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In The Apostles’ Creed Piotr Ashiwn-Siejkowski offers a very interesting debate on the Creed and ‘its difficult jargon’, in hope to make it more accessible to a wider audience. Trying to portray the Creed as a lively narrative, Ashiwn-Siejkowski takes the reader on a very interesting journey, which covers a multitude of issues regarding the Apostles’ Creed; starting with the twelve pronouncements and their formulation.
Ashwin-Siejkowski traces the most important Christian theological debates that inspired each statement and looks for ideas behind each creedal pronouncement. The way of portraying all these issues simply makes us aware not only of the richness of early Christian thought, but it also emphasizes the ‘polyphony’ of theologian opinion so characteristic for the Christianity in that period. Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski takes us through the various testimonies of these theological arguments, namely the Gnostics, ‘heretics’, as well as Jewish and pagan critics of Christian faith.
All these views, discussions and ideas presented by Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski clearly show us how important the Creed and its understanding by the readers are for the author, who simply says:
‘I have also been thinking of a way to introduce the Creed and its difficult jargon to a much wider group of readers even than my students and parishioners. However, I am aware that there will be a number of Christians for whom this Creed is incomprehensible, even irrelevant. For them the Apostles’ Creed could be put on a shelf of the British Library to gather dust, and not many people would notice its disappearance from the liturgy. Against this way of thinking, I would like to argue that the theological content of this specific Christian confession may still inspire our faith, and at the very least challenge our intellect. It may stir up a new desire to know more about the history of Christianity. The early Christian theologians are not mummified, satanic saints or villains from Madam Tussauds’ Museum of Wax Figures. Some of them were later labelled ‘heretics’, but I treat them with respect. All of them, the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, are still very much alive and the Apostles’ Creed echoes their important theological quarrels. Those ancient Christians were passionate about God and their relationship with the divine. This book will explain more about their disputes. However, I don’t approach the early Christian theologians on my knees, and neither do I encourage my readers to do so. I cannot hide the fact that I admire some of them, while others I would not invite to dinner, but voices of the latter are still recorded in the following chapters.’
The Apostles’ Creed and Its Early Christian Context is available in the UK in May 2009 and in the US in July 2009.
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