Short Stories by Phoenix Hocking

The Creeds

Let me start off by saying that this short paper in no way attempts to lay out the entire history of the creeds, but it seemed good to me that a little history might be in order for those who may not be familiar with this “nutshell” explanation of our faith.
I suppose we need to go back to the year 451 A.D., with the Council of Chalcedon in which the Council came to the following conclusions:
Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; on one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusions, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in now way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the Fathers has handed down to us.
Whew!
Proceeding from this viewpoint came the Creed of Saint Athanasius, which is very long and cumbersome, which I won’t repeat here. However, do you see the problem? In the early church, Christ was seen as “begotten.” And for many years, this was the creed that used in the early church.
Which brings us to the Apostle’s Creed, the earliest written version is perhaps the Interrogatory Creed of Hippolytus, written about 215. The current form is first found in the writings of Caesarius of Arles, 542 A.D. Here is the Apostle’s Creed, in modern terms:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, died, and was buried;
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
He ascended into heaven,
He is seated on the right hand of the Father,
And he will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
The holy catholic church,
The communion of saints,
The forgiveness of sins,
The resurrection of the body,
And the life everlasting. Amen.

Ok, still a bit of a problem, right?
When the Apostle’s Creed was drawn up the chief enemy of Gnosticism, which denied that Jesus was truly Man, and the emphasis of the Apostle’s Creed reflected the correcting of this error in thinking.
But when the Nicene Creed was written, the chief enemy was Arianism, which denied that Jesus was fully God. Arius was a presbyter in Alexandria in Egypt, in the early 300s. He taught that God, the Father, begot (created) the Son, then proceeded to create the world. The result of this was to make the Son a created being, and therefore not God in any real sense. This view was becoming a very real problem, so the Council of Nicea was convened in 325, with the following Creed being agreed upon:

We believe in One God,
The Father, the Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth,
Of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
The only Son of God,
Eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
True God from true God,
Begotten, not made,
Of one being with the Father.
Through Him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
He came down from heaven;
By the power of the Holy Spirit
He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
And was made man.
For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
He suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
In accordance with the Scriptures;
He ascended into heaven
And is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
And his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
And the life of the world to come. Amen.

Just a quick clarification here: the word catholic in this sense is not talking about the Roman Catholic Church, but is using the word catholic in its dictionary meaning, that of being universal. (catholic: Of broad or general scope; universal; all inclusive. American Heritage Dictionary)

An older translation of the creed has “begotten of the Father before all worlds.” The English word “world” used to mean something quite different from our present meaning. It is related to the word “were”, an old word for “man.” Hence a “world” was originally a span of time equal to the normal lifespan of a man.
Arias said “The Logos is not eternal. God begat him, and before he was begotten he did not exist.” The Athanasians replied that the begetting of the Logos was not an event in time, but an eternal relationship.
I quote here from an article entitled “The Nicene Creed”, in which the author, James E. Kiefer, is discussing the line “true God from true God; begotten not made.” :

This line was inserted by way of repudiating Arius’ teaching that the Son was the first thing that the Father created, and that to say that the Father begets the Son is simply another way of saying that the Father created the Son.
Arius said that if the Father has begotten the Son, then the Son must be inferior to the Father, as a prince is inferior to a king. Athanasius replied that a son is precisely the same sort of being as his father, and that the only son of a king is destined himself to be a king. It is true that an earthly son is younger than his father , and that there is a time when he is not yet what he will be. But God is not in time. Time, like distance, is a relation between physical events, and has meaning only in the context of the physical universe. When we say that the Son is begotten of the Father, we do not refer to an event in the remote past, but to an eternal and timeless relation between the Persons of the Godhead. Thus, while we say of an earthly prince that he may someday hope to become what his father is now, we say of God the Son the He is eternally what God the Father is eternally.”

As I explained to a friend early today, the point of the creeds is two-fold. One is to remind ourselves of exactly what our faith is and the points we hold dear. The other is to be able to present in a clear and concise manner to others what our faith is. If someone asks, “Just what do you believe exactly?” you can’t be more clear than the Nicene Creed.
I have a 12-part study on the Apostle’s Creed, if anyone is interested. I’d be happy to copy the study for anyone who wants one.

Now, moving on, I would like to tackle, albeit briefly, the question of the canonical books of the Bible, and the various reasons why the entire Bible is not included in Protestant versions as it is in Catholic ones.
Around the time that the Christian Bible was being formed, early Christians used a Greek translation of Scripture called the Septuagint, which included those books that we now call the Apocrypha. Christians continued to use the Septuagint as the Old Testament until around 1500, when the Protestant reformers placed the apocryphal books in a separate section of the Bible, usually at the end of the Old Testament.
Roman Catholic churches continue to use the apocryphal books as part of their Bible, while the Protestants have chosen to remove those books completely. I rather like the Episcopal view on the matter. Taken from the Book of Common Prayer:
Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation… the other Books the Church does read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet does it not apply them to establish any doctrine.”
The Apocrypha formed an integral part of the King James Version of 1611, as they had all the preceding versions from their beginning in 1381. They were certainly part of the Vulgate, edited by St. Jerome about A.D. 400, and remained a vital part of our Bible for over a thousand years.
In those Bibles, the various books of the apocrypha were scattered amongst the other books we currently recognize, and were not in a separate section.
The books of the Apocrypha include: 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, additions to the book of Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesasticus or the Wisdom of Sirach, Baruch, Susanna, Song of the Three Children, Bel and the Dragon (which ridicules the worship first of Bel and then of a “sacred” serpent), Prayer of Manasseh, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees and Psalm 151.
These books are NOT to be confused by other books known as the pseudepigrapha, which include books that some like to call the “lost books of the Bible.” These books, while some being in use in some Christian communities for many hundreds of years, were never considered canonical books.
The books of the Apocrypha themselves provide an excellent source of material that properly belongs between the Old and New Testaments as a sort of bridge. The book of Eccleasticus rivals the books of Proverbs for wisdom. And it is in the story of the Maccabeans that we find the reason the Jews celebrate Hannakah.
It is my own view that the books of the Apocrypha complete the Bible, and its books should be discounted in our quest for remaining true to God’s Word. They are a great source of both wisdom and history.