Arius and Nicea (src: Ryan Reeves)

Video

• Link to recording segments on Dropbox

Summary

To properly understand the council of Nicea, we must understand the historical, political, and spiritual backdrop surrounding that event. Constantine had come to the throne and unified the empire after the civil wars of the Diocletian era, and likely wanted to promote a unified and undivided Christianity. Heresies related to the doctrine of the Trinity were spreading. With anti-Modalism at its roots, Arius and others were teaching that the Father, Son and Spirit do not share the same essence but have unity of will, describing the Father as the “Unbegotton One” and teaching that the Son is a mere creature. In response to the threat of Arianism, some bishops prevailed upon Constantine to support an ecumenical council, thus giving Arians and Non-Arians a chance to discuss the doctrine of the Trinity. Alexander of Alexandria convinced the other bishops that Arianism violated a plain reading of Scripture and causes problems with soteriology. Those attending the Council of Nicea sought to affirm the unity of God while also affirming the proper division between the Father and the Son, and the Nicene Creed resulted.

Content

Background to the controversy: Trinitarian debates generally, and the pre-Arius extreme Origenist teachings that directly shaped Arius’s thinking

Video clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points

Saying that the Council of Nicea was “all about Arius” is a bit of a misnomer.

• What we mean by this is that Nicea was not just all politics and enforcing doctrine top-down using Roman imperial authority.
  • Despite this view being somewhat popular in the academy for a number of years now, we will be arguing that this is not fully accurate.
  • Among other reasons, because the thesis that there was no actual doctrinal consensus (just things being politically enforced) is a bit flimsy on the whole.
  • As is the idea that there was mass confusion in terms of the language used to describe Christ as Lord or God.

Instead, we will be arguing that the council was about figuring out a good way to phrase the pre-existing consensus about Jesus’s position in the Trinity:

• Determining how to use language that describes Jesus as equal with the Father that does not at the same time imply Modalism/Sabellianism on the one hand, or Arianism on the other.
• That is, figuring out how to shut down descriptions of the Father and the Son that went too extreme in either direction.

As we discussed before:

• Descriptions of the relationship between the Father and the Son actually come from scripture itself:
  • Descriptions of the being of the Son generally
  • Descriptions of the Son’s relationship with the Father
• So debates about the Father and the Son did not necessarily arise just because of people over-philosophizing scripture or engaging in wild speculation, but because folks were attempting to understand and synthesize what scripture actually does have to say about these things.
• Arianism is not the first Trinitarian controversy or debate to come along
  • Modalism/Sabellianism came first
• One line of thought that came about in an attempt to combat modalism arose from the views of the Eastern Church father Origen
• Some form of subordination in the Trinity, with the Father being supreme

And that brings us to the current topics.

Lucian of Antioch: a person who sort of taught an extreme version of the original teachings of Origen.

• He taught that we do not need to unite Father-Son-Spirit according to their being/essence
• Son is a created creature
• To combat the fear that this leads to viewing the Father and Son as “too separated”, he taught that the Father and the Son (and the Spirit) have unity of will/action/mission/etc., rather than essence.

Arius: was a student of Lucian of Antioch

• So Arius’s teachings were not just created by him out of thin air, but represent this sort of extreme anti-modalist camp who sought to head off people falling into modalism by seeing the Father and Son as somehow too united.
• We could label these sorts of views as being “extreme Origenist” positions

Follow-on topics

I’ve already spent some time in our previous videos (e.g., see here or here) discussing how it is impossible to completely divorce Nicea or any of the post-Constantine ecumenical Church councils from politics, in my view, and how that means we most certainly need to to view these events through a primarily historical rather than theological lens. No rose colored glasses, in other words.

But as Dr. Reeves emphasizes, this does not mean that the entire affair had nothing to do with legitimate doctrinal concerns, and things along those lines. Even though I have my own doubts as to whether some form of central church authority structure calling a big committee meeting (as happened here) is truly the approach God would have truly wished, it does not mean that the entire affair is entirely political, without even the barest hint of theological motivations.

Instead, both things can be true at the same time.

As to Arius, it is true that historically-speaking, he is the one whose name ended up most firmly attached to the extreme Origenist viewpoints that ultimately contributed to the calling of the Council to Nicea, but it is a mistake to view him as some sort of arch-heretic who alone malevolently pulled strings to foment theological rebellion.

