I Believe in God: Revisiting the Apostle's Creed

BY REV DAVID J RANDALL

Many people Would concur With that statement – including adherents of other religions and others Who believe that there must be something or someone ‘out there’. The really important question is: who is God and what is he like?

We sometimes hear talk about people ‘of all faiths and none.’ This might mean ‘of all religions or none,’ but there aren’t any people with no faith; even ardent atheists are people of faith – the faith that there is no God. As the Education Officer of the Humanist Society of Scotland once wrote, ‘Humanists have beliefs too’1 and the story is told of a child in an atheist family who asked, ‘Does God know we don’t believe in him?’!

Who is the God in whom Christians believe? That is not to ask which of many gods is the one in whom we believe, as if there is a variety of gods from which to choose. There is only one God (Isaiah 45:6; 1 Timothy 2:5) and he is not a God of our imagination or invention; nor is he (in the title of a 1960s book) ‘The God I Want’ Rather, we are talking about ‘The God Who Is There’ (Francis Schaeffer), the God who has revealed himself to us. He can only be known as he has revealed himself –which he has done in many ways (Hebrews 1:1):

• ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’ (Romans 1:19-20)

• he has revealed himself in history (his story)

• through the homing instinct for him in human hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

• in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1-3)

• and in the Bible (1 Timothy 3:15-16).

The Bible is all about this initiative of God

• in his self-revelation (first part of the Creed)

• in action for our salvation (second part)

• and in making it real in our lives (third part).

The Creed’s first sentence tells us three things about God; he is our Father, he is almighty and he is the Creator of everything that exists.

God The Father

It is wonderful that the word ‘Father’ comes immediately after ‘I believe in God’, because it reminds us that he is not an idol that we have set up or some mythical being that expresses something about our human existence. Nor is he someone or something immanent in nature; worse still, he is not some severe, tyrannical being who can only be feared — as depicted in the Shakespearean character who says, ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods they kill us for their sport.'2

How wonderful to know that God is ‘Our Father.’

It is a common analogy in the Bible — Old Testament as well as New. Psalm 103:13, for example, says, ‘As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.’ Think of the best father you could imagine — loving in every way, kind, generous, etc. — multiply it by the biggest number you can think of, and you’ll still fall short of how wonderful our heavenly Father is.

Of course, some people may have a negative view of fatherhood, because their father was uncaring, harsh or cruel (or the kind whose child scores 95% in an exam and all the father can say is ‘what happened to the other 5%?’). The very best human father would fall far short of what God is, and Ephesians 3 does not model God’s Fatherhood on human fatherhood, but human fatherhood on God’s. It is from God the Father that the concept of fatherhood comes, and the best thing that any earthly father can do is to seek to reflect the Fatherliness of God.

The actor Topol (Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof) was being interviewed on television and at the beginning the interviewer asked, ‘How should I address you? Is it Topol, Mr Topol, or what?’ He responded, ‘Topol is my surname; my first name is Chaim.’ The interviewer asked, ‘Well, what do they call you at home?’ He answered, ‘Abba.’ It is the familial word for father, equivalent to ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy’, and the word is found several times in Scripture, notably in Romans 8:15 where Paul said that Christians have been adopted into God’s family and ‘by him we cry, “Abba, Father”.’ This speaks of the grace of God who gives us the right (John 1:12) to call him our Abba, our Father.

Almighty

The Creed then describes God as Almighty. A children’s chorus says: ‘My God is so big, so strong and so mighty; there’s nothing my God cannot do.’ Nothing? Of course ‘almighty’ does not mean that he could do senselessly impossible things, like making a square circle, but it means that he can do everything that he wills to do. As the angel said to Mary about the virginal conception of Jesus: ‘Nothing is impossible with God’ (Luke 1:37).

This is the answer to despair, whether about the world, the church, or our individual lives. Faith in God’s omnipotence means that we need not despair about society (for all its deference shown to other religions and disdain for Christianity), the church (for all its faults) or our own lives (for all our failures in discipleship and witness).

The early disciples had nothing in the way of worldly power or influence when Jesus commissioned them to go out and change the world. Yet change the world they did. And they did it not by relying on their own strength or wisdom, but through reliance on the strength and guidance of an almighty Father. If we were left on our own, it would be a hopeless task. But we are not left on our own – not if we share the faith of the Creed: ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty.’

Maker Of Heaven And Earth

The Creed then confesses faith in the ‘Maker of heaven and earth.’ Far from God being created by us humans, he is the Creator of everything that exists.

It has become commonplace for the media to imply that such a belief has been abandoned by all reasonable people. At the beginning of a broadcast on life’s beginnings, for example, the presenter explained (yes, explained to viewers) that in the past people needed to believe in a great Designer of the universe, but as science has discovered more and more things, this has become unnecessary. It was stated with all the blandness of an assumption that everyone would accept.

However, the Bible’s first words still stand: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ We are not told everything about how he did so, except to say that it was ex nihilo (from nothing) and per verbum (by his word). He said the word and things came to be.

Joseph Addison’s hymn on creation ends by saying about the wonders of creation:

In reason’s ear they all rejoice and utter forth a glorious voice, For ever singing as they shine, ‘The hand that made us is divine’.

The Bible bids us look at the magnificence, splendour and beauty of the things we see and experience – and praise, love and serve the One who made it all.

Hebrews 1:3 says that he is also the ‘Sustainer of all things by his powerful word.’ He is not a distant Being who wound up creation like a clockwork universe and retreated to his far-off heaven. That is deism, not Christianity. Christianity is about a God who takes a hands-on approach to his creation, sustaining it moment by moment, involved in the lives of his creatures, and in the fulness of time coming into the world in the person of Jesus.

Many people have been conned by the notion that science has destroyed the Bible’s teaching about creation — despite the fact that science is really a child of Christianity; as C. S. Lewis said, people became scientific because they expected law in nature, and they expected law in nature because they believed in a Lawgiver. Science can find out and explain so much, but there are many things that are simply beyond its reach.

The point was made by (the non-believing) genetics professor Steve Jones in a Reith Lecture when he said, ‘Science cannot answer the questions that philosophers and children ask: why are we here, what is the point of being alive, how ought we to behave?’3 This is a refreshing recognition of science’s limitations and of the difference between science and scientism. The Bible has no problems with science, but it teaches us that we cannot live by science alone, we need every word that comes from the mouth of God.

How wonderful to say by God’s own grace, ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.’ •

Rev David J Randall retired from pastoral ministry in 2010 and is a member of Broughty Ferry Free Church

Footnotes

1 Times Educational Supplement, 10.10.08

2 King Lear, 111, iv, 36

3 quoted by D. R. Alexander in Science: Friend or Foe?; Cambridge Papers 4,3 (1995), 2