AP

Max Leenhaardt (1853–1941), Assemblée du Désert

In 1685 Louis XIV banned Protestant life and worship in France. His Revocation of the Edict of Nantes ordered that Protestant temples – church buildings – be “incessamment démolis”, demolished without delay. Brave French Protestants, Huguenots, who determined to go on worshipping Christ were forced out into the bushland and ravines of southern France. This was l’Église du désert, the Church of the Desert.

It was very clear to those Huguenots that the church is not a building, but the saved people of God filled with the Spirit of God. Louis could smash church buildings all day, and he did. But never could he touch the Spirit-filled Body of Christ.

The third and final section of the Nicene Creed speaks to these things. It is in two parts: the first part concerns pneumatology, the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit; the second part concerns ecclesiology, the Church within which the Holy Spirit dwells and works.

And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.

The Creed gives the Holy Spirit the same divine title given to Jesus Christ: The LORD, and the Creed affirms a divine work to the Holy Spirit. He is the “giver of life” (ζωοποιον, zōopoion). Jesus used the same word: “The Spirit gives life” (John 6:63).

God the Holy Spirit brooded over the waters of creation and at the Father’s word filled the earth with abundant and teaming life: not just vegetation, but “plants bearing seed” for abundant reproduction; not just animal life, but beasts which are fruitful and multiply. The lively Spirit makes life that makes life.

It was at this point that the original 325 Nicene Creed ended. What follows was added at the First Council of Constantinople in 381:

He proceeds from the Father and the Son

The Son is the only begotten of the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

“And the Son” translates the Latin Filioque, and was not part of the original two Greek versions of the Creed. It was added at the Third Council of Toledo in Spain in 589, which was a meeting of bishops from the Latin-speaking Western part of the church.

Filioque was inserted to uphold the full divinity of Jesus Christ against the Arian heresy. If the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son then the Son must be just as much God as the Father.

The Greek-speaking eastern part of the church never accepted this addition, one factor which led ultimately to the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054.

And with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.

Given that the Holy Spirit is “the Lord, the giver of life”, he is to be worshipped and glorified as God.

We do this when we baptise someone “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” just as Jesus commanded (Mat. 28:19).

We do the same when we pronounce Paul’s benediction: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14).

He spoke through the prophets.

Special revelation – God’s immediate revelation of himself and his words to particular people at particular times – is one of the great works of the Holy Spirit.

Speaking as a prophet, David said that the “Spirit of the LORD speaks by me; his word is on my tongue” (2 Sam. 23:2). Peter affirmed this: “The Scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through David” (Acts 1:16).

Later Peter wrote that all Scripture was wrought ultimately by the Spirit:

2 Peter 1:20–21 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

To hear Scripture is to hear the voice of God the Holy Spirit.

When Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that all Scripture is “God-outbreathed” he coins a

compound word – theopneustos (θεοπνευστος) – from theos (θεος, God) and pneō 

(πνεω, breath out), that captures the fundamental role of the Spirit (pneuma, πνευμα) in the making of Scripture.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.

Here the four attributes of the church are listed in one crisp sentence.

First, the church is One. Because there is only one Christ there can only be one body of Christ.

Ephesians 4:4–6 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

We grieve for the visible disunity of the Church into multiple denominations and “independent churches.” This is the product of a thousand geographical, cultural, linguistic, and historical divisions, as well as differing interpretations about Scripture (about baptism, church governance, and end times, for example), and even disagreements about the ultimate authority of the church. Whereas Roman Catholics obey the Magisterium (Scripture plus tradition) Protestants hold to Sola Scriptura: Scripture alone.

Yet there exists within the jungle of visible and organisational divergences one true Spirit-wrought church.

Second, the church is holy: set apart by God for himself, washed and purchased by the blood of Christ, and enlivened by the Holy Spirit. And the church is being sanctified and made holy.

Third, the church is catholic, universal.

The Roman Catholic Church falsely claims to be the only true church and ties “the Catholic Church” to the worldwide organisation headed by the Pope of Rome.

Protestants use a small c to show that catholic simply means universal.

Trying to avoid this confusion Lutherans substituted the word Christian for catholic. Philip Schaff thought that this “unwisely left the Romanists to monopolise the name Catholic.”

Fourth, the church is apostolic, founded upon the teaching of Jesus’ apostles: each of whom saw the risen Jesus, was personally commissioned by him, and was authenticated by him with signs, wonders, and acts of power.

Paul encapsulates these four marks when he describes Christians as:

Ephesians 2:19–22 Members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

This does not mean that baptismal water expunges our sins. This sacerdotal (priestly) view of baptism is taught by Roman Catholicism:

Baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte (a newly baptised person) “a new creature,” an adopted son of God (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1265).

This distortion of baptism denies that we are saved by the death and resurrection of Christ alone; but insists that we must add to Christ’s work baptism and other sacraments such as the mass and penance.

But the Bible teaches that we are saved immediately – without any mediating person or ceremony – by Christ; and that we receive Christ’s salvation by faith alone, a faith which is itself the gift of God:

Ephesians 2:8–9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism question 30 sums this up:

The Spirit applieth to us the redemption purchased by Christ, by working faith in us, and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling.

Because there is One Saviour and One Church the Nicene Creed is right to affirm only “one baptism,” in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We look forward to the resurrection of the dead

Every human being will rise to stand before Christ for final judgment and sentence, to enter into either an eternity with the LORD, which is bliss and heaven, or an eternity of separation from the LORD, which is misery and hell:

Daniel 12:2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.

“Look forward” translates prosdokaō (προσδοκαω), “to give thought to something that is viewed as lying in the future. The context indicates whether one does this in longing, in fear, or in a neutral state of mind”. Clearly the context in the Creed is one of yearning for the return of Christ and for what follows his return:

And to life in the world to come. Amen.

This is the Christian’s great and certain hope.

Isaiah 26:19 But your dead will live, LORD; their bodies will rise – let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy – your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.

Revelation 21:4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

Our brave eighteenth-century Huguenot brothers and sisters who gathered to worship in the wild, l’Église du désert, remind us that the church is not a building or earthly organisational structure.

The Church is the assembly of those who are called by the Father, saved by the Son, and enlivened and gathered by the Holy Spirit into one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic body.

– Campbell Markham