Mary, Star of the Sea Church in La JollaThe Question: Where does the church go from here?
ABOUT CREEDS

I often come across something better said than I might say it... something I have been thinking. This, for example, from Harvey Cox’s book The Future of Faith:

“Creeds are products of their times. They are road markers of key points in Christian history. They provide invaluable indices of how some Christians, thought not all, responded to largely internal disputes in the past. But to make ‘believing’ them a permanent feature of Christianity today misunderstands the invaluable function they can serve. The numerous creeds theologians have devised over the centuries enable us to glimpse the historical challenges they faced. But their circumstances and ours are not the same. Only by seeing them for what they are, landmarks along the long path Christianity has trod and not walled barriers, can they help us face current difficulties and opportunities.

“The other question about creeds is whether they should be taken literally or understood as poetry. Roman Catholic theologian Stephen C. Rowan in his book on the Nicene Creed holds that only when creeds are appreciated as metaphor and poetry can they serve a useful purpose today. Poetry, he says, is not a less exact but a more exact form of language, and we have to learn to ‘read’ symbolic language symbolically...

“...The main feature of Protestant fundamentalism is its literalism. Thus when the creeds are understood as factual descriptions of God and Christ and people are still supposed to ‘believe’ them, they become obstacles to faith rather than aids. Maybe the only way to preserve the real value of creeds today is to sing them, as was often done in the past, or to dance them, or to print them in iambic pentameter...

“Taken literally, creeds continue to constitute more of a hindrance than a help to Christian faith. They keep people stalled in the obsolete Age of Belief.” --pp. 75,76.