“I think the whole point of creeds is to decide who gets burned at the stake.” – David Ker

A few weeks ago, David Ker challenged the blogosphere to attempt to distil Christianity into a ‘tweetable’ creed, that is, one that was only 140 characters in length. I attempted it, as did a few others. But more interesting to me, were that some of these people refused altogether, or objected despite their attempts.

David asked for a creed that if someone sincerely confessed this creed you would both consider them to be a brother or sister in Christ, and believe that they are true believers and inheritors of eternal life. All of these objections seemed have something in common; they complained that no creed would ever do this for them, because Christianity is not only in the belief, but also in the action that results from that belief.

David deSilva (paraphrased from Ευανγελιον) eloquently describes the role creeds play in the Christian life, as an affirmation of our commitment to the story that the church has struggled to be a part of for millennia.  Creeds  exist as a result of the church’s working out of the non-negotiable contours of this story, God’s story, in response to thinkers – heretics – whose innovations were viewed with tampering with the coherence of God’s story. Why is the coherence of the story important? Because God’s story is a starting point for living our lives before Him and as He wills.  And outside these non-negotiable contours of the Christian story, lies heresy.

However, in the post-modern world, with a nebulous Christianity where no two Christians believe the same thing, heresy is a far looser concept than it once was, and one that possesses less force than it once did. Creeds based on the principle of eliminating heresy are more likely to alienate than it is to unite, even if they are used as a lowest common denominator, and many people are unwilling to judge (and rightly so) people on beliefs whose importance they are themselves not convinced of.

Mr Keen’s post, however, pointed to Pliny, writing in the first century, speaking of a Christian creed which defined how Christians acted, rather than what they believed. Unlike the later, intellectual creeds, the earliest creeds looked to unify Christian integrity. Christians might not have believed the same, but all Christians acted the same.

As David Ker puts it, these earlier creeds were proactive, and the latter creeds were reactive. I think this is a grand solution to the problem many encountered in writing a ‘modern’ creed. Our creed should be proactive it should tell the world how to recognise a Christian. How do you recognise a Christian? To paraphrase Pliny, “We worship Christ as our God, love our neighbours as ourselves, and bind ourselves not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not to falsify our trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so.”

This ‘proactive’ creed says a lot about our faith, a lot more than my ‘reactive’ creed. And, returning to the opening quote, does little to tell us ‘who to burn at the stake’. Surely a creed that tells us what to do, and not who to burn, is more attuned with a God who commands us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves? And surely a creed that tells us what we aspire to, and others how to recognise us, is a greater tool for unity than a creed that tells us who to exclude from the party?  In Christs’ words, “You will recognise them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or  figs from thistles?”