The “third” day did not originally mean the Sunday after a Friday, but rather the day of revelation, the day when an event is completed. The gospels have made this theological adjective into history. So I do not think there is much history in the gospel narratives of resurrection. That judgement includes the empty tomb. I believe in the resurrection but imagine that the bones of Jesus are in Palestine.

Paul mentions the “facts” of the resurrection: Jesus had really died and been buried, but he “appeared” to specific disciples, then to many unnamed disciples and last of all to Paul himself. Paul describes this appearance: “it pleased the Lord to reveal his son in me.” Doubtless, although the description in the book of The Acts is almost wholly an invention by the author, the revelation of which Paul writes is his conversion to discipleship of Jesus.

I conclude that the historical part of a resurrection narrative is a) the conviction of the real presence of Jesus and b) the call to give witness of his aliveness. This experience is then used to assert another fact which is not historical, namely that God has raised the crucified Jesus from the dead to be part of the identity of God. Such a fact cannot be given a place and a time and is therefore presented as an eschatological fact belonging to the action of God in bringing creation to its ultimate perfection. The resurrection witnesses experienced this as a creative act of God; while I think of it also as a creative act of the believers, similar to the act of creating the God of Genesis chapter 1. In response to experience, human beings, including Christians, invent their Gods. The resurrection of Jesus is the creative invention of the God who is ultimately known as the Holy Trinity. That is not to question its truth.

Narratives of the ascension, such as provided by Matthew and Luke are unsuccessful attempts to turn eschatological fact into historical fact. They point to the truth but they do not embody it. Sitting at the right hand of the pantocrator, the all-powerful, is the position of an emperor’s son and heir, but this clause has not taken seriously God’s identity as the father of JESUS, which reveals him as all- related (all-loving) and all- persuasive.

This composite clause in the creed points to the success of Jesus’ mission and the explosion of creative thought and action by the first believers.,who however attribute it to the work of the creative spirit of God.

This is a mistranslation of the Latin, infernos, and the Greek katotatos, meaning the depths (of the earth). There is certainly no reference to a place of posthumous punishment. From the 3rd century interpreters invented the mighty drama of the Harrowing of Hell in which Jesus liberates the saints of the pre-Christian era from the power of Satan. That is a fine piece of theology, but it may have nothing to do with the Creed as such. Of course if one translates accurately one is left with the question, what was he doing in the depths of the earth? It must mean something more than just being dead.

Can it refer to Hades, the classical place of the dead, described by Homer as “the after-images of used-up men”? The Hebrew word Sheol also refers to a realm of shades. This would envisage Jesus sharing the uselessness of the dead, their lack of agency.

1st Letter of Peter 3 mentions “Christ announcing the gospel to the spirits in prison.” Nobody knows for certain what this means, but it may have contributed to the development of notions of his ministry after death. In any case more general statements by Paul make it clear that no dimension of the cosmos, and therefore no person, is left untouched by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Me? I like the notion of the “harrowing of hell” which is truly evangelical, meaning that even in hell the good news is announced by Jesus, and that souls can respond. This is probably not very orthodox, as hell is excluded from Hope, but I like to think that may be a mistake.

As early as St Paul,Christian writing about Jesus’ death had become a theological exercise using texts from the Hebrew Bible, especially Isaiah 53, and much ingenious argument to show that this crime was within the prophesied will of God, and efficacious for the eternal salvation of believers.

I accept that Jesus of Nazareth was tortured and murdered by the Roman administration of Judaea as a messianic jihadist. Before anyone finds in this event any signs of God or salvation, one should note the all-too-common imperialist brutality, justified by the usual specious justification of public peace. The management of such an event would have been well-known to the Spanish, French, or British imperial staffs.

It is however the story of an atrocity and should be taught as such by the church. Mel Gibson’s muddled The Passion of the Christ at least has the merit of depicting gratuitous violence towards a failed religious radical. Crucifixion was a form of Roman punishment reserved for those who never had any civil rights or had been deprived of them designed to cause maximum pain and loss of dignity. Only in Mark and Matthew is the stark horror of the event preserved to some extent, along with a record of Jesus’ anguished questioning.

