The Nicene Creed

Nicaea 325 · Constantinople 381

“The Symbol of the Faith.” A σύμβολον was a token or tally: one half of a broken object, matched with its other half to prove who you were. The early church used the word for its creed, the sign by which believers recognised one another. The Definition of Chalcedon calls the Nicene Creed τὸ τῶν πατέρων σύμβολον, “the symbol of the fathers”.

The Nicene Creed in Greek, Latin and English, with the original creed of 325 alongside

Tap a word to light up its counterparts and open its parsing, New Testament usage, dictionary entries and Reformed reception. Drag the column names to reorder them.

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added at Constantinople, 381 in 325 only, left out in 381 Western Latin addition

Reformed reception

How the Reformation confessions received the Nicene Creed. Tap an underlined phrase to see the words of the creed behind it; tap a word in the creed to find the confessions that echo it.

Greek of 381 and 325 as printed in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2 (1877), with Schaff’s English translations. In the 325 column, Schaff’s English is given only for wording that has no counterpart in the Prayer Book. Latin is the received Western liturgical text. English is the Communion creed of the Book of Common Prayer, 1662.

The received Greek of 381 lacks “God of God” and the Filioque. Both are in the Western Latin, and the BCP follows the Latin. The Latin and the BCP also say “I believe” where the councils said “we believe”. Alignment and parsing are by sense and were prepared for this page.

New Testament: Greek of the Nestle 1904 text with lemmas from Macula Greek (CC BY 4.0); English from the King James Version. Counts are occurrences of each lemma in that text.

Lexicons: Liddell–Scott–Jones (9th ed., 1940) and Lewis & Short (1879) from the Perseus Digital Library’s TEI editions (CC BY-SA 4.0), cached in the page and shortened; each LSJ entry links to the full text on Logeion.

Peter Toon’s comments are drawn from The Service of Holy Communion Annotated (Prayer Book Society of the USA, 2004). That commentary is on the American Prayer Book of 1928, whose creed follows the classic Prayer Book wording. His points are paraphrased here, with one short quotation.

Confessions: Thirty-nine Articles (English 1571), Belgic Confession (traditional English), Heidelberg Catechism (traditional English), Westminster Confession (1647).