For the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea, many biblical scholars and theologians are exploring the significance of the creed for Christian faith and study. We’re reflecting, for example, on the way the creed distills the Bible’s storyline tracing the identity and activity of the Trinity as Creator and Redeemer; it’s central focus on the saving work of the incarnate Son; the way it holds together biblical truth claims with communal confession and praise.
All these are necessary and valuable explorations well worth emphasizing as fruits of the rule of faith embodied in the Nicene Creed. In this proposed paper, however, I want to present the ETS community with a lesser known, but no less significant, theological fruit of Nicaea: the Nicene Creed not only teaches us what to believe as Christians but how to think and speak like Christians.
To do so, I want to highlight a fascinating synodal letter sent by Eastern bishops in 382 to Rome and others in the West who weren’t able to attend the ratification of the creed at Constantinople the previous year. In this letter, the bishops defend their reception of the original creed of 325 as no new teaching, but “the ancient faith … the faith of our baptism.” Just as importantly, they immediately go on to describe the *theological* *implications* of the creed for orthodox Christian thought and speech about God:
“[This creed] tells us how to believe in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: believing also, of course, that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have a single Godhead and power and substance, a dignity deserving the same honor and a co-eternal sovereignty, in three most perfect hypostases, or three perfect persons….”
The bishops go on to explain why they therefore reject trinitarian and Christological heresies on the basis of the faith taught in the creed.
This ancient role of the rule of faith in theological reasoning is just as vital for Protestant evangelicals today. The rule of faith must govern and empower not only our claims about the outworking of creation and redemption, but our very thought and speech about the eternal identity and purposes of the blessed Trinity.
Prayerful pursuit of faithful theological reasoning is at the heart of creedal faith. Knowing God and seeing everything in his light by faith in Jesus Christ is what the church fathers meant by “theology.” And approaching theology in the ways they did is a practice the Reformation helped to recover. My goal in this proposed paper, therefore, is to contribute in some small way to helping evangelical scholars today not only believe what the bishops at Nicaea confessed but to follow the pattern they set out for doing theology faithfully in the first place. In this way, we’ll not only understand the doctrines that everyone from Athanasius and Augustine to Luther and Calvin taught, but, by the grace of God, we’ll grow in more faithfully doing theology like they did.