Young Kim: "Nicaea is Not Enough: The Second Creed of Epiphanius' Ancoratus"

At the end of his Ancoratus, Epiphanius of Cyprus included two creeds, which for a time were a source of some scholarly dispute.  It is now generally accepted that the first creed was the original Nicene Creed, and the second a creed developed by Epiphanius himself, likely for use during baptism.  Previously, scholars had argued that the first creed was a sort of precursor to that which was adopted at the Council of Constantinople, and they credited Epiphanius with an important role at the famed gathering in the imperial capital.  However, Bernd Weischer, through a study of the Ethiopic tradition of the Ancoratus, dismantled these assertions and proved definitively that the first creed found in the manuscript tradition was a later interpolation.  What requires further attention, however, is why Epiphanius included two creeds at the end of his exposition of orthodox theology, especially in light of the efforts of his ecclesiastical hero Athanasius to use the Council of Nicaea and its creed as the baseline for confessional orthodoxy.  This paper will examine the second creed in detail to ascertain what theological issues and perceived heresies necessitated its inclusion in theAncoratus, and will argue that ultimately Nicaea was not enough for Epiphanius.  While he affirmed the Nicene Creed as authoritative, he needed clearer lines of demarcation between orthodoxy and heresy.