Rather, Arius was simply one in a line of post-Origen teachers who sought to argue against modalism using some form of subordination in the Trinity.

It is thus interesting to speculate why Arius sort of became the bogeyman when it comes to these sorts of beliefs, rather than Lucian, say. After all, they both taught more or less the same concepts, and Arius was even a student of Lucian. Arius even described himself as a “Co-Lucianite” in signing his letter to Eusebius of Nicodemia (not the Church Historian who was also named Eusebius; that one was the bishop of Caesarea not Nicomedia, like this one):

So why does Arius end up coming in for ire more than others? In my opinion, it follows the sense of the Chinese proverb “the bird that sticks its head out gets shot” (枪打出头鸟, Qiāng dǎ chūtóu niǎo). As I see things, Arius was decidedly not low-key, and thus he became a target. As we will examine in the next section, he got into a dispute with a bishop of Alexandria named Alexander, and things just escalated from there. Perhaps others of similar theological persuasion managed to fly under the radar to a higher degree because they didn’t poke the beehive as much. At least, that’s how I see things.

But I just find it endlessly fascinating that he in particular got so much flak, given that he was far from alone in the general thrust of his beliefs, and arguably wasn’t even that important a person in terms of organizational position, being a a presbyter/elder rather than a full bishop (another thing we’ll examine more in the next section). In fact, anti-Nicene bishops themselves strongly refuted the idea that Arius was any sort of leader of theirs:

Calling him a scapegoat is perhaps a bit too strong, but I do nevertheless think it is entirely appropriate to cultivate some deep skepticism regarding the formation and application of heresiological labels, like that of “Arian”. How much were these labels precise tools for categorizing doctrine, and how much were they PR tools designed to tar and feather’s one’s theological opponents with undesirable associations?

Especially once getting these labels to stick starts to bring down legal consequences under the system of imperial Roman law, I do not find it at all unreasonable to ask to what degree truth became a casualty of over-generalization and mis-categorization for reasons of political expediency. I am not raising the question of whether this was happening (since that seems to me to be quite obvious from even a cursory reading of history), but rather how much it was happening.

At any rate, my purpose in going through all this is to challenge the narrative that these sorts of beliefs were inextricably linked to Arius in particular. You can actually make a case that there is more evidence for Lucian being the true organizational center of these beliefs. Not that we need to specifically affirm or deny that argument about Lucian in particular; the point is, we should take great care to not oversimplify these theological disputes by excessively linking them to Arius as a single individual.

The teachings of Arius

Video clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points

Some wider context:

• Much of this was happening in the East: places in Asia Minor, the areas in and around Palestine, and also locations extending down into Egypt (like Alexandria).
• Arius was a presbyter (elder) in the early 300s in the area of Alexandria.
• Arius and the bishop of Alexandria named Alexander got into a debate.
  • Arius as a presbyter/elder was of lower organizational rank than Alexander, who was a bishop.

Arius sends a letter to Alexander defending his views. In it he says (emphasis mine):

The phrase “The Unbegotten One” is a crucial phrase in Arianism, referring to how they believe that the Father alone is without origin.

In this same letter, Arius also refers to the Son as “a creature of God”.

To frame this in the way modern systematics textbooks might:

If the line in the middle represents the Creator-creature distinction, then what Arius has done in his paragraph is argue that:

• The Father is above the line = is the only unbegotten being
• And then everything else (including the Son) is below the line = is on the creature side of the line

Everything on the creature side “came into being”. So, under this line of thinking, Arius says that there was a time when Christ did not exist (=“was not”).

This visual representation with the Creator-creature line can be useful for us as students of history because it helps us see with our eyes why the Church reacted so strongly against what Arius was saying.

• It’s not just that he was teaching something like Origen: that you have a Supreme Father out of whom flow the Son and the Spirit (but still on the Creator side of the line).
• Instead, Arius was actually teaching that the Son was a created creature = in some respects more like us humans than like God.

The big problem the Church sees in this is the following: well, if Jesus is just like us, then how did He save us?

• Because the teaching of scripture is that God alone saves
• Because if it was just a creature up on the cross, how then could the death of a mere creature secure salvation for humanity?

