Questions about the Nicene Creed 1700 years later

My friend, you hold in your hands a lucid and daring book, worthy of its provocative title: Le Credo de Nicée est-il toujours croyable? (Is the Nicene Creed still credible?). Paul Fleuret, “barefoot biblical scholar” and “lay Christian in exodus” in his own words, offers us a documented, concise and limpid analysis of the tangled evolution by which the prophet Jesus of Nazareth became an eternal celestial divinity incarnated in the form of man.

In the year 325, 1700 years ago, the Roman Emperor Constantine convened a council in his summer palace in Nicaea, present-day Turkey. The bishops assembled there represented only the Christian churches derived from the Petrine-Pauline tradition, and among them those from the eastern part of the empire almost exclusively, presided over by the Greek speaking bishops of Alexandria and Constantinople, of Greek cultural tradition. The Judaeo-Christian church had virtually disappeared, and others, like the Gnostic churches, had been condemned and marginalized by the mainstream bishops. In Nicaea, the emperor, recently “converted” to the Christian faith because of political rather than religious reasons, imposed the dogma which was to be binding for all churches to better guarantee the unity of the empire: “Jesus is the only and eternal Son of God incarnate, consubstantial with the Father”. Those –like the Alexandrian priest Arius- who rejected that dogma were banished.

Many could wonder why these questions might be interesting in the world where we live when the species we call Sapiens is swept by a suffocating suicidal global race; when humanity, due to impotence or unconsciousness, seems to be ready to sacrifice the good and happy life to the inhumane greed of a few; when large dictatorial empires are once again imposing themselves; when we are moving forward and unrestrained towards an unknown and disturbing land where Homo sapiens will be subjected to the machine; when the techno-billionaires who devastate Planet Earth, in their crazy race forward, are already planning to colonise the Moon and Mars; when the endless horrors of Gaza, Haiti or Sudan reflect every day, urbi et orbi, the abyss that can swallow all of us, including the most powerful… does it make sense to still worry about the Nicaean dogma?

Many others, observant Catholics and Christians in general, irritated and bewildered, will protest: when the world is going down under, when men and women need more than ever firm ground to walk on, is this book not an excessive provocation? Furthermore, is it not high treason? Does it not undermine the very foundations of not only the Roman Catholic Church, but those of the oldest Creed of all Churches as well? If we cease to believe in the Nicene dogma, what can we offer to the world? Where will we find words of eternal life? In whom will we rest?

But be warned: the enormous threats to the world today and these questions and concerns raised by many Catholics of the best will share a common aspect: fear. Fear was also the common denominator of the imperial world and of the Church of Nicaea. It was not a reasonable fear, basic mechanism of life which alerts us of a real danger: fear of jumping in the void, of a predator, of the great powers that subject people, of those who are driven by irrational convictions, of people and institutions that use the image of an omnipotent and arbitrary god to control and dominate others… Without those fears we could not survive a single day. However, there are also many irrational fears that imagine non-existent dangers and enemies: fear to lose prestige, power or wealth, or the unity of the empire or of the Church, or the control of truth and of people’s conscience, or the image of an omnipotent and provident god, or the guarantee of eternal heaven… Or the fear of the other, of the different, of the new. These irrational fears shrink us and enclose us within ourselves, incapacitate us to trust, imagine and create. They turn us into our own enemies and enemies of others, of tolerance and of brotherly freedom, of creative trust, of inspired life.

Fear of the division of the empire and of losing power led the emperor to impose the exact terms of the Symbol or common Creed of all Churches. Fear led the bishops to identify creative faith in Jesus with mental adhesion to a philosophical idea, and to condemn those who rejected it. Fear inspired excommunications, banishments, burnings of heretics, crusades, inquisitions and wars of religion. Irrational fear is the origin of the evils of the world and of the Church today. It is essential, therefore, to have the lucidity to detect these fears and the daring to expose them.

This book is a singular exercise in lucidity and daring. It was not easy to gather in so few pages all the essential information about an extremely complex story, on the frontier of history, biblical exegesis, philosophy and theology, and offer at the same time the fundamental criteria for a “credible” and present-day rereading of the Christological dogmas. The author brilliantly succeeds in these concise and profound, clear and deep pages. My most sincere congratulations to Paul Fleuret.

For him, just like for us, the Symbol or Creed that we continue to recite and the Christological dogmas that continue to be presented as red lines of the “true faith” have become unbelievable and unpreachable in their literalness. They are linked to a geocentric, hierchical and patriarchal worldview, and to a philosophy that distinguishes two worlds (the physical and the metaphysical). We can no longer conceive God as an above-the-world and extrinsic entity, substance in itself, personal and anthropomorphic, who intervenes, reveals itself and incarnates itself in the world, in a temporary or definitive manner whenever it wants. We need new metaphors to express the unspeakable mystery of everything that is: fontal Reality, cosmic Breath, universal Creativity, Eros that attracts everything, Love which gives itself in everything and constantly creates itself

Consequently, we cannot conceive of Jesus as the only and eternal Son of God, of the same substance as the Father and the sole full incarnation of God in the cosmos. Nor can we affirm that he is the perfect man—a contradiction in terms—or even the most perfect. Who can measure him, and what use in comparison? However, we are his disciples, and he is our model of an inspired human being: good, happy, free, fraternal, and healing. He is the embodiment of who we are and who we aspire to be. All men and women are Christs on the way, like Jesus himself. But he is the icon and incarnate metaphor of the vital breath, universal creativity, the human or divine, and the liberated world toward which we want to walk.

We want to live and speak our faith according to the vision of reality and of life that we consider most reasonable, just, fulfilling, happy: a holistic, ecological, feminist, brotherly-sisterly, simultaneously mystic and political vision. We want to walk, barefoot and in exodus, with Jesus and with all inspired men and women of the past and present, beyond Churches, dogmas and confessional boundaries. The figure of Jesus is, in particular, our inspiration, beyond his mere documented history and beyond all closed Creed. We are inspired by his prophetic freedom, his healing compassion, his active and liberating hope, his universal brotherhood-sisterhood and his wise teachings, understanding and expressing them in a creative and enlightening manner for today’s world: “Do not be afraid, he tells us. The vital breath, like the water of the fountain, the meaning of the words or the spirit of the letter is never repeated or trapped. What you believe does not make you Christs, but that on which you trust and what you may believe. Get up and walk. Invent, create. Dare”.

 

José Arregi, Aizarna, April 10, 2025

(Published as the Prologue to the book: Paul Fleuret, Le Credo de Nicée est-il toujours croyable ?, Karthala, 2025)