The Nicene Creed: The Church’s Guide for Sound Theological Reasoning

More than 30 years ago, my sister Adriana, who had recently started attending church with me, posed a question following a worship service:  “I don’t understand,” she asked, “did Peter and Moses actually know each other?” The preacher that morning referenced these biblical figures as if everyone understood the temporal and relational connections with their theological meaning, but Adriana, a mathematics professor, immediately noticed a gap in the reasoning. Correcting the misunderstanding was easy, but her question revealed a deeper truth: even educated, thoughtful people can miss eternal truths and spiritual realities if the church fails to  guide them in careful reasoning.

This was precisely the task the early church faced during councils such as Nicaea (325 CE) and Constantinople (381 CE). In God’s providence, these gatherings not only provided responses to doctrinal controversies, debates, divisions, persecution, and political pressures; they also were deliberate efforts to assist the Church (the communion of the saints) in reasoning correctly in unity about their faith. On the one hand, the Church needed to help believers recognize the concrete facts of Jesus’ life that they had not witnessed, and on the other, it needed to teach the more abstract meaning of these facts as revealed by God because they involved values, explanations, and transcendent concepts that were not directly measurable or observable.[1] This understanding, transmitted from Jesus to his apostles and from them to successive generations, was both finished and perfect in its revelation, namely the Holy Scriptures.[2]

In the early fourth century, the church sought to equip all believers with tools to rightly engage with the eternal truths of the apostles’ teaching through the formulation of a creed. The pedagogical assistance provided by this now 1,700-year-old Nicaean Creed was intended for everyone – not merely the literate and well-informed, but also those who could neither read nor write and who would never have access to the Scriptures.

For example, during the Council of Nicaea, the young Athanasius of Alexandria introduced the concept of homoousios, meaning that the Son is of the same substance as the Father. This formulation avoided the errors of denying the distinction between the three persons of the Trinity and denying equality of the persons in the Trinity. Athanasius thus helped all members, regardless of education, grasp Christological truths beyond their immediate experience. This was a necessary strategy to pass on the unified understanding of the divine nature of Jesus Christ and the meaning of his redemptive work to every believer.

Later, when the Council of Constantinople affirmed the Nicene Creed in 381 and added the phrase “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic”[3] to describe the attributes of the church, the purpose remained the same: to assist the church in careful reflection and deep reasoning. The church was thus called to embrace one key aspect of the Christological belief according to apostolic teaching as summarized in the creed. While this phrase might seem to restrict reasoning, it preserves clarity and unity, allowing abstract Christological thoughts to be understandable in communion with the aid of the Holy Spirit and the foundation of concrete revelation that is the Holy Scriptures.[4]

The creed states that the church’s oneness of belief and meaning is rooted in the very person of Jesus. It therefore amplifies from the Gospels both the narrative of facts and the interpretation of the meaning of oneness. In this way, believers can grasp complex truths without remaining confined to either abstract speculation or mere historical recitation.

Let us recall, for example, the Upper Room Communion before Jesus’ betrayal and passion (John 17:1), where his prayer for his disciples is recorded. At this place and time, Jesus prayed, revealing to his disciples abstract spiritual reality and the meaning of his unity and communion with God the Father. He then characteristically asked for the oneness of his disciples, praying that they might share the oneness he had with the Father (John 17:21). This prayer reveals that the church’s oneness is not merely cultural, organizational or social; it is a divine work of God in Christ.[5]

Through his prayer in John 17, Jesus highlights the interplay between concrete facts and abstract reasoning replicated later by the early church fathers in the creed. First, Jesus prays to the Father in glory, situating the Church within a broader spiritual reality (17:11) that transcends immediate, visible experience. Understanding this abstract dimension helps believers see the church as a universal and eternal body. Second, there is the temporal dimension: Jesus prays not only for his immediate disciples but also for future believers who would come to faith through testimony of those in that room (17:20). 

Facts and meanings, both revealed and inspired, are present throughout Scripture, teaching understanding and faith. Then the creed summarizes a unified understanding of the church’s oneness as contained in Scripture. Consequently, while the teaching of the apostles in Scripture remains the ultimate authority, the church’s creed remains invaluable. It provides an indispensable guide that preserves the apostolic teaching and promotes sound reasoning within the communion of the saints.

In today’s world dominated by speed, screens, and instant reactions, the timeless call to reason deeply and reflect carefully has not diminished. Amid the noise and complexity of modern life, Calvin Theological Seminary, celebrating 150 years of thoughtful engagement with Scripture and tradition, continues to equip new generations to reason correctly, while honoring the unity of Christ and his church.