Some of my fellow ELCA pastors do not react to the new and improved Apostles' Creed in ELW with horror and dismay. Largely it is because they were not expecting to be horrified and dismayed. I admire this; it must be nice not to approach the church with suspicion at all times. I do not have the charism of ecclesiastical trust, so I am left to deal with my horror and dismay.

In this particular case, I think my horror and dismay are actually well justified. So, for the record, if anyone dares risk coping with the same horror and dismay, here are my problems with ELW’s take on the creed.

First, its trinitarian orthodoxy is seriously compromised in the second article. Hard to imagine anything more ironic than a creed that fails to be trinitarian, since asserting the trinitarian nature of God is one of the creeds’ chief tasks. The compromise comes in the change from the pronoun “his” to the noun “God’s,” as in, “I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord.” Here’s the problem. In the second article, the “his” does not refer to God generally, or the ousia, or the whole Godhead. It refers to the Father. The implied antecedent is “God the Father almighty” who was just confessed in the first article. Certainly Jesus is called the “Son of God” in biblical usage and in perfectly orthodox theology. But the creed’s purpose is to be as exactingly trinitarian as possible. Calling Jesus “God’s only Son” makes it sound like Jesus is perhaps not God or not fully God, or all of God is the Father of the Son, which creates relational problems in the Trinity that no amount of Greek metaphysics can untangle. Why the change? The only reason I can infer is that someone-in-charge did not like the masculine pronoun… and also did not understand the doctrine of the Trinity very well. Or thought the elimination of the masculine pronoun was more important than trinitarian orthodoxy.

Second, and again in the second article, we now are supposed to say that Jesus Christ was “conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.” The old version says “conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Why the omission of “the power of”? Rumor has it—I admit it is no more than rumor, but these kinds of things are rarely written down for public access—that “power” implied to somebody “overpowering,” as in divine rape. Perhaps this is a good occasion for us Lutherans to take a leaf out of the Catholics’ and Orthodox’s book, for they assert uncompromisingly that Mary’s fiat was entirely free and her assent genuine. But even aside from that, does omitting the reference to “power” actually make the situation any better? To me it now sounds like the Holy Spirit directly fathered the Christ child, like Zeus transforming himself into golden rain so as to impregnate Danae. Or, less mythologically, it encourages the bizarre quasi-scientific idea you hear these days that Mary contributed half of Jesus’ DNA and the Holy Spirit supernaturally whipped up the other half. Or maybe the Holy Spirit cloned itself? The new phrase even implies that Mary had no part at all in the Son taking flesh, but was just a holding tank until he was born. In conclusion: this correction solves no problems and creates a whole bunch more in the process.

Third and final, this version of the creed is a unilateral change without any reference to the wider catholic consensus. Sure, we frequently disagree and do things our ecumenical partners aren’t too keen about, and they regularly return the favor. But the Apostles' Creed was one of the few things we held in common. For that reason I’m even mildly distressed by the phrase “descended to the dead” instead of “descended into hell,” even though it is more accurate. It would be better if the change were multilaterally encouraged, and then explained to our congregations, rather than simply imposed.

If we’re going to make unilateral changes to the creed, let us at least make genuine improvements. I endorse this change, suggested by my doctoral advisor Ellen Charry, as a corrective to two millennia of Christian anti-Judaism: “I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, who brought Israel out of Egypt.”

Any takers?