CREED, CREEDS

1. An understanding of creeds. A creed is an authoritative statement of the principal affirmations of the Christian faith. It is generally brief and concise, free of definition, proof, or explanation. It is at once personal, social and historical in its impact and, insofar as possible, it attempts to witness to the universal Church rather than setting forth those points of doctrine which would describe the variance within that Church. In general it is to give testimony to those universal beliefs which bind the whole Church, not only in the day in which it was written but through the history of the Church.

Although creeds were originally individual (credo, I believe), they shortly became statements of doctrine in which groups set forth their essential beliefs. They became expressive of the life of the Church because to have a belief is to express it, and to express it together is creative of the Christian communion or community. In a negative sense they exclude all those doctrines which are looked upon as false or heretical and become, therefore, standards by which certain believers are included within the community of the creed and all others are excluded. For example, the Trinitarian structure of the Apostles’ Creed excludes Judaism; the close descriptive terms of the Nicene Creed exclude all lesser or truncated statements of the nature of Christ.

Originally candidates for baptism accepted a short summary of belief which varied in detail in various localities. By the 4th cent. these baptismal confessions had become more universal and the Trinitarian structure of Matthew 28:19 became the norm. Finally the Apostles’ Creed in the W and the Nicene Creed in the E became as they are now, the baptismal confessions universally used.

A creedal form is first the basis of teaching, and second the substance of what the candidate at baptism declares to be his own faith. The following process seemed to prevail in the life of creeds and may still be characteristic of their use. (1) There is a basis of catechesis in some kind of formal statement. (2) The candidate for baptism declares this to be his belief and he may be questioned regarding his understanding of this belief. (3) All those who are brought into an ecclesiastical community under the demands of a particular creed are unified into a visible church by their common affirmations. (4) The willingness or unwillingness to agree on the affirmations of the creed of a particular visible church become, therefore, a test of orthodoxy. (5) Orthodoxy in turn becomes the basis for the denunciation of heresy. (6) This common creedal acceptance becomes the basis of lesser enterprises of the Church. What is held to be true in the creed is basically the message the Church wants to proclaim.

It seems evident, then, that creeds have become both uniting and divisive, bringing together those portions of the Christian community which agree and excluding those who disagree. It is also evident, therefore, that the briefer the creedal statement, the more universal it can become, and the more specific the creedal statement, the more exclusive or divisive it may become. The great classical creedal statements, namely the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, are therefore made up of clear, bold strokes, whereas the later confessions became expansions and definitions of more specific beliefs. The catholic creeds are uniting and universal and the later confessions become “denominational” and divisive. Catholics and Protestants alike may join in the Apostles’ Creed; it is not possible for a Roman Catholic to join in certain sections of the Westminster Confession.

2. The growth of creeds. Christian creeds take their starting place with the Scriptures of the OT and NT. When man looks, however, to the Scriptures themselves, he finds no formal creedal statement. Although the so-called creeds of the Bible are basic to all that followed, they are rudimentary.

Not much of creedal nature is to be found in the OT. The Decalogue (Exod 20:3-17) could be looked upon as the beginning of a formulation of a creedal position, although the immediate expansion of the Decalogue in The Little Book of the Covenant (Exod 21:1-23:19) would seem to indicate that in its first usage the Decalogue was to have legal and social applications rather than the setting forth of a body of belief. Close to the heart of the whole OT, however, is the proclamation in Deuteronomy 6:4-7, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently....” And so the famous shema was established (cf. Num 15:37-41; Deut 11:13-21).

In the NT one may check and choose signs of creedal affirmation according to text or prejudice. Some examples of the sort of things that are drawn out will suffice: The confession of Nathaniel (John 1:49, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”); Peter’s Great Confession (Matt 16:16, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”); and Thomas (John 20:28, “My Lord and my God!”). These and other passages in the gospels contain some germ of subsequent creeds. All of them have Christ as their objects and express a conviction of His deity.

In the epistles, esp. in those of Paul, and particularly in those sections having to do with doctrinal content, there is what might be called a running commentary setting forth a clear, although unstructured, body of Christian belief. Certainly the material is creedal in form. To converts and to the public in general (cf. the church in Acts) and to communities of believers, facts of faith and inferences from the facts are certainly drawn out, esp. the meaning of Christ and the truth centering in His person—incarnation, death, resurrection. To these facts the epistles appeal, and it is natural that the unity of the early Christian fellowship demanded some acknowledgement of “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Paul emphasized that some definite belief in Christ is called for by those who would share His redemption: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart...and he confesses with his lips...” (Rom 10:9, 10). Paul sets forth Christ’s deity, death, and resurrection, and the necessity of confession as an assurance of man’s relationship to God. Illustrations and hints from the writings of Paul are virtually endless (cf. Rom 1:3ff.; 1 Cor 13:3ff.; 2 Cor 13:14; 2 Thess 2:13ff.), and the various Timothy references (1 Tim 1:15; 3:1; 4:8, 9; 6:20; 2 Tim 1:14; 2:11).

