On Christian Creeds

On Christian Creeds

Christianity, my faith and perhaps yours too, is unique among the world’s many faith traditions in many ways. It’s the only major faith tradition whose foundational figure was executed as a threat to public order. It’s the only one that claims that its foundational figure rose from the dead. It’s the only one that says that its foundational figure was nothing less than God Incarnate—or at least most Christians do. Christianity’s many peculiarities make it odd, mysterious, and wonderful.

Yet there is another thing that is unique about Christianity that is perhaps less wonderful. Christianity has creeds, lots of them, and they tend to be very complex. Christianity has more statements about what it believes (or is at least supposed to believe) than any other religion. We’ve got more creeds than we know what to do with. We’ve got the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and many others. Even my own United Church of Christ, which claims to be noncreedal, has its “Statement of Faith” that sounds an awful lot like a creed. These creeds aren’t necessarily all that long, but they tend to be complex and hard to understand. Take the Nicene Creed for example. It was formulated by the First Ecumenical Council, a gathering supposedly of all of the bishops of the church that Roman Emperor Constantine called in 325 CE. Using concepts from Greek philosophy it says things like the Son was “begotten not made.” People ask me what that means, and I answer no one really knows. It says the Son is “of one substance,” or “one in being” (homoousious) with the Father. People ask me what that means too, and again I answer no one really knows. It says that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father,” or in a later western corruption of the original “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” People ask me what “proceeds” means, and again I answer no one really knows. The Nicene creed is still foundational for most of Christianity. It is relatively short, terse, complex, and obscure. Yet since most Christians think they can’t do without a creed they recite it and pretend to understand and to believe it. Christianity, or at least most of it, is solidly creedal, and in our complex creedalism we are unique among the world’s great religions.

It's not that other great faiths don’t have creeds. At least the other monotheistic faiths do. Both Judaism and Islam have statements that function as foundational creeds for those faiths, but it’s really striking how simple those creeds are compared to Christianity’s many creeds. Here’s Islam’s foundational creed: “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.” That’s it. Islam shares the first part of this creed—there is no God but God—with Judaism and Christianity. Muslims say “There is no God but God,” and Jews and Christians, if they aren’t being bigots, say “Amen.” Muslims know God through Muhammad and the book he gave the world (or God gave the world through him), the Koran. There’s a lot more to Islam than its creed, but the point for now is only that while Islam has a creed that creed is short, simple, and straightforward.

Judaism has its foundational creed too. You’ll find it at Deuteronomy 6:4-5. It says: “Hear O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” NRSV Christians know some of those words as the first part of Jesus’ Great Commandment, but before they were that they were the ancient creed of Judaism, Christianity’s mother faith. They are known as the “Shema” because the Hebrew words that get translated as “Hear O Israel” are Shema Yisrael. The words that the NRSV translates as “the Lord is our God, the Lord alone,” can actually be translated in slightly different ways. The NRSV has a translator’s note that says that the Hebrew original here can also be translated as “the Lord our God, the Lord is one” or “the Lord our God is one Lord,” or “the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” A bit confusing perhaps. Originally the Shema was a confession that the god Yahweh (rendered in the NRSV and other translations as the Lord  in small capital letters like that) was Israel’s only god. Today the Shema is understood as a confession of the radical monotheism of the Jewish faith. There is one God and only one God. The Shema then goes on to say that we are to love the Lord our God with our whole being. That’s it. While there is of course a lot more to Judaism than that, that’s all there is to Judaism’s foundational creed.

So I think we Christians have to ask: If the other two great monotheistic faiths don’t need complex creeds, do we? We have them, but do we really need them? No, I don’t think we do. Of course, I’m ordained in the United Church of Christ; and as I said above the UCC claims to be noncreedal. We don’t require anyone to believe in some Christian creed or other to belong to the UCC. So I suppose it isn’t surprising that I say that Christianity doesn’t need a complex creed. I do think, however, that it is important for us to consider just what a creed is and why so many Christians think you can’t be Christian without one.

