The Opening of the Nicene Creed

by Brian A. Graebe

The changes to the English translation of the Mass proposed this past summer received a good deal of press, in both the Catholic and secular media. While these changes were evaluated by diverse criteria (according to the pre-set agenda of various groups), the stated objective of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was simply a response to the 2001 Instruction of the Holy See, Liturgiam Authenticam (On the use of vernacular languages in the publication of the books of the Roman liturgy). Following upon Sacrosanctum Concilium, this latest Instruction voiced the specific intent that "the original [Latin] text, insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner . . ."¹ Among the many changes approved (and awaiting a final imprimatur from Rome), were translations which more closely mirror the Latin standard,² translations which move further from that standard,³ or translations which could have been changed for more exactness but for various reasons were left in place.⁴

Among the less-commented-upon changes is the opening of the Nicene Creed. Since the first English-language Roman Missal was approved in 1972, congregations from New York to Sydney have been saying, "We believe in one God . . ." The USCCB unanimously voted for a stricter translation of the Missale Romanum, in which the Latin Creed begins "Credo in unum Deum . . .," or "I believe in one God . . ." At first glance, this change seems little worthy of commentary. As any first-year Latin student will affirm, Credo means "I believe." For an assembly striving to translate "in the most exact manner," the discussion would seem to end there.

And yet it does not end there, or at least should not. In the first place, one ought not simply to rest content with literalness, as numerous other changes, or lack thereof, belie. As mentioned briefly above, a pure word-for-word translation of Latin was clearly not the goal, at least not in all circumstances. Rather, so many of these changes are inextricably linked to matters of theology, politics, and history that only through a broad and comprehensive look at any particular change can one hope fully to understand why certain alterations were made, and only then proceed to evaluate these changes in a full light.

The complications latent in this translation trace their origins to the Council of Nicea. Convened in 325 by Constantine, this first ecumenical council sought to state definitively the Church's views regarding Christ's divinity. Arianism, the gravest threat to the nascent Church, challenged the uncreated divinity of Christ and his equality with the Father. Thus, the Nicene Creed emerged as the universal Church's Symbol of Faith, affirming that the Son of God is "begotten, not made, one in being with the Father."⁵ Of immediate interest, however, is how the Creed began. Written in the lingua franca of the time, the Greek Creed opens with the words: (Greek text) [We believe in one God].⁶ Even the Latin translations of this official text preserve the first-person plural opening: Credimus in unum Deum. On a purely historical basis, then, the case for the existing English version seems clear. Further adaptations, however, soon muddle that clarity.

When post-Nicean controversies challenged, inter alia, the dogma of the hypostatic union, a second ecumenical council convened at Constantinople in 381 to reaffirm and expand the teachings of Nicea. For the narrow focus of this present inquiry, it is enough to state that while the council fathers adjusted the wording of various parts of the Creed, the opening remained the same. And yet this "perfected form" is not quite the same as the Creed which has been standardized for the past millennium. Two noteworthy changes took place in the Western version that caused a divergence from the Constantinopolitan standard. The later, and far more consequential, adaptation was the famous, filioque, affirming that the Holy Spirit proceeds both from the Father and the Son. This particular theological point has been the source of innumerable commentaries, all of which lie beyond the scope of this exploration. Suffice it to say that the earlier change occasioned far less division between West and East.

Almost immediately after Constantinople, the Latin rendering of the Creed began to use the first-person singular. Thus, in the Collectio Dionysiana of Dionysius Exiguus, published roughly a century after Constantinople, the Creed begins, "Credo in unum Deum [I believe in one God]." Here, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed seems to have followed the pattern of the much older Apostles' Creed. From the earliest recordings, the Eastern creeds begin with, "We believe in one God," while the Western versions employ the first person singular.⁷ Why the difference? Most speculation centers on the varying impact the Arian threat had upon the East and West. As the threat was significantly graver to the Eastern Churches (evidenced in the centers of theological action of the time: Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Nicea, Constantinople, Chalcedon), these liturgies sought a collective statement of the faithful. In proclaiming "We believe," the East was confirming that the truths of the Symbol were not mere individual beliefs, but rather the defined and dogmatic belief of the Church herself. The collective nature of the Creed, then, became a bulwark of faith, strength in numbers, against Arianism and the host of other heresies flourishing in various regions of the Eastern Church.

