İZNIK, Turkey (RNS) — For Christian leaders across the world and across denominations, the anniversary of the first Council of Nicaea is providing an opportunity for introspection and, potentially, the beginning of further dialogue.
Seventeen hundred years ago — from May through July 325 — more than 200 bishops of early Christian churches gathered in the town of Nicaea, then in the Roman province of Bithynia (now İznik, Turkey), to determine a unified theology. Among the matters they agreed upon were the date of Easter and Jesus’ place within the Trinity.
It was all codified in the Nicene Creed, which held that Jesus was “God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father.” The last clause was a matter of debate in the fourth century, with factions known as Arians contending that God the son and God the father were not equal and co-eternal entities.
Nearly two millennia later, Arianism is in the distant past, the remains of the basilica where the hierarchs met is submerged beneath the shores of a Turkish lake and the Nicene Creed is considered by many to be the basic premise that defines a group as Christian.
Seminarians from Hellenic Colleg …