The Accumulation of Creed

November 4, 1962
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
8. The Accumulation of Creed

The most common capsule definition of Universalist Unitarian people and churches is that we have no creed to bind us, that we are free to disavow all the chains of dogmas that for two thousand years, the Christian Churches have hammered out. I would like to discuss the accumulation of creed, the values that creeds attempt to maintain, the violations of freedom and conscience that creeds perpetuate and the obligations that freedom in religion imposes if we take our religion seriously.

First of all, a famous historical analogy emphasizes a wide area of uncertain knowledge. “The history of Christianity between the time when the first Christian congregation fled from Jerusalem just before Titus captured that city in 70 A.D., and a century later is like a plunge into a tunnel.” (20 CENTURIES OF CHRISTIANITY, Hutchinson and Garrison, Harcourt Brace, 1959.) Prior to that time, the new Christian groups gathered informally, in various places to worship simply, with a prayer, a hymn and a re-enactment of the Last Supper. As the earliest Christians were poor people, there was no pomp, no splendor. They worshiped in little rooms in private houses without altars and images. They witnessed to their individual religious experience that “Jesus was Lord.” But, as Paul’s letters indicated, in the early days this testimony was not so much a creedal requirement, doctrinally defined, but rather the basis for what a Christian ought to believe, more than what he must accept as a creedal test.

About the close of the second century, or about one-hundred twenty years after the time of Paul, when the church emerged from the historical “tunnel,” it was an elaborate institution. The Lord’s Supper had become the Mass, ritualistic and liturgical; the prayers and antiphonals had begun to assume fixed forms. The church observed feast days, fast days and sacraments. Bishops had acquired great power. Theology was becoming more and more subtle, intellectually, and the early creeds had largely replaced individual testimony.

The scant records we have of the century and a quarter in the “tunnel” comprise letters from Church Fathers, the later New Testament writings, traditions and legends. All these Christian sources have been filtered through the institutionalized source, the Christian Church. Therefore facts are much more rare than theology. The references to the Christian Church are few in non-Christian literature and records. There are few contemporary historical writings that tell us about the Christian movement. Even in the beginnings, although Paul writes to and speaks of numerous Christian movements, we have no real account of the formation and growth of any Christian community.

... great historians of Christian thought and times have enabled us to acquire a measure of understanding of the events and forces which transformed loosely-organized, unpretentious Christian fellowships into the structured, liturgical, creedal Church. We, too, can increase our understanding if we discuss the nature and purpose of a creed, how creed accumulated through the circumstances of what the Church confronted and how the Church changed and adapted, as well as withstood the pressures upon it.

“Credo,” (I believe) is the source of our word, “creed.” Creed is “a confession of faith for public use, or a form of words setting forth with authority certain articles of belief which are regarded by the framers as necessary for salvation, or at least for the well-being of the Christian Church.” (Philip Schaff, CREEDS OF CHRISTENDOM, Vol. 1). There have been numerous creeds in Christendom. In every case, there was no spontaneous generation or document delivered from on high. Many would hold that the purpose of a creed is to make clear the meaning of scripture. But every creed is marked by the forces of its own age and was the result of historical situations which caused the Church to define its meanings and mission.

One ancient version of the Book of Acts, (8/27 ff) holds that when Philip baptized the Ethiopian convert, he was required to affirm only “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” Six hundred years later, the Athenasian Creed not only had a bewildering catalogue of complex theological propositions which must be believed, but also there was in it proclaimed that any who disbelieved were irretrievably damned.

The creeds evolved not only as definitions of the differences between Christianity and the other religions of the ancient world, but also as measures of properly orthodox beliefs within Christianity. Heretics beyond number arose among Christians leading to the Council of Nicea and Chalcedon defining the Trinity so that both monotheism and the human-divine nature of Jesus could be maintained. When ancient dualism, which allocated equal power to the god of good and the god of evil (Gnosticism, Manichaeism), the canon of sacred scripture was closed to prevent the entry of books espousing heretical views. The Christians insisted on the sovereignty of one god of all creation against the numerous polytheistic gods of Asia, Egypt, Rome, Greece and Gaul.

