“Our creed is we have no creed. Our creed is Christ.”
Such statements were common place growing. As a member of the Disciples of Christ, a more liberal version of the “Independent” and “Christian Church” denominations, these statements served as the basis of the Christian faith. There were no hard and fast rules and little in the way of spiritual expectations for believers. And as a young child, this was sufficient. Going to church on Sunday was just something you did. Believing Jesus fed 5,000 people was as simple as saying, “The sky is a pretty blue today.” And Christmas and Easter were so special, you needed to dress in even fancier clothing than your normal go-to-church clothes.
For a number of American Christians, this experience and approach to faith is quite common. Whether you grew up in the Disciples of Christ, Southern Baptist, or Lutheran, faith and spiritual practices were matters of superficial routine and tradition. Of course, routines and tradition imply an underlying belief or reason requiring their existence which contradicts the above statements. Thus we witness the underlying contradiction within American Christianity of the last 50 or so years: collective or communal standards within the Church need not be binding despite the consensus of observing them. This would explain the apparent deviations from the Christian faith in recent years by leaders and at times whole congregations and denominations. Deviations from sexuality, marriage, validity of the resurrection, and sanctity of life has become common. Yet because the standards of Christianity are not seen as binding, it has become more difficult to defend or explain the orthodox doctrines of the Church.
What is needed, is a creed.
Despite our culture’s indulgence in the ever evolving identity of the individual, a creed provides the stability needed for individuals to both live with and cooperate with as a group that exists beyond time and geographical location. There’s a reason so many of the older Protestant denominations wrote their own creeds or “confessions.” It helped their adherents understand not only what they believed, but why they believed it and why they observed it the way they did. In this way, their creeds served as a form of catechesis, a formal instruction in the faith.
In the Orthodox Church, and in the Catholic Church as well, the Nicene Creed is used as the primary statement of faith. Composed in the 4th century, this creed was the result of passionate debate and meditation upon the Scriptures and teachings of the first three centuries of Christianity. Though originally created in response to the Arian controversy, the Nicene Creed provides a strong yet simple summary of the different tenets of orthodox Christianity.
What I propose then is to provide a humble dissection of the Nicene Creed. I do not presume to be a trained theologian or that my posts are equal to those who are ordained to teach. But I offer my understanding and contemplations of what I have been taught. Indeed, I would argue this is the manner in which even the Church Fathers offered their insights. For there has been only one originator of the faith, and he is Christ. What he taught, the apostles declared. What the apostles declared, the Fathers taught. What the Fathers taught, we meditate upon and uphold.
Politics and the Bible 