The Early Apostles’ Creed and Gnosticism part I

In the next few posts, I want to take a look at the Apostles’ Creed and how it was used in marking out the true church against heresy in the opening centuries of the church. It’s final form which we have today is certainly post-Nicean, completed in the 5^th century, yet it contains strands of a creed that dates back probably to the 2^nd century ca. 150 AD. The particular use of it seems to be to summarize the Christian faith in accordance to what was believe about God over and against specific heresies of the time such as Gnosticism and Marcion. It is against these two specifically I will contrast with the Creed. The Creed begins with the words “I believe,” in Latin Credo, and in Greek Pisteuw. We get our word “creed” from this latin word credo, which essentially denotes something as a statement of faith. In this post, I will be using an early 2^nd century creed that most likely served as the backbone for what we now have as the Apostle’s Creed. The text is as follows:

“I believe in God the Almighty Father,
And in Christ Jesus His Son,
who was born of the virgin Mary,
crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried,
who arose from the dead on the third day,
ascended into the heavens,
sits at the right hand of the Father,
From whence He shall come to judge living and dead,
And I believe in the Holy Spirit,
And the resurrection of the flesh.”

“I believe in God, the Almighty Father.“

The first article of the creed states a belief in God, the Almighty Father. This does three things: 1) It starts the creed off with the first part of a trinitarian formula, 2) it uses the word ‘Father’ to exhibit the personal relationship with God, and 3) declares God to be ruler over all things.

The Trinitarian formula, though not formalized in the second century, is plainly seen here. The Creed announces belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Even in the early church, a form of heresy against the trinity sprung up called Modalism. The Modalists saw God as one person who took on the “roles” or “modes” of the Father, then the Son at the incarnation, and then the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. According to this view, God can only manifest Himself as one of these three modes at a time. The structure of the trinitarian formula in the Apostles’ Creed is suggestive, and rightfully so, of the three coeternal and coexistent persons of the one true God. “I believe in God the Father, andJesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

God is a father, both to Jesus in the incarnation (though He has always existed, prior to the incarnation), and to us when we are saved. This use of the word Father promotes a personal relationship between God the creator, and we the creation. We should note that Gnosticism as a movement was highly varied in beliefs. Though there are many many schools of thought Gnosticism, we can pick out some particulars that seem to run through each school. One of those particulars was that God was impersonal. Gnostics believed that God created spiritual beings, or “emanations,” called “Aeons” (the terminology is different throughout schools, but the idea is the same). These spiritual beings were in pairs of male and female, from whom would come other emanations. One such being, named Sophia (usually), emanated on her own, which caused the creation of a demiurge. The demiurge, who functions much like satan, was the one who created the world. The gnostics viewed matter and material as evil, and thus would not ascribe creation to the true God. This creates a gulf between us and God that the early Christians rejected. Thus, use of the word Father to promote a personal relationship excludes Gnosticism from the true faith.

Marcion, who would later be catergorized as Gnostic, also held to this view. He claimed that the God of the Old Testament couldn’t not be the loving Father of Jesus as shown in the New Testament, and he ascribed the role of YHWH in the OT to Satan, and the role of the serpent in the garden of Eden to God who was trying help Adam and Eve gain “gnosis” (knowledge). This secret knowledge would help them escape the evils of materialism and matter (the foundational belief of Gnosticism).

Since Gnostics hated matter and saw creation as evil, they would have also hated the inclusion of the word “almighty.”  This is because the word used is the Greek word pantokrator, which literally means “all ruling.”  If God rules over all things, that includes all of creation, including all matter. As stated above, Gnostics, including Marcion, had trouble reconciling God and fallen creation, so they found ways to attribute it to others.  This statement affirms the churches belief that God was creator, and maintains sovereign rule over all creation.

“And in Christ Jesus His Son, who was born of the virgin Mary,“

Gnosticism was so varied in beliefs, there were “Jewish” gnostics, “Christian” gnostics, and so forth. In “Christian” Gnosticism, one of the Aeons had the name “Christ” who functioned in a savior role, However, since gnosticism as a movement hated the materialism, this “Christ” was sent not in the incarnation where he would become flesh, but as a spiritual entity. Consider this quote from a Gnostic Text:

“[When touching Christ] I met with a solid and material body, and at other times, when I felt him, the substance was immaterial as if it did not exist at all.” – The Acts of John

And this from Ptolemaeus, a Gnostic teacher:

“Christ … passed through Mary as water passes through a pipe” and that during his time on earth Christ did not enter into an intimate relationship with the material realm “for matter is not capable of being saved” -quoted from Defence of the Truth, pg. 36

The way of salvation that this “Christ” brought was not through an atonement of sin, but through the secret knowledge he imparted . There is no place for atonement in Gnosticism, nor could there be if Christ was not incarnate. This was a wholesale rejection of Christianity. Thus the inclusion of the incarnation in the creed was a wholesale rejection of Gnosticism by the Church.

In the next entry, we will look at the statements on crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.