Global Anglican Commentary

Article 3. The Apostolic Rule of Faith

By the Rev. Ben Jefferies

Article 3

We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

Icon of the First Council of Nicaea; source: Wikimedia

The Christian life is lived in obedience to the Word of God; and the means of this life is given to us by the Church herself. As Article Two of the Jerusalem Declaration puts it, our obedience to Scripture is observed out of respect for the framework of “the church’s historic and consensual reading.” We derive this framework from the rule of faith. This ‘rule of faith’ is the plumb-line by which the right-reading of Scripture is determined. For the catholic Christian, this method is not a hidden esoteric knowledge; rather it is discovered in the public theological proclamation of the whole church, which is cardinally embodied (“…as express[ed]”) in three Creeds and four Councils.

Why Creeds?

Creeds (from the Latin “Credo” — I believe) sketch out for us the parameters to know whether or not Scripture is being read rightly, because through them—most importantly—we have been given a means to rightly understand God. If a passage from Scripture is being interpreted to make Jesus seem less than fully God, it is being interpreted wrongly. This is not a mere matter of opinion, but apostolic teaching, St. John himself warning that anyone who “does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son” (2 John 9, RSV).

The Creeds embody the catholic faith once for all delivered—defining the two Christian mysteries upon which our salvation hangs: the Trinity and the Incarnation. To willfully deny any element of this faith is to sever oneself from the Truth himself. This is why they are the Rule of Faith. The Latin phrase “de Fide” (of the Faith) has come to mean those things which pertain explicitly to our salvation. To deny the Creeds is to deny the saving work of God expressed in the Scriptures. Moreover, the Creeds bring us to this saving knowledge of the truth. It is for this reason that J.I. Packer describes them as those “forms of sound words”1 that Paul urges Timothy to “hold fast to” (2 Timothy 1:13, KJV).

The Three Creeds

The three Creeds in our Rule of Faith are those named in Article VIII of the Articles of Religion: the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian. The Apostles’ Creed is the ancient baptismal formula—the most succinct proclamation of Jesus Christ’s saving work. The Nicene Creed is the same witness—though having passed through the fiery trials of Arianism and Pneumatomachianism, being strengthened by the newly formed language that most accurately describes the relations of the Son and the Spirit to the Father. The Athanasian Creed goes yet further and clarifies precisely the relations of origin between the three Persons of the Trinity, as well the hypostatic union of the two natures of the Son.

The Four Councils

These three Creeds articulate the theology of the first four ecumenical councils of the Church, having been hammered out in them, or derived from the conclusions thereof. The rule of faith that the Creeds articulate for us is a synthesis of the councils. The first council proclaimed in the light of day the Faith in the Triune God that had been preserved during the first three centuries of intermittent persecution. The bishops present there had suffered greatly (and recently!) for the Faith once for all delivered. Each subsequent council clarified the definitions of those that came before it, while also meeting the new heresies that sprang up like weeds in that tumultuous century.

  • 1st Ecumenical Council – Nicea, AD 325: Defined the true divinity of the Son as of one being with the Father.
  • 2nd Ecumenical Council – Constantinople, AD 381: Defined the true divinity of the Spirit as of one being with the Son and the Father while doubling down on the statements of Nicea I.
  • 3rd Ecumenical Council – Ephesus, AD 431: Defined that the man Christ was also fully God by defending the title Theotokos (“Mother of God”) for the blessed Virgin Mary because she bore God in her womb.
  • 4th Ecumenical Council – Chalcedon, AD 451: Defined the relationship of the natures (human and divine) within the Son, emphasizing that they were not to be confused or combined nor divided or separated.

A summary teaching of all four councils is faithfully embodied in the Creed named after that great champion of the faith of that era: St. Athanasius.

Why Four, Not Seven?

Now, what of the fact that some Christians speak of seven ecumenical councils, not four? We must carefully note that the Jerusalem Declaration does not rule against seven. Rather, it affirms with perfect confidence as the rule of faith what the whole Church has always prized: the first Four. Gregory the Great, writing long after the fifth ecumenical council, gives pride of place to the Four: “I confess that I receive and revere, as the four books of the Gospel so also the four Councils.”2 This has always been the Anglican position. The fifth and sixth councils are extrapolations of the fourth dealing with controversies that arose in the eastern portion of the Church related to Nestorianism and Monothelitism. The seventh (which had mainly to do with images) was much contested in the West, especially in the midst of the Reformation and the near memory of so much abuse. Today, most Anglicans receive the positive and Christological affirmations of the seventh council also,3 while some still question its ecumenical status. Article Three of the Jerusalem Declaration wisely side-steps any controversy and presents a bedrock on which all Anglicans since Thomas Cranmer can certainly agree—and must agree if we are to be free of the tyranny of private judgment wreaking havoc with the Scripture in our midst.4

The Rule of Faith

To come to God, we are bid to come to the saving knowledge of God found in the “form of sound words”5 that the church has given to us. These words, refined in the Creeds and Councils of the first five centuries of the Church, offer to us the rule of faith that guides our historic reading of Scripture. This plumb line points us to God himself, in whom there is “no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). Therefore, we too must bind ourselves to the unchanging faith. We bind ourselves to this rule that we might hold fast to God.

↩︎ (On the Jerusalem Declaration)

  1. J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life ↩︎

  2. Gregory the Great, Letters, I.24. ↩︎

  3. For my own further reflections on the 7th Ecumenical Council I would direct you to: Nicaea II: A Revocare, https://nhc.anglican.center/p/nicea-ii-a-revocare ↩︎

  4. 2 Peter 1:20 ↩︎

  5. J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life ↩︎