The Nicene Creed: An Expression of Christian Identity 

28th June 2025 Leave a comment

Preface:

“Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour – the 1700th anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Nicea (325-2025)” – the title of the document released today, Thursday April 3 2025 – is therefore not simply a work of academic theology, but is offered as a synthesis that can lead to a more profound understanding of the faith and the witness it bears in the life of the Christian community.

… On May 20, the Christian world will commemorate the 1700th anniversary of the opening of the first ecumenical council, held in Nicea in 325, which has gone down in history primarily on account of the Creed, which brings together, defines, and proclaims the faith in salvation in Jesus Christ and in the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Later completed by the Council of Constantinople in 381, the Nicene Creed became in practice the identity card of the professed faith of the Church. 

Introduction:

  1. The Catholic Church and the whole Christian world remember with gratitude and joy the opening of the Council of Nicaea in 325 [AD]: ‘The Council of Nicaea is a milestone in the Church’s history. The celebration of its anniversary invites Christians to unite in a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the Holy Trinity and in particular to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, “consubstantial with the Father”, who revealed to us this mystery of love.’1 This has remained in Christian consciousness mainly through the Creed, that Symbol which gathers, defines and proclaims faith in salvation in Jesus Christ and in the One God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

The Nicene Symbol professes the good news of the integral salvation of human beings from God himself in Jesus Christ. 1,700 years later, we are celebrating this event above all with a doxology, a praise of the glory of God, since this glory has been manifested in the priceless treasure of faith expressed by the Symbol: the infinite beauty of the God who saves us, the immense mercy of Jesus Christ our Saviour, the generosity of the redemption offered to every human being in the Holy Spirit. We join our voices to those of the Fathers, like Ephrem the Syrian, to sing this glory:

Glory to that One Who came
to us by His First-born.
Glory to that Silent One 
Who spoke by means of His Voice.
Glory to that Sublime One
Who was seen by means of His Dawn.
Glory to the Spiritual One
Who was well-pleased that
His Child should become a body so that 
through Him His power might be felt
and the bodies of His kindred might live again! 2

  1. The light shed by the assembly of Nicaea on Christian revelation allows us to discover an inexhaustible richness that continues to deepen over the centuries and across cultures, and to show itself in ever more beautiful and fresh ways. These different facets become current for today especially through the prayerful and theological reading that the greater part of Christian traditions give to the Symbol, each with a different relationship to the very fact of the existence of a symbol. It is also an opportunity for them all to rediscover or even to discover its richness and the bond of communion between all Christians which it can constitute. ‘How can we not recall the extraordinary importance of such a commemoration in the search for the full unity of Christians?’, asks Pope Francis.[3]
  2. The Council of Nicaea was the first council called ‘ecumenical’, because for the first time the bishops of the entire Oikoumenē were invited.[4] Its resolutions were therefore intended to have an ecumenical, that is to say “universal” significance: they were received as such by believers and by Christian tradition in the course of a long and laborious process. The ecclesiological implications are crucial. The Symbol is part of the gradual adoption by Christian teaching of the Greek language and forms of thought, which were themselves, so to speak, transfigured by their contact with Revelation. 

The Council also marked the ever-increasing importance of synods and synodal modes of government in the Church of the first centuries, while at the same time constituting a major turning-point: in line with the exousia conferred on the Apostles by Jesus and the Holy Spirit (Lk 10:16; Acts 1:14-2:1-4), the event of Nicaea opened the way to a new institutional expression of authority in the Church, the authority of universal scope henceforth recognised in the ecumenical councils, as much for doctrine as for discipline. This decisive turning-point in the manner of thinking and governing in the community of the disciples of the Lord Jesus will have thrown light on essential elements of the Church’s teaching mission, and therefore of its nature.

