By the way, if I might take us on a slight tangent; the fact that the eight major indigenous categories of Eastern churches* (Eastern Orthodox, EO Old Calendarist, Russian Old Believer, Russian Priestless Old Believer, Oriental Orthodox, Maronite Catholic**, Assyrian Church of the East, Ancient Churchnof the East) use the only Nicene creed in the context of their liturgies is of some interest to me, particularly given the aforementioned printing of Quincunque Vult in Russian psalters and Greek service books, particularly given the lack of any assertions of defect in the Apostles’ Creed. This probably comes down to tradition; the Apostles’ Creed is believed to have been adapted from an ancient Roman baptismal liturgy.
There is one particularly powerful creedal hymn of probable Oriental Orthodox origin, Ho Monogenes (various Eastern Orthodox authors have been proposed, but the prominence of this creed in the Syriac Orthodox liturgy, where it is sung as an introit or initial hymn, as the curtain is pulled back following the Preparatory Service, which is chanted aloud (unlike in the Byzantine Rite) following Morning Prayers, to me strongly confirms the well established theory that this hymn was authored by St. Severus of Antioch, and was included in the Byzantine Synaxis by St. Justinian in the course of his considerable yet ill-fated efforts to facilitate EO-OO reunification.
This hymn has the interesting effect of, in combination with the Nicene Creed, excluding most major Christological heresies, including Eutychianism (Monophysitism, the heresy the OO have long been accused of but which have anathematized since before the actual EO-OO schism began at Chalcedon), Nestorianism, Apollinarianism, Adoptionism, Arianism, Sabellianism, Alogianism, “Process Theology”, Soccinianism, Docetism and, I think, Monothelitism (although considering the Monothelites did not think to delete it from their liturgies, perhaps not).
Quincunque Vult is also an extremely powerful creed, which demands recognition of the Holy Trinity explicitly, and links acceptance of this doctrine with salvation, which doubtless explains why the more mainstream Anglican churches use it much less frequently than was once the case; there is also the problem of poor Trinitarian catechesis. Most mainline Protestant churches, and a large number of evangelical megachurches, are not adequately teaching the doctrine of the Trinity. Certainly the one in which I was raised failed me; I nominally believed in the Trinity, because I knew it was something we believed in, and there was clearly something wrong with those churches which rejected it, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I did not understand the doctrine. When I finally learned what the Trinity was, I was overcome with a euphoric bliss, and several fears I had since early childhood about the implications of eternal life vanished.
The Apostle’s Creed strikes me as something that actually would fit into an Orthodox liturgy rather nicely, although it would also be completely superfluous given their liturgies explicitly affirm the two doctrines it stresses which the other creeds do not mention, namely, the Communion of the Saints, and the Harrowing of Hell.
The beautiful hymn Te Deum Laudamus is also a powerful creedal statement.
In addition, the Oriental Orthodox add the Theopaschite Clause attributed to St. Peter Fullo to the Trisagion Hymn; this was resisted by the Eastern Orthodox who interpret the Trisagion triadologically, whereas the Oriental Orthodox interpret it Christologically. This is an example of a classical interdenominational misunderstanding; to the Eastern Orthodox, the addition to what they regarded as a Trinitarian hymn of the Theopaschite Clause appeared to be Patripassian, a charge which must have bewildered and angered the Oriental Orthodox who understood the Trisagion in a purely Christological context (I have seen one liturgical text in which the Trisagion is sung thrice, once for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, with the Theopaschite Clause replaced by a more appropriate verse for the Father and the Spirit, but I cannot remember where).
I particularly like the Eastern Orthodox practice of singing the Nicene Creed, and I would also argue that all hymns with doctrinal content have creedal characteristics, and that hymnody is the most powerful catechist, something the cunning Arius recognized; some of the earliest Christian hymn-writers were motivated to compose hymns in response to inane ditties Arius taught to sailors and merchants that contained the essence of his heretical doctrines; by teaching them to those whose profession entailed traversing the Roman Empire and journeying to foreign destinations by land and by sea, he effectively propagated his doctrines using a novel method which had until his time been impossible, because all these events happened only a few years after the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire.