But this doesn’t really bother Arius. Rather than worrying about how making the Son a creature might affect soteriology, Arius instead concentrated on defending the unique singularity of God against problematic teachings. That is to say, if you imagine doctrine as a road with ditches on either side (representing improper extreme points of view), then Arius was very much focused on “the other ditch”.

Follow-on topics

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. I think visual representations can often help give us some “intuition” about the beliefs we hold, and in this case, the clear dividing line can make it very obvious exactly how Arius’s teachings were drawing a distinction between the Father and the Son in a way that previous systems of belief had not, even other systems of belief positing some form of subordination within the Trinity.

Dr. Reeves briefly mentions how the Early Church rightly noted that stripping Christ of his divinity poses problems when it comes to soteriology.

Put simply, if Jesus was not fully God, He could not have paid for our sins upon the cross. Incidentally, the same would be true if He was not fully human—Jesus had to be both fully God and fully man in order to save us.

Even if we put aside a for a moment all of the scriptural evidence to support the fact of Jesus’s divinity, the logical problems here would remain. Consider Isaiah 43:11:

If only God can save, and Jesus was not God, then everything falls apart. So that is one clear argument against Arianism.

Arguing against Arianism by attacking the notion that the Son is at all begotten in any sense other than His human nature

I’m now going to go off on a bit of a tangent unrelated to the exact contents of the source video, in order to explain how I think a large part of all the confusion that arises in these matters boils down to a misunderstanding of how a single Greek word is used.

Before we get into specifics, imagine for a moment how the entire matter of Arianism instantly becomes a non-issue if you hold that the Father is not the only “unbegotten one”. This would clearly go against the subordination in the Trinity that Origen taught (i.e., saying that the Son and the Spirit are somehow originated from the Father), but I am simply asking for a consideration of what this would mean in terms of the logic.

If the Father, Son, and Spirit are all un-caused and equally co-eternal, then because God clearly existed before creation, the Son could not merely be a creature. It simply would never even come up as a question, if this premise were accepted upfront.

I am harping on this point because I truly believe that if you remove the vocabulary of “begetting” with respect to Christ’s divine nature (i.e., only view His human nature as being caused/having some sort of origin), then everything else quite neatly falls into place with very little head-scratching.

Remember how we’ve been arguing that the underlying purpose of Church councils was to put up some guardrails in vocabulary, in order to head off doctrinal confusion? What I am bringing up here is the exact same concept. The irony is just that it is the very wording that the council decided to use that I view as being the biggest part of the problem!

All of this revolves around how we interpret the Greek word μονογενής (monogenés). Etymologically-speaking, this word literally means “only begotten”. You can see that some Bible versions actually translate exactly that way in John 3:16, which is one of the places this adjective is used of Christ.

The problem with leaning on the etymology is that the verb part of the compound (i.e., γίνομαι (ginomai)) definitely implies something that came into being rather than something that always existed. You can’t wriggle out of it; in its normal Greek usage, everything that is created or generated comes into being within the flow of spacetime. In other words, that is entirely what this verb means everywhere else it is used in Greek, as best we know.

Well, if you understand that—and you see John 3:16 as the Father sending not only Jesus as a human being but also the second person of the Trinity (which is sort of implied there no matter how you look at things, given what we typically term “Trinity roles”)—then you instantly bump into the issue of the divine person of the Son getting seemingly linked to some form of temporal beginning. And that leads you right into the controversies leading to Arianism.

Origen and others wave their hand at the issue by saying that the generation of the Son is “eternal”. The problem with this is that it does violence to the otherwise uncomplicated meaning of the word. That is, generated things have a beginning, but if you assert that something is generated yet has no beginning, then from one point of view, you are just talking nonsense and using words wrong. I should note that I am being quite outspoken here, given that large swathes of self-professing Christians today believe in some form of the eternal generation of the Son, and have for centuries.

This very situation is, in fact, much of the reason why I am so opposed to Church fathers, councils, and creeds intruding upon the Bible in our epistemology (rather than sticking with the Bible alone, as sola scriptura holds). Say I am correct in viewing this point of view as being misguided (something I will attempt to justify more formally below). Then for hundreds—even thousands—of years, people have been doing mental gymnastics to somehow avoid acknowledging that the position is a clear logical contradiction on the face of it… simply because it was passed down in an ancient extra-biblical creed that many people view as important.

Of course, all my catastrophizing about epistemology means very little in the absence of solid evidence. So is there such evidence?

