What is the Nicene Creed?
Nicene Creed History
The Nicene Creed is a document that was compiled at 2 different times. We will primarily be talking about the theological aspects of the first composition of the Nicene Creed around 325 AD, about 320 years or so after the birth of Christ. The events that happened with the first council, the first Ecumenical Council, are important for us historically and theologically. One of the reasons I'm clarifying that is because there's another council that came along in 381, 70 years later around 6070, called the First Council of Constantinople. That council looks back at the 325 Council, reaffirms, and expands on what was said at Nicea based on 60 years of church usage, including church conflict, over what was decided and discussed at Nicaea. What's at stake with the Nicene Creed? Why is this something that matters to us today? Why should we care? To say that eternity is at stake may not be too great of a statement for us to make. As Christians, we have certain beliefs and particular understandings about who God is and how God has revealed Himself to us. We also have specific beliefs and specific faith propositional statements. That's what's at stake when we come to the Nicene Creed, the creed of Nicea. It's our understanding of who God is and how He has revealed Himself to be in His Word and through the person and work of God, the Son, Jesus, Christ, this is what's at stake.
Who is Jesus?
Is Jesus a mythological character or a historical person? Is Jesus someone who genuinely lived in time and space in history, had a mission, and accomplished that mission? Let's say Jesus represents a moral way of living. Jesus does represent a moral way of living, but he's also much more than that. These questions about who Jesus is and why he matters, who God is, and who is the God that we as Christians worship, all come back to Nicea.
When we begin to waffle or differ on who God is we enter into the First commandment territory. “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me.” The God who, from Exodus 20, is the one who brought his people up out of the land of Egypt, out of slavery. That is our God, the God as revealed in the Scriptures, the God who is at work in the New and Old Testaments. The God who writes to save sinners and has made himself known, as one God in three persons. When we begin to differ about who God is, how we understand him, or how he's revealed himself, we are left with two different definitions of God, and therefore two different religions and two different beliefs. When the object of your faith is different from someone else, you have a different faith.
And so what's at stake? Our understanding of who God is as he's revealed himself. I'll explain it with a silly illustration. If you own a car, your definition of your car and its identity is that it's your car. And then I come along and I say it's my car, we're in conflict, aren't we? We have two different understandings of whose car it is and the identity of the car. Who does that car belong to? Where is that car's proper place in the universe? These are existential questions about car and property ownership, but we can see as a silly illustration, that when we begin to have different definitions about whose car it is, we're going to come into conflict. And when we have two different definitions of who God is, we also will come into conflict. There's a certain mutually exclusive reality that's there. We might both be wrong about the car. Maybe both of us are speaking about someone else's car. Oh, that's my car. No, it's mine. And this quickly becomes Mo and Curly, Three Stooges routine. Whose car is it? Both of us may be wrong. Maybe neither of us owns the car. One of us may own the car, but it may not be possible that we both own the car, right? What about joint ownership? This is what Nica does for us. We all sign off on the car. We all, as Christians, gather together and say this is who God is. When we begin splitting, defining and saying, I own the car and you don't conflict, arises. Mutually exclusive definitions of who God is. At Nicaea, there was nothing less than this at stake, the very understanding of the church regarding the identity of the person and work of God in the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ.
What is the Nicene Creed?
All right, well, what is the Nicene Creed? According to the CRC website, “The Nicene Creed is a statement of the Orthodox faith of the early Christian church in opposition to certain heresies, especially Arianism. These heresies which disturbed the early church during the fourth century concerned the doctrine of the Trinity and the person of Christ.”
What's the significance of Nicaea?
Nicaea is in modern-day Turkey, near Istanbul or Constantinople. This is the place where about 318so bishops gathered together at this first council to settle the issues of the day.
What is Orthodox?
This was another word that came up in our CRC website summary of the Nicene Creed. What does it mean to be orthodox? There's kind of two different ways to use this word. Lowercase o, means to be consistent with the historic truths of Christian practice and belief in general to be orthodox. If you use an upper case O, then that's referring to specific traditions within Christian history, such as the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, or the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. When you're using capital O, you're typically talking about a particular group of people or organization.
