"Render unto Caesar....."
In 325 AD, a council of bishops was convened at Nicea, in Turkey. The decisions of that council would effect the future of religion in the West for centuries to come.
Constantine had become Emperor in 323 AD, after defeating the Emperor Licinius in battle. Constantine would end the persecutions against the Christians and would, on his deathbed in 337, accept conversion to Christianity becoming the first Christian Roman Emperor. But in 323, he was still a pagan. Yet his was the hand that guided what may be the greatest policy-making enclave in the history of Christianity.
At first the issue under debate, the so-called Arian controversy, seems obscure. "The problem began in Alexandria, it started as a debate between the bishop Alexander and the presbyter (pastor, or priest) Arius. Arius proposed that if the Father begat the Son, the latter must have had a beginning, that there was a time when he was not, and that his substance was from nothing like the rest of creation. The Council of Nicea, a gathering similar to the one described in Acts 15:4-22, condemned the beliefs of Arius and wrote the first version of the now famous creed proclaiming that the Son was "one in being with the Father" by use of the Greek word "homoousius." Source: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/sbrandt/nicea.htm
So Jesus was proclaimed to be of Divine origin. Homoousius. But read the words of the proclamation itself: "'Thus the Catholic Church believes." There can be question that a body had been created that could decide matters of ecclesiatical belief for all Christians, that such decisions were final and that this body was empowered by less an authority than the Roman Emperor.
Why should the Roman Emperor, a pagan, care about an obscure point of Christian theology? Constantine himself said that the purpose of Nicea was to forge a unity of belief. And not just among Christians.
The Council of Nicea made other changes to Christain belief. Constantine was a Sun worshipper. During Constantine’s reign “Sol Invictus,” the invincible sun, was prominently displayed on imperial banners and the coinage of the realm. Pagan sun worship was the official religion ....until after Nicea.
To gain the support of the Emperor, one may theorize, the council had to make a number of compromises:
It was at the Council of Nicea, in 325 AD that the Roman Sun-day or day of the Sun was declared to be the Christian Sabbath along with the worship of the sun being the official state religion.
- It was at the Council of Nicea, in 325 AD that the emblem of the Sun god, the cross of light, was adopted as the emblem of Christianity.
- It was at the Council of Nicea, that the date of Easter was established to coincide with the vernal equinox sacred to pagans. Also the date of Christmas, the birth of Jesus was set, again using a date sacred to pagans.
- The day of the week holy to sun-worshipping pagans, Sunday, was decreed as the Christian day of worship.
- It was at the Council of Nicea, that rules were framed that defined the authority of bishops, thereby paving the way for a concentration of power in ecclesiastical hands.
- It was at the Council of Nicea, in 325 AD that, by vote, Jesus was declared a god, not a mortal prophet.
- "...a year after the Council of Nicea, he (Constantine) sanctioned the confiscation and destruction of all works that challenged orthodox teachings - works by pagan authors that referred to Jesus, as well as works by "heretical" Christians.
Thus ended the Gnostic heresies. The books were burned, making those found at Nag Hammadi 1600 years later all the more rare. There was now one temporal power, the Roman Emperor, acknowledged by the Catholic Church. The was now one ecclesiastical power, the Council of Bishops, acknowledged by the Emperor.