Today is the feast of our fathers among the saints, Athanasius and Cyril, Patriarchs of Alexandria. The name of St Athanasius will always be associated with the Symbol of our faith, the Creed first promulgated at the 1st Œcumenical Council, held at Nicæa in 325, and completed at the 2nd Œcumenical Council, held at Constantinople in 381:
I believe in one God, Father almighty, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made.
For our sake and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man.
He was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried; he rose again on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He is coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with Father and Son is worshipped and together glorified; who spoke through the Prophets.
In one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
I await the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.
Amen.
The Creed was composed in order to counter the false teachings of Arius. In the Church, Creeds are not a list of everything that a Christian must believe but the statement of true beliefs to counter specific false beliefs.
I have just completed the page of this website on Gnosticism, a page that took an unconscionable time to write and a subject that I will be revisiting in this blog. One of the doctors of the Church who combatted the Gnostic heresy was St Irenæus of Lyons. In Adversus Hæreses he formulated a creed in opposition to the Gnostic heresy. This creed, formulated a century and a half before the Nicene Creed in response to a very different heresy, is nonetheless strikingly consistent with it:
The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: She believes in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father to gather all things in one, and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send spiritual wickednesses, and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning, and others from their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory.
Adversus Hæreses, I, x, 1, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, Ante-Nicene Fathers, I (1885). From the New Advent website.
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