Transcript

Okay, welcome back to the fourth century.

Tonight we're talking about the First Ecumenical Council of the Church, the Council of Nicaea.

If you don't know what that means, I'll tell you.

And then in the second hour tonight we're going to talk about the Creed that resulted from the Council of Nicaea and also the Second Ecumenical Council.

So that's the plan for tonight.

Let's talk about the Council of Nicaea.

You remember where we've been, I hope.

We were talking about the Aryan controversy last week.

And so now we're going to see where that goes.

But before we get there, I just want to do a couple of things.

When we started this course, One of the first things we talked about in the first couple of weeks or whatever was that we saw two ways that the church determined what was orthodox or correct belief.

And the two ways that the church determined orthodoxy were first, apostolic succession, remember that, and then the canon, the development of the New Testament canon.

Now today we're going to look at two more ways that the church determines orthodoxy.

One is councils, and the other is the result of the council, creeds.

And of course the point is going to be for the bishops of the councils to draw the lines of boundary around what is orthodox.

In other words, by drawing these boundary lines, They're defining not only correct belief, but they're really defining the church in the sense of what one has to believe to be considered within the mainstream or Catholic church.

Now again, I'm using the word Catholic here in the sense of its original meaning, the universal church, but remember it already has the exclusive nature built into it, in the sense that the boundaries that we're drawing are the boundaries within which you have to stay, color inside the lines, if you want to be considered Catholic, If you go outside the bounds, you are no longer considered Catholic.

And why is that important?

For the sake of unity.

Because if too much diversity of belief is allowed, then we no longer have one church anymore, right?

Then we have multiple churches.

So really, all of this is for the sake of unity.

Alright, so think about it.

If correct doctrine depends on apostolic succession, And if apostolic succession is centered in the bishops, the bishops are the successors of the apostles, then when you need to make a major theological decision, what do you do?

You gather bishops together.

And the bishops meet in councils, or I'm using the word synod to speak of a smaller council.

So the bishops gather in synods or councils, and they talk it out, they debate, they vote, Often the result of these counsels is the writing of a creed, or a statement of faith.

Sometimes it's referred to as the rule of faith, or the rule of truth.

But a creed outlines doctrine, acceptable doctrine.

And by outlining the acceptable doctrine, it excludes the doctrine that's not acceptable, right?

And of course, you probably know this, but the word creed comes from the Latin credo meaning, I believe.

So this is why the creeds usually start with I believe or we believe, something like that.

Now, in the early church, most likely every city or bishop or catechetical school has its own statement of faith that it used in the baptismal ritual.

Sometimes they are very simple, sometimes they're more complicated, but they're probably done interrogatively.

In other words, the presider asks, do you believe?

And then you respond with a yes, theoretically.

But it all goes back to the baptismal formula that we see at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus says in Matthew 28, Jesus says, go into the world, disciple the nations, and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And so the creeds, as statements of faith, are going to be built on a nice three-point outline, right?

something about the Father, something about the Son, something about the Holy Spirit.

At least that's the basic structure that we're going to see.

And so the decrees or these early statements of faith were used as a test for membership.

You want to be baptized?

You need to agree with this.

They were probably also used as tools of catechesis, although as we discussed, Early catechesis was more about morality than it was about theology, but the creeds were probably used that way.

Later on it becomes clear that as a product of a council, a creed is a handy way to put the theological boundaries in writing.

So a council could write a creed in reaction against heresies.

and ultimately heresies are interpreting Scripture one way, And what comes to be known as orthodoxy is interpreting Scripture a different way.

And the Creed represents the orthodox interpretation over against the heretical interpretation.

And remember my law number one, right?

Heresy forces orthodoxy to define itself.

And this is never more clear as in the production of the Creed, because when we look at the 19th Creed, it is written primarily in response to Arianism, right?

The more heresies popped up, the more the creeds became theological.

This is exactly what is about to happen at the Council of Nicaea.

In practice, councils are only binding over the areas that are represented by the bishops in attendance, right?

So if the council is attended by bishops from a certain region, then the council is theoretically only binding over that region.

But as we saw in the Arian controversy, we had a situation where we had opposing councils or opposing metropolitan synods, one in Alexandria and one in Nicomedia.

The Alexandrian one The Catholic Church was the proponent of what we'll call orthodoxy in this case.

The one in Nicomedia supported Arius.

So now, not only do we have competing bishops, We have competing councils.

So what do you do when you have competing councils?

If you have two regional councils that are at odds, you need a council that is authoritative for worldwide Christianity.

