A religious history review about the Council of Nicaea held in 325 AD, in what today is Iznik, a city in Turkey
‘True God From True God’: Echo article published in Columbia Magazine by Tracy Rowland
1,700 years ago, one of the most consequential councils in Church history defined and defended the divinity of Christ.(Maine Writer note: My father was a Greek Catholic - not orthodox- the roots of his Catholicism are connected to the ancient eastern rite traditions and the practices authorized by the Council of Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea, held in 325 AD, is a foundational event for both the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches, including the Greek Catholic Church, which is in full communion with the Catholic Church. The Council of Nicaea affirmed the Nicene Creed, which is recited in Greek Catholic liturgies and is a core statement of Christian faith for both Eastern and Western traditions, )
A painting hangs in the Gate Church of the Trinity of the Pechersk Monastery in Kyiv, Ukraine — Vladimir Putin’s drones and rockets permitting.
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| The Council of Nicaea (18th century) by F. Pavlovskyi, I. Maksimovych, A. Galik, et al. (Holy Trinity Gate Church / Photo courtesy of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra National Reserve) |
In the painting, it depicts the First Council of Nicaea held in 325. Christ is seated prominently in the very center, surrounded by mitered bishops, to emphasize his headship of the council. Historical records indicate some 300 or more bishops participated in this council, the first to be called “ecumenical” because bishops from the entire oikoumenē (“inhabited world”) were invited. Its significance was unprecedented. In an address June 7, Pope Leo XIV affirmed that “the Council of Nicaea is not simply one council among others or the first in a series, but the council par excellence, which promulgated the norm of the Christian faith.”
Nicaea was on the eastern shore of the Bosporus Strait, in the Roman province of Bithynia, now a part of Turkey. Its name in Turkish is İznik, a city famous for its tiles and pottery. Inside the walls of the ancient town stands the Ayasofya Mosque, or Hagia Sophia, the once renowned Church of Holy Wisdom where the Second Council of Nicaea was held in 787.
The First Council of Nicaea is famous for its condemnation of Arianism, the doctrine of Arius (c. 256-336), a priest from Alexandria. Arius argued that the Father alone is God in the full sense, and that the Son, though a very lofty being, was nevertheless created by the Father. In other words, the Logos had a beginning; there was a time when he was not. Arianism set the bar dividing the uncreated and the created between the Father and the Son; the Holy Spirit was on yet another rung further down. Thus, the Arians vaporized the Trinity announced in our Lord’s baptismal formula “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19).
Attending the council as the secretary of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, was the young deacon Athanasius. The bishop had used his authority to oppose the “subordinationist” strand of third-century Christology, which saw the Son as inferior to God the Father. Under the presidency of the venerable Bishop Hosius of Córdoba, Spain, the large number of undecided council fathers eventually moved in behind Alexander and Athanasius. What broke the impasse was the proposal of the word homoousios (“same essence”) to describe the relation of the Father and the Son. The conventional Latin rendering of this word was consubstantialis. It means that the Logos — the Son — was of the same being, the same kind of being, the same nature as God. The creed describes this as: “Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”
While the Council of Nicaea clearly rejected Arianism, contention over the word homoousios continued for another 60 years. Emperor Constantine himself came under the influence of the Arian leader Eusebius of Nicomedia, and Constantine’s sons and successors as Roman emperors were Arianizers of one stripe or another. Many bishops — at times most of the bishops — cowed beneath their imperial authority.
Christological controversies were the social issue of the times. Venerable Fulton Sheen once quipped that in those days, even conversations at the hairdresser would turn to the Trinity — what party do you support and why? He probably had in mind St. Gregory of Nyssa’s story of his experience in Constantinople: “If you asked something of a moneychanger, he would begin discussing the question of the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you questioned a baker about the price of bread, he would answer that the Father is greater and the Son is subordinate to him. If you went to take a bath, the Anomoean bath attendant would tell you that in his opinion the Son simply comes from nothing.”
In hindsight, St. Athanasius was a superhero. He was “Athanasius contra mundum” — “Athanasius against the world.” When Bishop Alexander died not long after Nicaea, Athanasius accepted election as his successor very reluctantly, for he knew what was coming. Beginning with the Arianizing turn under Constantine, which his successors continued aggressively, Athanasius found himself in exile five times over a 17-year period. If he had not stood his ground and Arianism had won the intellectual battle, the proper understanding of the Incarnation would have been lost — together with the whole sacramental economy and Christianity as we know it.