The statement that Jesus died and was buried is doubtless intended to rebut any teaching that explained his resurrection by denying his death. The ending of Jesus’ physical life is important to Paul who sees it as the full expression of the “emptying” of one “who always had the form of God.” It is the end of one sort of body. I guess he would not have been over-disturbed by the discovery of Jesus’ bones.

Certainly this detail anchors the fact of Jesus to the known facts of secular history: Pontius Pilates was the Roman prefect of Judaea from 26-36 CE. He is made responsible for Jesus’ execution as a messianic claimant in all four gospels. Given this fact, it is likely that the Roman state was decisive in judging Jesus to be politically dangerous, a truth diluted by the tendency of the gospel writers to shift blame on to the Jewish leadership.

“Suffered” Latin passus, Greek pathonta, is easily translated by the English, suffered, but certainly the Latin can mean, suffered death. It indicates a serious suffering in which the victim is utterly subject to the will of another. In contrast to the gospel attribution to Jesus of godlike powers, here is an unambiguous record of his vulnerable humanity. Those who suffer at the hands of powerful states will find this sober statement an introduction to their brother Jesus.

But my immediate reaction to this clause of the Creed is to ask, “what about his life?” as there is nothing noted between his birth and his death. Surely the only reason for remembering his birth and death is the nature of his life. Apart from the verbal memory of the Christian assemblies, by early in the second century they had the written testimony of the gospels. I could not accept any creed which is silent about Jesus’ healing, teaching and encounters with people. It is disturbing that many churches have been happy to accept this gap, considering his incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection sufficient for salvation. Yes, St. Paul had this bias, but it was balanced in the Christian Bible by the four gospels. The creedal neglect of Jesus’ life and teaching may have been productive of a whole range of heresies throughout the history of the church and still today.

Some scholars have argued for two main streams of remembrance of Jesus after his death and before the written gospels: one about his life and teaching; the other about his divine origin, death and resurrection, which eventually came together in the four gospels and the Catholic faith of the early church. The creeds lean dangerously to one side of this equation.

It looks certain to me that this translation of the Greek is simply wrong: the Greek says conceived EK the Holy Spirit, a preposition which means from, out of, rather than by. Modern English Catholic and Methodist translations have “in the power of the Holy Spirit” which seems right. After all the child is conceived BY the woman even in ancient physiology. The angel in Luke chapter 1 says to Mary, “you will conceive in your womb.” I’m not sure what is meant by “conceived by the Holy Spirit.”

It has been pointed out that in Jewish Rabbinical thinking all conception involves the creative spirit as well as a man and a woman. But it appears that the Gospels of Luke and Matthew leave out the man in the case of Jesus, Matthew explicitly, Luke by implication, although some scholars argue that as Luke does not explicitly rule out sex between Mary and Joseph, he leaves the possibility open. I am happy to think of the Holy Spirit as involved in the conception of Jesus, working through the ordinary processes of genetic inheritance. I do not see any need for Jesus’ conception to be different from mine. Indeed, how can anyone ask me to be like Jesus if he had the advantage of a supernatural birth? But the declaration that Jesus’ conception is from the Holy Spirit, reminds me that the creator God is ever active in her creation.

Within Greek culture virgin birth is a mythological motif asserted of persons with extraordinary abilities. It does not exist in Jewish culture, although extraordinary persons like Samuel are born from previously childless women. In Greek religion sex between Gods and mortals is common enough, but would have seemed a blasphemy to those who believed in Yahweh. So the story of Jesus’ birth has to be handled with great delicacy by Matthew and Luke, so that God is not depicted as playing the part of the missing male. Mark,John and Paul show no acquaintance with stories of a miraculous birth.

It is possible that the purpose of the virgin birth motif, is less positive than negative, emphasising that Jesus was not a product of human reproduction and patriarchy, pointing towards his own treatment of women as equal with men. As part of a story it may make beautiful sense, but as a creedal fact it must be resisted. The humanity of Jesus is too important to be jeopardised by theological poetry, however lovely. Either Jesus is a product of evolution, human sex, conception and birth or he’s as mythological as Aeneas whose daddy made love with Venus. My creed would mention Mary and Joseph as the parents of Jesus.

This would clear away one of the foundations of the pernicious Roman Catholic teaching about sexuality, and its nonsense about “purity.”

Still, the 11th century mosaic of the Virgin in Santa Maria Asunta on Torcello island, is for me an astonishing image of the femininity of God.

