The Apostles’ Creed (Things LDS Hate Series: Creeds)

All right, so we mentioned earlier that Mormons will often claim that they don't have creeds, but do they? Given the definition of creed that we've kind of been discussing tonight, do they have creeds? Yeah, I do kind of think that the Articles of Faith is the most obvious example of a creed, although maybe it's not as Well, it is technically scriptures. I guess it's even different. It has more authority than we believe it had.

Creeds should have because they believe that it was revealed from God. That they, so basically, if it's scripture, they have to believe it, right? Isn't that kind of the idea of scripture? It's God's word.

So, they've elevated the 13 articles of faith to scripture, whereas we wouldn't even hold the creeds to the level of scripture, which is kind of fascinating.

So, it's even super, it's like super, it's a super creed, you know, when it's on the level of scripture. You're entering. Outer brightness. How can you look upon this in the love? Grace overflows my cup.

All of my soul and my heart have been revived in you. I'm satisfied. All right, Fireflies, welcome back to Outer Brightness Podcast. Matthew and I are recording for the first time in several months. We've tried to get together a few times over the last several weeks, but I've had to push it out and reschedule a number of times due to.

Uh, some trips that I had to take, um, and so we're just going to do a little bit of catching up because it's been a while since we've talked. Uh, so, Matthew, uh, lots of changes in your life since we uh spoke late last year. Uh, you have What's the biggest change? Why don't you share that with our listeners?

Well, I'm pretty sure that my wife would be serving me papers if I told her that my job is the biggest change.

So yeah. I don't know if we recorded about that, but I think I mentioned it at some point that, yeah, so last December we got married. It was on our third anniversary of our first date.

So we've been dating for three years. Got married on our third anniversary, so that was last month. It was great to see my family fly out. To New York. And then also that same month, I graduated from school.

So I'm finally done with school, at least for now. Who knows what the future may bring. And then started a new job.

So, a lot of changes all at once. Plus, I moved out of my apartment.

So, my family of squirrels is no longer living with me. They've had to relocate and find their own place, you know, move out on their own. But uh, so yeah, so we've got a new place. I haven't moved out west yet to Idaho, but we will soon.

So, lots of changes all at once, yeah, for sure. Uh, and you and you and Rebecca met at church, right? Yeah, yeah, we met at uh Albany Baptists in uh well, outside Albany, New York. Yep, nice, so. She got me this pretty sweet t-shirt, actually.

I don't know if I've shown you this periodic table of reformed theologians. Although there's some people on here that aren't technically reformed, like Martin Luther is not technically reformed. He'd probably get upset if you labeled him as a reformed theologian. That's, yeah, I can't remember who else, but that's pretty soon. Why do you think he'd get upset if you labeled him reformed?

Well, I mean, there's the whole controversy with Zwingli, right?

So he said, he said, you are of a different spirit regarding the Lord's Supper.

So to be thrown in the same, you know, in the same cage along with him, he might not like that.

Okay. But how about you? What's new? I know you've been, so you mentioned before when we were talking that you had gone on a couple trips. I know you went on vacation, right?

On a cruise or something. Yeah. Yeah. My wife and I went on a cruise to the Bahamas. We got back last, well, a week ago, this past Friday.

And It was a fun trip. We went down and down to Florida, flew down there, spent the night in a hotel, and then took a bus over to the pier at Port Canaveral. There was supposed to be a rocket launch that day. A company called Astra was launching their first rocket, but it ended up getting delayed. And they finally did end up launching it, I think, the next day or a couple of days later, but we didn't get to see it, unfortunately.

But it was a fun trip. We went to Nassau in the Bahamas and also an island called Bimini. And spent a couple of days on the beach there with the beautiful blue water and just had a good time together.

So it was fun. Apologies there for my dog, folks. I'm not sure what's gotten into him. He's a newer dog. We got him a couple of weeks before Christmas, rescued him.

And yeah, he's a little golden Yorkie and he's one of those that barks and yips at everything. And there were some neighbors outside with their kids riding some of those like motorized vehicles that. you can get for your kids and That was that had him going crazy a couple hours ago, but that's. Over now, but he continues to go on and on with his barking tonight.

So, hopefully, if I keep him in here with me, he'll stay quiet. But um Yeah, prior to going on the cruise, in fact, the week right before we left on the cruise. I traveled down to Georgia. My uncle passed away. He had gotten COVID and then pneumonia following COVID and was hospitalized for a time and then succumbed to the pneumonia.

And so, sad times for that. But got to go down to Georgia and visit with my cousins. See my dad and my sister. They flew in from Utah and my brother flew in from Texas for the funeral.

So it was kind of good to reunite with family, but wish it was under different circumstances for sure. Yeah, sorry about that. That's no good.

Sounds like you had a rough year. Yeah, it was a little rough. That's my uncle that I've talked about on the podcast previously. He sent my dad the placard with the great prologue on it that hung in our house. And I've talked about how important that was in my thinking about who God is and who Christ is.

And, you know, kind of comparing and contrasting that with Mormon beliefs about who Christ is. And so, yeah, kind of tough to see him pass, but grateful that he's now with the Lord. Amen. I guess that's the hope that every Christian should have. I think too often we want to stay here as long as we can, but because we forget about what's coming next.

Right. Yeah. So, yeah, it's kind of bittersweet.

So sorry about your loss. Thank you.

So there was a post of yours that I wanted to ask you about, actually. Let me pull it up real quick. Hopefully not. Nothing heretical. I don't think so.

So it was the one that you talked about, the line in God's army. You posted a couple of days ago. Um You said that as a young man preparing for your LDS mission, you clung to the line in the film God's Army, where the character says, speaking of the truthfulness of the LDS church and paraphrasing, it's like God gives you 100 reasons to believe and one reason not to believe so that you can choose. And that resonated with you. But you said that looking back, your thinking on that has changed.

That it's almost like God gives you 100 reasons not to believe in the LDS faith and one reason. Uh to believe. What made you think about that recently? I don't know. It was just kind of spurred sometimes, just thoughts and memories, you know, come up when you start thinking about the mission.

And that was, I watched that a lot. You know, the, what were the other movies I watched? But I watched God's Army a lot in preparation. That in best two years, I think I was on and in preparation for my mission because I was excited, you know, going to Europe and preaching the gospel, always what I thought was gospel. And so just thinking about mission times, you know, like, I don't know about you, but just thoughts about the mission pop up, you know, just people that I met or events that happened.

And I just remembered that movie and I thought about it, you know, I thought about that line because that line really stuck out to me at the time because, you know, you'd hear things about, you know, what things that are controversial, you know, blacks in the priesthood or polygamy or things like that. And so at the time, I was like, you know what, there's, there's these little things here, you know, as Gordon Hinkley said, flecks of history, you know, things that are kind of thrown there to kind of throw you off. And it felt like, you know, that's God just testing our faith. Because if it was 100% true and there was no controversies, it'd be so easy to believe, you know, and that's kind of how I rationalized it. But then, you know, just looking back on it, it's like, well, I mean, when you're given a very limited set of data.

That's what it feels like, you know, looking back as Latter-day Senior. You're getting a very little limited set of data in terms of history, in terms of biblical understanding, you know, understanding of passages and the history of how the church has understood certain passages. It's like if you get rid of all that and you just keep the blinders on, yeah, it makes sense, makes total sense. And then, you know, the polygamy and like, why couldn't blacks have the priest until 1978? Ah, those are not a big deal kind of thing.

But then, once you start thinking about all the, I mean, one book I've really been going back into, and we've recommended on previous podcasts, is Yaroslav Pelikin. I think he's a Lutheran scholar. He does a really great series. I think it's a five-part series. He goes about the development of Christian doctrine or the, you know, how Christian doctrine has, you know, been developed or refined over the centuries.

And it's, and I think it's fascinating rather than disconcerting, as I thought as an LDS. You know, as an LDS, I wanted everything to be sure and certain, like have everything fixed, have everything figured out. And so if there's any kind of change or debate, that means that you don't have the true church.

So that's not, I don't know, looking back, I find it fascinating now that there is all this debate and that Christians have been trying to figure out what God really meant in his word when he revealed it.

So, yeah, so when you look back through time, you see all you start learning about people through time, like Irenaeus and Ignatius, and they make these very early statements, you know, like second, third century, that are very. Uh, very poignant and very, they point towards the Trinity, you know, things that we said, oh, you know, those are developed hundreds of years later. But you find very clear statements about the divinity of Christ and all these other teachings. You find, wow, there's so much great history here in the Christian tradition. And so, then all those reasons that you find in the LDS church for why there was a supposed apostasy kind of melt away.

And so, yeah, they're kind of rambling, but that's just you find the more you learn about Christian history, at least I think, and you know, biblical manuscripts and things like that, it's not scary, it's fascinating to me. And I think it enriches our faith to know that the church has gone through controversies and trials. And that kind of leads into our topic today, I guess. Yeah, definitely a good segue.

