30 - Nicaea Continued

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Okay, I put this up on the board so we would have a little easier time following the discussion here.

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That's a W, doesn't look, oh, that's a nice eraser. That one's so dead, it's become an eraser, that's pretty good.

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So I took the time to put a little chart up here.

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We are discussing the Council of Nicaea. We've given the background up to this point.

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We have, by tradition, 318 bishops who have been gathered in the summer of 325 to the city of Nicaea at the invitation of the

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Roman Emperor Constantine, and we talked a little bit last time about was

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Constantine a true Christian, what were his motivations, well, we don't know.

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We emphasized the fact that the terminology that the council eventually adopted, which we'll look at today, does not come from Constantine himself, though there are people online who will make claims like that.

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Unfortunately, the amount of falsehood that you can dig up on the

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Council of Nicaea online, especially on YouTube, is pretty astounding.

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It's blamed for everything under the sun, it all happened at the Council of Nicaea. It's very easy to get away with that kind of accusation.

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But, we need to know a little something about the views and the parties and leaders of the three different perspectives.

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Arius was in attendance at the invitation, sort of the insistence of Constantine, and he had two

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Egyptian bishops, Theonus and Secundus, in support of him, but they were clearly, from the beginning, a minority group at the

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Council of Nicaea. And as we've already explained, their view is that Christ is of a different substance than the

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Father. So he is hetero, hetero, another, ousios means substance, kind, substance and kind, that's the problem is that words are difficult to use of these things, but heteroousios, of a different substance.

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So the sun is not, the sun may be called a god, can be seen as a god in a secondary sense, but remember the phraseology, there was a time when the sun was not, which means the sun, when you have that chasm between the created and the uncreated, the sun is on the created side of that chasm.

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No matter how exalted he is, his substance is different than that of the

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Father. He is a creation, and so this is the Arian position. And of course, one of the elements of human existence,

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I think, is the fact that when you get two sides together that are in disagreement, there are always going to be people who want to be in the middle and say, can't we all just get along, and so there is a middle group and they sort of formed at the council because the top and the bottom are the two opposite sides.

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You have what would be called eventually the Orthodox Party, led by Alexander of Alexandria, Hoseus of Cordova, and Athanasius is in attendance, but while most people, when they talk about the

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Council of Nicaea, because Athanasius would for decades be the primary defender of the

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Council of Nicaea, it's assumed that he was one of the bishops there, but as I mentioned earlier, and I think it's important for you to know this,

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Athanasius was not a bishop at the Council of Nicaea. He was a deacon, and so he was under Alexander and was supportive of him.

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Three years later, he would become the Bishop of Alexandria. So he obviously had a part in the council and was recognized for his brilliance and things like that, but he was not one of the bishops at that time.

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But he is there, and of course their position is that the son is of the same substance as the father.

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Now at the council, this group attempted to utilize strictly scriptural language to exclude all possible

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Arian interpretations, but they couldn't do it. The Arians had already developed ways of reading any biblical text in such a way as to redefine the idea of the relationship of the father and the son so that the son remains a creature.

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I'm sort of facing a similar situation in a modern context. I mentioned last week,

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I hate to mention these things in the church history thing because that dates them. And so ten years from now, someone is going to be listening to this, and now this debate will be ten years old, but there's not much

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I can do about it. In just a couple weeks, I'll be debating the lead representative of Iglesia Ni Cristo, which is a very large cult in the

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Philippines up in Rapid City, South Dakota. And they bought a town up there, and they're expanding this direction.

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It is sad to be watching the cultic mentality of the people. There have already been people who are writing to me, we've already won.

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We've already won. It's like, I love the open mind there. But we've already won because we know there's only one true

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God. Yeah, I believe that too, but anyway. But they actually, for example, though they say

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Jesus was merely a man, will worship him. And don't see a contradiction between the worship of Jesus and the idea there's only one true

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God. It's inconsistent, but they find a way around anything.

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It's not a consistent way, but they find a way around anything. So this is sort of, it happened almost 1 ,700 years ago.

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It continues to happen today. There's a new group, when I was down in Patrasum a few weeks ago,

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I met with a guy who's studying a brand new cult group that's developing down there.

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Similar type of stuff. Similar denials of the deity of Christ, but they're still in that fast development period.

