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What’s the Point of Creeds?
CERC ^ | 1988 | Peter Kreeft

Posted on 05/01/2009 10:31:49 PM PDT by Salvation

What’s the Point of Creeds?

PETER KREEFT

I remember vividly how deeply moved I was as a young Protestant to hear how one of the Catholic martyrs died...


Peter Kreeft

I remember vividly how deeply moved I was as a young Protestant to hear how one of the Catholic martyrs died: scratching in the sand with his own blood the words of the creed, “Credo ....”( “I believe”).

My heart was moved, but my head did not yet understand. What do these Catholics see in their creeds anyway? How can a set of words be worth dying for? Why have wars been fought over a word? What's the point of creeds?

Then I read Dorothy Sayers' little masterpiece Creed or Chaos?, and I was answered.

The question can be answered by remembering another question, the one Pilate asked Christ in another life-or-death situation: “What is truth?”

And that is the point of the creeds: truth. In fact, Primal Truth, the truth about God. That is why the words of the Creed are sacred words. Just as God's material houses are sacred, so are his verbal houses. Of course God is no more confined to words, even the sacred words of creeds, than he is confined to the sacred buildings of tent or temple, church or cathedral. But both are holy, set apart, sacred. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. “

Faith has two dimensions: the objective and the subjective. Creeds express these two dimensions: “I believe in God. “ There is an I, a believing subject, and there is God, the object of belief. There is the psychology of believing, which is something in us, and there is the theology of belief, which is the Truth believed. There is the eye, and there is the light. And woe to him who mistakes the one for the other.

When the Church formulated her creeds, humanity was more interested in the light than in the eye. God providentially arranged for the great creeds of the Church to be formulated in ages that cared passionately about objective truth. By modern standards, they ignored the subjective, psychological dimension of faith.

But we moderns fall into the opposite and far worse extreme: we are so interested in the subject that we often forget or even scorn the object. Psychology has become our new religion, as Paul Vitz and Kirk Kilpatrick have both so brilliantly shown.

Yet it's the object, not the subjective act, of faith that makes the creeds sacred. They are sacred because Truth is sacred, not because believing is sacred. Creeds do not say merely what we believe, but what is. Creeds wake us from our dreams and prejudices into objective reality. Creeds do not confine us in little cages, as the modern world thinks; creeds free us into the outdoors, into the real world where the winds of heaven whip around our heads.

What is the object, the Truth? Saint Thomas says that the primary object of faith is not words and statements but God himself. “We believe in God.” Further, as Christians we know God most fully in Christ, God incarnate, and as Catholics we know Christ through Holy Mother Church and her creeds.

When human reason raved, in the Arian heresy, that Christ could not possibly be both fully human and fully divine, Athanasius stood against the world; today we know Christ as he really is because of Athanasius and his creed.

When contemporary forms of the same heresy water down the strong meat” of Christ, the Church again braves the media, the mouth of the world, and calmly thunders the full truth about Christ. True, it is Christ rather than words that is the primary object of the Christian's faith, but what Christ? Here words are crucial.

Two extremes must be avoided: intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, worshipping the words and scorning the words. If the ancient mind tended to the former extreme, the modern mind certainly tends to the latter. Both errors are deadly.

Intellectualism misses the core of faith, both objectively and subjectively. Objectively, the core of faith is God, who is a Person, not a concept. Subjectively, the core of faith is the will, not the intellect. Though informed by the intellect, it is the will that freely chooses to believe.

Faith is not the relation between an intellect and an idea, but the relation between an I and a Thou. That is why faith makes the difference between heaven and hell. God does not send you to hell for flunking his theology exam but for willingly divorcing from him.

Anti-intellectualism also misses the core of faith, both objectively and subjectively. Objectively, because its faith has no object. It calls faith an experience (“the faith experience”) — a term never used by our Lord, Scripture, the creeds, or the popes. Modern people are constantly saying, “Have faith!” But faith in what or whom? They often mean “have faith in faith. “ But faith in faith in what?

