THE Christian world of to-day presents us with four main attitudes towards creed. These attitudes in the main correspond to definite divisions within the Church, though in the case of the first it is perhaps more true to say that it cuts across existing divisions rather than stands as a mark of division itself. (1) There are those who decry any intellectual tests or creeds. This group generally stresses the life as opposed to belief, and many within it are in favour of an ethical creed of some sort. (2) There is a group represented by several Protestant bodies who cry, "No creed but the Bible." This group generally speaks of creeds as "Man-made" in opposition to the Scriptures which they regard as "God-made." (3) A number of Churches, including all so-called Catholic Churches, and some Protestant, which accept either the Apostles' or Nicene Creed as a full statement of faith. (4) A group which regards the simple confession "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God" as a sufficient ground for union. All these groups were represented at the Geneva Conference in 1920, when the matter of creed was discussed; and during the recent [63] discussion in the press they have again emerged. Another shade of opinion was also expressed at Geneva by some who recognise that a creed or statement of faith is necessary, but that it cannot be one of a past age, but must be produced by the Church of to-day--neither when produced can it be considered as binding on a future age. The Church they claim must be trusted to formulate its own creed, or at least to adjust its creeds to the requirements of each new age. This is not an opinion confined to Protestants, but there are some liberal Catholics who would go so far. We need not assign a separate class to this body of opinion, for we shall discuss it in connection with the Nicene Creed.

      First we turn to the claim that the Church should be creedless. There can be little doubt that this claim is due to the reaction from stringent intellectual tests made by the multitudinous creeds, confessions and formularies produced by the Reformation age, both within the Roman Church and the separated bodies. Such formularies as the Tridentine Decrees, the Augsburg and Westminster Confessions, the Thirty-nine Articles, to say nothing of the numerous Catechisms, some of which arose later, form a barrier of tremendous proportion to intellectual progress. With this class of creeds and confessions must be placed all documents connected with trust deeds and the holding of property, and all "unwritten" creeds--sometimes more stringent in their outworking than written ones--possessed by bodies which [64] claim to have no creed but the Bible. Creeds of this description are an intolerable burden, too heavy for the growing mind of man. With all our veneration for the past, with the most exaggerated sense of the worth of historic continuity, we cannot consent to be bound and limited by even the best thought of our forefathers in the way that these creeds have sought to limit us.

      And so the pendulum has swung the other way, and men are crying out for the removal of all intellectual tests. This cry is often found associated with the critical views of the Liberal Protestant School. Salvation is only to be found in Christ--the Apostles and Apostolic Church blundered--and Christ was a teacher of ethics, not of theology. No man will be condemned for his beliefs, they say, but only for his conduct. The only real test is the Sermon on the Mount: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me."² Apart from the soundness or unsoundness of this critical position--and this has been discussed elsewhere³--we may ask is it possible to draw such a fine distinction between belief and conduct? Can we divorce them in this way? And again, while recognising to the full the value of this stressing of conduct and the reality arrived at by insisting on this side of Christ's teaching--a side, however, which is not neglected in Apostolic Christianity, but which later, unfortunately, was overshadowed and almost lost sight of--we may remind ourselves that we are not solely concerned [65] with the question of the relative values of creed and practice, but the question of what is essential as a foundation for the re-united Church. Shall we ever get a united Church without a united belief and some basis of dogma however small it may be? And if we had such a Church, would it in any sense be Christian? These are questions which we must keep before us.

      Professor Bacon has dealt most trenchantly with this attitude towards creed. In his Jesus and Paul⁴ he speaks of the rejection, by Liberal Protestants, of St. Paul with his doctrine of individual salvation, and of their desire for a simple humanitarian Gospel devoid of all dogma, and claims that Christianity is more than a system of ethics: that it contains mystical as well as moral elements. "We have many brilliant scholars (I have already mentioned Arnold Meyer of Zurich, and might now add the lamented William Wrede) in whose view the new faith incurred a loss that quite outweighed the gain when it secured as its chief interpreter to the Greek speaking world Saul of Tarsus, the converted scribe and sanhedrist. Back to Jesus is the cry. Back to the simple doctrine of the Prophet of Nazareth. Genuine Christianity is the monotheistic humanitarianism of the prophets stripped of its temporal and racial limitations."⁵ After summing up the position thus, Professor Bacon goes on to criticise it. "But if our teacher is to be the eternal Logos of God who leads into all truth--if it is the Creator Spiritus of the cosmos of soul-life who is to take [66] of the things of Christ and interpret them to us; then we shall need to take a leaf from the book of Paul and of the great Ephesian evangelist, learning to look at things from the point of view of the Eternal."⁶ There is, no doubt, something refreshing in all this stressing of the ethical as opposed to the old evangelical cry--too often still heard--"only believe" in the sense of "give an intellectual assent." Often we have felt stirred to make the reply of James. "The devils believe, but it only causes them to tremble." Yet, granting this, and recognising to the full that the position has come about through an overstressing of intellectual assent to such an extent that it was divorced from conduct, is it true to say that this ethical position does away with intellectual assent? Professor Bacon has shown that it does not. The assent it demands may be negative, but it is none the less intellectual. It is really a denial that the intellect can under any guidance formulate even relative truth on the subject of God, and His relation to the universe.

