on creeds

I've written on here before about my ambivalence about creeds. Or maybe it would be more accurate to refer to it as my process of warming up to creeds. At any rate, I seem not to be the only one who has felt wary. Tonight I was reading a little of Kathleen Norris's Amazing Grace, which is her collection of essays on the sometimes scary vocabulary of Christianity. In it, she writes that at their worst, creeds can feel like "a verbal strait jacket" or "a grocery list of beliefs that one has to comprehend and assent to fully before one dare show one's face in church."

But at their best, she compares creeds to a form of speaking in tongues:

"Now, when I'm preaching and remember to include a creed in the worship service, I usually select the Nicene Creed, because then no one can pretend to know exactly what it is they're saying: 'God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God.' It gives me great pleasure to hear a church full of respectable people suddenly start to talk like William Blake. Only the true literalists are left out, refusing to play the game" (206).

That killed me. Right on, Kathleen Norris. Then she points out that in the Bible, "story carries more weight that mere doctrine," and a creed can just as easily begin with "I believe in one God" as it can like this:

My father was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt with a small household and lived there as an alien. But there he became a nation great, strong and numerous.

When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us, imposing hard labor upon us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and he heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression. He brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand and outstretched arm, with terrifying power, with signs and wonders; and bringing us into this country, he gave us this land flowing with milk and honey. (Deut 26:5-10)