The Synod of Nike and Its Creed

After this letter the Arians stirred up the emperor, and they got most of the bishops, against their will, to a certain town in Thrace called Nike. Some simple men they deceived and others they terrified into carrying out their old scheme for harming true religion: erasing the words “substance” and “of one substance” from the creed and putting the word “like” in their place. I include their formula in this history, not because it is properly worded, but because it convicts the faction of Arius; for not even the dissenters of the present day accept it. Instead of “like” they now preach “unlike.” [a]

The unsound creed put forth at Nike in Thrace.

“We believe in one only true God, the Father Almighty, from whom are all things. And in the only Son of God, who was begotten of God before all ages and before every beginning, through whom all things were made, both visible and invisible; begotten alone, the only Son of the Father alone, God from God; like the Father who begot him, according to the Scriptures; whose begetting no one knows except the Father alone who begot him. We know that this only Son of God, sent by his Father, came down from heaven, as it is written, to destroy sin and death; that he was begotten of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary according to the flesh, as it is written; that he lived among his disciples; and that when the plan of salvation was fulfilled according to the Father’s will, he was crucified, died and was buried, and went down to the world below, before whom Hell itself trembled. On the third day he rose from the dead and spent forty days with his disciples. He was taken up into heaven, and sits at the right hand of his Father, and he is coming on the last day of the resurrection, in his Father’s glory, to repay everyone according to his works. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, whom the only Son of God, Jesus Christ, both God and Lord, promised to send to humankind, the Comforter, as it is written, the Spirit of truth. He himself sent this Spirit after he had ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father, from where he is to come to judge the living and the dead. But the word ‘substance,’ which the fathers put in too simply, and which gave offense because the people did not understand it and because it is not found in the Scriptures, we have decided to remove. And from now on no mention at all is to be allowed of ‘substance,’ since the holy Scriptures nowhere mention the ‘substance’ of the Father and the Son. Nor is one ‘essence’ to be spoken of in relation to the person of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And we call the Son like the Father, as the holy Scriptures call him and teach. But all the heresies, both those already condemned and any that may have arisen against the document thus put forth, let them be anathema.” [d]

This creed was signed by the bishops, some of them frightened and some coaxed into it. But those who refused to give their agreement were banished to the most remote regions of the world.