      Can we divorce creed and conduct in this way? And if we can, would it be possible to hold together in any corporate body which might be called a Church, men of no creed at all and men of any creed? Is there any guarantee of conduct apart from belief? Allegiance to the ethical standards of Jesus is not possible apart from some kind of belief about His Person. Why not the ethical standards of Plato, or Aristotle, or Mahomed? Why Christ? There must be some authority in His Person--some objective authority--to compel obedience to His [67] ethical code. If there is not, and obedience is only due because of the appeal the code makes to our inner self, then there is no guarantee that it will make this appeal to any but a limited number, and the vision of a united Church is hopeless. What man, poor or rich, living the life of extreme self-seeking, steeped in the worst vice, has ever been won to a redemption life by the preaching of an ethical code appealing to an inner self? For men living a life of seclusion the appeal may come with some force, but such men are only a minority, and even then the ethical way apart from mystical union with Christ, can only in the ultimate lead to Pharisaism. It does seem that this attempt to divorce conduct from belief is something of a "text-book" exercise and has no reality in actual life. Balfour emphasises this union of belief and conduct when he says, "No unification of belief can be practically adequate which does not include ethical beliefs as well as scientific ones; nor which refuses to count among its ethical beliefs, not merely those which have immediate reference to moral commands, but those also which make possible moral sentiments, ideals, and aspirations, and which satisfy our ethical needs. Any system which when worked out to its legitimate issues, fails to effect this object, can afford no permanent habitation for the spirit of man."⁷ He is here speaking of the opposite tendency to that with which we are dealing, but his words serve to show how belief and conduct are inseparable in any system--religious or otherwise.

      It is not fair to overstress statistics, yet we [68] cannot close our eyes to the fact that in Roman Catholic Ireland, where a certain religious dogma about birth is stressed, the number of illegitimate births is 2.5 per cent., whilst in Protestant Ireland, where such a belief is not so definitely a matter of creed, the number is 3.7 per cent.; in England 4.3; Wales, 5.4; and Scotland 7.29 per cent.!⁸

      Pre-war figures are also available for Germany and Mr. L. Pullan summed the matter up thus in 1907: "As for Germany, one of the first things likely to arrest the thoughts of an inquirer into the state of German religion is that throughout Germany the proportion both of illegitimate births and of suicides is higher in Protestant districts than in Roman Catholic districts. Protestantism is honeycombed with Rationalism, and the sense of moral obligation is weaker. . . . The fact that in Germany Protestantism is not the religion of the best moral character, in spite of all its advantages, does surely suggest a very real connection between a definite creed and a good character."⁹ We are not here wishing to stress the merits of Catholicism as opposed to Protestantism, or to suggest that the former necessarily results in a higher moral life; such a contention would be absurd. Protestantism has been as dogmatic as Catholicism in the past, but the last fifty years have seen a loosening of the hold on dogma in Protestant circles, and that loosening has to some extent affected the conduct of its adherents. It will be argued that the Society of Friends has never stressed dogma, and yet its ethical standards [69] have been high, and this we shall readily admit; but Quakerism has always been somewhat esoteric. It has never been the religion of the masses. Now Christianity was never esoteric, and to-day we have to deal not with special people, but with ordinary men and women, and to ask, "What will happen in the realm of morals if we deny to dogma any place at all?"

      Some in this school are not so definite in their agitation against creed as the Liberal Protestant wing. They vaguely stress morals even to the extent of formulating an ethical creed, but they are not quite definite on the relationship between belief and conduct. A representative of this school, writing in the Modern Churchman for November, 1921, says, "Nowadays it is recognised as a matter of actual experience that it is quite possible for a person to be extremely orthodox, and yet to lack that love which is the only true indication of effective Christian belief."¹⁰ Exactly! but this is no argument against belief in certain dogmas being necessary. On the other hand, it shows the result of any divorcing of belief from conduct, and our argument is that belief is necessary as a basis of conduct not that conduct necessarily follows intellectual assent. No one wishes to make creed the test of a man's life; but is the life possible unless impelled by belief? The question is, do we get action--moral action--without belief of some sort? The libertinism of a certain class of gnostics and the asceticism of another class, were both founded upon a dualistic conception of the universe, [70] and there is no document like the one written to counteract this, which so stresses the relationship between belief and conduct.¹¹ The article in the Modern Churchman concludes: "It is obvious that there will have to be some agreement as to what we do believe, and some statement of that belief, and there seems no very good reason why it should not include belief in God's purpose for us and our work,"¹² and then goes on to suggest a creed which implies but does not affirm the Lordship of Jesus and consists mainly of ethical generalisations. But what good are ethical generalisations? They are capable of interpretation in a dozen ways and can never have any cementing value. As to the creed being an ethical code, we have only to exercise a little imagination to realise how divisive it would be. Theology is bad enough! A code of moral laws drawn up by an ecumenical council of the Christian Church would be little less than explosive in its effects. Surely if we want an ethical creed we could not do better than take the Sermon on the Mount, although this would involve a series of critical considerations; and beyond this the Sermon on the Mount has really a theological basis, for it is bound up with a new conception of God, and depends for its validity upon some belief about the Person of Jesus. And would a definite ethical creed lead to anything but legalism? Do we wish to retrace our steps to Judaism? The Christian had something higher than a moral code--or ethical creed--he had [71] sworn allegiance to a Person, and he had an unconquerable hope, and as St. John said: "Everyone that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as He is pure."¹³ Our refuge is not even in the ethical code Jesus gave. There is something higher than the Sermon on the Mount--something which defies reduction to formula or creed--the sinless life of Jesus. We can never transcend it and our ethics will never outgrow it.

