Athanasian Creed Research Articles

Two in one: contradictory Christology without gluts?

The central thesis of JC Beall’s paraconsistent Christology is that Christ, being human and divine, is a contradictory being, and a rational Christology can accept it, since logic nowadays does not exclude the possibility of true contradictions. In this paper, I move from Beall’s theory and I present an alternative view. I quote seven statements of the so-called ‘Athanasian Creed’ which synthesizes the results of conciliar Christology. The aim of the Creed is to combat monophysitism by stressing the duplicity and unity of Christ: two (incompatible) natures inseparably joined in only one person. I note that the two-in-one principle, so intended, may be seen as an ancestor of what has been called ‘conjunctive paraconsistency’, whereby there could be true contradictions but contradictories cannot be separately true. I specifically oppose this view to Beall’s idea of Christ’s human divinity (or divine humanity) as a glut, showing that in the conjunctive account, true contradictions do not require any overlapping or joint ascription of truth and falsity.

A Trinitarian Reading of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s ‘The Windhover’

Abstract The rhetorical and emotional verve of ‘The Windhover’ reflect not the moment of stasis of Christ’s cross but the energy of Trinitarian interrelation in creation. Readings of the sonnet usually foreground the second divine person. Countering such a perspective, this essay rehearses the Scholastic theology and the Scholastically based faith that the poet took for granted in the original moment of experience and in the moment of composition, and so reads the sonnet in a more fully Trinitarian way. For Hopkins the energetic dynamic of love and relation within the Trinity is that into which he is drawn via the creation made through Christ, the Word (John 1:3, Col. 1:16), and as used here the energy of the sonnet form is his response to this. The Athanasian Creed and the ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ are identified as neglected Trinitarian intertexts. Hopkins believed, in Ignatian terms, that Christ ‘labours for me in all things created on the face of the earth’; and so, in the poem, Christ works dynamically through the Holy Spirit, ‘the fire’ (l. 10) who is Love itself, the vector of bird–poet interrelation, engaging him with the windhover and awakening his delight. The sonnet is the poet’s open acknowledgement of the love of the Triune tri-personal God which greets him every moment in the humblest glories of creation.

The Logical Problem of the Trinity: A New Solution

This article aims to introduce a new solution to the Logical Problem of the Trinity. This solution is provided by utilising a number of theses within the field of contemporary metaphysics in order to establish a conceptual basis for a novel account and model of the doctrine of the Trinity termed Monarchical Aspectivalism, which will provide the means for proposing an alternative reading of the Athanasian Creed that is free from any consistency problems.

Editorial: Conciliar Trinitarianism

Much recent work in analytic theology concerned with Trinitarian doctrine has been limited both by: (1) a narrow focus on the apparent inconsistency of the doctrine and (2) little regard for the historical context in which the doctrine developed. This special issue represents an effort to overcome these limitations in two ways. First, following Timothy Pawl’s definition of “Conciliar Christology,” we define “Conciliar Trinitarianism” as the conjunction of claims about the Trinity in the first seven Ecumenical Councils. Rather than speculative attempts at reconciling, say, sentences taken from the Athanasian Creed, or the common parlance of contemporary, Western Christians, the papers in this issue all address specifically Conciliar Trinitarianism. Second, the special issue brings together both analytic philosophers and patristics scholars in a format in which, in several cases, a scholar from one field responds to a scholar from another. We hope that this will help to jump-start some further conversations between scholars in analytic philosophy and in patristics, as we believe both fields can benefit from a deeper mutual engagement in the study of Conciliar Trinitarianism.

Sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est homo: ita Deus et homo unus est Christus. A Note on Aquinas’ Reading of the Pseudo-Athanasian Creed

Today, there is a general consensus that Athanasius of Alexandria (296/298–373), the famous Greek Church Father, did not write the so-called Athanasian Creed; the text was attributed to him much later. Nevertheless, it was an influential document, particularly during the later Middle Ages. And Thomas Aquinas was among those who seemed to have appreciated it. But how did he actually read or appropriate the Creed, especially within the context of his mature thought? In this paper, I focus on Aquinas’ reading of one particular verse of the Creed, namely “Nam sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est homo: ita Deus et homo unus est Christus”, by discussing two relevant texts, namely ST III.2 and SCG IV.41. And I argue that these texts convey the notion that Aquinas attempts to critically integrate this verse, not only into his Christological doctrine of Incarnation, but also into his Aristotelian-based anthropology.

