The confession of the Church stretches back centuries. What Christians confessed millennia ago, we confess to this day. The Church walks backwards; that is, she moves forward in time while looking back to the good confession the faithful have passed down as a heritage. However, the Church doesn’t make her confession in a vacuum; the faithful confess the doctrines and dogmas given in God’s Word to the realities and controversies and contexts of their day.  

This year, we commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea, whose attendees gave us what would become the Nicene Creed. The faithful who penned this creed didn’t think they were confessing for the ages; they weren’t intending to write this confession for Christians to confess for the next 1,700 years and counting. They intended to confess against the chief heresy of their day: Arianism.  

Arius, who was born in Libya around 256 AD, was a priest in Alexandrea, Egypt. Arius was chiefly concerned with the unity of God, because there could only be one God, the Father. According to Arius, the Son had a beginning; there was a time when He did not exist. He taught that since God is so transcendent, His substance and nature cannot be shared with anything else. He rejected the eternal nature of the Son, the Word, teaching that He was a mere creation of the Father; a perfect creation, beyond all other creatures, but a creature nonetheless. In other words, denied the divinity of the Second Person of the Trinity and the Trinity itself.  

Arius’ teaching began to spread in the Alexandrian circles and caught a foothold amongst some of the theologians there. However, his devilish teachings were opposed by many others. Arius journeyed to Nicomodia where he enlisted the discipleship of many of the bishops in the surrounding area, including the city of Nicea. With this  controversy in full blaze, the Christian Emperor, Constantine, called on the bishops to  gather into a council to discuss Arius’ teaching.  

The council assembled in the city of Nicea in 325 AD. The majority of bishops in  attendance opposed Arius and his teachings. The problem, for the faithful bishops, was how to craft a confession that made clear the true teaching of Scripture in such a way that the Arians were not able to twist it to their false view. At first, the faithful  attendees drafted a confession using only Biblical language, but the Arian supporters,  as Satan always does, warped the Lord’s Word into lies.  

It became clear that extra-biblical language would be necessary to clearly pen an orthodox confession. The Word at the heart of the matter was the Greek word  homoousios. This word is a compound word, combining the words homo, meaning same, and ousios, meaning substance. The Arians argued for a similar word, different only by one letter, homoiousios - homoi meaning like or similar. That vowel at the end of hom makes all the difference in the world. Do we confess that the Son, the Word, is of the “same substance with the Father” or of “similar substance with the Father?” The divinity of Christ hung in the balance. Of course, the faithful confessors maintained the true teaching of Scripture and the clear Biblical witness of Christ’s divinity. He is “begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things are made.”  

The bishops gathered at Nicea gave us the basic structure of what we know as the Nicene Creed, but it wasn’t until 381 at the Council of Constantinople that the creed that we know as the Nicene Creed was fully formed. Even though the Arians were condemned at Nicea in 325, the devil is persistent. The Arian controversy did not go away; thus, another council was called for. The faithful, once again, met in Constantinople to reject not only the Arians but also the Pneumatomachianism, who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. At this council, the final article was added that confessed, “we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life…”  

God forbid that faithful Christians cease confessing the Nicene Creed, for Arians are still in our midst. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are modern-day Arians who also deny the divinity of Jesus; they believe, with Arius, that the Son is merely a creation of the Father and not one in nature with Him. When we confess the Nicene Creed, when we keep on  our tongues that Jesus is “God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father,” we are putting on the armor of God  that vanquishes the fiery darts of the devil and keeps us in the true confession and faith. 

Let us give thanks for the faithful who gave us the Nicene Creed. And let us commemorate the Council of Nicea with great joy, as we confess these words with 1,700 years of faithful Christians.