Like so many generations of Lutherans raised in the Lutheran
Church
– Missouri Synod, my catechetical formation took place in confirmation class
using the Small Catechism with explanation produced by the synod and
published by Concordia Publishing House.[1]
While the text of the Small Catechism itself was memorized and received
some attention in catechesis, the true focus of catechesis was the synodical
explanation with its numbered questions and answers, and supporting Bible
verses.
When the synodical catechism treats the phrase “the
forgiveness of sins” in the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed the emphasis
falls on explaining justification by grace, on account of Christ through
faith. The current 1991 edition exhibits
some changes in wording from the 1943 edition that I used, but the focus
remains the same. Near the end of the
section on “the forgiveness of sins” there are three questions that follow the
same order and provide the same answer with only minor changes in wording. In the current edition they state:
183. Where does
God offer the forgiveness of sins?
God offers the forgiveness of
sins in the Gospel.
184. How do you
receive this forgiveness of sins?
I receive this forgiveness
through faith, that is, by believing the Gospel.
185. Why can and
should I be sure of the forgiveness of my sins?
I can and should be sure of the
forgiveness of my sins because God keeps His promises in Christ.
These questions and answers, like
all of them in this section, provide true statements that teach about the
Christian faith confessed in the Lutheran Church. For many years this is how I thought about
the phrase “the forgiveness of sins” in the Creed - namely, it confessed the truth that we
receive forgiveness because of Christ’s saving death through faith.
However, when we consider the
history of this phrase in the Apostles’ Creed, and of how it is explained in
the Small Catechism and Large Catechism, it soon becomes clear that
that there is a glaring oversight when “the forgiveness of sins” is taught in
this way. In fact, one can go so far as
to say that it reveals the degree to which the sacraments have often failed to
shape the piety of the Lutheran Church
– Missouri Synod. The correct answers
were given when it was time to talk about Holy Baptism and the Sacrament
of the Altar. Yet when the topic was
not, “What do we believe about baptism?” or, “What do we believe about the
Lord’s Supper?” the sacraments were often nowhere to be found in the piety of
the synod. And if these two sacraments
received this treatment, Holy Absolution was even more invisible.
In the history of the Church, the phrase “the forgiveness of sins” in the
Apostles’ Creed has been first and foremost about the forgiveness received
in baptism. The catechetical
practice of the Church prior to the
Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) is shrouded in relative obscurity.[2] There is a paucity of texts extant and those
that we have require us to tease out details of ritual practice and theology.[3] The Apostolic Tradition was once
considered to be evidence for pre-Nicene practice in Rome, but that now seems unlikely.[4]
The Edict of Milan in 313 A.D.
and Constantine’s support of the Church dramatically changed the Church’s situation and also prompted significant
changes in the way the Church was
now able to do things – indeed in how it needed to do things as it
sought to evangelize the Roman Empire that was
becoming newly receptive to the faith.
The developed form of the catechumenate leading to baptism for which we
have some significant evidence dates to this period.[5]
It is in this setting that
creeds, which were already beginning to take forms we would recognize during
the third century, come into their own.
The specific details varied from area to area, but the creeds became the
basis for catechesis as they were given by the bishops to the catechumens (an
event called the traditio symboli) and were then later spoken by the
catechumens before the Church (called the redditio
symboli).
The intimate connection between
creeds, catechesis and baptism is a foundational truth of the early Church. It is not
simply that creeds were part of the process that led to baptism. In Rome
itself the forerunner of the Apostles’ Creed was in fact part of the
baptismal formula. The Gelasian
Sacarmentary (Reginensis 316) provides “an edition of a rite which in
its original Roman form was first drawn up in the early sixth century.”[6] In this rite we find:
“And before you pour the water
over him, you question him with the words of the Creed, and say:
Do you believe in God the Father
Almighty? R. I believe.
And do you believe in Jesus
Christ his only Son our Lord, who was born and suffered? R. I believe.
And do you believe in the Holy
Spirit; the Holy Church, the remission of sins, the
resurrection of the flesh? R. I believe.
