property rights, that mind is superior to matter, that there should be one true international, interracial religion. It has a fourfold kind of membership: hereditary, adolescent, plenary, celestial.

18. The Amana Society believes in the Bible, a new revelation to them, a fire and spirit baptism only, confirmation at the age of fifteen, a biennial celebration of the eucharist, plain dress, omission of amusements and oaths, non-resistance, and communism.

19. The Pentecostal Holiness church holds to modern Arminianism, joyous demonstration in worship, premillenialism, divine healing, perfectionism, and the real baptism of the Holy Spirit.

20. The General Convention of the New Jerusalem believes in one God, in a trinity of essence, a Bible plenarily dictated by the Lord Himself, the literal sense of the Bible, the deeper sense of the Bible, that the one God by a virgin birth lived a human life overcoming sin, that all the enemies of the human race are in subjection in every man who co-operates with God, that man is raised up in his body in the spiritual world, that the judgment occurs immediately after death in the world of spirits and is man's coming to a real knowledge of himself.

This survey demonstrates that Christianity has never been in agreement regarding what is fundamental. Similarly, the documents of the primitive church reveal a refreshing variety of opinion. The Christology of Mark is not that of Paul or of John. The Orthodox Greek church differs from the Roman Catholic church in several dogmas. The Lutheran basis cannot be equated with either Calvinism or Arminianism, and Anabaptism was so radical as to be repudiated and caricatured by most Protestant bodies to say nothing of Roman Catholicism. Every variety of faith and practice has adherents and regards itself as 100 per cent orthodox. Laying on of hands, feet-washing, plain attire, premillenialism, omission of wearing of jewelry, wearing of hooks and eyes instead of buttons,

veiling of women, confirmation at the age of fifteen, the biennial celebration of the eucharist, are regarded as quite as important as the Nicene Creed, the Westminster Confession, the Augsburg Confession, the Thirty-nine Articles. Indeed, the matter of the hooks and eyes may be far more divisive than the matter of the Smalcald Articles. What the past has fought for in the matter of religion is sometimes incomprehensible, to the third and fourth generations.

II. AN EXAMINATION OF THE APOSTLES' CREED

Many groups of Christians accept the Apostles' Creed as basis. But the "received" form of this summary is not at all identical with the Roman form or with the much earlier forms. On the basis of Schaff's' brilliant study and employing the "received" text of the Western form, we shall indicate by numerals the approximate date of the first appearance of each affirmation.

1. I believe in God (prior to A.D. 250 “in one God") the Father (A.D. 250) Almighty (A.D. 200) maker of heaven and earth (A.D. 650),

2. and in Jesus Christ (A.D. 300) his (A.D. 220) only (A.D. 390) begotten (A.D. 341) Son (A.D. 220) our Lord (A.D. 260),

3. who (A.D. 390) was conceived (A.D. 550) by the Holy (A.D. 390) Ghost (A.D. 220), born (A.D. 220) of the virgin Mary (A.D. 220),

4. suffered (A.D. 220) under Pontius Pilate (A.D. 200), was crucified (A.D. 220), dead (A.D. 220) and buried (A.D. 220); 5. he descended into hell (A.D. 390), the third day (A.D. 220) he rose (A.D. 390) from the dead (A.D. 220),

6. he ascended into heaven (A.D. 390) and sitteth at the right hand (A.D. 220) of God (A.D. 550) the Father (A.D. 220) Almighty (A.D. 550),

7. from thence (A.D. 390) he shall come to judge the quick and the dead (A.D. 220).

1 Creeds of Christendom, Vol. II, pp. 52-55.

8. I believe in (A.D. 250) the Holy Ghost (A.D. 220),

9. the holy Catholic (A.D. 450) Church (A.D. 250), the communion of saints (A.D. 550),

10. the forgiveness of sins (A.D. 250),

II. the resurrection (A.D. 220) of the body (A.D. 1543), 12. and the life everlasting (A.D. 250).

The conclusion of such a conservative authority as Schaff is worth quoting:

If we regard, then, the present text of the Apostles' Creed as a complete whole, we can hardly trace it beyond the sixth, certainly not beyond the close of the fifth century, and its triumph over all the other forms in the Latin church was not completed till the eighth century.

