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Nicene Creed
Ryan Renfro
“And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock
I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it.”[1] With this statement
Jesus appointed Peter as the leader of his new Church and
foretold that evil, or heresy as well as later Church fathers
would come to see this verse, would not prevail against it.
The early Christian community was one which struggled to survive
in an empire which failed to acknowledge it as practicing a
legitimate religion, but that had by the fourth century become
the official religion of the Roman Empire. By this time the
Christian Community was ill-organized and contained a great
number of vastly differing ideas. A unification was needed;
some statement of faith that would define what it was to be a
Christian. The Emperor Constantine thus summoned the Church
fathers at Nicea in 325 who wrote the first draft of what today
is known as the Nicene Creed, a statement of orthodox faith in
opposition to certain heresies such as Arianism and Gnosticism.
The Nicene Creed can be divided into four sections; each section
dealing with a member of the Trinity or the Church. The
doctrine of the Trinity is thus immediately apparent: Christians
believe in one God the father, but the Son and the Holy Ghost as
well, all three distinctly different but yet the same single God.
This notion of a Trinity is not seen as a challenge to the belief
in Monotheism, rather it is a notion close to that of the
Kabbalists’ idea of the Sefirot, only there are three
manifestations of the Godhead as opposed to ten.
The first member of the Trinity which the Creed deals with is the
Father. It calls him the “Almighty, Maker of heaven
and earth, and of all things visible and invisible”[2] This suggests that
he is the all-powerful creator God, existing before all things.
The second half of this statement about objects seen and unseen
is denying the Gnostic view that there was somehow two creators
and that this world is under the control of the evil god. It
states that only the one God created everything that is seen, or
of this world, and invisible, or the heavens.
The second member which the Creed deals with is the Son, with
whom the largest portion of the creed is about because his role
was the most controversial. Jesus is called Christ, which
means that he is the messiah or God’s chosen king. It
says he was “begotten of the Father before all
worlds…by whom all things were made,”[3] suggesting an eternal relationship between the
two and not a relationship such that God created the Logos or
Christ at a point in time such as Arius suggested.[4] Christ is
“Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made, one in being with
the Father.”[5] Christ is begotten
because it suggests that he somehow comes from the Father, and
was not made or created by him, which is important because a
created being can not be fully divine because it has the
capability of falling from grace. Christ is fully divine,
which contradicts the Arian teaching that the Son is not God in
the sense that the Father is God; yet Christ was fully man, which
is implied by his incarnation, his birth of the Virgin Mary, and
his death as is sometimes included in the creed between his
suffering and burial. The doctrine of Christ’s
Incarnation is thus clearly referred to in that he was
“incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made
man.”[6] The doctrine of the
Atonement is implied in that Christ “for us men, and for our
salvation, came down from heaven.”[7] The doctrine of Atonement states that
mankind fell with the sin of Adam, but that Christ’s
passion, death, and resurrection are the ultimate atoning
sacrifice to God, as Christ had overcome sin and death and thus
the belief in him in an assurance of salvation. The
doctrine of the Second Coming is alluded to in the statement that
“he shall come again…to judge the quick (the living)
and the dead; Whose kingdom shall have no end.”[8] Because Christians
believe that Christ is the Messiah and that the Messiah must do
certain things which Christ did not, he must have a second coming
to fulfil the predictions of the scriptures. This idea of
fulfillment of the scriptures is also implied previously in the
Creed in “according to the Scriptures,”[9] where Christ is seen as the fulfillment of the
messianic figure in the Jewish tradition, for he claimed to
fulfill the scriptures, saying “Do not think that I am come
to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy,
but to fulfill.”[10]
The last member of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit, who is alluded
to as being one with the Son by being referred to as the
“Lord” and with the Father by “the Giver of
life.”[11] He
is worshipped and glorified along with the Father and the Son,
implying that he is also fully divine and part of God because he
alone is worthy of worship and glory. By stating that the
Spirit “spoke by the Prophets”[12], it is suggested not only that he existed
before Christ’s life on earth because they all lived before
him, but also that he is the living aspect of God who will always
be the spirit and God’s continual presence in the Church.
The Nicene Creed is completed with the Church, which is said to
be one catholic or universal Church which is apostolic, thus
tracing the roots of the Church back to its establishment by
Christ. Jesus named Peter as his successor, and thus
established the apostolic tradition of the Church. By
tracing their heritage back to Christ himself, the Christians
suggest that he both founder and presently the head of his Church
on earth.
To conclude the official statement of their belief, which draws a clear distinction between orthodoxy and heretical belief, the Council of Nicea acknowledges “one baptism for the remission of sins,”[13] alluding again to the Doctrine of Atonement and the importance of a life in the way of imitatio Christi since Christ himself was baptized. They look optimistically toward the future and the Second Coming and the “life of the world to come,”[14] or the establishment of the coming Kingdom of God. The Nicene Creed is the official statement of belief which resulted from the ultimately successful attempt by the early Church to organize and unify Christian belief.
[1]Matthew 16: 18
[2] Nicene Creed
[3] Ibid.
[4] Sandra S. Frankiel, Christianity. P. 14.
[5] Nicene Creed
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Matthew 5:17
[11] Nicene Creed
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.