I Believe ... ?

In churches all over the world people stand up every Sunday to recite a Creed: either the Apostles’ Creed or the more elaborate Nicene.

What is the function of these creeds? Historically, they have been devised as a test of orthodoxy. Before being baptised or confirmed, people had to recite these items of belief in order to be accepted as members of the Christian Church. As ‘heresies’ increased, so items were added to the creeds. The Apostle’s Creed, for instance, mentions three human beings: Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Pontius Pilate. Pilate certainly didn’t win a place in the creed for his holiness or piety: it was simply that some people claimed that the story of Jesus was a kind of symbolic myth with no historical reality. In order to show that they did not hold this unorthodox idea, prospective members of the Church were made to assert that Jesus was in fact crucified at a particular time in history, ‘under Pontius Pilate’.

When Christianity became the official religion of the European countries, holding the ‘wrong’ beliefs came to be seen as treason. Whether or not you were willing to say the Creed could be literally a matter of life and death. Even today, holding the wrong beliefs can get you excommunicated or ostracised by Christians, though thankfully the Church can no longer get the State to back up its condemnation with penal sanctions.

People today are increasingly uncomfortable with being made to prove they are orthodox. Belief surely has to come from the heart. Some of us feel that the Church should be a fellowship of people who genuinely share the same beliefs and values, a place where we can openly discuss the nature of God and the meaning of life and celebrate the variety of our experience, rather than an institution we are only allowed to belong to if we can either force ourselves or pretend to believe the ‘right’ things.

Perhaps ‘I believe…’ is the wrong thing to say. Sometimes I feel more like saying ‘I feel in my bones that…’. When Thomas, after doubting, cried out to Jesus ‘My Lord and my God!’ it wasn’t a considered theological statement. It was an exclamation of overwhelming joy, an expression of a feeling that was beyond words. In fact, it is not certain that he meant by it what we usually take it to mean.

‘I believe…’ is alright so long as we bear in mind that it is not a matter of believing that (certain statements are factual), but of believing in (a person or a way of life). It is a matter of feeling, and of being prepared to take the risk of living by that feeling. Only then can I truly say ‘I believe…’ – but I can’t say that about all the items in the Apostles’ Creed.

In future blogs I want to explore and express what I really believe. But maybe this thought is enough for now.