"Most tend to the preservation of unity and peace in the Church": PECUSA's BCP 1789 and the omission of the Athanasian Creed
A recent article at the North American Anglican addressed the absence of the Athanasian Creed from PECUSA's BCP 1789 and the 1801 Articles of Religion. It leads us to question if the decision to omit the Athanasian Creed from the liturgy and the Articles represented a serious rupture with the classical Anglican and Prayer Book tradition. Was it?
The interpretation of the Athanasian Creed given by Taylor and Burnet would suggest otherwise. Affirming the catholic truth of the articles set forth in the Athanasian Creed, Taylor nevertheless counsels that this Creed has a secondary nature:
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 without this symbol the faith of the apostles' 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.
As Taylor goes on to state, the Athanasian Creed (commonly so called) does not add "any new articles" to the Christian faith; it is "a further explication", after the Nicene Creed, of the apostolic confession.
Likewise, Burnet said of the Athanasian Creed that it "imports no more than the Belief of the Doctrine of the Trinity". In this sense, the Athanasian Creed says no more than the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, in affirming that which is revealed in holy Scripture:
we believe that the Doctrine which they declare, is contained in the Scriptures, and chiefly that which is the main Intent of them, which is to assert and profess the Trinity, therefore we do receive them; tho we must acknowledge that the Creed ascribed to Athanasius, as it was none of his, so it was never established by any General Council.
In Taylor and Burnet, therefore, we see a well-established school of thought which regarded the Athanasian Creed as secondary and certainly not essential to Trinitarian faith. From such a perspective, the duly constituted authorities of a national church omitting the Athanasian Creed from the liturgy and revising Article VIII cannot easily be regarded as a rupture when the essentials of Trinitarian faith continued to be confessed in creeds, liturgy, and Articles.
This helps to explain why the bishops of the Church of England responded positively to the request of the newly-created PECUSA for episcopal consecrations. This, of course, was after a delay, due to the English episcopate being disturbed by the proposed 1785 Prayer Book revision. As the Archbishops of Canterbury and York stated in their address to the 1786 General Convention:
We therefore most earnestly exhort you, that ... you restore to its integrity the Apostles' Creed, in which you have omitted an article ['He descended into hell'] merely, as it seems, from misapprehension of the sense in which it is understood by our church, nor can we help adding, that we hope you will think it but decent proof of the attachment which you profess to the services of our Liturgy, to give to the other two creeds a place in your Book of Common Prayer, even though the use of them should be left discretional.
Note that this request was for the Athanasian Creed - and, indeed, the Nicene Creed! - to be included in PECUSA's revision of the BCP but not necessarily required for liturgical use (which, of course, reflects the views of Taylor and Burnet). While the removed phrase was restored to the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed was also retained, the 1789 revision did not, of course, include the Athanasian Creed. As the minutes of the 1786 General Convention record, "On the question. Shall the Creed, commonly called the Athanasian Creed, be admitted in the Liturgy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America", "it was determined in the negative". This, however, did not prevent English bishops from consecrating William White and Samuel Provoost in 1787. In other words, PECUSA's decision not to include the Athanasian Creed in its liturgy was not regarded by the Church of England as undermining what the Archbishops had termed "the essential doctrines of our common faith".
The decision of the PECUSA General Convention to exclude the Athanasian Creed from the liturgy was hardly a surprise, reflecting widespread liturgical usage particularly in the mid-Atlantic and southern colonies. As Nelson notes in his study of Anglicanism in colonial Virginia, it was not unusual for it to be omitted, with parsons often citing the hostility of laity to the creed's use. Nor was this only to be found in the colonies or amongst those with an anti-Trinitarian theology. Gibson notes in his study of the 18th century Church of England that Thomas Sherlock - orthodox critic of Hoadly, Deism, and Socinianism, Bishop of London 1748-61 - agreed with a Dissenting representative "on the superfluity of the Athanasian creed". Secker - Archbishop of Canterbury 1758-68, described by Ingram in his study as "an opponent of theological heterodoxy and a patron of the theologically orthodox" - defended those who omitted the damnatory clauses from the saying of the Athanasian Creed:
Much less would we think unfavourably of anyone, who takes these condemning Clauses in too rigorous a Sense, and therefore only is afraid, from a Spirit of Charity and Humility, to join in them. Indeed, for the Sake of such, it may seem Pity, but either they had been originally omitted, (since though defensible, they are not necessary to be inserted in a Profession of Faith;) or the Limitations, with which they are to be understood, had been signified in two or three comprehensive Words.
