The Council of Nicaea met in the summer of the year 325, so that this year marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council, the first such gathering.
To mark the anniversary, the Church of England has published a small book, We Believe: Exploring the Nicene Creed which “explores the theological depth and contemporary relevance of the Nicene Creed — one of the most enduring and universal expressions of Christian faith”. It contains 24 reflections and prayers, one on each statement of the Nicene Creed, and can be used daily, 6 days a week across 4 weeks, though the reflections are not dated and can easily be used at other times. It is all also being included over the next few weeks in the Everyday Faith app. There’s a press release here, and for further information scroll down this page at the Church of England website.
The booklet of reflections was produced by a small subgroup of the Liturgical Commission, and the accompanying page (linked above) has extra resources that can be used to shape a study course or a sermon or sermon series or other activity. There’s also an article on the use of the Nicene Creed in the liturgy.
The Council of Nicaea met to resolve two major controversies, creating the statement about how it understood the relationship between God the Father and God the Son (a statement extended and revised at the Council of Constantinople in 381 to form what we call the Nicene Creed, give or take a word or two). And it agreed that Easter should always be kept on a Sunday rather than on the spring full moon itself.
In addition to this Church of England material, Transforming Worship (formerly called Praxis) in its June newsletter, available to subscribers, also included a couple of articles by two of the booklet writers: Jo Kershaw on the Nicene Creed and me on the Date of Easter, which is a canter through the history and significance of the date, from the first century to the twenty-first.
‘Give or take a word or two’. Yeah. Right. Matters not a jot.
Treating the Council of Nicaea as the source of the Nicene Creed, whose actual source is not fully clear, is at least a little hasty
That bit was intended as an allusion to the word filioque.
At that rate, somewhat too bland
Perhaps appropriately coincidental we attended choral eucharist at St. Patrick Cathedral, Dublin on Trinity Sunday. Quite nice. The best way to look at the trinity is as a Christian Zen riddle. Philosophically it has been in crisis for centuries. I will give the study guide a pass.
OK but surely Christians should be both curious and want to be informed about the nature of the God we believe in? It would be very weird if that didn’t shape believing. Rather like the New Testament Canon, the Creeds are part of the church’s “self denying ordinance” as we grope towards a deeper understanding of the being of God. That – I.e, “being” – is the only name that God gives Godself in the Bible after all, and that’s exciting. I very much warm to Caputo’s suggestiin that God is best described as an unfolding event, and surely what… Read more »
Completely agree with you Nicholas. This looks like a helpful resource for those seeking an accessible resource with which to understand better the historic, theological foundations of the faith. I am grateful for the initiative and the hard work behind it.
Exactly. Very relevant. Whenever I hear ‘God is this or that’ I firstly have profound difficulties with the word ‘is’ and secondly I have profound difficulties that mere humans can dictate what God is or isn’t.
Wasn’t that the problem Job faced?
It gets even worse when we hear ‘God says this or that’.
The question is not the existence of God, that is a stupid question, the question is the nature of God (and Jesus).
What, apart from the passage of time, qualifies the Nicene Creed to be declared “timeless truth”? They were just a bunch of chaps.
No one is saying the Nicene Creed is timeless truth. Since ‘the bunch of chaps’ that wrote it are dead, they are not timeless either. The blurb above calls it ‘one of the most enduring and universal expressions of Christian faith”. And so it is.
Only God is timeless. Our own works and thoughts are most certainly not, in any literal sense, but it is helpful to have a handy reference point for our core beliefs.
The Nicene creed is still the working yardstick which forms the underlying definitions of my own faith; it’s direct and to the point.
I profess the Nicene Creed, as part of liturgical “We believe.” It forms the basis of our parish (diocese, Episcopal Church) community, expressing the God we trust in.
I don’t hold it as akin to a mathmatical formula. I won’t assert it as fact.
