When atheists want to entertain you, they will give you their version of what happened at the Council of Nicea in 325AD; it seems to be the one ecumenical council they have all heard of. Typically you will learn that the Trinity was invented there, that the biblical texts were rewritten there, that the New Testament canon was decided upon there, and that texts which didn’t make it into the canon were burned there – to name just a few.
Readers of this blog with a more conventional view of history will probably be aware that there was once a priest by the name of Arius, whose view that the Son of God was a created being sparked a civil war in the early church. Constantine summoned the Council of Nicea so that the warring parties could negotiate a peace treaty. The first recorded use of the word Trinity dates from 180, when Theophilus of Antioch used it in his apologetic work “Ad Autolychum.” By the time the arian controversy broke out, some form of Trinitarianism was the accepted view amongst most Christian theologians. Arius and his followers were the exception. After his condemnation at Nicea, most of Arius’s works were destroyed, and that makes it very hard to know what caused him to adopt his unconventional views in the first place.
An initial attempt to bring Arius to heel was made when his bishop summoned a council at Alexandria, and had him anathematized. But he continued to minister in his church, and gather disciples, until he was finally forced into fleeing to Palestine. Elsewhere in the Church, however, councils were being summoned in support to Arius.
It was at this point that Constantine decided that enough was enough. Constantine was no great theologian himself. In fact he seems to have been perplexed by a dispute over a doctrine which had no apparent practical significance, but which had every chance of causing major unrest in his empire, if the dispute was not settled.
The Council convened on 20 May 325, but didn’t properly get under way until the Emperor arrived on 14 June. On 19 June 325 all but two of the bishops present at Nicea signed what has now become known as the Nicene Creed, although another three only reluctantly did so. Part of the Creed reads:
“We believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible: And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father….”
The above is incompatible with what Arius taught, and was intentionally made so. The Council then went on to other business, such as settling upon the date Easter was to be celebrated, before coming to an end on 25 August. Constantine departed sometime before that, doubtless feeling gratified that he had achieved his purpose, and Arius was forced into exile. Sometime later Arius was allowed to return from exile, having carefully reformulated his views so that the language was acceptable to his opponents, but he died shortly thereafter.
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