What is the Creed?
By Mark Oakley, Sunday 24th February, 2008
Last year I was asked to represent the Church of England at the opening of the Church of Sweden´s Synod in Uppsala. There were a lot of the great and the good around and on the day´s agenda. I began by thanking them for the invitation but having seen everything else that was to happen on the day I felt like Pontius Pilate might feel about the Creed – happy to get a mention but a little unsure as to the role I´m actually playing!
The Creed. You say it. I say it. Every Sunday, week by week. If we´re honest we can go into a sort of auto pilot mode when we do say it, recovering or waking up after the sermon perhaps, and we may not always know what exactly what we are saying: what does “very God of very God mean”, what does “of one substance with the Father” mean, what does “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” mean?. And so there is the question of how each of us interprets what we are saying. As 80 people say the Creed together perhaps there are 80 different Creeds being said?!
So what is the Creed? How did it come to be? Why do we keep saying it?
Well, I say “the” Creed but actually most of us here probably know two creeds. If you came to Evensong last week you will remember the Apostles Creed and if you were at the service this morning you will have recited the longer Nicene Creed. In fact, there have through Christian history been a number of creeds. The word Creed comes the Latin Credo which means “I believe” and there is the clue. Creeds are summaries of belief. They do not hold the full content of belief but they summarise what it is important to believe if you bear the name of Christian. Having acknowleged this, you will understand that the Creeds were not written over night nor by an individual or a committee. They came out of a lot of argy-bargy, endless debate, dispute, shouting and division. But what emerged, in terms of the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, are pretty universally used by a majority of churches from Roman Catholics to Lutherans, Anglicans to Presbyterians, Orthodox to Methodists.
Apostles´Creed
So, let´s take a look at the history. In the very earliest Christian church, candidates for baptism were required to confess their new personal belief (credo) in the presence of the Christian community. The same is true today as you remember from our own baptismal service. The earliest confessions were short and simple. Eg ”Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor 12,3) or ”I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God” (Acts 8,37). Eventually such simple statements were developed into the confession which we know as the Apostles Creed. We don´t know when it actually took its present form, some think as late as the 5th century. Its name comes from a 5th century legend that under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, each of the 12 disciples dictated part of it. It still traditionally has 12 separate articles. Its origins are certainly earlier that the 5th century as I say and something very similar to it may have been used as early as the 2nd century. The Creed was presumably useful in a number of ways at a time when, we must recall, the Church did not have the full New Testament put together as we do now:
• The Creed was a public statement of faith, a standardized way in which new people could confess their faith in Jesus Christ.
• The Creed anchored Christian faith to a tradition, to make it difficult for people or churches to be led astray by strange or new doctrines.
• The Creed was a preaching and teaching tool, giving an outline for further discipleship.
• The Creed was memorized through frequent repetition, which helped the many believers who could not read.
• The Creed provided a doctrinal basis for different churches to accept one another, and to reject those who did not accept the basic truths.
This still stands of course and by reciting this ancient Creed today we are confessing that which since the days of the apostles has been the faith of the Christian church.
What do you notice about the creed? Well, it never mentions anything about Jesus´s life and teachings between his birth and death! It is a statement about Jesus rather than statements of Jesus. The focus changes a bit from the message of the preacher to the preacher himself, as it were. The Creed begins with a simple statement of faith in God, who has all power and is the originator of everything. This statement is a rejection of pagan mythologies, but it was acceptable to Jews and to some of the more educated Greeks.
Most of the Creed is about Jesus Christ, for he is the definitive doctrine of the faith. Beliefs about Jesus separate Christians from everyone else. Jesus was a specific person, born of a woman, executed under a specific Roman governor. Unlike mythological deities, he did not come from the distant and hazy past — he interacted with the real world. He had a real body that was born, crucified and buried, and yet he was divine, too — conceived by the Holy Spirit, resurrected, ascended into heaven at a position of supreme power. He is the unique Son of God, a unique Lord who is above all earthly lords, and he is the Judge our of our lives. The early church knew about Jesus’ earthly ministry and his miracles, but they did not feel that these were essential to the Christian faith. The Creed focuses more on his supernatural birth, his death and his supernatural power. These were thought to be of the greatest theological significance, and were therefore included in the statement of faith. It finishes with some statements about the Church, forgiveness and hope of resurrection.
Nicene Creed
Now I want us to look at the other Creed, known as the Nicene creed. Nicene means “from Nicaea”, the place in modern Turkey where a Council of the Church met to debate Christian belief in 325 (discussing several things: castrated clergy, date of Easter, priests living with women etc).
