Back to the basics

I often worry about the state of the mainline church, but I do not worry about Christianity. There is something compelling about the Triune God of Christianity that I believe maintains faith in our collective consciousness, even in the midst of broken human institutions. In her book, Quest for the Living God, Elizabeth Johnson compares the arc of Christianity to the seasons, averring that Christianity has had its high seasons of spring and summer, marked by a flourishing faith and a society that prioritized Christianity as a way of life; but Christianity is now in a season of winter with more and more individuals marking “none” on their census cards in response to their religious affiliation (at least in the Northern hemisphere). For Johnson, this wintering is not cause for alarm, but rather a call to get back to the basics—strip away the frivolities and accoutrements that flourished during peak Christian seasons, and as she says, “return to the center, to the inmost core that alone can nourish and warm the heart.”

When I consider what it means to get to the core of Christianity, I think about what it means to know God—this complex, multi-faceted, too big for human language Divine; this God who is, as Richard Rohr writes, “bigger than the boxes we try to build for God.” In the midst of our attempts to comprehend a God who is so confounding that we may want to give up even trying, it is helpful to get back to the basics—the Creeds by which we attempt to define the Triune God. Over the next few weeks, I will be breaking down the Apostles’ Creed and expounding on its basic tenets of each person of the Trinity—Father (Creator), Son (Savior), and Holy Spirit (Advocate)— the stripped-down, wintery dogma of our Trinitarian faith.  

I would be remiss not to note that the Creeds have their fair share of controversy, beginning with their origin as the product of religio-political battles among Western, male leaders in the first five centuries AD. Over the years, however, some of the other tenets have been called into question as modern theologians have applied modern concepts to the Creed. Throughout the weeks I will bring some of these controversies to light as well. I invite you to embark on this journey with me with an open mind, recognizing that faith, even in its most simplistic form, is often wrought with disagreement. It is this difference of opinion that allows us to fully reflect the differing aspects of God, and in the clash of these ideologies arises a fuller understanding of the Divine in our midst. ​