Good evening. I I have bitten off a bit tonight, so we'll see.
I think I'm gonna be able to get through it all.
I had not intended to make it all the way through into into the council of Nicaea tonight, but as I was putting it together, it seems more and more like I should.
I should combine the road to Nicaea and the Council of Nicaea.
And get both of them in tonight, and I think we can do it.
I will warn you that we have a whole lot of theology and a whole lot of politics both come into to the material that we'll talk about tonight.
Before we begin. Let's just look to the Lord again, and prayer.
Father, we thank you for this time together we thank you for the opportunity to look at the history of of believers who lived hundreds of years ago to consider the reason for the struggles that they went through, and the the positions that they took and they're willingness to to fight long and hard battles over
them we pray that we would be able to look into them and see how they have affected the way we think about your word.
The way we think about you, and consider the the choices that they made in the choices that we make, and Christ's name.
We pray, Amen.
So!
The Council of Nicaea, even though we're we're not quite to it, in tonight's lesson yet.
But I'll go ahead and say the Council of Niceea, I think, has always gotten a lot of attention, and even an evangelical discussions.
And over the last, over the I don't know how many years ago the Da Vinci Code book came out, but at least since then, and even prior to that it had been getting attention widely in our culture.
Unfortunately, most of what people think they know about the Council of Nicaea and what happened.
There is all fiction. Oh, a lot of what you hear in and pop culture is either propaganda, anti Christian propaganda.
People are saying. You know, that the Council was gathered to to decide that Jesus was divine, or the Council was gathered, and they wrote the New Testament, and all these kinds of ridiculous things that is completely wrong.
And so we can set that aside and look at. Look at a little bit more accurate assessment.
I'll also say that I think the standard sort of Church History class account of what happened at an after Nicaea is optimistic and simplistic.
The sort of churchy account of what happened is that you know there was this heresy, and they gathered together to condemn the heresy because there have been people going back and forth on this issue which will come to in a few minutes.
But they they came together, and they made this decision and destroyed Arianism, and everybody lives happily ever after.
Well, that's not very accurate, either.
So I think the first thing we wanna do as we approach, talking about what was going on at Nicaea, and what was going on in the third century, and fourth century leading up to it is to think about the question that they're addressing now, I don't how many people just so I can get kind of
my bearings. How many people have heard of areas or Arianism?
Okay. A handful. All right. Good. So we've got a handful that have and a larger handful that haven't or didn't want to raise their hands.
Anyway, maybe they were afraid they'd get called on.
So Arianism gets described as an accurately as a denial of the of the full divinity of Christ.
The true divinity of Christ, equality of the Son with the Father.
And that's true. That's accurate. But it isn't like they were fighting over exactly that issue in that terminology leading up to Nice.
Ea, the way that I think it's better to frame this is what I've said at the very top of the Handout.
This is a question of articulating who the sun is and who he isn't.
When, when the Son of God was incarnate, and was on earth as Jesus Christ.
And then, after his death and resurrection, Christians, people whose whose faith was centered on him certainly knew that there was something special about him.
They believed that he was the Messiah at the very least.
They believe that even even we talked about the Ebn I's last week, and just as a side note I'll say Jeff told me that he actually does know some Messianic Jews who would go a whole lot further than the ones that I have been familiar with to the point of
requiring Gentile converts to to obey the law.
I don't not. Would they deny the divinity of Christ?
Or do you know about that, Jeff? Okay, so the ones he knows at least wouldn't go quite as far as the Ebn.
Ights, and denying is divinity. But my exposure that I talked about last week to present day.
Messianic, Judaism is apparently more limited than the range of Messianic Judaism, but even the Ebanites, who are denying the divinity of Christ, they are acknowledging that he is the Messiah.
If you take one step beyond them. You have people who recognize that Jesus is divine.
Whatever exactly they mean by that, and they don't know necessarily need to.
