THE NEW SCHAFF-IIERZOG
nent part played by Epiphanius at the Council of Constantinople, to say nothing of the acceptance of a creed proposed by him.
The fact is that the tradition of the establishment of the creed by the Council of Constantinople is no longer tenable, quite apart from tlie view held of the creed of Epiphanius. The council was not really ecximenical; it was summoned by Theodosius from his own division of the empire, and was not completely representative even of the East. Its canons were not included in the oldest Greek collections, and the evidence goes to show that they did not find universal acceptance in
5. Its Dif- the East until after 451. The creed is ficulties: not found among the few documents External, which remain from the council, and
when it was placed among them later, the compiler obviously knew nothing of its origin, as it appears without introduction or connection. Socrates (v. 8) tells that the council confined itself to affirming the Nicene faith after the Macedonian bishops had left; and the accounts of Sozomen (VII. vii. 9) and Theodoret (v. 8) are substantially the same. Gregory Nazianzen, who was in attendance, in his comprehensive letter on the rule of faith written soon after its close, mentions only the Nicene Creed, and is silent as to its expansion or the drawing up of a new creed, besides which he expressly remarks that the Nicene Creed is inadequate as to the Holy Ghost, which would have been quite impossible if the council had just completed it in that regard. In a word, between 381 and 451 there is no undoubted trace in East or West of the existence of the Creed of Constantinople; and during this period it was nowhere used as the Creed of Constantinople or as the official baptismal symbol, while the Nicene Creed came more and more into use for this purpose, especially in the East, and increased, if possible, in consideration. In fact, with the single exception of the Council of Chalcedon (451), which mentions the Creed of Constantinople together with the Nicene, and ascribes it to the council of 381, there is no valid evidence for it imtil the beginning of the sixth century, after which it is frequently mentioned. Thus the external evidence is wholly against its having been the work of the council of 381.
The internal evidence is still more unfavorable; for it can be shown that the Constantinopolitan Creed is no mere expansion of the Nicene, which disposes of the theory that the authorities who assert the simple confirmation of the Nicene by the council meant the creed under discussion; while if the council drew up a new creed or expanded the old one, its version could not possibly have l)een worded as this creed, is. As to tlic first, it
6. Its Dif- is to be noticed that this creed differs ficulties: from the Nicene not merely by the Internal, addition to the third section, but is
really different all the way through, and comes from another original source, even though it has adopted a eertaiii number of tlie Niceni^ watcliwords. To sum up the points of difference which a careful comparison of tlie two discloses, we find ten additions besides the long one, four omissions, and five distinct changes in order of
words or sentence-structure; or, as Hort puts it, of 178 words in the Constantinopolitan Creed only thirty-three, or less than a fifth, can be positively said to be taken from the Nicene.
The creed is therefore either a new and independent one with certain Nicene insertions, or based upon some older baptismal creed, edited in a Nicene sense — probably the latter, since there is no case known of the composition of a wholly new Ijaptismal creed in the fourth or fifth century. This hypothesis is supported by a consideration of two additions — the " before all worlds " which fol- 7. Modern lows " begotten of his Father," and Theory of the " according to the Scriptures " Origin. after the assertion of the resurrection.
As to the former, it is well known tliat the Nicene Fathers carefully avoided any limitation of time for the generation of the Son by the Father, and deliberately omitted these words from the creed of Evisebius. This attitude was made even more rigid by the history of the compromise-formulas of Antioch and Sirmium; and it is impossible to suppose that these very words were with equal deliberation added by the bishops at Constantinople, when such an action would have been construed as a concession to the Semi-Arians. The whole situation at the time allows no other explanation than that these words were already contained in an ancient baptismal creed, revised in a Nicene sense (not, of course at Constantinople), and that the revisers did not see any necessity for omitting them, but were satisfied with adding the most important Nicene watchwords. The words " according to the Scriptures," again, had become so suspicious in the course of a long controversy that no adherent of Nicaia would have thought of inserting them in a creed wbich did not already contain them, least of all in the Nicene Creed.
These conclusions are confirmed by the third section, which is traditionally supposed to have been the especial work of the Council of Constantinople. It is certain that the Macedonians were combated at this council; that from it dates their definite exclusion from the Church; and that it showed no tendency to make the slightest compromise with them. It is equally certain that the dogmat ic " tome " issued by the council (now unhappily lost) expressed the full unity of substance between the Holy Ghost and the Father and the Son. But the creed, instead of emphasizing this unity of substance, contents itself with phrases that bear, indeed, a homoousian meaning but lio not clearly express it — phrases which might ha\-e sufficed against crude Arianism, but would ha\ e been quite inadequate to combat the energetic denials of the homoousia of the Holy Spirit about 380. The fact that the creed thus contains an evidently orthodox but not sufficiently definite expression on this point brings us again to the theory of an ancient baptismal creed which was revised in a Nicene and anti-Macedonian sense after 'MV2 and some time before .'^Sl. Its inclusioi. in the Ancora- /ii.s' of Epiphanius, which, it is now plain, can not be regarded as duo to a subsequent mierpolation, may help to tlirow light on its actual origin.
