(I'd planned to complete this series in three parts, but it will take four. Part 4 will take a while.)
Quick review...
1. Part 1 > Jesus is a simple proposition and Christianity is not about knowing what you don't believe.
2. Part 2 > Christianity is about not only believing something, but doing something.
There are two aspects to finish out my thoughts on this, and both need a little time:
3. Part 3 (You here now.) What must a Christian believe?
4. Part 4 (still in my noodle) What must a Christian do?
A caveat: Entire libraries could be filled on this topic. I'm not summarizing or encapsulating or even providing anything new for most people, but the exercise was rewarding for me, and that's why I share it here. I was raised - and still am to some degree – an old-school Baptist, but developed a very un-Baptist fascination with resolving disagreements between Christian denominations. I think there is less that divides us than we think, if we think a little harder.
How do you summarize what Christians must believe to be "Christians"?
In linguistics (my area of study a long time ago), when describing a language for the first time, you develop a corpus of words and grammatical structures by eliciting natural speech from native speakers. Describing what you hear is called a descriptive grammar. It's an explanation how the language functions when speakers are speaking naturally (without regard to dictionaries or grammar teachers).
Something similar happens when a small group of people with a shared set of values becomes a large group of people with a shared set of values: They codify the values that first brought them together; unlike language, however, those values are carefully guarded and change little over time (except by consensus, and sometimes painful consensus, as, eg, with the American Civil War).
All human groups work this way, and early Christians are no different.
Among the set of beliefs Christians settled on ~1,400 years ago is the The Apostle's Creed. It's not a summary, but a compaction of essential teachings that can be easily memorized, prayed and shared.[1]
What I Believe
If you want to know what Christians believe, and what I believe, you need go no further than this Creed. The red parts, IMHO are non-negotiable; the others, though I believe them and they are central to Christian orthodoxy, wouldn't, shall we say, be on the entrance exam at the pearly gates.
| Creed | Comment |
| I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; | This is the God of the Old Testament |
| and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: | God visited us in the person of Jesus; the human language Jesus used to explain this mechanism was of a son to a father. |
| Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, | Jesus had no earthly father that donated DNA. |
| born of the Virgin Mary; | Jesus' mother was a virgin. |
| suffered under Pontius Pilate, | Roman procurator circa 36AD |
| was crucified, died and was buried | Jesus was executed, died, and was interred. |
| He descended into hell; | Hell in this case is not a place of eternal punishment, but rather Sheol or Hades, the afterlife of the ancients, both good and bad. This clause means "Jesus really died," because there's no other way to enter Sheol. |
| the third day He rose again from the dead; | Jesus wasn't resuscitated, he returned from the dead. |
| He ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; | Not literally on the right hand side of a man with a flowing white beard, but rather occupying a heavenly place of authority. |
| from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. | He's coming back to judge everyone. |
| I believe in the Holy Spirit, | Also God, but not Jesus and not the Father. The Holy Spirit appears a number of times in the New Testament and is the agent that descended at Pentecost. When I was a child, it was helpful to think of the Trinity as three personalities of the same person, distinct but coincident.[2] However we satisfy ourselves with analogies, the Godhead has unique personalities and ways of interacting with us that defy human explanation, just as light can be both wave and particle. |
| the Holy Catholic Church, | The universal body of Christ. I believe it does have one authorized representative on earth with unbroken successive leadership, but there's a larger conversation most fundamentalists would want to have. |
| the communion of Saints | All Christians, living and dead, have a relationship to each other and to Jesus. It means the body of Christ survives death and continues on both sides of heaven. Jesus speaks of the dead as living like angles in heaven (Mark 12:24-27), and he is seen in the Transfiguration talking with Moses and Elijah. |
| the forgiveness of sins, | This is the ultimate outcome of a relationship with Jesus. "Sin" is a shortfall, in Hebrew, literally "missing the target"; it need not be the sinister concept associated with fire and brimstone. It is instead anything that stands between you and Jesus. |
| the resurrection of the body | This is probably the most difficult for me. I remember vividly hearing sermons on how all the molecules of the deceased, even after thousands of years, will be collected together and restored into a new heavenly body. It's a very old doctrine. |
| and life everlasting. | We live forever with Jesus in heaven. |
| Amen.[3] | In Hebrew and Greek, "so be it." |
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A couple caveats:
• The red is a start, not the end. If belief is a staircase, they represent the landing (presuming you're going up :-)
• There are many more important things that Christians believe that aren't here. A distillation to essential ingredients is not meant to obviate the others. They are still very important, and though not peripheral, they are not necessary for one to call himself a Christian. (In my opinion. I am not ordained or a teacher or even as widely read as your friendly neighborhood parson. I am just a Christian.)
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What's not there?
Going to church on Sunday
A prayer of salvation
Baptism or communion or any other sacrament.
Mary remaining a virgin all her life
Praying to saints
Priests and pastors and pot lucks and many other integral, incidental, good or benign things associated with Christianity.
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IMHO if you sincerely believe the red words in the Apostle's Creed, you are a Christian.
But with that sincere belief comes a response the the person of Jesus.
That is Part 4, and that will be a while. Perhaps you will revisit the Gospels with me in the meantime.
Peace out.
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[1]
The Creed is based on the bible, but the form it took evolved over a few hundred years. Learn more here >
A very interesting experiment today would be to elicit beliefs from Christians across socio-economic and ethnic boundaries and see what they have in common. That's probably been done in a lot of comparative religion classrooms.
I remember reciting the Apostle's Creed at Bethel Baptist Church, only once, in the sanctuary during a Sunday morning service. (I think we had moved to the 38th Street location by then. Reciting The Apostle's Creed is a very un-Baptist thing to do, which is probably why I remember it). The Creed was printed in the back of some very old hymnals that Bethel has since discarded, but which I liked, for they contained the good old hymns no one sings much anymore.
As I recall, the clause "descended into hell" was omitted from the version in our hymnal; however, this was taught by Mrs Andrus in Bible class at Bethel Christian School, but she didn't call it "hell," she called it Abraham's Bosom. For a child of 12, it was all so confusing.
I could understand heaven and hell, but I wasn't ready for Sheol or Hades or, for heaven's sake, the chest of an ancient personality buried so deep in biblical antiquity I couldn't picture or understand why his life or actions were important to me. I'm still not sure I understand; it's an ancient concept we've discarded largely because New Testament theology doesn't benefit much by it (or so it seems to me, just as we discarded the Jewish origin of baptism, thinking that it sprung up automagically with John the Baptist - whom some today call John the Baptizer, lest, heaven forbid, we think he was Baptist).
[2]
This is actually a heresy and called "modalism," ie, that the Trinity is actually just three different ways we interact with the same deity; but I think God would forgive a child for finding some comfort in a simple analogy.
Mom and Dad introduced us to this concept with children's book that used an apple as a metaphor, identifying the skin, flesh, and seeds (IIRC) as the three parts of the Trinity.
[3]
I actually pray it this way:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth;
and 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, was buried,
and descended into hell;
on the third day He rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand of the Father,
from where He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the Holy Catholic Church,
the communion of the Saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen.
Not much different, but each difference is there because that's what comes out of my mouth. When I was a child at Bethel Baptist Church, we used the term "Holy Ghost," which I'm still partial to and use here in the second half of the Creed. It's just an old-fashioned name for the Holy Spirit. When you're raised with it, it doesn't sound spooky or ghostly.
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