Beyond ‘word-for-word’

The paper compares and contextualizes the comments of Gruffudd Bola (fl. 1270/1280) and Robert Gwyn (c. 1545–c. 1597/1603) on their strategies of translating (quotations from) authoritative religious texts. In the introductory section of his translation of the Athanasian Creed, which he produced for Efa ferch Maredudd, Gruffudd Bola employs the topos of ‘(sometimes) word-for-word’ versus ‘(sometimes) sense-by-sense’ to explain and justify his approach whenever the structural demands of the target language render a literal translation impossible. About three hundred years later, Robert Gwyn, the recusant author of Y Drych Kristnogawl (‘The Christian Mirror’, c. 1583/1584), argues that in the devotional- didactic genre the translations of quotations from authoritative religious texts such as the Bible need to be adapted to his audience’s level of understanding. He thus subordinates fidelity on the literal level to the demands of comprehensibility. Both authors insist on the priority of successful communication, but approach the translator’s dilemma in different frameworks.

Godhead and humankind: The New Testament in unison with creedal Christianity

The aim of this article is to argue that the sharing of ‘being’ between Jesus and the Godhead, professed in creedal Christianity and based on the Nicaean creed, pertains to a ‘sameness in divine substance’. This substance refers to divine wisdom, justice and mercy. The article attempts to demonstrate that there exists a congruence between textual evidence in the New Testament and these ‘orthodox’ belief tenets, especially represented in the Athanasian creed. This is explained in terms of an analysis of the origins and development of creedal formulae. This process represents a movement from a fundamental religious experience to a ‘use’ of metaphorical language, to the origins of confessional formulae that lead to the formulation of dogma. In light of the insight into the ‘building blocks’ of the formation of confessional formulae, the article concludes with a ‘deconstruction’ of the concepts ‘anathematisation’ and ‘heresy’.

DOGMA TRITUNGGAL MENURUT KRISTEN SAKSI-SAKSI YEHUWA

In the tradition of mainstream Christianity, the Trinity is a very central dogma as a faith in God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It can be seen in the 12 creeds of the Apostolic Creed where the faith of the Trinity was first, second, and third. There is one school of Christianity, calling themselves Jehovah's Witnesses, rejecting the dogma of the Trinity in their divine concept. According to Jehovah's Witnesses, the word Trinity is not originated of the Bible. The Trinity is also not taught by early Christian Fathers and Pre-Nicene. The Trinity Dogma was introduced by Constantine for some reasons, and even continued in the Athanasian Creed. Jehovah's Witnesses therefore believe that the Trinity dogma is an apostate that the Bible has foretold, and is influenced by ancient beliefs and Platonism.

The Age of Athanasius

The publication of the Fourth Report of the Ritual Commission in 1870 occasioned intense debate over the position of the Athanasian Creed in the liturgy of the Church of England. This article reconstructs the course of that controversy, focusing particularly on the centrality of historical argument to the speeches, letters, and pamphlets in which critics and defenders of the formulary sought to stabilise Christian orthodoxy and define Anglican identity in a progressive environment. The episode draws attention, first, to the continuing and underestimated centrality of patristic scholarship to questions of church reform in Victorian England, whilst also pointing towards the eventual decline of the textual and antiquarian approach to apologetics that had characterised Anglicanism since the Reformation. Post-Reformation Anglican history, secondly, was itself integral to participants’ articulation of religious division, suggesting that conventional understandings of “church parties” in the Victorian Church of England should accordingly be revised.

Multiple Location and Christian Philosophical Theology

This paper discusses how the possibility of multi-located entities can resolve problems both with the Trinity (i.e. there being one God and three divine people, or the Father knowing things that the numerically identical Son does not) and with the existence of souls. Something is multi-located if and only if it is exactly located at two or more places at the same time. Hudson (2010) and Pruss (2009) have already discussed how multi-location can solve certain Christian theological difficulties. This paper adds to that corpus by bringing multi-location to bear, primarily, on the Doctrine of the Trinity, and, secondarily, on issues to do with substance dualism. §1-2 discuss the Doctrine of the Trinity. §1 introduces some basic ideas about the metaphysics of multi-location and shows how they can solve an initial problem with the Doctrine: that God both does and does not know the day of Judgement; §2 then extends these thoughts about multi- location to provide a Latin understanding of the Trinity. By the end of those two sections I will have demonstrated that at least one defence of understanding the Trinity is available to the Christian. §3 shows how similar moves can be made with regards to our souls: we are entities multi- located both in spacetime (and so are physical) and some atemporal realm (and so are also substance dualistic souls). This helps both with making substance dualism consistent with the findings of contemporary science and with making the theory consistent with scripture. 1. The Trinity and Multi-Location 1.1 The Trinity The Doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is three different people (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) as laid down in the Athanasian Creed. Start with one immediate problem: in Matthew 24:36, Jesus says of the Day of Judgement: 'But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.' Given that, we should believe:

