Thoughts on the Nicene Creed?

GreekOrthodox · Mar 10, 2021

Jake Arsenal said:
Movable type resulted in fixed liturgy?

LOL, never thought of it that was but pretty much. Of course I'm amused by the errors that result in mass publications. One of our vespers books has a teeny weeny error in one reading of the Lord's Prayer... the final reading is "deliver us for evil". Uh... and this got sent out to HOW many churches?

The Liturgist · Mar 10, 2021

GreekOrthodox said:
WHO SAID THAT!?!?!? Lights up a candle to look around because flashlights are modernist ecumenical heresies...

Oh as for the Apostles Creed, I vaguely remember seeing that it is recognized as the Old Roman Baptismal creed or something along those lines. There's no objections to it, just that it isnt used by us. I think the same goes for the Athanasian Creed, minus the filioque.

My liturgics professor at seminary basically said that there used to be more liturgical flexibility until the printing press came around.

So there is a version of the Athanasian Creed, which we ought to call Quincunque Vult or a Greek title, which lacks the filioque and is printed in some service books.

By the way, some liturgical innovation has happened in the Orthodox church. It just happens slowly. The Violakis Typikon, for example. If you compare the way your church and the Antiochian church chants the Three Antiphons with the way the Russians and Ukrainians and the OCA chant them, you will see the impact of the Violakis Typikon most clearly, but there is also the change in the placement of the Matins Gospel, which Metropolitan Kallistos Ware was critical of. However if you went to Mount Athos, you would see the Sabaite-Studite typikon in use.

Also because monasteries are largely free to set their own typikons, there are some anomalies, like Elder Sophrony’s Monastery in the UK which makes very extensive use of the conventual recitation of the Jesus Prayer in lieu of the Hours, and New Skete Monastery in the US, which has an ambitious liturgy that attempts, ironically since they are a monastery, to implement the abandoned Cathedral Typikon. They also routinely use the Divine Liturgy of St. James on a rotating basis. The synaxis of all their services has been streamlined. They print their own Liturgikon, which is a beautiful book.

The Liturgist · Mar 10, 2021

seeking.IAM said:
The Episcopal Church (U.S.A.) has already decided the Filioque will not be included in its next prayer book revision. Of course, no telliing when that will be. It was decided at the General Convention in 1994.

Presumably sooner rather than later based on recent decisions. I for one am not looking forward to it, because I greatly dislike the ACNA’s 2019 BCP, and while I love the 1928 BCP, the 1979 BCP enabled the Anglican Service Book and could enable potential further enhancements.

One thing I would support would be a rubric requiring parishes to either revert to the traditional one year lectionary or implement Year D. Thus far, Year D is the only thing I have seen that makes the RCL exciting, because it was intentionally designed to include important pericopes omitted in the RCL.

seeking.IAM · Mar 10, 2021

The Liturgist said:
Presumably sooner rather than later based on recent decisions. I for one am not looking forward to it, because I greatly dislike the ACNA’s 2019 BCP, and while I love the 1928 BCP, the 1979 BCP enabled the Anglican Service Book and could enable potential further enhancements...

I'm mixed. While I look forward to removal of the Filioque, I suspect TEC's next BCP will falso be scrubbed of anything related to gender and will largely be edited for political correctness as defined by current times. While I am all for equality, I confess I'm not much of a fan of that. I think it's pretty arrogant for one to think they can write a better Lord's prayer than how Jesus said it. But, I digress, and that's probably better left for a different thread.

Jake Arsenal · Mar 10, 2021

GreekOrthodox said:
LOL, never thought of it that was but pretty much. Of course I'm amused by the errors that result in mass publications. One of our vespers books has a teeny weeny error in one reading of the Lord's Prayer... the final reading is "deliver us for evil". Uh... and this got sent out to HOW many churches?

At least it was likely accidental; It is unlikely that the Deuteronomy 5 error in the wicked bible of 1631 could have been accidental.

GreekOrthodox · Mar 10, 2021

Jake Arsenal said:
At least it was likely accidental; It is unlikely that the Deuteronomy 5 error in the wicked bible of 1631 could have been accidental.

