wikipedia: Council of Nicaea was called by Emperor Constantine in 325 CE in Contantinople (Istanbul)

Agenda and procedure:  The agenda of the synod included:

1. The Arian question regarding the relationship between God the Father and Jesus; i.e., are the Father and Son one in divine purpose only or also one in being?
2. The date of celebration of the Paschal/Easter observation
3. The Meletian schism
4. The validity of baptism by heretics
5. The status of the lapsed in the persecution under Licinius^{[citation needed]}

The council was formally opened May 20, in the central structure of the imperial palace at Nicea, with preliminary discussions of the Arian question. In these discussions, some dominant figures were Arius, with several adherents. “Some 22 of the bishops at the council, led by Eusebius of Nicomedia, came as supporters of Arius. But when some of the more shocking passages from his writings were read, they were almost universally seen as blasphemous.”^[17] Bishops Theognis of Nicea and Maris of Chalcedon were among the initial supporters of Arius.

Eusebius of Caesarea called to mind the baptismal creed of his own diocese at Caesarea at Palestine, as a form of reconciliation. The majority of the bishops agreed. For some time, scholars thought that the original Nicene Creed was based on this statement of Eusebius. Today, most scholars think that the Creed is derived from the baptismal creed of Jerusalem, as Hans Lietzmann proposed.

The orthodox bishops won approval of every one of their proposals regarding the Creed. After being in session for an entire month, the council promulgated on June 19 the original Nicene Creed. This profession of faith was adopted by all the bishops “but two from Libya who had been closely associated with Arius from the beginning.”^[18] No historical record of their dissent actually exists; the signatures of these bishops are simply absent from the Creed.

Arian controversy

The synod of Nicea, Constantine and the condemnation and burning of Arian books, illustration from a northern Italian compendium of canon law, ca. 825

The Arian controversy was a Christological dispute that began in Alexandria between the followers of Arius (theArians) and the followers of St. Alexander of Alexandria (now known as Homoousians). Alexander and his followers believed that the Son was co-eternal with the Father, and divine in just the same sense that the Father is. The Arians believed that the Father’s divinity was greater than the Son’s, that the Son had a beginning, that he shared neither the eternity nor the true divinity of the Father, but was rather the very first and the most perfect of God’s creatures.^[36]

For about two months, the two sides argued and debated,^[37] with each appealing to Scripture to justify their respective positions. According to many accounts, debate became so heated that at one point, Arius was slapped in the face by Nicholas of Myra, who would later be canonized.^[38]

Much of the debate hinged on the difference between being “born” or “created” and being “begotten”. Arians saw these as essentially the same; followers of Alexander did not. The exact meaning of many of the words used in the debates at Nicea were still unclear to speakers of other languages. Greek words like “essence” (ousia), “substance” (hypostasis), “nature” (physis), “person” (prosopon) bore a variety of meanings drawn from pre-Christian philosophers, which could not but entail misunderstandings until they were cleared up. The wordhomoousia, in particular, was initially disliked by many bishops because of its associations with Gnostic heretics (who used it in their theology), and because it had been condemned at the 264–268 Synods of Antioch.

Position of Arius (Arianism)

Arius maintained that the Son of God was a Creature, made from nothing; and that he was God’s First Production, before all ages. And he argued that everything else was created through the Son. Thus, said the Arians, only the Son was directly created and begotten of God; and therefore there was a time that He had no existence. Arius believed the Son Jesus was capable of His own free will of right and wrong, and that “were He in the truest sense a son, He must have come after the Father, therefore the time obviously was when He was not, and hence He was a finite being,”^[39] and was under God the Father. The Arians appealed to Scripture, quoting verses such as John 14:28: “the Father is greater than I”, and also Colossians 1:15: “Firstborn of all creation.”

