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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Are the Creeds important?
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Macrina
Shipmate
# 8807
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Posted
I am currently attending an evangelical Anglican church. I've come from a very Orthodox with a big O background so this is all very new to me. I've really enjoyed the oppurtunity that the change in church styles has given me to reflect upon faith and the place it has in my life.
However, over the past few weeks I've noticed a few instances where people have said things like 'Jesus isn't God, Jesus is God's son' and have spoken about Jesus in what for me, coming from the perspective I do, seems to be a decidedly untrinitarian way. The level of teaching and worship at the church also seems to lack a quality that I can only describe as 'oomph' but a better word might be depth.
I don't want to encroach too much on the Trintarianism thread as I acknowledge that there are different understandings of who and what Jesus was; but I am interested in people's views about how important solid theological understanding, such as those outlined in the creeds, is to Christian faith.
Does it matter if you don't understand the nature of Christ (who does?) or what your church teaches about it so long as you follow him?
I come from the perspective that it does and it matters deeply, not from an intellectual perspective but from the whole thing making sense as a narrative. If you lack a basic coherant statement of who and what God is and who and what Christ is then how can you understand what the resurrection was for? I feel sometimes like people get stuck at the cruxifixion.
But then I don't want to be a person who says that if you don't subscribe to my understanding of this then you are wrong.
So I am open to listening and being educated.
Posts: 535 | From: Christchurch, New Zealand | Registered: Nov 2004
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
I'm with you on that one. As an Anglican (Episcopalian) myself, though, I'm grateful that our church, while it uses the creeds, allows for freedom of conscience as well as for people "belonging before believing" - so people do have very different opinions sometimes about doctrinal points. I guess the hope is that they will find their way to the credal position.
Do you know whether there is an "official" understanding at this new church? Being Anglican, I would assume it is the orthodox view of Christ. If so, maybe they need to do a better job of teaching.
To me, it does matter, but with the caveat that not everyone in the community - in fact, no one in the community - will be perfect in their understanding. I'd be more concerned with what the church is actually teaching than with what you might hear from individuals' conversation.
It could be that "God" to them means "God the Father" or something - some people might have sloppy words for such complex concepts. After all, we do pray to "Almighty God" in the name of "...your [God's] Son..." Maybe that's caused some confusion in the technical terms people are using?
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Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Demas
Ship's Deserter
# 24
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Posted
Creeds are a tool for excluding people.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Creeds are a tool for excluding people.
That was their original intention, from what I understand; they defined orthodoxy with specific reference to particular heresies to demarcate those heresies as being Just Not On.
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Macrina
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# 8807
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Creeds are a tool for excluding people.
That was their original intention, from what I understand; they defined orthodoxy with specific reference to particular heresies to demarcate those heresies as being Just Not On.
Well, weren't they actually supposed to be a uniting element more than a divisive one? To provide some consistant understanding of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire at a time when people were killing each other over dipthongs?
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Creeds are a tool for excluding people.
That was their original intention, from what I understand; they defined orthodoxy with specific reference to particular heresies to demarcate those heresies as being Just Not On.
Well, weren't they actually supposed to be a uniting element more than a divisive one? To provide some consistant understanding of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire at a time when people were killing each other over dipthongs?
Not as far as I can see, except in the "scare the laity witless with the threat of anathematisation if they give Nestorianism or Arianism the time of day" sense. If you'd wanted to unite, you'd have said "Nestorius and Arius are wrong, but we're all children of the same God saved by the same Christ", rather than "Nestorius and Arius are evil and wicked and if you listen to them you'll be chucked out and probably burn in Hell" - which is what the councils producing the creeds did say, in effect.
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Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras
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# 11274
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Posted
American Episcopalian here -- yes the creeds do matter. They are minimal formulations of the Church's collective beliefs about the nature of God, of Christ, the Incarnation, etc. Orthodox Christians need to engage with the creeds, even if seeing them as approximations to ultimate truth and perhaps limited in time, culture and metaphysical concepts. Still, they ate the best we've got as agreed upon formularies.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
The Creed* defines. It is not meant to exclude people but rather heterodox doctrines. Christianity has content, and if someone were to present the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and claim it was Christianity, they would be wrong. That's not what Christianity is. Which is not to say Christianity is right and Buddhism is wrong; it's just to say that Buddhism isn't Christianity.
