Why We Need the Nicene Creed

Why We Need the Nicene Creed

by | Jul 22, 2025 | March/April 2025, May/June 2025

 

Why We Need the Nicene Creed

By Jerome Van Kuiken

My son just joined the Air Force. As part of his training, he memorized the Airman’s Creed. It’s a summary of the core facts and values that demand his loyalty as an airman and that define the community that he’s entered. That’s what a creed does: it lays out a vision of what’s true and most important, and it calls us to join with others in committing ourselves to that vision. Many businesses, civic groups, and other organizations have mission statements or lists of core values that function like a creed. And just as the Air Force and all those other organizations have their creeds, so does Christianity. The most influential Christian creed across history, geography, cultures and denominations is known as the Nicene Creed. Let’s look at where it came from, what it is, and why it’s so important.

Not only is 2025 the year my son enlisted; it’s also the 1700th anniversary of a crucial church meeting called the Council of Nicaea. The “Nicene” in “Nicene Creed” refers to Nicaea, a city in the ancient Roman Empire (now in modern-day Turkey). For most of the first three hundred years of Christianity, if you were a Christian in the Roman Empire, then you were a member of an outlawed religion and subject to persecution at the whim of Roman authorities. The decades leading up to the Council of Nicaea had witnessed the Great Persecution — a state-sponsored final solution that aimed at annihilating Christianity. Church buildings became heaps of rubble. Copies of the Scriptures became kindling for the fire. Christians became victims of torture and martyrdom. But then the most unexpected turnaround of all happened ….

The new Roman emperor, Constantine, embraced Christianity! He claimed the faith as his own and legalized it. Over the years, scholars have debated Constantine’s motives, the timing and genuineness of his conversion, and whether he had a net positive or negative effect on the church. What’s certain, though, is that he ended imperial attempts to wipe out Christianity. Instead, in A.D. 325 he called a council of bishops to Nicaea to settle a dispute among Christians.

Ever since Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code novel and movie, there’s been plenty of disinformation floating around about the Council of Nicaea. No, Constantine didn’t strongarm a bunch of reluctant bishops into seeing things his way. No, the council didn’t change Christianity from a hyper-tolerant, “believe-whatever-you-like” religion into a newly narrowminded One True Faith. No, the dispute it met to resolve didn’t concern which books belong in the Bible. No, it wasn’t about whether Jesus was just another human religious teacher, either. 

The argument was over what it meant when Christians called Jesus “divine.” Was he truly God in the flesh or simply a godlike created being, like an archangel? A popular Christian songwriter and preacher named Arius was promoting the second option, stirring up heated controversy. The bishops who gathered at the Council of Nicaea agreed that in light of Scripture and traditional church teaching, Arius had gotten the gospel wrong. They and their fellow believers who had suffered and even died for Christ in the Great Persecution hadn’t done it for a God who stayed comfortably in heaven and sent an angel to do the dirty work of salvation — they’d followed the lead of the God who’d truly suffered and died for them, then rose from the dead to guarantee them victory over even the worst of deaths!

The bishops laid out their convictions in the form of a creed that spelled out in no uncertain terms that Jesus is just as much God as his heavenly Father is. A follow-up church council, the Council of Constantinople, met in A.D. 381 and drafted an expanded version of the creed that Christians all over the world have used ever since. It commits them to these core beliefs:

• The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each truly God and the source of life and all created things.

• The Son, Jesus Christ, has brought salvation to us by becoming a human being, passing through birth and death before rising again and returning to heaven to reign forever.

• God spoke through the prophets of Israel and now, through the apostles, has established the church to include people from every nation, ethnicity, language, and social and economic class.

• The church invites sinners to a fresh spiritual start through baptism and the forgiveness of sins.

• History will conclude with Christ’s return, a final judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and life in the new world to come.

Each of these core beliefs has deep roots in Scripture. But when I teach it to my students, I find that many of them don’t pick up on that fact. They approach the Nicene Creed with suspicion, as if it’s a substitute for Scripture rather than a summary of its main points.

That’s why I decided to honor the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea by publishing a short book that explains in plain, practical language the creed’s biblical grounding and its continuing relevance for believers today. I’ve titled my book The Creed We Need: Nicene Faith for Wesleyan Witness (it’s available on Amazon).

Here are half a dozen reasons why the Nicene Creed still deserves our attention:

First, it serves as a roadmap for Bible reading by keeping us oriented toward Scripture’s major landmarks and highways: that is, its main points and themes. That way we won’t get lost or sidetracked in our travels through God’s Word. Jesus taught that all of Scripture prophesied about him (Luke 24:27, 44–49; John 5:39–40). The Apostle Paul wrote that everything that God had said to and about ancient Israel was for the church’s benefit (Romans 15:4; 1 Corinthians 10:6–11). The Nicene Creed reminds us to stay focused on Christ (along with his Father and his Spirit) and the church (including its origins in Israel and its future in the new creation). 

