06 January 2015

The actual Nicene Creed

Despite thirty-four-and-a-half years of being Episcoplian and Roman Catholic, with an interregnum of twelves years of devout atheism, I have never in my life said the Nicene Creed during Mass, not one single time.  Nor has any Christian I know nor any since the latter decades of the fourth century.  The creed most people call the Nicene is properly the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, adopted at the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinopolis in 381.  There was a creed adopted at the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325, but it was much shorter.  Its text follows here, translation from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 1:

            We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible;
            And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, not made, consubstantial with the Father.  By whom all things were made, both which be in heaven and in earth.  Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate and was made man.  He suffered and the third day he rose again, and ascended into heaven.  And he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. 
            And in the Holy Ghost. 

            And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not, or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence from the Father or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion—all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them.

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