When I became a Christian I did not know what was critical and what was not to understanding the faith to following Christ. It seemed that I had a very simple view of faith in Christ, too simple for many. My simple view expressed what I understood Jesus of Nazareth as saying to his followers. I believed that the starting point of the journey with Christ `was a point of recognition, that time when we recognize Jesus for who he really is in light of who we really are. But, to be fair, that journey really began before that point of recognition. There are many linear-minded people who would like to make discipleship – the lifelong process of following after Jesus – a straight line. The reality is that, somewhere on the left is a fuzzy off-the-map portion of life that says “Time Before We Knew Jesus Was Lord”. The starting point of the line segment of faith in Christ, however, begins with admitting you are a sinner and asking Jesus to be your savior. This was so important that the pastor asked me to write a date in the flyleaf of my Bible to memorialize that point. I was less then sure that the time at which I was able to articulate that in language that he approved of was actually the time I had that commitment in my heart. Nonetheless, I put the date down. Somewhere in the middle of that line segment comes being activated a Christian which usually means something like teaching children’s church. The third point is the return of Christ. The middle space could be quantified and categorized as unnecessary boredom. In this boredom we begin to over examine what we believe to a point of minutia.

I want to be careful to say that I do not dislike theology. I love the idea of talking wisely about God, understanding better who he is and being able to articulate that. The church has done that from its earliest times. The Apostle’s Creed, as it came to be known by the sixth century, dates to an earlier document of roughly 215 A.D. It is an early statement of faith – a statement of theology. This statement is simple as are the other early ones that I like, like the Nicene Creed and the Definition of Calcedon. The creeds became statements that were necessary in the life of the church when division rose within and threatened to split the church. Opinions and beliefs of who Christ was or was not, what God’s role in the universe was or how mankind came to a relationship with Christ were necessary to settle critical internal disputes. External pressures, misunderstanding and misrepresentations also call for credo statements.

Credo is the Latin word for “ I believe”. In the earliest baptismal forms someone who was being baptized would be asked in Latin, “Do you believe?” and the answer would be, “Credo.” Then they would recite the Apostle’s Creed to further express their belief in Christ.

The need to ward off and separate the cancer from the body of Christ, that is to say, heresy, is still part of the church and always will be. The heresies are not new. They usually center around Christ, who he is, what he does. Whether recognizing him as a divine being or as an angelic power, it becomes critical to understand who a heretic is by defining Christ. Paul will preach against diminishing Christ in any way. He will say that no matter what authority comes and says there is another Christ they are wrong; they are heretics.

It was a fascinating discussion to have and we are allowed to eavesdrop on it because of the Gospels. It took place in a quiet moment in a busy time (we are not given access to many of those quiet moments – we know there must have been many and the things that were said profound.) We know that Jesus probably held court most of the time speaking and commanding listeners to hear. I do not think that he commanded in any tyrannical way. I think that most people when they saw the passion and the love and focus in his eyes when they heard words that were not stumbling to fill time realized this was a man to whom they should listen. Oftentimes he would ask probing and extracting questions that would make his discussions dialogues rather than one way sermons, engaging hearts and souls. The discussion began with the simple question, “Who do people say that I am?” The answers were incredible. People were already claiming mystical impossible things about Jesus of Nazareth. Some were proclaiming that he was the resurrection of a great prophet, others that he was the spirit embodied in a new man of a man recently killed, a holy man named John the Immersor. To this day, the dialogue of who Jesus is brings incredible statements. We can discuss life and Christianity with those who believe Jesus was an alien, a New Age guru and the future founder of the Hapsburg dynasty. It is almost an understatement but a powerful and necessary one to say no man has shaped history or attracted interest like Jesus, the carpenter’s son from the backwater village of Nazareth.

The quiet conversation Jesus was having with his followers went on this way until Jesus posed a more poignant question, a more personal question. He asked his followers, “ Who do you say that I am?” This is where creeds began. It was Peter the Brave who gave the first Christological credo of history. He stated that Jesus was Christ, the Messiah, the anointed and chosen one and the son of the living God. To make that statement Peter obviously did not mean Jesus was God’s son in a non-special sense as in – we are all his offspring, we are all children of God. He meant something entirely different, something that could not normally be seen, for Jesus stated that his theology had been taught to him, whispered to his soul from Heaven above. Flesh and blood did not teach you this, he said to Peter, but my father in Heaven. Here was the truest of Christological truths so plainly put.

Jesus then helped him understand the function of the Messiah – that he would be rejected by the chief priests, the ones who supposedly handle holy sacrifices, and that he would be killed by the gentiles who, in a warped way, became the holy instruments of sacrifice, and that he would die and rise from the dead and would return to judge the world. This truth, along with three years of experience with Jesus , was what the disciples had to go on in order to make the most difficult and binary decision they could ever make as pilgrims on this earth. Do you believe this to the point that you will follow Jesus, even to death?

Understanding that core of commitment changed the way I viewed theology. You see there are many ways to break up the dialog about God in the Bible. We can break up the Bible as literature. We can break up the Bible as academic sections of theology for the Bible is an amazing book, which in some sense is sociology, some part anthropology. It speaks of history. It presents to us incredible biography, sparing no punches in the details of success and failure (which makes it unique in a time when most biographies were really propaganda pieces.) It is an inspirational book. It is an artistic journal of worship and poetry. It is a moral guide and code. It is a log and cataloging of the religious rituals of people. It is the sacred, unknown ,predicted prophecies and the revelation of some of the mysteries.

To get a handle on this book, many want to categorize and quantify in creeds and systematic theologies. These are simply human expressions of the source material, which is why I believe theology is nonetheless both good and bad. It has a good source but it is created by people. As a result we have conflicting views – people who genuinely follow Christ, wanting to read the Bible to reveal God with no faults, no agendas – coming up with separate conclusions. Often times we fight and divide over minute doctrine. We are willing to kill over material that Jesus said but not necessarily be willing to die for it. Just ask a Christian how they believe the world will end; what mechanistic role man has in salvation or how they should school their children. Stand back and expect the fur to fly and the blood to spill.

The Gospel, the good news, the revelation of Christ that he gave to his followers, is the one that Peter would carry and speak from the temple steps, a holy proclamation as the High Priest declared to him, he now as an under shepherd declared to the people. It is the one that Paul would take to the Gentiles, those who were outside the family of God, the commonwealth of the people of God. It is the one that Paul would say in 1 Corinthians 15 he spoke as of first importance from the sure authority of the scripture. And indeed the one, if we are to talk revival, that is to say new life and the ancient truths, we must follow.

In our spare time, when we are not busy trying to be holy followers of Christ, lovers of our God, and missionaries to our place in time, we can always argue those special and subtle points of theology. But most consuming to our minds and most beneficial to our souls are those simple but not simplistic deep yet still peaceable waters that immerse us in the Christ and his theological creed.