A History of the Christian Church

Nicene age 325-600ad

The Nicene Age:  The Council of Nicea

I. Introduction

With the accession of Constantine to full and supreme power in the Roman Empire in the early Fourth Century, the Church came under complete imperial favor and influence. Though in one sense the Church had triumphed in that it had adhered to the basic tenets of the gospel despite the fierce persecutions it faced, it was in another sense a long, tragic defeat for her to be so closely aligned with the state. At this time in history the principles of religious freedom and separation of church and state were fairly foreign to the minds of men (cp. Matt. 22:21; Acts 18: 12-17). It was not enough that government remain religiously neutral. There had to be a state religion. For many years the pagan religions had found peaceful co-existence with the church to be impossible and had tried to stamp it out through governmental persecution. After the last fierce but unsuccessful effort during the reign of Diocletian (284-305), it was evident that the church could not be squashed. It was left, then, to Constantine (306-337) to legitimize the Church and use it as one of his tools to forge political unity in the Roman Empire. The Empire was one legally, and it would also be one religiously, the Church replacing the defeated pagan religions as the state religion. This was not the announced plan of Constantine, but this is how it developed.

The "Edict of Milan" (313) only granted legal toleration to Christians; their religion was given a status of equality with all the other religions in the Empire. However, as time went on Constantine began to adopt measures which would set the Church above other religions. Christians were only a small fraction of the population at the beginning of Constantine's reign, but they had demonstrated a tenacious strength and a potential for growth which made them an obvious choice for imperial favor. Hence, not long after the Edict of Milan was issued, Constantine also granted the clergy exemption from public obligations and allowed the Church the right to receive legacies. He also forbade pagan sacrifices and working on Sunday in the cities. In other ways Constantine continued to curry the favor of the Church, and the Church began to take advantage of such favor for its own purposes. Thus, the Church and the state became more and more interdependent. This boded nothing but ill for the Church.

II. The Council of Nicea

Constantine soon found that managing the Church was no easy task. The Church was so fraught with doctrinal controversies that its usefulness as a tool for effecting unity in the Empire was greatly threatened. One of the first great problems he faced in this matter was the "Donatist" controversy. The Church in North Africa was divided because some objected to the new bishop whom they said had been invalidly ordained by one involved in mortal sin. Donatus was chosen to take his place. When the Donatists did not share in the imperial gifts made to North African clergymen, they appealed to the Emperor. Constantine summoned a synod to Arles in Gaul (France), which subsequently legitimized ordination at the hands of unworthy clerics, upheld the validity of heretical baptisms, and adopted the Roman date for Easter. The Donatists appealed to the Emperor again but he decided against them. Thus, the precedent was set for the Emperor to be given a decisive role in the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs. (Constantine was not even baptized until shortly before his death.)

Another, more serious, controversy arose in connection with the doctrine of Arius of Alexandria about 320. Arius became involved in a bitter dispute with Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, by asserting that Christ was a created being. Though He was the first-born of creatures and the agent who fashioned the world, He had a beginning and was not one, nor equal, with God. Unlike the West, the East had failed to achieve unanimity in its beliefs regarding the nature of Christ. Some challenged the teachings of Arius and the controversy became so sharp that Constantine felt the need to call the first general council of the Church to Nicea in 325. Bishops traveled to Nicea at government expense. Representation was quite lopsided, with only six of the three hundred bishops being from the West. Since all of the West and a large part of the East rejected the Arian position, Constantine deemed it politically expedient to throw his influence behind those who opposed the Arian position. Hence, the Council adopted a creed which was anti-Arian, and Arius was banished. The Council also issued rules regarding discipline, restoration, and the date of Easter.