Articulate that you know very precisely because nobody's necessarily challenging them on that basic idea.
Sometimes we think about the idea of Trinitarian theology.
Or the idea of a Trinity as being radically new with Christianity.
The really radical claim was that Jesus of Nazareth was the incarnate Son of God.
Judaism already had sort of enough flexibility in its understanding of God that you could fit.
The idea of God had not worked out quite in the way that we do.
As Christians, but you could fit some sort of an idea of Godhead into an orthodox and acceptable Judaism at the time, and you, as long as you didn't go, make specific claims about this human being being part of the Godhead.
You might have people kind of shake their head at you, but you weren't gonna be condemned for that.
And so that part of Christian thought they didn't have to work out in super detail.
And so, as they're moving forward, it takes a while before this question really comes to a head.
At first they accept divine claims about Christ.
They don't define them too precisely, and they go about spreading the gospel and trying to avoid getting eaten by the lions.
That's you know. That's the first. The first few generations, as things start to settle down a little bit, and for long periods there's no persecution.
This becomes more of an issue, and people start talking about it, and what it comes down to is talking about the idea of the relationship between the son and the Father, the Holy Spirit kind of gets left out of most of these conversations for quite a while the real debate is on this Father and Son.
Idea, and and how to understand how to describe that relationship. And it was described in terms of generation.
The father generates the son, or the generation of the son by the Father.
We can look at a few Scripture versus to to see kind of where they're coming from.
I've given you, you know, the important bits, but you can look at more than just that if you want to turn to them.
John, 1, 14.
So John 1, 14. And the word became full and dwelt among us.
That's gonna be right. The word became flesh.
Even Judaism, Greek speaking Judaism had already been talking about Logos in relation to God.
So the I. The first part of this chapter, might be interesting, and cause ears to prick up, but it wasn't going to be super problematic.
Verse 14, he says, and the word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory.
Glory, as of the only son, or I think I use New King James on the on the handout, just to pull in this language.
It's not actually the the most perfect translation, but as of the only begat from the father, and I particularly wanted that from the father, because they would look at the language in the New Testament, where the sun was talked about as being from the Father, as describing that relationship between Father, and Son, that has to do
with with who he is, and how he is related to the father, who, of course, everybody is exactly as you know.
True God the Father is the standard in these conversations. If you flip over a few pages to John 5, 26.
I'll just that version itself will be enough, for, as the father has life in himself, so He has granted the son also to have life in himself, and so that illustrates the and there are other.
There are other verses that fall into this pattern as well, but that illustrates the idea that the sun has.
Has what the Father has. The Father has life in himself, and so the Father grants the sun to have life, and hence also, so versus that fall into that kind of pattern, get looked at to to talk about, and I'm not saying that they're clear-cut and and you know everybody says
that's exactly what that means. I'm saying. These are the kinds of verses and the kind of language that are being talked about.
And then over in Hebrews, chapter one, verse 3, I'll just read the portion of it that's on your sheet.
Who is the son in context, who, being the brightness of His glory, his is referring to the Father.
So, who, being the brightness of His glory and the experience image of His person.
Once again a verse that is tying father and son together, and is being used by early Christians to discuss what exactly it means for the sun to be generated from the Father, and that conversation people in that conversation, I guess, is the way to say it fall into kind of one of 2 camps or they no that's not
a good way to say it. It's more that statements that these people have make are going to lean one way or the other.
They are either going to emphasize sameness, or they're going to emphasize difference.
And the first question I have creatively labeled it as question, one.
But the first question that they have to pursue has to do with the identity of the sun based on this question of sameness or difference.
Because of the generation statements or people who emphasize the sameness, who say that because of the generation of the Son by the father there is similarity.
There is sameness between them. They are emphasizing that Jesus Christ, that is, the Son of God, was divine, and they're usually doing this to avoid or to to rebut any sense of adoptionism I think I've mentioned adoptionism.
