"This essay is contributed to the commemoration in 1981 of the sixteen-hundredth anniversary of the second ecumenical council of the Christian church, which was held at Constantinople in 381. The contention which distinguishes these pages... is that the Creed's substance cannot be satisfactorily interpreted apart from attention to the twin questions of its function and its form. The answer offered to the first is that the Creed is primarily neither a summary of Christian beliefs nor a sort of loyalty oath, but instead is a statement of our identity as people who have been born anew through the Spirit and now live in Christ The answer to the second question is that the Creed shares with the New Testament a form which is essentially narrative. Christianity is not first of all a world view but a story; insofar as contemporary rationalism inside and outside the church has misunderstood this, it has mistaken shadow for substance and mislaid the riches of the gospel. The Creed gains its narrative quality from its reflection of the biblical recital of the works of him who is not only an individual but, in his historical particularity, also a new Adam who repairs all that the old Adam has done...."