The first of the seven Ecumenical Councils of the undivided Church was the First Council of Nicaea. Convened in 325 AD by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great with the support of Pope Sylvester I, the council met from May through July in the Greek-speaking city of Nicaea, located in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. More than 300 bishops from across the Christian world—both East and West—gathered to address one of the most pressing theological crises of the time.
At the heart
of the council was the controversy sparked by Arius, a popular and influential
priest from Alexandria. Arius taught that Jesus Christ, while exalted above all
creation, was not fully divine in the same way as God the Father. He argued
that the Son had a beginning—summarized in his striking phrase: “there was a time when the Son was not.”
According to
Arius, if the Father “begot” the Son, then the Son must have come into
existence at some point in time. This meant that Christ, though the highest and
most glorious of God’s creations and the agent through whom the universe was
made, was still a creature—not equal to the Father in eternal divinity. For
Arius, the key idea was clear: Jesus was created, not eternal.
This teaching
spread rapidly and gained significant support throughout the Church. Its
influence became so widespread that it has been estimated a large portion – up
to half - of Christians in the following decades leaned toward Arian beliefs.
Concerned about both theological truth and the unity of his empire, Constantine
called the council to settle the issue decisively.
The bishops
at Nicaea overwhelmingly rejected Arianism. In response, they produced the
original form of the Nicene Creed, affirming the full divinity of Christ.
Central to their declaration was the term homoousios—meaning
“of the same substance.” This word expressed that the Son is not merely similar
to the Father, but fully shares in the same divine nature.
The creed
makes this explicit: Christ is “begotten,
not made.” He is eternally begotten of the Father, not created, and
is consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit. As the second Person of
the Trinity, He possesses the fullness of the Godhead and has no beginning. For
our salvation, this eternal Son “came down from heaven” and was incarnate by
the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
A single
letter became the focal point of the debate. You may have heard the phrase, “it doesn’t make an iota of difference.”
In this case, it made all the difference. An iota—the smallest letter in the Greek
alphabet—distinguished two crucial Christological terms. Arius preferred homoiousios (“of similar
substance”), while the council affirmed homoousios
(“of the same substance”). That one small difference safeguarded the Church’s
understanding of Christ’s true divinity.
As concerns
Jesus Christ, the Son, the unified voice of the Church at Nicaea gave us a
lasting gift: the Nicene Creed, still proclaimed by Christians around the world
today:
I
believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
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