Put simply, you can sidestep 100% of this messy business if you interpret monogenes as meaning “one and only/unique” rather than having any connotative baggage related to things coming into being. If you do this, then the eternal second member of the Trinity can be described as monogenes without leading to logic problems.

In Genesis 22, the Hebrew text uses the adjective יָחִיד (yachid) to describe Isaac in Genesis 22:2, Genesis 22:12, and Genesis 22:16. You can check this for yourself using a Hebrew interlinear:

• Genesis 22:2 Hebrew Interlinear
• Genesis 22:12 Hebrew Interlinear
• Genesis 22:16 Hebrew Interlinear

In the Septuagint (LXX)—the translation of the Old Testament into Greek—the adjective used in place of yachid is not monogenes but ἀγαπητός (agapétos). You can check this for yourself in the Greek of the LXX:

• Genesis 22:2 LXX
• Genesis 22:12 LXX
• Genesis 22:16 LXX

The Greek adjective agapétos captures the meaning of yachid that emphasizes Isaac’s status as a “beloved/dear/favored” son. The Hebrew adjective yachid also has overtones of “one and only/unique”, but this particular translation choice eliminates all trace of that here.

The same is not true of Hebrews 11:17, however:

• Hebrews 11:17 Greek Interlinear

This is clearly the same passage being referenced, but now instead of agapétos translating yachid, we have monogenes. In this case, the translation choice captures the “one and only/unique” meaning, while eliminating the stronger overtones of “beloved/dear/favored”.

In this we can see one of the clear problems in translation: languages often to do not have direct equivalents for words. An excellent example is the the Greek adjective ὄλβιος (olbios), which basically means “happy/fortunate [in terms of material prosperity]/blessed [by the gods]” all at the same time. (It is used in Homer, for example). If you translate with any of the three meanings alone (rather than all three at the same time), you lose something.

We can see the same phenomenon when it comes to translating yachid with agapétos and monogenes. No matter which Greek adjective you choose to translate the Hebrew adjective with, you will inevitably drop some part of the meaning of yachid (or at least connotations), because the languages are not precisely apples to apples here.

But here’s the important bit: yachid has clear overtones of uniqueness, but no begetting involved; you can have a unique eternal thing. Since monogenes is clearly translating yachid in Hebrews 11:17, we know that it too can take on this specific meaning.

So the logic jump is to suggest that actually this is how the word was used in practice, pace etymology. With Isaac as a clear type of Christ, it is no great stretch to see that the usage of monogenes applying to Christ in John 3:16 and elsewhere is parallel to Hebrews 11:17.

That only leads us with a couple loose ends to clean up:

Firstly, we can note that it is in fact not rare at all for words (across all languages) to take on meanings different from and even almost opposite to their etymology. I like using the word “decimate” as an example. Coming from the punishment in the ancient Roman army of putting every tenth soldier in a unit to death, the verb has nowadays taken on a meaning not of destroying every tenth thing (leaving 90% intact), but of destroying 100% of something. So it is that usage is clearly king when it comes to proper interpretation, not etymology.

Secondly, we have to deal with Acts 33:13, which is quoting Psalm 2:7. In these verses, you cannot escape the fact that the text is talking about something coming into being in the sense of begetting—in Psalm 2:7 we have the verb יָלַד (yalad), and in Acts 33:13 we have the verb γεννάω (gennaó):

• Psalm 2:7 Hebrew Interlinear
• Acts 13:33 Greek Interlinear

In fact, this is no problem because we know these verses must refer to Christ’s human nature due to the fact that we have mention “this day/today” = a definite temporal point. Whether or not you take these verses to be referring to Jesus’s supernatural conception/birth/incarnation or his session at the right hand of the Father after His ascension, clearly they are both with respect to His incarnated identity as the God-man = his human nature that came into being and was not eternally existent.

Finally, we can note that John 15:26—which is used by people who teach the eternal generation of the Son to argue that the spirit similarly “eternally processes” from the Father—also has strong textual support for a reading that takes it temporally (rather than in terms of eternal ontology), because the sending of the Spirit is in this context is obviously linked to the point in time in which the Holy Spirit was sent by God to indwell believers (i.e., after Pentecost, as described in Acts 2). You “can” argue that the relative clause is supposed to make some sort of ontological statement—rather than emphasizing through repetition that the Spirit is sent from the Father instead of being without someone instructing Him to fulfill this function—in the sense that it is grammatically allowable… but the near context talking about a temporal event is nonetheless circumstantial evidence that decidedly weighs against such a view.

