J. I. Packer (1926–2020) served as the Board of Governors’ Professor of Theology at Regent College. He authored numerous books, including the classic bestseller Knowing God. Packer also served as general editor for the English Standard Version Bible and as theological editor for the ESV Study Bible.

Board of Governors' Professor of Theology, Regent College

Affirming the Apostles' Creed

Good News Publishers

Contents

I Believe in God

When people are asked what they believe in, they give not merely different answers, but different sorts of answers. Someone might say, "I believe in UFOs" — that means, "I think UFOs are real." "I believe in democracy"— that means, "I think democratic principles are just and beneficial." But what does it mean when Christian congregations stand and say, "I believe in God"? Far more than when the object of belief is UFOs or democracy.

I can believe in UFOs without ever looking for one and in democracy without ever voting. In cases like these, belief is a matter of the intellect only. But the Creed's opening words, "I believe in God," render a Greek phrase coined by the writers of the New Testament, meaning literally: "I am believing into God." That is to say, over and above believing certain truths about God, I am living in a relation of commitment to God in trust and union. When I say "I believe in God," I am professing my conviction that God has invited me to this commitment and declaring that I have accepted his invitation.

FAITH

The word faith, which is English for a Greek noun (pistis) formed from the verb in the phrase "believe into" (pisteuo), gets the idea of trustful commitment and reliance better than belief does. Whereas belief suggests bare opinion, faith, whether in a car, a patent medicine, a protégé, a doctor, a marriage partner, or what have you, is a matter of treating the person or thing as trustworthy and committing yourself accordingly. The same is true of faith in God, and in a more far-reaching way.

It is the offer and demand of the object that determines in each case what a faith-commitment involves. Thus, I show faith in my car by relying on it to get me places, and in my doctor by submitting to his treatment. And I show faith in God by bowing to his claim to rule and manage me; by receiving Jesus Christ, his Son, as my own Lord and Savior; and by relying on his promise to bless me here and hereafter. This is the meaning of response to the offer and demand of the God of the Creed.

Christian faith only begins when we attend to
God's self-disclosure in Christ and in Scripture,
where we meet him as the Creator who
"commands all people everywhere to repent"
and to "believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ."

Sometimes faith is equated with that awareness of "one above" (or "beyond" or "at the heart of things") that from time to time, through the impact of nature, conscience, great art, being in love, or whatever, touches the hearts of the hardest-boiled. (Whether they take it seriously is another question, but it comes to all — God sees to that.) But Christian faith only begins when we attend to God's self-disclosure in Christ and in Scripture, where we meet him as the Creator who "commands all people everywhere to repent" and to "believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ ... as he has commanded us" (Acts 17:30; 1 John 3:23; cf. John 6:28ff.). Christian faith means hearing, noting, and doing what God says.

DOUBT

I write as if God's revelation in the Bible has self-evident truth and authority, and I think that in the last analysis it has; but I know, as you do, that uncriticized preconceptions and prejudices create problems for us all, and many have deep doubts and perplexities about elements of the biblical message. How do these doubts relate to faith?

Well, what is doubt? It is a state of divided mind — "doublemindedness" is James's concept (James 1:6-;8) — and it is found both within faith and without it. In the former case, it is faith infected, sick, and out of sorts; in the latter, it belongs to a struggle either toward faith or away from a God felt to be invading and making claims one does not want to meet. In C. S. Lewis's spiritual autobiography Surprised by Joy, you can observe both these motivations successively.

In our doubts, we think we are honest, and certainly try to be; but perfect honesty is beyond us in this world, and an unacknowledged unwillingness to take God's word about things, whether from deference to supposed scholarship or fear of ridicule or of deep involvement or some other motive, often underlies a person's doubt about this or that item of faith. Repeatedly this becomes clear in retrospect, though we could not see it at the time.

How can one help doubters? First, by explaining the problem area (for doubts often arise from misunderstanding); second, by exhibiting the reasonableness of Christian belief at that point, and the grounds for embracing it (for Christian beliefs, though above reason, are not against it); third, by exploring what prompts the doubts (for doubts are never rationally compelling, and hesitations about Christianity usually have more to do with likes and dislikes, hurt feelings, and social, intellectual, and cultural snobbery than the doubters are aware).

PERSONAL

In worship, the Creed is said in unison, but the opening words are "I believe"— not "we": each worshiper speaks for himself. Thus he proclaims his philosophy of life and at the same time testifies to his happiness: he has come into the hands of the Christian God where he is glad to be, and when he says, "I believe," it is an act of praise and thanksgiving on his part. It is in truth a great thing to be able to say the Creed.