      But some of this objection to creed is divorced from all consideration of ethics. "Dogma" is the magic word. "We must not be bound by dogmas." Mr. Bevan has ably summed this up. "There is nothing commoner than to hear people denounce 'dogma.' What they mean by 'dogma' is any belief which they themselves may happen to have discarded. There is a type of Christian who cries aloud that we need to turn from the 'dogma of the Churches' to the Living Christ. But belief in the Living Christ appears a dogma to the Unitarian, who feels he has got to something real in the Fatherhood of a personal God. Again, the conception of God as a Person is dogma from the standpoint represented by an eminent French Protestant, the late A. Sabatier. Yet to the Danish philosopher Höffding, who wrote a well-known book on the Philosophy of Religion, Sabatier does not seem radical enough. Sabatier still habitually uses phrases of God as if He were personal. We must give that up, Höffding says, and we shall touch ground at last in the bare belief that the Universe is somehow of such a nature that 'values are [72] conserved.' But shall we? Höffding's optimistic supposition may seem a dogma to the man who holds that we know absolutely nothing about the Reality behind phenomena. Even here there is a possibility of dogma creeping in if we are not careful. If we assert definitely that the ground of the Universe is unknowable, we still may be taxed with dogma by the man who does not know enough about it even to say whether in its essence it is unknowable or not, who will go no further than to say that he personally does not know. One sees that it is no simple matter to get rid of Christian belief."¹⁴ After all is not this true? The intellect will demand satisfaction, and moreover we have to remember it is unity we are seeking, and unity demands a principle. And above all, it is unity not of some modern society, but unity of the Christian Church. We cannot neglect history and form our own creed with utter disregard to the past.

      But it is objected, "Dogma means authority and we must be entirely free." Free we may be so far as absolute freedom is possible in this universe, but intellectual freedom of an absolute kind can never produce unity. Without authority man is bound to wander in lonely paths. As Mr. Bevan has said: "It is reasonable in certain cases for a man to subordinate his own judgment to authority."¹⁵ After all it is the good of the corporate society we are after, not our own individual good, and this necessitates that at times we shall have to defer our judgment to that of the corporate society. The problem is to limit the field of this authority. But [73] beyond this there is--at least for those who seek Christian unity--the authority of Him who said: "He that rejecteth Me rejecteth Him that sent Me."¹⁶ It is true that He did not teach dogmatically; that He sought to make men think; but His authority stands attested by the experience of the Christian Church throughout all the centuries, and there can be no basis of Christian unity which neglects to recognise this supreme authority. It is idle, therefore, to seek to be entirely free from authority, and the objection to definite belief on this ground falls out in all consideration of Christian unity.

      We come now to those who repudiate all creeds except the Bible. This position arises naturally out of the infallible Bible of the Reformers, though it cannot be claimed that the Reformers themselves ever adopted it. Each reformed Church had its definite creed, one article of which affirmed that the Bible was the supreme test in matters of faith and doctrine. The cry, however, is still the chief weapon of attack against creeds by a number of smaller Protestant bodies, such as the "Brethren," and has recently been given fresh emphasis in the union discussion by Principals Townsend and Blomfield, of the Baptist Church.¹⁷ On behalf of the Baptists, Dr. Roberts, of Manchester, replied in an able letter to the Baptist Times, showing that Baptists really have a creed and a very definite one.¹⁸ [74] A common argument of those who put forward this plea is that if a creed contains more than is in the Bible it is unauthoritative, and if it contains less, then it is defective. If it contains neither more nor less, then it is useless. The argument still seems to satisfy a number of people, who when they have used it feel that the last word on the subject has been said. They do not seem to realise how shallow the argument really is. It is amazing that the argument is still used by those who have any conception of how the Bible came to be--who have studied it critically and who have seen the falsity of the dogma of verbal inspiration.

      In the first place the argument is founded on a view of the Bible which is no longer tenable. It presupposes that the Bible is verbally inspired--that the canon has been definitely fixed in a miraculous manner--and that the Bible is a text-book of theology, Church organisation, and discipline. The argument fails to recognise that the canon was given us by a Church, which already had a definite creed, and that if this Church was miraculously controlled in giving us the canon there is every reason to believe that it was miraculously controlled in other things, such as formulating its creed. In fact history is not a strong point with those who use this argument. The Bible is a text book or book of texts specially written to give us every detail. It is true there are two ways of interpreting it textually--one is to quote isolated texts in support of any dogma desired, and the other is to gather all the texts on any given subject indiscriminately from any book, and then sum up the evidence. The latter is preferable, but [75] it is still unsound; for it neglects to take into account the circumstances which lie behind each single writing. There is only one method of interpretation, and that is the historical method.

