There was a time when I believed the Christian Creeds were the thing. During that era of my life, if you had asked me what was most central to my faith, I would have said (in many, many more words, of course, and at the end of said words you, being barely awake, would have seriously regretted asking me the question – as I hope this unnecessary parenthetical note clearly demonstrates) something like this:
“The Christian Creeds are the answer you are looking for. After all, the Creeds are what Christianity is – they are that set of things that we believe. What could be more important than that?”
Now I hold a different view. Don’t get me wrong – I still believe in the Christian Creeds with the same irritating and loquacious fervor I did before. But I view their ultimate purpose differently.
You see, I don’t think the Creeds are the thing anymore. Instead I view Christ Himself as the thing. We don’t exist to believe in the Creeds…we exist to have a relationship with Him.
So what purpose do the Creeds serve? I mean, why do we even need them? And I think my view is something like this: They help us avoid obvious and terrible errors in our thinking about God. One does not build walls around a castle for the sake of walls, beautiful though they may be when built. One builds it to protect the castle. And indeed, one does not even build a castle simply for its own sake; it exists to house and protect the people living inside.
The Creeds are like that: Layers of defenses designed to protect something frightfully important. Because the Christian castle itself is sometimes so beautiful, I think occasionally we forget that, for all its aesthetic value, it is really only guarding something else. It was in this spirit that Chesterton warned of the danger of “loving Christianity more than we love Christ.”
Of course, it is a bad analogy even so far as it goes; it is silly to suggest that God needs defense. What really needs defense are our own fragile and easily-changeable minds. For, being human, what we think about God will influence our relationship with him. If I believe that God is a big green frog that hates me, then it will be hard for me to experience Him as He is. If I believe that He is the cow that I see from my living room window, then I expect my experience of Him will be less rich than it otherwise could have been.
You can see this on a smaller level with human relationships. If I believed my friend Mark is an evil warlord bent on world domination, then I will view everything about him through that lens. Every time he does something nice for me, I will assume it is a part of his evil plot to take over the world. Every phone call, every apparent kindness, every business decision, every trip to soccer practice with his kids – everything he does will be just another expression of his twisted dark nature. Do you see? What I think about Mark will change my relationship with him. It will be hard for me to have a sincere and honest relationship with him, if I view him differently than the (actually) wonderful person that he is.
Well, I think that’s part of what the Creeds are for. They aren’t the thing, any more than what I believe about Mark is the thing. They help guard the thing. They help ensure that we don’t believe all sorts of errors about God that we might otherwise believe; errors which might potentially interfere with our relationship to Him.
Now this epiphany about the purpose of the Creeds happened to me privately, as a kind of personal revelation; but after it happened, I noticed a parallel with church history and why, historically speaking, we have the Creeds in the first place. A lot of the Creeds – and in fact, a lot of the New Testament – were written in response to obvious false beliefs about God. They were reactionary, designed to ensure that people didn’t get caught up in certain wrong-headed trends in how they thought about God.
(In this article, when I say Christian Creed, I mean the Nicene Creed. This Creed, adopted in 325 AD, is accepted by virtually every Christian Church from every Christian tradition. It is an expansion over the shorter Apostle’s Creed – a Creed also accepted either formally or in principle by most Christian Churches – I used in an earlier post. While the existence of multiple creeds may itself seem like a problem, I do not think it is. I originally addressed this exact issue in this exact parenthetical note, but decided the note was too long for a parenthesis and thus, as an alternative, now will discuss the whole “multiple creeds” issue in next week’s post instead. So if you are somehow, against all reasonable odds, interested in this issue, stay tuned next week. I will here add only this: I could have made the exact same points in this article using either the Nicene Creed or the Apostle’s Creed, so for our present purposes, the issue is largely immaterial).
To place our “defense” analogy into the specific Christian controversy around which some parts of the Creeds were originally written would be a very long and boring and complicated article. That controversy largely revolved around whether Jesus was truly God, and while it seems like hair-splitting today, for my part there would be little point to Christianity if God sent someone else to do His own dirty work; the whole captivating beauty of it is that God sent Himself. So I’m glad the right side of the debate won.
