The Creed and the Holy Trinity

The Creed recited at every Orthodox Liturgy is not, word for word, the text issued at Nicaea in 325. The received text is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, associated with the Council of Constantinople in 381. The 325 text is shorter, says almost nothing about the Holy Spirit, and ends with anathemas against specific Arian formulas that are not carried into the version used in worship.

That distinction is not pedantry. Someone who reads the 325 text expecting the words they say on Sunday will be confused, and someone who claims the Church has always recited exactly this text is making a claim the evidence does not support.

The question at Nicaea

Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, taught that the Son was brought into being by the Father: the first and greatest of creatures, through whom all else was made, but a creature. The slogan attached to the position was that there was a state in which the Son was not.

What was at stake was not a technicality about origins. If the Son is a creature, then praying to Christ, being baptised into his name and receiving him in the eucharist are either idolatry or something less than communion with God. If the Son is God, then in Christ God has entered human life, and salvation means being joined to God.

The council answered with homoousios — of one substance with the Father. The word is not in Scripture, it had a difficult earlier history, and many bishops who were not Arians disliked it for both reasons. Athanasius's De Decretis, archived here, defends its use on the ground that it says nothing Scripture does not say, and was needed because the alternatives had been drained of meaning by people who would not be pinned down.

One essence, three persons

The formula that finally held is one ousia in three hypostasis. Its achievement was distinguishing two words that earlier usage had treated as synonyms — which is a large part of why the fourth-century arguments were so hard to resolve. The Cappadocians did that work.

The article on the Holy Spirit was expanded at Constantinople in 381: the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified. The Latin addition filioque, and the Son, came into use later in the West and has not been received by the Orthodox Church.

Key Scripture

• Matthew 28:19 — Baptism into the one name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
• John 1:1-14 — The Word who was God and who became flesh.
• 2 Corinthians 13:14 — A Trinitarian blessing in the earliest Christian writings.

On Scripture references. References are given so you can read the passage in the translation your parish uses. This site does not reproduce a modern copyrighted Bible text.

Patristic and liturgical witnesses

Council and canon connections

• Nicaea in 325 confessed the Son of one substance with the Father.
• Constantinople in 381 confessed the Holy Spirit and gave the Creed its received form.
• Ephesus in 431 forbade the framing of another creed for those coming to the faith.

Why this matters in lived Orthodoxy

The Creed is not a historical document an Orthodox Christian studies. It is confessed at every Liturgy and at every baptism, in the first person: I believe. It is the Church's answer to the question a candidate for baptism is asked.

Reciting it in that setting is a different act from assenting to it privately. It is joining a confession that has been made continuously since the fourth century.

Review

Going deeper

• The Creed of Nicaea, 325, with Percival's notes.
• On 'Not Three Gods', archived here in full.
• De Decretis, Athanasius on using a non-scriptural word.