As Harnack pointed out, in the days of the Old Catholic Church, before the church became official, that “monstrous abortion, political religion” was resisted successfully with openness in the cities and, at times, secretly in the catacombs.

Because there were large numbers of unlearned, unlettered and illiterate among the early Christians, whose allegiance to the faith was a commitment of the heart, not a consequence of philosophical deliberations, the leaders of the Old Catholic Church also formed the creed with the intent of explaining the scriptures. Gradually the religion of feeling changed to the formal institution.

But one of the astonishing consequences of victory – whether it be theological or military – is that the victor acquires some of the vices of the vanquished. What emerged at the end of the one-hundred and twenty year “tunnel” was not a simple, scriptural Christianity, but a complex combination of many streams of religions which flowed as the great river of Christianity.

As a product of Christian victory, the Christian movement had incorporated most of the common ideas and myths of other religions, and many of the ancient practices.

From time immemorial the myth of the divine infant, child of the gods, conceived and delivered by a virgin mother had stirred the wonder and worship of people. Neither Paul nor Mark apparently knew or believed this, for neither affirms the virgin birth of the god-man. But in the late additions of the birth stories to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, not to speak of the growing cult of the virgin in the Christian creed and liturgy, the Christians too had their charming myth of birth of the God-man. This myth drew to it a store-house of legends, customs and myths from all the peoples who became Christians. The astrology of the Near-East and the tree worship of the Germanic tribes are but two examples of the magnetic power of the myth of the divine child to draw to it, not only the hopes and fears of all the years, but also ancient superstitions galore.

Resurrected gods were familiar to that world, too, for this is another of the persistent myths of human-kind. The religions of Egypt, Asia and Greece had worshiped the dying-rising savior gods for thousands of years before the Christian movement witnessed to their risen Lord. Christian practice in worship was far more restrained than the ceremonial excess of the ancient religions, but again, the Old Catholic Church demonstrated the common roots and kinship of all religions in the ancient world.

The Lord’s Supper had become a eucharistic meal in which the miraculous sacrifice of the atoning savior is celebrated by the priest as the worshipers reverently observe. This, too, was a synthesis of the Passover meal and the ceremonies of ancient mystery religions.

In the earliest days, the duty of the elders or presbyters had been to supervise the behavior of their fellow Christians and organize assistance to the widows and orphans. At the close of the second century, leadership had concentrated in the Bishop whose primary task was to see that doctrine was kept pure.

In the earliest Christian groups, when Paul was writing and traveling, there was considerable self-government in the new movement. When the period of historical obscurity ended, the Bishop was an episcopal monarch, as well as priest. The Bishop had the responsibility of instructing the unlettered; he confronted heresies with an authoritative voice; he settled disputes in the organization as well as administering charity. The responsibility for insuring the purity of doctrine had resulted in the Bishop acquiring the sole right to ordain priests by the “laying on of hands.” This was the future controlled as well as the present, by authority to designate who should be permitted to perform the sacraments, now all-important.

Thus two centuries of accumulation of creed produced Christian churches in nearly ever important town and city of the Roman Empire. In each city or diocese, the Bishop’s authority was primary. The liturgy and sacraments were a synthesis of many ancient religions as well as the vehicle for the teachings of Jesus and the great monotheistic Jewish tradition. It is doubtful if more than a small minority of Christians had a wide knowledge of doctrine. Their reasons for Christian allegiance were various. Some were converted by Old Testament scripture; some because the Bishop exorcised demons; others by the better moral life of Christian communities; still others by the hope of immortality; or even as time went on, some were eager for the status Christianity conferred. (See MISSION AND EXPANSION OF CHRISTIANITY, Adolf Harnack, p. 87 ff.)

