Decoding Nicea Quotes

“Even as late as AD 200, Tertullian described Christian leaders in this way: The tried men of our elders preside over us, obtaining that honor not by purchase, but by established character.[141”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“There was no pope in the Nicene and pre-Nicene churches. The Roman Catholic Church as an organization that rules all of western Christendom was not a product of apostolic teaching. The papacy was not a product of the blessing that Jesus conferred upon Peter. The Roman Catholic Church is, instead, the product of the conquest of the western Roman empire by the barbarian hordes in the fifth century. Their conquest politically isolated the bishop of Rome from the other major bishops of the Roman empire and led to his having sole authority over all the churches west of the Byzantine empire. It is that political isolation which would cause the bishops of Rome to begin to imagine that they had entitlement to such authority over all the churches of the world. No one concurred, and eventually the bishop of Rome simply excommunicated eastern Christianity, isolating his own private Christian world. That separation from eastern Christianity and their rejection of papal primacy continues to this day.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“The Lord's Day was not a new Sabbath. Until Constantine declared it an official day of rest for the empire a few years before the Council of Nicea, no Christian considered resting on the Lord's Day.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“The Lord's Day was their day of rejoicing. It was not just the first day, but the eighth day, the creating of not just a new life, but a new world by the resurrection of Christ.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“Jovian replaced Julius, and he embraced the Nicene faith. Athanasius was not only restored but enjoyed some correspondence with the new emperor. That peace was as short-lived as the emperor, who died after a reign of only seven months.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“None of the Arian bishops really recanted their views. Almost all of them would devote the rest of their lives to opposing the Nicene Creed and the authority of the council.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“Never mind that they avoided using the word "anathema." To be counted as an alien from the catholic church was to be condemned in the minds of all Christians of that time period.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“Perhaps the most credit for the ending of the Arian Controversy should be given to Sisinnius, the Novatian reader! It was his idea that led to the public humiliation of the Arian position.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“Theodosius announced what all surely knew he would announce, that the Nicene faith was the only acceptable one.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“The bishops of Nicea, commendably, wanted something more than simply attending the church, and they would not admit to communion those who were deceived into thinking that merely entering the church is sufficient for conversion.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“Eventually, after Rome fell to the barbarians in the fifth century, the bishops of Constantinople and Rome would battle over who would be the highest bishop of all.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“He then broke the loaf, gave it to the servants of the congregation, and they ate the food that they called "the medicine of immortality.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“The Christian spirit and affection was strong in those days. From great to small, Christians were known for their bravery. Not just men, but women and children scorned the punishment of Roman persecutors, passing judgment on their judges by their joy in facing death, and knowing that every drop of blood they shed was seed. "The more often you mow us down, the more of us there are," they would boast.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“As they embraced the Nicene faith, Arianism disappeared until revived by Charles Russell and the Jehovah's Witnesses in the early 20th century.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“The real problem facing the council was how to phrase a creed in such a way that everyone would know that Arius' doctrines were rejected by the church.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“Tradition was important in the fourth century. Novelty was the ultimate theological crime. As far as Pre-Nicene Christians were concerned, elders and bishops had just one theological function: to preserve the truth that they had received from the apostles ... unchanged.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“The combination of all three influences—the nearness of Arianism to orthodox tradition, the ground laid by the teaching of Lucian in the late third century, and Arianism's appeal as a distant alternative to Sabellianism—was apparently enough to allow Arianism to take strong root in the churches of the Roman empire.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“The majority of believers in pre-Nicene Christianity had come out of paganism. They had come from a religion of many Gods to Christianity, a religion of only one God. How could this one God also have a Son? And how could this Son also be God?”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“In the end, though, his defense of the statement, "There was a time when the Son was not," is what would get him exiled. The phrase was specifically anathematized in the Nicene Creed. We are persecuted because we say that the Son has a beginning, but that God is without beginning … and likewise because he said he is of the non-existent.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“If Jesus consisted of some created substance, then he was not eternal ... and he was therefore not divine. Rejecting this, the Council of Nicea argued that the Son was created from an uncreated substance—the substance of God.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“There were no gnostics at Nicea. They had been gone from the apostolic churches for around two centuries.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“If there were disputes over which books the church should treat as Scripture, those disputes were settled in the second century.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“The Council of Nicea convened to condemn the doctrines of Arius—who taught that the Son of God was created and did not exist prior to his creation—and to consider the day on which Easter/Passover should be celebrated.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“The writings from the times surrounding Nicea discuss what we know Nicea to be about: the divinity of Christ; whether the term begotten or created should be applied to him;”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“While the influence of Christians had been growing steadily for almost 300 years by the time of Nicea, it was only afterward that Christianity played a major role in world government.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“The Council of Nicea was first and foremost an attempt by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great to keep his empire from splitting.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“It would be easy to pick a second best piece of evidence for the resurrection: Christians. The name of Jesus Christ has been transforming people's lives and bringing them into fellowship with God for 2,000 years despite strenuous efforts by skeptics to discredit his resurrection on an intellectual basis. The incredible power of his name has been, is now, and always will be the strongest ongoing evidence for the resurrection and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“All the New Testament letters are written to Christians. Acts, on the other hand, has passages where the apostles were talking to non-Christians.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“The churches were likely relatively small throughout the second century, though they were found all over the world. Persecution was intermittent, but could arise at any time because Christians refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods, a public obligation for everyone in the Roman empire except Jews, who had a special exemption (an exemption that was likely not always honored). By the third century, though, Tertullian, a Christian apologist, could argue that if the emperor were to banish all Christians from his empire he would have no subjects left to rule over. While this is a gross exaggeration, it does make it clear that he understood Christianity to be both widespread and popular. I have read estimates that suggested that 10% of Roman residents were Christian by the end of the third century, but there is no way to know how accurate that number is.”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea

“There is no evidence that the apostles nor any of their successors set about to create an organization or hierarchy to unite the churches. On the contrary, Christian apologists of the pre-Nicene era regularly pointed to the unity of the independent Christian churches and their agreement on important points of theology as proof that they had each, individually, carefully preserved the faith that had been taught to them by the apostles. This argument would have meant nothing at all if each of those churches were being controlled by or received their theology from a central, ruling organization.[28]”
― Paul Pavao, Decoding Nicea