The Nicene Creed.

If you consider yourself an authentic orthodox Christian, you should be able to read the following creed, and easily agree with it 100 percent. If not, you gotta work on that.

I believe in one God:

The Father, the almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all things, visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord, Christ Jesus,

the only-begotten Son of God,

begotten of the Father before all ages.

God from God, light from light,

true God from true God, begotten not made,

of one being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven;

by the Holy Spirit was incarnate from the virgin Mary.

He was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.

He ascended into heaven.

He’s seated at the right hand of the Father.

He’ll come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

His kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the Lord, the giver of life.

He proceeds from the Father [and the Son].

He, with the Father and the Son, is adored and glorified.

He’s spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

I recognize one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

I look forward to the resurrection of the dead

and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

When Christians define orthodoxy—the doctrines Christians oughta hold to, as opposed to heretic beliefs which lead us away from God—we often do it subjectively. We presume we get to define what’s orthodox and what’s not; we have bibles and the Holy Spirit, so shouldn’t we easily able to do this? We fix the standard.

I know; loads of us are gonna claim it’s not really us who fix the standard; the bible does. Which sounds humble enough, but it’s still tommyrot: Our interpretation of the bible is what sets the standard, which means it ultimately comes back to us. Still subjective.

Others are gonna point to their denomination or individual church’s faith statement. Sounds slightly less subjective, ’cause most of the time they didn’t write these faith statements. Thing is, while I didn’t write my church’s faith statement, I totally wrote one for TXAB. No doubt you can write one for yourself, as well as any ministry you start. And again: Subjective.

So this is why I point to creeds. They’re the first faith statements. The ancient Christians hammered them out in the first seven centuries of Christianity, way back before we formally shattered into denominations. They predate me by about 1,650 years, so I can’t claim I define them.

The very first formal faith statement is this one, written in Nikaía, Asia Minor, Roman Empire (today’s Iznik, Turkey) in the year 325, and updated in 381. We call it the Nicene Creed, although the Orthodox and Catholic churches call it the Symbol of Nicea (Greek Sýmbolon tis Nikaías, Latin Symbolum Nicaenum) or Symbol of Faith. Nearly every other creed is based on it.