So that's what the creed does. It says, "Here are the teachings that are central to Christian belief." (Even more literally, it says, "I believe thus-and-such" -- but when the Church recites it together, she proclaims that these are her core beliefs.)
It doesn't even say "You aren't a Christian if you don't believe this" (again leaving aside the so-called Athanasian so-called Creed).
So, no, it's not a horrible bad nasty mean ugly thing to make people feel unwanted and kick out people we don't like. It's a definition of the core beliefs of this religion of ours - the one we call Christianity.
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*I'm going to talk about the Nicene/Constantiopolitan Creed here; the Apostles' Creed is a western baptismal formula not used in the EOC (and doesn't add anything to the Nicene Creed except the descent into Hades), and the so-called Athanasian so-called Creed is, um, interesting, but not I believe officially part of any Church's self-definition.
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roybart
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# 17357
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Posted
quote:
So that's what the creed does. It says, "Here are the teachings that are central to Christian belief." (Even more literally, it says, "I believe thus-and-such" -- but when the Church recites it together, she proclaims that these are her core beliefs.)
.....
It's a definition of the core beliefs of this religion of ours - the one we call Christianity.
I appreciate the way you put this, mousethief. A problem arrives, when "we" are conventionally expected to participate in reading the Creed aloud as part of the Eucharistic service. When we do this, we are, inevitablyi also saying "I believe thus-and-thus."
This can be difficult for some of us, especially if we know something of the historical process by which some of the Creed's formulations have been defined.
I used to find myself engaging in an interior theological debate as I recited. Very distracting, not to mention negative. Now I simply don't recite the Creed, replacing it with silent meditation.
What DO people who happily recite the words and use the "we" really think about them? As literal truths? Metaphors? Some kind of God-poetry? I have no idea.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by roybart:
What DO people who happily recite the words and use the "we" really think about them? As literal truths? Metaphors? Some kind of God-poetry? I have no idea.
Probably any of the above depending on the person. Might be worthwhile to do some kind of poll.
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Macrina
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# 8807
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Posted
Roybart, I do the interior theological monologue too but part of that for me is important as it is me conciously and knowingly defining myself as acknowledging these words as true.
The current church service I attend has never gone near the creed and when I mentioned it at cell the opinion was more towards remaining Biblically based. (Which of course the creed IS)
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Enoch
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# 14322
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Posted
Macrina, a simple answer to your question, is 'Yes', and I agree with you. I also agree that churches are wrong to play them down. They are a fairly short and fundamental statement of ancestral wisdom and what a person can, should and ought to believe.
We don't have all the time to regard each provision as equally important and significant, but they do represent how wiser people than us have resolved past disputes. We do need to agree with them. Anyone who finds themselves thinking 'I don't understand that' should take it as God suggesting to them it's time they find out. Anyone who finds themselves thinking 'I'm not sure about that', should ask themselves serious questions, on the assumption that the Creed is right and they are wrong.
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
...I am interested in people's views about how important solid theological understanding, such as those outlined in the creeds, is to Christian faith.
Does it matter if you don't understand the nature of Christ (who does?) or what your church teaches about it so long as you follow him?
I'm not convinced that it does matter. Surely the important thing in Christianity is what you do (the fruits of your tree, as Jesus might put it), not what you happen to believe about the exact nature of the relationship between God, Christ and the Spirit.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Macrina, a simple answer to your question, is 'Yes', and I agree with you. I also agree that churches are wrong to play them down. They are a fairly short and fundamental statement of ancestral wisdom and what a person can, should and ought to believe.
We don't have all the time to regard each provision as equally important and significant, but they do represent how wiser people than us have resolved past disputes. We do need to agree with them. Anyone who finds themselves thinking 'I don't understand that' should take it as God suggesting to them it's time they find out. Anyone who finds themselves thinking 'I'm not sure about that', should ask themselves serious questions, on the assumption that the Creed is right and they are wrong.
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that they represent which one of a load of competing views that quite often are hard to actually find a significant difference between happened to win in the battle for supremacy in the first millenium. What is heterodoxy but the orthodoxy contender that didn't happen to win?
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
I agree with the big O Orthodox mouse.
When we say "We believe" we are saying what the church believes. Not what we individually believe.
