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Why Do We Still Recite the Nicene Creed at the Eucharist?

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Why Do We Still Recite the Nicene Creed at the Eucharist? ATR/87:2 Why Do We Still Recite the Nicene Creed at the Eucharist? Mark D. Chapman* The Anglican Communion appears to be seeking to rule some in and some out on the grounds of “orthodoxy.” In that con- text, a discussion of the creed in worship may help to illustrate the relationships between doctrine, performance, and practice. This article suggests that F. D. Maurice’s understanding of the use of the creed offers a way forward for Anglicans: the “performance” of the creed as a focus for the name of God becomes far more im- portant than assent to propositions. This understanding might help Anglicans in living with diversity while acknowledging an underlying baptismal unity. Reading the creed as a corporate hymn of praise to triune Love might encourage God-fearing people to live in humble adoration of the One who loves them— without growing anxious about precisely what, or even whether, the other people who are singing God’s praise “believe.” It is hard to know what people make of creeds today. My hunch is that most people, and even most Christians, however pious, do not spend much time reading creeds of any sort, let alone the Nicene Creed. Popular apologetic programs like the Alpha Course are, per- haps rather surprisingly, distant from the creeds, and instead focus on a few selected articles and a few things (like particular models of the atonement and charismatic experience) which are not in the creeds at all. In fact, the most likely place to encounter creeds is not in any teaching situation at all, but instead at a service in a church which uses a formal liturgy. And here, especially since the demise of Matins and Evensong as regular congregational services in most English churches, with their use of the Apostles’ Creed,1 it will be the so- * Mark D. Chapman is vice-principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford and a member of the theology faculty of Oxford University. 1 The other “creed” of the Book of Common Prayer, the so-called Athanasian Creed (or Quicunque Vult), was to be said or sung after Morning Prayer on thirteen 207 208 Anglican Theological Review called Nicene Creed2 that will be most frequently encountered in the Church of England and in many other parts of the Anglican Com- munion. This is something still said, and occasionally even sung, at celebrations of the eucharist, at least on Sundays and holy days. I will begin this essay by taking this liturgical context seriously and start by thinking in some detail about reading the creed in the setting of worship. Trying to work out why it is there and what it is for is important and might say something about the nature of the Nicene Creed more generally, about what form it has and precisely what sort of thing “I believe” or “we believe” might mean for Christians. Con- sequently I will be asking through the course of this paper: what are we doing when we read the Nicene Creed in worship? In the context of an Anglican Communion that appears to be seeking to define its boundaries more clearly and to rule some in and some out on the grounds of “orthodoxy,”3 it seems pertinent to look again at the role of the creed in worship. While I am not primarily attempting an essay in ritual or liturgical studies, a discussion of the creed as used at the eucharist can serve as an illustration of the relationship between doc- trine, performance, and practice—and it can also be of some use for the contemporary church. What I will suggest is that the sort of un- derstanding of the use of the Nicene Creed outlined by F. D. Mau- rice in the mid-nineteenth century offers a way forward for Anglicans, whereby the performance and affirmation of the creed primarily as a focus for the name of God becomes far more important than assent to propositions.4 Such a performative understanding of the creed holy days through the course of the year. With its many mistranslations and damna- tory clauses, it has been quietly dropped from all recent liturgical revisions of the Church of England, and of most other provinces of the Anglican Communion. It is hard to imagine that it is used in more than a handful of contemporary churches. 2 The so-called “Nicene Creed” (or more properly the Niceno-Constantinopoli- tan Creed [often called “C”]) as used today is basically identical to that adopted in the acts of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and was attributed to the “150 holy fa- thers” who were assembled at the Council of Constantinople of 381. There is a sub- stantial amount of evidence, which, while not conclusive, suggests that it pre-dates Constantinople and consequently cannot have been drawn up by the Council. On this, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (London: Longman [3d ed.], 1972), 205-262, 296-367 and W.