Anti-intellectualism is a modern reaction against the modern narrowing of reason to scientific reason. When the ancients and medievals called man a “rational animal”, they did not mean a computerized camera mounted in an ape. They meant by “reason” understanding, wisdom, insight, and conscience as well as logical calculation.

Modern thinkers often forget this dimension of man and think only of reasoning (as in calculating) and feeling. And because they see that faith is not a matter of reasoning, they conclude that it must be a matter of feeling. Thus “I believe” comes to mean “I feel and creeds simply have no place. Faith becomes a “leap” in the dark instead of a leap in the light.

Many of the Church's greatest saints have been doctors of the Church, theologians, philosophers, intellectuals: Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Bonaventure. Anti-intellectuals like Tatian and Tertullian and Luther (who called reason “the devil's whore”) often die excommunicated, as heretics.

The Church — repeating what Saint Paul said in Romans 1: 19-20 — even teaches as a matter of faith that God's existence can be known by reason, independent of faith!

The Catholic ideal is the complete person, with a cool head and a warm heart, a hard head and a soft heart. The mere intellectual has a cool heart; the anti-intellectual has a hot head. The intellectual has a hard heart, the anti-intellectual has a soft head. The Church puts the severed parts in the right order because the Church has the blueprint: Christ (Eph 4:13). The Church has always had a conservative head and a liberal heart, and the world has never understood her, just as it never understood Christ.

Creeds are to the head what good works are to the heart: creeds express truth, the head's food, as good works express love, the heart's food. Both are sacred.

If there is any doubt about the need for creeds, it can be settled by fact: the fact that the Church established by Christ, the Church Christ promised to “guide into all truth”, has in fact formulated and taught creeds.

The first bishops, the apostles, formulated the Church's first, shortest, and most important creed, the Apostles' Creed. Whether the apostles literally wrote it, as tradition says, or whether it was written by their disciples to preserve the apostles' teaching, in either case it is the teaching of the apostles. When we recite this creed we speak in unison with them.

There is a strange notion abroad that creeds oppress, repress, or suppress people. That is like saying that light or food is repressive. The practical purpose of the creeds is truth, and truth is light and food for the soul.

Each of the Church's creeds was written in response to a heresy, to combat it not by force but by truth, as light combats darkness. Creeds are “truth in labeling”. Those who disbelieve in truth or scorn it, or who disbelieve in our ability to know it, see creeds as power plays.

The media's hysterical rhetoric about the pope's labeling Hans Kung's theology as non-Catholic theology is a good example of the world's utter confusion here. The media conjured up visions of the return of the Inquisition simply because the pope said, in effect, that Kung's teachings about Christ should not be confused with the Church's teachings about Christ. But this reaction should be expected if we remember the words of Christ himself (read Jn 3:17-21 prayerfully).

The most important creeds were those formulated by the Church's ecumenical (universal) councils in response to the most important heresies, the heresies about Christ; and of these the two most important were Chalcedon and Nicaea. (The Nicene Creed is the one we recite each Sunday at Mass.) The Church's most recent council, Vatican II, formulated no new creeds and no new doctrines but applied the old ones to new needs and situations.

The pope called an extraordinary synod of bishops in 1985 in part to clarify Catholic confusion concerning Vatican II. Anyone who would take the trouble to read the actual documents (which are much, much longer than creeds) would see how traditional they are. The “spirit of Vatican II” conjured by the media and some theologians is a phantom, a ghostlike half-person, with the fatal split between head and heart, creed and deed, theology and social action, love of God and love of man, eternal principles and updated applications.

But the pope is a bridge builder, a pontifex; he will patch what the world has torn. And the blueprint he will follow in doing this will be the historic, never-abandoned creeds of the Church of Christ.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Kreeft, Peter. “What's the Point of Creeds?” Chapter 17 in Fundamentals of the Faith. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 107-111.

