Curious Christian

I’ve been spending some time revisiting the Nicene Creed recently, and something struck me that I hadn’t considered before: could it unintentionally encourage Modalism in the minds of some readers?

Here’s where I’m coming from. On one hand, the Nicene Creed tries to articulate the relationship between the Father (God above us), the Spirit (God within us), and the Son (God among us) in the eternal sense. But on the other hand, it also attempts to explain how the creation story, the gospel story, and the church story fit together in history. It suddenly hit me that trying to do both at once might be creating some confusion.

As it stands, the Creed explicitly connects the Father with creation and the Spirit with the church, but it doesn’t seem to do the reverse. Yet, when you look closely at scripture, you can see that the Spirit was actively moving in creation right from the beginning, and that the Father sometimes stands in judgment over churches—implying their actions aren’t always Spirit-led. Trinitarian theologians are well aware of this, but the Creed doesn’t make it clear for the average reader.

This critique goes beyond my earlier frustrations with the filioque clause—the part that says the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. My concern now is broader. The entire structure of the Creed seems a bit one-dimensional. It doesn’t seem to hold space for the deeper, more nuanced interplay between Father, Son, and Spirit in relation to creation, Christ, and the church. Instead, it risks collapsing all these distinctions into a more simplistic view, one that might even veer into Modalism if we’re not careful.

It’s something I’ll keep pondering, but it’s raised some interesting questions for me about how we articulate these profound truths without oversimplifying them.