1,700 Years After Nicaea

Anniversaries 1,700 years in the making do not come along very often. But beginning in the late spring and early summer this year, Christendom will celebrate just such an event, focused on the small, lakeside Turkish town of Iznik, known anciently as Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea took place in May–July 325 and is widely considered the first “Christian” ecumenical council, meeting under the auspices of the Roman emperor Constantine to resolve disputes over doctrine and practice.

A number of celebratory events are planned. At the heart of them will be the most famous statement produced by the council 1,700 years ago: the Nicene Creed, considered one of the most significant doctrines of nominal Christianity. To deny the truth of the Nicene Creed is, to many, to label oneself a false Christian, tantamount to denying Jesus Christ Himself.

In the words of promotional materials for a celebration in Istanbul, the Nicene Creed “stands as the most widely confessed and majestic expression of the Christian faith, underpinning the essence of the gospel we confess.” Jane Williams, the McDonald Professor in Christian Theology at St Mellitus College, notes, “There are not many 1,700-year-old documents that are read out loud every week and known by heart by millions of people across the world. The Nicene Creed is one of them.”

The Nicene Creed and other decisions made at the Council of Nicaea had a powerful effect on the faith that would bear Christ’s name in the 17 centuries that have followed. Today, many still see the conclusions of that first ecumenical council as fundamental to what it means to be Christian.

In truth, however, God’s word shows the Council of Nicaea and its creed to be something else entirely. For those seeking the Christianity established by Jesus Christ Himself, a brief examination of the Council of Nicaea in the light of Scripture and history can be fruitful.

Church and State Converged Under the Roman Empire

The Roman Emperor Enforced Changes, Punishing Dissenters

As the tale is commonly told, the purpose of the Council of Nicaea was to help unify the faith by dealing with differing ideas about the nature of Jesus Christ, as well as to settle disputes about the keeping of Easter.

The council in AD 325 was not convened under the authority of a religious leader, as one might expect, but the Roman emperor Constantine. In fact, Constantine’s fingerprints can be found all over it. It was Constantine who called the council together to begin with, ostensibly to repair the fragmented faith and bring stability to his empire. He also paid the enormous costs involved in bringing together hundreds of bishops and representatives from regions as diverse as Egypt, Greece, North Africa, and Persia.

The ancient historian Eusebius of Caesarea—an attendee at the Council of Nicaea and quite a fan of the emperor—notes that Constantine, no mere passive sponsor, held a position of honor over the conference and inaugurated it with a speech emphasizing peace and unity. And when the decisions were made, the conclusions settled, and the creed completed, it was Emperor Constantine who enforced the results. Bishops who would not profess the Nicene Creed were exiled and removed from their ecclesiastical positions. The works of those who disagreed were burned. It is not an accident that icons and other depictions of the Council of Nicaea show a defeated heretic lying on the ground at Constantine’s feet.

That the Roman emperor would have such sway over the religion bearing Jesus’ name should not come as a surprise—even today, the largest organization in the world claiming the banner of that religion is called the “Roman Catholic” church.

The Nicene Creed Affirmed the Deity of Christ—with a Twist

Among the issues the Council of Nicaea sought to address, two stand out. The first concerned Jesus Christ’s nature and His relation to God the Father. There were many nuanced disagreements, but the main disagreement concerned whether Christ is a created being, not co-eternal with the Father, or fully divine and eternal, of the same essence as the Father.

On the “created Christ” side of the argument was Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, and this position is often called “Arianism.” The discussions, passions, and personalities involved in this debate make for fascinating reading, but the key observation for our purposes is that the council concluded that the Son of God is not created—He and the Father are both eternal and of the same substance.

This conclusion was expressed in what came to be called the Nicene Creed. While there is a bit of dispute about the original Nicene Creed as it was agreed upon in AD 325, most scholars agree that the following is an accurate representation:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible; and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through Whom all things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth, Who because of us men and because of our salvation came down and became incarnate, becoming man, suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended into the heavens, and will come to judge the living and dead; and in the Holy Spirit.

