The Nicene Creed: A Scriptural, Historical, and Theological Commentary

By Jared Ortiz and Daniel A. Keating

Though the Nicene Creed is regularly recited in weekly church services, few understand its historical origins and connections to Scripture and key Christian doctrines.

This volume bridges the gap, providing an accessible introduction that explains how the Creed is anchored in the Bible and how it came to be written and confessed in the early history of the church. The authors show how the Creed reflects the purpose of God in salvation, especially in relation to Christians' divine adoption as sons and daughters, leading to glorification. Each chapter includes sidebars highlighting how the Creed has been received in the church's liturgy.

Professors, students, clergy, and religious educators will benefit from this illuminating and edifying guide to the Nicene Creed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9781493442850

Book preview

Seasoned theologians Jared Ortiz and Daniel Keating here introduce the Creed in a book that would make a great textbook for introductory theology classes as well as for study groups. What shines forth is the sheer reasonableness of Christian faith. They also draw a link between faith and hope, both vitally needed in our culture of despair. Deeply rooted in Scripture and the Church Fathers, this book exemplifies what Christian instruction at its best can be.

—Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary

This splendid book provides a brilliant presentation of the Nicene Creed that is richly historical but accessible, and conceptually profound but clear, so that readers can understand why Christianity teaches and professes what it does. The book functions both as an excellent introduction to Christianity and as a reference for the pursuit of deeper understanding of the Catholic faith. In a world where many who are nonreligious have a creed of some kind that remains unstated, this statement of the Christian creed invites all to reflect on what is ultimately true and suggests plainly how true knowledge of God orients the human being toward happiness.

—Thomas Joseph White, OP, Pontifical University of St. Thomas (Angelicum)

In the introduction, we hear that ‘the creeds are precisely the medicine we need’ because of their ‘densely packed summaries of the Christian faith.’ One could say the same of this book, which commends itself as a wonderful tool—indeed, a treasure trove—for those prepared to follow the authors in unpacking these rich phrases that Christians have recited for centuries. Here is a powerful antidote that helps us to ‘overcome our contemporary allergy to truth’ as we lean deeply into the Nicene Creed, understanding how it addressed the problems of its day and continues to speak powerfully to our own age.

—Edith M. Humphrey, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (emerita)

The Nicene Creed is the most widely accepted confession of faith among all Christian people. This superb exposition of the Creed, written by two faithful Catholic scholars, shows how this classic statement has practical relevance for believers of all confessions. A true treasure for the Lord’s people everywhere!

—Timothy George, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University; cochair of Evangelicals and Catholics Together

"An extremely well-thought-out introduction to the Nicene Creed, this book explains the Creed in a clear and compelling way. In an age impatient with complex truths and truth itself, this is no small feat. Demonstrating that the Creed is far more than a list of Christian beliefs, this book connects the Creed to both Testaments, church history, the words of the Church Fathers, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the prayers of the church in a way that not only teaches but also deepens faith. The faith of the church shines through in this text as the living, dynamic reality of unfathomable depth that it is, providing welcome clarity in our moment of deep confusion about the most basic Christian truths. More than an excellent teaching tool, this book is a great companion for prayer and for doing ‘the work of God,’ which is ‘to know the one he has sent’ (John 6:29)."

—Jonathan J. Reyes, Knights of Columbus

© 2024 by Jared Ortiz and Daniel A. Keating

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

Grand Rapids, Michigan

BakerAcademic.com

Ebook edition created 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4934-4285-0

Nihil Obstat

Reverend Lam T. Le, S.T.L.

Censor Deputatis

May 4, 2023

Imprimatur

Most Reverend David J. Walkowiak, J.C.D.

Bishop of Grand Rapids

June 9, 2023

Note: The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book is free of doctrinal and moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the nihil obstat and imprimatur agree with the content, opinions or statements expressed.

Unless indicated otherwise, Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations labeled ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016

Scripture quotations labeled NAB are from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms © 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, DC, and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled RSV-2CE are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible—Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition) Copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Excerpts from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America copyright © 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.—Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright © 1997, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops—Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Excerpts from the English translation of The Roman Missal © 2010, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation. All rights reserved.

Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and postconsumer waste whenever possible.

