The Nicene Creed as it exists today (as we saw in our last post) is a culmination of efforts between the Council of Nicea and the Council of Constantinople. From these councils, we have the summary of our Catholic Faith that we profess every Sunday (and certain other days). The Creed, much like other parts of our Mass, when translated from Latin to English lost some direct, literal meanings from the original Latin concepts. Beginning in Advent 2011, however, the (English-speaking) Church will be using a re-translated, and more “correct” version of this Creed. Keep in mind, though, I put “correct” in quotation marks, because we weren’t saying anything wrong before, we just weren’t saying it as fully as it could have been expressed, because of our limited English language barriers. It will still remain our brief and very pointed summary of the Catholic belief basis. But as concise as this creed is, it can still be pretty overwhelming to try to attack all at once. Because of this, scholars have broken it up into “bite-sized” pieces that we can better understand individually which are known as the 12 Articles of Faith. Again, it’s not separate from the Creed—it IS the Creed, just broken up into 12 simpler thoughts that make up the fundamental framework of our Faith. Today we’ll just start “simple” with the first article (I use quotation marks, because there’s nothing “simple” about the first article—or ANY articles, for that matter) and take the other 11 in our next few posts.
Article 1:
Current Text:
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of Heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.
Beginning in Advent 2011:
I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.
Right off the bat, we established ourselves as being opposed to the polytheist pagans that were a large population before the writing of the Nicene Creed. Polytheists are people who devote themselves to a whole group of gods (with a little “g”) as opposed to one, all-powerful God, like we worship. See, polytheism is a compound word with the prefix poly- meaning “many” (like a polygon is a shape that has “many sides”) and theism referring to “belief in god,” from the Greek qeos (theos), meaning “God.” As Christians, we’re what are called monotheists meaning we believe in ONE God—mono- meaning “one,” like monosyllabic, meaning “one syllable,” or monosodium glutamate, meaning “one sodium glutamate” (ok, that one was for me…). So anyway, it’s vitally important that in our summary of beliefs we first and foremost establish ourselves as believing in ONE God rather than many gods. This is huge, because it means that for us, everything we have and everything we need comes from ONE source, and we point to ONE entity to find our being and our purpose. …pretty deep stuff, this monotheism.
The next part we mention is “the Father almighty.” Here’s where we dive into the Trinity. Now, the Trinity is worthy of its own post (or series of posts) so here, we’ll just mention it briefly just to give us a simple understanding that will allow us to get through the rest of this article. The Trinity, that is to say, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is not three gods, or even three partial gods that make up one God, but are altogether always considered ONE GOD. It’s really tough to wrap our minds around this concept because we’re human, and we can only easily understand things that relate to our experiences. I don’t know about you, but I never encountered anything that was three complete things that were all the same all making one greater thing without making that one thing bigger. But since God is actually infinite (no beginning, no end, no physical limitations of a body or any space to occupy—or not occupy), He can’t get “bigger.” You see how complicated this Trinity concept can get…which is probably why most priests cringe around Trinity Sunday. How do you POSSIBLY explain the Trinity to your church in a 10-minute homily??? Not an easy task, and I do NOT envy priests and deacons who give Trinity Sunday homilies.
Anyway, God the Father is the person/aspect of the Trinity associated with creation and providing existence (along with the Son & Holy Spirit) to the world. So that’s where we get the rest of the first article: “maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” Now, it’s easy enough to think of God as being able to create the planets and the oceans and mountains, and even people and animals, but not as easy to think about the stuff we CAN’T see. Take a deep breath…go ahead…in……..hold it…..now out……good! That stuff that you just breathed in? Did you see it? Nope! It’s air, and it’s invisible. That one is still a little easy to understand, because air has physical properties. In fact, next time you open your freezer, poke your head inside and breathe out. You’ll probably be able to see the air as it turns “foggy” with the temperature change. So even though air is invisible, it still has physical properties that make it easier to lump into the category of “things” that God created when he created the universe.
What’s a little harder to understand are the invisible things that DON’T have physical properties. What happens when we die? Well, as a Catholic (which we’ll see later in the Creed), we believe that we have souls that (hopefully) ascend to a state of what we refer to as heaven, which is where we will share in God’s awesomeness forever. But have you ever seen someone’s soul? Chances are, no. If you have, I’d suggest either running straight to the Vatican to have them investigate this miracle, or running straight to a psychologist to have them investigate your grip on reality. There are things in what we refer to as the “Spiritual realm” that we cannot see, and that do not have physical properties in the way that our bodies do. These things include God, our souls, and the angels—both good and evil. These things, too, we believe God created (except for Himself—he didn’t CREATE Himself, He just always was…more on that when we discuss the Trinity in greater detail).
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