FURTHER BIBLE STUDY

Faith in action:

• Romans 4

• Hebrews 11

• Mark 5:25-;34

QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT ANDDISCUSSION

• What is the essential meaning of faith (Greek pistis)?

• What is the importance of the word "I" in the Creed's opening phrase?

• What doubts about Christianity have you had to deal with in yourself and others?

• How can the approach outlined in this chapter help address doubts and questions we may have?

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and bounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

EXODUS 3 4: 6-7

The God I Believe In

What should it mean when we stand in church and say, "I believe in God"? Are we at this point just allying ourselves with Jews, Moslems, Hindus, and others against atheism and declaring that there is some God as distinct from none? No; we are doing far more than this. We are professing faith in the God of the Creed itself, the Christian God, the God of the Bible — the Sovereign Creator whose "Christian name," as Karl Barth put it, is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If this is not the God in whom we believe, we have no business saying the Creed at all.

IDOLS

We must be clear here. Today's idea is that the great divide is between those who say "I believe in God" in some sense and those who cannot say it in any sense. Atheism is seen as an enemy, paganism is not, and it is assumed that the difference between one faith and another is quite secondary. But in the Bible the great divide is between those who believe in the Christian God and those who serve idols —"gods," that is, whose images, whether metal or mental, do not square with the self-disclosure of the Creator. One wishes that some who recite "I believe in God" in church each Sunday would see that what they actually mean is "I do not believe in God — not this God, anyhow!"

In the Bible the great divide is between those who
believe in the Christian God and those who serve
idols —"gods," that is, whose images,
whether metal or mental, do not square with
the self-disclosure of the Creator.

HIS NAME

The Bible tells us that God has revealed himself, establishing his identity, so to speak, by telling us his "name." This "name" appears in three connections.

First, God gave his "proper name," Jehovah (or Yahweh, as modern scholars prefer), to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:13ff.; see also 6:3). The name means "I am who I am" or "I will be what I will be" (esv, text and margin). It declares God's almightiness: he cannot be hindered from being what he is and doing what he wills. Well did the av translators render this name as "the Lord." The Creed echoes this emphasis when it speaks of God the Father almighty.

Second, God "proclaimed the name of the Lord" to Moses by delineating his moral character — "a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity ... but who will by no means clear the guilty" (Exodus 34:5;7). This "name" — you could call it a revealed description — discloses both God's nature and his role. It is a declaration whose echoes reverberate throughout the Bible (see Exodus 20:5ff.; Numbers 14:18; 2 Chronicles 30:9; Nehemiah 1:5; 9:17, 32; Psalm 86:5, 15; 103:8-;18; 111:4-;9; 112:4; 116:5; 145:8ff., 17, 20; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; Romans 2:2-;6), and all of God's acts that Scripture records confirm and illustrate its truth. It is noteworthy that when John focuses on the two sides of God's character by saying that he is both light and love (1 John 1:5; 4:8) — not love without righteousness and purity, nor rectitude without kindness and compassion, but holy love and loving holiness, and each quality to the highest degree — he offers each statement as summarizing what we learn from Jesus about God.

THREE IN ONE

Third, the Son of God told his disciples to baptize "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19). "Name," note, not "names": the three persons together constitute the one God. Here we face the most dizzying and unfathomable truth of all, the truth of the Trinity, to which the three paragraphs of the Creed ("the Father ... his only Son ... the Holy Spirit") also bear witness.

What should we make of this? In itself, the divine tri-unity is a mystery, a transcendent fact that passes our understanding. (The same is true of such realities as God's eternity, infinity, omniscience, and providential control of our free actions; indeed, all truths about God exceed our comprehension, more or less.) How the one eternal God is eternally both singular and plural, how Father, Son, and Spirit are personally distinct yet essentially one (so that tritheism, belief in three gods who are not one, and Unitarianism, belief in one God who is not three, are both wrong), is more than we can know, and any attempt to "explain" it — to dispel the mystery by reasoning, as distinct from confessing it from Scripture — is bound to falsify it. Here, as elsewhere, our God is too big for his creatures' little minds.

Yet the historical foundation-facts of Christian faith — a man who was God, praying to his Father and promising that he and his Father would send "another Helper" (John 14:16) to continue his divine ministry — and equally the universally experienced facts of Christian devotion — worshiping God the Father above you and knowing the fellowship of God the Son beside you, both through the prompting of God the Holy Spirit within you — point inescapably to God's essential three-in-oneness. So does the cooperative activity of the Three in saving us — the Father planning, the Son procuring, and the Spirit applying redemption. Many Scriptures witness to this: see, for instance, Romans 8:1-17; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Ephesians 1:3-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:13ff.; 1 Peter 1:2. When the gospel of Christ is analyzed, the truth of the Trinity proves to be its foundation and framework.

