{"id":50,"date":"2006-09-06T20:29:26","date_gmt":"2006-09-06T20:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/50"},"modified":"2021-08-20T21:17:08","modified_gmt":"2021-08-21T02:17:08","slug":"the-orthodox-formulas-3-the-athanasian-creed-early-5th-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/the-orthodox-formulas-3-the-athanasian-creed-early-5th-century\/","title":{"rendered":"The Orthodox Formulas 3: the “Athanasian” Creed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Athanasius\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The so-called Athanasian Creed (also known by the Latin words it begins with, Quicunque vult<\/i>) is considered by many to be the very definition of “the” orthodox doctrine. It is of uncertain origin, although many readers think it has a strongly Augustinian flavor (which if true shows it is not from Athanasius himself, who died before Augustine was converted). It has long been considered authoritative in the West, but less so in the East, and honestly I’m not clear about how this document came to be so popular, other than the fact that it memorably and concisely sets out something like the same doctrine as the Council of Constantinople.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many recent Christian philosophers, in setting out to defend trinitarianism, have used this (and not the Bible or some council document) as the reference point.<\/b> I’d probably chalk this up to convenience, and to the fact the philosophers are more likely to be from “high church” and confessional Christian groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The creed reads in part,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whoever wants to be saved<\/b> should above all cling to the catholic faith. Whoever does not guard it whole and inviolable will doubtless perish eternally. Now this is the catholic faith: We worship one God in trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the divine being. For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Spirit is still another.  But the deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one<\/b>, equal in glory, coeternal in majesty. What the Father is, the Son is, and so is the Holy Spirit. Uncreated… infinite… eternal… And yet there are not three eternal beings, but one<\/b> who is eternal… Almighty is the Father… And yet there are not three almighty beings, but one who is almighty. Thus the Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God: And yet there are not three gods, but one God. …not three lords, but one Lord. As Christian truth compels us to acknowledge each distinct person as God and Lord, so catholic religion forbids us to say that there are three gods or lords. The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten; the Son was neither made nor created, but was alone begotten of the Father; the Spirit was neither made nor created, but is proceeding from the Father and the Son.<\/b> Thus there is one Father, not three fathers; one Son, not three sons; one Holy Spirit, not three spirits. And in this Trinity, no one is before or after, greater or less than the other; but all three persons are in themselves, coeternal and coequal; and so we must worship the Trinity in unity and the one God in three persons. Whoever wants to be saved should think thus about the Trinity. It is necessary for eternal salvation that one also faithfully believe that our Lord Jesus Christ became flesh… That our Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son, is both God and man. He is God, begotten before all worlds from the being of the Father, and he is man, born in the world from the being of his mother — existing fully as God, and fully as man with a rational soul and a human body; equal to the Father in divinity, subordinate to the Father in humanity. Although he is God and man, he is not divided, but is one Christ. He is united because God has taken humanity into himself; he does not transform deity into humanity. He is completely one in the unity of his person, without confusing his natures. For as the rational soul and body are one person, so the one Christ is God and man. He suffered death for our salvation. …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been critical of this much-beloved standard of orthodoxy<\/b>. In a published article I said,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

. . . it is worth asking whether it is a mistake to consider [the so-called Athanasian Creed] document authoritative<\/b>. To be sure, it is and has been endorsed by many western Christian churches for a long time. Thus many western Christians who see God’s hand in the historical development of the Christian tradition want to affirm it. The problem is that we can find some powerful reasons not to<\/b>. The main problem is that it seems to put forth contradictory<\/b> claims. The creed says that each of the three divine persons has at least one property the other two lack (e.g. being “from none\u009d,” being “begotten from” the Father, and “proceeding from” the Father and Son). It follows by the indiscernibility of identicals that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not identical, not numerically the same. It also says that each of the three is God, and yet there is only one God. Further, it lacks the kind of pedigree one wants in an authoritative document. It is neither a council document, nor a digest of scriptural teaching, nor from the hand of a church father<\/b> (we don’t know who wrote it, but it wasn’t Athanasius). Finally, this document makes morally dubious claims, when it asserts that anyone who doesn’t accept its (contradictory?) doctrines is damned to Hell<\/b>. But doesn’t the merciful God accept many Christians with vague or incoherent trinitarian beliefs (often modalist in essence), Christians before the trinitarian developments of the fourth century, social trinitarians, and those with unique, speculative beliefs about the Trinity?
Some would argue that the above reasons are outweighed by reasons we have to trust in whatever documents a certain religious body (e.g. the Catholic Church) has affirmed. That looks like a tough row to hoe, but I suggest that the matter deserves more discussion by Christian philosophers, and that it is better to face than to avoid what looks like genuine conflicts between reason and tradition. . . (“Tradition and Believability: Edward Wierenga’s Social\u00a0Trinitarianism”, Philosophia Christi<\/i>, 5:2, 447-56, 2003.)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Now there are<\/i> apparently consistent ways to interpret this document<\/b>, for instance, using the doctrine of relative identity, or the concepts of material constitution and “numerical identity” which isn’t the relation which occurs in Leibniz’s Law<\/a>. How, then, can I assert that the Athanasian Creed seems contradictory? Simply, I’m not convinced that the authors had any of these highly rarefied metaphysical notions in mind, nor am I convinced that God inspired the anonymous author of this creed to write truths the meaning of which he didn’t understand, and that indeed no one would really understand until the 1960s (relative identity) or the 1990s (material constitution and “numerical identity” which ain’t identity). Charity does require us to seek for a consistent interpretation of any document, but doesn’t prevent us from ultimately concluding that an author is confused, when no plausible consistent interpretation presents itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, having said that, I must admit that I’ve seen traces of materialistic and quasi-materialistic thinking about God in the era of the church Fathers<\/b>. Tertullian, I believe, thought (like Hobbes much later) that God is a material object. And others sometimes seem to think of the divine nature (Godhead, deity) as a matter (or something like matter) which might eternally compose three divine persons – a sort of God-stuff. This sort of talk tends to disappear later in the Latin tradition, I’d guess because of the increasing emphasis on the doctrine of divine simplicity<\/a>, and the Thomistic claim that God is pure act. So I’ll leave the door open to the idea that this creed’s author may have had something like Brower’s and Rea’s constitution trinitarianism in mind, though he’s less than clear about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t think the same kind of historical considerations can help out the relative identity reading of this creed, but in any case, this version of trinitarianism, like any other, deserves to be considered on its own merits. Another day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update: you can hear, and hear about this creed in episode 2 of the trinities podcast<\/a>!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The so-called Athanasian Creed (also known by the Latin words it begins with, Quicunque vult) is considered by many to be the very definition of “the” orthodox doctrine. It is of uncertain origin, although many readers think it has a strongly Augustinian flavor (which if true shows it is not from Athanasius himself, who died… Read More »The Orthodox Formulas 3: the “Athanasian” Creed<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,58,4,14,20,9,7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-complaints","category-creeds","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-history","category-mystery","category-philosophy","category-quotes","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43394,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/43394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}