So, Fireflies, today, Matthew and I are going to be talking about the Apostles' Creed. It's the next installment in our series of things that Mormons Hate, which we got a lot of hate for that. That title when we published our first episode in that series, but we kind of stand by it. There are things that Mormons hate, and you know, hate may be a little bit of a strong term, but there are things that Mormons are averse to just because of the way that their theology points to there having been a great apostasy and. That theirs is a restoration of true New Testament Christianity, and everyone else is an apostasy.

And so there are just things that about historic Christianity that Mormons are averse to.

So that's the whole idea behind this series. And one of those things is creeds. And so Matthew and I thought we would discuss some of the more important creeds in a series of episodes. And in this one, we're going to talk about the Apostles' Creed.

So, quick intro. Matthew, when I was a young Latter-day Saint, kind of similar to your post, when I was a missionary in particular, there were a couple of books that I read that were important to me and important to me, especially in that time of, you know, a Mormon mission is really, really a time of formation for young Latter-day Saints. You really kind of come into your own, you step out of your kind of comfort zone and you go out into the world to preach the LDS version of the restored gospel. And you're kind of stepping out into. To unfamiliar territory.

You have to kind of stand on your own two feet and your own testimony of the LDS church. And, you know, for me, it was a period of questioning and trying to figure out what do I believe? Do I actually believe these things that I've been taught up until the 19th year of my life when I went out to be an LDS missionary? But the two books that I read were: first, a small little book, barely more than a pamphlet, called Our Heritage. And it was meant to be kind of like a primer of LDS church history, touching on the highlights, kind of the more important aspects of LDS church history, especially early LDS church history.

I remember there was a big push when it was released. I think it might have been studied as part of the Sunday school curriculum or even the Elders Corman Release Cited curriculum. I can't remember which, but I think it was studied for a year in one of those settings.

So, there was a big push for everyone to read this.

So, I read that while I was in the MTC, and then later in my mission, I got a hold of the LDS Institute manual, Church History in the Fullness of Times, which is a much fuller treatment of LDS church history. But in any case, the titles of those two books, Our Heritage and Church History in the Fullness of Times, kind of give highlights the fact that for Latter-day Saints, when we talk about or when we did talk about church history, we largely meant the events from the Restoration through Joseph Smith onward. We didn't really view much of what happened prior to 1820 as important, 1820 being the year that Joseph Smith was supposed to have had his first vision experience.

So, anything that happened prior to that was part of the great apostasy and was not really considered important and certainly wasn't covered in. In church history in the fullness of times. But like I said, those books were important to me. And as I was leaving the LDS faith a decade after my mission, I made a post on Facebook about how I felt that now that I had left the LDS faith and kind of decided that in my mind, I no longer believed in a great apostasy the way that the Latter-day Saints teach it. That all of Christian church history was mine.

That had become my heritage, whereas before my heritage was just those things that the LDS church taught from 1820 on. And so my heritage became the whole of the Christian tradition, like you were talking about with Yaroslav Pelikin's books. And I also got that series and began to read them. And so my heritage included all of Christian history, including the historic creeds and confessions of the Christian church. There's a podcast that's done by Ligonier Ministries.

I'm not sure if you listen to it or not, Matthew, but it's called Five Minutes in Church History. It's hosted by Dr. Stephen Nichols. And I love the intro to their podcast because it describes the podcast as. quote, where we take a little break from the present to go exploring the past.

Travel back in time as we look at the people, events, and even the places that have shaped the story of Christianity. This is our story, our family history. And so that's really the way that I felt after I left the LDS church: that all of Christian history was mine. That was my new heritage. And so that includes kind of Christian.

Creeds like the Apostles' Creed. I want to read a quote from J.I. Packer. It's in this little book that I have. I picked it up at an apologetics conference in Mobile a few years ago.

I'm going to try to get it in focus for you. If I move my mic, it might work. Yep, there we go.

So it's called Know the Creeds and Councils. It's just a little primer on each of the major Christian creeds and confessions.

So, in the introduction, they have a quote from J.I. Packer from I'm not sure if it's a book or an article, but it's called Upholding the Unity of Scripture Today. And he says, quote, tradition is the fruit of the Spirit's teaching activity from the ages. As God's people have sought understanding of scripture, it is not infallible, but neither is it negligible, and we impoverish ourselves if we disregard it, end quote. And I think that kind of goes to what you were saying earlier, Matthew, that it's not perfect.

There are debates and there are. Discussions about Christian doctrine throughout the centuries. And it's not, that doesn't mean that it's an apostasy, right? We've talked about before on the podcast that the New Testament, Ephesians 4, kind of a passage that Latter-day Saints quote a lot, you know, about what the structure of the church needs to be with apostles and prophets and all of that. But that passage itself kind of Presupposes that there's going to be some sense of disunity within the faith until we all come to a unity of faith, right?

Is the way that it is written.

So it doesn't mean that it's an apostasy if there are. conversations and discussions and debates that go on within Christian doctrine. Um But that kind of leads us to some questions about the Apostles' Creed. Before we jump into those, Matthew, do you want to have any? Anything to say in the way of introduction or any thoughts you might want to share at this point?

Nope, all right, no.

Okay. So kind of the first question I wanted to discuss with you is that Mormons will often say that they don't have any creeds. What does the word creed mean? Yeah, creed just comes from the Latin credo to believe, right?

So anytime you ask somebody, okay, what is it you believe? And you say, well, I believe this, you're basically giving kind of like a verbal, a verbal creed in a sense. But I guess in a more historical sense, creed is more formal than that, I guess. It's something that's not just, you know, off the cuff. It's more something that's kind of been accepted more broadly by.

One or more churches.

So that's kind of usually what we're referring to when we're talking about creeds. But so in LDS are against the idea of creeds.

Well, I mean, there's the very obvious creed of the 13 articles of faith. But I guess there is kind of one major difference with that, though, is that Joseph Smith had, and we have some quotes from him. He kind of viewed creeds as something that shackled people down, something that was like, you know, that. Was something that you couldn't change, you absolutely had to accept or else, kind of a thing, my way or the highway. And, you know, you couldn't budge them or change them at all.

Whereas I think he, you know, the 13 articles of faith are probably more flexible that way, where if the LDS church, the leaders were to say, well, we're going to change article number eight, you know, they'd be fine with that. Whereas no one's going back and changing the Apostles' Creed, you know, the verbiage of that.

So maybe that's the subtle difference.

Okay. Where do you think Joseph Smith got his view of creeds? Yeah, as I was thinking about that, about his history. I think it's, it might just be due to the fact that he didn't like conflict. You know, his family life was kind of tumultuous.

You know, he had his parents' marriage was not, you know, this pristine, idyllic marriage as it's sometimes portrayed. You know, it seems like his father at one point had trouble with alcohol. You know, he had trouble with money constantly. You know, he would, he had some bad sales deals. I remember going through Roughstone Rolling, where he had this deal where he was, you know, they were going to.

To invest some money into his business, and then it kind of all just fell through.

So they were constantly having problems. And there was also religious problems. His dad was more of a universalist, and his mom was more of a reformed Presbyterian. And so maybe it's just the idea that these creeds create lines in the sand and they create division. I was trying to think of why specifically he would go against creeds, but that's kind of just what I was speculating or thinking about.

What about you? Have you thought about that or have any insight on that? Yeah, I think if you look at the first account of Joseph Smith's first vision, because the currently accepted account, the one that's officially accepted by the LDS church is the 1838 version of the first vision. And that one actually does have I can't remember if it is: is it God or Jesus Christ in the vision that tells them that all the churches are corrupt, that they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me? Talks about their creeds being corrupt.

So, you have that language put into the mouth of God. And if you look at the first 1832 version of the first vision, you don't really have that kind of anti-creedal language. I was looking in teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith because I wanted to see what it said there, what he might have said there about creeds. And there is a quote there. I think you had brought it up earlier, Matthew.

Let me see if I can pull it up real quick. It's on page 327 of the edition that I have. Is that the blue one? It's actually the red one. I've got the blue one, so I would check, but it's holding up my.

webcam right now. Um But this is from some comments that he had made in 1843, which is pretty close to the year that he was murdered. But he said, I cannot believe in any of the creeds of the different denominations because they all have the same things in them I cannot subscribe to, though all of them have some truth. I want to come up into the presence of God and learn all things, but the creeds set up stakes and say, Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further, which I cannot subscribe to.

So he has this sort of anti-creedal sentiment, both in the 1838 version of his first vision and there in 1843. That's the only quote that, at least by the index in the teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith, touches on creeds. There are Other statements that he makes with regards to the Trinity specifically in that book, but. I think it's important to note that Mormonism kind of doesn't come about in a vacuum. It kind of rose up in a very specific historical time in the United States.

