NICAEA AT 1700: REFLECTIONS FROM ROME
For the past four years, I have been on a quest to understand the Nicene Creed.
Time after time, I heard the same questions from parishioners: “Why do we say this every Sunday?” “Can I come to church if I don’t believe every word of this?” “What is so important about it?” I knew that many of the church’s greatest minds had a hand in the creation of the Creed, but their brilliance seemed lost to my parishioners – and to me. So I studied it in depth. I wrote a podcast covering the Creed’s history. I even wrote a book about the Creed’s history!
In the process of learning about the Creed, I have also been learning about recent ecumenical efforts centered on a common Nicene faith. I attended the conference “Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium,” held in Rome, Italy this past June. The conference’s organizers knew that the Nicene Creed was one of the most important creeds that Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches all affirmed. They held the conference on the 1700 th anniversary of the council to remind us of what we have in common and to encourage us to further reunification.
Most of the dialogue was between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theologians, who made up the majority of the conference goers. I was there with a few other Anglicans from around the world, and the conference organizers worked to make us feel welcome. I have walked away from the conference with many takeaways about the state of worldwide ecumenism.
1. I met Rowan Williams AND Pope Leo!
Alright, you got me. This isn’t a takeaway about the state of the church, but it is a takeaway about how an overly excitable church nerd like me can have all his dreams come true. Pope Leo greeted us for a private papal audience in which he encouraged our work and shared his desire to bring about greater unity in his reign. He also apologized for being late to meet us, stating, “I’m sorry I’m a bit late; I’m not even a month into this new job and so I’m still learning something every day!”
For me, the greater treat was meeting Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury and one of the most profound thinkers of our day. We had a lovely conversation about substance metaphysics, his future book plans (no, I’m not telling you what they are), and his grandchildren.
He even tolerated my selfie request!
But most impressively of all, Rowan Williams led the Anglican delegation in song.
At one point, the Syrian Orthodox (1) delegation was leading worship. They noted that a beloved figure in their church had just passed away. They wanted us to remember him by singing a traditional Syrian hymn. That hymn just happens to be in the Episcopal hymnal - #312, “Strengthen for service, Lord.” The speaker invited all the Anglicans at the conference to lead them in singing the hymn. We Anglicans looked at each other, somewhat terrified. I know that hymn; but I don’t know it well enough to sing it from memory, and I’d left my hymnal at home. We had been given no forewarning of this and didn’t want to cause an ecumenical nightmare by singing the hymn poorly. Thank God that Rowan Williams stood up in the middle of the confusion and boomed out, in his lilting Welsh baritone, the first words of the hymn. The rest of us followed in his footsteps.
Sometimes, leadership is singing out when no one else will.
2. The filioque clause is old news.
For centuries, three little words have divided the West from the East: “and the Son.” (Or one medium-sized word if you speak Latin, in which case the word is filioque – hence the term “filioque clause.”)
The Western Nicene Creed reads as follows:
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
The Eastern Nicene Creed reads simply:
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
Who proceeds from the Father.
The Eastern version of the Creed is the original text. Over the course of centuries, churches in the West adopted the filioque clause until its practice became uniform. While we are not exactly sure as to why the West modified the Creed, it probably did so to affirm the Son’s divinity. If Jesus was involved in the generation of another member of the Trinity, then he truly had to be fully and completely divine – a fact many Western Christians wished to impress on the non-Nicene churches of the Goths and Vandals.
The Eastern Church has objected to the filioque clause for two main reasons. First, creeds are by their very nature communal documents created through painstaking diplomacy and consensus building. The West was not allowed to change the text of the Creed on their own, no matter how pure their intentions. Second, Eastern Orthodox theologians have long worried that involving the Son in the Spirit’s procession takes away the Father’s unique role in the Trinity. Most Nicene-affirming Trinitarians believe that the Father, Son, and Spirit are exactly alike in every way except their relationships to each other. The Father begets; the Son is begotten. The Father breathes out, and the Spirit proceeds. To say that the Son also breathes out the Spirit is to confuse the relationships among the Persons – and to take away the Father’s unique role.
This topic has divided the church for about fifteen centuries. It was one of the primary drivers behind the Great Schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. At this conference, however, it was mostly passe. When we worshiped together, we used the original (Eastern) version of the Creed. Western theologians may still believe the filioque, but none of them pushed for its inclusion in the Creed. After all, Christians believe all sorts of things that aren’t in the Nicene Creed, and that is just fine. Eastern and Western Christians seem to have happily agreed the filioque clause is one of those matters. Eastern Christians need not accept it in the Creed, and Western Christians need not be condemned for believing it to be true.
