There is a reference to the Quicumque in the first canon of the fourth council of Toledo of the year 633, which quotes part or the whole of clauses 4, 20-22, 28 f., 31, 33, 35 f., 40. The council also quoted phrases from the so-called Creed of Damasus, a document of the 4th century, which in some cases they preferred to the phrases of the Quicumque. Their quotations form a connecting link in the chain of evidence by which the use of the creed may be traced back to the writings of Caesarius, bishop of Arles (503-543). Dom Morin has now demonstrated (“Le Symbole d’Athanase et son premier témoin S. Césaire d’Arles,” Rev. Bénédictine, Oct. 1901) that Caesarius used the creed continually as a sort of elementary catechism. The fact that it exactly reproduces both the qualities and the literary defects of Caesarius is a strong argument in favour of Morin’s suggestion that he may have been the author. Further, Caesarius was in the habit of putting some words of a distinguished writer at the head of his compositions, which would account for the fact that the name of Athanasius was subsequently attached to the creed.
The use, however, of the Quicumque by Caesarius as a catechism may be explained by the suggestion that it had been taught him in his youth, so that his style had been moulded by it. He was not an original thinker. Moreover, the creed is quoted by his rival Avitus, bishop of Vienne 490-523, who quotes clause 22, as from the Rule of Catholic Faith, but was not likely to value a composition of Caesarius so highly. Morin does not deal fully with the arguments from internal evidence which point back to the beginning of the 5th century as the date of the creed. If the creed-phrases needed sharpening against the revived Nestorian error of the Adoptianists, it is scarcely likely to have been written during the generation following the condemnation of Nestorius in 431. Burn suggests that it was written to meet the Sabellian and Apollinarian errors of the Spanish heretic Priscillian, possibly by Honoratus, bishop of Arles (d. 429). He suggests further that the Creed of Damasus was the reply of that pope to Priscillian’s appeal. This would explain the quotation of the two documents together by the council of Toledo, since the heresy lasted on for a long time in Spain. But the theory has been carried to extravagant lengths by Künstle, who thinks that the creed was written in Spain in the 5th century, and soon taken to the monastery of Lerins. There are phrases in the writings of Vincentius of Lerins and of Faustus, bishop of Riez, which are parallel to the teaching of the creed, though they cannot with any confidence be called quotations. They tend in any case to prove that the Quicumque comes to us from the school of Lerins, of which Honoratus was the first abbot, and to which Caesarius also belonged.
The earliest use of the Quicumque was in sermons, in which the clauses were quoted, as by the council of Toledo without reference to the creed as a whole. From the 8th century, if not from earlier times, commentaries were written on it. The writer of the Oratorian Commentary (Theodulf of Orleans?) addressing a synod which instructed him to provide an exposition of this work on the faith, writes of it, as “here and there recited in our churches, and continually made the subject of meditation by our priests.” It was soon used as a canticle. Angilbert, abbot of St Riquier (c. 814), records that it was sung by his school in procession on rogation days. It passed into the office of Prime, apparently first at Fleury. In the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. it was “sung or said” after the Benedictus on the greater feasts, and this use was extended in the second Prayer Book. In 1662 the rubric was altered and it was substituted for the Apostles’ Creed. It has no place in the offices of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but is found, without the words “And the Son” of clause 22, in the appendix of many modern editions. In the Russian service books it appears at the beginning of the psalter.
