The Council of Nicaea (325) and the development of Christian doctrine

The Council of Nicaea, which took place 1750 years ago in 325 of the Christian era was and remains fundamental for all mainstream Christian churches. It defined the most distinctive and crucial aspect of our faith.

Nicaea, the modern day Iznik, lies about 90 miles East and slightly to the South of Istanbul in modern Turkey The reason the Council took place here is that the Eastern capital of the Roman Empire was then at Nicomedia, only 40 miles away. In 330, not long after Nicaea Constantine, the first emperor to be a Christian, was to found a new Christian capital at Byzantium, renamed Constantinople and today Istanbul.

You might wonder why the emperor was here rather than in Rome. This was because of the permanent threat from the East provided by Persia. He needed to be here for defensive purposes. But from the point of view of the Council Nicaea was handy for the emperor, with his capital just up the road at Nicomedia, and it was the emperor Constantine who called the council.

325 CE was an extraordinary time to be a Christian. For some 250 years the church had been subject to spasmodic but fierce persecution culminating in the great persecution of Diocletian which began in 303when more than 3000 Christians were killed. Then in 312 CE Constantine won a great battle at Milvian Bridge, according to accounts seeing a great cross in the sky with the words In hoc signo vinces, ‘in this sign conquer’. Although Constantine was not baptised until his death bed, because sin after baptism was such a serious matter, restrictions against the faith were removed and the Church began to be favoured. However Constantine was perplexed to find the church was bitterly divided over some theological matter; not something he wanted in his empire. He told the bishops to sort it out and he himself presided over some of the sessions. Furthermore he provided accommodation for them and free travel on the imperial transport system. About 250 bishops attended the sessions, the majority of them from the Eastern part of the empire though the Council may have been chaired by Osius, the Bishop of Cordoba. Including presbyters and deacons, the total attendance was nearly 1900, including two presbyters representing the Bishop of Rome. They met in a basilica in the Royal Palace in Nicaea now under water, though the remains of a mosaic to one of its entrances has recently been uncovered.

So what was this dispute about? Jesus Christ was clearly a human being but the writings of the New Testament witness that Christians had come to think of him as Divine. St John’s Gospel comes to a great climax with the words of Thomas to the risen Christ ‘My Lord and my God’. St Paul wrote that ‘In him the whole fullness of God was pleased to dwell’ (Col 1.19).

The people of Israel were monotheists. It was the most fundamental feature of their faith that there is only one God, creator of all that is, visible and invisible. So how could a faith that talked about Father, Son and Holy Spirit fit into this? It is not surprising that there were different views and fierce arguments. This was particularly so in Alexandria, the most intellectually sophisticated city of the time. It was here that the dispute began. The Bishop, Alexander, was accused by one of his presbyters, Arius, of making Christ and the Father one in such a way that there was no distinction between them. Arius argued that there was a distinction and that only God the father was uncreated. Arius was condemned and expelled, but he went around getting supporters and the split grew. Constantine first tried to reconcile Alexander and Arius and when that failed called the great Council which met from May to the end of July 325, and from this came the first part of what we call the Nicene Creed.

I will be using the Nicene Creed as we have it in Common Worship, which is shared by all the Western Churches. A point to note however is that the creed we use now has not only been put into modern language, it is in fact the Creed of Nicaea as tidied up and expanded by the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE and is often referred to not as the Nicene Creed but the Niceno Constantinopolitan creed. I will be dealing only with the first part of the creed the substance of which comes from the Council in 325 CE. As we have it now in Common Worship it reads:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is,
seen and unseen.
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;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,
was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and was made man.

A fundamental challenge with all theology, but particularly in relation to the difficult issues discussed at Nicaea, is to find language that conveys what we want to say. The Council wanted to draw a distinction between God and Christ and yet at the same time affirm that they were fully one. So first of all they made the distinction by using the word begotten in contrast to the word made. As the creed affirms, Jesus is ‘eternally begotten of the father’ τὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων or in Latin, de Patre natum ante omnia saecula. Then it goes on to say that he is ‘begotten, not made,’ γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα or in Latin natum, non factum.

