"General truths": The modesty of the Athanasian Creed

From an 1816 sermon preached by Richard Laurence (then Regius Professor of Hebrew, later Archbishop of Cashel, 1822-38), at the episcopal visitation in the Diocese of Rochester. Laurence defends the Athanasian Creeds on the grounds of its modesty and moderation, against those critics who portray it "as an attempt to explain in detail, that which is confessedly inexplicable".

He states that this Creed makes no attempt to "explain" the Holy Trinity but is a rejection of erroneous teachings which had sought too precise definitions, as seen with the Sabellians who "anxious perhaps to preserve entire the divine essence ... strangely confused together the divine persons" and the Arians who "separated the substance". The Athanasian Creed, rather than being an exercise in scholastic speculation, consisted "only of the most general counterpositions" as a response to the speculations and definitions of "the Antitrinitarian hypothesis, under various forms and with various modifications":

If therefore we contemplate this Creed in that light in which it ought only to be contemplated, as contrasted with coeval heresies, we shall find in it no attempt to explain topics which are in themselves in explicable, but merely a simple declaration of opinions opposed to others of an obnoxious tendency. It states only leading propositions, so contradistinguished, omitting all investigation of particulars, and substituting general truths for general errors. Taken in this view, it is everywhere plain and unperplexed. It shortly points out what is the truth solely in reference to what is not the truth, or what has been alleged against it. We do not perceive in it any affectation of defining (as some have supposed ) how three distinct Persons subsist in one undivided essence, and of detailing the peculiar modes of their existence, but merely a simple assertion of the fact, as deducible from the sacred Scriptures. The air of explanation, which appears to run through it, applies wholly to the statement of points in which it differs from the adverse Creeds, and not to an exposition of the reasons upon which such points are grounded, or of any collateral speculations connected with them.

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