The Greek for Lord, kurios, can also mean as little as Sir, but has special significance as applied to Jesus:

1. In relation to the disciples of a Rabbi it means Master, that is, a teacher with complete authority, as over slaves.

2. Because it was used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible to translate Adonai, which was the pious substitute for the unspeakable name of God, it carried theological implications about Jesus, uniting him with God.

In relation to 1, I have asked if the master/ slave relation is appropriate to Jesus and his followers, then and now. Jesus seems to have had no problems with that relationship, using it as a metaphor for the obedience owed to God. Slaves abound in the parables of Jesus, being diligent, lazy, trustworthy or otherwise, and their duty to their master is never questioned. Of course you can argue that he was talking about God, and that his attitude to the societal institution may have been different. My guess is that he saw it as fact, limited by biblical law, which in his estimation may have included the Jubilee legislation of Leviticus 25 providing for the freeing of slaves every 50th year. Radical as that was, it still left a lot of room for slavery. Jesus’ disciples however were free men and women, who nevertheless passed on the very teachings which demanded complete obedience and used the language of master and slave. Since that would normally have been unacceptable to them, I have to reckon that his relationship with them made it not only acceptable but necessary: they wanted to call him Master. The term carries the weight of something strange and primal from the experience of Jesus’ first disciples.

2. That experience was then interpreted by the use of kurios as signifying God. Although no formal identification of Jesus with God need have been intended at first, this language included Jesus in the sphere of God, as our Lord, and therefore as the referent of that language in Scripture. It was OK for Jesus to have bossed people around since he was standing in for God.

I can see how this title was creative in the early church’s thinking about Jesus, but do I accept it for myself, that Jesus demands my absolute obedience? In any other relationship I would reject such a demand, but in this, since the devotion of my heart has made him God for me, it can seem logical and right.

Then I remember that I do not believe in a God of absolute command, but in one who persuades. I also think that absolute power is the essence of evil, no matter who exercises it. But the master/slave material in the Gospels is so pervasive and deeply rooted in the traditions about Jesus, that it cannot be simply dismissed as spurious. I have not solved this dilemma, although I consider that a solution may lie in seeing this metaphor as part of the Jewish wisdom tradition to which Jesus belonged. Perhaps the apparently absolute commands should be interpreted as being preceded by “The wise person will…..” “The wise person will love her enemies; the wise person will bless those who curse her.” That would allow me to see the commands as a form of persuasion and the master/slave language as a metaphor for the urgency of Jesus’ persuasion.

This is not an unimportant issue. Everything I detest about religion hangs on the issue of absolute authority demanding complete obedience: suicidal jihadism, hatred of homosexuals, superiority of males, child abuse by clergy, denial of scientific fact, obedience as opposed to virtue- all these are the fruit of absolute authority. So serious is this issue that I must question my own desire to offer Jesus unconditional obedience as a sick piece of piety, relieving me of responsibility for my own actions, while allowing me a sneaky share in the omnipotence of Jesus.

Jesus is not my Lord; he is my teacher, my brother, my rescuer.

There is every evidence in Scripture for the Greek Ho Christos (The anointed one) as a standard accompaniment of Jesus’ name as early as Paul’s letters, in which it might also be translated, The Messiah, referring to the ruler expected from God to restore Israel. In spite of Jesus’ rejection by Jewish leaders, most early Christians wanted to maintain the link with Jewish history, expectation and scripture.

For the bulk of Christian believers today however, Christ is only Jesus’ second name, so that translating the Greek as THE Christ might be helpful in guiding people towards a fuller understanding of it. That still leaves the question of whether I think of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. Certainly I think of him as Jewish, and want some reference to his Jewishness in the Creed. Does it make any sense to call him Messiah when so many Jews in his time and now, reject him as such? This takes me into Jewish politics of both times, reminding me that Jesus was executed as a messianic claimant by the Romans, even while he was rejected as such by the leaders of his own people. To think if him, as Paul did, as “a crucified messiah” assists my understanding of faith and politics, as his story furnishes a critique of both empire and nationalism, of oppressive government and violent revolution.

