Editor’s Note: This essay is part of our extended series celebrating the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed.
With the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea this year, it’s worthwhile to consider why we should care about a creed from that long ago. Are there lessons to be learned? Should a Christian without much historical background care very much? Is there something that a Christian with a liturgical background—one who says the Nicene Creed every week—might learn? The answer is yes. There is much for us today, even beyond liturgy and history. Here are three things worth considering as we observe this anniversary.
First, the Nicene Creed answers a fundamental question. This is a question Jesus asked his followers: who do people say that I am?—and then who do you say that I am? Who is Jesus and what does it matter? Peter’s response to Jesus—in Mark 8, Matthew 16, and Luke 9—was in sharp contrast to what the people might have said. The disciples speculated they might say John the Baptist or Elijah (both would have been big news). Peter then comes up with what appears to be a showstopper: you are the Messiah! It is such an unlikely answer that Jesus says the only way Peter could have come up with this answer was for God to have whispered in his ear.
Who is Jesus is such an important question that very few people get it. The Gospel of Mark has the centurion—the man in charge of Jesus’ execution—confessing that Jesus is the Son of God. Other places have demons—evil spirits—confessing who Jesus is. It is not until after Jesus’ resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit that people really start to understand. Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost is a tour de force on the answer to the question of who Jesus is:
“Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” (Acts 2:36)
We should not be surprised that this fundamental question would be the cause of disputes. Arius (250–36) was a priest who had come up with an answer: Jesus was basically the top of the heap of created beings, but not equal to God. The Emperor Constantine not only wanted the dispute that erupted resolved; he wanted to use the controversy to build unity in his empire. The council of Nicaea declares Jesus is God.
This did not settle the matter then, and up to this day, the matter is not settled in the hearts and minds of all people. Ben Witherington III makes the point:
We live in a Jesus-haunted culture that is Biblically illiterate, and so unfortunately at this point in time, almost anything can pass for knowledge of the historical Jesus from notions that he was a Cynic sage to ideas that he was a Gnostic guru to fantasies that he didn’t exist, to Dan Browne’s Jesus of hysterical (rather than historical) fiction.
Arianism hasn’t gone away, as it closely describes the sect known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. Many modern Christian denominations have been tempted to come up with a different answer than did Nicaea—often answers that are close cousins to the Arian answer.
But Christians for 1,700 years have declared, with Nicaea, that Jesus is the eternally begotten son and is one in being with the Father. Will we, like Peter, let the Holy Spirit whisper these words to us so that we might confess them with our whole heart?
Second, on this 1,700th anniversary, we should pay close attention to how the argument is made that Jesus is more than a created being. The argument is more than just the marshaling of biblical proof texts—even though there are many that are quite suggestive (and biblical illiteracy is a problem). A favorite is the parallel between Isaiah 45:23 and Philippians 2:10-11: every knee will bow to God alone!
The Nicene theologians had several points. First, they highlighted that Jesus was worshiped. Only God should be worshiped, so how had Christians come to worship him? The answer: Christians worship Jesus because we believe he is God. Second, they claimed that if Jesus is not God, he could not save us. Salvation would be beyond the reach of created beings. It takes God himself to save.
Arius had a very logical case for what he proposed. Perhaps the insight for contemporary apologetics is that to make the case for Nicene faith, it takes a community of worship, grounded in Scripture, and trusting in the presence of the Holy Spirit. And in this way people come to confess Jesus as Lord and Messiah.
Third, and finally, the lessons of post-Nicene history provide some needed perspectives into how to deal with theology that at best has run off the rails and is at worst heresy. After Nicaea the Arian party did not go away. In fact, it gained the upper hand in politics. Emperor Constantine was ultimately baptized by his Asian chaplain, Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia. Athanasius, the major protagonist for Nicene faith in the mid-fourth century, was exiled five times. He died never seeing the final victory of Nicene Christology at the Council of Constantinople in 381.
Athanasius was slandered, threatened, and witnessed at great personal cost—all for the one church of Jesus Christ. When the emperor would not see him, he waited by the side of the road and jumped out to grab the horse’s bridle and made the emperor listen. He was a model of persistence in ministry and witness, insisting on the saving truth that Jesus is God. Athanasius believed that the answer to the question Who is Jesus? that the Council of Nicaea gave was worth fighting for, and gave his life to the job of defending that answer.
We too are faced again with the question, and if we give the answer Nicaea gave, do we believe enough to persist in this truth? Will we be creative and winsome as we take that answer into the world?
When Charlie and his wife arrived in Colorado Springs in the mid to late 1990s, they joined an Episcopal church. Living in the South, with a Baptist church on every corner, Charlie was a Lutheran. Now living in Minnesota, with a Lutheran church on every corner, he is an Episcopalian.
