The Council of Nicaea
Religious Studies: KS3, topic 1.3.18
The Council of Nicaea
The Council of Nicaea was a meeting of Christian leaders to debate questions about Jesus.
Early Christian communities
- For a long time after Jesus' life, Christians tried very hard to understand him better.
- Early Christian leaders, including St Paul, wrote letters to the early Christians. These letters tried to answer their questions about God and Jesus.
- The ideas in the letters were sometimes hard to understand. The teaching in the letters was sometimes unclear.
Questions about Jesus
- Most Christians were sure that Jesus was God. But this raised some big questions for the early Christians:
- Could Jesus be God and human at the same time?
- If Jesus was God, and there was also God the Father in heaven, do Christians believe in more than one God?
The Council of Nicaea
- In the 4th Century AD, the Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian. This brought a period of peace.
- Constantine said it was important for the Christian leaders to have a meeting.
- At this meeting, the Christian leaders could make a statement about what Christians believe about God and Jesus.
- In 325 AD, Constantine called the leaders to a council (a meeting) in Nicaea.
Arius
- In the 4th Century AD, there was a lot of discussion about the ideas of a Christian priest called Arius.
- Arius said that if Jesus was fully God, then Christians believed in more than one God.
- This went against the Christian belief that there is only one true God.
- This debate was even more complicated because of the belief that God had shown himself in a third form - the Holy Spirit.
Test yourself on The Council of Nicaea
Who was the Roman Emperor that called the Council of Nicaea?