Much could be said about this creed, but for now we should simply note that it is a rejection of the heretical idea that the Son of God is a created being. And we should note, too, for those who believe that the Trinity doctrine has been in place since the beginning of Christianity, that the creed says astonishingly little about the Holy Spirit. That, however, is a tale for another time!

The Council Replaced Passover with Easter

The creed was not the only result of the council. In the three centuries since Jesus Christ founded His Church, disputes had arisen concerning key beliefs and practices, and in Nicaea they sought to settle one issue of critical importance.

Many congregations in the east continued to keep the Passover on the fourteenth day of Nisan, the first month of the Hebrew calendar. In doing so, they were following the example of Jesus Christ, the Twelve Apostles themselves, and the immediate, first-century disciples of the Twelve Apostles. But the tradition in Rome was different. Rather than observing a memorial of Christ’s crucifixion, Roman congregations developed a tradition of observing His resurrection, and they did so on a fixed day of the week, Sunday—unlike the fourteenth of Nisan, which could occur on different days of the week.

This controversy has come to be called the Quartodeciman controversy—after the Latin quartodecima, meaning “fourteenth”—and history records significant conflict over it. Though scholars debate the details, the result of the Council’s ruling is clear: Not only would the Roman practice of keeping Easter on a Sunday become the rule of faith throughout the Empire, but its date would be set by a new Roman calendar calculation, discarding the Hebrew calendar previously used.

According to the aforementioned Eusebius of Caesarea, the last vestiges of what Constantine called “the detestable Jewish crowd” were finally cast aside by the bishops at Nicaea. All who sought to follow Christ’s example of keeping the Passover on Nisan 14 were declared anathema—that is, cursed and excommunicated.

The Bible was Disregarded for “Christian” Doctrine

The result of Nicaea was a more unified church. A more orderly church. A more Roman church. But not a more biblical church.

To be sure, Arius was wrong—his position was unbiblical heresy. The plain sense of the majestic statement in John 1:1 is the true sense: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” All things were made through Him (v. 3), and He did not make Himself!

More could be said, but what is most important is not what Nicaea got right, but what it got wrong. For instance, many observers have noted that Scripture does not support the Nicene Creed’s implication that the Son is somehow eternally begotten from the Father, which denies that the Son is God in the same way that the Father is. Scripture describes Jesus’ begettal as an act that took place in a moment of time (e.g., Acts 13:33)—specifically, in the womb of Mary (Matthew 1:20).

In John 1, describing Jesus Christ’s pre-incarnate state, the Bible does not call Him “the Son” but rather “the Word”—in Greek, the Logos. He was the Divine Spokesman of the Godhead, serving as the God of the Old Testament—the “Rock” that followed Israel (1 Corinthians 10:4). He became the Son at His begettal in Mary’s womb, when also the other member of the Godhead became the Father. Scripture’s simplicity on this point contradicts the ideas leading up to Nicaea, which had become corrupted in the preceding centuries by heathen philosophy that sought to reconcile the simple truths of God’s word with the abstract ideas and concepts of the Greeks.

Rome Cursed the Passover—Refusing to Follow Jesus

As for the council’s placing a curse on the practice of observing the Passover on the fourteenth day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, history agrees with Scripture that this “cursed” practice was that of the Twelve Apostles themselves, not to mention their Savior. Scripture makes clear that Jesus Christ and His disciples kept the Passover (Luke 22:11) on Nisan 14, the day when Israel put away leavening for the Days of Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23:5–6). This was “the same night in which He was betrayed” (1 Corinthians 11:23), before He died during the daylight portion of the Passover (Jews reckoned days from sunset to sunset, not midnight to midnight).

