THE NICENE CREED ON THE CHURCH

 * We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

[J.S. Bach, a devout Lutheran, wrote a musical setting for the
Liturgy known as the B-minor Mass. In his setting for the words
printed above, there are two melody lines. One is a traditional
Latin plainchant melody, and the other is a traditional Lutheran
chorale melody. They are played and sung simultaneously, and they
interweave and harmonize perfectly.]

The Creed speaks of (1) the Unity of the Church, (2) the Sanctity of
the Church, (3) the Catholicity of the Church, and (4) the
Apostolicity of the Church.

[NOTE: Some versions of the Creed omit the word "holy" in describing
the Church. When the traditional translation of the Creed into
English was made in the 1500's, the oldest available Greek
manuscript of the Creed omitted the word "holy", and therefore the
translators mistakenly supposed that it was a later addition. In
fact it is part of the original Creed, and almost every recent
printing of the Creed includes it.]

     (1) The Church is One, and the bonds of Unity are Faith and
Love. Heresy violates the former, and schism the latter. Heretics
violate the unity of the Church by holding to beliefs or practices
that are incompatible with the Gospel that the Church has been
commissioned to proclaim, so that the Church cannot include them in
her fellowship without compromising, diluting, or denying the Gospel
message. Schismatics violate the unity of the Church by requiring
from others, as a condition of fellowship, assent to doctrines or
practices that are not an essential part of the Gospel (though they
may be compatible with it). We ought therefore to ask ourselves:
"Have I sinned against faith by denying or failing to uphold
doctrines essential to the message of the Gospel? Have I sinned
against love by requiring as a condition of Christian fellowship
agreement with me on matters where Christians may differ and still
remain Christians?"

     (2) The Church is Holy. Some persons understand this to mean
that individual church members are virtuous -- that you can tell
which group most truly embodies the church by noting which group has
the fewest members who are or ought to be in trouble with the
police. This understanding implies that holiness is something that
we confer upon the Church -- that by working hard to improve our own
personal scores on the Virtue chart we boost the team average. But
the older idea is that Holiness is something that the Church confers
upon us -- that Our Lord Jesus Christ is Holy, and that He has
called us to holiness in Him, and that He brings us into fellowship
with Him through the community of believers, by the Sacraments, by
the preaching of the Gospel message, by the mutual love and
fellowship of the community, by experience of praying and being
prayed for, of learning and teaching, of forgiving and being
forgiven. We ought therefore to ask ourselves: "Am I opening myself
to God's grace as He makes it available to me through the Chrisian
community? Instead of concentrating on my dissatisfaction with those
persons in the Church who appear to be unsatisfactory channels of
grace, am I looking for, and taking advantage of, whatever spiritual
nourishment is available? Am I, in my turn, being open to being used
by God as a channel of grace to others? Am I making it easier for
them to grow in Christian faith and love? Am I ready to forgive, and
ready fo seek forgiveness of others?

     (3) The Church is Catholic. The Greek word KATHOLIKOS comes
from KATA (a preposition with various meanings depending on the
context, often meaning "down" or "negative" as in "catabolic" or
"catastrophe" or "cathode," but also often meaning "according to")
and HOLOS (meaning "whole" as in "holistic medicine," which claims
to treat the whole patient and not just the particular ailment
complained of), and thus means, literally, "according to the whole."
The meaning of the word as applied to the Church has evolved.

     Probably the first Christians to use the term were simply
distinguishing the entire Church worldwide from particular
congregations. If you said something about the Church, they would
ask, "Do you mean the Church in Corinth, or the Church Catholic?"