Arius believed that Christ was Divine, but he thought that there was a split second before he was created. Theological disputes in Alexandria at the time were much like football rivalries today and you could go to your barbers to talk theology and hear people shouting the great Arian slogan ‘There was a time when he was not’ ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν. He was not eternal like the Father but had a beginning in time. This the Council decisively rejected. He was not created, not made. He was eternally begotten. Now you may say that we don’t really know what begotten means, and you are right for there is no other example of being begotten. It applies to the unique relationship of Christ and the Father-and here we come up against the fundamental fact about language when it is applied to God because as such it will have no exact equivalent. Or to put it another way, human language when used of God is used in a metaphorical or symbolic way to point rather than giving an exact description. But begotten, so far as we can give the word meaning suggests a coming out or emanation. The best example are the words we have at the very beginning of John’s Gospel. As our words both come out of us and are fully us, so Christ streams forth from the Father and at the same time remains one with him.

We then come to a no less crucial part of the creed. He is ‘of one Being with the Father’ or as the old English version put it, ‘of one substance with the father.’ ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί, or in Latin, ejusdemque substantiae qua Pater est; The Church Fathers really struggled to find the right words for they not only had to find a word to affirm the oneness of the Father and the Son, they had to find a word to affirm the distinctness of the three persons in the Trinity. In the general confusion words were often used in different senses. In fact, before the Council, homoousion, meaning of one substance, or of one being, was not one of the key words in the debate but was allegedly proposed by Constantine as a way of uniting people.

It is important to note that however crucial the Council was for the future of the church, it did not end controversy. Followers of Arius continued to campaign and in the succeeding years they sometimes managed to get the emperor of the day on their side. The next Bishop of Alexandria was the great defender of Christian orthodoxy, Athanasius, and it was said in his time that ‘The whole world groaned and found itself Arian’. And there were not just Arians there were semi-Arians, those who said that Christ was not of one substance with the father but was of like substance homoiousion-just an extra i in the word. Outsiders of course scoff and ridicule the church for all this dispute over a single letter, but I hope you can see that something fundamental was at stake. The Nicene fathers affirmed that Christ is ‘of one being with the Father’ In Him it is God himself who reaches out to us - not a semi-divine figure but God himself.

It is also important to note that there were other issues which were not considered in full at Nicaea. For example: how are we to understand the relationship between the divinity and the humanity of Christ? What about the position of the Holy Spirit? What about the relation of all three of them to one another, Father, Son and Holy Spirit?

The relationship between the humanity and divinity of Christ was addressed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 ce. The background being that again there was a dispute. Christians in Alexandria emphasised the Divinity of Christ and were always in danger of thinking that this swallowed up his humanity. Christians in Antioch emphasised the humanity of Christ and were always in danger of underplaying his divinity or failing to see how the humanity and divinity could combine in Christ to make one person. Always there was a danger of misunderstanding. The leader in Antioch was a man named Nestorius who was accused of overemphasising the humanity of Christ at the expense of his divinity and the unity of his person. When I was at Cambridge many years ago I had to write an essay ‘Was Nestorius really a Nestorian? Chalcedon did not solve the problem, in the sense of making it understandable. It simply laid down boundaries. It said that Christ was fully human and fully divine and that the two natures were united in him so that he was truly one person. Chalcedon is important historically not just for setting up the boundaries of the faith but for the splits that resulted from it. Some bishops did not sign up for Chalcedon or for some reason failed to turn up, the result being that in Egypt today we have Coptic Christians, who emphasise the divinity of Christ and Christians in places like Lebanon and Syria who stress the humanity. Interestingly Nestorian Christians, who found themselves in Persian territory, took the faith along the Silk Road to China. These non-Chalcedonian churches, sometimes called the Oriental Orthodox, are very much part of the world wide Christian Community today and much has been done to overcome past misunderstandings.

Then what about the position of the Holy Spirit? In the fourth century there was a group of very distinguished bishops called the Cappadocian fathers, ministering in what is now central Turkey, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and Basis of Caesaraea who championed the full divinity of the Holy Spirit. In our creed in Common Worship we say:

We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,

The key word to notice here is proceed. How this differs from begotten is not stated but the main point is clear enough. The Spirit comes forth from God and is to be given equal worship with the Father and the Son.

