Christian creeds

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Christian creeds have been around since the Church came into being . A creed , also called Credo or Symbolum ( Latinized from Greek symbolon ), is a concise, fixed summary of the beliefs of Christianity , and was usually discussed and decided at a church council . Such creeds emerged in specific historical situations, for example as a baptismal creed or as a demarcation from doctrines judged as heretical . In a precarious situation (in acute historical, political circumstances, etc.), the Christian creed often acquired the meaning of a 'testimony to faith' (in ancient Greek μάρτυς mártys 'witness' or in ancient Greek μαρτυρία martyría , martyrdom ).

New Testament

The shortest and most popular early Christian creed that is often repeated in the New Testament is:

Κύριος Ἰησοῦς ("Jesus is Lord") This confession also had a political meaning in the Roman Empire, in which the emperor was referred to as κυριος. During the time of the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire , if Christians did not acknowledge the emperor as God by calling him κυριος , as was required of them, then they delivered it to certain death; z. B. Polycarp of Smyrna refusedthis confession and preferred martyrdom . The confession of Jesus Christ often had the status of a final, unsurpassable testimony of faith.

In the Gospels there are statements about Jesus Christ that have a confessional character: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God !" ( Mt 16:16  EU )

"Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world." ( John 11:27  EU )
“My Lord and my God!” ( Jn 20.28  EU ).

One of the oldest Christian summaries of the doctrine of the faith can be found in Paul in 1 Cor 15.3 ff.  EU :

“For above all I delivered to you what I also received: Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and was buried. He was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures, and appeared to Cephas , then to the twelve. After that he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at the same time; most of them are still alive, some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. "

The Philippians hymn is also an early confession ( Phil 2,6–11  EU ):

“[Christ Jesus] was equal to God, but did not hold fast to being equal to God, but emptied himself and became like a slave and like men. His life was that of a man; he humbled himself and was obedient until death, until death on the cross. That is why God exalted him above all and gave him the name that is greater than all names, so that everyone in heaven, on earth and under earth bow their knees before the name of Jesus and every mouth confesses: Jesus Christ is Lord of Glory to God the Father . "

A similar hymn can also be found in ( 1 Tim 3,16  EU ):

"Truly, the secret of our piety is great: He was revealed in the flesh, justified by the Spirit, seen by the angels, proclaimed among the peoples, believed in the world, received into glory."

Confessions of the Old Church

Examples of a baptismal creed are the ancient Roman creed , which should date from the 2nd century, or the baptismal questions of the church father Hippolytus († 236):

“As soon as the person to be baptized has descended into the water, the baptist lays his hand on him and asks: Do you believe in God, the Almighty Father? And the person to be baptized should answer: I believe. And immediately, with his hand on his head, he baptizes him for the first time. And then he asks: Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Spirit out of the Virgin Mary , who was crucified under Pontius Pilate , died, rose alive from the dead on the third day and rose to heaven , for Right of the Father who is to come to judge the living and the dead ? And when he said: I believe he should be baptized a second time. Again he asks: Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, in the holy church and in the resurrection of the flesh? The person to be baptized should say: I believe. And so he is to be baptized a third time. "

The baptismal confessions of the Eastern Church were also the basis for the Confession of Nicaea ( 325 ), with which the Church distinguished itself from Arianism , and for the Nicano-Constantinopolitanum ( 381 ), which defined the doctrine of the Trinity . In addition, the apostolic creed based on the ancient Roman creed came into use in the western church .

The Confession of Christ of the Council of Chalcedon ( 451 ), which formed the basis for the further development of Christology (see Chalcedony's Creed ), is also essential .

The Athanasian Creed , dating from the sixth century, is also one of the great creeds of the Western Church .

