The American Creed and the Christian Creed: “We Believe” vs. “It Doesn’t Matter What You Believe”

Deeds Over Creeds

In his book Christless Christianity Michael Horton argues that when it comes to the Christian faith in North America, creeds have given way to deeds.[1] In others words, what counts in modern Christianity are deeds—serving the poor, drilling water wells, and tutoring at-risk children.  What no longer counts in contemporary Christianity are creeds—believing specific things about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.  What matters these days is what churches do in their communities and around the world, not what churches believe when they gather together.  Creeds have given way to deeds.

In my book Preaching to Pluralists I argue something similar.[2] Contemporary postmoderns are more interested in orthopraxy—the right practice—than they are in orthodoxy—the right belief.  They have tired of churches which claim to have the right belief but fail at the right practice.  Postmoderns long for churches which prioritize deeds and call their members to go and make a difference in the world.  They care less and less what those churches believe.

In today’s religious world, it no longer matters what a person believes as long as a person behaves.  Relativism or pluralism is the reigning worldview.  It’s the view that that there are many truths and no single truth is true for all people at all time.  Belief, therefore, is subjective and private.  Behavior, however, is more objective and public.  What matters are the kinds of deeds that make a difference around the world.  Who cares what your creed says about God or Christ or the Holy Spirit?

False Creeds

But in fact, churches and Christians in North America have not entirely abandoned creeds.  They’ve just embraced an alternative creed.  Michael Horton writes, “I think our doctrine has been forgotten, assumed, ignored, and even misshaped and distorted by the habits and rituals of daily life in a narcissistic culture…[the church’s creed] is closer to the American Dream than it is to the Christian faith.”[3] Churches and Christians today still have a belief system.  It’s just that the content of that belief system now resembles the American Dream of health and wealth more than it resembles anything in the Bible.  Deeds are still considered more important than creeds.  And what creeds still do exist are a far cry from the teaching of Scripture.

From 2002 to 2005 the National Study of Youth and Religion interviewed more than 3,300 American teenagers between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.[4] On the one hand, the study found that teenagers have very little knowledge of biblical doctrine.  Kenda Dean, one of the researchers, writes, “Teenagers lack a theological language with which to express their faith or interpret their experience of the world.  The vast majority of U.S. teenagers, to quote Smith and Denton, are ‘incredibly inarticulate about their faith, their religious beliefs and practices, and its meaning or place in their lives’ (emphasis original).”[5] Many teens today do not have a traditional Christian creed or hold to traditional Christian beliefs.

On the other hand, the study found that teenagers do have a fairly consistent spiritual belief system.  It is a belief which they’ve caught from their churches.  Called “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” this creed consists of 5 basic tenets:[6]

1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.

2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

This recent research shows that many teens today emphasize deeds over creeds.  But teens still have a belief system.  Their creed is moralistic therapeutic deism.  And point by point it contrasts central teachings of the Bible.

Thus we arrive at a crisis: the dominant perspective today in the spiritual world of North America is that it doesn’t really matter what you believe.  And when it comes to what people actually do believe, the content of their belief resembles little of what we find in Scripture.

The Importance of Belief

The dichotomy between creeds and deeds is a false dichotomy.  Christianity has always been interested in both belief and behavior.  For example, James critiques those who claim to have faith (belief) but do not have works (deeds).  On the other hand, Paul emphasizes the importance of salvation by faith (belief) and not by works (deeds).  Both creeds and deeds, both faith and works, are vital to the Christian faith.

But in this contemporary culture in which belief is belittled and so many wrong beliefs are championed, it is important to understand that the Christian faith has long been a faith focused on belief.  Orthodoxy—the right belief—is central to what it means to be a Christian.

Author Ben Quash puts it this way:[7] “From its very beginnings, Christianity said that neither your race, nor your sex, nor your social class, nor your age could ever be a bar to full membership of Christ’s body, the Church.  Anyone could be a Christian: you didn’t have to be born in the right place at the right time to the right parents…What, though, was left to mark a Christian out from a non-Christian?  The answer was this: your faith—what you believed in, as embodied in your practices and confessed with your lips.”  What made a Christian a Christian was not birthplace, skin color, gender, or income.  What defined a Christian was belief.  That belief gave rise to certain behaviors.  But belief was the root of all that was distinctive about the Christian faith.  You were a Christian first and foremost because of what you believed.

