This story is the fourth and final in a series covering the Nicene Creed that appeared in a special section of the March 27 edition of The Baptist Paper. Click here to subscribe. For more stories in this series, click here. To request a copy of the special section, email news@thebaptistpaper.org.
A.J. Smith
Special to The Baptist Paper
The Nicene Creed carefully chose language that clarifies who the Triune God is.
From the Old Testament to the New Testament, the Bible affirms there is only one living and true God. Deuteronomy 6:4 affirms, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Paul affirms this in 1 Corinthians 8:4: “There is no God but one.” Written in an age of polytheism, the creed boldly affirms there is only one true and living God.
Contrary to the gods of the Roman world, the true God is personal and loving. He is Father in that He is the beginning, the source of all life. He is also Father in that He is caring, that in His love He disciplines His own and He provides for His creation. Most importantly, God is eternally Father in relation to the Son.
When the creed says God the Father is “almighty,” it reflects His power and sovereignty. God has, in the words of one old Baptist catechism, the power “to do all His holy will.” God’s power is not merely a matter of brute strength but of authority and of sovereignty. Scripture presents God as one who wisely plans and directs history, in its broadest strokes and finest details, to His purposeful end.
God the Father, because He is almighty, is also the “Creator” of all things visible and invisible. Anything apart from God that exists does so because He is the Creator. This has several implications: 1. Everything God created was good and has a purpose, a reason to exist in accordance with divine wisdom and power; 2. Your life has meaning, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you or those around you; and 3. God sustains and directs His creation.
Thus, we have no reason to fear what will be because we know God is the one who created this world, us, and all the things in it for His glory and for the benefit of His people (Rom. 8:28).
God Incarnate
On the subject of the Incarnation, the creed affirms that the second person of the Trinity came to earth and became a man in the person of Jesus.
Jesus has no human biological father, but He has a human mother. He is the promised “seed of the woman” who crushed the serpent’s head. The Son of God is eternally begotten of the Father.
God is unchanging, so there is no speaking of God as Father without also speaking of God the Son. God is eternally one divine and undivided essence in three distinct persons — Father, Son (or Word) and Holy Spirit. The persons are not “parts” of God. God is one and undivided. Herein lies the mystery of the Trinity.
The creed meticulously maintains the unity of the Godhead and yet distinguishes the individual persons. All that God is in His essence, Jesus is as God the Son incarnate. He is no less God than the Father (John 10:30), which is why Jesus identifies Himself as the “I am” of the Hebrew Scriptures (John 8:58).
For God to save us, He had to become human and restore our fallen humanity to its original glory. The goal of salvation is to restore in us the image of God (Rom. 8:29–30).
He fulfills the just demands of the law for us (1 Cor. 1:30). He provides the one perfect sacrifice to atone for our sins (Heb. 2:17).
Furthermore, He is our High Priest, interceding for us daily (1 John 2:1–2). He is the only truly sinless human being (Heb. 4:15). He is both fully God and fully man (John 1:14).
The Holy Spirit
Rounding out the doctrine of the Trinity, the creed addresses the nature of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an “it,” nor is the Holy Spirit God’s power and force at work in the world. The Holy Spirit is the Lord, and He is the Creator of life.
Without the Holy Spirit there is no new birth; there is no spiritual life. Our life comes from the Holy Spirit through the gospel, convicting of sin and leading sinners to repentance and faith.
In this section of the creed, “and the Son” did not appear in the original form of the creed. They were added by the western branch of the Church later.
The ties, especially in the Book of Acts, between the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit are so closely intertwined that affirming the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son seems to be better supported by Scripture, maintaining the equality of persons in the unity of the Trinity. We worship one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit — three eternally distinct persons in one eternal Godhead.
We must remember, then, that the Holy Spirit is, like the Father and the Son, a person, possessing all the attributes of the Divine Nature just as fully as the Father and Son.
Just as Jesus claims to be the “I am” (Yahweh) of the Old Testament in John 8:58, so the writer of Hebrews says the Holy Spirit is Yahweh in 10:15 when he writes, “the Holy Spirit also testifies,” and then quotes Jeremiah 31:33, where the words of the Prophet come from Yahweh.
The creed recognizes this by affirming the Holy Spirit is the One who spoke through the Old Testament prophets. The Bible, as penned by the men who first wrote each of its portions, was directly inspired by the Holy Spirit without it being dictated (2 Pet. 1:21). Furthermore, the Holy Spirit safeguarded the Bible through the centuries, preserving it for us, so we have an infallible witness revealing God, His will and the gospel.
Universal Church
One aspect of the creed many Baptists find troubling is the affirmation, “In one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” The word catholic in this usage means “universal.”
We tend to focus on the local church because that is the most common usage in the New Testament, and this is where we live out the Christian life daily.
Baptists have, in the past, and do now, affirm the universal (catholic) Church as the spiritual body of all the redeemed of the ages (Second London Confession, XXVI.1; BFM 2000, VI).
The creed affirms the unity, sanctity, universality and apostolic origins of the Church. Most of this is drawn from Ephesians 4. Paul affirms the unity of all believers in one Church bound together by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the gospel. The Church is set apart by God and holy (Eph. 5:26–27).
A visible (local) church is marked by the true gospel preached by the apostles. Peter’s confession that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” is the rock upon which the Church is built, and Christ is the foundation (Matt. 16:16; 1 Cor. 3:11).
Another item that concerns many is, “I confess one baptism for the remission of sins.” Paul affirms one baptism in Ephesians 4:4.
This affirmation is where many hold fast that baptism of a genuine believer, properly administered, should never be repeated because it is considered a once-in-a-lifetime act.
Baptism is a public statement that one has changed allegiance from the world to Christ. It is also a symbol of the spiritual cleansing of sin, and so Peter speaks of it as giving a clear conscience before God (1 Pet. 3:21).
The expression, “baptism for the remission of sins” is no different here than in Acts 2:38. Baptism is the initial visible testimony of repentance and faith in Christ. It is an outward display of forgiveness of sins.
An affirmation of belief in the resurrection and the life of the age to come rounds out the Creed. Christ came, not merely to save the soul, but to save the whole person. The idea that salvation only involves the soul is a heresy advocated by early Gnostics.
Jesus demonstrated to the disciples His bodily resurrection from the dead by showing the marks of His crucifixion and by eating fish. The Scriptures clearly affirm that in our own resurrection we will be made completely like Him (1 John 3:2; cf. 1 Cor. 15:15–20).
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.
