Dear
Congregation,
When we come
to the table on the coming Lord’s Day, one of the things that we will want to
come having done is examine ourselves. “Am I believing in Christ as He is
offered to me in the gospel?” That’s a question that we need to be asking
ourselves, and indeed, it is a question that we answered publicly, when we
first professed our Christian faith.
This is the focus of the Athanasian
Creed, which
begins, “Whosoever desires to be saved should above all hold to the catholic faith,”
and ends, “This is the catholic faith, that one cannot be saved without
believing it firmly and faithfully.”
One of the many blessings of our new
Psalter-Hymnal is having the Athanasian Creed ready to hand. Up to this point, we have been confessing the Nicene Creed
at the table. The Athanasian creed is more developed than that of Nicaea (325)
and declares carefully those truths about the Trinity that we have been
studying from Scripture in the Education Hour, as acknowledged by the elders
who gathered at the councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451).
In the Reformation, reforming churches
wished to demonstrate that they were not inventing some new religion, but still confessed the same historic,
biblical faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. So, they retained
and confessed such creeds as the Athanasian Creed.
One problem,
however, was that as a result both of Roman Catholic contentment to keep the
masses (pun intended) in the dark, and the accumulation of contra-biblical
Roman Catholic teachings, many in the churches had come to believe that Christ’s
human soul went to Hell upon His burial, rather than being dismissed to the
paradise of His Father’s hands from the cross.
So, would the
Reformed improve the language of the creed, at the cost of appearing to introduce
new doctrine in order to correct this erroneous thinking? They chose instead
to retain the language, and correct misconceptions by teaching.
So, we are
again blessed to have the Trinity Psalter Hymnal. When you read the “descent
clause” in the Athanasian Creed on p854 on the Lord’s Day, you may notice a
footnote referring you to Heidelberg Catechism 44 (p879), Canons of Dort 2.4
(p904), and Westminster Larger Catechism 50 (p945).
Heidelberg
and Dort explain the descent clause the same way that Calvin did—that the
confessing of Christ’s humiliation in the “Apostles’ Creed” was not ordered by
chronology but rather by intensity—that although He finished (as He Himself
declared) enduring Hell upon the cross before He was buried, yet that pouring out
of God’s wrath was His humiliation’s greatest extent and so it is named
last.
Westminster
explains the descent clause historically, basically saying that this was the
language used to describe not a place that He went, but His body’s spending
three days in the grave under the power of death.
It is vitally important that we believe
these two things—that Christ suffered all of the Hell that our souls deserved
by the time that He said “it is finished,” and that He indeed continued under
the power of death for three days, and on the third day rose again.
As we
approach the table, confessing this together, let each of our hearts resoundingly
say, “I believe this!” And let us show forth Christ’s death, as we feed
upon Him by faith.
Looking
forward to Word, sacrament, and prayer with you,
Pastor
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