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A.D. 325 Nicaea / Nice

The voluntary retirement of Diocletian, and the enforced abdication of his colleague, Maximian, in 305, removed the strong hand of the only man able to master the complex governmental situation. Persecution had now practically ceased in the West. It continued in increased severity in the East. Constantius Chlorus died in 306, and the garrison in York acclaimed his son Constantine as Emperor. Before the decisive contest for the West took place, however, Gulerius, in conjunction with Constantine and Licinius, issued in April, 311, an edict of toleration to Christians "on condition that nothing is done by them contrary to discipline." Constantine doubtless desired the aid of the Christians' God in the none too equal conflict - though it is quite probable that he may not then have thought of Him as the only God.

Constantine's later affirmation that he saw a vision of the cross with the inscription, "in this sign conquer," was a conscious or unconscious legend. But that he invaded Italy, as in some sense a Christian, is a fact. A brilliant march and several successful battles in northern Italy brought him face to face with Maxentius at Saxa Rubra, a little to the north of Rome, with the Mulvian bridge across the Tiber between his foes and the city. There, on October 28,312, occurred one of the decisive struggles of history, in which Maxentius lost the battle and his life. The West was Constantine's. The Christian God, he believed, had given him the victory.

To Constantine's essentially political mind Christianity was the completion of the process of unification which had long been in progress in the empire. It had one Emperor, one law, and one citizenship for all free men. It should have one religion. Constantine moved slowly, however. Though the Christians were very unequally distributed and were much more numerous in the East than in the West, they were but a fraction of the population when the Edict of Milan granted them equal rights. The church had grown with great rapidity during the peace in the last half of the third century. Under imperial favor its increase was by leaps and bounds. By a law of 319 the clergy were exempted from the public obligations that weighed so heavily on the well-to-do portion of the population. In 321 the right to receive legacies was granted, and thereby the privileges of the church as a corporation acknowledged. The same year Sunday work was forbidden to the people of the cities. In 319 private heathen sacrifices were prohibited. Gifts were made to clergy, and great churches erected in Rome, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and elsewhere under imperial auspices.

If Christianity was to be a uniting factor in the empire, the church must be one. Constantine found that unity seriously threatened. The first ecumenical council, held at Nice in Asia Minor, A.D. 325, was summoned by the emperor Constantine, who presided at the opening of the council and gave to its decrees (against Arianisin, &c.) the force of imperial law. The Catholic Almanac, and Roman Catholic writers generally, on the authority of Gelasius of Cyzicus, a worthless witness who wrote about 150 years afterwards, claim that Hosius, bishop of Corduba (now Cordova in Spain) presided as pope Sylvester's legate ; but Eusebius represents Constantine as introducing the principal matters of business with a solemn discourse and taking the place of honor in the assembly, and the Roman presbyters as acting for the Roman prelate; and even pope Stephen V., in A.D. 817, wrote that Constantine presided in this council. Eusebius gives the number of bishops in this council as more than 250 ; others have reckoned the number at 318. This council gives its name to the Nicene creed.

The first Council of Nicaea was resisted and opposed by emperors and prelates throughout the East for fifty years. A council held in Constantinople restored Arius. Eusebius of Nicomedia, the chief of the Arians, surreptitiously erased his name from the list of subscriptions to the Nicene Creed and obtained possession of the patriarchal chair. After him, St. Paul, the orthodox patriarch, was banished and put to death. Macedonius and Eudoxius, Arians, succeeded him. There were great champions of the Nicene Creed in the East, Athanasius, Basil, the Gregories ; but it was not Constantinople, it was Rome which protected them ; it was the Roman Church and the popes who fought the battle of the faith and conquered.

