Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
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It does not give a definition of the Catholic Faith purely and simply. It-declares what one who has the Catholic Faith must believe about certain particular doctrines pertaining to that Faith, chiefly concerning the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the Last Judgment of mankind. As for what I think of it, much depends on from what point of view you want my opinion. If you are concerned about its authorship, it was certainly not composed by St. Athanasius himself, who died in 373 A.D. However, it certainly sums up the doctrines about the Trinity and the Incarnation which St. Athanasius so strenuously vindicated. Probably it was composed by Caesarius, Bishop of Aries, in Gaul, who died in 543 A.D. If you are concerned about the authority of the Athanasian Creed, I can but say that it has the same authority as the Apostles' or the Nicene Creed; and all Catholics are obliged to accept all its teachings.
can accept your confession of your own ignorance; but that cannot be accepted as evidence of the ignorance of everybody else. You reflect the mentality of those multitudes of non-Catholics who have drifted so far from the Christian religion that they hardly know what they believe themselves, or why they believe, or what good belief does them; and who object to any clear and dogmatic teaching about God at all.
It is evident that you have not the remotest idea of the purpose of the Athanasian Creed. Its purpose certainly was not to make the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Incarnation any less a profound mystery to be believed by faith than before it was composed. Its purpose was to exclude wrong explanations of the doctrine revealed by God about the Trinity and the Incarnation; and to give an exact and precise statement of the doctrine so revealed, and to be held by all Christians. We have to hold that there are three Persons in one and the same God; and that the second of these three Persons became man as Jesus Christ in order to redeem mankind. The Athanasian Creed excludes all explanations which would undermine these essential truths, but it leaves the inner reality of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ as at once God and man still in the order of the most profound mysteries.
That is not the explanation. The Athanasian Creed was intended to safeguard the faith of Christians against the false teachings of heretics. Some heretics denied that the three Divine Persons in the Trinity were equally God. Others denied the unity of God in the Divine Nature possessed by the three Divine Persons. Others again denied the Divinity of Christ as the Incarnate Son of God. As often as a new error appears concerning a vital element of the Faith the Church has to give an authoritative decision, condemning the error and declaring the truth.
Some saw difficulties they were not able to solve, tied themselves into knots, were too proud to accept the teaching-authority of the Church, and became heretics. But the Church defined the truth against these heretics, God raising up men who had not only the highest intellectual gifts but the insight of Saints to see both the fallacies in the arguments of heretics and the true explanation of Christian doctrine.
The vast majority of simple unphilosophical members of the early Church had the faith and were content with the faith, leaving it to the ecclesiastical authorities to deal with the errors of heretical theologians. When the Church condemned the errors of these men and defined the right doctrine, ordinary Christians accepted without question the decisions of the Church.
And they succeeded admirably. No one is left in any doubt by the Athanasian Creed as to what Christians must believe about the Holy Trinity and the Divinity of Christ. People who no longer believe in those doctrines find the ideas in the Athanasian Creed foreign to them; but that is because they have abandoned the Christian Faith, not because of any fault in the Creed.
As I have suggested, that is true only of those who have drifted so far from the Christian Faith that it has become quite foreign to their way of thinking.
One who says that the best thing he knows of St. Athanasius is merely that he did not personally write a certain document knows very little indeed of St. Athanasius! Meantime, whilst it is true that St. Athanasius was not the actual author of the Athanasian Creed, it would be absolutely false to suggest that he would not have subscribed to every one of its propositions. Those who drew up the statement, and those who named it after him, knew that there could be no doubt whatever that the Creed embodied the doctrines for which St. Athanasius had ever made so uncompromising a stand against heretical denial of them.
"THAT CATHOLIC CHURCH
A Radio Analysis"
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