Editor’s note: The following is adapted from Edgardo Colón-Emeric’s address to new students at Opening Convocation at Duke Divinity School Aug. 29, 2025.
It has been a hard year, but there is more to 2025 than cruelty and chaos. This year marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. The gathering of hundreds of church leaders by a lakeside town in the year 325 set down historical milestones: the first council convened by an emperor, the first ecumenical synod, the first agreement on a date for Easter, the first ecumenical creed.
Christians have been observing this year in a variety of ways. Pope Leo XIV and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew have pledged to meet in Nicaea before the year’s end to join in a shared celebration of faith.
With everything going on around us, what can we learn from Nicaea now?
Pentecost profession
Since I became dean, I have drawn our attention again and again to the big Pentecost of Acts 2. When we join in the Nicene Creed later in this worship service, we engage in a cross-cultural confession. We affirm our faith in English with words originally coined in Greek in response to a Jewish community’s worship of Jesus the Messiah.
Peter did not see this coming. Just think of all that God had to do to bring him to Cornelius in Acts 10. God gives Peter a vision; he messages him, “Do not call impure what God has made clean” (Acts 10:15 NIV). Then God messages him again. And then again.
Even after all this, Peter arrives at the house of Cornelius with high uncertainty and low expectations. He did not understand that what happened in Jerusalem 50 days after Easter triggered a chain reaction. The Pentecost in Caesarea in Acts 10 sparked the Council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 and the Council of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381 and on and on, Aldersgate in 1738 and Azusa Street in 1906, and on and on. Pentecost is not one and done.
2025 is not only the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea; it is also the 40th anniversary of the Kairos Document. This document incisively diagnoses three types of theologies growing in the South African landscape during the apartheid regime.
First, state theology — this is the theology that justified apartheid by clothing it with the trappings of Christianity. It is the theology of a god who shows partiality toward white settlers. It praises “the god of teargas, rubber bullets, prison cells and death sentences.”
Second, church theology — this is the theology that rejected apartheid in principle but accepted it in practice. It is the theology of peace as appeasement and reconciliation without transformation.
Third, prophetic theology — this is the theology needed to end apartheid. It is the theology of Isaiah’s suffering servant who was sent “to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon” (Isaiah 42:7 NRSVUE). This is the God who does not share his glory; this is the God who does not give his praise to idols, whether their names are Baal, mammon, or blood and soil.
Isaiah speaks of new things springing forth. What if one of those new things is a Nicene Kairos? Perhaps this is the season for untangling the Nicene Creed from state theology and church theology.
Perhaps this is a task for us here at Duke Divinity School, as our mission claims “to engage in spiritually disciplined and academically rigorous education in service and witness to the Triune God in the midst of the church, the academy, and the world.” It may sound like mission impossible, but the Pentecost God is full of spirited surprises.
Peace proclamation
The Nicene Creed is also a peace proclamation. In his encounter with the Roman centurion, Peter sums up God’s purpose for the incarnation — preaching peace. Christ did not preach peace looking for recognition. His life is a single extended sermon. He stretched out his arms in love because he is Lord of all and the lover of all.
Aquinas says, “In their own way, all things desire divine peace.” There is hunger for the message of the gospel. It is no accident that when John Wesley wrote a letter to a Roman Catholic, he extended the Nicene Creed not as a billy club but as an olive branch. Everything professed in the Creed preaches peace.
We believe in the Pentecost God who delights in diversity and calls nothing he has made unclean, and we believe in Jesus Christ, our peace. At his birth the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace” (Luke 2:14). For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, “making peace through the blood of the cross” (Colossians 1:20).
When he rose again on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures, he greeted his disciples with the blessing “Peace be with you” (Luke 24:36). He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. And what is this kingdom? “Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17).
Christianity is a peace movement. It is how Paul begins his letters: Grace and peace. It is how we are sent from worship: Go forth in peace. There is peace in believing. Peace in believing that we are called to be ministers, not messiahs. Peace in believing that a quarrelsome congregation is called to be — and still is — one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Peace in believing that our lowest point does not limit our highest hope, because we acknowledge the power of baptism, the possibility of repentance and the forgiveness of sins.
Praise pronouncement
The Nicene Creed is known today because it has been recited or sung in Orthodox, Catholic and many Protestant churches for centuries. Nicaea begat worship. The Creed inspired the lyrics of Adeste Fideles, “True God of true God, Light from Light Eternal, lo, he shuns not the Virgin’s womb; Son of the Father, begotten not created.”
The Creed inspired the musical structure for “Holy, Holy, Holy”; its tune is aptly named Nicaea. The Creed inspired monks to read the story in Genesis 18 of the hospitality of Abraham and write icons of the Trinity.
Some years ago, while teaching theology at the Methodist seminary in Moscow, I had the opportunity to visit the famous Tretyakov gallery. I was drawn there by the desire to see a single item — Andrei Rublev’s Troitsa, his icon of the Trinity.
The Nicene Creed has been called a textual icon. Rublev’s Troitsa could be called a visual creed. It was made for a monastery but moved to a museum by Soviet officials who thought it more worthy of preservation than veneration. I imagine that many of you have seen reproductions of this icon. To call it beautiful is true but trite.
Even from inside the display case, it pulsed with glory; it opened a vista to the divine hospitality of God’s love. Since I last saw this icon, the Russian government has returned it to the Russian Orthodox Church. The move brought the icon closer to the people, and the patriarch closer to the president.
In the travails of this visual creed, there is a cautionary tale. On the one hand, pressed by the tyranny of relevance, Christians are tempted to place Trinitarian teaching behind protective glass. The creedal doctrines of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son and the proceeding of the Spirit are relegated to the rare book room. Theology becomes archaeology.
On the other hand, pressed by the relevance of tyranny, Christians are tempted to enlist the symbols of faith for partisan political ends. Contemplation is out. Pragmatism reigns. Theology becomes ideology.
We are experienced with these temptations in the church and in this school. The pronouncement of personal and collective sin is a necessary chapter of our story, but it is not how it ends. The end is not failure but fiesta.
Like Cornelius, we may have come here with deep longings. Like Peter, we may have come here with low expectations. Regardless of how we came, when we confess with our lips and lives, we believe, we are welcomed into communion with the one who is eternal communion.
