Sermon for Pentecost 18 (Proper 21B), September 27, 2015

Text: Mark 9:38-50

            Beloved in Christ, there are a couple billion people currently alive who claim to be followers of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are some additional people who can’t quite bring themselves to call themselves “Christians,” but nonetheless admire Jesus and think of themselves as friendly to Him. But if you look at everything people say about Jesus, it is clear that at least some people have gotten His message garbled. Or, put another way, everyone cannot be right in what they are saying about Him, since some people state things about Him that contradict what others say.

            People tend to solve this dilemma by saying one of two things. They may say that only those people who belong to their corner of the Christian world are Christians, and that all people outside of their fellowship will perish. Or they may say that it doesn’t really matter what you teach or believe about Jesus. As long as you say the name magic word “Jesus” in a positive manner, everything is okay.

            Our Lord doesn’t approve of either of those solutions in today’s Gospel. When the disciples saw someone casting out a demon in His name, they got upset because that person was not part of their organization and didn’t even want to be part of it. That individual had recognized that Jesus had some kind of supernatural power, and he decided to invoke it when he was doing an exorcism. He probably threw in the name of Jesus after invoking the names of Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and every other prophet he could think of. He didn’t necessarily think of Jesus as the Messiah, let alone as the Son of God, but he thought that the demons would tremble when the name of Jesus was mentioned. This irritated the disciples, who rightly wanted our Lord to be given more honor than that. And so they told him, “Either honor Jesus properly or stop using His name!”

            But Jesus took a different tack. “Do not stop him,” our Lord said, “for no one who does a mighty work in My name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me. For the one who is not against us is for us.” In other words, the man may not have entirely understood the truth, but there was the possibility that he would come to know Jesus more deeply as time passed and that he would become a disciple. At the very least he wouldn’t go around blaspheming Jesus. And our Lord further noted that those who honored His disciples without being disciples themselves would be honored appropriately, for He added, “Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.”

            Therefore, it is not necessary that every person know everything about the Scriptures and its teachings in order to be a Christian. Granted, it does not help to be ignorant, as we will talk about shortly. And you certainly do not want to go against the clear teachings of the Scriptures, for you do so at great peril. Nonetheless, we have brothers and sisters in Christ who do not fully understand or profess everything that they ought. We pray that they will come to know more about God and will be corrected over time. In fact, we want to discuss God’s Word with them and help them to come to a clearer understanding of it. But we will not quickly dismiss them as being outside God’s kingdom, for we know that God is at work far beyond our congregation and beyond the churches that share our confession of faith.

            But that does not mean that every Christian gets to believe whatever they want and that every notion anyone has must be accepted as completely good. Our Lord warns us that there is also a danger in living and teaching in such a way that the weak and the unlearned are led away from the Christian faith. A false teacher who would lead others astray would find swimming with a millstone as a life preserver preferable to the fate that awaits them. Even in our own lives, we should look to see if there is anything that we hold dear that is separating us from God. Be it ever as precious to us as our own eye or hand or foot, we should not cling to it, but yield instead to God’s Word.

            Thus, our Lord shows an appropriate balance. He gives people grace to grow in their knowledge so that they may come to a clearer understanding of the truth and embrace it. And He warns people not to assume rather lazily that His grace means they can say, do, and teach anything they want. Instead, we should use God’s grace as an opportunity to delve deeper into His Word, not as an excuse to sin all the more.

