THE OLD ROMAN FORM. 9. The Holy Church; 10. The forgiveness of sins; 11. The resurrection of the body (flesh).3 THE RECEIVed Form. 9. The Holy [Catholic] Church 10. The forgiveness of sins; 11. The resurrection of the body (flesh); 12. [And the life everlasting]. NOTE ON THE LEGEND OF THE APOSTOLIC ORIGIN OF THE CREED.-Till the middle of the seventeenth century it was the current belief of Roman Catholic and Protestant Christendom that the Apostles' Creed was 'membratim_articulatimque' composed by the apostles in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, or before their separation, to secure unity of teaching, each contributing an article (hence the somewhat arbitrary division into twelve articles)." Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, commenced: 'I believe in God the Father Almighty;' Andrew (according to others, John) continued: ‘And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord;' James the elder went on: Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost;' then followed John (or Andrew): 'Suffered under Pontius Pilate;' Philip: Descended into Hades;' Thomas: The third day he rose again from the dead;' and so on till Matthias completed the work with the words 'life everlasting. Amen.' The first trace of this legend, though without the distribution alluded to, we find at the close of the fourth century, in the Expositio Symboli of Rufinus of Aquileja. He mentions an ancient tradition concerning the apostolic composition of the Creed (tradunt majores nostri'), and falsely derives from this supposed joint authorship the name symbolon (from συμβάλλειν, in the sense to contribute); confounding σύμβολον, sign, with συμβολή, contribu tion (Symbolum Græce et indicium dici potest et collatio, hoc est, quod plures in unum conferunt'). The same view is expressed, with various modifications, by Ambrosius of Milan (d. 397), in his Explanatio Symboli ad initiandos, where he says: 'Apostoli sancti convenientes fecerunt symbolum breviter;' by John Cassianus (about 424), De incarnat. Dom. VI. 3; Leo M., Ep. 27 ad Pulcheriam; Venantius Fortunatus, Expos. brevis Symboli Ap.; Isidorus of Seville (d. 636). The distribution of the twelve articles among the apostles is of later date, and there is no unanimity in this respect. See this legendary form in the pseudo-Augustinian 1 'Catholicam' (universal), in accordance with the Nicene Creed, and older Oriental forms, was received into the Latin Creed before the close of the fourth century (comp. Augustine: De Fide et Symbolo, c. 10). The term catholic, as applied to the Church, occurs first in the Epistles of Ignatius (Ad Smyrnaos, cap. 8: ὥσπερ ὅπου ἂν ᾖ Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς, ἐκεῖ ἡ καθολική ¿KKλŋσía), and in the Martyrium Polycarpi (inscription, and cap. 8: àπάons TйS KATÀ TηV οἰκουμένην καθολικῆς ἐκκλησίας, comp. c. 19, where Christ is called ποιμὴν τῆς κατὰ οίκουμένην καθολικῆς ἐκκλησίας). * The article' Communionem sanctorum,' unknown to Augustine (Enchir. c. 64, and Serm. 213), appears first in the 115th and 118th Sermons De Tempore, falsely attributed to him. It is not found in any of the Greek or earlier Latin creeds. See the note of Pearson On the Creed, Art. IX. sub 'The Communion of Saints' (p. 525, ed. Dobson). Heurtley, p. 146, brings it down to the close of the eighth century, since it is wanting in the Creed of Etherius, 785. The oldest commentators understood it of the communion with the saints in heaven, but afterwards it assumed a wider meaning: the fellowship of all true believers, living and departed. 6 'The Latin reads carnis, the Greek σapróg, flesh; the Aquilejan form HUJUS carnis, of THIS flesh (which is still more realistic, and almost materialistic), ut possit caro vel pudica corori, vel impudica puniri' (Rufinus, § 43). It should be stated, however, that there are two Miforms of the Aquilejan Creed given by Walch (xxxiv. and xxxv.) and by Heurtley (pp. hich differ from the one of Rufinus, and are nearer the Roman form. in use in Ath African forms (of Carthage and Hippo Regius) put the article of the Church that the forms way: 'vitam eternam per sanctam ecclesiam.' Others: carnis resurrecthe view of Kattnam. The Greek Creed of Marcellus, which otherwise agrees with the with ζωὴν αἰώνιον. in part upon Irena