Seeing the world through different eyes

Can 'dull words' signpost to something beyond? Explore how creeds help imagine life.

Alister McGrath

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

A set of low concrere blocks in the shape of a map's viewpoint symbol sit beside a lake.

'Viewpoint': a sculpture near Needs Hill on the north side of Kielder Water.

Oliver Dixon, via Wikimedia Commons.

Why are the Creeds so dull? To many, they have the intellectual depth and emotional appeal of hastily written shopping lists. Their leaden and impenetrable statements seemed to point to a cold, dead orthodoxy which has nothing to say to a fast-changing world. During my own phase as an atheist, I saw the creeds as top-down authoritarian attempts to trap people within a narrow and restrictive view of the world. I objected to being told what to think; I wanted to find things out for myself.

My outlook on life changed while I was a student at Oxford University in the early 1970s, as I began to appreciate for the first time the intellectual and imaginative appeal of Christianity. The Creeds themselves had nothing to do with this transition, which came about through conversations with intelligent and reflective Christians. This helped me grasp the vision of what lay at the heart of Christianity – something that could not be reduced to words or slogans, but which gave birth to a new way of living and acting. This seemed to be a million miles away from the arcane declarations of the Creeds. But as time passed, I began to see the Creeds in a new way. Let me explain.

The way we imagine the world – whether socially, morally, politically or religiously – needs to be expressed.

Back in the 1980s, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor introduced his idea of “articulation”. Every attempt to live a good life or develop a viable moral system depends on a set of background assumptions which need to be identified and put into words. “Articulation” is about the “bringing to light of that which is unspoken but presupposed”. Taylor’s point is that we need to put into words the grander vision of reality which shapes the way we think and live, despite the obvious inability of words to do justice or fully express this vision. The way we imagine the world – whether socially, morally, politically or religiously – needs to be expressed; yet that very act of expression both diminishes and restricts that vision, precisely because it is a rich imaginative reality that cannot be reduced to words.

It is this vision of faith which engages, inspires and motivates believers, not its verbal articulation in the Creeds.

The Creeds are thus an articulation of the core vision of faith. (The Apostles’ Creed is thought to have emerged gradually within Christian communities, particularly in Rome, apparently in response to the need for brief personal articulations of faith at baptism.) It is this vision of faith which engages, inspires and motivates believers, not its verbal articulation in the Creeds. If this vision is to be effectively expressed in words, it will use the language of poetry, capable of engaging the imagination and emotions. Perhaps this helps us understand why some of the Church’s best-loved theologians were poets (think of John Donne, or George Herbert). We need verbal articulations of faith, yet too easily misunderstand these as defining the essence of faith when they are actually signposts to its core vision.

Thinking of Creeds in this way allows us to see them as expressing frameworks of exploration and discovery. Rather than presenting us with a set of verbal formulae as “givens”, the Creeds point to a rich landscape that we can explore, identifying its landmarks that deserve our attention. They are like guidebooks, telling us what to look out for – and thus countering our natural tendency to limit ourselves to the familiar by pointing out what we have yet to discover.

Yet the Creeds are not themselves the agents of discovery. If the Christian faith can be compared to a landscape, then its best guides are those who live there, having internalized its features and incorporated them into their lives. There is a necessary and proper synergy between the statements of the Creeds and the personal experiences of Christians. The Creeds map the landscape of faith; yet individual Christian believers are best placed to explain and unpack its features, and the difference that this makes to their lives. The primary witnesses to the vitality of faith are thus ordinary Christians, who can connect the landmarks of faith with their personal journeys of discovery and living out their faith.

At times, those personal narratives may express the excitement of a new way of seeing the world; at others, they may concern how faith enables individuals to cope with uncertainty, trauma, loneliness, and death. The Creeds cannot (and do not) make those connections; they can, however, provide a framework for exploring and understanding how faith changes lives and shapes personal worlds, in dialogue with those who have made those discoveries, and can express them in their own words and ways. The Creeds cannot tell anyone what it means – or feels like – to believe in God. Yet they make room for individual believers to tell their stories, amplifying and embodying the terse and otherwise opaque creedal statements.

The Creeds, at first sight, at least, may indeed be dull – but their significance lies in the landscape to which they point. Far from trying to limit us, they are seeking to expand our vision by pointing to a greater reality that lies behind and beneath them.

Article

Christmas culture

Creed

Middle East

Royalty

13 December 2024

6 min read

Magi: where did the wise men come from?

The origin story of the Middle East's ancient king makers.

Mark Gilbert

Mark is a research mathematician who writes on ethics, human identity and the nature of intelligence.

An arts and crafts image of the three kings adoring the new born Christ.

The Adoration of the Magi.

Edward Burne-Jones, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

You’ve probably heard they weren’t really kings, but the wise men or magi had some impressive royal connections. Far from being one-off royal visitors to the infant Jesus, the magi had a long history of involvement with monarchy, crossing paths with illustrious kings including Cyrus the Great of Persia, Alexander the Great and the Roman Emperor Nero.

Originally a tribe of the Medes who lived in Northern Iran 600 years before Jesus’ birth, the Persian magi were hereditary priests. Writing around 425BCE, Greek historian Herodotus tells us how these magi became known throughout the ancient Middle East for their ability to interpret dreams and knowledge of the stars. They were followers of the Zoroastrian religion, and were responsible for the holy fires central to Zoroastrian worship.

