The Council of Nicaea and
The Faith That Reached Parthia and India
The early fourth century brought one of the greatest crises in Christian history — the question of who Jesus Christ truly is. A priest named Arius of Alexandria began teaching that the Son of God was a created being, higher than all creation yet not eternal like the Father. His teaching spread rapidly, dividing churches and confusing believers. In response, the Church gathered at the Council of Nicaea (AD 325) under Emperor Constantine. Guided by Scripture — “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1) and “He is the image of the invisible God… by Him all things were created” (Colossians 1:15-16) — the bishops declared that the Son is not made but begotten, sharing the same divine essence as the Father. They affirmed in the Nicene Creed that Jesus Christ is “true God from true God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”
The battle did not end at Nicaea. For decades, emperors wavered, and many bishops compromised, but Athanasius of Alexandria stood immovable. Athanasius’s five exiles covered almost 17 years of his 45-year episcopate — nearly one-third of his ministry spent in banishment.
Yet during those years he wrote some of his most important works, including The Life of Antony, On the Incarnation, and numerous letters defending the Nicene faith.
His courage in exile made him a symbol of truth under pressure. The cry “Athanasius contra mundum” — Athanasius against the world — became a timeless emblem of faith’s endurance against overwhelming odds.
“The Word of God took flesh that He might renew man made after the image of God.”
— Athanasius, On the Incarnation
His courage preserved the gospel’s integrity for generations to come. When the tide of heresy seemed to prevail, he could still proclaim, “They may have the churches, but we have the faith of the apostles.” The victory of Nicaea endures in every confession that calls Jesus Lord — the eternal Word through whom all things were made and in whom all things hold together.
The Crisis of Truth
By the early fourth century, the young Christian Church had become a worldwide fellowship. From the bustling streets of Jerusalem, where it was born, to the imperial grandeur of Rome, the intellectual vigor of Alexandria, the missionary zeal of Antioch, and the distant lands of Parthia and India, the gospel had taken deep root. The faith that once hid in catacombs now reached the palaces of emperors and the villages of the East. Yet, just as the Church emerged from persecution into freedom, it faced an even more subtle and dangerous trial — a theological storm that threatened its very heart.
A popular priest named Arius, from Alexandria, began to preach a teaching that appealed to reason but denied mystery. He claimed that Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, was not truly divine — that He was a created being, brought into existence by the Father and therefore not eternal. His words, “There was a time when the Son was not,” rippled through the Church like an earthquake, shaking the foundation of Christian belief. If the Son were a creature, however exalted, then He could not share in the Father’s eternal nature — and if Christ were not fully God, then salvation itself was impossible.
Yet the Scriptures bore powerful witness against this falsehood. John declared, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The Son did not come into being — He is, from eternity. Paul proclaimed, “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). The writer of Hebrews affirmed that through the Son, God “made the universe,” and that He is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being” (Hebrews 1:2–3). And Jesus Himself testified, “Before Abraham was born, I AM” (John 8:58), taking upon Himself the divine name revealed to Moses.
Arius’s reasoning may have seemed logical, but it dismantled the mystery of divine love. If the Son had a beginning, then the Father was not eternally Father, and love itself would have had a starting point. The Church instinctively knew this could not be true. From its worship, its Scriptures, and its living memory of the apostles came one unshakable confession — that Jesus Christ is not a creature but the Creator, the eternal Word who became flesh for our salvation. “Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:3). Under the shadow of this great crisis, a young deacon named Athanasius rose to defend the truth. With holy courage he would later write, “If the Word is not truly God, then neither are we truly saved.” Thus began the battle for the divinity of Christ — a battle that would define the faith for all generations.
Constantine and the Call to Nicaea
In AD 313, Emperor Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan, granting Christians freedom to worship throughout the Roman Empire. For the first time in nearly three centuries, the Church emerged from the shadows of persecution into the light of imperial favor. The scars of suffering were still fresh — countless believers had faced imprisonment, torture, and martyrdom for confessing the name of Jesus. The once-despised faith of fishermen and tentmakers was now openly acknowledged by emperors and senators. Yet, as persecution ceased, a new and more dangerous threat arose — not from swords or prisons, but from within the Church itself.
