The apostles' creed

This is the apostles' creed, the oldest commonly known creed, coming from around 50 years after the latest writings of the New Testament:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
    the Maker of heaven and earth,
    and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
    born of the virgin Mary,
    suffered under Pontius Pilate,
    was crucified, dead, and buried;

He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead;

He ascended into heaven,
    and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
    from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost;
    the holy catholic church;
    the communion of saints;
    the forgiveness of sins;
    the resurrection of the body;
    and the life everlasting.

Amen.

I used to find this confession something of a puzzle. It seems relatively light on specific doctrinal confession, taking most of the space on recounting historical events. My mathematical and scientific mind wasn't so used to this kind of fodder. Over a number of years my thinking has changed - I hope, developed and matured. The construction of this confession is now something I appreciate and value very deeply.

Now, I don't think this or any man-made confession is infallible. For one thing I think that the arguments that "he descended into hell" was not intended literally by the confession's authors are implausible, given the position of that statement (coming after crucified, died, buried, and as a separate statement to that one). And I think that statement is false; Christ told the dying thief that "today" they would be together in paradise. Christ's sufferings are in the Scriptures uniformly attributed to the cross, not to a mythical "descent into hell". I think that those who have used the confession in the last 500 years in this sense (i.e., it refers to the cross) are right in intent, even if it is not really what the confession says.

But, coming back to my point, I think that the historical emphasis is very helpful. The confession arose in the times when the Gnostic challenge was very strong, and the fact is that Gnostic-type errors have never died, but manifested themselves again and again in different forms in the church. By Gnostic-type errors, I am talking about the tendency to separate history from theology, facts from ideas, values from events - flesh and blood from soul and spirit.

Theological liberalism is a form of Gnosticism. Theological liberalism sought to "de-mythologise" the Bible, stripping out the historical claims and keeping the ethical teaching. But in the Bible, the ethical teaching is a fruit, and God's historical actions in the world are the roots. Dig out the former, and quite quickly you won't have any consistent basis for the former - as the recent history of the West shows.

The Bible is a very earthly book. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He acts in this world - not some mythical private sphere - to judge and to save. Jesus is Lord, not simply of our private values and personal beliefs, but of the hills, valleys and plains too; of the public, visible reality that you can see on Google Earth. He actually came into this world, lived, suffered, and died and rose - to be Lord of this world, not of a different or invisible one. He's Lord of all seven days of the week, not just Sunday; Lord of the world, not simply the church. When we understand that, we'll understand that secularism is actually functional atheism, and that secularism no more matches with Christianity than Gnosticism does - because it is (in its Christianised forms) a species of Gnosticism.

Theistic evolution is another crypto-Gnostic scheme, that separates God's acts from God's words. It relegates the creative accounts of Scripture to theological stories that are intended to teach theological ideas, but not because they tell an account of what actually happened in the real world. Fruits without roots again.

This insight is part of what gives me confidence as a missionary and elder. As I preach the gospel and spread the word in this world (badly, but with God's help to keep going forward), I have confidence that Jesus, as Lord of this world, will achieve his purposes. I believe that his word will transform real-world institutions - individual lives, families, places of work, cultures and even governments. Those things aren't in another sphere, where Jesus' Lordship is less important - they're an integral part of the very universe he is Lord over. We can pray and work with confidence, not just hunker down into a holy huddle waiting for the second coming to rescue us into a world where Jesus actually does reign.

Tomorrow I've been asked to address a student Christian Union on the subject of post-modernism. Post-modernism denies the validity of meta-narratives - i.e. of universally true stories which transcend local cultures and boundaries. The gospel is nothing else than a meta-narrative, and the Apostles' Creed hence denied post-modernism 1900 years in advance. I submit that a Christian who really appreciates the logic of the construction of the Apostles' Creed is a Christian who is well-armed against many of the erroneous -isms plaguing the church today. Once you've grasped Genesis 1:1, that in the beginning God made not just souls and Platonic realms of ideals, but the real-life heaven and earth in which we live, and once you've grasped the flesh-and-blood gospel of a Saviour who really suffered terrible agony on a Roman gibbet around 30AD, and once those insights have penetrated throughout your thinking, you're well on the way. Truly the ancients have a lot to teach us, even in the very fundamentals.