← The Alisa Childers Podcast
The Alisa Childers Podcast
#168 What are the Earliest Creeds in Christian History? With Gary Habermas
00:53:22
Loading summary
Transcript37 lines
- [00:00]
A
Bauckham cites this, but it's not his. He got it from somebody else. And the statement is this. And it's incredible. It is probably one of the most show stopping quotations that anybody could make about the New Testament. Here's the sentence. The earliest Christology is the highest Christology. The earliest Christology is the highest Christology. And you want to say, oh, no way, no way. Have you read John, have you read the Johannine prologue of the first 18 verses where Jesus called God twice? I don't think so. That's the highest one. Well, Oscar Coleman and others say, yeah, calling Jesus God probably is not the highest claim in the New Testament for deity. Calling him Lord is. And Lord, Coleman argued, is the main one. Because the, the translation of the Greek is. When you go back and look at the text that they cite in the Old Testament, it's Jehovah. So Jehovah and the Old Testament, the holiest name for God is translated Lord in the New Testament.
- [01:29]
B
Hey, friends, welcome to the Alisa Childers podcast where we equip Christians to identify the claims of historic Christianity, discern its counterfeits, and proclaim the gospel with clarity, kindness and truth. I am so excited to bring you today's episode about early creeds of Christianity. So you might be thinking, what relevance does this have to my life as a Christian? Well, maybe you've heard a skeptic say, hey, you know, the earliest Christians didn't even have a Bible, therefore we can't possibly know what they all agreed about regarding what it meant to follow Jesus or what it meant to be a Christian. You might have heard people say, well, maybe the Bible, the New Testament in particular, was just written by the theological winners of certain theological debates and therefore silencing the opposition with what was essentially canonized in the New Testament. So these are tough things to address, especially when we realize that the New Testament books weren't written right away. But many Christians are unaware that our Bibles are filled with early creeds that actually predate the books within which they are recorded. Today we're going to talk with an expert guest, Dr. Gary Habermas, who's a New Testament scholar and historian. He specializes on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The doctor Habermas, welcome to the show. Welcome back. We talked about the resurrection last time and we're here to talk about creeds today.
- [02:55]
A
We did. Elisa, I'm, I'm really tickled to be back. I'm looking forward to this topic as much as you are.
- [03:01]
B
Yeah, well, you know, I think when many Christians Think about creeds, they think Apostles Creed, they think Nicene Creed. But when we're talking about early creeds, we're talking about something that comes long before those other creeds and formulations. So these are creeds that date within to a few, within a few years of Jesus life, creeds recorded for us in various places in our New Testament. And in a moment, we're going to walk through some of these specific creeds and talk about the beliefs they affirmed. But I thought it might be good to start out with, just giving us a foundation of an idea of, you know, how did these creeds form? What function did they serve in the early church and just, you know, a general idea of what these creeds are all about.
- [03:44]
A
Sure. Well, this started almost 100 years ago. And some German scholars in what was, if anybody cares about this, and what was the first quest for the historical Jesus, which went from about 1800 to about 1920. And some of the scholars, toward the end of this time, 1890s and the first 20 years of last century, they noticed that there were texts in the New Testament that were sort of, let's say, almost set aside like a quotation. Like, when we quote things, we. We take long quotes and we block them. And so you can tell that I'm citing somebody that's not me, or if I footnote a shorter statement, you can tell I'm using somebody's source that's not me. But Paul on a couple of occasions, 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 15, Paul said, I delivered unto you that which I also received. Now in the 11th passage, 1 Corinthians 11, the famous communion or Eucharist passage, he says, I delivered unto you that which I also received from the Lord. That's important. But in 1 Corinthians 15, 1, he says, I delivered unto you that which I also received. And then he just goes into it, and there he calls him Christ. And the other one is introduction, he calls Jesus Lord. Now, so Paul is telling you, I tell my grad students, this is the way Paul tells you. He's inserting a footnote here. So the footnote is, I'm giving you what I was given. Or to say that another way, this isn't me, this is somebody else. And many times throughout the Epistles, you have phrases like observe the traditions of the elders or that sort of thing. Now, traditions, there are synonyms for the word creed. I would say I like the word creed the best, but the word traditions is probably the best synonym. Other name would be Confessions. But what the New Testament scholars realized is that these thoughts often broke the train of thought in that passage, and the writer was citing somebody or something else. So they noticed some disparities in the text. And then about 1935 to 1945, right in there, first C.H. dodd, professor of New Testament at Cambridge, he wrote a little book called the Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments. And then the best known book on the creeds was written about 10 years later by a German scholar, Oscar Cullman. And Kuhlmann wrote a book on the earliest Christian confessions. And that's when they started unpacking. Dodd mostly did the act sermon summaries, and Coleman did the creeds proper in the Epistles. That's at least a little introduction. But these people noticed, these scholars noticed that there were. They were not the same as the text. They were like somebody citing something. But more clearly, when the author says, I'm giving you something that I received or observed these traditional statements, when they say those things, they're talking about something else. And so that got the field going. And today it's huge. The kind of evidence that this gives
- [07:25]
B
us, it's very exciting and very relevant, I think, for Christians who are dealing with counterfeit gospels that they're faced with. Because a lot of times the skeptical claims coming from these counterfeit gospels are they'll say things like, well, you know, the tradition or whatever that you're in is just your thing. But we're doing this other thing that probably predates and there's all kinds of claims that people make. But really we go back to these really early creeds, and we can confidently say, like, this is what Christians believed. And you mentioned the earliest Christian confessions by Oscar Kuhlman. I happen to have a little copy of that right here. So this is a great resource for people to get. It's very short. If you're listening and you can't see the video here, it's a very short book. It's just maybe about 65 pages, and it goes through those earliest Christian confessions and creeds. So how many creeds are there in our New Testament, would you say, overall?