Meanwhile, the West remained largely immune to these theological controversies. The Creed, therefore, "did not find its way into the Mass of the Western Church at so early a period, for the reason, given by some, that this Church never fell into any of the errors spoken of, and that, therefore, since its faith was evident to all, there was no necessity of making open profession of it."⁸ As a result, the Creed became more and more linked with its role in the baptismal liturgy. Catechumens would recite a creed as their public profession of the faith to which they were being admitted. It thus became appropriate for the Creed to reflect this personal purpose: here, the individual believer avows, "Credo in unum Deum." The Creed stands, then, "in the singular as is fitting in view of its origins in the baptismal liturgy."⁹ Over time, the Creed became a fixed part of the Ordo Missae, bridging the Mass between the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Indeed, by "the 11th century, praying the Profession of Faith during Mass, once a regional custom, became a universal practice in the West. The Creed was introduced into the Mass at this point because baptisms were celebrated then."¹⁰ Interestingly, the first part of the Mass was referred to for centuries as the "Mass of the Catechumens," since those who were unbaptized would leave the church after the Creed (the belief in the faith to which they aspired) and before the "Mass of the Faithful" began. Due to this baptismal link, the Latin-rite Creed has preserved its first-person singular wording, unchanged, since its immediate post-Constantinopolitan adoption.

Some conciliar questions

The Creed, or at least its opening, remained fixed and unchallenged for approximately a millennium. The gates were thrown open, however, with the promulgation of Sacrosanctum Concilium in 1963. When the Second Vatican Council issued this Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, it decreed that:

Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites. But since the use of the Mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the Liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended . . . It is for the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority . . . to decide whether, and to what extent, the vernacular is to be used; their decrees are to be approved, that is, confirmed, by the Apostolic See.¹¹

Full revision of the Mass took time, of course, but the compaction of its implementation is startling, especially by ecclesiastical standards. "By Holy Thursday, 1969, Pope Paul VI had approved a thoroughly revised Missal . . . and only four years later (1973) the English-language versions of all the new texts were published" (italics added).¹² This rush to the vernacular fell under the auspices of the International Commission for English in the Liturgy (ICEL), a group which almost single-handedly, in an unimaginable timeframe, translated the entire corpus of the Roman Rite into the common language of hundreds of millions of English-speaking Catholics around the globe.

Among the countless instances where the ICEL choices in translation are questionable are the opening words to the Creed. In a clear departure from the Latin text, Roman Missals the world over now began the Creed with the words, "We believe." The question, then, becomes why. Two possibilities emerge: one historical, the other liturgical. Historically, ICEL may have been attempting to reinstitute the original Greek form of the Creed, essentially rolling back a millennium-and-a-half of Western theological tradition. More likely, however, is the liturgical explanation. "The shift to the plural [has been] seen by some critics as part of an excessive post-Vatican II emphasis on the communal dimension of worship."¹³ While circumstantial evidence weighs heavily towards the latter interpretation, a clear answer to the rationale behind "We believe" remains conjectural. To get to the heart of the issue, however, one must first examine the history of ICEL and English liturgy in general, and then move from an exploration not of what the motivation behind "We believe" was, but, rather, what it ought to be.

From the start, ICEL translations received widespread criticism for their pedestrian and altogether insipid tenor, coupled with far too much license. These criticisms have extended from the pews all the way to Rome. No less a figure than the Prefect for the Congregation of Divine Worship, Jorge Cardinal Medina Estevez, recently deemed that ICEL "in its present form is not in a position to render to the bishops, to the Holy See, and to the English-speaking faithful an adequate level of service."¹⁴ How could this commission, charged with such a lofty responsibility, seem to have abnegated so radically? Part of the answer lies in interpreting exactly what Rome desired when it came to the translation mandate.

In their defense, members of ICEL will often cite a 1969 Vatican document offering guidelines on matters of translation, entitled Comme le Prevoit. A brief excerpt helps to explain the broad license that ICEL took during the post-conciliar rush-to-translate: "Texts translated from another language are clearly not sufficient for the celebration of a fully renewed liturgy. The creation of new texts will be necessary."¹⁵ There can be little doubt that, taken alone, the goal of one instructed by Comme le Prevoit was not literalness. As Bishop Donald Trautman points out, although "the authority of this 1969 document has subsequently been modified, those sentences still provide a valid historical insight into what was approved thinking at one time in the life of the official church."¹⁶ Two points must be considered here: first, the authority of the document in itself, and secondly, the subsequent modifications to which Trautman alludes.