And there was already a quote unquote restoration movement that had been going on for a number of decades in the United States. And the church that I belong to actually traces its history back to that restoration movement. And that's through Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone, Walter Scott, some of the early prominent Latter-day Saints who came out of that movement are Sidney Rigdon and Parley P. Pratt, among others.

Um And Alexander Campbell and his father were Scottish Presbyterians. And his father came here on a preaching, came here to America to accept a preaching position at a Presbyterian church. And right before. His father left, or it might have been after his father left, Alexander Campbell in Scotland, if I recall correctly, had a disagreement with the way that Presbyterians were handling communion. I think it was done on a quarterly basis, and you had to have a communion coin basically that was minted that you would present to affirm that you were in good standing within the Presbyterian church.

And so you could only get the coin from the Presbyterian minister. And so they didn't have open communion. And Alexander Campbell disagreed with that. It was one of his kind of first disagreements that he had with Presbyterianism. And so, separately, his father is here in America and having his own difficulties with the Presbytery here that he was responsible to.

And Kind of drafted up a document called the Declaration in an Address, which basically declares his church to be separate from the presbytery. And so that was kind of the beginning of their separation from the Presbyterians. They eventually, when Alexander Campbell came with the rest of the family over to America, they eventually landed for a time with Baptists, but then fell out with them as well, and then kind of became their own independent movement. But that kind of restoration movement, as they merged with other groups that were doing similar things out of Presbyterianism, like Barton W. Stone in Kentucky, that was growing throughout the 18 teens and 1820s.

And actually, Alexander Campbell. From 1823 to 1829, while he was associated with the Baptists, he wrote in a periodical called The Christian Baptist. A series of 32 articles that were entitled The Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things.

So these ideas of great apostasy, these ideas of restoration, these anti-creedal ideas, they were all part of that broader restoration movement. And so I think it's interesting to note about Joseph Smith in particular that you begin to see the anti-creedal kind of stuff kind of creep in more and more as they move into Ohio and into the kind of into the heart of where that broader restoration movement had been successful in Ohio and Kentucky and Missouri. And so as they begin to get converts from that broader restoration movement, converts who were more drawn to the more, as we talked about with Steven Pinnaker, the more Pentecostal aspects of the early Latter-day Saint movement when compared with the Alexander Campbell kind of Baconian reasoning side of the restoration movement. That's when you start to see more of the anti-creedal language from Joseph Smith.

So I think it's interesting just to note from a historical standpoint that it fits squarely within that broader anti-creedal restoration movement. Yeah, that's great. Thank you for that background.

So, do you think, because you know, Joseph Smith tended to include people into his inner circle, you know, and kind of bounce ideas off of them or get ideas from them? Like, I think it was. were pretty well that was the accusation i think of uh Against Sidney Rigdon, that he kind of came up with the idea of the two tiers of priesthood. And it was after he joined Joseph Smith, I think, in 1830, 1831, something like that, that that's when, you know, that he was criticized for. For it was David Whitmer, right, that said that.

He said, Well, it was Sidney Rigman that came up with this idea of the two priesthoods.

So, Joseph Smith kind of had an idea of bringing new people into his group and then bouncing ideas off of them and getting new ideas.

So, do you think there was someone in particular that might have kind of pushed him in that direction of going anti-creeds? You know, I don't know. It'd be an interesting thing to try to look into. I don't know if I could pit it on any person right now. I just think it's interesting that in those earliest accounts of his religious experience in the first vision in 1832, you don't see it, but then later on you do see it as they're in those areas of the country where the restoration movement was more entrenched.

That was also during a time, 1838 was around the time when he's starting to get opposition from people like William Law, right? There was all kinds of people on all sides that were kind of questioning his authority and his, you know, his calling as a prophet.

So if you can kind of make a stronger case against, you know, the creeds of other churches, and that kind of builds your case up in terms of your authority, I guess. Yeah. All right.

So when you were a Latter-day Saint, Matthew, what was your view of creeds? Were you anti-creedal? I see, you know, we see on Facebook Latter-day Saints that are still very anti-creedal. Did you have Strong feelings about the creeds of Christianity when you were a Latter-day Saint? In general, no.

I did remember, I think the first time I ever read the Athanasian Creed was when I was reading Mormon Doctrine by Bruce Armakonke. I think he just quotes it verbatim in his book.

So the first time I'd ever read it, and I was like, okay, this doesn't make any sense, you know. But that's kind of the only really exposure I'd had to creeds. And then later on, I ran into the Apostles' Creed and I'm like, eh, there's nothing really that offensive in it.

So, yeah, to me, there weren't specific creeds. I was like really, you know, gung-ho against, like, oh, this is blasphemy or this is apostasy. It was just kind of more like, eh, it doesn't really make sense to me. How about you? Yeah, I don't think I did.

I've mentioned before that my dad was a convert. To Mormonism.

So he came from a background where in their church, their Lutheran church, they did read the Apostles' Creed as part of their. weekly liturgy. And so he didn't have he didn't have a strong anti-creedal bent to him with regards to the Apostles' Creed. But when it came to the Athanasian Creed, he did. And you know, it's the Athanasian Creed confused him.

And it's part of what kind of drew him to Mormonism and the view of God that Mormonism has. And he and I had a conversation. about that even after we had both left the LDS church. He was still really struggling with the idea of the Athanasian Creed. But for myself, other than just hearing my dad talk about those two creeds, I didn't really have deep thoughts about the creeds.

I think we would read portions of Joseph Smith's history, the official version, the 1838 version, where, like we said, the the the anti-creedal sentiment is is placed kind of into the into the mouth of god and um I don't think I really thought too deeply about that. It was more just kind of like, okay, that's just kind of a general statement about the overall apostasy of Christendom. I didn't think of specific creeds. And then, you know, not until like maybe in the MTC, I read. The Articles of Faith and the Great Apostasy by Talmadge, and he kind of gets more into that anti-creedal sentiment in those books than I tended to get maybe in Sunday school.

But even then, I don't think I became like fully entrenched in any kind of anti-creedal views. I just didn't really think much about it. Again, it kind of goes to that, it happened before 1820, so it's not really important. Thing, you know, so that's kind of the way I thought about it. Yeah, but I do thinking back on it more, I do remember in seminary, you know, when we did talk about Joseph Smith's view of the creeds and stuff, it's kind of treated as this boogeyman.

I don't know if you ever encountered that where it's like the creeds are so bad, you know, like they're just they just weigh people down. And, you know, Joseph Smith came and the rest through the restoration, people were freed from those shackles, you know, it was kind of like treated as a boogeyman, but then we never actually really read any, you know, in it was definitely the boogeyman, but I never really dug into why. Yeah, you know, and it, and I don't think we, like you said, they didn't cover it in much detail as to why. It just was like an overall sentiment that we were supposed to hold. Right.

All right.

So we talked about how Latter-day Saints don't really have creeds and kind of what the overall view of creeds are within the Latter-day Saint movement. How have creeds been used historically in the Christian faith? Usually, from what I've understand, it's basically kind of interesting because the three main ecumenical creeds, well, apart from the Nicene Creed, but so the two Apostles' Creed and Athanasian Creed, we don't really know exactly who wrote them. And we don't know exactly when they came into existence, but they just somehow like ubiquitously started being passed around all the churches and confessed, you know, since like the third, fourth century, third, fourth, fifth century, something like that, that time range.

So, they've been kind of used as like a common confession of faith, like we were describing, introducing what creeds are. It's like when someone asks you, well, what can you believe? What do you believe?

Well, everybody would have to come up with their own idea. But with these, throughout the centuries, there have been people that have tried to challenge the faith or come in and teach different doctrines, and you know, unorthodox or heretical doctrines. And so, to have creeds has kind of been like a goalpost or, you know, not in a bad way, you know, Joseph, the quote that we gave kind of makes it sound like a bad thing, but it's more like fences to keep you from falling off the cliff, kind of a thing.

So, I mean, there's if you deny the resurrection of the dead, you know, that's in all the creeds. That's that's a pretty big thing, and there are. Groups that profess to be Christian who deny that there will be a physical resurrection.

So there's just a lot of things there to protect the saints from outside influences, you know, wolves that would try to come in and teach false doctrines. And to also, I think it's also a teaching tool when you're maybe you got a catechumen, which is somebody who's just new to the faith and he's learning about what you believe.

Well, what's the most basic thing you can turn to to say, okay, this is what we believe?

Well, you can turn to the. Ecumenical creeds, the three creeds that we talked about.

So it's been, it's kind of got multiple uses, but maybe you can fill in some of the details that I forgot. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you hit all the main points, you know, kind of as fence posts, keeping us, you know, and that's ironically, that's, you know, what Joseph Smith mentioned in the quote that I read from him as the thing that bothered him about it. Because he said they tell you you can go this far and no further. But why is that a bad thing?

