Before studying the Nicene Creed, its history, and its theology, we should propose some basic questions to lay some groundwork concerning the importance of creeds. Given the current state of our country, when many hear the word creed, their minds go to Apollo Creed dancing around to James Brown’s “Living In America” or to Adonis Creed and the ever-growing list of movies that is keeping the Rocky Balboa story alive. Let’s consider three questions: What is a creed? Are creeds Biblical? Why do we need creeds today?
What is a creed?
The term creed comes from the Latin credo, which means “I believe.” Creeds serve as a statement of faith and, more importantly, a confession of what an individual or group of people believe. Throughout the history of the church, creeds have been composed to produce short-form specifics of Biblical truths and to combat false teaching.
What are creeds used for? Phillip Schaff writes, “The Bible is God’s word to man. A Creed is man’s answer back to God.” 1 He helpfully delineates the difference by saying, “The Bible reveals the truth in the popular form of life and fact. The creed sets the truth in logical form of doctrine. The Bible is to be believed and obeyed. The creed is to be professed and taught.”2 The Bible is God’s Holy Word. All sixty-six books from Genesis to Revelation are God’s Word (1 Timothy 3:16). Creeds take significant portions of God’s Word and lay out the doctrines that are communicated in the Bible.
So, for example, one does not have to recount every passage where the Trinity is pointed to in the Bible. The creed will simply state, “We believe in one God the Father Almighty…. And in One Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten son of God… And in the Holy Spirit.” The creed presents in a few sentences what the entire corpus of Holy Writ declares. There is no need to cover every passage that points to the Tri-unity of God to make the simple declaration of belief, “I believe.”
The creed serves to state what is believed and is a helpful tool for teaching. The Nicene Creed, for example, breaks down into five helpful pedagogical sections: Theology Proper, Christology, Pneumatology, Ecclesiology, and Eschatology. These five points can be memorized and can also serve as a helpful skeleton onto which a Bible teacher may then put the meat of Scriptural truth. Such methods would produce a doctrinally sound and Biblically-saturated disciple. It is a tool to continue practicing what the early church did in Acts 2:42, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.”
Are creeds Biblical?
We have a Bible that is God’s Word to us. Why would we need further statements – statements that have been composed by men? Often, in some church circles, you will hear statements such as, “We have no creed but the Bible.” The irony is lost on those friends who do not realize that statement in itself is a creedal statement about what they believe.
The view that declares “no creed but the Bible” misses the role of creedal statements that are actually found in the Bible itself. The Shema is a great example. It defines right belief, serves as a personal confession, and combats false teaching. It is found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
This creedal statement defined Israel’s belief as a monotheistic religion, contra those pagan nations’ polytheistic religions around them. There is only one God. We believe this. Pedagogically, we teach our children this. That creedal declaration became the distinguishing mark between God’s people and the other nations.
Scripture goes on to restate this principle time and again. For example:
For who is God, but the Lord?
And who is a rock, except our God? (Psalm 18:31)
Wherefore thou art great, O Lord God: for there is none like thee, neither is there any God beside thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears. (2 Samuel 7:22)
The New Testament writers pick up the doctrine in the following verses:
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. (John 17:3)
As concerning, therefore, the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no other God but one. (1 Corinthians 8:4)
The New Testament writers believe the Shema, but they expand upon it and declare the doctrine more fully that this One God eternally exists in three Persons.
Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16)
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4)
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68)
Thomas answered Him, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28)
Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:6)
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. (1 Timothy 3:16)
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. (Hebrews 1:3a)
The Christians immediately following the apostolic era certainly saw creeds as Biblical and used them. In the first and second centuries, we see the early church using these clarifying teaching tools and doctrinal statements, such as the Didache3, a church manual of sorts, and the Apostle’s Creed. In addition, the early historian Eusebius read the Creed of Caesarea at his baptism4 and later read this creed at the Council of Nicaea. It seems the Creed of Caesarea served as a basis for the Nicene Creed.5
Why do we need creeds today?
Given the significant Biblical and doctrinal illiteracy found today, those ecumenical creeds of the ancient church would help to reestablish us on solid footing. Such teaching needs to be reintroduced into our congregations. The nineteenth century saw a sharp turn from doctrinal fidelity to experienced-based religion. The verbiage changed from “I am a Christian and here is what I believe” to “I am a Christian and here is what I have done.” The creeds will help train professing believers to understand the faith once for all handed down to the saints (Jude 3).
In the State of Theology survey conducted by Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research, only fifty-four percent of all those claiming to be Christians in the United States strongly agree with the statement that there is one true God in three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. If you consider those claiming to be Christians who go to church twice a month, you might expect that number to change drastically. Unfortunately, it only rises to a meager sixty-seven percent.6
Biblical illiteracy is serious, and doctrinal illiteracy is serious. We would do well to recover the use of creeds to help on both accounts. The Nicene Creed is a great example of why we do not just grab some Bible verses and say, “This is what I believe.” During the Council of Nicaea, those gathered initially attempted to simply use Scripture verses to summarize their beliefs. The problem arose when the heretic Arians agreed upon those same verses, although they interpreted them outside the bounds of orthodoxy. For example, they were fine to agree that Jesus was the Son of God, but the Arians understood that to mean He had been created at some point by the Father. Justo Gonzalez explains, “It soon became evident that by limiting itself to Biblical texts the Council would find it very difficult to express its rejection of Arianism in unmistakable terms.”7
Finally, as has always been the case, the creeds will aid Christ’s church today in teaching the truths of Scripture and passing down these truths to our children and future generations. Hear again the instruction God gave to his people to remember his commands in Deuteronomy 6, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Following the belief is a clear statement on instruction of the truth of those words in the next verse, “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
- The Creeds of Christendom vol. II The Greek and Latin Creeds. Phillip Schaff. Baker, 1996. p.3 ↩︎
- ibid ↩︎
- Early Christian Writings. Penguin Books, 1987. p.185. ↩︎
- The Creeds of Christendom vol. II The Greek and Latin Creeds. Phillip Schaff. Baker, 1996. p.61. ↩︎
- Eusebius: The Church History. Kregel. 2007. p. 12.
↩︎ - The State of Theology Survey conducted by Ligionier Ministries and LifeWay Research. https://thestateoftheology.com/
↩︎ - The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation. Justo L. Gonzalez. HarperSanFrancisco, 1984. p.165. ↩︎