New book revisits Council of Nicaea as a call to justice and renewal

CHIANG MAI, Thailand — As the Christian world celebrates the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which for the first time gathered the whole of Christendom to affirm together their faith, a new book from the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) seeks to set out its significance for Reformed Christians today.

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Launched on Tuesday at the WCRC General Council taking place in Chang Mai, Thailand, the book is titled “Receiving Nicaea Today: Global Voices from Reformed Perspectives” and is available for free download as well as purchase.

Coming in at almost 700 pages, the book contains 34 contributions organized around six sections: Reformed Hermeneutics and the Authority of Creeds; Nicaea and the Empire; Scriptural and Theological Hermeneutics of the Nicene Faith; Nicene Influence on Reformed Synodality and Church Governance; Confessions and Contemporary Witness; and From Creed to Confessing: Worship, Teaching and Mission.

The main editors of the book are Hanns Lessing, WCRC executive secretary for communion and theology, and Daniel Rathnakara Sadananda, former general secretary of the Church of South India.

“In this volume ‘Receiving Nicaea Today: Global Voices from Reformed Perspectives,’ Reformed theologians, together with theologians from the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, Lutheran, and Anglican tradition, have engaged in critical reflections on the Nicene Creed as it communicates to us in the present tense,” writes WCRC General Secretary the Rev. Dr Setri Nyomi in the preface.

Moment of joy

“This a moment of joy and gratitude,” said Lessing during the book launch. “In a way, the production of this book is a miracle.”

The Council of Nicaea agreed on a creed as a statement of faith, later supplemented to become the Nicene Creed, which is said in many churches around the world today. Lessing acknowledged that the Nicene Creed is about unity. “This is of course true,” he said. “But the Nicene Creed also was very much divisive from the very beginning and still splits churches today.”

In fact, the creed — and the Council of Nicaea itself — have repercussions for how we see the church, noted Lessing. “The oneness is not the oneness of a fortified institution where only certain people have access.”

“The 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea is more than a commemorative milestone — it is a Kairos moment, a Spirit-stirred invitation to re-encounter the triune God and to re-examine the covenantal faithfulness of the Church in a  wounded and waiting world,” the book states in its introduction. “For the Reformed tradition, this is not a ritual of nostalgia but a liturgical provocation — a call to interrogate, discern, and renew the very grammar of our believing.”

Repair and re-voicing

Prof. Heleen Zorgdragger of the Protestant Theological University in Amsterdam, one of the book’s contributors, reflected that reception of the Nicene Creed is not archival recovery but Spirit-led repair and re-voicing. “Nicaea is both gift and wound,” she said. “Naming empire is not distortion but repair.” Lament, reparation, and restructuring the Spirit demands accountable repentance, she added. “This reclaims theology’s imagination,” she said. “May the church stay unsettled: listening to Scripture, inspired by Spirit, standing with the vulnerable.”

Contributor the Rev. Dr. Neal D. Presa, from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and moderator of the WCRC Theology Working Group, described the volume as a gift from the oikoumene to the oikoumene. “May it bless many and inspire us all to ‘Persevere in Our Witness,’ ” he said, citing the theme of the ongoing WCRC General Council, which runs through Thursday. WCRC President the Rev. Najla Kassab formally received the book from Lessing on the floor of the General
Council. “May this book invite us to rediscover the creed as a living confession,” she said. “May it enrich our communion and build us to be a better communion.”

About the book

Receiving Nicaea Today: Global Voices from Reformed Perspectives, ed. Hanns Lessing and Daniel Rathnakara Sadananda, in collaboration with Anna Case-Winters, Margit Ernst-Habib, Gemma King, Henry Kuo, Andreas Müller, and Dirk J. Smit (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlangsanstalt, 2025).

For purchase or a free PDF download, go here.

The Rev. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Executive Director of the Interim Unified Agency, is leading a PC(USA) delegation to the 27^th General Council of the World Communion of Reformed Churches meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Read additional reporting here and here.