And this is why, in the end, the concepts of “eternal begetting” and “eternal procession” do more harm than good, as I see things. These phrases do not exist in the Bible at all (even in the passages that are used to try and proof-text the positions), and lead to having to combat false doctrines like Arianism that would not even come up as issues if this sort of language were to be avoided. Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that teaching the eternal generation of the Son means you teach Arianism. Rather, I am saying that you don’t even have to have those conversations if you do not use that sort of confusing language to begin with.

Further discussion

The Council of Nicea is called

Video clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points

We’ve previously examined some of the fault lines in play—at the doctrinal tensions that have at this point been simmering below the surface for some time. For decades and perhaps even centuries, disagreement had been simmering, but nothing had completely boiled over. That changes here.

There are two real factors that cause or provoke the Council of Nicea:

1. Constantine comes to the throne and, having just unified the empire after the civil wars of the Diocletian era, he pushes for a unified and undivided Christianity.
   • At least, these motives are commonly ascribed to Constantine by historians; we don’t directly have these words from Constantine himself. In Steven’s opinion, this is not particularly shocking, as very seldom (as far as we can tell) do powerful people throughout history publicly record the exact motives for the PR campaigns that they pursue. Why would we expect them to do so?
2. Some bishops—believing that the threat of Arianism and the disputes as to whether or not the Son was a creature (or whether He was fully God) had risen to a sufficient level of import—prevailed upon Constantine to consider backing or supporting an ecumenical council.
   • This seems to be likely, because with the schism of Donatism, it was definitely bishops who reached out to Constantine and asked that he intervene and apply his imperial authority to the decision.
   • So too here, then?

This brings up an ancient belief (also present in the Middle Ages) that the Church is supposed to reach out to rulers and “counsel” them as to the wisest decision.

Although there is likely some of this in play here, it is sort of hard to say for sure.

• Part of this is because this was foreign territory for all involved. Constantine was the first man who holds the throne who at least claims to be Christian.

The feelings of the bishops were also probably affected by the fact that Constantine’s treatment contrasted so sharply with what had come immediately before: the extremely intense persecutions of the Diocletian era.

• This is perhaps why some seem to praise Constantine so one-sidedly. Eusebius of Caesarea (the church historian) comes to mind, with his borderline sycophantic eulogizing of Constantine.

At any rate, the council gets called, and it is decided that it will be held in the city of Nicea. Now, historians estimate that there were perhaps ~1,800 potential bishops who could have attended/would have been “eligible” to attend, but only ~300 do in practice.

This brings up an important point: Church councils were seen as binding and authoritative even without a full majority or some sort of formal quorum. How do we know this? Well:

• After the decisions from Nicea were handed down and circulated (and subsequently discussed in the following decades), the Church visible largely embraces them as their own.

As to what exactly went on in this council that got called, as students of history, we sort of wish we had more specifics to go on.

• We don’t have exact minutes or things of that sort, unfortunately.
• As a generalization though (=likely true of Nicea, and other councils too), we know that often someone presiding over the assembly would set the agenda by presenting a statement that would then get discussed by the group.
• Sometimes decisions concerning what to make of this sort of “topic statement” came easily, and sometimes there was much wrangling before decisions were rendered. So even inasmuch as there was a pattern to these things, there was obviously plenty of variability even within those bounds.

One closing point: we should very much get it out of our heads that these things were boring and staid. Quite to the contrary, the sources tell us that they could get decidedly raucous.

• One example of this is how the councils tended to get concluded. Apparently, having the appearance of near-complete unity was viewed as important, so the bishops would all stand up and shout their assent… literally. Voting by shouting wasn’t particularly rare in antiquity (even though it seems rather odd to us as a procedure), but this wasn’t so much a vote between multiple positions as a process of political theater to give the appearance that decisions were unanimous (or at least close to such).
  • In Steven’s cynical opinion, this sort of procedure would tend to stifle any sort of reasonable discussion or dissent. Imagine the pressure faced by people who honestly didn’t agree with the position being put forward. If you found yourself in the minority (especially if the decision was not close, but rather one-sided to begin with), then refusing to go along with this song and dance would very publicly paint a target on your back. No hidden ballots or anonymity here.

