The Symbol of Faith (Nicene Creed)

In the ancient world a symbolon was a token of recognition — two halves of a broken object, matched together to prove that strangers belonged to one another. That is exactly what the Creed is. It is not a complete theology textbook; it is the Church's identifying token, the compact confession by which she recognizes her own faith across every century and language. Recite it, and you are matching your half against the faith "once delivered unto the saints" (Jude 1:3).

The Creed's shape is the shape of baptism. Christ commanded His apostles to baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 28:19), and from the earliest days candidates for baptism professed their faith in exactly that threefold pattern. The Symbol of Faith is that baptismal confession, given precise and universal form by the councils. This is why it is said in the first person singular — I believe — even in a church full of people: the faith of the whole Church must become each person's own.

The Creed was forged in crisis. In the early fourth century Arius taught that the Son of God was a creature — exalted, but made. The First Ecumenical Council, meeting at Nicaea in 325, answered with a creed confessing the Son as "of one essence" with the Father — begotten, not made. Two generations later, when the divinity of the Holy Spirit was likewise denied, the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381 gave the Creed its full and final form, confessing the Spirit as "the Lord, the Giver of Life... Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified." The full story is told in How the Nicene Creed Was Written.

In the Orthodox Church the Creed has remained unchanged ever since — the Third Ecumenical Council forbade composing any rival creed, and the East has held to the text of 381 word for word. The medieval West later added one Latin word, Filioque — "and the Son" — to the article on the Spirit's procession, an addition the Orthodox Church has never accepted; that story is told in the Filioque controversy.

The tradition counts twelve articles in the Symbol, and this encyclopedia walks through each one: the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth (Article 1); one Lord Jesus Christ, true God of true God (Article 2); His Incarnation of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary (Article 3); His crucifixion for us under Pontius Pilate (Article 4); His resurrection on the third day (Article 5); His ascension (Article 6); His coming again in glory (Article 7); the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life (Article 8); the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church (Article 9); one baptism for the remission of sins (Article 10); the resurrection of the dead (Article 11); and the life of the world to come (Article 12).

Notice the order: the Creed is not a list of opinions but a single story — from the Father through the Son's saving work to the Spirit's life in the Church, ending at the open door of the age to come. It is the whole economy of salvation in about two hundred words.

The Creed is professed at every baptism and recited at every Divine Liturgy, just before the great eucharistic prayer — the congregation confesses the faith together before approaching the Chalice together (the Creed in the Liturgy). It also remains the Church's working measure of teaching: whatever contradicts the Symbol is not Orthodox, whatever the Symbol confesses is not open for renegotiation (dogma). St. Paul's principle stands behind this: the faith is something received and delivered, "according to the scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) — not invented fresh by each generation, but handed on whole.