CH on the Nicene Creed
As a follow-up to our Vital Worship feature story on creeds, see this article from Christian History and Biography on the background of the Nicene Creed, featured in a recent CTLibrary newsletter.
The question, “Do you know whom you worship?” has been a perennial one for Christians, but it came to the forefront at the beginning of the fourth century when there was as yet no doctrinal consensus about the divinity of Christ.
All Christians asserted that Jesus was God and worshipped Him as such, following the understanding laid down in an early second-century sermon known as II Clement: “brethren, we ought to think of Jesus as we do of God.” However, those baptismal creeds which have come down to us from local churches said very little beyond the basic wording: “of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary” (Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus). Such confessional statements left many questions unanswered. ... There was no agreement among Christians about the Bible’s teaching on these issues. It was inevitable, therefore, that the early church would eventually require a more universal statement of faith like the Nicene Creed. ...
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