ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q010 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. * * * * >> DAVID: In our church at home, we confess the creeds within worship. Is this the context where they originated? >> DR. KLAUS DETLEV SHULTZ: Yes. This question that you have just asked is a very important one because it asks the question: What functions and purpose do the creeds fulfill? And we can say from what we have seen in our worship services that we do, in fact, have therein constant confessions that are in use. For example, the Nicene Creed is frequently used in our worship service. We confess it, usually, on important Sundays of the church year. The Apostles' Creed is used on other Sundays, and the Athanasian Creed, the longest of them all, is used, for example, on Trinity Sunday being so long, of course, it is a tedious task confessing it, and it would take a long time. And so, generally, the most--the creed used most would be the Apostles' Creed. The functions the creeds perform in worship services and beyond that can be illuminated in three ways. The first function, I would call, is doxological. That means that we Christians are confessing the creeds by praising God himself, the triune God, for what he has done to us as Christians; namely, bringing to us the salvation through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:4 verse 9 tells us, for example, that Christians should declare the praises of God. Now, that's what we do when we speak about confessing the creeds in the worship services. We declare the praises of God constantly when me confess the creeds. The Te Deum, that famous creed that we sing constantly in the worship service, is the best example, perhaps, of how doxological a creed can become. Another function the creed performs is that of bringing about a unity on faith. It means that Christians, when they come together in service, unite around a common confession. And when we confess the Nicene or the Apostles' Creed or the Athanasian, we know that these Christians confess it together in unity, and that unity is not expressed only with one another, those that gather in that particular building, but that unity also transgresses geographical context, in fact, also a historical context because we confess that with those Christians of the past and with those in the future. And so this catholicity, that unity of the creeds, is very important, and we should make sure, therefore, that the confessions are maintained in the worship service, particularly those three ecumenical creeds. Another function, the third function, I believe, of the creeds in the worship service is to define that unity in a sense of saying to these Christians that gather there that you are the ones who believe in Jesus Christ and God the Father and the Holy Spirit in a very particular way. You are restricting yourself to a faith in the triune God. That means you are confessing a unity that you would like to share with those who believe the same thing as you have just confessed. And at the same time, and negatively speaking, you are rejecting those who believe otherwise. Let me go back again to the confession of 1 Peter, of Peter in Matthew 16 verse 16. There he confesses, �I believe that you are Jesus Christ, the Son of God.� That is a particular definition he gives there of Jesus Christ. We share the same faith, and thus, we cannot share it with any others who reject Jesus Christ by saying that he is perhaps just a mere prophet or subordinate to God the Father. The Apostles' Creed goes back to the time of Rome. In fact, we have Hippolytus, in the second century, already speaking of the creed that they have confessed at baptism. At that time, there was a structure in the confession of Christians that would relate to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It goes back to Matthew 28 where it says, �Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.� So we know that Christians who confess their faith usually do it within connection to baptism. And we know also that the Apostles' Creed probably derives from such a confession to which Hippolytus refers. And later on, in the fifth century, an individual named *Rufinus quotes an important which we call here the Roman symbol which has been in use since then in the Roman church. And we believe strongly that the Apostles' Creed is such a confession that was confessed at baptism and goes back to that Roman symbol to which *Rufinus refers. Tertullian, the great Latin theologian of the early church refers to a practice that is very important, as well, when we speak about the use of the creeds. In fact, he speaks of a regular *fidee, rules of faith. It means that Christians at that time already knew that it was important before they bring in and incorporate another Christian in their community, that these are able to confess the same faith. Usually, it was done at their baptism. And before they were baptized, they were instructed in the regular *fidee, these catechumens as we call them. These regular *fidee were rules of faith that measured, or were used as a yardstick, to which all other faiths were measured. And if they would not hold against that critical yardstick of the regular *fidee, they would have to be dismissed. The Nicene Creed was confessed all over the Western church already by the tenth century. And we know that this creed replaced the Apostles' Creed as the official liturgical text. In 1054, in fact, King Henry II introduced the Nicene Creed in the Roman Catholic Church at Rome where, before, it had already been used in southern Spain, in Gaul, and also in regions ruled by Charlemagne the Great. The Athanasian Creed, the longest of them all, as I have already said, has also been used in the church. We know that, for example, in the medieval times, that at the monastery, there were already monks praying it in the first hour in the morning, the sixth hour, in the devotions that they had every day.