The Council of Nicaea and the Nicene Creed
Source: Excerpted from Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I: The History of Creeds.
This text covers the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), the formation of the Nicene Creed,
and the Seven Ecumenical Councils of the undivided Church.
[Attribution: Schaff, Philip. Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I. Harper & Brothers, 1877. Public domain.]
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§ 8. The Nicene Creed.
Literature.
I. See the works on the oecumenical Creeds noticed p. 12, and the extensive literature on the Council of Nicaea, mentioned in my Church History, Vol. III. pp. 616, 617, and 622. The acts of the Council are collected in Greek and Latin by Mansi, Collect. sacr. Concil., Tom. II. fol. 635-704. The Council of Nicaea is more or less fully discussed in the historical works, general or particular, of Tillemont, Walch, Schröckh, Gibbon, A. de Broglie, Neander, Gieseler, Baur (Hist. of the Doctrine of the Trinity), Dorner (History of Christology), Hefele (History of Councils, Stanley (History of the Eastern Church).
II. Special treatises on the Nicene symbol:
Ph. Melanchthon: Explicatio Symb. Nicaeni, ed. a J. Sturione, Viteb. 1561, 8vo.
Casp. Cruciger: Enarrationis Symboli Nicaeni articuli duo, etc., Viteb. 1548, 4to, and Symboli Nicaeni enarratio cum praefatione Ph. Melanchthonis, acc. priori editioni plures Symboli partes, Basil (without date).
J. H. Heidegger (d. 1698): De Symbolo Nicaene-Constantinopolitano (Tom. II. Disp. select. pp. 716 sqq., Turici, 1675-97).
J. G. Baier: De Conc. Nicaeni primi et OEcum. auctoritate atque integritate, Jen. 1695 (in Disputat. theol. decad. I.).
T. Fecht: Innocentia Concilii et Symboli Nicaeni, Rostock, 1711.
T. Caspar Suicer (d. 1684): Symbolum Nicaeno-Constant. expositum et ex antiquitate ecclesiastica illustratum, Traj. ad Eh. 1718, 4to.
George Bull (d. 1710): Defensio Fidei Nicaenae, Oxon. 1687, in his Latin works ed. by Grabe, 1703; by Burton, 1827, and again 1846; English translation in the Anglo-Catholic Library, Oxf. 1851, 2 vols.
The Nicene Creed, or Symbolum Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum, is the Eastern form of the primitive Creed, but with the distinct impress of the Nicene age, and more definite and explicit than the Apostles' Creed in the statement of the divinity of Christ and the Holy Ghost. The terms 'coessential' or 'coequal' (homoousios to patri), 'begotten before all worlds' (pro panton ton aionon), 'very God of very God' (theos alethinos ek theou alethinou), 'begotten, not made' (gennetheis, ou poietheis), are so many trophies of orthodoxy in its mighty struggle with the Arian heresy, which agitated the Church for more than half a century. The Nicene Creed is the first which obtained universal authority. It rests on older forms used in different churches of the East, and has undergone again some changes. [47]
The Eastern creeds arose likewise out of the baptismal formula, and were intended for the baptismal service as a confession of the faith of the catechumen in the Triune God. [48]
We must distinguish two independent or parallel creed formations, an Eastern and a Western; the one resulted in the Nicene Creed as completed by the Synod of Constantinople, the other in the Apostles' Creed in its Roman form. The Eastern creeds were more metaphysical, polemical, flexible, and adapting themselves to the exigencies of the Church in the maintenance of her faith and conflict with heretics; the Western were more simple, practical, and stationary. The former were controlled by synods, and received their final shape and sanction from two oecumenical Councils; the latter were left to the custody of the several churches, each feeling at liberty to make additions or alterations within certain limits, until the Roman form superseded all others, and was quietly, and without formal synodical action, adopted by Western Christendom.
In the Nicene Creed we must distinguish three forms--the original Nicene, the enlarged Constantinopolitan, and the still later Latin.
1. The original Nicene Creed dates from the first oecumenical Council, which was held at Nicaea, A.D. 325, for the settlement of the Arian controversy, and consisted of 318 bishops, all of them from the East (except Hosius of Spain). This Creed abruptly closes with the words 'and in the Holy Ghost,' but adds an anathema against the Arians. This was the authorized form down to the Council of Chalcedon.
2. The Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed, besides some minor changes in the first two articles, adds all the clauses after 'Holy Ghost,' but omits the anathema. It gives the text as now received in the Eastern Church. It is usually traced to the second oecumenical Council, which was convened by Theodosius in Constantinople, A.D. 381, against the Macedonians or Pneumatomachians (so called for denying the deity of the Holy Spirit), and consisted of 150 bishops, all from the East. There is no authentic evidence of an oecumenical recognition of this enlarged Creed till the Council at Chalcedon, 451, where it was read by Aëtius (a deacon of Constantinople) as the 'Creed of the 150 fathers,' and accepted as orthodox, together with the old Nicene Creed, or the 'Creed of the 318 fathers.' But the additional clauses existed in 374, seven years before the Constantinopolitan Council, in the two creeds of Epiphanius, a native of Palestine, and most of them as early as 350, in the creed of Cyril of Jerusalem. [50]
The Nicene Creed comes nearest to that of Eusebius of Caesarea, which likewise abruptly closes with pneuma hagion; the Constantinopolitan Creed resembles the creeds of Cyril and Epiphanius, which close with 'the resurrection' and 'life everlasting.' We may therefore trace both forms to Palestine, except the Nicene homoousion.
3. The Latin or Western form differs from the Greek by the little word Filioque, which, next to the authority of the Pope, is the chief source of the greatest schism in Christendom. The Greek Church, adhering to the original text, and emphasizing the monarchia of the Father as the only root and cause of the Deity, teaches the single procession (ekporeusis) of the Spirit from the Father alone, which is supposed to be an eternal inner-trinitarian process (like the eternal generation of the Son), and not to be confounded with the temporal mission (pempsis) of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son. The Latin Church, in the interest of the co-equality of the Son with the Father, and taking the procession (processio) in a wider sense, taught since Augustine the double procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, and, without consulting the East, put it into the Creed.
The first clear trace of the Filioque in the Nicene Creed we find at the third Council of Toledo in Spain, A.D. 589, to seal the triumph of orthodoxy over Arianism. During the eighth century it obtained currency in England and in France, but not without opposition. Pope Leo III., when asked by messengers of a council held during the reign of Charlemagne at Aix la Chapelle, A.D. 809, to sanction the Filioque, decided in favor of the double procession, but against any change in the Creed. Nevertheless, the clause gained also in Italy from the time of Pope Nicholas I. , and was gradually adopted in the entire Latin Church. From this it passed into the Protestant Churches. [51]
Another addition in the Latin form, 'Deus de Deo,' in article II., created no difficulty, as it was in the original Nicene Creed, but it is useless on account of the following 'Deus verus de Deo vero,' and hence was omitted in the Constantinopolitan edition.
The Nicene Creed (without these Western additions) is more highly honored in the Greek Church than in any other, and occupies the same position there as the Apostles' Creed in the Latin and Protestant Churches. It is incorporated and expounded in all the orthodox Greek and Russian Catechisms. It is also (with the Filioque) in liturgical use in the Roman (since about the sixth century), and in the Anglican and Lutheran Churches. It was adopted by the Council of Trent as the fundamental Symbol, and embodied in the Profession of the Tridentine Faith by Pius IV. It is therefore more strictly an oecumenical Creed than the Apostles' and the Athanasian, which have never been fully naturalized in the Oriental Churches.