3. The date of Easter
Another matter of discussion – and perhaps the one on which agreement seems most tangibly close – is the celebration of Easter. Indeed, in Pope Leo’s address to us, he emphasized the importance of finding a common date for celebrating our greatest feast. One of the many ironies of this issue is that the Council of Nicaea already set the date of Easter back in 325 AD: find the date of the spring equinox, then find the first full moon on or after that date, then celebrate Easter on the next Sunday after that. Both East and West still use the Nicene formula, yet they still come up with different dates. Western churches use the Gregorian calendar to determine the spring equinox, while some Eastern churches use the older (and less accurate) Julian calendar. Sometimes the two coincide, as was the case this past year; other times they can diverge substantially.
The solution seems simple enough. If the East was to move to the Gregorian calendar, the problem would be solved. Indeed, several Orthodox presenters suggested that the church should do exactly that. None of the conference speakers could explain why the Orthodox churches had not done so yet; however, an Orthodox attendee explained the problem to me over drinks at the local pub. If all Orthodox churches changed the date of Easter by changing their calendar, it would have ramifications for when other saints’ days are celebrated. Some of these saints are very important to the churches of Eastern Europe, who feel profoundly disrespected at the suggestion they celebrate the saints on a day other than the date the saint died. Traditions take on a life of their own; even a less accurate calendar can become sacred when its dates are marked by martyrs’ blood.
4. The primacy of the pope
To no one’s surprise, the role of the bishop of Rome continues to be a major roadblock to the reunification of Christian traditions. However, Christians have more common ground here than one might think. Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican Christians all share the notion of primacy: that some bishops have more authority than others due to their seniority or position. In the Episcopal Church, we have a Presiding Bishop that convenes the other bishops for meetings and presides over ecclesiastical discipline for bishops. In Orthodox churches, bishops of major metropolitan areas – Istanbul, Moscow, etc. – hold authority over other bishops in their area. For Catholics, of course, the bishop of Rome is the final authority over all bishops in the world, since they believe Jesus named Peter, the first bishop of Rome, the head of the church. (2) Most of the Orthodox speakers I saw were willing to accept that the pope holds some kind of primacy. The question is what that primacy consists in. No one seemed willing to allow the pope to singlehandedly and infallibly define matters of religious doctrine. Several Catholic speakers suggested that the pope’s primacy could be reimagined going forward. Perhaps the pope could function like an appellate judge, reviewing cases of appeal but not directly intervening in a church unless called to do so. Others noted that this system has been tried before in the medieval church, and usually resulted in the appellate bishop’s rulings being ignored. For now, it seems there is a willingness to find compromise, but no one can yet see what a satisfactory compromise might look like.
5. Gender and sexuality are not on the table yet.
During the discussion on papal infallibility, one member of the Old Catholic Church in Utrecht raised his hand. He noted that previous popes had declared the Old Catholic Church’s ordinations invalid because they ordained women. He asked the panel to help him understand what possibilities there were for unity in light of that statement.
No one took him up on his request.
Ever since the middle of the last century, churches have fought inside themselves at least as much as between themselves: over women’s ordination, over LGBTQ+ identities, and more. Those fights show no signs of resolving themselves, and were not much discussed at the conference. Even clerical celibacy, a major sticking point between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, received only a single breakout session at the conference. (Catholics do not allow priests to marry, Orthodox allow priests to marry prior to their ordination, and Anglicans allow priests to marry at any time – thankfully for this single Anglican priest!)
Conclusion
Where does all of this leave us Christians? We are still very much en route to unity, but closer than we have been in a very long time. I do not expect to see a grand reunification of the world’s major denominations any time soon. There is still no consensus on papal authority, and issues of gender and sexuality will continue to roil churches for years to come before any consensus is reached.
Still, we should not overlook how historic this moment is.
The filioque clause divided the church for almost 1500 years. Now, in the span of a few decades of reflection, it has become a non-issue. Churches have celebrated Easter on different dates for centuries. All of a sudden, the will to find a common date has materialized. Something is happening to God’s church. In the face of the deep anxieties of the 21 st century, Christians are coming together instead of pulling apart.
We don’t have all the answers we seek yet. How remarkable it is, though, that we have achieved so much common ground in so little time. What else might we be able to do by God’s grace? It seems worth the trouble to find out as we continue to walk the common road created by our Nicene faith.
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1 The presence of Oriental Orthodox Christians at this conference was significant. Oriental Orthodox Christians do not affirm the Council of Chalcedon (451), which asserted that Christ had two natures (human and divine) but was one person. There has been significant misunderstanding and division between Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox, who affirm the Council of Chalcedon. The fact that both were able to come together at this conference is a deeply encouraging sign for all who hope for unity.
2 See, for instance, John Paul II’s papal bull Ut Unum Sint; https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25051995_ut-unum-sint.html
