I picked up Karen Armstrong’s latest book The Case for God this weekend. While paging through the book at the bookstore, I found a discussion of the English word “believe” and it’s development of meaning. “In Middle English,” Armstrong notes, “bileven meant ‘to price; to value; to hold dear.’” It was only later that the word morphed into our modern usage related to intellectual assent to an idea or notion.
She brings up a good point. The Greek word usually translated as “faith” in the New Testament is pistis. And its verb form, pisteuo, is often translated as “I believe.” And while that is not an inaccurate reading, the root meaning is “to trust” or “to rely on.” That’s not quite how we generally use the word believe in everyday language. Which brings me to the creeds and their usual texts.
What if, instead of our standard confession of “I/we believe in” we instead confessed “I/we trust” or “I/we rely on” or “I/we are committed to”?
Consider what it might mean to confess in our liturgy a version of the Nicene Creed something like the following:
We rely on one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary and became truly human. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We rely on the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father ad the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We rely on one holy catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
We are committed to one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary and became truly human. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We are committed to the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father ad the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We are committed to one holy catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
How would using one of these versions affect how we understand what we are doing when we recite the creed in worship? How might it affect how we see our Christian faith?
One benefit may be that it moves what we confess in the creed out of being a matter of ideas we accept and more clearly into being our ground for life, the one in whom we live and move and have our being.
Please feel free to share your thoughts on what such a shift in language might mean.