Three-in-One Worship

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Carmen Renee Berry, The Unauthorized Guide to Choosing a Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003), 56–60, passim. Athanasian Creed, “Quicunque Vult,” Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1978), 54. Augustine, “The Trinity in the Baptism of Christ,” The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, trans. and ed. M. F. Toal (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1959), III, 75–76. “A Revelation of Love,” 51:275, in The Writings of Julian of Norwich, ed. Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 287. A quote from the Apostolic Constitutions. See Luther D. Reed, The Lutheran Liturgy (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957), 356–57. Evangelical Lutheran Worship [hereafter ELW] (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2006), 230. Peter W. A. Davison, “When Long before Time,” ELW, #861. Christopher Idle, “My Lord of Light,” ELW, #832. Richard Leach, “Come, Join the Dance of Trinity,” ELW, #412. Carl P. Daw, Jr., “Restore in Us, O God,” ELW #328, Jean Janzen, “Mothering God, You Gave Me Birth,” ELW, #735. “My Soul Proclaims Your Greatness,” ELW, #251. Rublev's icon of the Trinity can be seen in full color at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Andrej_Rublëv_001.jpg. Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, trans. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadlowbovsky (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1982), 204. See the Sunday liturgy enacted in this church in the video We Shall Go Up with Joy (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1995). See http://www.worldcat.org/title/we-shall-go-up-with-joy/oclc/34165108 for library holdings of this video. Additional informationNotes on contributorsGail RamshawGail Ramshaw studies and crafts liturgical language from her home outside Washington, DC. Among her many publications are Treasures Old and New: Images in the Lectionary (Fortress, 2002) and A Three-Year Banquet: The Lectionary for the Assembly (Augsburg Fortress, 2004).

The Logic of the Trinity

Roughly, the problem of the Trinity is the problem of how God can be one and yet be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which are three, not one. That one thing is identical with three distinct things seems to violate traditional laws of identity. I propose a solution to this problem according to which it is just an ordinary claim of one-many identity. For example, one pair of shoes is identical with two shoes; and my one body is identical with its six limbs of arms, legs, head, and torso. The pair of shoes is not identical with each one of the two shoes, nor is my body identical with each one of its six limbs, but rather identical with all of them taken together, or collectively. I argue that the problem of the Trinity should be understood accordingly: God is identical with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit collectively, but not with each one of them distributively. According to the way I develop this proposal, no traditional laws of identity are violated, but merely generalized in an intuitive way. I argue that this is compatible with Christian Orthodoxy as given by the Athanasian Creed. I end by responding to some anticipated objections.

Half-Acre Bylaws: Harvest-Sharing in Piers Plowman

This essay argues that Piers’ pardon is a harvest-sharing contract that combines Last Judgement theology with the regulatory language of the village bylaw. Looking first at the Athanasian Creed and the Gospel of Matthew, the essay examines the pardon in relation to late medieval perceptions of charity and salvation. The essay then considers the pardon alongside contemporary harvest bylaws and their regulation of gleaning and suggests that Piers can be seen as a local bylaw custodian who reinforces the agricultural basis of spiritual community on the half-acre. Although other late medieval authors – notably Chaucer and the author of the Northern Homily Cycle – treat devotion in agricultural terms, the essay contends that Langland is uniquely attentive to the distinctly collective nature of harvest as a way of exploring Christian spiritual community on the half-acre.

The Evangelical Theological Society and the doctrine of the Trinity

Significant evangelical leaders today teach that the Son is eternally subordinated in authority to the Father, sometimes using ontological terms. This teaching would seem to stand in stark tension with the primary Christian confession that ‘Jesus is Lord’ and to contradict the Athanasian Creed which teaches that all three divine persons are ‘almighty’ and ‘Lord’, ‘none is before or after, greater or lesser’, and all are ‘co-equal’. What is more, it would seem to contradict virtually all the Protestant Reformation and post-Reformation Confessions which speak of the three divine persons as equal in being/essence and work/function.

Newman’s Sermon on “The Mystery of the Holy Trinity”: A Response to Richard Whately?

After discussing the contents of this sermon–which is structured around the Athanasian Creed and emphasizes the inner life of the Trinity–this study raises the question of whether Newman wrote this sermon as a response to the Trinitarian heterodoxy of his one-time mentor, Richard Whately, Anglican Archbishop of Dublin.

