Explainer
Belief
Creed
4 min read

Beyond cold certainties

The Creeds set out a vision of reality – a vision that cannot be proved to be true, but which was found to be true by a community of people.

Alister McGrath retired as Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University in 2022.

A red shutter door bears a large painted message reading 'io ci credo'
'I believe it.'
Paolo Gregotti on Unsplash.

“I believe.” For many, the opening words of the Christian Creeds are self-defeating. Why read any further, when all they offer is opinions, rather than certainties? Faith is just a lower form of knowledge – a kind of hesitant half-truth, which seems out of place in today’s more sophisticated world, informed by science and philosophy rather than outdated worldviews inherited from a credulous past. 

It’s a fair point. We cannot believe anything we like; there has to be reason to believe it, evidence in its support. For those wedded to a hard rationalism, we can only believe what can be proved to be true. Yet the problem is that the secure truths of logic and mathematics are existentially inadequate. We seem unable to escape the lure of “ultimate questions”, to use Karl Popper’s term for truths about meaning and value in life that frustratingly lie beyond the scope of science to confirm. 

We can prove shallow truths. Yet the truths that really matter to us seem to lie beyond rational confirmation.

When it comes to the really important things in life, we are confronted with a rationalist dilemma. We can prove shallow truths. Yet the truths that really matter to us seem to lie beyond rational confirmation, often leading us into vicious argumentative circles rather than offering clear and persuasive proof. Bertrand Russell made this point in his famous defence of philosophy: “To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.” 

Albert Einstein was fond of using mental experiments to open up some fundamental scientific questions, finding that they combined imaginative reflection with rational analysis. Here is a useful mental experiment. Suppose we limit ourselves to a mental and imaginative world in which we only accept what can be proved to be true. What sort of world would that be? It would, obviously, be a world from which Christianity was absent. Yet, perhaps less obviously, it would be a world from which all beliefs – moral, political, social and religious – are excluded. It would be a world without moral values, which remain obstinately resistant to rational or scientific verification. My suggestion is that this mental experiment indicates that this world would be existentially, morally and personally uninhabitable. 

The human quest for wisdom, goodness and meaning takes us beyond the cold certainties of logic.

The opening words of the Creeds need to be seen in this context. The human quest for wisdom, goodness and meaning takes us beyond the cold certainties of logic into a world in which we believe or trust certain things to be true, life-changing and live-giving – but cannot prove them to be true. The Latin word credo – traditionally translated into English as “I believe” – is better rendered as “I trust,” invoking the world of relationships rather than mere beliefs. 

The Creeds set out a vision of reality – a vision that cannot be proved to be true, but which was found to be true by a community of people, who have passed down in the Creeds their collective witness to what they discovered. As C. S. Lewis remarked, “the one really adequate instrument for learning about God is the Christian community.” This vision is affirmed to be trustworthy – not merely something that is transformative and liberating, but something that can be lived, not merely thought.  

Getting the bigger picture 

Faith is thus not a half-hearted hope that there might be a God. For Christians, it is a broad recognition that we live in a world in which certainty is not possible, save in closed mental domains that have little relevance to the serious business of living well and authentically. It is about “getting” what things are all about in an epiphanic moment of putting everything together and seeing a bigger picture within which we realize we belong and can flourish. There are other big pictures, of course – but all of them lie beyond proof. In choosing any of these, we are making an informed judgement that goes beyond the available evidence. We may believe (and have good reasons to believe) that it is the best big picture; yet we cannot show that it is true. What we do know, however, is that others have grasped this vision in the past, and transmitted this way of thinking and living to us. 

‘Decentring’ 

The Creeds are thus not a demand to believe, but a description of what has been found, an affirmation of its capacity to satisfy and sustain, and an invitation to explore, discover and inhabit this new world. The Creeds provoke us into looking beyond the world of familiar banalities, and being prepared to be receptive to strange truths, which others have found to be life-changing. The vision of reality that we find articulated in the Creeds might be described as “decentring” – a term used by Iris Murdoch to describe the process of breaking free from our worrying obsession to make everything focus on us. As Plato suggested in his famous analogy of the Cave, there is a greater world that lies beyond us which, once grasped, makes us see things in a very different way. For Christians, faith is about the discernment of this vision of reality, and deciding to act as if it were true, in the firm belief that it can be trusted – and living meaningfully and authentically as a result. 

Article
Creed
Death & life
Football
Trauma
5 min read

The derby, the downpour, and the death of a hero

At Anfield, grief and glory collide
A mural on a side of a pub shows a footballer making a heart sign.
Diogo Jota commemorated, near Anfield.
Liverpool FC.

