As we saw last month, we state our belief in the Son after our belief in God, the Father and Creator and that the Nicene Creed explains at length the nature of God Incarnate.
The rest of the summary of Jesus’ life are not very different in the two Creeds. In the Apostles’ Creed we have
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
And the Nicene Creed from Common Worship (Church of England) says:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God... For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
There are minor differences in the description of the conception of Jesus. It is interesting to recall that the previous (Anglican) version was like the Roman Catholic version: By the power of the Holy Spirit He was born of the Virgin Mary. There were many hours of debate about the actual words approved for general use in Common Worship—does the ‘power of the Holy Spirit’ imply less choice by free will on the part of Mary, for example; and what is the best translation to use for the word ek linking the Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary in the original Greek.
In this, the core belief in Jesus, that unites Christendom, one thing is clear: he was made man, as explicitly stated in the Nicene Creed and implied in the Apostles’ Creed. We note again the economy of language about his life: what he did, what he said, why he was crucified and details of his life. There are just a few timelines for to believe in: birth, death, resurrection and ascension; then in the future, the second coming.
Both Muslims and Jews would profess faith in Jesus Christ, but what distinguishes Christian beliefs from that of the other Abrahamic faiths is precisely that: Jesus may have been a great prophet and hugely respected for that, but he was not divine, Son of God. Nor did he rise from the dead. But this is crucial for Christians: there would be no Christianity without the resurrection and ascension.
The Creeds later affirm our faith in the resurrection of the body, but at this point, we acknowledge it indirectly. We believe that Jesus will come again (in glory) to judge the living and the dead. So without explicitly saying it, we acknowledge Jesus to be God, sitting at the right hand of the Father.
It is difficult to say those words without recalling the parable of the sheep and the goats, and what judgement means, although once again the Creeds do not force us to profess faith in the nature of the judgement or the consequences of it.
It is probably worth recalling at this stage that Christianity is not unique in believing in incarnation, or God coming into the world in the flesh. The word avatar (defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘A manifestation of a deity ... in bodily form’) which is used commonly these days, originates in Hinduism. Hindus believe that there are ten avatars of God coming to earth in the form of living beings, in appropriate forms, to save the world from catastrophe. Nine already happened over many millennia in the past, and the tenth is awaited.
However, to the Christian, Incarnation is a unique event, faith in which, and the good works that should follow, has a redemptive value bringing the creature in union with the creator. The Nicene Creed makes this explicit in the statement, ‘for us and our salvation he came down from heaven’. This is the only reference we get in the creeds as to the purpose of the events (and persons) we believe in. That is, apart from the reference to the future, his second coming, when ‘he will come to judge the living and the dead’.
These two themes are linked, of course. He came down from heaven, was made man, for our salvation. But salvation is not something that is a one-off personal gift to us, but a dynamic, organic process. It should lead us to action that will ultimately result in our Lord saying to us at his Second Coming, ‘What you did for the least of these my brethren, you did for me’.
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