In the early 1900s, a group of Protestant clergymen in the US and Britain, tired of the divisive disagreements among the various Protestant sects, attempted to group the various Christian beliefs together in order to define the basic tenets of all Christian sects. They settled on five to seven pillars of faith that they believed were fundamental to all Christian groups. Their theory was that those who believe these pillars can consider themselves to be “fundamentally” Christian. If anyone refuses to believe any one of these pillars, his faith is in jeopardy. And Christian Fundamentalism was born.
It didn’t take long for the secular press to twist fundamentalism into something it was never meant to be. The secular press soon began using the word “fundamentalism” to characterize fanatical groups who use violence to force their views upon others. Today, when we hear “fundamentalist” it usually refers to Islamic terrorists. Fundamentalism today is a derogatory term.
Languages are fluid; words and phrases shift in meaning over time. My question is about the origin of this dramatic shift in meaning.
The pillars of Christian Fundamentalism actually come from the revelation Jesus Christ made to His apostles. This data of faith was formulated by early Church Fathers to be used as a mnemonic device for believers to make sure they adhered to what Christ revealed. It also insulated the believer against failure to accept what Christ revealed whenever these core beliefs came into question. This mantra is familiar to all Christians – it is known as the Apostles’ Creed. There are actually twenty-one individual pillars in the original Apostles’ Creed.
The Reformation
During the Protestant Reformation, faith in the mission Christ gave to His Church was questioned. Some Christians no longer had faith in the Catholic Church led by the Pope in Rome and began to doubt the tenets listed in the Apostles’ Creed. With the loss of faith in a central authority, many Christians began questioning the veracity of many of the truths enumerated in the Apostle’s Creed.
To address the errors in the way the Reformers interpreted the Apostles’ Creed, the Catholic Church switched over to the Nicene Creed, which was defined in 325 AD to correct the errors of Arius. It already had long-standing authority since it had been used since the days of the early Church. The Nicene Creed is still used in the Roman Catholic Church today, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Anglican Church along with a few other Protestant denominations. The Apostles’ Creed is used at services in most Christian Churches as well as in many Catholic devotions such as the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet.
This served a good purpose during the early years of the Reformation because it helped Catholics to understand more clearly the issues dividing Christendom. Five hundred years later, the secular world is presenting different challenges to Christians. The challenges are no longer mainly about sectarian issues. Today, it is all-out war against Christianity, especially regarding the veracity of Scripture. Both Catholics and Protestants are taught that Scripture is the authentic revelation of God, but of course, Scripture is sometimes difficult to understand. A large issue today is creationism versus evolution. Both Catholics and Protestants are on the side of creation in this controversy.
It would be nice if today’s Christians would unite in a common defense of creation, especially the Genesis account of creation. If the world, through the almost universal acceptance of evolution, convinces Christians that Genesis is not true, many Christians might lose their faith, especially non-Catholics, who have Scripture as their sole anchor of faith. It’s time for Christians of all denominations to rally to the defense of the veracity of God’s revealed words in the original Apostles’ Creed.
Seeking Unity
One pillar in the Apostles’ Creed might be an obstacle: “The Holy Catholic Church.” To most Christians today, the word “Catholic” means, “the Catholic Church administered by the Pope in Rome. During apostolic times it had a different meaning. It is a Greek word meaning “universal”.
During apostolic times there was only one Christian Church, and it was everywhere. That was the original intent of the word. This Church was everywhere in all nations. Yet, the word “catholic” is still used in modern English to mean universal.
The Apostles’ Creed was not written as an individual prayer in the bible, as was the Our Father, but every pillar in the Creed is easily identified from actual wording in the New Testament. One can easily find the biblical text for each pillar by searching the Internet. The Catholic Church still describes the teaching of Jesus Christ in terms of the Apostles’ Creed, as is easily seen by the way the Catechism of the Catholic Church is organized. Part One, on the Creed, constitutes the first 300 pages of the Catechism.
The Twenty-One Pillars
The following are the twenty-one pillars of fundamentalism which are essentially the truths we profess in the Apostles’ Creed:
- I believe in God the Father almighty
- Creator of heaven and earth.
- And in Jesus Christ, His only Son,
- Our Lord.
- Who was conceived by The Holy Spirit,
- Born of The Virgin Mary,
- Suffered under Pontius Pilate.
- Was crucified,
- Died,
- And was buried.
- He descended into hell.
- On the third day, He arose again from the dead,
- And ascended into heaven,
- Where He sits at the right hand of the Father,
- From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.
