Creeds 3: God the Father1
APOSTLES’ CREED
“I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth”2.
NICENE CREED
“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen”3.
Our two central creeds agree that God is Father; almighty; maker of heaven and earth. However, the Nicene Creed does what, earlier4, we said it did – it includes more detailed expression of the beliefs in order to defend the faith against attack from those who were teaching “errors”. The expansions are: God is “one”; God is maker of “all that is, seen and unseen”.
You might think that “one” God is obvious, but from earliest times Christianity had
to continue its assertion, from its Jewish roots, that monotheism5 is right and polytheism6
is wrong7. We must also remember that there is a built-
“Of all that is, seen and unseen” is a firmer statement of “heaven and earth” – an assertion that absolutely everything there is comes from God.
Both creeds agree that God is “Father” – but although there may be a lot of cultural background to the idea of the maleness of God [and it is the way many people talk of God], the “Father” idea, when applied to God, conveys the idea of God as the Father of Jesus Christ and as “Father”, that is “creator”, of all people.
The other key word in this section is “almighty” – but you cannot just say “almighty” means God can do anything God chooses9. Scholars agree that the idea of a God capable of doing things which are in themselves impossible is not what is meant by our creeds. It is better to think of God as the source of all the power there is10.