One of the problems of Protestantism, and by extension that subsect of Protestantism called Evangelicalism is that it is prone to take things which the Bible teaches as corporate and teach them as individualism. This cult of me can be found in the I'm going to do this songs they sing. But it is wrong. Take the teaching of the Bride of Christ. We are not individually brides of Christ (though I've heard this preached): The Church is the Bride of Christ, it's collective, not individualistic.
And so it is with the creeds, they are the collective view of the church. Not everyone in a congregation will agree with everything the creed says, but collectively it is what the Church believes and teaches. There is no hypocricy in reciting the bits you are less than 100% sure about.
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Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
Who exactly in the church is asserting that there is no incarnation?
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Staretz Silouan
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ArachnidinElmet
Shipmate
# 17346
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
When we say "We believe" we are saying what the church believes. Not what we individually believe.
In the new English translation of the creed in the RC church, we are now obliged to say "I believe", leaving very little wiggle room (should you need it).
I was much happier with "we", stating that we as a congregation are united in this list of beliefs. I mean, it's only proclaimed in a group; I don't know anyone who uses the creed when alone.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ArachnidinElmet:
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
When we say "We believe" we are saying what the church believes. Not what we individually believe.
In the new English translation of the creed in the RC church, we are now obliged to say "I believe", leaving very little wiggle room (should you need it).
I was much happier with "we", stating that we as a congregation are united in this list of beliefs. I mean, it's only proclaimed in a group; I don't know anyone who uses the creed when alone.
Indeed. The problem with "the creed is what we the church believes" is that it starts Credo, not Credemus.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that they represent which one of a load of competing views that quite often are hard to actually find a significant difference between happened to win in the battle for supremacy in the first millenium. What is heterodoxy but the orthodoxy contender that didn't happen to win?
If you think the Holy Spirit plays no part in the decisions of the Church, then that might matter.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that they represent which one of a load of competing views that quite often are hard to actually find a significant difference between happened to win in the battle for supremacy in the first millenium. What is heterodoxy but the orthodoxy contender that didn't happen to win?
If you think the Holy Spirit plays no part in the decisions of the Church, then that might matter.
I'm afraid I see little evidence that he's ensured the church always gets it right. We wouldn't have all these schisms if he did. Which side did the HS guide correctly in 1054? How do we know for sure? What if the Holy Spirit wasn't actually anything like as concerned for doctrinal accuracy as the church was? What if he said "it doesn't really matter, argue amongst yourselves?"
Unthinkable? But I'm thinking it.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Then you've got a nice little circular "creeds don't matter because creeds don't matter" echo chamber. Doesn't suit me. Bad theology produces bad fruit. Evidence: the dominionist movement and child abuse.
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Caissa
Shipmate
# 16710
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Posted
I have been reciting the Creeds with crossed fingers for many years. They just don't stand up to scrutiny in the 21st century.
[ 14. November 2012, 12:07: Message edited by: Caissa ]
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Then you've got a nice little circular "creeds don't matter because creeds don't matter" echo chamber.
No, I have no such thing. I have a "Creeds aren't the be all and end all because ultimately who knows, eh?" thing going on.
quote:
Evidence: the dominionist movement and child abuse.
You'll have to join the dots between adding "filioque" and child abuse there, because it isn't abundantly obvious.
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by ArachnidinElmet:
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
When we say "We believe" we are saying what the church believes. Not what we individually believe.
In the new English translation of the creed in the RC church, we are now obliged to say "I believe", leaving very little wiggle room (should you need it).
I was much happier with "we", stating that we as a congregation are united in this list of beliefs. I mean, it's only proclaimed in a group; I don't know anyone who uses the creed when alone.
Indeed. The problem with "the creed is what we the church believes" is that it starts Credo, not Credemus.
No, the agreed text begins Πιστεύομεν - 1st person PLURAL
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
That's interesting and something I didn't know as my Greek is almost non-existent. I wonder why the Latin versions have all started with Credo then?
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Evidence: the dominionist movement and child abuse.
You'll have to join the dots between adding "filioque" and child abuse there, because it isn't abundantly obvious.
You're moving the goalposts. Do you want to talk about doctrine, or just the filioque? I don't recall that anybody has mentioned the filioque on this thread until you just did, so it can't have been terribly important to the argument to this point. Which is to say, it's a red herring.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Actually, I'm not that fussed about either. My point is just that creeds were written by the victors, and today's heresy was yesterday's difference of opinion. Oh, and that I consider the idea that the Holy Spirit made sure the councils always got it right is no more than a hypothesis.
