The Creed of Nicaea
The statement of faith adopted by the bishops assembled at Nicaea in 325. It declares the Son to be of one substance with the Father and ends by condemning the teachings associated with Arius. It is shorter than the creed now recited under the same name.
Read the text at ccel.org ↗Greek and Latin text (Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2) ↗Creed, canons and synodal letter of the council on one page (New Advent) ↗
No minutes of the Council of Nicaea survive. The text of its creed is known because people who were there quoted it soon afterwards, above all Eusebius of Caesarea in a letter to his own church, and because it was read into the acts of the later councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). The church historians Socrates and Theodoret copy it from those earlier writers.
The creed is the council’s own wording and is evidence of the first rank for what was decided. It says that the Son is “of one substance” with the Father (homoousios in the Greek), gives a single clause to the Holy Spirit, and closes with a condemnation of those who say that there was a time when the Son was not. It should not be confused with the longer creed used in worship today and commonly called the Nicene Creed, which omits the condemnation and adds a full article on the Spirit and the church; that text is linked with the council of 381.
Cited in
- May AD 325, firm date
- May AD 381, firm date
- 28 November 2025, firm date