Reprinted by permission of Ignatius Press. All rights reserved. Fundamentals of the Faith - ISBN 0-89870-202-X.



TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; History; Theology
KEYWORDS: catholic; catholiclist; creeds
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To: TradicalRC

“Does not all power come from God? Including the power to judge and condemn?”

Yes, but God, in His infinite love for His creatures, is a respecter of our Free Will, even if that Free Will leads us to self condemnation by a rejection of God’s love.


141 posted on 05/06/2009 8:28:28 AM PDT by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!)
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To: TradicalRC; Kolokotronis
I have a problem with that approach: it's as though only intellectuals can really "understand" God. Smacks of Gnosticism

Gnosticism did not exhalt intellectualism. Gnostics believed in enigmatic revelation.

142 posted on 05/06/2009 8:49:35 AM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: TradicalRC; Kolokotronis
The atheists...use the upside-down rationale that a loving, merciful God would never condemn anyone to Hell for eternity

There are feel-good Protestant pastors who teach the same thing; they outright deny hell. It's not atheism, it's distortion of the Gospel. Christ does not teach us to condemn and judge, but to love and forgive as he does, to walk in his steps and imitate him. If you do judge, be merciful.

Christ's message summed up, as Kolo often reminds us, is not "do this or else you will go to hell," which became a household slogan in the West, but rather "do this an you will be with me."

Read Matthew 5,6 and 25. It tells you exactly what Christ teaches and who ends up where and why.

143 posted on 05/06/2009 9:01:08 AM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: Kolokotronis; TradicalRC
God, in His infinite love for His creatures, is a respecter of our Free Will, even if that Free Will leads us to self condemnation by a rejection of God’s love

Exactly, and well said.

144 posted on 05/06/2009 9:05:19 AM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: Cronos; Iscool
Iscool, we do not deny that you may be very holy, very well versed in scripture, but we do say this, that no one individual can ever interpret scripture by him/herself

Even the bible says so!

145 posted on 05/06/2009 9:08:13 AM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: Kolokotronis
No human understands God. The Fathers are quite clear on this.

I understand that we can never fully understand God. That said, if there were to be NO understanding, then why bother with Revelation or Scripture at all? He gave us the ability to understand, did He not? Christ speaks of understanding quite often.

146 posted on 05/06/2009 10:39:01 AM PDT by TradicalRC (Conservatism is primarily a Christian movement.)
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To: kosta50
Read Matthew 5,6 and 25. It tells you exactly what Christ teaches and who ends up where and why.

24 "Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.' 26 "His master replied, 'You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. 28 "'Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. 29 For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' -Matthew 25:24-30

Okay. Reads like God punishes the wicked servant for his wickedness. Servant seems unsure of what to do in the first place and strikes me as someone who should be shown mercy. Unlike the vineyard workers who volitionally went and killed the owners son. At any rate God, in His infinite wisdom and justice punishes and rewards according to faith and deeds.

147 posted on 05/06/2009 10:52:03 AM PDT by TradicalRC (Conservatism is primarily a Christian movement.)
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To: TradicalRC
"That said, if there were to be NO understanding, then why bother with Revelation or Scripture at all? He gave us the ability to understand, did He not?"

Indeed He did. By dying to the self, the nous becomes clear and we can experience the "light" which is the uncreated energy of God. To the extent that we can experience that Light, as the apostles did at Mount Tabor, we come to understand something about God and "participate" in Him, though not in the sense of a hypostatic union. By the use of apophatic theology, we can understand a bit about God by perceiving what He is not. But beyond that, or in point of fact even then, what we see and understand,

"βλεπομεν γαρ αρτι δι εσοπτρου εν αινιγματι"

148 posted on 05/06/2009 11:11:52 AM PDT by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!)
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To: TradicalRC
Matthew 25:24-30...Okay. Reads like God punishes the wicked servant for his wickedness. Servant seems unsure of what to do in the first place and strikes me as someone who should be shown mercy

It's amazing you would read the Parable of Talents but miss the Last Judgment (31-46)! The servant was selfish. And verses 31-46 explain that God doesn't give so that we may keep, but to to do what Christ would have done, namely give to those who need. Being Christ-like and being selfish is incompatible.