Elsewhere in the NT one finds the same sort of things depending on the authority cited and the interpretation sought. In the story of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:37) the requirement for baptism was a declaration that Jesus Christ is the Son of God (not all ancient authorities support this text). In Hebrews 6 some of the elementary doctrines of the Christian religion are enumerated: repentance and faith, resurrection and judgment. Hebrews 10:23 also reflects a creed of some sort.

Summaries of belief were much later than the apostles. At least there is no record of them before the time of Irenaeus and Tertullian (a.d. 175-200). The Scripture passages already referred to were given as support for the first forms of creeds and also contributed materials out of which the articles of the Church’s faith were formulated. Christian preaching and teaching gave rise to the need for explicit statements of the truth reflected through Jesus Christ. With the exception of the Virgin Birth as a statement, rather than as an event, all the main articles of belief can be found in their inception somewhere in the NT, primarily in the epistles of Paul. The leading tenets of the subsequent faith of the Church stand out clearly and distinctly in earliest scriptural sources: the Trinity, the Lord’s deity and humanity, the Atonement, death and Resurrection, the Holy Spirit, the catholicity and basic unity of the Church.

3. The three classic creeds. The main historical creedal statements which have prevailed are the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed.

a. The Apostles’ Creed in the shorter VS (Old Roman Form) and in the longer VS (Received Form) grew up over the centuries. It is apostolic in content but not in its authorship nor format. It represents a slow development in the history of the thought of the Church. This creed was the earliest attempt of the Church to systematize belief, although the Nicene Creed was the first officially approved statement of belief. There are many points of similarity between them. The Apostles’ Creed seemed to have a natural development in which the Church in its worship and teaching was discovering basic truths which needed to be affirmed. The Nicene, on the other hand, was a fixed and formal attempt to draw up Christian teachings in such a way as to settle controversy. Numerous Early Church Fathers read and interpreted their own creeds, and thus creeds used to teach converts differ from congregation to congregation. The chief source of the Apostles’ Creed as it is known today was prob. the creed of the church of Rome. Modification took place with ideas incorporated with creeds of other churches and it was not until the 6th or 7th cent. that the creed assumed its present form. Some statements are still being debated, e.g., “he descended into hell,” the “holy catholic” Church, as against the “holy Christian” Church, and the “resurrection of the flesh.” (See article on [http://biblegateway/wiki/Apostles’ Creed, The APOSTLES’ CREED].)

b. The Nicene Creed is sometimes called the creed of the 318 because 318 bishops were said to have been called together for the purpose of clarifying the received doctrine of the Church. The Nicene Creed was drawn up by the Council of Nicaea in a.d. 325 and completed by the Council of Constantinople in 381. The basis of their operation in the original meeting was a creed presented by Eusebius of Caesarea.

The opinions of Arius at the beginning of the 4th cent. had created such unrest that the Emperor Constantine intervened. He called a council at Nicaea and by that act set a pattern for church councils and in passing raised the question in later centuries of the authority of councils as against the authority of the pope (Nicaea a.d. I:325, Constantinople I, a.d. 385, Ephesus, a.d. 431, Chalcedon, a.d. 451, Constantinople II, a.d. 553, Constantinople III, a.d. 680, Nicaea II, a.d. 787). It is notable also that these councils were called by the ruler of the state rather than by the ruler of the Church. This was necessitated by the division and strife then rampant in the Church. These councils were, as far as possible, ecumenical, and were basically attempts to unify. The Nicene Creed, therefore, as against the slow growth of the Apostles’ Creed, was proposed as a statement of belief in the interests of unity. It is unquestionably a well-structured formal declaration of catholic doctrine and it still serves its purpose.

One of the strange quirks of history is that there is no known record of the proceedings of the Council of Nicaea. There is no way of knowing whether it lasted for weeks or for days. Arius who was only a presbyter, had no official status, but was given opportunity to speak and was defeated in debate by Athanasius.

The controversy centered on the relationship of the Son to the Father, the key word being homoóusios (“of one substance with”). The Arians opposed this term, which nevertheless prevailed. The Sabellians or semi-Arians held out for a mediating term, homoióusios (“of like substance”), but the stronger word held. A major decision, therefore, in the history of orthodoxy, setting the christological tone of the Church thenceforth hinged on the use of one Gr. letter; “being of one substance with the Father” became the central affirmation of this creed.

Also illustrative of the seriousness of theological discussions in those early days was the Filioque addition. In the clause, “proceedeth from the Father and the Son,” the words “and the son” (Filioque) were adopted by the Council of Toledo in 589. Later scholarship holds that the word was actually an interpolation rather than an adoption by a council. In the 9th cent. Leo III pronounced against this word Filioque as an interpolation. In spite of his pronouncement, however, Emperor Henry II (c. a.d. 1014) prevailed on Benedict VIII “to chant the Symbol at the Holy Mysteries.” Thus the interpolation remained. After the 9th cent. this became a divisive matter between the Gr. and Lat. churches, the Eastern church striking it out, and the Western church, which should have known better, keeping it in; for from the 9th cent. on no change has been made in the Nicene Creed. Filioque is firmly established in the W, denied in the E, and yet scholarship in both great divisions of Christendom are agreed that the word is an interpolation! If this kind of debate seems strange to modern ears, one is reminded that the scars of persecution lay on those who in those days drew up creeds. At the Council of Nicaea, two bishops had lost an eye and another had been hamstrung; Bishop Paul of Caesarea had had his hands so severely treated with hot irons that they were paralyzed. If such men seem now to have been overly anxious about words and phrases, one can understand their anxiety in a day when truth and error and their sharp definitions could be matters of life and death.

