The Athanasian Creed

A creed Athanasius did not write

In Latin the creed opens with the words Quicunque vult, "Whosoever will", and it is often called by them: "Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith" clause 1. Its usual name honours Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria who died in 373, but he did not write it. Athanasius wrote in Greek; this creed was composed in Latin. It answers questions about the person of Christ that were fought over at the councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), long after his death, and it says that the Spirit is "of the Father and of the Son", a Western way of speaking. No writer of the fourth or fifth century is known to quote it, and the Greek churches did not know it until much later. Scholars have agreed on this since the Dutch scholar Gerardus Vossius set out the case in the mid-seventeenth century.

Most scholars place it in southern Gaul, in the late fifth or the sixth century. Its first clear trace is usually found in a collection of sermons connected with Caesarius, bishop of Arles in the early sixth century. Hilary of Arles, Vincent of Lérins and Caesarius himself have all been proposed as its author; none has been proved. In 434 Vincent gave the church a famous test of the catholic faith: what has been believed everywhere, always, by all Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory. That is what the creed means by "the catholic faith": not one church's faith but the whole church's, received from the apostles (see the Apostles' Creed).

Why it came to bear Athanasius' name is not recorded. The usual explanation is that he, exiled five times for defending the faith of Nicaea against Arius, had become the very symbol of that faith. Its way of speaking comes from Augustine, who taught that the Father is great, the Son is great and the Spirit is great, and yet there are not three great ones but one Augustine, On the Trinity, Book 5. It seems to have been written as a summary for clergy and people to learn by heart. In the eighth and ninth centuries clergy were expected to know it, and it was copied into psalters and sung with the psalms, spreading through the whole Western church.

The creed has two parts. Clauses 3 to 26 confess the Trinity; clauses 27 to 37 confess the incarnation. Warnings stand at the beginning, in the middle and at the end.

One God in Trinity

The first part begins with a sentence that holds the whole doctrine:

And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence.

Athanasian Creed, clause 3

Notice the verb. The creed does not say "I believe" but "we worship". The Trinity is not first a puzzle to be solved but the God who is adored. And the sentence fences the path on both sides. To confound the persons is to merge them, as Sabellius did when he taught that one God appears now as Father, now as Son, now as Spirit. To divide the essence (the 1662 Prayer Book has ‘Substance’ here) is to split God into three gods, or to set the Son and the Spirit below the Father as lesser beings, as Arius did. Scripture allows neither. "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Yet Jesus sent his disciples to baptize into one name that belongs to three:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Matthew 28:19

The persons are distinct, but their Godhead is one, "the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal" clause 5. The LORD says, "I will not yield My glory to another" (Isaiah 42:8), yet the Son prays to be glorified "with the glory I had with You before the world existed" (John 17:5). The glory is the Son's own.

"Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost" clause 6. Each is uncreated, unlimited, eternal, almighty, God and Lord (clauses 7–17). The Son stands on the Creator's side of the line: "Through Him all things were made" (John 1:3). "Unlimited" renders the Latin immensus, without measure (the Prayer Book has ‘incomprehensible’): "The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain You" (1 Kings 8:27). Hebrews speaks of "the eternal Spirit" (Hebrews 9:14). Thomas called the risen Jesus "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28), and Peter told the man who lied to the Holy Spirit, "You have not lied to men, but to God!" (Acts 5:4).

Each line, though, ends with a refrain: "And yet they are not three Gods; but one God" clause 15. Eternity and almighty power are not three possessions shared out among three beings. They are the one divine being, which each person is wholly. The Father is not a third of God, nor are the Son and the Spirit. Clause 18 names the pressure from both sides: "we are compelled by the Christian verity" to confess each person God and Lord, and "forbidden by the catholic religion" to say there are three Gods clause 18. Scripture calls each person God, and Scripture says, "there is no God but Me" (Isaiah 45:5). The creed will not ease the tension by letting go of either. There is no room here for Arius, who made the Son a creature, nor for those in the fourth century who said the same of the Spirit.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit

If each person is all that God is, what distinguishes them? The creed gives one answer: who is from whom clauses 19–21.

"The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten." He is the source who has no source.

