The True Legacy of Nicaea
As wars and religious feuds tear the world asunder, the head of the Roman Catholic Church is emerging as a symbol of religious unity. On Sunday, Pope Leo xiv wrote about the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the landmark meeting in a.d. 325 that established governmental involvement in Christian doctrine and changed the Western world forever.
In his letter, titled “On the Unity of Faith,” Leo recalls the origins of the Roman Catholic Church and points to the Nicene trinity as the solution to current divisions between Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Protestants.
“As I prepare for my apostolic journey to Turkey, I would like this letter to encourage the whole church to renew her enthusiasm for the profession of faith,” he writes. “For centuries, this enduring confession of faith has been the common heritage of Christians, and it deserves to be professed and understood in ever new and relevant ways. To this end, a significant document by the International Theological Commission was approved: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. 1700th Anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.”
The document the pontiff refers to emphasizes the trinity as the key to Christian unity, but his letter goes further. It presents Emperor Constantine’s use of civil authority to enforce doctrinal beliefs as necessary.
In summarizing the history of the Council of Nicaea, Leo notes that as the controversy between Dr. Arius and Bishop Alexander over the trinity raged, “Emperor Constantine realized that the unity of the church, and indeed the empire itself, was in danger. He therefore summoned all the bishops to an ecumenical, or universal, council in Nicaea to restore unity. The synod, known as the ‘Synod of the 318 Fathers,’ was presided over by the emperor, and the number of bishops gathered together was unprecedented.”
The number was unprecedented, but Leo buried the lede. Far more important, and equally unprecedented in the history of Christianity, was the fact that the civil leader of the empire was intervening to force people to agree with doctrines they did not believe. This may have been good for unity and societal calm, but it was horrible for freedom and truth.
“Imagine a political ruler establishing law and doctrine in the Church,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes in his must-read book The True History of God’s True Church. “There is no way such a satanic work could be done in God’s true Church! It was from this discussion that the doctrine of the trinity as many churches understand it today was finally formalized—three centuries after Jesus Christ’s ministry!”
Later in this book, Mr. Flurry emphasizes, “This was a turning point in the history of the world! And it all began with Constantine and the Council of Nicaea. … Constantine personally and actively championed the military operation to eradicate Passover-keepers, whether they were in God’s true Church or worldly churches. Constantine’s goal was to force everyone to join the Catholic Church. Many of those who refused to surrender to the doctrine and worship of the Catholic Church were slaughtered.”
This is bloody history that many Catholics and most Christians are unfamiliar with.
In Revelation 2:10, God tells the Smyrna era of His Church, “[Y]e shall have tribulation ten days.” Applying the day-for-a-year principle often found in prophecy (Numbers 14:34; Ezekiel 4:4-6), this refers to 10 years of persecution that God’s Church suffered after the Council of Nicaea. While commemorating Nicaea as the way to unify Christianity, the Roman pontiff fails to mention this persecution.
“[T]he ecumenical movement has achieved much in the last 60 years,” Leo writes. “It is true that full visible unity with the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches and with the ecclesial communities born of the Reformation has not yet been reached. Nevertheless, ecumenical dialogue, founded on one baptism and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, has led us to recognize the members of other churches and ecclesial communities as our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ and to rediscover the one universal community of Christ’s disciples throughout the world. We share the same faith in the one and only God, the Father of all people; we confess together the one Lord and true Son of God, Jesus Christ, and the one Holy Spirit, who inspires us and impels us towards full unity and the common witness to the gospel.”
This type of prose sounds peaceful, but Leo is actually writing nostalgically about a time when Christians holding to unapproved Christian doctrines were intimidated, coerced and forcibly removed by government troops. This will happen again.
Jesus Christ Himself prophesied that just before His return, true Christians would be persecuted in all nations for His name’s sake (Matthew 24:9). He did not say that true Christians would be persecuted in all nations except those where the government was strictly enforcing true Christian doctrine. Constantine’s efforts “to force everyone to join the Catholic Church” were not of God—and neither were the resurrections of that church-state empire in the centuries since. And neither will be the next resurrection.
A prophecy in Isaiah 47 speaks of a “daughter of Babylon” who says, “I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children” (verse 8). As the late Herbert W. Armstrong wrote about for decades, this passage describes a church that has protesting daughter churches. This church wants to bring these daughter churches back under its authority. To do this, the church revives her illicit relationship with the emperor of a revived Roman Empire.
Leo xiv’s new exhortation represents the earlier, peaceful stage of this prophesied effort before the Roman Catholic Church reverts to using some of the most coercive and violent of its weapons of religious conversion.