Before but just to refresh. It's kind of the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was this man, and because he was such a great man for any number of reasons, people have different theories on why he was so great, but because he was so great God adopts him as Son, and they even have different points
in his life, as far as when that happens. For some people this happens at the baptism when the Holy Spirit descends on him, and they would say, That's when he is adopted as the sun, and then he pursues his ministry as the sun so that's called
adoptionism, and they are usually trying to avoid that when they, when they emphasize sameness.
People who are emphasizing difference are wanting to avoid. Well, I'm sorry.
Let me finish out that column. If you take that idea.
The idea of, say, of generation bringing about sameness between father and son.
If you take that train of thought to, it's extreme.
You end up with modalism. Modalism is the idea that there is one God, and he is manifested.
Not that he exists in 3 persons, but that he is manifested in 3 Persons.
He appears in 3 persons, he and the modal is referring to almost like a mask.
You in the Old Testament. God showed Himself as Father, and then the same God shows Himself as the sun in Jesus Christ.
And now, ever since then, the same God shows Himself as the Holy Spirit.
But there's there aren't 3. It's more like, you know, when I'm talking to Donna.
I'm a husband when I'm talking to my parents.
I'm a son, and when I'm talking to Zika Renee, I'm a father, but I don't change. That's modalism.
So that's what happens. If you take that idea of sameness and I'm not saying that we don't need that idea of sameness.
We do, but if you take it to, it's extreme.
And you say that they're completely identical. You end up in modalism. And people were doing this.
There are lots of modalists in the early church. There are some modalists in Christendom today, some okay.
There are 2 groups of modalists in Christendom today.
There are some that are modalists on purpose, the oneness, Pentecostals, or Jesus owned, like Pentecostals.
Are very explicitly modalist, and they know it.
I think then there are other people who who don't realize their modalists.
They think they're Trinitarians. But they're Trinitarian.
Theology is pretty much what I just described, and they haven't noticed that yet, and for them we just need to educate.
So that goes to modalism difference. People who are emphasizing difference over on the right hand column they're desiring to avoid that.
And say, no. We have to maintain that there is a distinction between father and son.
They are not the same. They are, you know, I don't know if they would all say this, but they are both God.
We would certainly say, they are all both God. They are both those same God.
But there is a distinction between them. Now, if you take that idea, if you took it to, it's extreme, you end up with dyeism or you know it would be better triatheism.
But, like I say, the Holy Spirit was not getting very much theological attention at this time.
So functionally, you get 2 guys. That's what I'm meaning by dyeism.
You have 2 guys, you don't have. You don't have God existing in 2 persons.
Yeah. 2 guys not to oppose God's like you would have a gnosticism last week.
But you have 2 gods now in practice that was very rare.
We don't really have any significant examples of people taking the idea of difference to the extreme.
Like, we have examples of people taking sameness to the extreme.
What we do have is people who are sort of on the same side.
Accusing the other side, accusing people who are on the different side of effectively being dye theists.
But nobody's ever been well, I shouldn't say nobody.
Virtually nobody has ever actually been just that way.
So that gets us.
Largely up through sort of the the centuries that we've covered up till now, and conceptually to a point where most people were existing.
Sort of in that range. Most Christians had acknowledged.
Yeah modalism really is not a good way to go.
And obviously dyeism or trite, you know, 2 or 3 different gods is definitely not the way to go, and they were finding themselves somewhere in the middle.
The fact that the sun was generated by the father meant that that the sun was distinct from the father, but same to some degree to the father.
I'm avoiding the word similar, because that becomes technically loaded later on.
The next question, then that we move into and this gets us closer to Niceea.
Is the question about the divine status of the sun.
If you're you are one of the people. On the sameness side.
What you're saying is that.
The generation of the song by the Father causes their his divine nature to be the same divine nature as the Father's.
