Full Contact Christianity

As we saw in a preceding post, when the language of the Creed is biblical, we are not free to abandon it, even if the framers of the creed — or later users of it — would not understand that language in the same way we do.  We are not free to shy away from the way the Bible talks about things.

So what do we do?  Isn’t it dishonest to recite the Creed knowing that we don’t mean the same thing as some others do when they say the same words?

Two issues here: First of all, how come this kind of thing always seems to only work one way?  How come it’s me being dishonest, and not them?  Especially since — from where I’m standing, at least — I mean what Scripture means by it, and they don’t.  Hardly seems right.  How about this: I am honestly employing the language of Scripture, and they are betraying their principles by unlawfully importing to the biblical expressions meanings that God did not intend?

Second, and more important, we can disagree and still be one.  Christ only has one Body.  What actually unifies us is not our doctrinal statements, nor our creeds, but our common participation in Christ.  A difference on whether Christ descended into hellfire after His death simply isn’t enough to trump our common participation in Christ.  You can’t undo the cross with a pen and a sheet of paper.

Or to say it in the old way: We believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church.  We believe in the communion of saints.  Or in the even older way: “There is one Body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling: one Lord, one faith, one baptism; One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”

When I go to, say, a GES conference, I find myself sharing an auditorium with many people with whom I disagree quite seriously, some of whom I would never allow to speak to a flock for which I am responsible.  In other circumstances, I find myself sharing a classroom or even a pulpit with someone I seriously disagree with.  And yet, we fellowship and worship together.  I recently became involved with a prayer effort in my community that puts me on the same team with a very broad range of folks.  And yet, we will continue to pray together.  Why?  Because Christ has united us.  They are my people, even if I don’t like it (I do, actually, but my likes and dislikes are irrelevant).

If a pen and paper can’t undo the work of the cross, neither can a clock or a calendar.

Back in 650 or 700, there were Christians.  Christ was building His church.  The gates of Hades were not prevailing against it.  These people said the Creed, and by those words they were expressing their belief in Jesus, the same Jesus I believe in.  They were joined to Him who is my Head; they were members of the Body in which I am also a member.  They still are; when I ascend the heavenly Zion on Sunday morning to worship before the mercy seat of the heavenly tabernacle, they are the “spirits of just men made perfect” about whom the author of Hebrews writes. I was baptized into the same Christ as they; I eat of the same bread, drink of the same wine, worship on the same holy mountain.  They were, and they are, my people, and if I cannot speak in unison with them on everything, I can still speak in harmony.

When I say the Creed, I am not trying to paper over the differences between us.  But I am claiming continuity with them.  I am in their debt, and I am grateful.  The Creed is their gift to me; they formulated it, spoke it, preserved it for me, and here it is: an adept summary of the Faith once delivered to all the saints, articulated as best they understood it, given to me, although I have done nothing to deserve or earn it.

They are my people.  When I say their creed, I am saying that I am in harmony with them, and because of that harmony, it is my creed too.

It’s important, when reading a historical document, to understand what the authors mean by what they say.  Corollary to this, it’s dishonest to pretend that their words mean something they did not intend.

For example, Lewis Sperry Chafer always maintained that he believed in the perseverance of the saints.  But what he meant by “perseverance of the saints” was that the saints would persevere in being saints, which is to say, eternal security.  This is mildly dishonest, because the terminology “perseverance of the saints” goes back to the Canons of Dordt, which definitely did not mean only eternal security; they meant that the saints will persevere in acting like saints.

It would have been more honest for Dr. Chafer to simply say that he didn’t believe in the perseverance of the saints, but he did believe in eternal security.

When the wording in question is biblical, however, we do not have the option of simply abandoning it.

For example, take “He descended into hell” in the Apostles’ Creed.  Arguably, that wording, when first introduced in the Latin version of the Creed, meant no more than that Jesus went where dead people go.  They used the word “Infernus,” which repeatedly appears in the Vulgate as a translation of “Sheol,” the Hebrew term.  In the Hebrew cosmology,  all the dead go to Sheol — some to Abraham’s bosom, and some to torment, to be sure.  But Sheol was all of it.  That is, apparently, within the semantic range of “Infernus.”  (The Greek OT translated “Sheol” as “Hades” with similar connotations.)

Note that I said “arguably” above.  Later, in the middle ages, many Christians taught that after dying on the cross, Jesus spent three days in hellfire suffering for the sins of the world before He was raised from the dead.  There is some argument as to what the original framers of the phrase in the creed actually meant by it — just that Jesus really died, and really went where dead people go, or that Jesus suffered the flames of hell to really pay for our sin after He said “It is finished.”  Turns out, “Infernus” can mean either the place of the dead generally, or the place where bad people go to suffer for their sins.

So what does one do with the creed?  When I say it, I say “He descended into Hades” rather than “He descended into hell” because the English word “hell” has connotations of suffering for sin, which is the meaning I don’t endorse.  But many of my conservative brethren would ask: With that ambiguity in play, why would I be willing to say that phrase at all?

We cannot simply abandon “He descended into Hades” for the very good reason that it’s true.  Scripture speaks of the death of Jesus in just that way, albeit obliquely (Acts 2:31).  To say “He did not descend into Hades” is to say that He did not go where dead people go — which is to depart from Scripture, and the Christian faith.  We just can’t say that.

So we say the creed, and when we say the words “He descended into Hades” we know that some of the people who have said those words do not mean what we mean by them.  In fact, the people involved in framing that part of the creed may not have meant what we mean by it.  However, they would have justified the language by appeal to Acts 2:31, just like I would, and Acts 2:31 ultimately does not mean what they mean by it; it means what God means by it.  I affirm the biblical language wholeheartedly, and to the best of my understanding, I mean what God meant by it.