Why Nicaea still matters

What does a church meeting that took place over a millennium and half ago have to do with our lives in the contemporary world? As it turns out, everything about our human existence and destiny hinges upon the Biblical truths that were summarized and defended at the “Great and Holy Synod” of Nicaea, which convened 1,700 years ago this month.

In May of 325, around 300 Christian bishops met in the city of Nicaea (now İznik, Turkey) to settle a theological dispute that had been roiling the ancient Christian church for several years. Called by the Emperor Constantine, who had converted to Christianity only 13 years earlier, the council met to address the contentious teaching of Arius, an Alexandrian priest who taught that the Son of God was merely the first and most exalted of God’s creatures. The council rejected Arius’s view and affirmed the true divinity of the Son as One possessing the very same essence as the Father (Greek: homousios). The creed that the council produced was controversial at the time and its precise meaning was hotly debated throughout the middle of the fourth century, but in time the council and its creed came to be received as truly “ecumenical,” that is, as statements of orthodox belief for the worldwide Christian church. Christians today still confess the affirmations of the Nicene Creed as a faithful summary of the Bible’s teaching on Jesus Christ and His relationship to the Father.

The central question that the council took up was the identity of the Son of God. Arius and his followers were convinced that the Father alone is the great and high God of Holy Scripture. The Son, therefore, must have been created by the Father at some point in the distant past. “There was once when he was not,” was their preferred slogan. In other words, there was a time when the Son did not exist. He, too, was created by the Father. To be sure, the Arians did not argue that the Son was a mere man. They believed in his pre-existence and his highly exalted status as the instrument of God in creation and redemption. But they did not confess him as God properly so called, as one co-equal and co-eternal with the Father. Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, with the aid of his young assistant Athanasius, convinced the majority of bishops at the council that such a teaching was destructive of the entire edifice of Christian belief. From the beginning, Christians had worshipped Jesus as God and had acknowledged that the salvation He brings could only have been accomplished by a divine Person.

The language of the original Nicene Creed was theologically precise but also spiritually poetic. The Son was not made by the Father but was “begotten of the Father”—not created but eternally and timelessly generated from the Father’s substance and therefore possessing the very same essence as the Father. He is, therefore, “God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God.” The Creed was framed in three articles, one for each of the divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (though the statement on the Spirit would only be filled out at the Council of Constantinople in 381). Thus, in the Nicene Creed, the doctrine of the Trinity was given its definitive expression. The Persons of the Trinity are identical in essence though distinct in their eternal relations. The Father is unbegotten, the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father (and the Son, as the Western churches came to confess). None of this was merely high-minded academic or philosophical speculation. The Creed gave the church a way of synthesizing, explaining, and defending what the Scriptures themselves teach: that there is only one God, that the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit are each to be identified as that one God, and that the divine Persons are relationally distinct from one another from all eternity. These affirmations did not introduce some new concept, alien to Christian faith and practice, but simply named the mystery of the divine that we encounter in our salvation and worship.

The Nicene Creed did not settle all disputes in the fourth century. Arianism and its derivatives made a comeback. Athanasius and others, who defended the Nicene settlement, often found themselves on the outs with church leadership and the imperial court. Alternatives to Nicaea were put forward. New debates emerged about the divine identity of the Holy Spirit. So, it took another council toward the end of the fourth century, the Council of Constantinople, to round out what we know today as the Nicene Creed. But the events that were set in motion in May of 325 at Nicaea would forever change the course of church history and global history more broadly.

One of the lessons that we can learn from Nicaea is simply this: Theology matters. A proper understanding of God’s nature and works is foundational to human flourishing. There are many pressing issues in every generation: intellectually, morally, culturally, and politically. But none are more important than rightly confessing the true nature of God as He is revealed in Holy Scripture. Indeed, discerning the truth in all of these other areas is downstream from an accurate apprehension of God Himself. Only when we come to understand the tri-personal and all-glorious God of Scripture—our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier—will we have the wherewithal to discern our true humanity, made in His image, and to address the intellectual and moral challenges of the day.