You need a council that is over the other opposing councils.

Now, if you want to have a council that's authoritative for worldwide Christianity, that means you need to gather bishops from all over the world.

And a worldwide council is called an ecumenical council.

Ecumenical meaning worldwide.

And so what we're going to see here is that the Emperor Constantine will convene the first worldwide council of bishops.

Now before he gets to that point though, Constantine thought he could nip this Arian thing in the bud.

And he wrote letters to Alexander of Alexandria and to Arius.

The letters were delivered by his right-hand man, remember the Bishop Osius?

Osius delivered the letters.

And the letters basically demand that Alexander and Arius patch up their differences and, if need be, agree to disagree.

Because remember, Constantine's main concern is the unity of the Church.

He's finally unified the empire.

Oops.

What about the church?

He had hoped the church would help him hold the empire together.

Who's going to hold the church together?

The church is threatening to split, at least in the East.

In the East, the church is threatening to split over this area thing.

I mean, the West has its So the West has its own problems.

But Constantine's main concern is the unity of the church.

And in his letters to Arius and Alexander, he says that this issue is too trivial to even worry about it.

Now remember, this is the Arian controversy that has a whole Eastern church in an uproar, and here's Constantine saying, this issue is too trivial, it's too esoteric to even argue about it.

The reality is Constantine himself leans toward Arius at this point.

He's got to backpedal and get on board with the Orthodox side at the council.

But at any rate, Constantine writes these letters where he scolded both Arius and Alexander.

He says to Arius, you should never have opposed your bishop.

He says to Alexander, you should never have pressed the issue.

And he calls both of them childish and says that they should just agree to disagree.

For Constantine, the bigger issue was actually the fact that we had different ways of calculating the date for Easter.

So you have at least two different ways.

So that was a bigger issue for Constantine because he was worried that if Christians the world over were celebrating Easter on different dates, then that would be more divisive, or at least it would have the perception of being more divisive.

So for him that was invigoration.

But of course, as you know, Alexander and Arius could not simply agree to disagree.

So in late 324, or early 325, a synod was held in Antioch to address the Arian controversy.

And Oseus was the presider.

He chaired that council.

At that council, Eusebius of Caesarea, remember him?

He's our first Church Historian Eusebius of Caesarea was accused of being an adoptionist, and he kind of was.

Eusebius was a student of Origen, and in fact wrote a defense of Origen, because Origen himself had been accused of heresy.

So by defending Origen, Eusebius got himself into trouble, And there are aspects of origin and other elements that sort of all come together so that Eusebius is kind of leaning towards Arianism.

And so at this council in Antioch, Eusebius wasn't enthusiastic enough for the other bishops in his support of Alexander against Arius, and so he was accused of being an Arian.

And the council resulted in the writing of a creed, and that creed made the specific distinction between the concepts of generation and creation.

And we've been over this, so this should be familiar to you, but the point is that the creed says that Christ is generated, begotten, but not created.

generated but not created.

And Eusebius of Caesarea refused to sign that creed.

Now by this time, Constantine had already decided to convene a worldwide council.

And so the Senate of Antioch temporarily excommunicated Eusebius that they would reconvene in Nicaea to settle the matter and the final decision would be made there.

And so in 325, We have the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea.

This is the Council of Nicaea because that's the name of the city where it was held.

You will see that it spells sometimes about that middle A. That's okay, but that's the way we spell it now.

Now, you know I'm not big on making you memorize dates.

But if you don't know the date of the first Ecumenical Council, and if I ever meet you ten years from now and I ask you, you better know it.

325 Council of Nicaea, the first Ecumenical Council of the Church.

Bishops came from all over the Eastern Empire.

According to Athanasius, there were 318 bishops, but other people who recorded the events have different numbers.

Remember, these councils don't just meet on one day.

They meet over a period of time.

So it could be that some bishops were in and out.

It could be that some people are not only counting bishops, but are counting other people.

Because there were priests and some lay people at this council.

There were confessors who were there and they were treated as having great authority.

Remember the charismatic authority.

There were some hermits that were there who were also treated with great respect.

By the way, a little bit of a spoiler alert where we're going after this, but if you think about this, if the persecution is over and there's going to be no more martyrdoms, What will take the place of martyrdom?

What's going to be the new martyrdom?

Assassination.

No. Although there's going to be some of that.

No, asceticism.

Being a hermit or an ascetic.

That becomes kind of a spiritual martyrdom, dying to yourself.

So that will take the place of martyrdom.

That's an aside, but we are going to get there.

There weren't very many bishops who came from the West.

