AllHoursChurch

A short History of Christian Creeds

The history of Christian creeds is a very sad one. Although they are intended to unite, they actually serve to highlight our historical differences. They bring us back to times of very deep conflict among Christians. Some people think that the "apostle's creed" was used by the apostles, hence the name. The apostles may not have thought about having a creed at all. When the church was in unity there may not have been any need. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed may have been an adaptation of an earlier creed but the earliest record we have of it stems from 325-381 AD - a time when the church was very deeply divided over the nature of Jesus Christ. Was he God or was he man?

After a few more centuries, the so called "Athanasian" creed came into popular use. It contains more expicit statements about the Trinity and has been credited to the influential bishop from Alexandria by that name as a result, but it was probably written in Latin, and it contains several anathemas. An "anathema" is a threat that if you don't believe it you don't belong to the church and you may be going to hell. It's a kind of Christian curse.

If you think that's sad it gets worse. In Toledo, Spain the first use of the words "and from the Son" were included in the creed. To the words "we believe in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father," were added "and from the Son." THis first appeard in the late ninth century and when use became widespread in the Roman Churches in the West without consultation from the churches of the East a great schizm among Christians who believed in every other part of the creed resulted. That schizm has still not been healed over a thousand years later.

When the era of the Reformers began things got more complicated. When Martin Luther defected from the Roman Catholic Church, seven Lutheran princes developed 28 Articles of Faith actually trying to hang on to unity, but the last seven of were critical of Roman Catholic practices such as priestly celebecy, merited grace, the requirement of confession and the authority of bishops. This didn't work and in response, the Roman Catholic issued a Confutation, condemning 13 of the articles. The tendency was for statements of belief to get longer and more precise.

John Calvin accepted a modified version of the Augsberg Confession and the Anglicans later expanded it to 39 articles while the Methodists reduced it to 25 articles and Jacobus Arminius developed a statement critical of John Calvin called the "5 Articles of Remonstrance." The Arminians disagreed with John Calvin over predestination, grace, limited atonement and free will. The Westminster Confession of the Scottish Presbyterians added the Calvinist points to the creed, turning the Confession into the length of a pamphlet with several paragraphs per article, rather than a paragraph or two to be recited by all in a single setting. The Methodists followed John Wesley's form of Arminianism, which was distinct from original Arminianism especially in two areas - the ability of Christians to turn away from the faith and on the opposite side, their ability to become perfect at least with respect to sins that are in the Christian's free charge.

Those who see the complexity of this history can appreciate how divisive these doctrinal issues actually are. As we consider the All Hours Church we recognize that we are asking for Christians to work together in unity despite these types of differences.

Many churches of today, especially the "non-denominational" and "Evangelical" churches have adopted short statements of belief that deliberately avoid difficult questions. They don't get into questions of the last days, or of Armenianism and Calvinism in their doctrinal summaries, as fascinated as they may be by these issues. They tend to say things like "we accept the Bible as the inerrant word of God." A short statement like this says much more than jumping into a particular doctrine that Christians have argued about for centuries. It assumes people will disagree and doesn't attempt to control that. Obviously, if the goal is to achieve co-existence, as it is with the All Hours Church, defining essential boundaries but forcing decisions on unessential issues is a good approach.