What People Get Wrong About The Council Of Nicaea

TITLE: What people get wrong about the Council of Nicaea CHANNEL: Premodernist DATE: 2025-06-12 ---TRANSCRIPT--- There are a lot of myths about the Council of Nika. One myth that you’ll hear sometimes is that that’s where the Christians decided what books would be in the Bible. And that’s not true. The uh compilation of the Bible had nothing to do with the Council of Nika. Uh there are some who say that Constantine, the emperor who convened the council, used it as an opportunity to force his own beliefs onto the Christians. Uh that’s also not true. He did not force his beliefs on the Christians. He couldn’t care less what the Christians decided at the council of Nika as long as they decided something. Um, another myth that you’ll hear is that at the council of Nika, the Christians invented a new belief that they had not previously had like the idea that Jesus is God or the idea of the trinity. But both of those things clearly predate the Council of Nika. We see that in in the historical record.

There is another um misconception out there about the council that I want to address in this video and that is the idea that it was to put it in blunt terms that it was that it was historically sign significant. A lot of people think that it was this major historical event. In in a way it was and I’ll explain what I mean by that but it was not a historically significant event in the way that most people assume because I think in the popular imagination and often also the way it’s presented in textbooks and in lectures and classrooms uh there was this dispute going on because the main thing that they talked about at the council of Nika that gets the attention was um that gets people’s attention is the um theological dispute over the ideas of Aras.

Uh so the the the the typical narrative goes there was this this dispute going on um and over the nature of Jesus and uh the dispute was taken to the council of Nika. The council of Nika decided in a certain way against Aras and then after that the Christians were nine. They had the nyine creed and they believed in, you know, the nyine uh side of the debate and that was the end of Aras. But in reality that was not anywhere near the end of Aras. The story does not end at 3:25. And if you were alive in the 300s of the Roman Empire, watching all these things all the all of these things unfold, you would not have thought at the time, oh wow, 325 was this decisive threshold, this decisive watershed moment. Like if you’re in the year 340 for example or 350, you would not look back and be like, well 325, the Council of Na, that was this huge watershed moment that really changed the course of Christian history. Um, not at all. You wouldn’t have thought that.

All right, but let’s back up a minute and um let me go over what happened with the Council of Nika and what that all was about. Um, and then maybe I could explain what I mean um after that. So the council of Nika was uh called in the year 325 and it had several things that it was going to address. It addressed some disciplinary matters regarding rules for example regarding clergy or regarding how to treat Christians who had compromised the faith during the persecutions because this is right after a period of really heavy persecution in the early 300s. And then there was an issue regarding how to calculate the date of Easter because at the time some Christians calculated Easter in such a way that it could fall on any day of the week. And other Christians calculated Easter in such a way that it always had to fall on a Sunday. And what that meant was some Christians were celebrating Easter on a different day than other Christians. And so you’d have some Christians who were still fasting, doing the pre-Easter fast while other Christians were already celebrating Easter and feasting. Um, and so that was regarded as a bit of a problem. So they they wanted to get some uniformity on that across uh the Christian world, at least within the empire. And then the other issue, the really famous issue was what to do about a particular priest in Alexandria named Aras. and the ideas that he was promoting and this is probably the most famous aspect of the council of Nika is is this issue regarding areas.

Now what happened was in the city of Alexandria a dispute arose between the bishop Alexander and one of his priests named Aras. Bishop Alexander said that Jesus aka the son of God or God the son was eternal in the same way that God the father is that Jesus or God the son has always existed just as God the father has always existed. Aras objected to that and said that no there was a time when Jesus did not exist. Jesus in his pre-incarnate form as the son of God or the God the son. God the son did not always exist. There was a time like ontologically, if nothing else, ontologically the father came first in such a way that he was not originally a father, but then he begat in some for in some sense begat the son and then in in in so doing he became the father and then the son was the son. Um, and then through the sun, God created uh the heavens and the earth, the universe, time and space. I’m I’m being a little bit weird about the way I’m phrasing this because as far as I understand, he believed that Jesus was created prior to the creation of time. So, he was created in an atmporal, you know, like there was no time yet. So, you can’t really talk about him being created before something else. I mean, he was created in the sense he was created before time. I guess you could say that. Um, and then the dispute that like Alexander was saying, no, Jesus had always been there. There was never a time when Jesus wasn’t Well, time again. I It’s kind of weird to use the word time when neither. Anyway, I it okay, sorry. Um, it gets a little bit nuanced.