And while you
ask the questions, you dip him three separate times in the water. Afterwards,
when he has come up from the water, the infant is signed by a presbyter on his
head with chrism, with these words:
May Almighty God, the Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who has made you to be born again of water and the Holy
Spirit, and has given you remission of all your sins, himself anoint you with
the chrism of salvation in Christ Jesus unto life eternal. R. Amen.”[7]
The most striking thing about
this is that baptism did not occur using the trinitarian formula of
Matthew 28:19. Instead, each portion of
the creed about Father, Son and Holy Spirit was confessed in conjunction with a
threefold immersion in water (naturally an adult spoke this for the
infant). As J.D.C. Fisher observes,
“This threefold series of question-answer-dipping constituted the means by
which the Roman Church at this time fulfilled
our Lord’s command to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Ghost.”[8] We do not know exactly when Rome shifted to
the trinitarian formula of Matthew 28:19. It occurred “by the time of Zacharias
I, who in 744 had to deal with the question of whether a presbyter who
incorrectly pronounced the Latin formula had administered a valid baptism.”[9]
In the early centuries in Rome, “the remission of sins” was confessed in the very
event in which it was received. The
explicit connection between baptism and the phrase “forgiveness of sins” has
been grounded for the Church in the words of
Peter on the day of Pentecost: “Now
when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest
of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent
and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the
forgiveness of your sins (βαπτισθήτω ἕκαστος ὑμῶν ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ εἰς ἄφεσιν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν
ὑμῶν),
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:37-38 ESV).[10] This truth is confessed in the Nicene Creed
(as it reached its final form at the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D.) in
the words “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” The explicit linking of baptism and
forgiveness is a regular feature of eastern creeds.[11]
As one would expect, the faith
confessed by the Church in the west on this
foundational truth of the faith was no different. Quodvultdeus of Carthage was a deacon in
Carthage under St. Augustine and later became bishop there. In his Second Homily on the Creed he
explained the creed and he told the catechumens, “[We believe] in the remission
of sins. Holy baptism completely destroys all sins, both original and personal:
things said, things done, things thought, things known, things forgotten –all
are discharged. He who created the
person makes him anew; he who is the one who does not look for merit remits
sins: for grace precedes even this second infancy, so that, liberated through
Christ, those who were once captives in Adam and bound by the devil are free”
(10.1-2).[12]
The historical understanding of
the phrase “the forgiveness of sins” in the Church is beyond doubt – it confesses
the forgiveness of sins received in Holy Baptism. The synodical explanation’s failure to convey
any kind of sacramental grounding for this forgiveness could perhaps be excused
by the rather vague language in the Small Catechism’s explanation of the
Third Article (“but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me
with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the truth faith” ).
Yet when we turn to the Large
Catechism all such excuses fall away.
There Luther writes: “Further we believe that in this Christian community
we have the forgiveness of sins, which takes place through the holy sacraments
and absolution as well as through all the comforting words of the entire
gospel. This encompasses everything that is to be preached about the sacraments
and, in short, the entire gospel and all the official responsibilities of the
Christian community. Forgiveness is constantly
needed, for although God’s grace has been acquired in Christ, and holiness has
been wrought by the Holy Spirit through God’s Word in the unity of the Christian
church, yet we are never without sin because we carry our flesh around our
neck. Therefore everything in this
Christian community is so ordered that everyone may daily obtain full
forgiveness of sins through the Word and signs appointed to comfort and encourage
our consciences as long as we live on earth” (II.54-55).[13]
We understand that the synodical explanation
is aimed at the catechesis of young people, and so there will be a lack of
precision on many matters. However, the
contrast with the Large Catechism is telling. For Luther, to speak of the forgiveness of
sins is to speak of the sacraments.
There is no free floating Gospel, but instead the Word and signs through
which God gives forgiveness and provides comfort. If historically the phrase “the forgiveness
of sins” referred to Holy Baptism, Luther expands it to include “the holy
sacraments and absolution as well as through all the comforting words of the entire
gospel.” Yet in this manner of speaking
the sacramental focus of forgiveness remains front and center. As his words at the end of the section on baptism
(IV.74-86) about the ongoing significance of baptism in the life of the
Christians dramatically indicate, Luther teaches a piety that is focused on
baptism.
