I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
At the words that follow up to and including and became man, all bow.
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.
The second section of the Creed, which focuses on Christ, is the longest, because it was in the midst of the Arian heresy that the Council of Nicaea was called, and this Creed was written. The Arians argued that Christ was God’s first creation, at the beginning of time. If this were true, then clearly the three persons of the Trinity could not be equal. To counter this false teaching, the Council Fathers used the Greek term homoousios to describe Christ. It is difficult to translate, but essentially means of one and the same being or substance. In Latin, this word was translated consubstantialem, and our translation now uses the word “consubstantial." In essence, the translators chose not to translate this unique word, in keeping with the new guidelines for liturgical translation on which this third edition of the Roman Missal is based: "Whenever a particular Latin term has a rich meaning that is difficult to render into a modern language (such as the words munus, famulus, consubstantialis, propitius, etc.) various solutions may be employed in the translations, whether the term be translated by a single vernacular word or by several, or by the coining of a new word, or perhaps by the adaptation or transcription of the same term" (Liturgiam Authenticam, 53). In the case of the word "consubstantial," the translators of the Roman Missal chose to use a unique word to reflect a unique reality.
This whole section of the Creed, one might argue, amplifies what we mean when we say that Christ is consubstantial wit the Father. He is what God is: “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” Fully God, Christ is also fully human, and the Creed carefully situates Christ in historical time—he was “crucified under Pontius Pilate.” It also emphasizes that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, promised to Israel—he rose “in accordance with the Scriptures.”