- [08:18]
A
Well, I'm not sure anybody's put a name on them, but. But there's about, let's say, 15 major ones. They're almost never in the Gospels. One is located at Luke 24:34. He's risen and appeared to Peter. That's thought to be one. But they're almost all in the epistles. They're mostly in Paul's epistles, but they're in the non Pauline apostles too. And then you have what are called the act sermon summaries, which are chiefly found in Acts 1. These are chapters. They're chiefly found in Acts 1, 5, 10 and 13. Some people go to the Paul at areopagus in Acts 17. But for sure, Acts 1, 5, 10 and 13 1, 5 and 10 are Petrine and 13 is Pauline. There are sermons by those guys in the text. And Dodd, for example, C.H. dodd, the Apostolic preacher, in his developments, he says, I can't prove these are written that these come from the apostles, he said, but they come from the apostles time. And it's the sort of things the apostles were saying. So he's getting pretty close to saying this goes back to the very beginning. And he did that in 36, 1936. By now everybody's saying that goes back to the beginning.
- [09:47]
B
So let me share with you how I try to explain this to people and then you can tell me, you can give me a grade on how I explain this to people. But a lot of Christians think, well, how do we know? Like how does that make sense that let's say 1 Corinthians was written, I don't know, 55ish. But yet this creed that's being recorded, you're saying is to so much, you know, dates to so much earlier. The way I explain it to people is it's kind of like when I went to my grandma's house when I was a teenager and I asked her to teach me how to make her peach cobbler recipe. And I thought she was going to pull out a recipe card or maybe open a cookbook, but instead she just said, oh, it's really easy. I can just tell it to you. It's my cuppa cup, a cuppa recipe. So it had three ingredients. Cup of flour, cup of sugar, and a cup of canned peaches. And then she would bake it. And so the way I explain it to people is it would be like if I wrote a cookbook right here in 2022. But in the cookbook, I first write down the recipe that was first passed down to me in say, 1986. So the recipe would date to 1986 or even before. But the book that it's recorded in dates to 2022. Does that you think that's a fair comparison there to how the creeds work in the New Testament?
- [10:56]
A
Yeah, I think we have a lot of those things in our lives where we might Yesterday I found a card from two of our grandchildren. And the card was dated about six years Ago. But if I'm talking to them about it today. Right, the talk today or the writing today is the same year. But the card, if I quote their card, it's going back several years. I think that's similar. So we do the same thing. When our students write, write papers, they will sort, sort, I mean, quote a source. But we do it with footnotes. They did it by saying, this is a. This is a creed. This is a statement. This isn't mine. I got it from somebody else. Remember what you were taught by the elders. They. They tell you it's from somebody else by the. Their intros. Now, sometimes they don't say that. They just start quoting. But scholars know you got to know Greek really, really well. And I've got a minor in Greek. But as I tell people, that just makes me dangerous. These folks know Greek inside and outside, and they can tell when the syntax is broken in the Greek. And, oh, it looks like something's coming. But if what comes after that syntax break, if what comes is a da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. They go, whoa, okay, we're dealing with a creed here. Now, I should say something. What we. When we do that in English, it often rhymes. An example of a creed. I often use these examples. Let's say we're teaching children how to read. They're in preschool, they can't read. But we teach them to sing or to say little ditties. And it might be A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Okay, we all know that one. Here's another one. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. And here's another one. Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Now, in English, those things rhyme. In Hebrew writing, in Greek, they don't rhyme the same way, but you can tell they're set apart. And there's a cadence to them, a cadence without rhyming. And they look for those spots where the text breaks. And then they know it's early for a lot of reasons, but. But I. I'm be glad to give you those and, and give. And also tell you why they needed to go to this in the first place. But what's significant about this is critics, like we talked about a few in our last broadcast. Garrett Ludeman, the late German atheist, New Testament scholar, or many others. Pincus Lapid. He's a non Christian Jew. He's passed away too, but a non Christian Jew who has a PhD in New Testament from a German university. And Lapid gives about nine or 10 characteristics of First Corinthians 15 that prove it's an early creed. And Ludemann says that the Creed of 1 Corinthians 15, or at the very least the material that's in the creed goes back to between 30 to 33 A.D. that's how early that creed is dated, or at least the substance in the creed.