- I believe in The Holy Spirit,
- The Holy Catholic church,
- The communion of the saints,
- The forgiveness of sins,
- The resurrection of the body,
- And life everlasting. Amen.
This is a digest of all the important truths that Jesus revealed to His followers. It was composed by the Church Fathers, probably by the Apostles themselves, and it carried the early Christians through the first three centuries of persecutions because most of these pillars are revealed truths that cannot be affirmed through observation or historical witness.
I memorized these twenty-one pillars and use them as my mantra of truth. Every time I hear modern society contradict any one of these pillars, my antenna goes up, and I stiffen my resistance against the unbelieving world.
The Benefit to the Modern World
The Church would be wise to go back to the original wording of the Apostles’ Creed because the modern world has gone far beyond denying some tenets of the Creed; the world rejects the entire Creed and makes war against any Christian acceptance of the Creed. Christians have been divided over having two creeds long enough. I think it’s time to unite them in the original Creed and encourage them to stand firm within that wording of the creed which goes back to apostolic times.
But whether the Church reverts to the original wording of the Apostles’ Creed or not, I think it would be wise for all Christians defending the veracity of Scripture to, in their minds, revert to the original wording. This present religious war is bigger than the sectarian issues that are used to divide Christians. It is now total war. I think it is smart for defenders of Scripture to try to understand Christian thinking about the original wording of the Apostles’ Creed as it was first composed.
Non-Catholic Christians are especially vulnerable to attacks against Scripture by the modern world ridiculing the teaching in Genesis and by those who adhere to the tenets of Darwinian evolution. When Genesis is refuted by our culture, some Christians may lose faith completely because Scripture is the only foundation they were taught to accept.
At one time Christian fundamentalism insisted on five basic core beliefs: (One) God is Our Father, (Two) Jesus, His divine Son, is Our Lord. (Three) Jesus was crucified, (Four) Jesus rose from the dead. (Five) Jesus will return at the end on the world to judge the living and the dead. But these core beliefs were changed over time, sometimes including two additional pillars. Today, because fundamentalism has such a bad reputation, I don’t think anybody endorses Christian fundamentalism anymore.
It was probably a good idea at the time, but if anyone wants to defend the whole faith Jesus revealed, one must insist on all twenty-one of the pillars.
Conclusion
Mantras have been part of every language and probably every culture in the world. They are good ways to remember important issues. Many are religious, such as, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5) and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39).” Some are political like “Remember Pearl Harbor”, “Remember the Alamo”, and “Beware Greeks bearing gifts.” Mantras come to mind when confronted with a new thought, and mantras usually take precedence. That’s a good thing if the mantras are formulated correctly.
In today’s culture, when religious principles like God being the Supreme Creator and God bringing every human being to justice in His court, it’s nice to be in the habit of reciting the Apostles’ Creed as a mantra to anchor your unquestioned faith when you hear the world argue against fidelity to God. Most of the twenty-one points in the Creed concern spiritual values or events that cannot be verified by the human mind. They are valid because they are revealed by God.
One can find all the biblical passages on the Internet which confirm each point of the Creed. For Catholics, the Apostles’ Creed is a central part of inspired Tradition. No Christian should doubt any point in the Creed. The conviction that the Creed is authentic should debunk any contradiction of God’s revelation voiced by our culture, especially through arguments based on evolution.
Do you feel swept around by the shifting of the wicked world against fidelity to Jesus Christ? Do you find it mind-boggling to try to navigate through all the clever but false interpretations of who Christ is? My advice to everyone is to memorize the Apostles’ Creed and use it as a mantra to recall the original inspired meaning of each one of these revealed truths.
11 thoughts on “Fundamentalism and the Apostles’ Creed”
Infallible, baby.
Hello an ordinary Papist
Thank you for reading my article, and thanks for your comments. You know, the origin of the name “papist” came from the English of Henry the Eight’s time. It was an insult levied at Catholics who recognized The Pope as head of Christ’s church.
Yankee has a similar origin. It came from the misprounced name the Indians called the English: Yengese. When adopted by the settlers, it soon became Yankee. It was a demeaning name also used by the English, but the settlers were proud of it. Two hundred years later, all England sang “The Yanks are coming,” and they will never forget the Yanks.
I don’t like to rub things in to people, but I am proud to consider myself a papist. If a great controversy should ignite in the world concerning creation verses evolution, I think the papists will have a big hand in resolving it. I hope I have some small part in it, but I’m not smart enough to be a great and prodigious theologian. The Lord will appoint him.
