evolution of xtianity

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Charles sez...
I forgot, already who sent me this 2-3 years ago... Part of a Ph.D.
dissertation.

THE NICENE CREED (Nicene Belief), or Symbolum Nicaenum, Constantinople, 381 C.E.

The Nicene Creed, arrived at by a convention of bishops just twelve
generations after Jesus,  is the most widely accepted and used brief
statement of the Christian Faith.  In liturgical churches, it is said every
Sunday as part of the Liturgy (Mass).  It is the Common Ground between East
Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist, and many other
Christian sects.  Many other sects that do not have a tradition of using the
creed in their services nevertheless are committed to the doctrines it teaches.

Question:  "What about the Apostles' Creed?"  Answer:  Traditionally, in the
West, the Apostles' Creed is used at Baptisms, and the Nicene Creed at the
Eucharist (aka the Mass, the Liturgy, the Lord's Supper, or the Holy
Communion). The Eastern Church uses only the Nicene Creed.

Symbolum Nicaenum (Nicene Creed):  The Symbolum Nicaenum, or Nicene Creed,
is a fusion of the creeds drawn up at the Council of Nicea (325) and the
Council of Constantinople (381).  It was at these councils that the nature
of Jesus was defended against two heresies. The Arians denied Christ's
divinity and the Monophysites denied Christ's humanity. The council of 381,
drawing upon the traditions handed down to them from the Apostles, condemned
both heresies and declared that Jesus was indeed both true God and true man.
In the 11th century this creed became part of the Mass.  A partial
indulgence is granted to the faithful who recite the Symbolum Nicaenum
(common latin or vulgate version).

(Note from the Catechism: The [filioque] in the vulgate creed appeared
neither in the the Apostles' Creed of 325 nor the Nicene Creed of 381. The
doctrinal point was confessed dogmatically by Pope St. Leo I in 447, and
affirmed by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The "filioque" was introduced
into the Latin liturgy between the 8th
and 11th centuries.)

Notes:  When the Apostles' Creed was drawn up in 325 A.D., the chief enemy
was Gnosticism, which denied that Jesus was truly Man; and the emphases of
the Apostles' Creed reflect a concern with repudiating this error.

When the Nicene Creed was drawn up in 381 A.D., the chief enemy was
Arianism, which denied that Jesus was fully God. Arius was a presbyter
(priest + elder) in Alexandria in Egypt, in the early 300's. He taught that
the Father, in the beginning, created (or begot) the Son, and that the Son,
in conjunction with the Father, then proceeded to create the world. The
result of this was to make the Son a created being, and hence not God in any
meaningful sense. It was also suspiciously like the theories of those
Gnostics and pagans who held that God was too perfect to create something
like a material world, and so introduced one or more intermediate beings
between God and the world. God created A, who created B, who created C, ...
who created Z, who created the world. Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, sent
for Arius and questioned him. Arius stuck to his position, and was finally
excommunicated by a council of Egyptian bishops. He went to Nicomedia in
Asia, where he wrote letters defending his position to various bishops.
Finally, the Emperor Constantine summoned a council of Bishops in Nicea
across the straits from modern Istambul), and there, in 325C.E., the Bishops
of the Church, by a decided majority, repudiated Arius and produced the
first draft of what is now called the Nicene Creed. A chief spokesman for
the full deity of Christ was Athanasius, deacon of Alexandria, assistant
(and later successor) to the aging Alexander. The Arian position has been
revived in our own day by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (the
Jehovah's Witnesses), who explicitly hail Arius as a great witness to the truth.

The Nicene Creed is presented here in two English translations, The first is
the traditional wording, used with minor variations since 1549,  to the
right is the Symbolum Nicaenum or Latin version.  The second is a modern
wording, that of The Interdenominational Committee on Liturgical Texts.


TRADITIONAL WORDING:			Symbolum Nicaenum:

I believe in one God,				Credo in unum Deum,
the Father Almighty,				Patrem omnipotentem,
maker of heaven and earth,			factorem caeli et terrae,
and of all things visible and invisible;		visibilium omnium et invisibilium.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,			Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum,
the only begotten Son of God,			Filium Dei unigenitum,
begotten of his Father before all worlds.		et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula.