There is here however one controversial point. In our creed we say ‘who proceeds from the Father and the Son.’ The Orthodox churches, such as the Russian, Greek, Georgian, simply say who proceeds from the Father - and that is what the original Creed of Nicaea said - In Greek τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον and in Latin - a Patre procedentem, So the Orthodox churches have a legitimate grievance that the words ‘and the Son’ ‘filioque’ were a later addition. This resulted in the great Schism between East and West in 1054. The modern ecumenical movement has however brought about much greater understanding between the churches. In the Anglican Communion, including the Church of England. parishes are allowed to follow Orthodox usage and omit the filioque clause or substitute through the Son instead. So it would read ‘who proceeds from the Father through the Son.’

St Matthew’s Gospel ends with the risen Christ standing on a mountain in Galilee saying to his followers ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ This was not spelt out at Nicaea but obviously the discussion was very much around at the time and in the centuries afterwards. Having affirmed that both the Son and the Spirit to be of the same being as the Father, but remaining distinct where was the language in which this could be expressed? The word for one being we have already come across, homoousion. The word the fathers eventually chose from the different persons was hypostasis. This caused a great deal of confusion at first because the two words often meant the same thing. Anyway, the final formula was three hypostases, ℎ𝑦𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡á𝑠𝑒𝑖𝑠 in one substance or essence or ousia. In Latin, three personae in one substantia. You may find it helpful to think of one God in three modes of being.

The Council of Nicaea was of supreme importance in affirming the most fundamental aspect of our faith, that it is God himself in Christ who has taken our humanity in order to share his eternity with us. But as I have shown, there were other issues also to be resolved and in fact they were not all finally answered until the Seventh Council of Nicaea in 787.

In relation to using the creed today, there are a couple of points worth noting. The first is that credal statements are doxological. By that I mean they are not statements on the basis of which further statements will be made, but ones which open out into glorifying - the Greek word doxa meaning glory. A good example of what is meant is provided by the creed iself when it proclaims that Christ is:

God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,

This is sheer worship. This is the end point of a process of affirmation which opens out into praise, not the start of a new line of reasoning.

The second point is that the English version as we now have it, begins ‘We believe’. This reflects the Greek of the creed drawn up at Nicaea which is still used in the Orthodox churches. Most of us will remember the days when we said ‘I believe’. That reflected the Latin translation of the Roman Catholic church – credo - and this is still their official version. The importance of ‘We’ is that it reminds us that this is the faith of the church not a private manifesto. As congregations are encouraged to say at baptisms, ‘This is the faith of the church’ or as an old prayer puts it, ‘Regard not our sins but the faith of the church.’ Our personal faith may fluctuate, grow dimmer or brighter but like a great tree trunk the faith of the church stands strong to support us, and it is this to which we wish to cling. I regard the creed like the National Anthem, only more important. It is what we identify with.

Now it is very easy to think that these are just abstract debates that have little to do with the faith of ordinary Christians. What I hope I have shown is that they have been and are important for safeguarding the central tenets of the faith. These fathers thought that only God could save us from evil and bring us safe to eternal life. So Christ had to be fully God. At the same time only if he became fully human would humanity be redeemed. Or as they sometimes put it, if we are to be divinised, only God himself could share his divinity with us, and only if he took our human nature could our humanity be divinised.

These are not abstract doctrines but the life blood of our faith. Hold in your mind for a moment the account or picture of Christ’s baptism. The Father is present speaking. The Son is present hearing the words ‘You are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased. And the Holy Spirit symbolised as a dove, alights on the head Jesus. So it is that when we pray or worship, we come in union with Christ to address the Father and this is made possible by the Holy Spirit within us.

Finally I come back to the problem of language, of finding words that can point to God. As was said many years ago, what God is in himself is totally unknowable and incomprehensible. All human words can do is direct our hearts and minds in the right direction with the right attitude. We can reject crude literalism. Equally we should reject the view that these are just myths. Christian language is symbolic realism. It is pointing to what is real, not just made up, but it can only do this through symbol and metaphor.

As Hilary of Poitiers put it in the fourth century

But the errors of heretics and blasphemers force us to deal with unlawful matters, to scale perilous heights, to speak unutterable words, to trespass on forbidden ground. Faith ought in silence to fulfil the commandments, worshipping the Father, reverencing with Him the Son, abounding in the Holy Ghost, but we must strain the poor resources of our language to express thoughts too great for words. The error of others compels us to err in daring to embody in human terms truths which ought to be hidden in the silent veneration of the heart.