To the first point, Comme le Prevoit must be read, in the words of Annibale Bugnini, as the "working tool" it was intended to be in this period of almost unprecedented flux.¹⁷ As Bugnini documents in his memoirs, "the text of the Instruction was published in the semi-official publication of the Holy See, Notitiae, but it never appeared in the official Acta Apostolicae Sedis."¹⁸ Debate over the authority of Comme le Prevoit soon became moot, however, as subsequent dicta from the Vatican have tilted unequivocally towards a literalist approach.

Literally speaking

Having had some time to allow the dust of liturgical reform to settle, the Vatican became increasingly concerned at what it viewed as excessive license in much of the English-language Mass. Lest any confusion linger over Rome's intent, Pope John Paul II directly addressed this matter with a group of United States bishops in 1993:

One of your responsibilities in this regard . . . is to make available exact and appropriate translations of the official liturgical books so that, following the required review and confirmation by the Holy See, they may be an instrument and guarantee of a genuine sharing in the mystery of Christ and the Church: lex orandi, lex credendi. The arduous task of translation must guard the full doctrinal integrity and, according to the genius of each language, the beauty of the original texts.¹⁹

Judging by the dearth of "exact translations" and the absence of any movement towards this end, the Holy See realized that greater imperative was required. Thus arrived Liturgiam Authenticam, perhaps the most consequential liturgical document since the promulgation of the Rite of Paul VI.

"Issued May 7, 2001, by the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW), the 35-page document was the cause of much joy among Catholics who are frustrated" with "less-than-inspiring Mass translations."²⁰ Essentially, Liturgiam Authenticam voiced explicitly what had been the theme of a growing chorus of Vatican liturgists in the post-conciliar years:

. . . The translation of the liturgical texts of the Roman Liturgy is not so much a work of creative innovation as it is of rendering the original texts faithfully and accurately into the vernacular language. The original text, insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses."²¹

Clearly, a thoroughly revised translation was in order, and the USCCB convocation this past summer heeded Rome's call. After numerous drafts, revisions, and discussions, the degree to which the approved revisions conform to Liturgiam's mandate can be debated on many fronts. Should Rome accept this revised Missal, however, the Creed will once more begin in the first-person singular. With so much complicated history behind it, however, one cannot help but ask, not what the Creed will say, but what it should say.

Returning to Credo

The strongest case for the first-person plural lies in the original Greek version of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. As established above, pisteuomen incontrovertibly translates as "we believe." For historical accuracy, a fork seems to emerge, dividing the Greek and Latin traditions. Down which road ought the English to travel? To form an answer, one must look beyond an isolated Creed and into its larger ramifications throughout the liturgy. Specifically, one must call to mind the very reasons why the Latin rite adopted Credo in the first place. As discussed above, the Creed's liturgical use has, from time immemorial, been intimately connected to baptism: the individual baptizandus would profess his beliefs before the assembled faithful, and over time the Creed became an institutionalized part of the Ordinary of the Mass. This historical connection, taken in a wider liturgical sense, has never been lost, even in translation.

At no point in the Church's liturgical life does the sacrament of baptism, being reborn of water and the spirit, have greater prominence than at the great Easter Vigil. In a wonderful continuum from ancient times, catechumens are initiated into the Church while the faithful themselves renew their baptismal promises. The sprinkling of holy water affirms the baptismal rite each one has received. Most tellingly, this explicit reaffirmation of the Creed retains its individual character.

In the order of the Easter Vigil, the priest asks the faithful if they believe the various parts of the Creed he professes. Beginning with a series of rejections (e.g., of Satan and his works and pomps), the priest then proceeds to a series of affirmations (e.g., in God the Father Almighty). A look at the exact wording, of both the Latin and English (here transliterated), is most telling:

Sacerdos: Abrenuntiatis Satanae?

Omnes: Abrenuntio.

Sacerdos: Creditis in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, creatorem caeli et terrae?

Omnes: Credo.