We see this clearly in Scripture.  Again and again there is an emphasis on having the right knowledge, belief, and understanding:

• Judges 2:10 – And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel.
• 1 Kings 8:60 – that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God; there is no other.
• Psalm 25:4 – Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths.
• Psalm 46:10 – “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”
• Psalm 119:66 – Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.
• Psalm 119:128 – Therefore I consider all your precepts to be right; I hate every false way
• Proverbs 2:6 – For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
• Isaiah 5:13 – Therefore my people go into exile for lack of knowledge; their honored men go hungry, and their multitude is parched with thirst.
• Matthew 7:15 – “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
• Mark 1:15 – “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
• Mark 12:30 – And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
• Romans 10:9 – if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
• Romans 12:2 – Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
• Philippians 1:9 – And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment
• Colossians 1:9 – And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,
• 2 Peter 2:1 – But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.
• 1 Timothy 2:4 – who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
• 1 Timothy 1:3 – As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine,

Those ancients who followed God and Jesus stressed the importance of having the right knowledge, understanding, and beliefs.  Strong warnings were issued against beliefs that were contrary to what was known to be true about God and life.  To be a follower of God, to be a Christian, meant to believe in something very specific.

The American Creed vs. The Nicene Creed

But what is that belief?  What are the defining beliefs of Christianity?  A survey of different Christian groups today might result in a number of competing answers to that question.  This series takes up that question in a two-fold way.  First, it explores some of the contemporary beliefs among people—including Christians—in North America.  I’m calling these contemporary beliefs the American Creed.  Second, this series holds those beliefs up next to the historical defining beliefs of the Christian faith.  To goal of this series is to provide a summary of what ancient Christian beliefs are most important in defining Christianity in light of current cultural beliefs.

In order to summarize the defining beliefs of historical Christianity, I’m going to use an ancient creed.  The word “creed” comes the Latin, credo (“I believe”) or credimus (“we believe”).[8] Early Judaism and early Christianity utilized creeds, short statements summarizing what they believed.

• The “Shema” in Deut. 6, repeated daily by Jews, was a kind of creed:[9] “4Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. In their polytheistic culture, this creed was surely repeated as contrast to the belief that there were many gods.”[10]
• Paul rehearses what was probably an early Christian creed in 1 Cor. 15:[11] “3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”
• Another early creed appears in Philippians 2:[12] “5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

These statements were attempts to summarize the heart of Christian orthodoxy.  They were followed by additional attempts.

• One of the earliest we know of comes from about 190 A. D.[13] Irenaeus of Lyons summed up the Christian faith in this way: “The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles, and their disciples, this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God.”
• Another early creed is found in about 215 A. D. from Hippolytus.[14] It takes the form of questions and answers. The context was undoubtedly one of baptism. Here is the version given by Hippolytus: Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty? Do you believe in Christ Jesus, Son of God, Who was born (natus) by the Holy Spirit out of Mary the Virgin, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate and died and was buried, and rose on the third day alive from among the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, to come to judge the living and the dead? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Church, and the resurrection of the flesh? The person to be baptized, we can safely assume, responded “yes” or “I do believe.”

Two things motivated the development of formal creeds like these: doxa and orthodoxa.[15] Originally these creeds were, in the words of Gerald Bray “jubilant expressions of baptismal praise…doxa.”  As candidates prepared for baptism these creeds provided a way for them to summarize what they believed and why they were being baptized.  But over time, the motive of doxa—praise, gave rise to orthodoxa—right or correct praise.  That is, the creeds weren’t just needed to provide a way for those being baptized the praise God and summarize their belief in God.  Eventually, the creeds were also needed to help differentiate the defining beliefs of Christianity from a number of different beliefs that started springing up.

Luke Timothy Johnson argues that the creeds did three things regarding alternative belief systems that were common in the ancient world.[16] First they helped Christians distinguish their beliefs from the beliefs of the Jews.  Second the creeds provided a way for Christians to explain what they believed about the resurrection, the most distinctive element in the Christian belief system.  Third, they provided a way of countering Christian heresy.

This final issue was more and more prevalent in the second and third centuries.[17] As Christianity spread across the globe there was an increasing diversity in what people believed about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  The creeds helped churches across the globe understand what was correct Christian belief and what was not.

