Quicumque
Athanasian Creed

The Athanasian Creed

Catholic Encyclopedia

One of the symbols of the Faith approved by the Church and given a place in her liturgy, is a short, clear exposition of the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, with a passing reference to several other dogmas. Unlike most of the other creeds, or symbols, it deals almost exclusively with these two fundamental truths, which it states and restates in terse and varied forms so as to bring out unmistakably the trinity of the Persons of God, and the twofold nature in the one Divine Person of Jesus Christ. At various points the author calls attention to the penalty incurred by those who refuse to accept any of the articles therein set down. The following is the Marquess of Bute's English translation of the text of the Creed:

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all One, the Glory Equal, the Majesty Co-Eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father Uncreate, the Son Uncreate, and the Holy Ghost Uncreate. The Father Incomprehensible, the Son Incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost Incomprehensible. The Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost Etneral and yet they are not Three Eternals but One Eternal. As also there are not Three Uncreated, nor Three Incomprehensibles, but One Uncreated, and One Uncomprehensible. So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not Three Almighties but One Almighty.

So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not Three Gods, but One God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not Three Lords but One Lord. For, like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say, there be Three Gods or Three Lords. The Father is made of none, neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father, and of the Son neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

So there is One Father, not Three Fathers; one Son, not Three Sons; One Holy Ghost, not Three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is afore or after Other, None is greater or less than Another, but the whole Three Persons are Co-eternal together, and Co-equal. So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity is Trinity, and the Trinity is Unity is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, must thus think of the Trinity.

Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting Salvation, that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man.

God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the substance of His mother, born into the world. Perfect God and Perfect Man, of a reasonable Soul and human Flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His Manhood. Who, although He be God and Man, yet He is not two, but One Christ. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into Flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God. One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by Unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one Man, so God and Man is one Christ. Who suffered for our salvation, descended into Hell, rose again the third day from the dead. He ascended into Heaven, He sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty, from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire. This is the Catholic Faith, which except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.

For the past two hundred years the authorship of this summary of Catholic Faith and the time of its appearance have furnished an interesting problem to ecclesiastical antiquarians. Until the seventeenth century, the "Quicunque vult", as it is sometimes called, from its opening words, was thought to be the composition of the great Archbishop of Alexandria whose name it bears. In the year 1644, Gerard Voss, in his "De Tribus Symbolis", gave weighty probability to the opinion that St. Athanasius was not its author. His reasons may be reduced to the two following:
  • firstly, no early writer of authority speaks of it as the work of this doctor; and
  • secondly, its language and structure point to a Western, rather than to an Alexandrian, origin.
Most modern scholars agree in admitting the strength of these reasons, and hence this view is the one generally received today. Whether the Creed can be ascribed to St. Athanasius or not, and most probably it cannot, it undoubtedly owes it existence to Athanasian influences, for the expressions and doctrinal colouring exhibit too marked a correspondence, in subject-matter and in phraseology, with the literature of the latter half of the fourth century and especially with the writings of the saint, to be merely accidental. These internal evidences seem to justify the conclusion that it grew out of several provincial synods, chiefly that of Alexandria, held about the year 361, and presided over by St. Athanasius. It should be said, however, that these arguments have failed to shake the conviction of some Catholic authors, who refuse to give it an earlier origin than the fifth century.

An elaborate attempt was made in England, in 1871, by E.C. Ffoulkes to assign the Creed to the ninth century. From a passing remark in a letter written by Alcuin he constructed the following remarkable piece of fiction. The Emperor Charlemagne, he says, wished to consolidate the Western Empire by a religious, as well as a political, separation from the East. To this end he suppressed the Nicene Creed, dear to the Oriental Church, and substituted a formulary composed by Paulinus of Aquileia, with whose approval and that of Alcuin, a distinguished scholar of the time, he ensured its ready acceptance by the people, by affixing to it the name of St. Athanasius. This gratuitous attack upon the reputation of men whom every worthy historian regards as incapable of such a fraud, added to the undoubted proofs of the Creed's having been in use long before the ninth century, leaves this theory without any foundation.

Who, then, is the author? The results of recent inquiry make it highly probable that the Creed first saw the light in the fourth century, during the life of the great Eastern patriarch, or shortly after his death. It has been attributed by different writers variously to St. Hilary, to St. Vincent of Lérins, to Eusebius of Vercelli, to Vigilius, and to others. It is not easy to avoid the force of the objections to all of these views, however, as they were men of world-wide reputation, and hence any document, especially one of such importance as a profession of faith, coming from them would have met with almost immediate recognition. Now, no allusions to the authorship of the Creed, and few even to its existence, are to be found in the literature of the Church for over two hundred years after their time. We have referred to a like silence in proof of non-Athanasian authorship. It seems to be similarly available in the case of any of the great names mentioned above. In the opinion of Father Sidney Smith, S.J., which the evidence just indicated renders plausible, the author of this Creed must have been some obscure bishop or theologian whose composed it, in the first instance, for purely local use in some provincial diocese. Not coming from an author of wide reputation, it would have attracted little attention. As it became better known, it would have been more widely adopted, and the compactness and lucidity of its statements would have contributed to make it highly prized wherever it was known. Then would follow speculation as to its author, and what wonder, if, from the subject-matter of the Creed, which occupied the great Athanasius so much, his name was first affixed to it and, unchallenged, remained.

