Athanasian Creed

“ A friend of my own, who was much pressed to say how much of the Athanasian Creed he still accepted, once said that he clung to the idea "that there was a sort of a something." In homely words such as the unlearned can understand, that is precisely what the religion of the Agnostic comes to, "the belief that there is a sort of a something about which we can know nothing." ”

“ Is it not, therefore, necessary to argue to prove that God is one? I am aware that people of our day will reject the Athanasian creed when it is brought before them in this way. Each individual clergyman, for example, when confronted by such contradictory statements as it contains, such obviously impossible things, will either say that it is beyond our understanding, yet true because the fathers of the Church have hitherto accepted it, but that he himself believes in only one God. ”

“ It never had been shaped in perfection until the time of the Athanasian Creed; and this creed contains among other things those famous damnatory clauses? which the Episcopal Church in this country, to their credit be it said, have left out of their Prayer Book. But this Athanasian Creed is obliged to be sung thirteen times every year in the Church of England; and you can imagine with what grace and joy they must sing the statement that, unless a man believes every single word and sentence of it, he shall no doubt perish everlastingly. ”

“ For when the Church ceases to know its God, the central point of all faith and doctrine, all subsidiary points must necessarily become involved in darkness. And thus it is that the Athanasian creed has given rise to so many absurd notions about God, and hence, also, to an innumerable brood of heresies and phantasies on every point of doctrine and life, so much so, that had not the Lord effected a Last Judgment in 1757, and established a New Heaven and a New Church, no flesh could have been saved. ”

“ Man must have knowledge of this One, belief in this One; or there is none for him to believe in or to know. God's covenant is with His Church on earth; and the statements of the Creed are the representation in words of that knowledge of the truth which the Church possesses, the possession of which is her life. The Athanasian Creed is not addressed to outsiders, but to those who are within the Church. For encouragement, or (if necessary) for warning, it insists to them on the uniqueness of their faith. To have hold on God is to have hold on Life. To revolt from God is to revolt from Life. ”

“ This Creed (Athanasian) does not pretend to explain how there are three Persons, each of which is God, and yet but One God, (of which more hereafter,) but only asserts the thing, that thus it is, and thus it must be if we believe a Trinity in Unity; which should make all men, who would be thought neither Arians nor Socinians, more cautious how they express the least dislike of the Athanasian Creed, which must either argue, that they condemn it, before they understand it, or that they have some secret dislike to the doctrine of the Trinity. ”

“ The Athanasian Creed, though generally admitted not to be drawn up by this father, (but probably, as Doctor Waterland says, by Hilary, bishop of Arles, in the fifth century,) is universally allowed to contain a fair expression of his sentiments. This creed says, “The Catholic faith is this: that we worship One God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity: neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one ”

“ The men who esteemed themselves to be philosophers must needs corrupt the simple truth of the "Apostles' Creed" respecting the three persons of the Godhead, by the false philosophies of the orient, and the idle speculations of the Greeks; until this simple expression of Christian faith in God was changed from what we find it in the "Apostle's Creed" to the "Athanasian Creed," and those vain philosophizings and definitions which have grown out of it, and which reduce the dignity of the Godhead to a mere vacuum—to a "being" impersonal, incorporeal, without body, without parts, without passions ”

“ And all because you believe the Athanasian Creed in spirit and in truth.
In like manner, if you believe that Jesus Christ is not a perfect Son; if you fancy that he has any will but his Father’s will; that he has any work but what his Father gives him to do, who has committed all things into his hands; that he knows anything but what his Father sheweth him, who sheweth him all things, because he loveth him; then you will be tempted to wish for power and honour of your own; to become ambitious, self-willed, vain, and disobedient to your parents. ”

“ Whilst the Apostles’ Creed compendiously sums up and declares the main articles of our Christian faith, and the Nicene Creed explains more fully the articles relating to the Son and the Holy Ghost, the Athanasian Creed stands as an excellent guard and defence against the subtleties of most kinds of heretics, who, were it once removed, would soon find means to enervate and evade the shorter Creeds, where the Christian faith is more simply declared.—Wheatly. ”

“ Men not satisfied with a simple trust, must speculate on the Divine Being—must ascertain whether he was essentially one, or numerically divided; Churchmen must define, and after much labour we have such a document as the Athanasian Creed, and such a doctrine as the Athanasian Trinity. ”

“ I say, I see it, and I must believe my own eyes and ears; and when I do see it, I begin to understand the text which says, ‘This is eternal life, to know thee, the only God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent;’ and I begin to understand the Athanasian Creed, which says, that if a ‘man does not believe rightly the name of God, and the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, he will perish everlastingly; his soul will decay more and more, become more and more weak, unhealthy and corrupt, till he perishes everlastingly. ”

“ And, after all, the Athanasian Creed is light and comprehensible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are divines among us who in the interest of a more sharply defined orthodoxy are conscientiously bent upon securing the reintroduction among our formularies of the so-called Athanasian Creed.
There are others who consider that a more damaging blow at the catholicity of our dogmatic position as a Church could scarcely be dealt. ”

“ The apostolic attitude is a desire to convert others to our beliefs for the sake of sympathy and light: the Athanasian attitude is a desire to murder people who dont agree with us. I am sufficient of an Athanasian to advocate a law for the speedy execution of all Athanasians, because they violate the fundamental proposition of my creed, which is, I repeat, that all living creatures are experiments. ”