Filioque bothers me not in the slightest in and of itself. I'm merely wondering what the link is between bad theology and child abuse. There was me assuming it had more to do with creating environment that closes ranks and protects people who do that sort of thing. Its only relevance is that it's the main sticking point between East and West; I'm querying the apparent line you drew of Schism --> One side (i.e. the Filioque side) has bad theology --> Child abuse. Please feel free to expand/correct/explain further if that's not what you meant.
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
However, over the past few weeks I've noticed a few instances where people have said things like 'Jesus isn't God, Jesus is God's son'
Interesting as I seem to recall some Orthodox posters arguing the same thing. As far as I understand them, they weren't denying the divinity of Christ, but saw God as a personal name, like Fred or Stanley, which, as such, could only belong to one Person of the Trinity.
They could support this by the Creeds as well, because they parsed it as "We believe in a.) One God the Father ... and in b.) his Son Jesus Christ", as opposed to "We believe in one God: a.) the Father ... and in b.) his Son Jesus Christ".
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Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Filioque bothers me not in the slightest in and of itself. I'm merely wondering what the link is between bad theology and child abuse. There was me assuming it had more to do with creating environment that closes ranks and protects people who do that sort of thing. Its only relevance is that it's the main sticking point between East and West; I'm querying the apparent line you drew of Schism --> One side (i.e. the Filioque side) has bad theology --> Child abuse. Please feel free to expand/correct/explain further if that's not what you meant.
I don't remember saying anything of the sort. I said Dominionism leads to child abuse. I think the filioque leads to the second-class status of the Spirit which in turn leads to other problems; I am not so sure that Domioninism is pinned on the filioque and don't see that I said so.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Filioque bothers me not in the slightest in and of itself. I'm merely wondering what the link is between bad theology and child abuse. There was me assuming it had more to do with creating environment that closes ranks and protects people who do that sort of thing. Its only relevance is that it's the main sticking point between East and West; I'm querying the apparent line you drew of Schism --> One side (i.e. the Filioque side) has bad theology --> Child abuse. Please feel free to expand/correct/explain further if that's not what you meant.
I don't remember saying anything of the sort. I said Dominionism leads to child abuse. I think the filioque leads to the second-class status of the Spirit which in turn leads to other problems; I am not so sure that Domioninism is pinned on the filioque and don't see that I said so.
My misunderstanding. No biggie.
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Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that they represent which one of a load of competing views that quite often are hard to actually find a significant difference between happened to win in the battle for supremacy in the first millenium. What is heterodoxy but the orthodoxy contender that didn't happen to win?
Why question the Creeds? Why not simply accept them gratefully? You - or most of us - accept that an electrician knows how to wire our house, even if we don't.
What on earth is the connection between the filioque and child abuse. I've never heard that one before. I'm at a loss how, why or where it might have bounced out of. Is a predilection for child abuse supposed to go with the Orthodox version, the Western one or the Florentine compromise?
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Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
What on earth is the connection between the filioque and child abuse.
There is none. It was a misreading. Do keep up.
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Laurelin
Shipmate
# 17211
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
[QB] I am currently attending an evangelical Anglican church. ...
However, over the past few weeks I've noticed a few instances where people have said things like 'Jesus isn't God, Jesus is God's son' and have spoken about Jesus in what for me, coming from the perspective I do, seems to be a decidedly untrinitarian way.
![[Eek!]](eek.gif) And these folk call themselves evangelicals??????? ![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif)
On behalf of all evangelical Anglicans, I offer my profound apologies! This is very dispiriting to read. ![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif) I've been fortunate to receive excellent teaching in most of the evangelical churches I've ever attended, so I am pretty gobsmacked by this, to be honest.
And yes, the Creeds matter.
quote:
Does it matter if you don't understand the nature of Christ (who does?) or what your church teaches about it so long as you follow him?
I do think it matters more that we follow and obey Jesus rather than get every single doctrinal duck in a row ... but a good theological understanding is also important.
I believe it is crucial for the health of confessional Christianity (whether one is evangelical, Orthodox or Catholic) that we hold a rich and full acceptance of the Trinity. Note I said 'acceptance' rather than 'understanding' ... the Trinity is not easily understandable, yet I believe we can grasp enough in order to worship the triune God in all His mystery and knowability.
