Main content
Course: World history > Unit 2
Lesson 10: Early ChristianityThe Council of Nicaea
Google ClassroomThe attempted unification of church doctrine by Constantine through the Council of Nicaea, in response to the Arian Controversy.
Want to join the conversation?
Can someone explain or give a link to better understand this POWER STRUGGLE?(3 votes)
Constantine was ruing over an empire that was "on its way out". Many of the structures of the empire were not functioning well any more. He noticed that Christianity was popular among certain social sectors and sought to co-opt that popularity to prop up his regime. He didn't realize, though, that Christians had very fluid doctrines, and argued among themselves about philosophical things. So he called a council to decide what would be the standard beliefs. Constantine cared little which side in the internal disputes in Christianity prevailed, only that they would agree with each other and bring stability to his empire. Creation of standard doctrine, though, divided the Syrian, Armenian and African churches from those of the empire. Eventually, instead of Constantine co-opting the Christians, the church co-opted the empire, which crashed anyway.(6 votes)
- Did Jesus himself tell that he would come back some time or the priests presumed it from his abilities of resurrection?
(By the way Jesus is told to come back in Koran too, although he is a prophet in Islam)(5 votes)
No Jesus knew that he would come back. “ After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him." Hosea 6: 2(2 votes)
- Why was it called the Council of Nicaea? What does Nicaea mean?(1 vote)
It was called the Council of Nicaea because it was at a place called Nicaea in Turkey.(6 votes)
Was the church in the East Byzantine empire, at this time stated in the video, the Orthodox Christian church as we know it today?(1 vote)- The church at the time of the Council of Nicaea constituted all current Christian Churches with the -possible exception of the Coptic, Ethiopic and Nestorian branches. The schism between Eastern and Western Christianity didn't happen until 600 years later.(7 votes)
What happend to them after the crusades(2 votes)- To whom, the crusaders, the byzantines, the turks, the arabs, the bankers? I'm unclear about whom you are inquiring.(3 votes)
Why were the Roman persecutions that lasted for two centuries or more not effective in checking the spread of Christianity ?(3 votes)- Christians might say that God was behind the persistence. Others might rightfully point to economic, social and political factors. Roman persecutions were not, in the end, empire wide and systematic, but sporadic and local. It was sometimes sufficient just to move to the next town or province in order to escape them.(0 votes)
were there any , monothiest , non trinitarian christians at the very beginings of christianity? and if there were , what happened to them?(1 vote)- Yes. These were known as the Monophysites. Here's what I learned about them from Wikipedia:
Acephali were monophysites who in 482 broke away from Peter III of Alexandria who made an agreement with Acacius of Constantinople, sanctioned by Emperor Zeno with his Henotikon edict that condemned both Nestorius and Eutyches, as the Council of Chalcedon had done, but ignored that council's decree on the two natures of Christ. They saw this as a betrayal of S. Cyrils use of "mia physis" and refused to be subject to the Chalcedonian Patriarch of Alexandria, preferring to be instead ecclesiastically "without a head" (the meaning of acephali).[6] For this, they were known as Headless Ones.[7]
Agnoetae, Themistians or Agnosticists, founded by Themistius Calonymus around 534, held that the nature of Jesus Christ, although divine, was like other men's in all respects, including limited knowledge.[8][9] They must be distinguished from a fourth-century group called by the same name, who denied that God knew the past and the future.[10]
Aphthartodocetae, Phantasiasts or, after their leader Julian of Halicarnassus, Julianists believed "that the body of Christ, from the very moment of his conception, was incorruptible, immortal and impassible, as it was after the resurrection, and held that the suffering and death on the cross was a miracle contrary to the normal conditions of Christ's humanity".[11] Emperor Justinian I wished to have this teaching adopted as orthodox, but died before he could put his plans into effect.[12]
Apollinarians or Apollinarists, named after Apollinaris of Laodicea (who died in 390) proposed that Jesus had a normal human body but had a divine mind instead of a regular human soul. This teaching was condemned by the First Council of Constantinople (381) and died out within a few decades.[13] Cyril of Alexandria declared it a mad proposal.[14]
Docetists, not all of whom were monophysites, held that Jesus had no human nature: his humanity was only a phantasm, which, united with the impassible, immaterial divine nature, could not really suffer and die.[15][16]
Eutychians taught that Jesus had only one nature, a union of the divine and human that is not an even compound, since what is divine is infinitely larger than what is human: the humanity is absorbed by and transmuted into the divinity, as a drop of honey, mixing with the water of the sea, vanishes. The body of Christ, thus transmuted, is not consubstantial homoousios with humankind.[17][18] In contrast to Severians, who are called verbal monophysites, Eutychianists are called real or ontological monophysites,[19][20][21] and their teaching is "an extreme form of the monophysite heresy that emphasizes the exclusive prevalence of the divinity in Christ".[22]
