I Believe, Too

By Eric Von Salzen

[This is a sequel to “I Believe . . .”, posted on Anglican Centrist on November 28, 2008. Soon to be a major motion picture.]

Tom: So, this business in the Creed about believing in “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church”. What’s THAT all about?

The Godfather: Oh, we’re back to that, are we?

Tom: Sure, you said you’d . . . .

The Godfather: . . . talk about it? Of course. What’s your problem?

Tom: Well, for one thing, the word “one”. I understand that in the Fourth Century, when the Creed was written, it was probably accurate to say that there was “one” Christian church. The Emperor Constantine had legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, and then gone so far as to make it the favored religion of Empire. At that time, it really was “one” church. But since then the church has divided over and over again: the division between the Roman Catholic west and the Orthodox east, in the Middle Ages all the Popes and Anti-Popes, and then the Protestant Reformation. Today there are scores if not hundreds of Christian denominations, many of which disagree strongly with the beliefs and practices of others. You can’t very well believe in “one” Christian church today unless you close your eyes to reality, can you?

The Godfather: I’m not so sure that you can say there was “one” church in that sense in the Fourth Century, either. After all, the whole point of the Council of Nicea, after which the Creed is named, was to deal with a disagreement between Arius and Bishop Alexander of Alexandria about the nature of Christ’s divinity.

Tom: Sure, but the Council of Nicea resolved that dispute in favor of the orthodox position, and condemned Arianism as a heresy. So then you have “one” church.

The Godfather: But Arianism didn’t go away, even if Arius himself was rejected. There were quite a few Arians still around.

Tom: Hey, that’s right. I’d forgotten that. Greg Jones says in Beyond Da Vinci that Constantine was baptized by an Arian bishop, years after the Council of Nicea rejected Arianism.

The Godfather: Quite so. There had been disagreements within the church before Nicea, involving docetism, ebionism, gnosticism, Sabellianism, donatism, and so on and so forth. Nicea didn’t end all disputes – as you say, it didn’t even end Arianism. After Nicea there were councils to deal with Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, Pelagianism, and on and on. And although the councils did define orthodoxy, there were dissenters from the orthodoxy, who went merrily on believing doctrines that the councils had condemned as heresy. They were either tolerated within the main body of the church, or they established their own separate congregations.

Tom: OK, but the Christian establishment didn’t consider these dissenters to be Christian, did they? They weren’t Christians, they were heretics. And if the Pelagians, say, weren’t really Christian, then the Pelagian churches weren’t Christian churches, so their existence didn’t prevent the Christian church from being “one” church. The “church” was those who held to orthodox beliefs, and therefore there was “one” church.

The Godfather: That’s very interesting. If what the Nicene Creed meant in the Fourth Century was that there’s “one” church because only those who agree with the Christian establishment counted as a “church”, then we could say the same thing in the Twenty-First Century, couldn’t we? We could say that there’s “one” church made up of those who agree with us, and any so-called “Christians” who disagree with us aren’t really a church, at all. That way there’s only “one” church, and we’ve solved that problem with the Creed. Happy now?

Tom: No, I’m not. I mean, look, it’s no big thing for me if you exclude Arians, or Pelagians, or Gnostics from the idea of the “church”. I don’t know any of those folks. Probably they’re just weirdos. But I’m not happy if the ones being excluded from the definition of the “one” church are, say Baptists, or Congregationalists, or, you know, any other sort of Christian whose practices or beliefs are a bit different from my own.

The Godfather: You might be surprised at how many Arians, Pelagians, and Gnostics you know, Tom, many of them right in your very own Episcopal parish. Some of them are even ordained. But let’s not go there.

Tom: No, please, let’s not. I’m just trying to figure out whether I can sincerely recite this part of the Creed.

The Godfather: OK. Maybe this will help us with that effort. I was trained as a lawyer. Lawyers are taught that, when you try to interpret a word in a statute or a contract, you should read it in its context, that is, you should read the entire phrase or passage that the word appears in. The interpretation of the word must make sense in that context.

Tom: So to understand what “one” church means, we should consider the whole phrase “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church”?

The Godfather: That’s what your lawyer would tell you.

Tom: OK. Let’s try that. I’ll start with “catholic”, which I understand means “universal”.

The Godfather: So it does, although as applied to Christianity it’s typically been understood to exclude heretics. St. Ignatius of Antioch, a personal favorite of mine, used the term “catholic” to mean the universal church, but he excluded the docetists, whom he considered “beasts in human form”. Then, St. Augustine . . . .”

Tom: Yes, sure, everyone’s going to exclude someone from the “universal” church, but it seems to me that if you say you believe in “one” “universal” church you can’t very well justify the “one” by defining too narrowly who is part of the church; if you do, you undercut your claim that the church is “catholic”.

The Godfather: That makes sense. How about “holy” and “apostolic”. If you follow the lawyer’s approach you need to deal with all the words in the passage.