[edit]Position of St. Alexander

Alexander and the Nicene fathers countered the Arians’ argument, saying that the Father’s fatherhood, like all of his attributes, is eternal. Thus, the Father was always a father, and that the Son, therefore, always existed with him. The Nicene fathers believed that to follow the Arian view destroyed the unity of theGodhead, and made the Son unequal to the Father, in contravention of the Scriptures (“I and the Father are one”; John 10:30). Further on it says “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me”; John 17:21.

[edit]Result of the debate

The Council declared that the Son was true God, co-eternal with the Father and begotten from His same substance, arguing that such a doctrine best codified the Scriptural presentation of the Son as well as traditional Christian belief about him handed down from the Apostles. Under Constantine’s influence,^[40] this belief was expressed by the bishops in the Nicene Statement, which would form the basis of what has since been known as the Nicene Creed.

[edit]The Nicene Creed

Icon depicting the Emperor Constantine and the bishops of the First Council of Nicea (325) holding theNiceno–Constantinopolitan Creed of 381.

One of the projects undertaken by the Council was the creation of a Creed, a declaration and summary of the Christian faith. Several creeds were already in existence; many creeds were acceptable to the members of the council, including Arius. From earliest times, various creeds served as a means of identification for Christians, as a means of inclusion and recognition, especially at baptism.

In Rome, for example, the Apostles’ Creed was popular, especially for use in Lent and the Easter season. In the Council of Nicea, one specific creed was used to define the Church’s faith clearly, to include those who professed it, and to exclude those who did not.

Some distinctive elements in the Nicene Creed, perhaps from the hand of Hosius of Cordova, were added. Some elements were added specifically to counter the Arian point of view.^[41] [42]

1. Jesus Christ is described as “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,” proclaiming his divinity.
2. Jesus Christ is said to be “begotten, not made”, asserting that he was not a mere creature, brought in to being out of nothing, but the true Son of God, brought in to being ‘from the substance of the Father’.
3. He is said to be “one in being with The Father”. Eusebius of Caesarea ascribes the term homoousios, orconsubstantial, i.e., “of the same substance” (of the Father), to Constantine who, on this particular point, may have chosen to exercise his authority. The significance of this clause, however, is extremely ambiguous, and the issues it raised would be seriously controverted in future.

At the end of the creed came a list of anathemas, designed to repudiate explicitly the Arians’ stated claims.

1. The view that ‘there was once that when he was not’ was rejected to maintain the co-eternity of the Son with the Father.
2. The view that he was ‘mutable or subject to change’ was rejected to maintain that the Son just like the Father was beyond any form of weakness or corruptibility, and most importantly that he could not fall away from absolute moral perfection.

Thus, instead of a baptismal creed acceptable to both the Arians and their opponents the council promulgated one which was clearly opposed to Arianism and incompatible with the distinctive core of their beliefs. The text of this profession of faith is preserved in a letter of Eusebius to his congregation, in Athanasius, and elsewhere. Although the most vocal of anti-Arians, the Homoousians (from the Koine Greek word translated as “of same substance” which was condemned at the Council of Antioch in 264–268), were in the minority, the Creed was accepted by the council as an expression of the bishops’ common faith and the ancient faith of the whole Church.

Bishop Hosius of Cordova, one of the firm Homoousians, may well have helped bring the council to consensus. At the time of the council, he was the confidant of the emperor in all Church matters. Hosius stands at the head of the lists of bishops, and Athanasius ascribes to him the actual formulation of the creed. Great leaders such as Eustathius of Antioch, Alexander of Alexandria, Athanasius, and Marcellus of Ancyra all adhered to the Homoousian position.

In spite of his sympathy for Arius, Eusebius of Caesarea adhered to the decisions of the council, accepting the entire creed. The initial number of bishops supporting Arius was small. After a month of discussion, on June 19, there were only two left: Theonas of Marmarica in Libya, and Secundus of Ptolemais. Maris of Chalcedon, who initially supported Arianism, agreed to the whole creed. Similarly, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nice also agreed, except for the certain statements.