Of course, the New Testament is the all-sufficient creed for Christians (II Tim. 3:16,17). Nothing in addition to it is needed, and no group of men has the right to act as representatives of the church in defining its faith. Neither does the New Testament know anything of the general councils of the church that began to convene in the days of Constantine. Some have appealed to the "Jerusalem conference" (Acts 15) for justification of such, but there is no parallel. (1) The Jerusalem conference was not convened by the authority of a civil ruler. (2) This was not a "general conference." Those who gathered were not delegates who formed a representative body of all the churches. Actually, only those of the two churches directly involved - Jerusalem and Antioch - were present. (3) It was altogether appropriate that the matter should be taken by members of the troubled church to the elders of the church from which the trouble-makers had hailed (vs. 24). (4) Most importantly, the decrees issuing from the conference were authoritative only because they were handed down by apostles who were inspired by the Holy Spirit (vs. 28). The general meeting (vss. 12-29) was called for the purpose of revealing and explaining the decision which had already been reached in an apostolic council (Gal. 2:1-10). Hence, without apostles inspired by the Holy Spirit present to participate in, and hand down, decisions, modern-day ecclesiastical councils can find neither precedent nor parallel in the Jerusalem conference.
 

The Nicene Age:  Arianism


I. Introduction

Different concepts of the nature of Christ continued to generate the controversies which dominated the theological landscape of the Church during the Ante-Nicene and Nicene Ages. Though other disputes have come to the forefront since those times, the nature of Christ and His relation to the Father has always remained a matter of much interest and concern. After all, it is the Christian's view of Christ which is the core and most distinctive feature of his faith. It has been so from the very beginning. It was the deity of Christ that the Jews found most objectionable about the gospel. The truth about the deity of Christ also had to fight its way through the Gnostic and Monarchian heresies. The West had early settled on the "Logos Christology," which asserted that the one God was a trinity consisting of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as the correct expression of Christ's nature and relationship to the Father. The East, however, had reached no such unanimity. There a variety of Christological views was taught, and there the battle over these matters was primarily waged.

II. Doctrine of Arius

Arius (c. 250-336) was a presbyter of one of the churches of Alexandria in Egypt. His doctrinal disputes with Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, beginning about 320, grew into a much wider controversy which remained a problem in the Church for the next two or three hundred years. Arius taught that Christ was the first and highest of God's creatures. As such He did not share in the divine essence but, like all of God's creatures, was made out of nothing. However, because of His moral integrity He was adopted by God as His Son, and it was through Him that God made the world. Arius was willing to concede that Christ was God in some sense, but He was only an inferior, secondary God. Christ was neither wholly God nor wholly man, but a third party between God and man. In the incarnation Christ had entered a human body, taking the place of the human spirit and reasoning. Alexander strenuously disagreed with these views, teaching that Christ was co-eternal with the Father, one in essence with the Father, and wholly uncreated. The controversy waxed so hot that an Alexandrian synod condemned Arius, and he sought refuge among those sympathetic to his views.

Constantine, the Roman emperor in Constantinople, felt the unity of his empire was greatly threatened by this controversy. Failing to achieve peace by mere counseling, he convened the first general council at Nicea in 325. There a creed was adopted which asserted that Christ was one in essence with the Father. The Arian idea that Christ was a created being and that there was a time when He did not exist was rejected. Constantine banished those who opposed this creed, including Arius.

However, the Council of Nicea did not spell the end of Arianism. Constantine fell under the sway of those sympathetic to Arius' views and was led to support a compromise creed, restore Arius, and banish Athanasius the leading opponent of Arianism.

Constantine's sons, among whom the empire was divided after his death, became even more embroiled in the theological disputes. The emperor in the West sided with the "Catholics" while the emperor in the East sided with the Arians. Thus, a pattern was being set for political interference with theological issues on the part of civil rulers. Whether Arianism or the "Nicene faith" had the upper hand at any particular time depended upon which one had the favor of the emperor. The "Nicene faith" finally gained the upper hand for good when Theodosius, a strong devotee of it, became emperor. In 381 Theodosius convened an Eastern synod in Constantinople. This became known as the Second General Council, and it reasserted that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were all of one divine essence.

Arianism, no doubt, would have faded from the scene much sooner had it not been for the fact that the Germanic tribes, then pressing in upon the Roman Empire, were almost entirely converted to Arianism. Toward the end of the Fifth Century the Catholic bishops groomed Clovis, king of the Franks, to be the champion of their cause. By the use of very brutal tactics Clovis eventually subjugated the Germanic tribes. Between the conquests of Clovis and those of Justianian, the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, the Germans were brought to surrender their Arian faith. Thus, Arianism was extinguished, not by the force of Scriptural truth, but by the force of arms.