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Prolegomena The most basic assumptions that we carry with us, the ones that inform all our decisions and operate "under the hood" of our lives, will often remain unexamined for years. After all, these assumptions, being quite literally taken for granted, aren't meant to be uprooted or dismantled. Instead, they are meant to serve as foundations, and foundations are meant to be built upon. But familiarity can breed contempt, and we often find ourselves beginning to disdain what we see as basic instead of receiving it with gratitude and thanksgiving.
The Apostle's Creed is paradigmatic for Christians; it serves them as a lens through which to view the world. The Creed itself is built upon an even more foundational document, the Bible. It really is, as it claims to be, a distillation of the apostolic teaching. The Creed, along with the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer, is also an encapsulation and summation of God's word. These three standards, expressing the Scriptures in summary, are our epistemology; they are our metaphysic, and they are our ethic.
And yet, because these three (especially the Creed) are so basic, they can be dismissed. After all, who among the theologically learned wants to be seen as a doctrinal minimalist? Nothing seems to threaten our confessional tribalism more than an "unhealthy"over-emphasis on the basic premises of Christianity. Those who openly profess their love for the fundamentals are vulnerable to the charge of fundamentalism. And who wants to be called a fundamentalist?
Conversely, the Ecumenical standards can be totalized to the exclusion of other theological truths. Many a liberal has defended sodomy, denied the existence of Hell, and scorned the authority of the Bible, all while swearing up and down: "I still affirm the Apostle's creed!"
But there is a better way - to recognize that the Apostle's Creed (and the Ten Commandments and Lord's Prayer) are stuffed to the gills with powerful doctrinal content. The Creed is stuffed so full, in fact, that John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion is essentially an exposition of it, moving all the way from "God the Father almighty" to "the life everlasting." The Creed is expounded in the Heidelberg Catechism, the Lutheran Book of Concord, and the Thirty-Nine Articles. And none of these necessarily exhausts the Creed - it remains as simple and yet as complex as ever.
I want to recover a love of these standards, particularly the Creed. I say "recover" because it's a love I've always had, as I will explore in subsequent entries. Each item of the Creed has been received or explored to some extent in my life; I have known it since I was a child. When I was in grade school, I was made to illustrate the Creed and that crayon-covered booklet is still in a bin in my room to this day.
But when I look back at my more recent forays into theology (my discovery of Calvinism, my anguished wrestling bout with the doctrine of paedobaptism, etc.), I see the straining of a man who has forgotten the foundation and gotten too far out ahead of himself. I see a man whose familiarity with the contents of the Creed has bred contempt. It's time for me, I think, to return to the foundations in order to envision a more excellent way to build upon them. In this series of articles, I will do just that, reflecting on each article of the Creed as it relates to particular seasons of my life.
"I believe in God the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth..."
To my knowledge, there has never been a time in my life when I did not affirm this truth. The fact that God is real, that He governs all things by His providence, and that He made the world and all that is in it has never been a real point of contention for me. As a child, I took the existence of God as given largely because of how the world presented itself to me. It seemed obvious to me that this world was made; how could it not be? This is a cliche in apologetics (to a point), but the existence of creation seems to imply a creator.
If I were to draw a picture in crayon and hand it to my father, he would have no reason to believe that it spontaneously appeared out of the ground or developed into existence over millions of years. If it was there, it had to have been made, if not by me, then by someone else (perhaps traced from a book or stolen from one of my brothers). The sheer obviousness of the fact that this world was made demanded of me a belief in the Maker, a belief which I cheerfully yielded and left unchallenged so I could attend to the crayons with less distraction.
This is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it serves to illustrate my point. It really is silly to say that butterflies, pinecones, dandelions, Georgia clay, and human beings just kind of started to exist one day or otherwise crashed their way into the universe through a series of random, unrelated events. This line of thinking is just as absurd as supposing a crayon drawing to be the result of fluids oozing out of the hardwood floor and finally hardening themselves into a depiction of an ill-proportioned Spider-Man swinging cheerfully through the streets of Manhattan.
The idea of a universe without a maker is far too absurd for children to believe it. I say this as a generalization, of course. The public schools have been hard at work making it an untrue generalization, but I think it holds despite their efforts. The fact remains: children who have adopted a materialistic or evolutionary view of the cosmos do so because we've trained them to, either through coercion, or indoctrination. Children tend to peer through such doctrines with piercing questions such as "Why?" and "Says who?" The wise among us would do well to ask similar questions, and I think if we do we will find ourselves entirely satisfied with an understanding that God is the all-mighty maker of heaven and earth.
How can this foundation be built upon? How can we expand upon this simple supposition? Well, to start with, we must move beyond the mere fact of creation in our thinking. We have to look past the fact that everything has been made by God to appreciate how particular things have been made by God. Instead of letting the doctrine of creation gather dust in our minds, we ought to allow this foundational notion to express itself in particular situations. Thus, the fact that God made everything gives way to an understanding that God made this particular flower, sunset, person, or food. And this understanding must in turn yield itself to thanksgiving.