How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee (46 page)

As such, it could be used to bring unity to a fractured empire. So Constantine acknowledges to the two recipients of his letter: “My first concern was that the attitude towards the Divinity of all the provinces should be united in one consistent view” (
Life
2.65).
¹⁰
The problem was that there was no consistency in the church itself, because of the split over Arius’s teachings. The split especially affected the churches of Africa, to Constantine’s chagrin: “Indeed . . . an intolerable madness had seized the whole of Africa because of those who had dared with ill-considered frivolity to split the worship of the population into various factions, and . . . I personally desired to put right this disease” (
Life
2.66). Constantine thus wanted to heal the theological division in the church in order to make the Christian faith more useful in bringing religious and cultural unity to the empire.

A second reason sometimes suggested for Constantine’s concern relates more closely to his pagan inheritance. It had widely been believed for many centuries that the gods oversaw the best interests of Rome when they were properly acknowledged in cultic practices of the state. Worshiping the gods in the proper and prescribed way earned their good favor, and their good favor was manifest in their kind treatment of the state—for example, in winning its wars and in prospering during times of peace. Constantine inherited this perspective and may well have brought it with him into his Christian faith. Now he worshiped not the traditional gods of Rome, but the God of the Christians. But this God too must be worshiped properly. If there are serious divisions in the worshiping community, however, this could not be pleasing to God. Christianity was far more focused on “theological truth” than traditional Greek or Roman religions and placed greater emphasis on “sacrificial practice.” It was important, in the Christian faith, to know and practice the truth. But widespread disagreements about the truth would lead to deep rifts in the Christian community, and God could not be pleased with that state of affairs. For the good of the state, which was overseen ultimately by God, it was necessary that these rifts be healed.

Constantine was not a trained theologian, and he found himself to be somewhat taken aback by the virulence of the debate between Arius and Alexander. To Constantine, the issues seemed petty. What does it really matter whether there was a time before which Christ existed? Is that really the most important thing? Not for Constantine. As he says in his letter: “I considered the origin and occasion for these things . . . as extremely trivial and quite unworthy of so much controversy” (
Life
2.68). But contention there was. So he tried to encourage Arius and Alexander to resolve their theological differences so Christianity could move forward as a unified whole to confront the greater problems of the empire.

Constantine had the letter delivered by an important bishop of Cordova, Spain, named Ossius. After delivering the letter, Ossius returned from Alexandria by a land route that took him through Antioch of Syria, where a synod of bishops was being held to debate the theological questions raised by Arius. This synod devised a creedal statement (that is, a statement of faith) that contradicted Arius’s views. Everyone at the synod signed this creed, with three exceptions—one of them being Eusebius of Caesarea. It was agreed, however, that these three could be given a further chance to defend themselves and their Christological views at another meeting. And this is how the Council of Nicea was born.

Originally, the council was supposed to meet in Ancyra (in Turkey), but for practical reasons it was moved to Nicea (also in Turkey).
¹¹
This was the first of the seven major councils of church bishops that historians have called
ecumenical councils
—which means something like “councils of the entire world.” The term is not entirely apt in this case, since obviously the whole world did not participate in the council but only a group of bishops; moreover, these bishops were not widely representative of the entire world, or even of the world of Christendom. Hardly any bishops attended from the western part of the empire; most came from such eastern climes as Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia. Even the bishop of Rome, Sylvester, did not attend but sent two legates in his place. Historians differ on the number of bishops at the conference. Athanasius of Alexandria, who was a young man at the time (but who was eventually to become the powerful bishop of Alexandria), later indicated that 318 bishops were present. The council met in June 325
CE
.

The key issue to be resolved by the council concerned the teachings of Arius and his supporters, including Eusebius of Caesarea. Eusebius began the proceedings by introducing his own creedal statement—that is, his theological exposition of what should be confessed as true and valid about God, about Christ, about the Spirit, and so on. Evidently, most participants at the council saw this creed to be basically acceptable; but it was ambiguous at key points, so most of the bishops were not satisfied because it did not directly refute the heretical claims of Arius. After hammering out their theological positions, the bishops finally agreed upon a creed. It consisted of terse theological statements: beginning with a very brief statement about God the Father (brief because no one was disputing the character or nature of God), followed in much longer order with statements about Christ (since that was the topic of concern), and concluding in almost unbelievably short order with a statement about the Spirit (since that too was not yet an issue). The creed ended with a set of anathemas, or curses, on people who made certain heretical declarations—these declarations all being claims connected with Arius and his followers. This creed eventually became the foundation of what is now called the Nicene Creed. Here it is, in full (readers who are familiar with the Nicene Creed as it is recited today will notice key differences—especially with the anathemas; the modern version represents a later revision):

We believe in one God, the Father, almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth, who because of us humans and because of our salvation came down and became incarnate, becoming human, suffered and rose on the third day, ascended to the heavens, will come to judge the living and the dead;

And in the Holy Spirit.

But as for those who say, “There was when he was not” and “Before being born he was not” and that “He came into existence out of nothing” or who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or substance or is subject to alteration and change—these the Catholic and Apostolic church anathematizes.
¹²

Many people have written entire books on this council and its creed.
¹³
For our purposes, I emphasize just a couple of points. First, as I have already stressed, far more space is devoted in the creed to Christ than to the Father, and the Spirit is barely mentioned. It was important to get the teachings about Christ “right.” To assure these teachings, and to avoid any ambiguities, the anathemas are added.

