Constantine and the Council of Nicaea

Defining Orthodoxy and Heresy in Christianity, 325 CE

David E. Henderson, Frank Kirkpatrick

• Editorial: The University of North Carolina Press
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781469631424
• Categoría: Storia
• Categoría: Storia dell'antica Roma

Constantine and the Council of Nicaea plunges students into the theological debates confronting early Christian church leaders. Emperor Constantine has sanctioned Christianity as a legitimate religion within the Roman Empire but discovers that Christians do not agree on fundamental aspects of their beliefs. Some have resorted to violence, battling over which group has the correct theology. Constantine has invited all of the bishops of the church to attend a great church council to be held in Nicaea, hoping to settle these problems and others. The first order of business is to agree on a core theology of the church to which Christians must subscribe if they are to hold to the "true faith." Some will attempt to use the creed to exclude their enemies from the church. If they succeed, Constantine may fail to achieve his goal of unity in both empire and church. The outcome of this conference will shape the future of Christianity for millennia. Free supplementary materials for this textbook are available at the Reacting to the Past website. Visit https://reacting.barnard.edu/instructor-resources, click on the RTTP Game Library link, and create a free account to download what is available.

1

Introduction

OVERVIEW

“The winners write the history” has probably never been truer than in the case of the development of Christianity. The Council of Nicaea is in many respects the founding of the Christian church as we know it. Constantine used the Greek word KATHOLIKON (ΚΑΘΟΛΙΚE) to mean all-encompassing or universal, and the Roman Catholic Church takes its name from this term. However, at the time of the Council of Nicaea, the goal was to form a single, unified KATHOLIKON Church, and the Christian church was in fact mostly unified until the split between the Western and Eastern branches in the second millennium. In this text, the word Catholic is used to mean universal and refers to the Christian church throughout the world that Constantine helped establish.

The Council of Nicaea was the first grand council to attempt to bring bishops from the entire Roman Empire together to make decisions on issues of theology and church policy. The precedent was set for bishops to make such decisions, and the stage was set for the development of a strongly hierarchical church structure. As the Church developed, it worked to eliminate documents and beliefs that did not fit the prevailing doctrines. Once these doctrines were ratified through councils of the Church, it became difficult for the official story of how the reigning orthodox views came into existence to be subjected to historical analysis. Such analysis would have revealed that the story of the development of doctrine at the Council of Nicaea, for example, involved actions and events that might strike contemporary readers as less than fully noble. Any threat to the orthodoxy of belief established at Nicaea and later councils would lead to charges of heresy. The burning of books and killing of “heretics” was quite effective in removing traces of the opposing views on Christianity that flourished during the pre-Nicaea period. Only recently have scholars felt free to begin examining this period with critical scholarship.

This game attempts to examine this period using recently discovered documents and the scholarly work of people who have tried to uncover the debates that raged at this time. The game examines the alternative views of the nature of Jesus of Nazareth and the basic nature of the message he sought to bring to the world. Students should be aware that the process of reconstructing the history of this period necessarily requires conjecture and speculation. Some of this has reached popular culture in the fictional work The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown, which invented and distorted historical material. Possibly the most extreme position is found in The Jesus Mysteries by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. They argue that the original Christianity was a Jewish construction of a mystery cult based on those of Dionysus, Osiris, and Mithras. This idea reached popular culture in the movie Religulous by Bill Maher. It also receives somewhat more scholarly support in Barrie Wilson’s book How Jesus Became Christian.

On its surface, modern Christianity appears to be very diverse. As Bart Ehrman notes in Lost Christianities, this runs the gamut from the snake-handling Pentecostals of Appalachia to the formal mysticism of the Greek Orthodox. However, virtually every Christian from the entire spectrum would still affirm the Nicaean Creed developed at the council that forms the basis of this game. At the beginning of the fourth century C.E., the scope of Christian belief was so broad as to be almost unrecognizable as parts of one religion. The nature of Jesus and his relationship with God, which forms the core conflict of this game, was hotly debated. It was not even clear to some Christians that the God of Jesus was the same as the God of Abraham. The two predominant positions have been labeled Alexandrian and Arian after the individuals most closely associated with them. The sections that follow explore in more detail these and other positions that emerged on the nature of Jesus.

