podcast 2 – the “Athanasian Creed”

This is your introduction to the statement most Christian philosophers start with, when they try to construct a self-consistent and plausible way of interpreting the claim that God is three equally divine “persons”. Of uncertain origin, through the middle ages, it rose to prominence in the Roman Catholic, and then in other catholic traditions.

It’s credited to this gent here, Athanasius (d. 373), but can’t be by him. I neglected to mention that the creed seems to echo language used in several places in the late writings of Augustine (d. 430)

Many thanks to my friend Caroline Roberts for reading the creed for us, and to her husband, the multi-talented Bob Roberts for recording her. Check out Bob’s website (also here) if you have any books you need expertly and lovingly rebound. Thanks to their generosity, you’ll be hearing Caroline’s beautiful voice again in some future creed episodes!

Resources:

J.N.D. Kelly’s classic monograph on the Quicunque. It was his translation from the Latin we used in this episode.
And the quote re: laughter is from Keith Ward’s God: A Guide to the Perplexed, which asserts what I call a one-self Trinity theory.

I should also thank this awesome web-based service: auphonic. This helps me to easily tweak sound quality and distribute through so many venues. Tip: if you have a very rough audio recording of a public lecture or talk, upload it to them and use all their standard processing – it’ll come out much more listenable!