            This is exactly what we teach as Lutherans. Our statements of faith have been gathered up in a book called the Book of Concord. We recite part of it every Sunday—the Nicene Creed—and everyone who has been confirmed knows another part of it, the Small Catechism. The preface to the Book of Concord gets the balance exactly right, as it condemns false teaching that would lead people astray, but also emphasize that there are many Christians outside of our fellowship. The authors state, “It is not at all our plan and purpose to condemn people who err because of a certain simplicity of mind, but are not blasphemers against the truth of the heavenly doctrine. Much less, indeed, do we intend to condemn entire churches that are either [in our nation] or elsewhere. Rather, it has been our intention and desire in this way to openly criticize and condemn only the fanatical opinions and their stubborn and blasphemous teachers….We have written condemnations also for this reason: that all godly persons might be diligently warned to avoid these errors. For we have no doubt whatsoever that—even in those churches that have not agreed with us in all things—many godly and by no means wicked people are found. They follow their own simplicity and do not correctly understand the matter itself….We are also in great hope that, if these simple people would be taught correctly about these things—the Spirit of the Lord aiding them—they would agree with us, and with our churches and schools, to the infallible truth of God’s Word.” (Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions: A Reader's Edition of the Book of Concord [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2005], Preface to the Book of Concord, paragraph 20.)

            In other words, we are concerned about false teaching and that is why we do not enter into fellowship with everyone and anyone who purports to be a Christian. We do not want to approve those teachers who cannot confess the Christian faith properly. But we acknowledge that there are many sincere believers in Christ to be found in other confessions of faith, for they cling to God’s Word and don’t understand that their pastors are teaching error along with the gospel. I am reminded of what a parishioner (who is now with the Lord) told me many years ago. He had grown up in a church that taught that Christ’s body and blood were not present in the Lord’s Supper, but that it was all symbolic. He was dating a young woman who was a member here and whom he eventually married. The pastor here at the time asked, “What do you think you receive in the Lord’s Supper?” “Christ’s body and blood,” he replied. The pastor then asked, “Do you know that’s not what your church teaches?” The man was taken aback a bit, because that was news to him. But when he went back to his home congregation, he discovered that that was indeed the case. Here was a genuinely Christian man, who believed Christ’s words about the Lord’s Supper. He had been taught false things about it, but the false teaching hadn’t stuck because in the simplicity of his faith he had rightly clung to God’s Word. There are plenty more people like him spread across Christianity.

            But as we are grateful to God that His Word has that effect and as we are gracious to those fellow believers, allowing them time to grow, we also take seriously the call not to cause someone to stumble in their faith, either by our wicked living or by false teaching. We do not want our selfishness, our egos, our penchant for the pleasures of the world, our lust, our greed, and the like to get in the way of others coming to faith or to lead others into the same vices so that they lose their faith.

            By the same token, we also don’t want any false ideas about God to destroy our faith or that of others. We want to worship the true God—the blessed Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in one Godhead—not some idol or some figment of our imagination. We want to be saved by Jesus Christ, true God and true man, united in one person. We don’t want a Savior who is a mere human or a distant God, but rather someone who is true God getting into the midst of our earthly problems by taking on our flesh. We want a Redeemer who saves us by living a holy life in our place, then dying to atone for our sins, and then rising again to impart forgiveness and new life. We want to find the Holy Spirit at work in the Word, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper—rather than think that they are merely empty symbols. We want to know that the Holy Spirit works amid our sufferings and uses them for our good and God’s glory. We don’t want to be misled by those who teach that Christians never have grief or disease and thus drive those who do have them to despair. We want to cling to this blessed hope throughout our life so that we will die a godly death and then rise again on the Last Day and receive eternal life. We don’t want to be led astray by thoughts that say that this is the only life we will ever know and that dead is dead.

            And thus we will be gentle toward those who are still in ignorance, even as we take care not to allow false teachings to creep in and corrupt things. In short, we will do what Jesus says: “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” We will have salt, that is, we will go against the countervailing forces of this world that would lead it to destruction. We will teach sound doctrine and strive to live godly lives. But we will also be at peace with each other. We will not make it our goal to pick a fight with everyone. We will gently guide and teach the ignorant and patiently admonish the recalcitrant. But our goal is to bring people to know our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father who sent Him. In Jesus’s name. Amen.

Sermon on the Confession of Saint Peter, January 18, 2015

Texts: Acts 4:8-13; 2 Peter 1:1-15; and Mark 8:27-35.

