The Apostles' Creed. One of several creeds or statements of belief passed down from the early church that we find printed in the back of our hymnal. But why is it there? What's its purpose? Why would we want to memorize it? For the next couple of weeks, we are going to answer some of these questions. We'll look at why the creed came to be, why there is more than one, and then examine each part to better understand how it can guide our faith.
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As we go, I hope you'll join us in memorizing the Apostles' Creed. And see if it doesn't guide you, as it has so many in the church for over 1700 years.
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So as I said, I think it's important we learn the Apostles' Creed, even memorize it if you can. And I think the best way to understand why is to talk about its history. But ironically, we don't know its full history. We don't know who wrote it. We don't know when exactly it was written. All we have is some evidence of why and some ideas of a timeline.
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The Apostles' Creed is actually not written by the Apostles. Despite the name, and if you've ever heard that rumor or myth, it's just a legend, it is not true that it was written by the Apostles. What it was was written to contain what the Apostles taught. It was meant to relay the centrality of their teaching.
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It's called the Apostles' Creed because the people wanted to hold true to the Apostles' teaching. We don't know exactly when, but what we do know is that the early church, and we're talking very early, we're talking just after Paul and the other apostles were visiting these churches, they began to set up catechisms for their new converts.
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And in that year, they would learn about what it meant to be a Christian, they would learn about the teachings of Jesus in particular, and then 40 days before Easter, Lent, where we're at now, they would definitely take that time to really focus on what it would mean to be a Christian. Really just think about and prepare themselves for their baptism, which would happen on Easter.
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Over time, these questions actually turned into statements, and the catechumet would learn these statements and recite them before their baptism, and they would say, I believe in God the Father. I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in the Holy Spirit. And of course, in Latin, I believe is credo. So that's where we get the word creed.
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Each church wanted to make sure they taught their students well, and so they would have what they called rules of faith, or statements of faith. We know those today as articles of faith, or in the United Methodist, we call them articles of religion. But these articles, these rules of faith, would be what the people would try to follow when they were teaching the new students.
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The rules of faith that came out of the Roman church were the ones that were getting spread the most, and that makes sense. A lot of people would make pilgrimages to Rome. Rome was, of course, the place where a lot of people had to go to do major business. And so over time, all the churches began to use what was called the Roman symbol, not creed.
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We know that by the second century, most of the churches were already using this, this old Roman creed. But by the way, and… There was no harm. there was a lot of uses for it. It was really helping them not only to train their students that were coming up, give their students an outline to use for their credo, their statements that they would say at baptism, but it also helped protect the churches from heresies.
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Because can you believe that even then people were struggling with interpreting Scripture differently? Of course they didn't have the New Testament, they only had the Old Testament. And there was no defined body at that point, no authority that said this is what's going to be in the Old Testament, and these are the letters of the Apostles that were going to consider Scripture. Each church had to decide that for themselves.
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The main thing they wanted to make sure they did was hold true to what the apostles taught so that they could counter these heresies. They started realizing that their statements of faith, their rules of faith, these creeds that they were using, were actually a fantastic way of making sure that it encompassed what the apostles taught.
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The Apostles' Creed was not meant to, these creeds were not meant to be a word -for -word, long theology, but a template or a backbone of what was true and what was true to the Apostles' teachings. What stayed true to it? Now it still gave them a lot of room to teach a lot more theology within that, and that's what we're going to do for the next several weeks.
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If I'm a first -year convert, if I'm a first -year Christian, there's only so much I can learn in a year. And so this was a great template for defining what were the basics of Christianity that I needed to learn and what was universal between the churches. What could all the churches agree on?
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Now you'll notice that the Apostles' Creed is actually broken up into three sections. That's, I believe God the Father. I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in the Holy Spirit. So right there you see the Trinity in this document, but it doesn't go into depth about the Trinity.
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So we use this document among many denominations because it holds true to...the basic fundamentals of what Christianity is. That we believe in a triune God, that we believe Jesus rose from the dead, that we believe the Holy Spirit is here.
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These parts are important to us as Christians, but as some people say, the other stuff we can agree to disagree on, but as a Christian most people say that you can't disagree with the Apostles Creed without committing heresy.
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It's important to know the Apostles' Creed so that you know what you're being taught or what you're hearing is true to what was believed that the Apostles taught. It is very helpful when you're reading Scripture to have the Apostles' Creed in mind so that you know when you interpret Scripture that you're interpreting it through that lens.
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We all bring a different lens to the reading of Scripture, to even events. I mean, that is very common that people all see an event different because of their life experiences, because of the things on their mind. I mean, if I've got blurred vision, I'm certainly going to see a set of numbers different than someone else that has very clear vision.
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So we recognize that even the reading of Scripture, we can walk away despite the fact the Holy Spirit helps us. We still can walk away with different interpretations. And so it's very helpful to have the Apostles' Creed as something we know in our heart that allows us to make sure that we interpret the Scriptures through that lens.
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A heresy, by the way, is a belief that is contrary to what is considered orthodox or right -thinking about the Christian faith. So we see three primary uses of the creeds or the rules of faith in the early church. We see that they were used to combat heresy, they were used to teach new people, and they were used as a pledge during baptism.
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Today, we can use the creed to help us make sure that we interpret Scripture correctly, that we make sure that what we're being taught is orthodox or sound theological teaching. We need the Apostles' Creed.
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It is helpful for us to memorize it so that it does become the filter with which we use as we spend this time in Lent really digging into the Scripture, really trying to draw closer to God. Use it to help you, to inform you, to make sure that you are staying true to what the Apostles Peter was taught about Christ. They did walk with Him, and so we want to do our best to walk with Him during this Lenten season.
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