I very much appreciate the rich Trinitarianism of the Orthodox. Also the Celtic Christian tradition.
quote:
I come from the perspective that it does and it matters deeply, not from an intellectual perspective but from the whole thing making sense as a narrative. If you lack a basic coherant statement of who and what God is and who and what Christ is then how can you understand what the resurrection was for? I feel sometimes like people get stuck at the cruxifixion.
I completely agree with you.
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Karl wrote: quote:
... My point is just that creeds were written by the victors, and today's heresy was yesterday's difference of opinion...
I think if you are going to compare two ways of looking at this, then I think you need to be far more critical of how those issues are being framed. Or how you are framing them. At the moment you've just got them floating free, as if they come from nowhere in particular and can therefore be simple alternatives we (or historically they) can pick and choose from.
The question then is "How realistic is this?". To which I would have to say "Not very".
For a start, what we now call the orthodox position was not just written by the victors. Arianism was actually the winner for a period, but the row didn't go away. The issue had to be revisited. There was a process, however grim some of the rhetoric became.
And largely, the arguments that led up to the councils seem to have been because people were concerned about the the second and third order consequences of certain differences, as much as they were with outright incorrect interpretations (first order differences). A good example of that would be the homoousios vs. homoiousios debate. Only an iota of difference between them.
These are the sort of concerns that provide the setting for the great councils. They were not just choosing between two options.
Indeed, if anyone was choosing between two options, that was the heretics. It's what haeresis means - a choosing to follow a different school of thought. Heresy was not so much about wrongthink as about choosing to divide the church, which is what Paul was on about in 1 Corinthians. To choose part of the truth and neglect the rest is in danger of twisting it badly out of shape. The nearest example I can think of would be as if we had two conflicting schools of physics, one of which declared that electrons were small spherical objects, and the other that they were only waves, present at all times everywhere. In fact we can really only understand particle physics by holding onto particle/wave duality. The one is intimately associated with the other.
Heresy, then, represents a diminution in the truth rather than an alternative way of seeing things. There have been plenty of things that can be seen in different ways, both then and now, such as ways of looking at the atonement. Dividing the body of the church is bad enough, but to do it on the basis of a narrower understanding of things is a catastrophe.
So I'm afraid I just don't buy this "equal explanations" approach. It's only tenable if you decontextualize the whole discussion.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that they represent which one of a load of competing views that quite often are hard to actually find a significant difference between happened to win in the battle for supremacy in the first millenium. What is heterodoxy but the orthodoxy contender that didn't happen to win?
Why question the Creeds?
Why not?
quote:
Why not simply accept them gratefully? You - or most of us - accept that an electrician knows how to wire our house, even if we don't.
I can find out why an electrician does what he does. There's an objective basis to it. The creeds are a not like that; they're the outcome of a theological argument. My brain just doesn't do "it's true because the church fathers said it was true" any more than it does "it's true because Mohammed/Joseph Smith/David Icke said it's true". I need a bit more than that to give something unquestioning acceptance.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
HRB - can you do me a favour, since I'm as thick as a whale omelette, and map homoiousios and homoousios onto particle, wave and wave/particle duality for me so that I can see your reasoning here, because at the moment I don't.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
HRB - can you do me a favour, since I'm as thick as a whale omelette, and map homoiousios and homoousios onto particle, wave and wave/particle duality for me so that I can see your reasoning here, because at the moment I don't.
The example of homoousios etc. was really just an illustration of the fact that an apparently small difference can have major consequences down the line. I'm sure that the matter must have been discussed for a long time before the councils though I guess it took a while for the consequences to become apparent. It was part of attempting to show that there was a back-story to this which was the first part of the post.
The wave-particle thing was really just a separate analogy to show that for some things you can have different ways of looking at them, but for other issues one needs to bear in mind that partial views are at best only part of the whole, and at worst can lead you astray. Perhaps if I had added that I was thinking more of the "fully human, also fully divine" Christology it might have been more obvious here. Sorry, should have done that.
Nevertheless - and bearing in mind that all analogies only work so far - I think my point remains.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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roybart
Shipmate
# 17357
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Posted
Interesting conversation.
