by Nathan Nettleton

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FOR OUR SAKE JESUS WAS CRUCIFIED . . .

The Creeds are silent on what Jesus did between his birth and his execution. Following a suggestion by Jürgen Moltmann (The Way of the Cross, p.150), a few churches have inserted a sentence such as "Baptised by John and filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus preached good news to the poor, healed the sick, received the outcast, showed mercy to the broken, and called Israel to revival for the salvation of the nations." Such an inclusion does enable the Creed to fill out the picture of Jesus a bit more, but really the Creeds are not attempting to give a full picture, and are not intended to stand alone. They provide an outline of essential beliefs and point us to the gospel stories which fill out our understanding of what Jesus did, taught and stood for.

What the Creeds do tell us is that the things Jesus stood for got him executed by the authorities of the day. The statement that "he was crucified under Pontius Pilate and died" is the one line in the Creeds which is beyond dispute: there is ample historical evidence, and it requires no belief in God. But as soon as the Creeds say it was "for our sake", we are once again in the realm of faith. There is a clear link back to the earlier line - "for us and for our salvation" - but it is important to note that the Creeds do not commit us to a particular theory of how the crucifixion of Jesus results in our salvation. One theory, known as substitutionary atonement, has dominated since Anselm (1033-1109) advanced it in mediaeval times. It says that God is like a feudal lord whose honour, offended by the sins of his citizens, can only be satisfied by suitable punishment, and that Jesus has suffered the punishment that we deserved, thus satisfying God and releasing our debt. While this theory can be supported from the Bible and would have been readily understood in feudal society, it has serious problems. Having been taught by the Lord's Prayer that God's forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others are two sides of the same coin, we must surely question the allegation that a God who asks us to graciously forgive without retribution is personally unable to forgive without first being satisfied that someone, perhaps even a scapegoat, has been made to pay. Fortunately, it is not the only theory which makes sense of the biblical teachings. Another one, more widely held in the early Church, sees Christ as the victorious leader who clashed with the powers of evil and death, took their full force in his own body, but rose in triumph, breaking their grip and leading us all to freedom and new life. However, while the Creeds do teach us that Jesus suffered in accomplishing salvation "for us", they do not make explaining it an essential element of faith.

What the Creeds do ask us to recognise, is that the shocking reality of the suffering and death of Jesus are crucial elements of the gospel story. We have already met one of the reasons it was necessary for the early Church to assert this. Some of those who taught that Jesus only seemed human also argued that his suffering was an illusion too. The Creeds were thus further asserting that, in Christ, God has entered into our experience completely, even to the extent of facing, as a vulnerable human being, the worst trauma and horror that human brutality can dish up. For people who are themselves facing nightmarish suffering, this really matters. If we are to put our trust in Christ to lead us out of slavery and into the land of freedom and life, then we need to know that he understands what we are up against and that he has managed to endure and overcome it himself. The God revealed in the Creeds and the scriptures is not one who rules from a safe distance, but one who gets personally involved, wherever we are, and whatever the cost. The Apostles' and Athanasian Creeds even speak of Christ descending into hell, or the land of the dead. There is no hell in this life or beyond which this God is not willing to enter to make known to us the way to freedom and life (1 Peter 3:18-4:6,19).

Naming Pontius Pilate in the Creed surprises or even offends many people, but it serves several purposes. Firstly, it lifts the story out of the realm of once-upon-a-time and anchors it in verifiable history. In doing so it adds to our understanding of what Jesus suffered, because history attests to the political expediency of Roman colonial justice and of the barbarism of their crucifixions. Crucifixion was reserved for the lowest of criminals and its humiliation and torture were used as a public deterrent. Victims were hung up naked in public places, suspended from metal spikes driven through their wrists into a wooden cross, and left to die slowly as the pain and exhaustion took its toll. The claim that grace and life could emerge from the God of the universe being subjected to this obscene symbol of humiliating defeat has understandably always been a scandal and an absurdity to most people. But the wisdom and power of God are revealed as Christ, the despised victim, offers forgiveness and reconciliation to a world which otherwise will go on making more victims (1 Corinthians 1:18-31).

The mention of Pilate is also an ongoing reminder that standing for the things Jesus stood for will always be seen as dangerously subversive by the established society and the authorities which maintain its social order. Jesus was not a masochist who wanted to be killed, but he was aware that what he was doing and teaching would be perceived as a threat to the peace of the empire and the interests of the established religion, and that if he refused to back down and toe the line, he would end up paying the ultimate price. Millions of his followers have also paid the price. The last century has seen more people martyred for their allegiance to Christ than any previous era. But even in death, they join with Christ to bear witness that God will endure anything to break the grip of evil and death over us and bring us safely home to the promised land of reconciling mercy and love which even death can not overcome.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ECUMENICAL CREEDS

This week we commence a new series of studies on another of the foundational practices of the Christian faith: the use of the creeds - brief summaries of essential Christian belief - to shape our thinking and the life, prayer and ministry that emerge from our thinking. Although this series focusses more on the content of our beliefs, it is still closely related to practice because we will also seek to explore the practical implications of the beliefs that the Church regards as essential.