But the fact that they were all invited means that the council will be binding on them as well.

The bishop of Rome was not healthy enough to make a trip, he was too old, but there were some people that he sent to represent him and a small delegation of other bishops from the west.

The presider, the chair of the council was our old friend Osius of Cordova.

And Constantine himself took a seat among the bishops and moderated, and so he would, if he thought someone spoke well, he would compliment them, and he would put his two cents in from time to time.

So again, look at how Constantine has, on the one hand, given bishops the authority of civil magistrates, but on the other hand, he has given himself the right to sit at the table with the bishops.

Who else is there?

Well, obviously, Alexander of Alexandria and Athanasius.

Remember, Athanasius went as Alexander's right-hand man and deacon and Athanasius will succeed him as the next bishop of Alexandria.

So, Athanasius was kind of there as Alexander's secretary.

And, obviously, Arius was there and his followers, including Our other Eusebius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, is also there.

And, of course, Eusebius of Caesarea is there as well.

So, the main question for the Council is going to be, is the Son co-eternal with the Father or not?

Is the Son co-eternal with the Father?

Or, was there a time when he was not?

Was there a time when he did not exist?

Now, secondarily, are these guys heretics?

Is the other big question, right?

Is Eusebius of Caesarea a heretic?

Is Arius a heretic?

Where are we going to draw those lines of boundaries?

One of the first things they did was call up old Eusebius of Caesarea because he's already been declared a heretic at the Synod of Antioch, and he's been temporarily excommunicated.

So, what do you have to say for yourself, Eusebius of Caesarea?

And he produced the baptismal creed in use in Caesarea.

This is the creed we use.

The creed was examined by the Council, and it was determined that there was nothing wrong with it.

It was orthodox.

Now, of course, here's the thing.

It was very general, not specific enough.

And so the bishops of the council basically said, this is okay, this is orthodox, we'll say, Eusebius, that you're not a heretic.

And they decided to use Eusebius' Creed as the template for the creed that would be the product of the Council.

But Eusebius' Creed by itself was not specific enough to refute Arianism.

Because after all, Eusebius leaned that way anyway, and he was okay with the creed.

So they knew that they would have to add to it.

That's what we'll talk about in the next hour.

Now remember how adoptionism Not only denies the divinity of Christ, but adoptionism also denies the uniqueness of Christ among humanity.

In other words, Jesus Christ is basically one of us and not much more.

And of course, Arianism has the added element of certain quasi-divinity.

But ultimately, any of us could earn that elevated status of quasi-divinity.

So the point being that, you know, It sort of removes all the uniqueness about the person of Christ among humanity.

So, the bishops of the Council who wanted to refute Arianism knew that to do that they had to come up with a way to include in the Creed a statement that would emphasize Jesus' uniqueness.

And so, it had to be enough of an emphasis that the Arians couldn't be okay with it.

The problem is, you know, this Arianism is not the old kind of adoptionism that just denies Jesus' divinity out of hand.

It does have a kind of qualified divinity for Christ.

So it does kind of acknowledge some uniqueness of Christ.

So they needed to say more than simply that Jesus is unique.

He must be unique On the level of his very essence, on the ontological level.

And he must be eternally unique.

So it's not enough that he starts out like us, but becomes unique.

He must be eternally unique.

To put it another way, he has to be more like God than like us.

And remember the Christology of descent, right?

The Orthodox Christology of descent says he is God who becomes human, not a man who becomes a god.

And so somehow the bishops of the council are going to want to emphasize that aspect of Christology.

So the Alexandrian bishops, who are leading the way here, needed to come up with a way to describe Christ that emphasized his oneness with God.

That emphasized the way in which he is the same as God, the same essence, the same substance, just as we get from Irenaeus and Tertullian and Novatian.

And that would give them something that they could state in the creed that the Arians could not agree to and that that would exclude Arianism.

And so, a new word was introduced into the creed, into the rule of faith.

It's a Greek word.

Some of you already know where this is going.

The word is homoousios.

Now, this is the Greek homo, meaning same.

and usios meaning essence, same essence.

So the word means of the same essence, which is to say the same thing as what Tertullian meant by the same substance.

And so when we say that the Father and Son are of the same essence, this is the same thing that we already saw in Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Novatian.

Now, when you translate this into Latin, and then transliterate the Latin into English, you get the sort of English word, consubstantial.

But again, you can see it right in the word, you know, with or same substance.

So that's the English version of that word.

Now, who can tell me where the word consubstantial is in the Bible?

You're right, it's not.

