THE IMPACT OF THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA:
“ALREADY/NOT YET”
James R. Payton, Jr.
From the vantage point of 1700 years, we can recognize the impact the 325 Council of Nicaea had on the development of the Christian church: it became the first ecumenical council and propounded what would become the first “fixed formula” creed of Christianity. But the participants at Nicaea could not have anticipated either of those outcomes.
This paper seeks to situate the Council of Nicaea and the creed it propounded in their historical setting. The Christian church, following the pattern of the Jerusalem synod related in Acts 15, had relied on synodal gatherings to deal with questions of practice and teaching. Even with the accession of a Christianity-supporting emperor and his wide-ranging summons to this council, its participants could not have assumed future “ecumenical” councils, with their meeting the first of them.
Beyond that, the Christian church until then had not propounded a “fixed formula” creed: the apostolic tradition passed on within the church, as affirmed by Irenaeus and Tertullian, found publication in what they styled “the rule of faith” (or “of truth”), but the wordings and specific content varied among those presentations. They pointed to a triadic reception of baptism, usually together with an affirmation of God the Father as Creator of all, more expansive comments about the Son of God and his incarnation, life, death, and resurrection—but, again, with considerable variation in wording and what was specifically noted. Until the Council of Nicaea the Christian church had not adopted any specific form of words to profess its faith—and gave no evidence of an intention to move in that direction.
This paper argues that, even if some participants might have been inclined to look at the creed adopted at Nicaea in that way, that was not how the church in the years following the council viewed it. We will note that: the 325 creed remained unknown for years in some regions of the church; its status was not yet clear as the 381 Council of Constantinople was summoned or at that council; the 381 creed became its rival as the church’s standard; and at the beginning of the 451 Council of Chalcedon alternative versions of both the 325 and the 381 creeds found support to become what would be accepted as the “fixed formula” creed of Christianity.
Biblical scholars have spoken of the “already/not yet” character of the salvation accomplished in Christ (or of the kingdom of God)—that in what Christ did salvation is secured (or the kingdom of God is implanted within history), but the fullness lies in the future.
In a similar way, historians and historical theologians could ascribe an “already/not yet” character to what happened at the 325 Council of Nicaea. This paper shows that the beginnings of “ecumenical” councils and the propounding of a binding creed for Christianity were already there, but that situation was not yet recognized as the path the Christian church would take in subsequent centuries.