Especially since it is a KJV it is God's Word!

The Liturgist · Mar 11, 2021

seeking.IAM said:
I'm mixed. While I look forward to removal of the Filioque, I suspect TEC's next BCP will falso be scrubbed of anything related to gender and will largely be edited for political correctness as defined by current times. While I am all for equality, I confess I'm not much of a fan of that. I think it's pretty arrogant for one to think they can write a better Lord's prayer than how Jesus said it. But, I digress, and that's probably better left for a different thread.

I have replied in another thread, in General Theology; I thought I would post it there as a Catholic member and I were lamenting the lack of interesting non-polemical threads.

Petros2015 · Mar 11, 2021

(from the book The Orthodox Church by Bishop Ware - though written many years ago, I understand he may have softened his views somewhat? But they are fairly well expressed here and reasonable)

But what is meant by the term ‘proceed?’ Unless this is properly understood, nothing is understood. The Church believes that Christ underwent two births, the one eternal, the other at a particular point in time: he was born of the Father ‘before all ages,’ and born of the Virgin Mary in the days of Herod, King of Judaea, and of Augustus, Emperor of Rome. In the same way a firm distinction must be drawn between the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit, and the temporal mission, the sending of the Spirit to the world: the one concerns the relations existing from all eternity within the Godhead, the other concerns the relation of God to creation. Thus when the west says that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and when Orthodoxy says that He proceeds from the Father alone, both sides are referring not to the outward action of the Trinity towards creation, but to certain eternal relations within the Godhead — relations which existed before ever the world was. But Orthodoxy, while disagreeing with the west over the eternal procession of the Spirit, agrees with the west in saying that, so far as the mission of the Spirit to the world is concerned, He is sent by the Son, and is indeed the ‘Spirit of the Son.’

The Orthodox position is based on John 15:26, where Christ says: ‘When the Comforter has come, whom I will send to you from the Father — the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father — he will bear witness to me.’ Christ sends the Spirit, but the Spirit proceeds from the Father: so the Bible teaches, and so Orthodoxy believes. What Orthodoxy does not teach, and what the Bible never says, is that the Spirit proceeds from the Son.

An eternal procession from Father and Son: such is the western position. An eternal procession of the Spirit from the Father alone, a temporal mission from the Son: such was the position upheld by Saint Photius against the west. But Byzantine writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries — most notably Gregory of Cyprus, Patriarch of Constantinople from 1283 to 1289, and Gregory Palamas — went somewhat further than Photius, in an attempt to bridge the gulf between east and west. They were willing to allow not only a temporal mission, but an eternal manifestation of the Holy Spirit by the Son. While Photius had spoken only of a temporal relation between Son and Spirit, they admitted an eternal relation. Yet on the essential point the two Gregories agreed with Photius: the Spirit is manifested by the Son, but does not proceed from the Son. The Father is the unique origin, source, and cause of Godhead.

Such in outline are the positions taken up by either side; let us now consider the Orthodox objections to the western position. The filioque leads either to ditheism or to semi-Sabellianism (Sabellius, a heretic of the second century, regarded Father, Son, and Spirit not as three distinct persons, but simply as varying ‘modes’ or ‘aspects’ of the deity). If the Son as well as the Father is an arche, a principle or source of Godhead, are there then (the Orthodox asked) two independent sources, two separate principles in the Trinity? Obviously not, since this would be tantamount to belief in two Gods; and so the Reunion Councils of Lyons (1274) and Florence (1438-1439) were most careful to state that the Spirit proceeds from Father and Son ‘as from one principle,’ tanquam ex (or ab) uno principio. From the Orthodox point of view, however, this is equally objectionable: ditheism is avoided, but the persons of Father and Son are merged and confused. The Cappadocians regarded the ‘monarchy’ as the distinctive characteristic of the Father: He alone is a principle or arche within the Trinity. But western theology ascribes the distinctive characteristic of the Father to the Son as well, thus fusing the two persons into one; and what else is this but ‘Sabellius reborn, or rather some semi-Sabellian monster,’ as Saint Photius put it? (P.G. 102, 289B).

