Now more than ever it’s imperative for every believer to be acquainted with the History of Christianity. The more we are aware of our History, the better we are at defending our faith. And honestly the more I learn about the early church fathers and how they lived their life to please God, the more I’m eager to emulate their faith and walk with our savior Jesus Christ. Our churches are filled with countless folks who profess a faith that is diametrically opposed to what the apostles of Jesus taught. And the reason why this is so is because we are clueless about how the truth claims of Christianity came to be. In today’s post we will be talking about the Council of Nicaea, which was very pivotal in our understanding of the deity of Christ. First let’s talk about what led up to Nicaea.
The Nicene Era begins with the Great Persecution in in A.D. 303. It lasted until it was called off by Galerius in A.D. 311.
Constantine the Great was “converted” (in a sense) by his famous vision as he prepared for battle with Maxentius, his rival emperor in the west. While Constantine would not count himself a Christian until his baptism on his deathbed in A.D. 337, he did grant Christianity a favor and an influence in government that it had never before experienced.
Alexander who was a bishop in the city of Alexandria called his elders to inquire of them about Scripture, one of those elders was named Arius. Now Arius was known to stir up controversies and had already been excommunicated once in 311 for his views. He basically postulated that since Jesus was begotten of the Father, then he must’ve had a beginning. Basically Arius was saying that before Jesus was begotten by the Father, He did not exist. Now the Jehovah witness find their roots in the heretical teachings of Arius ( I just wanted to point that out). Arius was told that his views were heretical but he insisted on standing by them and not backing down. Arius was eventually removed from office and excommunicated in 321, that is four years before the Council of Nicaea. Even though Arius was excommunicated, he took to the streets and began promoting his teachings to anyone who would give ear to him. He even managed to convince Eusebius, the bishop of Nicomedia and a popular leader to join his cause. So the church had to stop Arius and his cancerous heresies in order to preserve the teachings that had been handed down by the Apostles. As John 1:1 declares
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Scriptures taught that that the Son had existed prior to being begotten; he had existed inside the Father as His Logos ( You can read more about the meaning of the Logos-CLICK HERE ). So it was obvious that Arius or any of his followers were clearly teaching heresies. There is nothing new under the sun, people love controversies. So Arius’ message began to gain more popularity the same way movies like the Da Vinci Code drew a lot of viewers/listeners. Even the emperor Constantine found out about it and,
Constantine was in the process of uniting the Roman empire under his own rule. There had been as many as four emperors at once during the reigns of Constantine and his father Constantius.
Now reduced to two emperors, civil war had ignited in A.D. 320 when co-emperor Licinius ignored the Edict of Milan and reinstituted the persecution of Christians. Constantine took that as an opportunity to rid himself of his rival; however, it would take 4 years to make that happen, and the battles would not end until September, 324.
It was during this civil war that Arius and Eusebius, in complete disregard of the commands of Christ and writings of the apostles, sought to divide the Church.
Constantine recognized the danger of this. With so many of his subjects converted (so-called) to Christianity, splitting the Church could easily split the empire!
In A.D. 323, Constantine summoned bishop Hosius of Cordova (in modern Spain) to help resolve the dispute. Hosius delivered a letter—purportedly from Constantine but likely written by Hosius—to both Alexander and Arius informing them that neither was behaving properly.
Alexander was told that the questions he asked of Arius were inappropriate. Arius was told that opinions such as his should be kept to himself.
Neither was moved by the letter.
Once Constantine dispatched of Licinius, he was ready to turn more focused attention on his problem in the Church.
Constantine the Great was no fool. He was a master statesman and diplomat. He did not simply demand that the bishops of the churches in the empire appear before him in Constantinople. He called a council in a city easily accessible to all the bishops of the empire, Nicea in modern-day Turkey. He also paid their travel expenses and welcomed them with great pomp and circumstance.
Wooed and comfortable, the bishops gathered at the Council of Nicea to discuss the dissension that had by now spread across most of north Africa and the Middle East. Constantine asked if he could participate, and the bishops granted their host this privilege. While not a churchman, he was a diplomat, and he would play a major role in the proceedings.
It was the summer of 325.
There were several important things that were discussed during the proceedings of the Council of Nicaea, you can read them by CLICKING HERE. But I want to focus on the single most essential topic that was discussed, and it was centered around the word Homoousios. It’s a Greek word that means one substance or same substance. To the Greeks, there are only two substances, one is God and the other is Matter. But matter to them was made up of earth, wind, fire, air and even angels and the spirits of men were matter according to Greek thinking. The question being asked at the Council of Nicaea was- Is Christ of the substance of God, or is HE made of matter like us and the angels?
All of this applied to Arius’ theology at the Council of Nicea. If the Son had a beginning, as Arius was asserting, then he must be made of matter. After all, the substance of God can have no beginning.
On the other hand, if Christ is of God’s substance, then he always existed.
It seems Arius was confused by the fact that the Church taught that Jesus was begotten of the Father, not just here on earth as a man, but in the beginning as the Son of God. Proverbs 8:22, in the Greek Septuagint version used by the early churches, says, “The Lord made me the beginning of his ways for his works.” The early churches universally understood this to refer to the begetting of Christ from the Father in eternity past.
Arius mistakenly thought and argued that the begetting of the Son constitutes a beginning. He could not have existed before then.
The Church, however, taught that before Jesus was begotten by the Father, he already existed inside the Father as the Word, Wisdom, and Reason of the Father. The Father had always had Logos inside himself, so Jesus had always existed inside of him. (This is described thoroughly in Tertullian’s Against Praxeas, ch. 5.)
Not only is this what they taught, but they claimed to have received it from the apostles. Thus, the idea that the Son has always existed qualified as apostolic tradition, which carried as much—or perhaps almost as much—authority as Scripture (Irenaeus, ibid. III:2:2). This is the tradition that Arius was disagreeing with, and this is the reason that Constantine wanted homoousios inserted in the Creed of Nicea.
After much deliberation, the Nicene Creed was established and it goes as follows:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible:
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, that is of the substance of the Father; God of God, Light of light, true God of true God; begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father; by whom all things were made both which are in heaven and on earth; who for the sake of us men, and on account of our salvation, descended, became incarnate, was made man, suffered and rose again on the third day; he ascended into the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead.
[We believe] also in the Holy Spirit.
But those who say “There was a time when he was not,” or “He did not exist before he was begotten,” or “He was made of nothing” or assert that “He is of other substance or essence than the Father,” or that the Son of God is created, or mutable, or susceptible of change, the catholic and apostolic Church of God anathematizes.
Why is this so important to us believers today? Heresies find a way to reappear and we need to know what we believe in order to defend our faith correctly. Jesus as taught in Scriptures is indeed God, He existed for all Eternity as He himself declares in John 8:58: 58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” He has no beginning and no end.
My name is Tayib Salami and I started Tayibs.com for the sole purpose of exploring difficult questions about the Christian faith that most of us shy away from. In 2017, I entered a very dark time in my life and it’s only by the grace of the Living God that I’m still alive today. It led me to really go deeper in my faith and consider a myriad of questions that I never thought about asking myself or others before. Welcome and enjoy the ride with me.