Misunderstanding Constantine: Council of Nicaea

Ever since Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code, there has been a mass of misinformation about Constantine and the Council of Nicaea. This information was already circulating before Brown’s book, but he helped propel this conspiracy theory into the mainstream.

Brown isn’t a historian, but he made very clear historical statements. But as with most of what he claims to be accurate, the history tells a very different story.

I think one of the most common myths that gained ground after Brown’s book was that Constantine presided over the Council of Nicaea and forced his results. In this council, he defined God, created the idea of Jesus, and authorized the Bible.

However, the actual accounts of the Council of Nicaea are quite different.

In the grand scheme of things, Constantine had pretty much nothing to do with the Council of Nicaea. That is, besides calling it to order. Constantine had little to no grasp of the theological issues that were at stake. Nor was he a theologian or a scholar. Some would even debate whether he was a Christian at all, since he wouldn’t be baptized until much later. 

What he did do was allow the Bishops to debate these issues and reach some sort of agreement (even though that agreement didn’t settle anything). And in the end, he really didn’t care what view of Christ’s nature won out, as long as they came to some sort of agreement for unity’s sake.

The Nature of Jesus:
Debate over Arianism

A bit of background would be helpful. In 313 AD, Constantine made it possible for Christians to practice their religion openly through the Edict of Milan. The Edict wasn’t just focused on Christians, but opened up religious tolerance in general.

Christianity was still just a small portion of the Roman Empire, but it was growing considerably. However, it was a fractured religion. Constantine was looking to unify his empire in general, and having a unified Christianity would help with that task.

The major division within Christianity in the 4th century centered on a controversy over the nature of Jesus, specifically how Jesus related to God. There were two main views: Arianism, the view of Arius of Alexandria, and homoousian, meaning “same in being.”

Arianism claimed that Jesus was divine, but he was not equal to God, as Jesus was still a created being. Homoousians instead declared that Jesus and God are, in fact, equal, of one substance, and coeternal.

The Council of Nicaea wouldn’t be the first time that this difference would be debated. In 320/321 AD, the Bishop of Alexandria, St. Alexander, convened over 100 Bishops from Egypt and Libya, who condemned Arianism. But it really didn’t stop Arius from continuing to preach and recruit new members to his view. He would be banished from Egypt, but Arius then just continued to travel elsewhere.

This was a major controversy within Christianity, and would garner the attention of Constantine, who wrote letters to both Arius and St. Alexander, telling them that they needed to reconcile. The Council was just the next step.

Interestingly enough, Constantine would be limited in his interactions with the council because he spoke a different language. The language of Rome and Constantine was Latin. But the language of Christianity was largely Greek. Because of that, Constantine, when addressing the council, had to use an interpreter.

Defining Christianity: Well, not Quite

The second myth actually is linked to the first. The idea is that the Council of Nicaea created a unified Christianity, or in other words, defined Christianity. Now, this may be true on paper, but in actual discussion, it really changed nothing. Debate continued for decades, and the same positions were still held afterward. The main change was that on paper, there was an accepted idea.

Arius would be deemed a heretic, and the Emperor exiled him to Illyria, which was in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula. Instead, Arius would take refuge in Palestine, and eventually Constantine allowed him to return, on the condition that Arius downplayed the ideas his critics found most objectionable. This didn’t go over very well with his critics, and it is probable that one of his opponents poisoned him.

However, that wasn’t the end of Arianism. After Constantine died, Constantius II took over and was an Arian sympathizer. In 357, the Third Council of Sirmium produced the Seventh Arian Confession (or Second Sirmium Confession), which basically said that Arius was right. The confession would then be dropped, and it is now known as the Blasphemy of Sirmium.

So not much changed from a practical stance, but on paper, there was now a more unified view of Christianity. 

Defining the Bible Canon, or not

Finally (at least for the time being), there is the issue of the Bible canon and the Trinity (I see them going hand in hand). Both of these ideas predated the Council of Nicaea. The Bible itself really wasn’t discussed at the council.

The canon had already gone through centuries of debate, and the Old Testament was basically set anyway. Constantine commissioned 50 Bibles, but it wasn’t discussed at the council; in fact, the canon was pretty much set by then.

As for the Trinity, Origen had already spoken of it, as well as some other early church fathers. Moreover, we can find early references to the divine status of Jesus dating back to our earliest Christian work, that of Paul. What was debated was the nature of Jesus, in which there were differing ideas. Really, the idea that Jesus was divine had long been accepted.