Three Creeds
Introduction
4 real answers
When Jesus asked his disciples who do people say that I am, he wasn’t looking for
one right answer. He was
looking for real answers from
real people. He received four real
answers. "Some say you are John the
Baptist, others say you are Elijah or Jeremiah, and still others say you are
one of the prophets" (Mk 8: 27-30; Mt 16:13-14). Four real answers from four
real people, and none
of them is wrong and none is right. They’re
all simply real answers, and, as such they’re all true.
There
are more than just 4 real answers to the Jesus question. If you ask a staunch
fundamentalist Christian who is Jesus, he will answer he is “the only way”
without whom there is no salvation. If
you ask a good Lutheran who is Jesus, he will answer with the battle cry of the
Reformation that he is the one who save us through “amazing grace” and not good
works. If you ask a good Catholic who is Jesus, he will answer that he now is
his mystical body, the church, whose head is Peter. If you ask a social
activist who is Jesus, with Dietrich Bonhoeffer he will answer he is “a man for
other people.” If you ask a woman or a gay person or an African American who is
Jesus of Nazareth, he will answer that he is “liberator and freedom fighter.”
1 right answer
After asking
who do people say that I am, Jesus
looked squarely at the apostles and asked, “Who do you say that I
am?” He was still looking for real
answers from real people. Speaking for the others, Simon declared, "You
are the Christ, the Anointed One,
the Son of the living God" (Mt
The super-right answer
Three hundred years later in the Council of Nicea
(325), the church formulated an even more
right answer to the Jesus question.
We recite it in the Nicene Creed. Jesus is Deum verum de Deo vero,
(true God from true God). He is Lumen de Lumine (Light from Light). He is genitum non factum (begotten not
made). He is consubstantialem Patri “(consubstantial with the
Father). You can’t get a righter answer
than that, but whether we sing it in Latin or recite it in English, at the end
of the day most of us really don’t know what the words mean. At best we suspect
they claim a very extraordinary uniqueness for the son born of Mary.
Dominus Iesus and the one right answer
On
One arrogant Catholic gentlemen
responding to Dominus Iesus said,
“The ultimate goal of dialogue among the various Christian religions is to
eventually bring these people back into the Catholic Church. Three cheers to
Pope John Paul II for having the courage to say it.” In the same vein another Catholic said, “With Dominus Iesus the cafeteria is closed! No more picking and
choosing. All religions are not created equal.” Period! On the other hand, however,
an angry Catholic gentleman responding to the same
The answer given
by that document to the question who is Jesus of Nazareth and where is his true
church might well be the one only right answer. But what’s the use of having a right
answer if it’s too ponderous to understand, or if it tears down bridges laboriously built, or
if it angers people with its arrogance
and condescension.
Relativism/triumphalism
It
is noteworthy that Judaism does not claim to have the one only right
answer. The Talmud, for example, says that all righteous people of the
monotheistic religions, who observe the basic laws of morality, are saved. That’s
called the relativist approach to religion; it says, “I have my faith, you have
your faith, and others have their faith.” On the other hand, Christianity and
Islam each claims that it has the one only right answer. That’s called the triumphalist approach to
religion. Bernard Lewis says that that approach
has Christianity and Islam shouting at each other, “I’m right, you’re wrong, go
to hell.” He admits, however, that the triumphalist approach is increasingly
under attack in Christendom and is rejected now by many Christian clergymen. But
he adds there is very little sign that anything like that is happening in
Islam.
Islamic
terrorists are afoot today, preoccupying us 24/7 and robbing our lives of any
sense of normalcy. With their one only right answer that “Only Allah is God, and
Muhammad is his Messenger” they shout at us infidels, “We’re right, you’re wrong and we’re going
to send you to hell again and again, just as we did on 9/11.”
Benedict’s
quote
Yes,
Christians, too, have been terrorists. So in the year 2000 Pope John Paul
apologized to Muslims for the violence committed against them in the name of
Christianity. However, on the day Pope Benedict was installed, he greeted
fellow Catholics, other Christians and Jews, but he did not explicitly
greet Muslims[1].
Two months later when asked whether he considered Islam a religion of
peace, he said, "Certainly there are elements that favor peace.” Then he
cryptically added, “It also has other elements." Some believe that with Pope
Benedict the era of appeasement under Pope John Paul is over, and that the era
of a subtle, discreet, yet firm confrontation with Islam has begun. That brings
us to the present moment.
Last
Tuesday,
These
days if you turn on TV just for a second, you see whole seas of Muslims up in
arms against the Pope over his brief but remarkable remark. Yesterday
No miscalculation
It
is very interesting to note that Rev. Robert Taft, a specialist in Islamic
affairs at
The
We
make too much….