. . 'The faith of the Trinity lies,
Shrined for ever and ever, in those grand old words and wise;
A gem in a beautiful setting; still, at matin-time,
The service of Holy Communion rings the ancient chime;
Wherever in marvelous minster, or village churches small,
Men to the Man that is God out of their misery call,
Swelled by the rapture of choirs, or borne on the poor man's word,
Still the glorious Nicene confession unaltered is heard;
Most like the song that the angels are singing around the throne,
With their "Holy! holy! holy!" to the great Three in One.' [53]
The relation of the Nicene Creed to the Apostles' Creed may be seen from the following table:
The Apostles' Creed; Received Text. The Nicene Creed, as Enlarged A.D. 381. (The clauses in brackets are the later additions.) (The words in brackets are Western changes.) 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty,
1. We [I] believe in one God the Father Almighty,
[Maker of heaven and earth].
Maker of heaven and earth,
And of all things visible and invisible. 2. And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord; 2. And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God,
Begotten of the Father before all worlds;
[God of God],
Light of Light.
Very God of very God,
Begotten, not made,
Being of one substance with the Father;
By whom all things were made; 3. Who was [conceived] by the Holy Ghost, 3. Who, for us men, and for our salvation,
Born of the Virgin Mary;
came down from heaven,
And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of
the Virgin Mary,
And was made man
4. [Suffered] under Pontius Pilate, was crucified [dead], and buried;
4. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
And suffered and was buried;
5. The third day he rose again from the dead;
5. And the third day he rose again,
According to the Scriptures; 6. He ascended into heaven, 6. And ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of [God] the Father [Almighty];
And sitteth on the right hand of the Father;
7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
7. And he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead;
Whose kingdom shall have no end. 8. And [I believe] in the Holy Ghost; 8. And [I believe] in the Holy Ghost,
The Lord, and Giver of life;
Who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son];
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified;
Who spake by the Prophets. 9. The holy [catholic] Church;
9. And [I believe] in one holy catholic and apostolic Church;
[The communion of saints]; 10. The forgiveness of sins;
10. We [I] acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;
11. The resurrection of the flesh [body];
11. And we [I] look for the resurrection of the dead;
12. [And the life everlasting]. 12. And the life of the world to come.
We give also, in parallel columns, the original and the enlarged formulas of the Nicene Creed, italicizing the later additions, and inclosing in brackets the passages which are omitted in the received text:
The Nicene Creed of 325. The Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. [58]
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father [the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God], Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance (homoousion) with the Father; by whom all things were made [both in heaven and on earth]; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; he suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (aeons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; from thence he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Ghost.
And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets. In one holy catholic and apostolic Church; we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
[But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance' or 'essence,' or 'The Son of God is created,' or 'changeable,' or 'alterable'--they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.]
Compare the symbols of the church of Jerusalem, the church of Alexandria, and the creed of Caesarea, which Eusebius read at the Council of Nicaea, in Usher, l.c. pp. 7, 8; more fully in Vol. II. pp. 11 sqq., and in Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole, pp. 40 sqq., 91 sqq.
Eusebius, in his Epistle to the people of Caesarea, says of the creed which he had proposed to the Council of Nicaea for adoption, that he had learned it as a catechumen, professed it at his baptism, taught it in turn as presbyter and bishop, and that it was derived from our Lord's baptismal formula. It resembles the old Nicene Creed very closely; see Vol. II. p. 29. The shorter creed of Jerusalem used at baptism, as given by Cyril, Catech. xix. 9, is simply the baptismal formula put interrogatively; see Hahn, pp. 51 sqq.
The most remarkable change in the first article is the omission of the words poutestin ek tes ousias tou Patros, theon ek theou on which great stress was laid by the Athanasian party against the Arians, who maintained that the Son was not of the essence, but of the will of the Father.
See Vol. II. pp. 31-38, and the Comparative Table, p. 40; Lumby, p. 68; and Hort, pp. 72-150. Dr. Hort tries to prove that the 'Constantinopolitan' or Epiphanian Creed is not a revision of the Nicene Creed at all, but of the Creed of Jerusalem, and that it dates probably from Cyril, about 362-364, when he adopted the Nicene homoousia, and may have been read by him at the Council of Constantinople in vindication of his orthodoxy. Ffoulkes (in Smith's Dict. of Christ. Antiq. Vol. I. p. 438) conjectures that it was framed at Antioch about 372, and adopted at the supplemental Council of Constantinople, 382.
Comp. Vol. II., at the close.
In the Reformed Churches, except the Episcopal, the Nicene Creed is little used. Calvin, who had a very high opinion of the Apostles' Creed, depreciates the Nicene Creed, as a 'carmen cantillando magis aptum, quam confessionis formula' (De Reform. Eccles.).
From 'A Legend of the Council of Nice,' by Cecil Frances Alexander, in 'The Contemporary Review' for February, 1867, pp. 176-179.
The Greek reads the plural (pisteuomen), but the Latin and English versions have substituted for it the singular (credo, I believe), in accordance with the Apostles' Creed and the more subjective character of the Western churches.
The Greek reads eis mian. . . ekklesian, but the Latin and English versions, in conformity with the Apostles' Creed, mostly omit in before ecclesiam; see p. 15.
Here and in art. 11 the singular is substituted in Western translations for homologoumen and prosdokomen.
The Greek original is given, together with the similar Palestinian confession, by Eusebius in his Epistola ad Caesareenses, which is preserved by Athanasius at the close of his Epistola de decretis Synodi Nicaenae (Opera, ed. Montfaucon, I. 239); also, with some variations, in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Act. II. in Mansi, Tom. VII.); in Theoderet, H. E. I. 12; Socrates, H. E. I. 8; Gelasius, H. Conc. Nic. 1. II. c. 35. See the literature and variations in Walch, l.c. pp. 75 and 87 sqq.; also in Hahn, l.c. pp. 105 sqq.
The Greek text in the acts of the second oecumenical Council (Mansi, Tom. III. p. 565; Hardouin, Vol. I. p. 814), and also in the acts of the fourth oecumenical Council. See Vol. II p. 35; Hahn, l.c. p. 111; and my Church Hist. Vol. III. pp. 667 sqq.
§ 9. The Creed of Chalcedon.
Literature.
The Acta Concilii in the collections of Mansi, Tom. VII., and of Hardouin, Tom. II.
Evagrius: Historia eccl. lib. II. c. 2, 4, 18.
Facundus (Bishop of Hermiane, in Africa): Pro defens. trium capitulorum, lib. V. c. 3, 4; lib. VIII. c. 4 (see Gallandi, Bibl. PP. Tom. XI. pp. 713 sqq.).
Liberatus (Archdeacon of Carthage): Breviarium causae Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum, c. 13 (Gallandi, Tom. XII. pp. 142 sqq.).
Baronius: Annal. ad ann. 451, No. 55 sqq.
Edm. Richer: Hist. concil. generalium, Paris, 1680 (Amst. 1686, 3 vols.), lib. I. c. 8.
Tillemont: Mémoires, etc. Tom. XV. pp. 628 sqq. (in the article on Leo the Great).
Natalis Alexander: Hist. eccles. sec. V. Tom. V. pp. 64 sqq. and pp. 209 sqq.
Quesnel: Synopsis actorum Conc. Chalcedon., in his Dissertat. de vita, etc., S. Leonis (see the Ballerini edition of the works of Leo the Great, Tom. II. pp. 501 sqq.).
