The creeds and statements of the Councils of Nicaea,
Ephesus and Chalcedon are seen as the bedrock of Christian Theology. Despite
the changes of the Reformation, these have remained, accepted by all major
Christian traditions in the West. (And with slight differences in the Eastern
Church). I am going to argue that the way in which Creeds are used presents a
major obstacle to Spirituality and Faith in the 21st century.
My problems with the way creeds are used: -
· They are used to exclude others.
· They present a picture of absolute truth.
· Much of the language and concepts in them
no longer has meaning.
1. The
exclusion of others.
From their very inception Creeds and doctrines were
designed to exclude. The Early church was surrounded by different ideas.
(Gnosticism, Arianism etc.) Many of the
statements in the Creed are designed to distance themselves from these views.
eg. “Begotten not made, One being/substance with the Father.” against Arius who
argued that Christ was a created being. These discussions often involved power
play by various factions of the Early Church. The losers like Arius and
Nestorius were branded heretics and sent into exile.
This approach to “heretics” developed as the church
grew. The History of the Church is shockingly littered with atrocities against
those deemed heretics or infidels; the bloody battles of the crusades,
persecution of the Jews. The development of scientific theory came into intense
conflict with a church threatened by the new ideas of Galileo and Copernicus.
This is so very far from the carpenter’s son who
welcomed tax collectors and sinners.
Of course we don’t exile or execute heretics these
days. Can we comfort ourselves that those days are over? No. I would argue that
there are many in the church that use our creeds to exclude. People say things
like, “What, you don’t believe in xyz. Well, you can’t really be a Christian.”
Many people exclude themselves. They think, “I can’t possibly believe that, “
and instead of being able to explore their developing spirituality in a loving
community, they look with despair at the list of seemingly ridiculous things
they are expected to believe, and don’t come any more. We are a society with a
“tick box” mentality. Too many people see the Creed as yet another set of boxes
to be ticked.
This leads me to…
2.
The presentation of absolute truth
The creeds, as they stand and are used,
present the idea that we have the answers, the truth. It presents the idea that
this formula contains the truth about God.
Philosophers and Theologians over the
centuries have thought deeply about the idea of religious truth and what it
means. Thomas Aquinas thought that no human language could fully express
anything about God. He said therefore that all religious language was
“analogical”. The neo-Wittcenstinian’s in the 20th century went
further, arguing that religion itself was a “language game” in which believers
developed “concept words” through which to make meaning out of their lives.
Tomes of writings have been devoted to how religious language expresses truth,
and I don’t propose to resolve those discussions here! Suffice to say, that the
way we use words to express faith is a complex matter.
Many people are led to believe that we have
to accept the creed as an expression of factual, literal truth. As with much
religious writing, it is more complex. It contains Historical truths (crucified
by Pontius Pilate), metaphor (Light from light) and a whole load of stuff about
which there is considerable debate. (eg. Born of the Virgin Mary).
Rather than presenting the Creed as a tick
box list for Christianity, perhaps we could engage more creatively with the
language within it, gleaning the deeper meanings that lie within it. However,
as we try to do that, we come across another problem…
3.
The language and concepts of the creed
I blame Aristotle! It wasn’t really his
fault. In fact, he was very forward thinking for his time. (384BC). He has some
very interesting theories about how stuff in the universe was made up. Things
all had natures, substances, essences and accidents. At the time of Nicaea, the
Aristotelian theory of matter was accepted by everyone, and is the language
used in all the early formulae of the Christian Church.
However we no longer think in those terms.
To say that Christ had 2 Natures, and was Consubstantial with the Father, to
someone with an Aristotelian world-view makes perfect sense. Now we think in
terms of atoms, genetics, evolution, the space-time continuum and gamma
particles, we get in a bit of a muddle! For this reason, many of the formulae
fail to touch us deeply, or say anything meaningful about how we can understand
the way God is present in Jesus Christ.
Perhaps what we need to do is give our
creeds and doctrines their proper place. They express the understandings of our
ancestors. They can be meaningful to us, but only if we engage with them as
expressions of faith of an earlier and very different time. As the Church of
Christ we must seek repentance of the harm done in their name. Most importantly,
we need to find new ways to express faith that will touch the hearts and minds
of the twenty first century.
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