-D. Hauschild, “Niceno-Konstantinopolitanisches Glau- bensbekenntnis,” Theologische Realencylopädie 24 (1995): 444-456. I have used “Nicene Creed” to refer to this creed throughout this paper. 3 I have discussed this at length in my recent introduction to Mark D. Chapman (ed.), Celebrating Creation (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2004), 1-14, esp. 6. 4 See, for instance, Bernhard Lang, Sacred Games (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni- versity Press), 1997. Why Do We Still Recite The Nicene Creed? 209 might be a model for Anglicans as they seek to live with diversity while acknowledging an underlying baptismal unity. The Creed in the Liturgy As with most things to do with liturgy, the origins of the use of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed at the eucharist are shrouded in mystery: however, there is good evidence to suggest that it was regu- larized by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Timotheus (511-517), dur- ing the reign of Anastasius (491-518) in 511.5 It may have been first adopted in Antioch in 471 by the bishop, Peter the Fuller (476-488), although this may be a later interpolation into the historian’s text.6 Pre- cisely why is not clear: the most obvious reason was that it was inserted to remind the congregation of the church’s opposition to Arianism, al- though it might also have served as something of a polemic to prevent the church from adopting any creedal formularies later than 381. It should be noted that both protagonists were vigorous opponents of Chalcedon. That meant that the recitation of the creed could be very useful as an act of corporate reminding, which presumably explains its retention in virtually all later Eastern liturgies. In the Western church the use of the creed at the liturgy seems to have begun after the Third Council of Toledo in 589; after King Reccared and the Visigoths had been converted to orthodox Chris- tianity from Arianism it was presumably important to remind them regularly of precisely what that orthodoxy consisted: the creed was or- dered to be said immediately after the Our Father and thus shortly before reception of communion.7 And it should also be noted that 5 Theodorus Lector, Ecclesiasticae Historiae, Patrologia Graeca 86 (1865), vol. II §32, col. 201; see A. Jungmann, S.J., The Mass of the Roman Rite (New York: Ben- ziger, 1951-1955 [2 vols.]), I, 468. 6 Jungmann (in The Mass of the Roman Rite, I, 468) notes that the creed was mentioned in Pseudo-Dionysius and must therefore have been in use in Syria by 515. On the introduction of the Nicene Creed into the Roman Rite, see Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, I, 461-474; Bernard Capelle, O.S.B., “L’Intoduction du sym- bole à la Messe” in Travaux Liturgiques de doctrine et d’histoire (Louvain: Abbaye de Mont César, 1955-1967 [3 vols.], vol. 3, 1967), 60-81; Louis Duchesne, Christian Worship: Its History and Evolution (London: SPCK, 1912), 84; J. Neil Alexander, “Creeds in Liturgy” in Paul Bradshaw (ed.), The New SCM Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (London: SCM, 2002), 138-139. 7 Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, I, 469. This position had been unsuc- cessfully attempted by the Emperor Justinian in 565-566. See Edgar Gibson, The Three Creeds (London: Longmans, 1908), 166. 210 Anglican Theological Review this version of the Western creed inserted the little filioque (“and the son”) clause into the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed. There is a certain irony here: the creed might have reminded the Visigoths of their orthodoxy but it would later serve to remind the Eastern Or- thodox of Western heresy; whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from Father and Son or from the Father alone quickly became a matter of some controversy between the two halves of Christendom. At least initially the Nicene Creed does not seem to have been widely adopted in Western liturgies except in parts of Gaul and later in the court of Charlemagne at Aachen after 792, perhaps under the influence of Alcuin and aimed primarily against the heresy of adop- tionism which was then prevalent.8 The creed was to be said after the gospel. Efforts by Charlemagne to compel its use in the whole of the Western church were probably resisted by Pope Leo III, who felt that the creed should be restricted to teaching purposes.9 Charlemagne’s point in trying to ensure the use of the creed stems perhaps from the political importance of unity and conformity: it was much easier to rule over a large area if everybody publicly declared faith in the same things—which, after all, is why Constantine summoned his council at Nicaea in 325 in the first place, and presumably why Charlemagne wanted people to affirm identical beliefs in the ninth century.
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