Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Creeds

No Mormon can grow up without knowing at some level what the appropriate Mormon attitude towards creeds are.  In the version of the First Vision account that the church prefers to use, God says all the church creeds are an abomination.  Its a pretty direct statement.  At least in my growing up experience, the only creed I knew by name was the Nicene Creed.  The only things I knew about it was that it got its authority from a vote instead of by revelation and that it was full of contradictory nonsense about God being three persons but not three persons, everywhere and nowhere, material and immaterial etc all at once.  So I was very surprised when I first attended an Episcopal Church service and discovered that I didn't know very much about what I was talking about.

I won't say that the creeds of Christianity are somehow perfect or an unassailable version of truth with a clean history.  Frankly, the amount of human conflict that the creeds formed an excuse for is embarrassing.  The amount of debate over the nature of God and truth embodied in Christian history can make it almost impossible to discuss what God is as opposed to what God isn't without accidentally falling into some traditional category of heretic, leading to amusing memes such as: 


I've even once read someone suggest that one of the problems in Christian history is that once Christianity had power, it obsessed on defining itself and deciding what to do with those who disagreed rather than on how better to live a Christian life.  Of course, that summary is problematic, but it summarizes simply the historical moral tension between setting up enforceable definitions and expressing love to those who disagree with you.  For all that, the creeds deserve respect if for no other reason than that they often represent the best agreements that people could achieve after enormous amounts of effort expended and unfortunately at times blood spilled over trying to define concepts that are fundamentally important to all Christians and yet so difficult to define in any kind of testable way.  In the Episcopal tradition, the creeds generally are not always discussed as absolute truths, but sometimes as sources of tradition reminding people of what Christianity has meant over time, even if individuals may disagree with them.

But what are these creeds?  According to Wikipedia, there are more than 100 statements of faith which could be considered as creeds by different Christian religions at different times in history.  However, Wikipedia presents only six main creeds which might be considered central to the understanding of most of Western Christian Churches.  Below I explore a few of these.

Of course, you might ask why go over any of the creeds in particular?  Aren't they simply points of disagreement which can't be resolved and so shouldn't be discussed?  And at some point isn't it more important to experience God and participate in the Love of God than it is to define God?  Well, in some ways of course.  But on the other hand, a lack of familiarity of each others beliefs can create disrespect.  If all that LDS people really know about the creeds are that Joseph Smith taught that they were "all abominations" and that all of the teachers of religion who taught them were or are all denying the power of God, LDS people will have very little ability to fundamentally respect the beliefs of those around them, similar to how many Christians may have difficulty respecting the LDS tradition if they only experience it through caricatures based on fear.  Mutual respect must be based on knowledge.

The Apostles Creed, which is used in Episcopalian Baptismal, Confirmation, and Morning Prayer services, reads:


I believe in God, the Father almighty,
    creator of heaven and earth;
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
    He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
        and born of the Virgin Mary.
    He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
        was crucified, died, and was buried.
    He descended to the dead.
    On the third day he rose again.
    He ascended into heaven,
        and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
    He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
    the holy catholic Church,
    the communion of saints,
    the forgiveness of sins
    the resurrection of the body,
    and the life everlasting. Amen.

I'm honestly not sure what exactly LDS people would find abominable about this particular creed.  The word catholic is here used to mean "universal," rather than the Catholic Church which Episcopalians don't "believe in" despite reciting these words as part of worship.  In Mormon speak, you might say that you believed in "The Church of the Firstborn" as discussed in D&C 76, meaning the church of all those who are saved, or that the true church is universally true.  The communion of Saints, as quoted from Wikipedia, is "is the spiritual union of the members of the Christian Church, living and the dead, those on earth, in heaven, and, for those who believe in purgatory, those also who are in that state of purification."  Again this is not a foreign concept to the LDS religion, which baptizes both the living and the dead into membership of the same church.  Unless you want to split hairs and discuss how some early LDS church leaders talked as if they didn't believe in Virgin Birth even though most assuredly the overwhelming majority of members and leaders do, it would be a safe bet to say that practically all Mormons actually believe in the essentials of the Apostles Creed.  They just use different vocabulary to discuss it and have a different vision the concepts involved.

Even less abominable is the Creed of Jerusalem, which, quoting from wikipedia, states:

I believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, and in one Baptism of repentance. 