Contents

Cover

Endorsements    i

Title Page    iii

Copyright Page    iv

Acknowledgments    vi

A Note on Texts and Translations    vii

Abbreviations    viii

The Nicene Creed in English    x

Introduction    1

1. Belief    15

2. God the Father    37

3. God the Son Divine    74

4. God the Son Incarnate    103

5. God the Holy Spirit    141

6. Life in the Trinity    172

Appendix 1: Three Creeds Compared    211

Appendix 2: The Nicene Creed in Latin and Greek   214

Glossary    216

Suggested Resources    220

Index of Sidebars    223

Back Cover    225

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dave Nelson for first pitching the idea of a commentary on the Nicene Creed, as well as our editor, Anna Gissing, for so ably and encouragingly bringing the manuscript to completion. We are grateful to Nathan Betz, David DeJong, Abigail Favale, Angela Franks, and Jacob Wood for ad hoc consultations on key points and to Eric Boldiszar, Nathan Gilmore, Dustin Gordon, Bryan Harr, Bryan Noonan, and Denium Roman for their careful reading and astute suggestions.

A Note on Texts and Translations

Unless noted otherwise, all translations of Scripture come from the Revised Standard Version.

The English text of the Nicene Creed comes from the standard translation approved by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe.

The Latin and Greek texts of the Creed come from Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. Peter Hünermann, 43rd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012), §150.

Abbreviations

General

Books of the Old Testament

Books of the New Testament

The Nicene Creed in English

I believe in one God,

the Father almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the Only Begotten Son of God,

born of the Father before all ages.

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;

through him all things were made.

For us men and for our salvation

he came down from heaven,

and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,

and became man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,

he suffered death and was buried,

and rose again on the third day

in accordance with the Scriptures.

He ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory

to judge the living and the dead

and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son,

who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,

who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins

and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead

and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Introduction

Why Creeds Today? A Medicine for Our Times

Why would we bother with creeds in our day?1 Aren’t they just relics from a past age? People today are less and less concerned with truth, and no one seems inclined to follow any authority, especially if that authority is imposed on them from the outside. We could say that our age has taken aim at truth and wants either to obliterate the idea of truth or render it so weak that it has no force in our lives. To recite a creed—to make a common confession of faith that is already worked out and defined—just doesn’t fit with our desire to go our own way as individuals and to establish our own truth. We are told that people today are hungry for stories—for narratives—not for statements and declarations that seem detached from real life. In a sense, everything connected to the idea of a creed seems out of step with the drift and direction of our culture.

Our view is that these apparently unfavorable conditions are exactly what make the creeds so crucial for our times. Through their densely packed summaries of the Christian faith, the creeds are precisely the medicine we need. Because we live in an age that doubts the very reality of truth, and because we are trained to go our own way and encouraged to craft our own truth, we need more than ever an anchor of Truth—given, tested, and secure—not just as individuals but together as the Church. To our culture, the creeds implicitly say, "These things are true and real. Here is the genuine narrative of our world. And this is true for everyone."

What are the core truths that the creeds announce as true? That God has made the world and all that is in it—and that it is good; that Christ, true God and true man, has come to redeem the world and to bring forgiveness of sins; that the Spirit of God is alive and real, acting in the Church and in the world; that there will be an end to the world, when we will experience the resurrection of our bodies and life eternal with God. From its origins, Christianity was inescapably concerned with truth, with a right understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The early Church was from the start a believing, confessing, preaching Church.2 If we are to overcome our contemporary allergy to truth, the creeds will play a critical role.

But the creeds are not only an antidote for minds that doubt the very reality of truth. By requiring a vocal, public confession, the creeds also supply another important remedy for our times. We live in a world that loves to hedge its bets. We want to try things out and experiment with options, but we are reluctant to commit ourselves to anything definitively. The creeds invite and summon us to confess: Here I stand, this is my conviction, and I will put my life on the line for this truth. When we confess the creeds, we commit ourselves both to God and to the truths that the creeds contain. In a very real sense, we have not really made the truths of the creeds our own possession until we confess those truths and commit ourselves to them. In a marriage covenant, the public profession of commitment secures the love of the spouses and strengthens them to live out that commitment against all the challenges that may come. So it is with the creed—by confessing our beliefs, we pin our lives to the truths we acknowledge. We don’t hedge our bets; we put our lives on the line. Strikingly, the confession of the creeds is a kind of rehearsal for martyrdom. What we do each week by committing ourselves to the truths of the faith prepares us to make good our confession of faith should the call of martyrdom come our way. For some people, even today, this martyrdom will mean shedding their blood for the faith, but for all of us it means dying to ourselves daily and living a life in accord with the truth.

We see two further benefits of creeds for our day. The first is that the creeds keep us in balance. By presenting a short summary of the main outlines of our faith, the creeds steer us away from focusing on just one thing. They place before our minds the full narrative arc of God’s saving action through Christ, from the creation of the world to eternal life in the age to come. For many of us, there is a temptation to focus on those truths of our faith that we find most congenial and comforting. Like sheep wandering in the fields, we migrate toward what we perceive as good food for our soul and shy away from things we don’t understand or that seem threatening. The regular confession of the creeds helps to keep us balanced and open to the fullness of our faith.