Jesus Christ was our Passover, sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7), and the timing of events makes the connection clear. Jesus and His disciples kept the old Passover, and Jesus then instituted new symbols of bread and wine as a memorial of His crucifixion (1 Corinthians 11:23–25). On this, there is no room for doubt.

History records that faithful disciples after the Twelve Apostles sought to continue this practice and example—but doing so brought them into conflict with corrupting Roman influences. Consider Polycarp of Smyrna, a disciple of the Apostle John who, according to his student Irenaeus, “always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the church has handed down.”

The Hebrew Calendar was Replaced, Obscuring the Holy Days

By keeping the Christian Passover on Nisan 14, Polycarp came into conflict with Anicetus—the bishop of Rome, later designated “Pope Anicetus”—who sought to replace Jesus’ practice with a Sunday Easter observance, as favored by his Roman teachers.

Similarly, near the end of the second century, Polycrates of Ephesus confronted Roman bishop Victor—later “Pope Victor”—regarding Rome’s departure from Christ’s teachings. According to Eusebius, Polycrates wrote that “we scrupulously observe the exact day, neither adding nor taking away,” meaning, in his words, “the day when the people put away the leaven”—or the Passover kept on Nisan 14 (Leviticus 23:5–6). After naming several of the Twelve Apostles, as well as Polycarp and other faithful elders of the early Church, Polycrates told Victor, “These all kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month, in accordance with the Gospel, without ever deviating from it, but keeping to the rule of faith.” He also told the Roman bishop that “those who are greater than I have said, ‘We ought to obey God rather than men.’”

As noted of Polycrates’ letter in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson’s classic The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Vol. VIII), “It is surely noteworthy that nobody doubted that it [the Passover, versus Easter] was kept by a Christian and Apostolic ordinance.”

Yet this practice of following Christ’s and the Apostles’ example fell by the wayside at Nicaea, in favor of the Roman custom. After the Council of Nicaea, anyone who sought to keep the Passover as Christ and His first followers had kept it was declared cursed and thrown out of the congregation.

In making this choice, the Council of Nicaea threw out the calendar God handed down through His chosen people (Romans 3:1–2) in favor of a pagan Roman system intended to “change times and law” (Daniel 7:25).

Apostasy Began Early in the First Century

How can this be? The Council of Nicaea took place barely two centuries after the death of John, the last of the Twelve Apostles. Is it really possible that “Christian” leaders in the Roman Empire were already so far into apostasy that the simple teachings of the Bible could be so corrupted—that the practices of both the Savior Himself and His earliest followers could be cast aside so completely in favor of Greek philosophy and Roman traditions?

Indeed, God’s word reveals that the corruption of the Church founded by Jesus Christ began almost immediately, during the lives of the Twelve Apostles and the biblical writers! We see this in Acts 15. Some insisted that Gentile converts needed to become Jewish before they could truly become Christian. The Apostles and elders, including Paul, resolved that such a requirement was an unreasonable and unnecessary yoke.

Clearly, from the beginning, heresy plagued the Church. God’s word paints a picture of the struggle against false teaching and corrupted understanding.

Warnings About False Doctrine in Jesus’ Name

The Apostle Paul warned the Corinthian brethren that they were too accepting of those preaching “another Jesus” and bringing a “different spirit” and a “different gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:4). Paul also opposed bringing gnostic heresies to the faith (1 Timothy 6:20), along with practices from other philosophies (Colossians 2:8), such as non-biblical food customs and prohibition of marriage (1 Timothy 4:3). He called such teachings “doctrines of demons” (v. 1) and such ideas “commandments and doctrines of men” (Colossians 2:21–22). Paul saw that some were finding ways to embrace their old paganism (Galatians 4:8–9)—under different names and with new veneers of “Christianity,” but paganism nonetheless.

Even Jude, one of Jesus Christ’s own half-brothers, pressed his readers to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” as he saw it replaced by a false system of belief and practice that turned grace into license to ignore the laws of God (Jude 3–4).

