Not so long ago a little treatise on the Apostles' Creed was edited by the late Dom R. H. Connolly, and established as the property of Ambrose of Milan. In this treatise the statement may be found that “when therefore the holy Apostles all came together they compiled a short formula of the faith so that we might shortly be instructed about the whole course of the faith.” We are not concerned here with the question on what occasion the holy Apostles did come together. Apocryphal traditions know of several such meetings of the Apostles, usually with the Virgin Mary, and it was presumably one of these which was in the mind of the great bishop of Milan. The significant fact is rather that he denied here that Christianity ever went through a pre-credal period. His great authority could not fail to make a lasting impression, especially upon the Western Church. It is evidently on the basis of this his assertion that we find, in the orations of Pseudo-Augustine, a Creed that is divided as follows: “Peter said: ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.’ Andrew said: ‘And in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord.’ James said: ‘Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of Mary the virgin.’ John said: ‘Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.’ Thomas said: ‘He descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead,’ ” and so on till at last Matthias finishes with the words, “and the life everlasting. Amen.”

In their struggle against the Church of Rome, a number of sixteenth century English reformers became students of ecclesiastical and secular history. To support their contention that the Roman Church had deviated from New Testament principles, these reformers studied the available records concerning the dogma and ritual of primitive and early medieval Christianity. To prove their charge that for eight hundred years the Church of Rome had usurped the temporal power of European and English rulers, they turned to the medieval chronicles.

For many people the problem of evil is a major stumbling block to belief in God. A history professor asks, why did a good God permit Hitler to incinerate millions of Jews? A parishoner wants to know why his beloved wife must lie dying of cancer? A female Pepsis wasp plunges its stinger into its tarantula victim, injecting just enough venom to paralyze, but not to kill, the spider host, so that the wasp larvae may eat the living but helpless body. Why has the syphilis germ come to be in the course of the evolution of life? It lives, survives, and thrives only in higher organic hosts, which are its victims. Treat some kinds of bacterial disease with our modern “miracle drugs” and, in reaction to the medication, mutating genes produce new, hardier strains of the destructive microbe. Why is there pain — especially when it seems “excessive,” “prolonged” and “unnecessary”? If God is good and loving, and if His power is adequate, why is there physical and mental suffering in our world? If the evolutionary process is the divinely appointed, creative method, why has so much of it taken a course of brutality and aggression? Raising the question at the most fundamental level of process, why has evolution taken place by “mutations,” many of which must be classified as “evil” when they result in the suffering of living forms? For many minds the fact of pain, and back of it, the phenomenon of “evil,” or “inept” mutation remains the unhealed core of the problem of evil, and a barrier to religious faith.