What’s missing from the creed?
Monday, October 24th, 2005Time: 10:07:38 PM
Topic: theology
In many Christian churches throughout the world, an affirmation of faith, known as a creed, is read or recited at regular intervals. The word “creed” comes from the latin credo, I believe, and in the best instance is indeed an affirmation of the deep faith of the person who utters it. But whereas, as Jacob Boehme says, “faith is that out of which the creed arises,” a bastardized definition of faith has developed which considers “assent to a creed” as sufficient evidence of faith. Thus what was once vital and vibrant enough to produce some rather astounding declarations and affirmations is finally reduced to a dull recitation of barely-undersood syllables.
It was to this rather lifeless use of unthinking recitations that some persons of vital faith objected, in the waning decades of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, when they said they were forevermore done with “sects and creeds.” Just as joining one’s name to the membership rolls of a religious organization does not in itself guarantee that one has indeed begun to partake of a living faith, likewise, it was felt, with the recitation of the creeds. Who needs a creed, when you’ve got Jesus as a personal friend, the Holy Spirit as an indwelling power, the Father in Heaven as a gracious overseer of all your circumstances?