The creeds

The Nicene Creed Explained

The Nicene Creed is the fullest confession shared across the whole church, written to defend the truth that Jesus is fully God. It was drawn up at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and completed at the Council of Constantinople in 381. Against the teaching that the Son was a created being, it confesses him God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.John 1:1 (KJV)

What the Nicene Creed is

The Nicene Creed, more precisely the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, is the most widely shared confession in all of Christianity, recited across the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, and many other traditions. Like the Apostles' Creed it is structured around the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but it is longer and more precise, because it was forged in the fire of a great controversy over who Jesus is.

Where the Apostles' Creed simply says his only Son, the Nicene Creed pauses and piles up phrases to leave no room for doubt: begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father. Every one of those phrases was chosen to confess the full and eternal deity of Christ.

Its history: Nicaea 325 and Constantinople 381

In the early fourth century a priest of Alexandria named Arius began teaching that the Son, though the first and greatest of God's works, was still a creature, made by the Father out of nothing, so that there was a time when he was not. The teaching spread rapidly and threatened to divide the whole church. If the Son was a creature, then the one Christians worshiped was not truly God.

In the year 325 the Emperor Constantine called the first ecumenical council, gathering bishops from across the Christian world to the city of Nicaea. There the church rejected Arius and confessed the Son as being of one substance with the Father, in Greek homoousios, sharing the very being of God. In 381 a second council met at Constantinople, reaffirmed the faith of Nicaea, and expanded the article on the Holy Spirit against those who denied the Spirit's deity. The creed we call Nicene is the fruit of those two councils.

How it defends the deity of Christ

The heart of the Nicene Creed is its defense of the truth that Jesus Christ is fully and eternally God, not a lesser or created being. Its most famous phrases were carefully aimed at the Arian error. God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God means the Son is God in exactly the same sense the Father is God, as light shining from light is itself light.

Begotten, not made draws the crucial line: the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, sharing his nature, and is not a creature that was made, as the world was made. Being of one substance with the Father, the word homoousios over which the whole council turned, confesses that the Father and the Son share one and the same divine being. By whom all things were made adds that the Son is not among the created things but the one through whom they all exist. The creed leaves no crack through which the deity of Christ could slip away.

Its biblical basis

The council did not invent its faith; it defended what Scripture teaches. John opens his Gospel with the confession the creed guards: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh. Paul writes that in Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and that by him were all things created. Hebrews calls the Son the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person, the very source of the creed's Light of Light.

The creed's language about the Spirit as the Lord and Giver of Life who is worshiped with the Father and the Son rests likewise on Scripture, where the Spirit is God, gives life, and shares the one divine name in baptism. The Nicene Creed is not philosophy imposed on the Bible; it is the church guarding the Bible's own testimony that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the one true God.

The church and the world to come

Having confessed the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the Nicene Creed closes with the blessings that flow from the Triune God. It confesses one holy catholic and apostolic Church, the four marks of the one universal people of God, where catholic again means universal and not any single denomination. It acknowledges one baptism for the remission of sins, the single washing that marks entrance into Christ.

Then it lifts its eyes to the end: we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Like the Apostles' Creed, it ends not in the grave but in hope, confessing that the dead will be raised and that the life God gives has no end. The creed that so fiercely guards who Jesus is finishes by resting in what he has secured, a renewed creation and unending life with God.

It is honest to note that the Nicene Creed carries one long-standing difference. In its Western form it says the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, the phrase called the filioque, while the Eastern churches keep the original wording, from the Father. This was a sorrow in the division of East and West. Yet on everything the creed was written to defend, the full deity of Christ and of the Spirit within the one God, the whole church still stands together, and in these words seekers across every tradition can hear the same confession of the same Lord.

What it means for us

The Nicene Creed matters because our salvation hangs on the truth it defends. If Jesus were only a lofty creature, then he could not truly reveal God to us, and his death could not truly reconcile us to God, for no creature can save. But if, as the creed confesses, he is very God of very God who came down for us and for our salvation, then in Jesus we meet God himself, and his cross has infinite worth.

To confess the Nicene Creed is to stand with the whole church across sixteen centuries in worshiping Christ as Lord and God. It guards the wonder at the center of the faith, that the Maker of heaven and earth became one of us to save us. That is not a doctrine to be admired from a distance but a Lord to be adored, and the creed exists to lead you to him. Come and see the God who came down for you.

For all its careful words, the Nicene Creed exists for one reason: to lead you to the Christ it confesses, very God of very God, who came down from heaven for you. You are not asked merely to agree that Jesus is divine but to meet him, to trust him, and to worship him with the whole church across the ages. The God who made heaven and earth became one of us to bring us home. That is not a truth to be admired from a distance but a Savior to be received, and he is calling you now to come and see.

A note for all traditions: the creeds are not a fourth authority above Scripture but a faithful summary of it. Christians hold them in different ways, some reciting them weekly in worship and others rarely, yet the faith they confess is broadly shared across the church. Where believers differ on secondary matters, the creeds mark the ancient center that unites us: one God, and one Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.

Related: The Apostles' Creed explained · What are the creeds? · Who is Jesus? · The Christian creeds