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Every generation faces the same type of thing. And so, the term that they presented, they didn't make up this term.

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The term homoousios, of the same substance, was a term that was already in theological usage.

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The problem was, the eastern bishops did not like the term. Why? Because, as I said before, this is not the first theological conflict in the church.

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And primarily, in the east, they had had to deal with another heresy, an even earlier heresy.

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Anyone remember what that earlier heresy was? Sean's not here, so you're all left having to come up with an answer on your own.

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So the rest of the time, you can sort of sit back and go, Sean will answer, don't worry about it. Anyone remember what the east had had to deal with already?

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Chirp, chirp, chirp. Sneezing won't help. That's always a good way, because you figure, well, he can't call on me because now

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I'm having to breathe hard because I sneezed, and so that's a really good way of getting around things. No one, no one remembers.

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I can make my lower lip quiver if I need to, and that always gets some of the ladies going, aww. Actually, it makes my daughter laugh, but other than that.

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They had already been dealing with what we called monarchianism, modalism, the idea that the

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Father, Son, and Spirit are just different modes of being. They're not divine persons. So there's one

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God, one person. It's a form of Unitarianism, also known as Sabellianism.

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And they were very uncomfortable with the term homoousios because it sounded like what the modalists would say, that there is only one substance and one person.

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And so they were somewhat resistant to this idea of homoousios because they understood what it was saying, that Jesus is of the same substance, the

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Father, that is, fully God, but they were concerned in light of the conflicts that they have had to deal with as to how it could be misinterpreted.

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And that's sort of where the middle group developed out of was

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Eusebius of Caesarea, coming from an Eastern church, had already had communication with his church that this would not be an appropriate term to use.

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And so he suggested a middle ground, which would be homoousios, of a similar substance.

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So the idea there would be similar as in divine like the

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Fathers, but not the same. It's an attempt to try to refute the

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Arians. Yeah, the Arians are wrong in saying Jesus didn't exist at some point in time.

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But homoousios is going to help the people. We're still fighting in the East, so we need something that we can sort of fit in between.

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And you can see what the idea was.

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And someone, I forget which church historian it was, has commented that incredible theological conclusions can be defined by a single letter, a single stroke of a pen.

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And the difference between homoousios and homoousios is a single stroke of a pen. Because homoousios would require you to go, well, similar substance as in the one divine nature, but not the same person.

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Okay, I can see how you could get there, but it would be so weak that it certainly would not survive the challenges that would come against it, even over the next number of decades.

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And so a lot of the time at the council was spent in conversation primarily between these two sides, assuring these guys that homoousios was not destructive of the individual existence of the

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Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Just asserting that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit share the one being.

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There's only one ouzios. So if you have only one ouzios, one being of God, you can't have homoousios without having an implicit subordination already in the language that you're using.

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And so much of the conversation was between these two sides. Eventually, the middle group is convinced.

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It's interesting to read Eusebius' letter to his church back in Caesarea, where he explains why, in essence, they were allowed to, why they gave in.

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And at the final vote, it was only Arius and his two Egyptian bishops that refused to vote and to go along.

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Now, I mentioned last time somewhat, a little something about the role of Constantine.

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I do this because so much is said about this. There are many people in academia who will simply off the top of their heads say, well,

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Constantine called the church together, told them what to do, and they all said, okay, fine, whatever. This is not substantiated by any of the original documentation, what little of it we have.

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Eusebius of Caesarea is also the Eusebius of church history.

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He is the one who wrote the first major church history, Eusebius' church history. Same guy. There's another

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Eusebius at Nicaea called Eusebius of Nicomedia, who is a semi -Arian. So you need to differentiate between those two individuals.

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And when Eusebius describes how Constantine came into the council in his flowing golden robes and all the superlatives that Eusebius uses,

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Philip Schaff, his eight -volume history of the church is rather dated now, but still one of the best available, describes

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Eusebius' penegyrical flattery. Because Eusebius is writing in a later period of time, and he is trying to remain in the good stead of the

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Roman hierarchy. And so it does leave us somewhat skeptical of exactly how accurate

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Eusebius' descriptions are. In other words, he was not in the no -spin zone.

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He was definitely in the spin zone, to utilize the language of certain people on Fox News today.

