What Nicaea Did Not Settle

The tidy account has Nicaea condemning Arius and settling the doctrine of the Trinity. The next fifty years say otherwise. Arian and semi-Arian bishops held major sees for much of that period, Constantine himself received Arius back into communion before his death, his son Constantius favoured the anti-Nicene party, and Athanasius of Alexandria was exiled five times over the course of the struggle. There was a moment in the middle of the fourth century when the Nicene position looked like the losing one.

The reason is that the decisive word was the problem. Homoousios, of one being, is not in scripture, and it had been used earlier in senses the church had rejected. Bishops who had no sympathy with Arius could still object to being required to confess in language the Bible did not use, and the objection was not unreasonable. Much of the theological work of the following decades consisted of showing what the word did and did not mean.

Nor did the council settle its practical business. The Easter rule it laid down did not produce uniform practice, and the question was still causing disputes in Britain three centuries later. The atlas holds Nicaea as the beginning of a process rather than the end of one, and the creed most Christians recite comes from the council that finished the job in 381.