Theological turmoil began to divide the body of Christ. The Arian controversy, born in Alexandria, spread like wildfire through the empire, turning bishops against bishops and sowing confusion among believers. Constantine, newly converted and eager to preserve unity in his realm, realized that political peace would be impossible without spiritual agreement. He desired one faith, one baptism, one Church under the one Christ. Therefore, in AD 325, he summoned the first Ecumenical Council — a gathering of bishops from across the known world — to the lakeside city of Nicaea in Bithynia (modern-day İznik, Turkey).
More than 300 bishops answered the call, traveling from distant regions — from Spain in the west to Persia and India in the east. Many bore on their bodies the marks of persecution: eyes gouged out, hands maimed, backs scarred by lashes. These were not academic theologians debating abstractions; they were confessors of the faith who had risked their lives for the truth of the gospel. They came not to invent new doctrine, but to defend the eternal truth revealed in Scripture — that Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, is “of one substance with the Father,” sharing His very divine nature.
Amid this assembly stood a young deacon from Alexandria named Athanasius. Though not yet a bishop, his keen mind, unshakable faith, and passionate defense of Christ’s divinity soon made him the voice of orthodoxy (*1-see footnote). Standing among men old enough to be his grandfathers, Athanasius argued that salvation itself depended on Christ being fully God — for only God could redeem humanity. History would remember him as Athanasius contra mundum — “Athanasius against the world” — the man who would stand alone, if necessary, to keep the Church anchored to the truth.
The Council of Nicaea became a defining moment — not a political assembly, but a spiritual battle for the heart of Christianity. Surrounded by the pomp of empire, the bishops sought not imperial favor, but divine truth. Under Constantine’s gilded canopy, scarred men of faith confessed with one voice that the Word who became flesh is Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made. In doing so, they forged a creed that still echoes in the worship of the Church today — a declaration that Christ, the eternal Son, shares the glory, majesty, and essence of the Father forever.
*1 Footnote Orthodoxy:In Christian theology, orthodoxy refers to the faith that aligns with the original and apostolic teaching of the Church — the truths revealed in Scripture, proclaimed by the apostles, and affirmed in the early creeds (like the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed). It stands in contrast to heresy, which means “false belief” — ideas that distort or deny essential truths about God, Christ, or salvation.
The Debate: Who Is Jesus Christ?
The question before the Council of Nicaea was at once simple and world-changing:
Is Jesus Christ of the same substance (homoousios) with the Father,
or merely of similar substance (homoiousios)?
That single Greek letter — an iota — became the thin line between truth and heresy, between the gospel of divine grace and a religion of mere human effort.
For if Christ were less than God, then His cross could not save, and His resurrection could not conquer death.
Arius, the eloquent priest from Alexandria, argued that the Son was a created being — the first and highest of God’s works, but still subordinate, made before time began. To him, calling Christ “God” was a courtesy of honor, not a declaration of essence. “The Father alone is unbegotten,” he reasoned. “The Son came into existence by the Father’s will.” His teaching gained traction among the educated and powerful, appealing to those who wanted a tidy, logical faith without mystery.
But Athanasius, young and unyielding, rose to defend the faith handed down from the apostles. His argument was not based on speculation, but on Scripture. He declared with conviction:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” — John 1:1
From eternity, before all worlds, the Son existed in perfect communion with the Father — not as a creature, but as the eternal Word, sharing the Father’s divine being.
Athanasius turned also to the writings of Paul:
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” — Colossians 1:15–16
The term firstborn did not mean created — it meant preeminent, the rightful heir of all creation. If all things were created through Christ, then He Himself could not be part of the created order. The Son is not a product of the Father’s will, but the eternal expression of His being. “Begotten, not made,” Athanasius explained, meant that the Son shares the same essence (ousia) as the Father — just as light from a flame is not separate from its source but one with it.
