CREED
CREEPING THINGS
517
guarded by a sok-iiin recital of sacred facts. In both respects it is distiii^lshed from the relifrion of revelation. This rests upon facts, which have to be perpetually made visible, and upon an inter- l)retatiiin of those facts, without which they lo.se their vahie and power as a basis for religion. This is true b^itli of ()T and NT sla<;es in revelation, but it is in the latter only that we can lie said to see the first approaches to the formation of a creed. The Ten \Vords, with their demand for monolatry, if not their proclamation of monotheism, might be regarded as the ' symbol ' of the ancient religion : the Sliema — Hear, O Israel, J" our God is one J ' — in l)t (i' is the nearest approach to the enunciation of a doctrine. In NT there are various more distinct indications, sometimes of the existence, sometimes of the contents, of what would now be called a creed. The emphasis which Jesus lavs upiin faith in Him.self makes Mini, naturally, tlie l>rincipal subject in these. The Cliristian creed is a confession of faith in Him ; there is nothing in it which is not a more or less immediate inference from what He is, or teaches, or does. The early confession of Nathanael (.In l*'-*), ' Kabbi, thou art the Son of tiod ; tlinu art the King of Israel,' is the germ of a creed. There is probably more, thongh not everything, in Peter's confession at Caesarea I'hilippi (Mt 16''0, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.' The exclamation of Thoma.s in Jn 20'''» goes further still. We may infer from such ])assagesas 1 Co 12* (' Jesus is Lord ') and Uo 10'-* (' If thnushalt confess with thy mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead '), that a confession of the exaltation of the crucilied Jesus was the earliest form of Christian creed. Cf. Ac 2"*. Some such confession seems to have been connected from the beginning with the administration of baptism. This appears from the ancient interpolation in Ac 8'^' in wliich the eunuch is made, before his baptism, to say, ' I believe that Jesus ("lirist is the Son of God ' ; but still more from Mt 28''-'. The formula, ' into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy .Spirit,' which is here prescribed for baptism, is undcmbtedly the outline on which both the We.stern (Apostolic) and the Kastern (Nicene) symbols were moulded ; and candidates for baptism were at a very early date required to profess their faith, sometimes in the very words of those .symbols, .sometimes in forms virtually equivalent to them. (See 15 vi'TisM.) It ha.s indeed been pointed out that where baptism is mentioned historically in NT, it is ' into the name of the Lord Jesus' (Ac 8'" 19' etc.), not into the triune name of Mt 28" ; but the surprise of St. Paul in Ac 10^ that any one could have been baptized without hearing of the Holy .Spirit, is fair evidence that the Holy Spirit teas mentioned whenever Christian baptism was dispensed (observe the force of oSi' in Ac 10'). Expansions of this trinitarian formula constituted what Iremeus calls ' the canon of the truth which one receives at baptism' (Iren. J/xr. 1. x. 1, and the note in Harvey's ed. vol. i. p. 87 f.). Such expansions, however, are hardly to be found in NT. The brief summaries of Chri.stian fundamentals are usually of a ililTerenl character. Thus St. Paul mentions, as the elements of his go.spel in 1 Co lij^'' Chri.st's death for sins. His burial, and His resurrection. In 1 Ti ;i"' there is what is usually considered a liturgical fragment, defining at least for devotional purpo.ses the contents of 'tlie mystery of gndliness,' the open secret of the true religion. There the lir.st emphasis is laid on the Incarnation — He who wa.s manifested in the fle.sli ; and the last on the Ascension— He who was received up in glory. As in the individual conlessions mentioned above, Christ is the subjeet throughout. It is difficidt to say whether the summaries of his gospel in which
' '■onirinht, 1S9S, hi, cliarlei Si-rilmer'n Srtm
St. Paul delights, sometimes objective as in Ro W; sometimes subjective a-s in 2 Th 2'''f-, Tit H*-'', in- fluenced the formulation of Christian truth for catechetical purposes, or were themselves due to the need for it ; but it is obvious that outlines of gospel teaching, such as the apostles delivered everywhere, must soon have been required and supplied. Such an outline may be referred to in 2 Ti 1'** — vnoTviroiaiv exc vytaivdm-wv \6y(i}v — though it may well be the case that something is denoted much more copious than anything we call a creed : a catechist's manual, for instance, such as might contain the bulk of one of our gospels. It is usual to assume that by TrapadrjKTj or irapaKarad-qHT) ( 1 'lii C-', 2 Ti 1''') is meant 'the faith once delivered to the saints,' in the sense of a creed or deposit of doctrine ; and though good scholars dispute this, and suppose the ref. to be to Timothy's vocation as a minister of the gospel, the a.ssumption is probably correct. For in the first passage the rapadriKr) is opposed to • profane babblings and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith ' ; and in the second, it is evidently parallel to the ' form ' or ' outline of sound words.' There are several passages in which St. Paul uses the word K-f/pvy/xa to denote the con- tents of his gospel (Ko 16-'', Tit 1^ Krtpvyp.a 8 i-ma-TeiSrip ^t!>) in a way which suggests that idea of the gospel which woidd naturally find embodi- ment in a creed. The tuttos SiSaxv^ of Ro 6'" is evidently wider than anything we mean by creed. There is one passage in NT (He 6'f) in wluch the elementary doctrines of the Christian religion are enunu'iated, partly from a subjective point of view (repentance and faiih), partly more object- ively (resurrection and judgment). In one place the reality of the Incarnation is expressly asserted as the foundation of the Christian religion, and as a test of all 'spirits,' in a tone which had immense influence im early Christian dogma (1 Jn 4-''). The creeds of Christendom go back to these small be- ginning.s. The tendency to produce them is plainly as old as the work of Christian preaching and teaching ; and their legitimate use, as all these NT passages suggest, is to exhibit and giuird the truth as it has been revealed in and by .Tesus. If it be true that the dogma of Christianity is the Trinity, and that this is the central content of the creeds, it nuist be remembered that the trinitarian con- ception of God depends upon the revelation of the Father, and the gift of tlic Sjiirit, both of which are dependent on the knowledge of the Son. In other words, it is truth 'as truth is in Je.sus.' But on this view of the content of the creeds, we should have to refer for the Scripture basis of them to such pa.ssages (besides those quoted above) as 1 Co 12*-<>, 2 Co 13'*, Kph 2i», Jude ^-■", Jn 14-1(1. Apart from the authenticity of Mt 281", these are suflicient to show how instinctive is the combina- tion of Father, Son, and Spirit in the thought of NT writers, and how completely the problem is set in Christian experience to which the Church doctrine of the Trinity, as embodied in the Nicene- Constantinopolitan creed, is an answer. The his- torical, as oppo.sed to theological, statements in the creeds claim to rest on direct Scripture authority.