Thanks for your comments.
Maurice A. Williams
Amen.
I will paraphrase and render somewhat polite a friend of my describing his time as a student at university: “The more I wanted to commit another sin, the more doctrines of my faith I rejected.”
Hello Guy,
Thank you for commenting on my article and for the surprising information of your friend who realized that if he is willing to commit another sin, he would have to reject more of his Christian background. We can both see right away what a deadly toll our wicked culture takes on all of us.
Our culture does not believe in the existence of hell. If they did believe in hell, not so many would be willing to risk all our good training in order to enjoy sin. Sis is deliberated disobedience to the laws of God. And sin is not repugnant; we all have an innate tendency to crave certain sinful activity (that God gave us a challenge to deal with) due to concupiscence.
We “must deny our very selves” the pleasure of sin if we want to live with God in heaven. Sin is inspired by the devil who hates us because we belong to Christ. We all must overcome the influence of the devil in order to serve God. It is not easy, disciplining ourselves. But the reward for refusing to sin is as good and spectacular for our happiness as the punishment is for our unhappiness.
Thanks for reading my article and for the comment.
Maurice A. Williams
Wonderful and thoughtful article and thanks for these good words. I have two thoughts — I am a convert from evangelicalism (Southern Baptist) and my experience is that none of the evangelical churches use the the Apostles Creed. The only mainline Protestant church where I have ever heard it used, and this was as a boy, was in the Methodist church and they went to great pains to explain that “catholic” meant universal and absolutely did not not refer to the Roman Catholic Church and, therefore ok for Methodists to say. Also, my understanding is that the word “catholic” is not capitalized in the creed so that it reads, “. . . the holy catholic Church . . .”. This is all right with us Catholics because the word “Church” is capitalized, which is to say that she is the One True and visible Church established by Jesus. Evangelicals and others refer to the church as the “invisible church,” which includes all believers everywhere, and which is neither Biblical nor historical.
Hello Sandy,
Thanks for reading my article and thanks for the information you provided. I did not realize that many Protestant Churches did not use the Apostles Creed. I picked up the five pillars of fundamentalism from Jack Van Impy. I can see now why the wicked world was so hostile to Christian fundamentalism. It there were a large number of Christian believers that championed faith in the Apostle’s creed as the complete source of all the pillars of faith taught by Jesus, I can see why the wicked world is worried.
But don’t you worry. The Christian world is not as pugnacious as the wicked world claims. It’s the wicked who want to beat their enemies down. Christ wants us Christians to lift others up. In the end Christ will deal with all of us according to our deeds.
And thanks also for information on the invisible church. It sounds like something desirable, like a huge cadre of closet Christians who have not yet made their influence felt. But this is not what Christ wants. He wants his church to be visible so that those searching for it will not fail to find it. He, himself, will be the backbone of his church when the end comes.
Glad to hear that you embraced Catholicism. Welcome into Our Lord’s authentic gathering where not a single pillar of faith is neglected. And, of course, keep the faith. Be a pillar of truth to those who have not yet arrived at the truth.
Maurice A. Williams
“Both Catholics and Protestants are on the side of creation in this controversy. It would be nice if today’s Christians would unite in a common defense of creation, especially the Genesis account of creation.”
Genesis is the reason Christianity isn’t taken seriously by the secular world, which rolls their eyes at the sheer audacity of two people screwing it up for all mankind It is a raw, unfiltered allegory that has tried to shame noble creatures who struggled to survive, with undeveloped brains against nature’s fury and the very earth itself which showed no mercy to these precious souls just trying to stay alive. Now, if mankind ever brings forth a great and prodigious theologian who can translate this great epic, unlock the hidden meanings and set it solidly against the backdrop of Jesus’ ministry, then there is no limit to the number of converts that would be added to this one true faith.
No need to stop with Genesis in considering why the secular world dismisses the Christian faith. They don’t want to be burdened with “outdated” notions such as sin, hell, judgement, the Holy Trinity; nor are they impressed with the notion of the resurrection itself. The idea that if only some learned theologian could re-explain Genesis in a way the disciples of modernism would respect and all would be great, is, I think, naive.
The world rejects the Christian faith because it rejects Christ and even the very notion of God. That rejection was foretold by Christ while present on earth. We are called to preach the gospel, which those of a secular bent will find any number of excuses to reject. We preach it because it’s true. Not because it meets with approval from the modern mind of man.
