The Nicene Creed

This creed is “the Church’s faith.” It is what we, as the whole Church, hold to be true. It is what “We believe.” This is different from The Apostles' Creed. The shorter Apostles’ Creed is derived from the earliest known rites of Holy Baptism. It was the question and answer dialogue between the bishop and the one about to be baptized: “Do you believe in God the Father?” “I believe in God the Father.” The Apostles’ Creed is a personal statement and it represents “the faith of the Apostles,” that is, what the early church held as a summary of the faith inherited from the earliest of times.

The Nicene Creed came later, around 325, and it was hammered out in a council of bishops and others whom the Emperor Constantine the Great had called together to settle conflicts brewing among various local Christian communities about what was “true.” Constantine was something of a monomaniac - he wanted one emperor in charge of one empire that had one understanding of this newly “official” Christianity. Many see this interweaving of state and church, of politics and religion as an unfortunate thing. The arguments for and against are endless and never likely to be conclusive or agreed on. At any rate, this creed became eventually, though not immediately, the official statement of the whole Church.

This creed is more than an antique statement in outmoded terms. Our challenge is to ask “What were the earliest Church leaders trying to say by the words of this creed?” What did it mean to THEM to say “he came DOWN from heaven”? What did that mean to THEM? Then we must ask how we would state that truth in today’s terms. It isn’t an easy task, but it is a necessary one. Today’s Christians are not asked to embrace an antique and superceeded cosmology (map of the universe), one that includes a physical heaven above the clouds and a literal hell under the ground, for instance; but what are we to make of these earlier claims? And how DO we understand these ideas in our own day? We don’t have to cross our fingers as we say things that use an ancient world-view, but neither are we expected to believe no longer reasonable statements from a pre-scientific world. Reciting the Creed, we stand united as one people with one basic faith – with much room for human reason and experience to guide us.