The Council of Nicaea’s 1700th
Icon from the Mégalo Metéoron Monastery in Greece, portraying the Council of Nicaea 325 A.D., with the condemned Arius in the bottom of the icon (source Wikipedia)
This year, in May to be specific, marks 1700 years since the start of the Council of Nicaea. The town is now known as Iznik, in modern Turkey. From this Council’s determinations sprang the core content of what Christians now know, and regularly recite, as the Nicene Creed.
Why does the anniversary of such an old statement matter? It’s not ultimately about philosophical theology, or winning a debate, let alone the intersection of religion and politics, as some suggest.
Ultimately, it’s about worshipping God properly, as he truly is, and not just as we imagine or find convenient.
In particular, it was about honouring Jesus not just as perfect man, but truly as God.
Just think of the start of John’s Gospel (1:1-4, 14,18):
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men...
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth...
18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
There can be nothing more important than rightly honouring Christ!
And this is not irrelevant to the modern world. You may know that Jehovah’s Witnesses insistently deny that Jesus is God. So, of course, do Muslims.
But far more broadly, it’s worth noting that a reputable survey in the United States in 2022 discovered that 53% of professing Christians tended to agree with the statement that “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God”.
They would do well to understand and confess with the Nicene Creed:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father...
We will preach a short series on Nicaea and the Nicene Creed, beginning on Trinity Sunday, 15 June, with guest preacher from Moore College, Andrew Leslie (and also featuring Bach’s Cantata 129 at the 10:30am service).
But the background story is more interesting than any Dan Brown novel conspiracy theory. And the theology is more important. So why not read on to this extended piece…
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The Council of Nicaea was called by the Roman emperor, Constantine. He was almost two decades into his reign. It was just over a decade since his conversion to Christ (312), Soon after with the Edict of Milan (313), he had granted freedom of religion in the empire, and reversed the persecution of Christians that had previously ebbed and flowed.
Even so, the church’s history prior to that had been public, even if difficult. Christians had been gathering to listen to the reading of Scriptures, to pray, to love one another and to share meals together, notably the Lord’s Supper.
And the foundation of orthodoxy, of right teaching, was clear: it was the teaching from the apostles of Christ, now found in the Scriptures.
There were some very clear data points of Christian teaching, certainly about God. And the list of key teachings included:
There is only one God: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who created all things, in heaven and earth.
Jesus is God, specifically the eternal Son of God.
As the only-begotten Son of the Father, Son and Father are not the same person, but interact with each other.
The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, is also distinct.
“Father, Son and Holy Spirit” are rightly spoken of as a triplet that sets them in parallel to each other.
We worship all three of these as God – one God.
We do not give divine worship to any who is not God.
The word ‘trinity’ had even begun to be used by some as a summary word for this constellation of truth. This was central to the “faith once delivered to the saints”.
But from the middle of the third century A.D., new teaching was gaining ground. And these ideas, associated with Arius, a presbyter or priest in the Christian church, grew in popularity into the 300s.
In brief, Arius and others taught a single high God, who had created all things. And Jesus was his first creation, a perfect creature ‘emanating’ from the unknowable God. You could worship Jesus as a kind of ‘small g’ god. He was like God in nature (homoiousios: = of ‘similar nature’), but not the same.
After all, famously, Arius had a hymn which had people sing, “There was a time when the Son was not.”
Arianism was largely an attempt to rationalise or simplify the more mysterious idea of the Trinity.
There was an understandable hesitancy to use philosophical terms to systematise the data points mentioned above. There is magnificent mystery with God. As limited creatures, we humans are ultimately unable fully to comprehend God!
But when the new teachers denied a couple of key teachings, then more careful and philosophical language became inevitable.
This is where the famous ‘homoousios’ ( = ‘same nature’ or ‘consubstantial’) arose to help hold the data points together: Jesus was homoousios with the Father, not just homoiousios, resembling God.
Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, commanded Arius to leave aside his novel teachings. Arius and a few colleagues refused to do so. Alexander sadly excommunicated Arius.
That’s when the Emperor heard of it. These Christians had seemed a great source of unity and strength for the empire, when he converted and legalised their faith a decade earlier. Now they were quibbling about words. Roman paganism had been more relaxed than this. So, he summoned Alexander and Arius and other bishops and priests to a Council in Nicaea.
Tradition says up to 318 of them arrived in May 325, from every country where Christianity had spread. There were Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Libyans, Phoenicians, Palestinians, Macedonians, Asians (i.e. modern day Turkey), Mesopotamians and more; even Scythians and Persian bishops from outside the empire.
