The Council of Nicaea

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Speaker 10 1700 years ago, an unprecedented council of early Christian bishops gathered at Nicaea, not far from present-day Istanbul.

Speaker 10 The council had been convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine, Constantine the Great, to address a theological dispute, a schism amongst early Christians that threatened to explode across the empire.

Speaker 10 Constantine wanted it sorted.

Speaker 10 At the center of the council was the issue of homoousion,

Speaker 10 this idea that the Father, God, the Son, who would be Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit were all equal.

Speaker 10 The two figureheads on opposing sides of this dispute were Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria on one side, and Arius, a member of the clergy, on the other.

Speaker 10 Arius had the idea that there was almost this divine hierarchy, that the Son was subordinate to the Father.

Speaker 10 Alexander and his followers believed that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were of equal weight and shared the same divine substance. This dispute was the so-called Arian controversy.

Speaker 10 The bishops had gathered at Nicaea to determine which was the correct doctrine and which was heresy. Their decision remains central to Christianity even today.

Speaker 10 It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.

Speaker 10 Joining me to explain the Council of Nicaea and why this ecumenical council was one of the most important events of early Christianity, I was delighted to interview Dr.

Speaker 10 Dafith Daniel, a lecturer in divinity at the University of St. Andrews.
We delve into the fascinating details of this early Christian theological dispute, and I really do hope you enjoy.

Speaker 10 Dafith, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

Speaker 13 Well, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 10 And it's a special anniversary, it feels this year, because 2025, it's the 1700th anniversary of one of the most pivotal moments in Christian history, the Council of Nicaea.

Speaker 10 But this isn't just a dry theological debate. It's got power, politics, intense religious rivalry, all set against the backdrop of the Roman Empire's first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great.

Speaker 10 So with that established, I mean, let's start with the basics.

Speaker 10 For listeners who might not be familiar with early Christianity, what was the Council of Nicaea and why does it still matter so much today?

Speaker 13 So the Council of Nicaea was a church council called by the Emperor Constantine in 325.

Speaker 13 It's the first ecumenical council, so worldwide council. In fact, the word ecumenical was coined by Eusebius of Caesarea, one of the church historians who was there to describe this council worldwide.

Speaker 13 It's significant because it decides really two of the most sort of fundamental doctrines in Christianity that we've all sort of heard about, the Trinity and the Incarnation, but also because through that it really is the beginning of, well, one of two things, depending on your point of view.

Speaker 13 It's either the beginning of modern Christianity, Christianity is a public, visible religion, civic religion, or it's the beginning of the corruption of Christianity, because it involves this decision of what is orthodox and therefore what is heretical, and involves the state's action in that.

Speaker 10 Is it quite a definitive line that either you go the way that is agreed and that's orthodox, or if you don't and anything else is seen as heresy?

Speaker 13 Yes, this is where the church council produces this Nicene Creed, something still read out today, this sort of foundational text.

Speaker 13 Now, it certainly is trying to clearly decide a distinction between orthodoxy and heresy. One of the interesting things is that it's not necessarily entirely clear what Nicaea has decided.

Speaker 13 These obscure phrases, homoousion, which I'm sure we'll get to, what does that really mean? Is that heretical itself, which was one perspective at the time?

Speaker 13 And then even though Nicaea, the council, makes this decision, In the immediate aftermath, really the opposing side, who are the Aryans, seem to come to the fore a bit more than the Nicenes.

Speaker 13 So it's part of a very vibrant struggle or discussion, depending how you want to phrase it, through this period.

Speaker 10 Well, we're going to be exploring all of that in detail, but Daph, at the beginning, as we kind of explore the background, you also mentioned in passing a figure called Eusebius of Caesarea.

Speaker 10 Do we have many literary sources for this event in this time in history?

Speaker 13 Yeah, it's striking is that because we don't.

Speaker 13 I suppose that's the interesting thing because I think now we'd, and certainly I would think of something like a church council of any kind would have all sorts of minutes taken and there'd be all these records and everything else.

Speaker 13 But that's not the case here. I mean, it goes on for a couple of months, it seems.
We're not in time, maybe starts on the 20th of May, ends in July in Nicaea 325. Even that's not that clear.

Speaker 13 Our main sources for it are Eusebius of Caesarea, who is there, and also Athanasius of Alexandria.

Speaker 13 Obviously, they have their own particular point of view and perspective, which may well interfere with their account and recognition of what's gone on. But it's in their books.

Speaker 13 that we have their account of what went on, but also extracts from some of Constantine's letters, which follow the council, which go up to the church to tell the church what were decisions that have been made.

Speaker 13 And, of course, other records of, for example, the writings of Arius.

Speaker 13 And, you know, part of the build-up to the controversy is sort of hundreds of letters being exchanged all over the place between these various bishops, theologians, and versions of those recorded in those historic accounts, as well as others later on.