In the creed itself, Christ is said to be “from the substance of the Father.” He is not a subordinate God. He is “of one substance with the Father.” The Greek word used to indicate “one substance,” which could also be translated as “same substance,” is
homoousios
. It was destined to become an important term in later disputes over the nature of Christ. As it turns out, and as we will see in the epilogue, neither the council nor the creed resolved all the issues surrounding the nature of Christ. In fact, the issues lived on; Arianism continued to thrive; and even after the Arian issue was eventually resolved, a whole set of other issues, increasingly detailed, nuanced, and sophisticated, arose. If Constantine did not much like the controversy of his own day, he would have despised what was to come.

But it is important that the creed emphasizes that Christ is of the “same substance” as God the Father. This is a way of saying that God and Christ are absolutely equal. Christ is “true God,” not a subordinate deity secondary to God the Father. And as the anathemas indicate, it is now a heresy to claim there ever was a time when Christ did not exist (or before which he did not exist), or to say he was created like everything else in the universe “out of nothing,” or that he does not share God’s very substance.

To make a long and complex story very short, there was widespread agreement among the bishops present about the details of the new creed, which was seen to be binding on all Christians. That is what the creed means when it states that it presents the view of the “Catholic and Apostolic church”: it is the view of the church that descended in direct lineage from the apostles of Jesus and that is found scattered throughout the entire world (“catholic” in this context means “universal”). Sometimes you will hear that at Nicea it was “a close vote.” It was not close. Only twenty of the 318 bishops disagreed with the creed when it was finally formulated. Constantine, who was actively involved with some of the proceedings, forced seventeen of those twenty to acquiesce. So only three did not eventually sign off on the creed: Arius himself and two bishops from his home country of Libya. These three were banished from Egypt. A couple of other bishops signed the creed but refused to agree to the anathemas at the end, which were directed specifically against Arius’s teachings. These bishops too were exiled.

So the story of how Jesus became God appears to end. But as we will see in the epilogue, it did not really end. Quite the contrary. But for the time being, Alexander and his like-minded colleagues won the day, and Constantine believed he had attained a unified church. The issues were, for the moment, resolved. Christ was coeternal with God the Father. He had
always
existed. And he was “of the same substance” as God the Father, himself truly God, from back into eternity.

The Christ of Nicea is obviously a far cry from the historical Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant apocalyptic preacher in the backwaters of rural Galilee who offended the authorities and was unceremoniously crucified for crimes against the state. Whatever he may have been in real life, Jesus had now become fully God.

A
S
I
HAVE BEEN
writing this book I have come to realize that the history of my own personal theology is a mirror image of the history of the theology of the early church. To use the older terminology, in early Christianity the views of Christ got “higher and higher” with the passing of time, as he became increasingly identified as divine. Jesus went from being a potential (human) messiah to being the Son of God exalted to a divine status at his resurrection; to being a preexistent angelic being who came to earth incarnate as a man; to being the incarnation of the Word of God who existed before all time and through whom the world was created; to being God himself, equal with God the Father and always existent with him. My own personal beliefs about Jesus moved in precisely the opposite direction. I started out thinking of Jesus as God the Son, equal with the Father, a member of the Trinity; but over time, I began to see him in “lower and lower” terms, until finally I came to think of him as a human being who was not different in nature from any other human being. The Christians exalted him to the divine realm in their theology, but in my opinion, he was, and always had been, a human.

As an agnostic, I now think of Jesus as a true religious genius with brilliant insights. But he was also very much a man of his time. And his time was an age of full-throated apocalyptic fervor. Jesus participated in this first-century Palestinian Jewish milieu. He was born and raised in it, and it was the context within which he conducted his public ministry. Jesus taught that the age he lived in was controlled by forces of evil but that God would soon intervene to destroy everything and everyone opposed to him. God would then bring in a good, utopian kingdom on earth, where there would be no more pain and suffering. Jesus himself would be the ruler of this kingdom, with his twelve disciples serving under him. And all this was to happen very soon—within his own generation.

This apocalyptic message does continue to resonate with me, but I certainly do not believe it literally. I do not think that there are supernatural powers of evil who are controlling our governments or demons who are making our lives miserable; I do not think there is going to be a divine intervention in the world in which all the forces of evil will be permanently destroyed; I do not think there will be a future utopian kingdom here on earth ruled by Jesus and his apostles. But I do think there is good and evil; I do think we should all be on the side of good; and I do think we should fight mightily against all that is evil.

I especially resonate with the ethical teachings of Jesus. He taught that much of the law of God could be summarized in the command to “love your neighbor as yourself.” He taught that you should “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” He taught that our acts of love, generosity, mercy, and kindness should reach even to “the least of these, my brothers and sisters”—that is, to the lowly, the outcast, the impoverished, the homeless, the destitute. I agree wholeheartedly with these views and try my best to live according to them.

But as a historian I realize that Jesus’s ethical teachings were delivered in a decidedly apocalyptic form to which I do not subscribe. Jesus is sometimes lauded as one of the great moral teachers of all time, and I sympathize with this characterization. But it is important to realize that the reasoning behind his moral teaching is not the reasoning most of us use today. People today think that we should live ethically for a wide variety of reasons—most of them irrelevant to Jesus—for example, so we can find the greatest self-fulfillment in life and so we can all thrive together as a society for the long haul. Jesus did not teach his ethics so that society could thrive for the long haul. For Jesus, there was not going to
be
a long haul. The end was coming soon, and people needed to prepare for it. Those who lived according to the standards he set forth, loving God with all their being and loving one another as themselves, would enter into the kingdom of God that was very soon to appear. Anyone who chose not to do so would be destroyed when the Son of Man arrived in judgment from heaven. Jesus’s ethics were an “ethics of the kingdom” both because the kinds of lives his followers led when they followed these ethical principles would be the kinds of lives they would experience in the kingdom—where there would be no war, hatred, violence, oppression, or injustice—and because a person could enter into the kingdom only by living in this way.