- [14:25]
B
That's fascinating. Let's talk about that creed. Because 1 Corinthians 15 is probably, I'm assuming among. There's probably still a lot of Christians that don't know about this creed. But of all the creeds, this probably is the most well known one. Would you also say it's the earliest or is there something earlier?
- [14:42]
A
I don't know that anybody knows exactly. When you get down in that first three year period, it's just a matter of a person's opinion, which one comes first. Some people says, say that the comment in First Corinthians 12, Jesus is Lord, that little three worder is an early creed, some people say, and some people say it's the earliest. But 1 Corinthians 15 gets a lot of attention for a lot of reasons. And it's usually one of the ones that's put right there in the beginning. And again, Paul opens up by saying, somebody else gave this to me.
- [15:18]
B
Right. And so that creed says that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, that he appeared to Cephas and then to the 12. Now what stands out to me in this creed is that you really have more than just the actual events of Jesus, death, burial and resurrection. You actually have a divine reason for Christ's death given you have, you know, he wasn't just crucified for speaking truth to power or to satisfy the bloodlust of an angry mob, but actually there was a reason in the divine realm for his death, and that's for our sin. So it had something to do with, I think really hints at a substitutionary type atonement there. And then we have this scriptural support for the theological beliefs, which I think is really phenomenal. When you think about how many skeptics will claim, kind of like I started the show out with, hey, the earliest Christians didn't even have a Bible. We can't possibly know what they thought. Well, it's true they didn't have a New Testament, but embedded here in this very early creed is this idea that they held these beliefs which included the, I would argue Substitutionary death of Christ and his bodily resurrection with scriptural support and then, of course, eyewitness testimony and evidence. In that sense, I think that's really robust. What do you think, would you say is the significance of this early creed? Is this the understanding of the Gospel for the earliest Christians?
- [16:48]
A
Yeah, there's so many things that are important about this. Whenever the definition of the gospel is given, not just we preach the gospel, but when they define what the gospel they preached is, the contents, these comments are usually in Paul or in the Book of Acts. Those are the two regular places. And when you see the definition, it involves the deity, the death and resurrection of Jesus, minimum. Now, Paul says, born of a woman. Well, I say Paul says that's part of the Romans 1, 3, and 4 Creed. Born of a woman. I think there they're trying to say he had a human being for a mother, but he's the Son of God. I think he's talking about Jesus. Two natures here. And once in a while, you see buried. A lot of Christians define the gospel as death, burial, and resurrection. Well, actually, burial is not mentioned all that often, maybe half the time, but deity is in there much more, more frequently, and we can talk about that. But the three are there. Deity, death, resurrection. So that's very important. First Corinthians 15. Here's another one. It turns criticism on its head because criticism often says, well, the Gospel of John is plus 65 after Jesus, and it's the most theological of the Gospels. Okay, true. So it took them 65 years to unpack. It took John or whomever 65 years to unpack the story. And the story gets more involved as you go on, as more is unpacked. Well, 1 Corinthians 15 reverses that, because the list of appearances in 1 Corinthians 15 is the longest list of appearances anywhere in the New Testament. There's more appearances mentioned there than there are anywhere else. And it's the earliest list of the appearances. So it gets you thinking that people had this in mind right at the very beginning.
- [18:52]
B
Yeah, well, this First Corinthians 15 creed doesn't really directly speak to the deity of Jesus, but as I understand, there are other creeds in the New Testament that speak to that. Can you tell us about some of those? Because often we'll hear from skeptics that the deity of Jesus was a legendary development. This was something that came much later. But what can we learn from the creeds about that?
