Recent Readings: Creedal Content

As a church history addict, I am partial to the study of how the Church has interpreted theology down through the ages. That would include the impact of creeds and confessions of faith. While I am presently helping lead faculty devotions at school on the Westminster Confession of Faith, and while I tend to lean in my affections toward the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England, I also love pondering the truths of the universal creeds.

Such statements are brief and concise, yet meaty, born out of a desire to instruct Christian disciples (e.g., the Apostles' Creed), to combat heresy (e.g., the Nicene Creed), or to do both at once (e.g., the Ignatian Creed). I love the Nicene Creed myself and consider it to be the mostly dynamically beautiful statement of Christian belief in history, but I know the value to studying the also-familiar Apostles' Creed. Many Christians repeat this statement every week in church, but what does it mean? Author and theologian J.I. Packer reveals the depth of it in his Affirming the Apostles' Creed. In successive chapters, each phrase of the Creed is unpacked and explored in all its beauty and cogency.

One advantage of ATAC is its brevity. Packer does not try to say anything the Creed either specifies or implies. As a result, the book is a mere 160-ish pages and each chapter is in a range of 5-7 pages. This helps the reader make progress without bogging down.

Packer also provides further Scripture passages at the end of each chapter, along with questions for reflection and application. It is well worth the reader's time to dwell on these resources.

Packer also excels in demonstrating how biblical (and Reformational!) truths are deposited in the Creed. For instance, the clause "the forgiveness of sins" is no mere dangling expression of trust that rebellion is forgotten, but that believers are justified (made right with God) by grace through faith in Christ. People who want to see the historical undercurrents in the Creed will find a treasure trove within Packer's work.

And Packer also demonstrates--along with the fact that theology matters--why these beliefs matter. Why was it necessary for Christ to "descend into hell", or to be "born of the Virgin Mary", or why we say God the Father is "Maker of heaven and earth", or the work of the Holy Spirit? Packer expertly shows connections to the believer's life in each of these chapters.

Affirming the Apostles' Creed is a little volume that carries weighty truth in digestible bites. A refreshing review for seasoned believers, it is written for clear, serious engagement for laypeople and inquirers to faith. Once again, J.I. Packer exemplifies that intelligence properly exercised means making the complex and deep both understandable and accessible.