The "damnatory", or "minatory clauses", are the pronouncements contained in the symbol, of the penalties which follow the rejection of what is there proposed for our belief. It opens with one of them: "Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith". The same is expressed in the verses beginning: "Furthermore, it is necessary" etc., and "For the right Faith is" etc., and finally in the concluding verse: "This is the Catholic Faith, which except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved". Just as the Creed states in a very plain and precise way what the Catholic Faith is concerning the important doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, so it asserts with equal plainness and precision what will happen to those who do not faithfully and steadfastly believe in these revealed truths. They are but the credal equivalent of Our Lord's words: "He that believeth not shall be condemned", and apply, as is evident, only to the culpable and wilful rejection of Christ's words and teachings. The absolute necessity of accepting the revealed word of God, under the stern penalties here threatened, is so intolerable to a powerful class in the Anglican church, that frequent attempts have been made to eliminate the Creed from the public services of that Church. The Upper House of Convocation of Canterbury has already affirmed that these clauses, in their prima facie meaning, go beyond what is warranted by Holy Scripture. In view of the words of Our Lord quoted above, there should be nothing startling in the statement of our duty to believe what we know is the testimony and teaching of Christ, nor in the serious sin we commit in wilfully refusing to accept it, nor, finally, in the punishments that will be inflicted on those who culpably persist in their sin. It is just this last that the damnatory clauses proclaim. From a dogmatic standpoint, the merely historical question of the authorship of the Creed, or of the time it made its appearance, is of secondary consideration. The fact alone that it is approved by the Church as expressing its mind on the fundament truths with which it deals, is all we need to know.

JONES, The Creed of St. Athanasius; JEWEL, Defence of the Apology (London, 1567); in Works (Cambridge, 1848), III, 254; VOSSIUS, Dissertationes de Tribus symbolis (Paris, 1693); QUESNEL, De Symbolo Athanasiano (1675); MONTFAUCON, Diatribe in symbolum Quicunque in P. G. XXVIII, 1567, MURATORI, Expositio Fidei Catholicae Fortunati with Disquisitio in Anecdota (Milan, 1698), II; WATERLAND, A Critical History of the Athanasian Creed (Cambridge, 1724; Oxford, 1870); HARVEY, The History and Theology of the Three Creeds (London, 1854), II; FFOULKES, The Athanasian Creed (London, 1871); LUMBY, The History of the Creeds (Cambridge, 1887); SWAINSON, The Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed (London, 1875); OMMANNEY, The Athanasian Creed (London, 1875); IDEM, A Critical Dissertation on the Athanasian Creed (Oxford, 1897); BURN, The Athanasian Creed, etc., in ROBINSON, Texts and Studies (Cambridge, 1896); SMITH, The Athanasian Creed in The Month (1904), CIV, 366; SCHAFF, History of the Christian Church (New York, 1903), III; IDEM, The Creeds of Christendom (New York, 1884), I, 34; TIXERONT, in Dict. de theol. cath.; LOOFS, in HAUCK, Realencyklopadie fur prot. Theol., s. v. See also the recent discussion by Anglican writers: WELLDON, CROUCH, ELIOT, LUCKOCK, in the Nineteenth Century (1904-06).

 

QUICUMQUE vult salvus esse, ante omnia opus est, ut teneat catholicam fidem:

WHOEVER wishes to be saved must, above all, keep the Catholic faith.

Quam nisi quisque integram inviolatamque servaverit, absque dubio in aeternam peribit.

For unless a person keeps this faith whole and entire, he will undoubtedly be lost forever.

Fides autem catholica haec est: ut unum Deum in Trinitate, et Trinitatem in unitate veneremur.

This is what the catholic faith teaches: we worship one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity.

Neque confundentes personas, neque substantiam seperantes.

Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance.

Alia est enim persona Patris alia Filii, alia Spiritus Sancti.

For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Spirit.

Sed Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti una est divinitas, aequalis gloria, coeterna maiestas.

But the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one divinity, equal glory, and coeternal majesty.

Qualis Pater, talis Filius, talis Spiritus Sanctus.

What the Father is, the Son is, and the Holy Spirit is.

Increatus Pater, increatus Filius, increatus Spiritus Sanctus.

The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, and the Holy Spirit is uncreated

Immensus Pater, immensus Filius, immensus Spiritus Sanctus.

The Father is boundless, the Son is boundless, and the Holy Spirit is boundless.