Although the words in whicli Epiphanius com-
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Constantinopolitan Creed
mends the creed to the church of PamphyHa are not clear and the text is possibly corrupt in at least one place, it is evident that he sets it forth as a creed substantially of apostolic and Nicene origin. Now the question as to the source from which he received it led as long ago as the days of Gerhard Voss to the comparison of its wording with that of the Jerusalem creed; and in modern times Hort has conclusively justified the ^^tatement that the creed of Constantinople is nothing but the baptismal symbol of Jerusalem increased by the addition of the most important Nicene formulas and definitions on the Holy Ghost. The whole first section and the second down to " before all worlds " is identical in both; the structure of the second section is that of Jerusalem, with the addition of the Nicene phrases and four supplementary expressions — and of these one or two may have been in the Jerusalem creed, which is only known by reconstruction from Cyril's catechetical lectures; the third reads " and in one Holy Ghost, the Comforter, who spake by the prophets," which words afford a basis for the longer statement of the Constantinopolitan Creed.
The latter would therefore be a revision of the old Jerusalem creed made between 362 and 373, under the influence, there is scarcely a doubt, of CyrU, bishop of Jerusalem from 351 to 386. Three of the creeds mentioned above as resembling but distinct from the Nicene came into being under precisely the same circumstances. The creed of Antioch was probably a revision of the old baptismal creed of that church made, in dependence on the Nicene, by Meletius about 373; the Nestorian creed still in use was a further revision of the Antiochian creed made on the basis of the Nicene about 366, and designated as Nicene in its introduction; and that laid before the Council of Ephesus by Charisius was an ancient creed of Asia Minor, revised in a thoroughly orthodox direction in the last third of the fourth century. The whole seven creeds belong to this class, in fact, may for more than one reason be attributed to the period just named, which witnessed much activity in the formulation of baptismal creeds in the East.
III. History of its Acceptance: How it came to be designated as " of Constantinople," and to enjoy ecumenical authority, is a more difficult question. The Council of Constantinople did not acquire this authority in the East until the middle of the fifth century, in the West from seventy to a hundred years later. The patriarchate of Constantinople attained supremacy in the East in 451, after which it had every reason for exalting the
I. Accept- authority of the council held in that
ance in city in 381 as equal with the Nicene.
the West. The Monophysite churches held back for twenty years from acknowledging these claims, and they were not conceded in the West for nearly a century, not, in fact, until the dependence of the popes upon the Byzantine emperors brought about a tacit acceptance of the Council of Constantinople and its decrees. Pope Vigilius (538-555) is apparently the first to call it ecumenical; but possibly before his pontificate the creed in a Latin version was appended to the first three canons of Constantinople in the collection of
Dionysius Exiguus, though he does not affirm the ecumenicity of the council. Gregory the Great, who took up the sorry inheritance of the Byzantine period, puts the four great councils, including that of Constantinople, on a level with the four Gospels. While the reverent reception of the creed in the West can not be clearly shown before the middle third of the sixth century, it increased with remarkable rapidity, once the formula was regarded as the production of a council now recognized as ecumenical, and had been raised to the rank of a baptismal creed by the Roman and Spanish churches, partly owing to the need of a strong defense against Visigothic Arianism. The addition of the word Filioque took place in 589 — so soon after the reception of the Creed in the West that it is almost possible to defend it as, for the West, no innovation. After the creed had once taken its position as a baptismal symbol in the most important Western provinces, and the legislation of Justinian had stamped it as authoritative there also, there was little chance of any question being raised as to its origin or sanction, and it retained its place in the mass and other solemn functions as of equal validity with the Apostles', and under the name of the Nicene. The Council of Trent solemnly reaffirmed it, and the Reformers (though Calvin for a time was inclined to criticize it) accepted it as Nicene and approved its teaching.
Its reception in the West shows that soon after 500 it must have passed in at least a part of the East as a Constantinopolitan revision
2. Accept- of the Nicene creed. The process of ance in its enforcement as such must have
the East, begun shortly before 450 and been completed about 500. It has been maintained that its presence in the acts of the Council of Chalcedon is due to an interpolation; but there are several strong reasons against the acceptance of this view.