      Again, those who believe in no creed but the Bible will not allow that there are any ambiguities which can only be explained by the aid of history, and some which are still baffling and seem likely to remain so. The Acts of the Apostles is only the acts of two or three of them, and covers but thirty years of the Church's history. What of the next thirty years? There are certainly developments during the first thirty. What were the developments of the next thirty It is quite probable that the Pauline canon as we have it does not represent the whole Pauline literature, and even what we have consists of letters called forth by the circumstances of the time and written to deal with these circumstances as they arose. Professor Peake has put this matter very clearly: "The answer to many objections which have been supposed to discredit the Bible is to be found in a true understanding of what the Bible is. It is not primarily a manual either of theology or of ethics, but it is the record of God's gradual self-disclosure, of the Spirit's leavening of a material often too uncongenial."¹⁹ And again, "We can frame no satisfactory theology by an indiscriminate collection and arrangement of all the Biblical statements on each subject. The whole movement of revelation as an historical process must first be studied . . . . We can hardly over-emphasise the importance of the fact that while the Bible [76] contains doctrines of the highest importance, it is primarily a book of experimental religion; and that the truths it enshrines did not come simply as direct communications of theological propositions, but were realised through doubts and misgivings, through wrestlings of the soul with God, through long and perplexed groping, or through some sudden and radiant flash of insight. And it is this human element which gives the Bible so much of its appeal to the human heart, and stamps it with such marks of authenticity. If we go expecting to find a body of doctrine formulated with scientific precision, or an accurate record of events such as a modern historian would give us, we may be disappointed."²⁰ The Bible contains sixty-six books--twenty-seven if we restrict it to the New Testament--of varying kinds. How can we take this as a creed, i.e., a necessary statement of belief on which we may build the unity of the Church? If the New Testament was intended to be any such thing, then we are bound to say that it has failed in its purpose, but never does it reveal in a single book that it was written with the intention of providing a creed for Christianity, nor was it ever so regarded before the Reformation. "When you expand your creed to the dimensions of the sixty-six books of our canonical Scriptures, you pass into a region where a more extended treatment becomes necessary, desirable and inevitable."²¹

      Historically the claim that the Bible (more often the New Testament) is the creed of the Christian Church is without foundation. During the New [77] Testament period it is evident the Church came to formulate its belief in some way or other. Writers could speak of "the faith once for all delivered unto the saints,"²² "the form of sound words, etc."²³ Many quote these as if they had reference to the New Testament itself. This is obviously absurd. There was no New Testament--it was in the process of production. What kind of a New Testament had the Church at Antioch, to which not a single one of our canonical books is addressed? Yet there was some body of belief which could be called "the deposit" or "the faith." The question is what was it? How many affirmations did it contain? These questions we may not be able to answer, but we can definitely say it was not the twenty-seven canonical books of the New Testament, nor was it the thirty-nine of our Old Testament.

      But apart from this, if the whole of the New Testament is the creed, then we shall need an authoritative interpretation of it. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the claim made for the New Testament as the only creed has led to the formation of several bodies of Christians. They are all equally emphatic that theirs is the New Testament position. It has been customary in the past for one body to claim that all the others were insincere, and that if they were sincere they would come to see the error of their own interpretation and the truth of the other body. How can one set of Christians have a monopoly of sincerity? The situation created by such a claim is ridiculous. Different sections equally sincere claiming the New Testament as the [78] sole creed, have adopted systems of Church government and views of sacraments--to say nothing of views of our Lord's Person and work--which are diametrically opposed. The cry for the New Testament as the sole creed has not resulted in unity, but in disunity. We must face the reality of the situation. What those usually mean who say that the New Testament is the only creed, is not the New Testament, but their interpretation of the New Testament. Moreover, is it not true that they have a creed--though unwritten--which is ten times more stringent than any written creed? With some this creed includes belief in a pre-millennial reign of Christ; with others a denial of the doctrine of immortality; and again with others a very definite system of Church organisation. There are some who go so far as to include in their unwritten creed the belief that all who do not believe as they do are eternally damned, and yet these very people if questioned, would loudly proclaim that they had no creed except the Bible.

      But beyond all this these bodies which claim to have no creed have very definite statements of their beliefs and practices, which are placed on trust deeds for the holding of property, and these statements are also put forward by authority when an enquiry is made as to the beliefs of the body. They are also placed on tracts. Are not these creeds? What else are they? They are described as "Things most surely believed among us." Well, what else is a creed? Creeds arose in this way. They were statements of things most surely believed, put forward at a time when these beliefs were being [79] called in question. Every corporate body must have such a statement. To deny that it is a creed is merely a piece of sentiment.

      The commonest argument used against creeds is that they are divisive. Well! so have Baptism and the Lord's Supper been divisive. But this is no argument against them. It is just because such things are unifying principles that they can so easily become divisive. There is too, sometimes, such an ignorance as to how creeds came to be made that it is often stated that they were made out of sheer perversity and definitely designed to split the Body. But creeds arose in no such way. The earliest creed in the New Testament: "Thou art the Christ the Son of the Living God," had a very different origin; and as far as we can gather the Apostles' Creed was a natural outgrowth from this simple Baptismal Creed. We have no evidence of controversy in connection with the rise of the Apostles' Creed in the West.²⁴ The Nicene Creed was the necessary outcome of a long series of divisions which had existed long before the creed was formulated and which after its formulation seem to have quickly disappeared. Far from its being a cause of division it seems to have been the means of healing the wounds which the Body had suffered.