Priest: Do you reject Satan?

All: I do (reject him).

Priest: Do you believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth?

All: I do (believe).

The above excerpt carries enormous ramifications for the Credo dilemma. Here the faithful do not recite the Creed, but rather respond to the priest. In posing these articles of faith, the priest questions the faithful as a whole (evidenced in the use of the second-person plural, a nuance that does not carry over into the English). Despite the collective question, the respondents, denoted together as All, nevertheless answer in the first-person singular. Clearly, this is a matter of personal affirmation of faith, individually declared, and yet collected as one united voice of belief. The baptismal link to the Creed argues heavily in favor of the "I believe" revision. Any "restorationist" intent on the part of those upholding "We believe" must surely cede not only to overwhelming historical settlement, but also to the permeated liturgical ramifications that the words "I believe" carry.

The ramifications of "I believe" extend even beyond sacramental connections, and into the actual impact upon the believer. "It is worth speculating what effect this might have on the faithful. It may well be that Mass-goers, suddenly saying 'I believe in one God,' will be jolted into a realization that they are making a personal profession of faith, rather than going along (often unreflectively) with the congregation."²² If ICEL's original intent was not a restoration of the Greek, but rather a communal ideal, then that goal itself must be re-examined in this personal light.

And yet all such speculations of intent suddenly fall by the wayside when confronted by the text of Liturgiam Authenticam:

The Creed is to be translated according to the precise wording that the tradition of the Latin Church has bestowed upon it, including the use of the first person singular, by which is clearly made manifest that "the confession of faith is handed down in the Creed, as it were, as coming from the person of the whole Church, united by means of the Faith (italics added).²³

The Holy See has left little room for creative interpretation, effectively voiding any recourse to a broadly-read Comme le Prevoit. Any lingering yen for "we believe" must shift the debate away from ICEL and to the original Latin text itself. "If our Holy Mother the Church should want us to say 'we believe' in English during Mass then the same Church could by a sacred act . . . impose a new Latin liturgical formula having credimus and we would joyfully translate it using 'we believe.'"²⁴ Liturgiam Authenticam, however, had no such changes in mind. And so the U.S. bishops complied. This debate, however, ought not to be cast in the authoritarian roles some would prefer. "I believe" is not a better translation because Rome mandated it. Rome mandated it because it is a better translation — for all of the historical and liturgical reasons discussed above.

Catechism confusions

And so all seems resolved in this unexpectedly rich corner of the liturgical world, until a final hurdle comes along. Barely does the ink dry on the conclusions reached above when one reads paragraph 167 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"I believe" (Apostles' Creed) is the faith of the Church professed personally by each believer, principally during Baptism. "We believe" (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed) is the faith of the Church confessed by the bishops assembled in council or more generally by the liturgical assembly of believers. "I believe" is also the Church, our mother, responding to God by faith as she teaches us to say both "I believe" and "We believe."

The passage above is the same in both the 1992 and 1997 versions of the Catechism, and is transliterated both from the original French and the typical Latin editions. How, then, to reconcile the Catechism with the very explicit demands of Liturgiam Authenticam?

The task is as frustrating as it is difficult. One begins by questioning the very existence of 167, given how it appears, at least prima facie, to contradict the actual wording of the Creed in the Latin and French Orders of Mass.²⁵ Settling this issue remains necessary however, both to tie up all "loose ends" and to preserve doctrinal consistency. It seems like the only resolution, and far from a satisfactory one, is to walk a fine interpretive line. "We believe" is the faith of the liturgical assembly of believers. That is why the priest, after concluding the Easter Vigil renewal of vows, declares, "This is our faith." So the Catechism rightly echoes that communal dimension. And yet the means by which that common faith is expressed remains a collection of individual professions — a plentitude of "I"s forming a clear, if not explicitly voiced, "We." And so the Church does, in fact, "teach us to say both 'I believe' and 'We believe.'" She simply does not instruct us to say the latter when the Nicene Creed is recited in the Ordinary of the Mass. The resolution is not a clear one, but in light of the explicit demands set forth by Liturgiam Authenticam (based on solid liturgical reasoning), it appears to be the best reconciliation of an unfortunate ambiguity in the recent Catechism.

