Tonkawa,
I’ll use this space for the next 4 weeks to dive into something that, whether you’re familiar with it or not, shapes your life in a profound way. That something is the Apostles’ Creed:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, he descended to the dead. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic (the church for all times in all places)* church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
Before I go on, I should clarify, creeds in themselves have no authority. The word of God, our scriptures, reveal Jesus as the only authority. Not a pope; not a creed. The scriptures.
The creeds act like the moon to the sun. You look at the moon and say, “Oh it’s so bright!” You may even have inclination to throw a lasso on it to impress a pretty girl.
But your science teacher told you, “The moon has no light of its own, but it tells us there’s a light out there, reflecting the light of the sun.”
The creed is the moon reflecting of the light of the sun as God’s word. It isn’t the light, but it tells us it’s out there.
Last week I stated that a creed in the Christian tradition does 3 things:
First, (last week) creeds synthesize and make concise what we believe, making the big 66 book bible into a memorable statement from which we then build the smaller doctrines out of.
The second way a creed functions is both for education on what is true and protection against what is false. This matters because those deceived and confused can take our sacred book of authoritative scripture and make it say weird things.
For instance, the Ebionites claimed a divine being jumped inside of Jesus at His baptism. The Docetists denied Jesus even had a physical body. The Marcionites denied that the God of the Old Testament was the God of the New Testament.
