Cross and Creed

Oh, my. I said earlier that Carroll is better than Dan Brown. I’m revising that estimate. He describes the Council of Nicea in a paragraph, implying that it was all Constantine’s doing. The bishops came up with a creed “in response to the emperor’s mandate.” He notes that it was “almost” unanimous (which is correct), but doesn’t indicate that there were only two dissenters – stating only that “those who dissented were exiled by Constantine,” which makes it sound like the Babylonian Captivity.

The worst of it comes in his summary of the creed itself. He quotes the original creed, which stated only that the Son “became incarnate, becoming man, suffered and rose again on the third day.” By 381, the phrase “crucified under Pontius Pilate” and the word “died” had been added. Carroll finds the addition of the cross, and the reference to Pilate, ominous, especially for Jews. With the cross taking a central place in Christian faith (an emphasis again attributable to Constantine and not Paul), the way was opened for the church to mistreat the “Christ-killing” Jews.

According to Carroll, the original version doesn’t mention the death of Jesus much less the cross. That’s odd; the original says that Jesus suffered and rose again – doesn’t that “rose again” imply something very like death?

He suggests that the “only concrete, historical detail” in the creed is “crucified under Pontius Pilate.” That’s not the way the bishops understood it, of course. “Became incarnate” and “suffering” and “rising again” were also concrete historical details.

Carroll writes, “Explicitly holding the Roman procurator responsible contrasts with Gospel accounts that emphasize his reluctance before Jewish bloodthirst, a change that may reflect the Church’s new state in the empire as favored instead of a persecuted.” Carroll adds that the creed “avoids self-accusation because, of course, Pilate was a pagan, and pagans have now joined the Jews as enemies par excellence.” But the fact remains that Pilate is mentioned, not the Jews; and the means of execution is the Roman cross, not the Jewish stone. Exactly how the mention of a Roman governor’s responsibility for Jesus’ death leads to anti-Semitism remains a mystery.

He seems to think that the inclusion of the “concrete historical detail” regarding Pilate indicates a trend toward a more historicized faith – the creed implies “the supersessionist pattern of ‘prophecy historicized.’” If he thinks this is new at Nicea, he needs to take another peek at the New Testament.