How Do You Say The Creed?

Do you ever have difficulty reciting the Nicene Creed during your Sunday Christian service? You know what I'm referring to, its the section that starts:

We believe in one God, Father Almighty,
Maker of Heaven and Earth,
Of all that is seen and unseen . . . etc.

I have always had a difficult time affirming the statements of the Creed. I can't say that I agree with it and even worse, I don't understand what all the statements mean. I am no stranger to holding much of Christianity at a metaphorical distance, but there comes a time when I feel I just can't say this stuff anymore and still have any credibility (notice the pun!)

Do I just act 'as if' the Creed is true, and see if grow into it? Do I continue to question but defer to the longstanding tradition of the Church? I have wondered if there is a kind of grace in deferring to thousands of years of tradition--not to stop questioning, but to just agree to "go with it" for the time being. Just knowing that I don't have all the answers, and that maybe the thousands and millions of people who came before me know more than I give them credit for. There are times to wade in carefully at the shallow end, and there are time to jump into the deep end and just start swimming. So I figure maybe I should just swim in it.

Other times, it seems that the questioning spirit is a true path of faithfulness, and one affirmed time and again in the Bible--the questioning and fiery Job was the one who experienced a vision of God, not his doctrinal, legalistic friends. Abraham, who broke with tradition and refused to sacrifice his son, is the patriarch of our faith. These questioners became trend-setters and heroes.

So here's what I say silently to myself as a preamble to the Creed (or something to this effect):

I commit myself to the evolving faith tradition which affirms the mystery described as one God, the Father almighty, etc.

Its a lot better than:

I believe in the scientific reality of one God, Father almighty, etc.

MysticalSeeker regularly asserts that many atheists who were once fundamentalists do not change their mindset when they change beliefs. They just "switch teams" but are playing the same game. Their basic approach and the way they frame the questions remain the same, even if they reach different conclusions. This is an excellent point. The problem is that while many of us approach the Bible and other articles of faith with modernist eyes, many of us (myself included) are still trapped viewing the Creed in black/white, fundamentalist terms.

If we don't take the Bible literally, anymore, then I see no reason to take the Creed literally, either. I don't see why a literal interpretation of the Creed is some kind of prerequisite for orthodox Christian faith.

This may be a difficult assertion, since it can be argued that creeds lend themselves to literal interpretation much more than a scriptural narrative (just don't tell that to a fundamentalist). However, a more loose relationship with a creed may be more in keeping with the original intention.

In this, I rely heavily on Berard Marthaler's The Creed. He says that originally the creeds (there have been several) were statements of commitment and faith rather than of scientific belief. This wouldn't rule out a scientific interpretation, but it would not necessarily be the focus nor the point. Creeds have served many purposes throughout the history of Christianity, from initiation rites, articles of faith, up to an "outright test of orthodoxy" (9). Today, we see the creed only through the narrow lens of the latter of that list.

He describes the Nicene Creed as a narrative. In doing so, that really frees us up to interpret the Creed as we do the Bible: The product of a particular people responding to particular circumstances, coming to understand their God and their faith in the best language they could find (372). Its a wonderful piece of an evolving story, and the theolgy that it is based on is not lightweight.

The Creed is not something to discard, by any means. Like the Bible, it just has to be re-read with new eyes. Marthaler writes: "It defines us in a new particular relationship to God and to the world. In summary form the creed discloses that God at once transcends the universe and at the same time enters into history and the lives of human beings. Like all good stories, which are in essence pointed narratives, it has the power to change patterns of thought and meaning so that everything is seen in a new light." (9)

Now, that's an interpretation of the Creed I can swallow! We can still draw from the Nicene Creed even if we're not so surefooted about the literal details, just as we do the Bible.

The word "believe" is critical. It originally had connotations of be love, such as "This is my beloved son". We do not have that word in modern English. Through some mistranslations and the evolution of words in our language, we ended up with this cold word "believe" which expresses a purely cognitive, true/false reality. It really embodies the western mentality that frames too much of religious discourse as whether something is factually true or not. Marthaler suggests that the evolution of this word most likely has had a profound impact in shaping our western approach to religious faith and dogma (18).

The most literal, accurate translation of the first line of the Nicene Creed would be: I set my heart upon God.

Imagine starting the creed with: I belove one God. In that statement, it is not so much a factual matter of whether God exists or what form God takes. It is more of a question of loving the God that is and swimming in the mystery that surrounds this God. There is "belief" in there--it is not for atheists. But it has more flexibility than most modern people give it credit for.

One of the biggest problems in western society is that we view all truth as scientific reality. We have difficulty affirming the "realness" of religious mystery because are too hung up on whether we can "believe" it or not. And that is important. All truth is going to make sense scientifically, as well as in other ways. But it is also more than that. We ultimately don't go to church to profess laws of natural science, we go there to swim in the mystery of faith and relationship to God.

So if you're like me and disdain the recitation of the Creed, I say: Give it another shot! Like the Bible, you may benefit from a good guide to help unravel deep-rooted assumptions we bring to our reading, and Marthaler's book is excellent. It appeals to both the orthodox and the progressive. It has a neat chapter at the end which is a call for new creeds, and it looks at some modern attempts.

Seeing the Creed anew, I realize it is a lost treasure--hiding in plain sight for us Catholics, since we recite it at virtually every mass.

ADDED LATER: It has taken Christianity the last 100 years or so to understand how to continue to appreciate the Bible even though the literal details have been found to be suspect. We should not underestimate the crisis that occurred when scholars first began to call into question much of the historical details of the Bible. I imagine that it is also going to take a while before people can recognize the value of a creed when its message is no longer taken 100% literally, either.

My point is that there is value in the creed. They serve a purpose in our evolving faith history, just like Biblical narratives do. The early church, in particular, was very creed-happy and chose to frame its message in those terms, which may explain why there were no new writings recognized as scripture--the church simply shifted its focus to statements such as creeds. The various creeds has never been my favorite parts of Church Tradition, but now that I have learned to see them differently, I recognize their role and appreciate them. I think I would be missing out on a major slice of Church history to ignore them.