What Happened at the Council of Nicaea?

from ancient aliens to grand conspiracies there's a lot of bad history out there it seems this is becoming more and more prevalent within the circles I'm ostensibly in so this video will be addressing some of the bad history I've been seeing evidently there are many people who think Jesus was invented at the Council of Nicaea or that the council decided on the final state of the biblical canon both of these things are false one would have to pass over a lot of history to make these claims the first Council of Nicaea in 325 was definitely a defining moment in the history of Christianity but not in the way some people may think so today I'll be exploring what really happened at the Council of Nicaea to understand why the council came together in the first place we need to have a good understanding of the world the attendees lived in the story begins with the persecution of the Christians by Diocletian in the early years of the 4th century by this point Christianity has spread far and wide it was by no means dominant but it was widespread there were many different ideas about Christ ology theology eschatology and soteriology there were a growing number of Christian sects most of which were heretical or Gnostic the Christian communities were still a minority compared to the followers of the Roman religion but it was beginning to cause a problem for Diocletian he had always been an advocate for uniformity in the Empire as is demonstrated by his edict concerning marriages in 295 this mentality was pushed to his limit in 303 when Diocletian ordered that all Christian churches be destroyed and all their sacred scriptures be burned just as it is in many cultures when an empire is threatened when the crops don't grow or when disease strikes the religious blame it on someone doing something wrong that's the way it was in ancient Israel and that's the way it is in modern-day America in diocletian's case he blamed the mere existence of Christians for the troubles in his empire here was a whole group of people not worshiping the gods of the region the gods which they need to sacrifice to in order to please Diocletian had no desire to hurt the Christians he just wanted to wipe the religion away although some Christians did suffer and die but of course it didn't work and one of the reasons it didn't work hinges on the meaning of Scripture at this time there was no biblical Canon so every church had their own sacred scriptures some would recognize the Gospel of Thomas and ignore some of Paul's letters others would exclude Jude and recognize the acts of Paul and Thecla early Christianity was diverse and there was no way to get rid of all Scripture when different groups were calling different texts scripture let's jump 10 years into the future the year is 313 the Emperor of the West is Constantine the first the Emperor of the East was licinia's Constantine is easily one of the most important figures in all of Christendom he had successfully taken over the western half of the Empire and he reasoned this must have been with the help of God the Christian God a few years earlier he supposedly experienced a vision of this God and converted initially he believed the God in his vision to be Sol Invictus the Unconquered Sun this was the Supreme God it wasn't until later that he decided so Invictus was in fact identical to the Christian God after so many years of persecution by Diocletian and others the last remaining offender Galerius died in 311 this gave licinia's control of the entire east and him and constantine were now co emperors in 313 we see the issuing of the Edict of Milan which by the way was not an edict nor was it issued in Milan Constantine and Licinius decided to come together for a peace meeting in Milan they agreed to end the persecutions once and for all the edict which was just a letter sent to governor's in the East declared that all religions be tolerated it did not as some people claimed make Christianity the state religion as I covered in my video on the history of the Trinity there were many competing ideas on the nature of Christ and his relationship to God was he an adopted son a biological one was he a phantasm was Jesus made from the substance of God was he a different God altogether these controversies culminated and reached their apex in the early 4th century the biggest issue of the time and the main reason for the Council of Nicaea was the Arian controversy it all began in 319 with the teachings of arias a Presbyterian dreary gypped he was elevated in the church and was told to expound the Christian teachings some of the church members were displeased with his theological assessment and he was exiled at the Council of Antioch in early 325 his main opponent was the Bishop Alexander of Alexandria their views on the nature of God and the Trinity were not really all that different they both based their theology on the work of origin arguably the greatest theologian of the 3rd century this didn't matter though they were different enough the Exile of arias didn't solve the problem of the condemned views however he found too many supporters outside of Egypt some of them would be key players in the controversy at the upcoming council of nicaea by 324 custom team had become the sole emperor of the Roman Empire just like the many Emperor's before him he was concerned with the unity of the nation the Arian controversy was not something he truly understood or even really cared about he only cared about the unity of his faith he even tried to end the dispute by urging Alexander and arias to stop their philosophical bickering and live in peace unsurprisingly it didn't work at this point Constantine had already publicly declared his Christian beliefs and he attempted to unify the faith he had already called the council to deal with another controversy previously the donut is controversy he decided it would be best to call another council but with the recent regime change this council could be much bigger and presumably much more effective this was the first ecumenical council and it would be held at Nicaea in 325 the council officially started on May 20th 325 and the first and