After St. Athanasius’ death in 373, his work was carried on by the “Neo-Nicenes,” led by the Cappadocian Fathers, including St. Basil the Great and St. Meletius of Antioch. Part of the breakthrough at this late stage was a needed clarification of terms, especially the distinction between ousia (essence), and hypostasis (individual subsistence, or distinct personhood, within the Godhead). Finally, the teachings of Nicaea were reaffirmed at the Council of Constantinople in 381, which also added phrases on the divine nature of the Spirit to the original text of the Creed.
“If he had not stood his ground and Arianism had won the intellectual battle, the proper understanding of the Incarnation would have been lost.”
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), the Franco-English writer and historian, argued that an undefeated Arianism would have led to the treatment of Our Lord as nothing more than a prophet. He also offered a sociological analysis of the heresy. He saw it as representing a social alliance of the Roman army, the old Roman families who resisted the ascendancy of Christianity, and “at least half the snobs” who wished to associate themselves with the old Roman families. Many intellectuals of the day were also on the side of the pagan philosophers, and courtiers of Christian leaders worried about the rising power of bishops vis-à-vis that of the civil authorities. Also sympathetic to Arianism was the Roman army, which Belloc thought “explains three-fourths of what happened.” He concluded, “The army went Arian because it felt Arianism to be the distinctive thing which made it superior to the civilian masses, just as Arianism was a distinctive thing which made the intellectual feel superior to the popular masses.”
One key historical event illustrating Belloc’s judgment is the conversion of Clovis, the king of the Franks. When Clovis accepted baptism from St. Remigius, bishop of Reims, in 496, it marked the beginning of the defeat of Arianism across modern-day France, parts of Germany, Belgium and Holland. Thousands of his soldiers abandoned Arianism the moment that their warlord leader accepted the Catholic faith of his wife, St. Clotilde. This new alliance between the Franks and the Catholic faith would pave the way for the crowning of Charlemagne as emperor in 800 and the eventual rise of the Holy Roman Empire. Meanwhile, St. Clotilde’s great granddaughter, St. Ingund, carried on the “family business” by converting her husband from Arianism. He is now known as St. Hermenegild, and with his conversion, Visigothic Spain shifted toward Catholic orthodoxy.
Today, some 1,700 years after the Council of Nicaea, we can thank God for the gift of St. Athanasius, a fearless, holy and thoughtful bishop who firmly understood that bad theology tends to have catastrophic consequences. We can also be thankful for the gift of St. Clotilde, a Burgundian Catholic princess who changed the arc of history by praying incessantly for the conversion of her Arian-inclined husband. Above all, we should reflect upon how our very relationship to Christ — in his consubstantial unity with the Father in the Spirit — has an impact on our relationships with others. As Pope Benedict XVI emphasized on several occasions, “Truth is a Person.”
*****
TRACEY ROWLAND holds the St. John Paul II Chair of Theology at the University of Notre Dame in Australia. A former member of the International Theological Commission, she received the Ratzinger Prize for theology in 2020, and was appointed to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in 2023.
Nicaea was on the eastern shore of the Bosporus Strait, in the Roman province of Bithynia, now a part of Turkey. Its name in Turkish is İznik, a city famous for its tiles and pottery. Inside the walls of the ancient town stands the Ayasofya Mosque, or Hagia Sophia, the once renowned Church of Holy Wisdom where the Second Council of Nicaea was held in 787.
The First Council of Nicaea is famous for its condemnation of Arianism, the doctrine of Arius (c. 256-336), a priest from Alexandria. Arius argued that the Father alone is God in the full sense, and that the Son, though a very lofty being, was nevertheless created by the Father. In other words, the Logos had a beginning; there was a time when he was not. Arianism set the bar dividing the uncreated and the created between the Father and the Son; the Holy Spirit was on yet another rung further down. Thus, the Arians vaporized the Trinity announced in our Lord’s baptismal formula “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19).
Attending the council as the secretary of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, was the young deacon Athanasius. The bishop had used his authority to oppose the “subordinationist” strand of third-century Christology, which saw the Son as inferior to God the Father. Under the presidency of the venerable Bishop Hosius of Córdoba, Spain, the large number of undecided council fathers eventually moved in behind Alexander and Athanasius. What broke the impasse was the proposal of the word homoousios (“same essence”) to describe the relation of the Father and the Son. The conventional Latin rendering of this word was consubstantialis. It means that the Logos — the Son — was of the same being, the same kind of being, the same nature as God. The creed describes this as: “Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.”