At any rate, the general point is that the church councils tended to be messy and spirited—with all sorts of lively characters and serious debates—and Nicea was no exception to this general rule.

Follow-on topics

Finally we get to discussion of the Council of Nicea proper. We’ve gone several lessons here in our CrossTalk Bible Study dealing with preamble and background, leading us up to this point.

Since we’ve already previously described how Nicea represented a paradigm shift in terms of it being ecumenical (with it being supposedly church-wide) and a great deal more politicized (with Roman imperial authority getting involved in the council’s organization and enforcement), I won’t revisit most of those points in depth. But it does bear repeating that these changes starting with Nicea started fundamentally reshaping the organization of the Church visible… and not in a good way, I would argue.

Scholars debate exactly how much Constantine as an individual is to blame for all this, and fair enough. The Church visible clearly had momentum heading in the direction of centralization even apart from him as an individual. But it is nonetheless true that he seems to have been the specific catalyst for the changes that came into effect here at Nicea, and as I’ve said repeatedly before, I think trying to pretend like the council wasn’t at all political is a pretty big historiographical mistake.

However, Dr. Reeves’s argument that this was new ground for all parties involved is well-taken. He is 100% correct that up until Constantine, there was never a need for church leaders to consider how they ought to relate to Roman imperial authority, since Roman imperial authority had up to this point in time always been completely hostile to Christianity.

But I truly do wonder that if at the same time that some flocked to Constantine as a supposed liberator there might have been others who saw the slippery slope, and were not so keen on this path of centralization and politicization. Were there those who did not wish to set such a precedent? Is the lack of such sentiment at the council because these people did not exist at all, or merely because they were not invited? Or perhaps they got the invite, but were just largely uninterested in squabbling over the levers of power?

I argued before that in my view these sorts of people probably existed; God has always had His remnant of the truly faithful. My thesis was that people like this are so much less prevalent in the historical sources precisely because they kept their heads down and stuck to their own knitting. If the history books mostly talk about “big” people and events, then is it any surprise to not find much about the little guys?

Conjecture about hypothetical abstainees aside, I also find it fascinating to consider the response bias that is inherently introduced by requiring large amounts of travel to get to ecumenical Church councils. Consider:

• Travel in antiquity was very arduous; the very young and very elderly would have a hard time with it.
• Travel in antiquity was also expensive, with very high relative opportunity cost. In other words, not everyone could afford to drop everything and go away for long periods of time.

Combine those two factors alone, and bishops with family obligations (like a dependent wife and young children) would have faced some serious sacrifices if they wanted to travel, for example.

There were also other forms of response bias likely in effect:

• Education level also likely had an effect (with the most highly educated being disproportionately represented)
• Political connections and networking also likely had an effect (with the most highly connected being disproportionately represented)
• Etc.

On top of all that, there is also the fact that the threat Arianism posed was not equally distributed from a geographical point of view. That is to say, bishops from some regions might have had quite a bit more skin the game in a practical sense (and thus would have been more predisposed to wanting a resolution to this doctrinal dispute in particular), compared to others from more “doctrinally peaceful” regions where the whole thing was more academic in nature.

I get that it might seem like I am being overly cynical in all this, but my purpose in saying these things is less to say that the whole thing was hopelessly biased, and more just to point out that it ought not shock us at all that only 300 out of 1,800 eligible bishops attended (if those numbers scholars have come up with are to be believed).

Rather than that being the noteworthy thing, I actually personally find it more interesting that the decision of the council managed to get accepted as globally as it did, despite representation being by all accounts only a small percentage even of those self-professing to be part of the central organizational structure (much less people who viewed themselves as being more independent to begin with).