It was only through the work of grace, which centers on the Incarnation, that the one God was seen to be plural. No wonder, then, if those who do not believe in the work of grace doubt the truth of the Trinity too.

But this is the God of the Creed. Is this, now, the God whom we worship? Or have we too fallen victims to idolatry?

FURTHER BIBLE STUDY

God revealed:

• John 1:1-18

QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT ANDDISCUSSION

• What does it mean to say: "In the Bible the great divide is between those who believe in the Christian God and those who serve idols"? Do you agree or disagree? Why?

• What is the basic meaning of God's name Jehovah? What does it tell us about him?

• Why did Christ direct his disciples to baptize "in the name [singular] of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"?

Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?

MALACHI 2: 1 0

The Father Almighty

In any church where saying the Creed is part of the worship service it is likely that God's fatherhood will have been celebrated in song ("Glory be to the Father ...") before the Creed is said, for it is a theme that with a sure instinct hymn-writers have always highlighted. But how should we understand it?

CREATION

Clearly, when the Creed speaks of "God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth," it has in immediate view the fact that we and all things besides depend on God as Creator for our existence, every moment. Now to call creatorship fatherhood is not unscriptural: it echoes both the Old Testament — Malachi 2:10, "Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?" — and the New Testament — Acts 17:28, where Paul preaching at Athens quotes with approval a Greek poet's statement: "we are indeed his offspring." Nonetheless, both these quotations come from passages threatening divine judgment, and Paul's evangelistic sermon at Athens makes it very clear that though the offspring relationship implies an obligation to seek, worship, and obey God and makes one answerable to him at the end of the day, it does not imply his favor and acceptance where repentance for past sins and faith in Christ are lacking (see the whole speech, verses 22-31).

Some who stress the universal fatherhood of God treat it as implying that all men are and always will be in a state of salvation, but that is not the biblical view. Paul speaks of persons to whom "the word of the cross is folly" as "perishing" (1 Corinthians 1:18) and warns the "impenitent" that "you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath" (Romans 2:5), however much they are God's offspring.

FATHER AND SON

In fact, when the New Testament speaks of God's fatherhood it is not with reference to creation, but in two further connections. The first is the inner life of the Godhead ... Within the eternal Trinity is a family relation of Father and Son. On earth, the Son called the One whom he served "my Father" and prayed to him as Abba — the Aramaic equivalent of a respectful Dad.

What this relationship meant Jesus himself declared. On the one hand, the Son loves the Father (John 14:31) and always does what pleases the Father (8:29). He takes no initiatives, depending instead every moment on the Father for a lead (5:19ff., 30), but he is tenacity itself in cleaving to the Father's known will. "My Father ... not as I will, but as you will ... your will be done" (Matthew 26:39, 42). "Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?" (John 18:11).

God's loving fatherhood of his eternal Son is both the
archetype of his gracious relationship with his own
redeemed people and the model from which derives the
parenthood that God has created in human families.

On the other hand, the Father loves the Son (John 3:35; 5:20) and makes him great by giving him glory and great things to do (5:20-30; 10:17ff.; 17:23-26). Giving life and executing judgment are twin tasks that have been wholly committed to him, "that all may honor the Son" (5:23).

God's loving fatherhood of his eternal Son is both the archetype of his gracious relationship with his own redeemed people and the model from which derives the parenthood that God has created in human families. Paul spoke of "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" as "the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" (Ephesians 1:3;3:14ff.). Human families, by their very constitution, reflect the Father-Son relationship in heaven, and parent-child relationships should express a love that corresponds to the mutual love of Father and Son in the Godhead.

ADOPTION

The second connection in which the New Testament speaks of God as Father has to do with the believing sinner's adoption into the life of God's family. This is a supernatural gift of grace, linked with justification and new birth, given freely by God and received humbly by faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. "To all who did receive him [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born ... of God" (John 1:12ff.). The message Jesus sent to his disciples on rising from the dead was: "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John 20:17). As disciples, they belonged to the family; indeed, in that very sentence Jesus called them "my brothers." All whom he has saved are his brothers.

When the Christian says the first clause of the Creed, he will put all this together and confess his Creator as both the Father of his Savior and his own Father through Christ — a Father who now loves him no less than he loves his only begotten Son. That is a marvelous confession to be able to make.