Apostle's Creed?

Any Baptist who can find an error in the Apostle's Creed does not believe the Bible. The youth director at our church had his youth memorize it.

 

Amen to the apostle's creed. and not the roman "catholic" church either and the nicene creed as well.
I can defend every word from the Bible in the creed. a creed will not save you but
faith can and does

 

He descended into hell,…

There is no real basis for this and the scriptures do not positively point to this. There are some theologians who believe this, however, there are many who don’t. Places that point to this are ambiguous at best. The Bible never says he went to Hell. Three verses that I know of where this "interpretation" stems from are Matthew 12:40, 1 Peter 3:18-20; and 1 Peter 4:6. None of these say Christ went to Hell. Three phrases where this particular view stems from "…in the heart of the earth", "…spirits in prison" and "…preached also to them that are dead". (There may be more, but this is what I found.) I do not believe these places were hell.

Sadly, there are many "Christian" denominations who have even stated that Christ had to go to hell to suffer for our sins. If that were the case, then Christ’s words "It is finished" are rendered useless.

…A holy catholic Church*…

O.K., I know this is nit-picking, but I really have a problem with this one. Yes, I understand 100% that catholic is spelled with a lower case "c" and that its meaning is universal. This I have no problem with in so far as we as Christians are the body of Christ, the universal church. However, the problem I have, is the fact that it is the only portion that remains in the original Latin. To me, it seems to only lend credence to the Catholic Church.

I have heard the argument that people have said that everyone knows catholic means universal. I think that is a terrible assumption. I consider myself to be well educated and I did not know it meant universal until a year ago. Imagine those people who don’t know. As far as they know, it only makes the Catholic Church more credible. If people are going to use the Apostles creed, they should use the English word, not the Latin.


Do I find the entire creed in error, no. But yes, I do find error in the Apostle’s creed.

Dave

[ August 07, 2001: Message edited by: Dajuid ]

 

Brother Dave,

I used to have a lot or problems with saying "the catholic church", until I became a very serious student of First and second century Christianity. I was very surprised to learn that in the first and second centuries, the word "catholic" (small c) was used very often to refer to the entire church, and not just to a single congregation of believers. It was only in later centuries that the Roman church appropriated the name as it's private domain. Of course, this is only one of he things that they claimed to have sole jurisdiction over! Their claims, however, does not take the right of any christian to claim the whole church as their own.

IHS <><

 

My objection is that it's a creed.

Baptists are SUPPOSED to have no creed but the Bible (although the intent of the new SBC BF&M is to serve as a creed).

 

Has anyone noticed that The Apostle's Creed does not include the Deity of Christ?

HankD

 

4. Refer to #1. It is reasonable to believe that since God cannot look upon sin and Jesus Christ had sin on him that God could not look upon his Son.

Agree... to a certain point.

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Matthew 27:46

It is at this point that God has hid his face from His Son. (Also a referrence to Psalm 22:1)

God hid his face from him, and for awhile withdrew his rod and staff in the darksome valley. God forsook him, not as he forsook Saul, leaving him to an endless despair, but as sometimes he forsook David, leaving him to a present despondency.
Matthew Henry; 1704-1716

Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.Matthew 27:50

And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
Luke 23:46

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
John 19:30

We see here that when Jesus died, His spirit went to be with the Father. His work here was finished.

5. Diety now being split from diety (the single most amazing event in all of history in my opinion) Jesus Christ had to go somewhere for those three days. We know that he was not in heaven and we know he was not upon the earth. Since purgetory is non-existant this only leaves one reasonable answer- Jesus was in hell for three days.

We are told where Jesus was for those three days. His spirit was with the Father; Luke 23:46 and his body was in the grave; Luke 23:52,53.

When he rose from the dead he had the keys to death and hades with him.

Where is this? I find no reference to the Lord raising from the dead holding the keys to death and hades. The Lord has them and has always had them long before he died on the cross. He didn't need to go to hell to obtain these keys. It was not a quest for the keys to death and hades.

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Revelation 1:18

[ August 07, 2001: Message edited by: Dajuid ]

 

Jesus did descend into hell. For a comprehensive look at the subject visit John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter 16, Section 8. (You'll have to scroll to section 8. There is a short summary of each section at the beginning of the page. Scroll to the second section 8.)

http://www.ccel.org/c/calvin/institutes/bookii/bookii28.htm

[ August 07, 2001: Message edited by: Theopolitan ]

 

flyfree wrote:
>And what is the BF&M i keep hearing about?

