Why Do We Do What We Do?

Pastor Brian Lays

Why do we do what we do? A column to answer questions about worship: Why do we recite other creeds, not just the Apostles’ Creed, after the sermon?

The Apostles’ Creed is surely the best-known confession of faith. Like the Nicene Creed, its usage is wide-spread across the Christian faith, but it is shorter than the Nicene, lending itself to memorization or study in Sunday School, and of course, recitation in worship. Many of you, like me, grew up knowing it by heart, perhaps from sheer repetition.

In worship, after the sermon, we come to the “Affirmation of Faith.” The purpose of this liturgical moment is to “confess the faith of the church.” In doing so, the “proclamation of the word” (the sermon) is, in a certain sense, tested, or measured, against the confessional documents of the church. It is here that the Apostles’ Creed often appears.

The Catholic and Orthodox traditions place greater authority in “church tradition” than most Protestant denominations do, what with our emphasis on scripture alone (sola scriptura) as the only “unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ.” However, we do not ignore church tradition altogether. In fact, our Presbyterian Church USA Book of Confessions contains twelve confessional documents to which we have collectively assigned a certain degree of authority, not equal to scripture, but of greater import than the whims or any individual preacher or teacher.

The Apostles’ Creed is one of these confessions, but it is one among many. The Book of Confessions contains confessions of the early church (the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds), confessions from the Reformation period (such as the Scots’ and Westminster Confessions), and confessions from the last century (such as the Theological Declaration of Barmen and the Brief Statement of Faith). As a whole, the Book of Confessions demonstrates that the church in every age must confess its unchanging faith in Christ in the midst of the changing circumstances and challenges of contemporary life.

While the Apostles’ Creed does a marvelous, succinct job of proclaiming the foundational tenants of Christian faith, the other creeds, confessions, and catechisms are important, too, and often contain more detailed elaboration of certain doctrines or subjects than we find in the Apostles’ Creed. (The Second Helvetic Confession, for instance, comprises 66 pages of the Book of Confessions.)

When pastors, elders, or deacons are ordained to their respective ministries, one of the vows they vows they must affirm has to do with our denomination’s confessions. They are asked, “Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?”

Those of us who write liturgy try to include words from each of the confessions at least once a year. In the end, the Apostles’ Creed still receives much more attention than, say, the Confession of 1967—and rightfully so. Still, the Affirmation of Faith in worship enables us to give all the confessions, not just the Apostles’ Creed, some important public recognition and review.