D.H. Williams on the Creed

I enjoy D.H. Williams. His book Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism ought to be required reading for evangelical pastors.

Williams has an article in Christian History regarding the Nicene Creed. It is titled "Do You Know Whom You Worship?" and has the subtitle "Did the Nicene Creed distort the pure gospel, or did it embody and protect it?"

Given the fascination with spurious writings like the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas as well as the worldwide phenomena of "The Da Vinci Code", this is a timely article. The accusation is leveled these days that the church which defined the creed and the Canon was already relatively corrupt, owing to the marriage of Roman imperial power with a hierarchical structure. In a way, some Protestants have made the very case Dan Brown attempts to make with his book.

"At the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, some Protestant historians regarded the Council of Nicaea and its creed with the same suspicion as they did the church of Rome. The esteemed German scholar Eduard Schwarz, for example, depicted the conflicts between pro-Nicene and "Arian" opponents as in reality a struggle for power within the church which was disguised as a theological dispute. The council's decisions represented a victory for those who wielded the most influence over the emperor. This meant too that the creed was an unfortunate capitulation of the church to imperial politics and an emblem of the new merger between the Roman empire and Christianity. "



Hence, in many independent Protestant denominations, the rule "no creed but Christ" came to be the rallying cry. Says Williams:

"To this day, some churches and denominations see creeds, ancient or modern, as little more than legislated statements of power used for manipulating the faithful. Such a view is often built on the assumption that the church by the time of Nicaea had compromised its original biblical standards, replacing principles of Scripture with the authoritarianism of a new imperial and episcopal establishment. "

To be sure, the Protestant rallying cry of "Sola Scriptura" springs from noble motives, to adhere as closely as possible to the teaching of the apostles and to avoid later corruptions. Still most Evangelicals in the pew are completely unaware that the Council of Nicea established for once and for all the very Canon of New Testament scripture some use to cast aspersions on the council itself.

Yet without the Creed, which has become an interpretive grid for understanding Scripture, the Bible had become the central point of contention, rather than the mediating standard. It was disagreements about the meaning of scripture that made the creed a necessity.

"...one of the lessons learned during the "Arian controversy" was that in order to achieve doctrinal orthodoxy you cannot interpret the Bible from the Bible alone. The church needed a vocabulary and a conceptual framework that stemmed from the Bible but were also outside of the Bible. Sooner or later, some means of interpreting the scriptural text would be required." That means of interpretation would lead to and include the creed, drawn from both scripture and a long understanding based in older creeds and baptismal formulas.

It is no small point that the bane of Evangelical Protestantism has been endless disagreements about the meaning of various portions of scripture by those who most strongly insist to be guided by scripture alone. Such disagreements manifest themselves not only on small matters, but in some groups old heresies about the Trinity have been revived. Conversely it is the travesty of the mainline that so many recite the creed mindlessly while believing nothing of what it affirms. To begin to end the marginalization of Christianity in the post-modern world, Christians need to find a way to reaffirm this central definition of Whom it is we worship, as a true Confession of genuine faith, to speak again with a singular voice. Because who God is - is the foundational question on which every other question depends.