History and relevance of the Creed of the Council of Nicaea
Dear friends, let us first begin by understanding what we are celebrating when we talk about the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. We know the text of the creed that we recite every Sunday and on solemnities. It is a text that indicates the content of our Christian faith, in its fundamental elements.
In reality, the formula that we use for the profession of faith collects the text approved by the bishops in 325 together with some additions that were approved by the subsequent council in 381 called the Council of Constantinople. This last council specifies some elements of the identity of the Holy Spirit. But certainly, the text approved at Nicaea is the fundamental text that expresses the faith of the united Church.
What is an ecumenical council
Perhaps it is a good idea to know what a council is, in particular what is an ecumenical council, before going into the current meaning of this text. An expression found in the Bull of Indiction of our Jubilee 2025 regarding the Council of Nicaea, written by Pope Francis, helps us understand its value:
“The coming Jubilee Year will also coincide with a significant date for all Christians, namely, the 1700th anniversary of the celebration of the first great Ecumenical Council, that of Nicaea. It is worth noting that, from the apostolic times, bishops have gathered on various occasions in order to discuss doctrinal questions and disciplinary matters. In the first centuries of Christianity, synods frequently took place in both East and West, showing the importance of ensuring the unity of God’s People and the faithful proclamation of the Gospel. The Jubilee can serve as an important occasion for giving concrete expression to this form of synodality, which the Christian community today considers increasingly necessary for responding to the urgent need of evangelization. All the baptized, with their respective charisms and ministries, are co-responsible for ensuring that manifold signs of hope bear witness to God’s presence in the world.”
In this way we understand that the synodality that we are often talking about in the Church in recent years is actually a very ancient theme. Christians have walked together since the beginning.
A specific expression of synodality is the Ecumenical Council, that is, the meeting that bishops hold to make fundamental decisions for the life of the Church. The Acts of the Apostles already write about a meeting of the Apostles in Jerusalem to discuss what to do when the Christian faith goes beyond the borders of Israel and enters into the pagan world: that event celebrated at the beginning of Christianity is today called as the Council of Jerusalem.
The decisions that are taken in councils are introduced with this expression: “the Holy Spirit and we have decided…”. The formula is very interesting because it expresses the awareness that the synodal path takes place under the assistance of the Holy Spirit and that the decisions that are taken are decisively marked by the work of the Spirit. For this reason, the decisions that the ecumenical councils have taken regarding the faith, the decisions that are called dogmatic, are considered irreformable and must be held as true and belonging to the deposit of faith, as an expression of the one Christian faith.
The sources of our faith
In this sense it is important to consider that the source of our faith is always Christian revelation, it is always the word of God, written (in the sacred Scripture) and transmitted in the living tradition of the Church.
This allows us to observe that it is not enough to read the Bible to understand faith in its contents, but it is necessary to read the Bible within the living tradition of the Church that grows over time through the study and reflection of faith, the spiritual experience of the people of God, especially the saints, and the authentic magisterium of the Church.
This is why, for example, in the Nicene Creed we find words that describe Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity that we do not find directly in the Scriptures, but in the living tradition of the Church, in the writings of the Fathers of the Church and the saints.
It is not part of Catholic thought to isolate the sacred Scripture in itself, but it must always be read in an ecclesial way.
The creed and the experience of faith
Before going directly into the historical and current meaning of the Council of Nicaea, we must grasp the connection between the creed that we recite and the experience of faith. We cannot understand the precious words that are written in the Nicene Creed if we do not understand what faith is.
Let us start from a simple point that we find in the Gospels: the first step of faith is the encounter with Jesus. Faith is born from an encounter. Faith is not an intellectual reasoning; it is not a theory about God. Faith is born from the encounter with Jesus, recognizing in him, first of all, something exceptional, which surpasses the experience that we normally have in daily encounters.
Benedict XVI says in his encyclical on love: “We have come to believe in God's love: in these words, the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”.
