In this installment, we will look at the core beliefs that all Christians must have about God, the work of Christ, Scripture, and the future of the universe.

Q. What do you believe as a Christian?

A. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate. He was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into Heaven, and he sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.  Amen.

Q.. What do you mainly learn from these beliefs?

A. First, I learn to believe in the Heavenly Father, who is God, and who made me, and all the world. Secondly, I learn to believe in the Heavenly Father’s Son, Jesus Christ, who is also God, and who redeemed me, and all of humanity. And thirdly, I learn to believe in the Holy Spirit, who also is God, and who sanctifies and empowers me and all of the people God chooses.

Commentary

Part Two of the catechism gives an overview of the beliefs of the Christian faith that one must assent to in order to be a Christian.
First we have a recitation of the Apostles’ Creed. A ‘creed’ (from the Latin for ‘I believe’) is something that Christians recite to state their key beliefs. This creed was either written by the Apostles themselves and passed down orally to their disciples, or, is a faithful summary of their key teachings, whichever is true, the Anglican Church affirms that this creed “ought thoroughly to be received and believed” (Article VIII). After the creed is recited there is a summary of its contents, and both the creed and the summary follow the same basic structure. We will now give commentary on each article of the Apostles’ Creed, though note that we will reserve discussion of the ‘forgiveness of sins’ article for our next installment, which is on the Law and the Gospel.

1. God the Trinity (I believe in God)

First, by affirming that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all ‘God,’ we come to the core doctrine of the Christian faith; that there is one God, who is three Persons. Because this catechism is intended for young people and as a refresher for mature Christians, this is not the place to delve into a deep analysis of how the Trinity works, but we will give a general description. 
The simplest reason for why Christians believe in the ‘Holy Trinity’ is that while Scripture is crystal clear that there is only one God and that God is one Being, Scripture also speaks of a Divine Person called the Father, who is identified as God, a Divine Person called the Son, who is identified as God, and a Divine Person called the Holy Spirit, who is also identified as God. These three Persons are not the same Person (the Father is not the Son for instance), they are distinct from each other. The Son can pray to the Father and the Father can speak to the Son. However, the Son and the Father are both said to be God, and yet, God is one Being. Therefore the Father, Son and Spirit, while being distinct, all fully possess the exact same life and existence. They are the same Being.

Also, Scripture tells us that the Son has always existed, and so has the Spirit, thus it is not a case of God originally having only been the Father, who later makes the Son part of God as well, no, the Son has always existed and has always been God. So what the Church has said then, is that God is one ‘Being’ but three ‘Persons’ and has been this way from all eternity. 

A Christian, especially a young Christian, does not need to understand the Trinity any more than this in order to have a full relationship with God and attain salvation. And so, for those who may not be able to understand the explanations given of the Trinity due to their complexity, we will stop at this point and simply affirm this formula: The Father is not the Son, or the Spirit. The Son is not the Father or the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father or the Son. However, the Father is God. The Son is God. The Spirit is God. The Father, Son and Spirit have always existed, and have all always been God, and this God is one Being. If this does not make sense to human minds, that is because God is far more myserious and awesome than our minds can comprehend, and so this should not surprise us. Faith therefore is our ability to say that despite something not making sense to us we will believe in it anyway. 

For a more detailed explanation of the Trinity, you should read the Athanasian Creed, which is found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. 

2. God the Father (the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth)

The Person of the Father is the source and origin of all that the three Persons do. The Father is the one who sends the Son, for instance. Everything that God does, whether it is writing Scripture, saving your soul, adopting you as children, healing you, etc. comes from and starts from the Father. That is in terms of God’s actions, but it is also true of God’s Being. In Scripture, the Son is said to be the ‘image’ of the Father and the ‘exact representation’ of the Father’s Being. Therefore, the Son’s nature comes from the Father’s nature, but remember, that nature is exactly the same in both of them. The very thing, so to speak, that makes the Father ‘God’ makes the Son ‘God’ to the fullest degree.
This, by the way, is precisely why we call them the Father and the Son, because the Son takes his nature as God from the Father; he takes his ‘godness’ from the Father. 

Since all that God does comes from the Father, so also, everything that we do towards God is directed to the Father. When we pray, we pray to the Father, that is why the Lord’s Prayer is addressed only to the Father and every single prayer in the New Testament is addressed to the Father alone. 

