Theological and philosophical errors excluded by the
creed's first article

         In its first article, the Apostles’ Creed sets itself in opposition to a host of theological errors, both old and new.  The following is a partial listing of such errors.

Materialism insists that matter is fundamental and that matter is all that exists.  (Some materialists admit the existence of spirit, but classify it as a mere emanation of matter, something made possible only by certain fortunate but transitory material collocations.)  Materialists believe that behind and below all things lies a material principle of existence.  All the functions and operations attributed by theists to spirit materialists attribute to matter.  Materialists, because they believe matter is everything, tend also to be mortalists, who insist that because no such thing as soul exists apart from body, death ends all because death ends the body.  Against this view, the creed declares that all things, matter included, derive from God and that the resurrection awaits all.  According to the creed, behind and below all things stands God; all things, matter included, derive from Him.   

Pantheism insists both that God is everything and that everything is God, thus obliterating the distinction between God and the world.  Put differently, pantheism blurs the distinction between Creator and creature, between infinite and finite.  To a pantheist, God is all; nothing else exists.  Like materialism, therefore, pantheism is an injudiciously monistic explanation of reality.  Like materialism also, pantheism insists that the universe is eternal.  But whereas materialism postulates matter as the fundamental reality, pantheism identifies that fundamental reality as God, and insists that nothing else exists.  As Samuel Taylor Coleridge explained in his Table Talk (1827), while pantheism teaches both that the world minus God and God minus the world equal nothing, biblical religion teaches that the world minus God is nothing while God minus the world is still God.  The creed, in contrast to pantheism, insists that while God made the world and is actively involved in it, He is most emphatically not the world.

Deism insists that God is creator only; He is distant and not actively concerned with or involved in human affairs.  As a result, deists often denigrate, even deny, both special revelation and special providence.  Deism is very much an error from the end of the spectrum opposite pantheism.  In the latter, God is entirely imminent; in the former, He is entirely transcendent.  The creed, by contrast, affirms that God exercises direct sovereignty over all the world, including human history.  But unlike pantheism, the creed does so without identifying God with the space/time continuum. 

Agnosticism insists that God cannot be reliably known.  It tries to plead modesty and ignorance, but ought to plead sloth because it too readily and too quickly assumes that God is irretrievably hidden.  In so doing, it undervalues, if not ignores and rejects, the incarnation and its epistemic implications.  Agnostics believe that enough is not known, and cannot be known, about God to put to rest any of our serious questions concerning Him.  Agnostics seem not to understand that while the answers to some questions might be difficult to acquire, they can be, and often have been, identified.  Agnostics also seem not to realize the internally contradictory nature of their position.  Not to answer a question is to answer it, not with something definite (something that might or might not be correct), but with an “I don’t know.”  To say “I don’t know” might be a true statement about the state of one’s own understanding of God, but it cannot be an accurate statement about God Himself, who is, after all, the focus of the question at hand, but whom this answer altogether avoids.  Not to answer fundamental questions about God is, therefore, not really an option.  Arising as it does from the data of Scripture, the incarnation, and tradition, the creed affirms that God is both knowable and known, at least to the extent He has seen fit to reveal Himself through those three channels.  

Atheism denies that God exists.  In this it resembles materialism, which insists that matter is everything.  Because it denies the existence of God, atheism must also deny revelation, the incarnation, the resurrection (indeed miracles of all sorts), providence, and virtually everything that is distinctly Christian.  Atheism must, by necessity, render a naturalistic explanation of all things.  The Apostles’ Creed, in contrast to atheism, not only affirms that God is, but that He is Father, that He is Creator, and that He is almighty. 

Polytheism  (or Paganism) insists that the Deity is multiple, not singular.  It posits many gods, not one God.  In this it is the polar opposite of atheism, which denies Deity altogether.  While some forms of polytheism might be content to admit the existence of the Christian God, Christians rightly refuse to number God as but one god among many.  Rather, Christians insist that only one God exists, and that He has no peer.  Apart from the God of revelation, all other gods are no gods at all. 

Gnosticism (a widely divergent theological phenomenon with multiple variations), distinguishes between the Supreme God, whom it deems ineffable and unknowable, and this fallen world’s creator, whom it labels the Demiurge and whom it identifies with Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament.  The God of the Old Testament, Gnostics insist, is not the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Gnostics say this because they believe that matter is evil, and because they believe that the Supreme God would or could have nothing at all to do with it.  Gnostics, therefore, also tend to deny the incarnation (and thus fall into an early heresy known as Docetism), insisting that the Son of the ineffable God could never unite Himself to flesh because flesh, being matter, is innately evil.  The Apostles’ Creed, of course, affirms both that God made the physical world, on the one hand, and that the Son of God became a genuine man, on the other. 

Matriolatry, or mother-worship, denies that God is properly called "Father." Christian matriolatrists seem not to realize that to be baptized into the name of the Mother, the Child, and the Sustainer (or into some variation upon that theme) is to be baptized into another religion and not into historic and Biblical Christianity.  By declaring faith in God the Father (and in God the Son), the Apostles’ Creed stands over against goddess religions of all sorts and, by implication, against priestess religions and almost all forms of theological feminism.

date modified:
5 July 2006