I like your comment. With regard to the “mathematical formula” aspect Latin American liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, who wrote about the ‘social trinity’ says that there is no counting with regard to the trinity i.e. 1+1+1=3 is not the point. Using a patristic notion ( perichoresis) he talks about the indwelling nature of the persons in the trinity. The problem is that counting continues i.e. one God, three persons, two natures, four points in the hypothesis of interrelationship. There is a liturgical practice here in Canada in which the Apostles Creed is frequently used as an alternative to the Nicene… Read more »
Like you and Mr Fisher, I simply cannot cope with people who seek to reduce life and living faith to credal statements of dogma which we have to conform to. Life’s reality and experienced faith are too untidy, and fluid to let us do that; J B Phillips was right when he said that that kind of view of God is too small. I don’t know what a patristic notion is, but the indwelling nature of the trinity is what my experience of Christian faith is centred on – I suspect we’re talking about the same thing but at different… Read more »
I wouldn’t hold to it as a mathematical or scientific formula either – anything to do with faith has to be seen in a more subjective way than that. But it does help (me, at any rate) to have something which defines the core on which that faith is built. If nothing else it warns me if I’m drifting off the beam in a manner of speaking. Campus Crusade used to portray it as a train – Fact, the engine, Faith, the tender carrying fuel and Feeling the caboose or brake van at the back. It isn’t a perfect allegory;… Read more »
The Church House Publishing House to which purchasers are directed claims that “We Believe offers twenty-four daily Bible readings and reflections to help you pray and reflect on the Nicene Creed’s timeless truths.”
It is indeed one of the most enduring expressions of Christian faith. But “timeless truth” is a rather big claim!
Once again – I simply take that to mean the creed is expressing the timeless truths of the Christian faith. Which it does. I have no problem with it being a big claim – it is very big – and very glorious too I think!
I agree. Perhaps, in similar way that Martin Dodsworth upthread refers to ‘give or take a few words’ Church House Publishing might have considered ‘one or two ‘inverted commas’ or “speech marks”, such as ‘timeless truths’, or ‘timeless’ truths. Or ‘timeless’ ‘truths’? Perhaps they trash out such things at a modern Nicea- Church House Council, or Archbishop(‘)s(‘) Council?
Let us praise the Nicene Creed, a mighty literary achievement. Its rolling phrases create a sense of serene certainty about the relationship between God our Father and Jesus our Lord and complements this by moving so smoothly between cosmology and history, with the human beings Mary and Pilate woven into the narrative, that we seem to glimpse something which looks like a bond between time and eternity and helps us look for that eternal life
Clearly the Nicene Creed has enduring appeal as a classic text for some folks. However, the notion of it being ‘timeless’ must be juxtaposed to its location in an historical, cultural, political, and philosophical context. The difficulty is that it attempts to relate the person of Jesus to divinity based on historically problematic readings of NT texts. It does not relate the historical Jesus per se to divinity. The data is lacking to do so. In that regard it remains a religious belief rather than a viable theory. But I suppose liturgy is not about theory; it is about praying… Read more »
Re: ‘Mr Historical Jesus’ Conceptuality. All CAPS
https://firstthings.com/jesus-after-the-critics/
Tks, for a plot point on the spectrum which begets no responsibilities in me whatsoever. Here is an article from a conservative perspective. It makes an interesting argument. I find it as tendentious and unconvincing as dogmatists find the historical issues. At this stage I have no interest either in telling or being told what ‘the church’ has always believed. I’m mostly interested in my own deepening understanding of my faith. I think of it as a kind of ‘soul freedom’ Anglican modified.
https://tabletalkmagazine.com/posts/jesus-the-shema-and-the-glorious-trinity/
What is ‘history’? There are some good studies of the history of the idea of ‘history’ available. Frei taught an excellent course at Yale, as did the esteemed Louis Dupre.
I’m not sure about your claim re ‘dogmatists’ vis-a-vis ‘historical issues.’ Feels home cooked/caricature.
Legaspi has himself worked on this coal face. He is no ‘dogmatist.’ He is an historian — just not on your grid.