This sacramental focus is one
that many in the LCMS are in the process of recapturing. The phrase “the forgiveness of sins” in the
Creed provides one place where both historical accuracy and confessional congruency
prompts us to speak about the sacraments in general and baptism in
particular. With the synodical
explanation we can ask the question, “185. Why can and should I be sure of
the forgiveness of my sins?” And
then we can answer: I have been baptized!
[1]
The edition I used was, A Short Explanation of Dr. Martin Luther’s Small
Catechism – A Handbook of Christian Doctrine, copyright 1943, slightly
revised in 1965 and copyright renewed 1971. The current edition is Luther’s
Small Catechism with Explanation, copyright 1991.
[2]
This fact should provide a strong caution against any attempt to use the
catechumenate as a significant exegetical insight for reading the New
Testament. Such an attempt is an
invitation to anachronism.
[3]
The best treatments of this period are: Maxwell E. Johnson, The Rites of
Christian Initiation (rev. and exp.
edition; Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 2007), 1-114; Bryan D. Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals
and Theologies of Baptism: From the New Testament to the Council of Trent
(Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 1-36.
[4]
I am persuaded by the work of Paul Bradshaw, Maxwell Johnson and L. Edward
Phillips that the Apostolic Tradition does not describe pre-Nicene Roman
practice, but rather that the text is a conflation of several different
traditions from several different periods and that its final form probably
reflects a fourth century setting. See:
Paul E. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson and L. Edward Phillips, The Apostolic
Tradition: A Commentary (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2002).
[5]
For a general description of the catechumenate as it existed in the fourth and
fifth centuries, see: Edward Yarnold, The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation:
The Origins of the R.C.I.A. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1994),
1-54. It is true that the Church developed the catechumenate in this period as
a ritual process for bringing people out of paganism and into the Church during
a time when it faced the challenge of dealing with larger numbers of
people. On the topic of ritual and
conversion and antiquity, see: Thomas M. Finn, From Death to Rebirth: Ritual
and Conversion in Antiquity (New York: Paulist Press, 1997). It is often asserted that the conversion of
Constantine and the growth of the Church dramatically altered the commitment
found in the Church. However Peter Brown
counters: “Knowing what we do of the moral texture of the third-century
Christian communities, we do not need to think that, when it came to sinning,
worldliness, and feigned adhesion, the conversion of Constantine heightened to
any appreciable extent activities in which the contemporaries of Origen and
Cyprian had already shown themselves capable of a high all around level of performance. As with the idea of ‘mass conversions,’ so
with the idea of the ‘corruption of the church’ after its establishment by
Constantine, we are dealing with labor-saving formulas that take us much less
far than we might think in understanding the precise moral tone of the late
fourth century” (Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function
in Latin Christianity [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981], 66-67).
[6]
E.C. Whitaker, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy (3d rev. and exp.
edition.; ed. Maxwell E. Johnson; Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 2003), 212.
[7]
On the use of chrism for this part of the baptismal rite in our own setting,
see: Mark’s thoughts: The Use of Chrism in the Lutheran Service Book Rite ofHoly Baptism.
[8]
J.D.C. Fisher, Christian Initiation. Baptism in the Medieval West: A Study
in the Disintegration of the Primitive Rite of Initiation (Chicago: HillenbrandBooks, 2004), 13.
[9]
Fisher, Christian Initiation, 14.
[10]
The Latin text of the Vulgate has “in remissionem peccatorum” and this provides
the language for the Latin creeds.
[11]
J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (3d ed.; New
York: Longman, 1972), 160.
[12]
Thomas Macy Finn, Quodvultdeus of Carthage: The Creedal Homilies. Conversion
in Fifth-Century Africa (New York: The Newman Press, 2004), 64.
[13]
Translation cited from Kolb-Wengert.
