When I was a little boy in the 1950s, the prevailing opinion among the adults in charge of such things was that the Church knew all the answers, and the job of the person in the pew was to accept those answers at face value.  When I went to seminary in the 70s, cracks were beginning to appear in this monolithic edifice.

Today, with the Christian Church in retreat, we have begun to realize that the Church has never been a monolithic structure, that there have always been profound divisions.

Practically speaking, this means there are no easy or universal answers.  We must each sift through what is known about God on our own.  We must each find our own answers.  I’m hopeful that these essays on church history will help you find yours.

*  *  *

The answers the Church claims are universal and God–given are actually responses to specific problems that arose at particular times and in particular places.  

And this brings us, in our present narrative, to the politics that drove the theological narrative arising from the Council of Nicaea – the politics the Church deliberately overlooks.

As an Episcopal priest with a graduate degree in these matters, I was taught to believe that Nicaea was about finally understanding the truth of Jesus’s nature: was Jesus human, Divine, or some combination of the two?  But by focusing on the Christological issue, which is a theological concern, the Church has completely overlooked what actually happened.

The Council of Nicaea was about politics!  Any concern about religion and spiritual matters was a distant second.  The Council of Nicaea was not called into being by the Church itself.  No.  It was the Emperor, Constantine, who called for the Council and presided over its opening.  What’s more, only one major issue was solved; most of the other theological issues remained without clear solutions.  And the one issue that was addressed was handled with vague language to avoid offending or excluding the major political factions of the time.  So, what we really have is a political compromise, which was then presented to the people as the Truth.

Here, for me, lies the strangeness, the utter weirdness of this Council.  I had always understood this as a gathering of the bishops of the major churches around the Mediterranean to resolve the various heresies of the Church.  As you know, there was no clear authority regarding spiritual matters in the church in its first 300 years.  As a result, all sorts of strange aberrations about the nature and life of Jesus arose.  (To give you an idea of how strange, consider the “gospel” that described Jesus’s boyhood as one of creating toy soldiers out of mud, breathing life into them, and watching them battle it out for his own entertainment.)

So, some sort of gathering was necessary to figure out the boundaries of this new religion.  What does Christianity actually believe?  What was the true nature of Jesus – was he fully human, fully divine, or something else again?  The resolution of these questions was critical.  You can’t just have someone going around – kind of like we have today – saying that Jesus is from another planet, or that the holy Eucharist is some kind of magical potion.  (Strangely, we seem to be replicating the chaos of the early Church in our own time, with all sorts of strange claims by folks who claim authority in the Christian world, but who are making claims that cannot be verified!)  

*  *  *

So, back to Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea.  After decades of civil war, Constantine had recently unified the Roman Empire through military means.  By 325 A.D., the Empire was a patchwork of territories (most of them conquered and occupied by Roman armies), ethnic groups, and religions.  In addition, the Empire was divided socially into Roman citizens (who had all the rights and privileges), noncitizens, and slaves.  Constantine’s problem was finding some way to unite these different factions into a coherent whole.  As you might imagine, governance would be impossible without a single frame of reference that was more or less acceptable to everyone.

Constantine looked to the Christian church as the potential ideological glue for his empire.  As he looked into the matter, however, he found, instead of unity, a series of bitter doctrinal conflicts, especially in Egypt and the eastern provinces.  The central controversy was called the Arian dispute.

Arius argued that the Son was created by the Father, and therefore was not eternal.  He had a clever slogan, “There was when he was not.”  As you will remember, the theology of John stated the opposite in the opening words of his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.”  This was clearly a statement aimed directly against Arius and his teachings.  This dispute spread rapidly across the eastern empire, creating considerable chaos.

Poor Constantine.  He thought he had picked a winner with this new religion, Christianity, but apparently, he didn’t check that horse’s mouth very carefully.  For Constantine, this theological dispute was perceived as a threat to Imperial unity, and he could not let it stand.  As a result, he imposed a Council on the Christian bishops to force a settlement.

This Council took place over several years, and between 200 and 300 bishops attended, mostly from the Greek-speaking Eastern Empire.  Very few Western bishops were present, so this was not a representative assembly like we know today.  Constantine himself opened the Council, which is a clear indication of how important it was to him.  The central theological issue debated by the bishops was: “Is Christ fully divine?”

Of note, Arius’s position – that the Father is eternal and the Son is created and is therefore subordinate – actually preserved a strict monotheism.  This position, however, lost the political battle.  Arius’s opponents, led by Athanasius and Alexander, held that the Son is eternal and shares the same divine nature as the Father.  Specifically, they said that the Son was of the same substance as the Father.  This became the foundation of the Nicene Creed.