The influence of the Greek philosophic spirit had made Christianity considerably more intellectual and speculative. At the scholarly level, there has always been more room for differences of interpretation than is generally conceded. This was particularly true in the centuries before the church became official.

Because we are not bound by creeds, the relevance and importance to us of the idea of the creedal church or the authority of the Bishop is not so much the particular contend of specific creeds, even though we would assert the falsity of particular ideas therein contained. There was a fascinating inconsistency in the developing, creedal church. Looking backwards, we can comprehend that the Church adjusted to, or incorporated, every historical force. At the same time, the bishops defended every accommodation by asserting that this was what the scripture said or meant. The Christian leaders were convinced that the message they taught was necessary for salvation, that this message was delivered to them from the past and that history, with its traditions was to be the authority in religion. The seat of authority was the Holy Scripture whose divine revelations were abbreviated in the creeds, preserved in the Church and guarded by the Bishops to prevent doctrinal impurities from creeping in. One of the early Church Apologists, Cyprian, phrased it, “outside the Church (bishop) there is no salvation. He cannot have God for his father who does not have the Church for his mother. The Bishop is in the Church and the Church is in the Bishop.”

This attitude generated not only the virtues of loyalty, but also the vices of fanaticism. In the third century, a pagan philosopher, Celsus, wrote a critique of Christianity which emphasized the virulence of heresy-hunting by Christians and the bad feeling which sometimes prevailed in Christian groups. Celsus may have written with the bias of a philosophical opponent of Christianity, but there is undoubtedly a good measure of truth in his charge that “these people (the Christians) utter all sorts of blasphemy, mentionable and unmentionable, against one another, nor will they give way in the smallest point for the sake of concord, hating each other with a perfect hatred.” (see Harnack, ibid, p. 444)

Does the past have the truth? The sanction of our Universalist Unitarian emphasis in religion is that we affirm the authority of truth known or to be known. Truth is more like a trip around the world than it is like Mt. Everest. That is, truth is a process in human experience, not a fixed rock of ages. No one should be criticized for testifying to his beliefs, whether called creed, consensus or conviction. Human dignity is violated and reason prostrated when there is insistence that there is only one way to truth, e.g., the past as the seat of authority in religion. To attempt to limit truth to a creed is to discredit what is always elementary and essential to any vital religion – personal experience and social growth.

Immanuel Kant (in the CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON) speaks of the land of truth, “surrounded by a wide a stormy ocean ... engaging the (adventurous seafarer) in enterprises which he can never abandon and yet is unable to carry to completion.” The search for truth can never be halted or ever finally terminated.

Erich Fromm, the psychiatrist who has placed so many of the pre-suppositions of religious liberals in relevant and topical framework, thinks of the human as a truthseeking being who continually refines truth through the elements of personal experience – observation, testing and agreement.

He upholds truth-seeking by bringing together three insights of the ages about truth. In modern times, Freud and his successors, who have studied the human personality, assert “truth (about himself) makes man healthy.” That is, when we know the nature of our deep conflicts – the truth about ourselves – we become more healthy, physically and emotionally. In ancient times, Socrates said, “knowledge is virtue.” That is, truth is the power that makes men virtuous. Before the accumulation of creed, Jesus said, “the truth shall make men free.” The consequences of truth are health, goodness and freedom.

There is no age, certainly not the one in which we live, where there is any excuse to abandon the search for new truth, to quit the task of constant refinement of what was held to be true in other times, or asserted to be true by those who would chart our ways. The great support any truth can have is the heretic who questions it, examines it, criticizes it. For this is how we grow. On the fiftieth birthday of Agassiz, the naturalist and geologist, who was a pioneer in theories of glacial formation, his friend Henry W. Longfellow wrote a poem for the occasion. Some of the lines go like this:

“... and nature, the old nurse took
The child upon her knee,
Saying: here is a story-book
Thy father has written for Thee.
Come wander with me, she said
Into regions yet untrod,
and read what is still unread
in the manuscripts of God.”