A Happily Startling Advent

 

Advent at Grace

I suppose it is appropriate to be happily startled by the Nicene Creed on the first Sunday of Advent. That was my experience at Grace Episcopal Church in Woodlawn last Sunday when we came to that moment in the liturgy. 

Grace Church is an Anglo-Catholic parish in an old neighborhood that was once thriving but now bears that inner-city urban blight seen in the wake of white flight and new suburbs. The church sponsors a soup kitchen, a food pantry, a clothes closet, and a warming station on cold winter nights. Their motto is, “Where street and altar meet,” doing everything they can for neighbors in need.

I like to visit Grace, especially during Advent, for a dose of Anglo-Catholic liturgy. This past Sunday, the service moved along as expected with prayers, chants, and hymns. The service was printed out for congregants to follow. When it came time for the Nicene Creed, my first delightful surprise was in the gender-neutral language. Instead of talking about how Christ “was made man,” with the incarnation, the creed stated he “became truly human.”

Another gender-neutral turn was in reference to the Holy Spirit. I have never understood the Holy Spirit as “he,” anyway (if I were to think of gender, I would think in feminine terms). I usually just shuffle through those gender pronouns in the creed without giving them voice. This translation of the creed we read on Sunday, however, gets around gender altogether by saying, “who proceeds from the Father” and “who has spoken through the prophets.”

But the real zinger for me was that the creed I recited with the congregation had no filioque clause (the part where it says the Spirit proceeds from the father and the son. Instead, it harked back to the very early form which simply states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Church history buffs know that the filioque clause was the final straw that launched a rift between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Church.

Tracking Down the Source

Maybe I’m a bit of a church nerd in this, but it was quite enlivening for me to hear the creed in this newer form that was also an older form. When I got home, I had to do some research to find out where this version of the Nicene Creed came from. (see the full text of the translation below).

I got help online from Trinity Episcopal Church in Concord, Massachusetts. In a letter to the congregation, their rector explains the “New Words for Old Words” that the parish would be using in their services. He explains that

The translation of the Nicene Creed we are using this summer comes from Enriching our Worship 1 which are supplemental liturgies prepared by the Standing Liturgical Commission of the Episcopal Church in 1997. There are three major changes in this translation: language around the incarnation, the filioque clause, and the removal of a gendered Holy Spirit.

In his letter, The Rev. Christopher Whiteman writes of the incarnation passage:

The difference here is the Son being “made man” or “becoming fully human.” The original Greek contains the word ánthrōpos from which we also derive the word anthropology. This word in its singular form is translated as “man,” but in the most common usage of its plural form means people of all genders. The Greek word anḗr means biologically male in both its singular and plural forms. If it was essential that Jesus was incarnated biologically male, the word anḗr would have been used instead of ánthrōpos. Of course, we can use “man” in the English language similarly to ánthrōpos in the Greek but practice has changed. In academic circles Christians believe that the Son being biologically male in the person of Jesus is significant and use that as the basis for excluding those who are not biologically male from the priesthood. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus, an early pivotal thinker of Christianity and one of the authors of the creed we use, suggests that to ascribe human relationships and our understanding of gender to any of the persons of the Godhead is like a perverse joke.1 This passage appears to suggest that the best way forward is emphasizing the Son becoming human in the person of Jesus rather than biologically male.and even in common language, we more frequently go to “humanity” or “humankind” to describe the collectivity of people.

In translating this Greek idea into English as “became truly human,” we are emphasizing that the importance of the incarnation is the Son becoming human–one of us. Some Christians believe that the Son being biologically male in the person of Jesus is significant and use that as the basis for excluding those who are not biologically male from the priesthood. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus, an early pivotal thinker of Christianity and one of the authors of the creed we use, suggests that to ascribe human relationships and our understanding of gender to any of the persons of the Godhead is like a perverse joke.1 This passage appears to suggest that the best way forward is emphasizing the Son becoming human in the person of Jesus rather than biologically male. 

Of the second major difference, the removal of the filioque clause, Whiteman writes,

In the Book of Common Prayer (1979) translation, we say:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

In the Enriching our Worship translation, we say:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father.

The filioque clause is the “and the Son” which suggests that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the two other persons of the trinity not just one. This clause is not original to the creed and was only officially added in the western churches during the eleventh century as part of the East-West Schism when the church broke in two. In 1976, Anglican and Orthodox theologians issued the “Moscow Agreed Statement” in which Anglicans agreed with Orthodox Christians that the filioque clause should not be included in the Nicene Creed. In 1994, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church resolved that any new liturgies from that point on would not include the filioque clause. The removal of the words “and the Son” corresponds to the original Greek text and aligns us with current Anglican liturgical practice.

 

Of the gender-neutral references to the Holy Spirit, Whiteman writes,

The third major change in this translation of the Nicene Creed is the removal of gender from the Holy Spirit. In the 1979 translation the pronoun “he” is used for the Spirit and in the 1997 translation “who” is used. It has become common practice in some Episcopal churches to replace the 1979’s “he” with “she” when reciting the creed, but this gets us into another sticky situation: one in which we ascribe masculine aspects to parts of the Godhead and feminine aspects to others. This could suggest a play between gendered forces within the nature of God and goes against Gregory of Naziansus warning that we should not ascribe human concepts of gender in our theological expressions even though we are given the language of Father and Son. The Greek word for spirit, pneûma, is neuter and so the authors of Enriching our Worship chose to render the Holy Spirit without gender. This is not a perfect solution, but no words we choose can fully encapsulate God.

I’m not sure how many of you find this sort of discussion interesting, but for me it was an enlivening turn to take on this first Sunday of Advent at Grace Episcopal Church, “Where street and altar meet.”

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Nicene Creed 

We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one Being with the Father;

through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven,

was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary

and became truly human.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again

in accordance with the Scriptures;

he ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,

and his kingdom will have no end.

 We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father,

who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,

who has spoken through the prophets. 

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come. Amen.

 

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