Trinity Sunday: celebrating the Nicene Creed 325 to 2025

A reflection for Trinity Sunday, taking account of the Nicene Creed, devised 17 centuries ago in 325. Written and spoken by Kieran J. O'Mahony OSA. 

Gentle piano music to close the meditation

Transcript

John’s Lane
D08 F8NW
15 June 2025
Trinity Sunday
Proverbs 8:22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Welcome
Usually on Sunday, we recite the long version of the Creed known as the Nicene Creed. The name comes from a town in Turkey called Nicaea where a church council was held seventeen centuries ago, in the year 325. The name Nicene isn’t quite accurate — the basics were indeed agreed at Nicaea but the full version we use is an expended version agreed some years later at the council of Constantinople in 381. The anniversary of Nicaea is important because what was agreed in Nicaea and later in Constantinople has been accepted by the great majority of churches ever since. In spite of all our differences, we are united, we are one, when it comes to the Creed.

Topic
In this reflection, I would like to tell the story of Nicaea under three headings:
1. Who was Jesus?
2. The importance of words and
3. The unimportance of words!

Steps
1. Who was Jesus? 
From earliest times, Christians used the acclamation “Jesus is Lord” — reported in last Sunday’s second reading from 1 Corinthians 12. It is important to start with experience: the first disciples encountered God in Jesus is a totally new way. Our earliest writer — St Paul — says in Philippians chapter 2: though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God something to be grasped but emptied himself. St John, writing much later, noted: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1) leading to the startling assertion: And the Word became flesh and lived among us (John 1:14). The experience of God-in-Christ led to such rich affirmations, reflected also in today’s readings. 

At the beginning of the third century, a priest in Alexandria in Egypt caused a bit of a flurry. He was trying to protect the transcendence, the mystery of God. Accordingly, he affirmed that God’s nature was one and indivisible and it could not be somehow shared in any real way. Jesus was, in the view of Arius, a kind of second class God. To make a clear distinction between the Father and the Son, Arius said there was a time when the Son was not. In this way, he hoped to uphold the transcendence of the one, utterly mysterious God. 

Arius was in the diocese of Alexandria and his bishop — Alexander — suspended him for heresy. According to Alexander, Jesus was truly God or in the preferred expression “of one being with the Father.” In the teaching of Alexander, God was always a Father, who always had a Son. There never was a time, so to speak, when the Son was not. The row grew and there was considerable unrest. In order to prevent division and disturbance, the Roman Emperor of the day, Constantine the Great, called a council at Nicaea for the year 325. There was big turnout — some 300 bishops, mostly from the east, with their entourages of priests and deacons. In total, somewhere between 1200 to 1900 people came. The result was the Nicene Creed — the bones of our longer one — and also the eventual excommunication of Arius. 

2. The importance of words
Of course, the mystery of God is always greater than our hearts and certainly greater than the mere words we use. At the same time, in 1 Peter 3:15, we are encouraged to be ready to give an account of the hope that is in us. We do this, in the first place, for ourselves and only then, with courtesy and respect, may we be able offer such an account to others. As human beings, we are head and heart, intellect and will, and we believe ultimately that faith and reason do not finally contradict but actually go hand in hand. Even so, it is good to be aware than when we use words taken from human experience to name our faith, there is always a gap between the convictions of the heart and our capacity to put words on them. In the old saying, when we speak of God, the difference is always greater than the similarity.

3. The unimportance of words
Perhaps this might help. Doctrines appear to be descriptions of what we believe. After all, this is how we normally use words. In reality, we cannot truly describe what we believe because the reality, God, is always so much more wonderful. Doctrines, even exalted ones such as the doctrine of the Trinity, are more like language rules or guardrails. If we break the rules, we sell the mystery short, so to speak. In the gentle expression of Archbishop Rowan Williams, a heresy is to make claims about God which fall short of the mystery or fail to hold the experience of believers. We use words not so much to describe precisely but rather to hold ourselves before the mystery, as richly and fully as possible.

St Augustine knew this well. Over the door of our old Priory in John’s Lane is a carving of St Augustine and a child on a beach. The child is filling a hole with water from the sea. Augustine objects that the child will never fit the ocean into a hole in the sand. The child replies, neither will you fit God into your small mind. It is not accidental that at the time, Augustine was writing his huge tome on the very topic of the Trinity. Mystery and even experience are better guides, in the end.

Conclusion
After all that, it may be useful to hear the original Nicene Creed, as agreed in 325. It is different to the longer one we use today — and it is notably more brief on the existence of the Holy Spirit. 

We believe in one God, the Father almighty,
maker of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
begotten from the Father, only-begotten,
that is, from the substance of the Father,
God from God, light from light,
true God from true God, begotten not made,
of one substance with the Father,
through Whom all things came into being,
things in heaven and things on earth,
Who because of us humans and because of our salvation came down,
and became incarnate and became man, and suffered,
and rose again on the third day, and ascended to the heavens,
and will come to judge the living and dead,
And in the Holy Spirit.