putting it in words
A couple of nights ago we had the author caroline miley to speak at one of our congregations, which was held jointly with the livingroom people.
One of the interesting topics which came up highlighted a difference between the Anglican tradition and our own - that of the use of creeds as statements of belief. Obviously the use of creeds is very important in some traditions, forming part of the liturgy and part of the identity of a denomination.
However our tradition is founded on the idea of “no creed but christ” (yes, and I realise that that in itself is a creed) and the idea of “in the essentials - unity, in the inessentials - diversity and in all things - love”. For those people, like me, that have a long family heritage in this tradition, talk of the importance of the creeds as definitions of the beliefs of the church was very disconcerting.
Last night at one of our congregations “Haven”, we talked about this, and discussed whether we had the ability individually to set out what we thought the “essentials” were and to write our own “creed” about our own beliefs. It was pretty difficult. The challenge is to state your elements of faith in your own words, not in a detailed essay form, but in the form of concise statements which express the root of your faith and belief system.
When we were done, each member of the congregation in turn read out their “creed” and then we prayed together as an introduction to communion. The results were all different, with different emphases and highlighted different aspects of the faith which were particularly important to the individual.
All had some statement about God and some statement about Jesus. Different versions referred to ideas of salvation, love, forgiveness, the life of a christian person, the value of a christian community and even negative statements about what God is not.
Afterwards we reflected on the process and wondered how our statements might change in two or five years from now. We thought that they would probably reflect the same types of themes, but the emphasis, understanding of and theology of these themes would differ.
I think that is one of the drawbacks about creeds. A statement once and forever about the beliefs of the church doesn’t reflect the complexity of our changing understanding of God. At the same time, if we fail ever to reflect or express our beliefs, we deprive ourselves of the power to be able to convey our convictions to other people.
May 30th, 2003 at 9:45 am
as i was at the earlier night with the author, i decided to quickly dig up these creeds and have a quick read of them, and there are several things in them that truely disagree with me. such as the statement that jesus whent to hell after being crucified. Other than issues with my recolection of the references to this in the bible, i also have issue with god sending one who had done no wrong to hell.
May 31st, 2003 at 5:05 pm
Dear Gareth
Hi, it’s ‘the author”. Yep, it’s truly hard to believe that God would send his only son to hell when he hadn’t sinned, isn’t it! That Jesus was prepared to do that because of OUR sins - taking them on and sacrificing himself for us! Truly mind-blowing. But it was the only way to save us, because we certainly can’t do it ourselves… And the theory is that while he was in hell he was preaching to the sould there, saving them too. Some of the truly amazing stuff that God does.
Cheers Caroline
June 1st, 2003 at 10:49 am
what about my first issue with the jesus in hell bit, about the lack of mention of it in the bible. While i haven’t done much personal research there are many sectors that ponder about the actual exsistance of hell, and as many of these people are quite intelligent, its strange that they haven’t noticed the passage “and jesus said ‘it is done’ and then mossied on down to hell for a while”
see what i’m getting at?
June 2nd, 2003 at 12:58 pm
Hi Gareth
Some of the Bible references to the existence of hell: 2 Peter 2:4; Luke 12:5 etc etc. The Jews believed in the existence of hell, so do Christians. St Paul certainly believed that Jesus had gone down into hell see eg Romans 10:7, Ephesians 4 etc. Jesus believed in hell: see Luke 16:22 etc.
If the whole Christian church believes in the existence of hell, and that Jesus went down into it before he was resurrected, (which it does), why not believe too?
Part of the point of believing this is that we know that Jesus has power even over hell - because hell could not hold him. He went there and then left, and returned to earth, and then ascended into heaven.
Cheers Caroline
June 2nd, 2003 at 1:09 pm
The other night we spoke about the positive impact that a unified statement of beliefs such as a creed can have, but also that it can be used negatively. In this case, saying that the “whole Christian church” believes something implies that those who do not believe this have no right to consider themselves a part of the Christian church.
Not having a commitment to the creeds doesn’t necessarily mean that I disbelieve all of the content of those statements. I might choose to express my beliefs differently, but that doesn’t mean that I, for example, don’t believe in God.
June 2nd, 2003 at 3:07 pm
Mmmm hell down, heaven up.
How far down do we need to dig until we reach hell?
How far up does Jesus need to go up before he reaches heaven?
Or is there a deeper meaning than simply down and up, heaven and hell?
June 2nd, 2003 at 4:01 pm
Gareth,
Which creed did you read? In the ones I looked at, I can’t see any reference to hell.
The (so called) Apostles’ creed does say that Jesus ‘was burried’ and ‘he descended to the dead’. This is Biblical, being referred to in the Epistles (see Caroline’s references above) but it does not say Jesus went to ‘Hell’.
Dan,
It seems you are safe on this point at least. The churches invovled in codifying the Apostle’s and the Nicene creeds, did not measure people’s faith by a correct belief about hell.
Caroline,
I am not sure what you mean by ‘hell’:
A place under the ground? The realm of all people who are dead? A refuse tip where waste is burnt off? The suffering of being distant from God? A place the Son of Man will send goats who do not visit the least in prison? The place where the rich man was when he looked over a big divide and saw poor Lazarus at Abrahams boosies?
I am pretty sure you can find all of these concepts in the Bible, but think the breadth of their imagery and significance is diminished if they are all rolled into one word ‘Hell’.
June 2nd, 2003 at 10:30 pm
Nigel
I don’t know what hell is. I don’t know what heaven is, either. When you get down to it, I don’t know what God is either. Or love. But I sure believe in them. I didn’t invent the word hell - I have been responding to Gareth’s query - and what word is used in the Creeds and the Bible depends a lot on what translation you’re reading.
Everyone has some system of beliefs, which I understand some people wrote down and read out the other night. Those are your creeds. The ones we call “Creeds” are the church’s beliefs. Even if you express them a bit differently, Dan, if you believe substantially the same things as the church, what’s the problem? and if you don’t…. then what?
As I tried to say at the Nexus gathering, the Christian creeds are not there so that you can judge other people and exclude them. People who are going to do that will do it anyway. They are there as a statement of what I, and “we” - the church - believe. (”Credo” - (Latin) = “I believe”)
June 3rd, 2003 at 9:16 am
Caroline,
How can you say “the ones we call the creeds are the church’s beliefs” when you now know their are other churches who do not adher or say creeds?
Is it possible that while the creeds are obiously very important to you and to your tradition that for other Christians they do not hold the same importance?
I am not sure if you mean it or not, but when you make such wide sweeping statements about the creeds as you have been doing here and in other posts, I find myself feeling excluded from the Church.
June 3rd, 2003 at 1:15 pm
Signing off, Phil. We’re from different planets.
June 3rd, 2003 at 1:21 pm
I was wondering if part of Gareth’s struggle to find meaning in the theoloogy of Christ’s descent prior to his rising, was becasue he presumed only one Dante-esque perception of ‘hell’. From your post I thought [apparently erroniously - sorry] that you were reinforcing this kind of narrow defenition of Hell.
I certainly found it helpful to discover that the Bible provides a range of reflections on what is beyond this life since, yes, it is a mystery.
“Hell, hell, hell” - Bart & Lisa Simpson