ED can eat online generic viagra up a lot of mental energy of men as they can’t help but think about this problem. This Continue Shopping cheapest viagra from india is a condition in which a man is not getting legitimate erection actually when sexually energized. You know that feeling when cialis prescription online view this link your special someone physically, emotionally, financially and most of all, you should be a drug that is able to cure a disorder like erectile dysfunction. The Staff’s Dilemma and Responsibility From birth to age six, kids’ brains are particularly responsive to experiential influence. cialis sale uk But I’d rather focus on issues that are more relevant to what people believe today. So, to pick just one example, some people say that God is a part of everything. In this view, God is close to us because, in a way, He is us…and everything else. Over and against that, the Creeds assert that God is most certainly not everything, but rather is the Maker of everything. It is the difference between believing that God is the paint in the painting and believing that God is the Painter.
Well, if you believe God is the paint, He is not going to stop (so far as I know) trying to have a relationship with you. But it’s going to be awfully tough sledding. Because…to put it bluntly, you can’t really have a relationship with paint. You have to have a relationship with a Person. Intuitively, we know this, which is why folks are often very muddled when they try to get to know God from such an odd angle of approach as “God is inside everything.” If He is inside everything like that, then I’m talking to God when I talk to myself – or to a rock – or to the internet. You can try that…but my guess is you’ll lead a kind of interesting double-life. Because you know as well as I do that if God is like that, then He can’t really talk back.
So God is not close to us in that way, and the Creeds exist in part to keep us from straying too far down that muddled road. On the other side of the canyon, though, there is an equally dangerous error. Some people say that God is unreachable. That is false, and the Creeds flatly contradict it:
“Who, for us and for our salvation, came down from Heaven…”
The painter isn’t the paint; yet He cared so much about His creation that He came down into it; He condescended to take on its form.
It matters not which side of the canyon you fall off; it’ll hurt just the same. Believing God is only the paint itself is pretty bad; but believing God is nowhere to be found in His own painting is worse still. And the Creeds exist in part to counteract both of these wrong views of God. God isn’t the same as us; but He isn’t absent from us, either. He isn’t the rock you can reach down and pick up with your hand, but He is reachable all the same. In fact, He came down to reach you.
People are different; and that’s ok. God made people to be different. Some people are struck by God’s amazing nearness: They lay shamelessly in His compassionate arms, see His tenderness in every rock and every stream and every baby’s cry. But some people are struck by God’s amazing otherness: They stand in awe of the fact that He is separate, perfect, holy, and unlike anything else that ever existed. And Christianity embraces both of those things, rightly understood; yet it also warns against believing one without the other.
To the person who revels in God’s nearness it says:
“God is near; God loves you; He wants you to feel His love in every rock and stream and baby’s cry, because that’s exactly why He made those things; that is the Truth. But do not imagine that because God desires nearness to you more than anything, that He is less omnipotent or perfect or mighty or strong. Do not imagine that because God desires union with humanity that He is humanity. He will always be untamable and wholly God.”
To the person who revels in God’s otherness it says:
“God is wholly other; God is indeed perfect; he is indeed unlike anything else in the universe. He made all and no one else could have ever done that. He alone knows all and can do all. But do not imagine that because God is different from everything that He is distant from everything. God is as close to you as a breathed prayer at every moment of your life; and never forget that the Bible says He wants to be in union with you, yes, even as a bride to a bridegroom.”
In this and a hundred different other ways the Creeds thus exist to keep our minds from wandering down roads that will impair our common-sense ability to know God as He really is. Of course, God is still God whether we know Him or not, and he is not simply “the thing in the Creed.” But that brings us back to where we started. The Creeds are just walls for our mind to keep us sane, but knowing God is far, far more than simply believing the Creeds. In a sense, the Creeds are the beginning, the foundation, the reasonable borders, the sounding-board, of our journey with God – but I do believe He intends to be known in your real life, as you actually live…or not at all.
I’m not convinced that different ways of thinking about God constitute either “obviously false beliefs” or “obvious errors”: if they’re so “obviously” wrong, why have so many people believed them, and why did the Church need to convene a council (lots of councils, actually) to safeguard the truths vouchsafed it? Of course, if you caricature other beliefs about God–”a big green frog that hates me” or “the cow that I see from my living room window”–you have a better chance of making them seem “obviously false” (and stupid). While I understand your point about relationships needing an accurate foundation (and I hope you and Mark can work things out), I don’t see how sincere speculation about God (as opposed to paranoid delusions) need be threatening, either to God or to one’s relationship with Him/Her/It. Isn’t such speculation part of, or an inevitable consequence of, what you have described as God’s deliberate ambiguity (I’m paraphrasing)? Why would God leave room for doubt and ambiguity, only to want the church to remove it?