3. God the Son (And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord)

From the all eternity, the Person of the Father has had an image before him, and that image perfectly reflects who he is, and yet, is distinct from him. There is the Father, and there is his image, and they are two different Persons, and yet, are the same Being. The image is not lifeless like a reflection in a mirror, but is an actual Person. The Father loves his image like a Son, because his image comes from him, and also, the image loves the Father as a Son because he came from the Father. And so, we say that there is a Father and a Son, and both have always existed, and both have always loved each other.

The Son being called a ‘son’ does not mean he was created or born but only that his existence comes from the Father, but that has always happened; there was no point in time when he started to come from the Father. For as long as the Father has existed, which is always, the Son has existed, reflecting the Father’s image back to him. But, since the Father and the Son are both the same Being, they share the same life, the same ideas, the same goals etc. If they were physical, we could say that they have the same beating heart. 

The Father loves the Son so much that whenever the Father wants to interact with the world, he does so through his Son. So for instance, if the Father wants to speak to people, it is the Son that speaks, but he says exactly what the Father wants him to say. Because of this, the Son is also called the ‘Word’ because God primarily interacts with us through words. When God created the world, the Father said ‘let there be light’ but when he spoke, it was the voice of the Son that was heard throughout the universe. 

4. Jesus of Nazareth (who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate)

While the Son has always existed, there was a point in time when he was born as a human being, and that was Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was born in ancient Palestine to a woman named Mary in the town of Bethlehem and grew up in a town called Nazareth raised by his mother and a father named Joseph. Between A.D. 30-33 at the time of the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, he had a public ministry that involved performing miracles, excorcisms, preaching, and discipling. His public ministry came to an end with his crucifixion in A.D. 33 under the orders of Pontius Pilate, but after that death, his followers claimed that he rose from the dead in a transformed and immortal body and that he later ascended to Heaven. Christians say that this man Jesus, who truly existed, was God himself.

In particular, we say that he was the Person of the Son (who is God) incarnate as a human. The subject of all of Jesus’ actions was therefore the Son, and thus, God. If Jesus healed you, that meant the Son healed you, which meant God himself healed you. But while Jesus was God, he was also fully human. So while God healed you, it was also a human who healed you. And so, in Jesus himself, God and humanity were united. 

Scripture calls Jesus the ‘Son of God’ and ‘the Son of Man,’ which means that just as Jesus was the true representation of God (he showed us who God truly is) as the Son of God, he was also the true representation of humanity (he showed us who human beings are truly supposed to be) as the Son of Man. Jesus was therefore the only perfect human who ever lived; he perfectly lived up to what we are supposed to be like. Why was Jesus perfect? Because, just as human beings are made in the image of God so also Jesus himself, as the Son, is the image of God! Christians therefore worship Jesus of Nazareth, a man who truly lived, as God, but, we also look to this man as the perfect human and so try and follow in his footsteps and be like him. It is therefore in this regard that we call Jesus our Lord, because we believe that we must obey his teachings and example. Since Jesus lived the perfect life, we believe that he has been given the title Lord and has dominion over our lives.

5. The Truthfulness of Scripture

Everything that we know about Jesus; all that he said and did and all that he was, we know because Scripture tells us. Specifically, the four Gospels record his life, but in the other New Testament books the Apostles that Jesus appointed explain and apply Jesus’ life to us. However, in the Old Testament, we also find countless prophecies that perfectly predicted what Jesus would do, and Jesus himself affirms that the whole Old Testament was true. Jesus’ actions (such as his sacrificial death) only make sense because they come as the climax of the larger story of the Bible, and are preceded by the whole Old Testament.

And so, from our belief in Jesus, comes our belief that the Bible is utterly true and faithfully records and explains to us the things of God. This is because Christians, following Jesus, believe that the whole Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit, who supernaturally enabled human writers to correctly record historical events and the messages of God.
When Christians therefore read the Bible, we read it as though God is truly speaking to us through it, which means we can read it devotionally and worshipfully as God speaking into our lives, or, in a more intellectual way of studying God, the history of his work in the world, and the things God wants us to do.