Let us think of all the encounters that characterize the vocation of the Apostles. These are encounters that change lives. Why does the encounter with Jesus profoundly mark people's lives? Because he is capable of speaking in a unique way with our heart, with our needs, with our questions about the meaning of life.
No one can respond to our desires like Jesus, our desire for truth, desire for justice, desire to love and be loved, desire for beauty and goodness. The encounter with Jesus sets people's lives in motion. In all the encounters that are reported in the Gospel, we see how those who meet Jesus and accept his invitation to follow him, completely change their lives. No one remains the same after meeting Jesus.
The first confessions of faith
Jesus is recognized as the one who has the words of eternal life. The confessions of faith that we find in the scriptures are numerous: Jesus is the Lord, Jesus is the Messiah, You are the son of God, You are the Christ.
All these are professions of faith that express the encounter with Jesus. This faith is lived by the Apostles, but it is also lived by many who meet Jesus and follow him: the Samaritan woman, Mary Magdalene, the man born blind, the demoniac of Gerasene, Nicodemus, the centurion who sees Jesus dying on the cross and exclaims: this man is truly the son of God.
In this perspective, faith is an act that the believer performs by recognizing the presence of God in Jesus. In fact, the Christian faith is not simply believing that God exists. Believing in the existence of God, in fact, before being a question of faith, is a philosophical question. Every authentic philosophy deals with the existence of God that can be demonstrated with the power of reason.
When we talk about the Christian faith instead, we refer to something different, it refers to the presence of God in history and in our life. With the power of the reason, we can reflect on the existence of God. But man with reason alone cannot define who is God because God is a mystery ultimately unfathomable for the reason of man.
Think for example of the experience that the Apostles had while being together with Jesus: they see him do exceptional things, say words that no man has ever pronounced about God and human life, they see him perform miracles, calm the storm, heal the lepers: in front of all this the disciples ask themselves: but who is this man that even the wind obeys? This means that the disciples cannot understand by themselves, with the power of their reason, who Jesus is, because Jesus surpasses their capacity of understanding.
They will need the gift of the Holy Spirit for them to truly understand that Jesus is the son of God. This is why St. John in his letters says that no one can affirm that Jesus is the Lord except by the power of the Holy Spirit.
There is a very beautiful example in St. Francis of Assisi who makes a very simple comparison: he says the apostles saw Jesus with the eyes of the body but with the eyes of faith they recognized the son of God. In the same way in the Eucharist, we also see with the eyes of the body, a piece of bread, but with the eyes of faith we see and believe that in that bread there is the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
An important distinction: the act and the content of faith
To fully appreciate and understand the depth of the Nicene Creed, it is important to clarify a distinction that has always been present in the theological reflection of the Church: we must distinguish the act of faith from the content of faith.
There is a Latin expression that summarizes this distinction: we speak of fides qua creditur and fides quae creditur. What do these two expressions mean? First of all, there is the act of faith, which is the human, reasonable and free act, made possible by the grace of God, with which we open ourselves to Christ, welcome him into our life, recognize him as present. With the act of faith, we trust in Christ and entrust ourselves to him.
At the same time, this act is never generic but always has a content. The act of faith with which I welcome the presence of Christ in my life always implies contents to believe. The simplest act of faith is the one that says: I believe in you. But at the same time, I have to ask myself: sure, I believe in you, but what is the content of my belief, of my faith?
In the Gospels, these dynamics is reported in its fundamental simplicity: I believe that you are the son of God, I believe that you are the Lord. The Church throughout its history has reflected more and more on the content of faith. The Church enlightened by the Holy Spirit has deepened the content of faith arriving at formulating the articles of faith. The Nicene Creed represents a decisive moment because it arrives at formulating the fundamental contents of faith regarding God, regarding Christ and the Church.
Since it is not possible to have an act of faith without the content of faith, the Church has matured in its reflection with the help of the Holy Spirit some formulas that express the content of faith.