found renewed study of them has only eleven articles, unless art. 6 be divided into two; while Virgin birth of Christ teen articles, if 'Maker of heaven and earth,' 'He descended into in the forms of the Ruf saints,' and 'the life everlasting,' are counted separately. baptismal formula, "bo treatise on the Virgin bir. Sermones de Symbolo, in Hahn, 1. c. p. 24, and another from a Sacramentarium Gallicanum as the seventh century, in Heurtley, p. 67. The Roman Catechism gives ecclesiastical sanction, as far as the Roman Church is con cerned, to the fiction of a direct apostolic authorship. Meyers, 1. c., advocates it at length, and Abbé Martigny, in his 'Dictionnaire des antiquitées Chrétiennes,' Paris, 1865 (art. Symbole des apôtres, p. 623), boldly asserts, without a shadow of proof: Fidèlement attaché à la tradition de l'Église catholique, nous tenons, non-seulement qu'il est l'œuvre des apôtres, mais encore qu'il fut composé par eux, alors que réunis à Jérusalem, ils allaient se disperser dans l'univers entier; et qu'ils volurent, avant de se séparer, fixer une règle de foi vraiment uniforme et catholique, destinée à être livrée, partout la même, aux catéchumènes.' Even among Protestants the old tradition has occasionally found advocates, such as Lessing (1778), Delbrück (1826), Rudelbach (1844), and especially Grundtvig (d. 1872). The last named, a very able but eccentric high-church Lutheran bishop of Denmark, traces the Creed, like the Lord's Prayer, to Christ himself, in the period between the Ascension and Pentecost. The poet Longfellow (a Unitarian) makes poetic use of the legend in his Divine Tragedy (1871). On the other hand, the apostolic origin (after having first been called in question by Laurentius Valla, Erasmus, Calvin 2) has been so clearly disproved long since by Vossius, Rivetus, Voëtius, Usher, Bingham, Pearson, King, Walch, and other scholars, that it ought never to be seriously asserted again. The arguments against the apostolic authorship are quite conclusive: 1. The intrinsic improbability of such a mechanical composition. It has no analogy in the history of symbols; even when composed by committees or synods, they are mainly the production of one mind. The Apostles' Creed is no piece of mosaic, but an organic unit, an instinctive work of art in the same sense as the Gloria in Excelsis, the Te Deum, and the classical prayers and hymns of the Church. 2. The silence of the Scriptures. Some advocates, indeed, pretend to find allusions to the Creed in Paul's 'analogy' or 'proportion of faith,' Rom. xii. 7; the good deposit,' 2 Tim. i. 14; the first principles of the oracles of God,' Heb. v. 12; 'the faith once delivered to the saints,' Jude, ver. 3; and the doctrine,' 2 John, ver. 10; but these passages can be easily explained without such assumption. 3. The silence of the apostolic fathers and all the ante-Nicene and Nicene fathers and synods. Even the ecumenical Council of Nicæa knows nothing of a symbol of strictly apostolic composition, and would not have dared to supersede it by another. 4. The variety in form of the various rules of faith in the ante-Nicene churches, and of the Apostolic Symbol itself down to the eighth century. This fact is attested even by Rufinus, who mentions the points in which the Creed of Aquileja differed from that of Rome. Such variations in the form of the Creed forbid the supposition of any fixed system of words, recognized and received as the composition of the apostles; for no one, surely, would have felt at liberty to alter any such normal scheme of faith." 5. The fact that the Apostles' Creed never had any general currency in the East, where the Nicene Creed occupies its place, with an almost equal claim to apostolicity as far as the substance is concerned. 