Did the Council of Nicea Create the Divinity of Jesus?
Did the Early Church Councils Create Jesus's Divinity? Did the Early Church Change Doctrine or Edit the Bible?
"But how can there be a slow evolutionary process like this, with the elevation of a mere man to the status of a demigod and then a full deity, if, in fact, the disciples of Jesus were monotheistic Jews? Would monotheistic Jews accept this kind of evolutionary development over time? Of course not! So, one has to modify the argument so that it is no longer monotheistic Jews who are in view in this development period, but, evidently, someone else—possibly pagans or polytheists or Greeks or something? We were not told when the transition supposedly took place. But once again we were left with a ton of assumptions and silence—we were told what the early Christians could not believe, but we were not given anything they left us to confirm the assertions made."
-Professor James White
Sadly in today's world people watch movies like the fictional The Da Vinci Code and believe it offers them a true version of history. The most commonly believed claim is that the church councils created the divinity of Jesus. In other words Jesus did not create the church as the bible says, but man created Jesus as the son of God. The claim is the church council of Nicea in 325 A.D decided that Jesus was divine [Maybe so they could become martyr's] where as before he was seen a simply a man and the church rejected any writings that did not claim he was divine and chose the ones that did and made them official simply to support their desired wants. Instead of the historical councils that reorganized what was passed down from the apostles and gods word.
Many problems exists with this false history. For one we have thousands of manuscripts that date well before any council was convened. If any council attempted to change doctrine we would have known about it since it would have contradicted those surviving manuscripts across many nations, many of them not found until recently and all speak orthodox christian beliefs of Jesus as divine. The following link shows the impossibility of any council or group changing the NT documents.
http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2011...testament.html
The earliest NT manuscript that survives comes from Philippians 2 5-11 the camren Christi a hymn to Christ as to God and the Old testament speaks multiple times of the divine/human being "the angel of the lord" who appears on earth as a man and prophecies of the coming messiah who will be divine. Historians such as Josephus in 37-101 A.D Eusebius 263-339 and the Talmud [first century] all talk of Jesus as the son of god or at least thought so by his followers long before any council. The apostles preached he was god and early Christians worshiped Jesus as god all prior to any council. The early church fathers writings attest to the orthodox christian view and biblical manuscripts that Jesus was the son of God, Ignatius trained by John died 107 AD taught his divinity. St Justin the maryter 100-165. the Roman pagan Celsus in the 2nd century confirmed the view as did roman Plimy the younger.
If the church council had created Jesus divinity, why not take out passages that call him human and cause some to say he's not, or add passages? The councils acknowledged what the bible taught. In fact they had to fight heretics who denied Jesus humanity.
"The Council of Nicea Contrary to the book, this Council did not decide that Jesus was divinity and not a mortal man. Both sides in this Council agreed that Jesus was divinity. The question at hand was whether Jesus was a created deity or an eternal deity. first general council of the Church summoned by Constantine (the Council of Nicea) shows the 300+ delegates all speaking at once and shaking their fists at one another. Presumably Howard is trying to portray disunity by this distortion of history, but history records that the outcome, which became the basis for the Nicene Creed, was carried by a vote of 316 to 2. Note: The Council of Nicea did not create the divinity of Christ. The delegates affirmed what the New Testament proclaims in many places, for example, the Apostle Thomas’s confession of faith, ‘My Lord and my God’ (John 20:28 ), when he saw the Lord Jesus Christ one week after His Resurrection."
- Tim Chaffy How Should Christians View the Fact Claims of The Da Vinci Code?