Hulsemann: Exercit. ad Concil. Chalcedon. Lips. 1651.
Cave: Hist. literaria, etc. pp. 311 sqq. ed. Genev. 1705.
Walch: Ketzerhistorie, Vol. VI. p. 329 sq.; and his Historie der Kirchenversammlungen, p. 307 sq.
Arendt: Papst Leo der Grosse, Mainz, 1835, pp. 267-322.
Dorner: History of the Development of the Doctr. of the Person of Christ (2d Germ. ed.), Part II. 99-150.
Hefele: History of the Councils, Freiburg, Vol. II. . p. 392 sq.
Schaff: History of the Christian Church, N. Y. 1867, Vol. III. pp. 740 sqq. Comp. the literature there on pp. 708 sq., 714 sq., 722.
The Creed of Chalcedon was adopted at the fourth and fifth sessions of the fourth oecumenical Council, held at Chalcedon, opposite Constantinople, A.D. 451 (Oct. 22d and 25th). It embraces the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed, and the christological doctrine set forth in the classical Epistola Dogmatica of Pope Leo the Great to Flavian, the Patriarch of Constantinople and martyr of diophysitic orthodoxy at the so-called Council of Robbers (held at Ephesus in 449). [59]
While the first Council of Nicaea had established the eternal, pre-existent Godhead of Christ, the Symbol of the fourth oecumenical Council relates to the incarnate Logos, as he walked upon earth and sits on the right hand of the Father. It is directed against the errors of Nestorius and Eutyches, who agreed with the Nicene Creed as opposed to Arianism, but put the Godhead of Christ in a false relation to his humanity. It substantially completes the orthodox Christology of the ancient Church; for the definitions added during the Monophysite and Monothelite controversies are few and comparatively unessential. As the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity stands midway between Tritheism and Sabellianism, so the Chalcedonian formula strikes the true mean between Nestorianism and Eutychianism.
The following are the leading ideas of the Chalcedonian Christology as embodied in this symbol: [60]
1. A true incarnation of the Logos, or the second person in the Godhead (enanthropesis theou, ensarkosis tou logou, incarnatio Verbi).) This incarnation is neither a conversion or transmutation of God into man, nor a conversion of man into God, and a consequent absorption of the one, or a confusion (krasis, sunchusis) of the two; nor, on the other hand, a mere indwelling (enoikesis, inhabitatio) of the one in the other, nor an outward, transitory connection (sunapheia, conjunctio) of the two factors, but an actual and abiding union of the two in one personal life.
2. The precise distinction between nature and person. Nature or substance (essence, ousia) denotes the totality of powers and qualities which constitute a being; while person (hupostasis, prosopon) is the Ego, the self-conscious, self-asserting and acting subject. The Logos assumed, not a human person (else we would have two persons, a divine and a human), but human nature which is common to us all; and hence he redeemed, not a particular man, but all men as partakers of the same nature.
3. The God-Man as the result of the incarnation. Christ is not a (Nestorian) double being, with two persons, nor a compound (Apollinarian or Monophysite) middle being, a tertium quid, neither divine nor human; but he is one person both divine and human.
4. The duality of the natures. The orthodox doctrine maintains, against Eutychianism, the distinction of nature even after the act of incarnation, without confusion or conversion (asunchutos, inconfuse, and atreptos, immutabiliter), yet, on the other hand, without division or separation (adiairetos, indivise, and achoristos, inseparabiliter), so that the divine will ever remain divine, and the human ever human, and yet the two have continually one common life, and interpenetrate each other, like the persons of the Trinity. [63]
5. The unity of the person (henosis kath' hupostasin, henosis hupostatike, unio hypostatica or unio personalis). The union of the divine and human nature in Christ is a permanent state resulting from the incarnation, and is a real, supernatural, personal, and inseparable union--in distinction from an essential absorption or confusion, or from a mere moral union; or from a mystical union such as holds between the believer and Christ. The two natures constitute but one personal life, and yet remain distinct. 'The same who is true God,' says Leo, 'is also true man, and in this unity there is no deceit; for in it the lowliness of man and the majesty of God perfectly pervade one another. . . . Because the two natures make only one person, we read on the one hand: "The Son of Man came down from heaven" (John iii. 13), while yet the Son of God took flesh from the Virgin; and on the other hand: "The Son of God was crucified and buried," while yet he suffered, not in his Godhead as coeternal and consubstantial with the Father, but in the weakness of human nature.' The self-consciousness of Christ is never divided; his person consists in such a union of the human and the divine natures, that the divine nature is the seat of self-consciousness, and pervades and animates the human.
6. The whole work of Christ is to be attributed to his person, and not to the one or the other nature exclusively. The person is the acting subject, the nature the organ or medium. It is the one divine-human person of Christ that wrought miracles by virtue of his divine nature, and that suffered through the sensorium of his human nature. The superhuman effect and infinite merit of the Redeemer's work must be ascribed to his person because of his divinity; while it is his humanity alone that made him capable of, and liable to, toil, temptation, suffering, and death, and renders him an example for our imitation.
7. The anhypostasia, impersonality, or, to speak more accurately, the enhypostasia, of the human nature of Christ; for anhypostasia is a purely negative term, and presupposes a fictitious abstraction, since the human nature of Christ did not exist at all before the act of the incarnation, and could therefore be neither personal nor impersonal. The meaning of this doctrine is that Christ's human nature had no independent personality of its own, besides the divine, and that the divine nature is the root and basis of his personality. [66]
There is, no doubt, a serious difficulty in the old orthodox Christology, if we view it in the light of our modern psychology. We can conceive of a human nature without sin (for sin is a corruption, not an essential quality, of man), but we can not conceive of a human nature without personality, or a self-conscious and free Ego; for this distinguishes it from the mere animal nature, and is man's crowning excellency and glory. To an unbiased reader of the Gospel history, moreover, Christ appears as a full human personality, thinking, speaking, acting, suffering like a man (only without sin), distinguishing himself from other men and from his heavenly Father, addressing him in prayer, submitting to him his own will, and commending to him his spirit in the hour of death. Yet, on the other hand, be appears just as clearly in the Gospels as a personality in the most intimate, unbroken, mysterious life-union with his heavenly Father, in the full consciousness of a personal pre-existence before the creation, of having been sent by the Father from heaven into this world, of living in heaven even during this earthly abode, and of being ever one with him in will and in essence. In one word, he makes the impression of a theanthropic, divine-human person. His human personality was completed and perfected by being so incorporated with the pre-existent Logos-personality as to find in it alone its full self-consciousness, and to be permeated and controlled by it in every stage of its development.
The Chalcedonian Christology has latterly been subjected to a rigorous criticism (by Schleiermacher, Baur, Dorner, Rothe, and others), and has been charged with a defective psychology, and now with dualism, now with docetism, according as its distinction of two natures or of the personal unity has most struck the eye. But these imputations neutralize each other, like the imputations of tritheism and modalism, which may be made against the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity when either the tri-personality or the consubstantiality is taken alone. This, indeed, is the peculiar excellence of the Creed of Chalcedon, that it exhibits so sure a tact and so wise a circumspection in uniting the colossal antithesis in Christ, and seeks to do justice alike to the distinction of the natures and to the unity of the person. In Christ all contradictions are reconciled.
