Q.1 Celebrant Do you believe in God the Father?
People I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
Q.2 Celebrant Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of
God?
People I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our
Lord.
He was conceived by the
power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin
Mary.
He suffered under Pontius
Pilate,
was crucified, died, and
was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose
again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the
right hand of the Father.
He will come again to
judge the living and the dead.
The Book of Common Prayer (1979), 304
----------
(The belated fourth installment in
the Baptismal Covenant series)
So far in this series, I have framed covenant in biblical terms
together with the way the Prayer Book talks about covenant. The takeaway is
that nothing that the Baptismal Covenant asks of its people is anything other
than can be "proved" (in that old Anglican sense) from Holy
Scripture. This is important. The BC formulates a path of discipleship rooted
in Scripture.
The first two questions of the Covenant are the first two articles
of the Apostles' Creed. As one of my undergraduate teachers used to say that
the creed is a "portable narrative." It hits the highlights of the
Gospel story from beginning to end. I would add that the creed, when memorized,
creates a set of useful "places" to go in the mind. They are nooks
and crannies in which you can put other memories, other thoughts about God,
self, and other. Memorizing this is not an end in itself. It is something that
creates the ability to learn and retain more than one would otherwise be able
to capture and keep.
Why put the creed first in the Baptismal Covenant? Because it
provides the narrative context for everything that follows. In effect, the
creed stands at the head of the Baptismal Covenant as both context and
legitimation. The way of life that we request of our baptizands is sufficiently
weird that we have to justify in advance why this kind of life means something.
Our answer: this crazy way of life means something only because of the story
told in the creed.
What about people who struggle with believing the creed? There is a
certain amount of "as if" here. If you don't believe the creed but
still act according to the rest of the Covenant, you are acting as though you believe it. If you're okay
living with that kind of ambiguity, that's up to you; however I have a hard
time imagining taking the rest of the BC seriously without some kind of
grounding in these basic statements of Christian belief.
The basic elements of the portable narrative revolve around the
three persons of the Trinity: God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father
stands at the head of the creed as almighty creator of heaven and earth,
already the Father because of his everlasting relationship with the Son. The
Son has a very earthly life: conceived, born, suffered, crucified, died,
buried, descended to the dead, rose, ascended, coming again. The creed is clear
about the continuity of Jesus' earthly life and his resurrected, ascended, and
reigning life. Without this continuity, without the Jesus who died and yet
reigns and is coming again, everything else that is to follow (including the
third article of the creed) makes little sense.
This portable narrative stands at the head as context and
legitimation for the way of life to follow, a life just weird enough to need
that context and justification. The next instalment in this series will begin
to look at the life of the baptized as the life of the Spirit.
No comments:
Post a Comment