Christ had warned His Apostles that, within their lifetimes, false teachers and false prophets would rise using His own name (Matthew 24:4–5). According to the inspired record of God’s word, by the end of the lives of Jesus’ first followers, the Church He had founded was beleaguered, beaten down, infiltrated, increasingly corrupted, and even in rebellion against the hand-picked teachers the Lord Himself had appointed and trained.

And in the writings of the last of the Twelve Apostles, we see the state of things at the end of the first century. The aged Apostle John wrote that, while a final antichrist was yet to come in the end times, John’s own day was already filled with antichrists (1 John 2:18). Even John himself was shunned by the false pastor Diotrephes, who also excommunicated those who aligned with John (3 John 9–10). Yet Christ, calling His Church a “little flock” (Luke 12:32), had assured its members that He would still be with them all the way to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). They would be protected by Him—not by the sponsorship of the world’s greatest pagan empire as it co-opted the faith once delivered.

Unified False Christianity Emerged at Nicaea

The church that met with Emperor Constantine in Nicaea in AD 325 was not the Church founded by Jesus Christ. The collection of leaders who met in Nicaea represented not the little flock to whom Christ had given His promises (Matthew 16:18), but rather an organization backed by the most powerful ruler in the world, inheritor of Rome itself. The elders and bishops at Nicaea did not represent a coming Kingdom that was “not of this world” (John 18:36), but rather an organization directed by the Emperor of Rome in an unholy union with the powers of this world—a union that would grow in worldly power as the centuries passed.

Meeting more than 200 years after the lives of Christ’s initial followers, the Council of Nicaea was already far down the path of apostasy and compromise that had begun in the days of the Twelve Apostles. Not that they hadn’t been warned.

The celebrations, ceremonies, and seminars held around the world noting this year’s anniversary of the Council of Nicaea will no doubt claim that the council and its famous creed represent a foundational element of Christianity. They will be wrong. The council that met under the gaze of the Roman Emperor in AD 325 was simply one more attempt to dismantle the foundation Jesus Christ Himself had laid and to solidify the apostasy that had begun even during the lives of the Apostles, two centuries before.

The Council of Nicaea was, indeed, foundational in establishing the “Christianity” we see around us today. But it played no role in establishing the Christianity of Christ. In fact, it is likely that not even one representative of the true Church that Christ personally founded was even in attendance!

Yet the “Little Flock” Endures

But Christ’s true Church has survived. That Church was not—and is not—the paganized counterfeit “Christianity” embraced by the Emperor of Rome. The true Church had already been pushed against, slandered, marginalized, and persecuted for more than two centuries preceding the Council of Nicaea. Yet the “little flock” upholding the true faith of Jesus Christ still exists today.

How do we know? Because the Son of God Himself promised that it would continue and endure—that the gates of death would never prevail against it (Matthew 16:18). Though only a “little flock,” He would remain with it—working with it, upholding it, and nourishing it—until it would be ready for His Second Coming. That Church was commissioned to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to the entire world before Christ’s return (Matthew 24:14).

If you are interested in going beyond Nicaea—in discovering not the ancient, idolatrous, and apostate church that the council sought to solidify in AD 325, but rather the one true Church that Jesus Christ established long before that—please read “The Church Behind Tomorrow’s World” later in this issue. And, if you haven’t already, please read our free study guides Where Is God’s True Church Today?, God’s Church Through the Ages, Satan’s Counterfeit Christianity, and Restoring Original Christianity. All our materials are free for the asking—just as Jesus Christ commanded they should be (Matthew 10:8).

In the meantime, be mindful of what God the Father is looking for. His Son tells us in John 4:23 that “the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.” Don’t let prestige, power, and wealth impress you. Don’t let mystery and ceremony cloud the clarity of God’s word. And don’t settle for “Church Fathers” over the plain teachings of the Bible. The Church founded by Jesus Christ can be found before the Council of Nicaea. And it can be found today.