What the Council of Nicaea actually decided — and what it didn’t
In AD 325 the bishops met to settle a dispute about Christ. They did not choose the books of the Bible.
The emperor Constantine summoned bishops from across the empire to Nicaea in AD 325. The pressing issue was the teaching of Arius, a presbyter in Alexandria, who held that the Son was a created being and that “there was when he was not.”1
The decision
The council rejected Arius’ view and issued a creed confessing the Son to be homoousios, “of the same substance,” with the Father. The bishops pointed to texts such as , where the Word is with God, is God, and is the one through whom all things were made.
The council also addressed practical matters: how to calculate the date of Easter, a schism in Egypt, and twenty canons on church order.2
What it didn’t do
None of the surviving records of the council — its creed, its canons, or the accounts by people who were there — discuss which books belong in the Bible. The idea that Nicaea “chose the canon” is a much later story. The New Testament canon took shape gradually, through use in the churches, well before and after 325.3
Notes
Sources
- primaryEusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine. Book III.
- primarySocrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History. Book I.
- secondaryLewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy. Oxford University Press, 2004.
- secondaryBruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament. Oxford University Press, 1987.
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