Faith in the Trinity

  1. Even before the doctrine of the Trinity was developed theologically, faith in the Trinity was at the foundation of the Christian life celebrated in baptism. The profession of baptismal faith pronounced in the sacramental formula of baptism did not simply express a theoretical mystery but the living faith that referred to the reality of salvation given by God, and therefore to God himself. Baptismal faith provides a ‘knowledge’ of God that is at the same time an access to the living God. Thus, the apologist Athenagoras asserts: ‘There are […] human beings […] who allow themselves to be guided solely by the desire to know the true God and his Word, to know what is the unity of the Son with the Father, what is the communion of the Father with the Son, what is the Spirit, what is the union and distinction of the three persons thus united, the Spirit, the Son and the Father.’67
  2. This is why the baptismal formula, in which the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are placed on an equal footing, constitutes the central argument against Arius and his followers, much more than recourse to theological reasoning. This is as true of Ambrose[68] and Hilary[69] as it is of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and Ephrem the Syrian.[70] Likewise, Athanasius insists that the Son is named in the baptismal formula not because the Father is insufficient, nor simply by chance, but because:
    He is the Word of God and God’s own Wisdom and, being his radiance (apaugasma), he is always with the Father. For this reason, when the Father dispenses grace, he can give it only in his Son, for the Son is in the Father as the radiance of light […] He whom the Father baptizes, the Son also baptizes, and he whom the Son baptizes is sanctified in the Holy Spirit.[71]
  3. That said, for Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers, it is not simply a matter of pronouncing the Trinitarian formula, but baptism presupposes faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ. Thus, the teaching of right faith is necessary and forms part of the proper practice of baptism. Athanasius cites as a basis the formulation of the precept in Mt 28:19: “Go … teach … and baptise.”[72] This is why Athanasius – like Basil and Gregory of Nyssa[73] – denies all efficacy to Arian baptism, because those who consider the Son to be a creature do not have a correct conception of God the Father: he who does not recognise the Son does not understand the Father either and does not ‘possess’ the Father, because the Father never began to be Father.[74]

2. The Symbol of Nicaea as a confession of faith

  1. Not only is the Nicene confession of faith the expression of baptismal faith, but it may have come directly from a baptismal symbol of the Church of Caesarea in Palestine (if we believe what Eusebius says[75]). Three additions would have been made: ‘…that is, of the substance of the Father’, ‘begotten, not created’, and ‘consubstantial with the Father (homoousios)’. In this way, it is established with overwhelming clarity that the one who ‘took flesh for us human beings … and suffered’ is God, homoousion tō Patri. Yet while he is ‘of the substance of the Father’ (ek tēs ousias tou Patros), he is distinct from the Father insofar as he is his Son.  Through him, who ‘became human for our salvation’, we know what it means that the Triune God ‘is love’ (1 Jn 4:16). These additions are essential and mark the proper originality and decisive contribution of Nicaea, but at the same time it must be constantly emphasised that the Symbol, as a symbol of faith, is originally rooted in the framework of the liturgy, which is its vital environment and therefore the framework in which it takes on its full meaning. It is certainly not a theoretical exposition but an act of the baptismal celebration, which is enriched by the rest of the liturgy and in turn enlightens it. Our contemporaries may sometimes have the impression that the creed is a highly theoretical statement because they are unaware of its liturgical and baptismal roots.
  2. In this sense, the faith of Nicaea remains a ‘symbolon’ (‘ekthesis’, ‘pistis’), i.e. a confession of faith. It can be distinguished from an interpretation or a more precise technical theological definition designed to protect the faith (‘oros’, ‘definitio’), as proposed, for example, by the Council of Chalcedon. As a symbol, the Nicene Confession is a positive formulation and clarification of biblical faith.[76] It does not claim to be a new definition, but rather an evocation of the faith of the apostles: ‘Christ gave this faith, the apostles proclaimed it, the Fathers of all our Oikoumenē gathered at Nicaea handed it on (paradosis).’ 77
  3. In the same way, it is because of its status as a confession of faith and precisely of the apostolic faith, and not as a definition or teaching, that the Nicene symbol is considered in the following period (at least until the end of the fifth century) as the decisive proof of orthodoxy.[78] This is why it was used as the basic text at subsequent councils. Thus, Ephesus and Chalcedon were intended to be interpretations of the Nicene Creed: they emphasised their agreement with Nicaea and opposed the positions taken by those who dissented from Nicaea. When the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Confession of Faith was read out at the Council of Chalcedon, the assembled bishops exclaimed: ‘This is our faith. This is what we were baptised in, this is what we baptise in! Pope Leo believed thus, Cyril believed thus.’[79] Note that the profession of faith may be expressed in the singular – ‘I believe’ – but it is often in the plural: ‘we believe’; similarly, the Lord’s prayer is in the plural: ‘Our Father…’. My radically personal and singular faith is just as radically part of that of the Church as a community of faith. The Nicene Symbol and the Greek original of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol open with the plural ‘we believe, ‘to bear witness that in this “We”, all the Churches were in communion, and that all Christians professed the same faith.’80
  4. As we mentioned in the previous chapter, to this day ‘Nicaea’ – ‘the confession of faith of the 318 Orthodox Fathers’[81] – is regarded in the Eastern Churches as the Council par excellence, that is, not as ‘one Council among others’, nor even as ‘the first in a series’, but as the norm of the right Christian faith. The ‘318 Fathers’ are explicitly mentioned in the liturgy of Jerusalem. Moreover, in the Eastern Churches, unlike the Western Churches, Nicaea has also been given its own commemoration in the liturgical calendar. It should be noted that the disciplinary issues dealt with at Nicaea were given a different weighting from the outset from that of the confession of faith. While majority decisions are possible for disciplinary matters, it is the apostolic tradition that is decisive for matters of faith: ‘With regard to the date of Easter, the Fathers wrote: “It has been decided.” As regards the faith, they did not write: “It has been decided”, but “So believes the Catholic Church!”[82]