The Southern Baptist Faith and Message. Baptists are supposed to have "no creed but the Bible" as a distinctive, but last year, the conservative juggernaut approved changes to the 1963 BF&M to make it an instrument of doctrinal accountability (i.e. a creed).

Since I'm sure you are unfamiliar with Baptist political history, here's a short summary.

Prior to 1979, the SBC was a shared environment between conservatives and moderates, held together by a common "rope of sand". However, beginning in 1979, fundamentalists within the leadership exercised a calculated attack on the status quo, realizing that if inerrantists were elected enough times to the presidency, then the power of appointment would eventually give them total control of the convention.

From 1979 to the early '90s, the fundies engineered scare tactics to fool delegates into believing that the SBC leadership was full of "liberals" and that Bible-believing conservatives were needed to get the convention back on track. "Inerrancy" was chosen as the line in the sand between the "good guys" and the "liberals". The general fear among Baptists of the societal liberalism of the 1960s made these false accusations seem concrete, and they voted in "conservative" candidates year-after-year.

The moderates never recovered from these tactics and after 15 years, the conservatives had appointed an entire convention of inerrantists. They then promptly purged SBC seminaries and mission groups of those that disagreed with them.

True liberals broke off to form the Alliance of Baptists in 1991 and moderates began leaving to form the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1994, rather than engage in a long battle over time with no end in sight.

The crowning achievement of the new fundamentalist leadership has been to rewrite the somewhat-moderate confession known as the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message into a creed, now called the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. It eliminates Christ as the criterion for interpretation of scription, supports a strict literal inerrancy position, bans women pastors, submits women to their husbands, and sets itself as an instrument of doctrinal accountability over a denomination that was founded on autonomy and soul liberty.

Any questions?

 

>>HankD- Yes it does:
"in Jesus Christ his only begotten Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary" only begotten *S*on, *our LORD*, conceived by the *Holy Spirit*, born of the *Virgin* Mary. All these reference Christ's deity.>>

Not necessarily Adam, does the "V" of Virgin imply Mary's deity? Your own belief system is driving your bias and thats alright.
JW's, Unitarians and other who deny Jesus deity have no problem with calling Jesus Lord and giving some form of credence to the other matters you mention.
In particular, the credal statement "of one essence with the Father" is missing.
Granted it may be because the Apostle's Creed was developed so early in the history of Christianity that it was not an issue at that time. Arians would say that the apostles took it for granted that He wasn't believed to be deity while those who followed Athanasius claimed it was because they took it for granted that He was/is God come in the flesh. The early church fathers were weighted on the deity side (in my research).
Other Creeds which followed such as the Nicene creed include "of one essence with the Father" when speaking of Jesus and His deity.
It is not so much a criticism of the Apostle's Creed but an observation.
Personally, I give the creeds value only in that they are kind of an historical thermometer as to what was going on in Christianity at the time of their developement.

HankD

 

In his address to the first meeting of the Baptist World Alliance, John D. Freeman asked all of the gathered delegates to stand a recite the Apostle's Creed as an indication that baptists were not a breed apart from the wider Christian church. They did just that.

Joshua

 

Dear Flyfree,

My first response to your post concerning the Apostle's creed was :

>>HankD:Has anyone noticed that The Apostle's Creed does not include the Deity of Christ?>>

So, no, the Apostle's Creed does not deny the deity of Christ it just doesn't specifically affirm it.
No one can know why it doesn't affirm it because , as far as I know, historically no one has said why.
Apparently it was not an issue at the time.
My guess is that the deity of Christ was a given. Later it was challenged by the Arians when it then became a major issue.

HankD

 

>>Anyways this thread is starting to get off topic and very nit-picky>>

Just another side note Flyfree and as a "for instance", if you think this is nit-picky, you should see the verbal wrestling matches the early Church fathers went through to formulate the biblical definition of the Trinity of the later creeds:

God is three distinct persons in one divine essence.

This formula took about 300 years of semantic thrashings to resolve.

I have a hard disk with about 20,000 pages of early church fathers writings and their pontifications. I don't have enough time left in my pilgrimage here to read it all.
Search engines are indeed a blessing.

HankD