As 2025 draws to a close, you may know by now that this is the 1,700th anniversary of the promulgation of the creed of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. This was a monumental event, first because the Council of Nicaea became the first ecumenical council, and second because the Council published a creed that is recognized by all Christians. That is why it is called ecumenical. That word means universal. All orthodox Christians affirm it, and many traditions, including churches in the Reformed tradition, not only affirm the Nicene Creed but, in our worship services, confess the Nicene Creed as it was modified at the second ecumenical council held at Constantinople in AD 381.

The church gathered at Nicaea, now known as Iznik, Turkey, which sits about fifty-five miles across Lake Iznik southwest of Istanbul. The Council gathered to confront the teaching of a popular presbyter named Arius, who shows up in the late third century in Alexandria. He became notorious for denying the eternal generation of God the Son, for teaching the eternal subordination of the Son, and for teaching, “There was when the Son was not.”

Though the church had gathered in regional synods to deal with issues ranging from the Pentecostalism of the Montanists to other errors, Arius’ errors warranted the calling of pastors (episkopoi or bishops) in an ecumenical council.

Phillip Cary was chair of the Department of Philosophy, Eastern University. He has published three books on Augustine’s theology and taught on history of theology for many years. Now he has published a lively, brief, engaging, and sometimes frustrating commentary on one of the most important and widely shared documents in the history of the Christian church. The question I kept asking myself as I read this book is this: Is this the accessible introduction to the Nicene Creed to which I will now point people when they write, as they do, to ask for the book on the Nicene Creed?

This hardbound, sewn (not glued), duodecimo-sized book, in 231 pages, surveys the doctrine of the Creed in three articles: Article 1, God the Father; Article 2, part 1, The Eternal Son of God; Article 2, part 2, God Incarnate; Article 3, The Holy Spirit.

Our author provides us with a good, swift introduction to the background of the issues and personalities that prompted the Council of Nicaea. As you might imagine, the full story is quite complex and detailed, and it is clear that Cary knows that story and gives the reader what he must know to understand the Creed but without losing him in the maze along the way. He provides us with a fresh translation of the Creed (from the Greek text) and proceeds to explain it in forty-four brief chapters.

There are many reasons to like this book. Some parts of it are outstanding. I recently gave a chapel talk about what it means to say, “We believe in one God.” I wish I had consulted this volume first since he makes the point that there were sophisticated pagans who spoke about God as one, but that when the Council said, “one God,” the early church was using shared language “to say something more specific and biblical” (26).

There has been some heated discussion in recent months about the unseen world, with some well-meaning but misguided evangelicals verging on henotheism or polytheism. Cary’s account of the unseen world grounds us in Scripture (e.g., Col 1 and in the language of the church [e.g., the Definition of Chalcedon]), which, were some of our enthusiasts better grounded in the church’s understanding and language, they might have spared us and themselves some heartache (31). His very brief, Augustinian account of the nature of evil as a corruption of good is helpful (33–34).

Cary’s explanation and defense of the doctrine of eternal generation is helpful (57–64), and his note that begetting is not equivalent to making is extremely important (76), but it is not clear why the author thinks that the language “eternal begetting” is clearer than “eternal generation.” Likewise, his account of essence is quite good, but it is not clear why substance is more ambiguous than essence (78–83). His note that to say, “God bearer” (theotokos) “does not mean something preposterous like saying she is the origin of God” is timely (118). In our age, when many Christians are discovering traditional Christian theology on social media, where terms like theotokos may be badly explained and even mangled by amateurs, this brief explanation should be read by many.

Perhaps the strongest part of the work is his explanation of the third article of the Nicene Creed, which addresses the person and work of the Holy Spirit. In my copy, these are the pages that bear the greatest number of marks. For example, his account of hypostasis and persona as distinct from ousia (being) are very helpful, as is his observation that the Holy Spirit is neither an angel nor merely an energy (176).

