The Nicene Creed /
As was said last month, the Lutheran Church has been a ‘creedal’ church. The Lutheran reformers, along with the entire Western church until that day, held to the simplistic, yet specific words of the ‘three ecumenical creeds’ with which we describe our God in His three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In the early 300s AD, a man by the name of Arius was the founder of what was (and is) referred to as Arianism. This heresy claims that God the Father created the Son and then, in the teamwork of both, everything else was created. Since this heresy taught that Son is a created being who lived among mankind, He is imperfect which is how imperfection was brought into the world. As a recognized and powerful teacher in Egypt, Arius was teaching this as a fact in the faith, yet had no Scriptural teaching to illustrate it.
After legalizing Christianity in the Roman Empire in 313AD, the Emperor Constantine called for the first ecumenical council of the Church in 325AD. For this council, Constantine called all 1,800 Bishops of the Church to join him at his home in the seaside town of Niceain Turkey and their first order of prayerful business was to deal with the heresy of a man named Arius. Thus, the Nicene Creed was born along with the practice of consistent forms of liturgy and the posture for prayer.
The Nicene Creed was never meant to replace the Apostles’ Creed, but rather expand on it. It is tradition that the Nicene Creed, as the more thorough confession of the Christian faith, is used whenever the Sacrament of the Altar (Holy Communion) is celebrated; however, there are times (like our most recent Christmas Eve service) when the Apostles’ Creed is used instead. Regardless of which of these is confessed, I suggest that any believer should consider how he or she reads, speaks, or hears the creed each time they confess it. The words should not be ‘parroted’ or mumbled, but rather each phrase should be recognized for the truth that it speaks and the believer should speak those phrases for what they are: Scripturally based truths which identify the speaker as a follower of Jesus Christ who is one of the three persons of the Trinity.
Pastor Storrs
May our Triune God be with you as you look at how the
church has taught our common faith which He has given to us.
Next Month: The Athanasian Creed (Trivia: Athanasius was Deacon of Alexandria, Egypt and chief spokesman regarding the deity of Christ in the Council of Nicea when the Nicene Creed was written.)