Theology Thursday Book Review: The Creed
I’m singing in church this weekend, and I was also asked to lead the reading of The Apostles’ Creed for one of the services, and so you just know what my reaction was going to be, don’t you?
Okay, so my initial reaction was, “No, thanks.” Nervous as I can get about singing into a microphone, it’s ten times worse to speak into one. However, the service I’ll be speaking in is a small one, and the atmosphere is very family, so I’m going to stretch myself a bit.
My next reaction was, “I’ve got a book about that!” The Creed: What You Believe and Why, by Michael Bauman, is a concise 
treatment of The Apostles’ Creed, explaining each point and adding in testimonials from Christians about what the Creed means to them. I picked it up for a buck from CBD. Mmm…dollar books.
One would hope that most pew-dwellers would already know what each line means, rather than just reciting the Creed without understanding, but then a book such as this would be unnecessary.
Having grown up in a decidedly non-liturgical church (Assemblies of God), I didn’t grow up knowing any Creed other than Petra’s. (Which I still think is an awesome song.) But after taking a Church History course in college, and doing quite a bit of self-study on the topic, I’m now reasonably familiar with the various Creeds.
There are a couple of points I disagree with the author on, but that’s hardly surprising given my tendency to disagree with everyone on something. The first disagreement comes in the Introduction:
A well-written creed marks out the truths that the Bible reveals and requires for salvation.
I’m not one to put knowledge tests on salvation, given that the Disciples were apparently saved before knowing much more than “Jesus is Lord and Christ.” Yes, we have more knowledge today, and so we have more responsibility to shepherd that knowledge, but imperfect belief in Christ is still belief in Christ. Errors can be corrected after conversion.
The other issue is Bauman’s treatment of “He descended into hell,” in which he makes the common mistake of not recognizing that “hell” is a bad translation of “Hades,” which is better understood as The Grave, or the place of the dead, and not a place of punishment. The idea that Christ suffered the tortures of Hell is interesting, to say the least, but I’m not aware of any Biblical case that can be built for it.
One other minor thing was that Bauman recycles the very common idea that God the Father turned away from Christ when he was on the cross. I’ve written before that the idea makes sense but isn’t explicitly taught in Scripture and shouldn’t be taught so dogmatically.
Other than that, though, The Creed is a nice, short work of basic apologetics, and it would be very useful as a resource for new converts or those just wanting to brush up on the particulars of their Faith.
But, of course, I was looking for something I could use, man! And I found it. Actually, several things. First, Bauman mentions the legend of the origin of the Creed. The legend says that the Twelve all collaborated on it (after Pentecost, so including Matthias rather than Bad Judas), with each of them contributing one statement to it. A cool idea, to be sure, but not provable.
The next thing is the fact that The Creed is personal. Even though it’s often spoken communally, it’s phrased “I believe,” not “we believe.”
And finally, Bauman emphasizes that there are two sides to faith. The first is the mere intellectual assent, stating things like “I believe this.” The other side is the trust aspect of faith, where we say, “I believe in Jesus.”
It’s the difference between knowing facts about God and knowing God. It’s the difference between saying, “I know what I believe,” and saying with Paul, “I know whom I have believed.” It’s certainly useful to know what you believe about God, but it’s only a stepping stone on the way to knowing Him.
So now I guess I’m ready-ish for Sunday.
Theology Thursday Book Review: The Impossible Faith
I'm a fan of James Patrick Holding's apologetics ministry, Tektonics.org. It's a very useful website, frequently updated with book reviews and other essays and articles from several authors. He has a handy list for apologetics questions related to various Bible topics, as well as the book review list, organized by author or title.
I became aware some time ago that he was turning one of his theses into a book. Failing to secure it through the library, I turned to Amazon, seeing as how it's a short book, and I approve of short books. In fact, I determined to read the whole thing on our flight to Alaska. I gave myself a slight headstart by reading the preface and introduction before we left.
I failed to complete it on the flight, though I did finish it up the next day. It really was a short book (~120 pages). I suppose I should give you the full title now. It's called The Impossible Faith: Why Christianity SUCCEEDED When It Should Have FAILED.
Of course, this is an argument that basically goes, "Christianity had so many disadvantages and outright challenges that its survival into the 21st century proves it must be true." It's a tough sell for moderns, who look to Mormonism and Islam and say, "Well, THEY survived, too...so does that make THEM true?"
Mr. Holding does a nice job dealing with that angle by first setting up all the challenges to early Christianity. He points out the fact of Christianity arising from Judaism, already making it part of a minority movement. Then there was the fact that Christianity was seen as a production of the very backward Galilee (Hicksville for the time). Also at issue was Jesus' association with the town of Nazareth ("Can anything good come from Nazareth?"). And let us not forget that Crucifixion was a humiliating and dishonorable way to die.
Holding then goes on to point out all the scandalous aspects of Jesus' teachings, including the apparent call to forsake family, the reversing of social roles (the Good Samaritan), the forsaking of symbols (predicting the Temple's destruction), and teaching subversion (of the ingrained Jewish understandings of things). He's building a case for the idea that Jesus' own teachings were one of the prime disadvantages of Christianity.
Of course we have to go back to the Islam and Mormonism questions, and Holding does. He takes an entire chapter to hold Mithraism (always a pet of lazy liberal theologians), Mormonism, and Islam up to his Impossible Faith test, which comprises three questions:
- Did the leading personage or figure in this faith do or say anything that would have been considered dishonorable or disreputable, and if so, would that have affected the movement as a whole, as the Crucifixion affected Christianity?
- Were there any social prejudices that the movement would have had to deal with, as Christianity would have had to deal with Jesus being a Jew from Nazareth in Galilee?
- Did the movement offer any teachings that were contrary to deeply-held convictions within its social setting, such as Christianity's belief in resurrection and its radical restructuring of the social order?
This three-pronged approach is an excellent way to deal with a common objection to the Impossible Faith line of argumentation. Of course, we find in the book that none of the three alternatives stand up to Christianity by these tests.
Holding then touches, lightly, on some skeptical alternatives to Jesus' death (the "swoon" theory) and resurrection (the "twin" theory, and the "the Disciples stole the body" idea), and demonstrates their ridiculousness.
In the end, it's a good thesis, although nothing exactly earth-shattering to me. I was glad to have some meat to put on the "but other faiths had challenges" answer. I did have to find it humorous though, that the back of the book said, "A Thesis So Explosive, An Atheist Paid $5,000 for An Answer." I'm just not sure I'd brag much about such a pedestrian sum. Not that I'd turn up my nose at five grand, but it's not like it was $100k or anything.
I'd recommend the book as a bit of light apologetics reading, but I'd more heartily commend Tektonics.org. I'll probably pick up the new book "Shattering the Christ-Myth" Holding's working on when he finishes it. That might be interesting, too.