Even the Apostles' Creed was an exceedingly gradual development and required centuries to attain its present form. How a text not affirmed by the early church can be made obligatory for twentieth-century democratic Christians is a little difficult to understand.

But not only does the text of creeds vary from generation to generation, but the interpretation of its clauses undergoes change. To begin with, consider the Apostles' Creed. After we confess this symbol, we ask ourselves what is meant. For example, consider the affirmation, "He descended into hell." One may read "hell," "Hades," "inhabitants of the spirit world." Moreover, we recall that the Roman creed did not contain this clause until after the fifth century. Finally, the investigator is confronted with the difficulty of interpreting the expression. It has been regarded as identical with "buried," as denoting the "intensity of Christ's suffering on the cross, and as an actual descent of the slain Jesus to the realm of the dead. What is "the communion of the saints"? What is denoted by "the resurrection of the body"? Did the church appreciate Paul's soma pneumatikon? If so, the modern Christian were fortunate. Alas! one recalls that "body" first appeared in this creed in A.D. 1543, that "flesh" appeared in A.D. 220. The work must be done over again. This clause

must be connected with the gnostic controversy whose history is in our day being rewritten.

The fourth-century church debated for more than half a century on homoousios of the Nicene Creed only to discover that its earlier significance had been modified.

The symbol of Chalcedon was a compromise formula. Actually little progress had been made since A.D. 381. It can be understood only after several thoroughgoing courses upon it. "Born of the virgin Mary the mother of God; to be acknowledged in two natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably." The once underlined was directed against Nestorius; the twice underlined against the Eutychians. Immediately we wish to know who these brethren were and what they desired to affirm and why their views could not be adopted by the church. This symbol had hardly been spread on the minutes, when the monophysites made a frontal attack. The sixth century beheld the disintegration of the imperial church. The Eastern provincial churches separated from it. In succession, the Persian church, the Jacobites of Syria, the Copts of Egypt, the Ethiopian church, and the Armenian church departed from the orthodox fold. Christianity dissipated its vitality in doctrinal controversy and had no superior religion to offer to advancing Mohammedanism. In fact, during the succeeding thirteen centuries it has not been able to conquer Islam. Sometimes history exacts a heavy penalty for failure to understand the nature of Christianity.

If the Christian church has never agreed regarding the interpretation of such a simple and ancient formula as the Apostles' Creed, is it conceivable that a small group of twentieth-century Christians will be able to formulate the fundamentals of Christianity for their brethren?

Consider the Apostles' Creed from another angle, from the point of view of completeness. What information does it give us regarding the attitude Christianity should take on

disarmament, on internationalism, on the recently adopted amendments to the Constitution of the United States, on the general labor unrest? Does it at all evaluate the Sermon on the Mount or enable us to understand the principal purpose of Jesus? We must still face the problems of today ten minutes after pledging allegiance to the Apostles' Creed. The following excerpt from an editorial in a Catholic weekly should bring conviction:

It has become plain that we can go little farther along present lines of attempting to patch up modern industrial society by legislative plasters. In laying down the first step in a real program of reform we must proceed on the assumption that our objectives are clear: Capitalism must go, the modern State must go, and in their places must arise a society based on the mediaeval Guild State.

What, then, is the first step? Existing Catholic societies and agencies must merge their efforts and undertake to educate Catholic workingmen in the new economics. We will set down this one piece of educational reform and place it alongside the entire list of any existing reconstruction program as an equivalent. Indeed we will go so far as to say that we pin our hopes solely to the education of our people, and primarily of our Catholic workingmen, in the ancient Catholic principles and methods of social ethics.

The tragic element about the fundamentalist controversy is its diversion of Christianity's attention from the realities of the present day. It is far more essential to the survival of Christianity that the church provide a proper background and atmosphere for twentieth-century civilization than that it seek to awaken interest in its ancient doctrinal fossils.

No confession of faith has ever been composed that adequately described the faith of its subscribers.

Probably the greatest fallacy of fashioners of creeds is the assumption that subscription accomplishes something. As soon as the Nicene Creed had been signed, the battle began. Had they signed homoousios or homoiousios? The tyro in church history is familiar with the general bedlam that continued for decades. Just how many times was Athanasius banished and what atrocities were not alleged against him! How many parties and minor groups came into existence