Andrew Ewbank Burn

“ The creed in all its forms lies behind worship, which it preserves from idolatry, and behind ethics, to which it supplies a motive power which the pre-Christian system so manifestly lacked. Whether the first creed of the primitive Church was of the simple Christological character which confession of Jesus as the Lord expresses, or of an enlarged type based on the baptismal formula (Matt. xxviii. 19) , makes no difference to the statement that the faith which overcame the world derived its energy from convictions which strove for utterance. ”

“ Faithful souls would be contented with the word of God which bids us: ‘Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’ But also we are drawn by the faults of our heretical opponents to do things unlawful, to scale heights inaccessible, to speak out what is unspeakable, to presume where we ought not. ”

“ The very intensity of that phase of modern thought which declaims fervently against all creeds, and would maintain what George Eliot called “the right of the individual to general haziness,” is likely to draw all Christian thinkers nearer to one another in sympathy through acceptance of the Apostles’ Creed as the common basis of Christian thought. In the words of Hilary of Poitiers, “Faith gathers strength through opposition.” ”

“ In 1629 he published a confession in which he attempted to incorporate ideas of the reformers while preserving the leading ideas of Eastern traditional theology. The controversy chiefly turned on the question of the necessity of episcopacy. Dositheus taught that the existence of bishops is as necessary to the Church as “breath to a man and the sun to the world.” Christ is the universal and perpetual Head of the Church, but he exercises his rule by means of “the holy Fathers,” that is, the bishops whom the Holy Ghost has appointed to be in charge of local churches. ”

“ II. Modern Confessions of Faith.—The second great creed-making epoch of Church history opens in the 16th century with the Confession of Augsburg. The famous theses which Luther nailed to the door of the church at Wittenberg in 1517 cannot be called a confession, but they expressed a protest which could not rest there. Some reconstruction of popular beliefs was needed by many consciences. There is a striking contrast between the crudeness of much and widely accepted medieval theology and the decrees of the council of Trent. Even from the Roman Catholic standpoint such a need was felt. ”

“ But the new study of comparative religion has something to teach us even here. The saying lex orandi lex credendi is true of all times and of all peoples. And since we must reckon praise as the highest form of prayer, such an early Christian hymn as is found in 1 Tim. iii. 16 must be acknowledged to be of the nature of a creed: “He who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory.” ”

“ And whereas it is by faith alone that we should worship the Father and reverence the Son, and be filled with the Spirit, we are now obliged to strain our weak human language in the utterance of things beyond its scope ”

“ The disciplinary question of clerical marriage is not of the same primary importance as the doctrinal questions involved in the restoration of the cup to the laity, or discussed in the subsequent article on the mass. As has been well said by a learned Baptist theologian, Dr Green: “It was by a true divine instinct that the early theologians made Christ Himself, in His divine-human personality, their centre of the creeds.” [15] The fundamental questions of Christianity, exhibited in the Apostles’ Creed, should be marked off as standing on a higher plane than others. ”

“ The Apostles’ Creed is the ancient baptismal creed, held in common both by East and West, in its final western form. The Nicene Creed is the baptismal creed of an eastern church enlarged in order to combine theological interpretation with the facts of the historic faith. ”

“ Augustine teaches that the Father and the Son are the one principle of the Being of the Spirit. From this it is a short step to say with the Quicumque vult that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, while guarding the idea that the Father is the one fountain of Deity. Since Eastern theologians would be willing to say “proceeds from the Father through the Son,” it is clear that the two views are not irreconcilable.
3. The Athanasian Creed, so called because in many MSS. it bears the title “The Faith of S. Athanasius,” is more accurately designated by its first words Quicumque vult. ”

“ But there is always the possibility to be faced that Irenaeus drew his creed from Rome rather than Asia Minor. Kattenbusch does not shrink from suggesting that he shows acquaintance with the Roman Creed, and that Justin Martyr also knew it, in which case all the so-called Eastern characteristics have been imprinted on the original Roman form, and are not derived from an Eastern archetype. But the ordinary reader need not feel concern about the future victory of either theory. ”

“ Belief in the fact of the Incarnation of the eternal Word, as it is stated in the words of Ignatius quoted above, or in any of the later creeds, stands or falls with belief in the Holy Ghost as the guide alike of their convictions and destinies, no mere impersonal influence, but a living voice. ”

“ The history of the introduction of the creed into liturgies is still obscure. Peter Fullo, bishop of Antioch, was the first to use it in the East, and in the West a council held by King Reccared at Toledo in 589. The theory of Probst that it had been used in Rome before this time has not been confirmed. King Reccared’s council is usually credited with the introduction of the words “And the Son” into clause 9 of the creed. But some MSS. [11] omit them in the creed-text while inserting them in a canon of the faith drawn up at the time. ”

“ Plato regarding the world as an embodiment of eternal, archetypal ideas, which he groups under the central idea of Good, identified with the divine reason, at the same time uses the ordinary language of the day, and speaks of God and the gods, feeling his way towards the conception of a personal God, which, to quote Dr Illingworth again, neither he nor Aristotle could reach because they had not “a clear conception of human personality.” ”

“ On the other hand the creed is a valuable statement of Catholic faith on the Trinity and the Incarnation, and its use for students and teachers at least is by no means obsolete. The special characteristic of its theology is in the first part where it owes most to the teaching of Augustine, who in his striving after self-knowledge analysed the mystery of his own triune personality and illustrated it with psychological images, “I exist and I am conscious that I exist, and I love the existence and the consciousness ”