One creed in particular became most helpful in this regard.  It was known as the Nicene Creed.  It was produced by a council at Nicea in 325 A. D. The Council of Nicea was summoned by the emperor Constantine in an effort to unify his new Christian empire.[18] TTop of Form

he three hundred eighteen bishops who gathered at Nicea worked for months, and on June 19, 325 they issued a creed in Greek with this wording: “We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Begotten of the Father as only-begotten, that is, out of the being of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father, through whom all things are made, things in heaven and things on earth, who, for us humans and for our salvation came down and became flesh, becoming human, he suffered, and he rose on the third day, and having gone into the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit.”[19] As evidenced by the amount of detail given to the nature of Jesus, the creed was partly developed as a way of refuting some Christian heresies which taught the wrong thing about Jesus’ relationship with the Father.

Not long after, in May 381, the Christian emperor Theodosius called for a gathering in Constantinople. One hundred and fifty bishops attended. They approved a creed that substantially agreed with the Nicene Creed, but differed slightly. The most obvious difference was that it elaborated on the role of the Holy Spirit.[20] This creed became known as the Nicene—Constantinopolitan Creed.  Today it is commonly known as the Nicene Creed:[21]

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.  Through him all things were made.  For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.  On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.  He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.  With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.  He has spoken through the Prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.  We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

This ancient creed provides a way for us to summarize the core beliefs of the Christian faith.  When the early Christians sought to state the defining beliefs of the faith especially in contrast to alternative beliefs in the culture, this is how they did it.  This creed can be similarly helpful to us as we try to state the defining beliefs of our faith in contrast to common contemporary beliefs found in our culture.

We Believe

And notice how this creed begins: “We believe.”  The creed says, “This is who we are.  We are a people who believe.  We Christians are above all a people who believe.”  The most important thing about historical Christianity is that Christians were people who first and foremost believed.

Gerald Bray writes this:[22] “Second and third century Christians who first said credo did not do so thoughtlessly.  At times they uttered this word at the risk of their lives under threat of possible persecution, torture and death…To say credo in this way was to speak from the heart in direct defiance of the powers that be, precisely when those powers required direct denial of Christian faith.”  Who were these early Christians?  They were the one group willing to say “We believe” when believing cost them their lives.  They were the one group willing to say “We believe” when no one else did.  They were the only ones willing to say “We believe” when others argued it didn’t matter what you believed.

Luke Timothy Johnson writes that when Christians recited this creed they were contrasting themselves from the world:[23] “In a world that celebrates individuality, they are actually doing something together. In an age that avoids commitment, they pledge themselves to a set of convictions and thereby to each other. In a culture that rewards novelty and creativity, they use words written by others long ago. In a society where accepted wisdom changes by the minute, they claim that some truths are so critical that they must be repeated over and over again. In a throwaway, consumerist world, they accept, preserve, and continue tradition. Reciting the creed…is thus a countercultural act.”  When they said “We believe” they were also saying “We do not believe.”  “We do not believe what the powers tell us to believe.  We do not believe the lies the world feeds us.  We believe something else.  We believe someone else.”

And in an age when the primary creed is “It doesn’t matter what you believe” it is critical for Christians to once again be the people who say “We believe.”  In a culture which says “You can believe this, or this, or this—it really doesn’t matter” we need to be the community which says, “We believe this and only this—and it does matter.”  In contrast to all other worldviews rampant in our society, we Christians are those who say “We believe.”Top of Form

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[1] Michael Horton Christless Christianity (Baker Books, 2008)

[2] Chris Altrock, Preaching to Pluralists (Chalice Press, 2004).

[3] Horton, 21.

[4] Kenda Creasy Dean Almost Christian (Oxford University Press, 2010), Kindle location 317.

[5] Dean, Kindle location 356.

[6] Dean, Kindle location 270.

[7] Ben Quash and Michael Ward, editors Heresies and How to Avoid Them (Hendrickson), Kindle edition.

[8] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters (Image, 2007), Kindle location 183.

[9] Johnson, Kindle location 145.

[10] Johnson, Kindle location 204.

[11] Johnson, Kindle location 264.

[12] Gerald L. Bray, editor Ancient Christian Doctrine: We Believe in One God (IVP Academic, 2009), ix.

[13] Bray, x.

[14] Johnson, Kindle location 486.

[15] Bray, xii.

[16] Johnson, Kindle location 200.

[17] Johnson, Kindle location 435.

[18] Johnson, Kindle location 520.

[19] Johnson, Kindle location 544.

[20] Johnson, Kindle location 574.

[21] Bray, unnumbered page.

[22] Bray, viii.

[23] Johnson, Kindle location 613.