"The true humanity of Jesus Christ was denied even in the earliest ages of the Church. The Docetist Marcion and the Priscillianistsgrant to Jesus only an apparent body; the Valentinians, a body brought down from Heaven. The followers of Apollinaris deny either that Jesus had any human soul at all, or that He possessed the higher part of the human soul, they maintain that theWord supplies either the whole soul in Christ, or at least its higher faculties. In more recent times it is not so much Christ's truehumanity as His real manhood that is denied. According to Kant the Christian creed deals with the ideal, not with the historicalJesus; according to Jacobi, it worships Jesus not as an historical person, but as a religious ideal; according to Fichte there exists an absolute unity between God and man, and Jesus was the first to see and teach it; according to Schelling, the incarnation is an eternal fact, which happened to reach in Jesus its highest point, according to Hegel, Christ is not the actual incarnation ofGod in Jesus of Nazareth but the symbol of God's incarnation in humanity at large. Finally, certain recent Catholic writers distinguish between the Christ of history and the Christ of faith, thus destroying in the Christ of faith His historical reality. The New Syllabus (Proposit, 29 sq.) and the Encyclical "Pascendi dominici gregis" may be consulted on these errors.
Ignatius (AD 105): “God Himself being manifested in human form.”
Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, electronic edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), Ignatius, Epistle of Ignatius, XIX
"Ignatius, also called Theophorus, to the Church at Ephesus in Asia . . . predestined from eternity for a glory that is lasting and unchanging, united and chosen through true suffering by the will of the Father in Jesus Christ our God" (Letter to the Ephesians 1 [A.D. 110]).
"For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God’s plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of the Holy Spirit" (ibid., 18:2).
"[T]o the Church beloved and enlightened after the love of Jesus Christ, our God, by the will of him that has willed everything which is" (Letter to the Romans 1 [A.D. 110]).
Aristides
"[Christians] are they who, above every people of the earth, have found the truth, for they acknowledge God, the Creator and maker of all things, in the only-begotten Son and in the Holy Spirit" (Apology 16 [A.D. 140]).
Clement (AD 150): “It is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God.”
Clement, The Second Epistle of Clement, I Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, electronic edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994)
Justin Martyr (AD 160): “The Father of the universe has a Son. And He . . . is even God.
ustin Martyr, The First Apology, LXIII. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, electronic edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994)
Tatian the Syrian
"We are not playing the fool, you Greeks, nor do we talk nonsense, when we report that God was born in the form of a man" (Address to the Greeks 21 [A.D. 170]).
Melito of Sardis
"It is no way necessary in dealing with persons of intelligence to adduce the actions of Christ after his baptism as proof that his soul and his body, his human nature, were like ours, real and not phantasmal. The activities of Christ after his baptism, and especially his miracles, gave indication and assurance to the world of the deity hidden in his flesh. Being God and likewise perfect man, he gave positive indications of his two natures: of his deity, by the miracles during the three years following after his baptism, of his humanity, in the thirty years which came before his baptism, during which, by reason of his condition according to the flesh, he concealed the signs of his deity, although he was the true God existing before the ages" (Fragment in Anastasius of Sinai’s The Guide 13 [A.D. 177]).
Irenaeus
"For the Church, although dispersed throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and from their disciples the faith in one God, Father Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who announced through the prophets the dispensations and the comings, and the birth from a Virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Christ Jesus our Lord, and his coming from heaven in the glory of the Father to reestablish all things; and the raising up again of all flesh of all humanity, in order that to Jesus Christ our Lord and God and Savior and King, in accord with the approval of the invisible Father, every knee shall bend of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth . . . " (Against Heresies 1:10:1 [A.D. 189]).
"Nevertheless, what cannot be said of anyone else who ever lived, that he is himself in his own right God and Lord . . . may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth" (ibid., 3:19:1).
Irenaeus (AD 180): “He is God, for the name Emmanuel indicates this.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III.21 Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, electronic edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994)
Clement of Alexandria
"The Word, then, the Christ, is the cause both of our ancient beginning—for he was in God—and of our well-being. And now this same Word has appeared as man. He alone is both God and man, and the source of all our good things" (Exhortation to the Greeks 1:7:1 [A.D. 190]).
"Despised as to appearance but in reality adored, [Jesus is] the expiator, the Savior, the soother, the divine Word, he that is quite evidently true God, he that is put on a level with the Lord of the universe because he was his Son" (ibid., 10:110:1).
Tertullian (AD 200): “Christ our God.”
