Dr.

Ralph Weimann The Creed

Introduction to the course

on the Creed

Contents  
Introduction  to  the  course  on  the  Creed  .................................................................................  1  
I.   The  challenge  to  believe  ...................................................................................................................  1  
II.   “Credo”  as  the  central  Christian  word  .......................................................................................  2  
Conversion  as  foundation  for  the  Creed  .......................................................................................................  3  
The  invisible  became  visible  ..............................................................................................................................  4  
Faith  as  a  decision  ...................................................................................................................................................  4  
Faith  as  answer  on  the  sense  of  life  ................................................................................................................  5  
The  reason  of  Faith  .................................................................................................................................................  5  
III.   Personal  and  ecclesiastic  dimension  of  Faith  ........................................................................  6  
IV.   Brief  history  of  the  Creed  ..............................................................................................................  7  

I. The challenge to believe

In times dominated by a positivistic, materialistic and especially relativistic

mentality it is not easy to believe. Pope Francis summarized the challenge to
believe in his Encyclical Lumen Fidei with the following words: “As a result,
humanity renounced the search for a great light, Truth itself, in order to be
content with smaller lights which illumine the fleeting moment yet prove
incapable of showing the way. Yet in the absence of light everything becomes
confused; it is impossible to tell good from evil, or the road to our destination
from other roads which take us in endless circles, going nowhere.”1 Cardinal
Ratzinger addressed the same difficulty in the homily of the Mass “Pro eligendo
Romano Pontifice” in 2005, he said: “Today, having a clear faith based on the
Creed of the Church is often labelled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism,
that is, letting oneself be ‘tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of
doctrine’, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are
building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as
definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and
desires.”2

1
Francis, Encyclical Lumen Fidei, in: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/encyclicals/documents/papa-
francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei_en.html [10.09.2013] 3.
2
Joseph Card. Ratzinger, Homily Pro eligendo Romano Pontifice, 18 April 2005, in:
http://www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_20050418_en.html [6.8.2013].
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Dr. Ralph Weimann The Creed

Faith is confronted by challenges and provocations; almost everything related

with faith is questioned in our days. Believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
in the existence of an invisible world, in a life after death, only to name a few
topics, are beyond the canon of modern sciences, they cannot be proved by an
exclusively positivistic operating method. On the other hand there is a growing
alienation from faith, secular mentality and language. Already Søren Aabye
Kierkegaard noticed this difficulty and he expressed it through the story of the
clown and the burning village. According to this story a traveling circus had
caught fire. The members of the circus were already dressed for the
performance. Since there was no time to change the clothes the director sent the
actors as they were in order to ask for help. The clown ran into the neighboring
village asking for help to extinguish the fire and issuing a warning that the fire
could spread across the fields of dry stubble and engulf the village as well. The
people in the village took the clown’s shouts for an excellent piece of
advertising so to attract as many people as possible to the performance. They
applauded and laughed till they cried. The clown tried everything to convince
the people of the seriousness; he tried to make clear, that it was not a trick but
bitter earnest, that there was a dangerous fire. His supplications only increased
the laughter until finally the fire engulfed the village, then it was too late, both,
the circus and the village were burned to the ground.
This story was compared to certain experiences of believers, who felt like the
clown, when living their own faith. Often they are not taken seriously or they are
even classified as a type of “clown” and the important message of salvation is
often refuted as a “performance”. This affected also the faith and the theological
expression of faith. It's not the “dress” as such, which causes difficulties, but the
belief. There is the difficulty of believing today, the difficulty of proclaiming the
faith in a world more and more distant from faith and the Christian foundations.
To change the “clothes” in order to solve the problem, which was often proposed
and also intended as a solution, would be much too naive; it would not even
touch the real problem, which consists in believing today. A situation has
emerged that makes it difficult to believe and to proclaim the faith. The image of
the clown does not describe fully the problem of belief and unbelief in our
world, but it expresses and illuminates part of the problem.
What does it mean if someone says “I believe”? In other words, what are the
conditions necessary in order to believe, how do we believe today? This course
tries to offer an overview about what we believe: the Apostolic Creed.

