Athanasian Creed
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
Definition
The Athanasian Creed is a Latin confession of Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy, one of the three creeds, alongside the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, received as the common inheritance of the Western church.1 Its traditional title credits it to Athanasius, the fourth-century Alexandrian bishop who led the fight against Arianism, but modern scholarship rejects that ascription: the creed was almost certainly composed in Latin, not Greek, by an unknown Western author working within Augustine’s theological circle.2 It takes its other name, Quicunque vult, from its opening Latin words, “Whosoever wishes to be saved.”2
Confessional Definition
The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession does not name the Athanasian Creed, but its own Trinity chapter states substantively the same doctrine the creed exists to defend: “In this divine and infinite Being there are three subsistences, the Father, the Word or Son, and Holy Spirit, of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided,” with the three distinguished only by their relations of origin, “the Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son.”3 That is the same “neither confounding the persons, nor separating the substance” structure the creed itself states clause by clause: one undivided divinity shared without division by three distinct subsistences, each fully God, yet only one God.2
Historical Development
Hodge’s chapter on the ancient creeds identifies the Athanasian Creed as already “of private and unknown authorship” among the handful of creeds the whole Western church inherited.1 Its theology, marked by close, careful distinctions between “substance” and “person” that read as a direct heir of Augustine’s own Trinitarian vocabulary, is why modern scholars “unanimously assign to it a later origin” than Athanasius’s own lifetime and “trace it to Northern Africa and the school of Augustine.”2 Hodge reports one specific proposal, tracing the creed to Virgilius Tapsensis at the end of the fifth century, and notes Philip Schaff’s judgment that the creed does not survive in its complete form before the end of the eighth century.2
Despite that uncertain authorship, the creed was received into general use across both East and West: Hodge records it as accepted in the Greek, Roman, and English churches, though the Protestant Episcopal Church in America eventually dropped it from its Prayer Book.2
Text of the Creed
Whosoever wishes to be saved, it is above all necessary for him to hold the Catholic faith. Which, unless each one shall preserve perfect and inviolate, he shall certainly perish for ever. But the Catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in trinity, and trinity in unity. Neither confounding the persons, nor separating the substance. For the person of the Father is one, of the Son another, and of the Holy Ghost another. But of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost there is one divinity, equal glory and co-eternal majesty. What the Father is, the same is the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The Father is uncreated, the Son uncreated, the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father is immense, the Son immense, the Holy Ghost immense. The Father is eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet there are not three eternals, but one eternal. So there are not three uncreated, nor three immense, but one uncreated, and one immense. In like manner the Father is omnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, the Holy Ghost is omnipotent. And yet there are not three omnipotents, but one omnipotent. Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God. And yet there are not three Gods, but one God. Thus the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Ghost is Lord. And yet there are not three Lords, but one Lord. Because as we are thus compelled by Christian verity to confess each person severally to be God and Lord, so we are prohibited by the Catholic religion from saying that there are three Gods or Lords.
The Father was made from none, nor created, nor begotten. The Son is from the Father alone, neither made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is from the Father and the Son, neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. Therefore there is one Father, not three fathers, one Son, not three sons, one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this trinity no one is first or last, no one is greater or less. But all the three co-eternal persons are co-equal among themselves, so that through all, as is above said, both unity in trinity, and trinity in unity is to be worshipped. Therefore, he who wishes to be saved must think thus concerning the trinity.
But it is necessary to eternal salvation that he should also faithfully believe the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is, therefore, true faith that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is both God and man. He is God, generated from eternity from the substance of the Father, man, born in time from the substance of his mother. Perfect God, perfect man, subsisting of a rational soul and human flesh. Equal to the Father in respect to his divinity, less than the Father in respect to his humanity. Who, although he is God and man, is not two but one Christ. But one, not from the conversion of his divinity into flesh, but from the assumption of his humanity into God. One not at all from confusion of substance, but from unity of person. For as a rational soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ, who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, the third day rose from the dead. Ascended to heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God the Father omnipotent, whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall render an account for their own works. And they who have done well shall go into life eternal, they who have done evil into eternal fire.
This is the Catholic faith, which, unless a man shall faithfully and firmly believe, he cannot be saved.4
Objections and Responses
The creed opens and closes by declaring that whoever fails to hold this whole, precisely worded confession “shall perish everlastingly” or “cannot be saved.” Even a sympathetic reader of the creed’s content has raised this objection: Hodge, who calls the Athanasian Creed “a most admirably stated exposition of the faith of all Christians,” still says plainly that it “is objected to only because of the ‘damnatory clauses,’ which ought never to be attached to any human composition, especially one making such nice distinctions upon so profound a subject.”2 The same source that raises the objection also limits it: the complaint targets the clauses that attach eternal stakes to a human formulation, not the creed’s Trinitarian and Christological content, which Hodge continues to treat as a sound and faithful statement of what the Nicene Creed had already established against Arianism.
The creed states that the Holy Spirit is “from the Father and the Son,” the filioque position the Eastern church has never accepted. This is the same East-West division that eventually split the Nicene Creed into two textual traditions and is addressed at length in Procession of the Holy Spirit.
Related Doctrines
- Trinity
- Deity of Christ
- Hypostatic union
- Nicene Creed
- Apostles’ Creed
- Council of Chalcedon
- Arianism
- Procession of the Holy Spirit