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So, the question really is, what was

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Constantine's desire? Well, he wanted a unified church. First and foremost, from his perspective, this was to help solidify the unity of the

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Roman Empire, which had only in the past decade been fractured by war, so on and so forth. And so, his powers depend upon the unification of that Roman Empire, and he sees a unified

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Christian church as vitally important to that. And so, basically, if he felt the wind blowing one way or the other, that's the direction he's going to go.

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As a good politician, he sees that Arius is not the direction to go.

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There's not enough of the bishops. And, evidently, what he sees is that the strongest personalities and the strongest arguments, as far as he can tell, are coming from what we would call the orthodox position.

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And so, as Schaff points out in regards to the term homo eusebius, the word was not an invention of the

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Council of Nicaea, still less of Constantine, but had previously arisen in theological language and occurs even in origin and among the

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Gnostics. So, this was simply a term that the orthodox found that the

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Arians exposed them. They simply could not, in any way, shape, or form, sign that and agree to that kind of perspective.

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So, once the orthodox party convinced the middle group that homo eusebius was not in any way attempting to give aid and comfort to the modalists and civilians, then they came together.

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And the resulting creed, signed by all but Arius and those two bishops, was quite clear in its position.

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You've heard it. You have it in your hymnals. Briefly, just the relevant section.

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We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only begotten, that is, from the substance of the

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Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance, homo eusebius, with the

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Father, through whom all things were made. And so, you have a clear distinction of the

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Son from the Father. You have the assertion of the eternal relationship between the

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Father and the Son. He is described as the only begotten, that is, from the substance of the

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Father, not a different substance, not a like substance. God from God, light from light, true

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God from true God, begotten, not made. Again, emphasizing the fact that that term, begettal, is not a creative process that brings the

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Son into existence at a point in time. And then the key term, of one substance, with the

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Father, homo eusebius, and then, of course, his role as creator, through whom all things were made.

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Now, what made this also significant, the

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Creed also contained the anathema for those who rejected these truths. And for the first time, such anathemas carried with them civil repercussions.

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Arius and some of his followers were banished, even though for a short time. While it was quite true that this set a precedent that would eventually have tremendous impact upon culture and church, it is also a very separate issue from the theological proclamation of the

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Council. And so, it is significant. We need to recognize that, as I said before, this is a watershed in the history of the church.

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Up to this point in time, the church is the persecuted minority. Now you have the beginnings, and it's going to grow over time.

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No one at this time could have foreseen what the eventuality was going to be. Constantine did not say the

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Roman Empire was a Christian empire. That was Theodosius about 55 years later.

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But, the germ, the seed is sown here, of eventually the creation of what we call sacralism, the joining of church and state, which would exist in the

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Christian experience for about 1100 years or more. It had been 1100 years at the time of the

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Reformation where you had had sacralism in the West, the state church. It's a long time.

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It's real easy for us to, as moderns, who invest very, very, very little in the idea of historical continuity.

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It seems that today we could care less what our parents or grandparents thought about government or the purpose of the nation or politics or anything else.

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Nobody before us had any brilliance because they weren't as technologically advanced as we are.

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It's very easy for us to not realize the weight that this sameness over time carried and the fact that it was something that gave a great deal of comfort to individuals that things were going to continue the same and there was going to be stability and things like that.

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We don't know anything about stability any longer. Instability is the new stability in our day.

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Yes sir? If you're going to address this topic later, save your answer, but is the development of sacralism related to infant baptism as well?

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There's a book we've discussed before, actually Mr. Ricketts lent it to me, called The Reformers and Their Stepchildren. He argues that sacralism, or what he calls

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Constantinianism, created the ground in which the state wanted every single subject to be in the church and that infant baptism was a way to do that, whereas adult baptism was very uncomfortable for them because that meant you had a church that was separate from the state.

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Yeah, there's a direct connection. And the timing, infant baptism has already developed, but is not yet universal at this period of time.

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It's right at the same time period that it is, for example, Constantine holds off his baptism until his deathbed because there were people who had the idea, and we're going to do a section on baptism eventually, sort of get a little bit past this, and then we'll stop and need to do a section on the supper and baptism, just on theological topics, just to make sure we're covering most of the ground anyways.

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The problem is that there are almost no subjects in church history that I have found that the books on those subjects are more biased than on the subject of baptism.

