The Nicene Creed: “I Believe” or “We Believe”?

Note: A version of this post first appeared on Earth & Altar.

πιστεύομε είς ένα θεόν

This is the first line of the Nicene Creed in Greek. It translates to “We believe in one God.” This might seem surprising to many of the faithful who weekly profess “I believe in one God.” Why the difference?

On an historical level, we can chalk up the apparent discrepancy in the fact that, as Anglicans, we are Western Christians. When the Creed was translated from Greek into Latin, the first line read, “Credo in unum Deum,” or, “I believe in one God.” This was because the Creed was linked to the Baptismal Vows. And yet, I would argue, there’s more to it than that.

First, a brief explanation of the importance of Creeds. John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “The Preacher” summarizes a common derogatory attitude concerning creeds: “From the death of the old the new proceeds, And the life of truth from the rot of creeds.” Many modern people assume that creeds retrain intellectual freedom and are prisons of rigid dogmatism. This lacks nuance because it fails to adequately grapple with what Creeds are. Romano Guardini offers a corrective: “He who holds to the truth holds to God.” The Creeds function as a Rule of Faith, they protect revealed facts about God who has intervened into space and time “for us and for our salvation.”

We can go further, however. A deeper understanding of the role of Creeds can be derived—surprisingly—from a work called I and Thou by Martin Buber (1878-1965), a Jewish, German mystic and philosopher. For Buber, there are two modes of relating to others: I-it and I-thou. The I-it mode of relationship consists of a subject (the “I”) acting on an object (the “it”). When a subject acts on an object, real relationship is precluded because the object’s significance is not drawn from the object itself, but from the subject’s use. While this way of relating can be helpful, like in scientific inquiry, it comes with dangers. Buber argues that I-it is inherently dehumanizing for both the I and the it. When “I” reduce another being to an object of scientific discovery, “I” am reduced to just a scientist, but “I” am so much more! We can see this play out in many ways. A biblical scholar who thinks Scripture is just another text that needs to be dissected like a biologist might dissect a frog finds themselves incapable of conversing with Scripture. We were made to relate to others as more than just things.

Buber’s alternative is the I-thou relationship. I-it approaches the other with assertions in an attempt to box the object in the “I’s” mental boxes; I-thou understands the other cannot be boxed in so easily. I-thou is a humanizing mode of relation for both parties. Buber says: “When thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing for his object. For where there is a thing there is another thing. Every It is bounded by others; It exists only through being bounded by others. But when Thou is spoken, there is no thing. Thou has no bounds. When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing; he has indeed nothing. But he takes his stand in relation.” In other words, I-it assumes a distance between the subject and object, but I-thou is based on an unseen yet tangible unity between parties where both constantly participate in the other. “I” am only possible because of the “you” that “I” encounter. This way of relating to others is not just humanizing for the other person, but also for the “I.” As one encounters the other, the “I” emerges. This can be confirmed by findings in modern neuroscience, particularly child development where it has been discovered that children develop into social persons based on their engagement with their parents. Self-consciousness occurs only through relationship.

While Buber’s framework is helpful, his mysticism is not rooted in orthodox Christianity and, therefore, requires some modification. For Buber, our encounters with God should be conceived as I-Thou. Buber refers to God as “the eternal Thou.” This means that faith is a meeting. His translator, Rev. Ronald Gregor Smith, remarks that for Buber, faith “is not a trust in the world of It, of creeds or other forms which are objects, and have their life in the past.” Smith would argue that according to Buber, a creed is an artifact, an inauthentic antiquarianism. This iconoclastic impulse imagines a creed as an “it” because creeds are based on propositions rather than a relationship.

Is this the right way to think about creeds? Maybe this is how the unbeliever perceives them. But where is it that we as Christians encounter the Creeds? The answer is in the praying life of the Church: we say the Apostles Creed each day at Morning and Evening Prayer and the Nicene Creed at the Mass. In that context, the Creed is more dynamic and cannot be reduced to the status of a dead artifact. The speakers should not conceive of the Creed as an “it” at all; rather, it is a dialogue occurring between the “I” and eternal “Thou.”

To better understand this way of thinking about the Creed, we have to remember the context of the Holy Communion liturgy. The Celebrant stands in persona Christi during the service. What the priest does, Christ does (and vice-versa.” The priest and Christ find themselves in the I-Thou relationship because the priest’s identity only emerges from a sustained encounter with Christ, the “High Priest” (cf. Heb 4:14-16). Anglican theologian E.L. Mascall explains, “The Bishop [the mother of the priesthood'] is not merely the organ of the earthy Church, whether of the past or of the present, but of the Church of Christ, here and beyond the grave. And the sinful man on whom priestly character is conferred in ordination receives the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest ‘in the Church of God’…Just as Baptism takes a man or woman up into an already existing unity, so consecration takes a man up into an already existing unity which exists within and for the sake of the former one.” The priest finds his own sacerdotal identify in the sacrifice of the Altar where his life becomes merged with the victimhood of the crucified Christ. The priestly “I” emerges in the context of the Christic “Thou.”

The liturgy is not a purely propositional reality, but a lived experience, an encounter with the Eternal Thou. The Mass is full of these encounters. The bread is not the “it” of bread nor the wine the “it” of wine; they are the “Thou” of Christ’s Body and Blood. In the Eucharistic encounter, a sacrificial pattern emerges: Christ’s sacrifice for the remission of sins and our response of self-sacrifice: “Here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.” The “I” who emerges from the encounter is cruciform by virtue of participation with Christ in his sacrifice. This is the milieu in which hate Creed is said—one in which the “I” and eternal “Thou” are in relationship.

Contrary to Smith’s assertion, the Nicene Creed is not just a set of propositions. While modern liturgies have preferred to shift to the first person plural “We believe” to highlight the fact that the Creed belongs to the Community of the Faith that is the Church, something is lost in this transition from singular to plural. Liturgically, the priest begins the Creed and invites the congregation to join him by extending and then joining his hands. But the priest stands in persona Christi; he speaks not as Fr. Wesley or Fr. David or Fr. Dennis, but Christ. The Creed speaks the Word back to the Father. To borrow from Buber, the Creed exists not as an I-it monologue of objectifying propositions but an I-thou dialogue between Christ and his Church. The Creed facilitates a relation in which the Church finds itself becoming who She is, much like the vows at a wedding bring about the bride’s self-awareness of her marital identity. The Creed invites us to see the world through the eternal Thou where our relationship with Him constitutes the bearings by which we understand everything around us. The Creed is not a list of conditions that arrogantly place God in a box; instead, it is a result of the Father and the Son’s relationship and the Church’s sustained dialogue with her Creator. There is an ecclesiological layer to this as well. The Creed unites members of the Church separated by time and space in the “I” of Christ, creating a coherent self-consciousness.

“I believe” is Christ’s declaration. In his I, we find ourselves.