Speaker 13 So there's Theodoretus Cyrus and a couple of other sort of historians, more in the fifth century, who also have some sort of access to documents documents that don't seem to survive and only survive in those histories.

Speaker 13 Constantine also wrote other letters to try and prevent the council happening, to try and stop everyone arguing and to calm down. Again, we've got sort of versions of those letters.

Speaker 13 Whether they're how accurate they are is open to debate.

Speaker 10 Well, let's explore the context as to why this council is happening in 325 AD. Big question, Daphth.
What is happening in the Roman Empire and the church in those years running up to 325?

Speaker 13 Yeah, okay. So in the empire itself, and so we're coming out of the

Speaker 13 so-called crisis of the third century, sort of unsettled period in Roman history, right?

Speaker 13 So, you know, we've had the plagues like Plague of Cyprian, which has wiped out 50% of Alexandria and things like that, and all these barbarian tribes attacking in the third century leading to an unsettled situation.

Speaker 13 Various people declaring themselves Caesar all the time, right? You know, they win a battle and they're going to be the new emperor.

Speaker 13 So the crisis of the third century has led to, at the end of that period, the Tetrarchy.

Speaker 13 a tetrarchy system of government has been established by Diocletian, which has seemed to work sort of fairly well, right? You've got two Augusti, right?

Speaker 13 Two senior emperors, East and West, then these junior Caesars beneath them. And that, of course, means you've got more imperial people closer to the action across the empire, to the troubled areas.

Speaker 13 And that seems to work fairly well until 306, when the Augustus at that point, the lead of Augustus in the West, Constantius, who is Constantine's father, dies.

Speaker 13 And that then leads really to set off to civil war in the Empire between these rival Augusti and Caesars. They all start fighting each other.

Speaker 13 Not least Constantine, of course, but another chap, Maxentius, who was one of the original Augusti, but he's been left out of the equation.

Speaker 13 And then this other fellow, Licinius, who had been promoted above both Maxentius and Constantine, much to their consternation. And so they've all been fighting with each other.

Speaker 13 Maxentius is significant because it leads us to the Battle of Milvian Bridge, which I'm sure we'll come to. That's 312.
That's where Constantine gets rid of him, his half-brother.

Speaker 13 And then later on, Constantine gets rid of his other half-brother, Licinius, in the Battle of Chrysopolis in 324. So, period of civil war and settlement.

Speaker 13 Now, we've got this single man, Constantine, has become the sole emperor. So, a period of settlement has emerged there through periods of unrest.
That's the empire at large.

Speaker 13 The church, well, the church has also come through really its main periods of persecution. So, there's only two really empire-wide persecutions of the church.
One of them is Decius in the 250s.

Speaker 13 It's not aimed at Christianity as such. Decius wants a return to the worship of the ancient gods, and so that gathers the Christians up into it.

Speaker 13 As part of the Tetrarchy, however, Diocletian, Galarius, do have a concentrated persecution against Christians. This is called the Great Persecution.

Speaker 13 And that has continued until softly in 311 when Galerius releases an edict of toleration, but finally with the Edict of Milan, which comes out of Constantine and Licinius before they separate.

Speaker 13 So it's been a period of unrest, of unrest for the Empire and the church and persecution for Christians, which is part of this, does feed into Nicaea because part of the struggle, sort of internal politics of the church, and part of Constantine's concern is the fact that after those periods of persecution, you have certain Christian groups who are claiming to be the true church.

Speaker 13 And this is most famously with the Donatists in Africa.

Speaker 13 I mean, one of Constantine's first acts in 314, 314, so even before he's going towards Nicera, is to have the Council of Arb, which is to try and quiet these Donatists.

Speaker 13 So the Donatists oppose people who apostatized during the persecution. They surrendered the Bible, surrendered their faith.
Now they want to come back into the church, and the Donatists refusing.

Speaker 13 And the same thing is happening in Egypt with a chap called Militius.

Speaker 13 And so the Militians are also this group that don't necessarily seem suspect in their orthodoxy, unlike Aries and others that we'll come to, but they are claiming to be the real church of the spiritual church, the church of saints.

Speaker 13 And so again, there's a threat of schism and separation.

Speaker 10 So already in those immediate decades before the Council of Nicaea and before we get to the figure of Arius, there are other figures, as you've highlighted there, the Donatists and so on, which are almost a symbol of what's to come, that there are divisions emerging, maybe catalyzed by these persecutions that have happened in recent history.

Speaker 10 There are divisions in how people are viewing Christianity and how they should approach it.

Speaker 13 Yes, yeah, exactly right. No, exactly right.
I mean, the status of Christianity, even as a religion in the empire, has been much debated, right?

