Someone asked me not long ago why we recite Nicene Creed at the Sunday Eucharist. Why introduce into an act of worship a series of dogmatic statements intended originally to draw lines between “the orthodox” and “the heretics.” As it happens, the year 2025 marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea from which the Nicene Creed takes its name. (The present form of the Creed incorporated teachings from a further ecumenical council, that of Constantinople in 381.) The question then comes at an opportune time. The person with whom I spoke reflected the not uncommon tendency to think of the Creed as an official doctrinal statement of what we mut believe. These beliefs are sometimes called “dogmas of the Church.” That’s a particularly uncongenial way of speaking of them. Whether or not we give our mental assent to these dogmas, they may not make our hearts burn with love.
Dogma suggests “dogmatism,” an attitude of mind that considers its own understanding of the Christian Tradition to be the only legitimate one and does not tolerate any other views. It encourages the illusion that we can contain the Mystery and enclose it in a formula that forever defines its nature, that we already possess the fullness of Truth.
We can never possess the fullness of Truth. There can be no final word about God. We cannot comprehend God finally, totally, even in heaven. St Gregory of Nyssa (+394) taught that in heaven we grow endlessly into God, learning more and more about God, becoming more and more like God. This infinite, never ceasing learning is not only what heaven is really about. It is also what the life of faith on earth is about: more and more knowledge and awareness of God through ever greater love.
The Creed therefore does not “contain” God – does not place any limits within which we may experience God. The Mystery of God is bigger than the formulas that try to express God in words. The Creed is an inspired image – a true one – of the inexhaustible reality of God and of God’s dealings with the world.
It is for this reason, perhaps, that the Eastern Church, following the ancient usage of the Fathers, rarely calls the truths contained in the Creed “dogmas” but refers to them as “mysteries.” They are not to be explained or too quickly defined, but proclaimed, reflected upon and approached with wonder and awe. The Creed is not a list of “facts” about God but an act of adoration of the mystery of God’s love: a celebration of all that God has done for us.
The Creed, like the sacraments (also often called “the mysteries”), the prayers, our whole tradition of faith, cannot be grasped with our rational mind. One might say that the creeds are attempts to be as little misleading as possible about what may be said about God. That is, in order to know and understand what is true, it is necessary to let go of what is not true. The mysteries of faith cannot finally be contained by cerebral effort. They can only be received at the heart of our being, rejoiced in and embraced.
In view of this, it may perhaps become easier to understand the place of doubt in the Christian life. If we think that faith should give us an absolute, unshakeable certainty of what we profess to belief, we see doubt as the enemy of faith. At best, it is a trial; at worst, a serious sin.
Not all doubt is dangerous to faith, however. Doubt can be a necessary and natural reaction of human reason to any situation about which it does not have the final word. Without the ability of human reason to doubt itself, to question and rethink its own solutions and conclusions, no progress in any field of knowledge or science would be possible. Doubt is a sign that the knowledge we possess can never be absolute but must always remain incomplete.
Yet, like all other aspects of our nature, our reason – our thinking mind – may want too much. It may refuse to accept its own limitation. It may raise questions and demand rational answers in areas where there can be none. The source of most of the controversies or “heresies” that have caused so much dissension in the early Church lay precisely in the desire of some Christian theologians to get rid of the paradoxical nature of the truths of faith and choose only one side of the paradox.
Arians, for example, claimed that because God could not be subject to change, it would have been impossible for God to take on human nature and that Christ, who was fully human, could not have been fully God. Nestorians insisted that God could not be born of a woman, and therefore Mary could not be the Theotokos, the God-bearer or mother of God and Christ’s humanity could not have been totally real. The Manicheans thought that because God could not be believed to be responsible for the existence of evil in the world, there had to be two gods: one responsible for god, another for evil.
The Creed, as part of the great tradition of the Church, has always emphasized the need to hold onto both sides of each paradox. It has also insisted that the mysteries of faith must appear to us as paradoxes, because our minds cannot embrace the totality of the Mystery to which they point. They do not present different, contradictory truths, but are only partial glimpses of the one unknowable and inexpressible Truth.
While the Creed can be read privately, its most natural place is thus within the Church’s main act of worship, that occasion when we open and give ourselves to the great Mystery, acknowledging that our life of faith will always be a journey into. The Creed gives us the broad outline of the great story of that journey and gives us reason to lift up our hearts and give thanks.
The Rev. Canon Kevin Flynn is the Incumbent at St-Bernard-de-Clairvaux.
