The Apostles' Creed: Its Relation to Primitive Christianity.

By

Swete, Henry Barclay:

I

No Christian document outside the limits of the Canon appeals to the loyalty of religious Englishmen so forcibly as the Apostles’ Creed. For nearly three centuries and a half it has held its place in the Book of Common Prayer as the Creed of Baptism, of the Catechism, and of the daily offices. Even in the middle ages it was known to a relatively large number of the English laity through the instructions of the Clergy and the versions circulated in Primers. The English Reformers inherited a reverent esteem for the Credo, and gave it in their new Order of 1549 a place of honour equal to that which it had held in the Breviary and the Manual. From Prime it passed into Matins, from Compline into Evensong; in the Baptismal office it was ordered to be rehearsed by minister and sponsors as in the Sarum ordo ad faciendum catechumenum, and sponsors were required as heretofore to provide for its being taught to their godchildren. In the new Catechism the English Creed was printed in full, and the translation which appears there was afterwards adopted in the offices. It seems to be due to the Reformers themselves, probably to Cranmer, for while differing materially from the versions which are found in the Primers, it bears a close resemblance to the Creed set forth in the ‘King’s Book’ of 1543, a work with which the Archbishop was concerned1. Thus the English Reformers gave the fullest sanction to the existing Creed of the Western Church, and retained it in its old position. They did more, for they enlarged the old interrogative Creed of Baptism in such wise as to make it practically identical with the Apostles’ Creed. The Church had perhaps from the first used at the font a Creed shorter than that which she delivered to her catechumens before their baptism. But the short interrogative Creed had gradually been enlarged in the West by the introduction of clauses from the symbolum, as may be seen by any one who will compare the Sarum interrogatories with those of the Gelasian Sacramentary2. The English Reformers completed this process in 1549, and, as a result, they were able to identify the Creed professed at the font with that which is taught to the baptized; in the Catechism the child is made to repeat the Apostles’ Creed as the Creed in which his sponsors promised belief3.
Thus in the Church of England since the publication of the first Prayer-book the Apostles’ Creed has occupied a position even more important than that which it held in the mediaeval Church or now holds in Churches subject to the Roman See. Apart from all questions relating to the origin and history of the Creed, it commended itself to the practical instincts of the English Reformers as a sober and convenient summary of Christian belief. With the legend which attributed it to the Apostles they did not concern themselves. Nowell’s catechism allows the alternative views that it “was first received from the Apostles’ own mouth, or most faithfully gathered out of their writings.” The latter explanation of the title was more in harmony with the way of thinking which prevailed at the time. An anonymous tract printed in 1548, and by some attributed to Cranmer, complains bitterly that the legend was still taught by the parish-priests as a necessary truth, “whereas it is at the best uncertain.” It is a significant circumstance that in the first Prayer-book the document is simply called ‘the Creed’ without further description. The Articles of 1552 ruled that it was to be retained on the ground of its close agreement with Apostolic teaching; whatever its history, it could be proved by “moste certayne warrauntes of holye Scripture.”
A more critical method of study has led our own age to examine with minute care the sources and the interpretation of authoritative documents. With this examination there has come the challenge to reconsider the decision of the Reformers in reference to the Apostles’ Creed. In England the dissatisfaction is at present limited to a section of the Nonconformists who either regard all Creeds with aversion, or find themselves unable to accept certain statements in this particular formulary. In Germany recent controversy has been more thoroughgoing, turning upon the history of the Creed. There are indications that public attention amongst ourselves will shortly be directed to the latter point. Professor Harnack’s pamphlet, which in Germany passed through five-and-twenty editions during the course of a year1, has been reproduced in the pages of an English periodical with a commendatory preamble by the pen of the authoress of Robert Elsmere2. Most of its facts are familiar to students of theology, as the learned author fully recognises; but to many educated laymen in England as well as in Germany they probably wear the appearance of startling novelty, and the general effect cannot fail to be for the time unsettling to those who had regarded the Apostles’ Creed as a document uniformly primitive in its origin and teaching. But Professor Harnack does not confine himself to the history of his subject, in which he is a master; his pamphlet abounds in statements upon matters of opinion which the narrow limits of a popular discussion do not permit him to support by argument, but which will carry with them the weight of a name deservedly high in the estimation of educated Europe. The appearance of his work in an English form becomes, therefore, under present circumstances matter of grave concern to those who are charged with the teaching of Christian doctrine as it is maintained in the English Church. In the following pages I have not hesitated to take up the challenge which has been dropt, not by Dr Harnack himself, but by his English translator. Dr Harnack’s remarks were addressed to the Protestant communions of Germany, and in their original form called for no discussion at the hands of members of the English Church. But their reproduction by an English writer in a popular form has transferred the controversy to English soil, and thrown upon English Churchmen the duty of defending, if it be defensible, the Creed which the Edwardine Reformers inherited from the mediaeval Church.
The symbolum Apostolorum in mediaeval England was practically identical with that which we repeat today. A few variations have been collected by Dr Heurtley from the English versions of the Creed1, but all the forms, English and Latin, clearly belong to one type. It is otherwise when we go back behind the Norman Conquest. In the British Museum there are two MSS. containing Creeds, one Latin, the other Greek2, which fall short of the complete Apostles’ Creed in a number of important particulars. These MSS. belong, it is stated, to the eighth and ninth centuries respectively, and are both apparently of English origin. Further, they present nearly the same text, and their text agrees very closely with the Roman Creed of the fourth century as it is represented in the Greek confession of Marcellus, and in the Latin of Rufinus. It seems, then, that in England down to the ninth century, a shorter Creed was current which was substantially identical with the old Creed of the Roman Church, and was probably brought to England by the Roman missionaries. There is reason to think that at Rome itself the shorter Creed was still known in the time of Gregory the Great. The great Oxford MS. of the Acts (cod. Laudianus, E), which was written in Sardinia, or at least was in the hands of a Sardinian owner between the sixth and eighth centuries, contains the Creed in a similar form written at the end of the Codex by a hand of the sixth or seventh century1. But Sardinia was in constant communication with Rome, and Januarius, Bishop of Cagliari, appears among Pope Gregory’s most frequent correspondents. It is true that by this time the Creed of Constantinople may have taken the place of the Roman Creed in the traditio symboli, as the Gelasian Sacramentary seems to shew2; but the local Creed must have survived as a form of instruction after its deposition from liturgical honours, and as such would probably have found its way with Augustine into Kent. This simpler and briefer Creed, which is known to have been in use at Rome during the fourth century, may with great probability be carried back to the second. “We may regard it,” Professor Harnack writes, “as an assured result of research that the Old Roman Creed…came into existence about or shortly before the middle of the second century.”
The other recension, now known as the Apostles’ Creed, is of later and not of Roman origin. Traces of it may be seen in English episcopal professions of the ninth century1, and it is found with an interlinear translation in a Lambeth MS. of the same period2. But it did not, like the earlier form, emanate from Rome. All the evidence goes to shew that the fuller Creed was of Gallican growth, and that it was crystallized into its present shape by influences which found their centre in the person of Charlemagne. This Gallican Creed had reached Ireland, whether in its completeness or not, before the end of the seventh century, for it has left distinct marks of its presence in the Creed of the Bangor Antiphonary3. To England it probably came quite a century later, not from Gaul, but from the court of Charles, possibly through the hands of Alcuin. At all events it was here about A.D. 850 and existed for a while side by side with the Old Roman Creed, until official recognition secured for it an exclusive place in Psalters and books of devotion. After the beginning of the tenth century the older form ceases to appear in MSS. of English origin; and for a thousand years the Gallican recension has held undisputed possession as the Baptismal Creed of the Church of England.
Thus the present Apostles’ Creed is a document of composite origin with a long and complicated history. The basis of this document, the local Creed of the early Church of Rome, is substantially a product of the second century. But the Churches which derived their faith from Rome, or acknowledged the primacy of the Roman See, felt themselves under no obligation to adhere to the letter of the Roman Creed; and it received at their hands not only verbal changes, but important additions, involving in some cases new articles of belief. The process was gradual, and some of the new clauses do not appear before the sixth century, whilst others are as late as the seventh. The question arises whether these accretions are of equal authority with the original draft. From the second century to the seventh is a far cry, and in the interval the primitive teaching had been obscured in some quarters by modifications and extensions which do not now command general assent. Do the later clauses of the Apostles’ Creed, or does any one of them, fall under this category?
Let us place the two forms of the Creed side by side for the purpose of comparison, italicising the later words and clauses in the Apostles’ Creed.
Roman Creed.
Apostles’ Creed.
Credo in Deum Patrem1 omnipotentem.
Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem,

