The revised Jerusalem Creed was quoted by Epiphanius in his treatise The Anchored One, c. A.D. 374, some years before the council of Constantinople (A.D. 381). We gather that it had already been introduced into Cyprus as a baptismal creed. Hort’s identification of it as the work of Cyril of Jerusalem is now generally accepted. On his return from exile in A.D. 362 Cyril would find “a natural occasion for the revision of the public creed by the skilful insertion of some of the conciliar language, including the term which proclaimed the restoration of full communion with the champions of Nicaea, and other phrases and clauses adapted for impressing on the people positive truth.” Some of Cyril’s personal preferences expressed in his catechetical lectures find expression, e.g. “resurrection of the dead” for “flesh.”
The weak point in Hort’s theory was the suggestion that the creed was brought before the council by Cyril in self justification. The election of Meletius of Antioch as the first president of the council carried with it the vindication of his old ally Cyril. Kunze’s suggestion is far more probable that it was used at the baptism of Nektarius, praetor of the city, who was elected third president of the council while yet unbaptized. Unfortunately the acts of the council have been lost, but they were quoted at the council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, and the revised Jerusalem Creed was quoted as “the faith of the 150 Fathers,” that is, as confirmed in some way by the council of Constantinople, while at the time it was distinguished from “the faith of the 318 Fathers” of Nicaea. One of the signatories of the Definition of Faith made at Chalcedon, in which both creeds were quoted in full, Kalemikus, bishop of Apamea in Bithynia, refers to the council of Constantinople as having been held at the ordination of the most pious Nektarius the bishop. Obviously there was some connexion in his mind between the creed and the ordination.
The reasons which brought the revised creed into prominence at Chalcedon are still obscure. It is possible that Leo’s letter to Flavian gave the impulse to put it forward because it contained a parallel to words which Leo quoted from the Old Roman Creed, “born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary,” “crucified and buried,” which do not occur in the first Nicene Creed. If, as is probable, it was from the election of Nektarius the baptismal creed of Constantinople, we may even ask whether the pope did not refer to it when he wrote emphatically of the “common and indistinguishable confession” of all the faithful. Kattenbusch supposes that Anatolius, bishop of Constantinople, or his archdeacon Aetius, who read the creed at the 2nd session of the council, took up the idea that through its likeness to the Roman Creed it would be a useful weapon against Eutyches and others who were held to interpret the Nicene Creed in an Apollinarian sense. But Kunze thinks that it was not used as a base of operations against Eutyches because there is some evidence that Monophysites were willing to accept it. Certainly it won its way to general acceptance in the East as the creed of the church of the imperial city; regarded as an improved recension of the Nicene Faith. The history of the introduction of the creed into liturgies is still obscure. Peter Fullo, bishop of Antioch, was the first to use it in the East, and in the West a council held by King Reccared at Toledo in 589. The theory of Probst that it had been used in Rome before this time has not been confirmed. King Reccared’s council is usually credited with the introduction of the words “And the Son” into clause 9 of the creed. But some MSS.[11] omit them in the creed-text while inserting them in a canon of the faith drawn up at the time. Probably they were interpolated in the creed by mistake of copyists. When attention was called to the interpolation in the 9th century it became one cause of the schism between East and West. Charlemagne was unable to persuade Pope Leo III. to alter the text used in Rome by including the words. But it was so altered by the pope’s successor.
The interpolation really witnessed to a deep-lying difference between Eastern and Western theology. Eastern theologians expressed the mysterious relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son in such phrases as “Who proceedeth from the Father and receiveth from the Son,” rightly making the Godhead of the Father the foundation and primary source of the eternally derived Godhead of the Son and the Spirit. Western theologians approached the problem from another point of view. Hilary, starting from the thought of Divine self-consciousness as the explanation of the coinherence of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, says that the Spirit receives of both. Augustine teaches that the Father and the Son are the one principle of the Being of the Spirit. From this it is a short step to say with the Quicumque vult that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, while guarding the idea that the Father is the one fountain of Deity. Since Eastern theologians would be willing to say “proceeds from the Father through the Son,” it is clear that the two views are not irreconcilable.
3. The Athanasian Creed, so called because in many MSS. it bears the title “The Faith of S. Athanasius,” is more accurately designated by its first words Quicumque vult.[12] Its history has been the subject of much controversy for Athanasian Creed. years past, but no longer presents an insoluble problem. Critics indeed agree on the main outline. Until 1870 the standard work on the subject was Waterland’s Critical History of the Athanasian Creed, first published in 1723. Having traced “the opinions of the learned moderns” from Gerard Vossius, A.D. 1642, “who led the way to a more strict and critical inquiry,” Waterland passed in review all the known MSS. and commentaries, and after a searching investigation concluded that the creed was written in Gaul between 420 and 430, probably by Hilary of Arles.
In 1870 the controversy on the use of the creed in the Book of Common Prayer led to fresh investigation of the MSS., and a theory known as the “Two-portion theory” was started by C. A. Swainson, developed by J. R. Lumby, and adopted by Harnack. Swainson thought that the Quicumque was brought into its present shape in the 9th century. The so-called profession of Denebert, bishop-elect of Worcester, in A.D. 798 presented to the archbishop of Canterbury (which includes clauses 1, 3-6, 20-22, 24, 25), and the Trèves fragment (a portion of a sermon in Paris bibl. nat. Lat. 3836, saec. viii., which quoted clauses 27-34, 36-40), seemed to him to represent the component parts of the creed as they existed separately. He conjectured that they were brought together in the province of Rheims c. 860.
This theory, however, depended upon unverified assumptions, such as the supposed silence of theologians about the creed at the beginning of the 9th century; the suggestion that the completed creed would have been useful to them if they had known it as a weapon against the heresy of Adoptianism; the assertion that no MS. containing the complete text was of earlier date than c. 813. This was Lumby’s revised date, but the progress of palaeographical studies has made it possible to demonstrate that MSS. of the 8th century do exist which contain the complete creed.
The two-portion theory was vigorously attacked by G. D. W. Ommanney, who was successful in the discovery of new documents, notably early commentaries, which contained the text of the creed embedded in them, and thus supplied independent testimony to the fact that the creed was becoming fairly widely known at the end of the 8th century. Other new MSS. and commentaries were found and collated by the Rev. A. E. Burn and Dom Morin. In 1897 Loofs, summing up the researches of 25 years in his article Athanasianum (Realencyclopädie f. prot. Theol. u. Kirche, 3rd ed. ii. p. 177), declared that the two-portion theory was dead.
This conclusion has never been seriously challenged. It has been greatly strengthened by the discovery of a MS. which was presented by Bishop Leidrad of Lyons with an autograph inscription to the altar of St Stephen in that town, some time before 814. As M. Delisle at once pointed out (Notices et extraits des manuscrits, 1898), this MS. supplies a fixed date from which palaeographers can work in dating MSS. The Quicumque occurs in a collection of materials forming an introduction to the psalter. The suggestion has been made that Leidrad intended to use the Quicumque in his campaign against the Adoptianists in 798. But the phrases of the creed seem to have needed sharpening against the Nestorian tendency of the Adoptianists. It is more probable that Leidrad was interested in the growing use of the creed as a canticle, and was consulted in the preparation of the famous Golden Psalter, now at Vienna, which contains the same collection of documents as an introduction. This MS. may now without hesitation be assigned to the date 772-788. The earliest known MS. is at Milan (Cod. Ambros. O, 212, sup.), and is dated by Traube as early as c. 700.