An Introduction To The Creeds And To The Te Deum

An Introduction to the Creeds and to the Te Deum

Hearings

An Introduction to the Creeds and to the Te Deum

This is a history of the Catholic Creeds, from Apostolic times to the centuries of the Church Fathers. In the words of the author: "As professed scholars of the Eternal Word, incarnate, risen, ascended, it will not be less our duty to present evidence plainly and honestly, nor will it be less obvious if that duty is shirked. While we are collecting our facts, the more scientific method is, doubtless, to proceed from the known to the unknown. But when we come to explain them a theory is necessary, and with any theory an element of uncertainty is introduced. Why then should we not, in presenting our theory, retrace our steps, from the obscure to the obvious, from the days when the currents of Christian life and thought lay unseen beneath the surface of social life, to the days when the persecuted Church of the Catacombs, preserved through that mighty upheaval of ideas which has made our religion dominant in the world's history, found kings to be her nursing fathers and their queens her nursing mothers? I will therefore venture to begin from the beginning, passing from the evidence of the New Testament down to the final and polished forms of our Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, hoping by resolved restraint of language and imagination to commend my theory of their growth. To borrow an illustration from photography. In a clear light the exposure of a plate need only last a moment. In a dull light exposure must be prolonged, and we must be content with less definite outlines. Yet with patience we may hope to reproduce both distance and foreground. By patience we may hope to obtain in our study of " the faith" in apostolic times what above all we need, a sense of perspective, a standard of the relatively great and little thoughts which stirred in the minds of the first Christians. What was the secret of their persistency? What enabled an apostle to write: 'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith'?"