The purpose of a
creed is to provide a doctrinal statement of correct belief among Christians amid controversy. The creeds of Christianity have been drawn up at times of conflict about doctrine: acceptance or rejection of a creed served to distinguish believers and heretics, particularly the adherents of
Arianism. The Greek word passed through Latin into English "symbol", which only later took on the meaning of an outward sign of something. The Nicene Creed was adopted to resolve the Arian controversy, whose leader,
Arius, a clergyman of Alexandria, "objected to
Alexander's (the bishop of the time) apparent carelessness in blurring the distinction of nature between the
Father and the
Son by his emphasis on eternal generation". Emperor
Constantine called the Council at Nicaea to resolve the dispute in the church, which resulted from the widespread adoption of Arius' teachings, which threatened to destabilize the entire
Roman Empire. Following the formulation of the Nicene Creed, Arius' teachings were henceforth marked as
heresy. The Nicene Creed of 325 explicitly affirms the Father as the "one God" and as the "Almighty", and Jesus Christ as "the Son of God", as "begotten of[...] the essence of the Father", and therefore as "
consubstantial with the Father", meaning, "of the same substance" as the Father; "very God of very God". The Creed of 325 does mention the
Holy Spirit but not as "God" or as "consubstantial with the Father". The 381 revision of the creed at Constantinople (i.e., the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed), which is often simply referred to as the "Nicene Creed", speaks of the Holy Spirit as worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son. The
Athanasian Creed, formulated approximately a century later, is not the product of any known church council and is not used in Eastern Christianity. It describes in much greater detail the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The earlier
Apostles' Creed, apparently formulated before the Arian controversy arose in the fourth century, does not describe the Son or the Holy Spirit as "God" or as "consubstantial with the Father".
Original Nicene Creed of 325 The original Nicene Creed was first adopted at the
First Council of Nicaea, which opened on 19 June 325. The text ends with
anathemas against Arian propositions, preceded by the words: "We believe in the
Holy Spirit" which terminates the statements of belief.
F. J. A. Hort and
Adolf von Harnack argued that the Nicene Creed was the local creed of
Caesarea (
an important center of Early Christianity) recited in the council by
Eusebius of Caesarea. Their case relied largely on a particular interpretation of Eusebius' account of the council's proceedings. More recent scholarship has not been convinced by their arguments. The large number of secondary divergences from the text of the creed quoted by Eusebius make it unlikely that it was used as a starting point by those who drafted the conciliar creed. Their initial text was probably a local creed from a Syro-Palestinian source into which they inserted phrases to define the Nicene theology. The Eusebian Creed may thus have been either a second or one of many nominations for the Nicene Creed. The 1911
Catholic Encyclopedia says that soon after the Council of Nicaea the church composed new formulae of faith, most of them variations of the Nicene Symbol, to meet new phases of
Arianism, of which there were at least four before the
Council of Sardica (341), at which a new form was presented and inserted in its acts. However, the council did not accept it.
Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed What is known as the "Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed" or the "Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed", received this name because it was adopted at the
Second Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 381 as a modification of the original Nicene Creed of 325. In that light, it also became very commonly known simply as the "Nicene Creed". It is the only authoritative
ecumenical statement of the Christian faith accepted by the
Catholic Church (with the addition of the
Filioque), the
Eastern Orthodox Church,
Oriental Orthodoxy, the
Church of the East, and much of
Protestantism including the
Anglican communion. (The Apostles' and Athanasian creeds are not as widely accepted.) It differs in several respects, both by addition and omission, from the creed adopted at the First Council of Nicaea. The most notable difference is the additional section: Since the end of the 19th century, scholars have questioned the traditional explanation of the origin of this creed, which has been passed down in the name of the council, whose official acts have been lost over time. A local council of Constantinople in 382 and the Third Ecumenical Council (
Council of Ephesus of 431) made no mention of it, with the latter affirming the 325 creed of Nicaea as a valid statement of the faith and using it to denounce
Nestorianism. Though some scholarship claims that hints of the later creed's existence are discernible in some writings, no extant document gives its text or makes explicit mention of it earlier than the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in 451. Some scholars have argued that the creed may have been presented at Chalcedon as "a precedent for drawing up new creeds and definitions to supplement the Creed of Nicaea, as a way of getting round the ban on new creeds in Canon 7 of Ephesus". It is generally agreed that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is not simply an expansion of the Creed of Nicaea, and was probably based on another traditional creed independent of the one from Nicaea. of the Nicene Creed and declared that "it is unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different () faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicaea" (i.e., the 325 creed). The word is more accurately translated as used by the council to mean "different", "contradictory", rather than "another". This statement has been interpreted as a prohibition against changing this creed or composing others, but not all accept this interpretation. which is included in the acts of the
Council of Chalcedon of 451: The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the singular forms of verbs such as "I believe", in place of the plural form ("we believe") used by the council.
Byzantine Rite Eastern Catholic Churches use the same form of the creed, since the Catholic Church teaches that it is wrong to add "
and the Son" to the
Greek verb "", though correct to add it to the
Latin , which does not have precisely the same meaning. The form generally used in Western churches does add "and the Son" and also the phrase "God from God", which is found in the original 325 Creed.
Comparison between the creed of 325 and the creed of 381 The following table, which indicates by square brackets the portions of the 325 text that were omitted or moved in 381, and uses to indicate what phrases, absent in the 325 text, were added in 381, juxtaposes the earlier (AD 325) and later (AD 381) forms of this creed in the English translation given in
Philip Schaff's compilation
The Creeds of Christendom (1877).
Filioque controversy In the late 6th century, some Latin-speaking churches added the word ("and the Son") to the description of the procession of the Holy Spirit, in what many Eastern Orthodox Christians have at a later stage argued is a violation of Canon VII of the
Third Ecumenical Council, since the words were not included in the text by either the
Council of Nicaea or the
Council of Constantinople. This was incorporated into the liturgical practice of Rome in 1014. of the world's Christians are Nicene Christians, adhering to the Nicene Creed's Trinitarian and Christological doctrines. The remaining 1.5% include non-Trinitarian groups such as the
LDS Church,
Jehovah's Witnesses,
Swedenborgians, etc. (see below). As mentioned above, there are a minority of Evangelical and non-denominational groups, such as some independent
Churches of Christ, certain
neo-charismatic congregations, or some fundamentalist churches, who view the Nicene Creed as a helpful summary of biblical truth but not authoritative, emphasizing that
only the Bible is authoritative and rule of faith and practice. Furthermore, certain
non-Trinitarian groups explicitly reject the Nicene Creed's Trinitarian doctrines: examples include the
Church of the New Jerusalem,
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and
Jehovah's Witnesses, whose theologies are incompatible with the Creed's teachings on the Trinity and Christ's divinity. The view that the Nicene Creed can serve as a touchstone of genuine Christian faith is reflected in the name "symbol of faith", which was given to it in Greek and Latin, when in those languages the word "symbol" meant a "token for identification (by comparison with a counterpart)". In the
Roman Rite Mass, the Latin text of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, with (God from God) and (and from the Son), phrases absent in the original text, was previously the only form used for the "profession of faith". The
Roman Missal now refers to it jointly with the
Apostles' Creed as "the Symbol or Profession of Faith or Creed", describing the second as "the baptismal Symbol of the Roman Church, known as the Apostles' Creed". == Ancient liturgical versions ==