On the other side of it. You're saying on the difference side, rather, you're saying that because the sun is generated, his divinity is derived from, and if it's derived from most people assumed to some degree inferior to that of the Father.
So you could get strictly hierarchical trinity if we include the Holy Spirit into it, you could get a very hierarchical Godhead if you're emphasizing difference, and you could get a a perfectly level.
No, you know no divine distinction. If you're all the way on the sameness side, and the thing is.
It's important to recognize that just like in politics today, and this isn't where I was.
Gonna get into politics. I didn't plan to talk about politics until we got to the Council, but if we think about politics today, it's not like, you know, the the House of Representatives has a whole bunch of Republicans.
That agree perfectly on every single thing, and are in total lockstep, and they're, you know, a unified block.
Ed at exactly this point, and a group of Democrats that are exactly the same way right?
Exactly in lockstep. They agree on everything. They exist right here on every issue.
And these 2 groups have to fight it out.
There are people all along the spectrum anywhere in between those 2 positions, and based on where they fall, and who they agree with most of the time.
They end up with one or the other party. They did that before they they decided that before they ever got to Congress, but but it's a spectrum.
Is my point. And people talking about these issues, about on the divine status of the sun, and how that what the generation means for that they exist on a spectrum as well.
So their ideas about oh, well, the results here are, you know, that sameness means there's at least some degree of divinity.
If you're emphasizing that, generate that because the sun is generated by the Father, or from the father, that means that there is a sameness in their divinity, and that means that the the sun has at least some degree of divinity, now you might fall.
I say some degree because different people at different points on that spectrum.
And then on the different side. If you say the fact that he's generated.
But he's not self. Generating means that there is some degree of subordination.
And again, some degree because there's a spectrum for that, and almost everybody at this time was subordinationist at least in one way or another.
Yeah, I've got you a side note there that tells you that pretty much.
Everybody was subordinationist and was subordinating the sun to the father.
And I'm not gonna call somebody a subordinationist because it it sounds bad.
I'm not gonna call somebody a subordinationist unless their purpose is to to say, you know, there's this hierarchy and the sun is inferior to the father, if that's their purpose in making the statement, I'll lump them in as a subordinationist, if they're just sort
of assuming some degree of subordination or submission, even and they're using that to illustrate that there's there's a similarity.
There's a sameness between them. Then I'm not gonna throw them in, because almost everybody had it least.
Some subordinationist tendencies at this point. But that could be a variety of things is when they are, you know, ranking.
If that's the right word when they're ranking themselves of the Trinity? Or is it just?
You know they have to be put in an order that you know.
That's all we're doing when we say first, second, and third, when we say father, son, and spirit, it's just that there must be order within the Godhead, that's one way that they could do it.
Some of them would say that that no, that submission, the sun submitting to the father, that's a function of his earthly ministry, that's all that is, that's not something that that goes on prior to the incarnation, not something that goes on post incarnation, or they could say it
wasn't something that was prior to the inquiry Carnation.
But it continues after the Incarnation. There are other people, and then there are questions of whether whether that generation itself is eternal is the sun always generated by the Father.
Has the father always been generating the son? Is it?
Does it affect their nature, or does it only affect function?
It doesn't affect nature. They're all these kinds of questions that people were. We're wrestling with.
Right? So that's the last couple of points, or what I have down at the beginning.
Is? Is it aal? When does it begin? When does that generation of the sun?
When does that begin? And that question the the eternal generation of the sun is the position that that Nicaa ends up, taking because the the eternal generation of the sun argues that this doesn't start at any point in time the file is the father because always
eternally generates the sign. The sun is the sun, because he is eternally generated by the Father.
That is their relationship, and there is nothing outside of, you know, outside of that relationship.
And the Godhead.
So, it. Those are the. Those are the issues that people are going to be arguing about.
And it's not you know. It's not one thing that's sparks the theological disagreement that gets talked about.
At Nicaea. It's one of them that I'll talk about in a minute.