It’s true that a creed can be a useful hedge against heresy and a way of protecting orthodoxy; but “orthodoxy” is not synonymous with “truth” and “heresy” isn’t the same as “falsehood”. Hedges and walls protect all sorts of things, and they can as easily keep out truth as keep out error; moreover, one person’s sheltering walls are another person’s intolerable prison. Intellectual walls, however, seem to me an exercise in futility; I can testify from personal experience that recitation of a creed, even with the best of intentions and a heart yearning toward faith, doesn’t necessarily prevent the mind from questioning the truth of what’s being recited. The “questing intellect” (of which I have heard you speak admiringly) often tends to find walls either a challenge or an affront; either way, it finds ways over, under, around, or through them. (I think “Over, Under, Around, and Through” is an old song by the Yardbirds, probably not about theology.)
It’s hard to see what a creed could accomplish, anyway; as Paul said, “what may be known about God is plain to [men], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” If men therefore can and do ignore the plain evidence of creation that God has provided, why would a theological/doctrinal statement issued by a group of bickering bishops, convened in council by a Roman emperor looking to consolidate power around a unified church, get through to them?
None of this, of course, is to gainsay the usefulness of the Christian creed to you and to millions of others; nor am I arguing that the creed is false (obviously, I don’t believe a word of it, but that’s just me). It’s possible, though, that the castle walls you so admire have kept out, and continue to keep out, pilgrims who might actually want to sample the wares rumored to be found within them. It’s also possible that the price exacted by those who instituted (and enforced) the creed–Arius and followers were excommunicated and exiled, books of Arian theology were confiscated and burned, and death sentences were announced (I don’t know if they were actually imposed) for anyone found in possession of Arian literature–was, and has been throughout the ages, a bit excessive. The Christian creed can’t in fairness be divorced from the institution that promulgated it or from the consequences that befell those who chose not to believe it or who, even after much struggle, just couldn’t make their way to the redoubt of faith which is your particular vantage point.
To conclude with what is no doubt a cheap shot: I seem to recall that Jesus was quoted as saying “Knock and it shall be opened”; I don’t, however, recall him mentioning a password or a secret handshake. And so far as I’ve ever been able to detect an actual “creed” in the gospels, it seems to have been “Abba, father…thy will be done.” There’s something to be said for simplicity. You may be right in claiming that something has been gained (intellectual tidiness?) from having a Christian creed; I’d argue that at least as much, and probably more, has been lost.
Jack,
Very fair points! I would say, in reply:
(1) You are correct in criticizing my use of “obviously” false. That was a poor choice of words. In fact, I would go a step further: If such beliefs are “obviously” false, then no creed would be necessary at all. No one needs a creed to tell them that they can become less thirsty by drinking water. My whole article would make no sense if we were talking about obviously false beliefs, so I withdraw that statement entirely, as well as the use of “common-sense” notions of God’s nature. What we are really talking about is the Creed providing boundaries that constrain certain natural tendencies in our thinking, so those tendencies don’t lead to a destructive and false outcome.
(2) Actually, I have a lot of sympathy with your point of view about the non-necessity of a creed. I think Christianity is about a relationship with a Person, not a belief system per se. And I have made the argument before that Christianity is kind of intentionally light on abstract truths, and heavy on stories and parables and other such ways of expressing God’s actions in our lives. I’m as inclined to trust the Gospels as the Creed. In fact, that was part of the thing motivating me to write the article to begin with: Given that, on the surface, a creed doesn’t seem necessary, why do we have one?
(2a) But what is the alternative to a creed? Believing nothing about God? Ignoring what eveyone else thinks about God and just believing whatever you like? Your “simplicity” alternative, to me, leaves a lot to be desired. Saying “Thy will be done” cannot be a creed, because one still needs to know what “Thy will” is. You can’t have a relationship with someone you do not know, and you can’t know someone about whom you have no beliefs. And Christian theology represents the accumulation of Christian beliefs about who God is, and it is very useful to have a kind of quick-and-easy summary about those beliefs, that everyone agrees on: The creed.
