Council of Nicea

The Council of Nicaea

… in A.D. 325 the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea was called to order. The result was the establishment of the core beliefs of the Christian Church.

Christianity had had very little organization in the years following the crucifixion of Jesus. At first, it was just a branch of Judaism. But in A.D. 70, the Roman Army destroyed the city of Jerusalem in the process of crushing a Jewish uprising. The result was that Christians, along with Jews, were scattered throughout the Roman Empire. And since Christians were no longer living in Jewish communities, Christianity lost its strong ties to Judaism and became a religion with much broader appeal among gentiles.

By A.D. 100, there were fewer than 10,000 Christians in the world, and most of them had relocated to Rome. They were subject to persecution by Roman officials, who believed that Christianity was a dangerous cult. The persecution of Christians seemed to help gain new converts. The stories of martyrs persuaded people to join a religion that could inspire such passion. Churches banded together to give each other courage, and the bonds between Christians became stronger and stronger. By the end of the second century A.D., the number of Christians had grown to more than 200,000. By the end of the third century, those numbers had grown almost exponentially, to about six million Christians throughout the Roman Empire.

But there was still a lot of diversity of religious beliefs among Christians. Some Christians believed that they could fall into trances and speak the word of God while under the influence of the spirit. Some believed that Jesus was not a divine figure, but merely a great man. Some believed that Jesus was a supernatural being created by God, but not really God himself. And then there were the Gnostics, who believed that the God of the Old Testament was an evil God, and that Jesus had come to save humanity from that evil God. There were many gospels

1 other than those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There was a Gospel of Thomas, a Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and a Gospel of Judas.

Christianity might have continued to splinter into many different religions if it hadn't been for the emperor Constantine. He came to power after a stunning military victory, and he later claimed that during the battle he had received a vision from the Christian God. He'd been raised by a Christian mother and Greco-Roman father, but had never been baptized as a Christian himself. However, once he became emperor, he announced that Christianity would become an equal religion in the Roman Empire.

And if Christianity was going to be equal to the other religions of the empire, Constantine thought that Christians needed to agree on what they believed. And so it was, in A.D. 325, that Constantine called together more than 250 bishops to debate what those Christian core beliefs should be.

The result was the Nicene Creed, a prayer that is still recited in many Christian churches today. The most important belief that the council established was that Jesus was not only the son of God, but that he was also of one being with God. And even though he was God, he had become a man, and as a man he had suffered, died, and was buried, only to rise again, in fulfillment of the scriptures.

Within 50 years of the Council of Nicaea, thanks to the patronage of Constantine and his descendants, more than half of the citizens of the Roman Empire, about 34 million people, had converted to Christianity.

2 Decisions of the Council of Nicaea

1. It was at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 that Sunday was declared to be the Christian Sabbath. 2. It was at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 that the emblem the cross of light was adopted as the emblem of Christianity. 3. It was at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 that the date of Easter was established. 4. It was at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 that rules were framed that defined the authority of bishops thereby leading towards a concentration of power in ecclesiastical hands. 5. It was at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 that Jesus was declared a both man and god not a mortal prophet. 6. "...a year after the Council of Nicaea he (Constantine) sanctioned the confiscation and destruction of all works that challenged orthodox teachings - works by pagan authors that referred to Jesus as well as works by "heretical" Christians. He also arranged for a fixed income to be allocated to the Church and installed the bishop of Rome in the Lateran Palace (It was not until A.D. 384 that the bishop of Rome called himself Pope for the first time). Then in A.D. 331 he commissioned and financed new copies of the Bible. This constituted one of the single most decisive factors in the entire history of Christianity and provided Christian orthodoxy with an unparalleled opportunity.

7. In A.D. 303, a quarter of a century earlier, the pagan emperor Diocletian had undertaken to destroy all Christian writings that could be found. As a result, Christian documents - especially in Rome - all but vanished. When Constantine commissioned new versions of these documents it enabled the custodians of orthodoxy to revise edit and rewrite their material as they saw fit in accordance with their tenets. It was at this point that most of the crucial alterations in the New Testament were probably made. The importance of Constantine's commission must not be underestimated. Of the five thousand extant early manuscript versions of the New Testament not one predates the fourth century. 3 Questions about the Council of Nicaea

1. How and why did Christianity lose its strong ties to Judaism? 2. How did Roman persecution help Christianity gain new converts? How did it unite elements of Christianity? 3. How much did Christianity increase between AD 100 and AD 200 (the end of the second century)? To what did it increase in the next 100 years? 4. What were some of the differing beliefs of Christians during this period? 5. How did Constantine seek to create consistency in Christian belief? 6. What was the result of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea? 7. Why are there few Christian texts that predate the fourth century? 8. Why is the theology (beliefs) of the texts we do have generally so consistent?