Deeper understandings The creeds
They’re confessional, revelatory, ecumenical, evangelical & delightful
Editor’s note: This series is intended to be a public conversation among teaching theologians of the ELCA on various themes of our faith and the challenging issues of our day. It invites readers to engage and dialogue with the ELCA’s teaching theologians.
The series is edited by Philip
D.W. Krey, president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadel- phia, on behalf of the presidents of the eight ELCA seminaries.
By Robin Steinke and Gary Simpson
Robin Steinke: Let’s frame our conversation by using a simple way of remembering specific aspects we want to address that relate to all three major creeds. They are confessional, bear witness to the revelation of God, and are ecumenical, evangeli- cal and delightful.
Gary Simpson: Good suggestion. You want to start?
Steinke: Confessional is a way to start our conversation about the creeds. That is, we don’t “believe” in the creeds, for God is the only proper object of belief. We confess the creeds as a succinct statement of who God is.
The Bible is filled with very short statements about God such as “Jesus is Lord” in Romans 10:9 or “Jesus Christ is the Son of God” in Acts 8:37. To confess “I believe” does not state a personal opinion about God. Confessing is the freedom to promise together that the whole of our exis- tence, what we think, say, how we act, how we suffer, how we care for the world, is centered on God alone. Confessing the creed, therefore, has implications for how we live in the world. Confessing is risky business.
Steinke Simpson
Steinke is professor of theological ethics and dean, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (Pa.), and Simpson is professor of systematic the- ology at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn.
Simpson: I agree. The two creeds that we most often use in worship— the Nicene and Apostles’—emerged in risky circumstances (the third is the Athanasian Creed). The Nicene Creed was forged in the heat of several challenges, not least of which was a widespread mis- sional crisis. Church leaders clarified their confidence in the trinitarian God in distinction from the various pagan deities that were available to worship. The Apostles’ Creed was forged in the long-distance heat of a differ- ent kind of missional crisis, the crisis of living daily life under the run- of-the-mill pummeling by sin and suffering, by death and the devil, all the while trusting in a God who was rather strange by the Greco-Roman
18 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
standards of the day. For this reason the Apostles’ Creed regularly goes hand-in-hand with our baptismal identity as named children of the triune God—Father, Son and Spirit. As Martin Luther reminds us in the Large Catechism, God stakes God’s very own reputation on our baptisms. When I ponder that, that’s risky of God.
Steinke: The revelation of God is what we confess in the creeds, not only because it speaks to these succinct statements about God but because the creeds bear witness to the way God is at work in the world. The three articles of the creed describe “believing three ways in one God,” as Nicholas Lash writes in a book with that same title. The creeds don’t describe three separate roles that God plays but bear witness to how the whole of the mystery of one God is in relationship with and for the world.
One of our challenges is to con- tinue to pay humble attention to ways that God continues to reveal God’s self, especially in circumstances where we may be surprised.
Simpson: The creeds do indeed lift up God’s work in the world, summarized by Luther as creating, redeeming and sanctifying. Perhaps more subtly, but no less fervently, the creeds also hold up profound rela- tionality: ours in God, God’s in the triune persons, and God’s in God’s work. At our core we get to trust in these three persons: Father, Son and Spirit.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52