Michael Bird has become one of my favourite authors from a new group of younger scholars. He’s even more enjoyable in his lectures and podcast, witty and profound. This is perhaps the best theological exposition of the Apostle’s Creed, We used it for our Sunday school class and was about to use it again before the COVID shutdown.

Hope to engage it again but right now I am ever slowly reading his book with N.T. Wright’s The New Testament and Its World and Evangelical Theology, second edition and they are both phonebook (do they even exist anymore) size!

Well written and balanced discussion of an ancient creed not used in many churches today; would be helpful to anyone teaching on this ancient Christian creed.

This is, like Carl Trueman's "The Creedal Imperative", a fantastic introduction to the function and place of creeds in the modern church. Bird uses varied and extensive sources, as well as anecdotes, to patiently articulate the historicity, necessity, and benefit of creeds. I am personally grateful that he defended the descendit ("he descended to hell") and that this book serves a very practical purpose. It isn't just history, or explication, it is a thorough look at the way the Apostles' Creed influences our life and worship. An appendix with other early creeds and a look at the formulation of the Apostles' is an added bonus.

Michael F. Bird’s What Christians Ought to Believe: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine Through the Apostle’s Creed attempts to convince college students (the intended primary audience) of the author’s belief in the necessity of creeds and then presents his own theology through the skeleton of what is widely known as the Apostle’s Creed. Using circular arguments, Bird fails on to convince of necessity, though there is a positive argument of a creed’s potential usefulness. Though Bird says he’s unpacking the theology of the Apostle’s Creed, he fails to present the theological history and politics that went into the establishment of this and comparable creeds that promote division within a desire for unity. What he actually does is unpack his own theology from a modern perspective that can be seen in lengthier and more specific creeds in contrast to the simpler and more universally accepted Apostle’s Creed; thus, this is not an honest approach to the creed at hand and probably should not be used in courses including the subject.

Though we have different approaches to creedal theology and disagree on a number of potentially significant fronts, there are a few subsections of chapters that I found to be helpful for any reader. Among them: How Creeds Can Invigorate Your Faith (in Ch. 2), The Lord Jesus (in Ch. 6), Why the Virgin Birth? (in Ch.7), The Foolishness of the Cross (in Ch. 8), and When Did You Get Saved? (in Ch.14).

In my opinion, it isn’t worth adding to a syllabus and requiring students to purchase and read it. For those who disagree, in addition to this text, there are resources available for both instructors and students with Zondervan Academic accounts.