Enoch makes clear the conventional/orthodox position as to were "I" (or "we") stand in relation to the Creed.: quote:
We do need to agree with them. Anyone who finds themselves thinking 'I don't understand that' should take it as God suggesting to them it's time they find out. Anyone who finds themselves thinking 'I'm not sure about that', should ask themselves serious questions, on the assumption that the Creed is right and they are wrong.
This is satisfactory for those who find it satisfactory. I go along with leo, who suggests that this kind of thinking reflects quote:
... the Western church trying to remove paradox and ambiguity.
Enoch seems to be speaking about two kinds of people:
-- (a) those who see the historically evolved Creed(s) as being an accurate reflection of what "the church" (whatever that is) takes as true;
-- and (b) those others who doubt this, or are in denial.
For the (b) group, the conventional advice is, as it has been throughout history -- try harder, pray to see the light, or take the consequences.
This a-b dichotomy seems well suited to religious controversies of the, let's say, 4th or 16th centuries. In our day, however, people, even those who sincerely practice a version of the faith, are much more likely not to care much about such distinctions. (Distinctions that people killed and died for in the past.)
It's possible to believe that God is our Father (if God requires gender), that Jesus is God (perhaps putting "God" in quotes), and that it's useful to have the image of a Spirit to help us understand God's involvement in physical creation. For me, the physical act of the Sign of the Cross, accomplishes this. I dont' think of a "triune God" so much as a God who is "complex" and "universal." Reciting "we believe" or "I believe" -- or even "I don't believe" amounts, in the end, to pretty much the same thing. (Except that "I don't believe" has historically been very dangerous in Christianity. Poor Arians, poor gnostics, poor heretics of all sorts.)
God is infinitely grander and more mysterious than theologians tend to make God.
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"The consolations of the imaginary are not imaginary consolations."
-- Roger Scruton
Posts: 547 | From: here | Registered: Sep 2012
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Anglican_Brat
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# 12349
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Posted
The "victors write history" argument can undermine Christianity altogether. Why for example do we accept the four canonical gospels and not the Gospel of Philip or Thomas as authoritative? Why do we teach that Jesus was an actual human being and not as the docetics claim, God simply "appearing as human"?
At the heart of the concept of revelation is the notion that God indeed reveals Truths to the Church. When this revelation occurs, certain beliefs are by nature, rejected. The assertion that Jesus is NOT the Christ is refuted by the orthodox claim that Jesus IS the Christ. The assertion then that Jesus is God and man, refutes those who argue that Jesus is ONLY God or ONLY just a man.
Now no one is stopping you in this day and age, from setting up a church which acknowledges the Gospel of Philip as authoritative, in the same way that religious groups such as the JWs were created with explicitly unitarian views. However, if you claim continuity with the catholic Church in the past, then you must I believe, accept what the Church has stated as definitive. This definitive things are located in the Creeds.
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
Posts: 4332 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Feb 2007
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Caissa:
I have been reciting the Creeds with crossed fingers for many years. They just don't stand up to scrutiny in the 21st century.
...Only if you read them in one particular (and particularly modernist) way. You can just as easily mean, by saying, "I believe...", that you believe the truth that lies in the particular doctrines. I'm curious which parts (or all of it?) you find problematic. The most common, IME, is the virgin birth. Well, think about it this way: What is that doctrine saying about Jesus? Perhaps you can believe in that.
I have my doubts about the eschatology stated in the creed, but it's more to do with my own agnosticism about any particular model of what it means to say that Jesus will return and the dead will rise. I do believe Jesus rose bodily from the tomb, but I don't understand the nature of his body, so I don't pretend to know what it could possibly mean that the dead, most of whom have thoroughly decomposed, will rise again - but I can still say "I believe... in the resurrection of the body," because I don't have to understand the details to believe. I affirm resurrection; I affirm the body. The mystery of it is embedded in the faith of the Church, of which I am a part.
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
I agree with the big O Orthodox mouse.
When we say "We believe" we are saying what the church believes. Not what we individually believe.
One of the problems of Protestantism, and by extension that subsect of Protestantism called Evangelicalism is that it is prone to take things which the Bible teaches as corporate and teach them as individualism. This cult of me can be found in the I'm going to do this songs they sing. But it is wrong. Take the teaching of the Bride of Christ. We are not individually brides of Christ (though I've heard this preached): The Church is the Bride of Christ, it's collective, not individualistic.
