Cambridge History of Christianity

The first Council of Nicaea was summoned in 325 CE by Constantine, within seven months of the victory that installed him as sole ruler of the empire. Eusebius of Caesarea seems none the less to disapprove of the Council of Nicaea altogether when he imputes the beginnings of it to malevolence. Few considerations may have induced Eusebius of Nicomedia to take up the cause of Arius. Eusebius may have thought in good faith that his suppliant had been wrongly condemned, for, while he does not appear to have held that the Son was out of nothing. Whatever the provenance of the 'Nicene symbol', earliest text of it is quoted in the letter of Eusebius, which is appended to the treatise of his opponent Athanasius, De decretis Nicaenae synodi. The Council of Antioch had ratified the condemnation of Arius while purging the creed of clauses which, in the eyes of easterners, were more of a snare than a prop to orthodoxy.

The first Council of Nicaea

This chapter analyses a crucial moment in the second century of the formation of a 'Christian' discourse and, indeed, of the construction of 'Christianity' itself. Justin Martyr was not the first to take up the question of self-definition vis-a-vis the Graeco-Roman world, and he would certainly not be the last, but he was surely one of the most influential to do so. Taken together, Justin and Celsus signal a turning-point in the construction and contestation of Christian discourse. Justin's notion of an ancient Mosaic philosophy on which the Greek philosophers depended betrays the influence of contemporary ideas about the history of philosophy. The distortions and corruptions with which contemporary Platonism was riddled could be compensated for through a process of triangulation among the doctrines of Plato, the precepts of Pythagoras and the institutions of the most ancient 'barbarian' peoples. The feature of Greek philosophical theology was the attempt to reinterpret traditional religion in light of a form of monotheism.

Self-definition vis-à-vis the Graeco-Roman world

Marcion is an intriguing figure in early Christian history. He has commanded attention on two topics: the church's appropriation of the scriptures of Judaism, and the emergence of a canon of specifically Christian scriptures. A major corollary of Marcion's ditheism was a sharp disparagement of the creation. His disdain for the material order found two principal expressions, namely docetic Christology and moral rigorism. Ditheism, docetism and devaluation of the material world and the body, Marcion's teaching is in other ways distinct from Christian Gnostic systems. Beyond his ditheism, what drew the strongest fire of Marcion's critics was his view of Jewish scripture. Marcion's rejection of the scriptures of Judaism amid the challenges posed by the Christian employment of Jewish scriptures, it had some appeal within the Gentile church. Marcion's activity was the sine qua non of the formation of the New Testament, and that the New Testament canon arose principally or even exclusively as a reaction to him.

Frances M. Young

Papers

Temple Cult and Law in Early Christianity A Study in the Relationship between Jews and Christians in the Early Centuries