By Rollin Grams, Bible and Mission.
On the 17 hundredth anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), orthodox Christians need another ecumenical council. The Council of Nicaea produced the Nicene Creed, a statement of faith that articulated orthodox, Christian teaching on the doctrine of God. While the creed has its roots in affirmations of the faith in Christian contexts, such as baptism, it also was a response to the Arian heresy on the doctrine of God, which rejected the full divinity of Jesus Christ.
Today, we need a catholic (universal) statement by orthodox Christians that pushes back against the heresies of our times that are dividing the Church. We need a statement on the doctrine of creation. The challenges we face on the doctrines of creation and of humanity are several: understanding creation care, diverse cultures, nature, gender, marriage, sexuality, children, family, work, and sin. Many societies today are governed by a notion of freedom that is so individualistic that it is anti-natural—opposed to the Creator—imagining that humanity can create itself by its own standards. Previous societies making such claims for themselves (the Tower of Babel, the persons in Noah’s day, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah) were judged by God. Our anti-natural society endorses such sins as racial preferencing, human greatness, sexual profligacy, homosexuality, gender fluidity and multiplicity, infanticide up to the age of birth, ‘transgender’ surgeries, various practices that undermine the family and assisted suicide.
There ought to be agreement on the following affirmations by orthodox Christians in various denominations and churches. A Biblically established, creedal statement on the doctrine of creation and humanity that also represents Christian teaching through time might look something like this:
We believe in one God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are One God, not three, and were all active in creation. God is not created but eternal. God alone is to be worshipped.
We believe that God is the origin, the means, and the purpose of all things, ‘for from Him and through Him and to Him are all things’.[1] God is the Creator, we are His creation.
We believe that God created our universe and our world with humans as His stewards over all the earth. Humans, alone created in God’s image, are a little lower than the angels and are distinct from the beasts, neither equal to them nor less than they are. Our responsibilities over the world are to care for it and use it as God intended, not to exploit it as bad caretakers.
Read here.https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2025/09/toward-creedal-statement-on-doctrine-of.html