The Nicene Creed at 1700 Years Old

I had never heard a woman preach, yet I had made the bold decision to go to seminary to become a pastor. Not everyone agreed with my decision. One person questioned the need for more education. “All you need is Jesus!” they exclaimed. “Who is Jesus?” I responded in jest. Yet I found that seemingly simple question was at the core of much of my seminary education.

This question was also at the center of many theological discussions and controversies throughout the history of our church, even to the present day. Yes, we know that salvation is in Christ alone, but who is this Christ that we worship? Christ is Lord, but what does that mean in our everyday life? What does being a Christ follower look like? These struggles and questions were as alive in the early church as they are today. The need for clarity arose from wanting to know God and to honor God. 

In the early 300s, the church was struggling with the question of how best to talk about the Father God, Jesus the Son, the Holy Spirit, and their relationality. What are the right words to use? How do we balance the seemingly conflicting truths that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God, yet there is only one God? There is a Father and a Son, which suggests a generational timeline, but one didn’t come before the other. How does this all work? 

Arius, a pastor from Alexandria, Egypt, thought it didn’t work. Out of the right desire to protect the holiness of God the Father, Arius argued that God could not have become an unholy human; therefore, Christ is not God incarnate. Arius demoted Jesus Christ to a created being, though still a divine being. John 3:16 says that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.” If Jesus was begotten from God the Father, doesn’t that suggest that there was a time he didn’t exist—that he came into being after God the Father? 

Meanwhile, across town, a pastor in training, Athanasius, was teaching that God the Father and Christ the Son were equally divine. Hearing this, Arius cried heresy, and quite a row erupted, with church members quickly choosing sides. This disagreement soon spread beyond Alexandria. 

“We Believe” or “I Believe”?

The beginning of the Nicene Creed was originally written in Greek in the first-person plural: “We believe.” When translated into Latin, it became credo: “I believe.

There isn’t a right or wrong choice when using the creed today. If the creed is used liturgically as a statement of unity, “We believe” is appropriate. If it is functioning as a personal statement of faith, “I believe” may be the better choice.

Constantine, the Roman emperor and a fairly new convert to Christianity, was worried about the political fallout of the growing division. He summoned more than a thousand Christian leaders to Nicaea for a meeting that lasted from May through July of 325. Around three hundred of the attendees were bishops active in the debates about the nature of Christ. At this three-month meeting, participants made a variety of decisions, including when to celebrate Easter and when people were permitted to kneel in prayer. Of most significance, though, was the formulation of a new statement regarding the divinity of Christ; this became known as the Nicene Creed. In 381, at the First Council of Constantinople, the creed was expanded to include additional clarification around the Holy Spirit, finishing the work begun at the Council of Nicaea. 

The significance of this council’s work and of the resulting Nicene Creed cannot be overstated, even if few of our congregations make regular use of the creed in worship. 

FILIOQUE CLAUSE

While it may have seemed that the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople put an end to Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ, the reality was that this heresy continued to plague churches in the West, particularly in Spain. To combat the heresy, Western churches wanted to make Christ’s divinity very clear. They did so by adding “and the Son” to the section on the Holy Spirit, insisting that the Holy Spirit proceeds from “the Father and the Son.” In Latin, “and the Son” is expressed as the single word filioque. 

The addition of the filioque clause  is one of the reasons given for the split between the Orthodox Church of the East and the Roman Catholic churches of the West in 1054. The Eastern church thought the clause implies the Holy Spirit is a lesser member of the Trinity; the Western church believed it didn’t change the creed’s meaning. Today, most theologians from the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions no longer see the filioque clause as a reason for division, understanding that they are professing the same truth in different ways. 

The Nicene Creed . . .

. . . is ecumenical: The basic truths affirmed in this creed are held in common by Christians around the globe. Whether we say the creed often or not, Christian churches of all denominations—small and large, rural and urban, Eastern and Western, from the Northern and Southern hemispheres, with all kinds of worship styles—fundamentally agree with what is claimed in this creed. Given all we disagree with each other on, this is no small feat and should be what unites us as the siblings in Christ that we are. When we say “We believe,” we can truly say “we” to mean “all Christians.”

. . . embraces trinitarian mystery: Ambiguity might make scientists anxious, but the Nicene Creed has no problem with mystery and contradictions. It’s able to do what Arius wouldn’t: affirm the divinity of Christ. Christ is “of the same substance” as the Father, and coeternal with him. The creed outlines Christ’s work of salvation through his incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension—all four equally important. The Nicene Creed also affirms the profound mystery of the three-in-oneness of the Trinity—three persons, yet one essence. These theological truths are foundational to our Christian faith—a faith built on mystery and truth, a faith worth declaring boldly. 

I don’t regret my time at seminary exploring answers to the question “Who is Jesus?” My faith continues to deepen as I pursue that question and grow in my desire to know Jesus. Still, difficult times come, and as I journey through life, I find that the creeds serve as anchors in seasons of doubt or challenge. And it’s both powerful and heartbreaking to know that these same words are being proclaimed each week by Christians in Gaza and Jerusalem, in Russia and Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, China, Haiti, and along the southern border of the United States. Together in the face of opposition, in times of unimaginable grief and suffering, immense joy, unshakeable faith, and even seasons of doubt, together we declare, “We believe!”