- [19:14]
A
Let me preempt this part of it with a little discussion. There's a one liner going around in theology today. There are a group of, well, depending how you define them, about five theologians. Unfortunately you can add others to the group, but unfortunately the original group, only one is still alive and two of them just passed away in the last little while. And they called themselves the High Christology Club. Now the names in this list are the most reputable names in New Testament scholarship. You're talking about Martin Hengel, the New Testament scholar from Germany. And when he was alive, he was probably the top New Testament scholar in the world. Then you've got Larry Hurtado, you've got James DG Dunn and Richard Bauckham. And they even dedicate books to each other. And they'll say to my buddies in the High Christology Club or to my buddies studying high Christology, now here's what they say. Now Bauckham cites this, but it's not his. He got it from somebody else. And the statement is this. And it's incredible. It is probably one of the most show stopping quotations that anybody could make about the New Testament. Here's the sentence. The earliest Christology is the highest Christology. The earliest Christology is the highest Christology. And you want to say, oh, no way, no way. Have you read John, have you read the Johannine prologue of the first 18 verses where Jesus called God twice? I don't think so. That's the highest one. Well, Oscar Coleman and others say, yeah, calling Jesus God probably is not the highest claim in the New Testament for deity. Calling him Lord is. And Lord, Coleman argued, is the main one. Because the translation of the Greek is. When you go back and look at the text that they cite in the Old Testament, it's Jehovah. So Jehovah and the Old Testament, the holiest name for God is translated Lord and the New Testament. Now you said, where are some phrases that do that? Well, here's some examples. How do we back up the earliest Christology? The highest Christology? Well, several things would make the highest Christology. Here's some examples. If Jesus can forgive sin, that's High Christology. When he did it in Mark, chapter two, the man comes through the ceiling and Jesus said, son, your sins are forgiven you. And they went. The elders went, that's blasphemy. You can't talk like that. And he said, well, so that you know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sin. I'm saying to this man, rise, take up your bread and walk. The fact that I'm healing him. Which by the way, at least is a good comment about apologetics. Jesus used the healing as an indication that his theology was accurate. Son, your sins are forgiven. And yeah, you know, I can forgive sin because now I'm going to heal you. So the implication is the Son of Man, which by the way, is not a human title for Jesus. Son of man is probably as lofty in the literature as Son of God is those two. It was Jesus favorite name for himself. And so forgiving sin is high Christology. Here's another one. Worshiping Jesus. That's very high Christology. Here's another one. It's being seated on God's right hand. That's a biggie. So there's others, but those three are huge. He can forgive sin. He sits on the right hand of God and he's worshiped. If those things are done, that's high Christology. Well, what early creeds say that kind of thing. Well, Romans 10:9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God's raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And to show you what Paul means by Lord, he quotes just that's 10, 9. And he comments on it in Romans 10:10. But just three verses later, he quotes from the Old Testament saying, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. And when he quotes that from the Old Testament, Lord there is Jehovah. So Paul is aware that he is attributing the Old Testament word for Jehovah to the New Testament when he says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, there's a huge one, another one, Romans 1, 3 and 4. And by the way, people will say are unanimous about these being creeds. The critics another One is Romans 1, 3 and 4, that where Jesus showed himself to be Messiah, son of God and Lord by virtue of his resurrection from the dead. So there you go again. Just like the healing, the man evidenced Jesus ability to forgive sin. And this passage, his resurrection evidenced his being Messiah, comma, son of God, comma, and Lord. Now you go, okay, what about the worship part or the seat under the right hand of God part? Well, for that you go to Philippians 2, 6, 11, another unanimous creedal passage. And there every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of the Father. So they're worshiping him. And that quotation is taken from the Old Testament in the same book, Isaiah, where God will not share his glory with anybody else, and here he's sharing it with the Son, and it's to the Father's glory, that the Son is praised. Whoa. That happens in the 30s. Wow. They were praising him. Yeah, he was exalted on God's right hand. Whoa. When were they teaching this right out of the gate? And those are three examples of the names for Jesus. That example in Mark 2, he can forget that's not a creed of Mark 2, but he can forgive sin. He's worshiped. And by the way, in Philippians 2, that creedal passage is one of at least that I know of. Three passages in the entire New Testament, and two of them are creeds. But three passages that answer the question. It's an awkward question, but how much of God is Jesus? In other words, there are cults and religions that say Jesus is less than God, he's half God, he's like an under God, he's a demigod. Gnosticism was like that. There were levels in the early church. But there are a few verses that say he's four fully God. And two of them are creeds. One of them is Philippians 2, where the text says he was in the form of God. Now in English, form doesn't mean much. If someone's building a house around you and they rough the house in with two by fours and there's not even a roof on it, I mean, the rain's going to go right through it. That's the form of a house. We can see what the house is going to look like from the two by fours. That's the English word form. But the primary meaning of the Greek word form, morphe, means of the nature of. So though Jesus shared God's nature, he left it and became a man. He didn't get rid of his attributes, but he left heaven and comes out. So right there, that's a very high Christology. The other one that's a Creed is Hebrews 1:3. Notice number one is not Paul, so it's a non Pauline Creed. And Hebrews 1:3, it says that Jesus, the English is something like Jesus is the exact representation of God's nature. In the Greek, that means the Greek is he had the nature of God. The last