I am happy to affirm Jesus as the Christ, less so to call him God’s “only son.” The Lord’s Prayer” in Matthew’s version calls God, “our father” as does Paul, who is explicit in the claim that believers are children of God. How then can Jesus be the only son? Of course theologians may argue that we are only God’s children IN the only son Jesus. That simply pushes the issue on to another stage: OK in Jesus are we or are we not genuine sons and daughters of God? If yes, then we have to find a better term to use of Jesus. I think it would be better to use the biblical term “beloved”, marking the specific relationship between Jesus and God, into which believers are subsequently called.

Does this change not reduce Jesus to simply one of us? Of course I want to insist that he was one of us, but also that his greatness was in what he did and suffered as a human being. His being “God” is not some additional quality or nature in Jesus, but in his being the one who commands the “devotion of my heart” (Luther) along with the father and the spirit, as the one God. The naming is done by me and all believers.

CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH

Yes, yes, I believe in God the creator of elephants, hyenas, viruses, bacteria, supernova, whirlpools, mushrooms, birch trees, Joseph Stalin, Jesus, Mount Everest, cyanide, bread, sex, lesbians, Mars, cancer, Boris Johnson, blue-green algae, hippopotamuses, icebergs, methane……..

I do not believe that God has finished the job, but is rather continuing until, as Paul puts it, “creation itself is set free from its slavery to decay”

I believe, as did Alfred North Whitehead, that in the process of creation God is intensely involved with every event, and is therefore changed by each and every one of them. No creator, no painter, sculptor, or composer is left unchanged by her creation; no more is God. The Creed is wisely agnostic on this matter, although much Greek thought was unable to imagine any change in God. It was for this reason that Aristotle named him the unmoved mover.

The biblical God in both testaments, however, is moved and must therefore be subject to change. I think that for many believers this conclusion, that God changes, will be very disturbing. How can you have faith in someone who is changing? But in fact we put faith all the time in some of our fellow human beings, who are of course, changing. We trust that their affection for us will not change although other aspects of themselves may change. If we can do it with changing people, why not with a changing God? As we change, we invite God to change in relation to us.

In this process of mutual change God persuades us to help in the perfecting of creation. Indeed, all the elements of the universe are involved in this same process by which everything is continually changed. The fact that we could destroy our species and even our planet is a measure of the freedom God has given us and of the commitment of God to persuasion rather than force. We may be the only creatures in the universe who can refuse the creator’s persuasion.

Where is God? Everywhere. The creation is in God, and God in it. In God we live and move and have our being; but God may also lodge in us, if we let him. God asks our permission before entering our lives: we shall attend to this when considering belief in the Spirit. Does that mean that God simply takes up residence in other living creatures? No, God in her courtesy always asks permission, but it may be that in the case of the other creatures she always gets it. And God is also present in every event right down to the smallest particles and their activity. Nothing is untouched or unaffected by God’s love.

In respect of creation, God is the alpha and the omega, the “author and finisher” as the writer to Hebrews says. This means that in addition to God’s abiding presence with the universe, she has blessed it with initial purpose and with the lure of an achieved perfection. It has often been said that the event of Jesus is God’s new creation, but I cannot see that God has ever stopped creating; the story of Jesus is an episode in God’s continuing creation.

To live in this faith is exhilarating.

THE FATHER ALMIGHTY

I recognise and agree with much that women believers have written about the patriarchal culture from which the notion of the male God arises, both about its insistence on male authority and its denigration of female ability. I am not denying that criticism when I point out that at least in the New Testament God is primarily understood as the father of JESUS. That is for example as the father of the one who had women disciples, defended women from easy divorce, welcomed the trust of prostitutes, resisted the law of stoning, and allowed himself to be rebuked by a gentile woman whose children he had insulted as dogs. Clearly the One Jesus called Abba was no purveyor of patriarchy. When Jesus refers to himself as a mother hen, he attributes motherliness also to his father.

I want to hold on to the image of God as the Abba of Jesus, while also welcoming womanly, as well as non-binary and asexual images, as long as they are compatible with God’s identity as the Abba of Jesus. There needs to be some criterion of appropriate imagery. The Bible ends with a womanly image of God as a mother who wipes away the tears from the eyes of her human children. God is said to have the strength of hills, and on the other hand to pant like a woman in labour. Human experience of God will generate many creative images which enrich the primary image of God as the Abba of Jesus.