            Beloved in Christ, we love reading the first paragraph of today’s gospel. Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ and is commended for his confession. And then Jesus says that Peter can keep mum about our Lord’s real identity. We love that approach. We too confessed our faith in Jesus when we were confirmed. The pastor praised us as good students and allowed us to take communion for the first time. And now that is all over with. We can sit down, relax, and enjoy a nice retirement from having to learn the faith and confess it. Because we confessed our faith once, we can now keep mum.

            But if you read the entire New Testament, you see that that is not the case. Yes, there were a number of times when Jesus ordered people to keep quiet, but that was because He had not yet completed His ministry and people were bound to misunderstand it. Once He had been crucified and raised from the dead, then people would see the totality of His ministry and then it would be appropriate to talk openly about His being the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One sent by God. But until then our Lord asked people to keep quiet, since He knew that a little knowledge could be more dangerous than ignorance. But once His earthly ministry was over with, it was no longer time to keep mum. He poured out the Holy Spirit upon the church on Pentecost, and since the church is not to be silent. No, we are to confess Jesus as the Christ again and again.

            Today I would like to look at three aspects of confessing the Christian faith, as described in today’s readings. First of all, if we take our task seriously, we will have to deepen our confession of faith. It isn’t that we set aside what we have confessed before. No, we underscore what we have said previously and we go even deeper into those matters than we had done previously.

            Consider Peter’s confession in the first paragraph. It was spot on. Jesus wasn’t John the Baptist. How could He be, since John had baptized Him? He wasn’t Elijah come down in a fiery chariot. He wasn’t an ordinary prophet. No, He was the Christ, the one especially sent by God. As far as who Jesus was, you couldn’t beat Peter’s confession. But just because Peter knew who Jesus was, it didn’t follow that he knew what Jesus was supposed to do. Jesus tried to explain God’s plan for Himself, but it all sounded as nonsense to Peter. He didn’t want to embarrass Jesus and so he tried to correct Him privately. In return, Jesus rebuked Peter and said that he had a satanic understanding of what the Messiah would do. He told him to get with the program, to stop thinking the way most people do and to start seeing things the way that God does.

            You, like Peter, need to go deeper. Do you believe in God and confess that there is only one God? Good. Deepen your knowledge by learning to confess that there are three Persons in one Godhead. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is true God and true man in one person? Good. Deepen your knowledge by learning why He came as the true God-man, namely, to be your Savior and the atoning sacrifice for your sin. Do you believe that He came two thousand years ago, died, and rose from the dead? Good. Deepen your knowledge and learn of His glorious return some day in the future. Do you believe that God forgives your sins? Good. Deepen your knowledge and learn of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, both of which were instituted to convey that forgiveness.

            That is the point Peter is making in his second epistle. It is fine to have faith in Almighty God and in the Christ whom He has sent. But Peter does not envision some kind of lackadaisical faith that is stagnant and immature. No, he wants an excellent faith, and so he urges us to “supplement your faith with excellence”—“excellence” is a better translation than mere “virtue”—and to have that excellent faith grounded in “knowledge.” He goes on to describe other outgrowths of faith: “self-control,” “steadfastness,” “godliness,” “brotherly affection,” and “love.” In each of these instances Peter shows that faith in Christ is not shallow or lazy. Those who refuse to grow in this way show that they are “so nearsighted” so as to be “blind, having forgotten that [they were] cleansed from [their] former sins.” This is how you “make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.”

            However, that faith doesn’t just need to be deepened, but it also needs to be confessed repeatedly, which is the second truth we learn from today’s readings. As we look at Peter’s life, we see that he didn’t just make the confession the one time. Yes, for a while he was told not to repeat that confession until Christ could complete His work. But that would have given him a break for a year or maybe even just a few months. But after Christ completed His work, Peter began confessing the faith again and again.

            We see that in today’s first reading, where Peter confessed who Jesus Christ was. That is Acts chapter 4. But we could go back a couple of chapters and see that Peter made a big confession of faith on Pentecost Sunday. And we could go forward a chapter and see him making another confession of faith in Acts 5. He will go on to give similar confessions of faith in Acts 8, 10, 11, and 15. In other words, wherever we find Peter in the book of Acts, we discover him confessing the faith.

