THE uproar in the religion that had brought Constantine his Imperial crown became so serious that for the first time in the Church’s history bishops from all over the Empire assembled to discuss it.* They met at Nicaea near Constantine’s new capital, Constantinople, in 325.*
At first, Athanasius’s arguments won out; Arius was banished, and all but two bishops signed a statement declaring that the Son is no creature beginning in Time, but God, consubstantial and co-eternal with his Father.* Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, however, immediately reverted to Arianism, and by remaining close to Constantine secured the banishment of Athanasius and other enemies, while promoting Arians to high office.*
It was not until 381 that a second imperial synod, gathered in the capital, confirmed the first and released an expanded version of its Creed. Arianism now lost ground rapidly. But those who could not deal with Christianity’s wild message — that God became man, and dwelt among us — were soon thinking up new ways to tame it.
The Council is called the First Ecumenical Council, where Ecumenical means ‘of the whole inhabited world’ — in practice, the Roman Empire, which is how St Luke uses the word in Luke 2:1. There were roughly 1800 bishops in the Empire at the time, though eyewitnesses mention only about 250 to 320 attending over the three months. Athanasius gave the number as 318, which has become the accepted number in the Orthodox tradition. Transport and accommodation was reimbursed by the State.
Constantinople or New Rome, founded on the former town of Byzantium, was at this time still under construction: it would be consecrated in 330, six years after Constantine was acknowledged as sole ruler of the united Roman Empire in East and West. Since 1922 the city has been called Istanbul.
Consubstantial (‘homousios’) was a much-disputed term not widely used at the time, but strongly supported by Bishop Hosius of Córdoba in Spain. As interpreted by the creed, it meant that the Son and his Father are of one being in everything – except of course for the fact that the Son comes from the Father, whereas the Father has no origin at all. Naturally, Arius could not bear the word because it ruled out completely his idea that the Father is God and the Son is a quite different being, a creature, and it functioned for many years after as a kind of shibboleth – a handy test for which side you were on.
It was Eusebius who performed Constantine’s baptism on May 22nd, 337. Athanasius, who succeeded Alexander as Patriarch of Alexandria, was exiled no fewer than five times, on the orders of Constantine’s Arian son and successor Constantius II, of pagan Emperor Julian ‘the Apostate’, and of Arian Emperor Valens. Valens was followed in 379, six years after Athanasius died, by Emperor Theodosius I, who adopted Nicene Orthodoxy as the official faith of the Roman Empire.