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Book Review: The Creed Luke Timothy Johnson Sticks to Underground, Eschews the Crossover. The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters Between the outbreak of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code and the impending release of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, I can only imagine that its been a heady year for religious scholars called to offer their opinions in far more controversial forums than the occasional Newsweek issue with Jesus on the cover. Recent pop-commentary has treated faith as, at worse, a sinister secret ready to be unlocked after thousands of years and, at best, an outdated and superfluous phenomenon to be handled with care in case it is contagious. Noted biblical scholar Luke Timothy Johnson’s latest work The Creed addresses itself to those he understands as modern versions of Schleiermacher’s “cultured despisers” of religion in an attempt to demystify and support the use of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. The tension Dr. Johnson chooses to negotiate is a formidable one as, in terms of content, he endeavors to write a thorough study of this important article of faith without pandering to the pop-religion sensibilities that frequently push solid religious scholarship out of the public eye. His format, however, avoids all of the trappings of academia in an effort to achieve universal accessibility. References are included within the text, rather than in footnote form, he does not include an index and the entire work shockingly jargon-free, a rare feat in biblical scholarship. In walking this line, Dr. Johnson offers a thorough look at the Creed without compromising his currently unfashionable religious convictions. The piece is plotted out predictably, with two chapters covering the history of the Creed and the place that it occupies in Christian religious devotion. His analysis of the background of the Creed shies away from hip disdain for fourth century Christianity and focuses itself strictly on the development of the specific prayer. In his discussion of the Creed’s role in the Christian faith, entitled “What the Creed Is and What it Does”, he asserts that it is a “symbol of faith” that serves as a starting point for Christian faith, crucial in what it does not profess as well as what it does, and in so doing, “through analogy it speaks truly about God – truly but inadequately – and, as a set of critical theological concepts, its statements provide the logic for the Christian way of life”. The rest of the book works its way through the Creed systematically, utterance by utterance. Dr. Johnson is clearly at his strength in his fourth chapter, when he finally gets around to the Christian claim that “we believe in one lord Jesus Christ…”. His Christology is the strongest statement in made in this intentionally tame piece as he brilliantly addresses his criticism to the liberal relegation of Jesus to a simple moral exemplar. He makes the apt point that without saying anything extraordinary about Jesus like assertions about his divinity or his redemptive sacrifice, there is not any particular reason to privilege Jesus. If we want to make Jesus a Marxist revolutionary, why not just take Lenin? If Jesus was just a nice guy, the comforting casual-wear of Mr. Rogers would have far greater appeal amongst the 3-8 year old demographic than Sunday School ever did. Dr. Johnson concludes, “If God is not in Christ, devoting one’s life to Christ is truly arbitrary”. If that last sentiment is disagreeable to readers, then they wont find much use in Dr. Johnson’s secondary goal of explaining why the Creed matters. However, in light of the lately hip abuse of religious scholarship, though, The Creed stands out as a fine work of remarkable integrity that achieves its goal of accessibility with flying colors and devotes serious attention to a central piece of Christian religious life. Read more articles in Arts » |
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