The Non-Negotiables of Christian Faith

How can the Nicene Creed help heal our churches? Skye Jethani, Kaitlyn Schiess, and Phil Vischer explore how this ancient statement of faith is helping Christians find clarity, unity, and theological grounding in the midst of intense division. (From Holy Post Podcast 670)

Kaitlyn: There are a lot of evangelicals that are interested in the Nicene Creed, and I think for two reasons.

One: we're reaching the end of what we can really do as a seemingly completely unrooted faith tradition. People are hungry for things that come from somewhere, that have an older history than just "a guy with a Bible started this church 20 years ago," and that's the basis of our history. I think people are looking for something more rooted.

And secondly, with all of the polarization and political division and theological division—I mean, we talk a lot about the political stuff, but most major American denominations in the last 50 years have split, sometimes multiple times, over questions of sexuality and gender and other theological questions that play into those questions of sexuality and gender. So I think people are hungry for something that helps them divide between what is essential and what is not.

One way that the Nicene Creed does that is by laying out: “Here’s what Christians have always believed.” It’s also helpful that it's so ancient and that Christians across the world and in different traditions have held to it. That gives you a greater leg to stand on when you're in your particular non-denominational church in America and you're trying to say, “Hey, we all have to believe these things to be Christians. These other things we can disagree on." And maybe our church will still take a stance that’s more specific than the Nicene Creed, that might divide us from other churches. But in terms of who we are able to partner with, in terms of who we call fellow Christians—brothers and sisters—it should be these things that define whether or not we can do that.

Phil: Okay. You had sent out an article from Christianity Today put together by Daniel Silliman. He interviewed like 10 or 11 different academics about the Creed and how it was being used or influencing the evangelical world. Dale Coulter, professor at Pentecostal Theological Seminary, said it's a really good thing to use as a counter to a lot of the craziness that can happen when private revelation and the prophetic become paramount. It’s an anchor. The Nicene Creed is a lens on biblical interpretation.

So I like that view—that it helps you look at the Bible and bring things into focus in a historically consistent way. But that does lead to the question: is it infallible? Is it inspired? How do we know that it’s right?

Kaitlyn: I mean, I think most Christians who read, recite, and rely on the Nicene Creed would make it pretty clear that there’s a difference between the inspiration of Scripture and the fallible work of humans trying to work out a summary of Christian faith. But I think the reason we put a lot of stock in it is partially because it’s very old, and partially because if it’s so old and used across so many different traditions—and we still haven’t come up with a serious objection to it—then it has stood the test of time. That’s really positive, right?

And I think the point you just made, Phil, is really important: heretics had Bibles too. Every heretic who has launched a serious challenge to orthodox Christian faith has found biblical passages to support their heretical belief. So just having the Bible—you can take the Bible and construct it in such a way that you end up with pretty serious Trinitarian heresies that the Church has condemned.

That’s harder to do when you’ve been kind of swimming in, immersed in the language of the Creed. You come to a passage that you might be tempted to think shows Jesus is merely a really cool human—but you know the language of the Creed, so you know that can’t be what’s happening there. And the idea that we can just construct all of that theology on our own—that anytime we read one individual passage, we should, just because we’re Christians, know exactly how to interpret it—I think puts such a burden on people. Especially now that we have a world with access to so much information. Like, people can go look up a bajillion commentaries online and read a bajillion theologians. That’s so overwhelming and exhausting, especially for evangelicals who tend to place the locus of that authority on the individual.

I think people are sick of that weight and they’re going, “Okay, well if I have these foundational beliefs from the Creed, I can come to a passage. There might be differences of interpretation. There might be disagreements. I might not totally understand it, but I can know I won’t wander into heresy territory because these foundational beliefs help me interpret what’s happening in this specific passage.”

Phil: Okay, Skye—thoughts? And also: how, as an individual believer that didn’t go to seminary, how do I use—how could I apply the Nicene Creed or work it into my spiritual life?

Skye: Well, first of all, I think it—like all the creeds—is best utilized in community rather than individually. Not that they can’t be a source of guidance or instruction for the individual, but I think there’s more formative power in reciting these things collectively.

Phil: Because I was thinking about just when I have my toast in the morning, walking out on the back porch and just yelling the Nicene Creed to the neighborhood.

Skye: I think—this might be an echo of what Kaitlyn said a little bit—but I think there are two main reasons why this is becoming popular again.

One is the church in America is just so divided these days, especially over political and cultural issues. I can see church leaders, worship leaders, others looking for something that transcends our particular divisions. Like, “Okay guys—whatever you think about MAGA, whatever you think about woke this or that, whatever you think about what’s going on in the news—this grounds us in our faith.”

And not just grounding it in an individual church’s doctrinal statement or even a denominational doctrine—something broader. I think a lot of us have a sense right now that the United States and the American church is kind of a... it's a mess. I mean, it’s a fecal festival going on right now, and people are looking for a sense that, “My Christianity, the faith I’m following, is not rooted in this place, in this time, in this experience. It goes back much further.” And yes, a creed like this—not only the creed, but this creed—is a way of getting that sense of transcendent identity. And a hope that this time will pass, and we’ll come back to our senses. But those things all lend us to reach back and look for something more stable.

Phil: I’ve had some people on social media trying to grill me, like: “What do you believe about every issue? Tell me your theology.” And at one point I just said, “You know, I’m completely on board with the Nicene Creed.” And it was very clear that was not enough, like, “Wait. Gender? Sexuality? I need to know.”

Skye: If you say the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, you are in lockstep with the global Church throughout all of history. That is orthodox Christianity: the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. But that’s not enough for today’s American evangelical fundamentalist MAGA world. They want to know where you are on your politics and social issues. Because they’ve really—not just them, right?—but they’ve lifted those up to creedal importance. Which is a form of Christianity. I’m not going to say they’re not Christians, if they also affirm the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. But by adding these other issues in, they are casting out the majority of believers around the world from being legitimate Christians.

That’s what fundamentalism always does—it increases the number of things you have to adhere to in order to be considered a sister or brother in Christ.

Phil: You can’t read the Nicene Creed and say, “Oh, that’s the position on women in ministry.” But if you’re in a church community, you do have to have a position on that. You can’t just say, “We’re not going to decide.” So that’s one of the areas where people say, “Well, we have to decide this.” And then the tendency is: once we’ve made our decision, if you disagree with us, you’re wrong. As opposed to: “You’ve chosen, like with baptism.” For the most part we’ve said, “You do you, we’ll do us. You baptize babies, we’ll…”

Kaitlyn: Which is new in Christian history, that we’re chill.

Phil: Do you think we’ll get there with women in ministry, or is it going to be a fight to the death?

Skye: Some people are doing that already. Some places are doing that already. But I think the difference is: as a local congregation or maybe as a denomination, you may make your decision. The question then is: do you view people who’ve made the other decision as apostate heretics, condemned by God and for all eternity? Or do you view them as sisters and brothers in the faith with whom I have a

disagreement on a non-essential doctrine?