Let us look more carefully at this charge of semi-Sabellianism. Orthodox Trinitarian theology has a personal principle of unity, but the west finds its unitary principle in the essence of God. In Latin Scholastic theology, so it seems to Orthodox, the persons are overshadowed by the common nature, and God is thought of not so much in concrete and personal terms, but as an essence in which various relations are distinguished. This way of thinking about God comes to full development in Thomas Aquinas, who went so far as to identify the persons with the relations: personae sunt ipsae relationes (Summa Theologica, 1, question 40, article 2). Orthodox thinkers find this a very meagre idea of personality. The relations, they would say, are not the persons — they are the personal characteristics of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and (as Gregory Palamas put it) ‘personal characteristics do not constitute the person, but they characterize the person’ (Quoted in J. Meyendorff, Introduction à 1’étude de Grégoire Palamas, Paris, 1959, p. 294). The relations, while designating the persons, in no way exhaust the mystery of each.

Latin Scholastic theology, emphasizing as it does the essence at the expense of the persons, comes near to turning God into an abstract idea. He becomes a remote and impersonal being, whose existence has to be proved by metaphysical arguments — a God of the philosophers, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Orthodoxy, on the other hand, has been far less concerned than the Latin west to find philosophical proofs of God’s existence: what is important is not that a man should argue about the deity, but that he should have a direct and living encounter with a concrete and personal God.

Such are some of the reasons why Orthodox regard the filioque as dangerous and heretical. Filioquism confuses the persons, and destroys the proper balance between unity and diversity in the Godhead. The oneness of the deity is emphasized at the expense of His threeness; God is regarded too much in terms of abstract essence and too little in terms of concrete personality.

But this is not all. Many Orthodox feel that, as a result of the filioque, the Holy Spirit in western thought has become subordinated to the Son — if not in theory, then at any rate in practice. The west pays insufficient attention to the work of the Spirit in the world, in the Church, in the daily life of each man.

Orthodox writers also argue that these two consequences of the filioque — subordination of the Holy Spirit, over-emphasis on the unity of God — have helped to bring about a distortion in the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Church. Because the role of the Spirit has been neglected in the west, the Church has come to be regarded too much as an institution of this world, governed in terms of earthly power and jurisdiction. And just as in the western doctrine of God unity was stressed at the expense of diversity, so in the western conception of the Church unity has triumphed over diversity, and the result has been too great a centralization and too great an emphasis on Papal authority.

Such in outline is the Orthodox attitude to the filioque, although not all would state the case in such an uncompromising form. In particular, many of the criticisms given above apply only to a decadent form of Scholasticism, not to Latin theology as a whole.

Andrewn · Mar 12, 2021

Petros2015 said:
(Sabellius, a heretic of the second century, regarded Father, Son, and Spirit not as three distinct persons, but simply as varying ‘modes’ or ‘aspects’ of the deity).

I don't think this is an accurate definition.

"A Sabellian modalist would say that the One God successively revealed Himself to man throughout time as the Father in Creation; the Son in Redemption; and the Spirit in Sanctification and Regeneration."

Sabellius

The problem with Sabellianism, also called Modalistic Monarchianism, and Oneness Pentecostalism is not that the Holy Trinity are "varying ‘modes’ or ‘aspects’ of the deity." The problems is their belief that God presented the varying modes successively to the world.

Orthodox Catholics, on the other hand, believe that the Son of God has been eternally begotten of the Father and that the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father.

In other words, it's an issue of timing rather than the semantics of how "hypostasis" and "prsosopon" should be translated into English.

Of course, the timing affects our understanding of the Incarnation.

Petros2015 said:
The Cappadocians regarded the ‘monarchy’ as the distinctive characteristic of the Father: He alone is a principle or arche within the Trinity. But western theology ascribes the distinctive characteristic of the Father to the Son as well,

Yes, this summarizes the difference in Trinitarian belief between the East and the West.

The Liturgist · Mar 21, 2021

Andrewn said:
I don't think this is an accurate definition.

