To whom are the Creeds addressed? And who says or sings them?

In Baptism, Morning and Evening Prayer, we use the Apostles' Creed and in the Order for Holy Communion we use the Nicene Creed. To whom are they addressed?

When we say, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." (Apostles') and when we say, "I believe in one God, the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." (Nicene) to whom are we speaking?

Let us first determine who is the "I" who here speaks in Baptism. It is obviously a new Christian, who is becoming a member of the Church of God, perhaps along with others, who states, "I believe." and is then baptized. He speaks to the Lord Jesus Christ, to the Minister, to the assembled congregation of the faithful and to anyone else who can hear as he confesses his faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Here the "I" is one person, soon to be incorporated by grace into the one Church of God.

However, the identity of the "I" in the Daily Offices and more particularly in the Eucharist, is related but different.

In Daily Prayer, and in the Eucharist on the Lord's Day, the assembled people of God as the Household of God the Father, the Temple of the Holy Ghost and the Body of Christ the Lord say "I believe." in unison with one voice as one person. Obviously each and every member is speaking for himself in confessing his faith, but what we have to bear in mind is that the "I" who speaks is, before it is the individual ego of the members, the "I" of the one Church of God, that is, the "I" of the Bride of Christ. She [the Church] is telling her Bridegroom [the Lord Christ] through saying it or singing it, that she wholeheartedly believes the Creed and thus the Revelation given to her from above summarized in it. She is re-echoing in her words what she has heard from him via the Sacred Oracles of God.

In the Creed the Church is primarily addressing her Lord and thus each member also addresses his Lord. The lesser "I" is contained within the corporate "I." At the same time the members in mutual encouragement and edification are addressing one another, "This is what I believe, my brother." Further, when the world is able to hear then the Creed is also a statement of faith, a proclamation of the Gospel, addressed to all comers.

[To maintain this traditional and classical interpretation of the corporate "I" it is all important that the Nicene Creed be translated correctly. Credo = I believe [not "we"] & Pistueo = I believe [not "we"]. From the fifth century when the Creed entered into the Eucharistic Liturgy it did so as the Baptismal Creed and thus in the first person singular. (It is true that the Fathers at Nicea and later Councils had spoken in unison saying "We believe in one God.," but this Conciliar Creed immediately went into the lst person singular when it was used by the Churches for Baptism and Liturgy. ALL the classical Liturgies use the lst person singular and it is only since the 1970s that "we believe" has been introduced into some English paraphrases and into certain prayer books in order, it appears, to emphasise "community" and apparently justified by the claim that the Fathers said "we" at Nicea in 325.)]

It is important to remember that the Creed in the Church creates a mental paradigm by which the Church as a whole and her members individually read, hear and appropriate the content of Holy Scripture.

The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
Minister of Christ Church, Biddulph Moor,
England & Vice-President and Emissary-at-Large
of The Prayer Book Society of America