most important item on the agenda was to find a solution to the Arian controversy the bout was between arias and Alexander of Alexandria the bishop who had exiled arias just a few months prior what did they believe and why was it so important to resolve the issue both areas and Alexander were subordination Asst they believed the son was subordinate to the Father the difference was over the issue of how he was subordinate to the Father according to arias only God the Father is eternal and unoriginal the logos or a word the pre-existing Christ is a creature just like any other creature and is not eternal being created by the Father out of nothing Arius taught that the word neither sees nor knows the father completely he saw God the Father as without a source and the source of all reality he viewed God as indivisible and unchanging so he reasoned that God's essence could not be shared for God to impart his substance to some other being he would have to be divisible and changeable areas taught that there can be no duality of divine beings since God is unique Arius argued that God needed an instrument of creation through which to mediate his power this instrument was the word a being that was perfect and generated the word is capable of change and even able to sin but God saw the goodness of it and bestowed grace upon it what did this mean for Jesus arias viewed Jesus as more of a vessel a carrier of the word for arias Jesus was sort of a demigod neither fully human nor fully God he only becomes God in the same way that every saint may be deified Alexander on the other hand was a strict organist he viewed the logos as continuously generated by the father and Co eternal with him in order for the father to be the father he must have always had a son his son was the logos the word for Alexander the word was a separate person or nature distinguishable from the father the word mediates between the father and creation but the word is not a creature itself the sonship of the word is for Alexander natural not adoptive the word is eternally generated by the father and is the father's Express image and likeness not capable of change the debate between these two theological Giants was underway their cases were presented to about 300 bishops although estimates range from 220 to 318 upon hearing the Arian views most of the bishops scoffed and rejected it outright the nice scenes the bishops who accepted Alexandra's view wrote up a creedal statement probably finishing it on June 19th at that time eighteen bishops posed it in a blatant power move Constantine threatened to exile those who wouldn't sign it only arias and his two most loyal supporters refused to sign the creedal statement after that so they were exiled the Creed affectionately known as the Nicene Creed reads as follows we believe in one God father all sovereign maker of all things seen and unseen and in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God begotten from the father as only begotten that is from the substance of the Father God from God light from light true God from True God begotten not made being of one substance with the father through whom all things came into existence the things in heaven and the things on earth who because of us men and our salvation came down and was incarnated made man suffered and arose on the third day ascended to heaven comes to judge the living and the dead and in one Holy Spirit and those who say there was once when he was not or he was not before he was begotten or he came into existence from nothing or who affirmed that the Son of God is of another person or substance or creature or mutable or subject to change such ones the Catholic Apostolic Church pronounces a cursed and separated from the church the first draft of this statement ended with the phrase and in one Holy Spirit without the statement directly following it the Arian view was not fully excluded it could still be argued in favor of with a bit of wordplay it was simply too vague after attempting to rewrite the Creed with only biblical terms they realized that it would be impossible to exclude the Aryan interpretation of the Trinity this didn't matter since they already made up their minds on how the Trinity should be understood so they added the final statement and that was the Nicene Creed Arius and his most ardent supporters refused to sign statements like we believe in one God and begotten of the father seemed to take care of other views the bishops deemed heretical in the former the Marcy nights are refuted in the latter the adoption is sects in fact every word and phrase was meticulously chosen to fight the Gnostic and heretical groups this effectively created a notion of Orthodoxy arianism was harder to pin down so the exact phrase so commonly used by the Aryans there was once when he was not was specifically included in the Creed areas taught that Christ came into existence from nothing so that mantra was addressed as well every sentence was chosen with something the bishops disagreed with in mind enforcing this view over every Christian took centuries but eventually the Nicene doctrines prevailed it may be easy to think of the Council of Nicaea as closing the book on Trinitarian controversies and in some ways that's true but in fact it only shifted the controversy over to Christ ology the nature of Christ that was the root of much disagreement in the following century with arias and his loyalists exiled the council could continue their work and concentrate on other issues facing the church they created twenty canons not to be confused with biblical canon church canons are the written rules that provide a code of laws for the governance of the church the twenty written in Nicaea were in no special order but they can be put into five categories church structure the dignity of the clergy the reconciliation of the lapsed the readmission to the Church of heretics and schism addicts and the liturgical practice for the purposes of this video I will only discuss two of them for a complete list I will leave a link in the description keep in mind that Canon Law is not absolute and has been subject to change over the years personally I find Canon 7 the most