Tritheists, a group of sixth-century monophysites said to have been founded by a monophysite named John Ascunages[23] of Antioch. Their principal writer was John Philoponus, who taught that the common nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is an abstraction of their distinct individual natures.[24][25]
The Oriental Orthodox, or Severians, accept the reality of Christ's human nature to the extent of insisting that his body was capable of corruption, but argue that, since a single person has a single nature and Christ is one person, not two, he has only a single nature. Agreeing in substance, though not in words, with the Definition of Chalcedon, they are called "verbal monophysites" by some Eastern Orthodox.[19][26] The Oriental Orthodox reject the label of monophysitism and consider monophysitism a heresy, preferring to label their non-Chalcedonian beliefs as miaphysitism.[27][28](2 votes)
were there people living as far north as nowadays Russia at this time in history?(1 vote)- The diverse landscape of the Arctic tundra and ice-covered sea shores has been home to various people and cultures, not to mention some of the most hardy plants and animals, for thousands of years. The earliest human inhabitants of the Arctic were there some 40,000 years ago, even before humans arrived on the North American continent in Alaska.(2 votes)
- Was the church in the East Byzantine empire, at this time stated in the video, the Orthodox Christian church as we know it today?(0 votes)
- All churches change through the ages. The church was ONE until it began to fragment (African, Central Asian, Western Asian, European) beginning in about 450CE. The big split came in 1054, and another began in 1517.(0 votes)
- How does the Nicene Creed illustrate the changes in the church as it grew from relatively small, illegal communities into a major hierarchical institution?(0 votes)
- This question is usually covered in church history courses at universities and graduate school. You've got a really big question here. There are shelves full of books on this subject, and PhD dissertations. I wish you the best as you do your research. This is a multi-year project.(0 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] In previous videos, we have talked about
how Christianity evolved and developed under the Roman Empire. In particular we saw
that as we entered into the 4th century, that
Christianity continued to be persecuted, in particular by the Emperor Diocletian, who had some of the worst persecutions of the Christians. But over the course of the next century, from roughly 300 to 400,
the relationship between the Roman Empire and Christianity goes completely in the opposite direction. As Constantine takes over, he becomes sympathetic to the Christians and he eventually becomes Christian himself. Even then, there was a lot of diversity within the Christian Church. There were debates about the nature of Jesus Christ relative to the Father, relative to the Holy Spirit. There were multiple sects of Christianity. And one in particular
started to create a debate. There was a priest in Alexandria, which was one of the major
cities of the Roman Empire. Now remember, by this
point, Rome of course is one of the most significant, if not the most significant city. Now Constantine sets up
a capital at Byzantium, which will eventually be
known as Constantinople. And Alexandria, which
was originally founded by Alexander the Great, is also one of the significant
cities of the Empire. And in Alexandria there
is a Christian priest by the name of Arius,
who has a view on Christ that becomes a bit of a controversy. And to understand that, here is an account of his writings, or his beliefs. So this is Arius of Alexandria. If the Father begat the
Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence:
and from this it is evident, that there was a time
when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows that He, the Son, had his substance from nothing. So, he's drawing a distinction
between the essence of the Father and the Son, who's
manifested as Jesus Christ. Now this is very
controversial, because even his own bishop in
Alexandria viewed the Father and the Son to be of the same substance. Now, today, you might say,
hey, isn't this just word play? It feels like it's
semantic, which is really debating around the meaning of words. But, at the end of the Roman Empire and as we get into the Middle Ages, this was a major issue of philosophical and it would sometimes bleed
over into political debate. And so Constantine, who we
mentioned has a sympathy towards the Christians,
he allows Christianity to be tolerated, he does not
like this idea of this debate and he wants to help unify the Christians. So, in 325 he calls the Council of Nicaea, to help resolve this controversy, which gets known as the Arian Controversy, named after Arius of Alexandria. Now it's worth mentioning, Arius wasn't the first person to make this argument, that the Father in some
way was more divine than the Son, because He begat the Son, He existed before the Son. But this controversy really
revolves around Arius, because he was especially persuasive about spreading this view of
the relationship between the Father and the Son,
manifested by Jesus. And at the Council of
Nicaea, many of the bishops throughout Christendom are in attendance, it's known as the First
Ecumenical Conference, the word ecumenical comes from the Greek word for the inhabited Earth. So you can view it as the Church leaders from the inhabited
Earth, in order to create a consensus about what it
means to be a Christian. And Arius of Alexandria was there to defend his position, but the majority of those there did not
like his point of view. So they declared Arius' beliefs as heresy and they exile him. And to be very clear