One is Colossians 2, 8, 9. In him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily. But that's not a creed, as far as I'm aware of people saying that. But Hebrews 1:3, Philippians 2, these verses are very, very high. And if you really want to get shocked by 1, 1 Corinthians 8:6, we all know that the John 3:16 in the old Testament is The Shema, hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. That's the John 3:16 in the Old Testament. In First Corinthians 8, 6, there's a dialogue about this among the high Christologists. But Jesus seems like he's brought into the Shema. He's put in the Shema because in the Shema, notice there's God and Lord, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. So what they do in whoever did this, First Corinthians 8, 6, God is the Father and Lord is the Son, and Jesus is in the Shema. Now, Bawkim and Dun went around and around on this a little bit and they were in high Christology club and they're buddies. And Don, before he passed away, Don was saying, yeah, I don't think they're really bringing him into the Shema, but they are snugging him right up against it. So it's high Christology. Bauckham said. Baka responded. I love his response. Hey, Jimmy, that James DG done always went by Jimmy, which sounds like a Southern name, but he's British. And hey, Jimmy, I got a problem for you. If you snug Jesus up to God, you got a problem because now you got two gods. What are you gonna do with two gods? I think you're safer to bring them into the Shema and say they're one and he's the God and Lord of the Shema. But so anyway, that seems to be what Bauckham seems to have won. This besides, Jimmy Dunn's explanation is a little bit funny. They've snugged him up to it, but he's not in. He's not in it yet. He's just kind of like. Like close enough that we should do something. But Bauckham goes, nah, See Bauckham's big deal on his, where he gets this early Christology. He takes Old Testament verses that are applied to Jehovah and sees how they're applied to Jesus and the epistles. That's Bauckham's emphasis. He takes over the praise and other things from the Old Testament. For Larry Hurtado, the other member, Larry Hordado's big deal is early Christian worship. How Christians worshiped Jesus. In the early mid-30s, they were already worshiping him. But you guys get these guys together and what you get is what Shema worship. Right hand of God, every knee will bow. And when do these date? I think pretty much everybody would say they're in the 30s. And some of them get this Jesus seminar. One of the most liberal Groups around. Right. Depending on how you score their colored phrases, they reject 80 to 90% of the red letter words of Jesus. They reject 80 to 90%. And yet when they took a vote, guess when they dated 1 Corinthians 15:3 and following, they dated it as being in existence before Paul was on his way to Damascus. Yeah, so here's Ludemann saying it's in the first three years. Here's the Jesus seminar. Not all of them. They said the majority of our members voted for it to be there when Paul was on his way to Jerusalem. I got three words for that. Early, early and early. So when people complain about John, I'm gonna tell you something. John's only plus 65. Take a look at the chief verses for Buddha, which are plus 600, 800. Zoroaster, a thousand. The Bhagavad Gita. Earliest copy, 4200 years after he was supposed to have lived. And nobody cares about those things. Alexander the Great's biography. There were a number of biographies written while he was alive. Alexander. But we don't have them. We may find them someday in a monastery, but we don't have them. The earliest one that's still around was written just short of 300 years after Alexander died. And the best two, Arian and Plutarch, are written 425 to 450. Almost half a millennium. What can happen with Alexander's life almost a half a millennium later? What kind of myth can go in there? And I can tell you what they think goes in there. There's some amazing things. But that's almost half a millennium. And you're going to complain about John at +65. I'm sorry, you're making a rule for the New Testament that doesn't apply to any other book. But I can get you. I can beat you. John 65. They date Luke and Matthew to 80, about 80 to 85. So now we're down to 50 to 55. Mark at plus 30. Oh, this is looking good. Paul's epistles. Most New Testament scholars date First Thessalonians at 50 AD. Some even put it back to 48. But let's go with 50. Let's go with the late date for First Thessalonians. That's only 20 years after the cross. And what scholars realized was when Paul starts talking to the Corinthians, he doesn't say, hey, I've got some big words for you. Messiah, Son of God, Son of man and Lord. Let's unpack these. No. When he opens up First Corinthians, he's talking with these big words. Guess what that means? His readers knew what he was talking about. He already explained them when he came earlier. He explained them. He had them. He knew it before that. And it was around on the way to Damascus. At the very least. I'll just say one more thing. I don't really care. That's strong comment. I don't really care when the creeds are dated. I mean, they're really, really helpful to me. But the more important thing is when is the material that's in the creeds to be dated? Because before the creeds are a stage that are sometimes called. It's a New Testament word, sometimes called homologia. And homologia in the Greek means the earliest material that everybody agreed on. In the pre show, in the opening, you said, what if the earliest Christians didn't agree? Homologia was the earliest preaching that comes from the apostles that everybody agreed to. Then it was put in creeds. I want to know when that content was. And Ludemann says it began immediately. Well, you go to the book of acts, and 50 days later, Peter's preaching. I think that's pretty close definition of immediately.
- [33:41]
B
That's great. And there's something I think especially powerful to knowing. Even though these creeds predate the books they were written in, many of these books were written when many of the people were still alive. You know, to me, that's a really strong indication that you wouldn't just start making stuff up when you're writing when the people who were around are alive still. You know, they would be able to say, hey, that's not right. I was there. You know, and it just seems like a really powerful apologetic in that way. So let me ask you this. Would you say then, well, first of all, let's say this. Are there any other creeds that might speak to other beliefs outside of maybe his death and resurrection and deity? Are there other creeds that would circle around another important belief of the early
- [34:29]
A
Christians, history or doctrine?
