Trinity Sunday: the Athenasian Creed and Anglicanism 

This Sunday we shall be reciting a different Creed from the Nicene Creed we are more familiar with. This reflects a long standing and very Anglican tradition that is especially fitting to observe on Trinity Sunday, given the emphasis it places upon a proper understanding of the great mystery that the Trinity comprises. In fact, as will be plain from reading it, this creed reminds us very firmly of how important what we believe is in framing what it means to be Christian.

The first section of the Athenasian creed enumerates the three persons of the Trinity (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) and ascribes the divine attributes to each individually. Thus, each person of the Trinity is described as uncreated (increatus), limitless (immensus), eternal (æternus), and omnipotent (omnipotens). Ascribing the divine attributes and divinity to each person of the Trinity in this way avoids the error of subordinationism, while the stress on the unity of the three persons in the one Godhead also avoids a theology of tritheism. All this reflects the credal concern that we should, as part of our journey in faith and as followers in Christ, seek both to  believe what is right, and do what is right. 

While its actual author remains unknown,[1] it is thought that the original text of this particular Creed was written  in Latin and took shape in southern Gaul (despite its name), around or before the year 1500. This is suggested by its use in a sermon by Caesarius of Arles, as well as its close resemblance to a long lost work by Vincent of Lérins, rediscovered in 1940. The deep Christian theology the creed expresses is, however, manifestly rooted in the Augustinian tradition and uses the exact terminology of Augustine’s work On the Trinity, published in 415 AD. This fact has led in turn to speculation that Ambrose of Milan, Venantius Fortunatus, and/or Hilary of Poitiers may have had a role in its composition. 

While never used in Eastern Orthodox liturgies, this creed became part of the Latin office of Prime across Europe from the ninth century, and proved widely ecumenical and enduring among churches of the West through the Reformation, when Lutherans and Calvinists accorded recognition to this creed. Nonetheless, it is in the Church of England, and its wider Communion, that the Quicunque vult (to use its Latin name derived from its opening words) has remained most in liturgical use. Its presence in Edward VI’s first Prayer Book of 1549, and subsequent Prayer Book revisions, points to the fundamental continuity of the Church of England before, during and after the Reformation as that liturgical use was ultimately derived from the uniquely English Sarum Rite. 

There is however, a specifically Anglo-Catholic dimension of importance for us here at the Advent, as this creed was the subject of intense discussion in the nineteenth century. 

This debate was useful in bringing religious and scholarly culture together. And it was the Tractarians and their successors who renewed for their contemporaries a sharp awareness of the authoritative status of patristic tradition in Anglican thought. The older high church tradition had long stressed this as vital to the intellectual seriousness of Anglican claims. 

The Anglo-Catholic movement made it central to their project of upholding the importance of right belief through the theological articulation of the scriptural presentation, as established by the early Church. While the likes of F.D. Maurice placed emphasis upon the role of religious experience in history – and radical reformists wanted to view the creed as part of a superseded, medieval past – it was the concern of Pusey and others of our tradition to present a needful corrective, and ensure the continuity in faith that is the authentic Anglican perspective through the history of the church. 

In the words of Keble’s 1836 Lyra Apostolica: our faith as Anglicans is one that is both biblical and assertoric yet also susceptible of profound aesthetic appeal:

The Psalm that gathers in one glorious lay,

All chants that e’er from heaven to earth found way:

Creed of the Saints, and Anthem of the Blest,

The Rev. Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff
Rector

[1] See J.N.D. Kelly, The Athanasian Creed, 1962-1963, London, 1964.