Council Of Nicea Quotes

At the Council of Nicea in 325, all the Churches agreed that Easter, the Christian Passover, should be celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon (14 Nisan) after the vernal equinox. Because of different methods of calculating the 14th day of the month of Nisan, the date of Easter in the Western and Eastern Churches is not always the same. For this reason, the Churches are currently seeking an agreement in order once again to celebrate the day of the Lord’s Resurrection on a common date.” The earliest date that Easter can fall on is March 22. That hasn’t happened since 1818, and won’t happen again until 2285. The latest possible date for Easter is April 25.

[F]rom the perspective of outsiders to the Christian tradition, Paul has sometimes been ridiculed for having abandoned monotheism. Such ridicule is part of a more general theological critique, advanced for centuries by Muslims and Jews, against the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, namely that God became human, and the notion of a triune God, namely that God is three-in-one, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. To reduce a long tradition of theological dialogue and debate to one sentence, Muslims and Jews believe that devotion to Christ renders the Christian claim to monotheism misguided at best and idolatry at worst, while Christians see no contradiction between their affirmation of the oneness of God and the doctrine of the Trinity. But, to once again reiterate a point made several times already in this book, Christianity does not yet exist as an independent religious system in Paul’s time. Paul is not operating with the doctrine of the incarnation as it was defined in the Council of Nicea (CE 325) or the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as it was hammered out in the Council of Chalcedon (CE 451). At the same time, Paul’s letters already reflect a surprisingly high Christology that appears to anticipate later orthodox views. That is to say, Paul’s letters manifest a belief in Jesus’ divinity that came to characterize the full-out identification between Jesus and God of later official Christian doctrine. Jesus is clearly a divine figure of unique status in Paul’s letters, and this has led many historians to conclude that devotion to Christ as developed by Paul must have come from outside—that is, non-Jewish—influences.

None of the Arian bishops really recanted their views. Almost all of them would devote the rest of their lives to opposing the Nicene Creed and the authority of the council.

The Lord's Day was not a new Sabbath. Until Constantine declared it an official day of rest for the empire a few years before the Council of Nicea, no Christian considered resting on the Lord's Day.

The Son of God The New Testament recounts few instances when God was heard speaking from heaven. When He did, it was normally to announce something startling. God was zealous to announce that Jesus Christ was His Son. At Jesus' baptism, the heavens opened and God's voice was heard, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17). Elsewhere, the Father declared from heaven, "This is my beloved Son; listen to him" (Mark 9:7). Thus, the title conferred from on high to Jesus is Son of God. This title has engendered a great deal of controversy in the history of the church, particularly in the fourth century, when the Arian movement, taking its cue from its leader, Arius, denied the Trinity by arguing that Jesus was a created being. References to Jesus as "the firstborn of all creation" (Col. 1:15) and "the only begotten of the Father" (John 1:14, KJV) led Arius to argue that Jesus had a beginning in time and was thus a creature. In Arias' mind, if Jesus was begotten, it could only mean that He was not eternal, and if He was not eternal, then He was a creature. Thus, to ascribe deity to Jesus was to be guilty of blasphemy, because it involved the idolatrous worship of a created being. The same controversy exists today between Christian believers and the Mormons and Jehovahs Witnesses, both of whom acknowledge a lofty view of Jesus over angels and other creatures but deny His full deity. This controversy precipitated in the great ecumenical Council of Nicea. The Nicene Creed provides an interesting answer to the charges of Arianism. The answer is found in the strange statement that Jesus is "begotten, not made." To the Greek, such a statement was a contradiction in terms. In normal terms, begotten implies a beginning, but when applied to Jesus, there is a uniqueness to the way in which He is begotten that separates Him from all other creatures. Jesus is called the monogenes, the "only begotten" of the Father. There is a sense in which Jesus and Jesus alone is begotten of the Father. This is what the church was getting at when it spoke of Jesus being eternally begotten-that He was begotten, not made.

The proceedings of these ecumenical councils remind me of the experience of sitting down at a table before a large, thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. Many of us know how frustrating it can be to keep trying piece after piece that looks like it should fit, but it doesn’t. I have even been guilty of trying to force a piece into the wrong space, even though I know only one will be a true fit. Eventually, I find the proper puzzle piece that provides an exact fit. Likewise, the delegates to the Council of Nicea and the Council of Chalcedon were seeking to be faithful to the hundreds of Christological “pieces” found in the texts of Scriptures. It was their unenviable task to put the whole “picture” of Christ together for the very first time in such a way as to find a perfect match for every piece. At times, various groups presented “pieces” they believed were a proper fit regarding the humanity or deity or natures or wills of Christ, but, in the end, each was declared to be improper fits. The proceedings of these councils did more to declare which pieces were not true pieces of the puzzle and should be discarded, than to provide a final, definitive statement of Christology that would silence all future discussions. We may know that the “Arius,” “Nestorius,” and “Eutyches” pieces do not fit the Christological puzzle, but this is not to say that a final and complete picture emerged.