It's more, not really one event, but one conflict that brings it all to a head at the Council of Nicaea.
But this theological debate have been going on for for several decades prior to that.
So!
Before I jump into Nicaea itself. We'll we'll see how either.
How clear I was, or how much we're gonna get derailed.
I'll open it up to questions if we end up.
Let's see, it's 7, 35 now. So if we do, 15 min of questions, I might not do the Council until next week, but if we don't have too many, I'll go ahead and finish up the council itself tonight, okay, so what do you have questions about the issues, that i've
posed so far tonight.
There won't be a quiz later. But yeah, so based, Robin.
Or?
Right. So Bill's asking if these discussions were based on interpretation of Scripture or pulling it out of the air, and the answer, as long as the air includes philosophy, the answer is that it's a little of both.
It's a philosophical interpretation of Scripture.
It's sparked by the interpretation of Scripture.
People are going to Scripture. They're finding these statements that push them one way or another.
But aren't as Arno is. You know, the Bible is not an engineering manual.
Unfortunately, or fortunately so. Sometimes you get into it, and you really have to wrestle with ideas, and as far as pulling it out of the air, a lot of the ones that were deeply involved in the debate were, you know, we talked about Simon, a little bit last week Clement of
Alexandria. I think I've mentioned origin before.
These were people who were, you know, philosophically educated even all the way back.
Justin Martyr, philosophically educated. And so they're using those tools to help them interpret Scripture.
But they're not, you know. They're not starting from nothing and trying to build up a Christian theology.
They are starting from and wrestling with and and holding themselves against Scripture, or at least, whatever whatever Scripture they can mutually agree on, which by this point is the vast majority of the New Testament, there are, you know, at the Margins you you've got, books that not everybody can agree
on, but you know the core of the New Testament.
Everybody's willing to accept and discuss. If you're building your argument exclusively on, you know.
Second Peter, then you might not be able to convince everybody, because not everybody accepted.
Second Peter. But yeah. But first, Peter, or first Corinthians, or Romans, or the Gospel of John.
By this point there pretty universally accepted other questions.
Jeff.
Well, they talk about the procession of the spirit, not the generation of the spirit, because they think of generation as specifically Father Sun language, and they they do talk about the procession of the Spirit, and they'll they include it in the Creed at Nicaea or or at least the version of the Nicene
creed that gets ratified at Constantinople.
I don't know how many of you, hey? Liturgical backgrounds at all.
But if you ever, if you ever said the nice thing, Creed in church if you were Catholic or Episcopal, or maybe Lutheran, I don't know, you would have at least in those you would have done that that creates, actually you know what the guys at Constantinople 50 years later.
we're pretty sure had been set at Nicaea cause the Nicene Creed had.
We've reconstructed it. Now, we think, but it had been largely lost.
Nobody bothered to write it down. They didn't know that the council was gonna be that big a deal, I guess, but they did talk a little bit about the Holy Spirit, but not a whole lot.
They didn't. You know, it's like most things they didn't talk too much about the Holy Spirit until a group of people. And this happens after Nicaea start, you know, really going to town trying to deny the divinity of the Holy Spirit there's a group called.
Which sounds like an awesome band name, but there's a group called Nomadomachians, or that got named the Nomadomachians, and they were the ones who were fighting the Spirit, fighting the Holy Spirit.
So it's only after them that they spent much time on the Holy Spirit.
So everybody's comfortable with the the question of the spectrum of issues around sameness and difference.
On the procession. I almost said it, not for session at all.
The generation of the sun, right?
Versus, or.
Those are the easiest ones for me to point to, partly because they're the clearest that that I can say.
You know this is what this is, what's coming out, but they do come from the rest of the New Testament as well.
I don't. I haven't like looked at numbers or anything like that.
But the you know, anytime it's talking about the sun.
Receiving or or being from the father. Those things are those things are throughout the New Testament, and and they'll all get argued about.