God of God, Light of Light,			Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine,
very God of very God,				Deum verum de Deo vero,
begotten, not made,				genitum non factum,
being of one substance with the Father;		consubstantialem Patri;
by whom all things were made;			per quem omnia facta sunt.
who for us men and for our salvation		Qui propter nos homines et propter
nostram salutem
came down from heaven;			descendit de caelis.
and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost		Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto
of the Virgin Mary,				ex Maria Virgine,
and was made man;				et homo factus est.
and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate;  Crucifixus etiam pro
nobis sub Pontio Pilato,
he suffered and was buried;			passus et sepultus est,
and the third day he rose again			et resurrexit tertia die,
according to the Scriptures,			secundum Scripturas,
and ascended into heaven,			et ascendit in caelum,
and sitteth on the right hand of the Father;	sedet ad dexteram Patris.
and he shall come again, with glory,		Et iterum venturus est cum gloria,
to judge both the quick and the dead;		iudicare vivos et mortuos,
whose kingdom shall have no end.		cuius regni non erit finis.

And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Live,	
					Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem,
who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son];	qui ex Patre [Filioque] procedit.
who with the Father and the Son together		Qui cum Patre et Filio simul
is worshipped and glorified;			adoratur et conglorificatur:
who spake by the Prophets.			qui locutus est per prophetas.

And I believe one holy Catholic				Et unam, sanctam, catholicam
			and Apostolic Church;				et apostolicam Ecclesiam.
I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;	Confiteor unum baptisma
in remissionem peccatorum.
and I look for the resurrection of the dead,		Et expecto resurrectionem
mortuorum,
and the life of the world to come. AMEN.		et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.


MODERN WORDING
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the
only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from
Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the
Father.  Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he
came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate
from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.  For our sake he  was crucified
under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he
rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is
seated at the right hand of the Father.  He will come again in glory to
judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe
in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the
Father [and the Son].  With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and
glorified.  He has spoken through the Prophets.  We believe in one holy
catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the
forgiveness of sins.  We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life
of the world to come. AMEN.

NOTES: I here print the Creed (modern wording) a second time, with notes
inserted.

* We believe in one God,
* the Father, the Almighty,
* maker of heaven and earth,
* of all that is, seen and unseen.

* We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
* the only son of God,

Here and elswhere (such as John 1:14) where the Greek has MONOGENETOS HUIOS,
an English translation may read either "only Son" or "only begotten Son."
The Greek is ambiguous. The root GEN is found in words like "genital,
genetics, generation," and suggests begetting. However, it is also found in
words like "genus" and suggests
family or sort or kind. Accordingly, we may take MONOGENETOS to mean either
"only begotten" or "one-of-a-kind, only, sole, unique."

* eternally begotten of the Father,

Here the older translation has "begotten of the Father before all worlds."
One might suppose that this means, "before the galaxies were formed," or
something of the kind. But in fact the English word "world" used to mean
something a little different. It is related to "were" (pronounced "weer"),
an old word for "man," as in "werewolf" or "weregild." (Compare with Latin
VIR.) Hence a "world" was originally a span of time equal to the normal
lifespan of a man. Often in the KJV Bible, one finds "world" translating the
Greek AION ("eon"), and a better translation today would be "age."  (Thus,
for example, in Matthew 24:3, the question is one of "the end of the age,"
which makes it possible to understand what follows as a description of the
destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70, and of the end of an era in the
spiritual history of mankind. But I digress.) So here we have "begotten of
the Father before all times,
before all ages." Arius was fond of saying, "The Logos is not eternal. God
begat him, and before he was begotten, he did not exist." The Athanasians
replied that the begetting of the Logos was not an event in time, but an
eternal relationship.