Um, and actually speaking to this, I’ve heard people say that when they’re lecturing on this topic or, you know, making a video on this or something and they’ll talk about the difference between the Aryan position and Alexander’s position and they’ll say, well, this sounds very complex or abstract or whatever to the modern ear, to a modern audience, but to people in the 4th century, this was significant. I disagree with that. I don’t think it’s a matter of what century you live in. That’s not the issue. Becau actually because um uh who is it? Constantine. Constantine was the emperor. This was going on this this conflict between the two sides had been going on for several years when when Constantine showed up in the eastern part of the empire. And when he came and he you know he defeated Lysinius and became the sole emperor of the entire empire. Um, so he shows up and there’s this dispute going on in the eastern part of the empire among the bishops there and they explained it to him. They explained what the issue was and he did not understand and he there’s a letter that’s preserved in Ucius Cesaria’s life of Constantine where he he tells both Alexander and Aras, both of you were out of line. Alexander, you shouldn’t have been teaching that. Aras, you shouldn’t have disagreed with your bishop. There’s no reason. Constantine said, there’s no reason you should even be talking about this stuff cuz it’s so abstract and so far away from real life. It’s like it’s so like who cares? That was that was Constantine’s view. Who cares who like like this barely a difference between these two sides. So this is a man who lived in the 4th century. So it’s not a matter about what century you live in. The issue was Constantine was a a career military man. He was not an intellectual, certainly not a theologian. And he really did not care which side won or you know who who prevailed or whose opinion prevailed. He just wanted unity. He wanted the bishops to be unified.

And so if if the Aryan position was going to win out, that would be fine with him as long as all the bishops go along with it. If the anti-Aryan position, I guess at this point, I don’t know what else to call it. If the anti-Aryan position, the trinitarian position, you could say the trinitarian position. If that won out, Constantine would be fine with that too. This goes back to what I said at the beginning about the myth that Constantine used the council as an opportunity to force his own beliefs on the bishops is really silly when you look at the the historical evidence like he is the exact opposite. He did not care. Um, and it’s not just Constantine. One of our uh sources, one of our main primary sources for the events of the 4th century church uh was um um a historian named Socrates Scholasticus. So not the same Socrates, it’s the famous one that Plato talked about. is a different guy named Socrates. But he also has a quote where he says um where he’s, you know, kind of talking about this debate and he has this little passage where he says um I I don’t know exactly I don’t remember exactly how he phrased it, but he’s like both sides believed that the go the God the Father and God the Son are distinct. Both sides believed in the Trinity, but for some reason they were fighting anyway. and he basically says he doesn’t understand what the what the point of the dispute was. Now, he was also not a theologian. So, he was not really steeped in theology or scripture or any of those things. This dispute was meaningful to people in the clergy, people who were, you know, they were bishops primarily, but also priests and, you know, other clergy. they were the ones involved in the dispute and really engaged in it and saw it as significant because they could see the nuances and they felt that the nuances were really significant.

So when this dispute arose in Alexandria sometime probably in the late 310s we don’t know exactly when but maybe around 318 or 319 Aras ended up being exiled from the dascese. So he left and he went to Palestine and started writing to different bishops and enlisting them to support his side of the dispute. So the dispute widened out beyond Egypt into other parts of the Eastern Roman Empire. Meanwhile, Constantine conquered the eastern part of the empire from Lysinius. And when he arrived, he found this dispute happening among the bishops. And so he called the council of Nika in order for them to all get together and hash it out and arrive at a decision about what they were going to, you know, what what was the one uniform position they were all going to take. Now, this was not the first council in church history. There was plenty of precedent for having a council. The Christian bishops have been having councils for centuries. But this was notable at the time because this was the first time when bishops from all over the Roman Empire were called to come gather together at one time. We don’t know exactly how many bishops attended. Uh different sources give different numbers, but it was probably somewhere around 250 to 300 bishops, maybe a little over 300.