And that's going to be the problem, because the Orthodox bishops, the bishops who hold the position that will be determined to be the Orthodox position, the Orthodox bishops want to include this word in the creed.

And the Arians, those who are going to be determined to be the heretics, their complaint is, hey, that word's not biblical.

Now, the word's been around.

It's not brand new.

It's been around, and there were some people, like Dionysius of Rome, who had said that the Father and Son are homoousios, and he probably got that from Novatian and Tertullian before him.

But there were others, like Eusebius of Nicomedia, who wrote specifically that the Father and Son are not homoousios.

So, which is it?

And in fact, what the Council did was pulled out Eusebius of Nicomedia's letter, where he argues against the use of the word homoousios, read it out, and condemned it.

And knew that because the word would not be acceptable to Eusebius of Nicomedia if they put it into the creed, that that would accomplish what they wanted to do in the creed.

Because it wouldn't be acceptable to the Arians.

So that word became the key to separating the Orthodox from the Arians.

Now, What's important to notice about this is that for the first time in the church's history, the Bible alone can't solve the problem.

In other words, every biblical word that the bishops tried to insert into the creed, the Arians could agree to it.

And, you know, we talked about the development of the New Testament canon, we talked about patristic exegesis, and we said that, you know, if at all possible, the early church interpreters liked to use Scripture to interpret Scripture.

But here's where they run out of Scripture.

Here's where the bishops had to go outside of Scripture to interpret Scripture.

Does that make sense?

Okay.

Alright, well, the Creed will be written with this word in it, and Arius and many of his followers could not accept the word because to them it sounded either Gnostic or Modalist, Sabellian.

And so, again, if you think about it from the perspective of an adoption, to say that the Father and Son are the same essence It sounds like you're saying that the Father and Son are the same thing, or one and the same.

And, of course, that's not exactly what the word was meant to mean, but that's what it sounded like to the Arabs.

And so at this point, Different factions sort of emerge, which were probably already there, but they come to life as different groups within this sort of Aryan camp propose other solutions.

So, for example, the Arians wanted to say, no, let's not say the Son is the same essence as the Father.

Let's say the Son is of similar essence as the Father.

The Son is like the Father, but what they mean by that is more in terms of the Son's will conforming to the Father's will.

They're not comfortable with the essence language.

So some of them are saying, let's say the Son is a similar substance.

Some of them are saying, let's not use the word substance or essence at all.

Let's just say the Son is like the Father.

And so these are various forms of Arianism.

Some of them are called semi-Arianism.

We don't need to worry too much about that.

There were even some who were more Arian than Arius and who wanted to say, the Son is nothing like the Father.

The Son is unlike the Father.

What's important about this is, we're not going to go into detail about these different factions, because it's really not necessary at this point, but the important thing to notice is that after the council, these different groups will solidify into different factions, and they will even oppose each other.

And eventually that opposition will be a benefit to the pro-Nicene party because some of these people will either cancel each other out or some of them will go so far in the other direction that it will cause the people on the fence to go with the Orthodox party.

So it ends up helping in the long run.

But I'll tell you right now, another spoiler alert, that just because a council is going to declare Arianism a heresy does not mean Arianism is going to go away.

It's going to be around for a while, and it's going to be a matter of debate for a while.

Now, in the end though, the word sticks, and the word is used in the creed.

And then, at the end of the council, All of the bishops are expected to sign the creed as a way of saying that they accept it, that they believe it, and that they will teach it when they get home.

Now, at this point, most of the followers of Arius simply found their own way to interpret the word loosely and sign the creed to stay out of trouble.

And in fact, Eusebius of Caesarea was one of these.

But he was so uncomfortable with the word that he felt he had to write a letter to the people back in his home, in his hometown, that would get there ahead of him, to explain, okay, now I'm coming home with a creed, it's got a word in it, word's not in the Bible, don't freak out, it's going to be okay.

You know, so he felt like he had to sort of, you know, defuse the situation before he even got there, because he really was not comfortable with it.

Eusebius of Nicomedia and a couple others did sign the creed, but refused to sign the part at the end of the creed that condemns the heretics.

And you'll see that when we look at the creed.

And the council said, well, you know, we'll give you a couple of days to think about it.

And then they sort of, the council a couple days later dispersed and they skipped town and left without ever signing that last part of the creed.

And when Constantine the Emperor found out that Eusebius of Nicomedia had not signed the last part of the Creed, he told the city of Nicomedia to get themselves a new bishop.

So, I'm pointing that out because I want you to see how the situation is going to flip in just a few minutes.