Second, it helps us to avoid heresies — that is, false teachings about God, Jesus, and salvation. Arius wasn’t the only popular preacher or influencer ever to lead people astray. Jesus himself had predicted that there would be many false prophets and false messiahs (Matthew 24:4–5, 23–26). The apostles had to warn their congregations against false teachers who doubted the future resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:12–19; 2 Timothy 2:17–18), denied that faith in Christ was sufficient to put us right with God (the whole letter to the Galatians), and even disbelieved that Jesus was the Christ or had come in the flesh (1 John 2:18 –27; 4:1–3). Up to today these faulty views and many more are still in circulation. The Nicene Creed acts like a tuning fork that tests whether a belief is truly biblical or not.

Third, it’s a “Goldilocks” document for summarizing a Christian worldview. In some Protestant circles, especially among evangelicals, there’s a high priority set on having something called a biblical worldview or Christian worldview. In other words, the goal is to think like a Christian should by looking at life through the lens of Scripture. But what are the standards that allow us to test whether we ourselves or others have a genuinely Christian, biblical worldview?

Here the answers vary. One popular worldview curriculum requires you to hold very specific positions on politics and economics for your views to measure up. By a “biblical” worldview, it really means a worldview based on the Bible plus the United States Constitution plus Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. That’s too much! But another worldview test used by an influential evangelical pollster is too little. It asks if you believe the devil is real but not if you believe in the Holy Spirit, and the only thing you’re quizzed on about Jesus is whether he lived a sinless life. Devout Muslims could answer “yes” to both of those questions. What they would say “no” to — Jesus’ identity as God’s Son, his crucifixion for our sins, his resurrection, the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity — isn’t included on this supposedly Christian worldview test. By contrast, the Nicene Creed strikes the right balance. It’s comprehensive on basic Christian beliefs while leaving plenty of room for differences of culture and opinion on secondary matters.

Fourth, it puts us in touch with our past. Advances in genetics and the online availability of historical records are allowing those who are curious about their ancestry to discover their roots. The Nicene Creed does something similar for our spiritual heritage: it’s a record of historic Christian doctrine and a genetic code of the church’s beliefs that spans generations and nations.

When I was in school, I had a roommate from Ethiopia. His forefathers had held to the Nicene Creed from ancient times, preserving their faith across the centuries. In fact, ancient churches in Europe, Asia, and northern Africa all accepted the Nicene Creed. Martyrs have died for it. Countless men and women have lived by it. It’s the precious heirloom of a shared faith. 

Fifth, it also links us to fellow believers around the world and across denominations today. Not only does the tree of Nicene faith have deep roots, but it also has wide branches. There are so many surface-level differences and even disagreements among Christians that it can be easy to overlook the underlying consensus on core beliefs. But recognizing those shared beliefs clears common ground that we can build on as we cooperate in evangelizing, discipling, providing relief, promoting Christian values, and overcoming longstanding barriers that have divided the body of Christ.

Sixth, it balances out our tendency to focus on the subjective side of faith: that is, our inner sincerity, trusting commitment, and feeling of confidence about what we believe. It’s possible to be sincere, trustful, and confident but still be factually incorrect — think of young children who are convinced that Santa and his flying reindeer exist! The Nicene Creed spells out the facts of faith for us to sincerely, confidently trust. Truth be told, we need both sides of faith. On the one hand, the New Testament tells us that if we want to please God, we must believe that God exists (Hebrews 11:6). On the other hand, it reminds us that even demons believe that God exists, but their faith doesn’t save them (James 2:19). Sincere trust in fake facts makes us misguided, but the opposite error is to have all our facts straight but never bother to personally entrust ourselves to what those facts represent.

That sixth reason brings us around to John Wesley. The year 2025 isn’t just the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea; it’s also the 300th anniversary of Wesley’s “Oxford conversion.” As a young man preparing for ordination, he read books on holy living that convinced him of one weighty truth: God wouldn’t be satisfied with half-hearted faith or merely going through the motions of religion. Only total devotion to God would do. Wesley dedicated his life to pursuing this ideal. His famous Aldersgate experience thirteen years later marked a major milestone in that pursuit, and he spent the rest of his days preaching personal trust in Christ as Savior, the Holy Spirit’s testimony to our hearts that gives us confidence in our salvation, and the necessity of wholehearted devotion to God. But sometimes Wesley’s emphasis on the subjective side of faith led him to downplay the objective side. Case in point: when he revised the Church of England’s Articles of Religion and Sunday worship service for the founding of the Methodist Church in America, he cut out the references to the Nicene Creed. Thankfully, nowadays Methodists are recovering the balance between the two sides of faith by rediscovering the creed. I’ve written my book as one small contribution to this positive trend. The Nicene Creed is a priceless part of our inheritance as Christians. On this anniversary year, let’s reconnect with it.