And um they discussed a variety of matters. As I said, um, and when it came to discussing the Aryan issue, they ended up voting overwhelmingly in favor of Alexander’s position, the the Nyine position that Jesus is co-eternal with the father. And uh, they promulgated a creed, which we call in retrospect the nine creed. And that again was not a new thing. There had been creeds before. Um it was simply a statement of faith that they were all supposed to sign and agree to. Now it was not exactly in the same form that the modern nying creed is because there was a later council in 381 called first council of Constantinople that augmented it a little bit. But basically the the the point at issue was a single word in the Greek and that was the word homosion which means um well it’s typically translated into English as consubstantial but you can also translate it as of the same substance or of the same essence. Uh so it was describing the father. It was you know there’s this long clause in the in the nyine creed that talks about Jesus and the nature of Jesus what he was you know God from God light from light etc. And then there’s this line where where it says u conssubstantial with the father or one in being with the father you know it can be translated in different ways. So that that phrase one and being in Greek is homosion. That was the sticking point for the Aryan party because that was the part that sounded like seellionism to them.

So most of the bishops ended up agreeing to that formula to that creed as it was drafted. But there were a handful of bishops that did not. We don’t know the exact number of bishops as far as I know cuz I I in my research I felt like I was seeing different numbers and l you know there would be a handful of bishops that that objected. I don’t know exactly how many um but notably in addition to Aras uh it was the bishop of Nicodemia Ucius and the bishop of Nika the Agnes and all three of them and some other you know handful of bishops were exiled because they refused to sign the Nying creed and so like typically That’s where the story ends. And the way when when people are telling the story of the council of Nika and the Aryan controversy, that’s where they stop. They’re like, “Okay, they held the council. They decided on the nine creed. They included the Homusion and they exiled all the people who rejected it.”

Um but that’s not at all where the story ends because uh within a couple years in 3:27 all three of those individuals came back from exile and were reinstated. Um of Nicodemia, Theognus of Nika and Aras of Alexandria. Aras uh he wrote a letter to uh Constantine and he included a statement of faith a creed that he wrote out I believe in blah blah blah blah blah and he wrote out basically the nine creed but he left the humusion out but Constantine said that’s good enough for me and so he let Aras come back and and he wrote a letter to Alexandria and said uh Bishop Alexander you need to reinstate Aras as a priest. Well, Aras shows up and Alexander, you know, realizes Aras is not repentant. He still believes that Jesus is subordinate to the father and create a creature of the father. So, he says, “No, you can’t be a priest here.” Um, and this starts a really long period of decades of bishops continuing to fight over this issue.

So, the the the fighting didn’t end in 325. That was really just the beginning near the beginning. It went on for decades after that where some of the bishops took the nyine position. Some of the bishops took the Aryan position and they kept arguing with each other. Now they knew that Constantine and then he had a successor Constant his son Constantius II who was similar to his father in that he did not care which side prevailed. He just wanted there to be unity among the bishops. um they knew that the emperor was not going to put up with like out and out arguing and you know creating division in the church but they engaged in political maneuvering to tarnish Alexander’s name and then Alexander’s successor and Alexandria was Athanasius they kept trying to slander him and make him look bad and depose him from office in order to get an a a an Aryan placed in the position of bishop of Alexandria.

So there was all this political maneuvering behind the scenes and because of Ucius and Mikimedia’s close association with Constantine, he was able to use that close association to advance the Aryan position. Um and it was actually uh you know Constantine famously was baptized on his deathbed. It was of Nicodemia the Aryan who baptized him. And then during the 4th century, there were tons of councils being held. I mean, there were councils being held anyway because that was the normal way of doing business um on a kind of macro level in the church. You’d have bishops gather together from different parts of a province uh to discuss issues of mutual interest. Uh and in fact, one of the canons of the council of Nika said that bishops should meet regularly to discuss issues.

