Prayer: A Catechesis in Belief
Scott Lyons
2/1/2012

In the past, when I applied for work with Christian organizations, I would routinely get frustrated with sections on the applications that asked me for a statement of faith. I always wanted to scribble in “Creed” but refrained because I knew how some people felt about the ancient creeds. They wanted something more specific about how I read the Bible, something more personal. The creeds, apparently, are too general and too impersonal. What we believe is important, but the way we express it is often a sticking point.

Perhaps some of these organizations were “just Bible” people. This seemed odd to me because every organization had a very detailed explanation of their own belief statements about what they saw as important, aligning themselves with some interpretive tradition. Nowadays I find myself ornery enough not to care as much about what someone might think if I wrote, “I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible,” and the rest, because that is what I believe. It is personal to me because the ancient creeds, in their brevity, rightly describe the faith. The creeds are not the Scriptures, but they correctly interpret them. When I read the Scriptures in light of the creeds, I cannot read them as a heretic would. I try to read and understand them as the church has always understood them. Those in the early church, even bishops and leaders, who wouldn’t sign their agreement with the creeds were understood as people who had left the faith and no longer proclaimed the Good News. As Paul says, “Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you” (Galatians 1:8, NLT). It makes me uncomfortable talking about God’s curses falling on people, but this is Scripture.

Some complain about the creeds, saying that only the Scriptures are without error, that the creeds are man-made, and that people are prone to mistakes. Though I agree with this statement, it is somewhat frightening because it leaves me wondering how, then, one is supposed to approach the Scriptures. When I come to the Scriptures by myself, I am suddenly open to the errors of Pelagius, or to my own many, grievous errors of interpretation. (Lord, have mercy.) The creeds provide a brief, general overlay of how the early church understood and read the Scriptures: not as Arius, but as Athanasius; not as Macedonius, but as Gregory Nazianzen. The heresiarchs were leaders in the church; they also read and believed the Scriptures. They were not wolves from without but from within. So for me the creeds are important ways to approach the Scriptures rightly. Even while they cover so little, they cover so much.

Foremost among the creeds are the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. When I say “the creeds,” these are the ones I mean. They structure my belief. They remind me of who I am and what I assent to. They recall to me how my life should be structured as it flows out of my belief. My faith and my life follow the creeds, Lord willing. The creeds shape my life into something Trinitarian, something incarnational, bones with muscle and skin on them—alive. Eyes that see. Hands and feet that work, that love. They flow out of the Scriptures. They rush back to them. They describe the faith.

So I memorize the creeds.

Now, what is the point of praying a statement of belief? Doing so joins me with the entire church across space and time, saying, Unworthy as I am, I stand here, too. It is the I standing with the We. Praying the creeds is participating in the body of Christ and therefore in Christ himself. The creeds are not about what I have chosen to believe; instead, they are a way of looking at God, the Scriptures, and the church and saying, I too believe. And I believe in this way. Such prayer is an assent to the faith handed down to us. It is a symbol of that faith: not a belief in something, but in someone.

So I pray the creeds.

And I teach my children to pray the creeds, too—not because I value creed over Scripture, but because the Scriptures must be handled rightly and I am not the man to do so. I have believed too many crackpot ideas in my life. I am susceptible to error when I rely on myself. When I think that Me + Scriptures = Right Understanding. Yes, the Holy Spirit guides us, but I suspect that he does not guide as often as we think. We are not infallible when we approach the Scriptures, not even when we fast and pray about what we read. If we were, the multitude of churches guided by the Holy Spirit might not have so many problems with one another’s interpretations of the Bible. However, I believe that the Holy Spirit did guide the church to produce the creeds for every Christian, and while they are not the Scriptures, they show me the right way to approach and know the Word.