There would be of course a problem in referring to God as the mother of Jesus, because the human Mary has this dignity, but that should not stop me praying to God as my (heavenly) mother and the mother of all living creatures. It is probably impossible to remove all taint of patriarchy from the Apostle’s Creed. If we did we would lose contact with the historical Christian communities of women and men who devised it.

“Almighty” is a problem of a different kind. It is a translation of Greek: pantokrator, Latin: omnipotent. These terms are drawn from the cult of ancient rulers, who were thought to have Godlike powers over their people, and in many cases over huge empires. The official propaganda of such rulers admitted no limit, natural or human, on their power of life and death over their subjects. It is not clear whether God language was first transferred to such rulers or vice versa, but it is clear that with significant modifications it was used by biblical writers of YAHWE, the God of Israel, and of the Abba of Jesus. Although the Old Testament uses power language of Yahwe, its stories often undermine those phrases. The book of Genesis for example plays sophisticated games with readers’ expectations, showing the creator as powerless in the face of the human creature’s evil, and having to befriend just one human family in order to persuade them of his wisdom. And most scandalously Yahwe does not intervene to save his chosen family from conquering empires. This God is no more almighty than the Abba of Jesus who does not prevent the execution of his son.

The Almighty God is of course also supreme in the heavens, “above all Gods” which relegates the Gods of other religions to a lower division. This is probably not a good start to interfaith discussion or multi- cultural community building.

I am strait -forwardly opposed to calling God “almighty”. Alfred North Whitehead, the 20th century philosopher, said that the discovery of God as persuasive rather than coercive, made in theory by Plato and in practice by Jesus, is the most important in the history of thought. I am aware that departing from “almighty” is just as problematic as departing from “father” would be, and just as divergent from those who created the Creed, but in this case I accept the problems and the divergence, because I simply do not believe in “the Almighty”

Book of Common Prayer, 1662^[

I believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth:

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead, and buried:
He descended into hell;
The third day he rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
And sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit;
The holy Catholick Church;
The Communion of Saints;
The Forgiveness of sins;
The Resurrection of the body,
And the Life everlasting.
Amen.

This is the 1662 translation of the Apostles’ Creed, the first written version of which comes from the 7th century, but was probably developed in 5th century Gaul. It is a revision of the Old Roman Creed, which may have arisen as far back as the 2nd century. It has nothing to do with the 12 Apostles of Jesus, except that the church held that it expressed their teaching. It is not a proclamation of the Gospel, but rather a summary of the church’s faith in God. It neither declares salvation nor expresses individual faith.

Still it does assume that truths about God can be stated; and that these are affirmed by all believers. I once affirmed them as the truths underlying my trust in God. How much of this stuff do I still believe?

I BELIEVE IN GOD

I notice that the creed assumes I know what is meant by “God”. Certainly it comes from a time when atheists were thin on the ground. I have to accept that a definition of God can only come from the whole creed, but it’s reasonable to think that here the word refers to one who is not human, but immortal, invisible, the only wise one. When I was a child and teenager, growing up in a Presbyterian church and household, I accepted that sort of concept of God without much difficulty. God was external to the universe, but powerful within it, guiding its existence providentially.

During my lifetime, within my culture, this concept of God has been challenged by all the sciences, including some theology, so that only about a third of people in Scotland any longer affirm such a belief. Young people especially think of it as an outdated fairy tale. My own experience of life, moreover, including the early death of my daughter, has encouraged me to look critically at any faith that presupposes God as a simple datum. This personal questioning is only a small reflection of the much more profound question asked by the generation before mine: how can there be faith in God after Auschwitz? Surely any God worth the name would have stopped it? This really leads to the next phrase of the creed, but I should admit here that a) I do not think that God is a simple given; and b) I do not believe in God’s supernatural providence in the universe.

But on the other hand, there is Luther’s demystifying statement, “It is the care and trust of the heart that make both God and idol.” At one stroke this makes God into a human construct which either equates to reality or not. This is similar to Bob Dylan’s great song, “ You gonna have to serve somebody:

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearlsBut you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes
Indeed you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

Dylan makes this universal, a fundamental condition and choice: what God do we make and serve?

This understanding gives me back God as one created truthfully or deceitfully by human beings. I’ll continue to explore this insight.