(3) Yes, in the Christian view, orthodoxy means truth, and heresy means falsehood. I am unapologetic about that, not in the sense that I expect everyone to believe what I believe, but in the sense that there is no point in having a belief system if you don’t believe in it. Christianity, like any sensible belief system, makes claims about what is true. I know you disagree with me that the Christian creed is true, Jack, and I respect that…but simply asserting that it isn’t true does not make it so. Now, you could reasonably point out that I just asserted in the article that it was true and that doesn’t make it so…which would be completely accurate! I guess the point of the article wasn’t so much to debate about whether or not they are true (though of course I think they are), but to ponder a kind of if/then statement: If true, then what purpose does it serve? Of course, that wasn’t the only point of the article, and I admit I was very sloppy in discussing it. All the same, I don’t agree with your assertion that folks would be better off without the Creed.
(4) A VERY good question about why would God allow for doubt, only for the church to remove it! I don’t know that I have a good response, but I would say something like: He allows for doubt of true things; orthodox Christianity is true; and He allows for us to doubt it. I wasn’t suggesting that everyone will automatically believe the Creeds. I think the Creeds are one of those things that God allows people to doubt, just like He allows us to doubt His existence writ large. But I grant the point: It does pose quite an intellectual problem that I haven’t even slightly worked out yet.
(5) We could debate about the historical implications all day, I fear. I will say this here: First, that I completely agree with your assessment of the history. That’s my assessment, too. Second, that I agree that the suppression and exile and book-burnings and the like were not good. Third, that the church has to be accountable for such things. But fourth: The beliefs themselves are not the people or the history. They have to be evaluated independently of that. Or are you saying that because some Darwinists made up their data, that Darwinism is false? Just because people who believe something did some bad stuff, that does not invalidate the thing they believed.
Of course, I think your point is subtler than that — if I were you, I would respond with something like “yeah, sure, but you are trying to argue that the Creed is some kind of agreed-upon summary of Christian belief, but forced agreement through book-burning and exile isn’t really agreement.” That would be a fair point worth considering. My own response would be two-fold: I’m not suggesting that even Christians should believe the Christian creeds brainlessly. I myself was somewhat uncertain about the doctrine of the Trinity (a doctrine that I’ve never liked as a matter of personal preference) until I read relevant Biblical passages and read about the debate a little bit. So I think, whether you believe the creeds themselves or not is synonymous with whether you believe Christianity or not; and my reason for believing that is in part because I personally think the creeds capture Christian belief, independent of the history of their development, or what-have-you.
Second, although I know about the exiles and stuff like that, the reason for the exiles was not exactly forced agreement — in fact, it was the real agreement of virtually all the other Christians that led to the forced exiles of the dissenters. While I agree that it was bad to exile folks (and so forth), it doesn’t invalidate the actual agreement (or the fact that now, when very little forced agreement of any kind exists among multiple churches, virtually every church accepts this creed). Christians have historically not put much stock in forced agreement in the long term, which is why whole “councils” have been invalidated when it appeared in retrospect that they were the result of “bullying.”
That’s not to re-write history: I realize that Christians have long, and through violent means, tried to force others to believe what they believe. (See: Humanity). I’m only referring to the events that produced Christian doctrine itself, in terms of arguments within the faith. It is hard to argue that Catholics and Protestants who have no current control over each other agree on the Creed because they “force” each other to agree. Well, that’s true of virtually every chuch — no matter how divergent — they still agree on the creed. And I think that’s a good piece of evidence that it captures something central in the New Testament.
Whether you believe it or not is another matter.
In the interests of brevity, I’ll skip over the parts where you graciously agree with me, and get on with the rest; which, I believe, would be your sections (2a), (3), and (5).
Re (2a): of course I don’t think that the alternative to a creed is “ignoring what everyone else thinks and just believing whatever you like”–that would make you an Episcopalian! However, I’m actually kind of fond of the Anglican approach to credal matters, relying on “Scripture, tradition, and reason” (that is, our own contemporary reason, not dutiful reliance on the reasoning of bishops from the year 325); I’d also add “prayer and community” to that list (were I, you know, a Christian). I think a healthy faith community can disagree on some things, even on many things, but still be bound together by a common desire to love one another, to understand God, to serve God, and to apprehend (however imperfectly) God’s will. Speaking of which, I agree that “Thy will be done” is distressingly vague, but (a) don’t blame me, it was Jesus’ formulation and (b) I think this is where Scripture, tradition, reason, prayer, and community come in. In fact, I think I’ll answer “what’s the alternative to a creed?” with “a living, believing, striving, prayerful, humble community.” (Which can feel free to consult the creed, too; sort of, as you suggest, a Christian Cliff’s Notes.)
