This month, 1,700 years ago, was one of the most significant and consequential events in all of Church history. Across the Bosporus Straight from Constantinople, in Nicaea, a Council met to settle a question plaguing the Church: Who, precisely, is Jesus? Their work shaped the future of Christian theology.
In the first few centuries after Christ’s resurrection, Jesus was understood in a variety of ways. Only the Gnostics doubted His humanity, arguing that Jesus was a purely spiritual being who only seemed human.
Others suggested that Jesus was an angel or archangel, or specifically the Angel of the Lord mentioned in the Old Testament. By the third century, the church accepted the deity of Christ while seeing him as subordinate in some way to the Father.
The Nicaean Creed is among the most consequential documents in Church history. It remains the articulation of orthodox Christology, though Arianism did not die out until the sixth century. The Council’s decisions also made significant contributions to theological clarity about the Trinity, another perplexity the Church had to define. Later councils would reflect on and refine the statements out of Nicaea. The First Council of Constantinople strengthened its statements on the Holy Spirit, and the Council of Chalcedon further worked out the relationship of the human and divine natures of Christ, united in a single person.
The Council of Nicaea was pivotal in determining the beliefs of most modern Christian churches regarding the keeping of Easter and also of the nature of God. The belief in the Trinity is still called the "Nicene Creed" to this day.
As God's apostle, Mr Armstrong explained the impact that both Council decisions had:
"...This theological battle was called the Quartodeciman Controversy. Polycrates contended, as Jesus and the original apostles taught, that the Passover should be observed in the new Christian form introduced by Jesus and by the apostle Paul (1 Cor. 11), using unleavened bread and wine instead of sacrificing a lamb, on the eve of the 14th Nisan (first month in the sacred calendar, occurring in the spring). But the Rome church insisted that it be observed on a Sunday.
About the same time another controversy was raging, between a Dr Arius, of Alexandria, a Christian leader who died AD 336, and other bishops, over calling God a Trinity. Dr Arius stoutly opposed the Trinity doctrine, but introduced errors of his own.
In AD 325, the Emperor Constantine called the Nicene Council to settle these controversies. Constantine was not then yet a 'Christian,' but as political ruler he assumed control. The Council approved both the Easter-Sunday doctrine and the Trinity. Constantine, then civil ruler, made it a LAW. But he was not able to make it TRUTH!
Satan has deceived the entire world in regard to the very nature of WHO and WHAT God is – as well as of Christ and the Holy Spirit... The word trinity is not used anywhere in the Bible...
The then pagan Emperor Constantine called this Nicene Council to settle it. The Roman Emperor’s supporters greatly outnumbered the persecuted true Church of God." (Mystery Of The Ages - Chapter 1)
“Just what is an APOSTLE?”
Today we find the Church of God in a “wilderness of religious confusion!”
The confusion is not merely around the Church – within the religions of the world outside – but WITHIN the very heart of The True Church itself!
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