This truth was echoed across the New Testament:
“Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.” — John 1:3
“Before Abraham was born, I AM.” — John 8:58
“I and the Father are one.” — John 10:30
“In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” — Colossians 2:9
Athanasius insisted that only one who is truly God can unite us with God. If Christ were a creature, He could not bridge the infinite gap between the divine and the human. But if He is eternal God, then through His incarnation and cross, the very life of God flows into humanity. “The Son of God became man,” Athanasius would later write, “so that we might become sons of God.”
In the great hall of Nicaea, voices rose and arguments clashed, but the truth shone through like light piercing fog. The bishops saw that to diminish Christ was to diminish the gospel. When the debate ended, they confessed with one heart and one voice that Jesus Christ is fully God — “begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”
Thus, the Church affirmed that the eternal Word who spoke creation into being is the same Lord who entered it to redeem it — the Alpha and the Omega, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father.
The Nicene Creed
When the debates had ended and the voices of division were finally silenced, the bishops of the Church gathered their conviction into words that would echo through the centuries. Arianism (Footnote 2*) was overwhelmingly rejected, and the council drafted what became one of the most important statements in Christian history — the Nicene Creed. Every word was chosen with care, forged in the fire of controversy and illuminated by the light of Scripture. It was not a new invention but a faithful summary of what the Church had always believed about Jesus Christ:
“We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
begotten from the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father.”
In these phrases, the early Church confessed what the Scriptures had always declared: that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, not created; that His light is the very light of God; that His life and essence are one with the Father’s. The words “God from God, Light from Light” captured a mystery that logic could not explain but faith could adore. Just as light from a flame is not divided but shared, so the Son proceeds from the Father — distinct in person, yet one in divine being. “In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind” (John 1:4).
This creed was more than a theological statement; it was a hymn of truth — a song that united East and West, bishops and believers, across languages and lands. It was recited in the catacombs and in cathedrals, in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Coptic. It became the heartbeat of Christian worship, echoing through centuries of liturgy as the faithful proclaimed together the unchanging confession: “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Syriac Transliteration: Yeshua Meshīḥa hu Marya leshūbḥa d’Alaha Aba.
Malayalam Transliteration: Yesukristu Karthāvān, Daivapithāvinu mahathwam.
Meaning: Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father
Yet the victory was not without cost. Though Arius was condemned and his writings ordered to be burned, the struggle for truth continued. Political tides shifted, emperors changed, and many bishops faltered under pressure. But Athanasius — the young defender of Nicaea — stood unyielding. For more than forty years, he bore the burden of controversy, enduring exile five times for his refusal to compromise the divinity of Christ. Often hunted, slandered, and isolated, he clung to the faith of the apostles with unwavering courage. When the Arian faction controlled the imperial churches, he famously declared, “They may have the churches, but we have the faith of the apostles.”
Athanasius’s steadfastness preserved the integrity of Christian doctrine for generations to come. His courage ensured that when believers across the world recite the Nicene Creed today, they confess not a formula of words, but the living truth of the gospel — that the Lord Jesus Christ, true God from true God, is the eternal Word who became flesh to redeem humanity. “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9).
Through persecution, exile, and centuries of change, the Nicene Creed has endured — a lamp of truth in a dark world, a testimony that Christ is not merely a great teacher or exalted prophet, but the eternal Son of the living God, one with the Father in glory and majesty forever.
Footnote 2* There is no historical or theological link between Arianism and Hitler’s Aryan ideology — only a phonetic coincidence in their names.
Arius sought to define Christ’s relationship to the Father;
Hitler sought to exalt one race above others — two completely unrelated movements separated by 1,600 years and utterly different in purpose.
From Parthia to India: The Faith of the East
What many forget is that the faith affirmed at Nicaea was not merely a Western creed forged in the courts of Rome or Constantinople — it was a global confession, echoing from the deserts of Egypt to the mountains of Armenia, from the Mediterranean shores to the palm-lined coasts of India. The Church of the fourth century was already a worldwide body, united by one Lord, one baptism, and one faith.
