H
Hesychios
Guest
An interesting article.
The Road to Nicaea
To us, in retrospect, the Council of Nicaea is a veritable mountain in the landscape of the early church…
[and]
The argument began innocently enough with a regular seminar that Alexander, the archbishop of Alexandria, was accustomed to hold with his senior clergy. Alexander was a follower of Origen who, a century beforehand, had laid the basis for a vast mystical understanding of the relationship of the divine Logos to the Eternal Father. Logos was the word the Greek Bible had used to translate “Divine Wisdom,” and it was also widely used in Greek philosophical circles to signify the divine power immanent within the world. To many Christians, it seemed a marvelous way to talk about the Eternal Son of God and became almost a synonym for the Son.
Like Origen, Alexander saw the Logos as sharing the divine attributes of the Father, especially that of eternity. The Logos, he argued, had been “born of God before the ages.” Since God the Father had decided to use the Logos as the medium and agent of all creation (e.g. John 1:1, Ephesians 1:4, Colossians 1:15-17), it followed that the Son-Logos pre-existed creation. Since time was a consequence of creation, the Son pre-existed all time and was thus eternal like the Father, and indeed his timelessness was one of the attributes that manifested him as the divine Son, worthy of the worship of the church. Since he was eternal there could be no “before” or “after” in him.
It was inappropriate, therefore, to suggest that there was ever a time when the Son did not exist. God was eternally a Father of a Son, Alexander argued, and just as the Father had always existed, so too the Son had always existed and was thus known to be “God from God.”…
…One of Alexander’s senior priests, the presbyter Arius, was scandalized at the direction in which his bishop was taking theological language. Arius, who had charge of the large parish of Baucalis in the city’s dockland, had also been an intellectual disciple of Origen but had taken a different strand of that early theologian’s variegated legacy.
As was typical among third-century thinkers, Origen had a deeply ingrained sense of the absolute primacy of God over all other beings. This meant that the Father was superior to the Son in all respects—in terms of essence, attributes, power, and quality…
[and]
Constantine decided to use the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his claiming of the throne (an event that sparked a civil war), which would be celebrated in 325, to help settle the embarrassing dispute among his allies, the bishops. He felt (rightly) that their disarray was compromising his desire to demonstrate that he had effectively “brought peace” to the eastern territories.
So it was that he summoned bishops to his private lakeside palace at Nicaea (“Victory City”) in Asia Minor (now Iznik in Turkey), offering to pay all their expenses, to supply them with the traditional “gifts” that followed an invitation to the court, and even to afford them the prestigious use of the official transport system, a privilege which had always been strictly reserved for officers of state. The buzz this created was all the more remarkable among the bishops of the East, who only a year or so before had lived under a persecutor’s oppression. Though Constantine envisaged a truly international meeting of minds, in fact very few Latin bishops attended—only representative delegations from the leading sees such as Rome.
The council opened on June 19. Tradition has it that 318 clergy were in attendance (a Greek number-cipher for the cross), but many modern historians think that 250 is a more accurate figure. As the meeting opened, Constantine took his place on the imperial throne and greeted his guests…
(more)
The Road to Nicaea
- The Council of Nicaea strove to answer one of the central questions of the Christian faith, but it also proved that theology is never a tidy business.*
By John Anthony McGuckin
To us, in retrospect, the Council of Nicaea is a veritable mountain in the landscape of the early church…
[and]
The argument began innocently enough with a regular seminar that Alexander, the archbishop of Alexandria, was accustomed to hold with his senior clergy. Alexander was a follower of Origen who, a century beforehand, had laid the basis for a vast mystical understanding of the relationship of the divine Logos to the Eternal Father. Logos was the word the Greek Bible had used to translate “Divine Wisdom,” and it was also widely used in Greek philosophical circles to signify the divine power immanent within the world. To many Christians, it seemed a marvelous way to talk about the Eternal Son of God and became almost a synonym for the Son.
Like Origen, Alexander saw the Logos as sharing the divine attributes of the Father, especially that of eternity. The Logos, he argued, had been “born of God before the ages.” Since God the Father had decided to use the Logos as the medium and agent of all creation (e.g. John 1:1, Ephesians 1:4, Colossians 1:15-17), it followed that the Son-Logos pre-existed creation. Since time was a consequence of creation, the Son pre-existed all time and was thus eternal like the Father, and indeed his timelessness was one of the attributes that manifested him as the divine Son, worthy of the worship of the church. Since he was eternal there could be no “before” or “after” in him.
It was inappropriate, therefore, to suggest that there was ever a time when the Son did not exist. God was eternally a Father of a Son, Alexander argued, and just as the Father had always existed, so too the Son had always existed and was thus known to be “God from God.”…
…One of Alexander’s senior priests, the presbyter Arius, was scandalized at the direction in which his bishop was taking theological language. Arius, who had charge of the large parish of Baucalis in the city’s dockland, had also been an intellectual disciple of Origen but had taken a different strand of that early theologian’s variegated legacy.
As was typical among third-century thinkers, Origen had a deeply ingrained sense of the absolute primacy of God over all other beings. This meant that the Father was superior to the Son in all respects—in terms of essence, attributes, power, and quality…
[and]
Constantine decided to use the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his claiming of the throne (an event that sparked a civil war), which would be celebrated in 325, to help settle the embarrassing dispute among his allies, the bishops. He felt (rightly) that their disarray was compromising his desire to demonstrate that he had effectively “brought peace” to the eastern territories.
So it was that he summoned bishops to his private lakeside palace at Nicaea (“Victory City”) in Asia Minor (now Iznik in Turkey), offering to pay all their expenses, to supply them with the traditional “gifts” that followed an invitation to the court, and even to afford them the prestigious use of the official transport system, a privilege which had always been strictly reserved for officers of state. The buzz this created was all the more remarkable among the bishops of the East, who only a year or so before had lived under a persecutor’s oppression. Though Constantine envisaged a truly international meeting of minds, in fact very few Latin bishops attended—only representative delegations from the leading sees such as Rome.
The council opened on June 19. Tradition has it that 318 clergy were in attendance (a Greek number-cipher for the cross), but many modern historians think that 250 is a more accurate figure. As the meeting opened, Constantine took his place on the imperial throne and greeted his guests…
(more)