- [34:32]
B
Doctrine.
- [34:33]
A
Doctrine. Well, for example, Romans 4:25 is a creed and it says, we are justified by his resurrection. You go, whoa, I thought we were justified by his death. Well, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if there's no resurrection, the death is meaningless. So in that creed, and you almost wanna say, in that creed, Paul says, but that's not really true because in that creed, Paul's quoting somebody else. Paul didn't say it. Paul quot all right, but it's the resurrection that justifies we talked about a, a passage in our earlier session when Paul is speaking to the current, to the Thessalonians, first Thessalonians, he says, we grieve when people die. We grieve, but not as those without hope. And I was making the comment when my wife died and so on. There's a lot of difference between grieving with hope and grieving without hope. After my wife died, two of my four children, my youngest was only nine. My oldest was 21, and the 21 year old and the 17 year old oldest, a boy and the second girl, they both came to me after her death. And I never thought of it like this before, but they said, dad, my best friend just died. And then he would leave the room. And a couple days later my daughter said, dad, my best friend just died. What do we do when we talk to people who are going through that kind of grief? And these are children, I mean, they're not, you know, they're thinking through this, it's their mom. Paul says, having that hope of resurrection and know someone's there on the other end is so much more healing than telling them there's nothing there. It's over, You've seen her for the last time. Good luck, because you won't see her again. Go look at photographs, that's all you got. That's tough. We have that. In fact, in the New Testament, the doctrine that's said to depend on the resurrection more than any other doctrine is the resurrection of believers. And believers are told almost 20 times that we will be raised like Jesus, we'll be raised like him. What is a greater hope than that? Now that's, you know, so you have that hope, but that translates to counseling because how would you use resurrection with the Christian client, teaching them about how to deal with grief? So it evidences the event of eternal life and it helps with the counselee who just can't break away from losing their husband, their wife, whatever. And we hear a lot of stories like that. I once in a while get an email from somebody lost their husband or wife. They tell me they're very close to walking away from Christianity. They're mad at God. And I'll say, well, you know what, let me ask you a question. Why are you mad? Well, God didn't heal my spouse. I'll say, did God take his son off the cross when he asked him to? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That God take him down? Oh, he didn't. Well, then wouldn't there be some. Whether we know it or not. Isn't there a reason for this? In fact, Hebrews 5 makes an incredible comment. Jesus learned obedience by the things he suffered. What? Jesus learned obedience by his suffering. So then you tell the counselor, you know, you better. Let me talk frankly to you. You better start learning from this because it's not the end of the world. But don't ever forget, the resurrection tells you it's not the end of the world. The resurrection tells not to walk away from this, but you'll get over your suffering. So it works into good theology, it works in a good counseling, it works into good preaching. And of course, it was the primary lecture. I'll tell you this, Elisa, this is so cool. All the creeds, with almost no exceptions, are about Christology, and about 80% of them are on the subject of the Gospel. Guess what the early church thought was the most important message.
- [38:38]
B
Yeah, well, and I'm so glad that you tied together just that practical application of the hope that we have as Christians. Because I think one misunderstanding when Christians start talking about creeds is people think, well, you're just saying that there's these intellectual boxes you have to check. And you know, these creeds are like lists of beliefs, and you're just checking boxes and making intellectual scent. But what you're demonstrating with what you've. The story you just told and connecting that hope is that, yes, there are some things that we have to believe, things that we have to know about the Lord who is saving us and the Jesus that we're placing our faith in. But it's not about checking those boxes. It's about placing active trust, this faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And then these creeds function, I think, partially, at least, in a way of letting us know about Him. Right. I love how you said it. Like the emphasis is on Christology, so heavy about who this person who is Jesus, who. Who is Jesus Christ? And just a reminder to everybody listening and watching, it's just, to me, so powerful to know that that highest Christology is the earliest Christology. Just keep everybody, keep that in your minds. The earliest Christology is the highest Christology. Now, one thing I'd love to do is give our listening audience and viewers maybe some practical ways to engage with some of the pushback that is going to likely come. And I'll just give you two of them that I encounter in the progressive Christianity movement. And one of those is, and I was actually, as you were talking, I was typing, trying to find the book that I read this in, and I couldn't find it. So I didn't have it off the top of my head, but you mentioned the phrase son of man, and I think every Christian needs to be able to defend why that is a claim to deity, why that is such a high view. Because when we think about it, we think, oh, son of man. That just. I mean, everybody's the Son of man, right? Everybody. Every man is born from people. And then in a progressive book, and I just can't remember which one it was, they literally said when it talks about son of man, it just means son of a human. And then they'll even emphasize that was Jesus favorite title for himself and he was emphasizing his humanity. So maybe what's a quick and maybe easy to remember way for the average Christian to be able to engage with that and say, no, actually it doesn't just mean son of a human humanizing Jesus, but it's actually, it speaks to his deity.
