Living at Home in the Creed

(From Living the Creed by Carroll E. Simcox)

The historic Christian Creed is like a house, in that it consists of an outside and an inside. You may know it from the outside only, as a passerby may “know” a house from the street. Or you may know it from the outside and the inside, which is the only way of knowing worth calling knowledge. You can never know a house until you have been inside it. Can you know it even then, until you have lived in it for a while, until the house has served as your home? …The people who find the Creed dead or dull know it only from the outside, and they who find it exciting know it from the inside. [However,] many a life-long churchgoer finds it dead and dull. For some reason he has never really lived in it. To anybody whose spiritual home is in the Creed it is a place of pleasance. But it must be lived in; it must be a real home, and not just a place where we hang our hats for a grim hour of duty on Sunday morning. The outer side of the Creed is theological; the inner side is religious. The outer side is dogmatic; the inner side devotional. The Creed must appear cold and drab to anybody who will not step inside and make himself a home.

The Creed does not begin, “I believe that…”, rather, “I believe in...” This is our chief concern in the Creed as a whole and in each of its parts: our personal trust is in a Person. The Creed is a personal confession of faith in a Person. We may believe the dogmas; we believe in God.