Jerome Van Kuiken, PhD, is an ordained Wesleyan Church minister and Professor of Christian Thought at Oklahoma Wesleyan University. In addition to his academic writings, he is the author of The Creed We Need: Nicene Faith for Wesleyan Witness (Aldersgate, 2025) and The Judas We Never Knew: A Study on the Life and Letter of Jude (Seedbed, 2023).

The Nicene Creed

The Nicene Creed

by | Jul 22, 2025 | Home Page Hero Slider, In the News, May/June 2025

 

The Nicene Creed —

By Ryan Danker –

The Nicene Creed, as it is commonly called, is much more than a basic outline of the Christian faith, although it is that. In fact, it is the universal outline of the faith used by Christians everywhere. It can rightly be called the outline of the orthodox faith.

The council that put together the first major sections of our creed met in the year 325 in Asia Minor in a town called Nicaea during the months of May and June. This year, 2025, marks the 1700th anniversary of this lasting statement of Christian belief and so this issue of Good News is dedicated to the creed. Our hope is that faithful believers everywhere not only know the creed, but the Triune God it describes. To know him is everything.

How we acquired the creed is a fascinating story with wonderful twists and turns. At times, the story reads like a novel. In Dan Brown’s blockbuster, The DaVinci Code, Brown uses some of the story correctly because it’s so good, but one thing he got fundamentally wrong was the idea that the Nicene council declared Christ divine at the council. The reality of the situation was that the council affirmed what the church had always taught, but clarified it due to new challenges. Once you know the actual story, though, the creed is much more than an outline. The remains of the battles that necessitated the calling of the council can still be seen in it. The bishops who gathered there 1700 years ago were not only affirming Christian belief, but also guarding it against false claims.

We have to go back into the first centuries of the Christian faith to understand the need for the Nicene Creed. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus changed everything. It was a revolution with cosmic effect that can also be described as an explosion. No one expected the Messiah to rise from the dead in the middle of history. And, in fact, many expected the Messiah to establish a temporal kingdom. Jesus, while fulfilling the prophecies in every respect, blew this away. Not only was his kingdom not of this world, but after he died a sacrificial death, he rose again on the third day, launching the new creation in the middle of history itself. Much of the early church’s discourse is an attempt to grasp this reality.

In the pages of the New Testament, we can see the earliest Christians grappling with the reality of what had taken place in Jesus. There are misunderstandings that needed to be addressed and we can see them in Paul’s letters and in the letters of John, Peter, and Jude, among others. So as the faith continued to expand beyond the earliest followers of Jesus to the far reaches of the Roman Empire and beyond, it needed to continually clarify its message. Once it had become both tolerated and preferred within the Roman Empire under Constantine, the clarity of the church’s message took on even greater importance. This is why Constantine asked the bishops to convene at Nicaea.

But the debate that ignited this meeting didn’t start in Nicaea or with the emperor, but with a popular and charismatic figure named Arius who was a priest in Alexandria, Egypt. The church in Egypt traces its inception to the preaching of Mark, the same who wrote the gospel that bears his name. And so a Christian community had existed in Egypt for many centuries before this time. The church there was intellectually rich, having produced one of the church’s greatest early theological minds in Origen. Egypt was also one of the early birthplaces of monasticism, often linked to the demon-fighting recluse Antony. The church was strong in Egypt and the gospel heard very clearly.

Heresy, the name that the church give false teaching on foundational matters, was first named by the church father Irenaeus. He fought against the Gnostics, a movement that claimed that salvation was given by secret knowledge, often denying the tangible nature of the faith. Heresy is rarely malevolent, though, at least at the beginning. It usually sets in when attempts to describe the mysteries of the faith are taken too far. The description rather than the reveal truth of God takes center stage. And this is what happened with Arius.

Without getting too far into the weeds, Arius accepted the idea that God is immutable (i.e. unchanging) and transcendent. And this is true! God in his nature, his character, his fundamental qualities, does not change. Also, God is beyond comprehension. But Arius took this truth and denied the reality of who Jesus is. If we are to understand the need for the Nicene Creed, to clarify the faith, we must understand that at the center of the entire conversation was the question, “who is Jesus?”