"A Sabellian modalist would say that the One God successively revealed Himself to man throughout time as the Father in Creation; the Son in Redemption; and the Spirit in Sanctification and Regeneration."

Sabellius

The problem with Sabellianism, also called Modalistic Monarchianism, and Oneness Pentecostalism is not that the Holy Trinity are "varying ‘modes’ or ‘aspects’ of the deity." The problems is their belief that God presented the varying modes successively to the world.

Orthodox Catholics, on the other hand, believe that the Son of God has been eternally begotten of the Father and that the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father.

In other words, it's an issue of timing rather than the semantics of how "hypostasis" and "prsosopon" should be translated into English.

Of course, the timing affects our understanding of the Incarnation.

Yes, this summarizes the difference in Trinitarian belief between the East and the West.

I think Eastern triadology is more correct, and while taking great pains to stress the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, I teach the Eastern model in my church, despite being a Congregationalist. Actually, even with the UCC I was already on an Orientalist approach to theology.

Andrewn · Mar 22, 2021

The Liturgist said:
I think Eastern triadology is more correct,

Eastern triadology got even more complicated with EO acceptance of the distinction promoted by Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) between essence and energies, as if the concept of a Trinity of "persons" was not complicated enough. And when questions are asked we are told it's a mystery and that God is unknowable and can only be described in negative terms!

As far as I understand, this theory is not accepted by Protestants, RC, or OO and perhaps constitutes an even bigger stumbling block to unity than Monophysitism, Monothelitism, and the Filioque.

01 - An Outline of Some of the Differences Between the Christian East and the Christian West - The Taboric Light

The following is how the RCC regards EO Hesychasm:

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Quietism

GreekOrthodox · Mar 22, 2021

Just cause we don't understand it does not mean that we don't understand it not to be true...

I do not want to keep you from not guessing.

prodromos · Mar 22, 2021

Andrewn said:
The following is how the RCC regards EO Hesychasm:

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Quietism

The article make only the briefest reference to Hesychasm, and it is a strawman at that. The Catholic encyclopedia does not represent the current Catholic understanding of Hesychasm.

Andrewn · Mar 23, 2021

GreekOrthodox said:
Just cause we don't understand it does not mean that we don't understand it not to be true...

Speculations are fine so long we realize they're not dogma and do not require others to approve them.

GreekOrthodox said:
I do not want to keep you from not guessing.

Thank you this is very kind .

MarkRohfrietsch · Mar 24, 2021

The Liturgist said:
<snip>
The beautiful hymn Te Deum Laudamus is also a powerful creedal statement.
<snip>

Luther wrote somewhere and called the Te Deum ("a 4th Creed")

I particularly love this setting from the Morning Office, Matins; the music starts off in a major key, and at the humiliation, into a minor key, then back into the Major key (Note: it is a custom in some of our Churches to genuflect, kneel or bow during the humiliation in the Nicene Creed, and rise again at "He suffered...):

The Te Deum Laudamus
We praise Thee O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship Thee, the Father Everlasting.
To Thee all the angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein;
To Thee cherubim and seraphim continually do cry;
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth;
Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of Thy glory.
The glorious company of the Apostles praise Thee
The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise Thee;
The noble army of martyrs praise Thee;
The holy Church though all the world doth acknowledge Thee;
The Father of an infinite majesty; Thine adorable true and only Son,
Also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.
Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ.
Thou are the everlasting Son of the Father.
When Thou tookest upon Thee to deleiver man;
Thou didst humble Thyself to be born of a virgin.
When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death,
Thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
Thou sittest at the right hand of God
In the glory of the Father.
We believe that thou shalt come
To be our judge.
We therefore pray Thee to help Thy servants,
Whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with Thy saints
In glory everlasting.
O Lord, save Thy people and bless Thine heritage.
Govern them and lift them up forever.
Day by day we magnify Thee,
And we worship Thy name ever, world without end.
Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin,
O Lord have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us,
O Lord, let Thy mercy be upon us, as our trust is in Thee.
O Lord, in Thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.