And so it is with the creeds, they are the collective view of the church. Not everyone in a congregation will agree with everything the creed says, but collectively it is what the Church believes and teaches. There is no hypocricy in reciting the bits you are less than 100% sure about.
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
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roybart
Shipmate
# 17357
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Posted
Anglican Brat, you write that quote:
The "victors write history" argument can undermine Christianity altogether.
I understand where you are coming from, but surely it is a feeble faith -- or church -- that can be "undermined" so easily? The "we" repeated so frequently in your post seems to me to consist largely of those with the power to define what and who are to be included, excluded, rewarded, stigmatized. I don't doubt that the Holy Spirit played a role in the creation of such a structure, but I do not assume automatically that the Holy Spirit was its author, nor do I assume that the Holy Spirit floats around approving of it.
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"The consolations of the imaginary are not imaginary consolations."
-- Roger Scruton
Posts: 547 | From: here | Registered: Sep 2012
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Anglican_Brat
Shipmate
# 12349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by roybart:
Anglican Brat, you write that quote:
The "victors write history" argument can undermine Christianity altogether.
I understand where you are coming from, but surely it is a feeble faith -- or church -- that can be "undermined" so easily? The "we" repeated so frequently in your post seems to me to consist largely of those with the power to define what and who are to be included, excluded, rewarded, stigmatized. I don't doubt that the Holy Spirit played a role in the creation of such a structure, but I do not assume automatically that the Holy Spirit was its author, nor do I assume that the Holy Spirit floats around approving of it.
So the Holy Spirit created the Church, but didn't bother to preserve the Church from teaching error?
That's essentially what you are saying. Because the Church in its doctrinal development, operates in prayerful discernment of the will of the Holy Spirit.
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
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Anglican_Brat
Shipmate
# 12349
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Posted
There is a certain romantization of the "losers of history" that I find problematic. Few if any, for example, sympathizes at those poor creationist Christians who discover that their theories of creation science has been thoroughly discredited by Charles Darwin. Few, because the reason why they don't receive much sympathy is because their ideas have been proven wrong.
Yet Arius, who would have completely destroyed the liturgical devotion to Jesus Christ as God, if his views were adopted, is lionized as a hero, defending against an arrogant orthodoxy. Or Marcion, whose hatred of the God of the Jews, would have led the Church to dump the entire Old Testament, is sometimes seen as heroic even though his views would be considered anti-Semitic today.
I agree that the manner that the Church takes in its opposition to what it considers wrong, is sometimes excessive and harsh. This does not however, mean that the Church should not longer establish doctrine.
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
Posts: 4332 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Feb 2007
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wstevens
Apprentice
# 17424
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Posted
I don't think that a belief that the Holy Spirit guided the church necessarily solves very many problems.
I would like to expand on what Karl: Liberal Backslider said:
quote:
...Which side did the HS guide correctly in 1054? How do we know for sure? What if the Holy Spirit wasn't actually anything like as concerned for doctrinal accuracy as the church was? What if he said "it doesn't really matter, argue amongst yourselves?"
Imagine that you are a christian from an earlier era, maybe taking part in one of the ecumenical councils:
How do you know what the scope of the revelation is? We now don't think it includes astronomy, but Galileo's opponents did.
How do you know when it has finished? Perhaps we are still at the discussion stage of doctrine-making. Maybe we still need a few hundred years more discussion.
How do you know whether you are one of the people with the revealed doctrine, or one of the heretics who mistakenly believe they have it?
Posts: 8 | From: Wiltshire, UK | Registered: Nov 2012
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roybart
Shipmate
# 17357
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Posted
quote:
So the Holy Spirit created the Church, but didn't bother to preserve the Church from teaching error?
My understanding of "the church" is something that has evolved quite significantly from its origins. An analogy here might be process by which a coral reef is formed -- a long, slow, occasionally violent process of accretion, accumulation, complication, diversification, elimination, etc. etc. The coral reef may become rich, beautiful and awesome in the process. But it is unrecognizably different from what it was 2,000 or even 200 years earlier. Any reading of church history in the 3rd and 4th centuries, or the wars of religion in the 16th and 17th, would seem to support this.
quote:
[T]he Church in its doctrinal development, operates in prayerful discernment of the will of the Holy Spirit.
