The Nicene Creed and Council 1700 years later: A Baptist perspective
Saint Catherine in Heraklion (Icon Museum); The First Oecumenical Council. Painter Michael Damaskenos. Closter of Vrontissi, county of Kainourgio. 1591. Image by Rigorius (own work) via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license.
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf
In 325, the First Council of Nicaea met under the auspices of the Emperor Constantine. A gathering of bishops from around the Christian world (but primarily the East), it met to decide certain theological issues, the most important of which was the relationship between Jesus and God. An epic showdown took place between those who saw Jesus as co-equal with God and Arians, who saw Jesus as a created being. The result was the doctrine of the Trinity and the Nicene creed used by Christians all over the globe as a confession of orthodoxy.
Now that 1700 years have passed, how are Baptists supposed to understand such an important historical event? For Baptists, the councils have never been authoritative, and creeds have been thoroughly rejected throughout 400 years of Baptist thought. While attempting to create a first century church modeled on the New Testament, Baptists have rarely cared about church history. And yet, the Council of Nicaea lives on in Baptist thought as a shaper of our theological imagination and a test of orthodoxy.
It is striking that few Baptists have rejected the trinitarian thought embodied in the creed, though that expression has little grounding in the New Testament as a later formulation influenced by Aristotle’s ideas. However, Baptists have respected its theological contribution and made little attempt to embrace adoptionist or Arian views.
Sure, you’re unlikely to find many Baptists who say the creed on Sunday. After all, the tradition is non-creedal, practicing a form of soul liberty that shuns fetters on the Christian conscience and embraces a form of free thought within Christian life. That has plenty of drawbacks, in my experience, as I have seen plenty of theological debates that were settled centuries ago continue to fester in congregations today. Further, while Baptists embrace free conscience, that conscience, like it or not, is shaped by pivotal events in the church’s history.
The Council of Nicaea and its creed have shaped the boundaries of orthodox thought for the entirety of the Christian world, Baptists included. Like it or not, it is still incredibly relevant to Baptists 1700 years later.
The creed itself is a useful tool for explaining what orthodox Christian belief looks like. I use it myself when teaching baptismal classes. Even if it’s not said on Sunday morning in unison, it is still an excellent tool for catechesis. The crafters of the creed wanted something that would be easy to memorize and understand, and in this essential task, they succeeded.
Even so, Baptists are right to have misgivings about the creed. While some of our Anglican siblings see benefit in the fact that Constantine (and not the Pope) presided over the council, Baptists have been wary of state interference in theological matters. Constantine called the council together with a mandate of theological unity so that it could be the religion of his empire, and he even participated in theological debate. In 325 CE, church and state were one; the bishops’ travel expenses were even paid from the state treasury.
Baptists, being on the receiving end of religious persecution in their early years, are rightly suspicious of religion that is too closely aligned with the state. Roger Williams used the metaphor of the garden of the church being kept free from state involvement, which to him meant forcible conversion or the intense favoring of one religion over another. Religion is meant to speak to the state, not for it. It is hard to trust a theological decision made under imperial authority.
The Council of Nicaea and its creed have shaped the boundaries of orthodox thought for the entirety of the Christian world, Baptists included. Like it or not, it is still incredibly relevant to Baptists 1700 years later. There are few documents that continue to be significant so long after their drafting. For that reason alone, this anniversary is an important one, even for free-church Protestants. We may act like it doesn’t matter, but even in our rejection of it, we cement its place in history and theology.
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf is senior minister, Lake Street Church of Evanston, Illinois. He currently serves as the co-associate regional minister with the American Baptist Churches Metro Chicago. His book, published in 2023 by T&T Clark, is titled “Sanctuary and Subjectivity: Thinking Theologically about Whiteness and Sanctuary Movements.” He is also the co-founder of Challenging Islamophobia Together Chicagoland, an initiative that brings together people of all faiths to counter Islamophobia from a religious perspective.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
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