So much for the theological controversy.  Now let’s get to the heart of the matter and look at the politics.  This theological debate did not occur in a vacuum.  Constantine exerted direct pressure on this gathering of bishops.  Remember, in the Roman world, the Emperor held the power of life and death over his subjects, and he had a substantial military to enforce his will.  He expected an agreement, and the bishops knew that if they did not agree, they would be exiled, or worse.  And that is what happened to Arius and his followers: the dissenters were branded as heretics and punished with exile.

*  *  *

Let’s step back from these historical events for a moment and look at the implications of these developments.  At the very beginning of the Christian church, we have the ruling political leader, Emperor Constantine, dictating the Church’s spiritual beliefs.  While the Emperor let the bishops debate among themselves about what was true spiritually, he made the final call.  As a result, we cannot be sure that these claims about the nature of Jesus are true, because they come from a political rather than a spiritual authority.  We do know with certainty that Constantine had the final say in this matter, and we do know that his central aim was to create a unifying ideology acceptable to all the people he governed.

A second compromising factor lies in the way the bishops arrived at spiritual truth:  they debated with each other, and in the end, they voted.  To make this matter clear, this means that the bishops, in their many conversations, also determined spiritual truth by political means.  While they did not have the power to impose their will as Constantine did, they used a similar political process.

To make matters even worse, the final wording adopted at Nicaea was rather slippery.  “Constantine’s one overriding motive was to secure the greatest possible agreement” to bring as many as possible under his rule.  To secure this end, the Council was willing to use rather vague language in its final formulations.  This language allowed for the widest possible measure of agreement, thus satisfying Constantine’s overriding concern.

*  *  *

So, where does that leave us today?  In my mind, and after looking at these data, it seems like the Church has both feet firmly planted on solid air!  While we have thought that the major tenets of the Christian faith have been based on revelation from God, it turns out that many of these same tenets are the result of political compromises.  While they may state truth, we seem to have little spiritual basis for these assertions.  Ironically, I am reminded of the rationale many young people give when they are caught doing something illegal or immoral: “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Since we turn to God and to our religion for certainty and truth, this conclusion is rather frightening.  And yet, if you sit with these ideas, it becomes clear that we are being called to look deeper.  To look much deeper.  I believe we are each called to look within and to discover the living Christ who dwells in our hearts.  To discover and experience in our own flesh the “Kingdom of Heaven” that lies within us.

There is a problem with this view, of course.  It means that ultimately each of us is our own authority.  And here we come face-to-face with the central problem of the early church: who is in charge?  Who has the final authority to determine spiritual truth from falsehood?  So let’s continue with our explorations.

*  *  *

Returning to our central narrative, Nicaea created an Imperial Church.  It did not immediately end the Arian controversy – that continued for several hundred more years. It did not address most of the other early heretical movements, such as the Gnostics, the Marcionites, or the Ebionites, either.  That said, the alliance of the Church and the Empire marginalized and eventually suppressed these movements.    In effect, the Imperial Church gained the power to define orthodoxy.  

The key feature of this alliance between church and state was that the state enforced doctrinal authority.  The Spanish Inquisition is a vivid example of this kind of alliance.  It also meant that bishops functioned as arms of the state, within the Imperial administration.  Finally, it meant that theological disputes were treated as issues of public order and, therefore, subject to Imperial rule.  This fusion shaped Christianity for the next 1500 years.

The real significance of Nicaea is not the creed that bears its name.  The real significance is that Christian doctrine became a matter of Imperial governance.  After 325 A.D., theology was no longer just a religious debate.  It became a political question about the stability of the Roman Empire.

The Nicene Council did not produce unity.  It produced an enforceable orthodoxy, and these two are not the same thing.  The Empire gained a uniform ideology, but theological conflict within Christianity intensified over the next two centuries.  We will look at this intensification in our next newsletter.

*  *  *

Again, thank you for your patience and for continuing to plow through this material.  I myself am fascinated by the parallels between the early church and our own time.  Understanding the historical antecedents allows us to draw more sensible conclusions about our faith.  I have always felt that finding the truth about something is both important and valuable.  I appreciate your willingness to travel down these roads with me.  Thank you.

Please remember to set aside time every day for at least five minutes of meditation and quiet reflection.  Ultimately, our willingness to travel into our own depths will determine how close we can come to the everlasting Truth.

May you rest in God’s love every moment of this week!

P.S.  These newsletters were written in a particular order, but due to the limitations of our email delivery system, we cannot send them in the order in which they were written.  We can send out the first five in order, but then the system sends out the next one, whatever that happens to be.

So, if you are suddenly moving from issue #5 to issue #whatever, it might be a little jarring.  If this sounds like you, I would encourage you to go back into our archives and do your best to read them in order. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

To access the other newsletter editions of the “Inside The Invisible Newsletter,” or if you’d like to read ahead or go back.

Please Note: These newsletters are meant to be read in order.