With so much intricacy surrounding the translation of the single word, Credo, it is a small wonder that an entire revision of the Mass was ever approved by the USCCB. Among the myriad praises, lamentations, and sheer puzzlement over many of these translation choices, one can at the very least rest assured that in this instance, the bishops got it right. What will be the impact of saying, "I believe" when it becomes the new norm? Can such a thing even be measured? Only time will tell. As with the very word, credo, this is but the beginning. For now, English worshippers can eagerly await, and believe, a Creed which assumes a richer place in the historical and liturgical tradition of the Roman Rite.

End notes

1. Liturgiam Authenticam, 20.
2. For example, replacing the response to "The Lord be with you" to "And with your spirit" rather than "And also with you," a choice that clearly coincides with "Et cum spiritu tuo."
3. For example, removing the word "men" in the Creed: "for us men and for our salvation," a clear departure from the Latin "propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem."
4. Most famously the "pro vobis et pro multis" in the consecration, which controversially remains "for you and for all," rather than the exactly translated "many."
5. Genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri. There has been some debate on whether to adopt the derivative consubstantial in the English Mass, although episcopal opinion seems to have weighed against this Latinization.
6. Hilary of Poitiers in Henrici Denzinger, ed., Enchiridion symbolorum definitionem et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 33rd ed. (Friburgi Brisgoviae: Herder, 1965), 52.
7. Examples in the East can be found in the writings of Cyril of Jersualem and Epiphanius, while Western examples can be found in the writings of Ambrose, Augustine and the Psalter of Rufinus. cf. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionem et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 22, 30-31, 66-67; The Sources of Catholic Dogma, 4-9, 35.
8. John O'Brien, A History of the Mass and its Ceremonies in the Eastern and Western Church (New York: Benziger, 1879), 258.
9. Francois Amiot, History of the Mass, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1959), 60. Also, cf. Adrian Fortescue, The Mass (London: Longmans
10. Father Pat McCloskey, O'F.M., "I Believe' or 'We Believe'?," St. Anthony Messenger, March 2005. The exact year of Rome's adoption of the Creed is 1014: cf Armor, op. cit.
11. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 36, 1-3.
12. Helen Hull Hitchcock, "Roman Missal Translation Update: Bishops Receiver ICEL Missal Texts; Translation Norms," Adoremus Bulletin, Online edition Vol. X No. 1 March 2004.
13. John J. Allen Jr., "New Mass translation said to be 'elegant,' closer to the Latin." National Catholic Reporter, 23 January 2004.
14. Jorge Cardinal Medina Estevez to Bishop Maurice Taylor, Chairman of ICEL, dated October 26, 1999 in "Letter Calls for New ICEL Statutes," Origins 29, no. 30 (13 January 2000): 489.
15. Comme le Prevoit, No. 43
16. Donald W. Trautman, "Rome and ICEL," America, 4 March 2000, 8.
17. Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: 1948-1975, trans. Matthew J. O'Connell (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1990), 236.
18. Helen Hull Hitchcock and Susan Benofy referencing Bugnini, 236 no. 17, "Origin of ICEL's 'Original Texts' (Part III of III)," Adoremus Bulletin Online Edition, VI, no. 8 (November 2000): http://www.adoremus.org/11-00-ICELIII.html
19. Pope John Paul II, "Final ad limina remarks to U.S. Bishops' Groups," Origins 23, no. 30 (13 January 1994): 539.
20. John Burger, "Lost in Translation: How the New Mass Translation Will Affect You." Crisis. January 2002, 41.
21. Liturgiam Authenticam, 20.
22. Burger, 42-43.
23. Liturgiam Authenticam 65, quoting St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIa IIae, 1, 9.
24. John T. Zuhlsdorf, "What Does the Prayer Really Say?," The Wanderer, 25 August 2005, 6.
25. It is worthy to note that the English translation of Credo is almost entirely alone in its plurality. A random survey of major vernacular languages for example, reveal the French (je crois), Portuguese (creio), Italian (credo) and Spanish (creo) all employing the Latin singular.

Mr. Brian A. Graebe is a 2002 graduate of New York University (Philosophy, summa cum laude). He has taught Latin on a secondary school level, and has done graduate work at the American Academy in Rome. Currently he is a seminarian in the St. John Neumann program at St. Joseph's Seminary, studying, for the Archdiocese of New York.

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