#MonthOfMinistry Day 4
The image shows St Nicholas (definitely not channelling his cosy Santa Claus persona!) about to slap Arius at the First Council of Nicaea. They’re disagreeing about whether Christ the Son is of the same substance as God the Father. A highly technical point about the nature of the Trinity, but enough for supposedly-holy men to come to blows. Poor Arius was by no means the last to get beaten up (or worse) for having an unsanctioned understanding of the mystery of the divine.
I don’t know if the incident really happened, but the image came to mind recently when my Quaker meeting was invited recently to take part in the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity by our lovely local council of churches. As Quakers, we’re not quite sure if we call ourselves “Christian”, but it was good to be asked, and good to co-operate with other local spiritual communities. Then I heard that this year’s theme for the week was the 1,700 anniversary of the Nicene Creed and I felt very uneasy about participating. (The Nicene Creed is the statement, agreed by all the mainstream Christian churches, laying out precisely what their members should believe about the nature of God and Jesus. It’s a very big deal.)
All this is to say that I’m quite uneasy about the word “interfaith”. If it means working together as loving communities, then I am very glad to be involved. But if “unity” means all having to believe exactly the same thing (about matters which are of course beyond rational comprehension), I think we run into big problems. And once we start coming to blows and killing each other as heretics, we have totally lost the plot.
I think it’s really fine to have lots of different ideas about what “God” means and what it means to be a human – and I want to celebrate the diversity and creativity that goes into those ideas. But ultimately, we can only stop in wordless awe at the mystery of existence, at our deep connection of joy and compassion with the rest of the universe!
If “interfaith” can mean sharing in that connection, I’m very happy to call myself an interfaith minister.