Jesus Christ: The Good Shepherd (Apostle's Creed Book 6)

Introduction

This is a short book on the Apostle’s Creed. Each article is taken individually while considering its development from the Apostle’s thru the Apostolic ages to its present expression. The hope of this mediation book on the articles of faith is that it will deepen our faith and enliven our love for the development of the articles themselves as well as grow in a more resolute commitment to keeping them always alive in our hearts. We weekly pray the sign of our faith in Sunday Liturgies or Holy Days of Obligation throughout the Liturgical Year, but these are reflections of our own faith and the faith of the local communities of our faith. The Apostle’s Creed comes down to us from the earliest years of the Church and has been the source of the earliest form of communal worship and witness. May that same faith from which it arose keep it alive in our lives.

I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth

Our Creed begins with “I believe in God the Father, Almighty.” This is the oldest part of the Apostles Creed and which is traced as being used by the earliest of the Apostolic Fathers St. Justin Martyr (160-165 AD), St. Irenaeus (202 AD), Hippolytus, Tertullian and Origen.

The act of faith is always directed to the Father, since we have received the faith thru his Son, who leads us back to the Father. The Father seeks those who worship in “spirit and in truth.” If it is to the Father we direct our faith, then we do so because Jesus says “the Father is greater than I.” This is a great mystery, since we believe that the Word is co-eternal with the Father. “The Word was with God and the Word was God.” (Jn. 1:1)
God is infinite in every perfection. Power is a perfection, which we understand to be a source of operation. God is pure act and he is void of all potentiality. The creed says he is “Almighty.”
He is the maker of heaven and earth. The Letter to the Hebrews speaks of the Word as “thru whom all things were made.” We say, “maker of heaven and earth,” because all power is attributed to the Father and the Father has no origin. The Son proceeds from the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son by way of Spiration between the Father and the Son. All three person are equal in majesty, but theologians and the Church speak especially of the Father as being “creator of heaven and earth,” though all three persons share equally in Creation.
The Church teaches that we can know the Creator thru reason by the things that he has made. (Ott, 1954, 13) These are the words of St. Paul to the Romans: “Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made.” (Rom. 1:20) In this book, we are speaking directly to our faith, since the articles of faith, which are found in the Creed, are a supernatural work requiring the grace of faith. “Without faith it is impossible to please him, for anyone who approaches God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” (Heb. 11:6)
St. Paul speaks of an interiorly written law written in the hearts of the Gentiles. The Gentiles arable to follow the unwritten Law of God, but do not have the written Law. St. Paul shows that God can make the Gentiles do his will without revealing his designs to them as he did the Chosen People. God can do this because he is the Creator not only of physical law, but also of the eternal spiritual law; that is, the unseen laws which govern the heart of humankind. (Rom. 2:14)
St. Justin Martyr
St. Justin Martyr taught the consubstantial divinity of the Son with the Father as well as his presence as the Incarnate Logos. Justin was trying to stop the persecutions of the Church by the Emperor Antoninus. This was the object of his book called the First Apology.