Icon representing the First Council of Nicaea, AD 325. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2863110
Pope Leo XIV is heading to Türkiye later this week, the first leg of a trip that will also take him to Lebanon, the first apostolic journey of his pontificate – the first outside Italy, that is – and one that marks a major milestone in the history of Christianity: The Council of Nicaea.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of the Council of Nicaea in the life of the Church, for a host of reasons too many and too complex even to list, let alone consider properly, but all somehow boiling down to the fact that Nicaea gave us the first systematic articulation of what Christians believe about life, the universe, and everything – especially about Christ.
“God from God, Light from Light, True God and True Man,” we say in the Creed, “begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through Him, all things were made; for us men and for our salvation, He came down from heaven and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary.”
We recite it liturgically, sometimes without thinking very much about what we are saying – that’s not a knock, it’s mostly just human nature, and I hear there’s a lot of that going around – but every word of it counts, not just the part I quoted here.
The Nicene Creed is important, in short, because it say what we believe – it states the “whatness” of the Christian faith – and preserves, in a nutshell, not only what Christians believe but how we came to understand what we believe.
It is important to consider why there was a Council of Nicaea in the first place.
The short-and-dirty version of that, is that a pair of theological heavyweights – a priest-theologian called Arius and Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria – were arguing with one another over the nature of Jesus Christ and pulling everyone in the Roman Empire – everyone in every part of the world that had received the Gospel at that point – somehow into the dispute.
Arius thought the Son was created – hence not fully God – since the Son comes from the Father. Athanasius taught that the Son is co-eternal and of the same being with the Father. .
It’s tough to imagine in this day and age, but the controversy threatened to tear apart both the worldwide body of Christian believers in the fourth century and the social fabric of the Roman Empire.
Nicaea was not the last word on Arius or Arianism – not by a long shot – and Arian ideas continue to percolate even in the present. So, the fact of the Nicene Creed is still important today.
Most English-speaking Christians who say the Creed these days use a version of it that contains the words, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son,” but the part saying “…and the Son” was a later addition made in the Latin-speaking area of the Church, first introduced – as an anti-Arian clarification, it happens – sometime between the 4th and 6th century, and only added to the Creed as recited at Mass in the early 11th century.
The filioque clause – filioque is Latin for “from the Son” – has been a sticking point in ecumenical dialogue, and the idea of dropping it has been mooted in both East and West.
The expression is theologically unproblematic – at least, it is not in itself Church-dividing – but it continues to be thorny because of questions having to do with the authority of the pope in the Church.
Orthodox dialogue partners might appreciate Rome dropping the filioque, but some of them could take such a decision as an at-least-implicit admission that the pope never had the authority to add it in the first place.
Also, Latin-rite Catholics are used to saying the Creed the way they’ve been saying it for centuries, and that is not an entirely irrelevant or insignificant consideration.
Whatever else Pope Leo’s visit to Türkiye will bring, it will be a reminder that there is a “whatness” to the Faith.
It is a whatness that may be – even must be – expressed in propositions.
Ultimately, however, it is rooted in the reality of God’s self-revelation to humanity through the Son, who is God from God, Light from Light, True God and True Man, consubstantial with the Father, and who founded one Church.
That’s something.
Follow Chris Altieri on X: @craltieri
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