Private Creeds and their Troubled Authors

• Autores: Andrew Radde Gallwitz
• Localización: Journal of early Christian studies: Journal of the North American Patristic Society, ISSN 1067-6341, Nº. 4, 2016, págs. 465-490
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Ultimately, the emperor, in consultation with Nectarius, the Nicene bishop of Constantinople, informed the head of each party to compose a creed defending himself and his communion. Since both the Novatian and non-Novatian leaders supported the homoousion, they submitted their creeds jointly, and unsurprisingly were the sole winners, a verdict Theodosius himself declared after prayerful consideration. Sometimes, we have only the text without any framing or title; sometimes one of these titles is modified by the term "written," presumably in order to distinguish it from the kind of oral profession given either at baptism or in a face-to-face inquiry as in the case of Heraclides. [...]the private creeds often bear the same form as that used at Nicaea and other councils: a summary of belief, typically in Trinitarian order, followed by anathemas.37 The individual creeds also have similarities with catechetical creeds in their allusions to the practice of baptism. [...]one notes similarities in form and content between the two groups of texts, and there is a similar appeal to the authority of a broad ecclesiastical tradition rather than that of the individual author. Go, he says, teach all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matt 28.19). [...]the power which enlivens those who are born again from death to eternal life comes through the Holy Trinity to the faithful who are counted worthy of this grace.