The Nicene Creed

Every Sunday after the homily at Mass, along with Catholics all over the world, we recite the Profession of Faith, known as the Nicene Creed. During this Jubilee Year 2025, we celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which is the basis of the Creed we still use today. Just imagine 17 centuries during which, using these same words, billions of Christians have expressed their belief in God as the One who loves, the One who is beloved, and the One who is the Love between them. The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in the city of Nicaea, now Iznik, in the country of Türkiye (Turkey). Around 220 bishops attended, mostly from the Eastern churches.

The Council of Nicaea met from May until the end of July 325. It was the first ecumenical council of the Christian church, called by the Roman Emperor Constantine I, at the time an unbaptized catechumen, to address the problem created by Arianism, a heresy first proposed early in the 4th fourth century by the priest Arius of Alexandria that asserted that Christ is not divine but a created being. The Arian heresy was popular throughout much of the Eastern and Western Roman empires. During that gathering in Nicaea in the year 325, the Council delegates came to a unified statement of who Jesus Christ is.

The response that came from the Council of Nicaea was the Nicene Creed, a Christian statement of faith that is considered the only ecumenical creed because it is accepted as authoritative by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and major Protestant churches. We are the heirs of those who gathered so long ago, and we too, believe in the mystery of God’s continuing presence in our world. When we say the words of the Creed, we are committing ourselves to beliefs that have practical, real-life implications. For example, when we say: “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Begotten son of God … through Him all things were made,” we are expressing our belief in Christ’s identity as true God and true man. But we are also expressing our understanding of our own identity as human beings created in God’s image and disciples of Christ. In fact, when we say, “Through Him all things were made,” we acknowledge that every part of God’s creation is graced and full of dignity.

Although the main focus of the Nicene Creed is meant to address the Christological question of the nature of Jesus Christ as both divine and human, it actually has a Trinitarian structure, with separate paragraphs about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, with a concluding paragraph about our beliefs in the Catholic Church and some essential dogmas, such as the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal life. In this sense, the Nicene Creed closely follows the structure of the Apostles’ Creed, so called because it is rightly considered to be a faithful summary of the apostles’ faith, although the Nicene Creed is often more explicit and more detailed than the Apostles’ Creed.