The Nicene Creed in Minimal English

“The Nicene Creed is the bedrock statement Christian orthodoxy: the point at which the Church, using conceptual tools it adopted from classical antiquity, defined its core beliefs in the God who is both creator and redeemer, incarnate in history, and thus the ultimate guarantor of history’s meaning. As Christians mark the 1,700th anniversary of this colossal achievement at the First Council of Nicaea, Anna Wierzbicka offers a fascinating explanation of why this ancient text has helped form the most diverse community in human history – and continues to do so today, across a myriad of cultural and social contexts.”

 — (George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, D.C.)

This book offers an unpacked version of the Nicene Creed, which is the defining statement of belief of mainstream Christianity, and a milestone in human history. The book seeks to clarify this compressed text through the common conceptual language of all people: “Basic Human”.  Given the unique power of this language to articulate the tenets of the Creed with clarity and precision, this book will have a wide readership among all people interested in Christianity, as well as among scholars interested in the scope of human understanding and communication. More than that, at a time of “post-Christian spiritual disintegration”, when  many are seeking for the threads of meaning to hold things together (as discussed for example by authors like Tom Holland and Ayaan Hirsi Ali),  the vision of the Nicene Creed - “the world’s one unchanging Creed” – can offer a new reference point and be a beacon of hope.

Anna Wierzbicka is Professor of Linguistics (Emerita) at the Australian National University. She has published twenty five books. Her work engages  linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology and religion. In 2024 she was named an Inaugural Highly Ranked Scholar, number 5 in linguistics, within the top 0.05%  across all disciplines.