O Come, All Ye Faithful

Many of us will sing these marvellous words this Christmas from the carol O Come, All Ye Faithful, that was first printed in English in 1751: “God of God, Light of Light, Lo! he abhors not the Virgin’s womb; Very God, Begotten not created.”

The first and third lines of this stanza, the second in the hymn, are clearly dependent upon the wording of the creedal statement issued by the Council of Nicaea (325). They bear witness to the ongoing significance of this turning-point in the history of the church.

In the last few articles for this column, we have seen the way that the controversy over how to think about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, one that began in Alexandria, had so spread that it came to the attention of the Roman emperor Constantine. Fearing a major schism in the church, he had called for a synod of church leaders to convene at Nicaea in what is now north-west Turkey in mid-June of 325 to quell the theological conflict.

Bishops came from all over the Roman imperium, including one or two from outside of the bounds of the empire. Eusebius of Caesarea tells us, for example, that a bishop from the Sasanian Empire (ancient Iran) was present. Constantine paid for all of their expenses. There were between 220 and 300 bishops. But each would have been accompanied by a small retinue of attendants, which might well have swelled the number at the council to well over a thousand.

Having summoned the council, Constantine kicked off the deliberations that ran from June to August of 325. The emperor entered the council after all had been seated. Walking before him were three of his family (including possibly his mother Helena) and then some close Christian friends, and finally the emperor himself. As Constantine entered the hall, all stood. According to Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, he was “clothed in raiment that glittered as it were with rays of light, reflecting the glowing radiance of a purple robe, and adorned with the brilliant splendour of gold and precious stones”.

What amazement must have gripped many of the bishops who were present on that auspicious occasion. Only 15 years earlier, Christianity was illegal and bishops were being martyred. And now, their gathering together – a first in the history of the church, though the Jerusalem Council would have been a distant precedent – was not only funded by the imperial treasury but graced by the emperor himself. As Eusebius of Caesarea commented, to some of these bishops it seemed like the kingdom of Christ had come to earth and that this was a dream rather than reality.

Speaking in Latin, Constantine opened the council by exhorting the bishops to come quickly to a united judgment so that harmony might once more reign among the people of God.

That judgment, expressed in what we call the Creed of Nicaea, took two months to hammer out. It consists of four sections: the first about God the Father and the third regarding the Holy Spirit are quite brief. In fact, the simple statement that the Christian Faith entails belief “in the Holy Spirit” would occasion further controversy in the 360s and 370s as this does not spell out exactly how the Holy Spirit is related to the Father and the Son.

The final section contains a list of anathemas that clearly target the views of Arius, whose preaching about the creaturely nature of the divine Son had initiated the controversy. “The holy, catholic, and apostolic church anathematizes” all who say that the Son of God “came into existence out of nothing” and that he is “created”.

The second section of this Creed, though, spelled out in detail what the bishops at Nicaea understood to be the Biblical witness about Jesus. His being “begotten from the Father” entails that He is “not made,” but “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God”, in short, “one in being (homoousion) with the Father”.

The word homoousion is not a word that is found in the Scriptures and would occasion mental distress for some who merely wanted to stick to Biblical terms. In the years following Nicaea, the Arians, as they came to be called, would make this central to their argument against the term. In reality, though, this term succinctly captures the core meaning of such passages as John 1v1‒4, Colossians 1v15‒17, Hebrews 1v1‒4; and 1 John 5v20.

When it came to a vote on this Creed, all but two of the bishops – they were Libyans like Arius – affirmed it.

Constantine would have been thrilled at the unity that emerged around the Creed of Nicaea. But it did not last, and controversy would rage on until 381, when a revision of the Creed of Nicaea – a revision that we know as the Nicene Creed, to distinguish it from the product of the summer of 325 – was issued. But that is another story for another column.

With its declaration that the Son is “one in being” with the Father, Nicaea provided the church in the centuries following with a clear Biblical declaration of who Jesus is. It also gives us a pattern of worship: if Jesus is fully God, He is worthy of our worship and adoration. Rightly then does the chorus after second stanza of Come, All Ye Faithful exhort us to “come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord”.