Introduction: Doctrinal statements, confessions, and creeds. What are they?
When we look at the history of the Christian church, we discover that almost every generation of Christians had doctrinal statements, confessions, and creeds. Doctrinal statements are the latest development in how Christians express their faith. A doctrinal statement serves as a defensive statement of a church or Christian institution in expressing its distinctive beliefs about the teachings of Scripture.
Confessions are the next oldest form of doctrinal expression.1 We see confessions emerge during the 16th century Protestant Reformation as Roman Catholics and Protestants attempt to distinguish themselves from one another and lay out what is deemed the crucial elements of the Christian faith.
Creeds are the oldest expression of doctrinal commitment. As I'll explain momentarily, the term creed means "I believe". Creeds came into use during the days of Jesus and the Apostles. The Holy Spirit chose to use those creeds in His production of the Divinely inspired books of the New Testament. 2
Seeing creedal statements in the New Testament.
For example, when Peter preached to a group of Gentile believers in Acts 10:36, he expressed a very short creed: "Jesus is Lord". Paul expressed an early Christian creed in the opening of his argument for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead in 1 Corinthians 15:2-4, affirming that:
"Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, He was buried, and He was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures".
Paul then included various sightings of the post-resurrected Christ in the remainder of the passage.3 Once the New Testament authors incorporated those creeds, they became part of the Divinely inspired text of the New Testament. Creeds formed after the New Testament are not Divinely inspired, and must be viewed as important witnesses and summaries of Scripture compared to their Divinely inspired counterparts in the Bible, the Word of God.
What functions do creeds have? Why are they necessary for Christians today?
The word "creed" derives from the Latin verb "credo" and means "I believe". In two of the most well-known creeds, the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed, the Latin versions of the each of these begin with that Latin verb "credo". Creeds served three purposes.
A. Creeds are tools for making disciples.
First, a creed was what a new believer confessed before the church prior to their baptism. To express a creed was to affirm "this is what I believe". We could say that creeds were originally the first tool used in making disciples.
B. Creeds summarize the essentials of the Christian faith.
Secondly, Creeds functioned to articulate the church's faith and summary of the teachings of Scripture in the face of heresy and controversy.
C. Creeds are used in the worship of God's people
Lastly, and of most importance, Creeds served as part of the worship services in the early church. We see this especially in the use of the Apostle's Creed and its much bigger cousin, the Nicene Creed.
The necessity of Creeds for Christianity.
As we saw earlier, creeds became part of the inspired New Testament record. As subsequent generations of Christians spread the Gospel, made disciples, and defended the faith, they no doubt affirmed the foundation of God's Word as the final standard for faith and practice. With that affirmation, early Christians did not exclude the need for statements of faith like Creeds to clarify what the Scriptures taught and what they believed. 4
What is the Nicene Creed?
June 19, 2025 will mark 1,700 years since the early church convened the historic "Council of Nicaea" in ancient Bithynia (modern day Turkey). The point of the council and its consequent creed was to deal with the error of Arius, a bishop at that time, who denied the deity of Christ, the personality of the Holy Spirit, and asserted that the Father alone was truly God in the fullest sense.5
As the dust settled after that extraordinary gathering of 325 bishops, Arius was deemed a heretic. It seemed the doctrine of Christ's deity was safeguarded. However, it didn't take long until Arius' teaching began to seep back into the empire. In 381 A.D. a second major council (also called an "ecumenical council") was convened in Constantinople to expand on the original Nicene Creed's statements. This council, known as the "Council of Constantinople", expanded particularly on the Nicene Creed's affirmation of the Holy Spirit to fight a heretical group called the "Spirit-fighters" or "Pneumatomachians". These people denied the deity of Christ and aligned closely with the lingering teachings of Arius. Consequently, the Council of Constantinople's outcome and additions to the Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. led to what is called today the "Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed". It is this Creed that is confessed the world-over in vast stretches of Christian churches.
As I mentioned already, the term "creed" derives from the Latin "credo" meaning "I believe". It is the first word in this historic creed. Although not the only creed of course (there is the historic Apostle's Creed, for example), the Nicene Creed is recited and affirmed nearly every Sunday throughout vast stretches of the Christian church. 325 bishops convened on June 19, 325 A.D. to debate the heretical notions of Arius, to hear the learned arguments of Athanasius, and to dispute among themselves what ought be the declaration of the Christian faith for that era.
Little did they imagine that this Creed (and its subsequent fuller version, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381) would find generations of Christian reciting it and using it even to this day. I close out this post with the full Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. I plan to offer further teaching about this creed in future posts in commemoration of this extraordinary 2,500th anniversary of it.
Conclusion: The Nicene Creed of 325 A.D.
I reproduce below the original Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. as it is found in Phillip Schaff's "The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church" here Philip Schaff: NPNF2-14. The Seven Ecumenical Councils - Christian Classics Ethereal Library
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, 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, both which be in heaven and in earth.
Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, and ascended into heaven. And he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead.
And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost. And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion—all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes (or curses) them."
More next post
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Endnotes:
1. When we look at confessions of faith (such as the Lutheran Augsburg Confession, or Westminster Confession of Faith, or 2nd London Baptist Confession of 1689, or the Baptist Faith and Message 2000), they serve not to defend, but to proclaim and go on the offense concerning what a particular denomination or Christian movement holds.
2. When the New Testament canon closed, creeds outside Scripture were formulated for use by new converts getting baptized. As heresies and persecution arose, the early Christians saw creeds as shorthand for summarizing the essentials of Christianity, as well as keeping in mind what the Bible taught.
3. New Testament scholars today agree that Paul utilized a creed that is traceable to within five years of the events of the empty tomb, making it the oldest evidence we have of Christ's resurrection, pre-dating the Gospels by twenty-five years.
4. The early Christians quickly saw it wasn't enough to say "I believe in Jesus", since there were other heretics (such as Marcion of the second century) and movements (like Gnosticism of the second century) who also claimed belief in Jesus and used the New Testament to back up their aberrant views.
Creeds became necessary to affirm what each Bible believing church taught and to clarify what they did not teach (for instance, denying Marcion's claim that the God of the Old Testament was evil for creating the material world, and that Jesus was a good lesser deity; or Gnosticism, which denied the true humanity of Christ while affirming him to be a deity among other deities).
As I will argue for in the next two posts, Creeds such as The Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, and other major Creeds are important to know, retain, and if need be, recite in the life of the church. Why? The proliferation of the errors of Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons on the Person of Christ requires us to state clearly why they don't have a Biblical view of the Savior, and why a tried and tested summary of Scripture's teaching on Jesus Christ yields that He is truly God and truly man, and that He, along with the Father and Holy Spirit are one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity. You have to have the right Jesus if you're going to be right with God.
5. This council came together after a heated seven-year debate between the older Arius, his superior Alexander (Bishop of Alexandria Egypt), and the chief defender of Christ's deity and the doctrine of the Trinity, Athanasius (who served as a Deacon under Alexander but then later became himself Bishop of Alexandria). I won't get into the details today about what led up to this council. We can note one other important fact tied to the Nicene Creed.
