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| Chapter III. He refutes his opponent by the testimony of the Council of Antioch.
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Chapter III.
He refutes his opponent by the testimony of the Council
of Antioch.
Therefore since we have,
as I fancy, already in all the former books with the weight of sacred
testimonies, given a complete answer to the heretic who denies God, now
let us come to the faith of the Creed of Antioch and its value. For as
he2547
| 2547 Nestorius, who had
belonged to the monastery of St. Euprepius near the gate of Antioch
before his elevation to the see of Constantinople. | was himself baptized and regenerated in
this, he ought to be confuted by his own profession, and (so to speak)
to be crushed beneath the weight of his own arms, for this is the
method, that as he is already convicted by the evidence of holy
Scripture, so now he may be convicted by evidence out of his own mouth.
Nor will there be any need to bring anything else to bear against him
when he has clearly and plainly convicted himself. The text then and
the faith of the Creed of Antioch is this.2548
| 2548 This creed is
plainly given by Cassian as the baptismal formula of the Church of
Antioch; and with almost verbally a fragment of the Creed preserved in
a Contestatio comparing Nestorius to Paul of Samosata
(a.d. 429, or 430) which is said by Leontius
to have been the work of Eusebius afterward Bishop of Dorylæum.
The form is especially interesting as showing that the Creed of
Antioch, in common with several other Eastern Creeds, underwent
revision, probably about the middle of the fourth century, from the
desire to enrich the local creed with Nicene phraseology. The
insertions which are obviously due to the Creed of Nicæa
are: non factum, Deum verum ex Deo vero, homoousion patri, or as
they would run in the original οὐ
ποιηθέντα,
Θεὸν
ἀληθινὸν ἐκ
Θεοῦ
ἀλιθινοῦ,
ὁμοούσιον τῷ
Πατρι, and it has been suggested
that they were probably introduced at the Synod held at Antioch under
Meletius in 363. Similar forms of local creeds thus enlarged by the
adoption of Nicene phraseology are (1) that of Jerusalem as given by
Cyril in his Catechetical Lectures, (2) the Creed of Cappadocia, (3)
that of Mesopotamia, and (4) the “Creed of Charisius”
preserved in the Acts of the Council of Ephesus (Mansi IV. 1348). On
all of these see Dr. Hort’s “Two Dissertations,” p.
110 sq.
Another interesting feature in the Creed
as given by Cassian is that it was in the singular
“Credo,” I believe; whereas the Eastern Creeds
are almost all in the plural πιστεύομεν.
That however which is found in the Apostolical Constitutions (VII.
xli.) has the singular πιστεύω καὶ
βαπτίζομαι,
and therefore it is possible that Cassian may have preserved the
original form here. It is however more probable that the singular Credo
is due to a reminiscence of the form current in the Western church,
which has influenced the translation. See further Hahn’s
Bibliothek des Symbole p. 64 sq. | “I believe in one and the only
true God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and
invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, and the
first-born of every creature, begotten of Him before all worlds, and
not made: Very God of Very God, Being of one substance with the Father:
By whom both the worlds were framed, and all things were made. Who for
us came, and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under
Pontius Pilate and was buried: and the third day He rose again
according to the Scripture: and ascended into heaven, and shall come
again to judge the quick and the dead,” etc.2549
| 2549 Cassian nowhere
quotes the last section of the Creed of Antioch, as it did not concern
the question at issue. A few clauses of it may however be recovered
from S. Chrysostom’s Homilies (In 1 Cor. Hom. xl. § 2);
viz., καὶ
εἰς ἁμαρτιῶν
ἂφεσιν καὶ
εἰς νεκρῶν
ἀνάστασιν
καὶ εἰς ζωὴν
αἰώνιον. | In the Creed which gives the faith of all
the Churches, I should like to know which you would rather follow, the
authority of men or of God? Though I would not press hardly or unkindly
upon you, but give the opportunity of choosing whichever alternative
you please, that accepting one, I may deny the other: for I will grant
you and yield to you either of them. And what do I grant, I ask? I will
force you to one or other even against your will. For you ought, if you
like, to understand of your own free will that one or other of these is
in the Creed: if you don’t like it, you must be forced against
your will to see it. For, as you know, a Creed (Symbolum) gets its name
from being a “collection.”2550
| 2550 Symbolus, or
more commonly and correctly Symbolum (= σύμβολον) is the
general name for the creed in the ancient church, met with from the
days of Cyprian (who uses it more than once, e.g., Ep. lxix.) onwards.
In the account which Cassian gives in the text of the origin of the
name he is certainly copying Rufinus (whose exposition of the
Apostles’ Creed is directly quoted by him below in Book VII. c.
xxvii.). The passage which Cassian evidently has in his mind is the
following: “Moreover for many and excellent reasons they
determined that it should be called Symbolum. For
‘Symbolum’ in Greek may mean both Indicium (a token)
and collatio (a collection), that is, that which several bring
together into one; for the apostles effected this in these sentences by
bringing together into one what each thought good.…Therefore
being about to depart to preach, the apostles appointed that token of
their unanimity and faith.” (Ruf. De Symb. § 2). Cf. also
§ 1. “In these words there is truly discovered the prophecy
which says: ‘Completing His work and cutting it short in
righteousness, because a short work will the Lord make upon the
earth.’” This explanation, however, of the origin of the
term labours under the fatal mistake of confusing two distinct Greek
words, συμβολή, a
“collection,” and σύμβολον, a
“watchword:” and the true explanation of the word is
probably that which Rufinus gives as an alternative, which gives it the
meaning of “watchword.” It was the watchword of the
Christian soldier, carefully and jealously guarded by him, as that by
which he could himself be distinguished from heretics, and that for
which he could challenge others of whose orthodoxy he might be in
doubt. |
For what is called in Greek σύμβολος is
termed in Latin “Collatio.” But it is therefore a
collection (collatio) because when the faith of the whole Catholic law
was collected together by the apostles of the Lord, all those matters
which are spread over the whole body of the sacred writings with
immense fulness of detail, were collected together in sum in the
matchless brevity of the Creed, according to the Apostle’s words:
“Completing His word, and cutting it short in righteousness:
because a short word shall the Lord make upon the
earth.”2551
This then is the
“short word” which the Lord made, collecting together in
few words the faith of both of His Testaments, and including in a few
brief clauses the drift of all the Scriptures, building up His own out
of His own, and giving the force of the whole law in a most
compendious
and brief formula. Providing in this, like a most tender
father, for the carelessness and ignorance of some of his children,
that no mind however simple and ignorant might have any trouble over
what could so easily be retained in the memory. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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