The word creed comes from the first word in the Latin version of the creeds, the word credo which simply means I believe. In general usage it has come to mean a set of beliefs by which one lives, or more specifically, a simple statement of those beliefs. So, for example, a person could say, "the creed I live by is 'eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.'" In the Christian Church, the word creed is now usually reserved to three classic statements which have been universally accepted by the churches as authoritative summaries of Christian belief, and so are sometimes known as the ecumenical creeds. Many churches regularly use other statements of faith in their worship and prayer but, while these may sometimes be more appealing and evocative in their language, they do not have the endorsement of the whole Church, past and present, and so do not represent a unified position on the essentials of our belief.

Many Christian churches claim that the Bible is their only creed, or declare themselves to be non-creedal, because they do not use the creeds to compel belief among their members. However, even the Baptist World Alliance, one of the biggest non-creedal traditions, opened its inaugural international meeting by standing and reciting the Apostles' Creed together as a symbol of their unity in faith with the wider Church. Experience has shown that when churches ignore the creeds, some other concept of what is essential to the faith of the group inevitably emerges and plays a similar role, and unlike the creeds, these often reflect an unexamined devotion to some peripheral matter, and so divide rather than unite Christians. Non-creedal churches like the Baptists have produced many creed-like professions of faith, but their conviction that "the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth" has usually prevented them from claiming too much authority for them.

The early development of the creeds can be seen within the pages of the New Testament. The earliest creed was simply "Jesus is Lord", and it was used at baptism as an affirmation of faith and allegiance to Christ and his Church. But as the Church developed, various divergent beliefs emerged, and the Church found it necessary to be more precise in defining what it did and did not believe about Christ. Many of the New Testament writings are seeking to establish correct belief in the face of the threat of beliefs that would lead to false thinking and harmful practice. Examples of early creedal statements can be seen in passages such as 1 Cor 15:3-8, Phil 2:6-11, Col 1:13-20 & 1 Tim 3:16.

The New Testament writings all come from the first century, but the same process of defining the bounds of correct teaching continued over the following centuries in the face of various attempts to reformulate Christian thinking or assimilate it to other world views. Within two centuries, a profession of faith now known as the Apostles' Creed was taking an increasingly standard shape among Western Christians. Its final form was fixed in the 7th century and it continues to be used by most churches today as the profession of faith in the rite of baptism.

The first standard creed in the East was authorised by the ecumenical Council of Bishops meeting in Nicea in 325. It used more philosophical language to refute the teachings of Arius, a preacher from Alexandria, who was arguing on philosophical grounds that Christ could not be God, but was only a creature made by God. Thus the Nicene Creed introduced the affirmation that Christ was "true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father." Another Council held in Constantinople in 381 expanded the statements on the person and work of the Holy Spirit to counter a group who had continued to follow the teachings of Arius and was now dismissing the Holy Spirit as being less than God. It is this larger Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed which is still in common use today and which, following the common practice, we will refer to as the Nicene Creed. In an unfortunate development, another council at Toledo in 589 added the so-called filioque phrase so that the creed said that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father 'and the Son'." This unnecessary variant was never universally accepted and became one of the reasons for the tragic church split between East and West.

Another major controversy over the doctrine of the Trinity led to the production of the Athanasian Creed sometime in the 5th century. Although it is still recognised by the Church and is still regarded as an excellent piece of theology, it is hardly ever used nowadays because its length and its fierce condemnations of error make it unsuitable for use in worship.

The Creeds serve several functions within the life and faith of the Church. They are celebratory professions of the faith, and as such are commonly used at baptism as a way of declaring one's allegiance to Christ and his Church. They are both an expression of individual commitment, and a common flag around which the Church rallies. By naming the beliefs that bind us together as the Church, the Creeds stands as a symbol of our group identity. The Creeds also serve as a rule of faith. By defining the Church's central beliefs, they are a measure against which we can assess the legitimacy of other teachings. On the one hand, this enables us to say that teachings which conflict with the creeds are thus not compatible with Christian faith. On the other hand, it enables us to celebrate what we hold in common with other Christians while accepting a great diversity of opinion on those matters which, by not being included in the creeds, are deemed non-essential.