This month, 1,700 years ago, was one of the most significant and consequential events in all of church history. Across the Bosporus Straight from Constantinople, in Nicaea, a council met to settle a question plaguing the church: Who, precisely, is Jesus? Their work shaped the future of Christian theology.

In the first few centuries after Christ’s resurrection, Jesus was understood in a variety of ways. Only the Gnostics doubted His humanity, arguing that Jesus was a purely spiritual being who only seemed human.

Others suggested that Jesus was an angel or archangel, or specifically the Angel of the Lord mentioned in the Old Testament. By the third century, the church accepted the deity of Christ while seeing him as subordinate in some way to the Father.

In 318 or 319, the nature of that subordination was the source of controversy between Arius, a priest in Alexandria, and Alexander I, the patriarch of Alexandria. Alexander argued that Christ was eternally begotten of the Father’s substance and thus equal to the Father and without a beginning. Arius countered, “If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son was not.”

According to Arius, the Son was not eternally begotten of the Father. Rather, He was made from nothing and thus not equal to the Father. Jesus, Arius taught, was the first created being through whom everything else was made.

The quarrel between Arius and Alexander became a heated controversy across the church, with incredible implications for theology and worship. In Rome, the task of mediating religious conflicts fell to the emperor. To settle this weighty matter, Emperor Constantine I called the bishops to Nicaea in 325.

The council sided with the position that reflected the longstanding understanding of the Church and Holy Scripture. Alexander’s position aligned with passages such as John 1:1, “the Word was God . . .”, as well as Jesus’ claims in John 10, that “I and the Father are one”, and John 14:9, that “. . . whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

The council chose the word homoousios to describe who Jesus is in relationship with the Father and to emphasize His deity. Though they are of the same substance, the council clarified that, as begotten of the Father, Jesus is not the same as the Father. The creed produced by the council, which is recited in churches around the world to this day, described Christ as “begotten, not made, of one being (or of one substance) with the Father.”

The Nicaean Creed is among the most consequential documents in church history. It remains the articulation of orthodox Christology, though Arianism did not die out until the sixth century. The Council’s decisions also made significant contributions to theological clarity about the Trinity, another perplexity the Church had to define. Later councils would reflect on and refine the statements out of Nicaea. The First Council of Constantinople strengthened its statements on the Holy Spirit, and the Council of Chalcedon further worked out the relationship of the human and divine natures of Christ, united in a single person.

While the doctrines articulated by these councils are complex and nuanced, they have played the essential role of affirming and clarifying the many biblical claims about God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This clarity is just as important today because of the various groups and individuals who claim to be Christians but hold unorthodox and heretical views about Jesus. The Jehovah’s Witnesses embrace a form of Arianism, claiming Christ is the Archangel Michael and the first created being. Mormons reject the eternal generation of the Son and see Christ as one of many children of the Father, including Satan.

In fact, Arianism remains alive and well among evangelicals. In 2022, a survey conducted by Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research found that 73% of evangelicals agreed with the statement, “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. This widespread ignorance (and even outright rejection) of church history and the Creeds among many Christians, and the lack of interest in theological seriousness and formation among many churches, has consequences.

Thank God for Nicaea and for the courage and insight He gave those leaders to clarify the nature and work of Christ. What was accomplished by the Council continues to be of great importance for the Church. May we be as committed to knowing and teaching good theology in our churches today as they were then.

Source