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Jaroslav Pelikan and the Need for Creeds

Jaroslav Pelikan, one of the great religious scholars of our time, is being honored across the country as he celebrates his 80th year. At the same time, Yale University Press is releasing his latest work, entitled Credo - or "I believe" - the largest collection assembled in modern times of Christian Creeds from across the globe. In this program, we discuss why creeds are so difficult for modern people and why, in Jaroslav Pelikan's view, human beings will always need them.

Guest:
Jaroslav Pelikan is Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University. His most recent book is Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions in the Christian Tradition. His other major works include Mary Through the Centuries, and the five volume The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine.
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Jaroslav Pelikan and the Need for Creeds
Sep. 19, 2003

Listen to the whole program
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Every field of human endeavor has its heroes - men and women who may be relatively unknown in the wider culture but are living legends in the world of their accomplishment. Jaroslav Pelikan is one of those. He is Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University, and past president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He wrote five epic volumes, the defining work of our time, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. This year, as he turns 80, he is being celebrated in a national lecture series spanning six months, at seminaries and cathedrals across the country. It will end with a gala event at the Library of Congress.

Pelikan's gift is for clarifying the past for the sake of the present and the future. And so it is fitting that this year he is also releasing an historic collection of creeds and confessions of Christian faith, from biblical times to the present and from across the globe. This is the first such effort since 1870. Published by Yale University Press, it is already being hailed as the standard resource for the coming century.

But the very idea of reciting an unchanging creed, composed many centuries ago, is troublesome for many modern Americans. We spoke with Jaroslav Pelikan about how a fixed creed can be reconciled with an honest, intellectual faith - which is surely not marked by a static certainty.

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The Masai Creed

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in the darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the Bible, that he would save the world and all nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, 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 was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from that grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love, and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

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Originally posted by honorman

I'm reading Timothy Johnson's book "The Creed." Very good.

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The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters

by Luke Timothy Johnson

Doubleday,
Forthcoming Spring 2003, viii + 324 pages, Cloth, English
ISBN: 0385502478
List Price: $23.95
Your Price: $16.74

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Creed can enflame lives - - author
Book engages theological truths

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The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters, by Luke Timothy Johnson. Doubleday: New York, N.Y. 2003. 324 pages. Hardcover.
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Review by WAYNE HOLST
Special to the WCR

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Every Sunday, millions of Christians recite the creed. They normally use either the Apostles, which evolved over several centuries and first appears in the writings of St. Ambrose in 390, or the Nicene, which was formalized by 318 bishops assembled to battle the Arian heresy at the Council of Nicea in 325.

Some sleepwalk through the exercise, thinking of other things. Some puzzle over the strange language, some find offence in what it seems to say. Moderns who think the creed boring or dated have antecedents in Anabaptist and other Free Church traditions who, 500 years ago, believed that a fixed structure of belief was less desirable than a good heart and an open mind. Creeds, they assume, close minds and harden hearts.

"Perhaps few (people) fully appreciate what a remarkable thing they are doing," writes Luke Timothy Johnson, a former Benedictine monk, now married with a family. He is a Catholic theologian teaching New Testament at Candler School of Theology (Methodist) in Atlanta.

"The creed does more than declare what Christians believe," he continues. "It challenges those who recite (it) week by week to live as though that which they recite is true."

Like many Catholic and non-Catholic Christians, Johnson memorized the creed as a child. He was slow to appreciate what it is and what it does for contemporary believers.

More experience of life, broader reading, and a growing awareness of the deeply confused state of many faithful today led him to adjust his earlier prejudices and write this creed-affirming book.

"I have grown in my appreciation of how important it is for the Church to have a communal sense of identity," he says, "and how hard that is to come by without something like a creed."

Johnson knows that cultured despisers, even many Christians, will not readily agree with him. He views as his primary audience, the Catholic and non-Catholic, "who still stumble through it as an act of piety because the Church tells them to."

The aim of this readable book for those with or without a theological education is to make the creed controversial for those who say it but do not understand it and therefore do not grasp what a radical and offensive act they engage in at worship.

"In other words," the author continues, "I want to make the creed more controversial (and counter-cultural) rather than less . . . for the right . . . rather than the wrong reasons."

Johnson prefers the Apostles to the Nicene because it says what needs to be said and does not get caught up in confusing philosophical constructs.

This book is worth reading because, even though it carefully and accessibly engages the theological truths of the creed, Johnson believes that the communal faith experience reflected in a consistent liturgical act is even more important.

"The more the boundaries of Christian communities are shaped by the powerful yet flexible myth of the creed," he ends, "the more confident Christians grow in their identity, and the greater grows their capacity to speak coherently a life-giving word to a confused . . . contemporary world."

(Wayne Holst is a parish educator who has taught religion and culture at the University of Calgary.)


http://www.wcr.ab.ca/columns/reviews/wayneholst/2003/wayneholst090103.shtml

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