Apostles' Creed

Started by AgnusDei, January 15, 2019, 06:43:58 PM

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AgnusDei

Hi everyone!

I had a question about the Apostles' Creed prayer and was hoping you could help me. In the prayer, we say the words, "and He rose again from the dead." What is meant by "again?" To my understanding, our Lord rose only once from the dead. Thank you so much for help!

Jacob

I am going to say it is poetical.  In the Latin, there is no "again" that I can make out and it is the Latin that is the important part.
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MilesChristi

Again is an intensifier in the translation.

Surrexit on its own means rose

Resurrexit means rose again (usually from the dead)
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

AgnusDei

Very interesting, so it is poetical or in other words is used to add color to the English translation of the prayer. I hope I have that right. Thank you so much!

AgnusDei

Does the Latin in the Apostles' Creed use surrexit or resurrexit?

AgnusDei

It's alright, I just checked. It's resurrexit ;)

St.Justin

1."He descended to the dead."
2. On the third day he rose again.
He had to have risen to go to Patristic Limbo.
He had to have risen again to come back to Earth from "The dead".???????

Non Nobis

#7
Quote from: St.Justin on January 15, 2019, 10:40:28 PM
1."He descended to the dead."
2. On the third day he rose again.
He had to have risen to go to Patristic Limbo.
He had to have risen again to come back to Earth from "The dead".???????

I think it's rather like this:  "My boy fell down, but don't worry - he got up again!"

He was alive before, now He's alive again.
[Matthew 8:26]  And Jesus saith to them: Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith? Then rising up he commanded the winds, and the sea, and there came a great calm.

[Job  38:1-5]  Then the Lord answered Job out of a whirlwind, and said: [2] Who is this that wrappeth up sentences in unskillful words? [3] Gird up thy loins like a man: I will ask thee, and answer thou me. [4] Where wast thou when I laid up the foundations of the earth? tell me if thou hast understanding. [5] Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?

Jesus, Mary, I love Thee! Save souls!

Daniel

#8
I'm with MilesChristi... I'm pretty sure it has to do with translation.

surrexit means "[he] rose" (third-person singular perfect active indicative)
re- is a prefix which means "again"

So resurrexit means "[he] re-rose" or "[he] rose again" (also third-person singular perfect active indicative).

Apostles' Creed: "tertia die resurrexit a mortuis"
It's not saying that he "rose from the dead, again", as if to say that he rose from the dead two times. (Had that been the case, the Latin would have been different.) What it's saying is that he "rose again, from the dead", as in, his second act of rising (becoming alive) was this time "from the dead" (as opposed to his first act of rising (becoming alive), which was not "from the dead").


That said, we sort of talk this way in English as well, as Non Nobis pointed out. Christ "rose" at the incarnation and he "rose again" at the resurrection.