Why Do We Need a Creed?

[Denise]

Randall Smith
June 12, 2025

This year is the 1700th anniversary of the 325 A.D. Council of Nicaea, from which we get the Nicaean Creed. Some claim they don’t want to be “constrained” by a creed. So why do we need a creed?

Our word “creed” from the Latin credo, meaning “I believe.” If you say, “I believe,” you need to believe something or in someone. It would be odd to shout: “I believe, I really believe!” but then if someone asks, “What do you believe?” you reply: “I don’t know, but I know I believe.” You have to believe in something. It might also be important to understand how and why you believe what you believe. But the first thing to get clear on is what you believe.

But to say, “I believe” in the sense understood by people who recite the Nicaean Creed is not merely to indicate, “Here’s what I happen to think right now,” as when someone in response to the question, “Where’s the men’s room?” says, “I’m not sure, but I believe it’s over there.” A creed is a statement of the fundamental principles that animate your life, as when someone in the face of great adversity proclaims, “I believe that goodness will triumph over evil” and then backs up those words with his actions.

When people recite the Creed, they are saying, in effect: “This is who I am.” Or, if it is a community of persons, they would be saying, “This is who we are. We pledge ourselves to God and to each other. We set ourselves to live our lives this way, in good times and bad. We believe that living this way is the way to human flourishing, and we accept everything that comes along with it.” A creed, in this sense, is something like a marriage vow.

Because it is meant to be an expression of who you are, you can’t say, “Here is what I believe, but, you know, it could change tomorrow.” If you did, then you wouldn’t be talking about the beliefs that animate your life. You would have other, more fundamental convictions that animate the way you actually live and by which you judge everything else. If the beliefs in the creed fit with those deeper convictions, then fine. But if not, then the creed, or certain parts of it, get dumped. That’s like vowing to be faithful in your marriage, but if things get difficult, you opt out. That makes your marriage less important than whatever you dump it for.

Oddly, there are theologians who claim that the creeds ratified in the past — at Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon — have no relevance for us today. The complexity of God cannot be captured in words, they say, so each generation has its own concepts, and each generation must compose its own creed.

But that’s like saying, “Since no words can capture the essence of marriage, whatever I vowed to my spouse the day we got married is no longer relevant now. My new vow allows me to commit adultery.” That’s not a vow, nor would it be the basis of a creed. Can you imagine someone insisting, “I believe it’s always wrong to lie,” and then the next day, not only lying to you, but insisting he holds the same belief. I think you’d probably tell him, “I don’t think you do believe that.”

Pope Saint John Paul II, in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, warned against those who “on the basis of preconceived assumptions,” deny the universal validity of the faith. “Faith,” he writes:

clearly presupposes that human language is capable of expressing divine and transcendent reality in a universal way – analogically, it is true, but no less meaningfully for that. Were this not so, the word of God, which is always a divine word in human language, would not be capable of saying anything about God. The interpretation of this word cannot merely keep referring us to one interpretation after another, without ever leading us to a statement which is simply true; otherwise there would be no Revelation of God, but only the expression of human notions about God and about what God presumably thinks of us. (84)

At a recent conference, I heard someone compare the creed to our memory. Our memories, she pointed out, have a lot to do with our identity – with who we are. The tragedy of Alzheimer’s is that people lose so many of their memories, and with them, much of their identity. We don’t need to remember everything; in fact, it would be overwhelming if you couldn’t forget many of the trivial things in your day. But it is important that we remember fundamental things; things like who we are, who our family members and best friends are, our promise to be kind to people, and courageous in hard situations. Forgetting the creed is a form of ecclesiastical Alzheimer’s that also causes you to forget who you are and why you’re alive.

What must we remember if we are to retain our identity as Christians? These basic animating principles are expressed in the Creed. It would be nice if more people knew more about the Church’s history and intellectual traditions. But few people have the time for that. And even if they did have the time, we all need to read that history, as we read the Scriptures, in light of the creed – what the early Church fathers called the regula fidei, “the rule of faith.”

The Creed. Learn it. Repeat it. It’s not just a bunch of empty words. Think of it as if it were a marriage vow. Say it and then keep it. Let the words animate your life and inform your thinking. It will bring countless blessings. But be forewarned: many of us say the words, but we live a different creed. This is likely why Pope John Paul II began Fides et Ratio with the words “Know Thyself.”