Apostles Creed: Protestants changed a word

  • Thread starter Thread starter LIMolly0721
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
L

LIMolly0721

Guest
While recently visiting my baptist mother-in-law and attending her “candle light Christmas service”, I couldn’t help but notice that during the recitation of the Apostles Creed (which their members had to read from a powerpoint projection screen), they changed the line

“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”

to

“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”

That seemed so ironic to me. 😃
Why say the creed at all if they’re going to change the words?
 
Baptists saying the CREED??? Wow! Even with changed words, I’m impressed. Most of 'em go with “No creed but Christ!” Whatever that is supposed to mean.
 
LIMolly0721 said:
While recently visiting my baptist mother-in-law and attending her “candle light Christmas service”, I couldn’t help but notice that during the recitation of the Apostles Creed (which their members had to read from a powerpoint projection screen), they changed the line

“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”

to

“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”

That seemed so ironic to me. 😃
Why say the creed at all if they’re going to change the words?
Click to expand...
They change the creed because they don’t want to associate with Catholics or the Catholic Church. Many Non-Catholic Christians are misinform and are ignorant of the Church. Some would even believed that the Pope is the Anti-Christ, or the “whore of Babylon.”

It’s kinda sad they the believe these which are faults.
 
Yes, I agree it’s sad. From my perspective, the whole service was lacking, I’m sure in part because they don’t have the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Afterwards we attended Midnight Mass, and it was spectacular! I pray that the Holy Spirit touched their hearts and minds.
 
LIMolly0721 said:
Yes, I agree it’s sad. From my perspective, the whole service was lacking, I’m sure in part because they don’t have the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Afterwards we attended Midnight Mass, and it was spectacular! I pray that the Holy Spirit touched their hearts and minds.
Click to expand...
WE? I does that mean that your in-laws went to Midnight Mass with you?

If so 👍
 
LIMolly0721 said:
While recently visiting my baptist mother-in-law and attending her “candle light Christmas service”, I couldn’t help but notice that during the recitation of the Apostles Creed (which their members had to read from a powerpoint projection screen), they changed the line

“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”

to

“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”

That seemed so ironic to me. 😃
Why say the creed at all if they’re going to change the words?
Click to expand...
No offense intended but from my perspective it is no different than taking catholic and changing it to Catholic.
 
myfavoritmartin said:
No offense intended but from my perspective it is no different than taking catholic and changing it to Catholic.
Click to expand...
Catholic in the sense it was originally intended meant universal church, so yes, that is quite a bit different, especially considering the people who changed the wording, as a general rule, refuse to recognize anybody but themselves as Christians, sometimes down to the individual congregation. Kinda difficult to believe in a universal church when you only recognize about 100 other people as Christian, don’t you think?
 
Not all Protestants changed the words. At my old church, a PCA (Presbyterian Church of America), when we recited the Nicene or Apostles Creed, we said the word catholic in it.
 
mercygate said:
Baptists saying the CREED??? Wow! Even with changed words, I’m impressed. Most of 'em go with “No creed but Christ!” Whatever that is supposed to mean.
Click to expand...
Yeah, they sound different than the Baptists I know!! They’d all rather be:eek: hung from a sour apple tree than to recite the Apostles’ Creed!!
 
Although belief in the “holy Church” was included in the earliest form of the Creed, the word “Catholic” does not seem to have been added to the Creed until the fourth century by which time the technical signification of the word “Catholic” had almost entirely supplanted its primitive and more general meaning. (, "Catholic"Catholic Encyclopedia)

In other words, the phrase “the Catholic Church” should be capitalized in the Apostles’ Creed because, rather than signifying “the universal or general Church,” it signifies “the one and only Church”, as distinct from heretical congregations. It signifies the Church, for instance, whose bishops earlier met at the First Nicene Council under the Roman Emperor Constantine.
 
LRThunder said:
Not all Protestants changed the words. At my old church, a PCA (Presbyterian Church of America), when we recited the Nicene or Apostles Creed, we said the word catholic in it.
Click to expand...

Anglicans haven’t changed it either.​

FWIW, I don’t see any difference between this, & the insertion of the word Filioque in a Spanish creed in 589 (as a marginal comment, I think). The Pope rejected it in 1014. Eventually, even the Pope adopted it.

And BTW - nothing can be built on the difference between “Catholic” & “catholic”: not in the first four centuries at least; because MSS. were written in capitals - no distinction between lower-case & upper-case was considered or observed. We can’t retroject 20th century typographical conventions onto the manuscript conventions of the fourth century.
 
mercygate said:
Baptists saying the CREED??? Wow! Even with changed words, I’m impressed. Most of 'em go with “No creed but Christ!” Whatever that is supposed to mean.
Click to expand...
Wow! was my initial reaction as well. **When I was a Baptist we certainly never said any Creeds. ** I’m certain that is the main reason that every Baptist church is ‘different’ and why there is so much **church shopping **among the believers in that denomination. I live in the south and if I don’t like what any particular Baptist church is teaching I can sample the other 20 churches within 5 square miles.🙂
 
Todd_Easton said:
In other words, the phrase “the Catholic Church” should be capitalized in the Apostles’ Creed because, rather than signifying “the universal or general Church,” it signifies “the one and only Church”, as distinct from heretical congregations.
Click to expand...
The phrase is spelled “holy catholic Church” in the Catechism. If the Catechism uses lower case, I am certain that is the correct spelling.
 
That “Catholic” very early acquired its modern sense of denoting a particular group of churches united in a single, visible communion is important for how we read the writings of the Church Fathers and how we read early creeds. Protestants accept the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, which make reference to the Catholic Church. The Apostles’ Creed states, “I believe . . . in the Holy Catholic Church”; the Nicene creed states, “I believe . . . in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” Both of these statements were written after “Catholic” had acquired its current meaning.
Catholic Answers
 
Although some “non-confessional churches” in the Baptist and Pentecostal movements have rejected the creeds, most Protestants have wished to use them. As a result, they have been forced to abandon their principle of interpreting a text based on the intentions of its authors. They have had to reinterpret the creeds to fit their own particular views, which is the very thing they revile liberal theologians and liberal Supreme Court justices for doing with the Bible and the Constitution. It would be more intellectually honest if Protestants who wish to use these creeds would simply mutilate them by dropping the offensive clauses, instead of reinterpreting them and claiming that the faith of modern Protestants is the same as the faith of those who formulated the creeds.

This creed mutilation is already engaged in by some Protestants. Some Evangelicals now confess belief in “the Holy Christian Church” when they say the Apostles’ Creed. Some liberal Protestants have gone so far as to drop offensive supernatural elements from the creeds (such as belief in the resurrection of the body). Conservative Protestants might find this anti-supernaturalistic creed mutilation offensive, but at least the liberals have the courage to drop what they don’t believe in rather than reinterpreting it so that it means something completely different.
Catholic Answers
 
lak611 said:
The phrase is spelled “holy catholic Church” in the Catechism. If the Catechism uses lower case, I am certain that is the correct spelling.
Click to expand...
Even though the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not use an upper-case “C” in the word catholic in its rendering of the Apostles Creed, the Catechism does define the word catholic, in the same technical sense that I tried to convey by saying that the upper-case “C” should be used. (By the way, the equally authoritative Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church uses the upper-case.)

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), the word catholic means having "‘the fullness of the means of salvation’ which he [Jesus Christ] has willed: correct and complete confession of faith, full sacramental life, and ordained ministry in apostolic succession… [and] “sent out by Christ on a mission to the whole of the human race.” (CCC, 830, 831)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top