The Chalcedonian Creed is far from exhausting the great mystery of godliness, 'God manifest in flesh.' It leaves much room for a fuller appreciation of the genuine, perfect, and sinless humanity of Christ, of the Pauline doctrine of the Kenosis, or self-renunciation and self-limitation of the Divine Logos in the incarnation and during the human life of our Lord, and for the discussion of other questions connected with his relation to the Father and to the world, his person and his work. But it indicates the essential elements of Christological truth, and the boundary-lines of Christological error. It defines the course for the sound development of this central article of the Christian faith so as to avoid both the Scylla of Nestorian dualism and the Charybdis of Eutychian monophysitism, and to save the full idea of the one divine-human personality of our Lord and Saviour. Within these limits theological speculation may safely and freely move, and bring us to clearer conceptions; but in this world, where we 'know only in part (ek merous),' and 'see through a mirror obscurely (di esoptrou en ainigmati)' it will never fully comprehend the great central mystery of the theanthropic life of our Lord.
Comp. my Church Hist. Vol. III. p. 738.
Abridged, in part, from My Church History, Vol. III. pp. 747 sqq.
The diametrical opposite of the enanthropesis theou is the heathen apotheosis anthropou.
'Tenet,' says Leo, in his Epist. 28 ad Flavian., 'sine defectu proprietatem suam utraque natura, et sicut formam servi Dei forma non adimit, ita formam Dei servi forma non minuit. . . . Agit utraque forma cum alterius communione quod proprium est; Verbo scilicet operante quod Verbi est, et carne exsequente quod carnis est. Unum horum coruscat miraculis, aliud succumbit injuriis. Et sicut Verbum ab aequalitate paternae gloriae non recedit, ita caro naturam nostri generis non relinquit.'
Here belongs, in further explanation, the scholastic doctrine of the perichoresis, permeatio, circummeatio, circulatio, circumincessio, intercommunio, or reciprocal indwelling and pervasion, which has relation, not merely to the Trinity, but also to Christology. The verb perichorein is first applied by Gregory of Nyssa (Contra Apollinarium) to the interpenetration and reciprocal pervasion of the two natures in Christ. On this rested also the doctrine of the exchange or communication of attributes, antidosis, antimetastasis, koinonia idiomaton, communicatio idiomatum. The antimetastasis ton onomaton, also antimedistasis, transmutatio proprietatum, transmutation of attributes, is, strictly speaking, not identical with antidosis, but a deduction from it, and the rhetorical expression for it.
Comp. 1 Cor. ii. 8: 'They would not have crucified the Lord of glory.'
Anupostatos is that which has no personality in itself, enupostatos that which subsists in another personality, or partakes of another hypostasis.
The doctrine of the impersonality of the human nature of Christ may already be found as to its germ in Cyril of Alexandria, and was afterwards more fully developed by John of Damascus (De orthodoxa fide, lib. III.), and by the Lutheran scholastics of the seventeenth century, who, however, did not, for all this, conceive Christ as a mere generic being typifying mankind, but as a concrete human individual. Comp. Petavius, De incarnatione, lib. V. c. 5-8 (Tom. IV. pp. 421 sqq.); Thomasius, Christol. II. 108-110; Rothe, Dogmatik, II. 51 and 147.
He calls himself a 'man,' anthropos (John viii. 40; comp. xix. 5), and very often 'the Son of man,' and other men his 'brethren' (John xx. 17).
John viii.58; xvii. 5, 24; iii. 11-13; v. 37; vi. 38, 62; viii. 42; x. 30, and many other passages in the Gospels. Dr. R. Rothe, who rejects the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, yet expressly admits (Dogmatik, II. 88): 'Ebenso bestimmt, wie seine wahre Menschheit, tritt im Neuen Testament auch die wahre GOTTHEIT des Erlösers hervor.' To escape the orthodox inference of an incarnation of a divine hypostasis, Rothe must resort (p. 100) to the Socinian interpretation of John xvii. 5, where the Saviour asserts his pre-existence with the Father (doxason me su, pater, para seauto te doxe, he eichon pro tou ton kosmon einai para soi); thereby distinguishing himself from the hypostasis of the Father, and yet asserting coeternity. The Socinians and Grotius find here merely an ideal glory in the divine counsel; but it must be taken, in analogy with similar passages, of a real, personal, self-conscious pre-existence, and a real glory attached to it; otherwise it would be nothing peculiar and characteristic of Christ. How absurd would it be for a man to utter such a prayer!
A persona sunthetos, in the language of the old Protestant divines. Divina et humana naturae' (says Hollaz), 'in una persona suntheto Filii Dei existentes, unam eandemque habent hupostasin, modo tamen habendi diversam. Natura enim divina eam habet primario, per se et independenter, natura autem humana secundario, propter unionem personalem, adeoque participative. The divine nature, therefore, is, in the orthodox system, that which forms and constitutes the personality (das personbildende Princip.).
§ 10. The Athanasian Creed.
Literature.
I. Comp. the general literature of the Three Creeds noticed p. 12, especially Lumby and Swainson.
II. Special treatises on the Athanasian Creed:
[Venantius Fortunatus (Bishop of Poitiers, d. about A.D. 600)]: Expositio Fidei Catholicae Fortunati. The oldest commentary on the Athanasian Creed, published from a MS. in the Ambrosian Library at Milan by Muratori, 1698, in the second vol. of his Anecdota, p. 228, and better in an Appendix to Waterland's treatise (see below). But the authorship of Ven. Fort. is a mere conjecture of Muratori, from the name Fortunatus, and is denied by modern critics.
Dav. Pareus (Ref.): Symbolum Athanasii breviter declaratum. Heidelb. 1618.
J. H. Heidegger (Ref.): De Symbolo Athanasiano. Tur. 1680.
W. E. Tentzel (Luth.): Judicia eruditorum de Symb. Athanasiano. Gothae, 1687.
Jos. Anthelmi (R. C.): Disquisitio de Symb. Athan. Paris, 1693.
Montfaucon (R. C.): Diatribe de Symbolo Quicunque, in his edition of the works of St. Athanasius. Paris, 1698, Tom. II. pp. 719-735.
Dan. Waterland (Anglican): A Critical History of the Athanasian Creed, etc. Cambridge, 1724, 2d ed. 1728 (in Waterland's works, Vol. III. pp. 97-270, Oxf. ed. 1843), also re-edited by J. R. King. Lond. 1871. The fullest and most learned treatise on the subject, but in part superseded by recent investigations.
Dom. Maria Speroni (R. C.): De Symbolo vulgo S. Athanasii, two dissertations. Patav. 1750 sq.
John Radcliffe: The Creed of St. Athanasius, illustrated from the Old and New Test., Passages of the Fathers, etc. Lond. 1844.
Philip Schaff: The Athanasian Creed, in the 'American Presbyterian Review,' New York, for 1866, pp. 584-625; Church History, Vol. III. pp. 689 sqq.
A. P. Stanley (Dean of Westminster): The Athanasian Creed. Lond. 1871.
E. S. Ffoulkes (B. D.): The Athanasian Creed: By whom Written and by whom Published. Lond. 1872.
Ch. A. Heurtley: The Athanasian Creed. Oxford, 1872. (Against Ffoulkes.)
Comp. the fac-simile edition of the Utrecht Psalter (Lond. 1875), and Sir Thos. Hardy (Deputy-Keeper of the Public Records), two Reports on the Athanas. Creed in Connection with the Utrecht Psalter. Lond. 1873.
