What is Belief

Last week we talked about the usefulness of the Creed in helping us to share the same understanding of who our God is.  Beginning this week we’re going to spend some time looking at each section of the Nicene Creed to learn what it means and why it’s included.

Before we can begin to talk about what we believe, we must take a moment and discuss what it means to believe.  Literally, to believe means to “hold dear.”  It has a sense of “preference” or “allegiance.”

One of the earliest examples of the English word “belief” is found in a medieval homily that warns Christians not to set their hearts, as we might say today, on worldly goods.   The actual phrase is “should not set their belief” on them.  So, literally, the homilist was saying that the faithful should not give their allegiance to worldly goods.

Belief is also tightly connected to the word “faith.”  The English language does not have a verb form of the word FAITH.  The word faith is a noun, but faith itself is an action, so English translators usually use the word “belief” instead. 

The Christian act of faith is not a solo; it is made in communion with the confession of faith sung by the whole church.  The “I believe” of baptism becomes the “we believe” of the community which gathers in faith.  The Christian community is the “we” of faith. 

In reciting the Creed, Christians declare, individually and collectively, our faith before both God and the world.  So the purpose of our confession of faith is two-fold:  Before God it is an act of praise and thanksgiving, through which we thank God for all that he has done in creation; and before our fellow human beings, we declare publicly that our allegiance is to God and not to the things of this world. 

The Creed echoes the faith of the early Church.  By it the individual Christian follows in the centuries-old tradition of the baptized who confessed their faith just moments before being changed by the waters of baptism.  Today we profess our faith just moments before being changed by a different Sacrament – the Holy Eucharist.