Creeds and councils—so what? They have not factored much into the thinking and practice of Pentecostals. Yet, creedal statements that express the essence of biblical truth long ago became embedded in the liturgical practice of the wider church. They were omitted, if not rejected, in Pentecostalism’s early days because of their association with formal religion and institutional rigidity. Only in recent years have Pentecostals begun to reconsider the value of such statements as the Nicene Creed.
On a chilly, damp morning in March 2009, I stood with a group of graduate students on the shore of Lake Iznik in northwestern Turkey, where we recited the Nicene Creed. A short distance from there is the site within the small city of modern-day Iznik (formerly Nicaea), where Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, led a council of 318 bishops, priests and deacons1 in 325 AD. Most of them were Greek-speaking followers from the eastern part of the Empire. Top of the agenda was to deal with the nature of Christ’s divinity and His relationship to God the Father.
The Council of Nicaea is considered the first official church gathering in the post-apostolic period. There was a high degree of urgency in that first council that is difficult for us to imagine 1,700 years later. With various Scriptures in the New Testament indicating God in three Persons (Matthew 3:13-17) and the divine and eternal natures of the Son (John 10:30-38), these mysterious truths had not been nailed down in language that most of the church could affirm. In the years leading up to the Council, there had been serious discord because of the teachings of Arius, who claimed that Christ was a created being and, therefore, not eternally one with the Father. This suggested an attempt to explain the Trinity but, in doing so, stripped it of its mystery. The church was in disarray, and Constantine, who had recently converted to Christianity, was anxious to see both sides come to terms with what he considered to be trivial matters.
Respecting History
The wrestling with truth done by previous generations is ignored far too frequently and more widely than wisdom would seem to warrant. Early Pentecostals tended to view the broad sweep of church history as somewhat irrelevant, sandwiched between themselves and the Book of Acts. The implication was that the Azusa Revival and other such Holy Spirit visitations were both unprecedented following the early church and final before the second return of Christ. Thankfully, we have come to better appreciate the thinking, writing and experiences of the Spirit at work in those who have come before us. While the church has been far from perfect, we stand on the shoulders of spiritual giants, and thus, it is appropriate to mark the dates and seasons of such important leaders and events.
Our respect specifically for the history of Nicaea and Constantinople will help to keep us grounded rather than floundering in our perspective on the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. Building our stance on a plethora of scattered Scriptures without a central focus is risky because it ignores the dedicated work of the people of God who predated our arrival and who faithfully sought understanding. John Wesley’s famous quadrilateral for Christian thought and practice—Scripture, tradition, reason and experience—implies that the church before and after Nicaea is the glorious church of Christ whose traditions need to be respected and considered.
Revisiting Truth
It took more than three centuries from its beginning for the church to establish what it believed about the Holy Spirit. The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD did not set out to do that either, but it did start the process of articulating where the church stood on the biblical evidence of the personhood and work of the third Person of the Trinity. At Nicaea, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was low on the priority list, not because it was not believed, but because some satisfactory resolution to the serious disagreement over the divinity of Christ and His relationship to the Father was critical.
Nevertheless, the original form of the Nicene Creed as the bare bones of Christian belief is firmly Trinitarian, stating, “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,… in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,…in the Holy Spirit.”2 The church had understood from its beginning that the Holy Spirit is God active in the world and in the rebirth of those who repent and believe the gospel. The Spirit was also seen as the agent incorporating believers into Christ’s body, directing the church’s teaching and operation, the means of their spiritual growth and the power of their eventual physical resurrection.
In 381 AD, the First Council of Constantinople, which focused mainly on the human and divine natures of Christ, also affirmed what had been agreed upon 56 years earlier but expanded on its understanding of the biblical relationship between each member of the Trinity. Today, the Nicene Creed used in traditional liturgical worship is, in reality, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed with belief about the Holy Spirit articulated thus: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son.] With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets.3 Centuries later, the declaration of the Holy Spirit as a Person (hypostasis) equal within the unity of the Godhead to the Father and the Son4 has been crucial for Pentecostalism and the global church.
