Did you know? Nicaea

[ABOVE: Polychrome lunette. Iznik, glazed. Circa 1575 CE—Museum of Islamic Art (Tiled Kiosk), Istanbul, Turkey. Photograph by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]

A shared heritage

Christians from vastly different traditions can agree on at least one thing: the importance of the Council of Nicaea. In 1925 the Church of England hosted a sixteenth centenary celebration of the council—an event that brought Orthodox patriarchs to Westminster Abbey for the first time in church history. That same year Pope Pius XI planned a party of his own in the Vatican basilica, declaring Nicaea a formative event for the Catholic understanding of the nature of Christ.

Many Protestants, such as Anglicans, recite the Nicene Creed in church every Sunday and celebrate Nicaea in their hymns. One of the most beloved is Reginald Heber’s (1783–1826) “Holy, Holy, Holy,” which ends with a rousing “God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.” Written for Trinity Sunday, the hymn was set to music by John B. Dykes (1823–1886), who named the tune NICAEA.

Arian barbarians

Theodosius the Great may have dealt Roman Arians a death blow at the Council of Constantinople (381), but the heresy got a new lease on life among the barbarian Goths. Particularly influential was Theodoric the Great (d. 526), a ruthless military tactician who murdered his rival, he made Arianism his religion and built numerous Arian churches in Ravenna, Italy. When Byzantine emperor Justinian (482–565) recovered Ravenna in 535, he resolved to erase Arian influence from the city. One example is a mosaic in the Basilica of San Apollinare Nuovo, formerly Theodoric’s palace church, that has obviously been altered—it likely displayed Theodoric with his family or court.

Who started it?

Most council historians begin the story with the fiery exchange of words between Arius and Alexander. But the discussion of the nature of Christ has a much longer history in the church. Third-century theologian Origen (185–c. 254), for example, pressed a bishop named Heraclides to define the relationship of Christ to God the Father. After much careful questioning, Heraclides admitted to believing in two Gods but clarified that “the power is one.” Origen reminded Heraclides that some Christians would “take offense at the statement that there are two Gods. We must express the doctrine carefully to show in what sense they are two, and in what sense the two are one God.”

I Baptize you with the “creed”

The earliest form of the Christian creed was a set of questions based on Jesus’s command to baptize disciples in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). As seen in the following example from the third-century Roman presbyter Hippolytus, the three baptismal questions follow a trinitarian pattern:

Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?

Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God,

Who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,

Who was crucified in the days of Pontius Pilate, and died, and rose the third day living from the dead and ascended into the heavens and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead?

Do you believe in the Holy Spirit in the Holy Church, and the resurrection of the flesh?

Take each of these questions and turn them into “I believe” statements, and you have what is often called the Old Roman Creed, a text very similar to the fifth-century Apostles’ Creed. These early baptismal creeds focused on the work of Christ. The Nicene Creed added an emphasis on the person of Christ.

The Ancyran Creed?

The Council of Nicaea had been originally planned to meet in the city of Ancyra (modern Ankara in central Turkey), but Constantine moved the location to Nicaea only a few months before the council’s opening meeting.

Nicene exiles

Theognis, the bishop of Nicaea, did not support the creed that the council produced, even though he signed it. He argued that Arius’s views had been misrepresented and rejected the anathema attached to the creed. For this reason, he, along with Eusebius of Nicomedia (d. 341), was briefly exiled.

Did Someone forget to get a count?

How many bishops attended the Council of Nicaea? Unfortunately, no original authoritative list from the council survives. Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339) says “more than 250” attended, whereas Athanasius (d. 373) claims there were “300 of them, more or less.” Ambrose of Milan (d. 397) later states 318, but he was erroneously inspired by a story in Genesis in which Abraham and his household of 318 routed the forces of four wicked kings (in the same way the council had exposed the evil errors of Arius).

Most likely the actual figure was closer to 200. Also, bishops were accompanied by fellow clergy—both presbyters and deacons—placing the total number of attendees close to a thousand or more. The sheer size of the assembly had no precedent in church history.

Angry old Saint Nicholas

Since we have no historical records of the council’s proceedings, a host of apocryphal stories about it have proliferated. In one legend, Saint Nicholas of Myra (270–343, the original Santa Claus) shows up at the council and becomes so angry with Arius that he punches him. Another tale has Nicholas proving the doctrine of the triune God at the council through a miracle—he changes brick into earth, fire, and water before the eyes of the astonished emperor.