It was chaired by Hosius, the Bishop of Cordoba in Spain, close to both Constantine and Sylvester, the Bishop of Rome, who was too old to come. The person who emerged as a key player during the Council was Athanasius, Alexander of Alexandria’s secretary, about twenty-nine at the time.
The bishops knew Jewish monotheism had taught - over millennia - that there is only one God, not many. Only this God should be worshipped. You cannot worship a second, albeit lesser god. To allow an Arian understanding would be to lose a biblical understanding of God.
So Nicaea insisted: there is One God; and that Christ Jesus, the man, is God, consubstantial with the Father. And there was no time when He was not! And they said it was unacceptable to deny this.
Icon depicting Constantine the Great, accompanied by the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea (325), holding the Creed. (Source Wikipedia)
Here is how they expressed it in the creed of the Council of Nicaea:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things seen and unseen;
And in one Lord, Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only-begotten, that is, of the essence of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same being as the Father, through whom all things came to be, both the things in heaven and on earth, who for us humans and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, becoming human, who suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, who is coming to judge the living and the dead;
And in the Holy Spirit.
The catholic and apostolic church condemns those who say concerning the Son of God that “there was a time when he was not” or “he did not exist before he was begotten” or “he came to be from nothing” or who claim that he is of another subsistence or essence, or a creation, or changeable, or alterable.
It's worth noting scriptural echoes all through the phrasing!
For example, you can see how “through who all things came to be” arises from texts like Hebrews 1:2.
That Scripture had described Jesus as “the Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe”. And “God from God, Light from Light”, echoes Heb 1:3: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being...”
Or think of John 1:14 & 18 (quoted near the start) which describe Jesus, literally as the “only-begotten” one.
That phrase is repeated in the Creed. This follows John 1:3’s assertion about this Word (i.e. Son) “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” Jesus is Creator not creature, hence the Creed’s, “begotten, not made”.
Constantine may have been happy with a compromise everyone could sign which showed some sympathy to Arianism. But he didn’t get it from the decision of the Council of Nicaea, which gained near-unanimous agreement from hundreds of attenders (with a tiny number refusing; perhaps five, including Arius).
The creed of the Council of Nicaea was fit for purpose; it articulated the old list of assertions in a way that would not permit an Arian to affirm it.
But Constantine later tried to command Athanasius, who had become Bishop of Alexandria, to rescind the excommunication of Arius. Athanasius refused.
“If a decision was made by the bishops, what concern had the emperor with it? ...When did a decision of the Church receive its authority from the emperor?”
Athanasius spent several “spells on the sideline” as a result, but would not compromise, though much discussion swirled around.
It took another fifty-six years for the theology of Nicaea to achieve genuine acceptance more widely through the churches, through insincere profession, political manoeuvring. It involved careful listening and patient argumentation in an effort to address and clarify ongoing concerns.
But the conclusion came at the Council of Constantinople in 381, which produced the Creed we now receive and recite as the Nicene Creed
The Principal of our local Moore Theological College, Dr Mark Thompson, has used the idea that “you can’t unsee it” with Nicaea. Once the Council articulated the New Testament data the way it did, it is impossible to be orthodox and not to see it that way.
“Once we’ve seen it, there is no going back. The decision at Nicaea is a little like that. Once the unity and equality of the Father and the Son has been articulated in this way, there is no going back.”
Sources:
For the story-telling, I have leaned heavily on “The Not At All Secret History of Nicaea” by Susannah Black Roberts https://mereorthodoxy.com/the-not-at-all-secret-history-of-nicaea
To note and study how the Nicene Creed expresses the teaching and even phrasing of the Bible, and expressions of earlier church ‘fathers’, see “Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed with Scripture and Pre-Nicene Fathers” https://nicenecreed.netlify.app
For Mark Thompson’s article “Celebrating Nicaea”, delving into the Scriptural background and theological distinctions, see https://moore.edu.au/resources/celebrating-nicaea/
I also found Andrew Moody’s “Learning from the Fathers: Nicaea at 1700” helpful for its nuanced explainers of how and why things happened and applications for today. https://www.andrewmoodywrites.com/2025/04/12/learning-from-the-fathers-nicaea-at-1700/
See also “A ‘praiseworthy landmark’ as the Council of Nicaea marks its 1,700th anniversary” by Nick Needham, who gives us another helpful account of Nicaea and its background, and also reminds us that Councils are not sinless, and Creeds are subservient to Scripture. https://www.christian.org.uk/features/a-praiseworthy-landmark-as-the-council-of-nicaea-marks-its-1700th-anniversary/