Speaker 13 It's only in that Edict of Milan that Christianity actually becomes officially recognized as a religion. I mean, that's part of a significant stage, right?

Speaker 13 It's not even viewed as a religion at that point. And yes, as you say, there's unrest about the status of the church, status of Christianity.
Is it a suspect cult? Is it something serious? Not.

Speaker 13 Even before this point, you've had the persecution of Decius in the 250s.

Speaker 13 After that, it's what's known as the little piece of the church, the sort of 40 years or so between that persecution and the great persecution.

Speaker 13 And then we've got this, the emperor Aurelian, and he is already asked to try and decide a controversy about another heresy, which is still being debated at the time of the Nicene Church, which is known as Sabalianism, with this extraordinary character, Paul of Samusata, who's a bishop of Antioch, who claims the privilege of the Queen Zenobia, who's sort of annexed part of Egypt and Syria from the empire.

Speaker 13 So, yeah, already the empire has been involved in trying to decide what's going on.

Speaker 13 And of course, that goes back, you know, the earliest record that we have of Christianity even being discussed is Pliny with Trajan, you know, saying he's found these odd people.

Speaker 13 You know, I've tortured them anyway.

Speaker 13 Now, what should I do with them now? You know, sort of thing.

Speaker 10 Yes, he's like, don't go looking for the Christians, but if they do, you can execute them or something like that.

Speaker 10 They've got a very interesting relationship with the Christians early on.

Speaker 10 It seems like, in regards to the events of the Roman Empire up to the Nicene Creed, some key events and things to highlight, as you have highlighted already, Daph, daphyth is at the end of the third century crisis the emperor diocletian comes along creates the ruler for the tetrarchy those two senior emperors and those two junior emperors seems to work for a period of time but then after diocletian goes the next successor is constantius chlorus he dies early on his son constantine is proclaimed emperor in 306 and very quickly it all starts falling apart and you get those civil wars like constantine versus maxentius and so on ultimately leading to constantine ditching the Tetrarchy completely and becoming a sole emperor again by the time we get to the Council of Nicaea.

Speaker 10 So let's focus on Constantine's career a bit to get more context into his adoption or his relationship with Christianity by that time, because it seems it's been 13 years or so, hasn't it, by 325 and his the beginning of his relationship with Christianity.

Speaker 10 I feel this is where we probably want to explore the Milvian Bridge and why that's important.

Speaker 13 It's an extraordinary story, isn't it? And much debated how much truth there is in this and how it relates to wider sort of political motivations for Christian conversion as well as anything else.

Speaker 13 But Constantine is about to fight this battle against Maxentius and has this vision of a sign in the sky and this line, in this sign, conquer, and later has a dream, a dream of Christ coming to him.

Speaker 13 This is how it's relayed by Lactantius and Eusebius of Caesarea, both of whom knew Constantine personally.

Speaker 13 And the sign in question is the Cairo symbol. So the Cairo symbol is just the first two letters of Christos in Greek.
It's an X with a big P sticking out the top of the X.

Speaker 13 And Constantine makes this his symbol, right? He puts it on his standards, on his shield, and fights with this and wins an extraordinary victory.

Speaker 13 It's not clear why Maxentius comes out to fight even at such an exposed area and so wins.

Speaker 13 And so because that Constantine thanks the Christian God, you know, dedicates the victory to it, thinks it's come from that, and carries on using this symbol.

Speaker 13 It's said that Licinius lived in great fear of it, you know, at this later battle, Chrysopolis 324, it's sort of pagan symbols of Licinius against this Cairo symbol.

Speaker 13 So what's his real view of Christianity? I mean, it's clearly... It seems to have been a monotheist, right?

Speaker 13 So it seems to have believed in one God and seems like a lot of people in the ancient world too, and not least Christians themselves, to have had the view that you may have sort of natural revelation of God and then further revelation of Him.

Speaker 13 So it's no inconsistency to say, well, the Sun God is revealed as actually being this other one God, this Christian God.

Speaker 13 And then you take Christianity very seriously. I mean, as I mentioned, the Council of Isles very early on when he's deciding about Odonatus, but, you know, St.

Speaker 13 Peter's Basilica right in Rome, that's 318. Starts to build that, then 330, establishes Constantinople as a new capital.
That's sort of festooned with all its Christian buildings.

Speaker 13 It's a vibrant pluralist sense of religion, isn't it? That religion can appear in different forms as long as it's peaceful.

Speaker 13 And that the particular religion that you worship in this day of Christianity of Constantine doesn't have to, he doesn't have to repeal the Edict of Milan, which is about freedom of religious worship and convert to a Christian.

Speaker 13 That's sort of what I'm trying to get across, I suppose.

Speaker 10 There seems to be a bit more toleration at that time, doesn't it?