Ici on parle français — RĒFLEXION
The Nicene Creed
Someone asked me not long ago why we recite Nicene Creed at the Sunday Eucharist. Why introduce into an act of worship a series of dogmatic statements intended originally to draw lines between “the orthodox” and “the heretics.” As it happens, the year 2025 marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea from which the Nicene Creed takes its name. (The present form of the Creed incorporated teachings from a further ecumenical council, that of Constantinople in 381.) The question then comes at an opportune time. The person with whom I spoke reflected the not uncommon tendency to think of the Creed as an official doctrinal statement of what we mut believe. These beliefs are sometimes called “dogmas of the Church.” That’s a particularly uncongenial way of speaking of them. Whether or not we give our mental assent to these dogmas, they may not make our hearts burn with love.
Dogma suggests “dogmatism,” an attitude of mind that considers its own understanding of the Christian Tradition to be the only legitimate one and does not tolerate any other views. It encourages the illusion that we can contain the Mystery and enclose it in a formula that forever defines its nature, that we already possess the fullness of Truth.
We can never possess the fullness of Truth. There can be no final word about God. We cannot comprehend God finally, totally, even in heaven. St Gregory of Nyssa (+394) taught that in heaven we grow endlessly into God, learning more and more about God, becoming more and more like God. This infinite, never ceasing learning is not only what heaven is really about. It is also what the life of faith on earth is about: more and more knowledge and awareness of God through ever greater love.
The Creed therefore does not “contain” God – does not place any limits within which we may experience God. The Mystery of God is bigger than the formulas that try to express God in words. The Creed is an inspired image – a true one – of the inexhaustible reality of God and of God’s dealings with the world.
It is for this reason, perhaps, that the Eastern Church, following the ancient usage of the Fathers, rarely calls the truths contained in the Creed “dogmas” but refers to them as “mysteries.” They are not to be explained or too quickly defined, but proclaimed, reflected upon and approached with wonder and awe. The Creed is not a list of “facts” about God but an act of adoration of the mystery of God’s love: a celebration of all that God has done for us.
The Creed, like the sacraments (also often called “the mysteries”), the prayers, our whole tradition of faith, cannot be grasped with our rational mind. One might say that the creeds are attempts to be as little misleading as possible about what may be said about God. That is, in order to know and understand what is true, it is necessary to let go of what is not true. The mysteries of faith cannot finally be contained by cerebral effort. They can only be received at the heart of our being, rejoiced in and embraced.
In view of this, it may perhaps become easier to understand the place of doubt in the Christian life. If we think that faith should give us an absolute, unshakeable certainty of what we profess to belief, we see doubt as the enemy of faith. At best, it is a trial; at worst, a serious sin.
Not all doubt is dangerous to faith, however. Doubt can be a necessary and natural reaction of human reason to any situation about which it does not have the final word. Without the ability of human reason to doubt itself, to question and rethink its own solutions and conclusions, no progress in any field of knowledge or science would be possible. Doubt is a sign that the knowledge we possess can never be absolute but must always remain incomplete.
Yet, like all other aspects of our nature, our reason – our thinking mind – may want too much. It may refuse to accept its own limitation. It may raise questions and demand rational answers in areas where there can be none. The source of most of the controversies or “heresies” that have caused so much dissension in the early Church lay precisely in the desire of some Christian theologians to get rid of the paradoxical nature of the truths of faith and choose only one side of the paradox.
Arians, for example, claimed that because God could not be subject to change, it would have been impossible for God to take on human nature and that Christ, who was fully human, could not have been fully God. Nestorians insisted that God could not be born of a woman, and therefore Mary could not be the Theotokos, the God-bearer or mother of God and Christ’s humanity could not have been totally real. The Manicheans thought that because God could not be believed to be responsible for the existence of evil in the world, there had to be two gods: one responsible for god, another for evil.
The Creed, as part of the great tradition of the Church, has always emphasized the need to hold onto both sides of each paradox. It has also insisted that the mysteries of faith must appear to us as paradoxes, because our minds cannot embrace the totality of the Mystery to which they point. They do not present different, contradictory truths, but are only partial glimpses of the one unknowable and inexpressible Truth.
While the Creed can be read privately, its most natural place is thus within the Church’s main act of worship, that occasion when we open and give ourselves to the great Mystery, acknowledging that our life of faith will always be a journey into. The Creed gives us the broad outline of the great story of that journey and gives us reason to lift up our hearts and give thanks.
The Rev. Canon Kevin Flynn is the Incumbent at St-Bernard-de-Clairvaux.
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