Secker here invokes the memory of the failed 1689 Liturgy of Comprehension, which proposed a rubric interpreting the damnatory clauses as relating not to Trinitarian dogma but "only to those who obstinately deny the substance of the Christian Faith". His suggestion that the damnatory clauses could be excluded from the Creed is evidence of an unease amongst the theologically orthodox regarding these clauses.
Browne's later defence of the clauses, quoted in the North American Anglican article, does not provide a convincing response to such concerns. Theologically orthodox voices such as Secker were well aware of how the damnatory clauses could and should be interpreted: this, however, did not prevent him expressing a wish that "they had been originally omitted", and excusing those who did not recite them. This was to be reflected in the later Old High tradition, with mid-19th century bishops such as John Lonsdale also refusing to recite the clauses and urging that they be omitted, and William Jacobson proposing that the rubric be amended so as not to require use of the Athanasian Creed.
For another example of how the theologically orthodox could revise the Prayer Book so as to exclude the liturgical use of the Athanasian Creed, we can turn to Ireland's post-disestablishment 1878 revision. The Preface to the revision carefully expressed how this Creed was received by the Church of Ireland:
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.
The reference to "the truth of the Articles of the Christian Faith therein contained" is clearly not a full-throated endorsement of this Creed, but a modest statement - following after Taylor - that within the Creed is orthodox Trinitarian faith. Nor does it make any claim to the Athanasian Creed being necessary as "the Articles of the Christian Faith" are also to be found in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds: to again quote Taylor, "without this symbol the faith of the Apostles' Creed is entire". While Ireland's approach to the place of the Athanasian Creed in its revised Prayer Book was different to that taken by PECUSA, the same theological principles shaped and determined the decision.
And while Irish Anglican clergy subscribed - and continue to subscribe - to an unchanged Article VIII, the fact that there was and is no liturgical use of the Athanasian Creed distinguishes it from the other creeds and emphasises its secondary character. In other words, this is not a creed whose absence from the Prayer Book can be easily described as a 'signal weakness'.
In removing the Athanasian Creed from its Prayer Book in 1789, PECUSA, rather than engaging in an innovation necessarily and inherently linked to anti-Trinitarian theologies, was reflecting an enduring unease about this creed within theologically orthodox Anglican circles. Indeed, the case could be made that the excessive claims of the Athanasian Creed in the damnatory clauses, and what Taylor terms its "curiosity and minute particularities", undermined rather than aided the proclamation of Trinitarian faith: we might suggest that this would have been particularly so in the cultural context of the early American republic. The fact that the English episcopate consecrated bishops for PECUSA, in spite of the General Convention's vote not to include the Athanasian Creed in its revised Prayer Book or Articles, is evidence of a prevailing understanding that this creed had a secondary status.
It is, therefore, very difficult to regard the absence of this creed as "one of the signal weaknesses of the American Prayer Book tradition". There were theologically orthodox and prudent pastoral grounds for the decision, reflected in mainstream, orthodox Anglican thought elsewhere in the 18th and 19th centuries. What is more, removing the Athanasian Creed from liturgical usage, as in Ireland post-1878 and as was de facto increasingly the case in 19th century England (the 1906 Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline stated "the omission of the Creed is not uncommon"), placed Irish Anglican laity and many English Anglican congregations in a similar position to Episcopalians in the United States: Trinitarian faith was communicated, shaped, and sustained by the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, the Gloria Patri, the opening petitions of the Litany, the collect of Trinity Sunday, and other aspects of the liturgy, not by the Athanasian Creed.
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