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The Trinity and the Council of Nice

 

Out of the debates which took place at the Council of Nice in 325 the Nicene Creed emerged. Among other matters, it pronounced on what has become the official doctrine of the Trinity, rejecting the contrary opinion of Arius, who held that God and Christ are separate and not – in the words of the majority opinion of the Council – ʻconsubstantialʼ.

 

Nonetheless, the teachings of Arius (Arianism) persisted in various forms until about the seventh century. But as one of the central tenets of the Roman Catholic church, the doctrine of the Trinity was enforced by her against those individuals and communities who dissented from it. And despite the wide-ranging defection from Rome during the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the Trinity doctrine survived the reactionary mood and was ferried across the theological divide. Having imported it into their own reformed creeds, the new Protestant denominations in their turn continued to punish those who dissented on this point. One of the most shameful examples was the burning at the stake in 1553 of the anti-Trinitarian Michael Servetus, in which his adversary John Calvin exercised an influential role. – Selected

 

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