Councils and Synods

The First Council of Nicaea

Also Known As Nicaea Short form. The atlas files this entry under a longer name and readers reach for the shorter one. · Council of Nicaea Short form. The atlas files this entry under a longer name and readers reach for the shorter one. · First Council of Nicaea Short form. The atlas files this entry under a longer name and readers reach for the shorter one.

Christian Councils

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "The First Council of Nicaea." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/councils-and-synods/the-first-council-of-nicaea.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). The First Council of Nicaea. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/councils-and-synods/the-first-council-of-nicaea

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-the-first-council-of-nicaea,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {The First Council of Nicaea},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/councils-and-synods/the-first-council-of-nicaea},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The first council to gather bishops from across the empire, summoned by Constantine to end the Arian controversy. It produced the creed that confessed the Son as of one being with the Father, twenty canons of church order, and a ruling on the date of Easter. Its significance is as much procedural as doctrinal: an emperor called it, paid for it and enforced its outcome, which set the shape of church and state relations in the East for a thousand years. The acts of the council do not survive, and what is known of its proceedings comes from letters and from later historians.

Facts

The Event

Principal Parties

The presbyter Arius, teaching that the Son was a created being not co-eternal with the Father, against Bishop Alexander of Alexandria and his deacon Athanasius, who upheld the Son as of one substance with the Father; the Emperor Constantine convened and presided over the gathered bishops. 1

Consequences

Lasting Consequence

Fifty years of further controversy rather than settlement, and a permanent precedent that an emperor could call a council of the whole church and enforce its findings. 1

Scholarship

Where It Is Recordedthe subject's own account

The acts do not survive. The creed, the canons, a synodal letter and Eusebius of Caesarea's letter explaining his subscription are the primary material. 2

Learn More

An Emperor Calls a Council

The most consequential thing about Nicaea may not be the creed at all. In 325 a Roman emperor, only recently the patron rather than the persecutor of the church, summoned bishops from across the empire, moved them at public expense on the imperial post, housed them at his residence, presided at their opening session and then enforced what they decided. Nothing like it had happened before. Bishops had met in regional synods for a century, but no mechanism existed to gather the whole church or to make its decisions stick.

Constantine's motive appears to have been order rather than theology. A church he had just made a partner of the state was tearing itself apart over the teaching of an Alexandrian presbyter, and a divided church was no use to him. He seems to have had little personal investment in the disputed vocabulary and considerable investment in agreement being reached.

The arrangement that resulted, in which the emperor convenes and the bishops define, set the shape of church and state relations in the Christian East for a thousand years and supplied the West with a precedent it spent the Middle Ages arguing about. The council also legislated on ordinary church order in twenty canons, on the reconciliation of those who had lapsed in persecution, on the jurisdiction of the major sees, and on a common rule for calculating Easter, which is the practical matter that reached the most parishes fastest.

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.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Alexandria

The Arian controversy began with an Alexandrian presbyter, Arius, and was addressed at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE.

Source The Canons of the First Council of NicaeaFirst Council of Nicaeathe holders' own account

Arianism

The First Council of Nicaea in 325 condemned the Arian position.

Athanasius of Alexandria

Present at Nicaea in 325 in the bishop of Alexandria's retinue as a deacon, not as a voting bishop. His part in the council grew in the telling afterwards.

Constantine the Great

Constantine convoked the council, paid for the bishops' travel on the imperial post, attended in person and opened the proceedings.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Eusebius of Caesarea

He was present at Nicaea in 325 and signed the creed with visible reluctance.

Gregory XIII

His calendar reform was framed as restoring the spring equinox to the date the council had assumed when it settled the rule for calculating Easter.

Source Saints and Sinners: A History of the PopesEamon Duffy

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity

Element Of

Anglicanism

The Articles of Religion require that nothing be taught contrary to the ancient creeds, and the Nicene Creed is one of the three the Church of England holds to be proved by most certain warrants of holy scripture.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account

Armenian Apostolic Church

Received as the first of the three councils the Armenian church numbers, and the Armenian catholicos Aristakes is recorded among those present.

Source The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern TimesRichard G. Hovannisian (ed.)

Assyrian Church of the East

The Church of the East receives Nicaea, and the two Greek councils of the fourth century are the only ecumenical councils it numbers.

Source The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian ChristianityChristoph Baumer

Baptist

Baptist churches confess the Nicene faith in substance while holding that no council has authority over a gathered congregation, so the creed is received as testimony and never imposed as a term of communion.

Source The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical NotesPhilip Schaff

Calvinism (Reformed)

Reformed churches receive the Nicene faith as a true summary of what scripture teaches about the Son, while denying that any council is a rule of faith in its own right.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

Coptic Orthodoxy

Received as the first council, and the Coptic church reckons its own patriarch Alexander and his deacon Athanasius among those who carried the argument against Arius there.

Source Two Thousand Years of Coptic ChristianityOtto F. A. Meinardus

Eastern Orthodoxy

The first of the seven councils the Orthodox Church receives, and the one whose creed, in its Constantinopolitan form, is sung at every liturgy.

Source The Canons of the First Council of NicaeaFirst Council of Nicaeathe holders' own account

Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church

Received as the first of three councils, and the Nicene faith is the ground the Tewahedo church shares with the churches it later separated from.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account

Lutheranism

The Lutheran confessions open by affirming the decree of the Council of Nicaea, and Lutheran churches receive it as scripture faithfully summarised rather than as an authority standing beside scripture.

Source The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical NotesPhilip Schaff

Oriental Orthodoxy

Received as the first of the three councils the non-Chalcedonian churches number, and the ground of their Christology no less than of the imperial church that later separated from them.

Source The Canons of the First Council of NicaeaFirst Council of Nicaeathe holders' own account

Presbyterianism

Received in the Westminster tradition as a sound statement of the Christian doctrine of God, subordinate to scripture and revisable by scripture alone.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

Quakerism (Religious Society of Friends)

Friends require no subscription to a creed, so the Nicene faith reaches Quakerism as part of an inheritance rather than as a test that any member is asked to pass.

Source Quaker Faith and Practice: The Book of Christian Discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in BritainBritain Yearly Meetingthe holders' own account

Roman Catholicism

Rome numbers Nicaea the first of the ecumenical councils and reads its confession of the Son as of one substance with the Father as the fixed measure of Christian belief about Christ.

Source The Canons of the First Council of NicaeaFirst Council of Nicaeathe holders' own account

Seventh-day Adventism

Seventh-day Adventists confess the Trinity in the terms Nicaea settled, having moved to that position over the movement first decades.

Source The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical NotesPhilip Schaff

Rejected Here

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah Witnesses hold that the council imported a Greek philosophical term into Christian teaching and that the resulting doctrine of the Son as of one substance with the Father is not what the apostles taught.

Source Jehovah's Witnesses: Continuity and ChangeGeorge D. Chryssides

Latter-day Saints (Mormonism)

Latter-day Saints refuse the Nicene definition of the Godhead, holding that the Father and the Son are separate embodied persons, and the founding narrative of the church names the creeds themselves as the point of departure.

Source The Pearl of Great PriceJoseph Smith

Arius

His teaching on the Son was the question the council was convened to judge; he was condemned and exiled.

Source The Ecclesiastical History (Historia Ecclesiastica)Eusebius of Caesarea