Full Text for Confessions 1- Volume 9 - Do All Denominations Accept the Creeds? (Video)

ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q009 JANUARY 2005 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 LOMBARD, IL 60148 * * * * * This text is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * >> JOSHUA: There are so many Christian denominations in the world today. Do they all except the creeds? And if not, why? >> DR. KLAUS DETLEV SHULTZ: Yes. There is evidence throughout the history of Christianity that creeds were used for various congregations, and finally, our Nicene Creed emerged as one of the major creeds from all of these plentiful creeds around in the Christian churches. In fact, the multitude of creeds is a fact of existence in the early church that we cannot deny, but we have, today, the very important fact that there are now the three ecumenical creeds. And we as Christians today, confess our faith as our three ecumenical creeds are stating it. That means we call ourselves today as Lutherans part of that main line Christianity, those churches that have come together to accept the three ecumenical creeds. We, thus, would like that everyone who baptizes his infants and adults that they baptize these into the faith of the triune God, and, therefore, we believe that we do not have to rebaptize them. The reality, the multitude of creeds in the church really goes back to the times of the New Testament. We see therein that the apostle Paul, for example, to the Christians at Corinth reminds them of a tradition that he has handed down to them that he himself has also received. We could call that creeds, creeds in the oral form because they were not written down yet. But Paul reminds the Christians at Corinth that they stick to that what he has delivered to them. And it is probably so that these Christians handed it down to other Christians generations later. And, thereby, they recognize a very important purpose of Christian creeds. They want to hand down the Christian faith from one generation to the next. And we are benefactors, today, of that tradition that has been handed down. It is very important, however, that we realize, as I've just said, that we accept the three ecumenical creeds as probably the pristine form of creeds as they had emerged from the New Testament. We have a beautiful publication from the great historian and theologian, *Jaroslav Pilican, who reminds us of the multitude of creeds that exists today. In fact, he published a multi-volume work that has 225 creeds. And of these creeds, some of them are very local and bound to the context of those churches that confesses them. For example, the Christians in Kenya, the Masai Creed. One of these creeds that they have confessed speaks of Jesus Christ going on a safari, and also that his body was not eaten up by the hyenas. We might think that that is very contextual, but it is, perhaps, a component that already goes to the first confession of Peter in Matthew 16. Because there we see that Jesus Christ will always remain the same, now and forever. But what we do also see is that Jesus Christ asked Peter, "Who do you say that I am?" and the evidence there is on you. And you see it is always important that we Christians confess Christ within the context within which we live. But like I've already said, it is crucial that we, as Lutherans, understand our creeds, both the early church creeds and those of the 16th century, as ecumenical in their claim. We do not want to forget this. It is different to those creeds that have emerged later on; for example, the Heidelberg Catechism or the Westminster Confession which do understand themselves more as local creeds. So the difficulty and challenge for us Lutherans is, today, that if we want to confess our faith addressing certain pertinent challenges of today, that we, again, have to ask how ecumenical can we become. And so it is important that we engage in a constant dialogue with other Christians in order that when a confession should arise again, and the possibility could arise, that we, again, confess together as ecumenical as we can, the faith in Jesus Christ.