In the Holy Spirit, that is, when we live in God, we share the lives of other believers, who can be called saints because they are holy people. The tendency of modern reformed churches to translate the Latin sancti as ‘God’s people’ by-passes any reference to their holiness which is certainly not the intention of St. Paul who invented this term. He believed that people who lived in the spirit would be holy, not perfectly and not all at once, but slowly and imperfectly they would separate themselves from the standards of the world, to live in the character of God, as Jesus did. So I would keep the term ‘holy’.

The Latin word ‘communio’ comes from the Greek koinonia, meaning a shared enterprise or shared life. It’s a business word, not holy at all. Paul and John use it to characterise the life of the first church assemblies. Both teach that the life they share is not just that of other believers but the very life of God. This lies behind Paul’s concept of the body of messiah, in which the differently gifted members contribute their unique lives to the life of the whole.

If believers share each other’s lives in the assembly, they also share the lives of the members of all the assemblies, even although they may never meet in person. Paul, as I have mentioned above, was always keen to nurture this sense of communion.

And then of course, as believers died, there grew also a sense that the shared life continued across that barrier, because both the living and the dead believers shared the one life of God. The New Testament authors are careful about this sharing: there is no claim that we can speak with our own dear dead, or consult them about our worldly dilemmas. But we remain in a shared life, albeit separated, until the arrival of God’s new world, where there shall be no separation. And the assemblies may keep special remembrance of their saints, as part of the regular liturgy of the Eucharist, where we “rejoice in the communion of saints.” There is one table although it may exist in different dimensions.

Neglect of the “shared life” of believers on earth and in heaven is common and regrettable, weakening their worship and mission.

The word, Catholic, comes from the Greek, katholiky, which in turn is derived from the Greek preposition kata, meaning according to, or to do with: and the noun holos meaning whole. Used of the church it means worldwide, universal, all-inclusive. This clause indicates that the church in which we believe is universal and all- inclusive, as opposed to say, national and sectarian. Roman Catholic might be thought an oxymoron, and often it is. The Anglican Communion is almost as bad, dragging echoes of colonialism. The Church of Scotland is a modest title which however allows a lot of scope for being national rather than universal in outlook. Some local baptist churches are concerned only with the salvation of their members, and the sinfulness of abortion and homosexuality. This is a populist sectarianism.

Still, I believe in a Catholic Church, where all are welcome to worship father son and holy spirit, one God, and are encouraged to live in justice, peace and love for the planet and its creatures. It may never wholly exist but it does at various times and in various places show itself in its true beauty.

It can be seen coming into existence in the Acts of the Apostles and in the letters of St Paul, who never ceases to urge his local assemblies to be Catholic by remembering other assemblies in their prayers and by contributing to the relief of poverty in Jerusalem. The local church can be universal in its worship, and its communion across distance. The world church on the other hand, is not a mighty army, but a communion of local churches, concerned with the specifics of local existence. It may be essential that the world church has no power structures.

The first thing to note about the Holy Spirit is that it is absence- the absence of powers that enslave a person, whether these are compulsions internal to a person, deriving from trauma visited upon them, or external forces of society, culture or religion. The first apostles for example were unbound from the guilt of having deserted Jesus, and of their own ordinary sins. They were liberated from race, language, nationality, and from the compulsions of wealth. Above all, the spirit of individualised life was absent and in its place was communion, koinonia, shared life.

The Holy Spirit, which is God’s spirit, is not some kind of supernatural gloop which enters into a person, nor is it a secret power which determines positive emotions and beliefs. It is the absence of false determinants and permits the person to live and move and have their being in God. It is the ministry of Jesus which enables a person to die to the powers that control the world and worldly people, and to rise into the liberating spirit of God, which does not enslave, but invites people to live as children of God. They are persuaded to live as God intended.

It is important to reiterate that the Holy Spirit is no-thing. It is not something of the same sort as any worldly thing. It is God, an undefinable reality. The Johannine tradition names it as love and koinonia (shared life). Paul names it as the spirit of adoption by which we cry out to God, Abba, dear father. Although it enters individual persons, it makes them no longer isolated individuals but members of the ecclesia, the assembly of brothers and sisters, citizens of God.

As is evident from my own attempts here, it cannot be fully described, because it is not a reality of this world. Like judgement (see above) it is an eschatological reality, which will only be fully known in the completion of God’s creation. It comes to human beings from the future and is creative of the future. But it is not unknowable: it is known by its fruits, which Paul describes as love joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

The living Jesus, who has known life in the world, will be the judge of worldly people. No details are given here about the nature of that judgement, but something like the judgement of The King in Matthew 25 is often assumed.

There is a whole industry in the US based on images of the last judgement from St. Paul and the book of The Revelation, all of which mistakes eschatological events for historical ones. The judgement of the living and the dead does not take place in our space/time continuum; it happens in God, and can only be asserted as prophecy or vision. It expresses the faith that our universe does not have the last word on the story of creation. The brief mention here affirms that faith as part of the truth of God. I am happy to go along with that.

The most stark images of judgement are attributed in the gospels to Jesus himself, and therefore deserve respect. In the story of the sheep and the goats, I like to think that the line between them runs through each and every person, rather than dividing one from another. After all it is a story. And I look forward to being judged; As in any test, I would like to know my score. An objective estimate of my attempt at goodness would be helpful. And I would like to be finally rid of the bits of me that are “goat”; I’m happy to surrender them to the fire. And if Jesus is in charge of this process, I can trust it will be done in love.

Are there people who are all goat? If so, they may be complete goners, but the purpose of God’s judgement is to rescue all the goodness of persons by separating it from all the evil. in the classic medieval view of judgement, as in the Divina Comedia, I cannot see the point of Hell. It does nothing that a properly organised Purgatory could not do.

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.