The Athanasian Creed is also called Symbolum Quicunque, from the first word, 'Quicunque vult salvus esse.' [70]
I. Its origin is involved in obscurity, like that of the Apostles' Creed, the Gloria in Excelsis, and the Te Deum. It furnishes one of the most remarkable examples of the extraordinary influence which works of unknown or doubtful authorship have exerted. Since the ninth century it has been ascribed to Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, the chief defender of the divinity of Christ and the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity (d. 373). The great name of 'the father of orthodoxy' secured for it an almost oecumenical authority, notwithstanding the solemn prohibition of the third and fourth oecumenical Councils to compose or publish any other creed than the Nicene. [72]
Since the middle of the seventeenth century the Athanasian authorship has been abandoned by learned Catholics as well as Protestants. The evidence against it is conclusive. The Symbol is nowhere found in the genuine writings of Athanasius or his contemporaries and eulogists. The General Synods of Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon make no allusion to it whatever. It seems to presuppose the doctrinal controversies of the fifth century concerning the constitution of Christ's person; at least it teaches substantially the Chalcedonian Christology. And, lastly, it makes its first appearance in the Latin Churches of Gaul, North Africa, and Spain: while the Greeks did not know it till the eleventh century, and afterwards rejected or modified it on account of the Occidental clause on the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son. The Greek texts, moreover, differ widely, and betray, by strange words and constructions, the hands of unskilled translators.
The pseudo-Athanasian Creed originated in the Latin Church from the school of St. Augustine, probably in Gaul or North Africa. It borrows a number of passages from Augustine and other Latin fathers. It appears first in its full form towards the close of the eighth or the beginning of the ninth century. Its structure and the repetition of the damnatory clause in the middle and at the close indicate that it consists of two distinct parts, which may have been composed by two authors, and afterwards welded together by a third hand. The first part, containing the Augustinian doctrine of the Trinity, is fuller and more metaphysical. The second part, containing a summary of the Chalcedonian Christology, has been found separately, as a fragment of a sermon on the Incarnation, at Treves, in a MS. from the middle of the eighth century. The fact that Athanasius spent some time in exile at Treves may possibly have given rise to the tradition that the great champion of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity composed the whole. [75]
II. Character and Contents.--The Symbolum Quicunque is a remarkably clear and precise summary of the doctrinal decisions of the first four oecumenical Councils (from A.D. 325 to A.D. 451), and the Augustinian speculations on the Trinity and the Incarnation. Its brief sentences are artistically arranged and rhythmically expressed. It is a musical creed or dogmatic psalm. Dean Stanley calls it 'a triumphant paean' of the orthodox faith. It resembles, in this respect, the older Te Deum, but it is much more metaphysical and abstruse, and its harmony is disturbed by a threefold anathema.
It consists of two parts.
The first part (ver. 3-28) sets forth the orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity, not in the less definite Athanasian or Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan, but in its strictest Augustinian form, to the exclusion of every kind of subordination of essence. It is therefore an advance both on the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed; for these do not state the doctrine of the Trinity in form, but only indirectly by teaching the Deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and leave room for a certain subordination of the Son to the Father, and the Holy Spirit to both. The post-Athanasian formula states clearly and unmistakably both the absolute unity of the divine being or essence, and the tri-personality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is one in three persons or hypostases, each person expressing the whole fullness of the Godhead, with all his attributes. The term persona is taken neither in the old sense of a mere personation or form of manifestation (prosopon, face, mask), nor in the modern sense of an independent, separate being or individual, but in a sense which lies between these two conceptions, and thus avoids Sabellianism on the one hand, and Tritheism on the other. The divine persons are in one another, and form a perpetual intercommunication and motion within the divine essence. Each person has all the divine attributes which are inherent in the divine essence, but each has also a characteristic individuality or property, which is peculiar to the person, and can not be communicated; the Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten, the Holy Ghost is proceeding. In this Trinity there is no priority or posteriority of time, no superiority or inferiority of rank, but the three persons are coeternal and coequal.
If the mystery of the Trinity can be logically defined, it is done here. But this is just the difficulty: the infinite truth of the Godhead lies far beyond the boundaries of logic, which deals only with finite truths and categories. It is well always to remember the saying of Augustine: 'God is greater and truer in our thoughts than in our words; he is greater and truer in reality than in our thoughts.' [78]
The second part (ver. 29-44) contains a succinct statement of the orthodox doctrine concerning the person of Christ, as settled by the general Councils of Ephesus 431 and Chalcedon 451, and in this respect it is a valuable supplement to the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. It asserts that Christ had a rational soul (nous, neuma), in opposition to the Apollinarian heresy, which limited the extent of his humanity to a mere body with an animal soul inhabited by the divine Logos. It also teaches the proper relation between the divine and human nature of Christ, and excludes the Nestorian and Eutychian or Monophysite heresies, in essential agreement with the Chalcedonian Symbol. [79]
III. The Damnatory Clauses.--The Athanasian Creed, in strong contrast with the uncontroversial and peaceful tone of the Apostles' Creed, begins and ends with the solemn declaration that the catholic faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation herein set forth is the indispensable condition of salvation, and that those who reject it will be lost forever. The same damnatory clause is also wedged in at the close of the first and at the beginning of the second part. This threefold anathema, in its natural historical sense, is not merely a solemn warning against the great danger of heresy, nor, on the other hand, does it demand, as a condition of salvation, a full knowledge of, and assent to, the logical statement of the doctrines set forth (for this would condemn the great mass even of Christian believers); but it does mean to exclude from heaven all who reject the divine truth therein taught. It requires every one who would be saved to believe in the only true and living God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one in essence, three in persons, and in one Jesus Christ, very God and very Man in one person.
The damnatory clauses, especially when sung or chanted in public worship, grate harshly on modern Protestant ears, and it may well be doubted whether they are consistent with true Christian charity and humility, and whether they do not transcend the legitimate authority of the Church. They have been defended by an appeal to Mark xvi. 16; but in this passage those only are condemned who reject the gospel, i.e., the great facts of Christ's salvation, not any peculiar dogma. Salvation and damnation depend exclusively on the grace of God as apprehended by a living faith, or rejected in ungrateful unbelief. The original Nicene Symbol, it is true, added a damnatory clause against the Arians, but it was afterwards justly omitted. Creeds, like hymns, lose their true force and miss their aim in proportion as they are polemical and partake of the character of manifestoes of war rather than confessions of faith and thanks to God for his mighty works. [81]
IV. Introduction and Use.--The Athanasian Creed acquired great authority in the Latin Church, and during the Middle Ages it was almost daily used in the morning devotions. [82]
The Reformers inherited the veneration for this Symbol. It was formally adopted by the Lutheran and several of the Reformed Churches, and is approvingly mentioned in the Augsburg Confession, the Form of Concord, the Thirty-nine Articles, the Second Helvetic, the Belgic, and the Bohemian Confessions. [83]
Luther was disposed to regard it as 'the most important and glorious composition since the days of the apostles.' [84]
Some Reformed divines, especially of the Anglican Church have commended it very highly; even the Puritan Richard Baxter lauded it as 'the best explication [better, statement] of the Trinity,' provided, however, 'that the damnatory sentences be excepted, or modestly expounded.'
