Is the Nicene Creed Biblical?
Is the Nicene Creed biblical?
This has been a point of discussion online ever since it was proposed to add the Nicene Creed to the Southern Baptist Convention’s doctrinal standards at a meeting in Indianapolis. Now, to be fair, the vast majority of Southern Baptists already affirm the Nicene Creed, but a few did raise questions about it or cast aspersions upon it.
Some people reject the creed for all sorts of reasons:
Unitarians, who reject the Nicene Creed’s ascription of divinity to Jesus outright.
Biblicists, who don’t believe anything theological unless it’s found in their KJV.
Liberals, who think everybody before 1776 was a superstitious moron.
Liturgists, who are happy to recite it, but don’t really believe it.
Fundamentalist, who think it is too “ecumenical,” because if Catholics believe it then it must be bad.
Primitivists, who want no creed but Christ and no book but the Bible.
There are a lot of commentaries on the Nicene Creed and books about the making of the Nicene Creed, I’m just going to defend three lines in the Creed that get disputed.
I’m going to defend and explain three lines:
“begotten of the Father before all ages.”
“of the same essence as the Father.”
“one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”
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“begotten of the Father before all ages.”
I have already done a video about Jesus as eternally begotten, but let me give you the basics.
The “begotten” language for Jesus is found in John’s Gospel and first epistle (John 1:18; 3:16-18; 1 John 4:9). It is the Greek word monogenēs, which I think means “only begotten,” not “one of a kind.”
Note that “begotten,” does not mean God the Son was literally begotten by sexual union, rather, it indicates sameness of genus, i.e., the Son of God is God in the same way that the son of a duck is a duck. The Father is the same type of being as the Son even though they are not the same person!
What is more, this begetting is eternal, not an act. If the Father is eternally the Father, then he eternally needs a Son. You cannot be the Father without offspring, so God the Father needs an eternal Son to be an eternal Father.
If God the Son pre-exists his human life, and is even eternal, and if he always had a Father, then the way to express this is to call him “eternally begotten.”
It means the Son was always God and God the Father always had a Son.
That is how we differentiate the Father and Son in eternity, that is how we affirm the Son’s relationship to the Father, and the language is drawn from Johannine language in Scripture.
“of the same essence as the Father”
The Greek word used here is homoousios which is not found in your Bible at all.
Homousios means “same essence” or “same substance.”
It was a word that was at times associated with the heresy of modalism.
But it is a good word, let me explain why.
It is a word that adequately describes what happens when you bring together a collection of texts. Consider these:
“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage” (Phil 2:6). See another video for an explanation of this verse!
“For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” (John 5:18).
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3).
If the Son is equal to God (Phil 2:6 and John 5:18) and if this equality extends to the Son sharing in the Father’s being (Heb 1:3), then what is a good word to express that? I would say homoousios, same substance, is a theological expression of two biblical assertions about the Son’s equality with the Father and sameness of being.
What is more, it is a theological affirmation that an Arian theologian (i.e. someone who thinks the Son is a lesser god than God the Father) could not affirm.
So homoousios is a good way to summarize what Scripture says and it’s a word that even heretics cannot say with a wink or wiggle their way around.
“baptism for the forgiveness of sins”
Some people do not like the idea of baptism, including infant baptism, as an act that secures the forgiveness of sins.
Nonetheless, baptism is connected with the forgiveness of sins in Scripture!
John the Baptist preached “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mk 1:4).
In the Book of Acts, Peter preached, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38). When Paul was converted to Christ he was told, “Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name” (Acts 22:16).
Yes, there are some traditions, Catholics and Churches of Christ, who do think baptism is the ritual that washes away your sins. But it is also possible to interpret the language so that baptism is merely the symbol of washing your sins away which happens by repentance.
The Creed doesn’t tell you which option to go for so it is “open” to either interpretation.
So people with a sacramental or a symbolic view of baptism can affirm it in their own way and for their own reasons.
In sum, these three lines in the creed about the Son’s eternal begottenness, sharing the same substance as the Father, and baptism for the forgiveness of sins, it’s kosher, legit, and biblical.
Excellent as always. I learned something every time I read one of your posts. Thanks so much.
Re: Premise,"If the Father is eternally the Father, then he eternally needs a Son." Father-Son language is analogical. It does not demonstrate eternal ontological necessity, though it is based on historical reality and miraculous biological-spiritual truth of the God-man. It may very well be that the Nicene theologians overstepped the humble and god-fearing requirement to not add to divine revelation by adding human speculation to the mystery of the three persons of the Godhead (Deut.29:29; Prov.30:6). We know from the beginning of John's gospel that the eternal divine logos became flesh, and we know that Messiah Yeshua is historically and regaly the son of God. Do we have clear and unambiguous Scriptural testimony that the Father-Son analogy speaks further of an eternal ontological-theological reality, rather than speculative hubris? (As an aside, I also find the ancient theological arguments about the personification of Wisdom from Prov.8 inappropriate/misapplied to the question of eternal generation, and so unconvincing). This is my biggest issue with the Nicene Creed. Does your work or that of others that you can recommend help with the faithful detailed & critical exegetical-theological reasoning that needs to be done to be convincing beyond mere tradition?