The Nicene Creed focuses mainly on the concept of God being The Holy Spirit, The Father and The Son. This can be misunderstood by people, this states that God being one person is made up of three separate aspects. This is a misconception to some who think that God is the Father, Jesus is the Son and the Holy Spirit is found within God. However, God is all three of these aspects not just one. The Nicene Creed can be read in different ways, for Catholics, in order for God to exist the Holy Spirit, Father and Son all correspond differently to how Orthodox Christians perceive. For Catholics, without the Father and the Son there would be no Holy Spirit. However for Orthodox Christians without the Father there is no Holy Spirit. This differentiation is known as the great schism (split) between Orthodox and Catholic Christians. This specific aspect is found in the third stanza in the line "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son". The Nicene Creed uses a lot of third person pronouns such as 'We' and 'Our', this helps to express Gods attributes and how believers follow them. For example " For us and for our salvation", this shows God sacrificing his life for his people, furthermore exemplifying Gods Omnibenevolence.
Psalm 139 (The Inescapable God) talks about Gods relationship with people and how he overlooks everyone all the time. In some ways this can be seen as a positive message, on the other hand this could also been seen as a quite a negative attribute of God. It's positive in the sense that God will always be there for you through thick and thin. If you were put in a situation of worry God would be there to help you make a good decision and if you received a good result or proved successful in something God would be there to congratulate you, not literally but spiritually, only those who truly commit to God would notice that and they are the people that really benefit from having such a strong bond with God and their faith altogether. Ultimately this sort of attribute tells everyone that God will always be watching them and helping them make moral decisions. It's a negative attribute in the sense that God can seem over powering in that there is no space for independence and God could be testing you a lot. This can be quite daunting for a lot of people. This feeling is challenged in the final stanza of the psalm when David speaks against anyone that were to disobey or betray God creating quite a possessive feeling. This tone is very different from the rest of the psalm when David speaks of how hard it is to escape God " where can I flee from your presence?".
On a whole Psalm 139 ( The Inescapable God) and The Nicene Creeh are very different although they address similar cultures. They are different because Psalm 139 mainly focuses on Gods attributes such as his omnibenevolence, omnipotence and omniscience. On the other hand The Nicene Creed focuses more on the relationship God has with people. For example it talks about God sacrificing his life for his people through the son (Jesus) when he was nailed to the cross.
Some good key words used throughout, Katherine - well done.
ReplyDeleteA few general points:
1. Although context (e.g. The Great Schism) is useful, don't let it overpower your actual analysis of the text.
2. A comparison of the third person language of the Creed and the first person language of the Psalm would have been useful.