It may come as a surprise to some people that it is not only in Jesus Christ that we claim to believe. And even more of a surprise that that we don’t stop with our declaration of our belief in God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Creeds go on to say: ‘I believe in the holy catholic Church’ (Apostles’ Creed) and ‘... in one holy catholic and apostolic Church’ (Nicene Creed).
One of my friends once asked, ‘Why do we as Anglicans say we believe in the catholic church?’ Of course we learn that it is the universal church, and not any denomination, that the Creeds are talking about here, although even in the early Third Century, when the Nicene Creed was formulated, there was more than one denomination of Christians (e.g. Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches), with their own spiritual leaders. Nevertheless, it is quite legitimate to ask, ‘why do we believe in the Church?’; do we not know how awfully people in the church, including leaders in the highest position in the church, have behaved throughout history, from the Inquisition to sexual and physical abuse?
For at least a partial answer to this question we need to go back to the early history of the church and the time of the formulation of the Creeds. As Christianity spread, local congregations and churches started up as also did many controversies about the nature of God and, in particular, that of the Son (see Creeds (3) and (4) in Around Langley, September and October 2021). Who decides what true faith is? After the Apostles died and were no longer available for consultation, in the second and early third Centuries, it became clear that a focus was needed to articulate, if not interpret, faith.
To deal with these controversies and heresies, Emperor Constantine called the first Ecumenical Council of Bishops in Nicea in present-day Turkey in AD 325 : it is recorded that it was attended by 318 Bishops, with participants not only from Rome and the Western churches, but also from Palestine, Persia, Arabia and so forth. Nicene Creed was born here and has remained more or less unchanged over the centuries.
That the church we believe in is ‘Holy’ can be easily understood in terms of the church being the body of Christ on earth, joined to himself by Christ. So the Church is ‘the Holy people of God’ and its members are called to be Saints. As Frances Young points out in her book, ‘The Making of the Creeds’, it is through the Church with all its failures that the Holy Spirit operates.
The Church is catholic in another sense also: she has been sent by Christ to the whole human race, to spread his Good News to the ends of the earth.
The Nicene Creed also specifies belief in the ‘apostolic’ church. The Roman Catholic church holds ‘apostolic succession’ as important, recognising the priesthood of only those who have been ‘lawfully’ ordained by those who ‘have an unbroken chain’ of laying on of hands going back to St Peter, the first Pope, followed by St Linus and then a continual succession of Popes. The Church of England also lays claims to this unbroken chain, as a reformed church. Interestingly, most Protestant churches also say the Nicene Creed, although their interpretation of ‘apostolic’ would not be the same as that of the Roman Catholics.
So do we as Christians need to believe in ‘the church’? Indeed, do we even need a church to be Christian? At the very least the church is a corrective to individualism. Tod Bolsinger’s book, ‘It takes a Church to Raise a Christian’ strongly defends Christianity as a corporate movement. Excessive individualism Bolsinger decries as “salad-bar” religion. For my part, I shudder inwardly when people use as touchstone the question, ‘What would Jesus do in this situation?’: I know that their answer is more likely to be based on their personal experience and probably prejudices.
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral speaks of Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience as the four sources for doctrinal development. When we say we believe in the holy catholic church, we are calling on ‘tradition’: the collected wisdom that we find in the practices and writings o Christians throughout history. However for Christians Reason is also important While we call upon the wisdom and authority of the Church, we as individual have the ultimate responsibility for our own actions.
Comments