An old allegory tries to describe religion with the story of four blind men feeling an elephant. The blind man feeling the trunk thinks he is touching a long, thick creature. The one touching the elephant’s leg says he is touching a creature like a tree. The one touching its tail says the animal is like a rope. The one touching its side claims the creature is like a wall. In this story, all four notice a small piece of the whole picture, each mistakenly thinking they understand the whole picture by their small part. The point, as people use this illustration to try to describe religion, is that supposedly we all have some insight into what God is, so all religions just need to work together to understand what God is like wholistically.
The story represents a widespread notion that all religions are basically the same. The theory presumes that God is a nondescript force in the universe, affecting and influencing everyone to some degree or other. We all supposedly have some correct insight into what God is like, and religious people foolishly argue with one another when we are all just saying the same thing.
This story is far from the truth about religion. Even apart from Christianity being the true religion, the story’s notion condescendingly disrespects every major world religion. It pretends that pluralism has a better perspective than adherents do by saying that their religion is reconcilable with other claims to what is true about God. Yet we make competing claims about what is true.
In the Apostles’ Creed, we announce what we hold to be reality, what we believe to be true of the world, particularly as we stand in relation to God and his works. The Apostles’ Creed is not a statement of faith that some generic god exists and that vague religious platitudes apply to us. No, the Creed says that we are not interested in generic theism but only in the true God of the Bible. We believe in the triune God, who alone made heaven and earth, who wrought salvation in Jesus Christ, and who brings that to bear upon our lives through the Spirit’s work in the church.
The Creed states that we believe in this God, the Bible’s God, not some God. No one besides Christians could affirm the Apostles’ Creed, which is one of its strengths. We are not making a statement of belief in a god, but a statement about the specific, true God in whom we believe. Put another way, the Creed is more about describing the true God who has our allegiance than about saying that God is out there.
Our starting place is then with the Apostles’ Creed, which begins, “I believe in God the Father.” We believe that God is the Trinity because we have no statement about the one God who exists that does not also quickly move to explain that the true God is Father, Son, and Spirit.
So, again, we see that all religions cannot be mushed together. Christians alone believe in the Trinity. If God is not triune, then we have no true insight into what God and religion is. Our faith is tied into this basic premise: the real God is the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Herman Bavinck wrote, “The doctrine of the Trinity is of incalculable importance for the Christian religion. The entire Christian belief system, all of special revelation, stands or falls with the confession of God’s Trinity. It is the core of the Christian faith, the root of all its dogmas, the basic content of the new covenant. . . . In the doctrine of the Trinity we feel the heartbeat of God’s entire revelation for the redemption of humanity.”1 The Trinity is the God who exists and works salvation for us. Our main point is that the God we worship is Father, Son, and Spirit.
Speaking
Hebrews 1 displays the same point. We cannot know God apart from knowing the specific, true God who is the Trinity. First, Hebrews 1:1–2 gives us the only foundation for knowing the true God: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.”
How is it that we know God? He speaks. He tells us who he is. People do not find generic truths about God by searching inside themselves. Some generic vague God has not scattered puzzle pieces throughout the world, hoping that people across the globe assemble their parts together to know the whole truth.
God spoke to his people through the prophets so that we would know him as the true God. The prophets did not find information about God. He delivered it to them by speaking through them. This means a prophet either heard the real God or they did not. No other claims to know God can be added to what is given in the Scripture. So, the point is that we know the true God because he reveals himself to us.
Second, according to Hebrews 1:1–2, how does God speak today? He has spoken finally in the Son, in Jesus Christ who came to earth for our salvation. The true God who spoke through the prophets is the same God who has definitively spoken in the Son. Jesus Christ is not one piece of the puzzle for religions around the world to come to a joint understanding of God. Jesus Christ is the revelation of the true God. We know who God is only through revelation related to Jesus Christ.
The Apostles’ Creed states a fundamentally biblical truth—I believe in God the Father. The true God is the God who is triune. The true God is the God whom we know through Jesus Christ. The only God who is real is the God about whom we can say that the Father relates to Jesus Christ as eternal Father and Son, both being related to the Spirit. The Lord’s speaking comes in triune fashion so that our God cannot be blended into every other religious belief.
Sonship
The Apostles’ Creed speaks of the one God, whom we believe is true, in contrast to all other religions. The claim that the true God is Father also entails that our God is triune. Hebrews 1:3 grounds our understanding that the biblical God who has spoken to make himself known is triune: “He [the Son] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” This Son through whom we know God is the radiance of God’s glory.
When I lived in Britain, all our homes were heated by radiators. A big metal piping system hung on the wall in every room, filled with water that got hot as a way to heat the room. Now, is the heat inside the radiator a different heat than the heat in the room? I am sure some of our scientifically or engineering minded readers could tell me how this example falls short, but my point is that the heat in those pipes rolls out, admittedly with slightly differing characteristics, to be heat in the room. The heat radiates out so that its duplicate of sorts travels.
Hebrews tells us the Son is the radiance of God’s glory, the exact imprint of the divine nature. He is the same nature, he is the same heat, in that he is the one true God. Yet, he differs from the Father in coming forth from the Father as the very radiance of his glory. Nonetheless, the Son is the exact nature of God, the showing forth of God’s own very glory and character.
We have a tried-and-true grammar to explain this truth. We say that the true God is one in essence and three in person. Father, Son, and Spirit all are the one divine essence, the divine being. Yet, they are distinct persons, as the Son has been eternally generated from the Father, and the Spirit eternally proceeds from Father and Son. This is how we have explained God as being one in essence and three in person.