            Peter shows what it means to be a Christian. The Christian Church confesses her faith in Jesus Christ not just once, but as often as she can. Unfortunately, we all have the tendency to rest on our laurels. We praise our forebears for being orthodox and making an excellent confession of faith in difficult times. But sometimes we assume that because we are personally orthodox in our faith that their confession of faith long ago suffices. We don’t have to repeat it aloud again, but just say, “Ditto.” But every generation of Christians is called to confess “the faith once delivered to the saints.”

            It is particularly important now when we live in a post-Christian society. Not everyone believes in Christ or even knows about Him. Even at a Christian university, such as where I teach, not everyone knows some very basic things about Christianity. That was underscored this past week. Early on in my course I show my students how various tools such as concordances and Bible dictionaries can help us understand a passage in the Bible. So I have my students summarize the parable of the prodigal son, since these tools can help us capture some nuances that are commonly overlooked. I choose this parable since most of them (even the non-religious students) are likely to know it. In fact, if someone knows only one parable of Jesus, this is likely to be the one they know. But after one of my students told the parable fairly well, another student raised his hand and asked for some details to be clarified about that parable, since by his own admission he had never heard it before. I’m sure that he was not the first student not to know it, but he was the first to admit as much.

            Well, one of the reasons we are in the situation we are today is that we didn’t confess the faith adequately in decades gone by. People assumed that the young folks would pick up the faith from the culture at large or in school or on their own. There wasn’t a big effort to say exactly what it was that we believed and why. We might have talked about the advantages of joining our church instead of the church down the street, but we assumed that everyone knew the Bible and believed in Christ. But in a post-Christian society like ours, we don’t have that luxury any more. We have to assume that people do not know who Jesus Christ is. We will also have to assume that what little they know about Christianity is probably all distorted, anyway. And so we will need to confess the faith to people inside the church and outside of it. We cannot assume people know the faith or know it well or accurately. We are going to have to be patient and carefully explain the faith. We may have to do so a number of times before it makes sense to someone, which is why we must also cultivate a loving relationship with others, so that we can be heard.

            And now we come to a third consideration. We have already noted that we need to deepen our confession and repeat it often. But as we do so, we acknowledge that confessing our faith will be the death of us. This is a point that Jesus made in the last paragraph of today’s gospel, where He called us to “deny [ourselves] and take up [our] cross and follow [Him].”

            Whenever we confess Jesus Christ to be our Savior, we are denying ourselves in some way. We are crucifying our sinful self, which does not want to admit that we need a Savior. And it is not just death within that we face, but death from without. When we confess that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world and all the articles of faith that flow from that statement, we will be rejected by those around us, at least to some degree. The world doesn’t want a Savior any more than our sinful flesh does. And so confessing the faith may lead to us being rejected at the very least; in some extreme circumstances it may even get us killed, as has happened to many of our brothers and sisters around the globe.

            But if we are hesitant to confess the faith, our Lord assures us that this is actually the best way to save our lives. If we try to keep mum so as to “save” ourselves, it will only harm us in the end. But if are willing to risk even our lives by confessing Christ, we are assured that nothing will separate us from God and His love in Christ. So our confession of faith kills us, but it also gives us life—and that abundantly.

            And so, beloved in Christ, confirmation day cannot be the last time we confess the Christian faith. May we learn from Peter to deepen our faith, confess it often, and embrace the life it gives! In Jesus’ name. Amen.

From my article on the Athanasian Creed (which will appear in a companion to the Lutheran Service Book)

Since Trinity Sunday is fast approaching, I thought I would post a portion of an article I had written introducing the Athanasian Creed. There was much that I learned in researching this topic that I had not been taught in the seminary. One thing that I didn't include in my article: this creed is a masterpiece of Latin prose, as can be seen in the way that it consistently follows the rigid metrical rules for ending clauses in Ciceronian era prose while it also still conforms to the dictates of contemporary 5th century prose, whose cadences were based on accentuation rather than syllable quantity. That in itself was a remarkable feat. If you want to read more, you'll have to buy the book.

