The Life We Claim. James C. Howell
should thank many who have helped with this project. Kevin Turner, a superbly talented young church musician, prepared the lists of worship resources in the appendix. Jill Reddig of Abingdon Press continues to be a wonderfully encouraging presence throughout the publication process. Jason Byassee and Ben Witherington read the full manuscript and offered many helpful suggestions. My secretary, Nancy Pryor, has been of tremendous support, as have been the members of Myers Park United Methodist Church, who first walked through the Creed with me in the winter and spring of 2003. My favorite member of Myers Park is the one I met and married in that very church; with this book as with all the others Lisa has been the biggest fan a writer could ever hope to have.
And so we begin, with four introductory lessons before we walk our way through the Creed itself.
Notes
1.Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 282.
2. Stanley Hauerwas is determined to "defeat the dreaded 'and'—as in 'theology and worship'" (in In Good Company: The Church as Polis [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1995], 155), which also demeans itself into a more daunting "and" between worship (or theology) and ethics. The preacher need never be confused about the relationship between theology and preaching if she remembers that theology happens in the discipline of the liturgy or not at all.
C h a p t e r O n e
INTRODUCTION TO THE
APOSTLES' CREED
_____________________________________________
LESSON 1
GROWING INTO OUR CONVICTIONS
Be ready to give an account for the hope that is in you, and
do it with gentleness and reverence. (1 Peter 3:15, AP)
In ancient times, hundreds of Christians, under interrogation, refused to bow down to the empire's gods, stood their ground and declared, "I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth," and were executed for saying so. They had not long before left their old life behind and risked everything by choosing Christianity. In those days, new converts were instructed in the faith for months, during which time they fasted, abstained from entertainment and sex, and were prayed over diligently by the church elders. An all-night prayer vigil culminated at dawn on Easter when the converts waded out into a pool of water and were asked: "Do you believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth? Do you believe in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord?" After being baptized, they were anointed with oil, dressed in a white robe, and given a drink of milk and honey, powerful symbols of their new life in Christ.
Every time we say the Apostles' Creed, we step into a long, steady river, the great two-thousand year story of believers, missionaries, and martyrs. When I say "I believe in God," I become part of something bigger than myself. My faith is something in me, my reaching out, my believing; but faith is also outside myself. Faith has content. I attach myself to something old. Modern culture fawns after novelties, the latest fads. Christians look at the world with old eyes; as John Henry Newman put it, "Great acts take time." Ultimate truth cannot have been cooked up just last night, and ultimate truth does not materialize in my mind in a flash. "Deep convictions are not hazarded, but grown into slowly, obscurely and often painfully acquired" (Nicholas Lash).1
The Apostles' Creed helps us grow into our convictions. To believe without the Creed would be like baking without a measuring cup or building furniture without a ruler. We read the Bible, we sing hymns, we ask questions and reflect together on theology, and it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. What is at the heart of what we believe? We will use the Apostles' Creed to discover what we believe, and don't believe, to figure out who we are and how to live.
The word credo means "I believe." Do we live in a disbelieving age? or in an overly credulous age? We are titans of doubt and cynicism, and yet advertisers and TV shows make our heads spin over nothing at all. Faith is not believing impossible things. Faith is what I give my heart to. Faith is how I view the universe; just as Copernicus yanked our perspective so we see the world isn't flat, and the earth isn't in the center of things, so the Creed suggests there is a deeper dimension than the stage we normally stroll upon, and we aren't in the middle of things. God is.
"I believe" is not the same as saying "I feel" or "I want" or "I think," but rather, "God is"—and I fling myself upon God, I attach myself to God. Nicholas Lash wrote that, theologically, "I believe" is grammatically equivalent to "I promise": "'I believe' does not express an opinion, however well founded or firmly held, concerning God's existence. It promises that life and love, mind, heart, and all my actions, are set henceforward steadfastly on God, and God alone."2
The Creed is not a list of facts so much as it is an act of worship, an act of prayer. The Creed's logic teaches us how our religious ideas hang together. "Words take meaning from the company they keep" (Lash).3 And the words take on their only valid meaning when our lives are changed. Our faith is something we do; our faith comes to life when we engage in those peculiar practices Christians count on to keep their minds and bodies in sync. It would be worse than futile to expend mental energy on the Creed while shielding our practical lives from transformation, which is our true worship.4
LESSON 2
DOUBT AND DOGMA
They did not understand what he was saying and were afraid
to ask. (Mark 9:32, AP)
But what if we have doubts and hard questions? Does the Apostles' Creed alienate thinkers? The Creed, in a surprising way, invites doubt. The Creed was first composed as a set of questions, and for people with plenty of questions. If we know all the answers, we forget the questions! And if Jesus did anything in his ministry, he asked far more questions than he answered. Isn't there a faithfulness in our doubting? Haven't all great discoveries in history happened because somebody doubted? We have to learn to trust our questions, to think more deeply, never to quit in our pursuit of truth, to probe the pages of the Bible, to listen to the pulse of our lives, to pray more fervently. If we think cocksure certainty is the only posture for the faithful Christian, we will wind up mean or disillusioned.
The Creed does not banish doubt so much as it offers up a hopeful frame within which to ask our questions and to grow in our love for God and our heart for serving God. A vital relationship with God is not easy; the life of faith has its dark moments, as we grasp after a God who is palpable one moment and elusive the next. We shrink before a God beyond comprehension, and yet even as we shrink, we stay, not to toy with a mere idea of God, but to flourish in a startling friendship with the living God.5
In this series, we will explore the hard questions that dog people outside (and inside) the Church. Can anyone prove there is a God? What about science and the Bible? How can God be good if there is evil? Why call God "Father"? Does it matter if Mary was a virgin? Doctrine, we might remember, is the extravagant effort of Christian thinkers to make sense out of a faith that is complex, and one that is never embarrassed by awkward questions.
We may all know fervent Christians bristling with faith who say, "Just give me Jesus." But the Creed not only gives us Jesus. In Rowan Williams's lovely words, it is "the job of doctrine . . . to hold us still before Jesus. When that slips out of view, we begin instead to use this language to defend ourselves, to denigrate others, to control and correct—and then it becomes a problem."6
Doctrine is holding us still before Jesus! So working through the Creed could never be dull or boring. The mystery writer Dorothy Sayers suggested that "it is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—and the dogma is the drama. That drama is summarized quite clearly in the Creeds."7 And the excitement of the drama played out in the Creed is never just a mind game; the Creed issues in a radically altered