New Translation Monday: Credo (Part III)

As a reminder, past editions of the New Translation Catechesis can be accessed via the right side bar.

This week, we continue our catechesis on the changes to the translation of the Nicene Creed by taking up a single word in the lengthy third paragraph.  We begin by revisiting the familiar current translation:

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

one in Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For the most part, this paragraph remains unchanged, with the exception of one very important word.  The new translation to be recited by the English speaking faithful on the first Sunday of Advent 2011 is:

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

consubstantial with the Father;

through him all things were made.

The word consubstantial has caused quite a bit of stir among those who will claim that the people in the pews will not be able to understand such a large and theologically dense term.  Of course, this begs the question as to how people currently understand the phrase “one in being.”

In Latin, the corresponding paragraph of the Nicene Creed reads:

Deum de Deo, lumen de lúmine,

Deum verum de Deo vero,

Génitum, non factum,

consubstantiálem Patri:

Per quem ómnia facta sunt.

The Latin word consubstantialem means literally “with substance” or “of the same substance.”  We can argue all day about whether or not “one in being” means the same thing as “consubstantial”, but the fact that the argument is never quite settled is evidence that the primary concern with “one in being” is its vagueness.  In its loosest form, one could say that a chair is “one in being” with God, for if it were not it would cease to exist.  However, we would never say that the chair is “consubstantial” with God.  “Consubstantial” is a very precise theological term from the fourth century that arose after decades of discussion regarding the nature of the Son’s relationship to the Father.

Jesus Christ is different from a chair, as he is different from any mere human being.  Jesus is not only human, but also fully God.  The use of “consubstantial” will impress on the faithful precisely this: that Jesus is God.

The correction of “one in being” highlights not only greater fidelity to the Latin, but also another goal of the new translation: greater theological precision.  Nowhere is theological precision more important than in the nature of the Divine Trinity, and years of debate, heresy, and clarification on this issue led the Church to adopt the term “consubstantial”.  Our own recitation of the Creed should respect the gravity and necessity of this term.

We should also note that the Latin genitum is rendered correctly as “begotten”.  This serves to highlight a point from the previous entry on the Creed concerning the Latin word natum.  In the current translation, both natum and genitum are rendered “begotten”.  While it is a very interesting question indeed as to why the authors at Nicaea opted for two different terms, the fact is that there are two different terms, and the new translation seeks to recover that.  Natum means “born”, and genitum means “begotten”.  Later on in the Creed we will read that the Holy Spirit procédit, or “proceeds from”, the Father and the Son.  The Fathers of the Church wrestled with the two terms “generation” (or “begetting”) and “procession.”  St. Augustine wrote,

“But as for the distinction between generated and proceeding, in connection with the Most High, who could explain it?  Not everything that proceeds is generated, even if everything that is generated proceeds ... I know this; but I do not know - I have not the ability - how to distinguish between this generation and this procession.  Both of them are ineffable” (Contra Maximinum II).

All of this discloses a literary device of sorts in the first part of the Creed.  After declaring  belief in “one God, the Father, the almighty” we turn to the Second Person of the Trinity.  We know from divine revelation that there is a “begotten-ness” that defines the relationship between the Father and the Son - this is, after all, why they are revealed precisely as Father and Son.  How this generation “works”, we can only ask with Augustine, “Who can explain it?”  What the early Fathers realized, however, is that pondering this “begotten-ness” can possibly lead to the error of thinking that the Son is subordinate, somehow “less than”, the Father.  For that reason, the Creed moves through the Father-Son relationship in a dramatic crescendo about the nature of Christ: “God from God, light from light, true God from true God.”  It is as if the Nicene authors are saying, “Now that you know that the Son, in some mysterious way, is generated from the Father, just in case you think him a lesser divinity ... let me beat you over the head with the fact that they are one God!  The catechetical crescendo continues, “begotten, not made,” and culminates in one of the most dramatic and precise words the Church has ever given us:

“Consubstantial with the Father.”