Nicaea + 1700

 

The "Nicene Creed" (technically called the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed) which we sing or say at Mass every Sunday is an expansion by the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (381) of the original creed composed at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325). We rightly refer to its as the Nicene Creed, however, given that the fundamental work was done at that first Council, convened by Emperor Constantine, which first assembled 1700 years ago today. It had been one of the late Pope Francis' fond hopes to travel to Iznik, Turkey, the site of the Council of Nicaea, sometime this year to commemorate this anniversary with the Ecumenical Patriarch Batholomew.

The Creed itself, which was adopted on June 19, 325, summarizes the result of the Council's deliberations. The Council confirmed and articulated in philosophical language the faith of the Church about who Jesus is and his relationship to his Father and also to us. (According to legend, as recounted by Eusebius of Caesarea, it was the Emperor Constantine himself who suggested the key term homoousios, "consubstantial," to describe the relationship between the Father and the Son.) Nicaea actually initiated a protracted conciliar process of doctrinal definition about who Christ is which would continue at Constantinople in 381, Ephesus in 431, and finally Chalcedon in 481.

When we mention Nicaea, we think especially of how it described the relationship between the Father and the Son within Trinity, but the Nicene Creed continues, elaborating on the mission of the Son and especially highlighting his incarnation. (Anyone above a certain age can recall dropping to his or her knees when the Creed got to the words et incarnatus est.)

Nicaea did other things as well. Famously, its decision on the determination of the date of Easter, a calculation which all Christians still follow (albeit with different calendars), highlighted Christianity's fundamental relationship with its parent religion of Judaism. 

But the Creed and the philosophical formulations which the Creed enshrines remain the great and lasting legacy of Nicaea. I remember many years ago a conversation with a now-deceased confrere who was speculating whether the Church might have been better served had she not adopted Greek philosophical formulations for expressing doctrines. In response, I repeated the obvious observation that this was how the Church learned to speak to the wider late-Roman culture, which her evangelizing mission required. How, I asked, could the Church have spoken to the wider world had she not adopted Greek philosophical formulas? My confrere answered that the Church would surely have found a way, to which I replied that, well, that was exactly what the Church did at Nicaea! The Church found a way to speak intelligibly to the world at Nicaea, and Nicaea remains the model for what the Church must continue to do in relating to the world.