CONFESSIONES ECCLESIÆ APOSTOLICE. SCRIPTURE CONFESSIONS. The Bible is the Word of God to man; the Creed is man's answer to God. The Bible reveals the truth in the popular form of life and fact; the Creed states the truth in the logical form of doctrine. The Bible is to be believed and obeyed; the Creed is to be professed and taught. Hence we find few traces of creeds in the Bible. In the Old Testament the fundamental doctrine of Monotheism is placed as a command at the head of the Decalogue, Exod. xx. 2, 3, and put in the form of a dogma, Deut. vi. 4: These words form the beginning of what is termed Shama (Hear), and are repeated in the daily morning and evening services of the Jews. They are the Creed of the Jews, in distinction from the Gentiles or idolaters. The sentence does not mean, 'Jehovah is our God, Jehovah alone' (and no other God), but it means either 'Jehovah, our God, Jehovah is one,'' or, 'Jehovah, our God, is one Jehovah.' In either case it is an affirmation of the unity of God, and this is made the basis of the fundamental moral precept which follows (ver. 5): ‘And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.' Hence our Lord, Mark iv. 29, quotes these two passages together as 'the first of all the commandments.' Similar assertions of the unity of God are found in Deut. iv. 35, 39 (‘Jehovah is the God; there is none else beside him'); 2 Sam. vii. 22; xxii. 32; 1 Kings viii. 60; 1 Chron. xvii. 20; Psa. xviii. 31 ('Who is God save Jehovah? or who is a rock save our God?'); Psa. lxxxvi. 10 ("Thou art God alone'); Isa. xliii. 10-12; xliv. 6, 8; xlv. 22; Joel ii. 27; Zech. xiv. 9. The New Testament confirms this doctrine repeatedly: Mark xii. 29; John xvii. 3 (‘Thee, the only true God'); 1 Cor. viii. 4 ("There is none other God but one'); Gal. iii. 20; 1 Tim. ii. 5. But while the New Testament presupposes the unity of the Godhead, it makes the Divinity and Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth the centre of the Christian religion in its distinctive fundamental creed. The following are the passages which furnished the nucleus for the ancient rules of faith and baptismal creeds. 1 So Oehler (Theologie des A. Test. Vol. I. p. 159), and others: 'Our Elohim' is in apposition to the first Jehovah, and is predicate to the second Jehovah. 2 * So our English Version, Keil, and others, who take ‘Jehovah, our Elohim' as the subject, and 'one Jehovah' as the predicate, of the sentence. The Mohammedans have borrowed their monotheistic watchword from the Jews, with a heretical addition-There is no God but Allah; and Mohammed is his prophet.' The Confession of Nathanael (Bartholomew). JOHN i. 50 (49). ̓Απεκρίθη Ναθαναὴλ καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ· Nathanael answered and saith unto NOTE. 'King of Israel' is a designation of the Messiah, and an anticipation of the Confession of Peter. Nathanael reasons from the divine character of Christ as revealed in his supernatural knowledge of the heart, to his Messiahship, and returns the commendation, 'Behold an Israelite indeed without guile,' by the acknowledgment, 'Thou art the King of Israel,' and hence my King. The term 'Son of God' was also a designation of the Messiah in his divine nature, derived from Psa. ii. 5, 12 (comp. Isa. ix. 6), and is so used by Peter, Matt. xvi. 16; by the disciples in the ship, Matt. xiv. 33; by Martha, John xi. 27; and by the high-priest, Matt. xxvi. €3. The Apostles, before the pentecostal illumination, had no clear insight into the full meaning of the expression; but their faith, based upon the Old Testament and the personal knowledge of our Lord, contained the living germ of the full knowledge. The Confession of Peter. MATT. xvi. 16. ̓Αποκριθεὶς δὲ Σίμων Πέτρος εἶπεν· | And Simon Peter, answering, said, NOTE. This is the fundamental Christian Confession, and the rock on which the Church is built. See Schaff's Annotations to Lange on Matthew, pp. 293-295. JOHN vi. 68. Κύριε, προς τίνα ἀπελευσόμεθα ; ῥήματα ζωῆς αἰωνίου ἔχεις· καὶ ἡμεῖς πεπιστεύκαμεν, καὶ ἐγνώκαμεν ὅτι Σὺ εἶ ὁ ἅγιος τοῦ Θεοῦ. Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast words of life eternal, and we have believed and known that THOU ART THE HOLY ONE of God. NOTE. This is the true reading, instead of the received text: 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God' (σὺ εἶ ὁ Χριστὸς, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ζῶντος), which is conformed to Matt. xvi. 16. It is equivalent to Thou art the Messiah, and coincides with the testimony of the demoniacs (Mark i. 26), who with ghost-like intuition perceived the supernatural character of Jesus. This Confession of Peter belongs to an earlier period than the one recorded by Matthew. See Lange, Com. on John, pp. 234 sq. (Am. ed.). The Confession of Thomas. JOHN XX. 28. ̓Απεκρίθη Θωμᾶς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ· Thomas answered and said unto him, Ο κύριος μοῦ καὶ ὁ Θεός μου. MY LORD AND MY GOD! NOTE. This is the strongest apostolic Confession of Faith in the Lordship and Divinity of Christ, an echo of the beginning of the fourth Gospel (i. 1, 'the Word was God'), and an anticipation of its close (xx. 31, 'that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life in his name'). For the words are undoubtedly addressed to Christ, as is evident from the preceding 'to him,' and from the appellation, 'My Lord;" and not an exclamation of astonishment addressed to God. For in the latter case Thomas would utter a profanity unrebuked by the Lord. The words indicate a triumph of faith over doubt. Thomas was not an unbeliever-he was not a doubter from indifference to the truth (as Pontius Pilate), still less from hostility to the truth, but from love of truth. He was an honest and earnest inquirer; his heart was anxious and ready to believe, but his understanding demanded evidence, which he embraced with joy as soon as it was presented. He represents the principle, intellectus precedit fidem, which is not entirely inconsistent with the other, fides precedit intellectum. He was a rationalist in the best sense of the term, animated and controlled by a love of truth. Blessed are those that seek the truth, for they shall find it. This kind of skepticism, or spirit of inquiry rather, is a stimulating and propelling force in the Church, and is necessary to the progress of theological science and historical and philosophical research. To such skepticism the words of the poet may be applied: "There lives more faith in honest doubt, He fought his doubts, and gathered strength, And yet there is a higher faith, which believes without seeing (ver. 29; 1 Pet. i. 8; 2 Cor. V. 7), which holds fast to the invisible as seeing him (Heb. xi. 27), which goes to Christ as the child to his mother's breast, as heart to heart, as love to love, with undoubting, implicit, unbounded trust and confidence. The Baptismal Formula. MATT. xxviii. 19. Μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, βαπτί- | Disciple [make disciples of all the The Greek nominative with the article is used for the vocative, as in Matt. xi. 26, where God is addressed in prayer, ò warŋp; xxvii. 29, xaîpɛ ó Baoiλɛúç; in Mark xv. 34, ó Jɛóg μου, ὁ Θεός μου, εἰς τί ἐγκατέλιπές με; in Luke viii. 54, and in many other passages. 2 Theodore of Mopsuestia: ‘Quasi pro miraculo facto Deum collaudat.' He is followed by Socinians and Rationalists. |