Introduction
This commentary compares the text of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer's Nicene Creed with that from older prayer books such as the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. There are the significant differences. In the side by side comparison below, I've taken the one liberty of changing anachronistic verb tenses in the original version so that the reader can see what going back to the original will look like. The first thing to note is that the authentic Nicene Creed is just as easy for the modern English reader to understand. The 1979 revision was NOT for mere simplification. Its claimed purpose was ecumenical renovation. Its effect, as this commentary will show, was to change the Creed's entire content and meaning. While the commentary is particularly directed at the current effort of the "Anglican Church in North America" to revise its Prayer Book, I think anyone whose church is using the ecumenical version of the Nicene Creed will find it helpful.
Conclusion
Ecumenical Nicene Creed ('79 BCP) We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. | Authentic Nicene Creed I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. |
- Personal Salvation
- In the 1662 BCP it says "I believe", and in the 1979 version it says "We believe". While it is true that the assembled Bishops at Nicaea recorded the creed with "we" for the purposes of demonstrating to the world that they had agreed on the content of the Gospel, when the creed was distributed to the churches after the council, it was taken up with the form "I". For this reason, from its beginning the Creed has always been a "credo" and not a "credemus." Credo (I believe) suggests that each man stands before the judgement seat alone, but for Jesus, without reliance upon another man, the Church or human institution or any crutch made by man. It means that salvation is personal, not collective, that God calls us to have a personal relationship with Him and that we cannot trust in anyone or anything but Him alone. The doctrine of collectivist salvation has now grown so common that the leaders of The Episcopal Church (and other churches) now regard personal salvation as heresy.
- Revelation and Knowability of Truth
- In the 1662 BCP it says "... Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is visible and invisible." To say that things are visible or invisible is to acknowledge that no matter how much we know about our universe, there is some part of understanding which God wants to keep to Himself, hidden from our eyes. God teaches us here the lesson of the Garden of Eden, that we should seek the Truth as He reveals it. We ought not to feast our eyes upon the "forbidden fruit", notably the tree whose fruit contains the "knowledge of good and evil", by which is meant the content of His eternal decree concerning the Elect. By contrast, to say as does the 1979 BCP that things are either "seen and unseen" is to suggest that man's perspective is paramount; that Truth is dependent upon perception, that we can perceive God if only for trying, that we are masters of all that we survey and that God is powerless to prevent us from discovering the full extent of what can be known.
- The sovereignty of God.
- In the 1662 BCP it says "By him all things were made." From Genesis we know that the heavens and earth were created by God. He created from nothing, using the instrumentation of no outside force. He is wholly responsible. In this small way, the original language illustrates God's sovereignty and opposes doctrines that elevate man. By contrast, a creation "through God", as it says in the 1979 BCP suggests that God is merely the conduit of forces beyond himself, that He is a part of nature rather than sovereign over it. Such a god is a mere idol.
- God's eternal decree
- In the 1662 BCP Jesus Christ is said to have been "begotten of his Father before all worlds." Apparently the Council of Nicaea was concerned to represent its view of the logical order of God's eternal decrees, or its "lapsarian" position, and that view was supralapsarian. It suggests that Jesus, the final judge of our election, is begotten as the Father's first priority; that the cornerstone of our salvation is laid before the beginning of time and the creation of the universe. Their view is that God's plan of salvation comprehended creation, the Fall of man and Jesus's redemptive work to remit the sins of an undeserving church, and finally to bring an end to the world. This is the "supralapsarian" position of God's eternal decree because it establishes the decree concerning the Elect as a logical precedent for the creation, the Fall and the work of Christ. It agrees with Scripture in that all the days of creation and all the hairs of a man's head are said to be numbered, and that life itself is owing to the decree. "The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life." Job 33:4. By contrast, the 1979 BCP's expression "eternally begotten" is unsure exactly when God's decree is made and in fact that His decree is still being made. The alternative theological view is the "Amyraldian" or "Arminian" position, meaning that God's decree to save comes after both creation and the Fall, in our present time. To the bishops assembled at Nicaea these choices mattered a great deal. They thought it important to say that the plan of God to set His favor upon a people of His own choosing was unconditional and determinant. They believed that unmerited favor is the essence of Christianity. The 1979 BCP, by setting God's plan of salvation within time, subject to the contingencies of Nature and of man's choosing, makes man responsible at least in part for his salvation.
- Person and nature of the 3rd person of the Trinity
- In the 1662 BCP, His name is "The Holy Ghost." Here I must defer to the late Peter Toon's fine essay called "The Holy Ghost and The Spirit of God." Excerpt: "An important sophistication of use by our forbears is lost by us when it is decided to adopt a Latin-based word, "spirit" (from spiritus), as the sole and only word to translate the New testament Greek word "Pnuema". With this lack of sophistication comes the danger of heresy. Where "the Holy Ghost" is truly known as a divine Person then the danger of such heresies as modalism is minimal. Modalism, which is common today, is the doctrine that there is one Person who is God and that this One Person reveals himself as Father, Son and Spirit, that is as three Modes of Being (not as Three Persons). As we seek to be relevant in today's world, we need not try to be wiser than were our forbears. To do justice to the rich variety of meaning conveyed by the biblical use of both "Ruach" (Hebrew) and "Pneuma" (Greek) in relation to Yahweh/ the Father we need to make use of both "the Spirit of God/the Lord" and "the Holy Ghost."