Now, Arius himself refused to sign the creed and some of his followers also didn't sign it.

So, Arius and anyone who refused to sign the creed was excommunicated.

Arius himself was banished from Alexandria.

Now, notice again, this is new because now If a person is a heretic, he's also an outlaw.

The emperor is backing the decisions of the council.

So it's one thing to be excommunicated from the church, but when the emperor is now backing the decisions of the council, that means you can also be exiled as well as excommunicated.

So, those areas we didn't sign were excommunicated.

Now, the creed was meant to be a standard.

Just like we talked about the word canon being a standard, like a yardstick by which other things are measured, the creed was also meant to be a standard by which local creeds could be measured.

So, it isn't even necessarily the case that everyone had to use the new creed, but The point was that you took this new creed home and you made sure that if you used another creed at home that it was consistent.

You couldn't teach anything that contradicted the new creed.

So the creed was supposed to be a standard to compare your local creeds.

But because it had a word in it that's not in Scripture, some people claimed that it was An innovation.

It was too new.

The way heresy is often seen as an innovation.

Older is better.

And here is an exception to that rule because this word was perceived as new.

And so, in the end, most of the bishops Including Athanasius eventually, when he became bishop, most of the bishops just kind of shelved it for a while, let things cool off.

They didn't necessarily use the Creed right away.

But by the mid-fourth century, The creed becomes pretty standard.

It becomes a sort of litmus test for orthodoxy.

If you want to call yourself a Christian, and by that we mean a Catholic Christian, not a heretical Arian or some other virgin, if you want to call yourself a Christian, you must agree to what's in the creed.

And the creed becomes kind of the minimum standard for orthodoxy.

And in fact, you know, Keeping it to a minimum is kind of intentional because you want to keep the mainstream church as large as possible.

You don't want to excommunicate too many people.

You don't want to exclude too much.

So the creed is written just enough to exclude the extreme heresies that we've been talking about.

Adoptionism, Arianism on the one side and also Gnosticism, Modalism on the other.

But, you know, it's only about a page long, so you can see that they didn't try to come up with every possible scenario.

So, the main result, then, of the Council of Nicaea is the production of the Creed.

But, this is not yet the Creed that we call the Nicene Creed.

And we're going to talk in our second hour about that.

because we're going to look at the Creed as it was written at Nicaea, and then we're going to talk about the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, and look at how the Creed was updated.

So the Creed that we know as the Nicene Creed, the one that's in the hymnal or whatever, that is technically the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed, because it's the product of both the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople.

Now, Before we...

Yeah, question there?

It's just too long.

I mean, that is technically the name of it, but who wants to say that, you know?

The Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed.

I'm not even sure I'm saying it right.

Yeah, it's just too cumbersome.

So, as a shorthand, it comes to be called the Nicene Creed.

And you'll see when we look at it that the bulk of it comes from Nicaea, but...

Alright, now the Creed was not the only thing they did at the Council of Nicaea, so I'm going to talk for a couple of minutes about other results of the Council of Nicaea.

Remember, Constantine's priority was also to discuss how to calculate the date for Easter.

Constantine wanted to get everybody on the same page with regard to the day of Easter.

He wanted everybody to be celebrating the day of Easter and you can see that it worked because now Christians all over the world celebrate Easter on the same day, right?

No. And so even though they tried To make a rule that everyone had to celebrate Easter on the same day, and theoretically the issue was settled after the Council of Nicaea, it was not universally followed.

And so people continued doing it the different ways that they had done it, and so to this day, our Eastern brothers and sisters celebrate Easter on a different day most of the time.

Sometimes it's on the same day, but that's just a coincidence when that happens.

In fact, this is going to be one of the issues that will eventually separate the Eastern and Western churches.

And I've got a whole lecture on that coming up later, so we'll get to it.

But this is going to be one of the things that will be kind of a bone of contention between East and West.

What's important to note about this now is that when the Council of Nicaea The Council decreed that the whole worldwide Church ought to celebrate Easter on the same day as the Church of Rome.

Why is that significant?

Because this is another stepping stone on the way toward the bishop of Rome becoming the pope, the office of the papacy.

This is another stepping stone on that evolution of the see of Rome becoming the most important, and in some ways it already is.

Now, having said that, though, in reality, what's going on here is that the Church of Rome is one of the major city churches that is in the majority in terms of the date for Easter.

And so the canon of Nicaea mentions that everyone should celebrate Easter on the same date as the majority of the churches do.

And it lists a couple of them, but Rome is the first one listed.