To him, it was because he was ranging all over the place with this theology. And so he didn't want to be fenced in by any kind of thought or creed that had come prior to him. But the Apostles' Creed specifically, it's the oldest creed of the Christian faith. And as you noted, we don't really know who wrote it. There is a tradition that is not.

Not correct, but it was a tradition that kind of cropped up in the sixth century that. the apostles, the 12 apostles of Jesus actually wrote. The Apostles' Creed, each of them contributing one of the 12 statements. But that tradition is the reason why it's called the Apostles' Creed, but that tradition about it is not correct. But it is attested earlier in Christian history.

And it kind of comes from, it's developed kind of out of the old Roman creed that was used during baptisms. And that can be dated to the middle of the second century, right around 140 AD in Greek. And then in Latin later in 390 AD, is when it can be attested as well. But the Apostles' Creed kind of kind of develops out of that. Um But just wanted to get that out there.

I think it's good that we have this tradition that develops in the sixth century about it, but it's also good that we can say that tradition is incorrect. And so it doesn't place upon us a requirement for us to accept it as being on the same level as scripture. It definitely is an attestation to the earliest beliefs of the Christian faith. Right. Yeah.

Lots of great points. And we also would point out that we don't believe that it's in addition to scripture or that it the creeds themselves are scripture. We just believe that they accurately describe what scripture teaches.

So, in as much as they accurately describe scripture, then we can consider them true. And that's why they're used a lot in churches. Like a, you know, a lot of times they'll be quoted as part of the liturgy of, you know, like maybe an Anglican or Lutheran service or even Presbyterian sometimes. They'll read the Nicene Creed or they'll read the Apostles' Creed. How about your church?

Do you do you recite creeds as part of your worship service? And if so, in what way? No, we don't. We, I mean, we certainly have nothing against it. It's just not part of our worship service.

We kind of ours, ours is less liturgical, I guess you could say. You know, liturgical in the sense of like a lot of times there's kind of like a set standard way of how the service goes. And usually it's like the priest or the minister will say something and then the crowd responds, that kind of a thing. You see a lot of that in high churches, kind of like in the English column response. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there's nothing against that. It's just not something we really do that. But I did see that in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church that is in my area and they kind of did that. And I like that. That's interesting.

What about you? No.

So because my church comes out of that American Restoration movement, so I wouldn't say that my experience in church. on a weekly basis is anti-creditable at all. In fact, I I've never heard an anti-creedal sentiment kind of brought up. Uh in it in a Church service or in Sunday school or anything like that. It's just, it's part of our history, but I think we've largely moved beyond it.

When I was attending Cincinnati Christian University for seminary, as part of the church history course that I took, I think I've mentioned this before, the professor had us read together, do a call and response kind of through the Nicene Creed as we were studying that section of church history. And I remember him making the statement because he's, you know, he was a lifelong American Restoration Movement person. And he kind of made the statement, you know, that our movement has had an anti-credal. Past, but he doesn't find anything wrong with reading the Nicene Creed.

So I thought that was interesting. But yeah, no, we don't recite creeds as part of our worship services. We may do column response with some scripture passages. An elder will stand up and do a column response with scripture passages, but beyond that, Nothing but the creeds.

So do you think do you think there's anything inherently wrong with creeds, Matthew? For us as Protestants who say that the Bible is our sole rule of faith? Do you think there's anything wrong with creeds? No, I kind of jumped the gun a little bit. And when I said earlier, how I described that as long as they as long as they adequately summarize and conform to scripture, then they can be, you know, they should or can't be used.

And yeah, if there were something that were completely just wrong that I thought that I found in one of the creeds, I would say, well, I would follow this creed, but with a caveat that I'm not sure about this particular line.

So, you know, ultimately, like you said, we hold the solo scriptura, which means scripture alone, although that doesn't mean that scripture is our only authority. It just means it's the sole infallible authority of rule and faith and practice for the church. And so we do have tradition that we need to be careful about. Like you said, sometimes tradition is just flat out wrong. You know, people are fallible.

So we have to. Continually look at scripture as our standard.

So, yeah, as long as it agrees with scripture, then it's totally fine. And I think that's a good thing to. Yeah, I agree. And I'm, you know, because of my background in Mormonism, I'm someone who kind of stepped into the river of Christianity at 1820. And You know, I read Packer's, J.I.

Packer's quote earlier, and I I agree with them. We impoverish ourselves if we ignore the tradition of the Christian faith. There have been many, many faithful saints prior to us who have given their lives as martyrs, who have held strong in the face of persecution to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

So I think it's okay to read the creeds and understand the development of Christian doctrine and how each of the ecumenical creeds was a reaction to teachings that were influential within the church that were heretical and were addressing teachings that were contrary to the rule of faith. Yeah, it really forced it forced people to have to, you know, to decide: okay, are you with this group or with that group? Because I'm sure we'll get into it with the Nicene Creed, but in the Council of Nicaea, that was the Arian controversy. You could point to a scripture and say, Do you form that to Arius and his followers? And they say, Yeah, we believe that, you know, but then they would say, with this understanding or with this idea.

So they had to come up with, you know, this creed to say, okay, like, look, you're either you either agree with this or you don't, you know, like it's pretty clear, you know, like lying in the sand. And so they admitted that they didn't agree with what they were saying.

So it makes it, it makes it, it makes it clear where perhaps you could take. Take a particular passage of scripture out of context and say, Well, I understand it my way and you understand it your way, kind of thing.

So it just makes it clear. Do you understand? All right, so we mentioned earlier that Mormons will often claim that they don't have creeds, but do they? Given the definition of creed that we've kind of been discussing tonight, do they have creeds? Yeah, I kind of also jumped the gun on that a little bit too.

Like, yeah, I do kind of think that the Articles of Faith is the most obvious example of a creed, although maybe it's not as, well, it is technically scripture, so I guess it's even different. It has more authority than we believe it has. Creeds should have because they believe that it was revealed from God. That they, so basically, if it's scripture, they have to believe it, right? Isn't that kind of the idea of scripture?

It's God's word.

So they've elevated the 13 articles of faith to scripture, whereas we wouldn't even hold the creeds to the level of scripture, which is kind of fascinating.

So it's even super, it's like super, it's a super creed, you know, when it's on the level of scripture. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And there's actually, Someone mentioned this on Facebook a while. a few days ago. And I remember seeing it and thinking, That I should know a little bit more about that.

But they made the claim that Joseph Smith actually changed the content of the Articles of Faith, the LDS Articles of Faith. And I've seen that charge kind of thrown around before, but had never really dug into it because, as far as I knew, the Articles of Faith came from the Wentworth letter, which he wrote in 1842 to a Chicago newspaper editor to kind of give a brief history of the LDS faith and also what they believed. And so the 13 statements that are, as you noted, canonized as the LDS Articles of Faith come from that Wentworth letter. But there were earlier versions. And I found an article on Churchofjesuschrist.org, written by John W.

Welch and David J. Whitaker, called We Believe. And the subtitle is Development of the Articles of Faith.

So I guess they did change over time, but as you noted, the 1842 version written by Joseph Smith is the one that's canonized and also it comes through. know the the person that they revere is a prophet and so they that those hold i guess more authority than the previous versions so the article kind of notes that there was a version uh written by oliver cowdery uh in 1834 in the latter-day saints messenger and advocate periodical um and so there's uh 13 statements there as well but they're quite different um than what you find in the 1842 version uh similar sentiments there but definitely different ordering and some different wording as well and then joseph young also wrote a version um trying to see if it says where his was published uh so he was proselytting in boston in 1836 and was approached by john hayward a local editor and asked for a written statement of the creeds doctrines sentiments or religious notions of the lvs church and so he presented uh one two three four five five uh statements that that he wrote Would have called articles of faith. Orson Pratt in 1840 wrote some. It was in a tract that was titled Interesting Account of Several Remarkable Visions. And of the late discovery of ancient American records.

And I think this is the version that gets closer to what Joseph Smith produces in 1840. But then Orson Hyde in Germany, in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1842, published a tract called A Cry from the Wilderness. And the fourth chapter has some additional articles of faith. But the ones that are accepted are those that Joseph Smith penned in the Wentworth Letter. And I would say that they're treated almost in the same way that creeds are in Christianity.

Primary children, as they're graduating from primary and going into young women's and young men's programs as teenagers, they're often asked to memorize and recite one of the articles of faith before the congregation.

Sometimes in Sunday school, if you're studying a particular doctrine, the lesson manual will instruct you to do a recitation of one of the articles of faith. And so, there's definitely some ways in which they're treated similarly. And just based on what you were saying earlier about the meaning of the word creed and it's coming from the root in Latin credo, which means I believe, the way that the articles of faith are each began with the statement we believe, except for one of them, I think. I think 12 of them begin with the statement we believe. They're definitely kind of set up as a creed.

