- Nov 26, 2019
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This question is concerning, since it implies you disagree with the Nicene Creed - is that correct?
You should be aware of course that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, specifically, (the 325 version is good but the 381 version adds additional protections against Semi-Arianism and Pneumatomachy, that is to say, the doctrine of Macedonius, who denied the deity and personhood of God the Holy Spirit) is the normative, definitive Christian denomination, accepted (with only one variation, that being the filioque clause) by all Christian denominations - it is the means by which we can separate the Christian wheat from the chaff of non-Christian cults such as Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Science and other heretics who preach a false Gospel. Even if one is not in a church which recites the Creed or has hypothetical objections to the idea of creeds, this document is still useful as a Symbol of Faith, as the authoritative text which allows us to identify and differentiate between Christians and adherents of other religions such as Swedenborgianism, Theosophism, Islam, Valentinism, Paulicianism, Bogomilism, or their recent revivals, which is why even the Christian Church / Disciples of Christ and the Churches of Christ make didactic use of it despite a quixotic opposition to the concept of a creed (which alas, is not a coherent theological position, since any definitive statement of belief is creedal, and the Symbol of Faith adopted by the 150 Greek Orthodox bishops at the Council of Constantinople in 381, who, unlike their forebears at Nicaea in 325, were not attending what was meant as an ecumenical council but rather merely as a local council, hence the absence of representatives of the Western church (the ancestors of the Roman Catholics and Protestants of the present) and of Syrian bishops or even Cypriot or Alexandrian Greek bishops, but their revision of the creed was adopted ecumenically, by all local churches everywhere, with the only issue being whether or not the filioque addition made in Spain in the sixth century in response to Adoptionist heretics denying the eternal status of God the Son should be permitted - we Orthodox say no, the original creed is sufficient to preclude Adoptionism, but the Catholics and my confessional Lutheran friends @ViaCrucis and @MarkRohfrietsch say yes, and such as important Orthodox leaders as St. Maximos the Confessor and more recently Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of Diokleia were Filioque “doves” as am I (but we also can’t risk a schism entering into full communion with a church that accepts the filioque, however intercommunion like what we have with the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch seems to me to be entirely reasonable and desirable).
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