'Agreeable to the Word of God': Irish wisdom on the Athanasian Creed

With reference to the Athanasian Creed (commonly so called), we have removed the Rubric directing its use on certain days; but, in so doing, this Church has not withdrawn its witness as expressed in the Articles of Religion, and here again renewed, to the truth of the Articles of the Christian Faith therein contained - from the Preface to the 1878 Irish revision of the Book of Common Prayer.

Amidst the debates in the disestablished Church of Ireland's concerning proposals for the revision of the BCP 1662, none was so fierce as that concerning the Athanasian Creed. The outcome - the Athanasian Creed was retained in the 1878 Book, the rubric for its liturgical use was removed, the text of Article 8 was unchanged - has the clear shape of a compromise.  But was it a compromise too far? From an Old High Church perspective, it might be thought that this represented something of a defeat.  Vigorous defence of the Athanasian Creed, after all, had been a characteristic of much High Church orthodoxy during the 18th century.  

Three factors, however, need to be considered before judging the 1878 revision to be, in this regard, a defeat for the High Church tradition.  The first is that the 1789 American Book, which omitted the Athanasian Creed and removed reference to it from Article 8, had been accepted as an acceptable revision by Anglicans elsewhere.

Secondly, it was already clear in the 18th century that the rubric directing use of this Creed was being ignored in some places. Controversy over it use continued into the 19th century.  The evangelical William Winstanley Hull published in 1831 his The Disuse of the Athanasian Creed Advisable.  In 1861 the Low Church Liturgical Amendment Society noted that "The damnatory clauses in the Athanasian Creed are so strongly objected to, that some of the laity refuse to use them, and some will not even stand up while the creed is being read".  The 1906 Report of the Royal Commission on Public Worship recorded that "the omission of the Creed is not uncommon", and pointed to the resolutions of the Northern and Southern Convocations in 1904 calling for discontinuation of its liturgical use.  In the words of the Northern Convocation, there were "grave difficulties which attend its recitation as a Creed by ordinary congregations".  

Thirdly, there was a recognition within some quarters of the High Church tradition that revision in some form was becoming increasingly necessary.  Thus, for example, William Jacobson (Bishop of Chester), described as "a strenuous upholder of the Creed", stated in the 1865 Convocation that he was "not unwilling to part with" the damnatory clauses.  

Those urging reform of the rubric directing liturgical use of the Athanasian Creed could also, of course, point to a significant supportive figure in the High Church tradition, Jeremy Taylor.  Taylor's caution regarding the Creed was carefully stated (in A Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying), dissenting from the clauses requiring for salvation acceptance of the propositions, while affirming that it is a "further explication" of the Apostles' Creed, not adding "any new articles":

But now if I should be questioned concerning the symbol of Athanasius ... I confess I cannot see that moderate sentence and gentleness of charity in his preface and conclusion, as there was in the Nicene creed ... For the articles themselves, I am most heartily persuaded of the truth of them, and yet I dare not say all that are not so, are irrevocably damned; because citra hoc symbolum, the faith of the apostle's creed is entire; and he that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved, that is, he that believeth such a belief as is sufficient disposition to be baptized, that faith with the sacrament is sufficient for heaven ... And, indeed, to me it seems very hard to put uncharitableness into the creed, and so to make it become as an article of faith ...

And yet I must observe, that this symbol of Athanasius and that other of Nice, offer not at any new articles; they only pretend to a further explication of the articles apostolical, which is a certain confirmation, that they did not believe more articles to be of belief necessary to salvation; if they intended these further explanations to be as necessary as the dogmatical articles of the Apostles' Creed, I know not how to answer all that may be objected against that; but the advantage that I shall gather from their not proceeding to new matters, is laid out ready for me in the words of Athanasius, saying of this creed, “This is the catholic faith”.

What we might call the 'Taylor Option' was - rather appropriately - adopted by the Church of Ireland in the 1878 revision.  Retaining its place in Article 8 and with the Preface proclaiming a version of Taylor's 'heartily persuaded of the truth' of the faith proclaimed in the Athanasian Creed, the text of the (unchanged) Creed itself was also to be found in the 1878 Book.  Removing the rubric directing its liturgical use, however, ensured that the debates over such use ceased.  Rather than being a cause of ongoing division and controversy, and so potentially undermining Trinitarian faith, the Creed was recognised as an affirmation of orthodoxy, a witness to "the truth of the Articles of the Christian Faith".

One Church of England commentator, looking back in the early 1920s to the Church of Ireland's first fifty years as a disestablished Church, particularly noted the views of William Alexander, a High Churchman (and husband of hymn writer Cecil Alexander), who had been Bishop of Derry at disestablishment and would later become Archbishop of Armagh:

For many years the struggle raged over the use of the Athanasian Creed. Many were the proposals and all excited heat. At last the Creed was printed without the English rubric, and was allowed - unlike in the American Church - to retain its place in the Eighth Article. Pusey and Liddon thundered that this involved the irretrievable loss of the place of the Church of Ireland in Catholic Christendom. Bishop Alexander who fought hard against this solution lived to say "the decision come to by the Church of Ireland upon the Athanasian Creed now strikes me as one of consummate wisdom." 

The wisdom of the Irish approach - the 'Taylor option' - might be detected in the fact that the Athanasian Creed remains in the Church of Ireland's BCP 2004, something not true of Common Worship or, indeed, for those heirs of Pusey and Liddon using the Liturgy of the Hours. 

Divisive debates over the liturgical use of the Athanasian Creed, which increased in intensity during the 19th century, detracted from this Creed's function as a witness to Trinitarian orthodoxy.  It was "consummate wisdom" to end those debates, while ensuring that the Athanasian Creed continued as part of the Formularies. What is more, it was proved to be a High Church wisdom, delivering the Athanasian Creed from the charge that it was a divisive and unreasonable liturgical formula while securing it a place within the Formularies, as a secondary witness to orthodox Trinitarian faith.