Once a year, need it or not, cowboys would take a bath—or so the legend goes. And once a year, need it or not, Lutheran congregations are forced to recite the Athanasian Creed. Those who find the annual recitation on Trinity Sunday to be a burdensome chore might well consider that from the days of Charlemagne the Athanasian Creed was to be learned by heart by the clergy and recited at Prime every Sunday. That was not enough for the Cluniac monks, who sang it daily.[1] Only at the dawn of the twentieth century did it get reduced in Roman circles from Prime on every Sunday to Prime on the Sundays after the Epiphany and Pentecost. By the middle of the same century it had been further reduced to Prime on Trinity Sunday only.[2] Anglican usage showed a similar deterioration of use, although it has been waning in those circles for the past two centuries.[3]

Prime, of course, was one of the daily offices sung first by monks and later by all clergy. As one of the more minor offices, it was less likely to be attended by laity than Matins or Compline. Thus, through most of the centuries of its use, the Athanasian Creed has been something pastors confessed repeatedly in their devotional life so that it could shape their preaching, while lay people have not used it as much. History would suggest, therefore, that we should not expect the Athanasian Creed to be an integral part of the average lay person’s thinking or devotional life. A wiser practice would be to encourage pastors (and perhaps elders and commissioned ministers of religion) to recite the Athanasian Creed more frequently than once a year (perhaps weekly) while expecting lay people to make use primarily of the Apostles’ Creed in their daily devotions (as Luther suggests) and the Nicene Creed at the Sunday Divine Service. By praying the Athanasian Creed, pastors would imbibe its rich Trinitarian and Christological language, which would help shape their preaching. This practice would not abolish the annual recitation of the Athanasian Creed on Trinity Sunday, but it might be a better way to steep pastors in the creed’s rich doctrine of the Trinity and enable them to communicate its theology to the laity they shepherd.

Who wrote the Athanasian Creed? Certainly not Athanasius, as it is never referred to by him or his contemporaries or even any later person in the Greek-speaking church, at least not until centuries later. Those who read Latin will recognize instantly that it is too Latinate in its phraseology and structure to be a translation of a Greek original. There are clear verbal parallels between the creed and the writings of Ambrose of Milan (†397), Augustine of Hippo (†430), Fulgentius of Ruspe (†533), and theologians of southern France such as Vincent of Lérins († ca. 450), Faustus of Riez († ca. 490), and Caesarius of Arles (†542).[4] But verbal parallelism is not in and of itself determinative. These theologians may have borrowed language from the creed, or the creed may have borrowed language from the theologians, or the creed may have been written by one of them.

When G. Friedrich Bente wrote his historical introduction to the Athanasian Creed as part of the Concordia Triglotta, he could do no more than suggest its origin in southern France between 450 and 600, which was as far as the scholarly consensus at that time was willing to go.[5] It was recognized by then that the Trinitarian language is drawn from that of Augustine’s treatise on the Trinity, although the creed seems to reflect Augustinianism rather than the hand of Augustine himself.[6] The focus of the creed is largely anti-Arian, but directed at a more moderate form of Arianism than the original Arianism, which would indicate that it was directed more against the Goths, such as had settled in Spain and France. Given the many parallels between the creed and theologians of southern France, that provenance seems more likely.

However, in 1931 the eminent French-Belgian patristic scholar Germain Morin discovered a collection of sermons of Caesarius of Arles that included the Athanasian Creed. This proved that not only had Caesarius been familiar with the creed, but that he had promoted it as well and thus the creed must have been written before his death in 542.[7] It is an intriguing possibility that Caesarius himself may have been the author, but it is unlikely, given some stylistic and minor theological differences between Caesarius and the creed. J.N.D. Kelly argues for the following: “the connexion [sic] of the creed with the monastery at Lérins, its dependence on the theology of Augustine, and, in the Trinitarian section, on his characteristic method of arguing, its much more direct and large-scale indebtedness to Vincent [of Lérins], its acquaintance with and critical attitude towards Nestorianism, and its emergence at some time between 440 and the high noon of Caesarius’ activity.”[8]