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If you're a paedo -baptist, then you read history as a paedo -baptist. If you're not, you read it in a different way, and it's just amazing how biased the work really is on that subject.

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And so it's one of the toughest areas to deal with in any fair way in regards to church history.

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But there's no question that there is, at this time period, the growth and popularity of infant baptism, and I think that that is given a huge explosion of impetus as the church moves toward the sacred position.

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So yeah, I'd say the 4th century is the biggest period of development at that time, because you still have adult baptism being held off as the best way of the cleansing of sins, which already means that there is a degradation of the understanding of the gospel and baptism and things like that already.

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But yeah, it does become the token of citizenship, which is why by the time we get to the

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Reformation, the greatest resistance to the establishment of a free church is the fact that if you don't baptize your kids, the baptismal roles of the church are the tax roles of the state.

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They're one and the same. So it's considered to be rebellion against the state to even think of such things.

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That's a long ways from here, it's a long ways from Nicaea, but it's part of the development.

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There's no two ways about it. And yes, many people do call it Constantinianism because of that.

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Constantine didn't dream of anything like that, so I'm not sure it's a fair term. But yeah, that's where it definitely comes from.

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So, these anathemas, again, wasn't the intention, but it does become the result.

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Now, I should mention, I need to mention, in the time, obviously as I've already mentioned to you, no one at the time identified

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Nicaea as an ecumenical council. The term ecumenical council is a later innovation, has a specific meaning, worldwide council, binding on all

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Christians, etc., etc. It's anachronistic to view it that way.

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Nobody at that time viewed it, didn't even have categories for understanding it. So, over the next number of decades, as Arianism, through politics, became ascendant, and Nicaea was overthrown by numerous councils, no one was sitting around going, oh, we don't know what to believe because we don't have ecumenical councils.

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This was not something that everybody was thinking. And it's interesting that when Athanasius wrote, as he wrote voluminously, in defense of the council of Nicaea, listen to these words from a number of decades later.

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So, how does Athanasius understand this? Athanasius does not see the proceedings of the council as an addition to Scripture.

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He does not see Scripture as insufficient to establish the truth of who Christ is. He says it is sufficient above all things.

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But what he sees is the council of Nicaea as a fully sufficient explanation of what is found in Scripture itself.

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And hence, the continuous call on the part of the Arians for more and more councils, he finds to be disingenuous.

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Because it's not going to accomplish anything. The Scriptures have already spoken. The council of Nicaea has already spoken.

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They're going back over old ground. But the point is that what's found in Nicaea is reminded by them of the religion towards Christ announced in divine

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Scripture. So, what's the foundation? What's the sufficient source for Athanasius?

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It's Scripture itself. And that's the major difference between how the Arians argued over the next number of decades and how

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Athanasius did. Athanasius stood on Scripture. Athanasius won. They lost. And that's an important thing to recognize.

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Now, I do want to mention something else that is almost never mentioned. I briefly mentioned to you last time that you'll have a lot of people today who will say,

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Well, I hold the seven ecumenical councils, so I'm a Catholic Christian in the sense that I hold all the early church and all the rest of this stuff.

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And I always start to chuckle when people say that. Because there are people who do, but very, very few who say that.

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Especially who are not either Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic. Recognize that the

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Creed was not the only thing that came out of Nicaea. What you have in your hymnal there is just, actually what you have in the hymnal is actually from 381.

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It's the Nicene Constantinoplean version, so it's a little bit longer than what Nicaea actually produced.

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But, pretty much the same thing. That's not the only thing that came out of the council. Now, you already know,

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I think I've emphasized to you about 20 times now, they didn't say anything about the canon of scripture. They didn't argue about it.

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It's interesting that they could argue deep things of scripture like this without having to produce a specific canon list.

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And it's also interesting that no one ever argues for or against this from non -canonical sources.

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So the canon is already functioning, even without having to list it out. But they also promulgated what are called canons.

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So for example, the Council of Trent, 1546 to whenever it finished, 1564

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I think. The Council of Trent produced Canons and Decrees. There's an entire book. Canons and Decrees of the

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Council of Trent. And these canons become the basis of ecclesiastical law.

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And Nicaea had canons as well. And the vast majority of people that talk about being, I hold all these, they've never read them.