Tertullian, Part Third, VI.13 Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, electronic edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994)
"The origins of both his substances display him as man and as God: from the one, born, and from the other, not born" (The Flesh of Christ 5:6–7 [A.D. 210]).
"That there are two gods and two Lords, however, is a statement which we will never allow to issue from our mouth; not as if the Father and the Son were not God, nor the Spirit God, and each of them God; but formerly two were spoken of as gods and two as Lords, so that when Christ would come, he might both be acknowledged as God and be called Lord, because he is the Son of him who is both God and Lord" (Against Praxeas 13:6 [A.D. 216]).
Origen
Origen (AD 225): “And as no one ought to be offended, seeing God is the Father, that the Savior is also God.”
Origen, De Principiis, I.2 Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, electronic edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994)
"Although he was God, he took flesh; and having been made man, he remained what he was: God" (The Fundamental Doctrines 1:0:4 [A.D. 225]).
Hippolytus
"Only [God’s] Word is from himself and is therefore also God, becoming the substance of God" (Refutation of All Heresies 10:33 [A.D. 228]).
Hippolytus of Rome
"For Christ is the God over all, who has arranged to wash away sin from mankind, rendering the old man new" (ibid., 10:34).
Novatian
"If Christ was only man, why did he lay down for us such a rule of believing as that in which he said, ‘And this is life eternal, that they should know you, the only and true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent?’ [John 17:3]. Had he not wished that he also should be understood to be God, why did he add, ‘And Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent,’ except because he wished to be received as God also? Because if he had not wished to be understood to be God, he would have added, ‘And the man Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent;’ but, in fact, he neither added this, nor did Christ deliver himself to us as man only, but associated himself with God, as he wished to be understood by this conjunction to be God also, as he is. We must therefore believe, according to the rule prescribed, on the Lord, the one true God, and consequently on him whom he has sent, Jesus Christ, who by no means, as we have said, would have linked himself to the Father had he not wished to be understood to be God also. For he would have separated himself from him had he not wished to be understood to be God" (Treatise on the Trinity 16 [A.D. 235]).
Cyprian of Carthage
Cyprian (AD 250): “Let us assuredly, as far as we can, please Christ our Lord and God.”
Cyprian, The Epistles of Cyprian, LXI Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, electronic edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994)
"One who denies that Christ is God cannot become his temple [of the Holy Spirit] . . . " (Letters 73:12 [A.D. 253]).
Gregory the Wonderworker
"There is one God, the Father of the living Word, who is his subsistent wisdom and power and eternal image: perfect begetter of the perfect begotten, Father of the only-begotten Son. There is one Lord, only of the only, God of God, image and likeness of deity, efficient Word, wisdom comprehensive of the constitution of all things, and power formative of the whole creation, true Son of true Father, invisible of invisible, and incorruptible of incorruptible, and immortal of immortal and eternal of eternal. . . . And thus neither was the Son ever wanting to the Father, nor the Spirit to the Son; but without variation and without change, the same Trinity abides ever"
(Declaration of Faith [A.D. 265]).
Methodius (AD 290): “He truly was and is, being in the beginning with God, and being God.”
Methodius, The Banquet of the Ten Virgins; Or, Concerning Chastity, III. 6 Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, electronic edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994)
Arnobius
"‘Well, then,’ some raging, angry, and excited man will say, ‘is that Christ your God?’ ‘God indeed,’ we shall answer, ‘and God of the hidden powers’" (Against the Pagans 1:42 [A.D. 305]).
Arnobius (AD 305): “Christ performed all those miracles . . . by the inherent might of His authority; and as was the proper duty of the true God.”
Arnobius, The Seven Books of Arnobius, I.44 Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, electronic edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994)
Lactantius
"He was made both Son of God in the spirit and Son of man in the flesh, that is, both God and man" (Divine Institutes 4:13:5 [A.D. 307]).