What are Heresies?
Here's a brief definition from Harold Brown's book on orthodoxy and heresy. He says,
“The word heresy, as we have noted, is the English version of the Greek noun heresis, originally meaning nothing more insidious than party. It is used in this neutral sense in Acts 5:15, and 26 early in the history of the first Christians. However, heresy came to be used to mean a separation or split resulting from a false faith. This sometimes is seen in the New Testament, for example, in First Corinthians 11 and in Galatians five, it designated either a doctrine or the party holding the doctrine, such as a church. In the early church, heresy did not refer to simply any doctrinal disagreement, but to something that seemed to undercut the very basis of Christian existence. Practically speaking, heresy involved the doctrine of God and the doctrine of Christ later called Special theology and Christology. So what I've got up here is a continuation of that quote, corrupto optimai pessimum est says the proverb, the corruption of the best is the worst. The early Christians felt a measure of tolerance for the pagans, even though they were persecuted by them, for the pagans were ignorant. This ignorance, says Paul, as he told the Athenians, God winked at that's acts 1730 but Paul did not wink at him, who brought any other gospel within the context of the Christian community. Let him be accursed. He told the Galatian church. In Galatians 1:8 honorable enemies are regarded with less hostility than the traitor from within one's own camp. The Christian life is often presented as spiritual warfare. If the pagans are the enemies, then the heretics are the traders”
I think it's very, helpful for us to understand this as we're talking about Nicaea. We need to know who's on the outside of what we would say is Orthodox Christian teaching. Different teachings are going on, particularly about Jesus Christ, in places like Alexandria, the Holy Land, and in places we would call modern Turkey, Rome, and northern Italy. As there are differences about who Jesus is there is a need to understand what do we agree on the scriptures saying who Jesus is.
What is Arianism?
Our next definition is Arianism. Arianism is a particular heresy. At the convening of the Council of Nicea, Arius taught that there was a time when the Son, the second person of the Trinity, was not. He was teaching that there was a time when God the Father was and God the Son was not.
Now is that something that is really that big of a deal? We're getting into that territory about, who is God and beginning to define potentially two different gods or two different understandings of who God is. We're in the first commandment territory, big topic, big issue. As a consequence, Arius's teaching put Jesus Christ as lower than God, including Jesus as a created being. In other words, if you were to draw one line and say, here's God on top of this line, and then here's everything that was created underneath that line. Where do you put Jesus, the second person of the Trinity? Arius’ answer is going to be that he's going to put Jesus below the line, in that created line, that there was a time when Jesus was not. There is a hard distinction in Arianism between the Father and the Son.
What is Adoptionism?
Arius was in some ways a forerunner and champion to many false religious beliefs today. There are many today who teach that Jesus was not always God, but became God. That's a heresy called adoptionism. It's very popular and oftentimes taught by Jehovah's Witnesses. Many teach that Jesus is a good representative of God, like a prophet or a teacher who spoke on God's behalf but was in fact a creature different, in essence, from God the Father. Islam teaches this. Mormonism teaches this, and Unitarians teach this. Arian saw the glory of the Father in his unique oneness and denied any CO eternal beings except the Father. This is what's percolating in the air and being taught in the 320s. This is what brings churches together, to bring these bishops together to convene at Nicea to try and hammer this issue out. They need to understand biblically and work through together what language and understanding the church will have moving forward regarding the Trinity and the relationship between the Father and the Son.
What is Trinity?
Lastly, let's define the Trinity, or the triune, Godhead. Trinity is a term and concept summarizing the biblical revelation of who God is. God is one, in essence, three in persons. God, the Father is just as much God as God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God has no beginning and no end. All three persons have no beginning and no end. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have always been God. They've always been distinct in person, and have always maintained obtained union together, like the hymn says, holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty God in three persons, Blessed Trinity.
We hope that these definitions give you a bit more background and information on the Nicene Creed. Stay tuned for part 2 on why we need the Nicene Creed.
