The Givenness of Unity in Creation
In this article, rather than just gauging the temperature of the water by dipping our toes into what amounts to the history behind Nicaea, we will dive head long into the words of the Creed itself.
By way of summary, it bears repeating that the Nicene Creed did not come to its full form, as we are familiar with it, until its words had been debated for another hundred and twenty-five years, through three additional ecumenical councils, and reaching its fruition at a council in Chalcedon in 451 C.E. Why, we might ask, was the original composition not sufficient? Simply put, it did not effectively address the various heretical beliefs which continued to threaten the common understanding adopted at and finding expression in the opening line of what was - and remains - the opening line of the Creed. In brief. that opening line expands into the first article of the Creed wherein: One God, the sole creator of all that is, can be trusted to hold all as one including the Church. Living into that united trust, we, the Church, subsequently establish the foundation of our being, vision, and activity in the world.
So, into the deeper waters of the Creed itself…
In the first article of the Creed, God is depicted as:
“the Father Almighty, make of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen…”
What might this be getting at? And. perhaps more importantly, why the need to make these claims?
First, worthy of note and consideration, there are no definitive articles in the Greek reference to who God is. As such, the Creed expresses a familiar rather than a formal identification with God as “Father” here. God is not THE Father but “Father”, less a title than a term of endearment. In some ways it is reminiscent of Jesus’ teaching on how we might approach God in prayer. God, Jesus suggests, can be addressed as “Abba”, which is essentially among the first words an Aramaic-speaking child (most likely the language of Jesus himself) would utter in life. In terms of English-speaking children, think “dada” or “mama” or “papa” or “gamma” etc. Intimacy with God is, here in the Creed, claimed to be a given.
However, there were, and sadly still are, people in the churches, who want to qualify this. “Yes, but”, we might hear them claim, “God cannot and certainly will not be intimately associated with the corruption of the world and particularly with corrupt people”. The general thought expressed here is that God is only accessible to those few who have put in the right effort or done the right things or made the right claims to get beyond the corruption, however those various things may get defined by these various schools of thought. Now, wherein we might hear the possibility of union within these sentiments, it is not a given and, therefore, there is not only the possibility of division, there is also, almost without exception, an insistence upon division. The faith of Nicaea, the trust embraced at Nicaea, claims unity is a gift from God and therefore the building block upon which we already share a God-given unity. We build on that or on nothing at all.
[An uncertain aside: I must claim that there is an element in this part of the Creed which I frankly can not address with any real confidence and I am not really sure what to make of it. The fact that I have not found anyone else who has called attention to this, much less expounded on it, may mean that I have not done enough research - though it seems very odd to me that the nature of this particular passage hasn’t generated extensive response and inquiry. So, here is the dilemma: the original Greek words for both “Father” and “Almighty” are written, when they need not be, in the feminine.
The Greek word for “father” in Greek is pater (think paternal, paternity, patriarchal, etc.). However, an “a” has been added as a suffix feminizing it. To claim this as odd in this context, seems to me, to be an understatement. While I am not an expert in Greek, I am fairly adept. My research revealed that it is not unique to feminize this otherwise masculine noun. However, its usage seems to have been restricted to what might be claimed to be a hierarchy of relations. For instance, one might speak of the “Queen’s father” as “patera” as she was more responsible for his identity as such than him conferring her queenship. Now, while that might not seem to clarify much, it does open up an avenue for making a different connection between the two feminine words in question here.
The other feminine word, often translated as “Almighty” - again, another odd word to feminize - is, in Greek, “pantokratora”. Maybe, instead of understanding Father/pantera as the ruling word in this turn of a phrase, we should consider if “Almighty”/pantokratora might be what gives meaning to the other. Maybe the feminized “pantokratora” accentuates something predominantly feminine about this “pantera” of ours.
So, my Greek scholars - and I do believe that we are all, to one degree or another, Greek scholars without realizing it - what can we surmise about this Greek word “pantokratora”? First, the prefix “panto” means “all” as in Pan-American or even pantomime. The root of the word “krat” gives us words like democrat or autocrat or bureaucrat. Now we might understand these words as descriptive of how we exercise power but the Greek word krat actually depicts a bowl, something which is capable of holding things. The English word “crater”, descriptive of the bowl-like resemblance to a hole in the ground, is taken directly from the Greek word “krat.” Following this line of thought, the meaning of our previously mentioned terms gets clarified. A democrat is one who holds the people, an autocrat only holds onto self, and a bureaucrat holds to business. A pantokratora, the term in the Creed, would be one who holds all with a feminine sensibility. I’m not sure that “Almighty” is here the best of words to adequately translate the meaning or intent of those who chose it for whatever reason that they did. Perhaps Patera Pantokratora would be best understood as a father with a rather feminine-like capacity to hold all. There is no doubt a doctorate waiting for the person who takes this up in the world of academia - mention me in the notes.]