II. “Credo” as the central Christian word

More basically than to ask how we believe is at first the question in what the
belief consists. “Credo” is the expression of the central Christian word; it
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Dr. Ralph Weimann The Creed

reflects more a posture than an abstract belief. Therefore the question what it
really means when someone says “I believe” is essential. How do we believe,
why is it so difficult to believe? It is quite certain that it was never easy to
believe, to make one’s own the word “I believe”. In all times there were always
just “fellow travelers”, people who believed because the society imposed or
required this attitude from them. In most parts at least of the Western world this
has changed entirely. Today people believe in spite of opposition.
One of the most remarkable characteristics of the word credo is that it
provides a second access (the first through reason) to reality; it is an access
through faith. The word credo includes therefore a basic conviction that things
we do not see are not unreal, but the foundation of what is. The letter to the
Hebrews says therefore: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the
conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval.
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so
that what is seen was made from things that are not visible” (Heb 11:1-3). Pope
Francis said that “Christian faith is centered on Christ.”3

Conversion as foundation for the Creed

In order to attain this second access to reality, an attitude is necessary,
which the biblical language considers as “conversion”. Man always strives
towards the visible, towards things, which can be touched and felt. In order to
access this second type of reality, man has to turn around, he has to accept that
there is much more in life, things which cannot be captured only by the senses.
Faith is tied to conversion,4 through which man discovers that there is more in
life. It is a “turning towards” the reality revealed by faith. To believe signifies to
enter into a lifelong process of conversion. All this forms part of the difficulty of
believing today.
The deep rift for “modern man” between the “visible” and the “invisible”
becomes still more complicated through the difference between “then” (past)
and “today”. Not even the attempts of an intellectual “demythologization” or a
more pragmatic “Aggiornamento” were able to overcome this difficulty. Quite
the reverse, those attempts made evident that the faith comes from “the past”, it
is based on Tradition. In times of (technical, etc.) “progress” this is a big
challenge and the temptation is ever-present to put in place of tradition the idea
of progress. But real progress can take place only, if the foundations are
respected, if there is continuity to the very foundations.5 That is why the process
of conversion is so necessary.

3
Francis, Encyclical Lumen Fidei, 15.
4
Cf. Ebd., 13.
5
Cf. R. Weimann, Dogma und Fortschritt bei Joseph Ratzinger. Prinzipien der Kontinuität, Paderborn 2012.
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Dr. Ralph Weimann The Creed

The invisible became visible

Christian belief – this is part of the “Christian scandal”– is not just about
the invisible but about the invisible who became visible in place and time.
Through his incarnation Christ overcame the deep rift between the visible and
the invisible, between the eternal and the temporal. Christ himself is the fullness
of revelation, he himself reveals who and how God is. This is a new type of
positivism, a Christian positivism, God reveals himself.6 The Second Vatican
Council expressed this fact in the dogmatic Constitution about Divine
Revelation with the following words: “In His goodness and wisdom God chose
to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see
Eph 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy
Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature (see Eph
2:18; 2 Pet 1:4). Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God (see Col
1:15, 1 Tim 1:17) out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (see
Ex 33:11; Jn 15:14-15) and lives among them (see Bar 3:38), so that He may
invite and take them into fellowship with Himself. This plan of revelation is
realized by deeds and words having an inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in
the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified
by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery
contained in them. By this revelation then, the deepest truth about God and the
salvation of man shines out for our sake in Christ, who is both the mediator and
the fullness of all revelation.”7

Faith as a decision
Christian Faith is a response to God, who reveals himself, it is a
fundamental decision. Every believer has to take a stand, he has to answer to
God who reveals himself. The Catechism expresses this fact with the following
words: “Faith is man's response to God, who reveals himself and gives himself
to man, at the same time bringing man a superabundant light as he searches for
the ultimate meaning of his life.“8 Already Cyrill of Jerusalem († 386) said that
the word “faith” is not only a linguistic expression, but faith is referred to the
doctrine and implies the consent of the soul to this or that truth. An inner
adherence to what is believed is essential for the Christian understanding of
Faith. To believe is above all a decision, which implies the whole man; it is an
answer to God who revealed himself as the truth (cf. Jn 14:6). The decision to
believe can be made only in freedom, respecting one’s personal will, because
“man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of
intellect and will to God who reveals and freely assenting to the truth revealed
6
Cf. Joseph Ratzinger, Einführung in das Christentum, München 2000, 46-51.
7
DV, 2, in:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-
verbum_en.html [6.8.2013].
8
Catecism of the Catholic Church, 26.
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Dr. Ralph Weimann The Creed

by Him.”9 This decision requires as well the grace of God, the interior help of
the Holy Spirit, who turns man’s heart towards God.