In summary: with the act of faith, I open my heart to the presence of Christ in my life and I trust in him, I entrust myself to him. At the same time, performing an act of faith means accepting those formulas that describe the content of the faith itself. This is the meaning of the formula of the creed that the bishops gathered in council at Nicaea affirmed as normative for all Christians. In this sense, every act of faith, in order to be true, must also affirm the contents that are affirmed in the creed. The formula of the Nicene Creed is therefore the development of the Apostolic faith.
The meaning of the formulas of the creed
All this brings us to a further fundamental question: with this Creed can we say that we have described who God really is and can we say that we know perfectly who he is in his mystery? Does God coincide with the formula of the Nicene Creed or is God greater than the words we use to describe the mystery of God?
Here we come across a beautiful phrase by Saint Thomas Aquinas who in this regard tells us that the act of faith is not exhausted with the statements we pronounce but points directly to the reality of the mystery of God.
This means that the formula of the creed is normative for every Christian because it pushes our act of faith to tend towards the mystery of God. However, these words do not exhaust the mystery of God but are like a path that leads us towards the mystery of God, which is always greater than our words. When we pronounce the words of the creed our act of faith extends beyond those words themselves to tend towards the infinite mystery of God.
The creed and the unity of faith
But why is it necessary to have specific and normative words that regulate our faith? Here we must highlight another fundamental element: the dogmatic formulas of the council have helped to rediscover the unity of faith and avoid serious doctrinal errors that risked betraying the original experience of the Apostles. Let us listen in this regard to the words of Pope Francis in the bull of Indiction of the Jubilee, in which the context of that council and the meaning of those decisions taken by the bishops gathered in Nicaea are described:
“The Council of Nicaea sought to preserve the Church’s unity, which was seriously threatened by the denial of the full divinity of Jesus Christ and hence his consubstantiality with the Father. Some three hundred bishops took part […]. After various debates, by the grace of the Spirit they unanimously approved the Creed that we still recite each Sunday at the celebration of the Eucharist. The Council Fathers chose to begin that Creed by using for the first time the expression “We believe”, as a sign that all the Churches were in communion and that all Christians professed the same faith.”
The basic content of the Nicene Creed
Trying to enter more deeply into the meaning of the Council of Nicaea, I willingly refer to the contribution of a very famous brother of mine, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, who was the Apostolic preacher of the papal household for over 40 years, and preached retreats to the Pope. Father Cantalamessa is also one of the greatest scholars of the Fathers of the Church and of the first councils. I refer to a recent article of his in the Osservatore Romano, January 4, 2025:
He recalls that the Creed sanctioned by that council constitutes the fact of faith that unites Christians of all the Churches: both the historical Churches — Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican — and the various denominations that go under the name of “Evangelical” and “Pentecostal” Churches. Hence the ecumenical importance of the celebration of the centenary. It offers us a unique opportunity - which only at this point in history are we able to seize - to acknowledge and celebrate together the faith that unites all believers in Christ.
Convened to define the mystery of Christ, as true God, and his place in the faith of the Church, the Council of Nicaea ended up achieving a result, if possible, even more important and decisive: that of defining the Christian idea of God. Nicaea marks the transition from the rigid monotheism of the Old Testament to Trinitarian monotheism.
Certainly, Christians have from the beginning professed the divinity of Christ and the Holy Trinity, as evidenced by the baptismal formula of Matthew 28 and the same Apostolic symbol prior to Nicaea: it is the short formula of the creed that we sometimes recite on Sunday.
But in Nicaea, there is the clear awareness of the church of these mysteries through dogmatic formulation. After this council it was no longer necessary to have other definitions of God, apart from the statements of the Council of Constantinople on the Holy Spirit in 381.
The divinity of Christ and the Trinity of God are two inseparable mysteries, two doors that open, or close, together. If Christ is not God, who would form the Trinity? There is proof of this in the facts. As soon as the divinity of Christ is put in brackets, the Trinitarian horizon also falls.
