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

Creed

Redemption

Trauma

5 July 2023

4 min read

The healing power of forgiveness

From Parliamentary Prayer Breakfasts to post-apartheid South Africa and fourth-century desert monks, Julie Canlis explores the benefits of relentlessly pursuing forgiveness.

Julie Canlis

Julie connects Christian spirituality with ordinary life in Wenatchee, Washington State, where she teaches and writes.

Eastern Orthodox icon depict the Prodigal Son displayed on Forgiveness Sunday

Last week, the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast convened with a focus on the power of the F-word in public life. In our cultural moment, we prefer score settling and retribution to what was once a cherished value: Forgiveness. Can the Christian story offer anything to an era which is caught in endless cycles of violence, conflict, injustice, and vengeance?

In our lifetime, we have seen the experiment of what happens when a whole country dedicates itself to forgiveness. In South Africa, overcoming the trauma of apartheid did not mean forgetting but choosing to remember collectively. Evil was named. But could this kind of truth set one free? There were no shortcuts to forgiveness. There was no quick wiping the slate clean that avoided the truth. Instead, perpetrators were faced with real people and stories of what they had done. Victims recounted their trauma, but in a new way that enabled them to stop being the victim of what had happened to them. In South Africa, forgiveness was not religiously sanctioned denial. It offered the victims agency, and release from the cycle of vengeance.

From South Africa, we learned the power in sharing trauma stories. We discovered the importance of looking for underlying causes and ideologies that are contributing factors. But that was not the end. We also watched the power of restorative narratives, testifying to the beautiful fragility and hope of reconciliation. Without forgiveness, no relationship on a personal or national scale can be sustained. What would it look like to begin to create a forgiveness culture amid a culture of hate?

In the fourth century, there were communities of Christians who fled the Roman empire and set up shop in the desert. They gave their life to prayer and forgiveness because they found that despite fleeing from the “sins” of Rome, they could not escape themselves. They were in the desert with a handful of other people, and yet their hearts still contained hatred. They did not have muscle memory oriented toward forgiveness.

For others, hearing that they are forgiven forty times finally cracks through a self-defeating wall.

And so, they relentlessly practiced forgiveness. They practiced it by stopping the incessant outward glance at other peoples’ faults. They asked forgiveness constantly, in a bold attempt to own their own culpability and blindness. And they ritualized this practice in a once-yearly “Forgiveness Sunday” which makes many of us squirm just to think of it. The Sunday before Lent, everyone in the community would extend a word of forgiveness to each person, and beg their forgiveness in turn.

Forgiveness Sunday is still practiced annually in Eastern Christian churches (often Greek or Russian) where you can still wander in on the Sunday before Lent, and work on your F-word muscle memory. In case you find yourself in one of these churches, the script goes something like this:

Person 1: Forgive me, sister.

Person 2: God forgives you. And so do I. Forgive me brother.

Person 1: God forgives you. And I forgive you.

Of course, this exchange can be rote. But for some for whom there has been anything amiss, eyes well up with tears. Perhaps it is the letting go of an exhausting grudge. For others, hearing that they are forgiven forty times finally cracks through a self-defeating wall. And for everyone, it is a commitment to not constantly ruminate on the wrongs of others, reliving incidents to keep the anger going. If done rightly, it allows for the recognition of wrong, while not allowing it to perpetuate itself in you. In essence, it is the cheapest mental health shortcut, available at a church near you.

Back in the fourth century, Forgiveness Sunday arose as a circumstantial necessity because these desert dwellers would retreat even further into the desert for Lent. Call it a detox camp. Call it a therapeutic immersion. Call it a technology fast. Regardless, due to the dangers of the desert (wild animals and a hostile environment), these Christians wanted to receive the forgiveness of their brothers and sisters (and offer it) in case they did not return to the community to celebrate Easter. For us, a modern equivalent might be simply to enter the liturgical time of confession and forgiveness on a regular Sunday. And to lean more deeply into the well-worn phrase to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” Would it be possible to treat these words with a whole new level of personal responsibility and vulnerability?

Forgiveness Sunday is the humble declaration that we are both victims and perpetrators.

Forgiveness, when taken seriously, is a process that takes time. Forgiveness involves great courage, but also the great humble realisation that we could have just as easily done the very act that needed forgiving, under different circumstances. Forgiveness involves neither appeasement nor grovelling. For the church, the ritualised understanding of Forgiveness Sunday is the humble declaration that we are both victims and perpetrators. And that, somehow, Christ accompanies us in the grief of both.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus founded his new order upon forgiveness. Jesus knew that the unforgiving heart is closed to not just giving forgiveness but to receiving it – it is sealed up like a tomb. That those who are least forgiving also live daily with the fiercest critic – themselves. In other sayings, Jesus highlights that forgiveness is not merely an interior disposition, but also one honours the integrity of the process of working through an injury. And finally, Christians believe that Jesus practiced what he preached: he forgave his enemies (and died for them) to secure divine forgiveness for everyone. For his followers, they had no choice but to forgive – and many of them ended up founding communities of forgiveness.