This story is the second in a series covering the Nicene Creed that appears in a special section of the March 27 edition of The Baptist Paper. Click here to subscribe. For upcoming stories, continue watching thebaptistpaper.org throughout this week or click here. To request a copy of the special section, email news@thebaptistpaper.org.
By A.J. Smith
Special to The Baptist Paper
The English word creed comes from the Latin credo which simply means, “I believe.”
A creed, then, is a statement of what one believes. In this most basic sense, everyone has a “creed.”
But when we think of the creeds of the Church, the word takes on a specific meaning. A creed is a statement of what all those who claim membership in the church profess to believe as a condition of membership.
The ancient creeds focus on what we call “primary doctrines.” These are the most important aspects of Christian teaching — doctrines like the Trinity and the Incarnation.
The Nicene Creed defines what is true with regard to these fundamental beliefs. But intellectual assent to truth is no guarantee of saving faith, and this has been the basis for some Baptists’ aversion to creeds in the past.
Definitive understanding
The Nicene Creed gives a definitive understanding of the Trinity and the Incarnation. It measures someone’s faithfulness to these critical truths of the gospel.
Over time it took on another role — a measure of saving faith. It came to be believed that if someone affirmed these truths intellectually that was a sign that the person was in a state of grace.
In churches practicing infant baptism, learning the Creed and going through confirmation became the benchmark for membership in the church. Early American Separate Baptists grew out of New England Congregationalism, and the Congregationalist Church held to this use of creeds.
These Separate Baptists, knowing what it was to confess the truth without a change of heart, then having experienced the new birth, developed an aversion to creeds “as an evidence of saving faith.”
Some Baptist historians interpreted this as a total aversion to creeds and confessions among Baptists. The rallying cry of the Disciples of Christ, “No creed but the Bible,” came to be associated with Baptists. At the same time, these Separate Baptists used church covenants containing confessional elements, showing a common doctrinal core that church members agreed upon.
Regular Baptists in North America, on the other hand, periodically wrote and published confessions of faith for their churches and associations and used them as instruments of unity and doctrinal accountability. These confessions were often referred to as “creeds” in their writings.
Changed life
But, like their Separate Baptist kinsmen, they never viewed them as a measure of someone’s salvation. Rather, for both groups, a changed life as a result of the new birth served as the benchmark for saving faith.
In the early 1800s, Regular and Separate Baptists united to promote missions work, and in 1845 the Southern Baptist Convention came into being from these two streams of Baptist life.
EDITOR’S NOTE — A.J. Smith received a Ph.D. in church history from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2004. His dissertation was on The Making of the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message (Wipf & Stock, 2008). Smith also is a contributor to The Holman Bible Dictionary and was an assistant professor of church history for Liberty University Online, 2006–2021.
Helpful resources
Credo Magazine developed 12 videos to help people understand the Nicene Creed. Find those videos and other information at thenicenecreed.org.
Southeastern Seminary’s Milestones video podcast series includes a feature on the Nicene Creed. Find it at sebts.edu.
In 2011, Timothy George, founding dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, edited a collection of scholarly examinations of the Nicene Creed — “Evangelicals and Nicene Faith: Reclaiming the Apostolic Witness.” Find George’s book, which was published by Baker Publishing Group, at Amazon.
Find a biblical study of the doctrines in the Nicene Creed by author and seminary professor Allen Ross at bible.org.
The theme of the 2025 Beeson Divinity School magazine is on the legacy of the Nicene Creed and other creeds and confession. Look for the magazine’s release soon and read past issues at samford.edu/beeson-divinity/beeson-magazine.
