Traditional Anglican Prayer Books render the Greek wording of the Creed “all that is, visible and invisible,” which in turn reflects St. Paul’s usage, when he says:
[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.Colossians 1:15-16
In the 1970s, an international commission of translators rendered the phrase “all things seen and unseen,” and this rendering appears in many contemporary liturgies, including the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. No doubt this translation reflects the rising secularism of the day, as when the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin reported from space that “I looked and looked, but I didn’t see God,” and when Episcopal Bishop John Spong claimed that “God can no longer be understood with credibility as a being, supernatural in power, living above the sky.”
Gagarin and Spong are guilty of a category error. They assume that invisible things are either not yet seen by the latest telescope or are fantasies fit only for the gullible. In truth, they are, in effect, the intellectual flat-earthers. Prince Hamlet’s rebuke to his fellow scholar Horatio fits their case: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
The perspective of the Bible and the Creed is far deeper than these caricatures, and the ACNA Prayer Book rightly returns to the traditional and accurate translation of the Greek text.
It's almost too easy to be in awe of the beauty of the visible creation. It can be harder to appreciate the invisible. Stephen Noll tackles the incredible realities around the Creator and creation "of all that is, visible and invisible":https://t.co/Y90GISIqmC
— Anglican Compass (@AnglicanCompass) May 15, 2025