Among the bishops gathered at the Council of Nicaea stood a remarkable figure named John the Persian, whose official title read: “Bishop of the Churches in the whole of Persia and Great India.” His presence bore powerful witness that Christianity had taken deep root far beyond the Roman Empire, flourishing in the ancient lands of Parthia (modern-day Iran), and along the great Silk Road trade routes that stretched eastward to India. In these regions, the gospel had found fertile soil long before the empire itself turned to Christ.
According to early Christian historians such as Eusebius of Caesarea and Origen, the Apostle Thomas was entrusted with the mission to Parthia. From there, tradition holds, he traveled further east, preaching the gospel in Persia, Bactria, and finally India, where he established communities of believers along the Malabar Coast. The St. Thomas Christians of Kerala still cherish this sacred heritage, seeing in the Apostle’s footprints a living reminder that the gospel first came to their ancestors through the courage and obedience of one of Christ’s own disciples. The Apostle’s journey fulfilled the promise of Acts 1:8 — “You will be my witnesses… to the ends of the earth.”
By the time of Nicaea in AD 325, these Eastern Christian communities were thriving and organized. The Church of Edessa in Mesopotamia and the Church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in Persia served as vital centers of theological learning, translation, and missionary outreach. These believers used the Syriac language for worship and Scripture — a dialect closely related to Aramaic, the very tongue that Jesus spoke. Through them, the faith was preserved, preached, and passed along the trade routes into Central Asia, Arabia, and India.
The title of John the Persian suggests that he carried on his shoulders the spiritual fellowship of countless believers scattered across vast lands — from the plains of Persia to the shores of the Indian Ocean. He stood in Nicaea as the voice of the Eastern Church, uniting the Thomas tradition of India with the apostolic confession of Nicaea. When the bishops declared with one heart that Jesus Christ is “true God from true God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father,” their confession was not the echo of one empire’s theology, but the united song of the universal Church — the katholikos ekklesia, stretching from Britain to Bactria, from Rome to Kerala.
The light of Christ had already crossed mountains and deserts, languages and empires. It illuminated palaces and mud-walled churches, Roman basilicas and palm-thatched chapels by the Indian sea. And when the words of the Nicene Creed were first spoken aloud, they did not belong to one people or one culture alone — they belonged to a Church without borders, proclaiming to the world that the same eternal Word who created all things had entered His creation to redeem it.
Footnote *3:He is true God, sharing the same divine essence (homoousios) with the Father; and He is true man, sharing our humanity in every way except sin.
The Churches of the East
By the fourth century, the Christian faith had spread far beyond the boundaries of the Roman world, taking root in vibrant communities across the East — where it developed its own languages, liturgies, and theological traditions while remaining united in the same confession of Christ.
In Parthia and Persia, the faith centered in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the twin capital of the Persian Empire, which became the seat of what was later known as the Church of the East. This church flourished under constant tension — often viewed with suspicion by Zoroastrian rulers, who feared that Christians might be loyal to Rome. Persecution was frequent and brutal, yet faith proved stronger than fear. Out of these trials came a resilient, missionary church that carried the gospel along the Silk Road to Bactria, China, and India. These Persian Christians were among the first to translate Scripture into Syriac, ensuring that the Word of God could be read in the language of their hearts.
In Mesopotamia, the city of Edessa emerged as a brilliant center of Syriac Christianity and theology. It was here that schools of learning trained scholars who combined deep biblical devotion with intellectual rigor. Edessa’s hymns and commentaries — many written by figures such as Ephrem the Syrian, called “the harp of the Holy Spirit” — shaped generations of believers. The faith here was practical, poetic, and profoundly Christ-centered. The Edessan Christians became bridges between Greek, Persian, and Indian believers, binding East and West together through faith rather than empire.