The Creed of Nicaea, from the time of its first promulgation, was always regarded as the bulwark of true Christianity. It has ever justly been the great test of orthodoxy on all the subjects expressed by it. It is incorporated in the daily devotional life of the Church, by being said or sung at the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and contains the fullest revelation of the incomprehensible nature of Almighty God. It is a Creed, so eminently authoritative in matters of faith, found throughout the Christian world in the most solemn part of its worship, when mysteries which angels desire to look into are placed within the reach of sinful men. Yet Christians do not recite it as it was there delivered, but as it was afterwards enlarged at the second General Council, held at Constantinople in the year 381, when some fresh errors, which in the mean time had sprung up, had to be condemned. In this was embodied the traditional teaching of the Church. But both the Nicene and Constantinopolitan have always been held as one; and that which we now sing in the solemnities of the Liturgy, though it be that of Constantinople, is termed by the Master of the Sentences and other Schoolmen, the Nicene.

"We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and of all things, visible and invisible.

"And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, Begotten of the Father before all ages, Light of Light, true God of true God. Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, by Whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, and was made man. And was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and rose on the third day according to the Scriptures. And ascended into the heavens, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, and shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end:

"And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, Who spake by the prophets:

"And in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

"We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins:

"We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

"Amen." Since the days of Timotheus, Archbishop of Constantinople, (AD 512,) it has been always repeated at the time of the Holy Communion, having previously to that been said only on Good-Friday, when the Bishop catechized. So completely is this Creed the standard of the Church's faith, that the Emperor Justinian says, "We ordain that the holy ecclesiastical Canons shall have the force of laws, even those which have been laid down by the four holy Synods, that is, of the 318 at Niceea, of the 150 holy Bishops at Constantinople, of the first of Ephesus, in which Nestorius was condemned, and of Chalcedon, in which Eutyches was cursed along with Nestorius. We receive the dogmas of the aforesaid holy Synods as the sacred Scriptures, and observe their Canons as laws."

Whether Unitarians like to hear it or not, it is a fact that they are outside of the pale of historical Christianity. If there is one doctrine which distinguishes historical Christianity from everything else, it is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The Greek, Latin, Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican churches with their denominational off shoots all accept it as fundamental. No other statement of doctrine so unites Christianity as the Nicene creed completed at Constantinople. Since Unitarians have rejected it, no complaint should be made because they are regarded as having placed themselves outside the boundaries of historical Christianity.

The Mormon definition of the Godhead differs from the Nicene Creed accepted by most Catholic or Protestant churches. In the 20th century, the Catholic Church became more aware of the Trinitarian errors which the teaching proposed by Smith contained, though he used the traditional terms. There is not in fact a fundamental doctrinal agreement. There is not a true invocation of the Trinity because the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, according to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are not the three persons in which subsists the one Godhead, but three gods who form one divinity. One is different from the other, even though they exist in perfect harmony (Joseph F. Smith, ed., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith [TPJSI, Salt Lake City: Desert Book, 1976, p. 372). The very word divinity has only a functional, not a substantial content, because the divinity originates when the three gods decided to unite and form the divinity to bring about human salvation (Encyclopaedia of Mormonism [EM], New York: Macmillan, 1992, cf. Vol. 2, p. 552). This divinity and man share the same nature and they are substantially equal.

God the Father is an exalted man, native of another planet, who has acquired his divine status through a death similar to that of human beings, the necessary way to divinization (cf. TPJS, pp. 345-346). God the Father has relatives and this is explained by the doctrine of infinite regression of the gods who initially were mortal (cf. TPJS, p. 373). God the Father has a wife, the Heavenly Mother, with whom he shares the responsibility of creation. They procreate sons in the spiritual world. Their firstborn is Jesus Christ, equal to all men, who has acquired his divinity in a pre-mortal existence. Even the Holy Spirit is the son of heavenly parents. The Son and the Holy Spirit were procreated after the beginning of the creation of the world known to us (cf. EM, Vol. 2, p. 961). Four gods are directly responsible for the universe, three of whom have established a covenant and thus form the divinity.

As is easily seen, to the similarity of titles there does not correspond in any way a doctrinal content which can lead to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The words Father, Son and Holy Spirit, have for the Mormons a meaning totally different from the Christian meaning. The differences are so great that one cannot even consider that this doctrine is a heresy which emerged out of a false understanding of the Christian doctrine. The teaching of the Mormons has a completely different matrix.