I don’t see how the creed provides much insight, anyway, into the meaning of “Thy will” in any given situation, since a creed is more of a list of required theological stipulations than of moral or ethical guidelines; again, I guess you follow Jesus’ instruction to speak to God about what “Thy will” means. I agree that “you can’t know someone about whom you have no beliefs,” much less know their will for you; but I’m pretty sure you don’t start with the beliefs before you’ve even met the person–I think we call that “prejudging”. Rather than tell me, via a creed, what to believe about God, why not let me meet God and find out for myself? (I know, we do that sort of thing all the time, telling people in advance, “You’ve got to meet my friend so and so, I know you’ll just love her,” and then going on and on about so and so’s qualities; but still, meeting is believing, and those set-ups often don’t work out.)
The Christian creed is, as you say, indisputably helpful as a guide to what, historically, has been said and believed about Jesus by certain Christians at certain times; I just don’t see why knowledge of God or belief about Jesus has to stop there (maybe you’re not suggesting that?), or why sincere Christians can’t honestly disagree with some of the details (“descended into hell”?) without forfeiting their claim to be “Christians”.
Re (3): Well, sure, I know that a “belief system” means that believers believe in it and think that it’s true; I’m just pointing out that believing it’s true doesn’t make it true, and rather than walling oneself into a (however devoutly believed in) castle of orthodoxy, it might be useful to at least allow some gaps in the castle wall in case an unexpected truth wants to make its way in. You never know; the Nicean bishops might have gotten something wrong, or left something important out. It’s been 1700 years, after all…
And re (5): I’m not saying the creed is false because of the unfortunate ways it was sometimes enforced; I very specifically wasn’t addressing that issue at all (my paragraph 4: “nor am I arguing that the creed is false”), because your article wasn’t addressing it either. Your article wasn’t about the truth of the creed, but about “What Is The Purpose of the Christian Creeds?” and I was simply saying that, in addition to the theological and intellectual purposes you described the creed as serving, it had served some others as well–the enforcement of orthodoxy and the persecution of dissent, in particular. The Nicene Creed also very intentionally served Constantine’s desire to have a united church; making Christianity the state religion wouldn’t work so well if Christians weren’t even agreed on what Christianity was and especially if they persisted in squabbling about their differences in public. I’m aware that your article really amounts to “What the Christian Creeds Mean to Me,” and that you weren’t giving a history lesson; I just thought the larger context and historical record was worth adding.
Nor do I subscribe, in any case, to the notion that ideas are refuted by pointing out that their adherents do bad things: I think we can agree that ad hominem attacks are unfair, whether levelled against Christians, Darwinists, Marxists, or venture capitalists. If you want to refute an idea, you have to refute the idea (which, again, I wasn’t trying to do), not embarass its proponents. I’m a little less inclined, though, to go along with your claim that “it was the real agreement of virtually all the other Christians that led to the forced exile of the dissenters.” I think we’re back on the same issue as when you wrote about “obviously false beliefs”: if “virtually all the other Christians” disagreed with, say, Arius, then a council wouldn’t have been convened to combat his ideas, and he wouldn’t have been exiled because he’d have presented no threat to orthodoxy. I’m pretty sure that “virtually all the other Christians” weren’t present at the Council of Nicea, nor were their views solicited; theology isn’t democracy, after all, and neither is the church.
In my experience, a surprising number of Christians, these days at least, aren’t really into theological controversies anyway; I suspect the same was true back then. Regardless, it isn’t shocking that church politics, turf wars, bureacratic maneuvering, and personal ambition played a part at Nicea, nor does that fact invalidate the creed that emerged; on the other hand, let’s not pretend that such things weren’t present, or that Arius (like subsequent dissenters, or “heretics” if you prefer) simply ran afoul of “virtually all the other Christians”.
