![]() Church doctrine in effect became a tool for the enforcement of imperial order as opposed to being the Good News of liberation for the poor and oppressed. What started as a movement by one who was wrongly executed by the Roman Empire now became an institution maintained by the threat and actual use of wrongful executions by the Roman Empire. Constantine required that all extent Arian writings be burned.Īt the Council of Nicaea, the empire approved Christian church lost its soul by accepting capital punishment by the state as a punishment for not adhering to its doctrines. Penalties included exile of the bishops who held on to their Arian views and capital punishment for any persons who were found to possess Arian writings. The sin of Nicaea is not the seeking of common understanding, rather it was what was done to those who dissented from the majority view.Īt the Council of Nicaea, the empire approved Christian church committed the grievous sin of allowing secular authority to enforce adherence to its doctrines. That is not the problem with the Council of Nicaea. There is nothing wrong or inappropriate about church leaders coming together to seek common understanding and agreement about their views concerning the divinity of Jesus. Arianism was deemed heresy and condemned by the Council. At the Council of Nicaea, the bishops rejected Arianism in favor of the more dominant view that Jesus the Son was of the same essence and substance as the Father and thus equal in divinity to the Father. He was particularly concerned about the divisions in the church in relation to a way of thinking called Arianism, which held a view of Jesus as not being co-eternal with the Father and thus being distinct from and subordinate to the Father.Īrianism was a problem for Constantine because it was in the interests of imperial order that the church be of one mind on its views of the divinity of Christ. ![]() In 325 C.E., just 12 years after the Emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be a legal and acceptable religion, he convened the Christian bishops from across the Roman Empire at the Council of Nicaea to come to agreement about the official doctrines of the church. A drawing depicting Constantine burning Arian books.
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