To the Greeks, the Zoroastrians and the magi were exotic objects of fascination. Many later Greek written philosophical and occult works claimed Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) as their author. Much like some twentieth century Western conceptions of Hinduism and Buddhism, the Greek and Roman conceptions of Persian religion often had only a passing resemblance to the original. This may have included the "mystery cult" of Mithras that would become popular throughout the Roman Empire in the first century. This also means that references to 'magi' may not refer to the Persian magi, but to other astrologers or dream interpreters who lived to the east of the Mediterranean.

A hundred years before Herodotus, we find the first mention of magi in the bible, in the Book of Daniel. This was the period of Jewish exile and captivity in Babylon. Jehoikim, King of Judea and descendent of Kings David and Solomon, was defeated in battle and killed by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed, and many Judean nobles were taken as prisoners. Daniel was one of these hostages and is taken to the Babylonian court, where God gives him the ability to interpret the king’s dreams. Impressed by his abilities, Nebuchadnezzar puts Daniel in charge over all his wise men. It’s unclear what relationship these Babylonian ‘magi’ had with the Medean ones, but strong Medean influence on the Babylonian court suggests that the Babylonian wise men could well have included Zoroastrian magi.

Daniel remained in the Babylonian court, until the Babylonians were invaded by Cyrus the Great, who allowed the Jews to return from exile and to begin restoring Jerusalem.

Cyrus' Persian Empire lasted for two hundred years, until it was invaded by Alexander the Great and his army in 331BCE. Alexander sought the advice of magi, but had many of them violently killed and extinguished their holy fires when he razed the Persian capital, Persepolis in revenge for the Persian destruction of the Acropolis by Xerxes 150 years earlier. Alexander’s Greek successors were characterised by bloody rivalries and in-fighting and were later overthrown by the Parthian empire, which would become Rome’s most formidable rival to the east. The magi consolidated their king-making reputation during the Parthian period, with a council of magi (the Megistanes) responsible for choosing Parthian kings.

The knowledge they have is broken, it’s a messy blend of wacky occultism, astronomy, maths topped up with an unhealthy obsession with royalty. The knowledge we have is broken too.

By Jesus' day, there were ‘magi’ throughout the Middle East, and it was in this context that Roman historian Pliny the Elder records the journey of Armenian magi to visit Emperor Nero in 66CE. By this time Parthia and Rome were a century into their protracted struggle and had just fought a five-year war over the Armenian succession. Despite suffering a humiliating defeat, Rome saved some face through a very one-sided treaty that had Parthia choose the next Armenian king, but with the Roman Emperor getting to place the crown on his head! Nero turned this to his advantage by having the new King Tridates I come to Rome to receive his crown. Tridates, who was a Zoroastrian priest as well as a king, came with a huge retinue including other magi and thousands of horsemen to receive his crown. The huge procession culminated in the magi king bowing before the emperor and acknowledging him as his god.

The visit of the Armenian magi has clear resonances with the familiar account of magi visiting the infant Jesus found in Matthew’s gospel. Given the many embellishments added to the magi story over the centuries, it's hardly surprising that some have suggested that the magi story was a fabrication and a remixed version of King Tridates’ visit to Emperor Nero. It’s a compelling theory, but I’m not convinced by this. If magi were stock characters in the ancient near east, and were also really interested in monarchs (who were often also treated as gods), then it wouldn’t be that surprising that there’d be more than one royal magi visit with emotionally charged religious overtones. What makes a fabricated magi story less likely to me is what the gospel writer Matthew’s Jewish audience would have thought of the magi. Although the Greeks and Romans were enthusiastic about foreign gods and exotic wisdom, first century Jews were not. To them and to early Christians, the magi would have been charlatans and followers of a false foreign god. A visit from some foreign astrologers would have been an embarrassment rather than the type of story you'd choose to make up.

So, who were the magi in Matthew's gospel? The two dominant theories have been that they were either Persian or else they were a later fiction. More fanciful theories include origins in India, China and even Mongolia. Another perhaps more realistic possibility, convincingly argued by Fr Dwight Longernecker in The Mystery of the Magi is that the magi were from the Arabian kingdom of Nabatea. The Nabateans were known for using irrigation to farm the desert and for controlling the trade routes across the Arabian desert. Two cash crops in which Nabatea dominated trade were frankincense and myrrh. The wealth generated from this lucrative trade was used to build Petra, the world-famous valley city of rock-face monuments. The Nabateans had close connections with Israel and may have been familiar with the prophecies of Daniel and Isaiah. They would also have been interested in the Judean monarchy and would have been natural visitors to the paranoid king Herod. Herod's mother was a Nabatean princess and the Nabatean king Aretas IV needed to shore up favour with Herod so the Nabateans would have had an interest in any new King of the Jews.

Barring some improbable Indiana Jones style archaeological discoveries, we’ll never know for sure who the wise men from the east were. But to me there’s something deeply fascinating about these mysterious visitors to the infant Jesus. Partly they seem to represent higher things – with their wisdom and wealth correctly put in divine service. It can seem as though their excellent learning and astronomical skills have cracked a cosmic puzzle, with the magi following the star and dodging a despot to find the baby at the end of the treasure hunt. This doesn’t hold up - the magi’s knowledge isn’t the object of wonder. The knowledge they have is broken, it’s a messy blend of wacky occultism, astronomy, maths topped up with an unhealthy obsession with royalty. The knowledge we have is broken too. But God uses the foolish things to confound the wise, and inside the crackpot mess of horoscopes and divination, God leaves the magi an invitation. To accept the invitation is to take a risk – to risk the long journey, the wrath of Herod and even to risk being wrong. But as they accept this invitation, they realise its an invitation to meet God Himself.