Speaker 10 And I remember interviewing Professor David Potter, and he was saying how with Constantine, it almost seemed like he was hedging his divine bets at times.

Speaker 10 Patronage to Christians, but also building temples and churches. So doing both things at hand.
But as time goes on, as you say, that endures.

Speaker 10 So by the time we get to 325 AD, does he feel responsibility? Is he the one who calls the council together? Or what do we know about that?

Speaker 13 Yes. So he does call the council and seems to preside over it in some form, interjecting the debate, so far as we can tell.

Speaker 13 He feels bound to call it, as far as we can tell from the documents we have from the time.

Speaker 13 It's not that he's very interested, again back to your point about hedging the bets, not that he's very interested in the theological question that's at issue.

Speaker 13 In fact, he thinks it's ridiculous, as far as we tell, that they should stop messing around and introducing disorder debate over this sort of minute and obscure, you know, theologians of any age, I suppose, can find something to disagree over.

Speaker 13 They need to not to bother with that sort of stuff just to keep peace in the church. So his interest definitely in peaceableness, in order.

Speaker 13 I mean, Eusebius dubs him bishop of those outside the church.

Speaker 13 So he's not an official churchman, not baptized, of course, as he isn't until he's just before he dies, but he's responsible for those who are believers.

Speaker 13 Another way of putting it, I I suppose, is that what Constantine represents is the laity, right? The voice of the laity coming into Christian affairs. They should be represented.

Speaker 13 They should have a sense of it, because you can't allow theologians to entangle things in endless debates, especially when those debates spill over into civic disorder.

Speaker 10 So is it a case then that Constantine, he hears that there are these divisions emerging in the Christian church and he's worried about dissent, about trouble within the empire if it's not sorted?

Speaker 13 Yeah, that's right. That's it.
So Arius is a priest in Alexandria. So so just a priest, and he objects to what his bishop Alexander is teaching.
So he objects to it.

Speaker 13 And he makes his objections very clear, and then writes to loads of other people to say that this patriarch is a heretic, basically, and

Speaker 13 should we really be following him? Should we actually maybe organise our own deacons? It seems that some followers of Arius are even sort of ordaining their own deacons and so on.

Speaker 13 So a threat to that order, right, that principle of order within the church.

Speaker 13 So then both Alexander and Arius are writing all over the place to sort of hundreds of other, you know, bishops across, you know, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Turkey, in modern-day terms, writing to all of them to try and get them on their side.

Speaker 13 And of course, then they are then appealing to imperial power, imperial authority to help try and decide this debate. And so in the end, Arius is exiled.

Speaker 13 And 3-2-1, he's thrown out, but he doesn't wish to be thrown out. So he appeals back.
And Constantine says, look, can't you just both, you know, shake hands and call it a draw or whatever and move on.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 then they have their own individual synods to try and decide the answer to the question. And that can't decide it.

Speaker 13 So then finally, Constantine says, right, well, he's going to organise something just to decide this question once and for all.

Speaker 13 This question is causing disorder through Africa, through Turkey, whatever else.

Speaker 13 If people are saying that this is something that they're going to disagree about, then we better try and settle the question. And that's why it's the first ecumenical council.

Speaker 13 So it seems to be 315 bishops, extraordinary number of people, and that would then include thousands of priests, right, brought in from across the empire. Only five from the West, interestingly.

Speaker 13 Most Most of these are Eastern bishops, only five from the West. But you know, they're all coming in to try and decide this question.

Speaker 13 Just if we can decide this question, then maybe everyone can just move on and stop arguing about it.

Speaker 13 I think Constantine's point seems to be: if you want to debate some minute point of theology, then you can.

Speaker 13 But the idea of then threatening a schism, really, which is what this is, threatening the church become divided into different types of different churches to rival each other, then that's not going to help some people battle and disagreement.

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Speaker 10 David, before we explore the Council of Nicaea, I hope you don't mind if we delve into a bit more detail about what Arius and Alexander were disagreeing about and really, really get that sorted for us so we can nail that down.

Speaker 10 And also, I guess, first of all, why it's happening in Alexandria. You mentioned there's a patriarch of Alexandria.

Speaker 10 So set the scene of Alexandria at this time in Egypt and the strength strength of Christianity there. And then

Speaker 10 what is the root of this disagreement that erupts between Arius on one side and Alexander on the other?

Speaker 13 It's incredibly interesting, isn't it, important to remember that we've got Paul's letters as the earliest documents of the Christian religion, and these are writing to these churches in the Eastern world, right?

Speaker 13 Fesus, Corinth, in Greece, and so on.

Speaker 13 So really the Eastern Empire, which later will become the Byzantium Empire, is the start of Christianity, where Christianity comes from and grows out into the West.

Speaker 13 So just fewer bishops in the West, fewer Christians in the West. This really is a thriving Greco-Christian culture in these areas of the world, Asia Minor, Alexandria, and so on.

