A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
come again to judge the living and the dead, and there will be no end to his
kingdom;
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-Giver, who proceeds from the
Father, who is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son,
who spoke through the prophets;
And in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church;
We confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins;
We wait for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the coming age, Amen.
The Constantinople Creed is a slightly modified form of the Nicene Creed. It
drops the anathemas against the Arians and enlarges the section on the Holy
Spirit, raising the status of the Spirit without making it ‘of one substance’ with
the Father and Son. This appears to follow the position taken by Basil of
Caesarea and it effectively excludes the Macedonians, who wished to retain the
lowly status of the Holy Spirit in the creed of 325. It omits ‘that is of the
substance (ousia) of the Father’, surprisingly in view of the central position
homoousios had taken in the debate, although ‘consubstantial’ is retained in its
original position.
The Athanasian Creed was probably composed in the first half of the fifth
century in southern Gaul, in other words near the time of Augustine’s death in
430. Despite its title, no one has been able to link it directly to Athanasius and it
seems that it was originally composed in Latin, which is why its origin is
assumed to be in the west. It sets out a definition of the Trinity as follows:
We worship one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity, without either
confusing the persons or dividing the substance; for the person of the Father is
one, the Son’s is another, the Holy Spirit’s another; but the Godhead of Father,
Son and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty equally eternal. Such
as the Father is, such is the Son, such also the Holy Spirit; uncreated is the
Father, uncreated the Son, uncreated the Holy Spirit; infinite is the Father,
infinite the Son, infinite the Holy Spirit; eternal is the Father, eternal the Son,
eternal the Holy Spirit; yet they are not three eternal beings, but one eternal, just
as they are not three uncreated beings or three infinite beings, but one uncreated
and one infinite... Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God;
yet they are not three gods but one God ...
The creed ends with the famous/notorious anathemas: ‘And they that have
done good shall go into life everlasting and they that have done evil into