However, the Bible must all be interpreted in the right way and with context. For instance, the Old Testament tells us not to eat pork but in the New Testament, the purpose of that law had been achieved so now we can eat pork. However, when the Old Testament tells us what sexual behaviours are unacceptable, the New Testament tells us that those must still be followed. We cannot just open the Bible at random and think that we can know exactly what the passage before us means. We have to interpret the Bible in a way that is faithful to the whole Bible and to the teachings of the Church about it. This is why dorks like myself go to Bible college, so that we can study the Bible, interpret it properly, and then educate others about what it all means. Hopefully your priest is someone who did this and respects the Bible properly, but often this is not the case, and so sometimes we might have to take it upon ourselves to learn about the Bible in our own time. 

6. The Atoning Death of Jesus (He was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead)

When Jesus died by being crucified, the Bible tells us that this was not a defeat, but was instead something that Jesus willingly chose to do in order for us to find salvation. There are many different ways that Christians understand the death of Jesus to have saved us, but for this commentary, we will focus on the primary understanding we see reflected in the Book of Common Prayer‘s Eucharistic liturgy (more on what that is in Part Five). I would argue (and will argue it if people want me to) that the Book of Common Prayer mainly understands Jesus’ death to have been an act of atonement for humanity before God.
The word ‘atonement’ means to make ‘at-one’ and implies that there is a division that needs to be healed and a wrong to be made right. Between humanity and God is a division, because all of humanity are sinners who constantly fail to give God the reverence and obedience that he deserves. Our lack of obedience to God is the ‘wrong’ that needs to be made right. Since Jesus was the perfect human and represented all of humanity as the Son of Man (remember, since humans are made in the image of God and Jesus is the Image of God, he represents us) what he did on the cross, was done on humanity’s behalf. Scripture tells us that Jesus’ death on the cross was the ultimate act of obedience to the Father, since he performed that which the Father required, but also, that his death was a sacrifice.

Throughout Scripture, we see God’s people offer God a sacrifice in order to show their devotion to him. When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac (God then stopped Abraham right before he killed Isaac) it was so that by giving up his beloved son Abraham could prove his superior devotion to God. Throughout the life of Israel, God’s people would also destroy things like their choicest animals or grain and offer it to God in the Temple, to show their love for God by giving something up for him. When God saw their devotion, proven through their sacrifice, he would forgive them for the times where they failed to devoutly obey God. 

When Jesus therefore died, he offered his own life to the Father as a sacrifice, to prove his devotion to the Father. Since Jesus was the Divine Son, his life was of infinite worth and could therefore be sufficient to cover an infinite amount of disobedience, and since Jesus was the Son of Man, this sacrifice was performed on all humanity’s behalf. Jesus’ death therefore meant that God the Father forgave us of our sins because our sinless representative made the ultimate act of obedience, righteousness and devotion on our behalf.

However, the Father only will forgive us if we claim Jesus’ death as a sacrifice done for us by having faith in him. If we reject Jesus’ sacrifice by not believing that he was God and that his death was on our behalf, then the Father will not forgive us but instead will punish us for rejecting his beloved Son.  

7. The Victorious Resurrection of Jesus (On the third day he rose again from the dead)

People often ask me why Jesus’ resurrection was so important when people had already been resurrected before, like Lazarus for instance, and they sometimes think that Jesus’ resurrection was just one more miracle he did to show he was God. In fact, Jesus’ resurrection is said to have been essential for our salvation, and St Paul says ‘unless Jesus has been raised to life your faith is worthless’ (1 Corinthians 15:17). So why is it so important? The main thing to remember is that when Jesus was resurrected, he did not go back to being a mortal human. After Lazarus was resurrected, he went on to die once again like everyone else, but in Jesus’ case, he is now incapable of dying. Jesus became immortal. His body became indestructible, incapable of ageing or dying. Jesus defeated death. No human being before or since has ever done this, except for Christ.

The reason why this is so important, is that since Jesus has defeated death, we can have assurance that those who belong to him will also be resurrected into an immortal body just like his as well. 

The ultimate Christian hope, therefore, that in the future we will be risen from the dead and live forever with Jesus in new bodies that will never die, is founded entirely on Jesus’ resurrection. God has shown us that he can, has, and will defeat death once and for all. 

Moreover, in his resurrection Jesus defeated the Devil, who has power over death. Since in himself Jesus has been victorious over the destructive power of the Devil, all those who are baptised into Jesus and united to him can be assured that they too will be victorious over the Devil as well. Christ’s resurrection is then like the first victorious battle that gives our armies the courage to win the war.

