Even the Nicene Creed Must Answer to Scripture

When Christians stand together and confess a creed, they are not merely repeating history. They are declaring what they believe to be true. That makes one question unavoidable: Does Scripture actually teach what we are confessing?

Consider the Nicene Creed. It is among the most important doctrinal statements in Christian history, rightly honored for defending the full deity of Jesus Christ. Yet the creed commonly recited today is not the text adopted at Nicaea in AD 325. It contains later formulations, including a statement about baptism that Christians understand in importantly different ways.

Many of those doctrinal clarifications arose because the church had to defend biblical truth against heresy. That is a reason to value the creed, not distrust it. The problem arises only when its antiquity or acceptance substitutes for examining what its words mean—and whether those meanings agree with Scripture.

What Nicaea Actually Confessed

The Council of Nicaea met in AD 325 amid the controversy over Arius’s teaching concerning the Son. Against the denial of Christ’s full deity, the council confessed the Son as “true God from true God,” “begotten, not made,” and of one substance with the Father.

These are not truths because bishops voted for them. They are truths because Scripture reveals the Son as God: the Word was God, and all things were made through Him (John 1:1–3); Thomas addressed the risen Jesus as “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28); and all things were created through Him and for Him (Col. 1:16).

The creed adopted in 325 concludes its affirmative statement with only this brief reference to the third person of the Trinity:

“And in the Holy Spirit.”

It then condemns certain Arian propositions. It says nothing about “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins,” the church’s four marks, or the resurrection and life of the world to come. Those familiar lines belong to a longer form.

Why the Creed Became More Explicit

Nicaea did not invent the deity of Christ; it defended that biblical truth against Arianism. As further disputes arose, the church had to clarify other doctrines that opponents challenged.

A particularly important controversy concerned the deity of the Holy Spirit. The Pneumatomachians—sometimes called Macedonians—denied that the Spirit was fully divine. The Council of Constantinople in 381 reaffirmed the faith of Nicaea and explicitly condemned the Pneumatomachians, along with continuing forms of Arianism and other heresies.¹

The longer creed traditionally associated with that council gives a far fuller confession of the Spirit as “the Lord and Giver of Life,” who is worshiped and glorified with the Father and the Son. This greater precision reflects the church’s defense of the Spirit’s deity in the fourth-century controversies.

The precise origins of the surviving Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed remain debated. It may have been composed at Constantinople in 381, adopted there from an existing confession, or reached its known form through further development. At Chalcedon in 451, the creed of Nicaea’s 318 fathers and the creed attributed to Constantinople’s 150 fathers were read separately and affirmed. Several lines of the longer text, including language about baptism and forgiveness, already appeared in regional baptismal confessions before 381.²

The expanded creed reflects both the church’s defense of biblical doctrine against heresy and confessional language already in use. As false teachings challenged Christian doctrine, the church sought to state more precisely what it believed Scripture had already taught.

Later does not mean false. And defending a doctrine against heresy does not make a council’s wording infallible. The decisive question remains whether each teaching is biblical.

What Are We Confessing About Baptism?

The longer creed says:

“We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”

That is theologically weighty language. And it echoes Scripture: John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4); Peter commanded his hearers to repent and be baptized (Acts 2:38); and Ananias told Saul to be baptized and wash away his sins, calling on the Lord’s name (Acts 22:16).

A Baptist should not evade those passages. The real question is what relationship Scripture establishes between baptism and forgiveness.

Scripture teaches that sinners are justified through faith in Christ (Rom. 3:28; 5:1). Paul describes believers as having been raised with Christ in baptism “through faith in the powerful working of God” (Col. 2:12). Peter can even say that baptism “now saves you,” but immediately distinguishes its saving significance from the outward washing of the body and grounds it in Christ’s resurrection (1 Pet. 3:21). These passages must be read together, not made to compete.

The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, chapter 29.1, consequently calls baptism a sign of fellowship and union with Christ and of “remission of sins.” Baptism is not an empty ceremony. It is Christ’s appointed ordinance, visibly declaring identification with Him and the forgiveness found in Him. But the water does not itself secure justification or regenerate the sinner.

That distinction matters historically. Cyril of Jerusalem, teaching baptismal candidates in the fourth century, told them that God heals the wounds of past sins by baptism. The lectures to the newly baptized traditionally ascribed to him go further, describing baptism as purging sins and ministering the gift of the Holy Spirit. That explanation reflects a sacramental understanding that differs from the Baptist confession’s treatment of baptism as a sign.³

We cannot assume that every bishop who affirmed the expanded creed explained its baptismal clause in precisely the same way as Cyril. Nor should we pretend that the clause itself settles every dispute about baptism. The same sentence can be spoken by Christians who attach different doctrines to it. Those differences must be examined, not concealed by shared wording.

A Reformed Baptist can affirm the clause in the sense that baptism signifies the forgiveness received through faith in Christ. He cannot affirm it if doing so means confessing that the act of baptism itself effects regeneration or obtains justification.

The creed’s words must be understood in light of Scripture; Scripture must not be made to serve an assumed interpretation of the creed.

And the Son

The Western version of the creed also came to include Filioque—”and the Son”—in its statement about the Holy Spirit’s procession. That expression was not in the 325 creed or the Constantinopolitan form. It appeared in the Western creed in the setting of the church’s struggle against lingering Arianism in sixth-century Spain, and its inclusion later became a major historical and theological dispute between East and West.⁴

The 1689 Baptist Confession, chapter 2.3, affirms that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. That is the doctrine I affirm. But its acceptance does not alter the history of the text. A later addition may express truth without having been part of the original creed.

This distinction matters because the authority of a proposition does not derive from the date it entered a confession. It derives from the Word of God rightly understood.

Respect the Creed. Test It by Scripture.

The answer is not to discard creeds. The church needs sound doctrine, clear distinctions, and the accumulated wisdom of Christians who defended the faith before us. The church was right to oppose Arianism and those who denied the Holy Spirit’s deity. Its growing precision was not evidence that Scripture had changed, but that new errors required clearer defenses of enduring truth. Nicaea’s confession of Christ’s deity remains a monumental and valuable achievement.

But respecting a confession does not mean surrendering judgment to it. The 1689 Baptist Confession, chapter 1.10, places even the decrees of councils and the opinions of ancient writers under one supreme judge: Holy Scripture.

This is the principle of sola Scriptura. It does not require us to ignore church history or to imagine that every believer must begin theology from nothing. It means that no uninspired teacher, council, tradition, or confession possesses the final authority that belongs to God’s Word.

The Bereans were commended for receiving apostolic preaching eagerly while examining the Scriptures to determine whether what they heard was true (Acts 17:11). If even Paul’s hearers were praised for testing his message, no Christian should regard an ancient creed as exempt from examination.

That examination may confirm a confession, clarify its language, or require us to reject an interpretation of it. But one result is not permitted: allowing inherited wording to decide what Scripture is allowed to mean.

The creed does not judge Scripture. Scripture judges the creed.

That same test extends far beyond ancient creeds. We must apply it to our positions on salvation, baptism, church government, the Christian household, and every doctrinal assumption we have inherited or defended. It is the governing argument of What Scripture Says, Volume 2: Submitting the Church to Biblical Authority: convictions held within the church must be brought back to the text, especially when Christians disagree about what that text requires.