- Substance of the Incarnation
- In the 1662 BCP, Jesus "was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary". The entire salvation story is premised upon God the Son becoming flesh so that He could both live and die as a real man. It is necessary therefore to know that He came into the world in the way other men come. The original Nicene Creed states that He (The Holy Ghost) joined with Mary, making Jesus incarnate in her womb. The 1979 BCP suggests instead that it was merely the "power" of the Holy Spirit that interacted with Mary, and that the Jesus "became" incarnate at the point when He came "from" Mary at birth. The 1979 BCP therefore teaches a gnostic transformation of substance from god to man. It also lays the groundwork for Christians believing that life does not begin at the point of conception but rather at the point of birth.
- Remission of Sin. Our calling through Baptism
- In the 1662 BCP it says "... I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins." The greek word here is 'aphesis'. It can be translated under appropriate circumstances as either "forgive" or as "remit", but in this particular case it should be 'remit' . The reason is that when a person repents of their sins the result can be forgiveness, but when there is remission of sin, the symptoms of sin disappear and sin no longer has power over an individual because the penalty is paid; the slate wiped clean. This is the meaning in the 1662 Nicene Creed. Sin's remission comes from the purchase by God through the Blood of Christ. We must not suggest that it can be reduced to God saying "I forgive you." Moreover, by tying remission to Baptism in this sentence, we know that a covenant exists between God the Father and God the Son on account of His purchase (remittance) of sin, a covenant is signified and established by Baptism. Again, this baptismal covenant is between the Son and the Father and is not to be confused with that strange superstition in the 1979 BCP called "The Baptismal Covenant" which purports to be a covenant between God and man.
- Assurance of His return and of resurrection
- In the 1662 BCP it says "He shall come again"... and... "his kingdom shall have no end" In english, the imperative form of the verb-to-be is "shall", not "will". We know as Christians that it is not merely a matter of our prediction that Jesus is returning. Rather, we know that He is returning because He promised to do so. He "shall" return because He is the creator of time itself and by his Word he said it would happen. The failure of the 1979 BCP to show the imperative form of the verb, which is clearly used in the original Greek demonstrates its tendency to see God as in time and subject to its conditions, not as the master of time. The sad oversight leaves us with a small god that might not do as he says, and it brings into doubt both the sureness of His return and our resurrection.
- God-centered definition of life
- The 1662 BCP says "to judge the quick..." rather than "the living" not because English speakers of the day didn't know the word "living" but rather because they thought "quick" better expressed the intent of the original Creed. It views life as dependent upon the quickening Spirit of God to join soul and body. It suggests life as more than mere biology. Although the latin in the Nicene Creed says "vivos", which surely does mean "living" in modern English, the original translators wanted to convey the meaning intended, and that word is the old but perfectly usable English verb "to quicken." While is it not a well known word, it is also not a word that is difficult to learn.
- The Unity of the Holy Ghost within the Trinity
- The 1662 BCP says that the Holy Ghost "with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified." The Latin clearly supports the 1662's use of the word "together." More importantly, the emphasis on the Unity of Holy Ghost's person with the Father and the Son is attested by the Athanasian Creed. The departure from this understanding by the 1979 BCP demonstrates once again a tendency toward modalism. It has surely contributed to the difficulty of today's Anglicans in their understanding the role of the Holy Ghost in God's plan of redemption.
- The Sufferings of Christ
- In the 1662 BCP, the Nicene Creed says that Jesus "suffered and was buried." At first glance, one might conclude that it is offering less information than the 1979 version which says that He "suffered death and was buried". But this is not the case. The revision did not add meaning but rather changed it. In English (and Latin), the verb "to suffer" can be transitive or intransitive. Because the 1979 BCP has a direct object ("death"), its usage of "suffer" is transitive. Merriam Webster Dictionary defines the 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 allowed his death to occur, or that he simply underwent death. This is not the meaning of the Greek or the Latin. To correctly translate it is to recognize that the verb "to suffer" 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." In the Latin, we have the same issue as in English. It says "passus est" without a direct object. It therefore does not mean to "undergo" or "allow" but rather to "know suffering". It is the same word from which we get our understanding of the "passion" of Christ.
- The Holy Spirit and the Authority of Scripture
- In the 1662 BCP the Nicene Creed says that the Holy Spirit "spoke by the Prophets". This is to be contrasted with the 1979 BCP where it says "through the Prophets". "Through" suggests that the words of the Holy Spirit were filtered through the minds of the Prophets. "By" suggests that the Prophets were used as instruments to speak the exact words of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the authentic teaching of the Nicene Creed is that Scripture is directly inspired and fully trustworthy, not distorted or adulterated or diminished through the filter of man's experience.
Reinstatement of the original Nicene Creed is long overdue, with or without the minor improvements shown in this commentary. When the Anglican Church in North America begins to respond to the call for a new American Anglican Prayer Book, I pray that among their many considerations they will return to the authentic Nicene Creed, and further that they will acknowledge its authority as they decide what changes to make in the rest of the Book of Common Prayer.