8. The Heavenly and Enthroned Jesus (He ascended into Heaven, and he sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty)

After Jesus’ resurrection he ascended to Heaven, where he currently is enthroned. Jesus is still fully human and fully God in Heaven however, so when you pray to Jesus, you are praying to God, but also, to an actual human being. Since Heaven is outside of time, we are told that Jesus is eternally and forever displaying to the Father that he died on the cross and was a slain lamb, which means his sacrifice was not a one-off event but continues to save us. 

Moreover, since Jesus said that wherever he goes, we would go, we believe that once we die, and before Jesus returns to resurrect our bodies on a new Earth, we will go to Heaven to be with Jesus. Heaven is therefore something like a waiting area, we will not be there forever. Instead, we will worship Jesus in Heaven until we will return with him down to Earth once Heaven and Earth become one in the future (see #12 below).

9. The Coming Judgement (He will come again to judge the living and the dead)

When Jesus returns to Earth, before he heals Earth and unites it to Heaven, Scripture tells us that Jesus will judge the Earth. This means that every single person who has ever lived will stand before Jesus and be judged based on the conduct of their lives. If they had faith in Jesus and always repented whenever they sinned, they will be saved and resurrected to be in Jesus’ Kingdom.

If, however, someone rejected Jesus by not believing in him, or, by not striving to obey his teachings, then they will be damned. They will be cast into the lake of fire and never be included in his Kingdom. This scary reality means that we Christians must seek to be faithful to Christ, remembering though that we will fail and sin but so long as we confess these sins we will be forgiven. Also, it means that if we love our neighbours we must try our best to convert them to Christ to save them from the lake of fire. 

We believe that Jesus has the right to judge the world because by living the perfect life he can be justified in his judgement, and, because by remaining sinless and defeating death he has stripped Satan of all power and of Satan’s ability to accuse us of our sins before God. Now, all judgement belongs to the victorious Christ.

10. God the Spirit (I believe in the Holy Spirit)

The Father’s key role is to be the ‘source’ of God. The Son’s key roles are to be the ‘image’ of God who reveals God to us and to be the ‘Word’ who actively performs the Father’s will. The Spirit’s key roles are to be the ‘life’ of God, which means he contains the ‘power’ of God, but also to be the Person who unites the Father and Son together. This does not mean that these Persons are their roles however (the Spirit is not the life and power of God, he is a Person, but those are his roles).

We can call the Spirit the life of God because the Greek and Hebrew words for Spirit both mean ‘breath’, in other words; life. If you ‘gave up your spirit/breath’ that meant you died. 
As the breath of God, it is always by the Spirit’s power that all of God’s actions are completed. When the Son healed people, it was by the breath of the Spirit. When God wrote Scripture, it was by the breath of the Spirit. When Jesus was raised from the dead, it was by the breath of the Spirit. When we pray to God, he hears us by the Spirit’s breath. When we come to believe in Jesus, it is the Spirit’s breath that makes us have faith, by breathing a love for God into our hearts.The Spirit is the kiss of life that brings all of creation into being and heals it. 

The Spirit also unites God together because he is the Spirit of the Son/Jesus, and also, the Spirit of the Father. The Father and Son both share the same Spirit. They share the same breath. The same life. Since the Father and Son love each other, they communicate that love via the Spirit they both share, and so we say also that the Spirit manifests in himself the love between the Father and Son. That is why, when the Spirit is breathed into our hearts, we fall in love with God. Moreover, as well as manifesting a love for God in us, the Spirit also manifests God’s love to us. By the work of the Spirit in our hearts and in our lives and through other people who are filled with him, we can feel God’s love and the presence of Jesus Christ. That is why Jesus calls the Spirit the “Comforter.”

The Spirit is also crucial to our salvation for it is by receiving the Spirit in Baptism that we become the Father’s children, because now we too have the same Spirit of he shares with his Son in us. God will therefore unite his whole family, the Church, together by this one Spirit. The Spirit’s power also helps us to become less sinful and more righteous because the Spirit of Jesus will make us more like Jesus! Finally, it is the Spirit’s power that will resurrect us to immortality just as it was his power that resurrected Jesus.

However, the Spirit is also a Person who can be grieved, or pleased, and sinned against or cooperated with.

11. The Church (the holy Catholic Church)

In the New Testament there is no suggestion whatsoever that one can be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ and not be an active member of the community of faith that is called the Church. But what ought Christians to believe about the Church? What is the Church?