The expression that allowed to reconcile the faith in the divinity of Christ with the indispensable biblical monotheism was not so much the philosophical term “consubstantial” (homoousios): of the same substance as the Father, as we say today in the creed. This result was obtained above all by leveraging the fact that Christ is, indeed, the Word "through whom all things were made" (Jn 1:3), but is first and foremost the "Son of God" and, as such, "begotten, not made" ("genitum non factum"). Arriving at this distinction between being begotten (gennetos) and being created (genetos: just one letter of difference in Greek!) was the most arduous and decisive conquest of the Christian faith on the level of being.
Christianity also professes, therefore, the unity of God. Not a numerical unity, but something infinitely more beautiful. It is usually defined as a "unity of substance"; but it’s true name is unity of love, because God "is" love (1 Jn 4:8). It is the only unity that can serve as a model for unity, not only of the Church, but of every human community, starting with that between man and woman in marriage. These will always and necessarily be unity in diversity, as is, precisely, the unity of the Trinity.
All the innumerable historical, theological and ecumenical initiatives that will take place on the occasion of the centenary of Nicaea will be — for God and for the Church — almost useless, if they do not serve the purpose that Nicaea served, that is, to confirm and, where necessary, to reawaken in Christians the faith in the divinity of Christ and in the Trinity of God.
The relationship between the content of faith and life
We now come to a final point. We could dwell on the temptations of much contemporary culture that even today deny the divinity of Christ or the mystery of the Trinity. Even various sectors of theology seem to have great difficulty understanding these two fundamental mysteries of our Christian faith.
In reality we must say that the Christian faith always has an irreducible character: to maintain that Jesus is God, as God the Father is and that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are One God in the Trinity of persons, is always a scandal for human thought. Only faith allows us to welcome this mystery and to savor its profound content.
For this reason, it is always necessary to deepen even today what was affirmed by the Council of Nicaea. In this direction, it is important and decisive today, in deepening the Christological and Trinitarian faith, to grasp the connection between these fundamental mysteries and our daily life. In fact, God revealed himself in Christ as Trinitarian love, certainly not to give us simple information, but to make us participants in divine life even now on this earth.
We must always remember a fundamental principle: every statement that concerns the Christian faith certainly has a theological value, that is, it illustrates something that concerns the life of God and the Church, but at the same time it always has a human, social and cosmic value. It is a matter of discovering and deepening the relationship between the Christian faith and the daily life that we live in the Church and in civil society.
The relationship between faith and life is actually very neglected today. This division is very dangerous, it is the fruit of the process of secularization. I would like to try to explain myself well. When I speak of the relationship between faith and life, I do not mean primarily the fact of putting into practice the commandments and moral precepts of the Church. This is very important, but it is not the heart of Christianity. Christianity is much more than a moral system to be put into practice.
When I speak of the relationship between faith and life, I do not even mean to indicate a particular feeling or emotion that we must always have in our hearts and that concerns Jesus, the Holy Spirit. Many saints teach us that faith can sometimes be sentimentally arid. Many times, the life of faith leads us to cross the desert. I am thinking in particular of a saint like Teresa of Avila or even Mother Teresa of Calcutta. They were exceptional women and saints and yet they went through very strong trials.
Living faith therefore does not mean having many feelings. Probably reflecting on the divinity of Christ or on the Trinity does not give us a strong emotional feeling first of all. When I speak of the relationship between faith and life, I mean that God's revelation is always also a revelation that illuminates the life of man. Faith changes life when it changes the way we understand life: living faith generates a new way of thinking: it is a new mentality.
A great Roman writer of the fourth century after Christ, Mario Vittorino, said that when he met Christ and discovered the Christian faith, he finally discovered himself as a man, that is, he understood what it meant to be truly a human person.