interesting of all through it shine the influence of a single Bishop on the council since custom and ancient tradition have prevailed that the Bishop of Eliah should be honored let him saving its due dignity to the metropolis have the next place of honor alia was the name given to Jerusalem after the destruction of the city in 70 CE II at the time the Bishop of the city was Macarius either because of his successful lobbying or silver tongue he was able to persuade the council into giving him a position of honor while still being subjected to the Metropolitan of Caesarea furthermore he was instructed to start an expensive church building program in the city according to Eusebius his excavations turned up the cross that Jesus was crucified on however there is no evidence outside of that claim one of the more specific cannons cannon 19 refers to the Polya nests they followed the adoption as teachings of Paul of Samos ahta they believed that Jesus was adopted by God at his baptism the sect was condemned and declared a heresy in 268 concerning the Polya nests who have flown for refuge to the catholic church it has been decreed that they must by all means be rebaptised and if any of them who in past time have been numbered among their clergy should be found blameless and without reproach let them be rebaptised and ordained by the bishop of the catholic church but if the examination should discover them to be unfit they ought to be disposed likewise in the case of their deaconesses and generally in the case of those who have been enrolled among their clergy let the same form be observed and we mean by Deaconess --is such as have assumed the habit but who since they have no imposition of hands are to be numbered only among the laity because of the adoption his teachings the bishops thought their baptismal ceremony was invalid consequently so was their ordination pollyannas had to be rebaptised Andry ordained two more smaller issues were discussed the first being the Mellish and schism in egypt millenia swooz a priest in alexandria during the time of diocletian's persecutions he took it upon himself to exercise Episcopal functions while the bishop Peter of Alexandria was imprisoned Matthias had been imprisoned as well and used his prestige to put himself at the head of the Church of martyrs a fanatical group that felt like their suffering was constantly looked over by the church and went unrecognized the church agreed to recognize their ordinations if they agreed to come back to the church the final issue concerned the date of Easter some of the churches in the empire were celebrating Easter on the Sunday after the Passover they did this according to Jewish calculations the council declared that Easter should be celebrated on the same day throughout the Empire those churches using the Jewish calculation were ordered to observe the custom of Alexandria in Rome where a different non-jewish calculation was used sadly the bishops didn't realize that Alexandria in Rome we're actually using different calculations themselves so went the events of the first Council of Nicaea in 325 the council ended their proceedings on August 25th the 20th anniversary of Constantine's rise to power Constantine gave gifts to all the bishops according to rank and later sent the churches a letter enjoining obedience to the council's decrees so there you have it no invention of Jesus or Christianity no hidden agenda to control the masses and not even a mention of what was to be the biblical Canon I think the confusion on the creation of the biblical Canon stems from the fact that used to be us of Caesarea a key player during the Council of Nicaea was the first person to set forth a clearly identifiable list of a New Testament scripture it couldn't be that his Canon was the be-all end-all of biblical canon since later Canon lists disagreed with his assessment the defining of scriptures their use and the closing of a biblical Canon was in a normally long process the New Testament Canon that Christians no one loved today was first listed by Athanasius of Alexandria at the time of the council he was a young buck who had to patiently sit on the sidelines while his view on the nature of God and the Trinity was defended his view ended up winning and he was one of its leading defenders he became the Bishop of the Alexandrian church in 328 and every year he sent a festal letter to all the churches to inform them of when the Easter celebration would take place that year the issue was resolved at Nicaea but as discussed before the reference places disagreed on the date in his 39th fest the letter Athanasius listed the 27 books of the New Testament these are the 27 books in all New Testaments today he also appears to be the first person to refer to it as canon his assessment wasn't accepted right away however there were still plenty of churches that rejected the book of Revelation it wasn't until 700 years later that revelation was universally held as Canon with all the myths and misinformation surrounding Nicaea I felt it was my duty to correct it I wasn't the first person to correct these myths and I certainly won't be the last but hopefully I was able to inform someone who held these misconceptions thanks for watching be sure to LIKE and subscribe check us out on Facebook and Twitter and if you really love us consider donating to us on patreon check out our new website Milwaukee atheists dot-com and make sure to click our teespring link in the description for classic Milwaukee atheist merchandise we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Milwaukee Atheists

Views: 240,919

Rating: 4.5172415 out of 5

Keywords: science, neutrinos, particle, physics, astronomy, cosmology, richard carrier, jesus, historicity, forged fiction, ACM, atheist, community, milwaukee, mythicist, space, evolution, big bang, philosophy, god, religion, apologetics, biblical, forgery, forgeries, bart ehrman, misquoting jesus, constantine, arius, alexandria, rome, council of nicaea, biblical canon, easter, athanasius, diocletian, edict of milan, nicene creed, trinity, macarius

Id: m-F0bSGBYP4

Length: 18min 24sec (1104 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 28 2018