- [41:00]
A
Yeah. I take two passages just to use as illustrations. One, we've already talked about Mark chapter two, where Jesus pronounces that the man's sins are forgiven. And when the Jewish leaders say, you can't do that, that's deity. He says, well, so you know, I'm. So you know, the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. I say to you, take up your bed and walk so that you know, I can forgive sin. There's a Son of man in that passage. The Son of Man forgives and forgiving is high Christology to me, the highest one. And probably the best verses in the Gospels for deity are Mark 14:61 to 64. And there Jesus is before the high priest, and the high priest asks him a straightforward yes, no question. Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One? Pretty straightforward. All I need is a yes or no here. Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One? And Jesus says, now in Greek, now he's speaking in Aramaic, but this is a Greek translation. Jesus says, ego a me, which is simply, I am, and henceforth you'll see the Son of man coming on the clouds, etc. Now, if I were the high priest, and my view was that Son of Man is son of a human being. When I ask him, are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One? And he answers, ego Me. Oh, I'm get. I'm getting you. You're saying, yes, I'm the Messiah and I'm the Son of God. Okay, that's pretty lofty. And then you flip the Son of Man. If I were the high priest, I'd say, son of man. Son of man. We're all sons of men. I want to go back to the other one. Are you the Son of God? No. When Jesus starts saying, I'm the Son of man, and henceforth you'll see me riding on the clouds and seated on my Father's right hand. The priest blows a stack, he grabs his garments, he tears him a formal declaration of blasphemy. And what did Jesus say wrong? He just said, I'm the Son of a man. No, the High priest knew what he was saying. He said, yes to I'm the Son of God. Yes to the Messiah. Yes to the Son of God. Then he flips the Son of Man. He says he's going to come on the clouds. Now, in the Old Testament, only God rides the clouds. The. That was enough. But then he says, and the Son of man will be seated on the right hand of God. That's another high Christological no, no. And that's when the high priest gets mad. Not well, how can you, a mere man, sit on God's right hand? No, he knows what he's saying. Now he realizes he's claiming deity and he can sit on God's right hand. So those two passages, Mark 2, he forgives sin, and Mark 14:61-64, Jesus answers yes to Son of God, then puts himself as Son of man, as a cloud rider and sitting on God's right hand, and it all breaks loose and it leads to his crucifixion.
- [44:14]
B
Okay, very. Yeah, that's a great thing to remember.
- [44:18]
A
There's a reason he went here. The Son of Man in the Old Testament can equal a regular man. Book of Psalms. It can be a prophet almost 100 times. Ezekiel says, prophesy, O Son of man. Okay, so that's a little more lofty. You could be a prophet. But Daniel 7 says the ancient of Days is sending someone like a Son of man to earth, and he's going to send up, set up God's kingdom, and it's God's everlasting kingdom. Now. This is not God coming down. Not God, the one we called God the Father because the Ancient of Days sends a Son of man. And we know Jesus is talking about the Daniel 7 passage and not the Ezekiel or Psalms passages, because twice he paraphrases the Daniel 7 passage, and 1 of them is right there with the High priest. When he claimed to be that Son of man, the high priest had heard enough. It was blasphemy. And he asks everybody, you know, what do you think? Is this Blasphemy or not. And everybody goes, yep, it's blasphemy. They heard it. So Son of Man is a lofty, lofty title.
- [45:24]
B
Very good. Another pushback that I've heard and I'm not sure how prevalent this one is. I think it's probably a minority view, but I have had to interact with this idea that people will say, when Paul says, I delivered to you what I received, he's not talking about a creed or maybe a Jewish teacher that he had or Peter or whoever else might have given him the creed, but rather he's talking about when he was taken up to the third heaven and received his basically his theological education in heaven. So really what he's delivering is something he heard from Christ himself when he was taken up into the third heaven. So I wonder how you might respond to that.
