Weird Ideas: Apostolic Churchনমুনা

When the Nicene Creed says the Church is an apostolic church, it implies that the apostles have handed something over to us today. What have the apostles handed over? Theologians and church historians will call it the deposit of faith. A deposit, or course, is a sum of money that you hand over, either as a guarantee of more to come or as something intended to grow with interest. Both are true of the apostolic faith.

When the apostles proclaimed Jesus, taught the faith, and wrote the scriptures, they did not intend to answer every question or teach every facet of following Jesus. It was a foundational beginning upon which the Church would grow and build deeper understandings of the way of Jesus in the world. And so for 2000 years Christians have continued to teach the faith, write about the faith, and contextualize the faith in their time and place. At the start of all of this is the initial deposit. Foundational things. Things to go back to. Things to develop. Things to test new questions and new challenges against.

And it’s not just beliefs. It’s a way of life. Because the way of Jesus is not just right understandings about him. It’s conforming to his way of living. Both constitute the apostolic faith.

In Greek this deposit of faith is called paradosis – a “handing over” or “passing on.” It gets translated into Latin as traditore. It’s where we get words like “traitor,” the idea being that a traitor hands over something or someone important. (Incidentally, this is the word Jesus uses to describe how he’d be “handed over” to be crucified. It goes on to describe the actions of Judas, the chief priests and Jewish elders, and Pilate himself.) It’s also where we get the word “tradition.”

Tradition can be a dirty word in the church. Too often the way of Jesus and new expressions of the Spirit have been traded for “the way things have always been done.” That’s tradition at its worst. In these moments tradition is like a traitor – betraying what Jesus intended. But tradition can be positive too. And the New Testament uses it this way. As in following the way and truth of Jesus that the apostles witnessed and taught.

There’s a lot of crazy ideas out there about God. Not to mention how he works and his plan for the world. The apostolic church says “Here, let me show you.” This is an apostolic church at its best.