Uh so there were tons of councils in the 4th century but then there were also councils being called specifically for the purpose of deciding the disputes uh deciding the dispute between Aryanism and and um nineism I guess you could call it and um the Aryans actually got the upper hand and in most of those councils where they discussed those issues the Aryan position was the one that was adopted either Aryanism or semiaranism. Semi-aranism was a compromised position where um you know the nyines said that the father and the son are of the same essence. Aras had said the father and the son are of different essences. And then the semi-aran position was that the father and the son are of similar essences. So still technically different but very similar to each other. uh and in Greek the difference between the two terms was one letter. So the nine position was homosios and the semi-airan position was homoios. There was an extra i in there because it was um similar essence versus the same essence.

Um, so, uh, if you were in the position in the 300s of seeing all this stuff play out, you would not have thought to yourself, wow, 325, Council of Nika, that was the really decisive point in which things changed because there were other councils, council of Ty, Council of Serium, multiple councils of Serium, Sardica, Councils of Antioch, Council of Arimeum and Seucia, and on and on and on. And there were all these councils being held that you where usually the Aryans and the semi-arans had the upper hand. Things finally changed in 380. So up until 380 there was a succession of emperors who were all um nominally Christian except for Julian who of course famously rejected Christianity. So he’s referred to as Julian the apostate. But there was a succession of emperors who while most of them were nominally Christian, none of them cared about which you know which version of Christianity was true. They just wanted the bishops to agree with each other and come up to some come up with some solution which is why the semi-aran position was attractive to someone like Constantius II because it’s like well that’s a compromise like you guys are compromising. Isn’t that the point? Let’s all compromise on this one. So, um, anyway, up until 380, the emperors didn’t really care. But in practice, since the Aryan and semi-aran positions were the ones that were predominant in the eastern part of the empire, that was the one that the emperors were pushing. Uh, so in effect, it it meant that the nyine bishops ended up getting um mishandled sometimes. like Athanasius for example, bishop of Alexandria was exiled on five separate occasions uh through the political machinations of the Aryan party.

Now meanwhile in the western part of the empire the bishops were all settled on the nyine position and there wasn’t a lot of controversy happening in the emp in in in that part of the empire. This was really focused on the eastern part of the empire.

So anyway, it all changed in 380 when Theodocious came to the throne because for the first time he was a a Christian emperor who actually cared about the matter and took a stand theologically and he was a committed nyine Christian. So when he came to power he favored the nyine party and um suppressed the Aryan party within the empire and he called the council of Constantinople which in retrospect is referred to as the first council of Constantinople which convened in 381 that reaffirmed the decision of the council of Nika reaffirmed the creed that came out of the council of Nika and then augmented it a little bit added some stuff at the end about the holy spirit because in the meantime during the 300s there had been another Christian group that had arose arisen called the Macedonians because they were followers of a guy named Macedonius also known as the Numatici who believed that the Holy Spirit is not God. So they didn’t believe in a triad but rather a diad like father and son but not spirit. So uh in order to um you know show that they were rejecting that idea they included some stuff at the end about the Holy Spirit. Um, but it’s still referred to as the nyine creed, although technically you could call it the Nino Constantinopolitan Creed. That’s a lot of syllables.

So, in what respect then can we say that the Council of Nika was historically significant?