Hello Chris C.
Thanks for reading my article and thanks for the comment. I know the world is reluctant to accept Our Lord’s teaching on hell.
I started my writing career on Catholic Stand writing about Genesis. I view Genesis as God’s very simplified explanation of how he created everything, especially man. I took an awful trouncing on my second essay “Christian Rebuttal of Darwinian Evolution:” 38 mostly hostile comments.
What did I get myself into? For a while, I really regretted writing something so unpopular. But I thought I was correct, and I think God has a right to reveal his works any way that he wants, even if He resorts to fairy tale stories. And if God did bother to explain how He really did it, even our best scientists would not be able to understand.
My only two choices were to quit writing or try to defend my unpopular position of being a biblical literalist as my critics called me. So I reposted my article using a different approach of proving me correct, namely comparing my conclusions to that of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. I found out that I was not only correct myself, but my critics who argued that the Church now pays attention to scientists about the origin of man were bogus. The Church does listen to them, but is not swayed in the direction of evolution. I have been hammering away at the evolutionists in most of my succeeding essays.
I agree with you that the world does need a preacher to preach the truth of Genesis to a culture that has already rejected it.
Thanks again for your comments.
Maurice A. Williams
Hello Original Papist,
I noticed yesterday that you seemed kind of distraught over the plight of Adam and Eve after they offended God and ate the fruit. I want to assure you today that it is not as bad as it seems.
If Adam and Eve had refused to disobey God’s command, they would not have been punished. They would remain immortal and the entire creation would have taken a different course. Because they did disobey, they and all their offspring lost immortality and had to struggle against a now hostile world and deal with constant temptation from the devils.
That is a tough situation indeed; you refer to it as struggling to survive against a world that shows no mercy. People don’t realize that these Old Testament characters have left this life a long time ago. If they were righteous in God’s eyes they went to a temporary holding place until Christ finally died. With his death, they were redeemed. Therefore Adam and Eve have been blissfully happy living with Jesus and the Saints and Angels for 2000 years already and will always live with them.
They were punished for their sin, but at the same time they were elevated to a much higher position in God’s kingdom than they had before. God was really after the devil for his defiance against God. God knew the devil would tempt them and they were no match against the devil’s wickedness. So God let the devil make the fatal step of messing with God’s little children, and that cost the devil big time.
He was once the bright morning star, superior to all angels and all humans, but because of what he did, he is no longer the bright morning star, and he is the enemy of God and of human beings. An offspring of Adam and Eve is now superior to all angels and all humans, actually two human beings are: Blessed Mother and Jesus, and human beings will take over positions once held by all the angels that became devils.
You have to think about this to understand how Adam and Eve view it. If they had not sinned, they would forever be only human, the least intelligent and least capable of all the sovereign creatures God created. But now that they have sinned and have been forgiven, they are now elevated into very family of being flesh and blood relatives of Jesus who is almighty God in human flesh.
You mentioned two other items that I’m sure has caused you grief: Adam and Eve struggled to survive with undeveloped brains. This comes from the baloney our culture has inundated us with due the theory of evolution. Adam and Eve did not have undeveloped brains. They were able to speak with God as soon as he created them. No human being is able to speak without being taught by his parents. And they did struggle against the now hostile world, but it wasn’t that much of a struggle having to plant crops. Before they sinned they did not have to plant crops. God provided everything the needed.
The wicked world would like to convince you and me and everybody that Adam and Eve simply evolved from other animals like all life forms did. They did not. God created Adam special from dust, and God created Eve special from some tissue God took from Adam, but what made them human is when God breathed his spirit into their nostrils. This act of special creation is written in plain language in every bible in the world. It is time the wicked took heed of it,
So I think you would be accepting of the trauma God placed Adam and Eve into maybe four thousand years ago, but don’t forget I think they were happy when they realized why God did it and are in heavenly bliss about for two thousand years now with an eternity to remain blissful from now on.
I like your provocative name “the original papist” It sort of indicates that nobody likes me, but I don’t care. I’m with Jesus and I mean to stay there.” And when a showdown comes between the wicked world and an inspired preacher, remember that God himself warned the devil “I have placed enmity between you and the woman, between her seed and your seed. You will strike his heel and he will crush your head.
Keep this in mind and you will be on the right side when God finally puts an end to this rebellion by Lucifer and consigns Lucifer to hell forever. Nobody should want to go along with
Hope this helps.
Maurice A. Williams