* God from God, Light from Light,

A favorite analogy of the Athanasians was the following: Light is
continuously streaming forth from the sun. (In those days, it was generally
assumed that light was instantaneous, so that there was no delay at all
between the time that a ray of light left the sun and the time it struck the
earth.) The rays of light are derived from the sun, and not vice versa.  But
it is not the case that first the sun existed and afterwards the Light.  It
is possible to imagine that the sun has always existed, and always emitted
light. The Light, then, is derived from the sun, but the Light and the sun
exist simultaneously throughout eternity. They are co-eternal. Just so, the
Son exists because the Father exists, but there was never a time before the
Father produced the Son. The analogy is further appropriate because we can
know the sun only through the rays of light that it emits. To see the
sunlight is to see the sun. Just so, Jesus says, "He who has seen me has
seen the Father." (John 14:9)

* true God from true God,
* begotten, not made,

This line was inserted by way of repudiating Arius' teaching that the Son
was the first thing that the Father created, and that to say that the Father
begets the Son is simply another way of saying that the Father has created
the Son. Arius said that if the Father has begotten the Son, then the Son
must be inferior to the Father, as a prince is inferior to a king.
Athanasius replied that a son is precisely the same sort of being as his
father, and that the only son of a king is destined himself to be a king. It
is true that an earthly son is younger than his father, and that there is a
time when he is not yet what he will be. But God is not in time. Time, like
distance, is a relation between physical events, and has meaning only in the
context of the physical universe. When we say that the Son is begotten of
the Father, we do not refer to an event in the remote past, but to an
eternal and timeless relation between the Persons of the Godhead. Thus,
while we say of an earthly prince that he may some day hope to become what
his father is now, we say of God the Son that He is eternally what God the
Father is eternally.

* of one being with the Father.

This line: "of one essence with the Father, of one substance with the
Father, consubstantial with the Father," (in Greek, HOMO-OUSIOS TW PATRI)
was the crucial one, the acid test. It was the one formula that the Arians
could not interpret as meaning what they believed. Without it, they would
have continued to teach that the Son is good, and glorious, and holy, and a
Mighty Power, and God's chief agent in creating the world, and the means by
which God chiefly reveals Himself to us, and therefore deserving in some
sense to be called divine. But they would have continued to deny that the
Son was God in the same sense in which the Father is God. And they would
have pointed out that, since the Council of Nicea had not issued any
declaration that they could not accept, it followed that there was room for
their position inside the tent of Christian doctrine, as that tent had been
defined at Nicea. Arius and his immediate followers would have denied that
they were reducing the Son to the position of a igh-ranking angel.  But
their doctrine left no safeguard against it, and if they had triumphed at
Nicea, even in the negative sense of having their position acknowledged as a
permissible one within the limits of Christian orthodoxy, the damage to the
Christian witness to Christ as God made flesh would have been irreparable.

Incidentally, HOMOOUSIOS is generally written without the hyphen. The OU (in
Greek as in French) is pronounced as in "soup", "group", and so on, and the
word has five syllables HO-mo-OU-si-os, with accents on first and third, as
shown. The Greek root HOMO, meaning "same," is found in English words like
"homosexual" and "homogenized", and is not to be confused with the Latin
word HOMO, meaning "man, human".

The language finally adopted in the East was that the Trinity consists of
three HYPOSTASES (singular HYPOSTASIS) united in one OUSIA. The formula used
in the West, and going back at least to Tertullian (who wrote around 200,
and whose writings are the oldest surviving Christian treatises written in
Latin), is that the Trinity consists of three PERSONAE (singular PERSONA)
united in one SUBSTANTIA. In English, we say "Three Persons in one
Substance." Unfortunately, the Greek HYPO-STASIS and the Latin SUB-STANTIA
each consists of an element meaning "under, below" (as in "hypodermic",
"hypothermia", etc) followed by an element meaning "stand".  Thus it was
natural for a Greek-speaker, reading a Latin document that referred to One
SUBSTANTIA to substitute mentally a reference to One HYPOSTASIS, and to be
very uncomfortable, while a Latin-speaker would have the same problem in
reverse. Thus the seeds were sown for a breakdown of communication.

* Through him all things were made.