149 posted on 05/06/2009 4:02:07 PM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: kosta50

***Mark: John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. The official English version Catholic Bible does not. Does yours? Who authorized it?

Although there are significant variants of John, only-begotten is not one of them in Jn 3:16—it appears in all Greek versions. So, the official English language Catholic Bible is wrong! Possibly, the editors perhaps realized that the word “begotten” can be misconstrued to imply that Christ is a “creature,” which would certainly find scriptural support in Col 1:15, and decided to take it out. Regardless, it is fraud and deception. One way to combat misconceptions about the nature of Christ’s existence is to educate the believers rather than alter biblical text.***

Interesting. I’ve done a little looking. I hadn’t realize the large differences between the literal and the dynamic interpretations. Thank you.

Of course, the best way to maintain correct interpretations is to educate, not change verse. But we see here in all manner of ways, the misinterpretations of the uneducated and the uncatechized.


150 posted on 05/06/2009 4:05:42 PM PDT by MarkBsnr ( I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: kosta50

***And now we have God being called the LORD when in Corinthians we read that Jesus was the Lord...

God can be and is logically the lord, because it’s his world and he is greater than all (cf John 10:29), greater than Jesus Christ himself (cf John 14:28). Anyone can be a lord, but Paul recognizes only one God, the Father. And so does Jesus (cf John 20:17).

As Mark correctly observed, the Greek word kyrios (master, prince, emperor, teacher) translated as lord is a title, specifically a title of ownership—one to whom things or living being belong. Since all authority on earth was given to Christ, he is the Lord over all on earth, but he is never called God; only the Father is. And the way the New Testament reads, the Father is the Lord over all, including Christ.***

That’s something that needs to be emphasized: the use of titles in Scripture. How many human lords were identified in the OT? Britain uses the term ‘House of Lords’ which served as the model for the United States Senate and was populated with those entitled ‘Lord’.

The term Christ is a title as well. It’s easy to get lost in these passages unless one knows what things mean, and then to put them into context using the Church as the guide.

***Obviously something other than “sola scriptura” had to play a role in the 300-year long development of Christian theology and canon. ***

What many people want is to relive those heady times and to take on the task of inventing their own theology using the Catholic canon, while repudiating the Church on every other matter.


151 posted on 05/06/2009 4:12:18 PM PDT by MarkBsnr ( I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: kosta50

***Read Matthew 5,6 and 25. It tells you exactly what Christ teaches and who ends up where and why.***

I remember in our glorious thread getting into some heated discussions with a loyal Reformed. She got to where she was posting some almost anti Matthew posts. :) Not quite anti, really, but very very irritated against their content.

***Christ’s message summed up, as Kolo often reminds us, is not “do this or else you will go to hell,” which became a household slogan in the West, but rather “do this an you will be with me.”***

Some of the West...


152 posted on 05/06/2009 4:15:26 PM PDT by MarkBsnr ( I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: TradicalRC

***I understand that we can never fully understand God. That said, if there were to be NO understanding, then why bother with Revelation or Scripture at all? He gave us the ability to understand, did He not? Christ speaks of understanding quite often.***

For those who have not achieved a full state of Grace, there is the Church to guide. Jesus says to go to the Church; He left Peter as the steward and the Apostles as the first bishops. Understanding is for no one man, but the Body of Christ and the Church which guides it, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.


153 posted on 05/06/2009 4:18:31 PM PDT by MarkBsnr ( I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: MarkBsnr

Have you ever heard of the Trinity?