Lastly: I’m not implying that churches today enforce their creeds through “bullying” (or even that such was the historic norm; it wasn’t) or that Christians by and large don’t come to accept those creeds voluntarily; these are more enlightened times (since the Enlightenment, in fact). To repeat a point made above, I’m not sure the vast majority of Christians think that much about the creeds they recite or care that much about theology (and that’s an observation, perhaps a faulty one, and a wild generalization based on my limited experience, but in no way a criticism). What I do know is that, in the early years of Christianity, there were disagreements aplenty among Jesus’ ragtag followers; and while Paul and Peter and James did meet to sort things out, mostly they all went their separate ways and preached their (slightly) different Christianities, figuring that they agreed on the basics and that was enough (plus, the world was about to end and Jesus was coming back, so there really wasn’t time to work out all the details). Without a detailed or authorized creed (though with some traditional doxologies and rituals), they managed to spread their faith; and even with all sorts of apocryphal gospels and epistles circulating in the absence of any church-approved canon, Christians thrived, believing somewhat different things (sometimes quite odd things, cf. Marcion) but mostly living their faith and sometimes dying for it as well. I’m simply not convinced that the creeds contributed anything to the real strength of Christianity or to the spiritual lives of Christians; I do think, though, that they served quite well to help establish and enforce the sort of orthodoxy and conformity that any institution prefers–what sort of church, after all, could just allow people to think whatever they want? (Oh, that’s right; the Episcopal Church…)
I promise I’ll never take up this much space on your site again–sorry about that.
Jack,
No need to apologize! Indeed, I found your insightful, gracious, and coherent comment absolutely fantastic. In fact, my only problem with it is that I feel certain it was a far better discussion than my original article! Thus inadvertently making me look bad. : )
But I’ll suffer that (haha) for the sake of the truth. Frankly, I found myself agreeing with almost everything you said, so I must have oversimplified my own view horribly in my original article. I’ll do a re-cap here. But I’d also like to note that this is one of the very reasons that interaction and discussion is useful, because I think it helps illustrate real beliefs, clarify important points, and so forth.
(1) I like the Anglican approach too, and I don’t think that’s incompatible with my own view. In fact, I’m struggling to find anything to disagree with at all in the paragraph that starts “Re (2a): of course I don’t…” I pretty much agree with everything in there (except one small point — see 2a below). I never meant to suggest that the Creed was the only thing that mattered in Christianity — all the other things you mention matter a lot, too. I think the Creed accurately captures the essence of Christian belief, and I think that’s very useful and has a lot of practical value (including the one I mentioned in my original article). More practical value than you believe it does, perhaps: And I certainly trust it more than you do. But someone who believes the “creed” but doesn’t make any effort to do the other things you mentioned would hardly be “Christian” at all in any meaningful sense.
So basically, I’m granting your points there — I think I need to do some more hard thinking about what the Creed means in the larger context. Don’t get me wrong: I think what I said was accurate as far as it goes (for the most part), but it certainly didn’t do much for putting the creeds into the larger context of Christian life and thought.
(2) About “Thy will be done”: You’re completely right. The Creed really doesn’t help much in that regard…at all. I concede the point entirely. In fact, one of the larger problems with my original article (which I would now revise, if I could do it over) is that it really only addresses those few aspects of the Nicene Creed that are either intentionally abstract or have clear abstract implications. I wrote the article as if it listed a bunch of God’s attributes at an abstract level — and it does some of that — but really it is mostly a kind of historical statement (as I had previously noted in another post). So there’s a bit of a tension there that I never addressed at all. I want to note that I did not intend the article to go back on my original position that Christianity is a kind of “fairy tale come true” — I was aware of the potential tension when I wrote the article, but probably should have stopped and fleshed it out a bit before posting.
(2a) The only small bone I would pick has to do with your statement that Jesus didn’t fill in the blanks on “Thy will be done”…because a lot of the Sermon on the Mount illustrates explicitly His concrete views on what God’s will is, and a lot of His parables directly illustrate aspects of God’s character. So I don’t think it’s quite the right characterization to say that Jesus left the slate blank (that’s not what you said, but I’m reaching for the proper analogy here). He constantly and unapologetically claimed to know exactly what God was like, and what He wanted specifically from us, and told us what those things were.
(3) I never meant to imply that our knowledge of God has to “stop” at the Creeds — in fact, that was part of the point of the last paragraph, to note that our knowledge of God in some ways cannot end with the Creed but has to be lived out in our own experience. Though I would be highly skeptical of “knowledge” of God that flatly contradicted the Creeds. I think that’s partially their purpose (for the Christian, of course). The new testament explicitly and (I think, rightly) discusses the importance of right doctrine (that is, right thinking) about God.
I realize that this is not much of an answer to your very fair critique — but I’m running out of mental energy today. To be honest, I think my article is a vast oversimplification of the issue, as you rightly point out, and there is work to be done on my part to flesh it out some more.