Speaker 13 And so later on, we're going to have Jerusalem as a important place, then Constantinople, a little bit, later an important place.

Speaker 13 But at the moment, we've got Antioch in Syria and Alexandria in Egypt, as these really key posts in the Christian world.

Speaker 13 And this is where a concentration of bishops are, then across these areas, metropolitan bishops.

Speaker 13 And then they have their own priests and everything else the estimate is really that by 300 10 of the empire is christian so sort of 10 million people and then by the middle of the fourth century you've got about half of the empire is christian so you know growing numbers and large numbers to debate these issues with each other the actual debate the actual debate between the two

Speaker 13 we've got the trinity right we all know the trinity father son and holy ghost we've got an issue here then of the father and the son Are they all equal? Are they equal?

Speaker 13 Is there any differences between them? What's the difference between the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost? Are they the same or different?

Speaker 13 If you're saying they're really different, then you're saying you've got three gods. So you don't want to have that.
You don't want to be a polytheist. So you want to connect them in some way.

Speaker 13 So, how are you going to connect them and bring them together?

Speaker 13 Now, Aries's claim is really straightforward semantics: is that the Son must be subordinate to the Father, otherwise, it's not a Son and it's not a Father.

Speaker 13 So, his claim, Arianism, is a form of a particular viewpoint that we call monarchianism.

Speaker 13 So monarchianism comes from monarch, right, monos, one, and then arke, principle, rule.

Speaker 13 So one principle rule, a belief then that God is one, that God is not just a being, God is being, God is everything, God is all, God is this essence beyond description, a particular substance, a divine substance, a deity, something above all things.

Speaker 13 He's created a world completely different from it, that's utterly transcendent from it.

Speaker 13 The Christian religion then poses a great threat for these Greek philosophically minded figures like Aries and others that you've got this principle of God.

Speaker 13 How can you then explain that it becomes incarnate? Arius solves it in an interesting way. So Arius' point is that there's the God, God of substance, God that becomes a father when he begets a son.

Speaker 13 So Arius's tagline is that there was a time that the sun was not. The sun is not eternal because he hasn't existed always, unlike God.

Speaker 13 So what the sun is for Arius, in effect, is divine, but not the deity, deity, not the Godhead. It's another level or ranking of divinity between the two.

Speaker 13 And so it means the Son is the creator of the world, is the mediator of the world, can become incarnate to save the world, but you leave the Father as pure Godhead, if you like, above it.

Speaker 13 So that allows Arius to solve that problem.

Speaker 10 So the Son is Jesus, is it? This idea that Jesus wasn't there at the beginning, but he's created by God for his mission on earth and that.

Speaker 13 Yeah, that's right. So the Son is Jesus.
So the Son becomes incarnate then as Jesus in the world and then can exist to save it in the world. So, I mean, let's put it in these sort of terms, right?

Speaker 13 The son is at home with the father in heaven or whatever, right?

Speaker 13 Now, the son then decides to leave that place and become incarnate as a particular human being, which is Jesus, and then acts to save it.

Speaker 13 Well, I mean, one thing I suppose to emphasize about Arianism... is that it shouldn't be confused with a later heresy called Sassinianism, which denies the divinity of Jesus.

Speaker 13 I mean, this is still saying that Jesus is the Son of God and is divine. It's just he's a different level of God.
He's not the highest God.

Speaker 10 So that is Arius's position. So, how does that differ then from Alexander's?

Speaker 13 Yeah, okay. So, what's the problem with Arius? Well, Arius is suggesting what's called hetero-ousio, right?

Speaker 13 So, usia is substance, and hetra is different, that the father and the son are different substances, different divine substances.

Speaker 13 So, one problem there for Alexander is that that seems to return us to polytheism. We've We've got more than one God, more than one divine substance.

Speaker 13 So this is where you get then the homoousion viewpoint. What that is saying is that the father and the son are the same substance.
They're equal. Now,

Speaker 13 what's the problem with saying that? Why is that such a problem? That seems to be okay, right? Say they're the same, they're equal.

Speaker 13 Well, the problem for Arius, why Arius views it as a heresy, is that then what you're saying is that the father becomes incarnate and dies on a cross. And you shouldn't be saying that, right?

Speaker 13 Because you should be able to distinguish something about these persons. There must be different persons.

Speaker 13 In Aries' own light, he's actually being the most Christian because he's preserving that there's three different persons in the Godhead.

Speaker 13 Whereas for their opponents, Alexander, they're being really Christians because they're preserving the fact that Christ is fully divine in the same sense as the Father.

Speaker 13 And so that's why they want to push that homoousion language.

Speaker 10 Well, let's now move on to the debate. So you've already highlighted how this explodes out of Alexandria.