For Arius, if God cannot change and is beyond all things, then God cannot become man. In other words, the incarnation was not “God with us,” but something else. At the same time that Arius wanted to demote Jesus, he didn’t want to claim that Jesus was simply a man. So while God the Father was God, Jesus for Arius was something between God and man, what was called a “demiurge.” In Arius’ teachings, Jesus — or to be accurate to the argument, the Word — was a created being even if God used him to create everything else.

I hope at this point that you have the first chapter of John’s gospel in your mind because it refutes Arius clearly: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” But there are other passages that Arius used to support his argument such as Luke’s mention that Jesus grew in favor with God and with others. Or when Paul calls Jesus the “firstborn of creation.” It’s easy to misinterpret scripture.

Arius, though, was not only a great preacher but he put his teachings to music including a line referring to the Word that still has a ring to it in English “there was a time when he was not.” Arius combined scripture, philosophy, and song to spread his message. And it was hugely popular. In fact, had the church held a poll to see which way its members wanted the council to go, it would have supported Arius.

The bishop of Alexandria, a man named Alexander, opposed the teachings of Arius. But it took another man, Athanasius, to stand up against this popular heresy. His story is fascinating in and of itself. He has sometimes been thought to be short in stature and darker skinned, but it is known that he came from what we might call “the wrong side of the tracks.” He was not of the elite. But he became an educated and forceful figure in the debates. Most of his writings, though, came after the council. He was the council’s great defender.

For Athanasius, following scripture and the teachings of the church, only Christ, fully divine and fully human, could have brought about the salvation of the world by dying on the cross. Only one who is fully God, and therefore capable of such a thing, and fully human, redeeming us as one of us, could have made such an eternal impact.

But let’s get back to the council. The bishops had initially intended to meet in the city of Ankara both to celebrate Constantine’s victory over Licinius and to come to agreement on the date of Easter. But Constantine wanted to be part of the proceedings, so he ordered the bishops to meet in Nicaea, not far from his palace. He also wanted them to clarify the church’s teachings on Christ’s relation to the Father.

Bishops gathered from all over the Christian world, from Spain to Persia. It’s likely that about 200 attended the council. Given the fact that the persecution of Christians had only ended a few years before, some of these bishops arrived with scars and other physical marks of their faith. Neither Arius nor Athanasius spoke at the council. They weren’t bishops, although Athanasius would become one in the years following. The council was organized so that every bishop could speak. Many brought local creeds used in their dioceses, but none of these addressed the fundamental issue that brought them together.

So they turned to scripture as they began to formulate a universal creed. This is why we see language such as “begotten,” “light,” and “Son of God” in the text. But more clarity was needed. So they turned to philosophy and introduced language such as “being” and “substance” in order to describe the scriptural claims of the church. The council used the Greek word homoousion meaning one substance or same being to describe the reality that Jesus and the Father are of the same being, both equally divine. The introduction of this language bothered some as the term is not in scripture, but it was deemed necessary to clarify the faith. In the end, all but 17 of the bishops endorsed the council’s statement, which included calling on Arius to either renounce his teachings or be banished. He chose banishment.

The historian Robert Louis Wilken provides a translation of the original creed of the Nicene council in his book The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity:

“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, begotten from the Father, only begotten, that is from the substance of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made in heaven and one earth; who for us men and our salvation came down and became incarnate, becoming man, suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended to the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead.

“And in the Holy Spirit.

“Those who say there was a time when he was not, or before he was begotten he was not and that he came from non-being, or from another substance or being, of that he was created, or is capable of moral change or mutable — these the catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes.”

We can see from this text that it is not exactly the same as what we recite in our church services today, but the core is there. Another council, this time in Constantinople in 381, was called to address the Holy Spirit because Arian sympathizers tried to demote the Third Person of the Trinity just as they had tried with the Second. So again, clarity was needed. The creed that we have today is actually the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed.

It would take many centuries to expunge the teachings of Arius. But the church stood fast. As did Athanasius, who for decades fought against Arians after the Nicene council, being exiled from his diocese numerous times became of his efforts. One of his books, On the Incarnation, became a standard for Christian thought. He was rightly described at one point as Athanasius Contra Mundum, Athanasius against the world. He stood fast.

And the church stood fast, to proclaim the true reality of Christ, the savior, the only one who could be, “God from God, Light from Light, true God of true God.” The only one who could save us. As we mark the 1700th anniversary of the council we can be thankful for the faithful voices who stood firm both then and now. We can also be thankful for the continued guidance of the Holy Spirit in the church. It is right that we mark this milestone anniversary.

Ryan Danker is the publisher of Good News.