For nearly as long as the church has existed so have Creeds. Creeds are the “I/we believe . . . ” statements of the people of God. As with all text, once it is “written” and made available(whatever the medium) the text takes on a life of its own.
So it doesn’t take the church too long to begin encouraging people recite creeds, or to incorporate them into worship praxis, or to demand that people sign creeds to show that they are part of the the community of faith, recite or die, etc. Surely many aspects of creedal engagement are very useful for communal life.
One of the beauties of the living body of Christ is that as groups – in concert with the Holy Spirit – focus on creedal statements other faith communities prophetically arise to speak of the limitations of those same Creeds. This may sound like an unnecessary battle, on the contrary, it is this dance that keeps the church alive; maybe its like the dance of the red blood cells, the white cells and platelets.
Often those most concerned about churches’ uses of Creeds have centered around the idea that Creeds are not sufficient for faith; its not enough to recite a creed to be “in”; they ask for more than mental assent or a signature at the bottom of such a document.
Anyway, I have begun to think of “Creeds” as Working Communal Thesis Statements. They are working in that they must be revisable. If we assume that our knowledge is finite and that God is infinite then we must always be open to more of God. They are communal in that as soon as the statement is uttered it generates relational engagement which shapes the “text” itself. It is a thesis in that it is making a claim that is not proven or in some cases entirely unprovable (empirically speaking). And as a statement it is located belief; meaning that nearly every statement we utter is a belief statement inseparably linked to the particulars of time, space, community, personal narrative, etc.
“I don’t know for certain, but but as best as we can discern in community I am in the process of believing . . . “
peace, dwight
I like the idea of owning that ultimately we are unsure because we dont know God. We know of God and even that is suspect.
OTOH, I like the ritual of reciting a creed but that may just be the comfortable familiarity of it all and requires that I not pay attention to the rampant silliness of who in the trinity proceeds from whom etc. Let alone the problems of not including of the mutual cross generation of the son and the spirit.
I think that a large part of the move toward creeds enters with Constantine asking for the new state religion of Rome to be united and have a common statement.
Could we throw out mission, vision and value statements as well today? Why do we have to spend so much effort defining who we are or more accurately who isnt in our camp?
Too true boo. When Constantine called church leaders together for the first time to come to an agreement on what they believed about God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit it was very politically motivated. There were literally fights breaking out in marketplaces over what we now call the "Trinity" and one of the Emperors first goals is to keep the peace within the kingdom; so getting the church to agree on the relationship of Father, Son and Spirit was necessary to internal peace (what a blessing and a curse).
Throwing out mission, vision and values statements is compelling though likely impossible. What seems wise to me is to, as best as we are able, resist the urge to codify or reify our mission, vision and values. Our common use of M,V,V reflects a modern objective sense of M,V,V often rendering a single-minded mission that is often antithetical to life.
good advance. id like to stress that pro-active creativity in it and say, it is more important to teach each other how to identify and utter our own creed – as an inherently unique reflection of the creator in a single person -than to recite creeds of old, of others or even of wisdom.
starting from this point i am fully with you in that we are blessed sharpening our creeds at each other and working on jointly owned community creeds.
sounds like a lot of fun.