I I I would say you could regard it as historically significant in the sense like for like in a couple different ways. First of all, for the participants in the council itself, for the actual bishops who went to Nika in 325, for them it was significant uh symbolically because this was the first time that a church council was being convened by a Roman emperor who was himself a Christian. And that in itself was highly significant, highly symbolic. And and then on top of that, the fact that this was coming on the heels of an extended period of really brutal persecution of the church at the hands of Roman emperors. And this is partly why it was so significant that a Roman emperor was convening this council and ceremonially presiding over it. I mean when people say that he presided over the council of Nika, it doesn’t mean that he was injecting himself into the debates or anything. It was more of a ceremonial role. But um uh but anyway the the you know his predecessors in the eastern part of the empire had been brutally suppressing Christianity for several decades prior to Nika and uh there were periods during that time when the bishops had to go into hiding and normal Christian worship was disrupted and um and some Christians were tortured and killed. And so you had these bishops convening at Nika and in many cases they had been maimed during the persecutions. There’s one anecdote that’s related. There was a bishop in upper Egypt named Pphanius who had had his eye gouged out during the persecutions. Then he was one of the attendees of the council of Nika and the emperor Constantine came over and kissed his empty eye socket as you know obviously paying homage to the sacrifice that this Christian had endured. But the fact there was a Roman emperor doing that after all these years a Roman emperors being enemies of the Christians. Here’s a Roman emperor doing that. So it was very moving for the participants of the council of Nika. For them this event was very significant just the but but not not based on what decisions they were arriving at but just based on the fact that you have a church council calling bishops from all over the empire under the presidency under the presiding of a Christian emperor. That was a big deal. So in that sense you could say it was significant in a symbolic way. It was marking a new era in um the history of Christianity because it was now transitioning from being a persecuted minority to a politically powerful minority. It was still a minority but they now were in a position of political power. Um so there’s that.

Um there is another respect in which you can regard the council of Nika as historically significant and that is within the context of nine Christianity. So for modern-day Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholics, and traditional Protestants like Lutheran, um, uh, Presbyterians, Reformed, um, uh, Anglicans, for for those Christians today, they look back at the Council of Nika as important because that was when, uh, the Ning Creed was written, which was an important, historically important articulation of their belief as Christians. Um, so it’s significant from that point of view. Certainly during the 3rd cent during the 300s, during the 4th century when these controversies were raging in the eastern empire and people were arguing back and forth, those in the Nyine camp did always hearken back to the council of Nika. They would point back to the council of Nika and say that was the correct articulation of the faith. So for them they were holding on to the council of Nika but obviously the um you know the Aryans you know like the council of Nika wasn’t important for them they regarded it as a wrong council.

So if you know if we were to imagine some hypothetical scenario in which the the Aryan version of Christianity becomes the predominant version and the mainstream version they would not look back to the council of Nika as being an important council. they’d look back to some other council from the 300s probably like Cermium a 357 something like that but the the respect in which we cannot really say that the council of Nika was historically significant was that we can’t say that it was significant in the sense that that was the watershed moment at which Christianity took a new turn where the Christian population or the Christian community or or Christian beliefs or whatever that’s when things dramatically changed uh because it really wasn’t. You know, Aryanism continued on. It wasn’t the ending of Aryanism. Aryanism continued on for decades within the empire. And then even after 380 when Theodocious cracked down on the Aryans, it pretty much went away within the Roman Empire. But then it was being spread uh among the Germanic tribes in Europe. Um like Ulis for example who was a prominent Aryan during the 4th century was also a missionary to the Germans. And uh so the Germanic tribes when they converted to Christianity they converted to the Aryan version of Christianity. And then when they conquered the western part of the empire and set up their Germanic kingdoms in the fifth and sixth centuries, they they were Aryans, but they were an Aryan ruling elite ruling over a predominantly Catholic population because like I said uh sorry uh Nyine population because like I said the um um the western part of the empire had remained in the Nyine camp for the most part during the 4th century and that was the part of the empire that the Germanic tribes conquered.

So they were um they were ruling over people who had different Christian beliefs from themselves and it was gradually over time over the succeeding centuries of those Germanic tribes those ruling elites I should say that were Aryan converted to Christian converted to nine Christianity. All right. So, let me know if that was way too complicated or like I mean I I I kind of wondered when I was when I decided to do this video. I I decided to do the video because um I’m recording this in 2025 and I realized a few weeks ago, oh, that’s the, you know, 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nika in 325. And I’m kind of a sucker for that kind of thing. So, I couldn’t resist making a video about this. Um, if there’s a famous event that happened in a year ending in 26, I’m probably going to do it next year. I don’t know. Um, anyway, um, I I I had this idea of making this video and then and then I was like, oh, this theology stuff gets kind of complicated. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s going to work in a video format. But so, let me know if it worked. Um, but yeah, so anyway, thanks for watching and have a good one.