The Council begins.
This First Ecumenical Council, the First Council of Nicaea, was not held in secret. We have five accounts of it.
It was called into session by the Emperor Constantine on May 20 in the Year of Our Lord 325, the Sunday after the Feast of the Ascension.
Why by the Emperor? Because there was no Ecumenical Patriarch yet, and the Pope of Rome had jurisdiction only over the Western Church.
Before we go any farther, let me say again that these two Posts are repeats from 2017, but considerably revised for accuracy and clarity. I draw a lot from the book The Fathers of the Eastern Church by Robert Payne. There are many more profoundly detailed analyses of the early Church, but this one is readable – like C.S. Lewis – intended not for professional historians but for us ordinary people.
The Council was held in a great marble hall (later to become a basilica church) above the beautiful Lake Askanios. The ruins are now submerged in the Lake.
To commemorate the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council, on November 28, 2025, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Leo XIV took part in a prayer service near the excavations of the ancient Basilica where the Council was held.
In the center of the hall was a throne on which a Gospel book was placed. At one end sat at least 250 (tradition says 318) bishops; * at the other end was a throne for the Emperor. This is how Constantine saw it: the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the center of the deliberatons.
- Only a few from the Western Church, largely because of the difficulties of travel – also perhaps because Arianism was an Eastern phenomenon.
Early in the morning on the Sunday which came to be named after them, the bishops awaited the arrival of the Emperor. Few of them had ever even seen an emperor, and most were probably on edge. Most Christians who had stood before recent emperors had not survived.
Constantine entered, dressed in purple and jewels. He was 51 but he looked younger, tall, vigorous, with longer hair, a very short beard, bright eyes. He walked slowly to his throne, apparently deeply moved at the presence of so many holy men. Contrary to all imperial precedent he did not sit until he had asked their permission.
First he spoke flatteringly to the bishops. Then he then begged them: Your dissensions are “more dangerous than war and other conflicts; they bring me more grief than anything else… I entreat you therefore, beloved ministers of God, to remove the causes of dissension among you and establish peace”. (Good advice, brothers and sisters.) Then he did something dramatic. He took all the letters that had been sent to him and, since he knew there was great bitterness in them, had them burnt. (Another good idea. Really, most letters and e-mails written in indignation or anger, whether about political issues or religious matters or whatever, should be ignored. They do more harm than good. Don’t read them. Burn them. Or Delete!) Said Constantine, “I have not read them.” (I don’t know if he was telling the truth or not.) The emperor continued, “God will judge your complaints at the Last Day. I will hear your arguments in person” – and he certainly did.
Arians (there were not many) and Orthodox were immediately at each others’ throats, so that the Emperor could barely keep order. Neither of the two chief protagonists were bishops: the priest Arius and the young deacon Athanasios, both of Alexandria. Athanasios was in his early 20s, brilliant and militantly Orthodox. At that age he may already have written his classic book On the Incarnation. Arius was a gaunt, long haired ascetic man who always went barefoot. He had a disorder that caused occasional nervous spasms. He was morally upright; no scandal was ever connected to him – and, believe me, his enemies tried hard to find some.
Arius spoke first and soon began to sing one of his pop songs: “There was a time when the Son was not”, to the horror of the Orthodox who began to cry out and stop their ears.
A story says that Saint Nicholas of Myra was so angered that he rushed up and punched Arius, * which caused him to be suspended from the episcopate for a time, and that explains why Nicholas was not listed among those who attended the Council. It does seem odd, with Myra not very far away, that Bishop Nicholas would not attend. The story may or may not be true, but at least it has made a great action scene at the Church School’s Saint Nicholas Pageants at our Saint Nicholas Church in Cedarburg!
- from the Troparion of Saint Nicholas: “You were the image of humility and a teacher of self-control.” Well, for the most part!
The arguing and contention went on for days. How was it all to be resolved?
What the Council did not do.
Some liberal theologians and books, such as the once-popular novel The Davinci Code. have held that the early Church did not believe in Christ’s divinity, that Constantine and the Council imposed this doctrine on the Church; that the Council therefore suppressed older “lost gospels” about Jesus and imposed the Four Gospels alone on the Church. These claims are false and contradictory. As I said last week, the early Church took Christ’s divinity for granted. The first Christian to deny this was Arius. There were other early books (sometimes called “lost Gospels” – of Peter and Thomas and more) which the Church never accepted because they denied the humanity of Christ. These books were of second or third century Gnostic origin. (Gnostics believed matter was evil, unworthy.) They were “lost” long before the Council, apparently through disinterest. The Council did not suppress them.
What the Council actually did.