In the Church of England it is still sung or recited in the cathedrals and parish churches on several festival days, but this compulsory public use meets with growing opposition, and was almost unanimously condemned in 1867 by the royal commission appointed to consider certain changes in the Anglican Ritual. [86]
The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, when, in consequence of the American Revolution, it set up a separate organization in the Convention of 1785 at Philadelphia, resolved to remodel the Liturgy (in 'the Proposed Book'), and, among other changes, excluded from it both the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds, and struck out from the Apostles' Creed the clause, 'He descended into hell.' The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, before consenting to ordain bishops for America, requested their brethren to restore the clause of the Apostles' Creed, and 'to give to the other two Creeds a place in their Book of Common Prayer, even though the use of them should be left discretional.' In the Convention held at Wilmington Del., October 10, 1786, the request of the English prelates, as to the first two points, was acceded to, but 'the restoration of the Athanasian Creed was negatived.' As the opposition to this Creed was quite determined, especially on account of the damnatory clauses, the mother Church acquiesced in the omission, and granted the desired Episcopal ordination. [88]
In the Greek Church it never obtained general currency or formal ecclesiastical sanction, and is only used for private devotion, with the omission of the clause on the double procession of the Spirit. [89]
It first bears the title, 'Fides sanctae Trinitatis,' or 'Fides Catholica Sanctae Trinitatis;' then (in the 'Cod. Usserius secundus') 'Fides Sancti Athanasii Alexandrini.' Hincmar of Rheims, about A.D. 852, calls it 'Sermonem Athanasii de fide, cujus initium est: "Quicunque vult salvus esse."'
According to the mediaeval legend, Athanasius composed it during his exile in Rome, and offered it to Pope Julius as his confession of faith. So Baronius, Petavius, Bellarmin, etc. This tradition was first opposed and refuted by Gerhard Vossius and Ussher.
Conc. Ephes. Can. VII. 'The holy Synod has determined that no person shall be allowed to bring forward, or to write, or to compose any other Creed (heteran pistin medeni exeinai propherein egoun sungraphein e suntithenai), besides that which was settled by the holy fathers who assembled in the city of Nicaea, with the Holy Spirit. But those who shall dare to compose any other Creed, or to exhibit or produce any such, if they are bishops or clergymen, they shall be deposed, but if they are of the laity, they shall be anathematized.' The Council of Chalcedon, although setting forth a new definition of faith, repeated the same prohibition (after the Defin. Fidei).
See the parallel passages in Waterland's treatise and in my Church History, Vol. III. pp. 690 sqq.
Now known as the Colbertine MS., in Paris, which is assigned to about A.D. 730-760, but is derived in part from older MSS. This fragment was first published consecutively by Professor Swainson in 1871, and again in his larger work, 1875 (p. 262), also by Lumby, p. 215. It begins thus: 'Est ergo fides recta ut credamus et confitemur quia Dominus ihesus christus Dei filius, deus pariter et homo est,' etc.; and it ends: 'Haec est fides sancta et Catholica, quam omnes [omnis] homo qui ad uitam aeternam peruenire desiderat scire integrae [integre] debet, et fideliter custodire.' The compiler of the two parts intensified the damnatory clause by changing it into 'quam nisi quisque fideliter firmiterque crediderit, salvus esse non poterit.' The passages quoted by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, A.D. 852, are all taken from the first part.
The authorship of the Symbolum Quicunque is a matter of mere conjecture. The opinions of scholars are divided between Hilary of Arles (420-431), Vigilius of Tapsus, Vincentius Lirinensis, Venantius Fortunatus of Poitiers, Pope Anastasius, Victricius of Rouen, Patriarch Paulinus of Aquileja (Charlemagne's favorite theologian, d. 804). Waterland learnedly contends for Hilary of Arles; Quesnel, Cave, Bingham, and Neander for Vigilius Tapsensis of North Africa. Gieseler traces the Quicunque to the Councils of Toledo in Spain (633, 638, 675, etc.), which used to profess the Nicene Creed with additional articles (like the Filioque) against Arianism. Ffoulkes (who seceded to Rome, and returned, a better Protestant, to the Church of England) and Dean Stanley maintain that it arose in France, simultaneously with the forgery of the pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, for controversial purposes against the Greeks, to set up a fictitious antiquity for Latin doctrine (the Filioque), as the Decretals did for Latin polity. Swainson and Lumby assign the Creed to an unknown writer of the age of Charlemagne (d. 814) and Alcuin (d. 804), or to the period between 813 and 850.
The latest investigations since the rediscovery of the oldest (the Cotton) MS. in the 'Utrecht Psalter' (which was exposed for inspection at the British Museum in 1873, and has since been photographed) are unfavorable to an early origin; for this MS., which Ussher and Waterland assigned to the sixth century, dates probably from the ninth century (as the majority of scholars who investigated it, Drs. Vermuelen, Heurtley, Ffoulkes, Lumby, Swainson, contend against Hardy, Westwood, and Baron van Westreenen), since, among other reasons, it contains also the Apostles' Creed in its final form of 750. The authorship of Venantius Fortunatus was simply inferred by Muratori from the common name 'Fortunatus' at the head of a MS. (Expositio Fidei Catholicae Fortunati) which contains a commentary on the Athanasian Creed, but which is not older than the eleventh century, and quotes a passage from Alcuin. Two other MSS. of the same commentary, but without a title, have been found, one at Florence, and one at Vienna (Lumby, p. 208; Swainson, pp. 317 sqq.). The internal evidence for an earlier date is equally inconclusive. The absence of Mater Dei (theotokos) no more proves an ante-Nestorian origin (before 431, as Waterland contended) than the absence of consubstantialis (homoousios) proves an ante-Nicene origin.
So far, then, we have no proof that the pseudo-Athanasian Creed in its present complete shape existed before the beginning of the ninth century. And yet it may have existed earlier. At all events, two separate compositions, which form the groundwork of our Quicunque, are of older date, and the doctrinal substance of it, with the most important passages, may be found in the works of St. Augustine and his followers, with the exception of the damnatory clauses, which seem to have had their origin in the fierce contests of the age of Charlemagne. In a Prayer-Book of Charles the Bald, written about A. D. 870, we find the Athanasian Creed very nearly in the words of the received text.
I may add that the indefatigable investigator, Dr. Caspari, of Christiania, informs me by letter (dated April 29, 1876) that he is still inclined to trace this Creed to the fifth century, between 450 and 600, and that he found, and will publish in due time, some old symbols which bear a resemblance to it, and may cast some light upon its obscure origin. Adhuc sub judice lis est.
The later scholastic terms for this indwelling and interpenetration are perichoresis, inexistentia, permeatio, circumincessio, etc. See my Church History, Vol. III. p. 680.
Called by the Greeks idiotes or idion, by the Latins proprietas personalis or character hypostaticus.
'Verius cogitatur Deus quam dicitur, verius est quam cogitatur,' De Trinitate, lib. VII. c. 4, § 7. Dr. Isaac Barrow, one of the intellectual giants of the Anglican Church (died 1677), in his Defense of the Blessed Trinity (a sermon preached on Trinity Sunday, 1663), humbly acknowledges the transcendent incomprehensibility, while clearly stating the facts, of this great mystery: 'The sacred Trinity may be considered either as it is in itself wrapt up in inexplicable folds of mystery, or as it hath discovered itself operating in wonderful methods of grace towards us. As it is in itself, 'tis an object too bright and dazzling for our weak eye to fasten upon, an abyss too deep for our short reason to fathom; I can only say that we are so bound to mind it as to exercise our faith, and express our humility, in willingly believing, in submissively adoring those high mysteries which are revealed in the holy oracles concerning it by that Spirit itself which searcheth the depths of God. . . . That there is one Divine Nature or Essence, common unto three Persons, incomprehensibly united, and ineffably distinguished--united in essential attributes, distinguished by peculiar idioms and relations; all equally infinite in every divine perfection, each different from the other in order and manner of subsistence; that there is a mutual inexistence of one in all, and all in one, a communication without any deprivation or diminution in the communicant; an eternal generation, and an eternal procession, without precedence or succession, without proper causality or dependence; a Father imparting his own, and the Son receiving his Father's life, and a Spirit issuing from both, without any division or multiplication of essence--these are notions which may well puzzle our reason in conceiving how they agree, but should not stagger our faith in assenting that they are true; upon which we should meditate, not with hope to comprehend, but with dispositions to admire, veiling our faces in the presence, and prostrating our reason at the feet, of Wisdom so far transcending us.'
