AN INSIPID CREED THAT FAILS TO RECORD HISTORIC FACTS: SURELY THERE’S MORE TO CHRISTIANITY THAN THIS?

Somehow or another the following declaration has been incorporated into our morning church worship. The congregation is invited “Let us declare our faith in God in the words of the creed” by saying these words:-

We believe in God the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

We believe in God the Son, who lives in our hearts through faith, and fills us with his love.

We believe in God the Holy Spirit, who strengthens us with power from on high.

We believe in one God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.^[1]

This version of the creed is authorised for use by the Church of England but it is a pallid relative of the real thing. This matters. My first exposure to institutional Christianity was aged 7 in a small parish church in Broadstairs, Kent. Each week Matins from the Book of Common Prayer was followed including the recitation of the Apostle’s Creed.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, 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 rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, And sitteth 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 Catholick Church; The Communion of Saints; The Forgiveness of sins; The Resurrection of the body, And the Life everlasting. Amen.

I’m not pretending that I found this gripping at the time, all the time.  Some of the time my attention was directed to the urgent business of ripping off a button to put into the collection bag so that I could pocket the threepenny bit that was intended for that purpose but which I intended for fish and chips.  Even when not diverted I didn’t understand all of it, but I understood enough to get an idea of the core of what Christians believed. Coming from a Jewish home a lot of it was news to me. I’m grateful for the weekly repetition of this concise statement of faith. It burned its way into my memory and has provided plenty of nourishment. Today, over half a century later, it still does. Comparing this with the emaciated version any child at church would have heard last Sunday I am struck by the inadequacy of the new liturgy.

To the uninitiated, the new version tells us next to nothing about Jesus. His name does not feature. You would never know that there was a real person called Jesus who lived and died at a particular historical time: i.e. when Pontius Pilate was in power. The incarnation is not so much as hinted at in the new version, yet without it Christianity collapses. A declaration of faith which omits the incarnation, the crucifixion and the resurrection is not just missing a few incidental points it is missing the point.  Sustaining a Christian life on this basis would be like trying to cross the channel in a ship without a hull, rudder, motor or mast.  You are not just likely to sink–you are bound to.

What were the Church of England’s liturgy experts thinking when they penned this thin gruel? It manages to be both watered down yet indigestible. Try explaining ‘from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named’ to a passing visitor (or to me for that matter). I know the phrase is taken from Ephesians but that does not tell us much that is readily intelligible about God the Father.

Have we abandoned or lost confidence in the idea that God the Father is Almighty? Do we no longer believe that He is the Maker of heaven and earth? Is it a loss of confidence in these truths that makes us shrink from declaring them? Is this why we are now expected to be content to settle for an obscure jumble of platitudes which repeatedly puts the focus on ‘us’? Thanks but no thanks.  Sadly, a passing visitor may never realise that Christians believe more that remains unsaid by the new version than is referred to in it.

Great care and attention has been taken in formulating the Nicene and Apostle’s creeds. They have withstood the tests of time and informed generation after generation of worshipers. The latest version leaves a vacuum where truth once stood. We should watch out. This vacuum will be filled by ideas falling well outside the orthodox.

1. https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/common-worship/common-material/new-patterns-28 ↑