CHRISTIANS sometimes speak as though the gospel could fit on a postcard. It can: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,” for instance; but compression can do us no favours. The gospel is more bountiful than any summary can express. The Creed — which takes more words — helps us to see why.
Working through the Creed, clause by clause, we find that every line of it turns out to be good news. Our sense of the gospel can be more expansive on account of the Creed, and our understanding of the Creed more alive on account of the gospel.
THE wellspring of Christian theology is an encounter with the gospel. Because of that, theology in all its parts should annunciate the good news. Ask any theologian producing lively work, and you will probably hear about a gospel encounter. It is equally true of the community that as a whole writes theology: the Church. Its theology began with the encounter with the risen Christ. Our doctrine ever since has been an attempt to say something in response to meeting Jesus risen from the dead.
That encounter provoked searching questions about who Jesus was and is and the meaning of his death. From that followed questions about the nature of God, giving us the doctrine of the Trinity, and, eventually, all the doctrines of the Creed. It is appropriate that this series on “The gospel in all of the Creed” should begin in Eastertide.
I hope that these columns will push in two directions: bringing the gospel into thinking about the Creed, and the Creed into thinking about the gospel. The former — approaching the Creed in terms of the gospel — might help us to throw some evangelical fire into our systematic theology. Conversely, considering the gospel in terms of the Creed should bolster and expand the theological resources that we have to hand for talking about the Christian message and living by it.
BY “CREED”, I mainly mean the Apostles’ Creed, with additions from the Nicene Creed, where that is helpful. The more interesting question is what we mean by “gospel”. The best place to look at that is the Acts of the Apostles, with its sequence of pithy sermons. At their heart lies something like this: “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree” (Acts 5.30).
There are a couple of lines of the Creed already; but notice that sermons in Acts also describe the gospel — the announcement, or kerygma — in various other ways: as the forgiveness of sins (e.g. 5.31); the arrival of the Kingdom of God and peace (8.12; 10.36; 28.31); the ministry of Christ (10.38); Christ receiving the Spirit from the Father and pouring him out (Acts 2.33); Jesus being “Lord and Messiah” (2.36) and “Son of God” (9.20; 13.33); repentance and baptism (2.38-39); the fulfilment of the scriptures (e.g. Acts 17.3); and the Second Coming, general resurrection, “universal restoration”, and judgement of all things by Christ (Acts 3.19-21; 17.30-31; 24.15).
There is the gospel in much of the rest of the Creed. There is the Creed already as gospel.
FROM an epistle, think about the hymn to Christ in Colossians. There, Christ is described as “the image of the invisible God” and “firstborn of all creation”; the creator of all things; “the head of the body, the Church”; “the firstborn from the dead”; and the one through whom “God was pleased to dwell” and “to reconcile to himself all things . . . making peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1.15-20). We might stand on a soapbox at Hyde Park Corner and speak about any part of that as the gospel.
Approaching the gospel through the Creed, and vice versa, should therefore help us to appreciate the breadth of the good news, and how broadly it speaks to the situations of human life. The Creed is like a prism that refracts the light of the gospel into many hues: the Church is part of the gospel; Christ’s burial attests to it; the creation of all things out of nothing is the most wonderful example of the undeserved bounty of God’s grace towards us.
Having that sense of the credal breadth of the gospel gives us resources for what would most speak to a person in any particular situation, or indeed what might speak most to us exactly where we find ourselves. The gospel we find in any clause can be the treasure in the field, the pearl of great price (Matthew 13.44-46): exactly what we need to hear, giving our whole selves in response.
I am not saying that the whole of the gospel is found in every clause — although, given the interrelation of doctrines, each part offers a vista on to the whole — but that certainly enough of the gospel is there in every part to draw us to Christ.
A USEFUL exercise might be to think of a definition of the gospel (for which we best turn to the words of scripture) and to trace that through all of the Creed. Consider Paul’s succinct phrase in 2 Corinthians 1.19: “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you . . . was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes’.” Our appreciation of every clause in the Creed can be enlivened if we approach it as saying something about God’s great “Yes” to us in Christ.
Conversely, our understanding of that “Yes”, and its repercussions, is expanded by thinking about it in terms of every line of the Creed. We see creation as God’s great affirmation, calling creatures into being: his “Yes” that overcomes the “No” of our non-existence.
Turning to the burial, we see God’s unquenchable “Yes” also at work, in the extent of his “Yes” to us, to solidarity with us in our humanity — even sharing mortality and the grave. Moreover, God’s “Yes” is all the more perfect and final for having passed through his “No”. In Christ’s burial, we see the force of God’s rejection of sin and death, the Father’s insistence that he must “condemn sin in the flesh”: even, and especially, in the sinless flesh of his incarnate Son. God’s “Yes” of forgiveness and life sounds all the louder from the silence of the grave.
ONCE you begin to trace the gospel through the Creed, you find that there is a lot to be said. This series will run to about a dozen columns, which won’t allow space to cover every clause. A book later on will enable that; so I would welcome comments and criticisms as these columns appear. The emphasis will be on doctrine, but that cannot, of course, be cut off from reflection on the Bible; so each column will include at least a little reflection on biblical passages.
The good news is wider than we often allow, and the Creed maps the breadth of its territory. There is gospel in all of it.
The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford and a Canon Residentiary of Christ Church. He can be contacted at: andrew.davison@theology.ox.ac.uk