GreekOrthodox · Mar 24, 2021

Sigh, that's one hymn I REALLY miss as it does not exist in the Eastern rites. Page 32 from The Lutheran Hymnal was such an underused service.

The Liturgist · Mar 24, 2021

GreekOrthodox said:
Sigh, that's one hymn I REALLY miss as it does not exist in the Eastern rites. Page 32 from The Lutheran Hymnal was such an underused service.

Actually I have a Russian Orthodox CD with hymns on the marriage service followed by others one of which is entitled Te Deum, and although the English translations titles of these hymns leave something to be desired (the hymn “Noble Joseph” about St. Joseph of Arimathea comes out as “Good-looking Joseph), in this case it seems reasonable that it is correct.

Also despite being liturgy of the place where the hymn originated (Milan), the treatment of it in the exquisite chant of the Ambrosian Rite while in no respects lacking was also somewhat unmemorable. Which applies to much of their chant and is actually a mark of liturgical quality from the perspective of ancient Byzantine or Gregorian approaches. But from the very beginning, we can say that Antiochian and Syrian and Assyrian chant strove for memorable harmonies which also substantially increase the role on the liturgical celebrant as a cantor in chief.

The Liturgist · Mar 24, 2021

Andrewn said:
And when questions are asked we are told it's a mystery and that God is unknowable and can only be described in negative terms!

This is very true beyond what is scripturally revealed, which is obviously in the case of via negativa a superficial cataphatic revelation, which I think I am being sufficiently Palamist in calling the divine energies beneath, or around which, there exists an infinite incomprehensible wonderland which in our present fallen state we can only through honest prayer and grave humility hope to learn something about using apophatic methods, the via negativa.

The via negativa allows us, like the navigator on a submarine, to use known revevelations about God to determine from them reasonably reliable projections about what statements concerning God are incorrect.

We cannot, navigating this blessed submarine through the incomprehensible and unknowable depths hope to arise from the plotting table and actually see out of the vessel, for no man has seen God and lived, except through the person of the incarnate Logos, who makes the Father visible to us.

This mystical voyage through the utterly unknown and unfathomably unknowable is also, as any one familiar with St. (Psuedo?) Dionysius the Aeropagite can attest, is a profound and moving experience.

But it is an essential recognition of human fallibility to cast aside the Thomistic concept of Absolute Divine Simplicity and admit that an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God in three persons in an eternal union of perfect love is, beyond what these basic revealed doctrinal statements say, on the verge of being alien to us, and would be entirely alien and unknown were it not for the Incarnation of the Son and the Grace of the Spirit, which establish for us the infinitely beneficent and loving will of the Father.

The Liturgist · Mar 24, 2021

Andrewn said:
And when questions are asked we are told it's a mystery and that God is unknowable and can only be described in negative terms!

Further, on this specific point, I would propose any answer other than that which has frustrated you would be inaccurate and what is more, regarding whoever gave such an erroneous answer, which implies a human reasoning powerful enough to comprehend that which by its nature, has been revealed to be incomprehensible in extremis, that is to say, that to attempt to see that which has not been revealed did not end well for the wife of Lot, whose fatal mistake was to turn back and look at the divine wrath being poured on Sodom despite having been clearly warned not to, one should feel a great pity for them, because what they seek they cannot find as it is essentially inscrutable, and because, most importantly, mystery is a blessing.

The beginning of wonder is mystery! This concept unlocked Palamism for me as the state of the art of Christian theological reasoning, and it in turn was merely disclosed by Palamas, but was actually the work of Symeon the New and the other Hesychasts who continue since that time to pray “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner.”

GreekOrthodox · Mar 24, 2021

[QUOTE="The Liturgist, post: 75837506, member: 424341"and although the English translations titles of these hymns leave something to be desired (the hymn “Noble Joseph” about St. Joseph of Arimathea comes out as “Good-looking Joseph), in this case it seems reasonable that it is correct.[/QUOTE]

Some translations really make me wonder. Early on, Google Translate translated "Kyrie Elesion" as "Excuse me sir"

Thoughts on the Nicene Creed?

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