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And so, when Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to God's self," every line in that statement goes beyond the historical. And yet, we attach that myth to a thoroughly historical person in set of circumstances and events.

What would you say to non-creedal Christians?

Non-confessional churches represent something important. Their protest against creeds is a recognition that creeds can be manipulative and can be instruments of power.

Nevertheless, the truth is that all communities have creeds, whether they articulate them or not.They have "fundamentals" of faith which guide the reading of Scripture. The problem is that if these are not articulated and are not subject to self-reflection and self-criticism, they can become even more tyrannical than creeds.

In addition, that non-creedal stance can diminish the sense of the importance of the community's faith as a shared faith and the way in which the church stands for something. You end up with a sense that all we are is a club of individualists rather than people who are genuinely galvanized by a vision of the world.

What is your message to confessional Protestants?

I suggest to the people who are confessional that the early creeds like the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed have much to offer in their parsimoniousness of profession, their lovely theological reticence.

Looking at later confessions, one is struck by the prolixity of profession. The Nicene Creed is remarkable for not having a theory of atonement, a theory of sin, a set polity for the church. If we Christians could focus upon these ancient creeds which get at the heart of what we're about, rather than on our own denominational renderings of them (I include here my own Roman Catholic elaborations about which I have many negative things to say in the book)—ecumenically, we would be well served in searching for genuine boundaries of fellowship that are not barriers, that don't call essential what may not be essential.

So, for example, I think to have the Virgin Mary in the creed is wonderful and important. But Roman Catholicism's elaborated and evermore extended Mariology is clearly very problematic.

In the book, you talk about what the Creed has to say to the spirit of modernity. What does it have to say to postmodernity?

If one understands postmodernity as the dissolving of meaning into sheer subjectivity or individualism, clearly the Creed—as the community's banner under which it stands—says something to that. Truth is not simply subjective, but witness is always subjective. And although we may not be able to ground our profession of faith mathematically, as a community we can ground it existentially. In that sense, I'm in line with people like Stanley Hauerwas, who are appealing to Christians to pay attention to our boundaries and to say what it is that we are actually professing.

The church used to be pretty cozy with power structures and in some places still pretends to be. How does the creed really help the church deal with the loss of cultural and political traction? Is this loss of influence a good thing for the church?

I think that the post-Constantinian era is good for the church. We are in a stage of trying to recover what is at the heart of Christianity as opposed to its cultural and political entailments that have grown up over the centuries.

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November 2003, Vol. 47, No. 11