And so we look again to the Nicene Creed, the epitome of what is required for personal Christian orthodoxy; the one declaration of faith a Christian makes as a part of his weekly worship. Besides being a statement of belief, it is an implicit condemnation of specific errors of Christian doctrine. Its purpose has been recognized as such by every branch of Christendom, and especially among Anglicans. The wording of the Nicene Creed was crystalized in the Eastern and Roman churches by the 4th century. Thereafter it remained unchanged through the English Reformation (1662 BCP). It did not change until 1979. This little article is one of a series about the 1979 changes to Nicene Creed in America's Book of Common Prayer, how those changes radically altered the faith of The Episcopal Church, and how they continue to impact the new Anglican Church in North America.
- In the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, the Nicene Creed says that Jesus "suffered death and was buried"
- In the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer (and in every version of the BCP until 1979), The Nicene Creed says Jesus "suffered and was buried."
At first glance, one might conclude that the 1979 version is adding some necessary detail to the story (that Jesus died) without taking away any of the original sense that He suffered. But this is not the case. The revision did not add meaning but rather changed it entirely.
In English, the verb "to suffer" can be transitive or intransitive. Because the 1979 BCP has a direct object ("death"), we must conclude that the verb "suffer" is transitive. Merriam Webster Dictionary defines this transitive meaning as: "to undergo or experience as in the expression "to suffer the consequences"; or to put up with the inevitable; or to allow by reason of indifference as in "The eagle suffers little birds to sing (Shakespeare)." Therefore, when the 1979 BCP says that Jesus "suffered death", it means simply that Jesus suffered his death to occur, or even more simply: Jesus died.
The above translation is a completely incorrect whether one is translating into "modern" English from the Greek, the Latin, or the 1662 English Book of Common Prayer. To be correct, one has to recognize that the verb "to suffer" does NOT have a direct object, that the word "death" is not there, that it is intransitive and must be translated "to endure pain or distress." In Greek, the verb is very simple and powerful: "παθόντα." It means literally "to know suffering." Let's also look at the Latin: "passus est". Like English, it means to "undergo" when it is transitive, but to "suffer" when it is intransitive. Since there is no direct object of "death", we know that it is the same word from which we get our English understanding of "The Passion", the life of suffering that Jesus lived.
By the time of the councils of Nicea, it was no longer necessary to emphasize that Christ had died at Calvary, as this had been spelled out in the Apostles' Creed. Nobody argues that the original Creed leaves a loophole for those who want to believe that Jesus merely swooned on the Cross. This is why the Nicene Fathers were right in supposing that their non-mention of the word "death" would not be misunderstood. In fact, it may have been more than benign neglect, for in one important sense His death represented the end of His suffering rather than the culmination of it. As the Apostle Paul said, "Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" I Corinthians 15:54-55
I cannot prove that this mistranslation was intended by the 1979 BCP authors with respect to the tangible historical reality of Christ's suffering. However it is reasonable to connect it with certain trends of neo-modern philosophy and Biblical "higher criticism"; with the end of belief in the Bible's authority as an historical document. In a small but significant way, the recovery of Anglican orthodoxy is dependent upon a recovery of understanding among Anglicans concerning the "passion of Christ." He did not merely "suffer death"; He suffered all the way to the Cross.
What should be done with the 1979 Book of Common Prayer?
Ironically, most of the new Anglican churches that have left The Episcopal Church have not yet jettisoned from their weekly liturgy the proximate cause of their revisionist doctrine, the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. When they have returned to the traditional Nicene Creed, they will find not merely Biblical and Apostolic truth but also the Faith of the Church catholic, for the traditional wording can be found in Prayer Books of most Anglicans worldwide from 1662 until 1979, and in the traditions of Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Reformed branches of the Church.
N.B. This is a critique of just one aspect of the Nicene Creed that changed in 1979. There are ten other aspects, each representing a revisionist doctrine that has crept into Anglican thinking in the last 30 years. A critique on all eleven points is here.