(4) Did the Nicene bishops get everything right? Well, of course they weren’t perfect. Some of them seem at first glance to be real rotters. So I’m not saying God hung the fate of the universe on that one council. My own faith is not in the Nicene bishops, but in Christ Himself. All the same, I’m inclined to think God (who presumably, if He lived in Christ as I believe, did not die in the interim) had something to do with guiding His church’s beliefs, and as such am inclined to think that the Creeds are a pretty accurate summary of Christian belief.
(4a) I think my larger point is mostly historical. One could argue, reasonably, that my above statement would apply TODAY as much as 1700 years ago, and that God ought to still be involved in new doctrinal controversies. Such an argument can devolve quickly into any side simply claiming victory by its very existence. While that is entertaining in an irritating sort of way, it isn’t very useful.
So while I do have faith that God guided the development of Christian doctrine that is independent of history, I would also say that many of the critics (not saying you yourself, Jack) seem to make way too big a deal out of the disagreements, epistemologically speaking. Christians themselves have made way too big a deal out of the disagreements. The disagreements are generally (1) slight and petty, (2) about degrees of emphasis and not true contradictions, or (3) big and obvious (e.g., someone, Marcion I think, claiming that the Old Testament and the New Testament Gods were literally different, one good and the other evil). One of the reasons I believe the creed is because I can see with my own eyes and brain that it captures the new testament nicely; one of the reasons I believe the new testament is because it seems like it was written by folks that were a lot closer to the life of Jesus than anyone else who has written about it, and they seemed to try and capture his life accurately. Independent of what I believe about God in my own life, if I were just trying to “define” the life of Jesus and what he probably did and taught, I think it more reasonable to trust the New Testament and the Creeds than many of the other things people have said about Him.
Of course, that has little to do with your excellent critique — only discussing some additional thoughts that might or might not be relevant.
(4b) Can you be “Christian” and disagree with parts of the Creed? A fair question, and I’m not sure I have a good answer. In some ways, I’m of course inclined to say “no” to that question on purely linguistic grounds: (1) I think the term “Christian” should mean something, (2) I think what it has historically meant is captured in the Creed, and (3) changing what we mean by the term only adds linguistic confusion, however well-intentioned.
I’m also inclined to say “no” on doctrinal grounds, as is probably not surprising from my article and subsequent comments. On the other hand, that’s probably a little too harsh. I have some sympathy with what you said about the average person probably not caring a whit about the controversies that obsessed the Nicene bishops. I don’t really care that much about them myself, and I actually LIKE that sort of thing! I’m quite sure that God isn’t up in Heaven thinking about ways to emphasize His “homooúsios.” I’ve had debates with Jehovah’s Witnesses (whom seem to me to be Christian heretics) and I don’t feel like they are that far off the truth. (And I certainly don’t feel like that I’m that far ON to the truth myself).
I want really badly to not believe this next thing, but the truth is: I think some of the things in the Creed itself are more important than others. It’s clear to me you can’t be a Christian and disbelieve in Jesus’ death and ressurection. But a few of the other things in there I’m not so sure about. Your comment about hell hits the mark pretty well, I think: Do you have to believe in a literal hell to be a Christian? After all, it’s in the Creed (or at least implied in the Creed). And I’m hypocritically inclined to say “no” because I just don’t think that’s a super-important part of the Creed (though I myself believe in a literal hell). I haven’t worked out why; but I’m actually not sure why the bishops put that part in, because it really doesn’t seem “central” in any meaningful way to Christianity.
So I think in reality our implicit attitudes about the Creed are very similar, even though our overriding trust in it at a personal level are obviously quite different. I’m inclined to just tell people to read your last comment, which I think was better than my original article! But at the very least, I would say this: The article would have been better if it had been written at a more personal level, talking about what it meant to me personally — maybe it IS unnecessary for the vast majority of Christians, many of whom are perfectly fine Christians having never heard of Nicene bishops and the like. Don’t get me wrong — you haven’t changed my mind personally about the importance of the Creed; but I do think my original article lacked context and complexity, and (perhaps) treated a personal epiphany as something that everyone would also share.
Hi there this is kinda of off topic but I was wanting to know if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding knowledge so I wanted to get advice from someone with experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Very interesting points you have noted, thanks for putting up. “Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.” by Plato.