In the Gospel we find the same thing: those who met Jesus and followed him experienced becoming more human: think for example of the case of Zacchaeus. At the end of that meeting with Jesus, Zacchaeus is totally transformed and becomes generous. He understood his mistake; he was forgiven and he understood that the meaning of his life was to love because God is love and he discovered that he was loved by God.
To understand even better the relationship between Christian faith and human life I propose this passage from the Second Vatican Council, taken from the pastoral constitution of the Church, Gaudium et spes, no. 22:
“The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear”.
These words are crucial because they teach us that the contents of our faith that God has revealed to us are also contents that explain the life of man and woman. Faith illuminates the life of every human person, gives meaning and an infinite perspective. In fact, human life in itself is an enigma, Christ has solved this enigma and revealed to us the human meaning of life.
This fact is further clarified when we think that man and woman are made in the image and likeness of God. For this reason, when God reveals himself to us, we can better understand who we are in the eyes of God.
The Nicene Creed and the Meaning of Our Life
To understand the relationship between faith and life precisely in the context of the Nicene Creed we must ask ourselves: what changes in our daily life to know that Jesus is the son of God, that Jesus is God: that is, that Jesus is a man like us and at the same time is God as the heavenly Father is God?
He is not a lesser God, a second-class God, an intermediary who is neither truly God nor truly man, as the ancient heresies said. Even more, we must ask ourselves what changes in our life to know that God is a trinity of love, as the Council of Nicaea affirmed.
How do the divinity of Jesus and the mystery of the Trinity illuminate the enigma of human life? Sometimes we do not reflect on this relationship between faith and life. In this way, faith remains something distant from our daily life.
We become aware of this difficulty especially when someone who is not a Christian, questions us about the meaning of the Christian faith and perhaps raises some objections to our faith, saying that Jesus is only a prophet, and that God cannot be a trinity and so on. For this reason, sometimes we are accused of believing in three gods and not in one God.
To be able to answer these questions, it is certainly necessary to study the Catechism of the Catholic Church well. But at the same time, it is necessary to discover how the mysteries of faith explain the meaning of human life.
I conclude by giving two examples and inviting you to further reflection.
How does the divinity of Jesus, affirmed by the Nicene Creed, illuminate our human life? First of all, this makes us reflect on the value of human life, the value of our being creatures. If the Son of God becomes flesh, it means that the flesh, that is, our human life, has a truly great value. The human creature is not dispersed in God, like a drop in an ocean. No, God became one like us to exalt the value of creation and human life. Every human creature has infinite value in the eyes of God, and we must learn to look at ourselves and others with the eyes and heart of God. God came into the world to destroy sin and evil and not to destroy the human creature. The divine-humanity of Jesus exalts the value and inalienable dignity of every human life. Our faith leads us to believe that every person is called to participate by grace in divine sonship.
With the affirmation of the divinity of Jesus we are led to discover the Christian face of God, which surpasses rigid monotheism, of a solitary and inaccessible God. God is Trinity, that is, true unity is always the unity of differences. This mystery is proper to love. For love to be present, there must be one, and the other, and their relationship of love. True unity of love is not the overcoming of differences but their fruitful reciprocity.
Dear brothers and sisters, this mystery illuminates life, illuminates the relationship between man and woman, the relationship between parents and children, but it also illuminates the life of the Church and society. In fact, in the Church and in the world, we are all different.
Let us think of our Church and our communities here in the Gulf, in our Apostolic vicariate. We are all different. The mystery of the Trinity reveals to us that the mystery of the other is positive, that difference is good. Without difference there is no true love.
Dear faithful, these are just examples to reflect on how the creed of the Council of Nicaea, affirming the fundamental content of faith, pushes us to change our mentality, to have a new understanding of life, society and the cosmos.
I conclude with a last quote from Benedict XVI that summarizes the whole meaning of the creed of Nicaea and of our faith: " “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny. In the same verse, Saint John also offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us”."