Tom: OK, OK. “Holy”. It means “divine” or “sacred”.

The Godfather: Right on. But it means “divine” or “sacred” in two senses. First, it can describe the nature of God. God is holy. No human being or human institution can be “holy” in that sense, can it?

Tom: No. In fact there’s a hymn that says of God “only thou are holy.”

The Godfather: It says the same thing in Revelation. The second sense of “holy”, the sense that refers to things human, means not divine or sacred directly , but related to the divine or sacred.

Tom: I see your point. A human person or institution can’t be holy in the way that God is holy, but a human may have a relationship to God, by doing God’s work or being devoted to God’s service, and thus can be said to be holy in the second sense – as in the "holy prophets", or the "holy temple". I guess that’s the sense in which the church could be said to be holy.

The Godfather: Does that help interpret what the “one” church is?

Tom: It does, now that I think of it. It undermines the argument that you can get to “one” church by excluding those who disagree with you. If the Creed spoke of a “virtuous” church or a “pious” church, then maybe that would be consistent with the idea that only those who hold a particular set of beliefs constitute the “one” church. But the Creed says the “one” church is a “holy” church, and you don’t get to be “holy” as a result of doctrine or practices. If you get to be “holy” at all, it’s by having or seeking a relationship to God.

The Godfather: Well, you’ve considered three of the four descriptions of the church, but it seems to me you can’t avoid grappling with “apostolic” any longer.

Tom: Yeah, I guess you’re right. The problem is, I really don’t want to say that the “one” church I believe in has to be one of the churches that follows the apostolic succession. That would exclude an awful lot of Christians.

The Godfather: We Episcopalians and other Anglicans think the apostolic succession is pretty important, and so do our brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox and several other churches.

Tom: Sure, I think it’s important, too, but I can’t accept that it’s so essential that the “one” church in the Creed has to exclude the Baptists and Congregationalists and all those other Protestant denominations that abandoned the apostolic succession when they abandoned Rome.

The Godfather: Not liking a conclusion doesn’t make it wrong, though, does it?

Tom: No, but it does provide an incentive to reach a different conclusion.

The Godfather: Spoken like a lawyer. Can you support a different conclusion in this case?

Tom: Hmm. Yes, I can. The Creed says the “one” church is “apostolic”, but it doesn’t say it follows the apostolic succession. It seems to me that a church can be apostolic in other ways. A church can be apostolic if it traces its doctrines and practices back to the apostles’ teachings, back to the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, even if it can’t trace its clergy back to the Apostles. In the Baptismal Covenant we say we will "continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship".

The Godfather: Like Liza Doolittle, I think you’ve got it! That’s a perfectly plausible interpretation of “apostolic”. It’s not even a stretch.

Tom: Good, but who’s Liza Doolittle?

The Godfather: Young fellow, one of these days we’ve got to get you a cultural education. Theology isn’t everything. But let’s stick to the subject. You’ve now considered the whole phrase, “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church”, from the Nicene Creed. Do you have a sense now of what it means, and can you affirm it?

Tom: I do have a sense of what it means. I don’t think it refers to any religious institution that actually exists today. I think it refers to a church that is yet to come, a single church that one day will incorporate all true Christians. When we say in the Creed that we “believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church”, we are identifying an ideal and a goal to strive for. It’s like saying, in the Pledge of Allegiance, that the United States is “one Nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all”; we don’t really claim to have achieved liberty and justice for all, but those ideals are part of what our country is all about, they are what we aspire to. "One holy, catholic, and apostolic church" is what Christians hold up as an ideal to aspire to.

The Godfather: And you can affirm that? You can sincerely say, “I believe” in that kind of church?

Tom: Yes, I can.

The Godfather: Well, that’s fine then.

Tom: Is that the interpretation you were leading me towards?

The Godfather: I wasn’t trying to lead you anywhere. We were just having a discussion.

Tom: Well, OK, but do you think that interpretation is right?

The Godfather: It’s a reasonable interpretation, and it works for you. That’s as right as things like this get.

Tom: But do you interpret the phrase that way?

The Godfather: I interpret it a little differently.

Tom: How?

The Godfather: To me, the phrase “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church” doesn’t refer to an ideal church to which we aspire, but to a present reality. It refers to all the Christian people of the Earth, of all denominations, and without regard for all their various disagreements with each other. All of us are “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church” right now, even though we so often don’t act like it. When the Prayer Book says, “we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people”, that’s another way of saying, “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church”.

Tom: Interesting, but I like mine better.

The Godfather: That’s fine, you’ve got every right. The problem I personally have with your interpretation is that it could mean someday that there actually will be only one church to go to.

Tom: And what would be wrong with that?

The Godfather: It might not be an Episcopal church. And if it isn’t an Episcopal church, you know the music won’t be as good.