Pentecostals who have focused particularly on the present activity of the Holy Spirit individually and corporately as their distinctive theological emphasis would do well to revisit carefully these fundamental truths about the Holy Spirit to which the church has adhered for these 17 centuries. The work of the ancient bishops at Nicaea and Constantinople reflects the early interpretation of the New Testament writings and provides guardrails against aberrant thought and practice that can lead astray even sincere people.
As people who believe in the freedom and fullness of the Spirit, the risk is universally present that error can creep in unwittingly. Individuals often claim to have a special endowment of the Spirit without any authentication or evaluation by the body of Christ. We need Nicaea to help prevent the over-privatization of spiritual experiences that can lead to the spiritual abuse of others and the subsequent devastation of their faith.
Restoring Practice
Revisiting Nicaea is also a way of ensuring that we continue daily to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3, NKJV) rather than attempting to re-vision the pneumatology we have inherited. Clearly, the Holy Spirit is not an “It” in the Nicene Creed but rather a Person. For Pentecostals, the articulation of the Spirit as “the Lord, the giver of life, who … is worshipped and glorified”5 means that when the Spirit is present in their lives and in the worship context, the very Spirit of God and Jesus is present—a fully Trinitarian theology. The presence of the Holy Spirit, especially within the context of the gathered church, means the transformation of human lives and genuine worship of the Triune God.
The Nicene Creed may not be recited regularly, but neither should it be abandoned and viewed as a mere relic of history. It is unimaginable that its formulators, leaders with the church’s interest at heart, would have worked so diligently to envision a document without any practical use. Nicaea initiated a creed, albeit with subsequent modifications, that contained the essence of a living faith, reflecting the biblical record.
As “the Lord, the giver of life,”6 the Holy Spirit is presented as equal to the Father and the Son, not as the third Person in rank. Restoring practice means reviving this truth that the Spirit with us personally and in the gathered community is the Lord Himself. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Corinthians 3:17, NKJV). The Holy Spirit also gives life because He is the Lord with us. As the Spirit of God hovered over the waters at creation (Genesis 1:2) and overshadowed the womb of Mary (Luke 1:35), the same Spirit must be allowed to breathe new life into the multiple facets of our existence. “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. But this He spoke concerning the Spirit” (John 7:38-39, NKJV).
Remembering and affirming the dedicated labour of our ancient forbears at the Council of Nicaea is appropriate—an opportunity for Pentecostals to respect Christian history, revisit the truth, and restore practice that is Spirit-empowered. “Praise the Father, praise the Son / Praise the Spirit, three in one / God of glory, Majesty / Praise forever to the King of Kings.”7
Ewen Butler, PhD, has been a lead pastor, campus pastor and teacher. He is currently part-time assistant professor for the Regent University School of Divinity, Virginia Beach, VA.
This article appeared in the April/May/June 2025 issue of testimony/Enrich, a quarterly publication of The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. © 2025 The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. Photos © istockphoto.com.
- “The First Council of Nicaea,” New Advent, accessed February 19, 2025, https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11044a.htm.
- “The Nicene Creed (1975 Ecumenical Version),” Verna Linzey, accessed February 25, 2025, https://vernalinzey.wordpress.com/2014/06/20/the-nicene-creed-1975-ecumenical-version.
- “The Nicene Creed (1975 Ecumenical Version).”
- F. F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its Beginnings to the Conversion of the English (Eerdmans, 1995), 310. See also Stanley M. Burgess, The Holy Spirit: Eastern Christian Traditions (Hendrickson Publishers, 1989), 10.
- “The Nicene Creed (1975 Ecumenical Version).”
- “The Nicene Creed.”
- Hillsong Worship, “King Of Kings,” track 6 on Awake, Hillsong Music, 2019, accessed February 19, 2025, https://open.spotify.com/track/3WDfiZYDY7cX4jluRUNpNz.