We may not understand that concept. On the one hand, it is good to know this grammar and we learn more about it over time as we reflect upon it. We need to know some principles in order to come to understand them. On the other hand, we will never really understand these things, which is part of what makes God majestic. We are supposed to bow before the mystery that is our God.
The rest of Hebrews 1 spells out much the same point. The Son is the exact imprint of God’s nature, he is himself God. Yet, God says to the Son, “You are my Son. . . . I will be a father to you.” God says to the Son, “God your throne is forever.” The Father calls the Son God, stating that the Son’s throne is forever. Even the reality of Sonship in God shows us the Trinity must be the true God.
Support
Our reflections have been about how the Creed helps us state our faith in specifically the true God. The Creed is about the God in whom we believe—namely, the triune God, because from the outset, we say, “I believe in God the Father.” It is good to know what we believe, but we also want to think about how what we believe is good for us.
We have seen how Hebrews 1 necessitates that God is three persons because God has to address himself in differing capacities. There must be Father and Son for Hebrews 1 to work, and of course the Spirit is also in the picture, just not in this passage explicitly. No one is there to address the Son as such if God is not Father, Son, and Spirit.
This reality of God’s triunity is one of the most moving truths we have. We opened with Bavinck saying the Trinity is the heartbeat of Christianity. Do you know why our God moves the heart of our religion because he is triune? Because it is the triune God who loves you. There is not some abstract deity who loves you. It is Father, Son, and Spirit, who have one essence and one will in common, who have pointed the divine love at you.
One of our most cherished truths is that God is love. But God must be triune to be love. Why? Because love is directed at an object. God was love before he created the world, for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have eternally existed as the divine essence, having love always for one another, existing in triune love. Christians believe in the one true God who alone can be love because he is triune.
Believer, you were born out of God’s triune love. God did not need any of us to know love because it is known within himself between Father, Son, and Spirit. But that essential divine love overflowed so that God made us, giving us the opportunity to know that infinitely beautiful love. You exist because God is love. And you were born again out of God’s triune love. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son so that all who believe in him should have everlasting life. God’s love for you is available only in Trinitarian fashion—God so loved you that the Son redeemed you, which the Spirit applies to you.
We rejoice to state, I believe in God the Father, because in Jesus Christ the Son, the natural Son of God, we all become God’s adopted children, forgiven in the Lord Jesus and reunited with our triune God who has become our Father.
Note
- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, 4 vol. (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2003–8), 2:333; emphasis added.
©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.
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Harrison Perkins
Harrison Perkins (PhD, Queen’s University Belfast; MDiv, Westminster Seminary California) is pastor of Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), a member of the of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, a Senior Research Fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards, associate online instructor in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, a visiting lecturer in systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary, and author of Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction.
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Adding to the I verses We conversation, I cannot say with certainty that everyone included in WE necessarily believes what I believe. But I can say with a good deal of certainty what WE as a church believe, whether or not everyone there at the time believes these things to be true or not. So the WE referred to is the corporate body of believers, not a collection of individuals, per se. When I pray through either creed I substitute I for We as it seems to make my prayer more personal. I agree fully with Dr. Clark that we should be cautious about changing the creeds as written at which point changes become a matter of opinion and therefore possibly division. Leave well enough alone.
Dr. Clark,
From an English standpoint, changing from singular to plural is a far cry from deleting a phrase or changing words. Do we confess it? Can we not say “we?” One need only look up the history of both creeds to find that they have been linguistically changed more than once depending on which church you happen to be in. For instance, the URCNA version of the AP has “begotten” in the second paragraph, whereas the PCA versions do not. That is, in my estimation, a far bigger deal than changing the number, which does not change the basic meaning of the noun involved or the text as a whole. Especially since both “I” and “we” should confess these things freely, individually and corporately. (I tried to comment in the thread but couldn’t.)
Steve,
I agree that some changes are more significant than others and there is some ancient precedent for the 1st plural but I want to resist high-handedness. I’m particularly opposed to hymnal committees taking it upon themselves to revise ecumenical creeds.
Thank you for this series on the Apostles Creed. We make an effort in our service to summarize why we do what we do in each of the liturgical elements and you have provided valuable insight regarding this creed.
Do you have any insight as to the historical use of the AC in the public worship service? Just curious because of the AC’s “I believe” in contrast to the Nicene’s ” We believe”
When we confess the AC in worship, we change the language to “we.” Pretty sure that’s OK. And, if you want to confess NC as “I,” that’s OK, as well. They are not inspired.
Steve,
It’s true that the Apostles’ Creed isn’t inspired but it’s also true that it is 1) an ecumenical creed (not just a local statement of faith); 2) adopted by the churches and thus has not only antiquity but also ministerial authority as an ecclesiastical summary of God’s Word. So, I wonder 1) about the grounds for revising the Creed willy nilly; 2) the wisdom of it. If congregations or even denominational committees may revise ecumenical creeds this way what about other ways? May they delete “he descended into hell”? If not, why not?
Thus my question regarding the historical use of the AC. When did it become a corporate confession? Why did the council of Nicaea go with “We”?
I do hold tightly to the idea of confessing the same words ( in whichever language) as those who came before us. Just wondering if the collective “I” is semantically the same as “we” or not. Does it change the meaning of the confession in any way?
To question the original premise, more details might be at work here. 2/3 versions of the Nicene Creed that I just checked say “I believe” as well. 1/3 said “we.” The origin of those variants might be interesting
The received text (Schaff) of both the Greek and Latin texts is in the 1st singular. There is an old Italian form from c. 350 (Latin) that uses the 1st plural. I have a note somewhere that Rome uses the first plural for the Apostles’ Creed.