This game places students inside a political process to establish the core beliefs that are held by virtually all modern Christians. The theological convictions of the people involved in the debates at Nicaea were sincerely and deeply felt. These people were willing to die for their beliefs. Like any meeting to resolve such a conflict, there is a political aspect to the debates. The council may produce a document that truly unifies all of Christendom but papers over some of the differences, or it may produce a specific document that can be used to marginalize and eliminate some Christians as heretics. Small changes in language, even a single letter in a word, can have a major impact on the outcome and whether a truly universal church is possible or the Church will split between competing ideas.

It is not the intention of this game to challenge or affirm Christian orthodoxy but only to show that, during the period in which it developed, there was a lively discussion and no clear consensus. Furthermore, the nature and structure of Christianity might possibly have been very different had the Council of Nicaea and subsequent councils during the fourth century come to different conclusions.

As Bart Ehrman notes in Lost Christianities, much of the debate about the nature of Jesus Christ had been settled by the time of the Council of Nicaea. There was an emerging “proto-orthodoxy” (to use his term) that had succeeded in marginalizing the more extreme positions of the first three centuries. However, it is also quite clear that these extreme positions still persisted as regional variations and that they had not yet been suppressed by the burning of their texts and the elimination of adherents who refused to recant their positions.

PROLOGUE—WELCOME TO THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA (NICEA)1

What an amazing time you live in. As a bishop of the Christian church, you have endured years of persecution. You have been imprisoned and tortured, all for your faith. Through it all, you have clung to your belief in Jesus as Savior of the world.

Now the world is suddenly Christian. Constantine has made Christianity legal and even the preferred religion of the empire. Suddenly, instead of having their property taken and being barred from public service, Christians are in demand. In fact, Constantine has made being a Christian a prerequisite for many government posts. He is building churches and returning property that was taken during the recent persecution. It is almost more than you can comprehend. You have heard some of the priests in your city compare Constantine to Christ in glowing terms and talk about the establishment of Christ’s kingdom on earth. Is this the kingdom that was foretold? You think it possible that these sentiments may be a bit overblown, but the reason for the excitement is clear.

Now, at the order of Constantine himself, you have arrived in Nicaea for the first great church-wide council of bishops to be sanctioned by the state. There have been many local councils to settle matters of theology and policy but never anything on the scale of this. You have heard that 250 bishops will attend, with their presbyters as well. There must be more than 1000 people here enjoying the hospitality of the emperor.

You do have some concerns about the direction things are going. Constantine seems determined to arrive at a single statement of Christian faith. As long as that is in accord with your personal faith, it will be fine, but you worry that some of the bishops will push through ideas and statements that you will find unacceptable. If that happens, you worry that Constantine may turn on those who refuse to go along and will urge the bishops to excommunicate them or worse. Until now, the Church has been able to accommodate a wide range of interpretations of who Jesus was and what he wanted his followers to do. Some have strayed from the faith, but most have been true to the faith of the apostles. Most of the more extreme theological positions have been marginalized, and you sense a broad agreement on most issues.

You are also concerned about the recent influx of new members into the Church. Some of the people you have seen join seem to lack the deep faith of those who were members during the years of persecution. When it was unpopular to be a Christian, you could be confident that those whom you baptized really had faith. But now that membership is a prerequisite for civil service, you see more and more people coming for baptism but not living the life of a Christian. The other problem with the rush to become Christian is that many of the new converts are not interested in progressing through the deeper levels of understanding of the faith. They read the introductory tracts in circulation, such as the Gospel of Mark, and think that they know it all. They lack the commitment to learn the deeper mysteries that you want to share with all of the faithful. Is this the price of having Constantine’s open support for the Church? Will the faith survive its success?

