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.

Explainer

Belief

Culture

Leading

Wisdom

7 May 2025

4 min read

Why does the Pope matter today?

The personal, vivid link to the origins of the movement that changed the world.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

An Anglican bishop wearing purple shakes hands with the Pope.

The author meeting the late Pope, 2024.

There is something about the way popes are elected that captures the imagination. Whoever dreamt up the idea of black smoke for ‘no decision’, and white smoke for ‘habemus papam’ – ‘we have a new pope’ - was a genius at marketing. So much better than a press release or a tweet from the Vatican X account.

The conclave was brought to our imagination so vividly by the recent film with Ralph Fiennes. We love the idea of secret debates, intrigue, people locked away from the world until they come to a decision with arcane ancient rituals and an uncertain outcome. Was there ever a film whose release was better timed?

There are also the sheer numbers involved. There are approximately 1.4 billion Catholics in the world today – roughly the same as the population of India and China, the world most populous nations. Yet the identity of the new pope is of matters to the rest of us too. The leader of China of India is of interest especially to people living in China or India, but maybe less so for those of us who don’t. The new pope is the head of churches round the corner from where you live, or of people with whom you work, or, if you are Catholic yourself, your own spiritual leader. This appointment matters.

Yet it’s not just the optics, the drama, the numbers. And it’s not just for Catholics either. I am an Anglican, and since the Reformation of the sixteenth century, we have had in our own 39 Articles the statement: “The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.” That might seem to settle the matter that it’s of no interest to English Protestants. But that would be wrong.

I met Pope Francis once. It was at a gathering of Anglican Archbishops in Rome last year. We all were led through magnificent Vatican corridors into an imposing state room, adorned with fantastic frescoes, where the white-robed Holy Father was brought in on his wheelchair to deliver a brief 20-minute homily to us all.

It was a good talk, thoughtful, well-constructed, but in many ways unremarkable. It didn’t say anything much that I hadn’t heard from other sources. Yet somehow this was different. His words carried a weight, a gravity that went beyond the content of the lecture itself. It was as if, when he entered that room, he carried with him two thousand years of church history.

The line of Bishops of Rome goes back to St Peter, the gruff, unschooled fisherman who Jesus called from his mundane life to become an apostle, and who then on, was so captured by the person of Jesus that he gave his life in the cause. I left that room conscious of the weight of the office of the papacy, even if I don’t recognise him as my direct spiritual father.

Listening to this successor of St Peter felt like you were listening to one of the friends of Jesus – and this was not just the personal quality of the man himself, but something about the office he occupied. It was a personal, vivid link to the origins of the Christian movement, the first stirrings of the revolution.

The papacy is one of those unique things in modern life - an umbilical link to the past.

Of course, there have been some pretty terrible occupants of the papal see, whose personal lives showed scant evidence of any knowledge of, or relationship with Jesus. The sixteenth century Roderigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI) comes to mind, who despite the rule on clerical celibacy, had several children from various mistresses, won the Papacy by bribing cardinals, and made his favourite son bishop of several lucrative sees at the age of eighteen, and a cardinal at nineteen. So, there is nothing automatic about this – which is why the Protestant Reformers denied the idea of any blanket automatic papal authority.

Yet when a person of evident holiness is combined with this notion of the weight of the office, the papacy becomes a gift to all of us, linking us back to the earliest followers of Jesus – even to Jesus himself.

The papacy is one of those unique things in modern life - an umbilical link to the past. Monarchies do something similar – linking us to the past through the long line of kings and queens of England, Denmark, Spain or wherever, yet more often than not, the events they lead us back to, the process by which those families took power, reveal murky politics, bribery and bloody battles.

This is a line in history that links us to the event that, if Tom Holland’s Dominion is to be believed, has had more impact in shaping western culture than any other – the remarkable life, death and resurrection of Jesus – a radical life full of love, self-giving and transformative power – for both individuals and whole civilisations. And for that, whether we are Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or even, perhaps, unbeliever, we might raise a prayer - or a glass - of thanksgiving.