      The creeds or formularies of the sixteenth century, including those of the Roman Church, are of a very different kind, being much fuller and leaving far less play for the exercise of the intellect. We can hardly wonder that they have served for [80] three centuries as a very efficient barrier to all efforts towards unity. We may be thankful that there is little attempt to-day to enforce such divisive statements upon a reunited Church. They form an intolerable burden from which the Church needs to be released. They have been divisive in their tendency, but not less so than the host of unwritten creeds which have been held by those who have loudly cried, "No creed but the Bible." Mr. J. Smith has summed the matter up thus: "If in the re-united Church there has to be a unity of Faith, and the degree of this unity has to be absolute, then it seems to me after considering many aspects of the case, that the statement of this Faith in an unwritten or written creed is both necessary and desirable. And as an unwritten creed is often more exclusive and more divisive in its tendency than a written one, the latter seems to be preferable. As to the tendency of a written creed to bring about division, may it not be that by its instrumentality divisions that already exist are made manifest?"²⁵

      There is more than one type of objection to the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. Some of these objections seem to have more validity than others.

      First there are those who object to them because they object to all intellectual tests. All creeds are anathema except ethical creeds. These objections have been dealt with in the first section of this chapter. Then there are those who object to them [81] because they are extra-Biblical. If they contain more than the Bible they are not to be received--if less, then they are faulty--if neither more nor less, then they are useless. The absurdity of this claim we have tried to show in the second section of this chapter. Thirdly, there are those who claim that all creeds are divisive, and it is thus absurd to imagine that either of these two creeds could serve to bind together the people of God. Those who stand in this class are in the main to be identified with those of the second class, who want only the Bible as the creed. But by no stretch of imagination can the Bible be looked upon as a creed. Not a single book in the New Testament was written to give us a creed or statement of belief, and the New Testament itself has been as divisive as any number of creeds. It is useless to adopt a prejudiced and sentimental attitude here. Since the Reformation there have arisen any number of bodies who have claimed "No creed but the Bible. Creeds are all divisive." No one of these can claim a monopoly of sincerity. We must regard them all as equally sincere--Friends, Plymouth Brethren (five different kinds), Seventh Day Adventists, several kinds of Baptists, Christadelphians, and a host of others. The result has been endless division. All claim that their systems are built on the Bible or the New Testament. Let it be plainly stated that the New Testament--textually interpreted--is ambiguous and obscure upon many matters concerning the very vital points about which Christians differ. It is for this reason there is difference--not because all other bodies are more perverse than the one claiming to be right. [82]

      Then Baptism and the Lord's Supper have been fruitful sources of division, and are still. Are they to be given up because they cause division? This is the logic of those who say "Creeds have ever been divisive; therefore creeds are bad." Many who use this argument against the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds often place them in the same category as the confessions and formularies of the sixteenth and later centuries. But there is really no comparison. The Western or Apostles' Creed contains not a single statement which is not found in the New Testament, and is merely an expansion of the Baptismal confession, including some truths which were in danger of being denied by many within the Church--truths which the Church considered vital to her existence. The very language is that of the New Testament with the exception of the phrase "resurrection of the Body," and this, if it be stripped of later additions to its content, can be justified from the New Testament. True the Nicene Creed is less Scriptural and more metaphysical than the older Western Creed, but apart from the phrases "God of God," "Very God of very God," and "Being of one substance with the Father," what is there in it which cannot be matched from the New Testament language. And these phrases must be understood in the light of the controversies which called them forth.

      Very different from all this are the formularies of the sixteenth century. Compare the thirty-nine articles of the Anglican Church with either of the two ancient creeds! Or again, take the Westminster or Augsburg Confessions, or the Tridentine Decrees. [83] Or, further, take some modern formularies such as are prepared as trust deeds or for presentation to conferences. All these latter include matters of Biblical interpretation which are not settled points, they bristle with opinions bound to be conditioned by the knowledge of the period of their formulation, they are replete with the prejudices of individuals or bodies, occasionally born of intense hatred and feelings far from Christian, they are long, and aim at being a complete statement of the faith including matters of Church organisation and interpretation of sacraments. They are purely denominational and are thoroughly divisive in their tendency. But these two ancient creeds content themselves with a statement of the great facts on which the Christian religion is built. They eschew opinions and interpretations and have no denominational flavour. They make no pronouncements on Church organisation, and on kindred subjects, but content themselves with the fundamentals on which the religion of Christ is built up. They merely assert in fuller form what is contained in the two earliest baptismal formularies: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God," and "Into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

      Beyond all this, historically it cannot be proved that these two creeds were ever divisive. The origin of the earlier one is somewhat obscure. We have no information as to controversy, though knowing what we do of certain forms of Gnosticism, and of the work of Marcion in Rome, we may well see in it an attempt--in days when the New Testament was not available except in fragments and that [84] only for the few--to provide the orthodox Christians with a statement of the Faith which would guard them against the wiles of the Marcionites. "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God" was not enough, for Marcion himself could cheerfully have said that.