John may be Crownzy Road for the fight, but much more than that comes in.
Okay.
I really do want to do the the Council tonight, so we will do it so that we can move on.
Partly, I think, having set it up, we don't wanna have to refresh everything before we get to it.
So I'll run a few minutes long if necessary. So I've given you kind of a timeline on the back of your sheet, or on the second sheet, if you're on Zoom that's how it is for me, too. It's my second sheet.
Not the back and just to set it up a little bit, because, you know, we've all heard of Constantine.
We've usually heard of the Council of Nicaea, and there are lots of questions surrounding it.
So around the year 3, 12 or no, in the year 3, 12.
Sorry is the battle of Milvian Bridge, and supposedly or legendarily, or, as the story goes, that's where Constantine sees some sort of sign in the sky just before the battle, and believes that that Christ has given him victory in this battle, and so he converts to Christ
out of or converts to Christianity out of, you know, gratitude, loyalty, whatever you wanna call it cynically, you can call it other things if you want, and that's his official conversion.
I have a feeling. He was at least very, very sympathetic.
Even prior to that, and this provided him with a convenient thing to point to.
He was already, you know, one of the emperors, and so these kinds of moves have to be have to be planned out.
You can't just do it, willy-nilly, and it is the next year the battle of Milvia and bridges in October of 312, and it's during 3 13 that the so called Edict of Milan is issued now there was No.
Edict exactly. There was a meeting in Milan, but there's no edict exactly.
There are a couple of letters that go out, and what it really comes down to is the Emperor for the other side of the Empire decides that Constantine has a pretty good idea.
Constantine's been tolerating Christian for a long time.
You know his and his territory. Christians were not getting persecuted, and you know that seems like a good way to handle it.
Constantine has convinced me, and so throughout the Empire.
Christianity is supposed to be tolerated, treated nicely, you know.
It's kind of effectively legalized at that point.
Now one of, and this is where my cynicism comes in and my politics.
One of the reasons I think Constantine pushes for this, and certainly the reason that the other emperor.
Whose name escapes me at the moment but you can look them up if you want to.
He was a pagan, by the way, not a Christian.
One of the reason that he decides to do this is because it's going to be effective at keeping peace in the Empire, persecuting Christians is simply bad for business.
They make up. Maybe maybe as much as 10% of the population of the Empire persecuting them doesn't seem to get them to stop being Christians, and it's just causing stripe.
It gets people, you know, turning in their neighbors for the hurrific crime.
Being a Christian, just because, you know, they don't cut their grass the way I want them to, or something like that.
And Constantine's approach seems to be working better.
The other part of the cynicism is.
Hmm. 25 or 30 years earlier than that. Maybe not quite that much, but Diocletian, who had been a really talented, really good Emperor from almost every perspective other than Christian perspective, had instituted an empire- persecution of Christianity in an attempt to to have you know what we might
call revival in the old pagan religions, basically to get people stirred back up for the old traditional religions.
And unify the Empire. Using the vehicle of traditional religions.
That failed completely failed. Didn't work most things.
Diocletian did worked nicely, but this policy did not effectively reunite the Empire.
And spirit, and all that. I don't mean publicly split it up into 4 parts, because it was too big for one person to govern that wasn't what he was trying to unify.
He was trying to get Romans to be Romans, and I think, Constantine, that has counterpart.
Realize that. Okay, that didn't work. Christianity is the future.
I'll unify the Empire as a Christian empire instead of as a pagan empire.
So that's what happens up to 3 13 to go back to the theological side in 3, 18, or around them.
Tensions come to a head, I said. A rise on the sheet, but it's more that they come to a head in and around Alexandria, between the bishop, whose name is Alexander and one of the presbyters in Alexandria, whose name was Arius over this question that
we talked about the generation of the sun. Alexander emphasizes the eternal generation of the sun, which is what what we would claim.