Creative sorts for the LDS Church. And when I was serving as a missionary, L. Tom Perry, who at the time was, he's passed away now, but he was one of the. 12 Apostles of the LDS Church. He gave a talk in one of the general conferences while I was on my mission about the Articles of Faith and encouraged all Latter-day Saints to study the teachings of Mormonism in light of the Articles of Faith.

And if that's not the way that creeds are used in broader Christianity, I don't know what is. You study what the Christian church believes in light of the creeds and what they state.

So although Latter-day Saints have this anti-creedal sentiment, they do have some statements that function at least as a creed for them. You're listening to Outer Brightness, a podcast for post-Mormons who are drawn by God to walk with Jesus rather than turn away. Outer brightness, outer brightness, outer brightness. There's no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth here. We were all born and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, more commonly referred to as the Mormon faith.

All of us have left that religion and have been drawn to faith in Jesus Christ based on biblical teachings. The name of our podcast, Outer Brightness, reflects John 1:9, which calls Jesus the true light which gives light to everyone. We have found life beyond Mormonism to be brighter than we were told it would be, and the light we have is not our own. It comes to us from without, thus, Outer Brightness. Our purpose is to share our journeys of faith and what God has done in drawing us to His Son.

We have conversations about all aspects of that transition: the fears, challenges, joys, and everything in between. We're glad you found us, and we hope you'll stick around. All right, so that brings us to the content. Matthew of the Apostles' Creed. I figured we'd just kind of read through each of the 12 statements of the Apostles' Creed and talk about each one individually briefly.

You good with that?

Sounds good. Do you have it up in front of you? Let's see. Yes, I do.

Okay. So if you want to read the first one, then share anything you want to. Share on that. I think maybe make a statement as we go on each one whether or not we think Latter-day Saints could agree with this statement of the Apostles' Creed. Sure.

Yeah, sounds good.

So the Creed starts out by saying, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

So in terms of comments on that, I think that's pretty explicit. Although LDS might ask us, well, does that mean that the Father is the only God? You know, that only the Father is God.

Well, of course, we believe that Christ is God. I think it's just kind of following the standard of the Pauline, how Paul does in his letters. He kind of refers to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So I think that's kind of he's just following, they're following that kind of structure there with that first, with that first clause, I guess, that first phrase. But yeah, it's, I mean, it's pretty clear that the God the Father created heaven and earth, although not completely separate from the Son and the Holy Spirit. You know, it was a Trinitarian act of creation, but I think we attribute that specifically to God the Father, not because Because he was the sole one doing it, or because he did it of his own will, but because I forget what the phrase is. Matthew Barrett's Simply Trinity, he basically. Talks about how a lot of times in scripture, we ascribe certain acts to a specific person in the Trinity, you know, but that doesn't mean that it's completely separate from the other two or that, you know, they did it by themselves.

So I think that's kind of what's going on here: God is, you know, the Father is, you know, the one who we pray to, the one who sent the Son into the world. He's the one orchestrating and directing everything.

So that's kind of what he's ascribed or attributed as creator of heaven and earth, even though that doesn't mean that the spirit and son were completely not involved. They were involved, but yeah, a lot of rambling there, but hope that makes sense. Yeah, it does make sense.

So I think some of the statements maybe where Latter-day Saints might have a difficult time signing on to are God the Father Almighty, because as you noted, they might ask, is the Father the only God? And you kind of took that to the sense that, yes, we would all. Also, as Christians affirm that Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit is God. But Latter-day Saints have a particular anthropology, a particular view of humanity that, according to Joseph Smith, the mind of man is uncreated. And so there's an aspect of humanity that, like God the Father, is affirmed in Christianity to be uncreated.

On Mormonism, Latter-day Saints affirm that there's an aspect of humanity that is uncreated as well. And so they might quibble about that. And then, you know, that goes to the whole idea of creator of heaven and earth. They would also probably quibble there over whether creation was ex nilo or ex materia from nothing or from preexistent materials. And Christians would affirm.

That creation was ex nilo. And so that would Uh Exclude any idea that humanity was created from pre-existing intelligences that are co-eternal with God, as Joseph Smith would have put it. Yeah, lots of good points. All right.

So the next statement in the Apostles' Creed is: the first statement began, I believe. And so the second statement begins with and, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, our Lord. I think there's not much here that on the surface a Latter-day Saint would disagree with. Christians affirm that Jesus Christ is God's only begotten Son, our Lord. On the surface, I say, but there's a word in here, begotten, that Latter-day Saints and Christians have very different views about the meaning of that word.

Do you want to say a little bit about that, Matthew? Yeah, you can get actually, I was reading or thinking about this earlier because there was a lot of controversy in the early church about what it meant that Jesus was the monoganous theos, you know, which is the Greek for which has traditionally been translated only begotten son, you know, or only begotten God is monoganous theos, and monoganous huios is only begotten son.

So, what does that mean? And there's a lot of controversy behind that, but like the traditional Nicene understanding, which is basically what Trinitarian Christianity accepts today, it's the idea that Christ is one with the Father in essence. They're homoousias, meaning whatever, what makes the Father God is shared with the Son.

So the Son is just as much God as the Father is. And the Father kind of begot eternally in eternity past.

So it's not a moment in time, it's kind of like an eternal begetting, which We don't really know what that means, but it's an eternally begetting of the Son.

So the Father in eternity past, he's always been begetting the Son, but it's an eternal beginning.

So there's no reference to time. It's also an internal begetting.

So it's not like God the Father created a second God. You know, the Son is the same essence as the Father.

So it's one God.

So that's the traditional understanding of what it means for Christ to be. The son of God. And like I said, there's been a lot of other different views of what it means to be son of God. You know, some, I think Arius, who's a controversy at the Council of Nicaea, he said that he's the son of God in the sense that he's the first created being of the father and the only created being of the father, and then everything else was created by the son.

So those are definitions that we would reject. But yeah, that's the traditional understanding. And that differs from LDS because they believe that Christ is in two senses, the literal son of the father. One, spiritually, where heavenly father and heavenly mother, in some sense or in some way, organized Jesus' spirit body back before the world was created. And in the second sense, he's the literal father of Christ in some sense also.

And you'll get a lot of debate there. There were statements, I think, from the Prats primarily, and maybe Wrighman Young, that talked about how God the Father came down and literally begat Christ by consorting with Mary. Virgin Mary, but I think traditionally Mormons or Latter-day Saints, they leave that to mystery. But in some sense, God the Father is the literal father of Jesus's physical body as well, which is something that Christians, historical Christianity, has not really believed in, which I think we'll get into in the next slide. Yeah, yeah, very good points.

So I like where you went with talking about the eternal begetting of the Son. And Matthew Barrett gets into this a lot in Simply Trinity. If there's any listeners that would be interested in that book, I would highly recommend it. It gets into some deep theology, but it's written in an engaging way. I was surprised because I expected it to be just full-on deep theology, but he writes about his own fandom of Los Angeles teams and sports teams.

So it's a very engaging book. But so do Latter-day Saints Have a belief in the eternal begetting of the Son. Do you think? I don't think so.

I think it depends on how they would define eternal, because a lot of times when you point to passages that say that from everlasting to everlasting, you are God, they'll point to the Hebrew word word for everlasting, and it means, well, it's like on the horizon, you know, it's a really long ways away, but we don't know what's beyond the horizon.

So they might define eternal or everlasting as just a really, really long time, but it's still a finite amount of time.

So maybe they so how is that different than how Christians would define the term eternal? Eternal meaning just outside time, you know, without respect to time.

So they would say before all word worlds, right? That's the language of the Nicene Creed, before all worlds. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

So they might say, well, yeah, sure, I believe that Christ was eternally begotten of the Father, but eternally meaning a long time ago, or even eternal has kind of been redefined in the Doctrine and Covenants to mean related to God. You know, eternal suffering is not suffering without end. Doctrine and Covenants say that eternal suffering is God's suffering. Eternal life is God's life.

So they kind of. Redefine it there.

So that's why I say it depends on how they would use the term eternal.

So I've, you know, we talked about in a previous episode where we reacted to an article by a BYU professor. We had Jackson Washburn on to talk about that article. It's, we talked about in that episode how, you know, at least that BYU professor was expressing the idea that he thought Latter-day Saints could. Could adopt the belief that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human. And so, if our listeners want to go back and check out that episode, we talk about that.