Rome has this priority of place.

This goes back to the beginning with the concept of apostolic succession and people like Ignatius saying we all need to agree with Rome.

That precedent is followed here.

We all need to agree with Rome.

Rome is the first church listed among the majority of churches to celebrate Easter on that day.

You can see that Some of the city churches, some of the churches, did not feel the need to comply.

And they simply didn't. And they just kept doing what they were doing and still needed to stay.

Another thing, and it's not a good question, that's totally fine, but another thing that the Council of Nicaea did was declare that the Novationists were in fact Orthodox and not heretics.

And the way this happened is this.

A Novatianist bishop was invited to the Council of Nicaea.

Now remember, the Novatianists have separated by this time, so they are a schismatic group.

They're a separate group.

They have their own bishops and their own churches.

But at least one Novatianist bishop came to the Council of Nicaea and he did sign the creed.

And there's no reason why he shouldn't have, because if he's a follower of Novatian, the idea of the father and son being consubstantial is perfectly natural to him.

So what that says is that while the Donatists were considered heretics, primarily for their sacramental theology.

The Novatianists were not.

The Novatianists were considered orthodox.

In fact, the candidates of Nicaea state that if Novatianist bishops want to come back into the Catholic Church, they certainly can, as long as they agree to not be Novatianists anymore.

Basically, they have to agree to reconcile anyone whom the Catholic Church would reconcile.

So they have to act like Catholic bishops.

Now again, notice how I keep using the word Catholic.

We started with this word meaning universal, but then it quickly has the connotation of a sort of exclusive universal.

In other words, we're Catholic and you're not, right?

And so we've already seen how it got that connotation.

So there's the Catholic church, which is sort of the majority, the mainstream church.

And then there are these heretical groups.

But now for the first time, with the Novationists, we have a group that's acknowledged by a worldwide council as Christian, but not Catholic.

So they're Orthodox, they're not heretics, but they're still schismatic.

So they're Christian, but not Catholic.

That's the first time that's really happened.

With the Novationists, we have the first time that a group is officially recognized as Christian but not Catholic.

In other words, it affirms and accepts the idea that there could be separated brethren, brothers and sisters, who are not under the same hierarchy and yet who are also not heretics.

Now this is going to call into question the idea of no salvation outside the church.

because if they're not heretics, then that implies that their Christology leads to a soteriology that works.

And yet, are they or are they not in the Church?

It's a question that doesn't really get answered, because eventually the Novationists will be somewhat persecuted by the mainstream, especially in the West.

In the 5th century in the West they die out, and they die out in the East.

by the 7th or 8th century or so.

And when I say they die out, it means that they stop being separate and sort of get folded back into the mainstream church.

Another thing that happens after Nicaea is that apparently having non-bishops present was perceived as a little bit too chaotic.

And so there were priests and even laypeople at the Council of Nicaea, and I mentioned there were confessors and there were hermits.

But Nicaea is really the last major council that is going to allow priests and laypeople to be there.

For the most part it's going to be bishops only invited to the major councils.

A couple of other rules that come up from the Council of Nicaea.

A prohibition Against ordination right after baptism.

Now, you may remember some stories from the earlier centuries of the Church where there is a figure who is so well respected and so well liked, or a person who is considered to be such a great speaker, that when that person becomes Christian, he is baptized and then immediately ordained priest or even bishop.

And we see, well, it even happens with Ambrose of Milan after this.

But there is a rule here that you don't ordain somebody to the clergy immediately after they got baptized.

There ought to be some time in between there, which sort of makes sense.

There's a prohibition also against clergy having women in their homes who are not a mother, sister, or aunt.

This is right at the time when there are questions about whether clergy are going to be expected to be celibate.

And as you know, in the East, priests, are not going to be expected to be celibate.

In the East, priests may marry and have a family, but the bishops are expected to be celibate.

Normally in the East, the bishops come from the monastic orders.

So in the West, we're already in that place where there's an expectation of a celibate clergy.

It's not always followed.

But that's becoming the expectation.

But what's happening is in some places you have clergy, priests or even bishops who have housekeepers who live with them and basically they're a common-law wife or whatever.

So the Council of Nicaea makes a ruling that clergy may not have women living in their homes who are not a close relative, something that wouldn't arouse suspicion.

Another rule is a prohibition against what's called the translation of bishops from one see to another.

The see, you remember, is the city or the place of a bishop's authority.

If you are the bishop of, let's say, Antioch, That implies that you're from Antioch.