One frustration that I share with LutheranSatire, much beloved of our friend
@MarkRohfrietsch , is the vacuous and non-doctrinal nature of some Protestant chorales. Lutheran Satire primarily accuses the Anglicans of this, on the basis of Christmas carols such as In A Bleak Midwinter, although in all fairness to everyone, the hymns of Charles Wesley, which were mostly edited by John Wesley to ensure doctrinal correctness (as his brother was perhaps a better poet than theologian) are highly doctrinal. In general, when it comes to Protestant hymnals, I favor those which favor hymns which make a clear doctrinal point to those which instead are sentimental, and perhaps I am simply paranoid of recent mainline Christian hymnals, but I feel a trend has been in progress towards sentimental chorales over doctrinal chorales.
Rich doctrinal content, which is inherently creedal content, is something I love about the ancient hymns of St. Ambrose one finds in the legendary Old Hymnal, and the hymns and metrical homilies of St. Ephrem the Syrian and St. Jacob of Sarugh, and the spectacular Byzantine hymnography produced by the Studion Monastery and the Sabaite Monastery, which in turn led to the Roman Graduale, and adaptations of it such as Byrd’s Gradualia, the massive Eastern Orthodox hymnary which spans as many as 24 volumes, the exquisite Coptic Psalmody, and the splendid collection of Canticles in recent editions of the Book of Common Prayer.
John Wesley himself, following in the example of monastic writings in the Philokalia, which generally contain 150 texts, and the Orthodox canons, whose Odes are based on a set of nine Biblical Canticles, combining the theme of that canticle with the subject of liturgical commemoration (and also I would argue the Roman Rite’s Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Officium Defunctorum, which are invariant offices which take the theme of the hours, and apply them in a Mariological and Eschatological context), included a Psalter in his Sunday Service Book for North America which contained those psalms he found most edifying, interspersed with the hymns of Charles Wesley. This was an elegant solution to the personal objection Wesley had to the use of imprecatory Psalms in worship.***
*Although indigenous to the East, I exclude the extinct Gnostic Paulicians, who converted to Orthodoxy although remain as an ethnic group in Armenia, Bulgaria and Romania, along with the smaller and more peculiar Raskol (schismatic) sects that resulted from the dreadful persecution of Russian liturgical traditionalists or Old Believers after the Nikonian liturgical form, the most noteworthy of which are the Molokans, whose beliefs are not unlike the Seventh Day Adventists, and the Doukhobors, who were basically Unitarians who regarded as canonical only the Sermon on the Mount; Leo Tolstoy financed their emigration to Western Canada, where they did make a nuisance of themselves following the passage of laws mandating public education, by protesting in the nude, which in turn led to the introduction of laws against indecent exposure, which prior to that point had not been necessary in British Columbia, Alberta or Saskatchewan. Both groups still exist, the former in California and the latter in the Pacific Northwest, in small numbers.
** I cite the Maronites but not other Eastern Catholics, because unlike the other Eastern Catholic churches, the Maronites separated from the Syriac Orthodox in a schism of a dogmatic nature (some allege they were Monothelites) and settled in the mountains of Lebanon, and there are no analogous Orthodox churches; all persons of the Maronite faith and ethnicity joined the Roman Catholic Church during the crusades. There are several specifically Maronite saints, such as St. Sharbel, and others who predate their schism with the Syriac Orthodox but are the subject of particular devotion among the Maronites, such as St. John Maron.
*** I prefer Wesley’s approach to that taken by the 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer, which edits the imprecatory Psalms to make them less offensive. However, I believe Wesley was in error; the imprecatory Psalms are only imprecatory if read in an Antiochene-literalist context, and these Psalms are, like many Psalms, parabolic, with a superficial esoteric meaning and a much richer exoteric meaning which becomes apparent with Alexandrian exegesis, and if read using the latter method, they cease to be imprecatory. It is a challenge for the Church at present to catechize the laity to understand these Psalms properly, but I feel this challenge is more worthwhile to pursue than attempting to sweep the issue under the rug. I should add there are portions of the Old Testament, and indeed portions of the Psalter itself, which are better suited for Antiochene-literalist exegesis, and in general the Cappadocian approach of using both seems ideal.
