The Nicene Creed

The Creed called “Nicene” or the Creed of Nicaea and Constantinople is first known in its present form from the Council of Chalcedon (451), where it was accepted as the Creed of the Council of Constantinople (381). That Council is recorded simply as having confirmed the Nicene faith. The Council of Nicaea (325) framed its own statement of orthodox belief, stressing that the Son is of the same essential Being ( homoousios ) as the Father, against the Arian heretics who allotted the Son a lower rank. The original Nicene statement differs considerably from the one recognized at Chalcedon. The latter, our “Nicene Creed,” appears to be based on an earlier baptismal creed possibly from Jerusalem or Antioch, and, in addition to the essential clauses from Nicaea, it incorporated material to combat later heresies.

Representing the statement of an ecumenical council, the Creed was naturally framed in the first-person plural, “we believe.” This plural use is not only original, but is also appropriate in corporate worship. The reference is to the faith of the whole Church, of all times and places, and not only to that of the local congregation. This is in contrast to the Apostles’ Creed, which began as a personal profession of faith. The liturgical use of the singular “I believe” is, of course, a legitimate variation found both in the East and in the West. It may date back to the widespread use of this Creed for baptismal profession before its incorporation into the eucharistic liturgy. Its use in the Eucharist apparently began in Antioch in the late fifth century as a way of ensuring the orthodox belief of the communicants and later spread in the West, but was not introduced in Rome until 1014.

Line 2. “the Almighty.” The addition of “the” brings out the significance of the Greek pantocrator , which is a noun and not an adjective. In Revelation 1:8, 4:8 it renders the Hebrew Sabaoth of Isaiah 6:3 and expresses God’s sovereign power.

Line 4. “seen and unseen.” This refers to “heaven and earth” (that is, the whole created universe) in the previous line and not to some further acts of creation. While the reference thus includes the angels, it does not preclude the notion that further creative processes may be part of the divine plan. A comma has been introduced after “is” for greater clarity, to indicate that what follows is an expansion of “all that is.”

Line 5. “We believe.” The repetition of this phrase, clearly implied by the sense, is found in several early creeds.

Lines 6-10. “begotten.” This word appears three times in the Greek to describe the Son’s unique relationship with the Father, as distinct from the process of physical birth. The Latin text dropped the formal equivalent ( genitum ) in line 7, and has natum ex Patre (“born of the Father”), which seems less appropriate than the use of natus with Maria in the Apostles’ Creed. It was thought sufficient to use “begotten” twice in English: it was dropped in line 6 as unnecessary and retained in line 7 to distinguish the truth conveyed by the Greek from any idea that the Son was created in time, or alternatively born in eternity.

Lines 7-23. In the original Greek the verbs in this section are expressed as a long series of participles which describe our Lord as one who is begotten ( gennethenta ) of the Father, descended ( katelthonta ) from heaven, made flesh ( sarkothenta ), became a human being ( enanthropesanta ), crucified (staurothenta), suffered (pathonta), buried (taphenta), risen ( anastanta ), ascended ( anelthonta ), sitting ( kathezomenon ), and coming ( erchomenon ). This sustained series could not be reproduced in the Latin version, nor can it be rendered satisfactorily in English. It has, however, influenced the handling of lines 14-16 as a closely linked sequence.

Line 7. “eternally begotten.” This phrase represents one of the statements in the original Creed of Nicaea that were specifically anti-Arian, directed against the assertion that the Son came into being at a certain time and only the Father existed from all eternity. (See J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines , 2 ^nd ed. [New York: Harper & Row, 1960], p. 243, and Early Christian Creeds , 3 ^rd ed. [London: Longman, 1972], p. 238.) In the preparation of the ICET translation philosophical objections were made to an earlier proposal, “before time began,” while the older phrase “before all worlds” was thought to be archaic and obscure. A question has been raised whether the translation should read “begotten from” to represent the Greek ek , as in lines 8 and 9. It was finally decided that the English idiom “begotten of” more accurately represented the intimacy of the original.