I even I grabbed a copy of the Bulletin and our third paragraph, and the what we believe says there's one God eternally existing in 3 persons.
I might slip by us. Why, we phrase it that way sometimes. Now.
But that's their saying that this didn't start at some point in time.
Right this is an eternal description of the nature of God.
God, eternally existed in 3 persons, and Alexander is saying something along those lines now.
He hasn't he hasn't rolled the Holy Spirit into it, because they just haven't gotten there yet.
But that's what he's saying about the sun and Arius thinks that he's going too far.
Areas, thinks that by saying that the Father is eternal and the sun is eternal, that you've got 2 ultimate principles in the universe, and you can't have 2 ultimate principles.
It just doesn't work. It doesn't make sense.
There can't be 2 that started it, and he also thinks if you want to take a glance at first, Timothy. First Timothy, chapter 6.
Yeah. Verse 16, but.
Where do I need to start?
Well, we'll start at 13. I might skip some passages.
I charge you on the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus.
So he's Paul is referring when he says God, here he's referring to the Father so he says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, and he goes on verse 150, no.
For first 14 to keep the commandment unstained and free from approach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he Jesus Christ, will display at the proper time.
He who is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings, Lord of Lords!
And so now, Arius thanks that Paul has shifted and has been talking about the father.
The blessed only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who and the Greek would allow you to keep that alone, modifying or defining this next phrase also alone dwells in unapproachable light, who no one has
ever seen or can see to him the honor and eternal dominion.
Amen. So the Esv makes it, you know. Sounds like it's bringing both the son and the father into this description, and and I think that's probably fine.
But area streets, this and areas thinks that what Alexander is doing is he's impinging on the alone eternality of the Father.
To say that the sun is eternal, violates what Paul says here in first Timothy 6, 16.
So, Bill, there they are, fighting over Scripture. This is not stuff they're pulling out of the air.
And so he he condemns what Alexander saying because of that Alexandria still has a a much less monarchical bishop.
The bishop is true by the Presbyterian, and kind of has to get them to go along with what he wants to do.
Still.
And so arias challenges him, accuses him of being a dyeist.
And that's how this fight between these 2 stars at some point in the next few years Alexander gathers a small council in Alexandria that condemns areas and demands that he, you know renounce what he's been teaching areas for fuses he goes looking for more.
People to be allies with him against Alexander, and he finds some so even is able to arrange for a couple of small councils in Bathenia, which is in Turkey and in Palestine, which is a Palestine thing, and partly because of the way he spends what went on
and Alexandria, those councils exonerate areas and say, areas is fine areas is on the right track.
He's doing it right, Alexander, you should let him back into fellowship and back into his priestly roles in Alexandria and Alexander says no.
And not many more words than that. But Alexander says, no, he is not readmitted, and so then it's around 324 that Constantine starts paying attention to this like I said, I think Constantine did become a Christian.
I'm not quite cynical enough to say that it was just a politically motivated act, but he was definitely aware of the political ramifications.
So he was wanting Christianity to help him unite the Empire.
And now the Christians, at least the ones down in Alexandria are fighting and they're pulling in other parts of the Empire into this fight.
That is not helping with my whole Unity campaign. So he writes a letter and says, Hey, guys, get it together alright. I don't know what you need to do, but get this thing together.
Make this problem go away. And so there are some other counsels.
There's a small one in Antioch, that is, I've said it's kind of a drive run for the Council of Nicaea.
It's probably in the spring of 3 20 or early spring, maybe even winter of 3 25.
The famous counsel of Nicaea, the, you know, worldwide empire.
Wide, council is May to June of 3, 25.
So Antioch is kind of a dry run. They don't make.
They do come to essentially the same conclusions that I see a later comes to, but they don't try to make any.
You know super definitive statements, because the counsel at Nica is already scheduled and so they don't wanna overstep their bounds.