Kind of at length there, but I just kind of want to zero in on that word begotten because we've Kind of teased out some differences there, but as I noted with relation to the first statement of the Apostles' Creed, Latter-day Saints have this anthropology, this view of humanity where we are co-eternal with God, and so. If that's the case, and as Latter-day Saints will often claim, that humans and Jesus and God the Father are all of the same species is the language that they will use. If that's the case, if Latter-day Saints are correct about that, then you're doing away completely with any idea of Jesus being. Or is Christ being the only begotten son. There's no sense in which you can affirm that humanity is the same species as God, and also affirm that Jesus is the only begotten Son.

And so that's a huge difference. And so that understanding when I was first leaving the LDS church led me to ask the question several times. LDS discussion forums. You know, isn't it true then that if your doctrine is true, any of us could technically have filled the role of savior? There's nothing unique about Jesus Christ that made him uniquely able to carry out that role that we couldn't have done, given our natures according to Latter-day Saint teaching.

Would you agree with my assessment of that, Matthew? To an extent, because I know that they would probably say that Christ was the only possible candidate to be savior because he was the firstborn, meaning the literal firstborn spirit offspring of Heavenly Father and his wife, one of his wives, possibly.

So, like, this firstborn status gave him certain prerogatives, I guess. I think that's kind of how. Prisoner Konki has explained it. But I do agree that he's in terms of his being, his essence, he's not of a completely different kind that would make it completely separate from us. It's in LDS thought anyway.

He's of the same kind as us, just like further progressed. And so I guess it would be possible potentially. I mean, I don't know, I would have to ask an LDS this, but what if, you know, I guess the only real difference is they believe that God the Father is the literal physical father of Jesus's mortal body.

So if by some miraculous means, instead of Jesus, it were somebody else that were conceived, you know, by the working of the Holy Spirit in a virgin, that they could have been, you know, the savior. I don't know. But so yeah, like I said, there might give you some pushback on that because Jesus was the firstborn and we aren't. Yeah. No, I think you're right to kind of lean into that idea that I think it was Orson Pratt kind of put forth, right?

That where Jesus Christ becomes unique. Mm-hmm. On the LDS view is in that idea of a literal physical begetting. And that's that's we'll get into it more with the next statement. But I also wanted to point out that the term only begotten shows up a lot in the Book of Mormon and in the Doctrine and Covenants.

So I think Latter-day Saints need to wrestle a little bit with what they mean by only begotten and whether that's a loan word from Christianity, a loan term from Christianity that they can fully adopt given their anthropology, given to what they believe about the nature of humanity. And we have other programs too where we talked about Christ. I couldn't give you specific ones, but I'm sure if you go to our Article of Faith series, where you talk about the first article of faith in the Trinity, we talk about how, like in, for example, John 8, Jesus says, you are from below, I am from above. There are a lot of passages that indicate that he is uniquely from God, you know, in a way that none of humanity is.

So not just Physically, you know, is he unique, but he is of he's divine in the sense that he came from heaven where we didn't.

So I think that's important to point out because LDS believes we all came from above.

So, how do you affirm those passages where Jesus says, I'm from above, you are from below?

So, yeah, very good. And the episode I was referencing with Jackson Washburn was episode 93: The Divinity and Humanity of Jesus Christ. And I put divinity first in that title because I think, as I challenged Latter-day Saints just now to really think through their anthropology, the divinity of Jesus Christ and what that means is critical to the atonement. And I think with Latter-day Saint theology, there's some areas where it becomes less critical. And so, you end up left, you're left wondering why the Book of Mormon would say that God Himself must come down and atone for the sins of the people if, according to LDS' views of eternal progression, Jesus Christ hadn't himself progressed through all of these.

The steps necessary for Latter-day Saints to become gods and goddesses. All right, Matthew, you want to read the next statement? Sure, statement number three, right? Yep.

So, continuing on, speaking of Jesus, it says, Who was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary?

So, we've already the previous statement of this one kind of dip into each other, you know, they lead right into each other.

So, I think. Maybe we won't have a lot to say about this, but I think LDS and traditional Christianity would agree about the Virgin Mary, although a lot of traditional Christianity would believe that Mary was perpetually sinless, that are perpetually a virgin, like you know, even after Christ's birth, she didn't have any children. That's kind of the more Roman Catholic and some more traditional branches, like Anglicanism and maybe Lutheran, maybe Anglicans and Lutherans would believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary. But at the time of Jesus' birth, we agree that she was a virgin. But the line that's a really controversial one is about how he was conceived from the Holy Spirit.

So they would probably have to give an asterisk there to say that they agree with that, to say, well, Jesus was conceived by the working of the Holy Spirit in some fashion, you know, because as we said, they believe that Jesus is the literal physical offspring of the Father and how that works.

Some go so far to say that, you know, they try to get into the mechanics of it. Like, well, the Holy Spirit transmitted, you know, half of the Father's chromosomes into her belly, you know, to create the zygote, you know, all the mechanics of the biology of it. And some just say, well, it's up to mystery.

Somehow the spirit was involved, somehow the father was involved. And so it really depends on which LPS you'll talk about, but they don't really have a hard, solid doctrinal statement on what that means, you know, that Jesus was conceived by the working of the Holy Spirit. They just know the spirit was involved, but yet at the same time, he's not the offspring of the spirit, because then the spirit would be the father of Jesus's physical body. They still believe that the father. Father is the literal father of his physical body.

And all of that is, it's really only a problem for the Latter-day Saint, right? Because of their view of the Godhead as three separate. Physical beings rather than one God. Exactly. So if it was the same God, yeah, it wouldn't be a problem.

But we don't, like we were talking about earlier, we don't believe that Jesus is the son of God just because he's the physical offspring of God. We believe that he's eternally God's son. You know, even long before the world was created, even before time existed, he was still the son.

So this idea that he has to be this physical offspring of only the father is, yeah, like you said, only a problem for LDS. What about you? Do you have any thoughts on this you would add to that? Just to make the statement that we're not trying to be offensive to Latter-day Saints. We know that Latter-day Saints do not necessarily accept the views of Orson Pratt or other early Latter-day Saint leaders in the polygamy period who made some statements with regards to the conception of Jesus Christ that modern Latter-day Saints would not hold to.

We're not trying to hold you accountable to those and say that's what you believe. We're just kind of pointing out that there is a sense in which those statements made by those leaders are they're not just kind of crazy off the wall statements they are attempting to be consistent with the rest of Latter-day Saint theology which is why they land where they do with those statements even if they are offensive to modern Latter-day Saint ears. Yeah that's a great that's a great disclaimer to add all right so the fourth statement suffered under under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buried he descended into hell so the first three clauses there suffered under Pontius Pilate was Crucified, dead, and buried. Those all are affirmations of the story of Christ's life and ministry and death and burial in the Gospels. The statement he descended into hell comes from 2 Peter.

I'm so bad right now because I don't have the reference on that, but it's. Latter-day Saints like this statement because, or this, the passage that that's based on, because it for them, it's a proof text for their belief in kind of a two-tiered life after death prior to the final judgment, where the spirits of the righteous will go to paradise, the spirits of the wicked will go to spirit prison. And so, for them, this the idea that's Behind this is that he went to spirit prison to preach the gospel and to initiate the preaching of the gospel to those who are in spirit prison to give them a second chance after death to accept the gospel and be saved, which is. A doctrine very somewhat similar to the Catholic, the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, that certain souls will do. Penance and receive punishment in purgatory until their souls are purged and refined, and then they're able to go on to salvation.

Um, so what are your thoughts there on this statement here? He descended into hell, the harrowing of hell, all of that. Yeah, there's that's a topic I've always found fascinating. There's different views amongst the Reformed, what this phrase means, that Jesus descended to hell. There's a difference amongst Lutherans and Orthodox and Catholics, they all have different views of what this means.

And I think I don't know the 2 Peter one off the top of my head, but there is a passage in Ephesians 4.

So reading it, it says, This is why it says, when he ascended on high, he led captives away and gave gifts to men. What does he ascended mean except that he also descended to the lower parts of the earth? And that's kind of also kind of in reference to Psalm 16, 10, which is quoted in Acts 2, 27. You will not abandon my soul to Hades. And in Psalms, it's Sheol, which is kind of like the Jewish idea of the underworld or death.

You will not abandon my soul to Hades, which the underworld or the place of the dead. Nor will you let your holy ones see decay.

So yeah, there's this idea of Jesus dying and being laid in the earth. And so in the Latin, it was, it talks about defending of the Latin version of the Apostles' Creed, I should say. It's descended ad in Pharos, which is he descended into hell.

So that's kind of a controversial one because people have different ideas of what it means. The reformed view is kind of like, well, he descended into hell on the cross in the sense of he descended into ultimate suffering for our sins. And the kind of the more, yeah, like you said, the traditional view is he literally descended into the place of the dead for various reasons.

So I think, yeah, that's that's the one that I think is the most controversial. I think even amongst confessing Christians, Trinitarian Christians, right? That we would kind of even debate about what that means exactly. But I don't think it's anti-scriptural. It's just that maybe we interpret what that means exactly differently.