Further east, on the lush Malabar Coast of India, thrived the St. Thomas Christians, who traced their lineage to the Apostle Thomas himself. These believers worshiped in Syriac, maintained close ties with the Persian Church, and lived out a faith that blended the ancient liturgy of the East with local Indian traditions. Their churches stood among palm trees and spice markets — a living testimony that the gospel had reached the very ends of the earth. When the Nicene Creed was recited in Kerala, it was not as a foreign import but as a confirmation of a faith already known and cherished: Jesus Christ, true God from true God.
In Arabia and Armenia, too, the light of the gospel shone. Armenia, under King Tiridates III, became the first kingdom to adopt Christianity as its official religion — even before Constantine’s Rome. In Arabia, small Christian tribes and monastic communities dotted the deserts, singing psalms beneath the same stars that once guided the Magi to Bethlehem.
Despite centuries of persecution under Zoroastrian and later Islamic rule, the faith of the East endured. These believers held fast to the Nicene confession and carried it eastward, even to China by the seventh century — where a monument known as the Nestorian Stele of Xi’an records the arrival of Christian missionaries from Persia in AD 635. The inscription, carved in both Syriac and Chinese, proclaims that “the true doctrine was made known to the Middle Kingdom” — a stone witness to the universality of Christ’s gospel.
The story of Parthia and India, of Persia and China, reveals that the battle for truth was not only waged in the imperial halls of Rome and Constantinople, but also in humble desert monasteries, mountain villages, and coastal chapels of the East. There, too, believers confessed the same Lord — Jesus Christ, the eternal Word, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father. Their courage, endurance, and faithfulness ensured that the Nicene light did not flicker out but continued to shine, from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas, from Antioch to Xi’an — bearing witness that the gospel of Christ knows no borders, and His kingdom no end.
C.S. Lewis and the Faith of Nicaea
Sixteen centuries after the Council of Nicaea, when the ancient creeds were often recited without reflection, C.S. Lewis emerged as one of the most eloquent defenders of that same eternal truth — that Jesus Christ is not merely a good man, but very God of very God. Writing in the twentieth century, Lewis faced a new kind of heresy — not born of persecution or empire, but of modern skepticism. In an age enamored with reason and psychology, many wanted to reduce Jesus to a wise moral teacher or a prophetic reformer. The modern mind found the claim of divinity too scandalous to accept. But Lewis, echoing Athanasius, saw clearly that such compromise emptied Christianity of its power.
In Mere Christianity, Lewis dismantled the “safe” view of Jesus as a mere moral example with razor-sharp logic:
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice.
Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse.”
For Lewis, the Incarnation was the turning point of all history. Either God Himself entered creation to redeem it — or Christianity collapses into empty sentiment. This, too, was the conviction that drove Athanasius at Nicaea: if Christ were not fully God, His cross could not save; if He were not fully man, His salvation could not reach us. Lewis stood shoulder to shoulder with Athanasius across the centuries, defending the same radiant mystery — Immanuel, God with us.
Lewis also grasped the heart of the Trinitarian life, the same truth the Nicene fathers articulated: that God is not an isolated being but a communion of love. He described the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit not as abstract doctrine, but as the very pulse of divine joy:
“The union between the Father and the Son is such a live, concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person — the Holy Ghost.”
This insight transforms theology into worship. The Trinity, for Lewis, is not a puzzle to be solved but a dance to be entered — the eternal movement of self-giving love into which we are invited. When a person comes to Christ, he wrote, they are “caught up into the life of God,” drawn into the fellowship of divine love that has existed from all eternity.
Lewis summarized this Nicene faith in a single luminous sentence that could have been penned by Athanasius himself:
“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”
This is the heartbeat of the gospel — the eternal Son taking on human nature so that humanity might share in the divine life. In this exchange of grace, heaven stoops down so that earth may rise.
From Athanasius to Lewis, the melody of truth has never changed. Both men, separated by sixteen centuries but united in spirit, proclaimed the same creed: that Jesus Christ is Lord — true God from true God, Light from Light, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father. In every generation, the Church must learn to sing this melody anew, not merely as a formula of faith, but as a confession of worship. For to know who Christ is — fully God and fully man — is to know the heart of God Himself.
