Creed of Creeds

First of Many

The early 4th century marked the beginning of the worst persecution of Christians in the religion’s young history. The typical routine of physical and psychological torture, imprisonment, and executions were being inflicted upon Christ’s followers under Emperor Diocletian’s rule and continued until Constantine claimed the throne in 306.

He eventually issued the Edict of Milan in 313 that made Christianity legal and commenced the beginning of an era that included tolerance of the religion.

Perhaps the most relevant provision in the edict was outlawing the stoning of Christians by Jews in Roman gladiator shows.

Constantine had converted to Christianity just a year prior and sought to use his power as the emperor of the great empire to establish unity within Christ’s Church.

There was already a strong sense of togetherness within the Church, as essentially all of the Christians scattered throughout the East and West agreed on essential components of the faith like Christ’s divinity, the Holy Trinity, how the Mass should be celebrated, and more.

However, a man named Arius from Alexandria had begun to preach the idea that Jesus was a created being, not coeternal with God the Father, and therefore not divine.

An excerpt from his beliefs is as follows: “there was a time when The Son did not exist but only The Father existed alone…The Son was created out of nothing…The Son is of a different substance or essence than the Father…The Son is susceptible to change.”

While the vast majority of Christians still held the traditional beliefs about Christ, Arianism was beginning to increase in popularity.

Just a few years prior, he was officially deemed a heretic by a local council, leading him to flee to Palestine, where he was able to gain a small following that would incrementally increase over time.

To prevent this heresy from spreading even further, Constantine gathered over 300 bishops from 22 countries that included Europe, Asia, and Africa to discuss the differences between the two schools of thought and set the record straight.

The bishops gathered in the city of Nicaea, located in modern day Turkey, where they convened from June to August of 325 in the Church’s first of 21 ecumenical councils, with the most recent being the famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) Second Vatican Council in the mid 1960s.

Constantine was generous enough to provide government-funded transportation, food, and housing for the attendees for the entire two month gathering.

Interestingly enough, Pope Sylvester I was unable to attend the council due to his old age and instead sent two Roman priests Vitus and Vincentius to represent him.

While some historians push the narrative that Constantine was the major voice of the gathering, he actually took on a passive role and let the bishops and theologians do the debating. His main focus was to reach a consensus that would enable the Church to progress together under one universal faith.

Another popular misconception about the First Council of Nicaea is the idea that there were numerous competing visions of Christianity, similar to the dynamic we see today, and the Catholic version was able to somehow overpower everyone else to establish its version as the dominant force.

This is false, as there were only three groups present at the council: Arians, Catholics, and Eusebians.

Like mentioned previously, the Arians asserted that the Father and Son were of a different substance (heteroousios), and the Catholics believed the two were of the same substance (homoousios). The Eusebians were similar to Catholics in the sense that they believed the Father and Son were both fully God and eternal, but differed on the use of homoousios, as they opted for a more nuanced version in which the two were of a similar, rather than the exact same, substance.

The Arian group was a very small minority at the council, as it was simply Arius and a few Arian bishops that had the burden of trying to convince hundreds of bishops and theologians that they wrongly interpreted scripture.

After two months of articulating their case and attempting to prove that not only were the rest of the Bishops incorrect in their understanding of Christ’s nature but also the early influential Church fathers like Saint Clement of Rome, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Saint Polycarp of Smyrna, and more were incorrect as well, the group of Bishops came to the unsurprising conclusion that these Arian claims were simply wrong and heretical.

Upon This Rock…

The council published a positive statement of what the Church believed about the deity of Christ as well as specified anathemas (denouncement of a doctrine) of what the Church considered to be a heresy.

This statement was the Nicene Creed that is still used (in addition to the Apostle’s Creed) in Catholic masses today.

More specifically, the bishops came to the conclusion that Arian views are incorrect because his arguments relied on completely novel interpretations of scripture that had no precedent in early Church teaching.

Athanasius, an extremely influential bishop of Alexandria, sums up this lack of precedent nicely when he inquires “how many fathers [early Christians] can you cite for your phrases?”

The Nicene Creed was signed by the Catholics and Eusebians, as the only three attendees that did not sign it were Arius and his two henchmen.

The minute differences between the Catholics and Eusebians eventually died out, as the movement eventually fizzled after the Council of Constantinople in 381 that fully stomped out Arianism and other groups that disagreed with the principle of consubstantiality between The Father and Son.

In addition to the establishment of Christ’s divinity and the reaffirmation of the Trinity, another point of contention was when Easter should be celebrated.

This disagreement was solely geographic, as the Western Christian practice was celebrating Easter on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal (spring) equinox, while the Eastern Christian practice was to celebrate it on the 14th day of Nisan, the Jewish Passover.

To simplify it, Jesus resurrected on the Sunday after the 14th day of Nisan and the West believed the day being Sunday is more pertinent than its connection to the Passover celebration on the 14th day.

As you’ve probably guessed, the Western vision of Easter won out, as it is still celebrated in this fashion up until this day.

After the disputes were settled, Constantine held a great feast to celebrate the unity within the Church and sent the bishops back on their way.

Although the Council of Nicea is one of the most important events in the history of the Catholic Church, we must understand that this was not the genesis of the Church as some historians like to proclaim.

In fact, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of John the Apostle, was born around 35 AD in Roman Syria and referred to the Church that Jesus Christ established through Peter as the Catholic (katholikos = universal) Church on numerous occasions.

In his letter to the Smyrnaeans (8:2), he proclaims “wherever the bishop appears, let the people be; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”

Thanks be to God for His mercy, love, and beautiful Church.

Thanks for reading and until next time.

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