Understanding the Trinity

Understanding the Trinity Jeffrey E. Brower (bio) and Michael C. Rea (bio) In no other subject is error more dangerous, inquiry more difficult, or the discovery of truth more rewarding. Augustine, De Trinitate The doctrine of the Trinity poses a deep and difficult problem. On the one hand, it says that there are three distinct persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and that each of these persons "is God." On the other hand, it says that there is one and only one God. So it appears to involve a contradiction. It seems to say that there is exactly one divine being and also that there is more than one. How are we to make sense of this? This is a difficult question, but one that Christians ought to take seriously. The difficulty is not just that the doctrine of the Trinity is mysterious. Rather, it is that the doctrine appears to be logically inconsistent—the sort of thing that could not possibly be true. And yet we must believe it if the rest of our faith is to make sense. For example, the Bible forbids us to worship any being other than God (see, for example, Exod. 20:3-5; Isa. 42:8). So Jesus is worthy of our worship only if he is God. But the Bible also makes it clear that the Father deserves our worship (see, for example, Matt. 5:9-13; Matt. [End Page 145] 7:21; John 2:16) and that Jesus is not the Father (see, for example, Matt. 24:36; Luke 22:42; John 1:14, 18). So, if we are to go on worshipping both Jesus and the Father, we have to say that Jesus is God and that the Father is God. But, again, we cannot say that Jesus is the Father, nor can we say that they are two Gods (Deut. 6:4). The same is true in the case of the Holy Spirit (see, for example, John 14:26; Acts 5:3-4; Rom. 8:26-27). Theologians and philosophers throughout the ages have devoted a great deal of effort to trying to understand the doctrine of the Trinity. Here we will summarize some of the fruits of their labor. We begin with a brief discussion of the doctrine in historical context, explaining more fully the nature of the problem it raises. We then turn to the most important strategies developed by Christians to resolve this problem. The Problem of the Trinity in Historical Context The doctrine of the Trinity says that God exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But that is not all it says. The central elements of the doctrine are neatly summarized in a passage of the Athanasian Creed, one of the most widely respected summaries of the Christian faith: We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the Persons, nor dividing the substance. For there is one person for the Father, another for the Son, and yet another for the Holy Spirit. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one. . . . Thus, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet there are not three Gods, but there is one God. This passage offers a paradigm statement of the orthodox understanding of the Trinity. As it makes clear, the doctrine requires not only that God exists in three persons but also that each of the following is true as well: [End Page 146] 1. There is exactly one God. 2. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. 3. The Father is not the Son, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son. But these three claims are in obvious tension. The first insists that the doctrine must be interpreted in the context of monotheism, the view that there is one and only one God. But the second claim insists that each of the persons is divine, whereas the third tells us that there are three persons. Apparently, then, the doctrine says both that there is and there is not exactly one God. It is important to emphasize that...

A Broad Churchman and the Prayer Book: the Reverend Charles Voysey

If the heirs of the Tractarians were in Victorian Anglicanism most conspicuously dissatisfied with the Prayer Book, they were not alone: the Broad Church also had discontents, which focused largely upon the recitation of the Athanasian Creed:Whoever will be saved: before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholick Faith.Which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled: without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.This is the Catholic Faith: which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.

Archetypal Heresy. Arianism through the Centuries (review)

