Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 29:1 (Spring 2025)
Article: Creeds And The Gospel: From The Beginnings To The Council Of Nicaea (325)
Author: Donald Fairbairn

Creeds And The Gospel: From The Beginnings To The Council Of Nicaea (325)1

Donald Fairbairn

Donald Fairbairn is Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Union School of Theology and Dean of Newton House. He is also the Robert E. Cooley Professor of Early Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He holds degrees from Princeton University (AB), Denver Seminary (MDiv), and the University of Cambridge (PhD). He is the author of numerous books including Eastern Orthodoxy through Western Eyes (Westminster John Knox, 2002), Grace and Christology in the Early Church (Oxford, 2006), Life in the Trinity (IVP Academic, 2009), The Story of Creeds and Confessions (with Ryan Reeves, Baker Academic, 2019), and The Trinity (Union, 2024). Dr. Fairbairn has also ministered and taught throughout Europe and North America. He and wife, Jennifer, have two adult children.

Perhaps the most central of all Protestant convictions is the affirmation that the Bible stands alone as the authoritative source of truth. From the Reformation slogan sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”) to John Wesley’s famous description of himself as homo unius libri (“a man of one book”) to the contemporary explanations of what is meant by biblical inerrancy, evangelical Protestants have trumpeted the truthfulness, uniqueness, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture for understanding saving history and for guiding all aspects of Christian life. Some evangelical Protestants have gone as far as claiming that there is no need for any human authorities at all, and within our evangelical movement there is suspicion about any doctrinal statements that might detract from the uniqueness of the Bible. Sometimes this suspicion is directed at “creeds,” statements from the early centuries of Christian history such as the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed, statements that the church as a whole has long regarded as normative, even

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authoritative. Some evangelicals insist that we need “no creed but the Bible” or “no creed but Jesus.”

This anti-creedal tendency in some branches of our evangelical tree is especially poignant now, because this year marks the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea,2 at which the first version of what we today call the Nicene Creed was published. The creed from the year 325 is technically called the “Creed of Nicaea,” and it was later revised and expanded at the Council of Constantinople in 381 into the “Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.” That slightly revised form is what we ordinarily call the “Nicene Creed” today. Most of the Christian world in 2025 is holding major ...