The gospel in all the Creed

CHRISTIANS sometimes speak as if the gospel could fit on a postcard. It can: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,” for example; 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 discover that each line of it seems to be excellent news. Our sense of the gospel could 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 excellent news. Ask any theologian producing vigorous work, and you will likely hear a couple of gospel encounter. It is equally true of the community that as a complete writes theology: the Church. Its theology began with the encounter with the risen Christ. Our doctrine ever since has been an try to say something in response to meeting Jesus risen from the dead.

That encounter provoked searching questions on who Jesus was and is and the meaning of his death. From that followed questions on the character of God, giving us the doctrine of the Trinity, and, eventually, all of the doctrines of the Creed. It is acceptable that this series on “The gospel in all the Creed” should begin in Eastertide.

I hope that these columns will push in two directions: bringing the gospel into fascinated by the Creed, and the Creed into fascinated by the gospel. The former — approaching the Creed when it comes to the gospel — might help us to throw some evangelical fire into our systematic theology. Conversely, considering the gospel when it comes to the Creed should bolster and expand the theological resources that we now have handy for talking concerning the Christian message and living by it.

BY “CREED”, I mainly mean the Apostles’ Creed, with additions from the Nicene Creed, where that is useful. The more interesting query is what we mean by “gospel”. The best place to have a look at that’s 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 few lines of the Creed already; but notice that sermons in Acts also describe the gospel — the announcement, or kerygma — in various other ways: because 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 remaining of the Creed. There is the Creed already as gospel.

FROM an epistle, think concerning 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 pinnacle 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 discuss any a part of that because the gospel.

Approaching the gospel through the Creed, and vice versa, should due to this fact help us to understand the breadth of the excellent news, and the way broadly it speaks to the situations of human life. The Creed is sort of a prism that refracts the sunshine of the gospel into many hues: the Church is a component of the gospel; Christ’s burial attests to it; the creation of all things out of nothing is probably 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 an individual in any particular situation, or indeed what might speak most to us exactly where we discover ourselves. The gospel we discover in any clause could be the treasure in the sector, the pearl of great price (Matthew 13.44-46): exactly what we want to listen to, giving our whole selves in response.

I’m not saying that the entire of the gospel is present in every clause — although, given the interrelation of doctrines, each part offers a vista on to the entire — but that actually enough of the gospel is there in every part to attract us to Christ.

A USEFUL exercise is perhaps to think about a definition of the gospel (for which we best turn to the words of scripture) and to trace that through all the Creed. Consider Paul’s succinct phrase in 2 Corinthians 1.19: “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed amongst you . . . was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it’s all the time ‘Yes’.” Our appreciation of each clause within the Creed could 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 fascinated by it when it comes to 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, within 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 of 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 within the flesh”: even, and particularly, within the sinless flesh of his incarnate Son. God’s “Yes” of forgiveness and life sounds all of the louder from the silence of the grave.

ONCE you start to trace the gospel through the Creed, you discover that there may be rather a lot to be said. This series will run to a couple of dozen columns, which won’t allow space to cover every clause. A book afterward will enable that; so I might welcome comments and criticisms as these columns appear. The emphasis will likely be on doctrine, but that can’t, in fact, be cut off from reflection on the Bible; so each column will include at the least slightly reflection on biblical passages.

The excellent news is wider than we regularly 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 within the University of Oxford and a Canon Residentiary of Christ Church. He could be contacted at: andrew.davison@theology.ox.ac.uk