Christ was coeternal with God the Father. He had always existed. And he was “of the same substance” as God the Father, himself truly God, from back into eternity. The Christ of Nicea is obviously a far cry from the historical Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant apocalyptic preacher in the backwaters of rural Galilee who offended the authorities and was unceremoniously crucified for crimes against the state. Whatever he may have been in real life, Jesus had now become fully God.