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And they don't hold to them anyways, even if they did read them. So one of the most important ones is

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Canon 6 from Nicaea. And this is what it says. Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis prevail, that the

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Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the

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Bishop of Rome also. Likewise, in Antioch and the other provinces, let the churches retain their privileges.

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Now why would that be at all relevant to us today? Well, it's relevant because what you don't have at the

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Council of Nicaea are Roman Catholics. Now what do I mean by that?

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Well obviously every Roman Catholic thinks everybody at the Council of Nicaea was a Roman Catholic. When you're talking to a

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Roman Catholic. Just this week, set up a debate. This next trip I'm going on.

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I couldn't pass this up. I'm going to fly into London first.

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We're going to have a debate at the Brompton Oratory. Look it up on Google. Gorgeous building.

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Beautiful building. It's this incredible spot, Roman Catholic spot. Known for its choirs. You know, the

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Gregorian chants and stuff like that. We're going to have a debate there on the Marian dogmas. Against really one of the nicest, smartest, best spoken

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Roman Catholic apologists I know in the world today. Peter D. Williams. And I'm going to be massively jet lagged so prayers will be appreciated.

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But we're going to be debating there. And if you listen to any of those debates we've had on the papacy.

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Someone like that just automatically views church history as Roman Catholic.

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And it just bugs him to death when I say there was not a single Roman Catholic in the house of Nicaea. Because there's nobody in that day that we would have even understood what that term meant.

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Because it's an oxymoron. Catholic is katahalos, according to the whole, universal.

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Roman is the opposite of Catholic. So it's the universal church based in Rome.

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Well, everybody back then would have called themselves Catholic. But then attach

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Roman to it would have made no sense to them whatsoever. And so there was no one at the council of Nicaea who believed what modern

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Roman Catholics believe about the assumption of Mary. And immaculate conception and all that kind of stuff.

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Certainly did not believe that the Bishop of Rome was the visible head of the entire church. And here is an example of it.

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Canon 6 says, well actually it's the Bishop of Alexandria who's in charge of these areas.

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And Antioch's in charge of these areas. And Rome's in charge of these areas. Hmm, sounds like equality amongst even these archbishops.

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And that's still a move from what we saw in Ignatius, remember? Remember when Ignatius writes the

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Church of Rome, Rome doesn't even have a single bishop. Each bishop is in charge of his little city.

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Well, now there's been a movement. Now you have archbishops who are in charge of an entire area. And that's what you still have in Eastern Orthodoxy today.

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But even that's a move. But what both of them prove is the idea that Peter was set up as the one

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Bishop of Rome, from a historical perspective, is just simply laughable. It's just ridiculous.

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But go tell Francis that. Actually, he probably actually believes that.

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He's an odd one. But there's canon six in what it has to say.

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Now, after the Council of Nicaea, things aren't settled.

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It didn't accomplish what it wanted to be accomplished. Through primarily political machinations, people getting close to Constantine, you start seeing the

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Arian position becoming more and more popular. Once again. And after Constantine dies,

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Constantius, his son, takes over. Council after council met in this location or that.

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So drastic was the activity that one commentator wrote of that time that, quote, the highways were covered with galloping bishops.

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End quote. Most importantly, councils met at Ariminum, Seleucia, Sirmium, and all of them presented

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Arian and semi -Arian creeds. And very few are the names that can be listed of those who are not coerced to subscribe to them.

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Even Liberius, the Bishop of Rome, having been banished from his place and longing to return, was persuaded to give in and compromise on the matter.

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And that's how Rome defends his compromise, by the way. Is that, well, you can't be held accountable for compromising if you're under coercion.

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So since he'd been banished, and he wanted to go back, and he signed it, then that's not a free signing.

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Well, okay. You can say that. But during this time, Athanasius is kicked out of his church five times, and he doesn't give in to the pressure that is placed against him.

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And so it's during this time that the phrase, Athanasius contramundum, is developed.

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Athanasius against the world. And I think it's important that we look back today and we go,

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Ah, the great Athanasius, he stands for orthodoxy. But based on the modern

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Roman Catholic theory of authority and church councils, Athanasius was a

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Protestant. I mean, at a point in time, you could easily say, Look, Athanasius, you're the only one.

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Council after council after council has met and condemned you, and condemned your position.