For instance, I may be utterly amazed by the grace of Christ and the work of the cross that brought me forgiveness of sins. This is excellent and worthy—but I shouldn’t neglect the created order and the life in the Spirit that follows from Christ’s work. Or I may be overjoyed by the goodness of creation and desire to steward it well. This is wonderful and praiseworthy. But I can’t be attached to the created order without recognizing the fall in the created order, the need for redemption, and the fact that we are really looking forward to the new and everlasting creation. Or I may be thrilled by the action of the Holy Spirit in my life and in the life of the Church. This is beautiful and worthy of full attention. But we also believe in the Father and the Son, and I need to integrate my love for the Holy Spirit with a full trinitarian understanding of our destiny.

Certainly, creeds do not make any claim to be thorough; they are only a digest of the primary truths of our faith. The Catechism is the main resource provided by the Catholic Church to open up and explain all the elements of our faith in a detailed and ordered way. But the creeds, by moving us briskly from the beginning to the end and by ordering what we believe around the trinitarian God in whom we believe (Father, Son, and Spirit), keep our faith—and our lives—in balance.

Finally, the creeds function like a treasure chest, waiting to be opened and explored. The creeds are not meant to reduce our faith to simple facts; they are not intended to drive away mystery and complexity. Rather, the creeds secure a framework for the whole of our faith, so that we can freely go and explore the riches of the mystery in each part and in the whole. Every line and phrase contains within it an astonishing world to explore. Of course, we cannot explore everything at once, just as we cannot explore a large and beautiful country all at once. We have to take things in turn, even as we keep the whole in view. To say this differently, we are not meant to stop with the creeds. Just as the creeds are condensed summaries of biblical revelation, so they ought to lead us back to the great wealth of riches revealed in the Scriptures. They ought to lead us further into the rich treasury of the liturgy and inspire us to explore the deep dogmatic foundations of our faith. All this, in turn, opens up for us the treasure of our common prayers and hymns and directs us to the witness of the saints, who embody the truths of the creeds in their lives. The creeds, then, secure an ordered confession of the central mysteries of our faith so that, as the redeemed sons and daughters of God, we may pursue the riches of our faith and become more fully conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29).

When and Why Did Creeds Originate?

The creeds arose because of a felt need for a short confession of the basic truths of Christian belief. We can detect in the New Testament short formulas of faith—creedal elements—that function as summaries of what is believed. One example comes from Paul when he is presenting his teaching on the resurrection. He begins by describing how the faith was handed down to him: For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve (1 Cor. 15:3–5). Paul sums up here the basic teaching on Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection in a short formula that he is passing on to the church in Corinth. It functions as a short statement of faith on Christ’s passion and resurrection.

Another example occurs in Paul’s First Letter to Timothy (3:16). Summing up what he calls the mystery of our religion, Paul offers this poetic hymn to Christ:

He was manifested in the flesh,

vindicated in the Spirit,

seen by angels,

preached among the nations,

believed on in the world,

taken up in glory.3

This short narrative hymn to Christ refers to the incarnation, resurrection, and ascension of Christ but also includes the preaching of the gospel to all the nations. The apostolic writings in the New Testament already show evidence of short creedal statements that capture the heart of Christian belief.4 There is plenty of evidence in the New Testament to show that the faith was already beginning to be formed into conventional summaries. Creeds in the full sense were yet to come, but the movement towards formulation and fixity was under way.5

The next stage on the road toward fixed creeds occurred in the second century when the internal needs of the churches combined with various external challenges to create the conditions for the development of creeds. What were the internal needs? By the second century, the Church was primarily evangelizing gentiles (†pagans) who had little or no contact with Judaism or the revelation given in the Old Testament. Catechumens, therefore, needed more time and further instruction to prepare to live successfully the life in Christ into which they were being baptized. To serve this longer process, short summaries of the faith, normally delivered in the form of questions and answers, were created to help new believers grasp and confess their newfound faith. The creeds took the form they did in response to the situation in which they arose, namely the context of catechesis and baptism.6

At the same time, the Church was confronted with popular teachers and movements who presented a plausible but false version of the gospel. We identify many of these groups today as †Gnostics (and the teaching they gave as †Gnosticism). In fact, they were a diverse and varied set of movements that possessed certain common tendencies. Most notably, these groups typically rejected the Old Testament as the work of an inferior God, and they often rejected the material creation itself as marked by sin and evil. Salvation, according to this view, comes through a flight from the material world by means of a secret knowledge (gnosis). Further, these movements often denied the true incarnation of the Word, claiming instead that the Word only appeared to take on human flesh, a teaching that we call †Docetism.7 Coupled with this claim was a denial that Christ actually suffered and died on the cross, as he could hardly do so if he did not really assume our flesh. And so the Church in the second century was faced with various movements that repudiated the goodness of creation, rejected the Old Testament, and denied the incarnation, the passion, and the resurrection of Christ.