“ The council also quoted phrases from the so-called Creed of Damasus, a document of the 4th century, which in some cases they preferred to the phrases of the Quicumque. Their quotations form a connecting link in the chain of evidence by which the use of the creed may be traced back to the writings of Caesarius, bishop of Arles (503-543) . Dom Morin has now demonstrated (“Le Symbole d’Athanase et son premier témoin S. Césaire d’Arles,” Rev. Bénédictine, Oct. 1901) that Caesarius used the creed continually as a sort of elementary catechism. ”

“ Whether his conclusion is justified or not, it helps to show how strongly the trend of contemporary research is setting against the theory of Kattenbusch that the Roman Creed when adopted at Antioch became the parent of all Eastern forms. It does not, however, militate against the possibility that the Roman Creed was carried from Rome to Asia Minor and to Palestine in the 2nd century. It is evidently impossible to arrive at a final decision until much more spade work has been done in the investigation of early Eastern creeds. ”

“ But Ignatius might seem to offer in the following passage some confirmation of Zahn’s theory of a primitive creed of Antioch (Trall. 9) : “Be ye deaf, therefore, when any man speaketh to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the race of David, who was the Son of Mary, who was truly born and ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died in the sight of those in heaven and those on earth and those under the earth ”

“ It is important as connecting the creeds of East and West. Since Jerome was born in Pannonia we may conjecture that he is inserting Nicene phrases from the Jerusalem creed into his baptismal creed, and that this form added to Niceta’s creed proves that the creed of the Danube lands possessed the clauses “maker of heaven and earth” and “communion of saints.” ”

“ It exhibits the leading features of the Reformed theology, but “disclaims Divine authority for any fixed form of church government or worship.” It also asks that “if anyone shall note in this our confession any articles or sentence repugnant of God’s Holy Word, that it would please him of his gentleness and for Christian charity’s sake, to admonish of the same in writing,” promising that if the teaching cannot be proved, to reform it. Between this and the Westminster Confession must be noted the first Baptist confession, published in Amsterdam in 1611. ”

“ This was Lumby’s revised date, but the progress of palaeographical studies has made it possible to demonstrate that MSS. of the 8th century do exist which contain the complete creed.
The two-portion theory was vigorously attacked by G. D. W. Ommanney, who was successful in the discovery of new documents, notably early commentaries, which contained the text of the creed embedded in them, and thus supplied independent testimony to the fact that the creed was becoming fairly widely known at the end of the 8th century. ”

“ These confessions teach the root idea of Calvin’s theology, the immeasurable awfulness of God, His eternity, and the immutability of His decrees. Such strict Calvinism was the strength also of the Westminster Confession (see below) , but was soon weakened in Germany. This same Elector Frederick invited two young divines, Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, to prepare the afterwards celebrated Heidelberg catechism, which in 1563 superseded Calvin’s catechism in the Palatinate. While Calvin began sternly with the question: “What is the chief end of human life?” ”

“ A.D. 374, some years before the council of Constantinople (A.D. 381) . We gather that it had already been introduced into Cyprus as a baptismal creed. Hort’s identification of it as the work of Cyril of Jerusalem is now generally accepted. On his return from exile in A.D. 362 Cyril would find “a natural occasion for the revision of the public creed by the skilful insertion of some of the conciliar language, including the term which proclaimed the restoration of full communion with the champions of Nicaea, and other phrases and clauses adapted for impressing on the people positive truth.” ”

“ To this summary of doctrine should be added the dogmas of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin declared in 1854, and of papal infallibility decreed by the Vatican council of 1870.
Conclusion.—In this survey of Christian confessions it has been impossible to do more than barely name many which deserve discussion. This is a subject which has grown in importance and is likely to grow further. ”

“ Their creed became the passport by which Christians in strange cities could obtain admission to assemblies for worship and to common meals. The passage quoted is obviously a condensed quotation of the Roman Creed, which reappears also in the following (de Virg. vel. i.) :
“The rule of faith is one altogether ... of believing in one God Almighty, maker of the world, and in His Son Jesus Christ, born of Mary the Virgin, crucified under Pontius Pilate ”

“ Such a riper analysis of the mystery of his own personality enabled him to arrive at a clearer conception of the idea of divine personality, “whose triunity has nothing potential or unrealized about it; whose triune elements are eternally actualized, by no outward influence, but from within ”

“ Swainson thought that the Quicumque was brought into its present shape in the 9th century. The so-called profession of Denebert, bishop-elect of Worcester, in A.D. 798 presented to the archbishop of Canterbury (which includes clauses 1, 3-6, 20-22, 24, 25) , and the Trèves fragment (a portion of a sermon in Paris bibl. nat. Lat. 3836, saec. viii., which quoted clauses 27-34, 36-40) , seemed to him to represent the component parts of the creed as they existed separately. He conjectured that they were brought together in the province of Rheims c. ”

“ English Articles of Religion.—The ten articles of 1536 were drawn up by Convocation at the bidding of Henry VIII. “to stablysh Christian Quietnes and Unitie.” They exhibit a traditional character, a compromise betweenArticles of religion. the old and the new learning. Thus the doctrine of the Real Presence is asserted, but no mention is made of Transubstantiation. Medieval ceremonies are described as useful but without power to remit sins. ”