Nicene Creed

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God,
begotten of his Father before all worlds,
God of God, Light of Light,
very God of very God,
begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father;
by whom all things were made;
who for us and for our salvation
came down from heaven,
and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary,
and was made man;
and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered and was buried,
and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures,
and ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father;
and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the living and the dead;
whose kingdom shall have no end.
And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of Life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son;
who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified;
who spoke by the prophets;
and we believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church;
we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;
and we look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

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In this entry we turn to the Nicene Creed, the second of the two ecumenical creeds which we are using to build the foundation for our examination of the Reformation-era confessions. The Nicene Creed is the first creed officially adopted by the church as a true expression of Christian doctrine. Like the Apostles' Creed, it is frequently recited in liturgical worship services and remains one of the few ancient creeds still used and referred to by modern churches, much less virtually every modern church.

The Nicene Creed is so called because it was composed at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. The council was convened by Roman Emperor Constantine, a recent convert to Christianity and the first Christian emperor. The primary task of the council was to resolve the issue of the Trinity raised by the teachings of Arius, a theologian in Alexandria, Egypt.

Arius and his followers taught that, though Jesus was divine, he was an entity distinct from and subordinate to God the Father. Specifically, Arianism holds to the belief that Jesus did not share with the Father the latter's eternal nature; rather, Jesus was a created being, though different in nature from other created beings, in that he shared in the Father's divinity. In other words, Arianism believed that there once was a time when the Father existed but the Son did not.

The consensus of the Council of Nicaea was to condemn Arianism as incorrect doctrine and heretical. Of the approximately 318 attending bishops, only two dissented from this conclusion. The primary document to be born from this decision is the Nicene Creed, which formulated the orthodox teaching about the Trinity in precise theological language.

Because the Creed was written to address a particular theological issue and was written by committee — though likely based upon existing regional baptismal creeds similar to the Apostles' Creed — it has a somewhat stilted language and uses a good bit of theologically precise vocabulary in Greek. In this sense the Creed takes on a character more like the later confessions which will be the focus of this project and leaves behind the more general, grass-roots (so to speak) tone of the Apostles' Creed.

What we today call the Nicene Creed, however, is not the same as the creed which was promulgated by the Council of Nicaea. Despite declaring that the Creed was not to be amended, the next ecumenical council in Constantinople in 381 did just that. Though the theology of the Creed was not changed, new clauses were added as well as clarification to address misinterpretation by Arians and new heresies. Thus what we call the Nicene Creed is often more correctly called by academics the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.

In fact, the Creed as recited by Western churches today — that is, most churches except for the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches — has an additional amendment: the infamous filioque clause. Filioque comes from a Latin word which was gradually inserted by many Western bishops into the Creed's doctrine on the Holy Spirit. Where the Creed originally read 'We believe . . . in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father,' Western churches began to add filioque: 'who proceeds from the Father and the Son.'

We'll discuss of the theological issue behind filioque further down, but it is important to note this amendment for one very big reason: it was one of the issues which led to the Great Schism of 1054. Up until the Great Schism, the church had been pretty much universal.¹ There was a cultural divide between the Eastern Greek-speaking regions and the Western Latin-speaking regions, but this cultural divide had never led to any significant theological or legal division.

In 1054, rising tensions between the Christian institutions in the Eastern and Western halves of the Christian world finally came to a head, centered around issues both legal and theological. The legal issue was whether the Bishop of Rome (i.e., the Pope) was supreme over the four patriarchs in the East. The main theological issue was the continued use of the filioque in the West.

The history of the Great Schism is much more complicated than the picture I paint here. I mostly mention it because it was a major event in the history of Christianity and because of its connection to the Nicene Creed. The filioque and the Great Schism show how even a Creed which was composed to describe correct and universal doctrine was nevertheless fallible and led to the greatest division in the history of the Church. This is an important theme which will play itself out throughout this project.

Theology of the Creed

A cursory look at the Nicene Creed will notice that many of the clauses are rather similar to those in the Apostles' Creed, which supports the theory that both creeds originated in unofficial statements of faith which were circulating throughout the Church. For though the final version of the Apostles' Creed dates to after the Council of Nicaea, many of its clauses were found in dozens of unofficial creeds which antedate Nicaea. Thus, we will concentrate on the clauses which are novel to the Nicene Creed.

The distinction between the Nicene and the Apostles' Creeds are almost exclusively those that deal with the doctrine of the Trinity — or more broadly, the doctrine of God. As we noted, the Apostles' Creed does not try to establish any precise trinitarian theology but does include language which strongly implies the divine nature of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The language of Nicaea, therefore, expands upon existing credal theology by more strictly defining which views of the Godhead are orthodox and which are heretical.

Because the Council of Nicaea's agenda was to address Arianism, most of its Trinitarian theology concerns the relationship between the Father and the Son. And here we find verbiage that clearly identifies Jesus as God: 'God of God, . . . very God of very God'. It's hard to get much clearer than that! But at the same time, it distinguishes the Father and the Son, with the latter having been 'begotten'. Both this and the identification of the Son with the creation are direct derivations from the gospel of John.