As the Council went on, it became obvious that, as in many controversies, those who made the most noise were few in number. After the issues were aired and the language clarified, the bishops (all except two, Theonas of Marmarica in Libya and Secundus of Ptolemais) agreed on what the Church had always taught, what the four original, authentic and universally accepted Gospels made clear, that Jesus was both God and Man. Finally Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea suggested that a common creed might express their unity. He recommended a beautiful statement of faith he had been taught as a boy in Palestine, which began “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God from God, Light from Light…” and so on. This Palestinian creed was reworked a bit, and the Council agreed.
So the first two parts of the Creed we say at every Divine Liturgy were written by the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, to defend the Church against Arianism: Jesus Christ is “true God of true God, begotten not created, of one essence with the Father; through Him all things were made.”
Pow! Take that, Arius! If Saint Nicholas didn’t punch him out, the Council certainly did! Arius was excommunicated from the Church. Let’s be clear again: The Church doesn’t exclude people from receiving the Holy Eucharist for being wrong (we’re all frequently wrong) or for being sinners (we’re all sinners). The Fathers of the First Council cut Arius off for being wrong and unrepentant. They isolated him like a virus, till such time as he should repent and return to the Faith. He never did.
The Council ends.
The Council completed its work on July 25. The Emperor threw a great banquet for the bishops. (Our Church conventions and conferences still often conclude with a banquet.) Constantine complimented Athanasios for such wisdom coming from a young deacon. * The Emperor stood up to leave. On his way out he paid reverence to the bishops who had suffered at the hands of his predecessors; he kissed their empty eye sockets and their wounds and paralyzed limbs. He passed through a line of imperial bodyguards with drawn swords and left the hall, and the First Ecumenical Council was over.
- I’ve attached a Post about Saint Athanasios at the bottom.
Constantine and the bishops went home exhausted but relieved. The Faith was established, and now the Church would be at peace…
…but it was not to be. Arius remained stubborn. He died, it was said in a privy (if you younger people don’t know what that is, just ask some of us old people), because of some sort of major intestinal explosion – and there are some imaginative pictures of his death which you do not want to see.
However, Arianism did not die with him. It continued to grow and almost seemed to win the day. The Emperor himself wasn’t much interested in theology – he only wanted peace – and at the end of his life he was baptized by a bishop with Arian connections! Fifty years later in Constantinople, the capitol, only one church remained Orthodox. All the rest had gone Arian. Arian missionaries went north and converted the Germanic tribes which were Arian for centuries, and as the tribes moved west and south they brought their heresy with them into western Europe as far as Spain. Arianism eventually faded out. Or maybe it just went underground, because it has revived (though not under that name) in the last couple of centuries. Many modern-day Christians who have denied the divinity of Christ have largely been of Germanic, Anglo-Saxon origin. *
- I think Arius could have endorsed this: Officlal Statement of Faith of the United Church of Christ (written in 1959): “We believe in God, the Eternal Spirit, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father, and to his deeds we testify: He calls the worlds into being, creates man in his own image and sets before him the ways of life and death. He seeks in holy love to save all people from aimlessness and sin. He judges men and nations by his righteous will declared through prophets and apostles. In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord, he has come to us and shared our common lot, conquering sin and death and reconciling the world to him…”
Why did the decisions of the Council not settle the issue?
Because councils are not considered ecumenical, that is, of universal authority, just because some bishops have approved something. The early Church was not like modern Roman Catholicism, where (in principle at least) the Pope speaks and that’s it – now obey! In the early Church and in the Orthodox Church yet today, we emphasize that bishops (even the Bishop of Rome) can err, that there have been false and heretical councils. Councils are called ecumenical because the people of the Church, led by the bishops, finally recognize them as speaking the truth and accept them. The Holy Spirit dwells in all of us, and all Orthodox Christians are defenders of the faith. It’s a messy system, but it works. Look at the theological and liturgical unity of the Orthodox Church today, compared to the rest of Christianity.
In time the tumult and the shouting died, anger and hostility settled down, and it became obvious to almost everybody that Arius had been wrong, that the Fathers of the First Council of Nicaea had been right, that Jesus Christ is “God from God, Light from Light, begotten not made, of one essence with the Father by whom all things were made”, and the truth of Orthodoxy triumphed as it always does, and peace was restored as it always is. But sometimes it takes a while.
The Holy Orthodox and Catholic Church sails on unto ages of ages. Amen.
I’ve attached the following Post just as it was in 2017 when I wrote it – no changes.
16. “Outside the Camp”: What we can learn from Saint Athanasios the Great
Next Week: Polytheism? Idolatry? Obscure? Obtuse?
Week after Next: Is God really good?