Nicene Creed
Conciliar · Creed · 325 · Greek
The first creed imposed on the whole church rather than recited in one city's baptistery, and the first to rest on a word the Scriptures do not use: homoousios, of one being with the Father. What follows the confession is an anathema written against particular sentences Arius had actually said — that there was when the Son was not, that he was made of things that were not. Percival's English runs to under two hundred words, and the church spent the next fifty-six years arguing about them. It is the symbol of the 318 fathers.
To: the whole church
The text
The creed
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten (gennethenta), not made, being of one substance (homoousion, consubstantialem) with the Father. By whom all things were made, both which be in heaven and in earth. Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, and ascended into heaven. And he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost.
The confession proper — and Nicaea says no more about the Holy Ghost than that it believes in him.
The anathema
And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not (en pote hote ouk en), or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion — all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them.
Aimed at sentences Arius had actually used; the creed of 381 drops it.
Percival, NPNF series 2 vol. 14 (1900) · Henry R. Percival · NPNF2 XIV, The Nicene Creed (the Ecthesis of the Synod at Nice)
Received it
- 451 — The Council of Chalcedon (Affirms). Chalcedon had the exposition of the 318 read aloud in session and then decreed, at the very outset of its own Definition, that the faith of the Three Hundred and Eighteen Fathers shall be preserved inviolate. Henry R. Percival (ed.), The Seven Ecumenical Councils (NPNF series 2 vol. 14) · Acts of Chalcedon, session II ('Let there be read the expositions of the 318 fathers gathered together at Nice'), and the Definition of Faith, in Percival, NPNF2 XIV
- 691–692 — The Council in Trullo (Affirms). Trullo opened its decrees by defining that the apostolic faith be preserved unchanged and inviolate, and named first the faith of the three hundred and eighteen fathers assembled at Nice against Arius. Henry R. Percival (ed.), The Seven Ecumenical Councils (NPNF series 2 vol. 14) · Council in Trullo, canon 1, in Percival, NPNF2 XIV
Refused it
- 325 — Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonas of Marmarica (Rejects). The council's own synodal letter to Alexandria reports that Arius had destroyed Theonas of Marmorica and Secundes of Ptolemais, 'for they also have received the same sentence as the rest'. Henry R. Percival (ed.), The Seven Ecumenical Councils (NPNF series 2 vol. 14) · Synodal Letter of the Council of Nicaea to the Church of Alexandria, in Percival, NPNF2 XIV
- 359 — The Council of Ariminum (Rejects). The double-synod of Rimini and Seleucia rejected homoousion and homoiousion alike, setting Nicaea's decisive word aside for a generation — the moment Jerome met with the phrase that the world awoke to find itself Arian. Henry R. Percival (ed.), The Seven Ecumenical Councils (NPNF series 2 vol. 14) · NPNF2 XIV, excursus on the Semi-Arians, Macedonians or Pneumatomachi (under I Constantinople)
Received it on their own terms
- 325 — Eusebius of Caesarea (Reinterprets). Eusebius held aloof for a time before subscribing, then sent his own diocese the creed with an explanation: he had concurred in 'of the substance of the Father' and in 'consubstantial' only in the senses defined in the emperor's presence, having regard to peace, and he found even the anathema inoffensive. Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History · Socrates, Church History 1.8 (NPNF2 II), which quotes entire Eusebius' letter to the people under his charge at Caesarea; volume held in data/bronze/texts/npnf2-02.txt.gz
What it formulates
- Homoousios The Son is of one substance with the Father.
In the disputes
- The Arian crisis Sixty years of argument about whether the Son is God in the same sense the Father is.