The Creeds: love songs that our ancestors in faith sang to their God by
John Shelby Spong
The following
from Bishop John Shelby Spong was
written as a response to this question: “Are the
creeds, the doctrines and the dogmas of the church, an expression of the way
people thought 2000 years ago?”
Answer:
All creeds, doctrines and dogmas will reflect the worldview of
those who framed them. No creed drops out of heaven, fully written, complete
with paragraphing and punctuation. All creeds are shaped in debate and
represent the winning formula, some times having been forced to consensus by
something as human as political compromise.
The first creed of the Christian Church was just three words:
Jesus is Messiah. In time Messiah was translated Lord. When Constantine became
Emperor after the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 C.E. he sought to unify his
country under the Christian banner. This was why he called the Council of Nicea
in 325 C.E. to force the Christians to form a creed that would be the basis of
that unity. That is the Council that produced the Apostles' Creed.
But unity did not result and the Church discovered that Christians
could say the creeds verbatim while meaning very different things. The creed
had too much interpretive room in it to be the basis for unity. So another
Council was called to close out the loopholes. That is when the Nicene Creed
was created with all of its loophole closing clauses. Who is Jesus? "God
of Gods, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, of one
substance with the Father." Each phrase was designed to diminish wiggle
room and thus create unity and conformity.
Even that did not work so, much later, an even more convoluted
faith statement was adopted called the Athanasian Creed. The primary purpose of
each creed was to define who is part of the true faith and who were outside the
true faith. So every creed is a boundary maker.
I do not regard any creed, doctrine or dogma as eternal. I am not
sure that in the light of modern biblical scholarship we would have or could
have come to the same creedal conclusions and I wish we would go back and
reargue the issues of Nicea, Ephesus and Chalcedon.
I say the creeds regularly. I do not think of them as strait
jackets to be worn whether they fit or not. I view them rather as love songs
that our ancestors in faith sang to their God. Love songs like the creeds
always use language that cannot be literalized.
Try to view the creeds this way and see what a difference it
makes.
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~ John Shelby Spong
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