LABC Midweek Message – Wednesday, August 6, 2025

1700th Anniversary of Nicene Creed

Although we Baptists are given to identifying ourselves as “non-creedal’ people,” (we like to say that we have no creed but Christ and that the Bible is our only authoritative written word) even Baptists of long standing, like myself, must admit that the 1700th anniversary of a historic Christian creed is worthy of notice.

Seventeen hundred years ago more than 330 bishops and officials participated in the first ecumenical council of the Christian church. It met between May and August 325 in the Byzantine city of Nicea (now Iznek, northwestern Turkey). The council was convoked by Emperor Constantine (r 306-337) to address the Arian controversy that threatened the unity of the early church, and thus for Constantine who viewed Christianity as the cement of his empire, the health of the empire itself.

Using beautiful, majestic and lyrical wording – We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father. – the Council rejected the Arian argument that the Son was somehow secondary to the Father and provided language that is still used by Christians around the globe to affirm their faith during worship and to define their faith in the public square.

Less well known is the fact that the first Nicene Council took action to set the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. It was a consequential gathering to say the least.

As a non-creedal Christian one of the things I value about the Nicene Creed, apart from its longevity, beauty and enduring impact, is its focus on Jesus the Christ as the very heart of Christianity. In contrast to many contemporary statements of faith, the creed does not mention the Bible as a focus of faith. Instead, it devotes the great majority of its words to the identity and work of Jesus. It asserts that he has taken residence in heaven alongside the Father and proclaims that he will return in glory to judge the living and the dead (meaning that though we will be judged, we will be judged with mercy) and that of
his reign there will be no end (meaning that the awaited peaceable kin-dom will at last be fully realized).

It is relatively easy to critique the creed on the basis that it was written exclusively by males, that the theological debates it tried to resolve seem rather insignificant to people of a much later time and place and that any effort to put the faith into words is by definition incomplete and inadequate. Still, those of us who profess to follow Jesus are duty bound to say something about who we understand Jesus to be. The Nicene Creed has been doing a pretty good job of helping to do that for seventeen hundred years
and might well do so for at least seventeen hundred more.

Pastor Jim

This Morning on LABC Zoom – Bible Study with Pastor Jim