See the preceding section.
So a majority of the 'Ritual Commission of the Church of England,' appointed in 1867: 'The condemnations in this Confession of Faith are to be no otherwise understood than as a solemn warning of the peril of those who willfully reject the Catholic faith.' Such a warning would be innocent and unobjectionable, indeed, but fall far short of the spirit of an age which abhorred heresy as the greatest of crimes, to be punished by death.
'It seems very hard,' says Bishop Jeremy Taylor, 'to put uncharitableness into a creed, and so to make it become an article of faith.' Chillingworth: 'The damning clauses in St. Athanasius's Creed are most false, and also in a high degree schismatical and presumptuous.'
J. Bona, De divina Psalmodia, c. 16, § 18, p. 863 (as quoted by Köllner, Symbolik, I. 85): 'Illud Symbolum olim, teste Honorio, quotidie est decantatum, jam vero diebus Dominicis in totius coetus frequentia recitatur, ut sanctae fidei confessio ea die apertius celebretur.'
It is printed, with the two other oecumenical Creeds, in all the editions of the Lutheran 'Book of Concord,' and as an appendix to the doctrinal formulas of the Reformed Dutch Church in America. It was received into the 'Provisional Liturgy of the German Reformed Church in the United States,' published Philadelphia, 1858, but omitted in the revised edition of 1867.
'Es ist also gefasset, dass ich nicht weiss, ob seit der Apostel Zeit in der Kirche des Neuen Testamentes etwas Wichtigeres and Herrlicheres geschrieben sei' (Luther, Werke, ed. Walch, VI. 2315).
The rubric directs that the Athanasian Creed 'shall be sung or said at Morning Prayer, instead of the Apostles' Creed, on Christmas-day, the Epiphany, St. Matthias, Easter-day, Ascension-day, Whitsunday, St. John the Baptist, St. James, St. Bartholomew, St. Matthew, St. Simon and St. Jude, St. Andrew, and upon Trinity Sunday.'
By nineteen out of the twenty-seven members of the Ritual Commission. See their opinions in Stanley, l.c. pp. 73 sqq. Dean Stanley on that occasion urged no less than sixteen reasons against the public use of the Athanasian Creed. On the other hand, Dr. Pusey has openly threatened to leave the Established Church if the Athanasian Creed, and with it the doctrinal status of that Church, should be disturbed. Brewer's defense is rather feeble. Bishop Ellicott proposed, in the Convocation of Canterbury, to relieve the difficulty by a revision of the English translation, e.g. by rendering vult salvus esse, 'desires to be in a state of salvation,' instead of 'will be saved.' Others suggest an omission of the damnatory clauses. But the true remedy is either to omit the Athanasian Creed altogether from the Book of Common Prayer, or to leave its public use optional.
Bishop White (of Philadelphia): Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, New York, 2d ed. 1836, pp 305, 306.
White's Memoires, 26, 27. Bishop White himself was decidedly opposed to the Creed, as was Bishop Provost, of New York. The Archbishop of Canterbury told them afterwards: 'Some wish that you had retained the Athanasian Creed; but I can not say that I feel uneasy on the subject, for you have retained the doctrine of it in your Liturgy, and as to the Creed itself, I suppose you thought it not suited to the use of a congregation' (l.c. 117, 118).
Additional Lit. on the Athan. Creed.--Swainson: The Nic. and App. Creeds, with an Account of the Creed of St. Athanasius, London, 1894.--Burn in Robinson's Texts and Studies, 1896.--Ommanney, London, 1897, is inclined to ascribe it to Vincens of Lerins about 450.--Bp. Gore, Oxf., 1897.--J. B. Smith in Contemp. Rev., Apr., 1901.--Oxenham, London, 1902.--J. A. Robinson, London, 1905.--Bp. Jayne, 1905.--W. S. Bishop: Devel. of Trin. Doctr. in the Nic. and Athanas. Creeds, 1910.--H. Brewer (S.J.), Das sogenannte Athanas. Glaubensbekenntniss, 1909.--Burkitt, 1912.--Loofs in Herzog, ii, 177-194, who places its probable origin in Southern France, 450-600.--Badcock inclines to the Ambrosian authorship and calls it a hymn to be memorized. The Abp. of Canterbury, following a resolution of the Lambeth Conference, 1908, appointed a commission of seven, including Bp. Wordsworth of Salisbury, Prof. Swete and Dean Kilpatrick, to prepare a revision of the English translation of the Athanas. Creed. Their report proposed thirteen minor changes. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer prescribed that the Creed be said or sung at morning prayer on thirteen feasts, including Christmas, Easter, Ascension day, and Trinity Sunday. By the order of both Convocations it was omitted and a new rubric inserted, making its use optional on Trinity Sunday. In the "Revised" Book of Common Prayer, recommended by the House of Bishops and rejected by Parliament, 1928, the following rubrics are printed side by side, making the use of the creed optional: "may be sung or said at morning or evening prayer" on the first Sunday after Christmas, the feast of the Annunciation, and Trinity Sunday. 2. On Trinity Sunday, the recitation beginning with clause 3, "The Catholic faith is this," etc., and closing with clause 28. 3. On the Sunday after Christmas and Ascension day, the recitation being from clause 30 to clause 41. 4. On all the thirteen festivals mentioned in the original Book of Common Prayer. A "revised translation is added" which differs from the translation of 1909. See the Translation of 1909 with Latin Text, by H. Turner, London, 1910, 15 pp. and 1918, 23 pp. Also the Book of Com. Prayer with the Additions and Deviations Proposed in 1928, with Pref., Cambr. Press, 1928. By Roman Cath. usage the creed is prescribed for Trinity Sunday and at prime on all Sundays except Easter and such other feasts for which a special service is provided.--Ed.
THIRD CHAPTER.
THE CREEDS OF THE GREEK CHURCH.
General Literature.
Orthodoxa Confessio catholicae atque apostol. ecclesiae orientalis a Pet. Mogila compos., a Meletio Syrigo aucta et mutata, gr. c. praef. Nectarii curav. Panagiotta, Amst. 1662; cum interpret. lat. ed. Laur. Normann, Leipz. 1695, 8vo; c. interpret. lat. et vers. german, ed. K. Glo. Hofmann, Breslau, 1751, 8vo. Also in Russian: Moscow, 1696; German by J. Leonh. Frisch, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1727, 4to; Dutch by J. A. Senier, Haarlem, 1722; in Kimmel's Monumenta, P. I. 1843.
Clypeus orthodoxae fidei, sive Apologia (Asphis orthodoxias, e apologia kai elenchos) ab Synodo Hierosolymitana (A.D. 1672) sub Hierosolymorum Patriarcha Dositheo composita adversus Calvinistas haereticos, etc. Published at Paris, Greek and Latin, 1676 and 1678: then in Harduini Acta Conciliorum, Par. 1715, Tom. XI. fol. 179-274; also in Kimmel's Monum. P. I. 325-488. Comp. also the Acts of the Synod of Constantinople, held in the same year, and publ. in Hard. l.c. 274-284, and in Kimmel, P. II. 214-227.