History involves the reasonable sifting and analysis of evidence in order to try and determine what may have been so. I recently finished reading Anthony Beevor’s, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. Of course other historians will engage him and his possible biases and judgements of matter of fact; but one comes away with a sense of empirically driven historical method unimpaired by an historiography tangled up with the hocus pocus of religious beliefs. Pagels’ rational for not debating N.T. Wright was sound in my view. Jesus was an historical figure. As such he was the offspring of two human parents… Read more »
When we say “was incarnate from [sic] … the Virgin Mary” we are primarily saying something about Jesus: that he was born as a human baby, and did not just appear fully-adult in the way that Greek or Roman gods did in their myths. As Paul and Barnabas were mistaken to be, for example (perhaps copying the encounter of Jupiter and Mercury with Philemon and Baucis described by Ovid). The role of the Virgin Mary was developed subsequently, wasn’t it, most notably at the Council of Ephesus? (Where the great virgin Diana of the Ephesians had previously been the object… Read more »
Thanks. I think the birth narratives in the NT are wonderful. They contain a wealth of religious insight. The point you make is a good one. However, that does not obviate what are two facts in my view (1) the virgin birth is myth, developed legend, crafted from the common sense if its day, not an historical fact like the birth of Jesus itself. (2) There are implications in terms of whether one accepts it as myth or historical fact, including to what extent one may successfully enter into the common sense of the time and culture which produced it… Read more »
fix one thing, frig up another, Antony Beevor. I still have jet lag and began commenting this morning at 7:00 am. lol, lol.
Thanks. My comment was carefully worded not to express one way or the other a view on the fact or myth of the virgin birth, only to suggest that the credal statement does not explicitly say anything on the topic; or rather what it does say can be interpreted either way. Whether that is deliberate or not is another question. The words “Virgin Mary” can be seen to be the usual designation of Jesus’s human mother, not necessarily a comment on if and when that status changed. Andrew Lincoln argues the case in his Born of a Virgin?. With fore-knowledge… Read more »
“So it does enable doubters to join in at least that clause!”
Interesting hypothesis, but I doubt that. lol.
Simon Kershaw, you find this piece on the subject from Anglican Journal of interest.
https://anglicanjournal.com/fourth-century-theology-that-still-packs-a-punch-reflecting-on-the-council-of-niceas-1700th-anniversary/
“…the human-ness of Jesus makes him more, not less, remarkable.” I concur ! For me the question needs to shift from the divinity of Jesus to the uniqueness of Jesus for Christians.
Thanks. Your religion becomes clearer the more you respond. I can see why the creed captures almost everything astride ou a l’ecart de your own religion.
I am religiously observant. I’m cheered to know it may be somewhat clearer for you. However, I try and and keep it distinct from historical analysis. In any given situation reason and evidence always trump fideistic assertions when the two conflict. Lonergan once made what is perhaps a bit of a cavalier quip: ” Only intellectual conversion can remedy Barth’s fideism”. None the less, I keep it in mind when contending with dogmatists.
Contending with dogmatists: where are these horrible people?
Dogmatism is a methodical starting point, not a character flaw. Some of my best friends have been dogmatists…helped form me in fact. lol.
The Nicene Creed emerged from the co-operation and the clash of some very strong personalities over quite a long time. But one hopes that somehow, in all the swirl of events, the Holy Spirit was moving things forward
Yes, one hopes so, but I can’t help thinking, when people start throwing round their particular “truth” about God, that some acknowledgement of that “mysterium tremendum et fascinans”, some awareness that we don’t know everything, that there is a space for ongoing speculation about “the numinous” wouldn’t come amiss.
They may have been ‘just a bunch of chaps’ but when you look at the signatures of these ‘chaps’ they represent a remarkable diversity in the kind of world from which this statement emerged. Even the most cursory glance at the historical context will reveal how this was an attempt, at a time when organised Christianity was in danger of serious (if not terminal) fragmentation, to come to an agreement about what beliefs could hold the Church together and give it a future. It also tells me, from that time, what beliefs were being rejected, too. Of course, no creed… Read more »
We got copies of the booklet for people to take if they wished. Lots of people have taken them and there have been several positive comments about how much people are enjoying them, and finding the reflections helpful and interesting.
Can you download it anywhere? [Even accessible across The Pond?]
It’s available in the Church of England’s “Everyday Faith” app, freely obtainable from your favourite app store. See https://www.churchofengland.org/faith-life/exploring-faith/everyday-faith
It looks quite good but it’s important to engage critically as well as prayerfully
This particular booklet is primarily devotional. It does touch on the theology, some reflections more than others, depending on the phrase and the particular writer. But it is not intended as a critical resource.