Speaker 10 It reaches the Emperor Constantine, and he starts getting worried that it will affect concord and harmony in the empire.

Speaker 10 So the creating of this council, and as you've also highlighted, this feels unprecedented. It doesn't feel like this has happened before, has it?

Speaker 10 When the council is called and the people get together, what should we be imagining at Nicaea? What should we imagine with this council and how it looks?

Speaker 13 Well, it's a great question because no one's entirely sure. I mean, it's like open to our imagination a little bit.
I mean, and I find it very difficult to imagine.

Speaker 13 It must be the most extraordinary thing ever. I mean, so Constantine pays for it all to bring all of these bishops together.
The discussion is in Greek.

Speaker 13 Constantine, when he speaks, speaks in Latin, it seems for the most part, rather than Greek, although he does understand Greek and occasionally talks in Greek.

Speaker 10 And he's actively there as well. He's not

Speaker 10 dictating it from afar. Okay.

Speaker 13 No, no, he's actively there. So he opens the council.
So you can imagine these, I mean, in effect, thousands of people gathered together in Nicaea.

Speaker 13 He moves it to Nicaea just so he can attend, because that's closer to where he is.

Speaker 13 And, you know, Eusebius and Athanasius give these extraordinary glowing descriptions of Constantine opening the debate.

Speaker 13 You know, Eusebius is describing this sort of transfigured figure, right, sort of in this glowing gold, opening the discussion.

Speaker 13 Then what it is is really heated argument for months between these bishops and others. They are heavily disagreeing.

Speaker 13 As you alluded to earlier, they're not always clear whether in actual fact they are agreeing rather than disagreeing. There's one great story which seems sadly not to be true.

Speaker 13 that Father Christmas himself, St. Nicholas, who maybe was not even actually there, but he was around and was a Nicene, that he was at the council and sort of biffed Arius on the nose.

Speaker 13 He sort of slapped him across the face for his views, which says Father Christmas.

Speaker 10 You wouldn't have imagined it.

Speaker 13 So, yeah, a really heated, heated discussion that each side feels that their view is the orthodoxy, right? Should be the view, and that each other view is really in danger of doing something.

Speaker 13 You know, one view feels it threatens the divinity of Christ and therefore salvation, the other that it really diminishes our idea of what God and the Godhead is.

Speaker 13 And then there are even compromises suggested. And according to Eusebius of Caesarea, it's actually Constantine himself who rejects those sorts of compromises.
He insists on homosion.

Speaker 13 Constantine seems to prefer that sort of language of clarity. Just say, well, this is the point of view, and that's it.

Speaker 13 And then in the end, they all have to sign this creed, sign their agreement to a Nicene Creed, which only two bishops don't do.

Speaker 13 Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonis of Mammaris, I think they are those two. They don't sign.
They're the only two who don't sign and they're deposed as a result. Aries is exiled, they're exiled.

Speaker 13 Then Constantine at the end, you know, we decide Homoison, that's the end of the debate, we've settled it all, and then he issues Aries' work to be burned.

Speaker 13 You know, you're not meant to support his works, not meant to even own them or have them. This is now the orthodoxy.

Speaker 10 And is this all written down then, if it was important to then cover this in the Nicene Creed?

Speaker 10 Because what is this and is this almost, as you say, the kind of the confirmation written down of what they've agreed?

Speaker 13 That's right. Yeah, and so that is the Nicene Creed.

Speaker 13 So it is emphasizing the divinity of Jesus as the Son incarnate, and that the divinity of Jesus is equal with that of the Father, that the God and the Father are one.

Speaker 13 And so this is where it says, you know, the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, all that sort of language, and begotten, not made.

Speaker 13 That later on becomes, you know, eternally begotten, to emphasize that God is also internal. And then further to emphasize that, you know, the of one substance, right? Homo Uson.

Speaker 13 The Son is from the substance of the Father, from this Godhead, that divine substance, but it's also one with that substance.

Speaker 13 It's really emphasized the fact that the Son is divine and equal, and therefore Jesus is divine and equal. And so it is, you know, that great Aryan tagline, you know, there was a time when he was not.

Speaker 13 So in other words, the Son was born at a certain point, was made. Well, that's anathema.
There was not a time when he wasn't, and so on. As I say, the Holy Spirit is just mentioned as an aside, right?

Speaker 13 And the Holy Spirit, so that's still needed to be settled. And then this fundamental question, right? Okay, we're clear now.
There's a Trinity. The Son is equal with the Father.
They're all divine.

Speaker 13 They're Homoous on the same substance. How can Christ be both human and divine? I won't go to that now because that's a huge other thing.
But when that is decided, this language of homoousion returns.

Speaker 13 So, you know, what does Nicaea settle in itself?

