To think on this
topic rightly we must initiate with the first confession the Church was given.
While there are many creeds, which are staring points for the Church this
beginning confession is the foundational confession, a confession that all true
Christians make in their life. “All authority in heaven and on
earth has been given to me. Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, teaching
them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you
always, to the end of the age.”[1]
This (and the other recordings of the Great Commission) contains the basic
confession of the Christian faith. The original Christian confession is the
confession of Baptism, and within this confession is the depicter of God as the
Father.
It
is in this confession of Baptism that a believer is baptized and confesses to
the Church, to the entire earthly and spiritual realm, their allegiance to the
Christian God and the Christian God alone. Therefore in the baptismal process,
in that distinct, specific confession is the affirmation that God is Father,
that he is not Mother or some odd mixture of both. Thus the Creeds are built
off of this original confession and all other confessions must carry as a part
of them this base confession of our belief as Christians.
It
is now, therefore, proper to dive into some of the early Creeds of the faith,
those confessions that carry within themselves the above confession confessed
at our baptism. (It would be safe to assume that any confession that does not
carry this basic confession is not Christian.)
“I
believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,”[2]
the Apostle’s Creed begins. One of the earliest confessions of the Christian
faith bears in its first line the description of God as Father. Mirroring what
Jesus gave before ascending into Heaven, “God the Father.” Yet it is of
interest to note the other words used to augment God’s Fatherly nature, that of,
“Almighty,” and, “Maker.” Part of the qualities that make God Fatherly is his
might and that he is the Creator. As such he determines what we are and what he
is and therefore what he is, is not determined by what we think. On the
contrary, as he states in Exodus 3, “I am who I am,” it is thus determinable
that he is and we are because he is. The attempt of the creation to change the
Creator would be futile at best, absurd in the medium and pure lunacy at its
plainest. So, in part, God being Creator means he is our Father because he is
who he is.
No comments:
Post a Comment