From the proclamation of Christ to the foundation of the Christian faith
You are…
Pierre proclaims one of the most overwhelming creed in the New Testament. When Jesus asks his apostles who he is for them, Peter announces: “You are Christ” (MC 8, 29). “The Son of the living God,” adds the version according to Saint Matthew (Mt 16,16).
He who has “the words of eternal life” (Jn 6, 67-68).
Rock
The apostle Pierre is addressed here to the cosmopolitan crowd gathered in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Shavouot. A celebration that commemorates the gift of the Decalogue on Mount Sinai.
Pierre thus makes the link with the gift of the life of Christ, a new law which sounds in all languages and hearts.
“It is this Jesus that God raised; We are all witnesses (…) he received from the Father the Holy Spirit who had been promised. »»
Book of Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 2, verses 22 to 33 (Gospel of Pentecost).
Body
These proclamations of the Christian faith also make the link with faith in the Church which is constituted as “body of Christ”.
Paul proclaims that “there are diversity of gifts, but the same spirit; diversity of ministries, but the same lord; Diversity of operations, but the same God who operates everything in all ”(1 Co 12, 4).
Trustee
It will take a few more decades for Trinitarian faith to find the right words to express themselves clearly. Even if Jesus himself, in the words reported in the Gospel of Matthew, had already announced everything: “Go, of all the peoples made of the disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit …” (Mt 28, 19).
Jesus
It is around the figure of Jesus of Nazareth that the reconfiguration takes place. Christians see the fulfillment of proclamation in a single God,, Received in Jewish revelation, in the figure of Jesus: recognized as Messiah, then as Son of God, then as God Himself.
Paul
The Saul Jew, who became the Christian Paul, is also fed by this proclamation of faith. “Christ” and “Lord”: the rapprochement of the two messianic titles is his big deal to convince his brothers and sisters of the synagogues he visits.
Then to address the pagans who discover the uniqueness of God and his revelation in Jesus, principle and end of all things: “For us, there is only one God, the Father and a single Lord Jesus Christ by whom everything exists and by whom we are” (1 Co 8, 6).
