RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Con stantinople Constantinopolitan Creed
This variant also goes back to the Augustinian theology, and ultimately to still older Western feeling, which objected to designating 3. The anything else than the Triune God as Omission the object of religious faith in the of " in," highest sense. This view received formand the al expression in Augustine's distinction Use of the between credere aliquid, alicui, and in Singular, aliquem. The change from plural to singular in the words of acceptance, which occurs in the oldest Spanish, Roman, Frankish, and Anglo-Saxon recensions, is connected with the usage of the traditio and redditio symboli, by which the creed was used as the personal expression of the individual who recited it. The Western Greek texts largely share the peculiarities of the Latin, while that written with Roman letters in the Gelasian Sacramentary, as well as in a liturgical MS. of the Vienna library, is identical with the Eastern text.
There are also a number of creed-forms calling themselves Niceno-Constantinopolitan or Nicene and considered by Caspari as modifications of the Constantinopolitan. These are: (1) the revised
Antiochian; (2) the Nestorian; (3) 4. Minor the Philadelphian; (4) the form given Texts or in the pseudo-Athanasian " Interpre- Forms. tation of the Creed"; (5) the second
and longer creed in the Ancoraius of Epiphanius; (6) the Cappadocian- Armenian; (7) the exposition of the Nicene Creed ascribed to Basil; (8) one of the two creeds read at Chalcedon and there described as Nicene. In spite of the resemblance of these to the Constantinopolitan, they are (as Hort has very well shown) rather sister than daughter recensions, and are, as will be seen later, of no slight importance for the solution of the question of origin.
11. Origin : The Nicene Creed proper was adopted at the Council of Nica3a in 326 as a first settlement of the Trinitarian controversy (see Arianisii). The process which led up to the victory of
the Alexandrian theology and to the I. Nicene reception of the creed is still obscure, Creed and the original meaning of the crucial Proper, term homoousios can not be absolutely
determined. But Eusebius is undoubtedly right when he says that the formula proposed by him was the basis of the new confession. The Nicene Creed differs from this formula by some omissions and slight alterations, by the insertion of the Alexandrian christological formulas, and by a thorough revision based on a comparison with the baptismal symbols of Jerusalem and Antioch. The changes made by omission are of importance as showing that the victorious Alexandrian party was bent on avoiding any ambiguity and indisposed to compromise; the omitted phrases are mostly Biblical in phraseology, but such as were on the lips of open or half-avowed opponents of the strict orthodox belief. That the Nicene Creed was intended not as a baptismal symbol but as a christological rule of faith is shown by the brevity of the third section and by the bearing of the appended anathemas. All these characteristics gave the creed a theoretical, unliturgical, and unscriptural form 1II.-17
which was used as a justification for attacks upon it in the next period by the Arians and Eusebians, and for acceptance with reservations even by some who were in the main orthodox.
The next few decades saw acute controversy rage around it, and its opponents proposed a series of alternatives for it up to 34L This controversy deepened the attachment of its defenders to its literal expression, and made them 2. Inade- avoid even any expansion of it in an quacy Felt orthodox sense. Thus at the Council Later. of Sardica (344) it was simply reaffirmed without changes, and numerous passages might be collected from both orthodox and heterodox sources between 350 and 450 to show the unique reverence paid to the Nicene formula. DifTiculties arose in regard to its use as a baptismal symbol, of which there is no evidence between 325 and 361, the older provincial creeds remaining in use. Later, however, after Julian's accession and the regaining of power by the orthodox party, which strengthened its position by the great synods of 360-370 and by the labors of strong bishops in Asia Minor and Syria, the desire of expressing the pure Nicene faith in connection with the act of baptism was felt. This could be done in three ways: by in- 3. Attempts corporating the Nicene watchwords to into the old provincial creeds, by ex- Remedy, panding the Nicene Creed into a completeness adequate for the purpose, or by keeping it unchanged, in spite of its incompleteness and its polemical bearing, and still using it for a baptismal symbol. All these three ways were, as a matter of fact, tried in the century between the synods of Alexandria and of Chalcedon; and the origin of the creed under discussion may best be sought in the history of these experiments.
The traditional account, held from the sixth century and accepted in both East and West, is that' the creed was drawn up at the Council of Constantinople in 38L This synod 4. Tradi- was supposed to have supplemented tional Ac- the Nicene Creed by an expansion of count of the third section, and the resulting Origin. Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed was assumed to have been at once received into universal ecclesiastical use. The first thing that shook the common belief was the realization that the Ancoratus of Epiphanius (373-374) contained a creed which, apart from its being supplemented by the Nicene anathemas and from two phrases in the text, was wholly identical with the Constantinopolitan.. This could only be explained in harmony with the traditional view by the theory that Epiphanius himself added it to his book after 381, as Franzelin maintains, or that it was a much later interpolation by another hand, as Vincenzi asserts. Hefele, accordingly, like Tillemont before him, took the view that the council did not actually draw up a new creed but adopted that of Epiphanius with a few slight changes, giving it the rank of an ecumenical creed. He demonstrates that it was not written by Epiphanius himself, nor in Cyprus, but rather in Syria, some years before 373. But there is no documentary evidence of a promi-
Oonstantiuopolitan Creed