Our Okie-Dokie Assent to Matters Too Wonderful to Understand

In this our final part in this series on the Nicene Creed, we will take a glance at the last couple of sentences concluding, not only the Creed but also, this third article of the Creed on the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit among us and in the world. The original Greek words are, I believe, much richer in meaning than the somewhat insufficient phrases used in the concluding sentences of our most common English translations of the Creed.

First, the phrase where we “acknowledge one baptism” is fraught with a word which may imply things which are not likely to have been in the minds of the original composers of the Creed. The word “one” does not appear in reference to baptism - though some may want to claim that it is, nonetheless, “implied.” However, the Creed is most definitely not claiming that there is “one” baptism different from, over and/or above other possible baptisms. The Creed is not interested in comparable analyses of baptismal practices. Instead, it strives to speak about how our practice of baptism, like everything else in the Creed, gives voice to the God-given unity we share not only with God but with one another. Baptism doesn’t create that oneness. Instead, it points to it as a reality which God has already gifted us with. (A fuller consideration of the significance and meaning of baptism is a worthy one which is best undertaken beyond a study of the Creed.)

The phrase which is translated as “we acknowledge one” is taken from a single compound word in Greek - “homologoumen”. That is a word with very rich connotations. The prefix “homo” means “same” as in homogenous or homosexual. The root of the word is where it gets interesting. “Logos” - which ends up as a suffix in many words used to describe various academic departments like sociology, biology, physiology, etc., means basically “word”. In scripture, “Logos” often gives voice to the creative activity and presence of God among us and in the world. While the thought of the pervasive presence of God’s creative word runs like a thread through all of Jewish and Christian scripture, it finds deep resonance in the first chapter of John’s Gospel. There the Word (the Logos) is identified as having been at the beginning of all things, it is equated as being with God in such a way so as to be God, and it has somehow, subsequently and mysteriously, become human flesh in Jesus. In the Creed we are assenting that our God-given unity, as sacramentally symbolized in baptism, is the result of the same creative word of God which has always been present and is at work in the world.

Baptism, as voiced by the creed, echoing the baptismal theology of scripture, substantially propels us toward forgiveness which cannot help but unite us. (Yes, the biblical themes of baptism also revolve around community and identity but without the creative spiritual presence and activity of forgiveness, the nature of Christian community and identity are seriously compromised).

The “forgiveness of sin”, like our consideration of “homologoumen” above, has richer and deeper associations than we commonly give it. In Greek, forgiveness of sin is “aphesin amartion” which may not initially mean anything but transliterating such words into English should bring to the fore some connotations worthy of our contemplation.

First, “aphesin”, as understood by the early Church, was not all that different from a medical condition we identify today called aphasia. Aphasia is the diagnosis for a person’s inability to speak when the capacity to speak are not in any way physically incapacitated. There may be other reasons identified for inhibiting their speech but the speaking mechanisms are all in proper working order. Forgiveness, understood as an activity of God and one which we are to emulate, is equated with not giving voice to that which one is perfectly capable of expressing. God, before whom “all hearts are open, all desires are known, and from whom no secrets are hid”, could easily rant on about all our “sin”, all our failings. However, in identifying the Word of God with the active presence of God bringing new creation out of the chaotic void, of bringing creation out of nothingness, life out of death, etc., it should come as no surprise that God’s atoning silence speaks with a greater creativity than a destructive word of condemnation. We might even see it in terms of the old adage most of us probably heard growing up that admonished us: “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything”.

The Greek word for sin is “amartion” and, like “aphesin” above, it too transliterates into English in a way which should broaden our understanding of “sin”. First, “amartion” is a legal term derived from the language of the courts. The prefix “a” negates the meaning of the word which follows. The root of the word is “mart” from which we derive the English word martyr. However, we run the risk here of too quickly assuming that martyrs are those who willingly give up their life for matters of personal conscience. Such conclusions, understandably, derive from what happened to martyrs and not what they were. The meaning of the word evolved from what it originally meant. In ancient times, martyrs were actually those who bore witness or testimony at legal proceedings. Early Christian martyrs were simply those who bore testimony in the courts. The fact that some of them suffered execution because of the witness they bore did not make them martyrs. Instead, it was their testimony which incriminated them and, at times, resulted in their death. Thus, “a-martion” speaks to the unwillingness of somebody to bear witness for their own behalf or for the sake of another. The scriptures again and again highlight the importance of the call we all share in being witnesses. Isaiah, wrestling with the sometimes rather exclusive nature of the “elect” of God feel as God’s people, has God address them by claiming that it is “too light of a thing for you to be my people for your own sake, instead I call you to be a light to the nations”. Jesus, echoing Isaiah, claims that all of us must “let our light shine” so that everybody in the household of humanity can see that we are commissioned by God to be a “light to the world”. Simply put, this is witnessing to who we are because of who we have been created to be. Anything less is “a-martion”, sin.