Faith as answer on the sense of life

Faith cannot be reduced to knowledge or to what people can make or
make up, it is not an expression of sentiment, opinion or cultural value. Faith
gives an answer to the essential question in life. This sense man cannot create or
give himself, he can only receive it. Man does not live only from the “bread of
self-doing”, he lives from God and he is called to live in God, who is the sense
of life. In the West many people live in such a way that they often do not ask
any more for the deeper meaning of life. They are caught up in the material
things without reflecting about the sense of life. Blessed Pope John Paul II
stated: “Different philosophical systems have lured people into believing that
they are their own absolute master, able to decide their own destiny and future in
complete autonomy, trusting only in themselves and their own powers. But this
can never be the grandeur of the human being, who can find fulfillment only in
choosing to enter the truth, to make a home under the shade of Wisdom and
dwell there. Only within this horizon of truth will people understand their
freedom in its fullness and their call to know and love God as the supreme
realization of their true self.”10 Someone who believes strives for truth; he
believes that God, who revealed himself in Jesus Christ, has revealed the truth,
as the definitive answer to what the sense of life is.11

The reason of Faith

Faith is not a blind obedience to the irrational but directed towards the
“Logos”, the “Ratio”, towards the divine Truth and reason. All this is reflected
in the word “Amen”, which is a type of equivalent to the word “credo”. It
embraces a variety of meanings and differentiations, such as: truth, firmness,
firm ground, and furthermore the term can mean to be loyal, to trust, to take
one’s stand on something, or to entrust oneself. The only guarantee looking for
the sense of life is truth, is divine truth. A sense of life, which were not true,
wouldn’t make sense. Christian faith is directed towards truth, but a truth
acceptable by faith and reason. That is why Pope John Paul II wrote in his
encyclical Fides et Ratio: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the
human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the

9
DV, 5, in:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-
verbum_en.html [6.8.2013].
10
John Paul II, Encyclical Fides et Ratio, on the relationship between Faith and Reason, in:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-
ratio_en.html, Nr. 107, [6.8.2013].
11
Cf. Francis, Encyclical Lumen Fidei, 26-28.
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Dr. Ralph Weimann The Creed

human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know himself – so that, by
knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of
truth about themselves.”12 Faith is and remains a mystery, but reason tries to
understand this mystery, tries to make it understandable. “Revelation therefore
introduces into our history a universal and ultimate truth which stirs the human
mind to ceaseless effort; indeed, it impels reason continually to extend the range
of its knowledge until it senses that it has done all in its power, leaving no stone
unturned.”13

III. Personal and ecclesiastic dimension of Faith

C. S. Lewis wrote that to believe in God's existence means above all to

consent to a person who calls my confidence. God revealed himself as a
personal God. He is not a distant God, but the good shepherd, who lays down his
life for the sheep (Jn 10:11). As we have seen before, faith has always a personal
dimension; it implies a personal and free decision which no one else can give,
because it is a (personal) response to God. “I believe” signifies to believe in a
personal God. The Catechism says therefore: “Faith is a personal act – the free
response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself. But
faith is not an isolated act. No one can believe alone, just as no one can live
alone.”14
No one can believe just in an individualistic way, faith comes to us through
the Church, through the community of believers. The believer forms part of a
community, founded by God himself who revealed himself through the Church.
That is why the word Credo (literally = I believe) was translated for a period
with “we believe”. Then it was made clear that the personal act of believe is
fundamental, therefore the new English official translation of the Nicene Creed
is: “I believe in one God the Father Almighty…” The personal decision is
essential, even though there is no faith then the faith of the Church: “It is the
Church that believes first, and so bears, nourishes and sustains my faith.
Everywhere, it is the Church that first confesses the Lord: ‘Throughout the
world the holy Church acclaims you’, as we sing in the hymn Te Deum; with her
and in her, we are won over and brought to confess: ‘I believe’, ‘We believe’. It
is through the Church that we receive faith and new life in Christ by Baptism.”15

