Bray, Gerald L., Ed.: We Believe in One God

Bray, Gerald L., ed.
We Believe in One God
Ancient Christian Doctrine 1
Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009. Pp. xli + 159. Hardcover.
$50.00.ISBN 9780830825318.
Nick Norelli
Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth
New Jersey
Following up on the success of their popular Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series,
InterVarsity Press under the imprint of IVP Academic has put together another series of commentaries on
perhaps the most important creed of the Christian tradition, the Niceno-Constantinoplitan Creed
(hereafter N-C Creed). They've once again enlisted Thomas C. Oden as the general editor of the series as
well as a number of qualified single volume editors from the various branches of Christianity. In this
volume Gerald L. Bray (Church of England) takes editorial responsibility.
The front matter of this volume contains a 15 page (vii-xxi) general introduction to the series that appears
in this volume alone (the last volume of the series will contain biographical sketches and a timeline that
will appear in that volume alone). In this general introduction Thomas Oden details:
• The importance of the N-C Creed: it's one thing that Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant alike can
all agree on.
• The reasons for this volume (there are 9 total which I will forego listing for the sake of brevity).
• Some notes on translation: they've taken a dynamic equivalency approach to previously
untranslated material, and they've modified previously translated material where necessary.
• The intended audience: this series is intended for interested lay persons and pastors although he
hopes it will be of use to scholars as well.
This is followed by a guide on how to use the commentaries in the series which gives brief descriptions
and explanations of the general layout. Then of course there is an abbreviations page before moving into
Bray's introduction in which he gives a brief and general history of the creed while mentioning its
importance for Christian belief and doctrine.
The chapters are all phrases from the first article of the N-C Creed so they are delineated as follows:
• We Believe
• In One God
• The Father
• The Almighty
• Maker
• Of Heaven and Earth
• Of All That Is, Seen
• And Unseen
The entire article appears at the beginning of each chapter in Greek, Latin, and English with the phrase
receiving the attention emboldened. Then we're treated to brief sections on the historical context of the
phrase and an overview of what is to follow in the commentary. The Fathers' quotes are then organized
according to topical headings. While reading through the various quotes one thing became apparent and
that was that Augustine had seemingly more to say than any other early church father! There's plenty
from the great doctors of the East and West as well as some of our other favorite early Christian writers,
but Augustine was a rather verbose individual if we allow this commentary to tell the tale! That being
said, the quoted material seems to me best suited for devotional reading. While there are hopes that these
volumes will serve academics in addition to the intended audience I think that at best it will be as an index
of sorts to the writings of the Fathers related to the N-C Creed.
But this volume has all of the wonderful qualities that the volumes in the ACCS series had: beautiful
binding, cover, layout, etc. If I were to level a complaint about this volume in particular it would concern
Bray's introduction. For a series that is supposed to take an ecumenical approach to the N-C Creed,
Bray strays from the topic to discuss the canon of Scripture which he does from an unabashed Protestant
perspective, talking about how the "Apocrypha, or deuterocanonical books... are sometimes printed
between the Old and New Testaments in our Bibles." (xxix, italics mine). I also have a minor gripe with a
statement he makes concerning monotheism when he says: "Scholars debate whether early Israelites were
monotheists in the strict sense, since there is at least a possibility that they worshipped Yahweh, the God
of Israel, as one deity among many. But whatever truth there may be in that idea, it is clear that by the
time of Jesus, Jews were monotheistic in the modern sense of the term." (xxxiii) The problem is that this
is not as clear as Bray would have us think (see e.g., Richard Bauckham's "Biblical Theology and the
Problem of Monotheism" in Out of Egypt: Biblical Theology and Biblical Interpretation [Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2004]; reprinted as chapter 2 in Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and
Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008]),
at least not until he defines what he means by 'modern.' These criticisms aside, this is a terrific volume
and I have benefited greatly from the insight of the Fathers on this first article of the N-C Creed (even if
not all of the comments are properly in reference to the creed itself). I'm very much looking forward to
diving into volume 2 of the series.

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Ancient Christian Doctrine 1

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