My wife and I went to our first game of the season recently: Liverpool v Everton, in the pouring rain. The stuff of dreams.  

It’s a bit of a walk from the train station to Anfield and the whole way, I’d been so excited to get that first glimpse of the stadium, the fans, the atmosphere, the buzz. We turn a corner and suddenly you can see Anfield looming large between rows of houses. One more street and then we’re there and … flowers on the floor. Tributes to Diogo Jota. 

Oh yeah. Diogo Jota’s dead. 

We get a pie, a programme for Jo’s Mum and Dad (who lets us use their season tickets; thanks Jeff and Janet), find our seats. Kick off. Flags wave from the Kop as they normally do and … there’s one of Diogo Jota. 

Oh yeah. Diogo Jota’s dead. 

10 minutes in and Ryan Gravenberch scores a beautiful goal to make it 1-0 and Anfield is roaring. Then 20 minutes hits and everyone stands up to sing Diogo Jota’s song (“Oh, he wears the number 20 …”). 

Oh yeah. Diogo Jota’s dead. 

I hadn’t forgotten that Diogo Jota had died, but being at Anfield made me remember that Diogo Jota had died. 

Being at Anfield – seeing the flowers and the flags, singing his song – all of it hit me and my wife unusually hard. With each new reminder of Jota’s death, I was taken back to the moment a mate messaged me to ask if I’d seen the news of his car crash. There I was again, no longer at Anfield watching the footy, but stood in my house, staring at my phone in disbelief.  

For the last year or so, St. Mellitus College (where I’m lucky enough to teach) has been hosting a series of public events to celebrate 1700 years since the Council of Nicaea. The events have been fantastic and, one of the perks of the job is that I’ve had loads of chances to learn from some of the best theologians alive at these events.  

In March 2025, Professor Trevor Hart was giving one of the public lectures for this project. The next day, I and the rest of the staff team had a chance to speak with the professor about his paper. One of the things that struck me in the conversation was what he said about trauma. 

One of the key characteristics of trauma, he said, is that it interrupts our sense of time. I’m going about my day and – all of a sudden – something triggers my trauma response and the past (that thing or event that causes my trauma) is made very present again. I see it and feel it as if it I’m living it for the first time again; it is re-present-ed to me.  

And this is exactly what happened to me, 20 minutes into the Merseyside Derby.  

Look, I’m not saying I have PTSD about Jota’s death or anything like that. I didn’t know Jota; frankly he’s not mine to grieve and I don’t want to co-opt the loss that Jota’s friends and family will be feeling.  

But, our first trip to Anfield since Jota’s death gave us something of a taste of how trauma re-present-s itself. The past became all too present as I stood there, thinking about the moment I heard of Jota’s death.  

But, for a Christian theologian (like Hart), this aspect of trauma is very significant. Because this is exactly what happens in the sacraments.  

The sacraments are bits of Church life in which Jesus Christ is really and especially present. Different Churches will disagree on exactly which events or rituals constitute the sacraments but most would say that baptism and Holy Communion definitely do. 

Let’s take Holy Communion (sometimes called the Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper) as an example. Again, this will look different in different Churches, but in holy communion bread and wine is blessed and said to become Jesus’ body and blood. And here we see the rupture of past and present. The body and blood of Christ, broken and shed on the cross before being raised again, is re-present-ed here for me, now. It is made really present (both in the physical and temporal sense of that word).  

Time and space collapse in on themselves as Jesus Christ – who created time and space in the first place and so can do what He wants with them, thank you very much – bends them to His will just to be present here, and now, with me. 

I wonder whether something similar happens in trauma, too? If trauma, too, might function as a sacrament, of sorts? If the moment of the past rupturing the present when trauma responses are triggered is precisely where Jesus Christ seeks to meet and really be present with those people? 

It certainly felt like it in the roaring, red cathedral of Anfield Road. The moments of remembering Jota’s life and having his death re-present-ed to us felt genuinely … sacred.  

And look, it was the Merseyside Derby, our first in-person game of the season; I was obviously excited, so maybe I was just primed to be emotional when these memories of Jota appeared. Maybe. Who knows? But it would be entirely in keeping with what the Church knows of God’s character that he meets with us precisely at those points where time and space begin to fall apart: in the sacraments, and in trauma. 

There will be flowers and banners and songs for Jota for some time yet. Whenever we drive from our house into Liverpool city centre, we drive by a huge mural of Jota that’s been painted onto the side of a pub.  

It won’t be possible to forget Jota, and there will be lots of prompts to remember him. And in those moments of remembering, time and space may well continue to collapse in on itself. I may find myself once again in my house, staring aghast my phone. And I may well find that Jesus Christ is there with me too. 

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