3. Going deeper in preaching and catechesis

  1. The Fathers of the East and West did not content themselves with arguing with the help of theological treatises, but also clarified the Nicene faith in sermons addressed to the people, in order to protect the faithful against erroneous interpretations, generally designated by the term ‘Arian’ – even if the ‘Homoeans’ of the West at the time of Augustine differed greatly from the ‘Neo-Arians’ of the East in their argumentation. The theological view that the Son is not ‘true God from true God’, but only the Father’s most eminent creature, and that he is not coeternal with him, was recognised by the Fathers as a persistent threat, and combated, even independently of actual opponents. The prologue to John’s gospel offered just such an opportunity to explain the relationship between the Father and the Son, or between ‘God’ and his ‘Word’, in accordance with the Nicene confession.[83] Chromatius of Aquileia (ordained bishop in 387/388, died in 407), for example, passed on the Nicene faith to his followers without using technical terminology.[84] Even the Fathers of the Church, who were sceptical in principle about ‘theological debates’, took a very clear stand against ‘Arian impiety’ (‘asebeia’, ‘impietas’): the Arians understood neither the ‘eternal begetting of the Son’ nor the ‘original equality-eternity’ of the Father and the Son.[85] They were even mistaken in their monotheism by accepting a second, subordinate divinity. Their worship was therefore depraved and erroneous.
  2. Thus, in his catecheses, John Chrysostom explains the baptismal faith that had been validly formulated at Nicaea,[86] and distinguishes the right faith not only from Homoean doctrine, but also from Sabellian doctrine: Christians believe in God as ‘one essence, three hypostases’. Augustine makes a similar argument in his instructions to candidates for baptism.[87] Gregory of Nyssa’s Oratio catechetica magna, the most voluminous parts of which are devoted to the eternal and incarnate Word of God, can be considered the masterpiece of a catechesis that was clearly intended for those who should relay it, namely bishops and catechists. The theme is not only the relationship between the Son-Word and the Father (chapters 1, 3, 4), but also the significance of the Incarnation as a redemptive action (chapter 5). Gregory wants to make it clear that birth and death are not something unworthy of God or incompatible with his perfection (chapters 9 and 10), and explains the Incarnation in terms of God’s love for human beings. But he insists above all on the fact that Christian baptism is accomplished in the ‘uncreated Trinity’, that is, in the three co-eternal Persons. It is only in this way that baptism confers eternal and immortal life: ‘Indeed, he who subjects himself to a created being, unwittingly places his hope of salvation in that being and not in the divinity.’[88]
  3. The heart of the debate is indeed an existential question rather than a theoretical problem: is baptism linked to ‘establishment in filiation’ (Basil), to ‘the beginning of eternal life’ (Gregory of Nyssa), to ‘salvation from sin and death’ (Ambrose[89])? This is only possible if the Son (and the Holy Spirit) is God. It is only when God himself becomes ‘one of us’ that there is a real possibility for human beings to participate in the life of the Trinity, that is, to be ‘divinised’.

This article on the Nicene Creed is excerpted from the document, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour – the 1700th anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Nicea (325-2025),” published by The Holy See Press Office, Vatican City © 2025. 

Top image credit: Icon from the Mégalo Metéoron Monastery in Greece, representing the First Ecumenical Council of Nikea 325 A.D. Image is cropped. Source of full image at Wikipedia.org. Permission granted to copy/use under the  Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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