Early Church, and are doing so. But for us to do this we need to understand the meaning of the Creeds for ourselves.

2. Again today, as a result of the rising tide of unbelief, there are many within and outside the Church that ridicule or distort Christian doctrine. Also in the world is available a smorgasbord of religious opinions, all claiming to be truth. Many of these claim that their doctrines are the same as Christian belief, even when they are not. Many Christians are not aware of the differences. Thus we need to be clear on what we believe.

3. As we shall see in the next chapter, the gospel is a major missionary challenge to our whole understanding of reality and knowledge. We too have to take the truth of the gospel and, if the truth is in Jesus, challenge all claims to truth that do not find their origin in him.