You had a long talk with Eusebius (you-SEE-bee-us) of Caesarea over lunch. He is clearly a very well educated and thoughtful person. He explained that the most important issue is the position of Arius and his followers on the relationship of Jesus to God. Eusebius explained that Arius has a strong belief that God alone is God and eternal. God existed before all time and is completely unknowable by man. Although Jesus is God’s “only Begotten Son,” he did not exist through all time as God did. If God begat Jesus, then the implication is that God preceded Jesus. Since God is indivisible, Jesus is not the same as God but is his issue, his Son. The Son is not the Father.

Eusebius seems to support Arius, but he was a bit vague when you asked him about the place of the Holy Spirit in the scheme of things. He seems to think the Holy Spirit is a creation of God and therefore he is not God either. There is a clear logic in this. However, the Gospel of John states very clearly that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” You challenged Eusebius with this, and his answer was that the Word, Jesus, was present at the beginning of the universe, and that all things that are were made through the Word. But just because Jesus was present at the beginning of time and at the beginning of the universe does not mean that Jesus existed in the same way that God does. If God created Jesus before there was time, then Jesus would have existed from the beginning of time but would still be an issue from God. The alternate view would be that Jesus was, ontologically, identical with God in being or substance. Eusebius asked your position on the issue, but you deferred and asked for more time to decide. You will need to pray about this and read the scriptures. You look forward to hearing more about this controversy.

You also had a meeting with Ossius (O-see-us), who will chair the council. He also pressed you for your opinion on the Arian “heresy,” as he called it. He accused Arius of being a polytheist by setting up three different gods. His own belief is that there is only one God. Eusebius discussed this with you and argued that it would be silly for Jesus to pray to God as he does many times in the scriptures if he is in fact God. That would simply be talking to himself. You have a sense that neither side is willing to give much to find a compromise. You will need to sort this out and meditate on it before you cast your vote.

After a lavish dinner sponsored by Constantine, you found yourself with a group of followers of Valentinus (Val-en-TINE-us). They seem to take the ideas of Arius one step further. They believe Jesus was born a normal mortal man and that only when he was baptized did he receive the Word. They believe that God could never take form in a human body. Instead, God provides some souls with esoteric, saving knowledge (gnosis), and they impart it through their teaching to others. Jesus was, at best, a divine soul, temporarily inhabiting a human body, imparting saving knowledge to those able to hear and receive it. Some followers of Valentinus deny the validity of the Gospel of John altogether and would substitute the Gospel of Thomas in its place. You are not very familiar with this Gospel and will need to study it as well. The followers of Valentinus also suggested you read the Gospel of Philip. You are very disturbed by their position. They seem to have some strange ideas about church organization as well. They elect their bishops on a rotating basis and allow women to participate in church leadership on the same basis as men. Although you see this as consistent with the apostle Paul’s statements that in Christ there is no male and female and no slave and free, it does seem to violate the apostle Paul’s comments about the place of women in the church. The followers of Valentinus also accuse the leaders of the Church of editing the scriptures to remove the roles of women and are particularly concerned that Mary Magdalene has been slighted. They suggest you read her Gospel as well. Finally, they tend to drop cryptic statements and ask you mathematical questions that you don’t understand. They seem a bit like a cult to you, with secret handshakes or something. You sense they have secrets that they will only share within their group. This makes you uncomfortable, and you feel like a second-class Christian in their presence. But they have invited you to meet with them and to provide you with instruction if you are willing. Again, you have some reading to do and some questions to ask.

Some groups at dinner would not even sit with each other. This does not speak well for reaching accord in the council. You asked Eusebius about one group that was clearly ostracized, and he explained that they were bishops who had turned over scriptures to the Romans during the persecution. Many feel that they should not even be here. Nevertheless, Constantine has asked them to attend, and no one would think of challenging him on this. At this point, everyone is so excited to have the emperor’s blessing on the council that no one ...