At the outset, I indicated that there are some frustrating aspects to this work. Let us call them idiosyncrasies. One of these is his argument that we ought to honor the rabbinic refusal to pronounce the Hebrew covenant name of God, YHWH, the tetragrammaton, because, unlike other proper names, the Masoretes did not indicate the vowels to be used with the four consonants (40–43). It is true that we do not know with absolute certainty how YHWH should be pronounced, but we also do not believe that the Masoretes were inspired in their work and thus there is a degree of uncertainty about a number of words. And if infallible confidence is the standard, then there is some doubt about all Hebrew words. Cary might be right, but an introductory book on the Nicene Creed is a strange place to make this argument. As a pastor, should I recommend this book to a layman, will I have to answer questions about the tetragrammaton, Hebrew vowel points, and rabbinic tradition?

Also under this heading belongs his somewhat tendentious attempt to wedge into the Nicene Creed the doctrine of the descent of Christ to the place of the dead (136–37, 141, 143–44). The doctrine he teaches here reflects the third Article of Religion of the Anglican tradition.¹ By the time the Nicene Creed was formed, this doctrine was beginning to gain traction but, as Rufinus tells us in his commentary on the Apostles’ Creed, as late as AD 390, the terms buried (sepultus) and descended were still being used synonymously. The belief that Jesus was going to the place of the dead was growing, and by the late sixth century the sequential use and understanding of the two phrases would be well established—that is, that Jesus was buried and then descended to the place of the dead. The Nicene Creed, however, is not the Apostles’ Creed, and neither in the Greek text nor in the author’s own English translation is there any indication of the doctrine of the descent. Remarkably, Cary continues to advocate a contested view of the descent even under the article of Christ’s ascent.²

Third, his discussion of the difficulties associated with the Filioque (“and the Son”) clause is helpful and even stimulating in places. He contends that the action by the Third Council of Toledo of adding the Filioque was not ecumenical, which is a reasonable and fair position—though it might have helped those of us who are confessionally bound to the Filioque to explain that it had an ancient pedigree and that Toledo did not invent and add it de novo. He also contends that it is a theologoumenon, “a theological proposition that many of us think is true, but which is not a teaching that you have to believe in order to be faithful Christian” (186). Again, this may be true, but all the Reformed churches confess the Filioque, and they do so in the course of their exposition of the Apostles’ Creed and in their account of what is necessary for a Christian to believe. So, for us, it is not a mere theologoumenon. Thus, again, should we recommend this book to laity, ministers in Presbyterian and Reformed churches will have to explain that though Cary himself does not say the words “and the Son” when the Creed is recited, and though he thinks it should be excluded from the Creed (186), the Presbyterian and Reformed churches affirm the form and substance of the Filioque, even with their problematic history.

Finally, in a book aimed at laity it would have helped to give a clearer explanation of the relationship between the sacraments as signs and the thing signified (199–202). The sacraments themselves are not the thing signified, and they do not automatically confer what they signify. Those coming to the Nicene Creed from low-church traditions will have reservations not only about infant baptism but also about the language of the Nicene, which might sound in their ears like an ex opere view of baptism. It is not. It is, however, an expression of the sacramental union or the figurative relation between, for example, baptism and the things signified by it (e.g., regeneration and the washing away of sins). Those things are had by faith, but the sacraments are signs and seals of the same and are to be closely associated with the things they signify and seal to believers.

This is a stimulating and interesting book. There are parts of it that I really like and from which I learned and which I will repeat to others. There are other parts that are puzzling and even frustrating. I probably will not recommend this book to laity, but I would recommend it to seminary graduates and to pastors with a good theological education.

Notes

1. “Of the going down of Christ into Hell. As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it to be believed, that he went down into Hell.” The Book of Common Prayer (Oxford University Press, 1969), 693.
2. It is worth noting that the eighth Article of Religion, Book of Common Prayer, 696, says the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian, and the Apostles’ Creed “ought thoroughly to be received and believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture,” but the Nicene-Constantinopolitan (AD 381) never appears in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. In the service of Morning Prayer the Apostles’ Creed and the Athanasian are used.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

Phillip Cary, The Nicene Creed: An Introduction (Lexham Press, 2023).

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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