Christian History Magazine Collection

What exactly happened at the famous Council of Nicea, when the Roman emperor convened some 250 quarreling Christian bishops?

by Robert Payne from Christian History magazine no. 51

It was of great importance in Christian and even in world history, wrote historian W.H.C. Frend about the first Council of Nicea.

In Christian history, the doctrine of Christs divinitya doctrine essential and unique to Christianity was formally affirmed for the first time. In world history, never before had the entire church gathered to determine policy and doctrinelet alone at the bidding of the Roman emperor.

The following article, written by the late writer and biographer Robert Payne (d. 1983), is excerpted and adapted from his The Holy Fire: The Story of the Early Centuries of the Christian Churches in the Near East (1957). Forty years of scholarship later, one can rightfully quibble about some historical details (clarifications and some updated findings are in brackets). But no other narrative conveys as well the human dimension of this critical event.

Alexander of Alexandria had called a meeting of the presbyters [priests]. According to the historian Socrates, the aging pope [some early senior bishops were called papa, that is, father] with perhaps too philosophical minuteness began to lecture on the theological mystery of the Holy Trinity.

Alexander had been discussing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost for some time when he was interrupted by one of the presbyters called Arius, a native of Libya. There is no evidence that Alexander was a profound theologian. He may have bumbled, and it is possible that Arius was justified in accusing Alexander of Sabellianism, a heresy that involved a belief in the unity of God at the expense of the reality of the Trinity. But in combating Alexander, Arius fell into a new heresy, for he announced, If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son was not.

Here, at some time in 319, the cry of the AriansThere was a time when the Son was notwas first heard. The words were to have an extraordinary influence on the shaping of the church. They were dynamite and split the church in two, and these words, which read in Greek like a line of a song, still echo down the centuries.

The Issue

Alexander was appalled by the new heresy and knew that desperate measures would be necessary to combat it. Once it is admitted that there was a time when the Son was not, then a bewildering series of further heresies follows. High as he is, the Son is now infinitely lower than the Father. The words are like a wedge, splitting the monotheism of the church. Athanasius [Alexanders chief deacon assistant] saw the danger clearly, and he seems to have taken over from Alexander the task of refuting Arius.

To the credit of Athanasius, he saw clearly that the most dangerous of existing heresies was precisely the heresy announced by Arius. It was a very simple heresy. All Arius said was that if the Father begat the Son, then the Son must have had a birth, and therefore there was a time when the Son of God did not exist. He had come into existence according to the will of the Heavenly Father, and therefore he was less than the heavenly Father, though greater than man. Christ was no more than a mediator between man and God. No, answered Alexander and Athanasius; Christ is absolute God.

In our own heretical age, the dispute between Athanasius and Arius may appear to be a splitting of hairs, but it was not so at the time. The historian Gibbon was amused by the thought that Christianity almost foundered on the controversy between homoousios and homoiousios, the fate of humankind hanging on a single iota. But the difference between Christ the mediator and Christ the God is a very real one, and whether Christ is of the same substance [homo-ousios] or a like substance [homoi-ousios] to God the Father is a matter of importance to all Christians, not only theologians.

Arianism brought Christ down to earth, making him at once inferior to the Father, and more popular. Following Arius, a person could believe that Christ was no more than a great, virtuous, and superbly godlike hero. Against this conception, Alexander and Athanasius rebelled, and they seem to have been perfectly aware that the heresy had the power to destroy the church as they knew it.

Round One

Alexander seems to have behaved with patience; there were long private interviews with Arius; special prayers were offered against the emerging heresy. The clergy of Alexandria were assembled to discuss the matter, and most of them signed an urgent letter to Arius, begging him to acknowledge his heresy. Arius refused.

Alexander had no alternative but to summon a synod of the bishops of Egypt and Libya and depose Arius and his followers. Thereupon Alexander issued an encyclical, stating tersely that the quarrel had gone beyond his powers of healing, and the views of Arius were anathema. The heresy, which was to grow into an immense poisonous flower, was still only a bud, and not all its implications were visible at first. In his encyclical, Alexander explains some of the consequences of the heresy:

The novelties the Arians have put forward contrary to the Scriptures are these: God was not always a Father the Word of God was not always [for] there was a time when he was not neither is he like in essence to the Father; neither is he the true and natural Word of the Father; neither is he his true wisdom . And the Father cannot be described by the Son, for the Word does not know the Father perfectly and accurately.

Alexanders letter, which shows signs of having been partly written by Athanasius, is a masterly summary of the heresy in its beginnings, but it suffered from one obvious fault. It was close-knit and logical. The people wanted something they could sing, and this Arius provided in abundance. There was a time when the Son was not became a catch phrase. There were many other catch phrases, hymns and songs, to be sung at table and by sailors, millers, and travelers. The people took up the cause of Arius, who withdrew to Palestine and later to Nicomedia, where he was protected by the bishop. Here in a corner of Asia Minor not far from Byzantium, Arius continued to taunt the pope of Alexandria, secure in the knowledge that the people were with him.

Arius possessed other advantages. Eusebius, the bishop of Nicomedia, had friends at court and was particularly close to Constantia, the sister of Emperor Constantine. Already the evil that had begun in the church of Alexandria was running through all Egypt, Libya, Upper Thebes, Palestine, and Asia Minor.