However, and herein lies a certain hinge in the doors of the heavenly courts, while God could easily point out how we fail to bear witness, the Creed sees God as One who does not exercise that word, choosing instead to forgive. Paul, in that definitive letter he wrote to the Church at Rome, speaks boldly to this theological understanding of God. He claims there that we all fall short, we are all in the same boat sinking together. “Who can possibly save us from this predicament?” Paul asks. “Thanks be to God”, Paul concludes, “for God in Christ acts in love to save us all, every last one of us, together”. There in a nutshell is a vision of the unity the composers of the Creed ensured would be embedded in the words of the trust of Nicaea. There is also a pre-Advent collect in our liturgical tradition which claims that while we may well be a people united by our enslavement to sin which paradoxically divides us one from another - a powerful metaphor in perceiving us as shackled together by what divides us, God is graciously active in ways which free us from such divisive unions that we might be genuinely together.

[A brief aside: It is interesting to note that among the various ideologies which our early Christian forbears deemed heretical - as opinions and attitudes which tended to foster division within the Church with exclusive claims of who’s in and who’s out - was one which wanted very much to declare that those, who out of a genuine fear for their own lives, refused to bear witness to Christ in the courts when they had been arrested for the crime of being a Christian. These folk, such idealogues claimed, should be excommunicated and condemned to eternal condemnation. In the spirit of the Creed such opinions and attitudes were rejected in favor of seeing God as One, who for the sake of the unity of us all, will not give voice to how any of us fall short.]

The Creed concludes with references to our looking toward “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”. The Greek word translated here as “we look for” might by us be humorously rendered as the Greek root of the word is “dok”. While hardly intended as such, that Greek word does eventually translate into both the Latin and English as part of the lighthearted phrase of “okie dokie”. It is perhaps not far off the mark to suggest that one of the best attitudes we can adopt in exercising our trust of this unity we all share in God is to approach it with a light-hearted reply of “okie dokie! Have it your way, God!” Having already addressed the derivative meaning of the word resurrection when we considered the mention of Jesus’ resurrection, here the Creed gives voice to the resurrection of the dead. Of course, like it or not, as nobody gets out of this life alive, our trust in the resurrection of the dead equally assures nobody gets out of death dead. There is in the Creed no mention that some of the dead are raised and others are not. It should also be noted that there is no mention that some of the dead are raised to a life of bliss and others to a life of perdition. Hell, as popularly imagined in most Christian circles, is arguably more the product of other ancient religions and philosophies than anything the scriptures claim. Hell is not a tenet of Creedal or biblical Christianity (but that’s another story for another time). In its claim that all the dead are raised, the Creed is asserting that even death can not prevent the desired union of us all in God.

By now it should come as no surprise that I will claim that the English rendering of “the life of the world to come” is not quite as deep and as rich as the words and concepts it attempts to translate. Common English translations of scripture, like those of the Creed, equally fall short in their use of phrases about “eternal life” or “everlasting life” which too easily lead us to think they are referring merely to life after death. However, the Greek words in the Creed, as well as in scripture, which get translated in such terms are “zoe aeon”. “Zoe”, which gives us English words like zoology or zoo, means life, but not biological life for that would then be the Greek word “bios”. Instead, “zoe” might be better understood as reflecting the wide spectrum of all life forms in all its spectacular diversity - animate or inanimate. And “aeon”? The best way to translate that is “the aeons” or “the ages”. The “Ages” is pluralized so as not to give any greater significance to any particular age, either our own, previous ones or some anticipated age off in the distant future. The Life of the Ages is, instead, the life force pulsing in the midst of every age, every moment. We already enjoy it. We look forward to more of it in whatever form, by God’s grace, it will take. We trust that this life force is God giving us birth into our own age or resurrecting us in an age to come where, in what ways it may be familiar, like our own age, it may come with some greater embrace of God and one another.

The Creed acknowledges, again and again, the trust we hold in God’s unifying power, the God who is bringing us all into the very heart by which all things have come to be and to which all things are moving.

“We entrust ourselves (in)to the One God…”