Why We Confess a Creed We Did Not Write

No one in the pews on Sunday wrote a word of the Nicene Creed. It was hammered out at Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381, by bishops arguing in a language most of us do not speak, about questions most of us have never had to defend our lives over.

A trust, not a burden

And yet we stand and confess it as our own faith, every week. That is not a failure of originality. It is an act of trust: we let Christians who were far closer to the apostles, and far more tested by controversy, tell us what the Scriptures mean when they speak of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

A creed we did not write keeps us from a faith we merely invented.