Credo: A Review
Ray Pritchard, a graduate of my alma mater, has undertaken to work his way through the Apostles’ Creed in his new work, entitled Credo: Believing in Something to Die For. Ignoring the dangling preposition at the end of his subtitle (you know, a preposition is really a lousy word to end a sentence with! Some of you will get that eventually…), Pritchard has written a nice little book that very ably, if not deeply, calls evangelical Christians back to the roots of their beliefs. At the end of the book, Pritchard sums things up this way: “This is the irreducible minimum Christians have always believed. The Creed reminds us that Christianity has a doctrinal basis. Although we talk a lot about a personal relationship with Jesus, that’s more than a feeling or a personal experience. It’s a relationship based on the truth revealed in the Bible.”
That’s a message that too many have forgotten in our individualistic, truth-challenged age, and Ray Pritchard deftly handles each clause of the Creed, explaining its meaning and then challenging readers to come to grips, not only intellectually but practically as well, with its implications for our lives. He brings the Creed to life, patiently illustrating the pertinence of our beliefs about such things as the Virgin Birth, the Ascension, and God’s judgment of all people. He made me think about some things, and I think that this book will serve as a nice resource, again, not because of particularly deep thinking, but because of its practical importance.
This is the kind of book that I’d encourage young believers, particularly, to pick up and read, in order to acquaint themselves with historic Christian faith. No, the Creed doesn’t cover every doctrine that I personally find critical; inerrancy isn’t mentioned in the Creed, and thus Pritchard doesn’t touch on it. We might say that the Creed wouldn’t necessarily serve particularly well as a full summation of our critical beliefs today, but as far as it goes, it goes well—and the same can be said for Pritchard’s elucidation of it.
Out of a possible five UVa helmets, I’ll give Credo a solid four.
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I received this book free of charge from Stacy over at Active Christian Media, who does a great job of hooking up bloggers with good books. You should check it out!
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
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