The Nicene Creed, strictly speaking -- the statement drawn up at a convention in Nicaea (now eastern Turkey) in 325 CE -- barely mentions the Spirit. Creeds tend to be written to solve controversies, and Nicaea was concerned with Arianism -- roughly a hierarchical view of God, parallel to the hierarchy of the empire. Arianism was rejected by the coining of a technical term, homoousion, to say that the Son was "of the same substance" as the Father, i.e. no hierarchy in God.
Two generations later, a different controversy -- whether the spirit of God was also God or a creature -- led to additions to the creed of Nicaea on that matter. The longer version has been used liturgically for 1500 years; it spread gradually through the eastern and western churches (but not to Rome until the 11th century).
Eastern (Greek) theology tried to explain how these three could be one God. Western (Latin) theology started with a notion of one God and tried to suggest how that could be three -- e.g., Augustine (d. 430) produced a collection of influential psychological analogies. Disputes over the matter were an explicit cause for the split of eastern and western churches in 1054 (which was of course overdetermined). --CGE
On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, snit snat wrote:
> look, i don't really care one way or the other about this HG thing,
> but I would _really_ like to know why it's so important. my memory,
> which is vague--i age--is that the HG was kind of a joke, no one took
> it seriouslyl. my mother and father's parents were devout bible
> thumpers, so much so that they pushed my folks away from the bible
> thumping, and they sent us to more respectable methodist churches
> where it was talk of love, and jesus, and all the different colored
> peoples of the world. such anti-racism i learned in Sunday school.
> anyway, this HG thing, it really seems like most people thought it was
> a joke.
>
> alas, recently, on another list, it became clear that someone from a
> catholic background, and someone with theological (protestant)
> training, took this HG thing really seriously re: the Nicene Creed
> that it freaked me out. To her (and him) there are a few things that
> make a christian a christian and one of themost important was
> acceptance of the Nicene Creed and acceptance of the HG.
>
> insight?
>
> kelley
>