Confessions of the Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Church

The Orthodox Churches refer to creeds as teaching of the faith , by which they mean the same thing. The most important creed is the Nicano-Constantinopolitanum in its original form without the Filioque . The Apostolic Creed, derived from Latin, is not in use in the Orthodox Churches, but it does not contain anything with which the Orthodox Churches do not agree. The Confession of Christ of the Council of Chalcedon is also important for the Eastern Orthodox churches .

Further confessions only emerged when dealing with other religions and denominations. This includes the confession of Patriarch Gennadius Scholarius , in which he laid out the Christian faith for the sultan after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the confession of Petro Mohyla (Peter Mogilas) 1643, which was a response to the Roman Catholic and Protestant confessions, the confession of Dositheus on the occasion of the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672, where the faith of the Orthodox Churches was summarized similarly to that of the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent . For the Russian Orthodox Church, the catechism of Patriarch Plato II and the catechism of Metropolitan Filaret from 1839 are decisive statements of faith.

During the Reformation and during the Counter-Reformation , the Roman Catholic Church once again summarized its teaching. Authoritative from this period are the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent and the Professio fidei tridentina of Pius IV from 1564 of the Trenton Creed . The liturgy of the Roman rite includes either the Nicano-Constantinople or the apostolic creed . On June 30, 1968, Pope Paul VI proclaimed the creed of the people of God .

Confessions of the Reformation

Confessions were written during the Reformation , partly to have them sanctioned by a government.

Lutheran Confessions

The fundamental Lutheran creed is the Confessio Augustana (Augsburg Confession) , written by Philipp Melanchthon in 1530 on the basis of the Schwabach articles . The theologically similar Confessio Bohemica , (Bohemian Confession) was written to have the evangelical confession approved by the emperor. Another variant was the Confessio Tetrapolitana .

Reformed Confessions

The first Reformed creed were the 67 articles by Ulrich Zwingli , which were approved by the Zurich Council in 1523. In 1528 the Bern Council declared the ten theses confirmed by the disputation , which Berchtold Haller and Franz Kolb had written on the basis of Zwingli's formulations, to be the teaching standard. The first Basel Confession , drafted by Johannes Oekolampad and the final version by Oswald Myconius , was published by the Basel Council in 1534. The first Geneva catechism " Instruction et Confession de Foy dont on use en l'Eglise de Genève " from 1536 comes from John Calvin , which was followed in 1542 by the second Geneva catechism " Le Catéchisme de l'Église de Genève ".

The First Helvetic Confession of 1536, on which Heinrich Bullinger , Wolfgang Capito , Martin Bucer and Leo Jud collaborated, was the first Reformed confession that had more than local significance. In 1549 the Consensus Tigurinus developed by Calvin and Bullinger was created, which was accepted by both the German-speaking (Zwinglian) and French-speaking (Calvinist) Reformed churches in Switzerland. The Second Helvetic Confession by Heinrich Bullinger , written in 1562, and the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 are the most widely accepted confessions in the Reformed churches.

Anabaptist Confessions

Front page of the Schleitheim article

The Schleitheim Confession , signed in 1527 on the occasion of a secret Synod of the Anabaptists in Schleitheim , Switzerland, was written by Michael Sattler . It formed the first fully formulated confession of the evangelical Anabaptist movement.

Post-Reformation Confessions

Baptist Confessions

The Baptists (in Germany: Evangelical Free Churches ) have formulated a number of creeds in the course of their history. The oldest creed was made around 1689, the youngest (in German) 1977. A curiosity is the "Creed of the Evangelical Baptist Churches in America, Great Britain, Hamburg and Jever" written by Johann Ludwig Hinrichs in 1840 . Baptist denominations served primarily as legitimation before state and church authorities. Today they are mainly used as a basis for interdenominational conversation. They do not play a role in the life of the Baptist churches; here the principle only applies to writing!

