The Spirit, the Scriptures and the Creeds

The Nicene Creed, line by line

The Church's conciliar confession, clause by clause, with the arguments each phrase was written to settle.

You are reading the brief version. Switch the depth control to Complete for the full treatment.

The Nicene Creed is the one text all four traditions confess and recite in public worship. It is properly the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed: drafted at Nicaea in 325 against Arius, expanded at Constantinople in 381 to deal with the Holy Spirit, and in use ever since.

Unlike the Apostles' Creed, which grew out of baptism, this one was written by a council in the middle of a fight. Nearly every phrase is aimed at somebody. That is why it is longer, more precise, and more technical - and why its wording repays study clause by clause.

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 the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men 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 sitteth 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 in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.

And in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The four traditions recite this in common, with one difference: Western churches add and the Son to the Spirit's procession, which the East rejects.

Why it was written

In about 318, a presbyter of Alexandria named Arius began teaching that the Son, though the greatest of all beings and the agent of creation, was Himself created. His slogan was memorable and set to popular tunes: there was when he was not.

The appeal was real. It preserved a tidy monotheism, explained the Gospel passages where Jesus prays, submits and confesses ignorance, and fitted the philosophical assumptions of the day, in which the supreme God does not directly touch matter.

It also destroyed the faith, and Athanasius saw why. If the Son is a creature, then Christians worship a creature, the incarnation is God sending a deputy, and the cross is a creature's death that cannot reconcile anyone to God.

The Emperor Constantine, alarmed at a dispute tearing his newly tolerated Church apart, summoned a council to Nicaea in 325. Somewhere between 250 and 318 bishops attended, some of them still bearing the marks of the persecutions. They produced a creed.

It did not settle matters. The next fifty years saw Arian and semi-Arian parties in the ascendant, imperial favour swinging back and forth, and Athanasius exiled five times. The Council of Constantinople in 381 confirmed Nicaea, expanded the third article against those who denied the Spirit's divinity, and gave us the text we say.

Pause and thinkPause: Arius and the Nicene party both quoted Scripture fluently. Given that, what could a council actually do? Why would adding a non-biblical word help?

The first article: the Father

We believe in one God

We, because a council speaks for the Church; many liturgies now say I, following the baptismal pattern. One God first, before anything else, because what follows is going to say startling things about three, and the monotheism is not being negotiated.

the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible

Maker - and note what Nicaea adds to the Apostles' Creed: all things visible and invisible. That is aimed at Gnostic and Manichaean systems in which the spiritual realm is generated by someone other than the Creator of matter. There is no second maker. The angels are creatures too.

The second article: the Son

This article carries about half the Creed, because this is where the fight was.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God

One Lord parallels one God, and the parallel is the point. In 1 Corinthians 8:6 Paul splits the Shema - the Lord our God, the Lord is one - so that God is applied to the Father and Lord to Jesus Christ, within a sentence insisting there is only one. The Creed follows him.

Only-begotten - monogenes. Unique, of a kind there is only one of. His sonship is not ours in a higher degree; it is different in kind.

begotten of the Father before all ages

Directly against Arius's there was when he was not. Not begotten at some point before time, but eternally begotten - a relation, not an event. As long as there has been a Father there has been a Son, which is to say always.

Light of Light

The Creed's one image, and the only analogy the Fathers really trusted. A light source and the light streaming from it: distinguishable, simultaneous, not made of different stuff, and with no moment when the source existed without the radiance. Each was called light, and it was not two kinds of light.

true God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father

The four hammer blows.

True God of true God - not a lesser or honorary deity.

Begotten, not made - the pivot. In Greek, gennethenta ou poiethenta. What is made is a creature. What is begotten shares the nature of the begetter. Human beings beget human beings and make tables; God begets God.

Of one substance with the Father - homoousios. The word that did the work. The compromise on offer was homoiousios, of similar substance - a single letter apart, and the difference between God and a creature. Gibbon sneered that the world was convulsed over a diphthong. It was convulsed over whether the one Christians worship is God.

By whom all things were made - He is on the Creator's side of the line, not the creature's. Arius had said the Son was the instrument through which God made everything else, which sounds similar and is the opposite.

who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven

The motive clause, and the only one in the Creed. Everything that follows happens for a reason, and the reason is us. Nothing compelled it.

and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man

Incarnate - sarkothenta, enfleshed. And was made man is not a repetition: the first phrase might be satisfied by a body, and the second insists on full humanity - mind, will and all. Apollinaris later tried to claim the first without the second, and this wording had already blocked him.

and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried

As in the Apostles' Creed, with for us repeated. The Creed will not let the cross be recited as biography.

and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures

According to the Scriptures - the resurrection was not an improvisation. It fulfils what was written, and the phrase comes straight out of the pre-Pauline creed in 1 Corinthians 15:4.

and ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father

A human nature enthroned. Sitteth - the offering is complete.

and he shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead

With glory - the second coming will not be hidden as the first was. To judge

history is going somewhere and it ends in a courtroom, with the crucified as the

judge.

whose kingdom shall have no end

Added at Constantinople in 381 against Marcellus of Ancyra, who taught that at the end the Son would be reabsorbed into the Father and His reign would cease. The clause insists the incarnation is permanent: there will never be a time when the Son lays down His kingdom or His humanity.