      The later of these creeds was born of a long era of controversy. The division was in the Church long before the creed was composed, and from what we know it seems to have disappeared soon after. Whether this was for good or bad is another matter--we are not now concerned with it--but it is quite wrong to regard the Nicene Creed as being the cause of division. Do those in this class who speak against the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds know what they contain? Have they any acquaintance with them? Very often--it is to be feared--they have not. Where are the statements about original sin, free will, total depravity, substitutionary or subjective theories of the atonement, theories of Biblical inspiration, theories of creation or evolution, theories of apostolic succession and a hundred other matters which are to be found in many of the later articles and confessions? Only once do these two creeds transgress in imposing a theory upon us--it is the theory of Christology found in the Nicene Creed. At all other points they content themselves with facts, and these basic facts of our faith cannot change, however we may progress in the realm of knowledge. No! it is impossible to place these two ancient creeds in the same category as the numerous confessions, Roman and Protestant, produced during or subsequent to the Reformation age. [85]

      There is one other objection raised, more especially to the Nicene Creed. It is said that this creed is metaphysical and therefore is conditioned by the thought of its day. There is a good deal to be said for this objection, which is offered in all sincerity by large numbers of those who belong to Churches which use the creed liturgically. But it is necessary to examine the objection more closely. Let it be granted that metaphysical statements are dangerous--they may need adjusting to the knowledge of our day; and it is monstrous to claim that the Church of the fourth century had the prerogative to settle for all time certain metaphysical interpretations of the faith. It is more monstrous when we know the history of the Nicene Creed. We cannot allow that a fourth century synod was given the task of devising a formulary which could under no circumstances be changed in a single word by the Church of succeeding centuries. The claim is absurd. We must trust the Church and believe that under the guidance of the Spirit she will in the twentieth century be able to perform a like task to that of the fourth century, if the need should arise. But when re-union is still unaccomplished, it is futile to attempt any editing of the Nicene Creed. The Church must be united first; for only a United Church can hope to deal with matters of this kind. No doubt, for this reason the recent conference of Anglicans and Free Churchmen sitting at Lambeth, while accepting the Nicene Creed, said: "While we thus recognise the rightful place of the Creeds in the United Church, we also recognise most fully and thankfully the continued presence and teaching [86] of the living Spirit in His body, and emphasise the duty of the Church to keep its mind free and ready to receive from Him in each day and generation ever-renewed guidance in apprehension and expression of the truth."²⁶ This is a necessary safeguard. At Geneva I pleaded for this liberty of interpretation and expression in the re-united Church. "I do not think English Non-Conformists are at present neglecting the study of the Fathers. But I am sure they would say that our statement of belief could not be prepared for us to-day by Origen and those who lived centuries ago. It must be prepared for us by the whole sainthood and scholarship of the Church in the present day."²⁷

      It is argued against any right of the Church to change the form of its creed that such a symbol forms an historic link with the past, and in worship at least it has a distinct psychological value. This is perfectly true and certainly there could be no stability about a Church which was always seeking new definitions of faith. Also, we know what has happened in Rome through constant additions to the faith. We may say definitely that additions to the faith are unthinkable. But there were certain conditions in the fourth century which made it impossible to adequately guard the faith by means of the Western Creed. It was necessary to formulate what we call the Nicene Creed. May not like conditions arise again, and if they do may not the Church meet them in the same way? The Nicene [87] Creed, beyond stating what may be regarded as the unchangeable facts of our faith, at one point indulges in metaphysical speculation and gives us a theory of Christology. This theory may hold good for us to-day or it may be inadequate; we are not raising this question in the concrete. But think what would have happened if the Nicene Creed had ventured in a like way into the realm of soteriology. There was no real controversy on this question in the first four centuries, as there was on Christology, and so no theory is found in either creed. They content themselves with the plain fact that "Christ died for our sins," although it is not exactly stated in these words. But imagine what would have happened if Origen's theory of the Atonement had found its way into the Nicene Creed. Who to-day would be clamouring for the liberty to express the fact of the Atonement in modern terms? Who would have upheld it? None but the ultra-Evangelicals--and few of them. What does this teach us? Surely that a creed to stand the test of time must be as free from theories as possible, must eschew metaphysical explanations, must content itself with the plain statement of those facts which are fundamental to the Christian faith, and had best be content with the use of New Testament terms. Apart from the phrase "resurrection of the Body" the Apostles' Creed fulfils these conditions, and apart from the phrase "of one substance with the Father" so does the Nicene Creed. There need be no serious break with the past and therefore no loss of the psychological effect of continuity if these phrases are modified; but of course there is [88] another alternative--that of retaining them and allowing interpretation. The question of the Virgin Birth is assumed by some to require similar treatment. But as it appears in the Creeds it is not a metaphysical explanation of the Godhood of Jesus, but rather the statement of an historic fact accepted by the Church from the first century onwards. While conceding the right of the Church in every age to do what the Church of the Nicene age did--once she is united--we must remember that historic continuity has its value, and we must further remember that it is possible so to reduce the fundamental facts of our faith as to rob it of its quality of being Christian. To be Christian it must contain certain essential units. To rob it of one or more of these is to rob it of its Christian character and to lose all historical continuity. But we need have no fear about the loss of historical continuity, if in our search for a statement of faith which will serve as a uniting force, and which will be free from all metaphysical statements likely to become ambiguous, we go behind the Nicene age and actually penetrate into the Apostolic period itself. It is more than likely that full unity will only come in this way. What were the fundamental facts necessarily accepted by the Church at the close of the first century? If we discover them we are necessarily in historic continuity with the Nicene age as well as the Apostolic Age, at least with the Nicene age so far as it was in line with the Apostolic age. Obviously it is a minimum we are searching for. What essentially did the Church believe? What might it cease to believe and still be Christian? There [89] were certain things vital to Christian belief in the first century. There were: (1) The birth of Jesus; (2) His sinless life; (3) His death and burial; (4) His resurrection; (5) His ascension; (6) His session; His coming again; (8) His Deity; (9) the forgiveness of sins; (10) God the Father; (11) the reality of the Holy Spirit; (12) the hope of the resurrection; and there is very little else in either the Apostles' or the Nicene Creed. We shall never get beyond these facts. If His sinless life goes--so does, Christianity, and the same can be said of the other eleven. Metaphysical explanations of His Deity have been plentiful, and will still be needed; but the fact of His Deity is essential to Christianity itself.