Two objections are commonly raised against the Athanasian Creed. The first is its damnatory clauses. Liberal Protestantism, Pietism, and even much of Evangelicalism have objected to the notion that a person could be condemned for failing to uphold certain dogmas.[9] Thus, Samuel Schmucker proposed dropping the Athanasian Creed when he offered his American Platform for amending the Augsburg Confession.[10] Most serious Lutherans, though, will recognize that the Scriptures themselves condemn those who teach contrary to the gospel (Galatians 1:8).[11] The second objection is that it teaches a salvation by works. But this objection does not hold up under scrutiny. The language is biblical (John 5:29) and does not contradict the notion that we are saved by faith in Christ apart from our works. It is only by faith in Christ that anyone can do good works. On the Last Day, Christ will point to our good works to demonstrate that we had true faith, while he will point out the lack of good works to demonstrate that the unbelievers had no faith (Matthew 25:31-46). Moreover, this creed was promoted by Caesarius of Arles, who was a firm opponent not only of Pelagianism (overt works-righteousness) but also semi-Pelagianism and organized the Synod of Orange in 529 to condemn it; nonetheless, he saw no false doctrine in the creed on this topic but rather promoted it instead, as we have seen.

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[1] John Norman Davidson Kelly, The Athanasian Creed (Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964), 43; Robert L. Wilken, “Introducing the Athanasian Creed,” Currents in Theology and Mission 6:1 (1979), 5-6.

[2] Kelly, 49.

[3] Kelly, 7, 49-51; Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition [hereafter Pelikan, Credo] (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 324.

[4] Kelly, 24-34.

[5] Concordia Triglotta [hereafter Triglotta] (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 14.

[6] Pelikan, Credo, 435-436.

[7] Germain Morin, “L’Origine du symbole d’Athanase: témoignage inédit de s. Césaire d’Arles,” Revue Bénédictine 14 (1932): 207-219; cf. Kelly, 35-37.

[8] Kelly, 123.

[9] Pelikan, Credo, 488-497.

[10] Pelikan, Credo, 324-325.

[11] Pelikan (Credo, 76-78) rightly notes that pharmacists have to follow prescriptions faithfully to a doctor’s intent or else be barred from their profession; the damnatory clauses in the creed serve a similar function for theologians. Wilken, 9, also points out the need for a church still struggling with a pagan environment to delineate sharply between the God Christians worship and the pagan concepts of deity.

Creeds or Deeds?

As we saw in my last post, institutions (including in some sense the church) are simply formalized sets of relationships. All the phenomena we see happening in institutions, including the church, are to be found in any relationship between human beings. Thus, it is foolish to think that one can avoid problems by eschewing the “institutional church” and creating some freeform church instead. The problems of institutions are simply the problems of interpersonal relationships.

One of the alleged problems of the “institutional church” is that it has put up boundaries called confessions of faith, which determine who is in and who is out. Wouldn’t it be better to be not so exclusive but allow anybody to hold whatever creed they want to? And if we want to draw lines in the sand, wouldn’t it be better to demand a certain set of common behavior rather than a certain set of beliefs?

We ought to begin by acknowledging that all healthy human relationships establish boundaries. Sane people do not stay friends with someone who is continually trying to murder them or burn down their house—or even just trying to make their lives miserable. Of course, we may wish that such people would change their attitudes and be reconciled with us. We need not repay them with the same hatred that they show us, but we still place some distance between them and us in order to keep ourselves safe. Even in good, healthy relationships we try to respect some boundaries. I have great neighbors on either side of me, but there are still fences between their properties and mine. This allows their dogs to have freedom to run around without digging up my garden or yard. The boundaries actually make the experience better for everyone.