Confessio cathol. et apostolica in oriente ecclesiae, conscripta compendiose per Metrophanem Critopulum. Ed. et. lat. redd. J. Hornejus, Helmst. 1661, 4to (the title-page has erroneously the date 1561).
Cyrilli Lucaris: Confessio christ. fidei graeca cum additam. Cyrilli, Geneva, 1633: graec. et lat. (Condemned as heretical.)
Acta et scripta theologorum Wirtembergensium et patriarchae Constantinop. Hieremiae, quae utrique ab a. 1576 usque ad a. 1581 de Augustana Confessione inter se miserunt, gr. et lat. ab iisdem theologis edita, Wittenb. 1584, fol. This work contains the Augsburg Confession in Greek, three epistles of Patriarch Jeremiah, criticising the Augsb. Conf., and the answers of the Tübingen divines, all in Greek and Latin.
E. J. Kimmel and H. Weissenborn: Monumenta fidei ecclesiae orientalis. Primum in unum corpus collegit, variantes lectiones adnotavit, prolegomena addidit, etc., 2 vols., Jenae, 1843-1850. The first part contains the two Confessions of Gennadius, the Confession of Cyrillus Lucaris, the Confessio Orthodoxa, and the Acts of the Synod of Jerusalem. The second part, which is added by Weissenborn, contains the Confessio Metrophanis Critopuli, and the Decretum Synodi Constantinopolitanae, 1672. Kimmel d. 1846.
W. Gass: Gennadius und Pletho, Aristotelismus und Platonismus in der griechischen Kirche, nebst einer Abhandlung über die Bestreitung des Islam im Mittelalter, Breslau, 1844, in two parts. The second part contains, among other writings of Gennadius and Pletho, the two Confessions of Gennadius in Greek. By the same: Symbolik der griechischen Kirche, Berlin, 1872.
H. W. Blackmore: The Doctrine of the Russian Church, being the Primer or Spelling-book, the Shorter and Longer Catechisms, and a Treatise on the Duty of Parish Priests. Translated from the Slavono-Russian Originals, Aberdeen, 1845.
§ 11. The Seven OEcumenical Councils.
The entire Orthodox Greek or Oriental Church, including the Greek Church in Turkey, the national Church in the kingdom of Greece, and the national Church of the Russian Empire, and embracing a membership of about eighty millions, adopts, in common with the Roman communion, the doctrinal decisions of the seven oldest oecumenical Councils, laying especial stress on the Nicene Council and Nicene Creed. These Councils were all summoned by Greek emperors, and controlled by Greek patriarchs and bishops. They are as follows:
I. The first Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325; called by Constantine M.
II. The first Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381; called by Theodosius M.
III. The Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431; called by Theodosius II.
IV. The Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451; called by Emperor Marcian and Pope Leo I.
V. The second Council of Constantinople, A.D. 553; called by Justinian I.
VI. The third Council of Constantinople, A.D. 680; called by Constantine Pogonatus.
VII. The second Council of Nicaea, A.D. 787; called by Irene and her son Constantine.
The first four Councils are by far the most important, as they settled the orthodox faith on the Trinity and the Incarnation. The fifth Council, which condemned the Three (Nestorian) Chapters, is a mere supplement to the third and fourth. The sixth condemned Monothelitism. The seventh sanctioned the use and worship of images. [91]
To these the Greek Church adds the Concilium Quinisextum, held at Constantinople (in Trullo), A.D. 691 (or 692), and frequently also that held in the same city A.D. 879 under Photius the Patriarch; while the Latins reject these two Synods as schismatic, and count the Synod of 869 (the fourth of Constantinople), which deposed Photius and condemned the Iconoclasts, as the eighth oecumenical Council. But these conflicting Councils refer only to discipline and the rivalry between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope of Rome.
The Greek Church celebrates annually the memory of the seven holy Synods, held during the palmy days of her history, on the first Sunday in Lent, called the 'Sunday of Orthodoxy,' when the service is made to reproduce a dramatic picture of an oecumenical Council, with an emperor, the patriarchs, metropolitans, bishops, priests, and deacons in solemn deliberation on the fundamental articles of faith. She looks forward to an eighth oecumenical Council, which is to settle all the controversies of Christendom subsequent to the great schism between the East and the West.
Since the last of the seven Councils, the doctrinal system of the Greek Church has undergone no essential change, and become almost petrified. But the Reformation, especially the Jesuitical intrigues and the crypto-Calvinistic movement of Cyril Lucar in the seventeenth century, called forth a number of doctrinal manifestoes against Romanism, and still more against Protestantism. We may divide them into three classes:
I. Primary Confessions of public authority:
(a) The 'Orthodox Confession,' or Catechism of Peter Mogilas, 1643, indorsed by the Eastern Patriarchs and the Synod of Jerusalem.
(b) The Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem, or the Confession of Dositheus, 1672.
To the latter may be added the similar but less important decisions of the Synods of Constantinople, 1672 (Responsio Dionysii), and 1691 (on the Eucharist).
(c) The Russian Catechisms which have the sanction of the Holy Synod, especially the Longer Catechism of Philaret (Metropolitan of Moscow), published by the synodical press, and generally used in Russia since 1839.
(d) The Answers of Jeremiah, Patriarch of Constantinople, to certain Lutheran divines, in condemnation of the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession, 1576 (published at Wittenberg, 1584), were sanctioned by the Synod of Jerusalem, but are devoid of clearness and point, and therefore of little use.
II. Secondary Confessions of a mere private character, and hence not to be used as authorities:
(a) The two Confessions of Gennadius, Patriarch of Constantinople, 1453. One of them, purporting to give a dialogue between the Patriarch and the Sultan, is spurious, and the other has nothing characteristic of the Greek system.
(b) The Confession of Metrophanes Critopulus, subsequently Patriarch of Alexandria, composed during his sojourn in Germany, 1625. It is more liberal than the primary standards.
III. Different from both classes is the Confession of Cyril Lucar, 1629, which was repeatedly condemned as heretical (Calvinistic), but gave occasion for the two most important expositions of Eastern orthodoxy.
We shall notice these documents in their historical order.
The full name of the Greek Church is 'the Holy Oriental Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church.' The chief stress is laid on the title orthodox. The name Graikos, used by Polybius and since as equivalent to the Latin Graecus, was by the Greeks themselves always regarded as an exotic. Homer has three standing names for the Greeks: Danaoi, Argeioi, and Achaioi; also Panthellenes and Panachaioi. The ancient (heathen) Greeks called themselves Hellenes, the modern (Slavonic) Greeks, till recently, Romans, in distinction from the surrounding Turks. The Greek language, since the founding of the East Roman empire, was called Romaic.
Worship in a secondary sense, or douleia, including aspasmos kai timetike proskunesis, but not that adoration or alethine latreia, which belongs only to God. See Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, Bd. III. p. 440.
This Synod is called Quinisexta or penthekte, because it was to be a supplement to the fifth and sixth oecumenical Councils, which had passed doctrinal decrees, but no canons of discipline. It is also called the second Trullan Synod, because it was held 'in Trullo,' a saloon of the imperial palace in Constantinople. The Greeks regard the canons of this Synod as the canons of the fifth and sixth oecumenical Councils, but the Latins never acknowledged the Quinisexta, and called it mockingly 'erratica.' As the dates of the Quinisexta are variously given 686, 691, 692, 712. Comp. Baronius, Annal. ad ann. 692, No. 7, and Hefele, l.c. III. pp. 298 sqq.
§ 12. The Confessions of Gennadius, A.D. 1453.