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… well, 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 we 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 tommyrot: Our interpretation of the bible sets the standard, and since its ours, it ultimately comes back to us. Still subjective.

Others point to their denomination or individual church’s faith statement. Sounds slightly less subjective, ’cause most of the time they had nothing to do with the writing of these faith statements; they started going to their churches, and later agreed to the churches’ faith statements. Thing is, unless we live in a Christian nationalist country (say, Russia) where there’s an official state church in which we’re automatically enrolled, and we’re obligated to abide by that church’s beliefs whether we ever attend that church or not… we get to choose our churches. We get to accept, or reject, those churches’ faith statements. We can pick a church based on its faith statements; we can decide, “I don’t like what that church believes; I’m going to this one, which believes as I do.” Still subjective.

So this is why I point to creedal Christianity. They define Christian orthodoxy. The ancient Christians hammered ’em out in the first seven centuries of Christianity, way back before Christianity split into Orthodoxy and Catholicism and all the other denominations. They predate me by about 1,650 years, so I can’t claim I define them.

And the very first formal faith statement is this one, written in Níkea, Asia Minor, Roman Empire (today’s Iznik, Türkiye) 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 Nicene Faith (Greek Σύμβολο της Πίστεως της Νίκαιας/Sýmbolo tis Písteos tis Níkeas) or Nicene Symbol (Latin Symbolum Nicaenum), or Faith Symbol. Nearly every other creed is based on it.

Creedal Christianity.

Whenever I talk about the creeds, certain Evangelicals flinch, ’cause they think creeds are a Catholic thing. No; they’re an ancient Christian thing, and therefore they’re a present-day Christian thing. Creeds existed centuries before the Roman Catholic Church did.

Creeds are faith statements. The ancient Christians were trying to sort out what was orthodox and what was heresy; what was consistent with Jesus and scripture, and what wasn’t. And once their councils sorted it out, they published their faith statement—which, in Latin, began with the word credo, “I believe.” If you believe this too, you’re orthodox; nobody’s gonna doubt whether your Christianity is authentic based on your theological beliefs. (They might still doubt it based on your fruit, which counts for more… but fleshly Christians really hope you never notice. Sad to say, may don’t.)

And churches still have faith statements. And still require their members to sign off on ’em. Not always declare “I believe…” etc.; but if you don’t believe what they do, it’s gonna create problems. So they’re still practicing a form of creedal Christianity; it just doesn’t take the very same form as the ancient creeds. But man alive, are they similar.

For one thing, most faith statements include just about everything that’s in the creeds. Usually that’s because they’re just duplicating their denomination’s faith statement… and the denomination took its faith statement from the creeds. For those churches who independently get to come up with their own faith statements, you realize the leaders of that church simply duplicated the statements of the churches they grew up in, or admire most. And if you work your way back to what inspired those churches, and the churches they imitated them, and the churches those churches imitated… yep, we’re back to the creeds again.

Face it: The creeds are pretty much at the back of all orthodox Christianity. And if they’re not—if, like many an Evangelical, you claim you got your beliefs directly out of the bible, not the creeds—okay, maybe you think you did. I certainly thought I did. Believing Jesus is both fully God and fully human is based on what the bible teaches, isn’t it?—and yes, it absolutely is. But recognizing it’s okay to believe both things simultaneously—even that we should believe both things, and try not to prioritize one over the other—ultimately stems from creedal Christianity.

More precisely: Stems from the ancient Christians who realized, “Oh, we gotta emphasize how Jesus is both, ’cause too many heretics are claiming Jesus is more one than the other, or is only one but not the other.” Who realized overemphasizing Jesus’s divinity at the cost of his humanity, or humanity at the cost of his divinity, gets him wrong. Who realized this wrongness undermines our relationship with him in a big way, so we’d better get this part right, at least.

And generations of Christians thereafter have taken up the ancient Christians’ cause. Including Christians who have no idea this cause didn’t originate with the Christians who wrote the bible, but the Christians a few centuries later who began to realize how important it is, gathered with other Christians across the civilized and uncivilized world to hash it out, and came up with the creeds.