Although “The Da Vinci Code”, so widely sold, has absolutely no historical credibility and any criticism in that regard is superfluous – as De Prada rightly warned -, one example among a thousand may suffice. Guillermo Juan Morado writes to us about whether «Constantine manipulated the Council of Nicaea?». This is his answer.
Faced with the heresy of Arius, which denied the true divinity of Jesus Christ, the Council of Nicaea (325) fixed Christian orthodoxy by defining that the Son is “consubstantial” with the Father (“homoousios”). A non-biblical word, “consubstantial”, is introduced into the Creed in order to defend, with new terms, the distinctive character of the Christian faith, professed from the beginning: Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son, of the same substance as the Father, essentially united to the Father. He is not a creature, nor a kind of intermediate being between God and created beings, but “God from God and Light from Light”. Only if Jesus Christ is true God are we saved.
The confession of faith is not changed in the least, but is made explicit in order to confront mistaken theoretical explanations which, under the pretext of assimilating Christianity to Hellenistic culture, ended by betraying the apostolic inheritance.
The Council of Nicaea takes place at a particularly significant moment, insofar as the establishment of a system of imperial Church was taking shape. A notable theologian such as Eusebius of Caesarea was fascinated by the idea of the convergence, in God’s plans, between Christianity and the Empire. Providence had guided the destinies of history so as to make the appearance of the Messiah coincide with imperial peace; the heavenly monarchy with the Roman monarchy.
The emperor Constantine personified, in the eyes of Eusebius, that happy coincidence. His role was not merely political, but also religious. It would be necessary to await the genius of Saint Augustine for the proper distance between the earthly City and the City of God to be set forth.
In the “Vita Constantini”, Eusebius of Caesarea exaggerates the role played by the Emperor in the councils and, specifically, in the Council of Nicaea. To the emperor he attributes the task of opening the debates, reconciling opponents, convincing some and bending others, urging all toward concord. Constantine, according to the image Eusebius gives us of him, seems to impose himself, even in doctrinal questions, upon the bishops gathered in the Council.
Is this vision real? Can one maintain, with arguments, the idea that Constantine manipulated the Council of Nicaea, imposing the doctrine of “homoousios” on all the Bishops in order to guarantee the religious unity of the Empire?
Reality is far removed from this image drawn by Eusebius. It is true that the Emperor defended the relationship between the Church and the Empire; between the good of the State and the good of the Church, but his participation in the Council of Nicaea, although prominent, was much less important than Eusebius of Caesarea would have us believe.
The researcher J. M. Sansterre, in his work “Eusebius of Caesarea and the birth of Caesaropapist theory”, critically examined fourteen texts that came from the emperor, dated between 325 and 335. From the analysis of this documentation he drew important conclusions, decisive for historically dismantling Eusebius’s construction.
Constantine convoked the Council of Nicaea with the aim of fostering unity and eliminating heresy. He felt obliged to watch over the dogmatic and disciplinary resolutions, but he never aspired to supplant the Bishops. He understood imperial intervention as merely subsidiary, since the final norm in doctrinal questions had to be, as in fact it was, the ecclesial traditions and canons and the assistance of the Holy Spirit to the Bishops. Only if the Bishops did not manage to have the conciliar decisions carried out was the Emperor willing to intervene in order to apply them; never in order to impose them himself.
Constantine does not claim for himself supremacy over the council in matters of faith; a prerogative which, together with others, Eusebius is indeed willing to recognize in him, turning the emperor into something more than a guardian of the Church, seeing in him the supreme religious summit of the visible world.
The analysis of the imperial documents from 325 to 335 therefore proves conclusively that the emperor did not influence the Creed of Nicaea. But, in addition, the same conclusion follows from the study of Constantine’s Christology, which can be glimpsed in some of his letters. The emperor lacked the theological preparation necessary to master the problems addressed at Nicaea. His Christology is decidedly pre-Nicene, as Alois Grillmeier has very well explained in his important study “Christ in Christian Tradition”.
Beyond hasty visions, whether polemical or apologetic, the serious study of the sources presents itself, in this case as well, as the only means for reliably reconstructing the past.
Author: Guillermo Juan Morado
