What is the Nicene Creed?

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Elioenai26

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hedrick

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As brief background: A lot of people consider the Nicene Creed to be a basic standard of acceptable Christian theology. A somewhat broader alternative is the Apostles' Creed.

In the early church there were a number of disagreements. In dealing with them, Christians were forced to think about just what they believed more carefully, and decide what things were so important that you had to believe them. There were several "councils", meetings of theologians and bishops, that then tried to come to an agreement. Those agreements were sometimes written into creeds, like the Nicene Creed.

The Nicene Creed is probably the most influential of those, with the creed of Chalcedon being close behind. The Nicene creed largely defined the Trinity, while Chalcedon decided the Incarnation (i.e. it dealt with whether Jesus is God, and in what sense.)

The Wikipedia articles are a pretty good introduction.

Christian Forums uses the Nicene Creed to define who is a Christian, for purposes of deciding whether you should be able to post on Christians-only forums.
 
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ViaCrucis

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Hello,

I am sorry for my lack of knowledge but I have seen people talking about the Creed/Nicene/Nicene Creed but I had never stumbled upon these terms before.

Do the three terms nominate the same thing? :confused:

And what exactly is the Nicene Creed?

Thanks for the help :)

To expand on what others have said:

Early Christianity was heavily dependent upon having shared confession, having a common credo. "Creed" comes from the Latin credo meaning "I believe".

Creedal confessions evolved over the years, the earliest being short statements such as, "Jesus is the Christ", "Jesus is Lord", "There is one God", etc. By the 2nd century these had come to be associated with baptismal formulas. These baptismal creeds were basic summations of accepted Christian doctrine:

The basic formula had been set for in the 2nd century, here is an example from St. Ireaneus of Lyons:

"The Church, though dispersed through the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith:

In one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them.

And in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation.

And in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord.

And His future manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father 'to gather all things in one,' and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus our Lord and God and Savior and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, 'every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess' to Him, and that He should execute just judgment toward all. ..." - St. Irenaeus of Lyons, c. 190 CE

The basic formula is


  • One God, the Father, who made all things.

  • Jesus Christ, the Son, our Lord; who suffered, died, and rose from the dead; and who is coming again at the end.

  • The Holy Spirit.

  • The Church.

  • The Resurrection of the Dead.
Everlasting Life.

The Nicene Creed came about specifically due to a theological controversy surrounding the teachings of an Egyptian priest named Arius, who rejected what his bishop, Alexander, was saying: That the Son was of the same substance as the Father. As a result, Arius was excommunicated by a small council held in Egypt, so he left and began traveling around the East. And his teachings caught on in some areas.

Arius himself had been a pupil of Lucian of Antioch, who in turn had been influenced by others from the century before. Arius saw himself as defending Christian orthodoxy against an older heresy that said Jesus was the Father (Sabellianism); but in doing so he taught that Jesus was a completely separate God from God the Father. Thus, Arianism effectively taught that there were two Gods, not one God.

The controversy became heated across the Eastern Empire, and in the year 325, not long after Constantine had unified the Western and Eastern halves of the Roman Empire, he asked all the bishops throughout the known world to gather in the city of Nicea, close to the new capital of Byzantium (Constantinople).

The bishops were to settle the matter, and the result was a confession outlining that Jesus was the same God as the Father, but distinct (being Son, not Father).

The controversy didn't end, and eventually Constantine himself was swayed to the Arian cause, and his descendants likewise. Until the end of the 4th century, when a new council was called in Constantinople, that reasserted the Creed of Nicea and expanded upon it to include clearer exposition on the Holy Spirit against the newer controversy, Macedonianism (also Semi-Arianism).

This Creed, from 381, known as the Niceno-Constantinoplian Creed is the confession we refer to as the "Nicene Creed" today.

It has remained identical throughout the centuries with one exception. In the West, the Pope tried to force an extra clause to the Creed. In Latin it was one word, Filioque, meaning "and the Son". The result was the Schism between East and West, with Roman Catholicism in the West and Eastern Orthodoxy in the East.

That difference in the Creed remains today, with Catholics and Protestants generally using the Nicene Creed with Filioque, the Orthodox and other Eastern Churches using the unchanged Creed of 381.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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