Frequently Asked Questions

The Nicene Creed is Catholic in origin and in substance. It was drawn up by the first two ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church, Nicaea (AD 325) and Constantinople (AD 381), and the Church has guarded and professed it ever since. Most Protestant communions also profess it, because they inherited it from the Catholic Church at the Reformation. To profess the Creed fully, the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" included, is to profess the faith those Catholic councils defined. Read the full history.

Consubstantial translates the Greek homoousios, "of one and the same substance". It means the Son is everything the Father is as God: not a creature, not a lesser divinity, but true God from true God, sharing the one divine nature. The Council of Nicaea chose the word in 325 precisely because the Arians could bend every scriptural phrase to their teaching but could not bend this one. St Athanasius defended it his whole life as the hinge of the Creed. Every line is explained on the Meaning page.

To defend the divinity of Jesus Christ. Arius, a priest of Alexandria, taught that the Son of God was a creature, so that "there was a time when he was not". The Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council, convened under the Emperor Constantine in AD 325, condemned that teaching and confessed the Son as "begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father", anathematising the Arian formula. If the Son were a creature, no creature could save us; the Creed exists to guard that truth. The whole story is on the History page.

The Creed of 325 ends abruptly with "and in the Holy Spirit" and closes with an anathema against the Arian slogans. The Council of Constantinople in 381 completed it: it expanded the article on the Holy Spirit, "the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father", added the articles on the Church, Baptism, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, and dropped the anathema. The text recited at Mass today is the Creed of 381, properly called the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. Both texts are set side by side on the Original Creed of 325 page.

The Filioque is the Latin for "and the Son" in the article "who proceeds from the Father and the Son". It is a later Western addition to the Creed of 381: it was inserted at the Third Council of Toledo in 589 against a lingering Arianism in Spain, and was not sung in the creed at Rome until about 1014 under Pope Benedict VIII. The Catechism itself notes the words were not in the Creed of 381 (CCC 247). The Catholic Church professes the doctrine they express as a true development of the apostolic faith, grounded in John 15:26 and 16:14 and taught by Fathers such as Augustine and Ambrose. The full, honest history is on the Filioque page.

Catholics of the Roman Rite say "who proceeds from the Father and the Son"; the Eastern Orthodox keep the original wording of 381, "who proceeds from the Father". The dispute is over whether the West had the right to add the Filioque to the shared text, not over whether the Holy Spirit is God. In 1995 the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity clarified that the Catholic Church confesses the Father as the sole source of the Trinity and accepts the Eastern formula "from the Father through the Son". Eastern Catholic churches in communion with Rome generally recite the Creed without the addition.

Not word for word, but nearly every phrase is drawn from Scripture: "one God, the Father... and one Lord, Jesus Christ" from 1 Corinthians 8:6, "through him all things were made" from John 1:3, "all things visible and invisible" from Colossians 1:16, "who proceeds from the Father" from John 15:26. The one decisive term not found in Scripture, consubstantial, was chosen to protect what Scripture teaches from those who twisted its words. As St Athanasius argued in De Decretis, the Fathers used a new word to guard the old faith. The scriptural roots of every article are traced on the Meaning page.

"Catholic" comes from the Greek katholikos, "universal", "according to the whole". In the Creed it names a mark of the true Church: whole in doctrine and sent to all nations. The word was in Christian use by about AD 110, when St Ignatius of Antioch wrote that "wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8). The Catholic Church holds that this mark is not an abstract ideal but is found concretely in the Church in communion with the successor of Peter.

No single author wrote it. It was drawn up by the bishops of the Council of Nicaea in 325, building on earlier baptismal creeds, and completed by the Council of Constantinople in 381. Ancient sources disagree on how many bishops attended Nicaea: Eusebius says more than 250, while the traditional figure of 318 is a round, symbolic number later linked to Genesis 14:14. Among those present was the young deacon Athanasius of Alexandria, who spent the rest of his life defending what the council defined. Read the History of the councils.

On Sundays and solemnities, after the homily, professed by priest and people together. All bow at the words recalling the Incarnation, "and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man". The Roman Missal permits the Apostles' Creed in its place, especially during Lent and Easter Time, since that is the Church's ancient baptismal creed.

The current English text came into use at Mass on the First Sunday of Advent 2011, with the third edition of the Roman Missal, in a translation made to follow the Latin more closely. The best-known changes in the Creed: "We believe" became "I believe" (the Latin Credo is singular), "one in Being with the Father" became "consubstantial with the Father", "he was born of the Virgin Mary" became "was incarnate of the Virgin Mary", and "seen and unseen" became "visible and invisible". The faith professed did not change; the words were sharpened to match the Latin and, through it, the Greek of 381. The full text is on the home page.

Most historic Protestant communions do: Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and the Reformed churches retain the Nicene Creed in their confessions, generally with the Filioque, and many recite it in worship. Some evangelical and non-denominational bodies use no creeds at all on the principle of "no creed but the Bible", though most affirm what it teaches about the Trinity. There is a quiet irony a Catholic will notice: to receive the Creed is to receive the judgement of Catholic councils, and of a Church with the authority to define the faith.