Continuing with the Nicene words, this God who holds all is the “maker of heaven and earth”. The Greek word translated as “maker” or “creator” is also associated with poetry, poems, and poets. I offer that just to instill deeper appreciation and wonder for what is being claimed here. Though common translations speak of God being the creator of “heaven and earth”, these words are perhaps better translated as all that is above and all that is below. This accentuates, yet again, the union with God which all things enjoy simply because God is who God is. The choice of imagery here intentionally bridges the gap that others would have us believe exists between our natural state and God on high and, I would add, between any imagined heaven and hell as popularly conceived or championed. The Creator God is not removed from the seemingly chaotic corruption of the world but is rather elbow-deep in it. It is further interesting to note that the Greek words for “heaven and earth” are Ouranos and Gaia. These are words taken directly from the Greek panoply of gods and goddesses. Ouranos was the god of all that is above; and Gaia was the goddess of all that is below. They were spouses to one another. This too is accenting the degree to which all of creation enjoys the givenness of God’s unity and therefore favor.
Lastly is the phrase “all that is, seen and unseen”. While all of these claims are certainly intent on leaving nothing out, it does however beg questions regarding the reality of evil. Questions asking why there is evil have probably been raised from the dawn of human experience. Answers to those questions are notoriously unsatisfactory. They rip the soul. I think the writers of the Creed, inspired by the witness of both Jewish and Christian witness and scripture, strongly imply that the great mystery of evil is held only in the imprints of God’s own creative heart and not to the wily devices, desires, or designs of some other god or devil much less to our human capacity to fathom such a mystery. The Jewish myth of an Edenic Paradise speaks of a place of great abundance and richness in which we could enjoy the fruit of millions of trees and yet one was forbidden us, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit of that tree was much too rich for our unrefined tastes. It was too much for us. It would overwhelm the God-given capacities and limitations of our hearts and our minds. While God could trust us to live with the electric socket in the midst of us, we should never put our fingers in it. We are further encouraged to trust God with our complete lack of understanding as to why even the possibility of such a shock should be there in the first place.
In many ways this insistence in the opening lines of the Creed that all is one in the One God, implies that our unity cannot be founded in any dualistic understanding of creation as popularly conceived and endorsed by so much popular religion of not only that time but our own time as well. The Creed aims to claim that we are not engaged in some cosmic battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil despite the fact that it was, has been, and continues to be a very popular way of understanding the world. This anti-dualistic world view of the Creed is because too many people within the churches have been too easily led to believe that creation is soaked with evil and that the only sensible option is to seek a means to either escape this vale of tears or seek a way to eliminate those we deem responsible for such evil.
In the early years of Christianity, from the late 1st century into most of the 2nd century, there lived a man named Marcion. This was a time when there was no definitively agreed upon collection of writings that we would recognize as “The Bible”. Marcion may well have be the first Christian to want to establish an authoritative foundation of Christian scripture. He claimed that the writings of Paul and self-selected portions of the Gospel of Luke alone got it right. However, Marcion had gotten himself so convinced of the need for good Christian people to choose sides, he concluded that the god found in Jewish scripture - what Christians call the Old Testament, was a different god than the one espoused by Jesus. The great betrayal of that Old Testament god was creating us in the first place. Jesus was understood as the true God delivering us from this world. These two gods were engaged in a cosmic battle for control of all that is. No, the creed claims. In keeping with the witness of Jewish scripture, God is identified as having created all that is and taking great delight in its inherent goodness. There is but One God of all that is; and all that is remains one in that One God. There is therefore no need to fight over who is on God’s side and who is not. Everything and everyone is, albeit mysteriously, under One Creator God - and we trust that to be true.
One last thing to point out in regards to the last phrase of this initial section of the Creed. In Greek it actually reads: “all that is said and unsaid”. Why? Simply put, biblically speaking, the creative agent of God is God’s word. “In the beginning God said…and it was”. And again, from the Gospel of John - an obvious favorite of the Nicene mindset: “in the beginning is the Word and the Word is from God and God is the Word…” The Word of God for these early Christian forbears of ours was not the Bible. The Word of God was for them that which uttered creation into being and is indeed still uttering it into being with that which has yet to be uttered. “All that is said and unsaid”. There is implied here that all which has been, all that is, and all that is yet to be, is already held in this God who holds all.
