Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 66:2 (Jun 2023)
Article: The Chiastic Structure Of The Athanasian Creed
Author: James M. Hamilton, Jr.

JETS 66:2 (June 2023) p. 279

The Chiastic Structure Of The Athanasian Creed

James M. Hamilton Jr.*

^* James M. Hamilton Jr. is Professor of Biblical Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2825 Lexington Road, Louisville, KY 40280. He may be contacted at [email protected].

Abstract: This essay exposits the chiastic structure of the Athanasian Creed and contends that understanding the Creed’s literary structure facilitates understanding the Creed’s message. The Creed is widely recognized to consist of two parts, the first on the Trinity, the second on the incarnation. What has not been noted in scholarship is that each part is a self-contained chiasm, with the two chiasms joined together by the overarching inclusio at beginning and end.

Key words: Athanasian Creed, chiastic structure, Trinity, incarnation

I first became acquainted with the Athanasian Creed as an adult. In the summer of 2005, as a faculty member of Southwestern Seminary’s Houston Campus, I had the opportunity to join the school’s Oxford Study Tour. While in a famous English bookstore, Scott Swain, Jason Duesing, and I all purchased copies of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. My oldest son was a toddler at the time, and on returning home, I would often read to him from the Book of Common Prayer as I rocked him before his nap. Sometimes I read him a series of collects (prayers), other times I read him the Litany, but most often I read what the Prayer Book notes is “commonly called the Creed of Saint Athanasius,” and that the Prayer Book calls “Quicunque Vult,” the Latin of its first words, “Whosoever will.”1

At the time I was pastoring a church plant in Houston, and our order of worship often included a responsive reading or corporate confession of faith. As much as I loved the Athanasian Creed, I thought it was too long to be used in that context. Shortly after I joined the faculty of Southern Seminary in 2008, relocating to Louisville, the Lord opened a door of service at Kenwood Baptist Church. From

JETS 66:2 (June 2023) p. 280

our earliest days at Kenwood back in 2009, we regularly recited the Apostles’ Creed at the end of our main Sunday morning worship service.

Not long ago there was considerable online controversy about the doctrine of the Trinity, and I remember my colleague Stephen Wellum saying that he thought churches would be well served to use not only the Apostles’ but also the Nicene Creed. My fellow pastor Denny Burk and I collaborated to produce a fresh translation of the Nicene Creed, which we led Kenwood to recite at the end of our worship services in 2018. That fi...