
325 A new church is born
IN THE TOWN of Nicaea, on the shores of what is now lake Iznik in the northwest of Turkey, the First Council of Nicaea was held in AD 325 that decided the path for Christianity. It was convened by the Roman emperor Constantine to settle a question that was threatening to split the Christian world at the time: what was the relationship of Jesus to God? The row had been brewing for seven years, since a priest in Alexandria named Arius had promoted a doctrine whereby Jesus was stated to be non-eternal and generated by God. This challenged the beliefs […]