What was the Council of Nicaea about?
By the beginning of the fourth century, Christianity had become one of the most significant influences in the Roman Empire. It was an important social 'glue,' holding the Empire together.
But the Church was struggling with internal divisions, and for Constantine, division in the Church threatened political instability. After he became the sole Emperor, in 324 AD, he turned his attention to these divisions, and called the Council of Nicaea to sort them out.
But we have seen previously that Christians had believed that Jesus was the Son of God right from the outset. There is evidence for this going back two hundred years before Constantine and the Council. So it is not accurate to say, as Dan Brown does, that
Jesus' establishment as the 'Son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea,
or that
...Constantine upgraded Jesus' status almost four centuries after Jesus' death...
But although Christians had believed from the beginning that Jesus was the Son of God, figuring out exactly what this meant would take hundreds of years. They had all kinds of questions: how could Jesus be both human and God? How could Christ, the Son of God, himself be God?
The debates in the Church during these hundreds of years were not about whether Jesus was the Son of God - they all agreed on this. They were about what it meant to say that Jesus was the Son of God.
Wrestling with what this meant began long before Constantine and the Council, and it went on long afterwards. It was not finally sorted out until the Council at Chalcedon, in 451 AD, more than a hundred years after Nicaea.
At the beginning of the fourth century, one of the key players in these debates was a leader of the church at Alexandria, in Egypt, called Arius. Arius taught that Jesus, the Son of God, was a created being. There had been a time when he did not exist. And this meant that he was not equal with God the Father.
A local Church Council in Egypt decided that Arius's ideas were wrong, and threw him out. But his teaching continued to grow in influence, especially in the churches of the eastern Empire.
This threatened a major split. Constantine could not afford for the Church to be split, and this is why he called the Council of Nicaea. Constantine himself presided over the opening session, but this was probably more ceremonial than substantial.
From the way Dan Brown describes it, it would be easy to think that the debate at Nicaea was between Gnosticism and historic Christianity - but it was not. It was a debate between Arius and his followers and historic Christianity. Gnosticism did not come into it. Gnosticism was most influential in the second and third centuries. By the time of Nicaea (early in the 4th century), its influence was already waning.
More than three hundred bishops took part in the Council. They came from all over the known world, but mainly from the Eastern Church, where Arius's influence was strongest. Arius's followers put forward their position, and these bishops voted it down by 318 to 2. They affirmed that Jesus was just as much God as the Father. He was
...begotten, not created, of one substance with the Father.
The bishops at Nicaea were not re-writing history - they were confirming a belief that had already been established for a long time. The debate at Nicaea was about what it meant to say that Jesus was the Son of God. It was an important step forward for the church, but it did not change what Christians believed. Christians had believed that Jesus was the Son of God ever since his crucifixion and resurrection, in the first half of the first century. At Nicaea, they clarified what this meant.
Arianism did not die out after the Council - it would still be influential for hundreds of years. But the statement that was put forward by the Church leaders at Nicaea is a basic statement of core Christian beliefs. It is still accepted by Churches of all kinds today - by Roman Catholic Churches, but also by Protestant Churches and by Eastern Orthodox churches.