- [46:05]
A
First thing I'd say is the third heaven passage is probably a near death experience. When old Bible commentators, previous to all the near death experience literature, old commentaries, they will often say, Paul says, I know a man. Then we find out it's him. He tells you it's him, but I knew a man 12 years ago. And when you work the chronology out, it comes to about the time that Paul was stoned and left for dead in Lystra. So a couple old commentaries will say, wow, this works out in Lystra. This might be one of those things where people have a glimpse of heaven, what we call Indies today. I would say it was probably an nde, but we don't know that Paul had any. You know, whatever he learned, he said it's unlawful for a man to speak. So if it's unlawful for a man to speak, how can it be this material? Because he's speaking this with all his might. It's the number one message. It's the number one message of the creeds. But Paul said he can't tell you whatever he saw in the possibly near death experience. But the part that he is speaking about cannot be that because he said, I can't talk about that. He's talking about it non stop. And I mean, there's a lot more going on here. But the other thing is that I told you that that Panos Lapid, the J, the Jewish New Testament scholar gives about. I think it's nine reasons why First Corinthians 15 is a creed. And it's not just that Paul says, I, what I heard, I give you. Also the syntax is different, the cadence is different. And that is the passage I was thinking of when I said in The Greek, it's like some people think it's two stanzas and it's da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And there's this cadence to it. And Paul uses several words in 1 Corinthians 15 that he never uses anywhere else in his book. It's a vocabulary that seems not to be his. So there's a lot of reasons. Plus, I've got a. We talked in the first interview about Paul going to Jerusalem and meeting with Peter and James for 15 days. C.H. dodd made a very famous comment. He said Paul spent 15 days in Jerusalem with Peter and James. And it's safe to say that they did more than talk about the weather. And I mentioned if I were Peter, if I were Paul, I'd say, hey, I want you guys to tell me what Jesus looked like when he appeared to you, and I'll tell you what he looked like when he appeared to me. That had to be first on his list, because in 1 Corinthians 15:11, this might answer your question, too. In 1 Corinthians 15:11, after giving a list of the apostles who saw Jesus, he says right away, 1 Corinthians 15:11, after the Creed, he says, whether it is them or me. So we preach and so you believe. So this is the content A. It's the content of the earliest preaching and Bible. They all agree, which answers your other question where they say, oh, there's all kinds of multiple Christologies. I get that on the people I talk to, to the multiple Christologists. They move the Gospel of Thomas back, they move Gospel of Peter back, they move everything back. You know why? They have to have something to compete with the early Christian saints. But even the Jesus seminar, when they move the Gospel of Peter back or the Gospel of Thomas back, if you look in their chart, they've got the oral teachings of Paul, Paul, that is the creeds, the oral teachings of Paul predate even their source.
- [49:32]
B
Wow.
- [49:33]
A
So the creeds take precedence.
- [49:35]
B
That's great.
- [49:36]
A
And by the way, I haven't said this yet, but there was a need for creeds in the early church because scholars today think that 70 to 90% of Jesus listeners were illiterate. And if you're going to tell them the fields are white under harvest, pray the Lord of the harvest that there be reapers and go on out there and give a testimony. And you have to give it to them in a way that they understand because you can't read or, you know, most of them couldn't read. So when they do it in little ditties. I mean, if you're five years old and you're sitting in a church and you can't write your name, but you can sing the song with your parents. Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me I once was lost but now I'm found Was blind but now I see I can sing that and not be able to write my name. That was the idea why the creed started. They wanted to teach the people to use these things. And if you're illiterate, go ahead, just go ahead, memorize it and use them.
- [50:32]
B
That's great.
- [50:32]
A
So that's how they got started. From the very beginning. It was a form. You said at the beginning, the interview, that what did they do before they had the first book? That's what they did. They memorized their teachings and passed them on.
- [50:46]
B
Yeah. That's great. Well, we are just about out of time here. But this has been so incredibly rich, and I know it's been really informative for everybody who's watching and listening again. I just want to tell everybody, pick up the earliest Christian confessions. It's edited by someone over here. Or how's that go? There he is. Yeah. Gary Habermas edited that with Benjamin Shaw. I think you can still get this on Amazon. Is there anywhere else you know, or any other resources you might point people to on this topic of early confession?
- [51:18]
A
Dodd's little book, the Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments. That's excellent. And probably the best one is Vernon Neufeld. He did his doctoral dissertation under Bruce Metzger at Princeton Seminary, and it's the most. His book is the same title as Coleman's Early Christian Confessions, and he lays it all out as an outline, and it's very, very rigorous. I think Neufeld's book is probably the best, but everybody cites Coleman's as the best.
- [51:51]
B
Great.
- [51:51]
A
And, yeah, that book is really inexpensive. My students tell me they're only charging $10 or $12 for it. But the reason Ben and I did that with Wifnstock is for years I would tell everybody, get Coleman. Get Coleman. People are with their magic fingers, they're, you know, going to the computer while I'm talking, and they'll say, oh, it's not available anywhere. Or they. When it is available, it's over $100. And like you said, it's not even 100 pages. So we can't get into people's hands at $100. So we had them put that back out. And I think it's 10 or $12.
- [52:26]
B
That's great. All right. Well, I want to thank my guest, Dr. Gary Habermas for this discussion on creeds today. You can go to garyhabermass.com for more information for articles and book. He's written dozens and dozens of books. So much great information. Of course, his magnum opus is coming out, so. So be looking for that. If you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe and click the bell icon to be notified every time we release a new video. If you're listening on audio platforms, it really helps if you leave a five star review. And of course, sharing this out on social media all helps to get the word out. Thanks so much for watching and for listening and we'll see you next time.
- [53:08]
A
Sam.