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Greetings!
The Apostles' Creed begins with the words "I believe," and these soon lead to the opening of the second paragraph, "in Jesus Christ, His only Son."
In his lectures on the creed, Karl Barth wrote, "With these words we step into the great centre of the Christian Creed. And here decisions are made" (Credo, p. 39).
What decisions? As we prepare to proclaim again the resurrection of Jesus Christ, please read following to consider who it is that we proclaim:
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"And in Jesus Christ, His Only Son"
Our understanding of the second Article decides whether we rightly understand the first [God the Father] and the third [God the Holy Spirit], and therefore whether we understand the whole as Christian creed in its true nature and distinct from all other possible and actual creeds. Whether a sermon and proclamation in word or writing have rightly or wrongly a place in the Christian Church is decided by their relationship to the second article.
The arrangement of the three Articles is not to be understood genetically, i.e. it does not represent the way in which faith gets its knowledge. If that had been intended, then undoubtedly the second Article would have had to be the first. . . . The second Article belongs to the beginning of the order of our knowing. . . .
The second Article begins by naming as object of the credo a man, "Jesus," and at once goes on to identify this man, by means of the designation, "Christ," with the prophet, priest and king of the last days, expected by the people of Israel, in order then, by means of the expression, "God's only Son," to place Him in the closest relationship, indeed, in unity, with God Himself. Here above all we shall have to marvel if we are to understand. . . .
Jesus Christ is the background from which man's misery and despair receive their light and not vice versa. What is the significance of that? Clearly this: there is, so to speak, an unfruitful knowledge of sin, of evil, of death and the devil, that succeeds in making it hard for a man to have happy and confident faith in the Almighty Father and Creator, but without making possible for him, or even bringing nearer, faith in Jesus Christ as reconciler. . . .
Grace must come first, in order that sin may be manifest to us as sin, and death as death; in order that, with the Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 5), we may confess that we are by nature prone to hate God and our neighbour, and therefore, with Luther, that we are lost and damned men. We cannot of ourselves know what our misery and our despair, our guilt and punishment really are; that becomes manifest to us in the fact the Christ has taken them upon Himself and borne them. . . . Sin scorches us when it comes under the light of forgiveness, not before. . . .
The decision of faith, however, in the face of this event, as faith's decision gets its character through what the symbol [creed] expresses in the further words: "God's only Son". Faith in the sense of the symbol and of the Holy Scriptures can only be faith in God. The designation of Jesus Christ as "the only Son of God" says that He Himself is God, God's Son, but as only Son of God no other than the one and only God Himself. . . .
God . . . does not reveal Himself through another. He reveals Himself through Himself. And He Who reconciles us with Himself in this revelation, and Holy One Who makes His dwelling here among sinners to be the sinners' Saviour is again no lesser, no other than the eternal God Himself. So deep is the abyss--now it becomes clear how deep it is--which separates us from Him, that to bridge it nothing less than God Himself will suffice. But God Himself does it, and in doing it shows that He can do it, because He is the triune God, the Father of the Son, the Son of the Father. . . .
Christian faith stands of fall once and for all with the fact that God and God alone is its object.
Karl Barth, Credo (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), pp. 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49.
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Grace and Peace,
Dr. James C. Goodloe IV, Executive
Director
Foundation for Reformed Theology
4103 Monument Avenue
Richmond, Virginia 23230
Better Preaching, Teaching, and Pastoral Care
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