Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Saved by the Creed

So summer German is abgemacht, that is, done. For our final we were permitted to choose our academic topic to translate from German. Naturally, I chose theology. And during the exam, I was quite literally saved by the Nicene Creed. Not in the soteriological sense (though I am indeed saved in that sense by the God expounded upon in that Creed). This saving was somewhat less dramatic.

Being pressed for time towards the end of the exam I was concerned I wouldn't finish, when I came upon a substantial quotation of what was unmistakably the Nicene Creed in German. Church attendance really does pay off! The habit of weekly recitation enabled me to translate quickly, and finish just in time. If your church, should you attend one, for whatever inexplicable reason does not recite the Nicene Creed weekly, simply tell them my story which should get them to alter their practice to what has for essentially two millenia been the Christian norm. American pragmatists need their reasons... now they've got one.

So I suppose even if one disagreed with me regarding the salvific power of that which is proclaimed in the Nicene Creed (as here described), that one would at least have to agree that the Creed itself did save someone at least once.