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Debating Jesus' Divinity: Did You Know?
Interresting and Unusual Facts about the Council of Nicaea
Compiled by Steven Gertz, D. H. Williams, and John Anthony McGuckin | posted 7/01/2008 08:54AM
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All Aboard?
The Council of Nicaea lives on in the imagination of the Church, both East and West. In this photograph taken in 1925, Russian Orthodox patriarchs prepare to board a train for St. David's, Wales, to celebrate Nicaea's 16th centenary. In Rome that same year, Pope Pius XI planned a party of his own in the Vatican basilica, declaring Nicaea a formative event for the Catholic understanding of the nature of Christ.
Protestants too have honored Nicaea in their own way. Anglicans, among others, recite the Nicene Creed in church every Sunday, and many Protestants (perhaps unknowingly) celebrate Nicaea in their hymns. One of the most beloved is Reginald Heber's "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty," which ends with a rousing "God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity." Written for Trinity Sunday, the hymn was set to music by John B. Dykes, who named the tune "Nicaea."
Wipe Out Those Arian Barbarians
Theodosius the Great may have dealt a death blow to Arians in the Roman Empire at the Council of Constantinople (381), but the heresy got a new lease on life among the barbarian Goths. Particularly influential was Theodoric the Great (d. 526), a ruthless military tactician (he murdered his rival) who adopted Arianism as his religion and built numerous Arian churches in Raverina, Italy. When the Byzantine Emperor Justinian recovered Ravenna in 535, he resolved to erase any Arian influence from the city. One example is a mosaic in the Basilica of San Apollinare Nuovo, formerly Theodoric's palace church, that has obviously been altered—the mosaic likely originally displayed Theodoric with his family or members of his court. Look closely, and you can still see in the far left column a hand that Justinian's artists apparently missed.
It Didn't Start with Alexander and Arius
Most historians of the Council of Nicaea begin their story with the fiery exchange of words between Arius and Alexander. But the discussion of the nature of Christ has a much longer history in the church. The great third-century theologian Origen, for example, pressed a bishop named Heraclides to define the relationship of Christ to God the Father. After much careful questioning, Heraclides admitted to believing in two Gods but clarified that "the power is one." Origen reminded Heraclides that some Christians would "take offense at the statement that there are two Gods. We must express the doctrine carefully to show in what sense they are two, and in what sense the two are one God."
I Baptize You with the "Creed"
The earliest form of what later became creeds was a set of questions based on Jesus command to baptize disciples in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). As in the following example from the third-century Roman presbyter Hippolytus, the early church asked candidates for baptism three questions following a Trinitarian pattern:
Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?
Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God,
Who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
Who was crucfied in the days of Pontius Pilate, and died, and rose the third day living from the dead and ascended into the heavens and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead?
Do you believe in the Holy Spirit in the Holy Church, and the resurrection of the flesh?
Take each of these questions and turn them into 'I believe" statements, and you have what is often called the Old Roman Creed, a text very similar to the later fifth-century Apostles Creed. These early baptismal "creeds" focused on the work of Christ. The Nicene Creed added an emphasis on the person of Christ.
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