And Antioch. And so then that summer in Nicaea, the council meets to discuss this division, which, like I say, it's crystallized by the conflict between area, some Alexander.
But that's not where it comes from. Areas is just one example of the people on his side, and maybe he's an extreme example.
But he's just one example of the people on his side of the debate, and Alexander is just one example of the people on his side of the debate, and there are people at every conceivable point between them, but they come together legendarily 318 bishops we're
there, but there might be literary reasons that they decided to count to 3, 18.
And ultimately this results in a condemnation of areas, even by the vast majority of the people who were kinda on his side.
And that's why I asked was sort of an extremist, because even the people who were over on that side of the debate, even the people who who wanted to see more different wanted to discuss more hierarchy they said that some of the things that Eric said go too, far one of the phrases
that's attributed to areas is, there was a time when he was not what he's denying.
There is the eternal generation of the sun. He's essentially saying there was a time when there was just the father.
He was not referring to the sun, the sun didn't exist at that point, and then the father create or begins to generate, depending on how you you want to phrase it, the sun.
And that's when the sun's generation begins.
And so, even though the people who wanted to emphasize the difference that they were not the same nature, that there was some distinction between them, even, they said, No, that's going too far, and they voted all.
But 2 of them apparently voted to condemn areas and condemn areas, says Theology.
So the result of it is a condomnation of areas, a composition of a creed that affirms, among other things, that the sun was of the same essence or the same nature as of the Father, that in their nature there was no difference between the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as well
although, like I say, he gets, you know, half a line instead of, you know, 2 paragraphs.
The composition of that creed, and then error, and 2 Libyan bishops are exiled.
These 2 Libyans refused to sign an Arabs was exiled because he was being condemned 2 Libyan bishops left because they refused to sign onto the creed, and so those 3 are sent into exile, and Constantine, as I said on the handout naively hopes.
that everything is settled now, and the Christian theologians will now all get along the and they'll all agree, and we can peace.
We have peace, and we can prosper, and everything will be wonderful and well.
Unfortunately, that that is not how things go they spend about the next 6 years fighting tooth and nail over this.
There are times when the so called Aryans, although that's really not a good term for them.
But the people who were on the, on the strongly hierarchical Trinity side.
There were times when they had far more power. One of the he wasn't a bishop at the time, but one of the deacons who was at at Nicaea helping, was effanaceous.
He was one of Alexander's deacons, and was sort of a theological thinger already.
At this point, and he will spend the rest of his life fighting against anything that he thinks is remotely arying, and he's responsible for calling all of it Area.
And this like, I say, it's not a good term for what comes after, but Athanasius knows that Arius was condemned.
Arianism is condemned. If I can show that this theology that I'm fighting is basically Aryan, it'll be easier to defeat it.
So he goes on fighting over these same issues, these issues of sameness or different between son and father.
And it's not until 3, 81, when there's another council that meets at Constantinople that the the doctrine of you know co-equal co eternal Father and Son, and Holy Spirit emphasized more this time get reaffirmed and at that point they do a little bit
better, of a job of sort of finalizing the deal. But yeah, it's not like after Nicaea.
Everybody stays online. The debate continues because a lot of those people who were who thought area was way out of bounds.
But we're kind of on his side of the middle.
They don't go fully to to the, you know, eternal generation.
Side. They're still where they are, and they can continue to to try to nudge the conversation one way or the other.
So that is, that is my very brief. One night take on the council of Nicaea.
We could spend semesters on it if we wanted to, but I I think I hope that's a reasonably good introduction to it, and explanation of it.
Are there any clarifying questions we don't have time for real content.
But if there's clarifying question, yeah, Tom.
I can't remember if it was just under a month, or just over a month, but it was right.
About a month. So yeah, anybody else you talk about Nica, right?
Okay.
Okay. In that case I will turn it back over to Jim, and we can get to the real purpose of the meeting. We can pray.