Not only Islamic fascists
but all of us make too much of the right answer. Immediately after Peter’s one
very right answer, "You are the Christ,
the Anointed One, the Son of the living God," Jesus speaks openly
to his apostles about his imminent sufferings. “I must go to
We make too much of the right
answer. From Peter's great confession "You are the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of the living God" right down to the present day, Christians have always
had the right answer about Jesus of Nazareth, but we haven’t always understood
what it means. We painfully remember that the Holocaust which turned six
million Jews into burnt offerings in the crematories of
We make too much of the right
answer. “If a brother or sister has
nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go
in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but do not give them the necessities of the
body, what good is” your one right answer about Jesus (James 2:14-18)?
We make too much of the right
answer. Some answers, which were right for centuries, can all of a sudden go
wrong on us. We Catholics are experts in this matter. After Vatican II we now find
out that we can miss Mass on Sunday and still go to heaven, and that we can eat
meat on Friday and still go to heaven. After
Vatican II many Catholics now believe that
all at once right answers about artificial birth control, divorce and
remarriage, ordination of women, inter-communion, homosexuality, etc., have all
gone wrong.
We make too much of the
right answer. By clever body language or by not so clever burst of anger we demand
the right answer from each other, especially our kids. And they give us the
right answer we’re demanding, but it’s often not the truth, and sometimes it’s
a lie. We should free each other to be transparent and tell the truth. Not so much with words but with something more
profound, invite the important people in your life to tell you what’s really on
their minds and who they really are. If
your son is gay, set him free from telling you a lie. Set him free for telling
you the truth. The truth will make you both free.
My creed
If
Jesus would ask me today, “Alexis, who do you think I am?” I perhaps wouldn’t
answer, “You, Lord, are true God from true God, Light from Light, begotten not
made, consubstantial with the Father.” I don’t always know what that means. Instead
I’d answer, “You, Lord, are the one who taught us powerful parables about the
human journey. You taught us the parable about
a man who, journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho, was waylaid by robbers
and left half-dead, was passed over by a Jewish priest and Levite but was shown
compassion by a Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37). You, Lord, are the one who taught us
the parable about the younger of two sons who grabbed his share of the
inheritance and journeyed off to a foreign land where, after squandering his
money and especially himself, he returned to his senses and his father’s house
and was received with opened arms” (Lk 15: 11-32). I know what that means, and I cherish it.
If Jesus would ask me today, “Alexis, who do you
think I am,” I’d answer, “You Lord are the one who prioritized and simplified
religion for me, when you told a
Pharisee, who was confused by the maze of 613 major commandments of
Mosaic Law, that the one most important commandment of all is to love the Lord
God with whole heart, soul, mind and strength, and that the second most
important commandment is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves” (Mk
12:28-34). I know what that means, and I cherish it.
If Jesus would ask me today, “Alexis, who do you
think I am,” I’d answer, “You Lord are the one who died on the cross not
because God was angry over the sin of Adam and Eve and needed shed blood to
appease himself, but because
human beings were angry at you. It was not God your Father but the religious
leaders who were angry at you because you believed your religion was so
important that it was worth criticizing with your many `Woes to you Scribes and
Pharisees’ (cf. Mt 23:13-27). You took the religious leaders of your day to
task, that made them angry, and they crucified you for it.” I know what that means, and I cherish it.
Conclusion
A creed to cherish
In response to the question who is Jesus,
there’s an African Creed which says that he is “a man in the flesh, a Jew by
tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on
safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and
man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his
people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross and died. He lay buried
in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day he rose
from the grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.” An African can
understand what that means, and he can cherish it.
That creed in response to the Jesus question,
like my own creed, is quite different from the Nicene creed: “true God from
true God, Light from Light, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.”
I’m not saying my creed is right and the Nicene creed is wrong. I’m just saying
my creed is real to me. I know what it means, and I cherish it.
Who do you, Christian, say that Jesus is? Ite Missa est. Go the Mass is ended. Go
forth Christian and construct for yourself a creed about Jesus which you can
understand with your head and cherish with your heart.
[1] Pope’s greeting
in his homily: “The Church is alive – with these words, I greet with great joy and
gratitude all of you gathered here, my venerable brother Cardinals and Bishops,
my dear priests, deacons, Church workers, catechists. I greet you, men and
women Religious, witnesses of the transfiguring presence of God. I greet
you, members of the lay faithful, immersed in the great task of building up the