12
John Paul II., Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 1.
13
Ebd., 14. Cf. Francis, Encyclical Lumen Fidei, 32-34.
14
CCC, 166.
15
Ebd., 168.
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Dr. Ralph Weimann The Creed

IV. Brief history of the Creed

The Creed is a Professio Fidei a confession of Faith. It implies central

contents of faith and it is meant as a self-commitment for the believer to live
according to these contents of faith. In addition, it indicates how the content of
faith has to be understood. Already some texts of the New Testament do express
a type of Creed. “God raised this man Jesus to life, and of that we are all
witnesses. Now raised to the heights by God's right hand, he has received from
the Father the Holy Spirit, who was promised, and what you see and hear is the
outpouring of that Spirit” (Acts 2,32f). Or: “The tradition I handed on to you in
the first place, a tradition which I had myself received, was that Christ died for
our sins, in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried; and that on
the third day, he was raised to life, in accordance with the scriptures; and that he
appeared to Cephas; and later to the Twelve” (1 Cor 15:3-5).
Soon after the years of persecution heresies arose and confused the faith
of the Christians. Arius († 336) did not recognize the divinity of Jesus Christ.
According to his doctrine, the Logos (Christ) and the Father were not of the
same essence (ousia), he considered the Son as a created being, and suspected
that there was a time, when the Son did not exist. This heresy known as
Arianism caused great division among the believers. The first Nicene Council
gathered together in 325 in order to discuss the problem and to solve it. The
teachings of Arius were condemned by the Council convoked by the Emperor.
In order to distinguish faith from heresy and to orient the faithful, the Council
summarized correct belief in a Creed, which was based on the ancient tradition
of the Apostle’s Creed, but developed further on to the so-called Nicene-Creed.
It affirms explicitly the co-essential divinity of the Son, applying the term
“consubstantial”. The Apostle’s Creed did not make an explicit statement about
the divinity of the Son, neither of the Holy Spirit, but it was implicitly present.
The Nicene-Creed explicitly affirmed this aspect. Nevertheless, even after the
council new theological struggles arose, still based on Arianism and denying
among other things the divinity of the Holy Spirit. In 381 the emperor gathered a
new council (second ecumenical council) in Constantinople. The Council
condemned again the heresies and modified the Creed so to guarantee the
orthodoxy of faith. The most notable modification was the affirmation of the
divinity of the Holy Spirit, “who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the
Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the
prophets.” In the Western Church there was still a modification made in 589
during the Council of Toledo, the filioque (and from the Son) was added, saying
that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Eastern Churches
rejected this modification. Anyway the Nicene-Constantinople-Creed is still the
valid expression of the Church’s faith.

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Dr. Ralph Weimann The Creed

On June 30 1968 Pope Paul VI published a personal Creed in the Motu

Proprio Sollemni hac liturgia. His intention was the following: “Likewise, we
deem that we must fulfill the mandate entrusted by Christ to Peter, whose
successor we are, the last in merit; namely, to confirm our brothers in the faith.
With the awareness, certainly, of our human weakness, yet with all the strength
impressed on our spirit by such a command, we shall accordingly make a
profession of faith, pronounce a creed which, without being strictly speaking a
dogmatic definition, repeats in substance, with some developments called for by
the spiritual condition of our time, the creed of Nicaea, the creed of the immortal
tradition of the holy Church of God.”16 There were and there are other attempts
to express the faith of the Church, but the Nicene-Constantinople-Creed is not
only a surely valid expression, but it is also provides a bond of unity between the
Churches and with many Christian denominations.

16
Paul VI, Moto Proprio Solemni hac Liturgia, in:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-vi_motu-
proprio_19680630_credo_en.html [6.8.2013].
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