Faced with these considerable deviations in teaching, the Church needed to find a way to communicate and confess effectively the true faith received from the apostles. One response was the development of what we call the †rule of faith (or the rule of truth).8 This was a short creed-like statement, typically organized around the three †persons of the †Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit), that briefly summed up the Christian faith. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, writing between 180 and 200, presents one of the clearest examples of such a rule:

And this is the order of our faith, the foundation of [the] edifice and the support of [our] conduct: God, the Father, uncreated, uncontainable, invisible, one God, the Creator of all: this is the first article . . . of our faith. And the second article: the Word of God, the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord, . . . by whom all things were made, and who, in the last times, to recapitulate all things, became a man amongst men . . . in order to abolish death, to demonstrate life, and to effect communion between God and man. And the third article: the Holy Spirit, through whom the prophets prophesied . . . and who, in the last times, was poured out in a new fashion upon the human race, renewing man, throughout the world, to God. For this reason the baptism of our regeneration takes place through these three articles.9

Irenaeus offers this remarkable summary of the narrative of our faith in three articles governed by the Father, Son, and Spirit, and he concludes by linking the recitation of this faith with baptism. We can see here the general shape of the formal creeds that will soon appear.

Fixed creeds likely began to appear in local churches by the last decades of the second century, but the first literary evidence we have is from the early third century.10 What purposes did these fixed creeds serve? Scholars often point to many contexts in which creeds—and creedal statements—functioned in the early Church, but these can be summed up under three main headings:

in the catechesis and baptism of new members

in preaching and teaching (to local congregations and in written treatises)

in the communal worship of the liturgy

In the early Church, the primary form of the creed used in catechesis and especially in baptism was interrogatory—that is, it was delivered through questions and answers: Do you believe in God, the Father almighty? . . . Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord? We encounter this interrogatory form of the creed today in the renewal of baptismal promises during the Easter Vigil. Creeds used in preaching, teaching, and worship were typically declaratory in form—that is, they confessed the faith through a declaration of the truth: I believe in God, the Father almighty, and so on.

How and Why the Nicene Creed Came to Be

The story of how the Nicene Creed came to be written is a long and complicated tale.11 Here we can offer only a short summary of the main stages. In the commentary that follows, we will develop some of the specific historical circumstances in greater detail.

The story begins with the teaching of a priest in Alexandria named Arius in about the year 318. In reaction to his own bishop (i.e., Alexander), Arius began to teach publicly that Jesus, the Son of God, was a kind of semidivine creature brought into existence by the Father (who is the only true God) and sent into the world to redeem it. For Arius, the Son was not fully and truly God; he was the first and highest creation of the Father. Brought into existence before the creation of the material world (and so before time), the Son was not, in Arius’s view, eternal. Famously, he claimed that there was when he was not.12 In a similar way, Arius also denied that the Holy Spirit was truly God. This teaching—that Jesus the Son of God was a creature—stirred up a roiling controversy that spilled out from Alexandria to surrounding regions.

One cause for the controversy’s quick spread was the recent legalization and acceptance of Christianity by the Roman Empire. Periodically persecuted and consistently marginalized, the Church got a surprising boost in prominence when Constantine attributed a key military victory to the Christian God. From 312 onward, Constantine favored the Church and saw in it a way he might unify a faltering empire. In 325, Constantine called a worldwide council of bishops to gather in Nicaea to settle this controversy about the true identity of the Son.

The bishops who met together in that first ecumenical council produced what is called the Creed of Nicaea (see appendix 1 for the English text of this creed). This statement of faith rejected the claims of Arius by confessing that the Son was †begotten, not made, and that he was God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. In order to strengthen this confession, the Creed made use of nonscriptural terms to describe the Son’s relationship with the Father, saying that the Son was †consubstantial (in Greek, †homoousios, one in being) with the Father. The end result of this council was that Arius’s views were condemned, and it seemed as if the Church could now be at peace on this issue.

But in fact, not all the bishops fully understood or were in full agreement with this confession of faith from Nicaea. It seemed to some of them to go too far by endangering the distinction between the Father and the Son. Though only a minority of bishops supported Arius’s radical conclusions, others sought a mediating position that (in their view) more effectively guaranteed the priority of the Father and the personal distinction between the Father