Nicaea: a council, a creed, and a question

In 325, bishops met at Nicaea to address a question at the heart of Christian belief: how should Christians speak about Jesus and God the Father?

In 325, Emperor Constantine convened bishops at Nicaea, in present-day Türkiye, to address disputes within Christianity. A central disagreement concerned whether the Son shared the Father’s divine being. Arius taught that the Son did not; the council rejected his position.

The council used the Greek word homoousios, meaning of the same substance or being. This affirmed that the Son is fully divine, rather than a created being. The term gave precise wording to the council’s interpretation of Scripture.

The creed used in many churches today is not simply the exact text of 325. The faith of Nicaea was further expressed at Constantinople in 381. The later form is known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

Nicaea did not settle every later Christian dispute or choose the books of the Bible. Its teaching on Christ’s divinity became central to Catholic, Orthodox, and many Protestant traditions.

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