A creed of a faith tradition is a foundational statement of the faith’s fundamental beliefs. “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.” “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God….” “I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible….I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ….I believe in the Holy Spirit.” They’re relatively short, concise, statements of theistic belief in the world’s three great monotheistic religions.

Now, notice that I used just a little bit of the Nicene Creed here for a Christian creed. That I felt the need to cut it down points to a problem that Christianity has with creeds that Judaism and Islam don’t. Basic Christian faith is just a whole lot more complex than are either Jewish or Muslim basic belief. It’s not that there isn’t complexity in either Judaism or Islam. There is, but those faiths can state their most foundational faith confessions considerably more concisely than Christianity can. In Christianity both the Trinity and the Incarnation are foundational beliefs, and it really isn’t possible to state what those confessions are simply or shortly. It just can’t be done. The Nicene Creed and others try to do it, but really they can’t. See, neither the Trinity nor the Incarnation makes any sense, and that’s their great virtue. They preserve the mystery of God and of Jesus Christ by being concepts that can’t be reduced to words. They can’t be reduced to concise creedal statements. When Christianity tries to  reduce them to creedal statements it ends up with something that no one really understands. I’ve already mentioned that truth here. No one knows what “begotten” means. No one knows what “proceeds” means. No one really knows what “homoousious,” the key phrase of the Nicene Creed that gets translated as one in being or of one substance, means. When we try to reduce Christianity to a concise creedal statement it just doesn’t work.

That’s why, I suppose, churches like the United Church of Christ and others claim to be noncreedal. We don’t require anyone to pretend to believe something they don’t believe or can’t understand. Yet are noncreedal churches like the UCC really entirely noncreedal? Not really. I’ll use my own UCC as an example. Article 2 of the UCC Constitution begins: “The United Church of Christ acknowledges as its sole Head, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior.” Although that sentence doesn’t begin “I believe in,” it is essentially a creedal statement. This same article of the UCC Constitution has other statements that sound awfully creedal too. “It [the UCC] looks to the Word of God in the Scriptures, and to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit….” “In accordance with the teaching of our Lord…it recognizes two sacraments….”

Then there’s the UCC Statement of Faith that I mentioned above. In its traditional form it begins: “We believe in God, the Eternal Spirit, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father, and to his deeds we testify.” There’s more to the Statement of Faith of course, but I think the point is made. The UCC claims to be noncreedal, but that doesn’t mean that it has no foundational statements of its basic beliefs. The church’s foundational documents establish it first of all as Christian church. They place the church squarely in the Protestant tradition. They aren’t a creed exactly, but they have creedal elements to them.

Why? Could it be that no church can function without some basic statement of its foundational beliefs? Indeed, I believe that to be the case. Requiring people to say they believe all the statements in the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, or any other creedal statement is inadmissible. Most of the people who say they accept everything in the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, the two most widely used creeds in Christianity, either don’t understand them or don’t accept all of them or both. The church must be open to and accepting of spiritual seekers as well as those who think they have faith all figured out.

So: Noncreedal? Yes. But without identity? No. Every organization needs a boundary, a way of saying who and what is in and who and what is out. Without a boundary an organization has no identity. Without a boundary an organization isn’t really an organization at all. The UCC and other Christian denominations may be noncreedal, but they are not non-Christian. They clearly identify themselves as Christian. Their boundary is the boundary of Christianity. Inside the boundary they may not require anyone to accept or profess any particular kind of Christianity, but they’re still Christian.

Creeds may have their place in Christianity. Our tradition has drafted and used them for centuries. Today, however, the world has changed. We no longer live in a world in which most people need to have truth dictated to them. In our world people generally would rather figure things out for themselves, or at least a lot of them would. Noncreedal Christianity invites people to do just that within the scope of the Christian faith. If someone figures out that no kind of Christianity works for them, OK. Go with God to a place where you fit better. Today noncreedal Christianity holds out the possibility of a future for Christianity in a time when that future is uncertain at best. So recite one of the Christian creeds if you like, but understand that creedalism has its limitations and that the world today is bumping up against those limitations. Christianity without a creed? Sounds heretical to many Christians. It is however the way of the Christian future.