The Emperor carried out his earlier statement: everybody who refused to endorse the Creed would be exiled. Arius, Theonas, and Secundus refused to adhere to the creed, and were thus exiled to Illyria, in addition to being excommunicated. The works of Arius were ordered to be confiscated and consigned to the flames while all persons found possessing them were to be executed.^[14] Nevertheless, the controversy continued in various parts of the empire.^[43]

The Creed was amended to a new version by the First Council of Constantinople in 381.

[edit]Separation of Easter computation from Jewish calendar

The feast of Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread, as Christians believe that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus occurred at the time of those observances.

As early as Pope Sixtus I, some Christians had set Easter to a Sunday in the lunar month of Nisan. To determine which lunar month was to be designated as Nisan, Christians relied on the Jewish community. By the later 3rd century some Christians began to express dissatisfaction with what they took to be the disorderly state of the Jewish calendar. They argued that contemporary Jews were identifying the wrong lunar month as the month of Nisan, choosing a month whose 14th day fell before the spring equinox.^[44]

Christians, these thinkers argued, should abandon the custom of relying on Jewish informants and instead do their own computations to determine which month should be styled Nisan, setting Easter within this independently computed, Christian Nisan, which would always locate the festival after the equinox. They justified this break with tradition by arguing that it was in fact the contemporary Jewish calendar that had broken with tradition by ignoring the equinox, and that in former times the 14th of Nisan had never preceded the equinox.^[45] Others felt that the customary practice of reliance on the Jewish calendar should continue, even if the Jewish computations were in error from a Christian point of view.^[46]

The controversy between those who argued for independent computations and those who argued for continued reliance on the Jewish calendar was formally resolved by the Council, which endorsed the independent procedure that had been in use for some time at Rome and Alexandria. Easter was henceforward to be a Sunday in a lunar month chosen according to Christian criteria—in effect, a Christian Nisan—not in the month of Nisan as defined by Jews. Those who argued for continued reliance on the Jewish calendar (called “protopaschites” by later historians) were urged to come around to the majority position. That they did not all immediately do so is revealed by the existence of sermons,^[47] canons,^[48] and tracts^[49] written against the protopaschite practice in the later 4th century.

These two rules, independence of the Jewish calendar and worldwide uniformity, were the only rules for Easter explicitly laid down by the Council. No details for the computation were specified; these were worked out in practice, a process that took centuries and generated a number of controversies. (See alsoComputus and Reform of the date of Easter.) In particular, the Council did not decree that Easter must fall on Sunday. This was already the practice almost everywhere.^[50]

Nor did the Council decree that Easter must never coincide with Nisan 14 (the first Day of Unleavened Bread, now commonly called “Passover”) in theHebrew calendar. By endorsing the move to independent computations, the Council had separated the Easter computation from all dependence, positive or negative, on the Jewish calendar. The “Zonaras proviso”, the claim that Easter must always follow Nisan 14 in the Hebrew calendar, was not formulated until after some centuries. By that time, the accumulation of errors in the Julian solar and lunar calendars had made it the de facto state of affairs that Julian Easter always followed Hebrew Nisan 14.^[51]

“At the council we also considered the issue of our holiest day, Easter, and it was determined by common consent that everyone, everywhere should celebrate it on one and the same day. For what can be more appropriate, or what more solemn, than that this feast from which we have received the hope of immortality, should be kept by all without variation, using the same order and a clear arrangement? And in the first place, it seemed very unworthy for us to keep this most sacred feast following the custom of the Jews, a people who have soiled their hands in a most terrible outrage, and have thus polluted their souls, and are now deservedly blind. Since we have cast aside their way of calculating the date of the festival, we can ensure that future generations can celebrate this observance at the more accurate time which we have kept from the first day of the passion until the present time….”

— Emperor Constantine, following the Council of Nicaea^[52]

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