EARLY CHRISTIAN CREEDS

J. N. D. KELLY, D.D., F.B.A.

Principal of St Edmund Hall, Oxford

Third edition

Continuum International Publishing Group

www.continuumbooks.com

Second edition © J. N. D. Kelly 1960

Third edition © Longman Group Limited 1972

This edition © Continuum

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

First published 1950

Second edition 1960

Third edition 1972

First published in paperback 1981

Continuum edition first published 2006

Reprinted 2008, 2011

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Kelly, J. N. D.

Early Christian creeds.—3rd ed.

1. Creeds—History

I. Title

238’.1 BT990 72-169389

ISBN 978-0-8264-9216-6

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

This third edition represents a much more extensive and far-reaching revision of the original text than did the second. In addition to making a host of minor adjustments and substituting references to more up-to-date editions and texts, I have introduced a large number of alterations of substance to take account of the considerable recent literature on ancient creeds (much of it, it can be fairly claimed, stimulated by the book itself). The most important of these are in Chapters X and XI, where the brilliant work of A. M. Ritter on the Constantinopolitan Creed has prompted me to rewrite certain vital pages; but many other sections (examples are those dealing with the Descent to Hell and the Communion of Saints) have undergone substantial modification. The Greek or Latin texts of certain creeds have also been slightly amended in the light of recent critical studies. It is my hope that as a result of these changes the usefulness of the book will be enhanced for presentday students.

As I explained in the Preface to the first edition, my reason for not including an exhaustive bibliography was that the late Père J. de Ghellinck’s astonishingly comprehensive survey of literature dealing with the Apostles’ Creed (Patristique et moyen âge,) I had just been published, and that if a proper bibliography of the Nicene Creed were to be compiled it would have to be on a comparable scale. A. M. Ritter’s book goes some way towards meeting the latter need, but books and articles have continued to multiply since 1950 beyond expectation. While making no claim to anything approaching completeness, I have endeavoured, in revising the footnotes, to mention as many of these as possible, including several published in the past year or two.

As in the first edition, I should like to record my indebtedness to the pioneer work of scholars of the older generation, such as A. E. Burn, B. Capelle, C. P. Caspari, F. Kattenbusch, J. Lebon, H. Lietzmann (under whom I worked for a period in Berlin), G. Morin, and E. Schwartz. ...