Because remember, the whole underlying assumption here of apostolic succession is that your theology, you're the bishop, your theology comes from the previous bishops in that city.

That it comes down through the succession of bishops in a particular city.

So if you're the bishop of Antioch, it means you're from Antioch.

So this rule prohibits Bishops from moving from one seat to another.

Now, the point there is really twofold.

One, it's, I think, to preserve the concept of apostolic succession, to preserve that pedigree of theology.

But also, it's to prevent clergy from getting ideas about being upwardly mobile in the sense of, wow, you know, I should be thankful to be the Bishop of Evanston, but I'd really like to be the Bishop of Chicago because, boy, wouldn't that be a primo gig, right?

So the idea is you're not supposed to have your eyes on other seas, which is kind of an interesting pun, but you get the idea.

Now, even though the Council of Nicaea decrees that bishops may not translate from one see to another, watch what happens, because it's going to happen real soon.

Another rule is that bishops must respect the excommunications of other bishops.

Now this is an important rule, because we have seen this problem ever since we talked about Hippolytus in Rome, right?

And now, more recently we saw it, with Alexandria, the bishop of Alexandria excommunicates Arius, but he can just go to Nicomedia and the place is full of his friends, or Antioch or whatever.

So if one bishop does not respect the excommunications of another bishop, It renders excommunication sort of ineffective as a method of discipline, right?

If you can just go to another city, then what's the point?

Is that a question, then?

Yes, sir.

I have a question in regards to excommunication, and I've been thinking about this the past couple of weeks.

Are there still excommunications today?

Yes, the question was, are there still excommunications today?

The answer is yes, but it depends on the denomination.

Some denominations do it, and some don't. In the ancient denominations, like Roman Catholic, you absolutely can get excommunicated.

Every once in a while, if you watch the news, there will be an item about some Roman Catholic theology professor who starts teaching something or writes a book and the Vatican gets a hold of it and says, ah, this is outside the bounds.

And they will say, you know, you need to stop teaching this or recant or something.

And if the person refuses, they can be excommunicated.

And once excommunicated, what happens to that person?

I know back then it was outlawed.

They were outlawed.

Yeah, you could be exiled or whatever.

But today, excommunication means what it originally meant Excluded from Communion.

So the idea is that you're excommunicated.

It's not as though you're kicked out of the church entirely, like you can't show up in church ever.

But you're not expected to go up to receive the sacraments.

You are excluded from the sacrament of communion, which means that if you want to be reconciled with the table of the Eucharist, you need to be reconciled with your bishop.

and because the bishops hold the authority over that, and so you need to do whatever the authority says you need to do in order to be reconciled again.

And so that's kind of the bottom line.

There have been occasions, and again, sometimes you'll hear about this in the news, where a politician The bishop of the area where the politician is from will excommunicate that politician and say, until you stop saying this, this, this, you are not welcome at the table of the Eucharist.

In regards to those at the church where there have been those scandals, have they resulted in excommunication?

I don't know if all of them or some of them have resulted in excommunication based on their actions.

I know we were talking about what they teach and that sort of thing, but the action.

Behavior certainly can result in excommunication, but usually excommunication is reserved for the unrepentant.

In other words, so if you commit a sin, whatever the sin is, if it's serious enough and the church comes to you and says, You have excommunicated yourself by your actions.

Some of the scandals that you're thinking of would clearly fit in that category.

You have excommunicated yourself by your actions.

Now at that point, when a person gets caught, they are often humbled and usually repentant.

It's a little more serious in countries where If I'm excommunicated, I have no place to be buried in, I have no right My marriage, my properties are illegal.

It depends what country is it and how are the rules.

Well, most of Middle Eastern countries are the same.

I'm from Syria.

I don't want to go there.

Well, in most cases you're talking about the Christian context, and I think that there would be similarities in Greece, but again, you know, notice...

It's Ottoman Empire rule, they left this thing, and it continues for the last couple of centuries.

Well, this tradition goes back to Constantine, and we talked about how in the East there is going to be more of a connection between church and state, and with the assumption that in a sense the state rules over the church, Now that can work to the church's advantage sometimes, when the state supports the church, but it can be a disadvantage too.

In the West, we're going to see it's more church over state.

In the East, it's more state over church.

But in your countries where you have a sort of national church, Minorities or faith communities are represented by the church or whatever faith community it is.

And your life is organized around that representation that you have.

So it is quite serious.

Yeah, and like that situation, in the early church, remember that not only was there a belief that there's no salvation outside the church, so if you're excommunicated, you're also outside the kingdom.