I think there are likely multiple reasons why Nicea was able to successfully establish a new process of deciding things at a global scale:

1. The divinity of Christ is clear enough from scripture that the orthodox side of this debate definitely had a large majority coming into the council (rather than this being something that was closer to a 50/50 issue). So the majority decision of the council sort of got to piggy-back on the pre-existing doctrinal consensus. Put cynically, these circumstances made it easy for certain parties to say “look, people are accepting the decision and authority of the centralized church council!” when actually people were just believing what the Bible teaches more or less self-evidently. I understand some might view that as a grossly unfair characterization of events, but I do personally think there was at least some of this in play here.
2. The historical context was such that Constantine was uniquely positioned to carry his momentum from the political unification of the divided empire into matters of doctrinal unification. With our modern perspective (where separation of Church and state has been preached for quite a few generations) this may not seem so natural a continuation, but to the people of antiquity, it probably seemed quite persuasive. It likely helped that Constantine was by all accounts a commanding and charismatic individual, making it relatively easier for him to sway large groups of people.
3. Finally, the fact that the council came shortly after some of the worst persecution the Church ever faced under Diocletian and the Tetrarchy is not nothing. The offer of cooperation with the Roman state probably seemed very tempting to the Christians of the time specifically because it would have been completely unthinkable just a few decades before. I would call it something of a cross between the “forbidden fruit effect” (i.e., playing politics had been completely out of reach for Christians for so long that it seemed proportionally more tempting) and the general tendency for human beings to naturally be interested in and curious about new and shiny things.

In any case, within a few decades of Nicea, the decisions reached at the council had been widely accepted, and with Nicea as a near contextual example, church councils that were 1) ecumenical (=fully centralized) and 2) enforced by imperial political authority went from being something that had never been done before to something more along the lines of “just copying what we did last time”.

In this, we should not at all underestimate the power of precedent in shaping human opinion. Things don’t seem so foreign if they have a past basis, and over time, if that way of doing things is all people have ever known, it suddenly becomes the “new normal”… even if it did not even exist at all beforehand!

One might argue that the precedent set here at Nicea stood largely unchanged for hundreds upon hundreds of years (although Roman imperial authority sort of changed to other political entities over time in the Middle Ages). Under this line of thought, it wasn’t until 1517 (some 1,200 years later)—when Martin Luther nailed a list of 95 theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg—that the problematic precedent set into motion here finally encountered real resistance.

At least, that is how I personally see things.

Further discussion

The two sides at Nicea

Video clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points

It is true that there were two distinct sides in the Council of Nicea—the “Arians” and “Non-Arians” (labels we use for those holding to specific doctrinal beliefs about the relationship between the Son and the Father)—but actually the council didn’t start out as a formal prosecution of the Arians by the Non-Arians, per se. As best we can tell, people came sort of willing to listen to what Arius had to say, and once the full breadth of his conclusions became apparent, then objections were raised.

So basically, people came in trying to figure out how to balance the two sides—affirming the unity of God, while also affirming some sort of division or separation between the Father and the Son (in line with the narrative of scripture in the way it simply reads)—and then just failed to get convinced by the Arian position.

And so it was that Alexander of Alexandria (leading the Non-Arians) was able to convince most of the other bishops that what Arius was saying about Christ being created (in the same sort of way that you or I are created) put all sorts of other things into jeopardy. For example:

• Soteriology and human salvation
• A plain reading of scripture

Follow-on topics

The fact that the council was at least hypothetically a theological discussion rather than some sort of judicial process is important largely as a framing tool in our understanding. Even though Nicea was one-sided in a sense (with the final decision being near-unanimous against the Arians), it was more about properly coming up with a way to talk about these matters than it was putting the people who held non-orthodox beliefs on trial, and that’s the point we are trying to convey here.

In this, we needn’t pretend like there weren’t polarized sides; there definitely were. It’s just more that the emphasis in the council itself was on establishing wording rather than being something else.

Further discussion

The original Nicene Creed of 325

Video clip from Ryan Reeves

Summary points

The exact wording of the creed coming out of the Council of Nicea in 325 is a bit different from the Nicene Creed that you might be used to seeing. The one we are used to dealing with is really sort of a combination of the decisions of Nicea and Constantinople (the second ecumenical Church council, that we will get to later). So it’s just important to note that the “Nicene Creed” we are talking about here (i.e., the one literally coming out of the council in 325) is different from the “Nicene Creed” commonly recited in churches to this day (i.e., the later refined creed that came about after the refinements from that second ecumenical Church council).

At any rate, one initial thing to notice about the 325 creed here is that it doesn’t say all that much about the Father. It’s not that it says nothing—it is just that this is far from all you would want to know about the Father, if one were to be exhaustive. But a creed has a certain purpose, and in this case, the authority and the divinity of the Father are not in question, nor any other doctrines related to the Father. So that’s why they don’t say so much about Him.

