Council of Nicaea — Defining Christian Orthodoxy
Constantine summoned some 300 bishops to Nicaea in 325 to settle what Christians believed about Christ, and paid their travel. The dispute had been started by Arius, a priest of Alexandria, who argued that if the Son was begotten then there was a time when he was not, and that he was therefore a creature — exalted above all others, and not God in the same sense as the Father. The argument spread fast because it was easy to state and was set to popular songs. Constantine had legalised Christianity twelve years earlier and had no interest in a church that could not agree with itself, and less in the disorder in Egypt and Syria that followed. The council was the first of its kind: bishops from across the empire, some with the scars of Diocletian's persecution, presided over by an emperor who was not yet baptised. Its creed asserted that the Son is of one substance with the Father — homoousios, a term with no scriptural basis, which is exactly why it could not be evaded — and appended anathemas against Arius's formulations. It also fixed the calculation of Easter independently of the Jewish calendar and passed twenty canons on church discipline. Two bishops refused to sign and were exiled with Arius. None of it settled the matter. Arianism was dominant at court within a decade, Athanasius was exiled five times, and the question was closed only at Constantinople in 381. The creed said in church every Sunday by most Christians is a revision of this one, and the phrase about one substance is the single most consequential word ever inserted into a document by a committee. Constantine's motive was public order, and the result was a definition of orthodoxy that has outlasted his empire by fifteen centuries.
- Year: 325 CE
- Category: Cultural
