{"id":21517,"date":"2025-07-02T04:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/?p=21517"},"modified":"2025-07-07T13:35:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T17:35:00","slug":"the-trinitarian-framework-of-the-nicene-creed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/article\/concise\/the-trinitarian-framework-of-the-nicene-creed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trinitarian Framework of the Nicene Creed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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We believe in one God,<\/em>
the Father almighty,<\/em>
maker of heaven and earth,<\/em>
of all things visible and invisible.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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And in one Lord Jesus Christ,<\/em>
the only Son of God,<\/em>
begotten from the Father before all ages.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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And we believe in the Holy Spirit,<\/em>
the Lord, the giver of life.<\/em>
He proceeds from the Father and the Son,<\/em>
and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.<\/em>[1]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

1. In this essay, I quote from the version of the Nicene Creed <\/span>found on the Christian Reformed Church website<\/a>. This version of the creed is very similar in word choice to the one found in Norman P. Tanner, <\/span>Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils<\/em>, vol. 1 (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 24. <\/span><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

The Nicene Creed is built on the confession of God as one in nature and three in persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Motivated to clarify the identity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God incarnate, the Council of Nicaea framed its recognition of Jesus Christ as having the same nature as the Father in the context of God as Trinity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The profession of this trinitarian account of God has architectural significance for the Christian faith. All aspects of the Christian life (doctrine, ethics, liturgy, mission, church, worldview) are shaped by it. The Father\u2019s relationship to his Son and his Spirit stands behind everything about his relationship to us and the world, eternity and history, salvation and judgement. The biblical gospel stands or falls on the reality of God\u2014creator, provider, and redeemer\u2014being the only and true God as Father, Son, and Spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike the fourth-century heresy of Arianism, which depicted God as one and the Son as \u2018similar\u2019 but not equal to the Father in his deity, the Nicene Council understood biblical revelation as presenting God as both one and three. This articulation set a foundational parameter for Christian orthodoxy for the church to build on in subsequent centuries.[2]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. For more on this, see Lewis Ayres, <\/span>Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). <\/span><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Today, the trinitarian confession of the Christian faith is often assumed to belong to all mainstream forms of Christianity\u2014Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. In one sense, this is true. Formally speaking, all Christian bodies (be they single congregations, denominations, or councils\/federations of churches) representing Christianity for the past thousand years have adhered to the trinitarian core of the Nicene Creed. They have embedded it in their confessional standards, recite it, and use it in their teaching and liturgies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Protestant and Catholic Christianity <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In his survey of the Protestant tradition, Scott Swain argues that the Reformers \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026 were committed to the doctrine [of the Trinity]\u2019s traditional modes of expression and to its propagation in the Protestant church. Many of the major Protestant confessions produced in the sixteenth century employed tradition and affirmed the early creeds as reliable summaries of biblical teaching.[3]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

3. Scott Swain, \u201cThe Reformers and the Ecumenical Doctrine of the Trinity,\u201d in <\/span>The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity<\/em>, ed. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 228. <\/span><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

In other words, we can say that Protestant Christianity is Nicene Christianity because it is rooted in the trinitarian foundations of the biblical faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about Roman Catholicism? In their widely acclaimed book Is the Reformation Over?<\/em>, Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom survey the contents of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), an important reference work that summarizes the teaching of the Catholic Church. Noll and Nystrom argue that evangelicals can embrace at least two-thirds of this catechism.[4]<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Mark A. Noll and Carolyn Nystrom, <\/span>Is the Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 119. For an additional evangelical assessment of the catechism, see Gregg R. Allison, <\/span>Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment<\/em> (Wheaton: Crossway, 2014). <\/span><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

This alleged consensus stems from a \u2018common orthodoxy\u2019 based on the ancient trinitarian creeds, like Nicaea, which articulate the triune nature of God, the incarnation of Jesus Christ as the God-man, the need for salvation, the reality of the church, the hope of eternal salvation, and so on. This is to say that Roman Catholicism allegedly espouses Nicene\u2014and therefore trinitarian\u2014Christianity. Indeed, the first part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a commentary on the creed and is structured under these headings:<\/p>\n\n\n\n