that they do not believe that the Son is of a different substance of the Father, they
issue the Nicene Creed. So what I have here, this is known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. And this is based on the Nicene Creed, which was established in
325, which was shorter, but then in 381, under
Theodosius, you have your Second Ecumenical
Council, which is held in Constantinople, to reaffirm some of the ideas of the Nicene Council. And so as I read this, keep a look out for some of these words, which
were really put there to try to settle the Arian Controversy, to try to ensure that that type of belief does not surface again. We believe in one God,
the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten
of the Father before all ages. So, not like Arius was
arguing, that there was a time where the Father existed
before the Son existed. Here it says begotten of the Father, but before all ages, so there was always a time when there was a Son. Light of Light, Very God of
Very God, Begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made. So, once again, really addressing
this Arian Controversy, the Arian Heresy as it becomes known, that the Father and the Son
are of the same essence, one is not more divine than the other. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the
Virgin Mary, and was made man. And was crucified also for
us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried. And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father. And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, Whose kingdom shall have no end. And we believe in the
Holy Spirit, the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who
proceeds from the Father. Now here in brackets I've
written filoque and the son? Because even though the official Nicene- Constantinopolitan Creed just says Who proceeds from the
Father, as we will see later on, as the Church starts to become more and more divided,
in the West, in Latin, the term filoque gets added,
which means and the son. And, once again, this
is starting to address this notion of how does the
Son relate to the Father? So, when you add filoque,
you're saying, hey, the Holy Spirit is emanating from both the Father and the Son, versus just the Father, but we'll get into that. This was not a matter of debate in the 4th century, but it
will become a matter of debate as we go into the 6th century and beyond. And we believe in the
Holy Spirit, the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who
proceeds from the Father. Who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified,
Who spoke by the Prophets. And we believe in one, holy, catholic, meaning universal, and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one Baptism
for the remission of sins. We look for the Resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come, Amen. So this is interesting, because it's, you can view it as a
unification of Christendom. Now, as we will see,
that unification does not hold well over the next
several hundred years. Even though Arius is exiled
and he dies shortly thereafter, you continue to have sympathetic bishops and even Roman Emperors,
to the Arian Doctrine. You also, this debate between the relation of the Father and the Son continues, we'll talk about this filoque debate. But maybe most important
and the biggest cause of the eventual divisions
between the Church, ones that carry on even to today, it's really about a power struggle. So, as we've been talking about the late Roman Empire and even the
fall of the Western Empire and the beginning of the Byzantine Empire, you might already notice that there are several very powerful actors here. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, you have the Byzantine Emperor, who considers him, and as we'll see, also herself, the Roman Emperor. We have the Bishop, the Patriarch, or, often known, the Pope of Rome. Now Rome is significant,
because according to tradition the Church at Rome was
founded by the Apostle Peter, who is considered by many to be the first amongst the Apostles. But of course Rome was the
seat of the Roman Empire for a very, very, very long time. And so you could imagine the Bishop of the Church of Rome, the Pope of Rome would be a very powerful figure. Now you also have the
Bishop or the Patriarch of Constantinople,
which is another capital and really the capital
of the Byzantine Empire. And so what we're going
to see, over the next several hundred years, is
the jockeying for position amongst these three, in particular the Byzantine Emperor
and the Pope of Rome. The Pope of Rome starts
to consider themselves as really the leader
of all of Christendom. The Patriarch of
Constantinople and the bishops of the other major
centers of Christianity, like Antioch and Jerusalem and Alexandria, they view themselves as
all kind of a college of, as peers and they will
give extra space for the Pope of Rome or the Bishop of Rome, because of the importance of
that city and the significance of how the Church of Rome was founded. And this gets, this jockeying for power over the next several hundred years gets even more complex as the West, what was the Western Roman Empire, or some of the areas of
the Western Roman Empire, start to get consolidated under Germanic rule really, Frankish rule and you start having this notion of a Holy Roman Emperor that we'll talk about in a few hundred years down our timeline. So, keep a look out for
this power struggle. We're going to talk
about particular issues of theological doctrine, things like the filoque issue, things
like the relationship between the Father and the Son, whether you should have icons. But, at the end of the day, what's eventually going to lead to the Great Schism, in the beginning of the Second Millennium,
is this power struggle.