      We need not deride metaphysics altogether, however, for in the end all religion is metaphysical. The statement "I believe in God," is a metaphysical statement of a kind. In this connection we may quote Dr. Lyttleton in the Challenge: "I notice a tendency to decry any tenet of the Faith which can be called 'Metaphysical.' But the doctrine that we are recipients of a higher life, if true, is metaphysical; if not, it should be denounced by a different title. The Apostolic teaching about Christ's Atonement is repudiated by many on the ground that it is either meaningless or metaphysical. So is the dogma that God exists, not as a projection of man's mind, but truly and objectively, and in and for Himself. But you will find that a professed Atheist takes his stand on the affirmation that to him Theism is unintelligible. That is the one thing about a doctrine he cannot brook. If his [90] intellect is unequal to it he will treat it as untrue."²⁸ We cannot escape metaphysics altogether, nor can we make the intellect infallible without denying God; but when metaphysics appears in the rôle of opinion, theory, or explanation of fact, it is out of place so far as a creed or statement of faith is concerned. The creed which is to bind the Church together and form a historic link with the past must contain no such opinions or theories.

      We come now to those who claim that the only creed is the simple affirmation "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God,"²⁹ or, in Dr. Denny's words, "I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour." There is much to be said in favour of this being the earliest Christian statement of the faith. It is the first great confession of a disciple of Jesus. It seems to have been made by candidates for Baptism at a very early date,³⁰ and at the close of the first century John's Gospel was written to prove its truth.³¹ There is no doubt that subscription to it in the first century meant subscription to the full faith in the twelve points we have enumerated; but does it now? Most of those who stand for this simplest of all creeds intend that it should. If all bodies could consent to its adoption it would be an easy matter to gain agreement on the faith. There are none seeking union but could subscribe to it. Why then are there Churches which are not willing [91] to allow it to stand alone as the creed of the United Church? The answer is because they feel that it does not sufficiently safeguard the faith, and amongst many of those who have been contending for it there is growing up a suspicion that, to-day, it is not sufficient to define the Church's belief. Moreover, it is claimed that there is some doubt as to whether it was sufficient in the first century--as to whether nothing more is meant by such phrases as "the faith once for all delivered to the saints," "the deposit," "the present truth" and "the mystery of the faith." This is a reasonable doubt and it is certain that under the disruptive influence of Gnosticism, it was necessary to expand it early in the second century. To-day it can be affirmed by all devout Unitarians, and is the common formula of Christadelphians. Many of those who contend for its sufficiency would never dream of union either with Unitarians or Christadelphians. We must look the matter squarely in the face. If we make the claim that there is to be no other statement of the faith, then we must be prepared to admit all those separated Churches into the Union who can subscribe to this statement. We have no right to demand more. It is fairly clear that to-day it does not necessarily include the twelve units of essential Christian belief. Undoubtedly there was a time when it did, and in a United Church that time might again come; but for the purposes of union we shall need to have some statement which sums up the necessary elements of the Christian faith. This statement will have to be as short as possible--it must be a minimum not a maximum. [92] We have all seen the divisive character of introducing into the faith such things as special beliefs on election, total depravity, free will, the state of the departed, forms of Church Government, millennial reign, etc. The statement of faith to reunite the Church must be free from these things. It must not seek to bind where there is no necessity. Authority there must be, but such authority must be reduced to a minimum. We must not seek to impose on the intellect of man a greater burden than is necessary for the unity of the Church; on the other hand, the individual must be willing to bear what is a necessary burden.

      When we turn to the earliest statement of faith we are struck with its brevity.³² Three great facts are stated: (1) Christ died for our sins; (2) He was buried; (3) He was raised again. Other statements could be extracted from various epistles--all equally brief.³³ The same is true of the Apostles' Creed, both in its earlier and later form.³⁴ Many things we should expect to be included are omitted. There is no extravagance--no tendency to multiply articles of belief. So long as there was no division, nothing was needed but the simple oath of allegiance. There is a remarkable absence of any stress on the atonement, and this is true of the early preaching in Acts. What is the meaning of this? Surely the meaning is to be found in the value which sacraments have of preserving belief. The Cross is not really absent from the early sermons in Acts, [93] nor from the Apostles' Creed. From the first it was intimately bound up with the two redemption rites of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. It was in these two rites--not in creeds--that the doctrine of the Cross was enshrined for fully three centuries. This value of sacraments as a means of enshrining belief must not be overlooked in connection with the claim that the simple affirmation, "Thou art the Christ; the Son of the Living God," is a sufficient statement of belief.