While the Council of Nicaea clearly rejected Arianism, contention over the word homoousios continued for another 60 years. Emperor Constantine himself came under the influence of the Arian leader Eusebius of Nicomedia, and Constantine’s sons and successors as Roman emperors were Arianizers of one stripe or another. Many bishops — at times most of the bishops — cowed beneath their imperial authority.
Christological controversies were the social issue of the times. Venerable Fulton Sheen once quipped that in those days, even conversations at the hairdresser would turn to the Trinity — what party do you support and why? He probably had in mind St. Gregory of Nyssa’s story of his experience in Constantinople: “If you asked something of a moneychanger, he would begin discussing the question of the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you questioned a baker about the price of bread, he would answer that the Father is greater and the Son is subordinate to him. If you went to take a bath, the Anomoean bath attendant would tell you that in his opinion the Son simply comes from nothing.”
In hindsight, St. Athanasius was a superhero. He was “Athanasius contra mundum” — “Athanasius against the world.” When Bishop Alexander died not long after Nicaea, Athanasius accepted election as his successor very reluctantly, for he knew what was coming. Beginning with the Arianizing turn under Constantine, which his successors continued aggressively, Athanasius found himself in exile five times over a 17-year period. If he had not stood his ground and Arianism had won the intellectual battle, the proper understanding of the Incarnation would have been lost — together with the whole sacramental economy and Christianity as we know it.
After St. Athanasius’ death in 373, his work was carried on by the “Neo-Nicenes,” led by the Cappadocian Fathers, including St. Basil the Great and St. Meletius of Antioch. Part of the breakthrough at this late stage was a needed clarification of terms, especially the distinction between ousia (essence), and hypostasis (individual subsistence, or distinct personhood, within the Godhead). Finally, the teachings of Nicaea were reaffirmed at the Council of Constantinople in 381, which also added phrases on the divine nature of the Spirit to the original text of the Creed.
“If he had not stood his ground and Arianism had won the intellectual battle, the proper understanding of the Incarnation would have been lost.”
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), the Franco-English writer and historian, argued that an undefeated Arianism would have led to the treatment of Our Lord as nothing more than a prophet. He also offered a sociological analysis of the heresy. He saw it as representing a social alliance of the Roman army, the old Roman families who resisted the ascendancy of Christianity, and “at least half the snobs” who wished to associate themselves with the old Roman families. Many intellectuals of the day were also on the side of the pagan philosophers, and courtiers of Christian leaders worried about the rising power of bishops vis-à-vis that of the civil authorities. Also sympathetic to Arianism was the Roman army, which Belloc thought “explains three-fourths of what happened.” He concluded, “The army went Arian because it felt Arianism to be the distinctive thing which made it superior to the civilian masses, just as Arianism was a distinctive thing which made the intellectual feel superior to the popular masses.”
One key historical event illustrating Belloc’s judgment is the conversion of Clovis, the king of the Franks. When Clovis accepted baptism from St. Remigius, bishop of Reims, in 496, it marked the beginning of the defeat of Arianism across modern-day France, parts of Germany, Belgium and Holland. Thousands of his soldiers abandoned Arianism the moment that their warlord leader accepted the Catholic faith of his wife, St. Clotilde. This new alliance between the Franks and the Catholic faith would pave the way for the crowning of Charlemagne as emperor in 800 and the eventual rise of the Holy Roman Empire. Meanwhile, St. Clotilde’s great granddaughter, St. Ingund, carried on the “family business” by converting her husband from Arianism. He is now known as St. Hermenegild, and with his conversion, Visigothic Spain shifted toward Catholic orthodoxy.
Today, some 1,700 years after the Council of Nicaea, we can thank God for the gift of St. Athanasius, a fearless, holy and thoughtful bishop who firmly understood that bad theology tends to have catastrophic consequences. We can also be thankful for the gift of St. Clotilde, a Burgundian Catholic princess who changed the arc of history by praying incessantly for the conversion of her Arian-inclined husband. Above all, we should reflect upon how our very relationship to Christ — in his consubstantial unity with the Father in the Spirit — has an impact on our relationships with others. As Pope Benedict XVI emphasized on several occasions, “Truth is a Person.”
*****
TRACEY ROWLAND holds the St. John Paul II Chair of Theology at the University of Notre Dame in Australia. A former member of the International Theological Commission, she received the Ratzinger Prize for theology in 2020, and was appointed to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in 2023.
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