You're that guy without the wedding garment Not only are you that guy, but you risk not getting a Christian burial if you should die in a state of excommunication.

These things were very serious.

Yes, go ahead.

That is a great question.

That's a great question, and I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer it.

In case you didn't hear it, the question was, is this idea of excommunication somewhat based on the idea of the Greek city, where you have to be a good citizen, but you have to belong to some city, and if you move from one city to the next, you might need a letter of reference or something like that.

Even to this day, if you change churches, Where you register, they might ask for a letter from your previous church.

To answer your question, though, I don't know how far I would go with this, because we do actually have the precedent for excommunication in 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul talks about distancing yourself from the unrepentant sinner.

Theologically, the precedent comes from there.

Would you want to do a new Testament paper on whether Paul got the idea from the Greek idea?

I don't know, but that's really what it goes back to.

Good question.

That actually may go back to more stoic ethical with Seneca, who was one of Paul's contemporaries in terms of when you support, you know, when you follow the virtuous life, you're supporting the empire, but you're also supporting You know, we talked about the debate over the sacraments after the persecutions and the controversy over the laps.

And, you know, the question sort of becomes, who are we helping by excommunicating someone?

Are we keeping the church pure by excommunicating the impure?

Or are we really helping the person by excommunicating them and showing them just how serious this sin is or this heresy is?

It's a little bit of a two sides of the same coin, maybe.

At least that's what they would argue.

Okay, so there's one more thing I want to mention as a result of the Council of Nicaea, and then we're going to take a break.

As you know, we talked about the evolution of the office of the bishop, the episcopacy, right?

And you know about the concept of one bishop per city.

And you know that we now have a situation where there is more easy communication between bishops, between cities.

But that also means that there is more opportunity for disagreement between bishops and between cities.

Now, going on the assumption of apostolic succession, we have a tradition that, at least in theory, everyone is supposed to agree with Rome because Rome is the church of Peter.

Now, Antioch also claims Peter.

But what the Council of Nicaea did was it began to define the hierarchy of the major metropolitan cities.

And so, at the Council of Nicaea, we have the most influential or the most authoritative cities defined.

And the number one city is Rome.

So, we have Rome at the top of the list, and again, this is no small step on that trajectory of the bishop of Rome, the office of the bishop of Rome becoming the papacy as we know it.

Now, after Rome, the next two most important cities are going to be Alexandria, And Antioch.

Now, as you know, Rome is in the west, Alexandria and Antioch are in the east.

The next metropolitan that is mentioned at this point is, and maybe only for sentimental reasons, Jerusalem.

Now, we also have a couple of other important cities who are on the list, and I would argue that Eusebius of Caesarea is one of them, Caesarea, probably more important than Jerusalem, though Jerusalem has some authority as sort of mother church, but both of these are not as important as Alexandria and Antioch.

But the problem here for them is that Alexandria and Antioch, being the two most important cities in the East, kind of cancel each other out, especially when they argue with each other.

The other city that is on the list of most important cities is Carthage.

Carthage is the second city of the West, it's in North Africa, but it is clearly not as important as Rome.

Now, in the next hour, we're going to talk about the Council of Constantinople.

I already told you that Constantine will create a new city, Nova Roma, New Rome, which comes to be called Constantinople, or Constantine City, right?

Why wasn't the Council of Nicaea just held in Constantinople?

I mean, if that's going to be the new capital, right, why not just have it there?

Because it wasn't built yet.

The Council of Nicaea was in 325. The city of Constantinople wasn't really dedicated until like 330. Not 330 in the afternoon, but the year, 330. And so it wasn't there yet, really.

But when we come to the next Ecumenical Council, it will be held in Constantinople.

So the Council of Constantinople is going to be in the year 381, and we'll talk about that in the next hour.

But at the Council of Constantinople, Constantinople as a city will be added to the list of the most important metropolitans.

And it will be added at the top of the list of the Eastern So it's going to edge out Alexandria and Antioch because, after all, it's the capital.

But, even though the Council of Constantinople is held in Constantinople, and even though it is now the new imperial capital, the Council will clarify that the city of Constantinople is second after Rome in authority.

So Rome still maintains So, and if that's not enough, there's five metropolitan seas in the east and only two in the west.

And in the west, Rome really has no competition from Carthage, though Carthage is important.

You can see how this falls out and how Rome becomes officially the seat of highest authority, the metropolitan at the top of the list.

Okay, now let's see if there are any last-minute questions before we take a break.

Okay, then let's take a break and let's come back at 5 minutes to 8 which is a little over 15 minutes.