The controversy on its use in modern times has turned mainly on the interpretation of the warning clauses. No new translation can put an end to the difficulty. While it is true that the Church has never condemned individuals, and that the warnings refer only to those who have received the faith, and do not touch the question of the unbaptized, there is a growing feeling that they go beyond the teaching of Holy Scripture on the responsibility of intellect in matters of faith.[13]
On the other hand the creed is a valuable statement of Catholic faith on the Trinity and the Incarnation, and its use for students and teachers at least is by no means obsolete. The special characteristic of its theology is in the first part where it owes most to the teaching of Augustine, who in his striving after self-knowledge analysed the mystery of his own triune personality and illustrated it with psychological images, “I exist and I am conscious that I exist, and I love the existence and the consciousness; and all this independently of any external influence.” Such a riper analysis of the mystery of his own personality enabled him to arrive at a clearer conception of the idea of divine personality, “whose triunity has nothing potential or unrealized about it; whose triune elements are eternally actualized, by no outward influence, but from within; a Trinity in Unity.”[14]
II. Modern Confessions of Faith.—The second great creed-making epoch of Church history opens in the 16th century with the Confession of Augsburg. The famous theses which Luther nailed to the door of the church at Wittenberg in 1517 cannot be called a confession, but they expressed a protest which could not rest there. Some reconstruction of popular beliefs was needed by many consciences. There is a striking contrast between the crudeness of much and widely accepted medieval theology and the decrees of the council of Trent. Even from the Roman Catholic standpoint such a need was felt. Luther himself had a gift of words which through his catechisms made the reformed theology popular in Germany. In 1530 it became necessary to define his position against both Romanists and Zwinglians.
1. The Confession of Augsburg was drawn up by Melanchthon, revised by Luther, and presented to the emperor Charles V. at the diet of Augsburg. Some 21 of its articles dealt with doctrine, 7 with ecclesiastical abuses. It expounded Augsburg confession. in terse and significant teaching the doctrine (1) of God, (2) of original sin, (3) of the Son of God, (4) of justification ..., (21) of the worship of saints. The abuses which it was maintained had been corrected by Lutheranism were discussed in articles (1) on Communion in both kinds, (2) on the marriage of clergy, (3) on the Mass, &c. (see [Augsburg, Confession of]).
The main difference between these, the first of a long series of articles of religion and the ancient creeds, lies in the fact that they are manifestoes embodying creeds and answering more than one purpose. This is the reason of their frequent failure to convey any sense of proportion in the expression of truth. The disciplinary question of clerical marriage is not of the same primary importance as the doctrinal questions involved in the restoration of the cup to the laity, or discussed in the subsequent article on the mass. As has been well said by a learned Baptist theologian, Dr Green: “It was by a true divine instinct that the early theologians made Christ Himself, in His divine-human personality, their centre of the creeds.”[15] The fundamental questions of Christianity, exhibited in the Apostles’ Creed, should be marked off as standing on a higher plane than others. In this respect catechisms of modern times, from Luther’s down to the recent Evangelical catechism of the Free Churches, and including from their respective points of view both the catechism of the Church of England and the catechism of the council of Trent, are markedly superior to articles and synodical decrees. The failure of the latter was really inevitable. In the 16th century a spirit of universal questioning was rife, and it is this utter unsettlement of opinion which is reflected in the discussions of doubts on matters only remotely connected with “the faith once for all delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). Moreover, fresh complications arose from the confusion in which the question of the duties and rights of the civil power was entangled. In an age when the foundations of the system on which society had rested for centuries were seriously shaken, such subjects as the right of the magistrate to interfere with the belief of the individual, and the limits of his authority over conscience, naturally assumed a prominence hitherto unknown.[16]
2. Other Lutheran Formularies.—For the purpose of classification it will be convenient to discuss Lutheran, Zwinglian and Calvinistic confessions separately.
An elaborate Apology for the confession of Augsburg was drawn up by Melanchthon in reply to Roman Catholic criticisms. This, together with the confession, the articles of Schmalkalden, drawn up by Luther in 1536, Luther’s Lutheran. catechisms, and the Formula of Concord which was an attempt to settle doctrinal divisions promulgated in 1580, sum up what is called “the confessional theology of Lutheranism.” Of less influence in the subsequent history of Lutheranism, but of interest as used by Archbishop Parker in the preparation of the Elizabethan articles of 1563, is the confession of Württemberg. It was presented to the council of Trent by the ambassador of the state of Württemberg in 1552. Its thirty-five articles contain a moderate statement of Lutheran teaching.