The
First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in
Nicaea in
Bithynia (present-day
Iznik in
Turkey) by the
Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325. The Council was historically significant as the first effort to attain
consensus in the church through an
assembly representing all of
Christendom.
[1]The First Council of Nicaea is believed to have been the first Ecumenical council of the Christian Church. Most significantly, it resulted in the first uniform Christian doctrine, called the Creed of Nicaea. With the creation of the creed, a precedent was established for subsequent general (ecumenical) councils of Bishops (Synods) to create statements of belief and canons of doctrinal orthodoxy— the intent being to define unity of beliefs for the whole of Christendom. The council did not invent the doctrine of the deity of Christ. Instead, the council affirmed and defined what it had found to be the teachings of the Apostles regarding who Christ is; that Christ is indeed the one true God in Deity and Trinity with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Derived from Greek oikoumenikos, "ecumenical" literally means "worldwide" but generally is assumed to be limited to the Roman Empire, as in Augustus' claim to be ruler of the oikoumene/world; the earliest extant uses of the term for a council are Eusebius' Life of Constantine 3.6[2] around 338 "s???d?? ?????µe????? s??e???te?" (he convoked an Ecumenical council), Athanasius' Ad Afros Epistola Synodica in 369,[3] and the Letter in 382 to Pope Damasus I and the Latin bishops from the First Council of Constantinople.[4]
The purpose of the council was to resolve disagreements arising from within the Church of Alexandria over the nature of Jesus in relationship to the Father; in particular, whether Jesus was the literal son of God or was he a figurative son, like the other "sons of God" in the Bible. St. Alexander of Alexandria and Athanasius took the first position; the popular presbyter Arius, from whom the term Arian controversy comes, took the second. The council decided against the Arians overwhelmingly (of the estimated 250–318&_160;attendees, all but two voted against Arius[5]).
