{"id":28134,"date":"2025-07-01T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T07:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/?p=28134"},"modified":"2025-07-01T16:16:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T15:16:04","slug":"a-letter-from-dave-adams-llm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/?p=28134","title":{"rendered":"A letter from Dave Adams, LLM"},"content":{"rendered":"

1700 years and still counting \u2026<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/strong>Tevye, the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof was born into a long tradition.  His father and mother knew their place in society.  They sent him to Hebrew school at the age of 3, and even picked out a bride for him – \u201cI hope she\u2019s pretty\u201d, he sang.  In Tevye\u2019s world everyone knew who they were and what God expected of them.  <\/p>\n

It was the same in Jesus\u2019s time until, that is, Jesus came.  But his followers were slow to make sense of what had happened.  It was 30 years before the first Gospel was written and fresh insights continued to emerge as the rest of the New Testament came together.  Did that settle all the questions?  Well, yes and no.  Several centuries passed before a concensus was reached about who Jesus really was.  <\/p>\n

In 325 AD the Church leaders gathered to thrash out a statement they hoped would settle, once and for all, who Jesus was.  It resulted in what we know as the Nicene Creed originally drafted 1,700 years ago this year.  Of the 151 words in the English translation, 126 were devoted to explaining who Jesus was.  But no sooner had it been published than people began to realise that they had missed some things out.  There was nothing about the Church or the baptismal rite of passage into the Church.  And what about the life of the world to come, and particularly where did the Holy Spirit fit?  The first edition of the Nicene Creed had barely mentioned the Spirit as an afterthought in just 5 words.  So just 56 years later, in 381 AD, the Church leaders got together again and added 75 more words to the Creed, resulting in the version we are familiar with today.  <\/p>\n

Was this the final word?  Well no.  Christians through the centuries have continued to probe the mysteries of God, who was \u201cin Christ, reconciling the world to himself\u201d (2 Corinthians 5:19).  We still only know \u201cin part\u201d (1 Corinthians 13:12).  In each generation and in every place there are new questions, provoking us to see God and His world with fresh eyes. <\/p>\n

Gustav Mahler, the composer, is reported to have said \u201cTradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire\u201d.  Thank God that it is His Spirit amongst us that keeps the flame burning and continues to guide us into all truth (John 16:12-15).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1700 years and still counting \u2026  Tevye, the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof was born into a long tradition.  His father and mother knew their place in society.  They sent him to Hebrew school at the age of 3, and even picked out a bride for him – \u201cI hope she\u2019s pretty\u201d, he sang. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":27702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news","ctfw-has-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28135,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28134\/revisions\/28135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}