"The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten." John calls him "the one and only Son from the Father" (John 1:14), using monogenēs (μονογενής), the only one of his kind. The Son has from the Father the very life the Father has: "For as the Father has life in Himself, so also He has granted the Son to have life in Himself" (John 5:26). This begetting has no beginning in time; as Augustine says, the Son "has not equality with the Father by growth, but by birth" Augustine.

"The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding." Jesus speaks of "the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father" (John 15:26), and Paul calls him "the Spirit of His Son" (Galatians 4:6). As a Western creed, this one confesses that the Spirit proceeds from the Son as well. The Orthodox churches keep the wording of the council of 381, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and do not accept this line; the Nicene Creed shown in this app is likewise the Western form, with "and the Son". Both traditions worship the Spirit as God with the Father and the Son, and the question is explained in The Trinity.

So there is "one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts" clause 22. Fatherhood, sonship and procession each belong to one person only. Augustine, reading "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30), puts the Son's claim this way: "What He is, that am I, in respect of essence, not of relation" Augustine. One in being; three in relation.

And "none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another" clause 23. Begotten and proceeding imply no earlier and later and no ladder of rank: the Son and the Spirit are not God in a lesser degree. But did Jesus not say, "the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28)? The second part answers.

The Reformed confessions follow this language closely. The Westminster Confession 2.3 echoes clauses 19–21, and the Shorter Catechism, Q. 6 teaches that the three are one God, "the same in substance, equal in power and glory."

Perfect God and perfect man

The second part says that it is necessary also to believe the incarnation clause 27. Christ has two births: "God, of the Essence of the Father; begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Essence of his Mother, born in the world" clause 28. Paul holds both in one sentence:

Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them proceeds the human descent of Christ, who is God over all, forever worthy of praise! Amen.

Romans 9:5

"Of the Essence of his Mother" means that he took real flesh from Mary, "born of a woman" (Galatians 4:4), and did not, as some Gnostics taught, pass through her like water through a pipe Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 1.

He is "Perfect God; and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting" clause 29. A reasonable soul is a human mind and will. In the fourth century Apollinarius taught that Christ had a human body but no human mind, the divine Word taking its place. Gregory of Nazianzus answered that what has not been assumed has not been healed Gregory of Nazianzus, First Letter to Cledonius: Christ took a whole human nature to save the whole of us. In Gethsemane he said, "My soul is consumed with sorrow to the point of death" (Matthew 26:38). "He had to be made like His brothers in every way" (Hebrews 2:17).

So he is "Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the Father as touching his Manhood" clause 30. Here is the answer to John 14:28. The Son, "existing in the form of God … emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:6-7). In the form of God he is the Father's equal; in the form of a servant he prays, obeys and says that the Father is greater. Augustine, on that verse, concludes: "Let us acknowledge then the twofold substance of Christ, the divine, which is equal to the Father, and the human, which is inferior" Augustine.

Three short clauses then say how the two natures make one Christ: "he is not two, but one Christ" clause 31; "One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by assumption of the Manhood by God" clause 32; "One altogether; not by confusion of Essence; but by unity of Person" clause 33. "The Word became flesh" (John 1:14) does not mean that God turned into a man and stopped being what he was: "I, the LORD, do not change" (Malachi 3:6). Augustine compares our own speech: "as our word is made voice, yet is not turned into voice; so the Word of God was made flesh, but never turned into flesh" Augustine. The Latin, and the Prayer Book after it, speaks of the manhood taken into God: God was not made less; our humanity was taken up to him.

The fourth row is what the Council of Ephesus in 431 rejected as the teaching of Nestorius, though historians still discuss how far he meant it; the sixth is what Chalcedon in 451 rejected when it confessed Christ in two natures, without confusion or change, without division or separation Definition of Chalcedon. The story of those councils is told in Truly God and truly man.

The creed offers one picture: "as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man; so God and Man is one Christ" clause 34. Alcuin uses it the same way: "the Word is not turned into flesh, nor the flesh into the Word; just as the soul is not turned into body, nor the body into soul" Alcuin. Like every picture of this mystery it limps: soul and body together make one human nature, whereas Christ's two natures never merge into a third.

