This is a quote by Victor Hugo that my daughter Em lettered for her Uncle Dan.

“We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” 

The above is the first line of the Nicene creed. What is below is a response on the above that I am writing for a course I am taking at Northern Seminary.

Not long ago I read a short devotional by Richard Rohr in which he was lamenting the fact that the Nicene Creed can be read as doctrinal truth without any directive as to our behavior and attitudes. I don’t want to misrepresent what Rohr was writing about, but I felt that at least part of what he was saying was this: the creeds include statements that can be held mentally as beliefs while having no impact on the ways we treat other people. Therefore, though we recite them as the main beliefs we hold to in orthodox Christianity, we can recite them in such a way as to make Christianity a belief system rather than a way of life that looks like Jesus.

I think there is a great deal of validity in what he was saying. As a member of a denomination that recites the Nicene or Apostles creed at our weekly service, I wonder if perhaps we shouldn’t also recite the two greatest commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and Love you neighbor as yourself. This would remind us not only of what we believe but of the actions that those beliefs should lead to—the actions they require.

For instance the first line of the Nicene Creed has implications for our lives. If we believe that the ONE God we believe in is the Father of ALL people, then that greatly affects how we see and interact with other people. It means we are all related, and no matter how different one particular relative (or a group of them) may seem/be from me, they’re still kin! And they’re KIN through a VERY significant relationship!

The creeds are not truly creedal if we don’t plumb the deep depths of them so that they affect our living.

I’ll close with a quote from Gordon Fee. Referring to Paul’s writing about the Triune God, he reminds us that Paul’s “concern is primarily …with the way God’s people live in the world, so that even when he addresses their thinking it is to change the way they are living. May our own Trinitarian discussions never lose sight of this end as well.” (from “Paul and the Trinity: The Experience of Christ and the Spirit for Paul’s Understanding of God” p. 71)

(This is a post written for a course on the Trinity that I am taking at Northern Seminary. It was originally posted on Instagram. If you search the hashtag #trinityclassNS, you can read posts by other students in the class–they’re REALLY good and it’s fun to read the various perspectives on the same topics!)