154 posted on 05/06/2009 4:20:51 PM PDT by BnBlFlag (Deo Vindice/Semper Fidelis "Ya gotta saddle up your boys; Ya gotta draw a hard line")
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To: BnBlFlag

***Have you ever heard of the Trinity?***

Do you mean http://www.trinitycollege.co.uk/? What does that have to do with this discussion?


155 posted on 05/06/2009 4:24:17 PM PDT by MarkBsnr ( I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: MarkBsnr
Interesting. I’ve done a little looking. I hadn’t realize the large differences between the literal and the dynamic interpretations. Thank you.

You are most welcome, Mark. One thing to remember about all countless variations of the biblical text is that the vast majority of them were made in good faith in order to clarify, to remove doubt or any dilemma, and not to corrupt the meaning.

Nevertheless, removing the "only-begotten" is a serious theological alteration which, being in the official English Catholic Bible is quite surprising. But, then, the English translation of the Roman Missal is no less corrupt as compared to the official Latin version.

The culprit seems to be not the Catholic Church but specifically the English-language part of the Catholic Church, something the Vatican has recognized and is changing. Hopefully the same will be with John 3:16.

Of course, the best way to maintain correct interpretations is to educate, not change verse. But we see here in all manner of ways, the misinterpretations of the uneducated and the uncatechized.

Well said, my friend. Worth remembering.

156 posted on 05/06/2009 8:17:19 PM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: MarkBsnr
That’s something that needs to be emphasized: the use of titles in Scripture.

Without a doubt a sadly neglected topic. As you observe correctly, Christ is a title, but so is  the son of God. Remember there were no lower case letter to distinguish the Son from the son. The problem is that Greek christos simply means the anointed one. And the son of God was a title given to angels as well as human kings, who were also considered anointed by God.  But the term never meant a divine person. Thus, Greek readers encounter "christs" (or "messiahs" in hebrew) all over the Old Testament, such as David:

"He is a tower of deliverance to His king, and shows lovingkindness to His anointed [i.e. christ], to David and his descendants forever." [2 Sam 22:51]

The Greek Septuagint reads: "

μεγαλύνων σωτηρίας βασιλέως αὐτοῦ καὶ ποιῶν ἔλεος τῷ χριστῷ [christo] αὐτοῦ τῷ Δαυιδ καὶ τῷ σπέρματι αὐτοῦ ἕως αἰῶνος [2 Kings 22:51, LXX]

MB: LXX does not divide Samuel and Kings, there are Kings, I, II, III and IV]

157 posted on 05/06/2009 9:04:50 PM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: MarkBsnr
I remember in our glorious thread getting into some heated discussions with a loyal Reformed. She got to where she was posting some almost anti Matthew posts. :) Not quite anti, really, but very very irritated against their content.

I can see why the Gospels can be a fly in their ointment.

158 posted on 05/06/2009 9:07:17 PM PDT by kosta50 (Don't look up, the truth is all around you)
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To: kosta50

***Nevertheless, removing the “only-begotten” is a serious theological alteration which, being in the official English Catholic Bible is quite surprising. But, then, the English translation of the Roman Missal is no less corrupt as compared to the official Latin version.

The culprit seems to be not the Catholic Church but specifically the English-language part of the Catholic Church, something the Vatican has recognized and is changing. Hopefully the same will be with John 3:16.***

I just came off a telephone conversation with our permanent deacon’s wife regarding the USCCB and its variance from orthodoxy.


159 posted on 05/07/2009 5:08:09 PM PDT by MarkBsnr ( I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: kosta50

***That’s something that needs to be emphasized: the use of titles in Scripture.

Without a doubt a sadly neglected topic. As you observe correctly, Christ is a title, but so is the son of God.***

That’s not what the JWs say. :)

I have enquired further as to the beliefs of some of evangelical friends and coworkers, gently of course, and my previous posting to you about their understanding of the Trinity appears to be correct.


160 posted on 05/07/2009 5:10:20 PM PDT by MarkBsnr ( I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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