The Pivotal Council of Nicaea

The Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, was conducted at Constantine’s imperial summer residence in Nicaea of Bithynia, from May 20th until July 25th, A.D. 325. With 318 clergymen in attendance, most of the delegates came from the eastern part of the empire, which was generally more conservative.

There were a number of items on the agenda. One included secular enforcement of codified laws adopted by the church, as promised by Constantine once church unity was established. That unity was to be achieved by healing the growing rift between advocates of the trinity and the Arian movement.

Another issue involving uniformity was setting the date of Easter on the Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox. (New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 5, p. 7).

One issue of note involved a little known law that would have enacted celibacy in the clergy. The council rejected this law in favour of defending the sanctity of marriage (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 19, pp. 640-642). There were elements within the empire that resisted the innovations that the clergy at Rome advocated. But over time, their influence steadily diminished.

Constantine, from a bust in Rome

The Council of Nicaea officially “admitted the principle that the state might employ the secular arm to bring the Christian subjects of the Roman world-empire under the newly codified faith” (Ibid., p. 640). Translated, this meant that, as protector of the only recognized and established form of Christianity in the empire, Constantine had the authority to force everyone—pagan and all brands of Christianity—into either conformity or exile.

Now let’s focus on another controversy involving the Council of Nicaea—the nature of God and how the trinity was decreed to be doctrine in the Roman Empire. This controversy flared throughout the debates and continued even after the final decision, which had only come after extensive vacillation through the process. Inroads, though shaky, were made for the approval of a compromised version of the trinity. But it was not until A.D. 381, at the Council of Constantinople, that the Catholic Church finally adopted the Nicene Creed, which officially approved the trinity doctrine.

Opposing Sides

There were two opposing sides of the controversy at Nicaea. One side was represented by Arius, the other by Athanasius. Both men came from the same congregation in Alexandria, Egypt. Arius was the priest, and 45 years older than Athanasius, who was a deacon. Both men were influenced by the same speculative mindset of Greek philosophy, for which Alexandria was known: “Arius (250-336) had received his theological education in the school of the presbyter Lucian of Antioch [in Syria], a learned man, and distinguished especially as a biblical scholar…Lucian…persisted in holding that the Logos became a person in Christ” (Ibid., vol. 2, p. 543).

Lucian—one of the most sound and capable teachers of that time—had compiled what became known as the Received Text, the authentic Greek manuscripts of the canonized New Testament Scriptures. His preservation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek is also significant. Erasmus, the most outstanding Catholic scholar in history, greatly favoured Lucian’s texts over Jerome’s spurious Latin translation, also known as the Vulgate (Truth Triumphant, Wilkinson, ch. 5).

During and after the Council of Nicaea, the Catholic position was that all who denied the trinity were effectively denying the divinity of Christ. But Lucian’s teachings proved this to be false. He had strongly advocated (as the Bible teaches) Christ’s divinity prior to His appearing in the flesh—without the philosophical trappings of the trinity.

Arius, who studied under Lucian, compromised. He leaned toward the teachings of Paul of Samosata, who maintained that Christ had to be a created Being and had not been God prior to becoming flesh (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 2, p. 543). Defining Christ as a created Being, Arius deduced that a member of the true Godhead could never dwell among sinful mankind. This became the greatest weakness in his thinking and became the basis for the rejection of his views at Nicaea.

On the other hand, Athanasius (A.D. 295-373) followed the philosophy of Origen. Often considered the greatest scholar of the Catholic Church, Origen was the antithesis of Lucian, since he weighed in heavily as a Platonist and Stoic. Lucian, by contrast, was strictly scriptural. He was considered to be a “Judaizer,” much in the tradition of the original apostles.

By proxy, the Council of Nicaea brought to head the two leading proponents of two opposite extremes: Lucian and his strict and literal biblical interpretation vs. Origen and his philosophic leanings, which coloured his interpretation of Scripture. This was one of the few open forums for pure biblical interpretation to confront the thinking of a renowned champion of human reasoning.

Unfortunately, as is so often the case, true biblical teaching was not properly represented. Arius had compromised his training and merely represented his own warped version of this teaching. Both sides departed from the Bible, but in different ways. The movement that contributed to Catholic thought, represented by Origen’s vast writings, even more blatantly distorted Scripture. Through the centuries, the proponents of this thinking have remained unswerving from their original foundations—holding to their tradition without deviation. (Remember Jeremiah 2:11-13.)

While Arius had been personally taught by Lucian, Athanasius subscribed to Origen’s teachings indirectly (because Origen had died 40 years before Athanasius was born). Although not a scholar, Athanasius compensated for his lack of formal training by his determined and confrontational approach in defending his convictions. He thrived upon controversy and arguments.

As the theologians gathered for the Council of Nicaea, the opposing sides took weeks to present their views. Some of the abstract terms used to define the mysterious state of the trinity were a source of constant confusion. Consider this example: “However, a great trouble arose, since there are two terms in Greek of historical fame. The first, homos, meaning ‘identical’ and the second, homoios, meaning ‘similar’ or ‘like unto’…The spelling of these words is much alike.

The difference in meaning, when applied to the Godhead, is bewildering to simple hearted [sane] believers. Nevertheless, those who would think in terms of homoiousian, or ‘similar,’ instead of homoousian, or ‘identical’ were promptly labelled as heretics and Arians by the clergy. Yet when the emperor, Constantine, in full assembly of the Council of Nicaea, asked Hosius, the presiding bishop, what the difference was between the terms, Hosius replied that they were both alike. At this all but a few bishops broke out into laughter and teased the chairman with heresy” (Truth Triumphant, Wilkinson, p. 92).

Just as there were Arians and Semi-Arians, there were also various factions within the trinity movement. Despite what many might suppose, the trinity was never a simple case of “for or against.” Far from simple to understand even at the time, comprehending what really happened in this era becomes nearly impossible for those studying it today.

For instance, one such group, the Homoiousians, advocated solely the “likeness of nature” of the three parts of the Godhead. They did not buy into the full trinity formula, which they viewed as abstract concepts without merit. Yet, decades later, at the Council at Constantinople, objections faded and allowed the trinity movement to merge into one voice (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. 2, p. 544).

Athanasius’ position centred upon the belief that Christ had formerly been a God Being, having always existed prior to becoming human. But many considered his various philosophical extrapolations taken from Origen to be confusing theory and conjecture, which, of course, they were. The Athanasius faction’s greatest advantage was that Arius tried to defend a position that the majority did not recognize as defensible.