Speaker 13 It gives great clarity as a substantive statement with a controversial word, and then it still leaves open many questions how God can be three persons in one.

Speaker 13 But then part of the point then is that maybe some things just have to be left a mystery, right? Maybe things are not inaccessible to human reasoning and everything else.

Speaker 13 That's part of the viewpoint here. And that seems to be Constantine's view in his letters.
We've got a letter of Alexander's when he's complaining about Arius to another Alexander of Byzantium.

Speaker 13 And just he's saying that Aries is straying into things that are beyond human reason, right? So there's certain mysteries that have to be left there. That might be part of the argument.

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Speaker 10 So at the Council of Nicaea, they ultimately come up with the Nicene Creed and the understanding of homoousion and being three different parts.

Speaker 10 Is there anything else big that we haven't covered that is achieved at the Council of Nicaea alongside the Nicene Creed and the condemning of Arianism or of what Arius believes is heresy?

Speaker 13 It does do much more than the Creed, which is part of why the debates went on for months about a lot of things.

Speaker 13 I mean, even celibacy of priests is something that is where the priests can be married is something that's being heavily discussed as well. So, one thing is the date of Easter.

Speaker 13 Again, the idea of uniformity. It doesn't work, of course, because East and West still have different dates for Easter following that because they date the spring equinox at different times.

Speaker 13 But that was the idea that you could move away from the Jewish calendar, also try and get everyone to agree when they celebrate Easter.

Speaker 13 Also, Sunday established as a day of rest, one thing that Constantine does. You know, one thing that comes out of the Nicaea Council is not just the Creed, it's also also the canons.

Speaker 13 This is the beginning of canon law, right? Church law, the first stems of canon law. What they're a lot about is about church structure, organization.
How do you organise things?

Speaker 13 So a lot of these canons are setting rules for how you decide who's going to be a bishop.

Speaker 13 It's setting rules that you, as a deacon and a priest, you have to follow the direction of your particular bishop in your area.

Speaker 13 That if you're exiled or anathematized in one area of the church, one province, one bishopric, you can't just move next door, right, and then become, carry on being a priest over there.

Speaker 13 So a lot of that is decided laid down as that canon law. You know, I mentioned by celibacy of priests.
I mean, it's decided that priests can remain married there.

Speaker 13 They just can't live with any woman that they want to live with, or isn't of upright character, I think is how they put it.

Speaker 13 Also, about whether eunuchs can be priests, and it's decided they can be, but you can't castrate yourself. You know, you can't willfully do that.

Speaker 13 Um, but you, if you've already gone through that process, you can become a priest and so on. So, those are some of the other things that come out of Nicaea and laid down and sent round to churches.

Speaker 13 And that's why we have those to survive, right?

Speaker 13 They're sort of gathered together, and they're the things that are sent out and laid down and kept i mean we talk about this as the first ecumenical council and you see this caesar describes it in those terms but you know but so after this and even before this there were so many synods and you know i've mentioned constantius the son of constant he he tries to have lots of his own councils to go in a more arian direction to reject a nicaea they're not then classed anymore as ecumenical councils, right?

Speaker 13 Because they don't fit this list of what's decided as what is orthodox. But no, the Nicaea is doing a lot of different things.

Speaker 13 And you can see there this laying down of maybe centralization isn't necessarily the right word, but the church has, what has the Christian church been?

Speaker 13 I mean, the earliest churches that survive are in sort of from the 230s, these house churches, right?

Speaker 13 More informal churches, private gatherings, you know, but now we've got Constantine is building churches, a visible display. of Christianity.
You can see already there's this huge network of bishops.

Speaker 13 I mean, staggering really how Christianity was already organized in this way, even before Constantine's conversion.

Speaker 13 And so, really, the structure was already in place, but now it's being more formularized, right? There's a sort of formal idea of what can be done.

Speaker 13 You know, once there's a rule, once the rule is decided, you can say, well, look, you're disobeying this rule. We all agreed this, right? We got together, we agreed it, and so let's all follow it.

Speaker 10 It does seem as if it's an important moment in the changing relationship between the church and the state, doesn't it?

Speaker 10 And especially also with the Emperor Constantine's presence as well as an overarching figure. I mean, Dafir, this has been brilliant, but just to wrap it up with the aftermath.

Speaker 10 So, Arianism, it doesn't disappear after the council.

Speaker 13 It doesn't disappear. No, it doesn't disappear.

Speaker 13 I mean, it has a media afterlife in that it becomes more successful in the short term because Constantius, Constantine's son, was educated by Eusebius of Nicanidea, who was the great Arian defender at Nicaea.

Speaker 13 And he's greatly embedded in the imperial court. And it's part really of exiling all sorts of Nicene people.

Speaker 13 Athanasius goes, Eustathius of Antioch goes, you know, Marcellus of Anchiro, all these figures who are pro-Nicene figures actually get into trouble and lose their sees for a while.