     Around AD 175, Irenaeus of Lyons used it in disputing with the
Gnostics. Many Gnostics claimed that their teaching was "the real
Gospel." They said that Christ had had two messages. The first
message, called "exoteric Christianity," was his message preached to
the ordinary man, who was not very "spiritual," and was capable of
understanding only a very simple message. The second message, called
"esoteric Christianity," was told only to a chosen few who had shown
themselves worthy of it, and was concealed from the masses, because
they would only misunderstand and pervert it, and would persecute
the chosen few who were sufficiently elevated spiritually and
intellectually to be able to understand it. For a modern parallel,
look for the advertisements of the Rosicrucians (AMORC). They
advertise in a large range of magazines, at one time including the
National Geographic. Their pitch is that they are a secret society
that has existed since ancient times, and that Socrates, Archimedes,
Galileo, Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and other respected men
now safely dead were all members. No proof, of course. It is a
secret society.  They say, "Our message cannot be entrusted to the
masses, but only to those who after careful examination are found
worthy to learn it. So send us twenty big ones and we will spill our
guts."

     In replying to the Gnostics, Irenaeus argued that Christians
have never had a secret doctrine in the Gnostic sense. He argues
that Christ had no secrets from The Twelve (John 15:15), that the
Twelve accepted Paul as one of themselves (2 Peter 3:15), and that
both Paul (Acts 20:26f) and the original Twelve (Matthew 28:20) were
under strict commandment to pass on to their converts all that they
had been taught. The Gospel, the whole Gospel, is to be declared to
all men. All are called to a saving knowledge of God in Christ. In
this sense, the Church is Catholic, in contrast both with
pre-Christian Israel and with the Gnostics.

     Irenaeus goes on to say: If Christ did have a special message,
you would expect him to entrust it to his apostles, and you would
expect the apostles to entrust it to the leaders of the
congregations they founded. If we look in cities that are mentioned
in the New Testament as places where the Apostles preached, such as
Jerusalem, or Antioch, or Corinth, or Ephesus, or Rome, we find that
in each of them there is a Christian congregation, headed by a
bishop who is part of an unbroken and orderly line of bishops going
back to the time when the Church in that city was first established
by an apostle. Moreover, we find, if we do a little comparing, that
the Church in Ephesus and its bishop teach the same doctrines as the
Church in Antioch and its bishop. Thus, we have the Church as a
world-wide community, with each local congregation agreeing in
doctrine with the other congregations spread throughout the world,
and also with its predecessor reaching back in time to the Apostles
and through them to Christ Himself.

     (4) The Church is Apostolic. That is to say, it is the
community that Christ founded with the Apostles as nucleus. We read
of the first Christian converts added to the Church at Jerusalem
that "the continued steadfast in the apostles' teaching and
fellowship, and in the breaking of bread, and the prayers." (Acts
2:42) In order to be a Christian, it is not enough to be in the
Apostles' teaching. You must also be in the Apostles' fellowship.
The Church is a group, just as the Scouts are a group. Suppose that
someone found a Boy Scout Manual, and read it, and said, "I like
this!" Suppose that he then sat down and memorized the Scout Oath
and the Scout Law, and learned to tie 21 different kinds of knots
blindfolded, and how to pitch a tent, and how to swim 25 yards
underwater, and how to read a compass, and all the other things that
a Scout is required to know and to do. Suppose that he further made
a point of being trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous,
kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Would
it be accurate to say that he was a Scout? I think the answer is
clearly negative. He might be called Scout-like. He would be someone
whom the Scouts would gladly welcome aboard. But until he gets in
contact with the Scout organization and joins up, he is not a Scout.

In like fashion, to be a Christian does not mean simply holding a
certain set of beliefs, even if accompanied by appropriate behavior.
It means belonging to the Christian community, to the Church. When
God sent an angel to the centurion Cornelius (Acts 10), the angel
did not instruct him in Christian doctrine and tell him, "Now, if
you believe what I have just said, that makes you a Christian."
Rather, he told him how to get in touch with the Christian community
by sending a messenger to Peter in Joppa. When Saul was on the road
to Damascus, Christ spoke to him. But He did not instruct Saul in
Christian doctrine. Rather, He told him to go into Damascus and wait
for instructions, and then He sent Ananias, a Christian, to receive
Saul into the Christian community. And one of the marks of that
community is its continuity with the community that Christ founded
and upon whom the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost.



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Posted by: James E. Kiefer
Source:    CHRISTIA File Archives 
(for more info send INDEX CHRISTIA to listserv@asuvm.inre.asu.edu)

jab/15-Mar-94