Credo: I believe

The recent Covenant post by Bishop Daniel Martins (Springfield, TEC) on the use of the Creed in the Eucharist is a welcome affirmation that the Creed is rightly part of the liturgy.  This is contrary to those liturgists who, pursuing a primitivist agenda (what Ratzinger termed "archeologism"), tell us that the Creed should be removed as it had no place in the earliest liturgies.

Unfortunately, however, there is something of that spirit of primitivism and archeologism in the view expressed by Bishop Martin regarding the form of the Creed.  Referring to the liturgical reformers of the 1960s and 70s, he says:

These scholars agreed to recast the Nicene Creed in the first-person plural: “We believe.” Marion Hatchett’s magisterial Commentary on the American Prayer Book (p. 333) notes that the original conciliar form of the creed indeed used the plural, that its liturgical use in the Western church was a relatively late development, at a time when vocal participation by the laity was at a low ebb, when it was modified to the singular form (“I believe”). Hence, the plural form adopted in the 1970s was not an innovation, but a restoration.

By contrast, of course, the classical Prayer Book tradition retains the 'I believe' of traditional liturgical practice.  And this traditional liturgical practice cannot easily be dismissed.  The use of the Creed in the Eucharist in the East started in the 5th century.  In the West it emerged in the 6th century, at the direction of the Council of Toledo (589AD).  To refer to this as "a relatively late development" is something a stretch.  It predates, for example, by quite a few centuries the celebration of Trinity Sunday, "a relatively late development", the removal of which would signal profound doctrinal confusion and error.

Grounding the Church's celebration of the Eucharist in the Christological confession was no retrograde step.  It was a profound enrichment, a proclamation that the One whom the Church encounters in Word and Sacrament is "of one substance with the Father".

In the Latin West the liturgical form of the Creed from the outset was Credo in unum Deum - 'I believe'.  In the context of the liturgy, this carries more significance than the conciliar 'We believe'.  It is appropriate for a council of bishops, exercising the teaching ministry and their responsibility to "drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine", to proclaim 'We believe'.  In the liturgy, however, 'I believe' is the appropriate form of the confession of Faith as a response to the grace offered in the sacraments: 'I baptize thee', 'The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee'.  The use of 'I' proclaims that the gift bestowed in Baptism is being received, and the gift set before us in the Eucharist will be received, with "lively Faith" (cf. Article 29).

Nor is this form, as the Bishop suggests, "ecumenically regressive".  As he notes, the new translation of the Roman Missal has reverted to the Prayer Book tradition's 'I believe'.  This is also the form used in English translations of the Orthodox Liturgy (see, for example, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America's Liturgy of St John Chrysostom).  What is "ecumenically regressive" is to retain 'We believe', ignoring the traditional liturgical practice of both East and West.

The 'I believe' of the Nicene Creed in the classical Prayer Book tradition thus embodies traditional liturgical practice, sound catechesis, and an ecumenical commitment in a way that the 60's innovation of 'We believe' does not.  Nor is this the only way in which the Prayer Book tradition's form of the Creed is liturgically and theologically superior - more of which tomorrow.