The creed then follows the Apostles' Creed through his suffering, descent into hell, resurrection, ascension and coming again (clauses 34–35); the descent clause is discussed on the Apostles' Creed page. At his coming all will rise with their bodies "And shall give account for their own works" clause 36. Clause 37 echoes Jesus almost word for word:

the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out — those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

John 5:28-29

Does that make salvation a reward for works? The churches of the Reformation, which taught justification by faith alone, did not read it so. Paul writes, "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith" (Ephesians 2:8), and in the next breath that we are "created in Christ Jesus to do good works" (Ephesians 2:10). The good that the judgment brings to light is not the price of salvation but the fruit of a living faith. How the churches have understood the "everlasting fire" is set out in Resurrection, judgment and the new creation.

The warning clauses

What startles most readers comes at the beginning and the end: "Which faith unless every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly" clause 2, and "This is the catholic faith; which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved" clause 38. Two clauses in the middle join the parts in the same tone (clauses 26–27). How should they be read?

First, for what they say. The God the creed describes, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is the God who saves; there is no other, and to turn from him is to turn from life. That is Scripture's own seriousness:

Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.

John 17:3

John writes, "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father" (1 John 2:23), and warns, "Anyone who runs ahead without remaining in the teaching of Christ does not have God" (2 John 1:9). The creed's warnings stand in that line.

Second, for what they do not say. No one is saved by reciting the right formula; we are saved by the grace of the God whom the formula confesses. The creed asks the one who would be saved to "think of the Trinity" in this way clause 26, not to comprehend it, and Augustine admitted that the church speaks of three persons not because the word says all there is to say, but so as not to be silent Augustine, On the Trinity, Book 5. So many have read "keep whole and undefiled" as a warning against knowingly abandoning or corrupting the faith received, not as a sentence on the child, the new believer or the person never taught. John Wesley wrote that he hesitated for a time to subscribe to the creed because of these clauses, until he saw that they concern those who wilfully reject the truth they have every means of knowing, and the substance of the doctrine, not the ways of explaining it. In the 1870s the Convocation of Canterbury declared that the warnings mean no more than the like warnings of Scripture, and that the church here judges no particular person, God alone being the judge.

Some churches have kept their reservations: a congregation pronouncing everlasting ruin seems to them to go beyond what worship should do, and the clauses can sound as if salvation hung on exact wording rather than on Christ. The Episcopal Church in the United States left the creed out of its Prayer Book of 1789, and its 1979 book prints it only among historical documents. When Wesley abridged the Thirty-Nine Articles for American Methodists, he left out the article on the three creeds. The Church of Ireland, after it ceased to be the established church, removed the rule that the creed be said in public worship. Those who love the creed answer that a warning at a cliff's edge is meant to protect, not to frighten, and that here the church's love speaks plainly.

Matthew Henry, on 2 John, keeps the balance: "we must show kindness and a good spirit to those who differ from us in lesser matters, but hold firmly the all-important doctrines of Christ's person, atonement, and holy salvation" Matthew Henry. The creed's warnings, too, concern the centre, who God is and who Christ is, not every question Christians discuss. The question of those who never heard the gospel is taken up in What about those who never heard?

The creed in the church today

The Reformers received the creed as part of the ancient church's common inheritance. The Belgic Confession, Article 9 willingly accepts the Apostles', Nicene and Athanasian creeds, and the French Confession of 1559 receives the same three because they agree with the Word of God. The Thirty-Nine Articles hold that the three creeds are to be wholly received and believed, since they can be proved from Holy Scripture on the surest grounds Thirty-Nine Articles, Art. 8, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer appointed it at Morning Prayer, in place of the Apostles' Creed, on thirteen feasts of the year, among them Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday and Trinity Sunday.

The Lutheran Book of Concord of 1580 sets it at the head of its confessions with the Apostles' and Nicene creeds, and many Lutheran congregations still confess it on Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost. The Catholic Church long said it at an early-morning office on Sundays; after the liturgical reforms of the mid-twentieth century it left the regular prayer of the church, though it is still counted among the creeds the Church has received Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Orthodox churches do not use it in worship.

The creed is long and repeats itself, and that is part of its gift: like a hymn's refrains, its lines train the tongue to name God without dividing him or confusing the persons. Read aloud, slowly, it sounds less like an argument than like praise, as Paul's own argument ends in song: "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen." (Romans 11:36). For a gentler introduction to the doctrine, see What is the Trinity?