Exploration and Methodological Test of a Transdisciplinary Research on the Council’s Symbol in History, Culture and Society (4th-20th Century). Greek version, Latin, Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, Slavonic and Russian Liturgical translations (Bando 2020)

Abstract del progetto

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed was not conceived to become what it actually has been throughout the eighteen centuries of its history: a cornerstone for all Christian denominations, circulating in the most diverse theological settings, and with a cultural impact and political implications which are hard to underestimate.

The historical analysis of it was marked by two common ideas: one, influenced by Adolf von Harnack and his 19th-century “Grundriss der Dogmengeschichte” concerning the Creed as the evidence and the result intermingling between Christian faith and Greek philosophy, which urged the subsequent (Protestant) confessional historiography and scholarship to uncover such a mixture; the other one, becoming visible during the late Sixties in Joseph Ratzinger’s “Einführung in das Christentum” declaring a perpetual and irrevocable right of the Greek philosophy to be found in the Christian faith in order to make it understandable.

Both perspectives have been forcefully rejected in the first research on the critical edition of the text (i.e. G.L. Dossetti), in the general history of the Creeds (e.g. J.N.D. Kelly) and in the research on ancient Christologies (e.g. A. Grillmeier). However, one aspect did not attract enough scholarly attention: namely the history of the Creed’s translations and the role and impact of its inculturation.

Translations of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol were begun as early as in the 4th century: it was a hermeneutical process, which later implied theological dispute, political controversy and cultural postulate. The purpose of this research is to systematically explore this process, which involves the public opinion (liturgy), the theological milieu (treatises), the political theology and the cultural dimension (catechesis as an instrument). The research starts with the Latin versions and their further reinterpretation in the Visigoths’ Spain, the filioque controversy and the link with the estrangement between East and West concerning the Libri carolini. Totally different issues were tackled in the translation in Syriac, Coptic and Armenian versions, followed by their survival and change. The Russian version offers a different perspective, where the greatest effort was dedicated to other aspects (such as the sobornaja formula). In medieval practice, the Creed was consolidated both in theological and canonistic terms which can be searched by connecting the great corpora of the patristic time with the medieval corpora to AI ontological analysis.