I am not sure what you mean by "prayerful discernment." I do not doubt that many have prayed and continue to pray about this. But "discernment" seems to suggests that they have reached the correct conclusion. Alas, so many theologians and institutions have reached competing conclusions about what the Holy Spirit really wants. It seems to me that this comes from the tendency in human beings -- and their institutions -- to create ever more elaborate ideologies and institutions.
Religious rituals also have a tendency to multiply and diversify. Anglicans and RCs have been especially active in that side of organized religion, and I admit that I rather like the way that works
Truth, however, what I am asked to affirm that I believe in, is simple. I doubt that many ESSENTIAL additions to Christian truth have been made since the ministry of Jesus and His disciples.
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"The consolations of the imaginary are not imaginary consolations."
-- Roger Scruton
Posts: 547 | From: here | Registered: Sep 2012
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Trisagion
Shipmate
# 5235
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Typical of the Western church trying to remove paradox and ambiguity.
Which would be an interesting conclusion if it weren't constructed on a faulty premise. The Creed as recited in the Liturgy of the East has always been Πιστεύω not Πιστεύομεν, ever since Patriarch Timotheus (died 517) introduced the Symbol into the Divene Liturgy. In adopting Credo, the Latin West was merely following the practice of her Greek Eastern sister.
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ceterum autem censeo tabula delenda esse
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Emendator Liturgia
Shipmate
# 17245
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
However, over the past few weeks I've noticed a few instances where people have said things like 'Jesus isn't God, Jesus is God's son'
In extremely conservative evangelical circles there has been developing a new theological perspective that borders on heterodoxy (if it isn't thoroughly so). One focal point has been the diocesan theologicans here in Sydney who have been developing a subordinationist view of the Trinity: the Son, though God, is subordinate to the Father, the head. The Spirit doesn't get much of a look in at all in this flawed theological perspective.
One, if not the reason, why this theology has been developed is to support a subordinationist view of the roles of men and women. Women, who are equal to men on one level, are biblically enjoined to not seek equality to men in the family, in business, etc. As God the Father is in control and ordains what is to be (many of Jesus' prayers can readily be cited to support this, at least on the surface), then so too women should not accept positions in which they have authority over men.
And people wonder why our PM's misogyny speech resonated with so many, both here and internationally.
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Don't judge all Anglicans in Sydney by prevailing Diocesan standards!
Posts: 401 | From: Sydney, Australia | Registered: Jul 2012
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gorpo
Shipmate
# 17025
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Emendator Liturgia:
quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
However, over the past few weeks I've noticed a few instances where people have said things like 'Jesus isn't God, Jesus is God's son'
In extremely conservative evangelical circles there has been developing a new theological perspective that borders on heterodoxy (if it isn't thoroughly so). One focal point has been the diocesan theologicans here in Sydney who have been developing a subordinationist view of the Trinity: the Son, though God, is subordinate to the Father, the head. The Spirit doesn't get much of a look in at all in this flawed theological perspective.
... which is obviously minimal comparing to the overwhelming number of liberal theologians and priests who think Jesus is God incarnate only in a "simbolical" way, and therefore the virgin birth, ressurrection, atonement, the miracles, etc, all have to be re-interpreted in very simbolical ways... yet still hypocritically recite the creed in every service.
Posts: 247 | From: Brazil | Registered: Apr 2012
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Emendator Liturgia:
quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
However, over the past few weeks I've noticed a few instances where people have said things like 'Jesus isn't God, Jesus is God's son'
One, if not the reason, why this theology has been developed is to support a subordinationist view of the roles of men and women. Women, who are equal to men on one level, are biblically enjoined to not seek equality to men in the family, in business, etc. As God the Father is in control and ordains what is to be (many of Jesus' prayers can readily be cited to support this, at least on the surface), then so too women should not accept positions in which they have authority over men.
(other content snipped)
We did have someone here from Moore College a while back when this last came up. I'm struggling to remember what he said about it, but I'm pretty sure that there was a lot of debate over what exactly the word subordination actually meant in this context. Some understandings of subordinationism are indeed deemed heretical, though functional subordinationism isn't (IIRC correctly). I'm not sure what he would have said about your claim that it derived from their thoughts one relations between the sexes though. I'm guessing he would have said you had it the wrong way round.
But this thread is about whether the creeds are important, and my earlier point was that the consequences and outworkings are at least as important as some imaginary propositional box-ticking activity. And this example is probably as good an illustration of that as anything else.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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