Council of Nicea
In June, 325 A.D., the Council of Nicea opened and continued for two months, with Constantine attending. The bishops modified an existing creed to fit their purposes. The creed, with some changes made at a later fourth century council, is still given today in many churches. The Nicene Creed, as it came to be called, takes elaborate care by repeating several redundancies to identify the Son with the Father rather than with the creation:
"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, the only-begotten of
his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God
of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father. By whom
all things were made ... Who ... was incarnate and was made human ..."
Only two bishops, along with Arius, refused to sign the creed. Constantine
banished them from the empire, while the other bishops went on to celebrate
their unity in a great feast at the imperial palace.
The creed is much more than an affirmation of Jesus' divinity. It is also an
affirmation of our separation from God and Christ. It takes great pains to
describe Jesus as God in order to deny that he is part of God's creation. He is
"begotten, not made," therefore totally separate from us, the created beings. As
scholar George Leonard Prestige writes, the Nicene Creed's description of Jesus
tells us "that the Son of God bears no resemblance to the ... creatures."
The description of Jesus as the only Son of God is carried forward in the
Apostles' Creed, which is used in many Protestant churches today. It reads: "I
believe in God, the Father Almighty ... I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son,
our Lord." But even that language - calling Jesus God's only Son - denies that
we can ever attain the sonship that Jesus did.
Christians may be interested to know that many scholars analyzing the Bible now
believe that Jesus never claimed to be the only Son of God. This was a later
development based on a misinterpretation of the gospel of John.
There is further evidence to suggest that Jesus believed all people could
achieve the goal of becoming Sons of God. But the churches, by retaining these
creeds, remain in bondage to Constantine and his three hundred bishops.
Some of the bishops who attended the council were uncomfortable with the
council's definition of the Son and thought they might have gone too far. But
the emperor, in a letter sent to the bishops who were not in attendance at Nicea,
required that they accept "this truly divine injunction."
Constantine said that since the council's decision had been "determined in the
holy assemblies of the bishops," the Church officials must regard it as
"indicative of the divine will."
The Roman god Constantine had spoken. Clearly, he had concluded that the
orthodox position was more conducive to a strong and unified Church than the
Arian position and that it therefore must be upheld.
Constantine also took the opportunity to inaugurate the first systematic
government persecution of dissident Christians. He issued an edict against
"heretics," calling them "haters and enemies of truth and life, in league with
destruction."
Even though he had begun his reign with an edict of religious toleration, he now
forbade the heretics (mostly Arians) to assemble in any public or private place,
including private homes, and ordered that they be deprived of "every gathering
point for [their] superstitious meetings," including "all the houses of prayer."
These were to be given to the orthodox Church.
The heretical teachers were forced to flee, and many of their students were
coerced back into the orthodox fold. The emperor also ordered a search for their
books, which were to be confiscated and destroyed. Hiding the works of Arius
carried a severe penalty - the death sentence.
Nicea, nevertheless, marked the beginning of the end of the concepts of both
preexistence, reincarnation, and salvation through union with God in Christian
doctrine. It took another two hundred years for the ideas to be expunged.
But Constantine had given the Church the tools with which to do it when he
molded Christianity in his own image and made Jesus the only Son of God. From
now on, the Church would become representative of a capricious and autocratic
God - a God who was not unlike Constantine and other Roman emperors.
Tertullian, a stanch anti-Origenian and a father of the Church, had this to say
about those who believed in reincarnation and not the resurrection of the dead:
"What a panorama of spectacle on that day [the Resurrection]! What sight should
I turn to first to laugh and applaud? ... Wise philosophers, blushing before
their students as they burn together, the followers to whom they taught that the
world is no concern of God's, whom they assured that either they had no souls at
all or that what souls they had would never return to their former bodies? These
are things of greater delight, I believe, than a circus, both kinds of theater,
and any stadium." Tertullian was a great influence in having so-called
"heretics" put to death.
