Philip Schaff · 21 of 60
Cyril of Jerusalem. About A.D. 350.
From his Κατηχήσεις .
Cyril was elected Bishop of Jerusalem in 350; was expelled by the Arians in 360; reinstated in 361; attended the second œcumenical Council in 381 as an advocate of the Nicene orthodoxy (although for some time he had sided with the semi-Arians); he died in 386. He wrote in 348, while he was presbyter of the Church in Jerusalem, twenty-three Catechetical Lectures ( Κατηχήσεις ) or Sermons on the baptismal Creed used in Jerusalem, which he asserts to be the faith of the universal Church (Cat.XVII. § 3), also 'the holy and apostolic faith' (Cat. XVIII. § 32), although Cyril knows nothing of a literal composition by the Apostles. The Lectures were delivered to those who hoped to be baptized on the ensuing Easter eve. The Creed thus explained is not given at length in the manuscripts, since it was not to be written on paper, but to be engraved on the memory, and to serve to the baptized Christian as a viaticum for his journey through life, by which he might test the doctrine of Cyril or any other teacher. He claims for it antiquity and agreement with the Scripture from which it was drawn (Cat. V. § 12).
From these Lectures and ancient headings A. Aug. Touttée, the Benedictine editor of the Works of Cyril (Venet. 1763), has compiled the following creed. It closely resembles the Nicene Creed of 325, but, like that of Eusebius, it avoids the ὁμοούσιον. At the same time, it contains most of the additional clauses of the Constantinopolitan Creed of 381.
Comp. the critical edition of Cyril's Lectures by Reischl and Rupp, Munich, 1848–1850; my Church History, Vol. III. pp. 924 sqq.; Swainson, l.c. pp. 16 sqq.; Hort, l.c. pp. 84 sqq. The fourth Catechetical Lecture of Cyril, in which he goes over the creed in a summary way, is printed in Heurtley's De Fide et Symbolo, pp. 42–60.
Longer Formula.
Shorter Formula.
In his Catechetical Lectures, XIX. § 9 (ed. Touttée, p. 309), where he gives an account of the baptismal service in the church of Jerusalem, Cyril mentions also a much briefer creed, as follows:
Note.—This is regarded by Touttée, Walch, and Swainson as an independent formula, as the shorter baptismal creed of the church of Jerusalem. On the other hand, Hahn (p. 58) endeavors to show from the context that this form was not properly a baptismal confession, but a preparatory form of ( ἡ πρὁς τὸν Χριστὸν σύνταξις ) following the formula of renunciation ( μετὰ τὴν ἀπόταξιν τοῦ Σατανᾶ ). It resembles in brevity the creed of Cyprian (p. 20), and, judging from its simplicity, is much older than the longer form.
