A creed is the Church’s official statement of what we believe. It’s a summary of the faith that’s short enough to memorize but complete enough to define who we are as Christians. We use the Nicene Creed because it’s the one creed that the whole Church, gathered in council, agreed upon to protect the truth about who God is.
You’ll hear it every Sunday at Divine Liturgy. Right after the Gospel and the sermon, the whole congregation stands and says together: “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth…” It’s not just recitation. It’s the moment when we publicly confess what we hold to be true.
Why We Needed a Creed
The Nicene Creed came about because the Church was under attack from within. In the early 300s, a priest named Arius started teaching that Jesus wasn’t fully God, that He was the first and greatest creation, but still a creature. This sounds like a technical distinction, but it destroys everything. If Jesus isn’t fully God, then He can’t save us. If He’s just a super-powered creature, we’re still stuck in our sins with no way out.
So in 325, bishops from all over the Christian world gathered at Nicaea (in modern-day Turkey) for the first Ecumenical Council. They hammered out a creed that made it crystal clear: Jesus is “begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father.” Not sort of divine. Not divine-ish. Fully God.
The Council of Constantinople in 381 expanded the creed to say more about the Holy Spirit, since new heresies had popped up denying His divinity too. That’s the version we use today. When we say “the Nicene Creed,” we mean the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the one finalized in 381.
What the Creed Does
It sets boundaries. Not to be mean or exclusive, but because truth has edges. You can’t say Jesus is a created being and also say you believe what the Church believes. The creed tells you where those edges are.
It also unites us. When you’re standing in St. Michael Church in Beaumont saying the creed, you’re saying the exact same words that Christians in Antioch and Moscow and Athens are saying. Your Baptist coworker at the plant might have a “statement of faith” on his church’s website, but it’s probably different from the one at First Baptist down the road. We don’t have that problem. We have one creed, and it’s been the same for over 1,600 years.
And it teaches. If you’re new to Orthodoxy, the creed is your roadmap. It tells you what we believe about the Trinity, about Jesus becoming human, about His death and resurrection, about the Church and baptism and the life to come. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware used to say that the whole Orthodox faith is contained in the creed like an oak tree in an acorn.
Why We Say It in Church
Some churches treat creeds like historical documents, interesting, maybe important, but not part of regular worship. We don’t. The creed is living. It’s our corporate confession of faith, spoken aloud every time we celebrate the Eucharist.
There’s something powerful about saying “I believe” in unison with everyone around you. You’re not just affirming doctrine in your head. You’re joining your voice to the voice of the Church across time and space. The same creed that St. Athanasius fought for, that your priest’s priest’s priest going back generations confessed, you’re confessing it too.
It also reminds us what we’re about to do. Right after the creed, we celebrate the Eucharist. We’re saying, in effect, “This is who we believe God is, and now we’re going to commune with Him.” The creed prepares us.
One Important Difference
You might notice that some Christian traditions add the phrase “and the Son” when talking about the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father. That’s called the filioque, and it’s not in the original creed. The Orthodox Church has never accepted that addition. It was inserted by the Western Church centuries later without an ecumenical council, and we believe it changes the theology of the Trinity in ways that matter.
This isn’t stubbornness. The creed was written by the whole Church in council. You can’t just edit it on your own. When you come to an Orthodox church, you’ll hear the creed as it was originally written and as it’s been prayed for centuries.
If you’re visiting St. Michael for the first time, don’t worry if you don’t know the creed yet. Just listen. Pay attention to what the Church is saying about herself and about God. You’ll find that it’s not abstract theology, it’s the shape of the faith you’re being invited into.
