The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed

This is the fuller form of the creed of Nicaea. It keeps the statement that the Son is of one substance with the Father, drops the condemnations with which the creed of 325 ended, and adds a longer confession of the Holy Spirit, “the Lord and Giver-of-Life, who proceedeth from the Father”, together with articles on the church, baptism and the resurrection.

Its origin is not documented as closely as its later use. No minutes of the council of 381 survive. The text first appears seventy years later, when it was read out at Chalcedon as the faith of the 150 fathers of Constantinople. Scholars have long discussed whether the council composed it or approved a creed already in use; a very similar text stands in a work of Epiphanius dated to 374, though some regard it as a later insertion there. In the Latin West the words “and the Son” (Filioque) were later added to the clause on the procession of the Spirit. They are not in the Greek text, and the Eastern churches do not accept them.