1,700 years ago on May 20, AD 325, the Council of Nicea was convened in what is now modern-day Turkey. Summoned by the Emperor Constantine, bishops throughout the Christian world gathered to debate and establish a central theological issue: the divinity of Christ.
At the time, a presbyter from Alexandria named Arius was teaching that Christ, the Son of God, was subordinate in essence to God the Father—that He was the first and greatest of God’s creation, divine in some sense but not eternally co-equal with the Father. This false doctrine, called Arianism, had become so popular among the church that we have record of it being set to hymns, filling the empire with songs of grave error.
What made this heresy so serious was that it touched not only on who Jesus was in His person, but also who He was in His work as Savior. If Christ were not truly and fully God, then He could not pay for our sins and release us from our bondage to death. Likewise, if He were not also truly and fully man, He could not represent us in His death nor make men partakers of the divine nature. Since humanity could not reach up to God, nor did we desire to in our fallen nature, we needed none other than God Himself to come down to us—and He did.
As Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, wrote, “What—or rather Who— was it that was needed for such grace and such restoration as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself… For He alone… was both able to restore all and worthy to suffer on behalf of all.” And so as a result of the Council of Nicea, and then five decades later the Council of Constantinople, we have today the Nicene Creed, which established the orthodox doctrine of Christ’s full divinity according to the Scriptures.
Seventeen centuries later, we may be tempted to view these complicated debates as unimportant to our walk in Christ, but this is far from true. We must not view orthodox doctrine and the great creeds as stuffy artifacts of history or relics of tradition. Rather, they are the fruit of the Spirit’s work in history, guiding the Church into all truth.
This means that when you recite the Nicene Creed today, you are proclaiming the orthodox faith, you are declaring before all men and angels the gospel of our salvation. And so let us do so with gratitude and sincere faith.