Sixth Friday of Easter
Friday is answers and responses to questions and comments during the week. Creed Wars attracted the most response (granted not much; I'm still hoping for more responses). I have learned more from several people about objections to the Apostles' Creed. What I'm finding is that people who aren't the slightest bit literalistic about reading the Bible become very literalistic (in a negative way) about saying the creed. The fundamentalist understanding of the Bible is that if there is one thing wrong in it, then the whole thing is wrong. They therefore feel like that have to believe everything in it. Creedal fundamentalists work on that same premise with the creed. If there is one thing in it that they don't literally believe, then they don't want to say it or have it said in church.
I once got to be liturgist for a Sunday morning service at University UMC. We said the Apostles' Creed. I prefaced it with the liturgists' introduction to it in the 1964 Methodist Hymnal, "Let us unite in this historic confession of the Christian faith."
When we say the creed we are participating in a 1700 year old tradition in the Christian Church. The fundamentalists of the Radical Reformation (various Anabaptist groups and Zwinglians in the early 1500's) and the Baptists, who formed a century later, threw out the Apostles' Creed. They did so because they believed that everything in the Christian Church from the time of the end of the New Testament up until their own time had been evil. Fortunately the major Reformation churches, Lutheran, Calvinist (Presbyterian), and Anglican (Episcopal) kept the ancient creeds. Methodists followed the Anglicans, as did other newer Protestant denominations that developed out of the Reformation. Baptists, Pentecostals, and other fundamentalist groups do not say the creed today.
We consider the Apostles' Creed an "Affirmation of Faith." For me that means an affirmation of the faith of Christians down through the ages that is the foundation of our faith today.
At this point I think I can say that I personally believe everything in the Creed, although there is one thing I'm not entirely sure about. At other points in my life there have been more things in the creed that that I questioned or didn't believe. But I never stopped saying it. I hope United Methodists will never stop saying it.
I did get one very positive email on yesterday's blog on written prayers and devotional resources. She was especially thankful for the prayer I included, the Phos Hilaron. Devotional resources is a subject I want to deal with much more. Thursdays are prayer and spirituality days on the blog. Next Thursday, however, is Ascension Day. I will be dealing with the "He ascended into heaven" part of the creed next Thursday.
Faithfully,
Christian
1 comment:
Until Glenda and I moved to Chapel Hill in 1966, I was a Baptist. We met in college, and a few months later I spent a weekend with Glenda and her family. We went to St. Paul Methodist Church in Durham that Sunday, and I heard the Apostles Creed for the first time. The thing that caused my eyes to really pop was the statement "I believe in the holy catholic church". I thought "whoa, what did they just say?" Although there are other statements in the creed that may cause, if looked at in a literal way, one to possibly question some of the things being said, the reference to the catholic church was the one that really got my attention. Later, I asked her what that meant. She explained it the best she could, and said that it did not mean that they believed in the "Catholic" (capitalized C) Church. At the time, I really didn't fully understand the statement. The other things in the creed such as believing in Jesus Christ, being conceived by the Holy Spirit, the virgin birth, the trinity, the resurrection, the ascension, etc. etc., were things that I had heard and belived all my life, so those things were not problematic to me. In my opinion, Christianity is based on having a deep faith based on studying the scriptures. If one were to analyze the creed based solely on science or rationality, there are several things that could cause one to question them. It is at that point that you believe, or you don't believe. You believe, if you have the faith mentioned above, and repeating the Apostles Creed is affirming that faith.
Post a Comment