Though it was with LDSAC, yeah, that he descended into Hades, which is the spirit world in the spirit paradise, right? Because they believe that Jesus couldn't go. Personally to spirit prison. He had to send envoys, messengers there. Yeah, I'm not finding the passage right now.

But it's definitely that idea, right, that Christ preached. It's in one of the epistles of Peter. It talks about those who had. Died, you know, in the times of Noah. Um, oh, yeah, that's uh, first Peter 3.

Yeah, first Peter 3.

So, um Let me see if I can 319. Is that what it is? Yeah, it kind of starts in 18 through 20. Yeah. Yeah.

So I think it's important to read through these. But also, as you noted, it's important to note also that just like with the scriptures, right, we can. As we read something, we can import our own ideas of what it might mean into it, right?

So, as a Latter-day Saint might read the Apostles' Creed and read this, He descended into hell, their mind is going to go to 1 Peter 3:19. Right. But it's not, that's not necessarily what this is referring to.

So I want to read again from the know your creed, know the creeds and councils book by Justin S. Holcomb, where he talks about this part of the creed. He says, For those who grew up in a Roman Catholic context, the expression he descended into hell may be familiar because it is associated with the doctrine of the heroing of hell. In Catholic theology, the idea is that after Christ's death on the cross, his spirit descended into Sheol, the world, the word in Hebrew for the underworld where the dead reside, in order to preach the gospel to the patriarchs, the Old Testament saints, and potentially to other virtuous pagans who lived before the revelation of Jesus Christ.

So that's again, this thought is based on 1 Peter 3. Much of this discussion is not based on the Bible. The New Testament itself emphasizes the consequences of Christ's death and resurrection from the dead, in which he triumphs over sin, death, and the devil, rather than what Christ did between death and resurrection. Initially, the language of descent into hell. Was borrowed from the Old Testament.

As you noted, it simply meant that Jesus died or passed to Sheol, the pit or grave, just as any other person did.

So it's another kind of statement about that Jesus was like us in every way, right? That in the incarnation, whatever was not assumed by Jesus was not redeemed by Jesus, right? I think Athanasius, right? said that, or no, maybe that was Irenaeus on the incarnation. Whatever was not assumed by Christ was not redeemed by Christ with regards to humanity.

And so death itself as well.

So dying was the final stage going on with what Justin Holcomb writes, dying was the final stage of Christ's humiliation, a necessary passage before his triumph in the resurrection. Second century theologian Tertullian wrote that, quote, Christ our God, who because he was man, died according to the same scriptures, satisfied this law also by undergoing the form of human death in the underworld and did not ascend aloft to heaven until he had gone down to the regions beneath the earth um and so again it's just um it's affirming that jesus died um he truly died uh he in the way that we all will die uh is what that's affirming it's not really making a statement about what uh first peter 3 says yep yeah lots of good comments thanks for sharing that all right number five i scroll down okay so we just read um how he descended to hell rose again from the dead on the third day so continuing on ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of god the father almighty I guess I could continue and say, Who will come again to judge the living and the dead?

So that's the next two phrases.

So, in terms of that, we agree on the ascension, you know, in Acts chapter one, Jesus ascended into heaven in a cloud, and he is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

So, we would probably read, and LDS would read that and say, Yeah, I agree. God the Father is a man, glorified body.

Now, Jesus is a man with a glorified body, and they're both sitting on thrones right next to each other. But when we look at passages of scripture that talk about Jesus being on the right hand of God, it's either meant in a metaphorical sense, meaning like right hand of power, meaning like he's the one who's next to father in glory, and like he's the one who is given all power in heaven and in earth, as Jesus said in Matthew 28, or when Stephen looked up into heaven and he saw the glory of God and Jesus at the right hand of God. And in there, you never hear anything about a body from the Father.

So, LDS uses that as a proof text very often to show, hey, the Father has a body just like Jesus. But if you scroll back, It says he saw the glory of God.

Well, what is glory? Light, luminance, radiance, that kind of thing.

So he saw like the light that represented the Father and Jesus next to that light.

So that's, I think, the big disagreement we would have is because we just don't believe that God the Father has a physical body because that opens up a can of worms. Where did he get this body? He would have to have gotten it from a different world.

Well, who was how did he create a different world before this world?

Well, then he must have had a God above him that created that world. And then God the Father got his body from that world. Obeying the commandments like Jesus did, and so on and so forth.

So there's just no need for the father to have a body, and there's no reason why he does have a body. There's nothing in scripture that affirms that he has a body. Yep.

Yep.

All good points on kind of noting the places where Latter-day Saints might have some disagreements with statements in the creed. All right.

So the eighth. Um, statement is: I believe in the Holy Ghost. I think the only aspect of that that Latter-day Saints might disagree with is just the nature of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, where Latter-day Saints would say that the Holy Spirit is an as-yet unembodied. Intelligence separate in being from the Father and the Son, who will at some point in the future, at least according to speculation, receive his own body and have a chance to become fully God, according to Latter-day Saint teaching. Um, and so uh that's that's one difference.

Um, and again, it's I'll point back to the second statement. It's it's again where I don't think it's possible for Latter-day Saints to say with regard to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that they are each fully God. Jesus Christ, according to their theology, now, yes, prior to his incarnation, no, I don't think they could affirm that. Whereas Christians would affirm that Jesus was fully God before the incarnation. And after the incarnation, and that the Holy Spirit is fully God as well.

So, yeah, that's a great point. It's interesting to look at the Apostles' Creed and also the Nicene Creed, because there's really not a lot there about the Holy Spirit. Almost kind of like an addendum to the rest of it, and especially in the Nicene Creed, because in Nicaea, the issue wasn't the Holy Spirit, they weren't debating about that, they were debating about who Christ is and how he relates to the Father.

So, there's really not a lot of development in terms of who the Holy Spirit is in the early, early church. That's kind of more they kind of had to find out later: okay, well, who is the Holy Spirit? Is it a person? Is a force? You know, I think in the earliest church, they referred always referred to him as a person, not as an inanimate force.

But, um, but yeah, they when they developed the idea that well, when they define the idea that Jesus or that the son is homoousios with the father, it's only natural that the Holy Spirit, who's referred to as God, is also homoousios with the father, because otherwise, he could not be truly God, he would have to be a lesser being or something else.

So, yeah, we also affirm that just as Christ is not a separate God or a separate being from the Father, the Spirit is not a separate being or a separate God from the Father. And as you pointed out, we're not expecting the Holy Spirit to have a body someday or to progress or to do anything like that. He's always been God. He always will be God. And that's another thing I want to point out: you'll see a lot of Christian hymns.

Like we follow the Trinity Hymnal in our church, which is kind of a more Reformed hymnal. And there are songs in there praising and worshiping the Holy Spirit, which you would never, ever, ever see in an LDS church. They do not pray to the Holy Spirit. They do not give praise and glory to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is seen of like, who is it?

Like Hermes, you know, in like Greek mythology. He's just the messenger that kind of goes to and from God to us and does things for God. And he is a God, but we're not supposed to talk to him directly or, you know, worship him directly. That's a no-no. But we, as Christians who believe the Holy Spirit is truly God, we can worship him.

Yeah. Yeah. Very good point. I remember the first time singing in church the doxology, and it was like, wow, this is so different. Would never have done this in the Latter-day Saint church.

So, yep. All right.

Next one. I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of the saints.

So I think. This would be a major point of divergence as well for Latter-day Saints. I don't think Latter-day Saints could say they believe in the Holy Catholic Church. There are some now who want to be kind of soft-pedaling their views to Christians of other faiths and say, well, you're Christians, we're Christians, and we've got more stuff than you. But that more stuff piece is the belief in a great apostasy.

So according to Latter-day Saint teaching, there is no other church that has priesthood authority to perform ordinances. And so as Brad Wilcox pointed out in a recent fireside, where he was kind of taken to task on this issue, but more so on another, but he made the statement that other churches are just playing church. And that really is the Latter-day Saint. View if you take the doctrine seriously that no other church is. Authorized by God and Jesus Christ to bring people to salvation.

And so there is no salvation in any other church, but. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to their. Their doctrine.

So I don't think they could say they believe in the Holy Catholic Church. And by the This isn't referencing the Roman Catholic Church. This is small C Catholic Church, which means universal, which is the idea that the church exists wherever the gospel has been preached and Christ has been received and people have been drawn to the Son by the Father. Amen. Yeah.

And this idea that, like you said, the great apostasy, the fundamental belief of the Holy Catholic Church is that it has always been here. When Christ set up his church, it wasn't taken from the earth, even though it's gotten messy, as we've talked about. You know, we've had divisions, we've had, you know, there's been the crusades, there's been all kinds of bad stuff in the past few centuries. There's always been the promise that the gates of Hades would not prevail against Christ's church. It's always been here.