It should not be surprising, then, that the Christian church will have to draw certain boundaries. But what should be the basis of those boundaries? Should we ask people to confess a certain set of teachings or should we ask them to behave in a certain way? The second option has become increasingly popular, as people argue that followers of Jesus should imitate His behavior rather than get bogged down in doctrinal disputes. “Deeds, not creeds” has become their motto. But there is a hidden tyranny in drawing the boundaries based on actions. Since no Christian is perfect and each individual struggles with a different set of sins, there is a tendency to draw the lines in such a way that one’s own sinful tendencies are excused while those of others are emphasized. Of course, our Lord established perfection as the only acceptable criterion; we are to be perfectly holy as God is (Matthew 5:48). Drawing the line to favor one set of sins over against another distorts our Lord’s teachings. For this reason, the Christian church has wisely emphasized the habit of repentance rather than the achievement of a certain level of perfection. When it comes to conduct, it is unrepentance (or the concomitant refusal to recognize the difference between right and wrong) that puts one outside the Christian church rather than the committing of any particular sin.

But if repentance is what separates a true Christian from a false one, then a true Christian must possess the sort of knowledge that could lead to repentance. Moreover, those who would teach others what it means to be a Christian must know enough about the truths of God that would lead their flock to repentance. And since Christian repentance also includes faith in Christ as the Savior, Christians (including their pastors) must know who Christ is and what He has done that we might trust in Him. In short, both Christian lay people and their pastors must have some accurate knowledge about Christ’s teachings.

But there is so much to know! The Scriptures are not a small book and it is impossible to plumb their full depths. Moreover, there are often disagreements between Christians as to how the Scriptures are to be interpreted. Who is the hero of the story—the prodigal son or his father? What are we to make of the parable of the dishonest steward (Luke 16:1-9)? Is Galatians the first epistle of Paul to be written or is it 1 Thessalonians? How are we to understand Paul’s argument in Galatians when compared to the Council in Jerusalem recorded in Acts 15? Who are the “superapostles” who opposed Paul in Corinth and what did they teach? What were Luke’s sources that he consulted in writing the gospel? Christians have not come to an agreement on all these questions and many scholars have even changed their minds over the years on these questions. But Christians have understood that disagreement on these and similar questions do not impair fellowship.

That is because creeds and confessions sort out the major questions from the more trivial ones and emphasize the truths that must be held by all Christians and taught by all pastors. The Apostles’ Creed sums up the most important tenets of the Christian faith in a few words. The Nicene Creed adds a more detailed explanation of Christ’s divinity. These creeds, along with the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, have been the basis of instruction for the laity for centuries. The commandments give a sound ethical basis for Christians; the creed outlines the faith; and the Lord’s Prayer sets a pattern for all prayer. Of course, a lay person may well know more than these things and indeed ought to grow in knowledge, but these things are a minimum. Those who refuse to learn them or accept them cannot be numbered among our Lord’s disciples, for they do not keep His word (John 14:23-24).

Pastors, on the other hand, must be held to a higher standard, just as teachers in general are expected to know more than their students. Teachers, after all, have to know not only the subject being taught, but also the common confusions students are likely to have and the means to overcome them. They are not only to know the very basic items, but be able to explain the subject in depth to any perceptive student who asks the harder questions. Therefore, pastors have been asked to pledge to a deeper confession of the faith than lay people have. In the West it began with the Athanasian Creed, but more recently it has included confessions such as the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord. Those who familiarize themselves with them soon realize that they have as their intention how to teach people to know God rightly, to repent and trust in Christ for their salvation, and to grow in godly living. They answer important questions and help pastors to read the Scriptures with an understanding of what matters. But they do not answer every last ethical or exegetical question.

These confessions, then, serve as an appropriate boundary. Those who refuse to repent of their sins and to trust in Christ as the creeds proclaim separate themselves from Christ and His church. Those who refuse to preach Christ as proclaimed in our confessions cannot be permitted to preach in our pulpits or else there could be some real damage done to our souls. To be sure, a person can live and die as a good Christian without having heard of the Apostles’ Creed, just as a pastor may be a genuine Christian without having embraced the Augsburg Confession. But to make sure that future generations know the truth and can preach the truth, creeds and confessions are a real blessing.