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And yet you're still hiding out in the desert claiming to be the Archbishop of Alexandria. Who do you think you are?

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The church has spoken. You're in the vast minority. You're it. It's done. And what was his answer?

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Yeah, but scripture says. Which sounds a whole lot like some guy named

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Luther 1 ,200 years later. Almost exactly 1 ,200 years later. So it's striking to me when people talk about,

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Oh, no one ever thought of solo scriptura until Luther. Baloney.

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You haven't been doing enough reading in the early church to know the difference. And it's interesting.

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A century after Nicaea, we find a fellow that we haven't gotten to yet, but we're getting close, by the name of Augustine.

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The Bishop of Hippo, writing to Maximon, who is an Arian, and saying the following words, quote,

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I must not press the authority of Nicaea against you, nor you that of Ariminum against me.

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I do not acknowledge the one, as you do not the other, but let us come to ground that is common to both, guess what, the testimony of the holy scriptures.

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So here's Augustine. He's arguing with an Arian, and is his argument,

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Listen to the Bishop of Rome. That wouldn't have worked, because Liberius, oh well. Listen to the

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Councils. No, they've contradicted each other. But as you say, we have to go to scripture.

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We have to go to ground that is common to both, the testimony of the holy scriptures.

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That's Augustine, a century later. I think that's very, very important to note, to recognize, okay?

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So, no canons on the canon of scripture.

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There are later centuries, interestingly enough, would fabricate canons to the

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Council of Nicaea. Just as a famous document was fabricated, was forged, called the

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Donation of Constantine, where allegedly Constantine gave the papal lands to the

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Bishop of Rome, accepted as absolute historical fact for centuries, and upon which many of the papal claims were based, purely fraudulent.

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And in the centuries thereafter, I did a debate back in 1994, I think, or 95, one of the two, at Boston College, a two -on -two debate with Robert St.

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Genes and Scott Butler on the papacy at Boston College.

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And Scott Butler quoted from the Arabic canons of the Council of Nicaea to help substantiate the papacy.

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And, of course, the Arabic canons are forgeries. But at the end of the 20th century, you still have

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Roman Catholic apologists quoting forged canons attributed to the Council of Nicaea in support of the supremacy of the

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Bishop of Rome. And, I think it was only back in 2010 or something like that, did a debate on the

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Marian dogmas, on the Immaculate Conception. And a Roman Catholic attorney quoted

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Augustine. And I had never heard this quotation before, and I even raised the possibility during the debate,

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I said, I have a feeling it's forgery, but when you're in the middle of the debate, it's hard to be looking things like that up when you have ten seconds between times of speaking.

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But afterwards, looked it up, acknowledged even by all Roman Catholic scholarship as a forgery.

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And so, over the next number of decades, next number of centuries, I'm sorry, many things will be attributed back to it, and its standing and stature will grow as a result.

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Then, we discover how much of that stuff wasn't true, cut it all back to what Nicaea actually did say, and then the

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Internet comes along. And you have the Zeitgeist movie and everything else, where once again, let's throw a bunch of garbage out there and see what sticks, and in the

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Internet age, pretty much everything does. The idea of doing serious research and original sources, things like that, not common these days.

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So, there's the Council of Nicaea, which met in... Thank you very much.

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Summer of 325, actually. Yes, June, there you go. I just don't even want to think about that, because I can't imagine what that would be like meeting here without air conditioning in June.

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That would cause everybody to be crazy. But there's probably more than you ever wanted to know about the

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Council of Nicaea, but it is important. And I hope some of you, three, four, five years down the road, maybe you're taking a class or something like that, and all of a sudden you start hearing some silliness pouring forth into somebody, will realize, ah,

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I was warned about this. Okay, that's how we sat through all those classes. All right, well, I'll take the notes, but at least

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I know what's really going on here. All right? Dan Brown did a lot. Oh, Dan Brown did a lot with that, too, yeah. He made a lot of money off of lying about the

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Council of Nicaea. Very much so. Very much so. Millions. There's a lot of money in fake history.

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There really is. Let's close the Word of Prayer. Father, we do thank you for this day. We thank you for the opportunity of gathering together and studying these things.

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We ask that you would help us to remember, help us to make application, have accurate knowledge, so that we might be better instruments in your hand to present the