Diary of a Theologian

Believing and Believing In

An advantage of having two rites, one traditional and one contemporary, is that they can interpret each other; one can study the differences and thereby go deeper into the meaning. Let’s apply this to the Nicene Creed.

In traditional language it begins: “I believe in one God.” In the contemporary eucharistic rite it begins: “We believe in one God.” Neither of these is the singular, correct version, and each leads us to important truth.

“We believe” translates the Greek original, deriving ultimately from the ancient councils of bishops that met in Nicea in A.D. 325. The “we” are the bishops there assembled, representing the church throughout the world and giving words to what they all believed. This creed was not used liturgically, but over many centuries it gradually became part of the Eucharist in the West.

But the Apostles’ creed, or something like it, had been used liturgically for some time. This was in baptism. Those being baptized affirm the faith personally; their creed was always “I believe,” an individual affirmation of basic Christian faith. Thus when the Nicene Creed came into liturgical use in the West, it adopted the “I believe” (in Latin, credo).

The result, however, is more important than these historical origins of the different first lines. Clearly both “We believe” and “I believe” are right, because faith is at once an individual’s belief in God and also the fundamental orientation of the whole church. Christian faith is at once “mine” and “ours”—at once personal and communal—and to have the two versions of the Nicene Creed leads us into that truth.
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May I draw your attention to a second difference between the two versions of this creed? Note the use of the preposition “in.” As the creed progresses, in both versions, we proclaim we “believe in” the Father, and “in” Jesus Christ his only Son, and “in” the Holy Spirit (or Ghost). But then comes a difference. In contemporary language, “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” That “in” is missing in the traditional language: “I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church.”

This reflects a difference between Greek and Latin. In Greek, to believe is always to believe in.

It’s different in Latin. The basic teaching is that the Latin language allows three kinds of statements concerning belief. First is the strongest. To “believe in” is to put your whole self into God’s hands. To “believe” is to trust, but it falls short of that personal commitment. I believe the church when she teaches me about God, for instance, but I do not give to the church the fullness of “believing in.” Third is to “believe that” something or other is the case. Although it doesn’t use the words “believe that,” the following line of the creed can be taken to say, “I believe that there is one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”

This little difference between the contemporary and traditional creed points us to a subtle distinction of various levels of belief, with the highest and most personal being given to God alone, without thereby losing the importance of any particular line in the creed.
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I offer these reflections as an example of what you can learn by holding the Prayer Book close—the printed Book, which allows you to flip back and forth between Rite One and Rite Two and see such small differences (without the danger of there being typographical errors, as can slip in when parts of the Book are printed for convenience).
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Out & About. Sunday, March 20, I will be with St. Philip’s Church in Frisco, Tex.; the services are at 9 and 11:15 a.m. I am preaching on friendship as a spiritual discipline.

That same day at 5 p.m., the “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar will discuss Children of Men by P. D. James. The book is quite different from the movie, and more theological (which, in my book, means better). The seminar meets at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas; entrance at the Visitor Center. Anyone who reads the book is welcome to join the conversation (others are welcome to come and listen).

Creeds Holding Close

To hold the Prayer Book close is to embrace the creeds. A creed is a summary of essential Bible teaching; creeds come under the authority of the Bible. But they also serve us as guides to reading the Bible. Beginning students of the Bible would be helped by using the creeds as their guide to the Bible; more advanced students can then use the Bible to help interpret the creeds.

When I first started these posts on our need, at this time, to hold the Prayer Book close, someone on Twitter tried to start an argument (surprise!) by pitting the Prayer Book against the Bible. I refused to engage because the Prayer Book is suffused with Scripture; there is hardly a phrase in it that lack scriptural foundation. What is true of the Book as a whole is true to a supreme degree in the creed
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That we have the Nicene Creed was a close thing. A “latitudinarian” spirit being strong in the late 18th century, the 1786 proposal for the first American Book did not include it. But the first American Book of 1789 printed the Nicene Creed in the Holy Communion service after the Gospel. It, or the Apostles’ Creed, was to be read there, although it could be omitted if the creed had been said immediately before in Morning Prayer.

That same latitudinarian spirit is present in some current proposals for liturgical revision: they would remove the Nicene Creed from being something to be said at all Eucharists on Sundays and Major Feasts—the requirement in the Prayer Book. It is true that a recitation of the Nicene Creed was not done at Eucharists in many places in the first Christian millennium. But it has been our usage (with, until 1979, the Apostles’ Creed as an alternative). Our Prayer Book locks the Nicene Creed to the Eucharist apart from weekday celebrations on non-feast days.

Since the creed follows the sermon, it can provide a correction for whatever crazy things the preacher might have proclaimed. A dear (now departed) theologian friend, not an Episcopalian, marveled at this. He found the Episcopal Church remarkable, that the faith of the ages could be undermined or ignored or outright rejected in a sermon, and then everyone would rise up and say, “We believe in one God . . .” Another friend has told me that sometimes the first word of the creed should be, “Nevertheless”! This, I think, is an underappreciated strength of the Episcopal Church.
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The Apostles’ Creed is the ancient creed for baptism. Episcopalians extend that use by putting it in Morning and Evening Prayer. Every day, when we say those set prayers, we reaffirm the faith proclaimed at the baptismal initiation of Christian life.
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There is a third creed, the Athanasian, which is long and didactic. It is printed in the Prayer Book as a historical document but is never prescribed for use in worship. This is its first appearance in an American Book. It is stubbornly and charmingly pedantic, saying for instance: “yet ... there are not three incomprehensibles ... but one incomprehensible.” It lacks the authority of the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds.
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To hold the Prayer Book close is to take the creeds seriously and to study them. When I was on staff at Saint Thomas in New York City, we organized a series of Evensong sermons on the creed, taking them more or less one line a week. I have written on them myself. They are worth whatever study we are able to give them.

Study, and also proclaim: the Apostles’ Creed daily, and the Nicene Creed weekly.
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Out & About. The next “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar will be at 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 20, on Children of Men by P. D. James. The book is quite different from the movie, and more theological (which, in my book, means better).