Sometimes in our expression of orthodox faith, one little word can make a world of difference.
From the fifth century all the way to the seventh, the heresy of Arianism was afflicting the Church in the Latin-speaking West. In both East and West the heresy had exercised great influence from the fourth century on, but even after it was overcome in the East and the defenders of Jesus’ divinity were triumphant at the Council of Nicaea, it still held on in the West, especially in large parts of Spain and in southern France.
Why was this? Well, unfortunately some of the Germanic tribes that had defeated the Romans in the region and ruled in Italy, Spain, and Provence had received their version of the Christian faith from the Arians.
The Arians held a view of the Trinity that, though it did not deny that the Son and the Holy Spirit were divine in a sense, still denied to them the same absolute divinity of the Father. The Son was thus a kind of lesser God, not co-equal or co-eternal with the Father. Thus the Holy Trinity was not a mystery of three persons, co-equal and co-eternal in One God, as we believe, but was rather a set of unequal relationships, the Son and the Spirit being subordinate to the Father.
In order to combat this error, the Catholic bishops of the West made explicit in the liturgical prayers the full divinity and equality of the Son and the Holy Spirit with the Father. These changes gradually became universal in the Latin-rite churches and received the ultimate approval with their adoption in Rome. By the way, this is also the origin of the words “and the Son” in the Nicene Creed, added to show the equality of the Son with the Father against the Arians. This addition is still controversial in the East.
The change ran like this: instead of ending the collect and other prayers of the Mass and Divine Office with “Through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, forever and ever,” the final doxology was enriched: “Through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.” In this way we underlined the identity of nature and personal equality of the Father and the Son, against the heresy of the Arians.
When the first English version (I prefer not to call it a translation) of the new Missal of St Paul VI came out, the editors added the word one before God. This, of course, changed the sense of the prayer. The doxology was an assertion of the Trinity, yes, but not an explicit recognition of the equality of the Son with the Father, which was the intention of the ancient insertion of the word God in the first place.
Why did they do this? Well, I would wager that it was because of a certain style of liturgical theology popular at the time, which wanted to emphasize that all prayer is offered to the Father explicitly as God and only “through” the Son and “in the Holy Spirit.” This is true enough from a certain point of view—that is, the order in which God reveals himself as a Trinity of persons and the order of the persons in relation to how we return to him in prayer. This is the so-called “economic” Trinity, the Trinity as it appears to act in relation to the things it has made.
But there is also the Trinity as it is in itself, the so-called “immanent” Trinity, which is the infinite life shared among the three persons from all eternity. This truth makes it so that in fact all the things that the Trinity does “outside” of itself are the work of all three persons together. So, for example, all three persons create the world equally, not just the Father. (This does not apply to the Incarnation, however, since only God the Son was incarnate, but that is his assumption of a created human nature.)
Now, the Arians, and some liturgists, had no problem with language that emphasized the “economic” Trinity, but for different reasons they both avoided language about the immanent Trinity in worship. Thus, for example, in the new rite of Mass all prayers that directly addressed the Holy Trinity as such were removed as being “late” additions, with the exception of some of the prayers on Trinity Sunday. Eastern-rite Christians would find this rather shocking, but that is what happened.
Starting in the US and Canada on Ash Wednesday (in the UK they began last Advent), the one before God will be eliminated in the Mass and other prayers, such as the Liturgy of the Hours. This was done by order of the Holy See, which sent a communication to the English-speaking bishops’ conferences requiring the change in May of last year.
We can be very happy that we will be praying now so as to profess our faith in the full divinity of God the Son, “God from God, light from light, True God from True God.” Just a change of one word, but what a difference in clarity of meaning!