Abstract: The Restoration began with the stunning divine declaration to the Prophet Joseph Smith that the Christian sects of his day were “all wrong,” that “all their creeds were an abomination in [God’s] sight.” It’s a powerful condemnation, but what, exactly, does it mean? Later in his life, Joseph reflected that he felt that creeds set limits “and say ‘hitherto shalt thou come & no further’ — which I cannot subscribe to.” Certainly, as I realized during a wonderful musical experience many years ago, there is little if anything in one of the great ecumenical creeds with which a believing Latter-day Saint must, or even should, disagree.

Many years ago, while I was studying at the American University in Cairo, my wife and I joined the Ma‘adi Community Choir. It took its name from the Ma‘adi Community Church, a largely expatriate Protestant church that was located in a southern suburb of the Egyptian capital and that was pastored at the time by our American downstairs neighbor, the late Rev. David Johnson.1

During our time with the choir, which rehearsed in the church itself, we prepared and performed two especially ambitious pieces, Antonio Vivaldi’s “Gloria in D Major” (RV 589) and Franz Schubert’s Mass in G — strictly, his Mass No. 2 in G Major, D. 167. Both are wonderfully beautiful and very powerful, and those long-ago performances with that choir remain among our most memorable musical experiences. In this little essay, though, I would especially like to focus on the Schubert Mass, and particularly on the section of it that is called the “Credo.”2

[Page viii]Incredibly to me, Schubert composed his Mass in G in less than a week, during the first part of March 1815. The portion of the work called the Credo — Latin for I believe — is a musical setting of an ancient Latin translation of the so-called Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. (The Creed was first composed in Greek.)3 The name of the Creed comes from the fact that it is a modified version of the original ad 325 Nicene Creed that was adopted by the Second Ecumenical Council, which was held in Constantinople in ad 381. Interestingly, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is the only formal statement of Christian faith that is accepted as both ecumenical and authoritative by the Orthodox churches, the Church of the East, many Protestant communions (including the Anglicans), and the Catholic Church (with one modification that I’ll describe shortly).

What I want to argue here is that Latter-day Saints, too, would be able — perhaps with some clarifications, and almost certainly with some surprise — to affirm the “Credo.” And that fact says something vitally important about the question, which still worries some of our friends and exercises some of our critics, about whether Latter-day Saints are really Christians. To lay out my position, I will individually cite and comment on every passage of the text:4

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem cæli et terræ, visibilium omnium et invisibilium.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

Obviously, no Latter-day Saint would have any difficulty at all in affirming this opening sentence. The first phrase of our first Article of Faith, after all, is “We believe in God, the Eternal Father.” And that first [Page ix]Article of Faith goes on, of course, to declare our belief “in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost,” as does the Credo:

Credo in unum Dominum Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum, [et] ex Patre natum ante omnia sæcula. Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine: Deum verum de Deo vero; [Genitum, non factum;] consubstantialem Patri, per quem omnia facta sunt.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,