Was Council of Nicaea Church Just Found Under a Lake?
In the past week, scientists announced the discovery of ancient Roman ruins underneath the surface of the lake in Iznik, Turkey. But this was not just any archaeological discovery. They have may have chanced upon the ancient Basilica of the city of Nicaea (now Iznik), one of Christianity's most historic sites and the place where the Church made its first official statement about the relationship between Jesus and God.
Historians and archaeologists had been looking for the ruins of the church for over a century. Mustafa Sahin, the current head of archaeology at Bursa Uludag University, had been searching the shores for years before he was shown some government survey pictures. These aerial photographs clearly revealed the outline of a large church beneath the water. Dr. Sahin said, “I’d been doing field surveys in Iznik since 2006 and hadn’t yet discovered a magnificent structure like that.”
In the ancient world, Nicaea was a locus for commerce and politics. It was part of the Roman province of Bithnyia and Pontus and competed with rival city Nicomedia for the seat of the Roman governor (a kind of ancient capital city). Though it was sacked in the third century, by the fourth century it had again risen to prominence as a military and administrative center for the eastern part of the Roman empire.
In 325 A.D,, following decades of tense and heated theological debate, the emperor Constantine convened a meeting of bishops in Nicaea to decide upon the central religious debates of the day. Constantine, like other Roman emperors and administrators, was a strong believer in the principles of unity and uniformity. Theological disagreements about the nature of the relationship between Jesus and God the Father had already bubbled into public controversy in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, and Constantine wanted to put an end to the discord, which he saw as fractious and divisive.
thedailybeast.com |