Reviewed by: Archetypal Heresy. Arianism through the Centuries Robert M. Grant Maurice Wiles. Archetypal Heresy. Arianism through the Centuries. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1996 Pp. x + 204. $55.00. The veteran theological historian Maurice Wiles begins his contribution on his very first page, when he criticizes church authorities who have called the Nicene Creed “the sufficient statement of the Christian faith” by insisting that “its fulfillment of such a role is inevitably problematic.” After all, it attempts to answer a fourth-century conflict, hard to assess, between Arius and his critics. Originating how? why? using what traditions and interpretations? how conditioned historically? He next provides a thoroughly modern reinterpretation, citing the conservative authority H. M. Gwatkin (9) but refuting him for the next 26 pages. Wiles rejects the picture of Arius and Arians presented by Athanasius and treats them with much more sympathy. Here much has to do with the starting point. If you begin with the fourth century or later you are likely to deny any claim of Arius to “orthodoxy,” whereas if you go from New Testament variety through Origen [End Page 319] you will find him more attractive. (A minor point: Wiles [10] mentions Arius’ “eight attributes” of God and prints seven, but the situation may be more complicated: Athanasius On Synods, c. 16, lists fifteen, including two more “philosophical” and even two [just and good] that are anti-Marcionite.) A brief chapter on “the End of Arianism” inquires into “the Latin West” (see now N. McLynn, “From Palladius to Maximinus: Passing the Arian Torch,” JECS 4 [1996]: 477–93) and “Gothic Christianity,” “clearly a faith of a strongly social character” (47; like its rivals). It seemed to revive in Socinianism, but this was hardly Arian. The heart of Wiles’s book lies in a hundred pages on “the Rise and Fall of British Arianism,” a chapter anticipated by the frontispiece, a portrait of William Whiston’s “lean and angular face” from Clare College, Cambridge. Whiston shared the anti-trinitarian views of John Locke and Isaac Newton, but did not hesitate to state them in public. He was removed from his mathematical professorship at Cambridge in 1710 “and was unable to secure gainful employment again for the remaining forty-two years of his life” (95). Wiles points out that his basic target was simply the so-called Athanasian Creed, which he once described on one occasion as “the most heretical creed now extant in the world.” Only at the age of eighty did he stop receiving the communion from those who “performed this ritual cursing of Christianity” (104). Some American variations to a largely British theme can be supplied. Later Episcopalians were (inadvertently) influenced by Whiston. His volumes on Primitive Christianity Reviv’d (1711) included “the Apostolical Constitutions” and their authenticity, as well as “the primitive faith concerning the Trinity and incarnation.” The Constitutions contained the eucharistic prayers of the apostolic church, and Whiston went on with “the liturgy of the Church of England reduc’d nearer to the primitive standard.” This provoked a reply by Richard Smalbroke, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (1714): The pretended authority of the Clementine constitutions confuted. Nevertheless, when Thomas Rattray, bishop of Brechin in Scotland, prepared his Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem (1744), he “corrected” the Liturgy of St. James by the liturgy of the Constitutions and strongly influenced The Cormmunion-Office for the use of the [Episcopal] Church of Scotland (1764). In turn this influenced early American Episcopalian liturgists (see J. Dowden, The Scottish Communion Office 1764 [Oxford, 1922], 99–105, emphasizing “primitive”). Fruitful errors? Another of Wiles’s characters with an American connection was the scholar and minister Nathaniel Lardner (1684–1768). His major study, The Credibility of the Gospel History, takes up seven volumes in the 1838 edition of his Works. His “large collection of ancient Jewish and heathen testimonies” even presents the fragments of Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian. Lardner, constantly in correspondence with American friends, sent his volumes to Charles Chauncy (1705–87), minister of the First Church in Boston and opponent of revivalism (I once found it in a Boston bookstore). Thus from both Whiston and Lardner we see American emanations not just theological but...

Frontotemporal degeneration, Pick disease, and corticobasal degeneration. One entity or 3? 3.

In ad325, the Council of Nicaea condemned the Arian heresy and proclaimed, in the Athanasian creed, that the Father and Son were not distinct beings, but along with the Holy Spirit were of 1 substance. We are now asked to consider whether frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), Pick disease, and corticobasal degeneration are 1 or 3 entities. This controversy, in common with theological debate, depends on terminological distinctions, traditionally held beliefs, and a degree of ancestor worship, not to mention proprietary politics. It was Pick who first described circumscribed frontotemporal atrophy. 1-4 His was an anatomical observation, and the histological condition of ballooned cells and inclusion bodies that now bears his name was only later described by Alzheimer. 5 Moreover, Pick's cases were clinically heterogeneous. The designation Pick disease, suggesting a unique clinical and pathological entity distinct from Alzheimer disease, gained coinage in the continental literature, but in the English

Die vroeë belydenisse aangaande Jesus in die Nuwe Testament

In 50 different instances in the Gospels and Acts confessions about Jesus are expressed. A synopsis of these confessions indicates that these confessions reflect on the question about who Jesus really is. Furthermore it is revealed that the contents of these confessions ultimately represent only three basic confessions about Jesus:(1) Jesus is the Christ, (2) Jesus is the Son of God, and (3) Jesus is the Lord. These basic confessions are augmented by three other more detailed confes­sions, in which Jesus is confessed to be (4) God Himself, (5) our Saviour, and (6) the Judge of the living and the dead. It is maintained that the Gospels and Acts state that God, through his Spirit and his Word, gave these truths about Jesus to his Church to confess. That these truths are indeed confessed by the Church, is evident from a survey of the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, as well as the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dordt.