the Nicene Creed, part 1

heresies, councils, and the creation of the creed

Sep 10, 2024

This is part of a series on the ancient creeds of Christianity. Start here for more background info on the creeds.

I recently perused the social media profile of an artist who draws a popular web comic, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the words “I follow Jesus,” included. I always love to learn that an artist whose work I have enjoyed is a believer.

But unfortunately, I very soon started wondering what exactly he meant by that. Many people might praise his simple statement of faith, saying “what more is there to the core of Christianity than following Christ?” I don’t begrudge the artist his concise confession, and I don’t think that he should copy and paste one of the creeds into his profile in its place. But these days, after all, it’s hard to be sure that when someone says “I follow Jesus,” they mean the same thing that I do by follow, or indeed the same person I do by Jesus. I certainly hope he does.

In the fourth century, there was a man named Arius who also claimed to follow Jesus. But the Jesus he taught about was not who many others in the church confessed faith in.

the Arian heresy

Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the most important and influential cities in the Roman Empire. A teacher there named Arius had become known for an unusual teaching about Jesus Christ’s relation to God the Father.

Arius taught that Jesus was not an eternal being, but rather was God’s greatest creation. He did not exist eternally with the Father, but was at some point begotten by the Father. Specifically, Arius said “There was once when he was not.”

This may sound logical at first; after all, we believe that Jesus is the Father’s “only begotten son,”1 and he said himself that “the Father is greater than I.”2 But let’s look at the implications of this belief, according to Phillip Carey:

Christians worship Jesus Christ as Lord, exalted at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. To say “there was once when he was not” would be to say that he is not eternal like God the Father—that he came into being from non-existence just like all God’s creatures. That would mean he is not really God at all, but one of the things God made. To say this would be to say that what Christians have been doing all along, worshiping Jesus as Lord, is the kind of thing the pagans do: worshiping something that is not fully, truly, ultimately God.3

This was just Arius’s point: Jesus was not God, was not eternal, and was not deserving of worship alongside the Father. He was trying to ensure that the proper honor was given to the Father.

Arius’s bishop, Alexander,4 saw the dangers of this teaching. He countered that if God the Father was eternal and unchanging, then he must be eternally the Father. But if there was a time when God’s son did not exist, then there was a time when God was not the Father. Only an eternal Son ensures an eternal Father.5

The job of a bishop in part was to ensure that the gospel that had been passed down from the Apostles was still being faithfully taught in his city or region. When there was a disputed teaching, several bishops from the area of the dispute would meet together to work out the issue.

But the dispute over Arius’s teaching grew past one region; it spread across much of the empire, and even came to the emperor’s attention. And he decided to see that the church settled the matter.

the council of Nicaea

In A.D. 325, Constantine, the first Roman emperor to profess the Christian faith, called a council of bishops in the town of Nicaea in modern-day Turkey. The gathering is known as the first ecumenical council, a word that simply means “of the whole world,” or at least “of the whole church.” Bishops from across the empire were invited, although the attendees were mostly from the eastern half.

The council actually made several important decisions, such as when Easter should be celebrated, but the most important item on the agenda was the Arian heresy, which led directly to the composition of the Nicene Creed, based on a baptismal creed similar to the Apostles’ Creed.

ever heard of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed?

However, the Nicene Creed you’ll find today is not exactly what was written at Nicaea. While the original Nicene Creed focused on responding to Arianism, adding language affirming Christ’s deity and relationship to the Father, it didn’t say much about Jesus’s earthly life, and said almost nothing about the Holy Ghost. In fact, all it said was “And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost.” Not much to go on.

A group known as the Semi-Arians, who accepted the creed’s language about Christ, began teaching that the Holy Spirit was merely a force or power, not a person as the doctrine of the Trinity would have us believe. They cited Scriptures where the Holy Spirit might be poured out (Joel 2:28), taken away (Psalm 51:11), or quenched (I Thessalonians 5:19). The orthodox Christians, though, could point to even more Scriptures that affirm the personhood of the Spirit: he could be grieved (Ephesians 4:30), speak (Mark 13:11), empower (Acts 1:8), and console (John 14:16). The Holy Ghost is clearly the most mysterious of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, but a person he remains!6

Another ecumenical council was convened, this time at Constantinople, and the Nicene Creed was expanded to affirm the Holy Ghost’s position with the Father and the Son, as well as his role in creation and the life of God’s people.7 This second edition of the creed is more properly referred to as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. But, since that’s a bit of a mouthful, and since pretty much everyone just calls this version the Nicene Creed anyway, we’ll go with the simpler name.

how is the Nicene Creed used today?

The advantage of the Apostles’ Creed over the Nicene Creed is that it is shorter and easier to memorize. Anyone who has heard it on a regular basis for more than a couple of years can probably recite it from memory.

But the Nicene Creed holds a fuller picture of the basic theology of Christianity. While the Apostles’ Creed is simpler, it leaves a lot of theological wiggle room when it comes to the deity of Christ and the personhood of the Holy Ghost. The Nicene Creed therefore has served for centuries as the standard of Christian Theology: if you can confess the Nicene Creed you are, theologically at least, a Christian; but if you can’t, you are not.8 As for theological matters that the creed doesn’t address, those are generally more up for debate; that’s where theological triage comes in.

Today, some churches confess the Nicene Creed together every Sunday in worship. It is an excellent reminder of the truths that the church stands on. It is also often used at baptisms, harking back to the baptismal creeds that it was built upon.

Whether or not your church uses this creed, I highly suggest you familiarize yourself with it, if only for a better understanding of the foundational theology of our faith. To that end, our next post will look at what the creed actually says about Christian beliefs. Since we’ve already covered the Apostles’ Creed, we’ll mainly look at what that creed doesn’t cover. So if you haven’t, I suggest you read our posts on the Apostles’ Creed, here and here, first.

Or, continue to learn what the Nicene Creed says.