Aeternus Pater, aeternus Filius, aeternus Spiritus Sanctus.

The Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, and the Holy Spirit is eternal.

Et tamen non tres aeterni, sed unus aeternus.

Nevertheless, there are not three eternal beings, but one eternal being.

Sicut non tres increati, nec tres immensi, sed unus increatus, et unus immensus.

So there are not three uncreated beings, nor three boundless beings, but one uncreated being and one boundless being.

Similiter omnipotens Pater, omnipotens Filius, omnipotens Spiritus Sanctus.

Likewise, the Father is omnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, the Holy Spirit is omnipotent.

Et tamen non tres omnipotentes, sed unus omnipotens.

Yet there are not three omnipotent beings, but one omnipotent being.

Ita Deus Pater, Deus Filius, Deus Spiritus Sanctus.

Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.

Et tamen non tres dii, sed unus est Deus.

However, there are not three gods, but one God.

Ita Dominus Pater, Dominus Filius, Dominus Spiritus Sanctus.

The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is Lord.

Et tamen non tres Domini, sed unus est Dominus.

However, there as not three lords, but one Lord.

Quia, sicut singillatim unamquamque personam Deum ac Dominum confiteri christiana veritate compelimur: ita tres Deos aut Dominos dicere catholica religione prohibemur.

For as we are obliged by Christian truth to acknowledge every Person singly to be God and Lord, so too are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say that there are three Gods or Lords.

Pater a nullo est factus: nec creatus, nec genitus.

The Father was not made, nor created, nor generated by anyone.

Filius a Patre solo est: non factus, nec creatus, sed genitus.

The Son is not made, nor created, but begotten by the Father alone.

Spiritus Sanctus a Patre et Filio: non factus, nec creatus, nec genitus, sed procedens.

The Holy Spirit is not made, nor created, nor generated, but proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Unus ergo Pater, non tres Patres: unus Filius, non tres Filii: unus Spiritus Sanctus, non tres Spiritus Sancti.

There is, then, one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three sons; one Holy Spirit, not three holy spirits.

Et in hac Trinitate nihil prius aut posterius, nihil maius aut minus: sed totae tres personae coaeternae sibi sunt et coaequales.

In this Trinity, there is nothing before or after, nothing greater or less. The entire three Persons are coeternal and coequal with one another.

Ita ut per omnia, sicut iam supra dictum est, et unitas in Trinitate, et Trinitas in unitate veneranda sit.

So that in all things, as is has been said above, the Unity is to be worshipped in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity.

Qui vult ergo salvus esse, ita de Trinitate sentiat.

He, therefore, who wishes to be saved, must believe thus about the Trinity.

Sed necessarium est ad aeternam salutem, ut incarnationem quoque Domini nostri Iesu Christi fideliter credat.

It is also necessary for eternal salvation that he believes steadfastly in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Est ergo fides recta ut credamus et confiteamur, quia Dominus noster Iesus Christus, Dei Filius, Deus et homo est.

Thus the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is both God and man.

Deus est ex substantia Patris ante saecula genitus: et homo est ex substantia matris in saeculo natus.

As God, He was begotten of the substance of the Father before time; as man, He was born in time of the substance of His Mother.

Perfectus Deus, perfectus homo: ex anima rationali et humana carne subsistens.

He is perfect God; and He is perfect man, with a rational soul and human flesh.

Aequalis Patri secundum divinitatem: minor Patre secundum humanitatem.

He is equal to the Father in His divinity, but inferior to the Father in His humanity.

Qui licet Deus sit et homo, non duo tamen, sed unus est Christus.

Although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ.

Unus autem non conversione divinitatis in carnem, sed assumptione humanitatis in Deum.

And He is one, not because His divinity was changed into flesh, but because His humanity was assumed unto God.

Unus omnino, non confusione substantiae, sed unitate personae.

He is one, not by a mingling of substances, but by unity of person.

Nam sicut anima rationalis et caro unus est homo: ita Deus et homo unus est Christus.

As a rational soul and flesh are one man: so God and man are one Christ.

Qui passus est pro salute nostra: descendit ad inferos: tertia die resurrexit a mortuis.

He died for our salvation, descended into hell, and rose from the dead on the third day.

Ascendit ad caelos, sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis: inde venturus est iudicare vivos et mortuos.

He ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

Ad cuius adventum omnes homines resurgere habent cum corporibus suis: et reddituri sunt de factis propriis rationem.

At His coming, all men are to arise with their own bodies; and they are to give an account of their own deeds.

Et qui bona egerunt, ibunt in vitam aeternam: qui vero mala, in ignem aeternum.

Those who have done good deeds will go into eternal life; those who have done evil will go into the everlasting fire.

Haec est fides catholica, quam nisi quisque fideliter firmiterque crediderit, salvus esse non poterit. Amen.

This is the Catholic faith. Everyone must believe it, firmly and steadfastly; otherwise He cannot be saved. Amen.