Line 8. “God from God.” The use of the preposition “from” makes for a clearer as well as a more literal translation of the Greek ek. This phrase, repeated more fully in the next line, is retained to conform with the usual Latin and English versions. The fullness of expression also appears in the Greek text of the Creed of Nicaea, but “God from God” is absent in the Greek text of the Chalcedonian formulation used in the liturgy. (See Denzinger-Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum , editio XXXVI [Freiburg: Herder, 1976], nos. 125, 180; also C onciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta [Basel, 1962], p. 20.)

Line 11. The crucial Nicaean term homoousios is difficult to translate, but “Being” seems preferable to “nature” or “essence” in a statement which tries to express the unity of the Godhead. The technical term “substance” has confusing materialistic overtones in modern English. “Being,” here with a capital letter to indicate that this is a noun referring to the uncreated Being of the Godhead, comes nearest to the literal meaning of the Greek philosophical term. The argument of the sentence is that because the Son is not made but begotten, he shares the same uncreated Being as the Father.

Line 12. The separation of this line and the use of “him” rather than the relative “whom” shows that the line refers to the Son and not to the Father, and that he is the Father’s agent in creation (John 1:3 and Hebrews 1:2).

Line 13. The omission of the generic “men” (Greek anthropous , Latin homines ) in apposition to “us” may appear to weaken slightly the sense of the original, but this was considered less serious than insisting on a term which is increasingly misleading or excluding as tied to only one gender. A suggested alternative, “for us all,” was rejected because of a colloquial tendency in some places to attach “all” to virtually every plural pronoun, which would diminish the force of “us” as representing the whole human race.

Lines 15 and 16. These lines have been completely recast from the ICET version in favor of a fresh translation from the Greek. The new form of indentation makes it clear that the whole of our Lord’s redemptive work was for the salvation of the human race.

Line 15. “was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.” The Greek original ( ek Pneumatos hagiou kai Marias tes parthenou ) uses only one preposition ek (literally “out of” or “from”) in relation to both the Holy Spirit and our Lord’s mother. In English renderings of the Creed, however, the traditional idiom has long been “incarnate of,” which the Consultation has decided to retain. An objection to “from” in English is that it tends to suggest too slight a role for Mary, as a mere channel, in the work of redemption. For a similar reason it was decided to drop the ICET phrase “by the power of the Holy Spirit” (see the note on line 4 of the Apostles’ Creed). The received Latin version of the Creed makes a distinction in the prepositions used of the Spirit ( de Spiritu Sancto , “by the Holy Spirit”) and the Virgin ( ex Maria Virgine , “of or from the Virgin Mary”), but examination of earlier Latin forms of the Creed shows that this was at first a variant without special significance and may even have arisen from a scribal error (reading ex for et). There is an interesting and learned note in Pearson’s Exposition of the Creed [originally published 1659, ed. James Nichols, London 1854], page 242 showing the inadequacy of the supposed distinction between de and ex to express what some have taken it to express, namely a difference between the efficient and the material cause. In the Vulgate version of the New Testament de is used, where the Greek original has ek , of both the Virgin (Galatians 4:4) and the Spirit (Matthew 1:20). The Consultation believes that its version of line 15 accurately represents the original text. The Latin text might be rendered “by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary” but this runs the risk of wrongly suggesting “Mary’s Holy Spirit” without making it clear what the respective roles of Mary and the Spirit are. The Creed wants to make it clear that Jesus, the incarnate Son, is completely God and completely human and that the operation of both the Virgin and the Spirit were equally essential. According to Diogenes, bishop of Cyzicus, speaking at Chalcedon, this clause was added to the original Nicaean formulation to guard against Apollinarianism (a refusal to admit the completeness of the Lord’s humanity). For a critical discussion of this, see J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds , pp. 333-337.

