Repetition is essential for depth. Without returning to once-learned things, we may never truly know them. Liturgical churches may take this for granted and, like Esau, spurn their birthright, but Lexham Press’s Christian Essential series is a beautifully designed set of books on the ancient catechetical topics that engages ancient things in fresh ways. Ben Myers’ book on the Creed is one of three currently available, each of which is copiously and attractively illustrated and skillfully laid out. The existence of the series with its commitment to “basics. . .unfolded afresh” (as the Series Preface expresses its intention) is altogether laudable.
The genesis of Myers’ contribution was in a series of catechetical sermons on the Creed preached at a Uniting Church in Sydney, Australia. That denomination’s melding of Methodism, Presbyterianism, and Congregationalism (similar to the United Church of Canada) would not necessarily prepare the reader for Myers’ depth of engagement with the church fathers in his preaching. He has constant reference to Irenaeus, to Athanasius, and to Gregory of Nyssa. A helpful index at the back of the book displays his references and where the reader can follow up with his own investigation of Irenaeus’ Against the Heresies, Jacob of Serug’s On the Mother of God, or Origen’s On First Principles—three among a large company of patristic citations.
But what is the consensus of the fathers? Myers places the Creed within its ancient setting in the baptismal rite—surely a patristic norm—but baptism is never explicitly regenerative in his text. Myers is clear that “[s]ome early Christian teachers suggested that heaven and hell might in fact be the same place” (92), but he is unclear how many fathers thought this or what his criterion of selection was for formulating his unique understandings of hell and of the final judgment, neither of which jives with the Athanasian Creed’s explicit formulations on damnation and judgment. Myers’ deployment of the Creed as a rule of faith follows Irenaeus closely, but when one father says one thing and another father another thing, who shall decide? Who watches the patristic watchmen?
Myers’ writing is fluent, clear, and beautiful, and his summary of the book as an “invitation to happiness” (xvi) in that word’s deepest sense could scarcely be improved upon as a way of understanding what we invite people to believe when we invite them to trust in Christ for salvation and life everlasting. Yet with the peaceful invitation to the beauty of faith, there must also be a refutation of falsehood, so that the new Christian does not stumble early for lack of knowledge and ignorance of danger. In refuting falsehood, Myers often boxes himself in rhetorically. He will bring up some objection to Christianity, for example, that it is patriarchal or Western (a priori bad and evil things), and rather than destroying the lofty thought raised against Christ or Scripture (2 Cor 10:5), he is eager to explain how really Christianity is necessarily egalitarian (but cf. Eph 5) or really the most profound depiction of the ascension is an Aboriginal artist’s painting of Jesus ascending down into the ground. These points are likely unconvincing to those opposed to the gospel, who hold all cultural power in the contemporary West, and Myers’ way of handling objections sets an example of accepting the enemy’s framework and then justifying one’s Christianity within that always-shifting, never-satisfied frame. His harsh words for ancient Gnosticism are welcome, but there are other opponents now abroad in the land. This book is a pleasure to read and to argue with, but we await a clear, Lutheran explanation of these ancient, evergreen topics keyed to contemporary challenges to the faith and drawn thoroughly not from this father or that father but from Scripture, as the ancient creeds are.
Adam C. Koontz
Pastor, Redeemer Lutheran Church
Oakmont, Pennsylvania