17th May, 2006

In the first of a series looking behind some of the key underlying assumptions made in The Da Vinci Code, JIM REIHER examines the claim that Jesus was first declared divine at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD...

Jesus was not declared to be divine firstly and decisively at Nicaea in 325 AD. Nicaea did grapple with the nature of his divinity, but the debate at Nicaea was between two divine positions: Arianism verses Orthodoxy. As US scholar Mark A. Noll puts it, the business of the Council of Nicaea was “to adjudicate the meaning of Jesus’ divinity".

The Christian (soon to be called heretic) Arius was arguing that Jesus was the first created being of God the Father. He said that Jesus was still divine, but of a different essence to the Father. He believed in the virgin birth, the miracles, and all the wonderful stories about Jesus. His beef was on the essence of Jesus: Arius believed Jesus to be different in his very substance to the Father. Arius’ opponents argued that Jesus was of the same substance as the Father, and had always existed from eternity past. There was not a time when he came into being. He was a part of the very essence of the eternal God.

Prior to Nicaea, Jesus was already considered to be divine. Theologians in the 2nd and 3rd centuries were saying as much. Some were saying some things that sounded like the later Arius (Origen, the great Catholic early Church Father seemed to believe something similar, for example.) Others were grappling with his divine nature in the more orthodox sense (Tertullian is a late 2nd century example. He is the man who first used the term “trinity”. Note this: in the 100’s not in the 300’s!) And the Gospel of John that promotes Jesus’ divinity the most out of the four New Testament Gospels - it is probably dated from the 90’s AD. We have a fragment of it dated about 120 AD and that is the earliest fragment of any of the New Testament writings. That Gospel was circulating in the early 100’s. Jesus’ divinity was not something thought up in 325 to solidify a shaky Roman empire.

Further testimony comes from non-Christian writers too. Two hundred years before the Council of Nicaea lived a man named Pliny. He was the secular governor of Bithynia, and is remembered for a number of things, including the tragic fact that he was a persecutor of Christians. He wrote about 112 AD, and noted that Christians “used to meet before dawn and recite a hymn among themselves to Christ, as though he were a god.”.

Of course the authors of the New Testament themselves, all of the documents in that collection were written in the first century. These documents contain are numerous references to the divinity of Jesus. Not just John’s Gospel does this (in a number of places, including 1:1; 8:58; and 10:30-33). See also Paul in Philippians 2 and Colossians 2 and 3; the writer to the Hebrews in Hebrews 1; and Matthews record of the name of Jesus given at his conception: Immanuel which means “God with us” in Matthew 1:23.

Jesus’ divinity was never not believed in from the earliest days of the start of the faith. There would be debate over the nature of that divinity and how best to describe it, and how the Father and the Son related together and what their essence or substance were. But was Jesus ever considered to be just a good man by his followers? Not after the resurrection...

Jim Reiher (BA (double major in history), BA in Theology, Dip Ed. MA in Theology (Hons)) is a full time lecturer for Tabor College Victoria, lecturing in church history and New Testament; and also has speciality interest areas in women’s ministry, creative ministry, and the New Age movement. His views are not necessarily those of other Tabor faculty members or of Tabor College.

For more on the Council of Nicaea, see This Great Moves of God article... | more...|