"We, on the other hand, are [truly] religious, who make our supplications to the one true God. Someone may perhaps ask how, when we say that we worship one God only, we nevertheless assert that there are two, God the Father and God the Son—which assertion has driven many into the greatest error . . . [thinking] that we confess that there is another God, and that he is mortal. . . . [But w]hen we speak of God the Father and God the Son, we do not speak of them as different, nor do we separate each, because the Father cannot exist without the Son, nor can the Son be separated from the Father" (ibid., 4:28–29).
Council of Nicaea I
"We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father. Through him all things were made" (Creed of Nicaea [A.D. 325]).
"But those who say, ‘There was a time when he [the Son] did not exist,’ and ‘Before he was born, he did not exist,’ and ‘Because he was made from non-existing matter, he is either of another substance or essence,’ and those who call ‘God the Son of God changeable and mutable,’ these the Catholic Church anathematizes" (Appendix to the Creed of Nicaea [A.D. 325]).
Patrick of Ireland
"Jesus Christ is the Lord and God in whom we believe, and whose coming we expect will soon take place, the judge of the living and the dead, who will render to everyone according to his works" (Confession of St. Patrick 4 [A.D. 452]
Archaeology Shows Early Christians thought he was God
A remarkable discovery was made in 2005 in the Jewish and Samaritan village of Kefar' Othnay in Israel. An ancient mosaic was discovered dating to about 230 A.D. in what is believed to be an early Christian house church, in fact the earliest recovered church found in Israel. Early Christians met in homes or church houses as the New Testament testifies (Romans 16:5; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 2). It was only later with the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine in 312 A.D. do we begin to see the rise of structural buildings called "churches". The inscription on this mosaic reads, "The God-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial'. You can see what is also called Nomina Sacra, the lines above the letters or abbreviations for "God" and IY XW ("Jesus Christ").
In this same house church, they also found another mosaic of fish, an early symbol of Christianity. Early Christians saw the Greek word for fish 'ICTHYS' as an abbreviation for "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior". Here is a depiction of the fish in the discovered mosaic:
What is interesting about this discovery is that first, it was found in Israel, the birthplace of Christianity. Secondly, it was found in a Jewish and Samaritan village, which would indicate that there were still Christians among both Jews and Samaritans considering that Jesus told His disciples that they would be His witnesses starting in Jerusalem but also in Samaria (Acts 1:8), where Philip also brought the Gospels to the Samaritan peoples (Acts 8). The third point to be made is that our Muslim friends continue to make and repeat the worn out argument like a mantra that the deity of Christ was invented by Constantine (who is blamed for every problem under the sun) at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. Dan Brown in his fictional book, The Da Vinci Code also argued that Constantine was responsible for inventing the deity of Christ. The major problem with this popular myth is that it is false. Early Christians long before 325 A.D. referred to Jesus as "God" as we see in the early second century Church Father, Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. 50 - A.D. 117). I have placed the relevant words in bold:
"There is only one physician, who is both flesh and spirit, born and unborn, God in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first subject to suffering and then beyond it, Jesus Christ our Lord" (Ignatius, Letter to the Ephesians, 7.2.).
"For our God, Jesus the Christ, was conceived by Mary according to God’s plan, both from the seed of David and of the Holy Spirit" Ignatius, Letter to the Ephesians, 18.2.).
Moreover, if you note the date of this mosaic, it dates to 230 A.D., that is almost 100 years before the Council of Nicea. So the popular myth that Constantine or the Council of Nicea invented the deity of Christ as anyone can see, is patently false. Here is a case where archaeology has shown what Christians have always known, the Lord Jesus Christ was believed to be God Himself in human flesh, and He was worshiped as such. Notice as well, that this belief in the deity of Christ reflected in this mosaic, was found in the land of Israel, the birthplace of Christianity. The theory that the deity of Christ evolved from Gentile Christianity outside of Jesus' Jewish homeland as some liberal scholars have argued, like Wilhem Bousset (1865-1920) in his book Kyrios Christos ('Lord Christ'), is no longer tenable. Archaeology has confirmed the biblical witness and the testimony of the Early Church regarding the identity of Jesus. Here is a case where if we remain silent, "the very stones would cry out" (Luke 19:40).
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Originally Posted by total relism
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