4. Why bother to think about the creeds?
One creed or another is said at most Church of England services, and
this unfortunately causes enormous problems to lots of people! There
are three different creeds officially in use, but the one most people
come across is the Nicene Creed. This began life as the deliberations
of a group of theologians and politicians at the Council of Nicaea in
325, who were called together to come up with a party-line as to what
Christians believed. After they went home, the debate continued, and
the creed didn’t arrive in its final form until the Council of
Constantinople in 381.
Like all the creeds it forms a convenient shorthand summary of
traditional Christian belief, and is therefore useful as a way of
reminding ourselves of what we’re officially about. But as an
introduction to Christianity, or as a help to faith, it’s pretty
useless, for two reasons: (i) it puts in all sorts of claims that most
people (including many churchgoers) couldn’t even begin to accept as
true in any historical or factual sense. This is why lots of those who
attend church either keep quiet during the time when it’s said, or
have a pause when it gets to a bit they find particularly unhelpful
(or even offensive), or say it but have a bad conscience about being
hypocritical! (ii) it leaves out almost everything that’s really
important. There is nothing in it that we can relate directly to our
everyday living, nothing about the need to love and care for one
another.
So what can we do about it? The easiest thing, of course, would be for
the Church to stop saying it at all. It doesn’t have to - we don’t
have to. The only necessity in religion is what people put there.
Creeds were invented by people, for people and can be scrapped (or
ignored) by other people if they/we want to! Their use in our liturgy
is a matter of choice - our choice. There’s nothing God-given either
about their words or the use to which those words are put. Indeed we
might well ask, do we actually need creeds at all?
Any creed is as much a product of its time as a piece of old pottery,
and it’s important to remember that when we say one, we don’t have to
try and pretend that we see things in the same way as the people who
wrote it. Some people (perhaps many people?) manage this without undue
difficulty, but probably rather more find it impossible, and indeed,
undesirable. The world has moved on a long way in the last 1700 years,
and our understanding of almost everything has changed out of all
recognition.
It might be that if the creeds were set to music they would cause far
fewer problems! After all, we sing lots of hymns with the most
peculiar ideas, but if they have good tunes then the words may not
matter much. The problem of the creeds is the problem of many other
areas of Christianity: the clammy hand of the faith of the past can
all too easily reach up and threaten to squeeze the life out of the
faith of the present. If we are serious in our wish to see the
continuation of Christianity, we must do whatever we can to try and
ensure that this doesn’t happen.
Many of the ideas in the creeds have done sterling work over the
centuries, even the millennia, but they may now have become prisons in
which contemporary expressions of spirituality are locked away. It has
been well said that ‘the past has a vote, not a veto’, and we need to
try to put ourselves into the shoes of those for whom conventional
religious language has gone dead (or indeed has always been dead). The
Buddha told a parable about a raft: a traveller comes to a wide
stretch of water; the side he is on is dangerous, but the other side
is safe. However, there is no bridge or boat. So he collects grass,
sticks and branches to make a raft, and crosses to the other side.
Because the raft has been so useful, he lifts it onto his head and
carries it with him forever. The Buddha tells his followers that the
traveller should have left the raft behind. It has served its purpose,
and can now only be a hindrance. In this spirit, they should let go,
not only of false teachings, but also of good ones.
This is almost unheard of in the Church! Doctrines and creeds grow by
process of accretion: more keep getting added, and no one is brave
enough to jettison the ones which are no longer helpful. But why not?
To cling so tightly to the past is to show, not great faith, but a
lack of faith. As an historical religion Christianity is always going
to have a problem with old understandings of the faith. Like our
religion, we are products of our past - but we don’t have to be
prisoners of it as well. The understanding of the faith preserved
(fossilised?) in the creeds is historically important, but can never
be the last word. In religion, nothing can ever be the last word.
The Nicene Creed has been called the ‘rugger song of the church’: when
we say it we are stating ‘I’m a member of that gang’, and proclaiming
our solidarity with this particular group; we’re subscribing to its
general outlook, just as we do when we sing the National Anthem. In
other words, when we say it we’re not stating a series of religious
propositions, but rather endorsing the fact that we are part of a
community of fellow enquirers linked through the creed across space
and time. The danger of creeds is that they tempt people into thinking
that the story is over, and all we’re required (indeed all that we’re
allowed) to do is keep replaying it, over and over again. In fact, the
story is new for each generation who have the task of continuing and
re-presenting the faith in terms that resonate with their own time.
The number of ‘timeless truths’ of religion is very small - and
they’re usually wrapped up in historical packaging that masks what’s
underneath. Anyone who demands that 21st century Christians take
literally the words of the creeds is consigning Christianity to the
dustbin of history. Those who are unwilling to see this happen have a
duty to make it known as widely as possible that things don’t have to
be like this; that it is possible to be a thinking Christian, and use
religious symbols imaginatively and creatively. The creeds are
pointers to the faith of the past: it’s up to us to be pointers to the
faith of the future.
Tony Windross, Vicar of St Peter's, Sheringham.
Why bother
A fuller treatment of this topic, plus 36 others, can be found in ‘The Thoughtful Guide to Faith’
also written by Tony Windross, published by John Hunt (2004) and available from all good bookshops at £9-99.