“I Believe in Jesus Christ”

We’ll now begin examination of the Christological statements of the Apostles’ Creed.

“I Believe in Jesus
Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord”

Christianity is unique among the
religions of the world. And the reason
for the uniqueness lies in the historical figure who stands at its centre –
Jesus Christ.[1]

The
Apostles’ Creed, just like the Nicene Creed and Chalcedon Definition, is a
Christ-centered creed. This is rightly
so, since Jesus is at the center of our faith and the key to our knowledge of
God. Quoting Luther, McGrath reminds us
that “God does not want to be known except through Christ; nor can he be known in
any other way.”[2] He is heralded by Paul as “the image of the
invisible God,” in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”[3] Jesus even proclaimed that to have seen him
was to have seen the Father himself.[4] If we are to glorify God and enjoy Him
forever, it can only be done through Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

This is
perhaps the most difficult, yet necessary claim of Christianity in a
postmodern, pluralistic world. The very
notion of there being one and only one way of knowing God is appalling to
postmodern people. It smacks of
oppressive metanarrative, and it can hardly be denied that it has been used as
such in times past. Marva Dawn notes
that many Christians “are afraid to tell the truth they know and live for fear
they will be seen as oppressive.”[5] She demonstrates, however, the necessity of
retaining this concept in a postmodern context:

However, if our faith teaches that
Truth is not a What but a Who (and a very counterideological, unpowerful One at
that), then to speak of Christ is to introduce people to a great delight, a
gift.[6]

To press the matter a bit further,
the early claim that Jesus was Lord carried with it the implication that Caesar
was not lord.[7] The Christian ethic of love as obedience to
Jesus’ lordship would have been a radical alternative to the “hegemonic,
militaristic, and expansionist Roman understanding of power.”[8] In other words, though Jesus is indeed Lord,
He is everything that an oppressive metanarrative is not.

It is for this reason that the
statements of the Apostles’ Creed about Jesus, which we will examine in posts
to come, are so important, for they do not describe an oppressive tyrant, but a
humble servant. In short, they describe
incarnation.