The third article: the Spirit

Nicaea in 325 said only and in the Holy Spirit. Constantinople expanded it against the Pneumatomachi, who accepted the Son's divinity but called the Spirit a creature.

the Lord and giver of life

The Lord - the divine title. Giver of life - no creature gives life; the Spirit is on the Creator's side of the line.

who proceeds from the Father

The disputed clause. The Greek original has from the Father; Western churches add and the Son, Filioque. Note the vocabulary chosen: proceeds, not begotten, because the Spirit's relation of origin is distinct from the Son's. The Fathers were content to name the difference without explaining it - John of Damascus says plainly that the manner of the procession is beyond us.

who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified

The decisive phrase, and Basil's argument in one line. The Church worships the Spirit. If He is a creature, that is idolatry. There is no third option, and the liturgy had been doing this since the beginning.

who spoke by the prophets

The Spirit is the author of Scripture, and He is the same Spirit in both Testaments. Against Marcion and anyone who divided the God of Israel from the God of Jesus.

The fourth article: the Church and the last things

And in one holy catholic and apostolic Church

The four marks, and each is contested in practice.

One - not many. The Church's divisions are a wound, not a design.

Holy - set apart and indwelt, not composed of impressive people.

Catholic - universal, whole, lacking nothing.

Apostolic - founded on the apostles, holding their teaching, and continuous with their ministry. What that continuity requires is one of the live differences among the four, and it is treated in its own section.

I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins

One - baptism is unrepeatable, which is why Christians received from other communions are not rebaptised where the form was valid.

For the remission of sins - the Creed says baptism does something. This one line, recited weekly by all four traditions, is the clearest creedal statement against a purely symbolic view.

And I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come

I look for - prosdokomen, I await expectantly. Not a hope held loosely.

The resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come - not souls in heaven but the renewal of everything. The Creed ends where Revelation ends, with a new creation.

Where the four traditions stand

Catholic

The Creed is recited at Mass on Sundays and solemnities. The Latin text includes Filioque, and the current English translation restored consubstantial with the Father in 2011 in place of the looser of one Being, precisely to recover the force of homoousios. Catholic teaching holds the four marks to subsist in the Catholic Church, while recognising genuine elements of sanctification and truth outside her visible boundaries - the formulation of Lumen Gentium 8. When the Pope celebrates with Eastern Catholics or with Orthodox guests, the Creed is commonly recited in Greek without the Filioque, and Rome has acknowledged the Greek text as normative.

Orthodox

The Creed is sung or recited by the whole congregation at every Divine Liturgy, immediately after the kiss of peace and before the anaphora, and it is the only creed used. Orthodoxy recites it exactly as promulgated in 381, without the Filioque, and regards the Western addition as uncanonical - Ephesus in 431 having forbidden the composition of another creed. Orthodox commentary places weight on the Creed as a liturgical act rather than a doctrinal checklist: it is confessed standing, corporately, immediately before the eucharistic offering, so that the faith and the sacrifice belong together. The four marks are understood to describe the Orthodox Church as such, though the status of those outside her is left deliberately undefined - a reticence that is itself characteristic.

Lutheran

The Nicene Creed is appointed for the Divine Service on festivals and is confessed with the Filioque. Article 1 of the Augsburg Confession begins by affirming the decree of Nicaea, which is the Reformation's first move: Lutherans wished to be seen as catholic in the ancient sense and heretical in nothing. The Book of Concord prints all three ecumenical creeds first, before any distinctively Lutheran document, establishing the order of authority. Lutherans note with particular interest the line I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, which supports their doctrine of baptismal regeneration against the Anabaptists of Luther's own day, and whose kingdom shall have no end, which underwrites the permanence of the incarnation and so of the personal union that grounds their eucharistic doctrine.

Anglican

Article 8 receives the Nicene Creed as to be thoroughly received and believed because it may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture. The Creed is appointed at Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer, and 1662 includes the Filioque. Following Lambeth 1978 and 1988, several provinces now permit or prefer the original form without it; the Church of England retains it. The English tradition has produced substantial commentary on the Creed - Pearson's Exposition of the Creed of 1659 is still in print - and Anglican theology has generally read the four marks as descriptive of the whole Church of Christ, within which Anglican provinces are one part, an ecclesiology that made the Communion an early and active participant in ecumenical work.

Where modern denominations differ

Who differs: Methodists and most Reformed churches recite the Nicene Creed and are allies here. The dissent is from non-creedal evangelical, Baptist and Restorationist churches, and, on the content itself, from Jehovah's Witnesses and Oneness Pentecostals, who reject what the Creed was written to establish.

