The First Council of Nicea

1700 Years Ago

The First Council of Nicea was the initial ecumenical council of the Christian Church. It was held in the Bithynian city of Nicaea (now İznik, Türkiye) from May to August 325 AD. Christianity had only recently been legalized in the Roman Empire under the Edict of Milan, decreed by Emperor Constantine and Co-Emperor Licinius in 313 AD.

Internal doctrinal disputes, particularly the Arian Controversy, threatened the unity of the Church. Concerned about the dissension, Emperor Constantine convened the council. It was the first effort to attain consensus in the Church through an assembly representing all of Christendom. The council was attended by at least 200 bishops. With presbyters and deacons attending each bishop, the total attendance may have been between 1200 and 1900.

The Arian Controversy was a series of disputes between two theological factions led by Arius of Alexandria and Athanasius of Alexandria. The principal controversy concerned the relationship of Jesus to God. The position advanced by Arius argued that Jesus was created by God at a particular point in time like all the rest of creation, which meant that Jesus was divine only in a subordinate or figurative sense. This conflicted with the view espoused by Athanasius, which insisted that Jesus was coeternal with God and fully and essentially divine in the same way as God the Father.

The Emperor Constantine sided with Athanasius, and the First Council of Nicea formulated the initial version of the Nicene Creed, which appeared to settle the controversy in favor of the Athanasian position. Arius was declared a heretic and was exiled. Athanasius became the Bishop of Alexandria.

But most of the bishops of the Eastern empire had signed onto the creed out of deference to the Emperor, not because they agreed with its theology. And so the dispute continued. Constantine looked for mediating positions that would settle the controversy, and released Arius from exile after Arius reformulated some of his most controversial statements. Athanasius, on the other hand, refused to be swayed from the Council’s affirmation of the full divinity of Christ. After refusing to reinstate Arius to fellowship, Athanasius was exiled by Constantine to Trier, in what is now Germany. He was exiled again on four different occasions by successor emperors, all of whom supported the theology of Arius.

The views of Athanasius, however, ultimately prevailed and were declared orthodox. In 381, Emperor Theodosius convened the First Council of Constantinople. This council confirmed that Jesus was coeternal  with God and fully divine, and also clarified the divinity of the Holy Spirit. A revised version of the Nicene Creed was adopted at Constantinople and became the basis of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. In fact, the Nicene Creed is the only authoritative ecumenical statement of the Christian faith accepted by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Church of the East, and much of Protestantism.

The First Council of Nicea also resolved the Melitian controversy, which was over the readmission to the Church of Christians who had renounced the faith under persecution. It also established a uniform date for Easter and issued 20 canons (that is, church laws). The council manifested the new and expanding relationship between the Roman state and the Church and began an era lasting almost 500 years in which the Church’s development and history was greatly influenced by a series of seven ecumenical councils.