c. The Athanasian Creed is primarily referred to as the Symbolum Quicumque, with the rise of the custom of naming ecclesiastical papers by the first two Lat. words of their content. As far as scholarship can now determine, this was a fully structured creed when it appeared. It was not a creedal growth like the Apostles’ Creed, nor the outcome of official approval and authority like the Nicene. It belongs to a class of individual or private confessions of faith which became acceptable to the whole Church. It is more a manual of instruction than a creed. Although it bears the name of Athanasius, its appearance was after the time of Charlemagne, and the name of Athanasius was attached to it, apparently to give it authority. Both authorship and date are uncertain, although there is little doubt that it can be identified with “the faith of the holy prelate Athanasius.” Whereas the Nicene Creed settled the question of the nature of Christ, the Athanasian Creed established the doctrine of the Trinity. Also, interestingly enough, it carried throughout a note of judgment, a threat against those who do not hold and follow the truth of God.

4. Creeds and confessions. In general it may be said that creeds were the burden of the 4th and 5th centuries, and the confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries. The 20th cent. sees a revival of the writing of confessions. Speaking in general again, a creed as illustrated by the three classical creeds—Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian—is concerned with the unifying essentials of the universal Church in every place and in every age. A confession, on the other hand, is a more comprehensive statement of theology, more denominational than traditional. Whereas in the creed there is a clarification of the fundamentals of the faith, one finds in confessions not only the clarification but an increase of identification of some branch of the church by way of a fuller treatment of those specifics over which churches divide.

This distinction is clearly seen in the differences between the Apostles’ Creed and the great classic confession, the Westminster Confession. It is assumed that the Apostles’ Creed is based on the Scriptures but the Westminster Confession does not begin to describe the faith until in a long series of affirmations and arguments it establishes a view of Scripture on which the remainder of the confession is to be based. Illustrations could be drawn from a whole series of confessions—the Belgic, the Augsburg, the Helvetic, the Scottish, and the Westminster. An interesting case in point is the new confession of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America referred to as the Confession of 1967 (C-67). This confession builds on the idea of reconciliation and, among other things, illustrates the conscience of the church in the 20th cent. on such subjects as race, poverty, and war. In those areas where C-67 does not refer to what some believe to be fundamentals of the Christian faith, reference is made to a so-called “Book of Confessions” representing the whole tradition of the Reformed Church. It is evident on the face of it that the official approach of C-67 (via reconciliation) would not necessarily be suitable for the whole Church nor would the emphasis on race, poverty, and war be necessarily catholic principles from the viewpoint of certain branches of the catholic Church. In some senses, such a confession is a “tract for the times” and there are those who argue that a true confession is one which speaks for a church in a given historical situation existentially. Some aver that such a confession could be made annually with the Church vis-a-vis problems of the contemporary scene.

Protestantism faces a peculiar problem with regard to creeds in the face of Authority vs. Freedom. It is quite impossible for a man to be a Christian alone. He is always a Christian in relationship, in communion and community. There is, therefore, the basic necessity of some kind of common agreement. At the same time there is a “givenness” in the Gospel however discovered in exegesis. The search for meaning assumes a corpus of authoritative material out of which understanding and meaning can and do arise. At the same time such ideas as the “priesthood of believers” or “justification by faith” or the interplay of Word and Spirit in the use of the Scriptures, calls on the individual man for personal decision and involvement in the truth and falsity of Christian claims on his life. It is the genius of Protestantism, as it is historically the confusion of Protestantism, that a Protestant is forced to decide in the paradoxical position where he is both fixed and free. Luther and Calvin posed the same kind of problem in the large as they broke out from Rome and insisted at the same time that the Anabaptists must not break away from them.

It is the glory of the three great creeds that in their comparative simplicity the “common sense of the Church” has emphasized those things most needful, and since their establishment the Church has had a fixed position over against the world and over against other religions, which at the same time has led to unity and saved the Church from destructive controversy.

Bibliography P. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols. (1877); A. F. Burn, Introduction to the Creeds (1899); B. J. Kidd, Documents of the Continental Reformation (1911), for material on Augsburg, Belgic, and Scottish confessions; ISBE (1939); Lambeth Conversations, pamphlet (1948-50), 67-90; Flew and Davies, The Catholicity of Protestantism (1950); J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, chs. II, III (1950); F. L. Cross, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (1958), 354; Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IV (1962), 237-242; Routley, Creeds and Confessions (1962), 1-6; Hendry, The Westminster Confession for Today (1963), 9-16; Little, The Language of the Christian Community (1965), 70-174.