Certainly it is far more than a mere community of people who mutually believe in Christ. In the Gospels we see that the Church is something that Jesus himself institutes, and he appoints people to lead it. We see in Acts and the Epistles that those who lead the Church are given supernatural gifts of the Spirit to help them lead well. We also see that the Church is blessed with the ability to correctly teach and interpret the truth of Scripture.

Finally, it is clear that ever since Jesus has ascended to Heaven, it is through his Church that his presence on Earth continues. The community that is led by Christ’s Spirit are empowered to spread the teachings of Jesus, perform miracles, and guide one another as disciples; in other words, to carry on the mission of Christ. This is why the Church is known as the body of Christ, because, as those who are ‘in Christ’ we become his bodily presence on earth in his absence.

For Anglicans, we define the Church as a “congregation of faithful men in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly Ministered” (Article XIX) which means that at the very core of the Church’s being is its proclamation of truth, and its rituals. 

What does it mean that the Church is empowered to proclaim the truth? In essence, Christians believe that when it comes to matters of supreme importance such as who God is, the Spirit has ensured that the truth will always prevail. For instance, during the 4th Century it was becoming increasingly popular for people to believe that the Son was not the same Being as the Father, but the Church ended up affirming that he was indeed the same Being, and wrote the Nicene Creed to affirm that belief. We believe that this was a Spirit-inspired development.

It would be contrary to Christian belief therefore for you to read the Bible and believe that almost all Christians for 2000 years were wrong about God because you have correctly interpreted what the Bible really says about God for yourself. Were this the case, it would certainly mean that God has not empowered the Church over time to remain in the truth, but we were promised that he would. 

What does it mean that the Church administers the Sacraments? Sacraments will by covered in detail in Part Five of this commentary,  but essentially, it means that the Church is the community that obeys Christ’s command to baptise believers, and, to “do this in remembrance of me” which he said about the Eucharist, otherwise known as the Lord’s Supper or Communion.

Scripture is clear that only those who have been baptised are full members of the body of Christ, which is why the true Church must continue to baptise people into it. As for the Eucharist, Acts and 1 Corinthians tell us that meeting together to take bread and wine, and bless them and administer them as a ritual to “proclaim the Lord’s death” was the centerpiece of the whole Church. The Church, which in Greek simply means ‘assembly’ is the community of baptised believers who ‘assemble’ together for Communion. Without these sacraments, the Church would be more akin to a book-club who also sing together, but with the Sacraments, the Church becomes the way that God bestows his supernatural grace to his people.

12. The Resurrection (the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting)

Finally, Christians believe that a day will come when Jesus will return to Earth and bring with him all of Heaven, including those faithful Christians who went there when they died, and all the armies of angels. Jesus will then bring Heaven and Earth together, they will no longer be separated. This unity of Heaven and Earth will be called the Kingdom of Heaven, where Christ will reign over all of creation as King. In this Kingdom, all faithful Christians will be resurrected physically back into their bodies, but those bodies will have been transformed so that they are immortal. We will then all serve God for all eternity without sin, pain and death getting in the way. All Christians must have this hope.

Something to point out about this, is that Christians are not hoping to escape Earth after death and live in paradise, far away from the struggles of life. Nor do Christians think the physical world, and our physical bodies, are bad and that our souls need to be set free in Heaven from our prison-like bodies in order to live forever and be without sin. All of these ideas are actually pagan, and are not taught anywhere in Scripture.

The hope of Christianity, and for that matter Judaism as reflected especially in the Prophets, is not to escape Earth but to transform it, to fix it. This is why we pray ‘your Kingdom come… on Earth as in Heaven.’ Jesus did not come preaching a Gospel of escape, but a Gospel of renewal.

Our lives are therefore focused on healing a broken world, not on running away from it. Also, as Christians we have a tremendous amount of respect for our bodies, which are ‘temples of the Holy Spirit’ and do not look down on them as something to escape from or as something that is not ‘really’ us. Rather, throughout Scripture is the view that our bodies are an essential part of who we are, and are themselves sacred. That is why sexual morality is so important for Christians, because we believe our bodies matter and that we will have them forever.

And so, we look forward to the time when Earth will be saved, and when our bodies will become even more glorious, because there will be no more death and sin to hold them back.

Conclusion

That concludes Part Two of this commentary, our next installment will look at the Christian moral life as summarized by the Ten Commandments.