“ In some respects he tried rather to impose a scheme of thought and imagination upon his age than to express the ideas that he found current. His theology and his cosmical conceptions are equally tainted [86] with his individual heresies. He flies in the face of the Athanasian Creed by representing the generation of the Son as an event occurring in time--"on such day as Heaven's great year brings forth." His later poem of Paradise Regained and the posthumous treatise of Christian Doctrine show him an Arian; in the poem the Almighty is made to speak of
This perfect man, by merit called my Son. ”

“ Whatever consists of soul and flesh is a creature. Christ consists of a soul and flesh. Therefore he is a creature.
I prove the major premise from the Athanasian Creed. Response: Christ does not consist of a soul and flesh, but of humanity and divinity. He assumed human nature, which consists of soul and flesh, and in the Creed, man must be construed with rational soul.
XVII. Argument: There is nothing accidental in God. To assume humanity is an accident. Therefore Christ is not God.
Response: In philosophy this is true; but in theology we have our own rules. ”

“ The Confession, improperly called the “Creed of Athanasius,” is acknowledged to embody the (Athanasian) doctrine of the Nicene Council; and I append it here as an index to the state of theology at the period which is the limit of our series. Nothing is properly a “creed” which has never been accepted as such by the whole Church, and the Greeks knew no other creed than that called Nicene. ”

“ I considered it judicious to elucidate Dionysius by the doctrines of Athanasius, to whom we owe the preservation of the fragment itself; and (6) I felt that here was the place to record the “Athanasian Confession” (so called) , which, apocryphal though it be, as a “creed” under his name is allowed to embody the principles for which the whole life of Athanasius was a contest unparalleled in the history of Christianity. ”

“ He was a living example of the truth that a man may be large-minded and yet strong; that he may hate error, yet love the erring—stand like a rock against heresy, yet be full of compassion for heretics.
Scarcely was Athanasius dead when he was honored as a Saint. Six years after his death, St. Gregory Nazianzen speaks of him in one breath with the patriarchs, prophets and martyrs who had fought for the Faith and won the crown of glory. His influence is with us to this day, his memory lingers in the words of that Nicene Creed which was his war cry ”

“ Athanasius and those who with him had been ready to give their lives for the Truth being, like all brave and noble men, gentle and compassionate, they resolved to make it as easy as possible. They announced that absolution would be given freely to all who accepted the Creed of Nicea. Those who had fallen away were mostly good men and true believers who had yielded in a moment of weakness or of fear, or who had been deceived by the protestations of the Arians. They had been thoroughly miserable, but now the proclamation of Athanasius set them free from what had seemed like a bad dream. ”

“ From his earliest youth Athanasius had stood forth as the champion of Truth and defender of the Faith—a gallant warrior who had not laid down his arms until the day of his death. Where a weaker man would have lost courage, he had stood firm; suffering had only served to temper his spirit, as steel is tempered by the fire. Among men who were capable of every compromise he had remained loyal and true, and few have been more loved or hated than he. To his own people he was not only their Bishop, but a Saint, an ascetic, a martyr in all but deed ”

“ A council at Antioch, 339, deposed Athanasius, and he was expelled from Alexandria, and Gregory of Cappadocia was consecrated in his place. Athanasius, with Marcellus of Ancyra and other supporters of the Nicene faith, repaired to Rome where they were supported by Julius, bishop of Rome, at a well-attended local council in 340 (a, b) . In the East numerous attempts were made to formulate a confession of faith which might take the place of the Nicene creed and prove acceptable to all parties. ”

“ We do not mean at all to say that the followers of Athanasius in the Christian Church have consciously been polytheists. They have insisted upon the formula that God is one, in spite of the fact that their creed, logically viewed, asserted the contrary. ”

“ The human mind cannot be chained. But it was a great thing to establish a creed which the Christian world could accept in the rude and ignorant ages which succeeded the destruction of the old civilization. That creed was the anchor of religious faith in the Middle Ages. It is still retained in the liturgies of Christendom.
It is not my province to criticise the Nicene Creed, which is virtually the old Apostles' Creed, with the addition of the Trinity, as defined by Athanasius. ”

“ At length the Athanasians collected a number of texts, which they conceived amounted to full proof of the Son being of one and the same substance with the Father; the Arians admitted he was of like substance, the difference in the Greek phrases being only in a single letter,--ὁμοούσιος, homoousios and ὁμοιούσιος, homoiousios. At length the former was decreed to be the orthodox faith, and the Nicene creed was framed as it remains at this day so far as concerns the person of the Son of God, who is said to be “begotten of his Father before all worlds ”

“ Athanasius (says the Encyclopedia Americana) is one of the greatest men of whom the church can boast. His deep mind, his noble heart, his invincible courage, his living faith, his unbounded benevolence, sincere humility, lofty eloquence, and strictly virtuous life, gained the honor and love of all. ”

“ The renowned and undaunted defender of the Catholic faith against the errors which in his day threatened to overwhelm Gospel-truth, Athanasius (the last of those ante-Nicene writers into whose testimony we have instituted this inquiry) , was born about the year 296, and, after having presided in the Church as Bishop for more than forty-six years, died in 373, on the verge of his eightieth year. It is impossible for any one interested in the question of primitive truth to look upon the belief and practice of this Christian champion with indifference. ”