Book Review: Affirming the Apostles' Creed
[Trivia: What are the 5 kinds of teeth that people develop?]
A few months ago I wrote a review of the late J. I. Packer’s book on the Ten Commandments (2007);1 a year later, he wrote a similar primer on the Apostles’ Creed, and it’s a worthy successor. In 149 pages (rounded out with discussion questions), Packer offers an informative treatment of the Apostles’ Creed one line at a time.
In many ways it’s an accessible version of a rabbinical exercise, asking why every word that is there is what it is rather than some other word. Why “Almighty” Father? Why was each word included? Which heresies were staved off by the selection of some words and not others? Why did each of these tenets “make the cut” for inclusion in perhaps the most succinct summary of Christian belief?
And it’s a close call, but this work feels like a modest improvement over the Ten Commandments book. Even though some of the foibles remain, including too much of a willingness to use the exclamation mark, Packer has a sense for bringing interesting content to bear on these lines and writing in a way that isn’t hard to understand.
To be sure, the book lists in the direction of being overly accessible or familiar, but that never stops it from being informative. All told, the book could serve a few distinct roles: the systematic and historically informed treatment of the theology makes for a handy survey of key Christian doctrines for the young or the young in the faith. It also gives a more expansive view of this Christian touchstone, providing more context and bringing more of the meaning behind those familiar phrases into the picture.
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Answer: Incisors, canines/eye teeth, bicuspids/premolars, molars, and wisdom teeth/third molars.