Dr. Dafydd Daniel
speaker
99 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Dr. Dafydd Daniel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Well, the problem for Arius, why Arius views it as a heresy, is that then what you're saying is that the father becomes incarnate and dies on a cross. And you shouldn't be saying that, right? Because you should be able to distinguish something about these persons. There must be different persons. In Arius' own light, he's actually being the most Christian person.
Because he's preserving that there's three different persons in the Godhead. Whereas for their opponent, Alexander, they're being really Christians because they're preserving the fact that Christ is fully divine in the same sense as the Father. And so that's why they want to push that homoousion language.
Well, it's a great question because no one's entirely sure. I mean, it's open to our imagination a little bit. And I find it very difficult to imagine. It must be the most extraordinary thing ever. So Constantine pays for it all to bring all of these bishops together. The discussion is in Greek. Constantine, when he speaks, speaks in Latin, it seems, for the most part.
Although he does understand Greek and occasionally talks in Greek. And he's actively there as well. He's not dictating it from afar. Okay. No, no. He's actively there. So he opens the council. So you can imagine these, I mean, in effect, thousands of people gather together in Nicaea. He moves it to Nicaea just so he can attend because that's closer to where he is.
And Eusebius and Athanasius give these strongly glowing descriptions of Constantine opening the debate. Eusebius is describing this sort of transfigured figure, right? Sort of in this glowing gold, opening the discussion. Then what is really heated argument for months between these bishops and others. They are heavily disagreeing.
As you alluded to earlier, they're not always clear whether in actual fact they are agreeing rather than disagreeing. There's one great story, which seems sadly not to be true, that Father Christmas himself St. Nicholas, who maybe was not even actually there, but he was around and was a Nicene, that he was at the council and sort of biffed Arius on the nose.
He sort of slapped him across the face for his views, which says... Father Christmas.
I know, it's funny. So yeah, a really heated discussion that each side feels that their view is the orthodoxy, right, should be the view, and that each other view is really in danger of doing something. You know, one view feels it threatens the divinity of Christ and therefore salvation. The other, that it really diminishes our idea of what God and the Godhead is. And then there are even...
compromises suggested. And according to Eusebius of Caesarea, it's actually Constantine himself who rejects those sorts of compromises. He insists on homoousion. Constantine seemed to prefer that sort of language of clarity, just say, well, this is the point of view, and that's it.
And then in the end, they all have to sign this creed, sign their agreement to the Nicene Creed, which only two bishops don't do, Secondus of Ptolemais and And Theonis of Mamaris, I think they are those two, they don't sign. They don't sign and they're deposed as a result. Ares is exiled, they're exiled. Then Constantine at the end, you know, we decide Homo Iuson, that's the end of the debate.
We settled it all. And then he issues Ares' work to be burned. You know, you're not meant to support his works, not meant to even own them or have them. This is now the orthodoxy.
Yeah. And so that is the Nicene Creed. So it is emphasising the divinity of Jesus as the Son incarnate. and that the divinity of Jesus is equal with that of the Father, that the God and the Father are one. And so this is where it says, you know, the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, all that sort of language, and begotten, not made.
That later on becomes, you know, eternally begotten, to emphasize that God, his Son is also eternal. And then further to emphasize it, you know, of one substance, right? The Son is from the substance of the Father, from this Godhead, that divine substance, but it's also one with that substance, right?
It's really emphasized the fact that the Son is divine and equal, and therefore Jesus is divine and equal. And so it is, you know, that great Arian tagline, you know, there was a time when he was not. So in other words, the Son was born at a certain point, was made. Well, that's anathema. There was not a time when he wasn't and so on. As I say, the Holy Spirit is just mentioned as an aside, right?
And the Holy Spirit, so that still needs to be settled. And then this fundamental question, right? Okay, we're clear now. There's a Trinity. The Son is equal with the Father. They're all divine. They're homoous on the same substance. How can Christ be both human and divine? I won't go to that now because that's a huge other thing. But when that is decided, this language of homoousion returns.
So what does Nicaea settle in itself? It gives great clarity as a substantive statement with a controversial word, and then it still leaves open many questions how God can be three persons in one. But then part of the point then is that maybe some things just have to be left a mystery, right? Maybe things are not inaccessible to human reasoning and everything else.
That's part of the viewpoint here. And that seems to be Constantine's view in his letters. We've got a letter of Alexander's when he's complaining about Arius to another Alexander of Byzantium. And he's saying that Arius is straying into things that are beyond human reason. So there's certain mysteries that have to be left there. That might be part of the argument.
It does do much more than the creed, which is part of why the debate went on for months. It's about a lot of things. I mean, even celibacy of priests is something where the priest can be married is something that's being heavily discussed as well. So one thing is the date of Easter. Again, the idea of uniformity.
It doesn't work, of course, because East and West still have different dates for Easter following that because they date the spring equinox at different times. But that was the idea that you could move away from the Jewish calendar, but also try and get everyone to agree when they celebrate Easter. Also, Sunday establishes the day of rest, one thing that Constantine does.
One thing that comes out of the Nicene Council is not just the creed, it's also the canons. This is the beginning of canon law, church law, the first steps of canon law. What they're a lot about is church structure, organization. How do you organize things? A lot of these canons are setting rules for how you decide who's going to be a bishop.
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