We Believe: Who Has Spoken Through the Prophets
The Nicene Creed of 325 ended with only one phrase on the Holy Spirit: [We believe] “in the Holy Spirit.” Due to the issue of Marcionism, the bishops at Constantinople in 381 added a new section on the Spirit, which included the words “who has spoken through the prophets.”
Why was this necessary, and what did it mean?
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Against Marcionism
Marcion of Sinope (ca. AD 85–ca. 160) was an early Church heretic who said the entire Old Testament was the product of an evil creator god, the God of the Jews. This God had nothing to do with the Father of Jesus Christ. Marcion was said to be friends with the Gnostic teacher Valentinus. Since Gnostics taught that matter was evil and the creator of this material world was malevolent, it was not surprising that Marcion adhered to this view of the Old Testament and that Jesus did not have a physical body. Marcion also said that the New Testament should be limited to a shorter form of the Gospel of Luke and ten epistles by Paul, which he regarded (mistakenly) as being free of Jewish influence.
Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165), Irenaeus (145–ca. 202), and Tertullian (155–222) exposed the Gnosticism behind Marcion’s teaching, and the early Church consistently taught the unity of the Old and New Testaments. However, when supersessionism (the idea that the Gentile Church superseded and replaced God’s covenant with the Jewish people) gained new currency in the fourth century, the bishops deemed it necessary to restate what earlier fathers had taught: that the Holy Spirit inspired not only the New Testament but also all of the Old Testament.
The Inspiration of the Hebrew Bible
Some of these bishops knew that the Bible refers to Moses as a prophet (Deuteronomy 18:15; 34:10) and that the history of the great prophet Samuel served as the foundation for the Bible’s historical books. Thus, the Creed’s assertion that the Holy Spirit “spoke through the prophets” was a statement about the Old Testament in general and specifically against Marcionism.
We should also recognize that Jesus believed in the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of the Old Testament. In words too often overlooked by Christians, Jesus proclaimed in his Sermon on the Mount that we are not to think that “I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17).
Jesus and the Hebrew Bible
Matthew is likely responding to Marcion-like beliefs that were already emerging in the first century when he wrote. Some were already thinking that Jesus had come to start a new religion that would have nothing to do with the Hebrew Bible and especially its Torah. Jesus said, No, he had come not to do away with the Hebrew Scriptures but to “fulfill” them.
This does not only mean that Jesus was the Messiah that all the Old Testament pointed to. It also means that Jesus did what the rabbis in the intertestamental period said that the Messiah would do—give his deeper interpretation of Torah. This is likely what Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 9:21 when he wrote of “the law of Christ,” which, when translated, refers to “the Torah of the Messiah.”
And this is what we have in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus often refers to the Torah there, and each time provides us with a deeper understanding of the Torah’s teachings.
The Fulfillment of the Law
Then Jesus proclaimed that “until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota [the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet] or a dot [the Greek word is “horn” and refers to the smallest stroke of the pen in Hebrew] shall pass from Torah until everything in it is accomplished” (Matthew 5:18).
Jesus does not deny Torah but affirms it. He declares that everything that is prophesied in it will come to pass.
Heavy and Light Commandments
Jesus goes even further:
Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:19
The rabbis taught that there are light and heavy commandments, and that sins against the heavy commandments are greater than sins against the light commandments. Jesus employs this rabbinic thinking to discuss lesser and greater commandments, and in fact, the least commandments.
Which commandments might he be referring to as the least commandments? Probably the Jewish-specific commandments in Leviticus that deal with sacrifices and purity laws. Yet the rabbis taught that Gentiles are not bound by these commandments. Only Jews are. (Similarly, Jesus said one of the commandments is the “greatest,” and another is the “second” [Matthew 22:38-39]. On different commandments for different kinds of disciples, Paul said there are different obligations for husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and slaves.)
Learning from the Jewish Law
This seems very strange to most of us. Matthew surely knew that many of his readers would be Gentiles. Why include these words of Jesus that were probably about Jewish-specific laws?
We can say, at the very least, two things. First, there are lessons we Gentiles can learn from Jewish-specific laws, such as kosher rules. Jonathan Edwards said we should discern what spiritual lesson lies behind this and every other commandment in Leviticus, such as the way Paul translated the principle behind kosher for Gentiles: “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:27).
Second, Jesus expressed extraordinary reverence for the Hebrew Bible, especially the Torah, its first five books, the Pentateuch. He declared that every stroke of the pen is inspired by God and is for all of us, Jews and Gentiles.
No wonder the Nicene Creed rejects Marcionism. The Lord of the Church did too.
God’s Chosen People
In this day, with a rise in antisemitism even within Christian circles, and when many in the world turn against Israel for defending itself, it is all the more important that we recognize, as the Nicene Creed teaches, that the Hebrew Bible was given to us by the Holy Spirit. And that Jesus endorses every stroke of the pen in the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, which was his only Bible.
We should also realize, as the Creed suggests, that the Pentateuch’s teaching that the Jews are God’s Chosen People (Exodus 4:22) was implicitly ratified by Jesus, and that Paul said the same when he referred to Jesus-rejecting Jews as “beloved” by God nonetheless, and that their “calling” as God’s Chosen was “irrevocable” (Rom 11:28-29).
Salvation comes only by confessing with the lips that Jesus is Lord and believing in the heart that God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9), so there will always be a Jewish remnant from the Jewish people. But “if the dough offered as first fruits [Jesus-accepting Jews] is holy, so is the whole lump [all the Jewish people], and if the root [the olive tree of Israel] is holy, so are the branches [both believing and unbelieving Jews]” (Rom 11:16).
The Nicene Creed helps us recognize that the Jews are still God’s Chosen People, even if they have not seen their Messiah yet.
Image: photo by Derktjakko from Pixabay, courtesy of Canva. Digitally edited by Jacob Davis.
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