Now, where as the Apostles Creed is a personal statement of affirming belief (“I believe”), the Nicene Creed developed more as a statement of combating errors that were around (“Heresies”). It was a statement to refute these false beliefs so that the Church could actually say “We believe” this and that, as against those who do not. And so the Nicene Creed begins, We believe. It was sometimes called the Symbol of faith, by which it meant that these words were the identification tag of the Christian community as opposed to any counterparts. And as time went on, and more ideas did the rounds ( a time in which there was a supermarket of religions), so the Church needed to make various amendments to the statement to deal with these new threats or heresies and so, for instance, we find some amendments taking place in Constantinople in 381. Greek is the original language of this Creed and so is much of the philosophical background to its thoughts.
Now what was played out at Nicaea was a dispute about Jesus. On the one hand there were those bishops, about 250 were there altogether called by the Emperor Constantine, who believed that Jesus was of the same substance as the Father, co-eternal with the Father. These were led by Alexander of Alexandria. On the other hand, there were those led by a priest called Arius who believed that although Jesus as Son was the most perfect of creations he was a creation and not co-eternal with God. There was a time when the Son of God was not.
Much of the debate hinged on the difference between being “born” or “created” and being “begotten”. Arians saw these as the same; followers of Alexander did not. Indeed, the exact meaning of many of the words used in the debates at Nicaea were still unclear to speakers of other languages. Greek words like “essence” (ousia), “substance” (hypostasis), “nature” (physis), “person” (prosopon) bore a variety of meanings drawn from pre-Christian philosophers, which could not but entail misunderstandings until they were cleared up.
“Homoousians” believed that to follow the Arian view destroyed the unity of the Godhead, and made the Son unequal to the Father, in contravention of the Scriptures (“The Father and I are one”, John 10:30). Arians, on the other hand, believed that since God the Father created the Son, he must have emanated from the Father, and thus be lesser than the Father, in that the Father is eternal, but the Son was created afterward and, thus, is not eternal. The Arians likewise appealed to Scripture, quoting verses such as John 14:28: “the Father is greater than I”. Homoousians countered the Arians’ argument, saying that the Father’s fatherhood, like all of his attributes, is eternal. Thus, the Father was always a father, and that the Son, therefore, always existed with him.
The Council declared that the Father and the Son are of the same substance and are co-eternal, basing the declaration in the claim that this was a formulation of traditional Christian belief handed down from the Apostles. If you like, the Son of God became God the Son. This belief was expressed in the Nicene Creed and Arius and his followers were exiled and excommunicated. This creed was a crib sheet for professionals to check someone out theologically. The bishops would have been shocked I think to know we would be using it every week over 1500 years later. It was used in services in late 5th century in parts of the world, recited just before receiving communion.
So, we can see geological strata in the creed, levels of historical debates showing themselves. Let me suggest that there are in the Creeds three different kinds of language as well. The first kind is historical. I have spoken about that. It is a statement that a certain Person lived in history, that He was in fact born, that He died, that He rose from the dead.
The second kind of language in the Creeds is what I should want to call by a word that I hope is not too outlandish: “ontological.” Now this is a word which comes from Greek. By it I mean that there are statements in the Creeds which concern the nature of things, the way things really are. There is, for example, an affirmation about God. Now that is not “historical”; God is not just somebody who happens to turn up in history. God is, in the very nature of things, there. And so also I should say that phrases such as those concerned with our eternal destiny are what I call by this long philosophical term — they have ontological significance.
There is a third kind of language in the Creeds, and that is symbolical language, the language which talks, for instance, about God’s “right hand.” Obviously, God does not have a right hand on which or at which Christ sits. This is the language of poetry, the language of metaphor. It used to be said — although I am told it is incorrect to say it — that when the Creed was translated into Chinese, it was necessary to alter the words so as to have Christ sitting on the left hand of God, this being the Chinese place of honor. This illustrates the point: if there were some culture where the place of honour was sitting on somebody’s head, then we should have to put it that way, for “the highest place which heaven affords is His by right.”
But what about you? And this is where I want you to complete this talk. What do you make of the Creeds? Is it important to recite them each week and if so, why, if not, why not? Are they hurdles for you or those you might bring to church? Or are you proud of them and feel they lead you deep into faith? Do you find the language doesn´t resonate and do you wish for another way of putting things for today? Or do you feel that so much is changing that we need a backbone, an historical rock on which to build and that the creeds are such? Over to you…
