Edward Rhodes, my friend and teaching colleague on The Internship, has kindly provided a series of guest posts reflecting on the Apostle’s Creed. This coincides with our current series at Emmanuel entitled Creed: Why I Believe. Edward is the author of Rooted: Reconnecting with the History of the Church.
I BELIEVE
Having looked briefly at what the creed is, and where it comes from, let us turn to what it is that I actually believe, and why. My “inner Anglican” (as I call him) points me towards three sources of authority for my faith, namely –
(a) Scripture.
By this I mean the books of the Old and New Testaments, properly understood in their historic and literary contexts, as the primary source of religious truth, regarding the 39 books of the Hebrew Bible and the 27 books of the “Athanasian” canon of the New Testament as being canonical, with the deuterocanonical books (the “Apocrypha”) as possessing a real, but secondary authority.
(b) Tradition
Tradition is a difficult word. Scripture sometimes speaks negatively of human traditions (e.g. Matthew 15.1-9). However, as we have seen in the Introduction, there is a tradition of Christianity which comprises the core teachings of the faith, enshrined in the creeds and doctrinal decrees of the undivided Church. Of course, creeds and councils can err, as the Westminster divines noted (somewhat ironically, in a creed drawn up by a council), however, I would argue that, at very least, the burden of proof when interpreting Scripture should lie with the consensus of the early Church rather than our own private interpretations.
(c) Reason
My belief in reason supports, rather than undermines, my faith. After all, if everything (including human thought) is the by-product of random accident, then on what basis can I believe that anyone’s thoughts or observations necessarily correspond to objective reality. Rather, in human reason, I see a reflection (however dim) of the perfect mind of God.