And that doesn't mean that everything the church did was good. I think that's a problem that some people take. You know, they say, well, God gave us a church.

So, you know, whatever Holy Mother Church does is good and righteous and acceptable to God. But I don't think that's necessarily the case. You know, I mean, how In the New Testament is written about things that the church did that was not good, that was not acceptable. And I praise God for that because that gives us an example of, like, yeah, the church is going to always be messy. Corinth was just a big mess and it never got better, really.

It continued to have problems even after, you know, the apostolic era. And so, yeah, but there is this idea of that the church has never been taken from the earth and that it never will. Be taken from the earth. And so we can take comfort in that. Right, exactly.

All right, so I think we can cover the final three, 10, 11, and 12 as one. If you want to read those and then share your thoughts on those. Sure. So continuing on, I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

So forgiveness of sins. Yes, I don't think we really have much disagreement there. Although what qualifies as a sin, we may have an issue there because LDS believe that you have to have a full understanding or knowledge of something for it to be a sin, which is why Adam and Eve was a transgression. They didn't have knowledge of what they were doing.

So it wasn't a sin to them.

So, but in terms of us and our sins, since we do have knowledge, you know, we do receive that forgiveness of sins. We do have kind of a similar view of sin is what I'm trying to say.

So we believe that without the forgiveness of sins, there is no salvation.

So in some sense, you have to be forgiven of your sins to return to live with God because no unclean thing can enter God's presence. And we agree. On that. In terms of the resurrection of the body, I think that's pretty clear too. Just as Jesus rose from the grave and he appeared to the apostles with a body that was resurrected and glorified, we agree on that.

And so we believe that all those who are in Christ will be resurrected, as well as those who are not in Christ, they will also be resurrected. And the life everlasting, that's not just saying that we'll live forever and ever and ever, but it's living in God's presence, those who are in Christ and are saved. But the big difference is that we don't believe that there are different kingdoms of glory necessarily. There's debate as to whether there are different rewards in heaven based on how faithful you were in life amongst Christians, which is what I personally see when I see scripture, you know, passages that talk about how. You know, God in Revelation, it talks about how he opens the books and he rewards to everyone, good or bad.

You know, so I believe that there's going to be a lot of saints ahead of me, you know, that have, you know, I don't know, bigger mansions than me or whatever in heaven. And I'm fine with that, I'm cool with that. But that doesn't mean that they're in a completely different kingdom or that they're completely separated from God's presence. LDS theology, if you read DNC 76, it says that only those who are in the celestial kingdom can access the Father, can be in the presence of the Father. And even then, you have to reach the highest level of there's three levels in the celestial kingdom, you have to reach exaltation, the highest level to be in the fullness of the presence of the Father and to have an existence like He has.

We don't believe that we're not going to be like different levels of gods and angels and stuff in heaven. We're all going to be just Christ's bride in heaven and praising and glorifying God in our resurrected bodies.

So that's kind of the difference I would say is, you know, there's not like different tiers of heaven based on what ordinances you received or what covenants you were. Faithful to, you know, we were either in heaven. What level of righteousness you were able to attain to, right? Exactly. Yeah.

It's a huge difference when you're talking about that. You know, and it goes to the line about forgiveness of sins. Although we do believe that we agree with Latter-day Saints that forgiveness of sins is necessary to obtain eternal life, there is some difference, as you noted, in terms of what sin is and when and how we receive forgiveness and which sins we receive forgiveness for. For example, at baptism, Latter-day Saints would say that baptism cleanses you from past sins, it does not absolve you of future sin.

So you have to continually repent and maintain your worthiness within the Latter-day Saint faith and ideas of salvation.

So, you know, we've talked about in many previous episodes, Latter-day Saints end up feeling a heavy weight that they're not good enough for those higher levels of the celestial kingdom, as you noted, Matthew.

So that's a big difference because the Christian faith, the Christian gospel is good news because it's about the faithfulness of God, not about the faithfulness of man. It's about the faithfulness of God. Faithfulness of God to keep his promises. And so the Christian has hope, even in their struggles against sin throughout the rest of their Christian walk. They have the hope and the promise of Christ that he will fulfill his promises and bring them into the presence of the Father.

Amen. And something I was reading about recently that's interesting that I was reading in differences between Reformed and Lutherans. They're different traditions, but they both agree that the law in and of itself cannot do anything to help us. The law only really shows us our sin. And it's kind of, but at the same time, it's not terrible.

You know, Paul says that the law is a good thing in Romans, but he, but it's not by the law that we progress to some higher level of existence or something like that. We're saved by the gospel, the good news that Christ died for us on our behalf. And the law serves as kind of like a standard of moral principles to follow, but that's not how we're saved anymore. You know, it's not like we get into the church. By the gospel, and then we stay in and achieve higher levels of existence by good works.

It's all the gospel. Whereas in the LDS church, and I'm not trying to say that they believe that in works righteousness, purely works righteousness, but they do believe that every blessing from God is predicated upon obedience to a law. And so the whole system is obedience to a law in some sense.

So even the gospel to them is a law in that sense. It's like a law you have to keep is accepting the LDS church. They call it the laws and ordinances of the gospel, which seems kind of contradictory to most. Probably historical Christians, you know, they see law kind of in opposition to the gospel or law fulfilled in the gospel rather than being the gospel being a law in and of itself. Very good.

Have you listened at all to the White Horse End podcast? I've tried to listen to some of their stuff and it's been pretty good, but I think it's behind a paywall now.

So I was like, eh, forget it. Oh, it is? I think on their website anyway, maybe if you watch it through Spotify or listen through Spotify or something, maybe it's. I just picked up starting to listen to it over the last few days as I've been working on a bathroom remodel. And they're doing a series of episodes through the book of Hebrews that I think is really good.

And I was listening to one yesterday as I was doing some painting called Jesus Our Hope. Or no, it was, I guess it was today because it came out today. It's called Jesus Our Hope. And it's, they cover those challenging passages in Hebrews that lots of Latter-day Saints like to to throw out there as Of a proof text that see Christians can lose their salvation. Hebrews 6, I think it is.

And so they cover those passages and talk about how Jesus is our hope.

So I would recommend that episode to our listeners. It's again, it's the White Horse Inn podcast, Jesus, our hope episode. Published February 20th of 2022. A really good podcast episode that goes kind of in depth on some of the topics that Matthew and I were just kind of going into with this idea, with the idea of forgiveness of sins and law and gospel and life everlasting. And so I would recommend that episode.

But uh, fireflies, that kind of brings us to the end of our discussion on the Apostles' Creed. I just want to close out with another quote from Know the Creeds and Councils by Justin S. Holcomb. Um, he says, Many churches still recite the Apostles' Creed during baptisms as a summary of the faith into which Christians are baptized. Church historian Philip Schaff notes that, quote, Quote, as the Lord's Prayer is the prayer of prayers, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, the law of laws, so the Apostles' Creed is the creed of creeds, end quote.

And Justin Holcomb goes on to say: perhaps more than any other profession of faith, the Apostles' Creed has expressed the essentials of Christianity in a way that Christians of all stripes can rally around. And I would challenge Latter-day Saints listeners to ask themselves: can they, with Christians of all stripes, rally around the statements in the Apostles' Creed without any fudging? That was good. Thanks for hanging out, Paul. It was a good episode.

It was good to catch up with you. Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Matthew. We thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Outer Brightness Podcast. We'd love to hear from you.

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at Adamsroad Ministry.com. In the past, I believed in my. own righteousness and Hope that I was worthy of the blood that Jesus shed. But now I know That all the works I did were meaningless. Compared with Jesus' lonely death on the cross where he bore sin.

And now I have the right chest. See it. This button. Faith in Jesus' name I could save everything I lost compared to knowing Jesus for whose sake I have lost all things. On the cross, Jesus took away.

The written code, the law of words that stood opposed. And they'll do their four And through the cross, you put to death hostility. And it is by the reconciliation Us to God who brought us peace. And I am crucified with Christ. And I no longer live, but he lives in me.

I consider everything I lost compared to knowing Jesus for whose sake I have lost all things. But when I gained Jesus, it was worth the cost all my righteousness. That count as lies. Because of the Cross some demand of side. And some sick too.

Be wise, but we preach Christ crucified a stumbling block for some the foolishness of God, but wiser than the The wisest man, the power of the cross. Excellent. in the cross of Our Lord, through which the world is. Spin Crucified to me And I too World, so I take up my cross and follow where Jesus leads. Oh, I can sit there everything I lost compared to knowing Jesus for whose sake I am lost all these.

Oh, yeah, Jesus, it was worth the cost. All my righteousness I count as lost because of the cross, because of the cross, because of the cross.