Jaroslav Pelikan & the Masai Creed

I was listening to an interview with the late scholar Jaroslav Pelikan on 'The Need for Creeds' and he made reference to a statement of faith drawn up by the Masai people of East Africa and the Holy Ghost Fathers in about 1960. Pelikan picked it out as being a fine example of a re-statement of Christian dogma in the particular language and concepts of a culture.

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in the darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the Bible, that he would save the world and all nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from that grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love, and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

Quite a number of aspects of this creed are striking. It begins with a bit of a surprise - not being composed in the context of Trinitarian controversy, the drafters didn't seem to deem it necessary to begin with a statement of the Fatherhood of God. Likewise, the eternal generation of the Son and the Lordship of the Holy Spirit aren't mentioned - not because of any squishy theology I would imagine, but rather because the focus isn't on disputed points of Trinitatian Dogma. (I would point to the strong affirmation of the need for penitence near the end of the creed as being evidence that we're not dealing with watered-down Christianity here.)
Pelikan was much taken by the idea of Christ always on safari doing good - a most lovely way of saying that Our Lord had no where to lay his head. Indeed, the emphasis on the life and ministry of Christ sets this apart from the more ancient creeds of Christendom. We normally jump from the Incarnation to the Crucifixion in those creeds which focus on re-affirming disputed points of doctrine. However, if one is coming up with a statement of the Christian faith in a non-polemic context, expressing what it is that is important about the life of the Christian, one can't simply pass over the life of Christ.
The description of what happened to Christ after his burial also has an interesting contemporary resonance. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him... One is inclined to grin - there's a certain poetry in putting it that way, and perhaps it's a little quaint, but it makes the point. The grave did not claim Him. He did not decay like other men and when you have the likes of John Dominic Crossan claiming that Christ was left in a shallow grave to be devoured by wild dogs and crows, there's a definite pertinence in affirming that on the contrary, the hyenas did not touch Him.
There's more which could be said about this creed - one could come up with several lacunae, but it's sincere and thought-provoking, and it's little surprise that Pelikan picked it out as something special.

Incidentally, it wasn't only the Masai who have come up with 'updated' Creeds. Paul VI's Credo of the People of God is a much neglected statement of the Catholic Faith.

Easter Thoughts from Bishop Tom Wright

Bishop Tom Wright is the Anglican bishop of Durham. As Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey he spent several weeks in Rome as a visiting lecturer at the Gregorian University and as a guest of the Pontifical Irish College. Quite apart from being a world-renowned Pauline scholar, he's also written a very fine book about the Resurrection. His piece in today's Times is well worth a read. It's a good mix of rigorous academic thought and solid preaching that characterises much of his writing:

Easter was the pilot project. What God did for Jesus that explosive morning is what He intends to do for the whole creation. We who live in the interval between Jesus's Resurrection and the final rescue and transformation of the whole world are called to be new-creation people here and now. That is the hidden meaning of the greatest festival Christians have.
This true meaning has remained hidden because the Church has trivialised it and the world has rubbished it. The Church has turned Jesus's Resurrection into a “happy ending” after the dark and messy story of Good Friday, often scaling it down so that “resurrection” becomes a fancy way of saying “He went to Heaven”. Easter then means: “There really is life after death”. The world shrugs its shoulders. We may or may not believe in life after death, but we reach that conclusion independently of Jesus, of odd stories about risen bodies and empty tombs.
(...)
Let's be clear: the stories are not about someone coming back into the present mode of life. They are about someone going on into a new sort of existence, still emphatically bodily, if anything, more so. When St Paul speaks of a “spiritual” resurrection body, he doesn't mean “non-material”, like a ghost. “Spiritual” is the sort of Greek word that tells you,not what something is made of, but what is animating it. The risen Jesus had a physical body animated by God's life-giving Spirit. Yes, says St Paul, that same Spirit is at work in us, and will have the same effect - and in the whole world.

Now, suddenly, the real meaning of Easter comes into view, as well as the real reason why it has been trivialised and sidelined. Easter is about a new creation that has already begun. God is remaking His world, challenging all the other powers that think that is their job. The rich, wise order of creation and its glorious, abundant beauty are reaffirmed on the other side of the thing that always threatens justice and beauty - death. Christianity's critics have always sneered that nothing has changed. But everything has. The world is a different place.

Easter has been sidelined because this message doesn't fit our prevailing world view. For at least 200 years the West has lived on the dream that we can bring justice and beauty to the world all by ourselves.

Good and faithful servant...

It's hard to believe that it's 4 years since the passing of Pope John Paul II. I was in pilgrimage in Lourdes during the last week of his life, and happened to be returning to studies in Rome with a fellow seminarian on the last day of his life. Getting from Lourdes to Rome involved a couple of flights, and at each stop-over my colleague and I anxiously sought news of the Pope's condition. He was still alive when we landed in Rome, but as we reached the door of our residence the church bells of Rome began to toll. The only Pope we ever knew, that grandfatherly presence, that great man had passed from this life.
The next couple of weeks were to be unforgettable - the whole world gathering in Rome to pay their last respects, the hours of queuing in order to pay a final tribute to his remains, the memorable homily of Cardinal Connell who offered a requiem Mass for the Pope in the presence of Rome's Irish community and the almost unbearable sense of emptiness during the Eucharistic Prayer when the Christians of Rome had neither Pope nor bishop to pray for.
Curiously, the most eloquent tributes paid to the pontiff were drawn by the cartoonists of the world. Some of these sketches captured the mission of the Pope and the unique charism of John Paul II better than newspaper editorials and lengthy obituaries.
Ar dheis De go raibh a anam dilis.