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No.273: October 31, 2025

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The First Council of Nicaea, Michael Damaskinos (1530-1593), Public Domain

Dear Friends,

Happy All Hallow’s Eve! Or what people in my theological tradition typically call “Reformation Day.” It was on this date in 1517 that Martin Luther, an extremely brilliant, high-functioning, and passionate Augustinian monk posted his “95 Theses” on the church door in Wittenburg. This sparked a revolution in the western world that echoes still today in a billion ways. Did you know that only one historical figure has more books written about him than Martin Luther? That figure is Jesus of Nazareth.

That pleases the Lutherans, many of whom do think Martin Luther ranks just below Jesus in historical importance. I jest. (Barely). But the Reformation and its importance is extremely well-trod territory, so I am going to leave aside the solas for today because all year I have been meaning to write about a different ecclesiastical anniversary.

2025 marks the One Thousand, Seven Hundredth anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. That is some truly ancient history. It was in 325 that Constantine called together the bishops of the world to settle a theological controversy about the person of Christ. Yes, this is the council that in the fevered brains of DaVinci Code readers determined what books belong in the Bible. Only, the Council of Nicaea said not a single word about the canon of Scripture because everyone knew quite well what books belonged in the Bible. No, they were gathered to answer the question the Risen Lord Jesus Christ continues to pose to each and every person today: Who do you say that I am?

To make a long story as short as I can: a man named Arius taught that Jesus was not God. At least not “GOD-god.” He is certainly exalted high above all other creatures, but he is on a lower level than God the Father. He is derivative and subordinate: a creature rather than Creator. He is “begotten” of the Father, and “begottenness,” as anybody who knows anything about procreation knows, implies—in words attributed to Arius himself—that “there was a time when the Son was not.” In other words, exalted though he may be, the Son of God is not eternally God. He does not share the “substance” of “God-ness.”

As you might imagine, this threw the church into something of an uproar. So a council was called, the council issued its judgment on the matter, and that judgment involved the tiniest letter in the Greek alphabet. The “iota.”

It is not an exaggeration to say that heaven and earth rest on a single Greek iota.

Is the Son of God homoousion (“same nature or substance”) with the Father or is he homoiousion (of “like or similar nature or substance”) with the Father? Is he fully divine, “GOD-God”? Or he is semi-divine, or quasi-divine, or “god-like”?

The question was answered in the text of the Nicene Creed, which is recited every single Lord’s Day in Christian churches all around the world 1,700 years later. (Yes, we recite it every single week.) It says, in part:

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from light, true God of true God, begotten, not made, of one substance (homoousion) with the Father.

The matter was settled, so everyone thought. But it turned out that this was only the beginning of the battle over the deity of Christ. For the next half-century the Roman Empire was convulsed in a back and forth battle over the Nicene Creed. The Arians lost the initial skirmish but very, very nearly went on to win the war. They were smaller in number but remained politically powerful. So much so that at one point they even got Liberius, the Bishop of Rome (i.e., the Pope) to compromise himself and sign an Arian creed (sort of inconvenient for the papal infallibility crowd, but I digress).

St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria and Arius’s arch-nemesis, was exiled from his city and church five times over the course of the controversy, to give you some sense of the Game of Thrones-style political machinations involved. Once, five thousand Roman soldiers surrounded the church in Alexandria and entered to arrest Athanasius. He remained calmly seated at the altar and instructed his Deacon to continue the reading of Psalm 136, a la Thomas Becket. At last, his fellow clergy seized him and dragged him away in the tumult and somehow, miraculously, he escaped. He vanished into the desert wilds of Egypt for six years. This stuff would make a great film, but Hollywood keeps giving us garbage like Conclave.

The Arians were oh-so-close to winning. We were oh-so-close to having to recite homoiousion every Sunday—except that we wouldn’t, because homoiousion is untrue and such a “gospel” would have died out just like all the other pagan cults that taught quasi-divine emanations and emissaries. Oh, wait a minute. It did die out just like all the Greco-Roman mystery cults. And that brings me to a remarkable irony of the whole affair.