Enter the complicated nature of the Trinity. The Nicene Creed is the first widely received creed which tries to answer the question, 'How can there be both one God and three persons?' The formula that it comes up with is to explain that both the Father and the Son share in the same 'one substance', ὁμοούσιος (homoousios) in the Greek.

Unfortunately, the Creed doesn't really describe what it means for one thing to be 'of one substance with' another thing. Furthermore, it doesn't address the tension between the one and the three. The Creed is clear that the Son and the Father are distinct in some sense (the latter was begotten and incarnated) but somehow share in 'one substance'. But for the purposes of the Council of Nicaea — that is, addressing Arianism — the Creed accomplishes its purpose, by clearly establishing that Jesus is very God and is not a created being. It would take additional councils to hammer out some of the more particulars, especially regarding Christ's dual nature of God and man. While we will not discuss those councils specifically, we will encounter their findings in the Reformation-era confessions.

This particular purpose of the Nicene Creed also helps to explain why the Holy Spirit is treated differently than the Son, in that it does not as specifically identify the Holy Spirit as 'very God of very God'. This does not mean that the Council did not consider the Spirit to be a member of the Trinity, only that the matter was not on their agenda.

But the Creed does partially speak of the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Trinity, in that it is to be worshiped and glorified and that it 'proceeds from the Father' — 'and from the Son' in the filioque version discussed above. Given the importance of the filioque controversy, it is important to briefly discuss what 'proceeds from' means in this context and why it matters.

To be perfectly frank, the question is rife with confusion, because 'procession' is itself a confused matter, resulting from extra-biblical speculation and imprecise translation issues between Greek and Latin. The issue of procession involves the concepts of how the Holy Spirit was sent, through whom, by whom, and its relationship to the Father and the Son generally. The early Church Fathers are at variances on the matter, and there has probably never been a consensus.

Suffice it to say, those who favored the filioque — i.e., those who believe the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son — claim that it further strengthens the identification of the Father and the Son as being 'of the same substance'. In addition, they would refer to passages such as John 20:22 where Jesus 'breathes' out the Spirit, as well as passages which mention 'the Spirit of the Son'.

Those who disfavor the filioque — i.e., those who believe the Spirit proceeds only from the Father — claimed that the Creed already strongly establishes the Father and Son being 'of the same substance' without adding the dubious filioque and that improper subordination of the Holy Spirit to both the Father and the Son leads to undermines the role of the Spirit and under-appreciates his work. In support of their theology, they point to John 15:26, which indicates that the Spirit proceeds from the Father via the Son.

Between Nicaea in the 4th century and the Schism in the 11th, both theological perspectives existed relatively peacefully with each other, despite their differences. But when the Bishop of Rome claimed the right to force filioque to be inserted, the theological problem became a political one, and the existing tension could not survive, leading to the Great Schism.

Aside from the Trinitarian issues, Nicaea contains much of the same doctrinal content as the Apostles' Creed. The one remark I want to make on these portions is the crucifixion clause. The Apostles' Creed had read only 'suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified...', where the Nicene Creed reads 'and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate'. What I want to point out is the inclusion in the Nicene Creed of 'for us'. As I had noted in the comments on the Apostles' Creed, that creed contained very little doctrine regarding the atonement, or even more broadly, why Christ's death, burial, and resurrection was actually something worth confessing.

The Nicene Creed adds only two little words, 'for us', but those two little words incorporate a great deal of theology. It still does not delineate a particular view of the atonement, per se, but it does describe Christ's death as having meaning for man. It is not merely the fact that he died that is important, but it is because it in some way has affected 'us', presumably for the better.

Again, we should note that it is not that the atonement was an undeveloped doctrine in the 4th century. In fact, by the time of Nicaea, at least two major theories had been developed regarding the atonement and its effect and purpose. Rather, the atonement was simply not a doctrine of great dispute within the church. No one was going around accusing others of heresy because of different views of the atonement. Keep this in mind as we read the confessions of the Reformation, as we will find a much different pattern in that era.

The Nicene Creed thus represents two historical patterns in the development of the Christian creed and confession. In the first place, it represents the beginning of creeds becoming selective and polemical: singling out particular doctrines in dispute and deemed to be important, rather than trying to encompass the whole of Christian doctrine. And in the second place, on those doctrines at issue, the Nicene Creed begins to more precisely define the boundaries of orthodox belief, specifically tightening the boundaries to exclude those which prior creeds had allowed. Seeing these trends will be especially enlightening as we read the Reformation-era confessions, as these trends will help us better understand the why's and wherefore's as each tradition writes its confessional statements.

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¹ The so-called Oriental Orthodox churches had broken off in disagreement over the Chalcedonian Creed over the issue of whether Jesus had one nature or two natures — one divine and one human. The Council of Chalcedon declared that Jesus had two natures, a doctrine which survives to this day in all churches except the Oriental Orthodox churches, such as the Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, and the Armenian Apostolic Church. These churches make up about 82 million members.