creatorem caeli et terrae.
Et in Christum Iesum unicum Filium eius, dominum nostrum,
Et in Iesum Christum Filium eius unicum, dominum nostrum,
qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria uirgine,
qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria uirgine,
crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato et sepultus,
passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus et sepultus,

descendit ad inferna,
tertia die resurrexit a mortuis,
tertia die resurrexit a mortuis,
ascendit in caelos, sedet ad dexteram Patris,
ascendit ad caelos, sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis;
inde uenturus est iudicare uiuos et mortuos.
inde uenturus est iudicare uiuos et mortuos.
Et in Spiritum Sanctum, sanctam ecclesiam, remissionem peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem.
Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, sanctam ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum communionem, remissionem peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem, uitam aeternam.

It will be seen that much of the new matter in the later form consists of amplifications which either do not seriously affect the sense, or cannot be regarded as departures from primitive belief. Creatorem caeli et terrae, uitam aeternam, are additions of which no Christian can complain. Conceptus, passus, mortuus, supply new details which scarcely alter the balance of truth. Three points only need separate discussion: the clauses which affirm our Lord’s Descent into Hell and the Communion of Saints, and the epithet ‘Catholic’ applied to the Holy Church.
But the doubts which are suggested by Professor Harnack’s pamphlet reach much further. He contends that even the earliest form of the Roman Creed contained articles of belief on excess of the Apostolic teaching. Moreover, he suspects the interpretations that later generations of Christians have put upon articles which are confessedly primitive. Under the former of these counts he challenges the article which asserts the Miraculous Conception of the Lord, and that which confesses the Resurrection of ‘the Flesh.’ Under the latter he takes exception to the received explanation of the Names ‘Father,’ ‘Only Son,’ ‘Holy Ghost,’ regarding the doctrine of the hypostatic Trinity as one which lies entirely outside the original drift and meaning of the Creed.
It is evident that these criticisms tend largely to discredit the ancient Creed of Western Christendom. Their author, it is true, abstains form drawing any inference adverse to the retention of the Apostles’ Creed by his own communion, and gracefully acknowledges the benefits which the early Roman Church has conferred upon Western Christians by transmitting so precious an heirloom. Nevertheless, if his conclusions are sound, the fate of the Creed in many of the Reformed Churches cannot be doubtful. Nor is the Creed alone in danger; articles of faith which are common to the Reformed Churches and to those which are still subject to the See of Rome, must stand or fall with it. It is difficult to exaggerate the gravity of these issues.
In the following pages an attempt will be made to submit Professor Harnack’s conclusions to a detailed examination. But instead of following him through successive articles of the Creed, we propose to arrange the points in dispute under three heads. The strictly theological articles will come first under review; then those which recite the Evangelical history; lastly, those which set forth the doctrine of the Church.

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INDEX