Confessions of the Mennonites

In an effort to reunite the fragmented communities of the Mennonites that had emerged from the Anabaptist movement , several Mennonite confessional writings emerged from the end of the 16th century, such as the Concept of Cologne from 1591 or the Korte Confessie des Jan Cents from 1630. In 1632, 51 representatives of especially Flemish congregations in Dordrecht, the Dordrecht Confession , which was later adopted by the Mennonites in southern Germany, Alsace or in the newly formed Mennonite churches in North America.

Confession of the New Apostolic Church

The Creed of the New Apostolic Church consists of ten articles of faith, the first three of which deal with the Trinity , the next two with the Apostle ministry , the next three with the sacraments , the penultimate with the promise and the last with the attitude towards the state and authorities .

Seventh-day Adventist Confession

The Seventh-day Adventist Church have summarized their creed in 28 beliefs.

Social commitment of the Methodist Church

In addition to the old church creeds, the Methodist Church has a social creed that is part of its teaching basis.

Modern creeds

In the twentieth century, confessions emerged that specifically dealt with the present.

Denominations

The Barmer Theological Declaration of 1934 delimited the evangelical confession of the professing church from National Socialism . Unlike the Reformed side, Lutherans (e.g. Hermann Sasse , Werner Elert ) emphasized in this context that this is only a common theological declaration, not a confession.

The Evangelical Methodist Church wrote a social creed in 1972 , which, together with the Apostolicum and Nicenoconstantinopolitanum, is one of the official creeds of the church.

Various Baptist creeds emerged between 1689 and 1977. More on this under Baptist Confessions .

In 1950 the Christian Manifesto of the Chinese "Three-Self-Reform Movement" was created , which reflects the situation of the church in the communist People's Republic of China . In 1951 the Indonesian Protestants wrote their "Creed of the Protestant Christian Batak Church" and in 1960 it came into being Masai creed of the community of the Holy Spirit in eastern Nigeria, which transfers the Christian faith into the African cultural context:

“We believe in the One High God who created the beautiful world and all that is good in it out of love. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on earth. We knew this High God in the dark and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the Bible , that he would save the world and all nations and tribes. We believe that God kept his promise by sending his Son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a small village, who left home and was always on safari, doing good people healed by the power of God, taught about God and people, and showed that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed to a cross with hands and feet and died . He was in the grave, but the hyenas didn't touch him, and on the third day he rose from the grave. He rose to heaven. He is master. We believe that all of our sins are forgiven through him. All who believe in him must repent of their sins and be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live according to the rules of love, and share the bread together in love to bring the good news to others until Jesus comes again . We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives We believe that. Amen . "

Religious churches

Some Christian churches do not prescribe confessions, for example the Evangelical Reformed churches in Switzerland - where the obligation to a specific confessional text was abolished in the context of the apostolic dispute in the 1870s - the Quakers or the Baptists .

literature

  • John Norman Davidson Kelly: Early Christian Creeds , 1982, ISBN 058249219X .
  • Jaroslav Pelikan : Credo. Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition . 2003, ISBN 0300093888 .
  • Jaroslav Pelikan , Valerie Hotchkiss (eds.): Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition . Four volumes with CD, 2003, ISBN 0300093918 (A collection of Christian creeds from the New Testament to the Masai Creed of 1960 and Ad tuendam fidem by John Paul II, English).
  • August Hahn, Adolf von Harnack , Georg Ludwig Hahn: Library of symbols and rules of faith of the old church . 1897.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Norbert Brox : Witness and Martyr. Investigations into early Christian testimony terminology. Kösel-Verlag, Munich 1961.
  2. ↑ In the NT, Jesus Christ bears the title Lord (kyrios). Did Jesus actually claim to be God? - 1.3.4. Documentation in the NT . Retrieved February 15, 2015.
  3. ^ Martyrdoms - Martyrdom of St. Polycarp - chap. 8 . Library of the Church Fathers. Retrieved February 13, 2015.
  4. ↑ Cf. Reformed Churches Bern-Jura-Solothurn.:. Eglises réformées Berne-Jura-Soleure: Confessions. Retrieved May 23, 2017 .