Same deal with the Holy Spirit (He only gets one single line): “And we believe in the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit not being emphasized is again not surprising, since the controversies here were not about Him. In fact, like Dr. Reeves says, the fact that He is still mentioned here (despite nothing in the debates really centering on Him) is actually itself good evidence that they were being careful to dot their I’s and cross their T’s and put forth a fully Trinitarian model of God.

By way of comparison, what they have to say about the Son is far more extensive. And the logic makes sense in this—of course they were going to say more about Him, since that is where all the controversy was. So what did they say, exactly?

First, they draw a distinction between begetting and being made. This is important because a core tenet of Arius’s position was that the Son was in some way created (“made”). Basically, they are saying that whatever the Son is with respect to the Father, it is not that.

Then they say that Son is “begotten from the Father’s substance”—that whatever the Father is, Christ also is.

Then there’s what Dr. Reeves calls the “drum beat”:

• God from God
• Light from Light
• True God from True God

Leading to arguably the core statement of the whole creed: “begotten, not made, homoousios with the Father”. This statement is basically explaining what the “X from X” statements mean = it concludes the drum beat.

Etymologically-speaking, homoousios literally means “same being”. So when they assert that Christ is homoousios with the Father, they are saying that He has the same essence at His core identity as the Father does (not anything “less”)—and that He was not created or made.

And that is the main thrust of what was decided at the Council of Nicea.

Now, the creed actually goes on after this to declare some anathemas: “let them be condemned, those who say about Christ that…”:

• There was a time when He was not
• He was not before He was made
• He was made out of nothing
• He is of another substance or essence
• He is created or changeable or alterable

This doesn’t mean that people who affirm these things are to be killed, but just cut off from communion with the Church—that statements like these will no longer be considered part of orthodox teaching.

In short, the simple truth of Nicea is that the Church came together and in an overwhelming consensus said that:

1. Those who assert that the Son is merely a creature are jeopardizing the faith and misreading scripture, and
2. Whatever God is, so also the Son is.

Follow-on topics

The noun οὐσία (ousia) in Ancient Greek was used by various Ancient Greek philosophers (e.g., Aristotle) to describe the philosophical concepts of “being”, “essence”, or “substance”.

“Being” is the present active participle of the verb “to be” in English. Ousia in Ancient Greek is derived from from the feminine present active participle of Ancient Greek’s verb “to be”. However, Latin does not have a present active participle form of the verb “to be” to match Ancient Greek’s ousia. So two terms came to replace it in Latin: essentia and substantia (from which we derive “essence and “substance” in English). This in part helps explain why some of the vocabulary developed to discuss the doctrine of the Trinity started getting a bit complicated, in terms of all these different words floating about.

I am going through all of this to give some background before raising this question: given that I previously argued strongly against the notion of “eternal begetting”, what are we to make of the adjective homoousios? Is it theologically accurate?

Well, it sort of depends what one means. In the context of the Nicene Creed of 325, they clearly understood homoousios to mean “eternally begotten from the substance of the Father”. That is, the idea of origination/generation is very much part of their understanding of the word. In this sense, I wouldn’t agree.

But strictly from an etymology perspective, the word is fine. That is, I agree that Christ is “of the same being/essence/substance” as the Father. It’s just that what those at the Council of Nicea took that to mean was that Christ was “begotten from the Father’s substance… begotten, not made”. In their eyes, that is exactly what is meant by Christ being of the same being/essence/substance of the Father—they wouldn’t see these statements as separate.

So I am a bit cagey about saying I “agree with homoousios”. I am fine with the statement “Christ is of the same being/essence/substance with the Father”, but do not agree that “Christ is [eternally] begotten from the Father’s substance… begotten, not made”. Why? Because I think there is no origination or generation involved in Christ and Father (and the Spirit) jointly partaking of the divine essence of God. Them being co-eternal and consubstantial does not require any generation or origination in my view, and so I reject the eternal begetting of the Son and eternal procession of the Spirit, and all other things that imply some form of causal subordinationism in the Trinity.

One last point about all this: before Nicea, homoousios as an adjective was used by various gnostic writers, particularly when they described their theories of emanation. It is also something that modalists/Sabellians were comfortable with in their Christology. Upshot: this word itself, though it became a sort of rallying point for Nicene theology, already had some baggage of its own even before Nicea.

Further discussion

Review Questions

Coming soon!