This is a direct quote from John 1:3. Before the insertion of the
HOMO-OUSIOS clause, this line immediately followed "begotten, not made." The
two lines go naturally together. The Son is not a created thing. Rather, He
is the agent through Whom all created things come to be. Inserting the
HOMO-OUSIOS at this point breaks up the
flow, and if I had been present at the Council of Nicea, I would have urged
the bishops to insert it one line further down instead. In the older
translation, in particular, someone reading the Creed is likely to
understand it as referring
to "The Father by whom all things were made." The newer translation, by
revising the English wording, makes this misreading less likely. 

* For us and for our salvation

The older translation has, "for us men." Now, while English has in common
current usage the one word "man" to do duty both for gender-inclusive
("human") and for gender-specific ("male"), Latin has "homo, homin-" for
gender-inclusive and "vir" for gender-specific, while Greek has "anthropos"
for gender-inclusive and "aner, andro-" for gender-specific. (Given the
demand for a similar distinction in English, I have been arguing for a
gender-inclusive use of "man", and the revival of the older word "were" (as
in "werewolf" and "weregild") in the gender-specific sense.  But so far I
have had but scant success.) Where the older translation of the Creed is
used, with its "for us men" at this point, a feminist might consider
complaining of sexist language. But the Greek and Latin wording here are
both gender-inclusive, and so a feminist, reading the Creed in either of
those languages, ought to find nothing that will upset him.

* he came down from heaven:
* by the power of the Holy Spirit
* he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
* and was made man.
* For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
* he suffered death and was buried.

You will note that the older translation has here simply, "He suffered and
was buried" (Latin, "passus et sepultus est"). Apparently by the time of
Nicea, it was no longer necessary to emphasize, to spell out unmistakably,
that Christ had really died at Calvary, as it had been spelled out in the
Apostles' Creed. And indeed, I have never heard anyone try to argue that the
Creed here leaves a loophole for those who want to believe that Jesus merely
swooned on the Cross. So apparently the Nicene Fathers were right in
supposing that their language would not be misunderstood. However, the
framers of the new translation decided to make the meaning unmistakable and
to close this particular loophole. And I for one am not sorry.

* On the third day he rose again
* in accordance with the Scriptures;

The wording here is borrowed from 1 Corinthians 15:4. The older translation
has "according to the Scriptures," which in terms of modern language is
misleading. Today, when we say, "It will rain tomorrow, according to the
weatherman," we mean, "The weatherman says that it will rain, but whether he
is right is another question." And this is clearly not what either St. Paul
or the Nicene Fathers had in mind. The newer translation is an improvement.
I would have suggested, "in fulfillment of the Scriptures," which is clearly
what is meant.

* he ascended into heaven
* and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
* He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
* and his kingdom will have no end.
*
* We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
* who proceeds from the Father [and the Son].

The words shown in brackets, "and from the Son," are a Western addition to
the Creed as it was originally agreed on by a Council representing the whole
Church, East and West. They correspond to the Latin word FILIOQUE (FILI =
Son, -O = from, -QUE = and; pronounced with accent on the O), and the
controversy about them is accordingly known as the Filioque controversy.

If we are looking for a statement that can be taken as common ground by all
Christians, East and West alike, it clearly cannot include the FILIOQUE. On
the other hand, Western Christians will be unwilling to have it supposed
that they are repudiating the statement that the Spirit proceeds jointly
from Father and Son. I accordingly suggest that we print the Creed with the
FILIOQUE either in brackets or omitted altogether, but with the
understanding that, while assenting to the resulting statement does not
commit anyone to belief in the Dual Procession of the Spirit, neither does
it commit anyone to disbelief in the Dual Procession.  I reserve extensive
comments on the Dual Procession, the history of the belief, and the reasons
for and against believing in it, for a separate essay, called CREED FILIOQUE.

* With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.
* He has spoken through the Prophets.

This line was directed against the view that the Holy Spirit did not exist,
or was not active, before Pentecost.

* We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

Many Christians from various backgrounds will want to know, "Precisely what
would I be agreeing to if I signed this?" The definition of catholic and
catholicity is contained in the introduction to this book.

* We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
* We look for the resurrection of the dead,
* and the life of the world to come. AMEN.

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