The Nicene creed has historically gone through a variety of edits, both in the original text and in how it has been translated.  The modernized text version used in many Episcopal Sunday worship services is the following:


We believe in one God,
    the Father, the Almighty,
    maker of heaven and earth,
    of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
    the only Son of God,
    eternally begotten of the Father,
    God from God, Light from Light,
    true God from true God,
    begotten, not made,
    of one Being with the Father.
    Through him all things were made.
    For us and for our salvation
        he came down from heaven:
    by the power of the Holy Spirit
        he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
        and was made man.
    For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
        he suffered death and was buried.
        On the third day he rose again
            in accordance with the Scriptures;
        he ascended into heaven
            and is seated at the right hand of the Father.


    He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
        and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
    who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
    With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
    He has spoken through the Prophets.


    We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
    We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
    We look for the resurrection of the dead,
        and the life of the world to come. Amen.

You really have to stop and think to figure out which parts of this the LDS church fundamentally disagrees with.  The typical idea of the LDS church is that the godhead is united in purpose and in love, not in "being."   However, given that the Lectures on Faith  taught that God the Father and Jesus Christ were the only two individuals in the Godhead, united by a shared mind which was the Holy Ghost, this concept actually fits right into an earlier version of Mormon theology that simply was replaced in the ongoing evolution of doctrine.  As such I don't see how it could be viewed as abominable as opposed to simply a disagreement.  Also, the LDS church wouldn't normally think of the Holy Ghost as being a "giver of life," viewing the essence of identity and life as being something uncreated which is added upon by different acts of creation and sanctification in which all the members of the godhead hold a part.  But again, this doesn't rise to the level of abomination.

When the LDS people I grew up around criticized the Nicene Creed, I think they were really thinking of the Athanasian Creed.  It has the classic linguistic mysteries that the Mormon's I grew up around loved to criticize, such as "That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence." and "And yet they are not three Gods; but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord."  This creed can be found in the "Historical Documents" section of the Book of Common Prayer, to show that it is not rejected, but on the other hand it is not accepted enough or viewed as vital enough to be included in any act of worship.  Of all the central creeds that define virtually all of Western Christianity, this is the only one that I can think of that the LDS church vehemently and passionately disagrees with in the whole.  The Athanasian Creed probably best sums up why many denominations of Christians can't find a way to accept Mormons as fellow believers in Christ.  Its opening lines read:


Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence.
The creed sets up a new requirement for salvation in which correct opinions about the trinity are absolutely vital to not being sent to Hell.  It is difficult to see how denominations that take that injunction seriously and believe in Hell literally could possibly view anyone who disagrees about the trinity as being truly Christian It would be no more likely than Mormon's could stop believing that all other Christians are apostates.  The core idea that having wrong opinions is a damnable sin is familiar in Mormonism, leading Bruce R. McConkie to say "Truth, diamond truth, truth unmixed with error, truth alone leads to salvation."  This concept that salvation is based in part on having right opinions is deeply unfortunate, since I am unable to think of anything in particular in Christ's teachings which suggest such a prime importance of someone's opinions on a subject which Christ himself left so obscure as to create controversy lasting for centuries.  I simply don't believe the idea that correct belief in the trinity is a core matter of salvation.  Christ's teachings suggest that such surface issues of worship and belief are of secondary importance.  In Matthew chapter 7, we read:
 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ 

If saying "Lord, Lord" doesn't count for much, having an exact idea of who is meant by "Lord, Lord" shouldn't count for as much either.  Also, in Matthew chapter 25 we read:


‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?  And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?  And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’  And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

I can't imagine Jesus saying those things, and then at the pearly gates telling someone that they didn't make the cut because they had their ideas about the trinity wrong.  It is simply absurd.  When Christ said "I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith." regarding the Centurion whose daughter he healed, Christ wasn't talking the correctness of the Centurion's Trinitarian theology.  He was simply praising the Centurion's confidence in God's love and power as witnessed in Christ, regardless of the probability that the Roman Centurion was a polytheist who almost certainly participated in Roman worship.
  
I find the concept of the Trinity to be a useful way to contemplate the mystery and manifestation of God, rather than as a way to define God.  The creeds are a useful way of focusing that contemplation.  Looking back, I am embarrassed by my youthful antagonism towards the creeds.  They may not be perfect, but what product of the human mind is?

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