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Creeds and Scripture

Wednesday, June 06, 2007. 0 Comments:

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Lately I have been reflecting on the relationship between the creeds and the Bible. The scriptures seem so Jewish; the creeds so Greek. Before anyone says anything about this gross simplification which is, almost certainly, the introduction of a false dichotomy, please bear with me. N.T. Wright, for example, has dedicated his academic career to studying Jesus in his historical (and therefore Jewish) context. Tom Wright never speaks of Jesus in creed language (ie. homoousion), he does indeed prefer to speak of Jesus as YHWH's agent who fulfilled Israel's purpose. Yet, Wright also declares that he still says the creeds whole heartedly. I have sometimes wondered how he does this. Rather than now presenting the solution to my earlier and larger question, I will simply share with you Wright's answer to how he gets from early Christianity to the creeds.


"(a) creeds are portable stories (as the form of the Creeds itself indicates) which summarize the narratives in the gospels in particular and highlight elements of them which Christians need to be clear on; (b) the early Christian justification for trinity and incarnation was not 'this was what Jesus said' but 'God raised him from the dead and thereby demonstrated that Israel's purposes had been fulfilled in him, i.e. that he was the Messiah; but Israel's purposes were to rid the world of sin; but that was something only God himself can do; therefore within his messianic son-of-god consciousness we are right to see a deeper meaning, itself interpreted within the Jewish world of God-talk; therefore we can and must not only worship Jesus within our Jewish monotheism but also speak of him in this bewildering new way'..."

I have some thoughts on the larger questions but that is for another night; their development is too early and the night is too late.

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