What they hold: The non-creedal objection is that Nicaea imposed Greek philosophical categories on a Hebrew faith at the direction of a Roman emperor. Jehovah's Witnesses hold that the Son is a created being - Arianism, continued essentially without change. Oneness Pentecostals hold that Father, Son and Spirit are modes of one Person named Jesus, and baptise in Jesus's name only, objecting to begotten before all ages and to the whole framework of eternal distinction.

How to answer: On Constantine, the history is checkable and it goes the other way. He convened the council and wanted peace; he had no theology to impose, and within a few years he had accepted Arius back and exiled Athanasius. For most of the half-century after 325, imperial favour lay with the Arian party. Jerome wrote that the whole world groaned to find itself Arian. The Creed survived because bishops kept being deposed for it and kept teaching it anyway - the opposite of a document imposed by power.

On Greek philosophy, note what the Creed actually says and ask whether any Greek philosopher would have said it. That the supreme God became a particular Jewish man, was executed, and rose bodily was an embarrassment to educated pagans - Celsus and Porphyry said so at length. The Church borrowed Greek words to stop people using biblical words to mean opposite things. That is translation, not capture.

Against the Arian position of Jehovah's Witnesses, work from begotten, not made and from the texts behind it: John 1:1-3, where the Word is with God and is God and all things are made by Him; Colossians 1:16-17; Hebrews 1:8, where the Father addresses the Son as God. Then John 20:28 and the fact that Revelation twice has an angel refuse worship while the Lamb receives it throughout.

Against the Oneness position, use the Creed's own logic. Begotten of the Father before all ages and sitteth at the right hand of the Father require two who are distinct. Then go to the Jordan, where all three are present simultaneously, and to John 17, where the Son prays to the Father and speaks of the glory He had with Him before the world was. One Person cannot sit at his own right hand.

And for the non-creedal objection generally: ask what their church would do if a teacher began saying the Son was created. Whatever they reached for at that moment would be functioning as a creed. The Creed simply has the advantage of having been written down, examined by the whole Church, and tested for seventeen centuries.

Work with it

Check yourself

Why did the Council of Nicaea choose the non-biblical word homoousios rather than a scriptural phrase?

Check yourself

Why was the clause "whose kingdom shall have no end" added at Constantinople in 381?

Check yourself

Which line of the Nicene Creed bears most directly on what baptism does?

Objection drill

Nicaea was a political event. An emperor who was not even baptised summoned bishops, paid their travel, presided over the opening, and got the answer he wanted. Christianity was rewritten by imperial power in 325, and everything since has been the winners' version.

Write your answer first. You will remember it far better than one you only read.

A model answer

The charge is specific enough to check, and checking it is the answer.

What Constantine wanted was a unified church in a newly tolerated empire. He had no theological position of his own - his letter to Alexander and Arius before the council urges them to see that they are quarrelling over a small and unnecessary question, which is not the letter of a man with a doctrine to impose. He wanted the argument to stop.

What happened afterwards is the decisive evidence, and it is rarely mentioned by people making this argument. If Constantine controlled the outcome, the outcome should have stayed controlled. It did not. Within three years he had recalled Arius from exile. By 335 he had exiled Athanasius, the Creed's fiercest defender - the first of five exiles totalling seventeen years of his life. Constantine was baptised on his deathbed by Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian sympathiser. His son Constantius II actively promoted Arianism across the empire and pressured councils to overturn Nicaea, which several duly did - Sirmium, Rimini, Seleucia. Jerome's line about the world groaning to find itself Arian describes the year 359, not 325.

So the historical picture is the reverse of the objection. Imperial power was applied for decades against the Nicene formula. It prevailed anyway, over two generations, because bishops who were deposed, exiled and harried kept teaching it, and because the churches kept receiving it.

On the bishops themselves, it is worth remembering who was in the room. The persecutions had ended barely a decade earlier. Some of the men at Nicaea had been maimed for refusing to sacrifice - Paphnutius had lost an eye. These were not courtiers looking for preferment; many of them had recently demonstrated exactly how much imperial displeasure they were willing to absorb.

On "the winners' version", the phrase assumes the alternative was equally attested and was suppressed. We have a great deal of Arian material, quoted at length by opponents and surviving directly in places, and we can read what Arius taught. The judgement of history can be examined rather than taken on trust. What we find is that the Nicene party was defending what the Church already did - worshipping Christ, baptising into three names - and the Arian party was proposing a revision that made those existing practices idolatrous.

And a fair concession. Constantine's involvement did entangle the Church with imperial power in ways that caused enormous harm over subsequent centuries, and Christians should not be defensive about that. But the entanglement is a separate matter from the truth of the Creed, and on the particular question of whether an emperor dictated its content, the record is clear and it does not support the charge.

Memory work

Turn each card over, then say honestly whether you knew it. Cards you miss come back sooner.

I have worked through this section