      We can hardly doubt, however, that some statement of belief beyond this simple formula will be necessary as a basis for reunion; and that this may be supplied by the Nicene Creed with the proviso that the reunited Church will have power to revise the expression of this creed. That such a statement of belief will long remain a necessity within the re-united Church may reasonably be doubted, but we are not concerned with what is to be, but merely with bringing about the unity desired.

      But in the East the Nicene Creed is the baptismal confession. It is not proposed by Westerns to make it so, but to retain as at present the Apostles' Creed for this purpose. Bishop Gore amongst other speakers at Geneva, made it clear that there was no intention to force subscription to the Nicene Creed on those demanding Baptism. But of course there is little difference in forcing subscription to the Apostles' Creed; and the recent conference between Anglicans and Free Churchmen has actually agreed to this. Can it be justified?

      There is a real difference between a statement of belief held to be necessary to the unity of [94] the Church, and the baptismal oath or confession. To demand subscription to a full statement of the Church's belief before Baptism, is to expect the babe to be as wise as its parents. The creed is the statement of faith held by the universal Body--the united Church, and has no reference to the individual in his coming into the Church. His coming to Christ is part of a great experience--it is something higher than mere intellectual assent, and we have no right to demand from the individual asking for Baptism that he should make any credal statement. There is a difference between what we can demand from the individual and what the Church stands for. The Nicene Creed is not the confession of the individual, but of the Church--it is something into which the individual will grow if it is the result of the Church's experience and the summing up of its historic foundation. The method of the early Church was to make disciples, then to baptise them, and then to teach them all things. We are beginning at the wrong end when we seek to impose either the Apostles' or the Nicene Creed as a confessional statement for Baptism. The earliest Christians were not asked to give an intellectual assent to propositions--metaphysical or otherwise. They were not asked to subscribe to a creed. They did not believe in any set of doctrines, nor even did they believe on a Person. They did something higher than all these--something which was a beginning with the possibility of working itself out. What Dean Inge has said of mysticism is true here, for in a sense conversion which is purely individualistic is a mystic experience for everyone-- [95] an experience of something outside the self: "It does not believe on a Person; it believes in and into Him; it becomes, by an act at once voluntary and impelled from without (as all human action that is really entitled to that name), participant with Him and through Him of a force of life and conduct."³⁵

      What the convert did was to swear personal allegiance to Jesus as Lord, and to substitute for this an intellectual test is not gain but loss--in fact it is to rob conversion of its real meaning. Baptism was associated not with a creed, but with a confession. It was in itself a confession, but it was preceded by a lip confession. St. Paul could say to the Romans: "For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,"³⁶ and he could remind Timothy that he had made the good confession before many witnesses.³⁷ But further, Jesus had definitely declared that confession of Him meant that He would confess His followers in heaven. Professor Bacon has well said of this confession, "After Jesus' death the first act of the brotherhood of those who were determined to avail themselves of the new Way of reconciliation with God, believing that God had actually made him both Lord and Christ, was to take up the rite of baptism, significantly making it not merely a token of repentance, but a confession of 'faith' and loyalty. They were baptised 'into the name of Jesus.' They dedicated themselves to him. They confessed him as 'Lord,' by which they meant their [96] Advocate, their Mediator, their Friend in the court of heaven. Hence the 'faith' which is denoted in baptism is far from being a dry intellectual conviction. With Paul, as with Philo, as with Deutero-Isaiah³⁸, it is the saving grace of Abraham, the Rock-foundation of Israel. It implies both trust and obedience. It implies loyalty without limit. It means self-dedication to Jehovah, under his Christ, for this world and the world to come. Indeed, the Jewish 'confession of faith,' the well-known Shema which Jesus quotes as the sum and substance of religion: 'The Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love him with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy strength,' is not a creed."³⁹

      Anything even so simple as the Apostles' Creed is more than this oath of allegiance--in fact is different from it not in degree, but in character, and therefore, destructive of the real nature of conversion.

      It may be necessary for the accomplishment of unity to have some statement of faith such as the Apostles' or Nicene Creed as a basis of agreement. It may be for the good of the United Church to repeat liturgically on certain occasions its sincere belief in Christian verities. But is anything further necessary to the maintenance of unity in ordinary times than the sacramentum or oath of loyalty? In the language of Professor Bacon, may not a covenant--the covenant into which we are baptised and whose benefits we share each time we commune with "the blood of the New Covenant"--and not the creed, constitute the basis of unity; so long as it is [97] recognised that those essential features which make our religion Christian are preserved?

      In any case nothing but the Shema can be demanded of individuals who seek to unite themselves to the Great Church, whatever special measures may be necessary to cope with the extraordinary circumstances in which we find ourselves through our divisions. And after all, the Shema is infinitely superior; for we can never get beyond it. It stands for all time--eternal like Him of whom it speaks--simple, yet so profound that we can never fathom its depths and never exhaust its storehouse of treasures. Neither does it pander to merit making and the tendency to claim salvation on the grounds of intellectual subscription. James saw the folly of making it a creed. To do so is to limit it in its application. As an oath of allegiance it has no limits. We can never exhaust its demands on our life. It stands as a perpetual barrier to self-satisfaction. To take him as "both Lord and Christ" is to set out on a task which can find consummation only when we reach Him and are like Him--when we see Him as He is. [98]

[EOCU 63-98]