1 Pars prima, cap. 1, qu. 2 (Libri Symbolici Eccl. Cath., ed. Streitwolf and Klener, Tom. I. p. 111): Quæ igitur primum Christiani homines tenere debent, illa sunt, quæ fidei duces, doctoresque sancti Apostoli, divino Spiritu affluti, duodecim Symboli articulis distinxerunt. Nam, cum mandatum a Domino accepissent, ut pro ipso legatione fungentes, in universum mundum proficiscerentur, atque omni creaturæ Evangelium prædicarent: Christianæ fidei formulam componendam censuerunt, ut scilicet id omnes sentirent ac dicerent, neque ulla essent inter eos schismata,' etc. Ibid. qu. 3: 'Hanc autem Christianæ fidei et spei professionem a se compositam Apostoli Symbolum appellarunt; sive quia ex variis sententiis, quas singuli in commune contulerunt, conflata est; sive quia ea veluti nota, et tessera quadam uterentur, qua desertores et subintroductos falsos fratres, qui Evangelium adulterabant, ab iis, qui veræ Christi militiæ sacramento se obligarent, facile possent internoscere.' ? In his Catechism, Calvin says that the formula of the common Christian faith is called symbolum apostolorum, quod vel ab ore apostolorum excepta fuerit, vel ex eorum scriptis fideliter collecta. 'Dr. Nevin (1. c. p. 107), who otherwise puts the highest estimate on the Creed. See the comparative tables on the gradual growth of the Creed in the second volume of this work. VOL. I.-C 22 9 § 8. THE NICENE CREED. Literature. I. See the works on the œcumenical Creeds noticed p. 12, and the extensive literature on the Council of Nicas, 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 Nicæa 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. MELANCHTHом: Explicatio Symb. Nicæni, ed. a J. Sturione, Viteb. 1561, 8vo. CASP. CRUCIGER: Enarrationis Symboli Nicæni articuli duo, etc., Viteb. 1548, 4to, and Symboli Nicæni enarratio cum præfatione Ph. Melanchthonis, acc. priori editioni plures Symboli partes, Basil (without date). J. H. HEIDEGGER (d. 1698): De Symbolo Nicæno-Constantinopolitano (Tom. II. Disput.select. pp. 716 sqq., Turici, 1675-97). J. G. BAIER: De Conc. Nicæni primi et œcum. auctoritate atque integritate, Jen. 1695 (in Disputat. theol. decad. I.). T. FECHT: Innocentia Concilii et Symboli Nicæni, Rostock, 1711. T. CASPAR SUICER (d. 1684): Symbolum Nicæno-Constant. expositum et ex antiquitate ecclesiastica illustratum, Traj. ad Rh. 1718, 4to. GEORGE BULL (d. 1710): Defensio Fidei Nicænæ, 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 NICENO-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' (óμoovσios tų tarpí), 'begotten before all worlds' (ρò πávτwv twv aiwvwv), 'very God of very God' (òç ἀληθινὸς ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ), begotten, not made' (γεννηθείς, οὐ ποιηθείς), 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.1 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.2 We must distinguish two independent or parallel creed formations, 1 Compare the symbols of the church of Jerusalem, the church of Alexandria, and the creed of Cæsarea, which Eusebius read at the Council of Nicæa, in Usher, 1. c. pp. 7, 8; more fully in Vol. II. pp. 11 sqq., and in Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole, pp. 40 sqq., 91 sqq. 2 * Eusebius, in his Epistle to the people of Cæsarea, says of the creed which he had proposed to the Council of Nicæa 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. 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 œcumenical 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 Nicæa, 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 Nicæno - 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 œcumenical Council, which was convened by Theodosius in Constantinople, A.D. 381, against the Macedonians or Pneumatomachians (so called for de nying the deity of the Holy Spirit), and consisted of 150 bishops, all from the East. There is no authentic evidence of an ecumenical 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 Pales 1 The most remarkable change in the first article is the omission of the words Touriσtiv ik TÕS οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρός, Θεὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ, 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. tine, and most of them as early as 350, in the creed of Cyril of Je rusalem.1 The Nicene Creed comes nearest to that of Eusebius of Cæsarea, which likewise abruptly closes with veμa üyor; 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 (Kπóрevσ) 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 (éμfiç) 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. (858), and was gradually adopted in the entire Latin Church. From this it passed into the Protestant Churches. Another addition in the Latin form, 'Deus de Deo,' in article II., cre 1 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." |