One man's opinion is another man's faith. JD
In a message dated 12/30/2004 1:17:30 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Somebody wrote me privately, expressing being mystified from my not finding
the creeds of Christendom, such as the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed,
to be too important. I guess my willingness to deviate from these creeds
might be somewhat surprising to some. I am choosing to address this subject
in this forum because it relates to truth and our communication to one
another regarding truth and the standards of authority we use for
determining what is true and what is not.
I consider creeds of any kind to be immature stepping stones on the path to
truth. They most likely will fail at some point when knowledge is increased
and greater understanding exists. Therefore, I do not hold creeds such as
the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed to be authoritative. Rather, they
are an effort to establish a truth that is really not yet apprehended by
all. The truth being established might be known to some but hidden from
others. Nevertheless, creeds often represent a compromise between conflict;
therefore, they ought not be trusted as standards of truth. They are, at
best, a picture into the consensus of a group of people at one particular
moment in time. For the most part, I consider a creed the same way I do a
working hypothesis or theory in the realm of science. It is a tentative
conclusion that is subject to change.
We do not establish creeds for things that we know with certainty to be
true. Who has ever heard of a creed that establishes that 2+2=4 or that a
triangle has three sides, the hypotenuse of which equals the sum of the
squares of the two remaining sides? We don't mindlessly quote creeds every
week that says, what goes up must come down due to the force of gravity, or
that the sky is blue, or that the earth rotates around the sun, etc. In
other words, truth that is known to be true never has any need for a creed
in order to establish them. From this observation, we must conclude that
creeds are an immature way of forcing the realization of an idea upon
others.
Basically, I hold Scripture and reasoning to be something that trumps
creeds. If Scripture and reasoning goes against a creed, I will consider
that to be a higher authority than the creed. The creed only holds
historical value of what people believed at the time, or of what people who
continue to embrace the creed believe. But the creed really has no
authority for me in regards to what is true. This does not mean that it
carries no weight at all. The weight it carries, however, is primarily that
it is the witness of truth given by a large group of people. That large
group of people, however, might be wrong. It is very possible that their
lack of knowledge and understanding is what caused them to embrace the creed
in the first place. One thing I am certain of, and that is that when
someone truly apprehends and knows a particular truth, he has no need for
any creed to declare it. At best, creeds give security to the insecure, and
that insecurity is the result of lack of knowledge and understanding.
Therefore, creeds are immature philosophical steps on the path to truth.
They do not represent the actual apprehension of truth, but only the hopeful
expectation of what might be found once that truth is fully apprehended. We
should not fear deviating from creeds.
David Miller.