Line 16. “became truly human.” The Consultation faced great difficulty in adequately rendering enanthropesanta (literally “inhumaned,” see Denzinger-Schönmetzer, editio XXXVI, no. 150, where a literal version from the original Greek is given as inhumanatus est ). In the original sequence of participles (see above on lines 7-23) this one has a pivotal place in making a link between our Lord’s taking flesh and the reality of his suffering and death. It does not represent a further stage in time beyond the incarnation, but spells out clearly the meaning of the incarnation. In some old versions of the Creed (see, for instance, Denzinger-Schönmetzer, editio XXXVI, no. 44) enanthropesanta was spelled out even more fully: “that is, taking on a complete human person, soul and body and mind and all things that belong to a human being apart from sin.” The Consultation believed that the sense was best captured by “became truly human.” It rejected a suggestion that the text should read “and became human,” as this, in common speech, implies something quite different, a change from severity to kindness. Some would have preferred to keep “and became man” as showing the particularity of the incarnation in a male person, Jesus. The Consultation rejected this as misrepresenting what the Creed affirms at this point. Neither the Greek anthropos nor the Latin homo carry male overtones as “man” in contemporary English normally does.

Line 18. “suffered death.” The Greek pathonta carries the notions of both suffering and death. (See Christine Mohrmann, Etudes sur le latin des Chrétiens [Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1958], 1:210, on passio.) It can also be reasonably argued that a reference to “death,” as in the Apostles’ Creed, provides a necessary link between “suffered” and “buried.”

Line 20. “in accordance with the Scriptures.” For kata tas graphas (1 Corinthians 15:4) “in accordance with” was felt to be closer to the sense than “according to.” The latter might suggest that Scripture says one thing, while other authorities say something different. The Scriptures referred to are the Old Testament, as in the appeals to Scripture in, for example, Acts 2:25-28; 13:34-35.

Line 21. “he ascended.” See the note on line 10 of the Apostles’ Creed.

Line 22. “is seated.” This is preferred to “sits,” to emphasize the permanence of Christ’s position of honor.

Line 25. “the Lord, the giver of life.” These are two distinct phrases, both applying to the Holy Spirit. They avoid the possible misunderstanding of the older version, “the Lord and giver,” which might be taken to mean “the Lord of life” and “the giver of life.”

Lines 26-28. These lines have been recast to follow the original texts more closely and also to avoid referring unnecessarily to the Holy Spirit as “he.”

Line 26. “[and the Son].” The square brackets are not meant to be reproduced in liturgical forms. They are an indication that each Church must decide whether or not to include the words. The word Filioque, which was a controversial Western addition to the Creed, originating in Toledo in 589 and not accepted in Rome until after 1000, has been translated within the brackets, but it is left to individual Churches to decide whether or not to include it in their official orders of service. It was not within the province of the Consultation to recommend either its excision or retention. It should be noted, however, that those who strongly favor retention of the Filioque are often thinking of the Trinity as revealed and active in human affairs, whereas the original Greek text is concerned about relationships within the Godhead itself. As with many historic disputes, the two parties may not be discussing the same thing.

Line 28. In the ICET version, “Prophets” was capitalized. The word has now been given a lower-case p in correction of an oversight or printing error.

Line 29. “We believe in one holy;hellip;” This phrase illustrates the need of reference to the Greek original, even for translation of the Latin. The latter here omits the preposition “in,” which can be readily understood from line 25 and the use of the accusative case unam sanctam… ecclesiam. In the Greek eis mian requires “belief in” the Church, as well as “in God” and “in Christ.” Some Western Fathers argued from the Latin text that belief in the Church is of a different order from belief in God (see Rufinus in Jacques-Paul Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina., [Paris, 1844-1904], 21:373 and Venantius Fortunatus, ibid., 88:35051). Notice the indentation of this line, in subordination to “We believe in the Holy Spirit.”