Speaker 13 And so, actually, the Arians gain ground. And it seems that

Speaker 13 Constantius is more interested in it. And so Jerome has this line later on.
He says, the world groaned to wake up and find itself Arian. That really Arianism was this short-term successor for a while.

Speaker 13 Then, of course, you've got Julian the Apostate, and that sort of falls apart. And then we go back to Nicene Emperor's Jovian, and then finally, Thadosius.

Speaker 13 I mean, also, Arianism has an interesting afterlife in two very different contexts.

Speaker 13 One, I always find really interesting is that through, I'm going to get his name wrong now, but it's Olfila, a priest ordained by this Eusebius of Nicanadea, he is the apostle to the Goths.

Speaker 13 And so the Visigoths and the Vandals who sack Rome are actually Arians. They're Arian Christians at that time.
But no, Arianism survives. And of course, you know, some great figures are in.

Speaker 13 The most famous Arian really is Isaac Newton. Isa Newton is Arian.
And he despises Athanasius.

Speaker 13 He thinks Athanasius was the Antichrist, that Nicaea, and obviously this was the beginning of the end of Christianity, has been destroyed from being a pure biblical religion, where you look at this scripture, what it's conveying to you, to something that is corrupted by an immoral murderer and power-seeking Athanasius away from it.

Speaker 13 And of course, you know, he wasn't public about that because of the Test Incorporation Acts.

Speaker 13 You know, in Britain, from the middle of the 17th century to the middle of the 19th century, you have the Testing Corporation Acts, which meant you had to sign up to not being an Aryan, to believing in the Trinity in the Nicene Way, to go to university, in Oxford and Cambridge, to have political office, to join the church.

Speaker 13 And this was to get rid of sort of variant of Arianism, like Unitarianism, we just don't believe in the Trinity at all.

Speaker 13 I mean, Samuel Clarke is called Sir Isaac Newton's bulldog because of his argument with Gottfried Leibniz. He's called Arian or Semi-Aryan.
Again, it's this interesting Arianism.

Speaker 13 We say it's called anti-Trinitarianism. That's why we now call things like Arianism.
But of course, they do believe in the Trinity.

Speaker 13 It's just they don't believe in the equality of the divine figures in the Trinity. That's the thing.

Speaker 13 They're not radical modalists or whatever that don't believe in it or Unitarians who wouldn't have the Trinity. They're a particular type of Christian.

Speaker 13 No, so Arianism, yeah, thrives for a little bit, but of course, Nicaea really has its great victory at what's now known as the Second Ecumenical Council, which is the one called by Theodosius in Constantinople in 381.

Speaker 13 And that's why the Nicene Creed that we have is the Niceno-Constantinople Creed, because that then settles, goes further into the language of the Son, but also adds in the Holy Spirit and settles that.

Speaker 13 It's a slightly longer creed, but that's the Nicene Orthodoxies combined with that.

Speaker 13 Now, of course, one last thing I should just mention, what then happens after all this is that a clause is added, which is called the folloque clause, which is to say the Holy Spirit doesn't just proceed from the Father, it proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Speaker 13 Because again, it emphasizes the equality, right? The Father and the Son are equal, so the Holy Spirit must come from both. Now, the Eastern Church doesn't like that.
So what becomes the schism?

Speaker 13 between East and West where they finally divide in 1054.

Speaker 13 The schism is over the clause that is added to Nassen Creed about whether or not the equality of the Father and the Son is such that the Holy Ghost also proceeds from both Father and Son rather than just the Father.

Speaker 10 So equality in the Trinity and Homoousion,

Speaker 10 you know, you can trace its roots back to the debate between Arius and Alexander, the Council of Nicaea and ultimately the split between East and West. It just continues throughout.

Speaker 10 I mean, Dafith, this has been absolutely, well, it's been really, really interesting to learn all about this.

Speaker 10 And it's a lot of deep theological debate as well to get through, but I think we succeeded in covering all the main points as well.

Speaker 10 Dafith, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come to the podcast and explain this big anniversary in Christian history.

Speaker 13 Okay, well thanks so much. A really great pleasure to have been here.

Speaker 10 Well, there you go. There was Dr.

Speaker 10 Dafith Daniel explaining the first council of Nicaea that occurred 1700 years ago, exploring key parts of the story such as the Arian controversy, the issue of Homoousion, and of course the Nicene Creed.

Speaker 10 I hope you enjoyed the episode.

Speaker 13 Thank you for for listening.

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If you leave us a rating as well, we'd really appreciate that.

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Speaker 13 That's enough from me, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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Speaker 7 Oh, scratchers, good idea.

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Speaker 3 We're glad we could assist.

Speaker 5 Thanks, random singing people.

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