Description: Our council, depicted here, met to determine whether Christ, the Son, was truly and fully God as the Father was.
By Sue Careless
BELIEVE IT or not, there is a lot for Christians to celebrate in 2025. Can you guess what crucial event in church history occurred 1700 years ago? What important theologian was born 800 years ago? And what great novelist was born 250 years ago? Look through our pages for clues.
We met f-rom May until the end of July in the year 325.
At any one time there were between 220 and 250 of us in attendance.
Most of us came f-rom the eastern part of the Roman Empire.
Many of us bore in our bodies the marks of the tortures we had undergone for the sake of our faith during severe persecutions.
We had been summoned by the newly converted emperor Constantine I, an unbaptized catechumen, who presided over the opening session and took part in the discussions.
Pope Sylvester I did not attend our council but was represented by legates.
Our ecumenical council was the first of many efforts to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all Christendom.
We met to determine whether Christ, the Son, was truly and fully God as the Father was.
Constantine hoped a general council of the church would solve the problem created in the Eastern church by Arianism, a heresy first proposed by Arius of Alexandria that affirmed that Christ is not divine but a created being.
Arius thought that to believe that the Son is God as well as the Father is God would mean that there were two gods, and that therefore Christians would fall back into paganism.
Arius maintained that the Logos was the first and highest of all created beings, called into being by God as the agent or instrument through which all other created things were made. Christ was thus less than God but more than a human being.
Our private opinions as attending bishops were anything but unanimous, but the opinion that carried the day was that espoused by the young presbyter Athanasius, who later became bishop of Alexandria.
Athanasius declared, “Jesus, whom I know as my redeemer, cannot be less than God.”
Our Council determined that Christ was “begotten, not made,” that he was therefore not creature, not even the highest creature, but creator.
Our Council also asserted that Christ was “of the same substance as the Father” (homoousios to patri). Christ was not subordinate to the Father.
The three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – were distinct f-rom one another but were equal in their eternity and power.
Our Council’s main accomplishments were settlement of the Christological issue of the divine nature of God the Son and his relationship to God the Father and the construction of the first part of what is generally called in your day the Nicene Creed.
Our Council condemned Arius and, with reluctance on the part of some, incorporated the non-scriptural word homoousios (“of one substance”) into a creed to signify the absolute equality of the Son with the Father.
The emperor carried out his earlier declaration: everybody who refused to endorse the creed and its four anathemas would be exiled. (An anathema is a formal curse by a pope or a council of the Church, excommunicating a person or denouncing a doctrine.)
Arius, Theonas, and Secundus refused to adhere to the creed and were excommunicated and exiled to Illyria. The works of Arius were ordered to be confiscated and burnt.
Nevertheless, the controversy continued in various parts of the Roman Empire.
We attempted but failed to establish a uniform date for Easter.
We issued decrees (canon law) on many other matters, including the proper method of consecrating bishops, a condemnation of lending money at interest by clerics and a refusal to allow bishops, priests and deacons to move f-rom one church to another.
We also confirmed the primacy of Alexandria and Jerusalem over other sees in their respective areas.
A proposal was made to require priests to be celibate, but it was rejected.
Our council issued The Nicene Creed but it is shorter than the one you know today. It ends at “And in the Holy Ghost.”
The original Nicene Creed with its four anti-Arian anathemas that we issued in 325 read as follows:
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 f-rom the Father, only-begotten, that is, f-rom the substance of the Father,
God f-rom God, light f-rom light,
true God f-rom 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 and became man, and suffered,
and rose again on the third day, and ascended to the heavens,
and will come to judge the living and dead,
And in the Holy Spirit.
But as for those who say, There was when He [Christ] was not,
and, Before being born He was not,
and that He came into existence out of nothing,
or who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or substance,
or created, or is subject to alteration or change
– these the Catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes.
Answer to quiz: The Council of Nicaea held in 325. It is so called because it met in the city of Nicaea.
It took a second ecumenical council that met 56 years later in Constantinople to endorse the section of the creed on the nature, function and work of the Holy Spirit.
The Council of Constantinople also added on the affirmations about Baptism, Resurrection and the Life of the World to come.
The full Nicene Creed, or as it is more accurately called the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, is the only ecumenical creed because it is accepted as authoritative by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and major Protestant churches. The Apostles’ and Athanasian creeds are accepted by some but not all of these churches.
BP. MARIANN BUDDE’S sermon at the National Cathedral’s inaugural prayer service in Washington stirred up a great deal of controversy on social media, including amongst traditionally-minded Anglicans.
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IT WAS Christmas Eve. The children had made the journey to Bethlehem, up one aisle and down another in the candlelight, picking up a donkey and a cow and Mary and Joseph and sheep and shepherds on the way. Now they sat by the crèche looking up at the Advent wreath. The Christ candle flamed– Jesus is born!– and one little boy leapt up at the sight of the light (Oh! Oh!) and flung up his arms and said, “Glory to God!”
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RIGHT OFF the top – yes, we realize that you may actually be reading the paper version of this issue in Epiphany…or Lent, depending on when the postal strike finally ends. Let me take this opportunity to remind you that you can access all of our stories online as well at www.anglicanplanet.org – if you haven’t received your password, send an email to office@stpeter.org and we’ll get you set up!
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IN THIS powerful picture book about a girl experiencing loss, The Good for Nothing Puddle helps children explore the nature of grief and loss. It does not offer the quick fix of a superficial band aid for those “stuck in sadness.” Instead, it leads them gently and gradually to finding hope in the midst of their pain.
THE Archbishop of Kenya has ordered churches under his care to stop allowing speeches by politicians during their worship services. The ban moves the Anglican Church of Kenya into a stricter separation of church and states than is common in the United States, where politicians often visit churches and speak f-rom pulpits during their campaigns.
BELIEVE IT or not, there is a lot for Christians to celebrate in 2025. Can you guess what crucial event in church history occurred 1700 years ago? What important theologian was born 800 years ago? And what great novelist was born 250 years ago? Look through our pages for clues.
IN THE EARLY 1990s, the Rev’d David Short came to Canada to study under J.I. Packer at Regent College in Vancouver. He and his wife Bronwyn planned to return to Australia with their two young sons after David received his masters. Instead, in 1993 he accepted the role of rector of St John’s Shaughnessy in Vancouver, following in the footsteps of the remarkable evangelical preacher, the Rev’d Harry Robinson. But 2002 proved to be a momentous year as the Diocese of New Westminster and the St John’s Shaughnessy congregation were at the epicentre of some tectonic shifts in the Anglican Communion. Their diocese, which was theologically liberal, became the first Anglican diocese in the world to formally authorize the blessing of same-sex unions
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