Maximus the Confessor (580–662) lived, historically and to some extent geographically, betwixt and between. Historically, he lived in the indefinite transition between “early” and “medieval” Christianity: after the downfall of the Western Roman Empire and the zenith of the Byzantine Christian Empire under Justinian, but before the schism of Byzantine and Roman Churches had reached the point of no return; after the crucial Councils of Nicea (325), Constantinople (381), and Chalcedon (451), but before the age of the Ecumenical Councils had ended; after the most creative epoch in patristic thought, stretching from Origen to the Cappadocian Fathers and Augustine, but before the tendency toward theological scholasticism East or West had fully gained momentum.

Council of Nicea had

Many Christians recognize the fact that when Constantine set up his council at Nicea, he in effect kicked out the Holy spirit, yet in a similar way,

The real problem facing the council was how to phrase a creed in such a way that everyone would know that Arius' doctrines were rejected by the church.

If Jesus consisted of some created substance, then he was not eternal ... and he was therefore not divine. Rejecting this, the Council of Nicea argued that the Son was created from an uncreated substance—the substance of God.

Arius of Alexandria denied the ontological deity of Jesus Christ and was excommunicated by the Council of Nicea in 325. His heresy, Arianism, was a bit different from Paul of Samosata’s, but both denied the deity

Since the earliest days of Christianity our order has born witness to a female tradition of spirituality that men of the church have suppressed and replaced with doctrines that refashioned God and religion in their own image. Centuries ago, the Emperor Constantine called disputing bishops to the Council of Nicea to agree on church doctrine. By consensus, and one curious result, Mary the mother of Jesus was declared the ever-virgin mother of God—despite the fact that Jesus never claimed divinity for himself, and our Foundress was living proof to the contrary regarding Mary’s perpetual virginity.

The Council of Nicea was first and foremost an attempt by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great to keep his empire from splitting.

The Council of Nicea convened to condemn the doctrines of Arius—who taught that the Son of God was created and did not exist prior to his creation—and to consider the day on which Easter/Passover should be celebrated.

I tried to remember the warning signs of the apocalypse; I was pretty sure they didn’t include talking philosophy with a TV star, but maybe the Council of Nicea had cut that one from the list. I

I am not arguing here either that all councils are to be condemned or the acts of all to be rescinded, and (as the saying goes) to be canceled at one stroke. But, you will say, you degrade everything, so that every man has the right to accept or reject what the councils decide. Not at all! But whenever a decree of any council is brought forward, I should like men first of all dillagently to ponder at what time it was held, on what issue, and with what intention, what sort of men were present; then to examine by the standard of Scripture what it dealt with-and to do this in such a way that the definition of the council may have its weight and be like a provisional judgment, yet not hinder the examination which I have mentioned...Thus councils would have come to have the majesty that is their due; yet in the meantime Scripture would stand out in the hgiher place, with everything subject to its standard. In this way we willingly embrace and reverence as holy the early councils, such as those of Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus I, Chalcedon, and the like, which were concerned with refuting errors-in so far as they relate to the teachings of the faith. For they contain nothing but the pure and genuine exposition of Scripture, which the holy fathers applied with scriptural prudence to crush the enemies of religion who had then arisen.

Who do you suppose the Nicey Priors were?” asked Pettigrew, beginning to chuckle again. “They sound an amiable crowd of old gentlemen.” “I don’t know, I’m sure,” said Miss Brown, blushing uncomfortably, “but that is what you dictated, Mr. Pettigrew.” She began to turn over the leaves of her shorthand notes. “No doubt it was. Don’t bother to turn it up. It was my fault for not explaining that I was talking lawyer’s Latin, and with a lawyer’s false quantities at that.” He crossed out the words, wrote in “Nisi Prius”, and murmured, “Poor old Priors! I’m quite sorry to see them go. But they had no business in the Court of Exchequer. Their proper place obviously was the Council of Nicea.

The Trinity is one of the most difficult concepts in Christianity, and they themselves do not thoroughly understand it. As you know, three apples of equal size do not weigh the same as one of those apples. Three people cannot sit on a chair which seats only one. Yet the Christians feel that there can be three separate gods who are really one. This is not a matter of theological profundity, but rather, illogical thinking which no thinking person should accept. Three can never equal one. [...] The reason for this absurd doctrine, is, I’m sure, again because of the difficult circumstances which the early Christians had to live through. They thought that Jesus was a god, and they also accepted God as their god. [...] One group, the Arians, agreed that the Trinity is illogical as well as impossible, and so they denied the claim that Jesus was equal to God. This group, however, was outvoted in 325 A.D. at the Council of Nicea. The majority opinion, forced to choose between logic or Jesus, chose Jesus.