Does a creed create a truth?

Declaring truth is an unmodern act.

Alex Irving

Alex lectures in theology at St Mellitus College.

A typewriter holds a piece or paper reading 'truth'

Markus Winkler on Unsplash.

2025 marks the 1700th anniversary of ratification of a statement, a form of which the Church continues to say to this day. Around the world, Christian community's are responding to this landmark by thinking again about the content of that statement and also about its form: a creed.

The Church is not a source of truth. The Church might confess that which is true, but truth is not its possession to do with as it pleases. Arising from Jesus’ comments in John 14.6 the Christian tradition has thought of truth in an inflected way. If truth is primarily caught up with the person of Jesus Christ, then truth is something more fundamental than the Church. The Church has its ground in the truth rather than the truth having its ground in the Church.

A creed is an expression of belief that this is the state of affairs. More than that, it is a statement of the commitment of oneself of this state of affairs. To say a creed is an existential act, a decision, for this. It is a decision for that which we did not create and over which we have no control. Beyond even that, it is a decision which we did not even make! It was a decision made by Christians before us who determined this and not that.

It is hard to think of an act that is less compliant with a ‘modern’ human spirit. If Immanuel Kant was right that enlightenment is humanity’s ‘emergence from his [sic] self-incurred immaturity’, with this immaturity defined as ‘the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another’, then the practice of confessing a truth we have not personally determined is analogous to never quite advancing beyond a dummy and pram.

Closer to home, the creeds speak in manner that won’t always align with our experience. There is a truth that is more fundamental even than what I induce to be true based on the particular thrownness of my being. On a mode of cultural analysis that is particularly attentive to power, this could be seen as hegemonic. The creeds are tools of establishing a common apprehension across tribes and tongues. A common adherence to truth that is basic (as in non-derivative) and universal irrespective of the particularity of experience.

Beyond that, the claims that the creeds make may not be seen to be true. Experience may, in fact, trend in a different direction. The world with all its problems and pains may not appear to be the creation of an almighty and benevolent Lord. The Spirit who is Lord and giver or life may not appear to be breathing new vitality of the age to come into the present. The Church may not always appear to be one and holy.

Why then, creeds?

That what we have and know is that which we have received is baked in to the very nature of the Christian claim to know something about God rather than nothing.

At that time Jesus said,

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

To know God is not something grounded in ourselves. God the Son has become a human and known the Father as one of us and for all of us. It is on the strength of his confession of God as Father that we confess God as Father.

The continuous and repeated practice of reciting the creed reminds us that the possibility of speaking about God and the work of God is not a human possibility. It is a possibility for us based on the given event of God’s speech to us. We attend to that which is given. It is an act of faith through which we return again and again to the Word of God as the Church has received it.

To find out more about the McDonald Agape Nicaea Project being held by St. Mellitus College in London, come and join the public lectures, or look out for other Nicene celebrations in 2025.

Participants will hear from some of the world’s leading scholars on various issues related to Nicaea, including Professor Khaled Anatolios, Dr. Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Professor Ilaria Ramelli, Professor Bruce McCormack, Dr. Willie James Jennings, and many more.

A significant part of the Nicaea conference in 2025 will be a call for papers, expanding dialogue on the topic and hearing from a wide array of voices.

For more information or to register for these events, you can visit the Nicaea Project website

The Nicaea Project.

Snippet

Creed

Fun & play

Music

12 August 2025

2 min read

The nuns leaning into the serious business of fun

The beats breaking down barriers

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

Sister Marizele and Sister Marisa.

Summer is for letting your hair down and water pistols. But in an age where we're super-soaked with content online, how did a couple of nuns in Brazil emerge through the saturation? As Sister Marizele sang and beatboxed, Sister Marisa danced on a Brazilian Catholic television show. They've now recorded their song, 'Vocation'.

Even though their online content was more about vocation than vacation, it's attracted huge numbers. “Why did something so simple and spontaneous take on such a huge scale?” asked Sister Marizele, “Because the Holy Spirit wants to touch people’s hearts.” “But besides the Holy Spirit,” she told the New York Times, “there’s also the algorithm.”

The algorithm's clearly helped. One of the nuns' colleagues came back from vacation to keep the content going online. Instead of only a handful of prospective nuns per year, they had over 50 women get in touch in a matter of days to ask about embarking on the life of a nun ahead. The nuns believe that God wants to draw young people to church in a country where church attendance has dropped off a cliff. Perhaps they should seek advice from Whoopi Goldberg, who has given them her blessing as a 'real-life ‘Sister Act’.

They aren't the only ones. Father David Michael is an American Catholic priest on Instagram (sometimes breakdancing) with 1.2 million followers who combines an uncompromising message with a sophisticated understanding of the need to hook people in the first three seconds of a video. This all doesn't paint the the staid picture of the church we expect. The iconoclastic act of beatboxing on TV isn't just breaking down beats, but the image of religion as being fun-averse.

Perhaps there's more to fun than meets the eye. We might misconceive fun as shallow, frivolous and lacking in depth. But you can be both a nun, and fun. Maybe it's not just a case of unexpected possibility, but actually intrinsic to those with vocations in faith.

Yesterday I returned from a crematorium in the front passenger seat of the empty hearse. The driver, along with hilarious stories of funerals gone wrong, also told me about losing his own child ten years ago. 'They say time's a great healer. But it isn't. You don't get over it. You learn to cope with not getting over it.' Those who have suffered and still carry unimaginable pain can know what it is to laugh.

It's a similar depth of fun from the nuns that can speak into pain. Far from a gimmick, their skills haven't just been breaking down beats, but barriers. According to Sister Marizele, they've been "an instrument to become closer and break down barriers" with young women at drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres, where they otherwise had little to connect over.

It might seem an odd segue, but it's striking that Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding party. The sheer abundance of the wine signifies the abundance of what's possible when nuns lean into fun: restoration and community for addicts, purpose for people considering their calling, and – simply – joy. Joy for countless millions around the world watching on. Joy, as CS Lewis said, is the serious business of heaven.