Freddy, the Council at Nicea actually had as a primary purpose the glorification of Constantine, whose wife was a former prostitute. He wanted to clean up his image. I have read several accounts of the Nicean goings on, and it seems to have been not only very political, but quite violent as well. I have read more than once about hundreds of killings, uproarious riots, and soldiers enforcing order.
jesusofnazareth.com
Supression of Opposing Views
The Council of Nicaea was concluded with a banquet which seemed a far cry from the open commensality of Jesus' meals. "Detachments of the body-guard and troops surrounded the entrance of the palace with drawn swords, and through the midst of them the men of God proceeded without fear into the innermost of the Imperial apartments, in which some were the Emperor's companions at table, while others reclined on couches arranged on either side. One might have thought that a picture of Christ's kingdom was thus shadowed forth, and a dream rather than reality."
- Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 3:15
Later, upon returning home, Eusebius of Nicomedia and two other churchmen repudiated the agreement, but it was too late.
"Understand now by this present statue, Novatians, Valentinians,
Marcionites, Paulinians, you who are called Cataphrygians...with what a tissue of lies and vanities, with what destructive and venomous errors, your doctrines are inextricably woven! We give you warning...Let none of you presume, from this time forward, to meet in congregations. To prevent this, we command that you be deprived of all the houses in which you have been accustomed to meet...and that these should be handed over immediately to the catholic [i.e. universal] church."
- Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 2
"The books of Arius and is sympathizers were ordered to be burnt, and a reign of terror proclaimed for all those who did not conform with the new, official'Christian' line:"
- Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence
"Eleven years afterwards, a more numerous and celebrated assembly was
convened at Nice in Bithynia, to extinguish, by their final sentence, the subtle disputes which had arisen in Egypt on the subject of the Trinity. Three hundred and eighteen bishops obeyed the summons of their indulgent master; the ecclesiastics of every rank, and sect, and
denomination, have been computed at two thousand and forty-eight
persons; the Greeks appeared in person; and the consent of the Latins
was expressed by the legates of the Roman pontiff. The session, which
lasted about two months, was frequently honored by the presence of the
emperor. Leaving his guards at the door, he seated himself (with the
permission of the council) on a low stool in the midst of the hall.
Constantine listened with patience, and spoke with modesty: and while he influenced the debates, he humbly professed that he was the minister, not the judge, of the successors of the apostles, who had been established as priests and as gods upon earth."
- Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 7
"According to historian Michael Grant, Constantine had little interest in the person of Jesus himself and found the crucifixion an embarrassment. In a remarkable irony, seeing 'the Cross not so much as an emblem of suffering but as a magic totem confirming his own victoriousness', Constantine transformed the cross from a symbol of sacrificial love and humiliation into a symbol of triumph: he had it painted on the shields of his soldiers."
- Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (1995)
"By the time of the Emperor Constantine's [deathbed] conversion, when
Christianity became an officially approved religion in the fourth century, Christian bishops, previously victimized by the police, now commanded them.Possession of books denounced as heretical was made a criminal offense. Copies of such books were burned and destroyed. But in Upper Egypt, someone, possibly a monk from a nearby monastery of St. Pachomius, took the banned books and hid them from destruction - in the jar where they remained buried for almost 1,6000 years."
- Eileen Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (1989)
Curiously, I also found several mentions of Gnosticsm actually playing a very influential role in the concept of Trinity, which was decided at Nicea as the way Jesus was conceptualized, and was of course the whole point of the event:
"The merging of Jesus into a Holy Trinity occured "probably under Gnostic influence which in turn developed from Neo-Platonism. The concept is that the one transcendent God is an impersonal God (contrast with Judaism's personal God) who is beyond the reach of mere man - hence the need for a mediator between God and man. There are two mediators: Logos the son of God personifies male rationality and logic, and Sophos the daughter of God personifies female wisdom and intuition. Jesus of course was related to Logos in the Gospel of John and the 'Holy Spirit' tended to be seen as Sophos."
- Paul Harvey
home.fireplug.net
Now, Freddy, I am really having a hard time finding anything of Jesus' spirit in this Council of Nicea at all. Why should whether I believe that Jesus was born a human who spread God's word, or that he was always the Son of God, be decided by whether Constantine wanted to salvage his reputation several hundred years later, and had the armies to enforce his will? I don't see much of the spirit of giving, compassion, or much good at all in any of this. |
