Being Christians in the spirit of Nicaea
By Roberto de Mattei | 9 July 2025
May of this year marked the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council of the Church, and Pope Leo XIV has announced that he wants to go to Turkey, where Nicaea is today, to commemorate this great event.
Nicaea may seem to us like a distant place and time, far from everyday concerns, and yet all that regards the history of the Church must ever be up to date for us, because it is full of teachings that are not lost in time. The internet sometimes absorbs us, we read everything, we believe we know everything, but we must ask ourselves what place the study of Church history, the study of Christian theology and philosophy, has in our activities. Without this study the spiritual life of a Christian will never be able to develop, it will only be superficial and sentimental, destined to dry up.
To be Christians means being disciples of Jesus Christ, but how can there be discipleship of Jesus Christ without deepening knowledge of Him? In his first address, in the Sistine Chapel on 9 May 2025, the pope said, “Jesus must be proclaimed to all. Not as a superman, as he is sometimes considered, but as the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
It was the Council of Nicaea, it was the first four councils of the Church, that clarified the true nature of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, promulgating the first great truths of faith. St Gregory the Great compared the first four ecumenical councils of the Church to the four Gospels: “I confess that I venerate with devotion the first four Councils as I do the four books of the holy Gospel.”1 The four councils to which he refers are Nicaea (325), Constantinople I (381), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). These formulated what are the fundamental dogmas of the Church: Trinitarian and Christological dogma, together with that, just as important, of the divine Motherhood of Mary.
The anti-Trinitarians of the fourth century, followers of the priest Arius, denied the divinity of Christ. They maintained that only the Father is the one true God. The Word, intermediary between God and the world, would instead be of a substance other than the divine. Nicaea defined, against the Arians, that the Word is the true Son of God, of the same substance as the Father and therefore truly God. The term “consubstantial” expresses the perfect equality of the Word and the Father. The Council of Constantinople confirmed the Nicene Creed, establishing that the Holy Ghost is truly God like the Son and the Father.
The Council of Ephesus affirmed, against the heretic Nestorius, the divine motherhood of Mary and the true and substantial unity of the divine and human element of Christ in the unity of the Person of the Word, the only subject to whom we must attribute the belonging and operations of both natures. When, in opposition to Nestorius, another heretic, Eutyches, wanted to defend the substantial unity of Christ, to the point of basing this not only on one Person but also on just one nature, the Council of Chalcedon established that the two natures in Christ are united in one person, but distinct, not confused, nor changed or in any way altered.
So, the first four Councils of the Church established that there is one God, in three persons, and that Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, has two natures, divine and human, but a single divine Person.
From these mysteries arise four great truths.
First of all, the divinity of Jesus Christ. He is God, the second of the divine persons. He is God from eternity and is so for all eternity.
But God is also man, and like every man he has soul and body, has mind, will and senses. Jesus Christ has all the human faculties and qualities because, along with a divine nature, he has a human nature.
Thirdly, the two natures of Jesus Christ, the divine nature and the human nature, are united in Him, but not confused. Jesus Christ is at the same time perfect God and perfect man.
Finally, it is in the unity of the person of the Word that the union of God and man subsists. This means that in Jesus Christ the human nature is absorbed in the divine person. The human nature can be moved only by the divine nature, just as the body of every man is incapable of any activity that does not come from the soul.
He who ignores these truths cannot call himself a Christian. To be Christian means to be made in the image of Jesus Christ, to be formed and transformed by Christ, to receive life from Him and through Him to grow in divine life.
Dom François Pollien, in his splendid book, Lived Christianity,2 explains to us that Christian life cannot exist if the four characteristics that constitute Christ are not found together: the perfect divine element, the perfect human element, the union of the divine with the human, the annihilation of human independence before God.
The first element is the divine: the primacy of God in our life. If we believe in God and understand who God is, we must direct our whole life to Him and to His glory, seeking to continually increase the glory of God in us.
The second element is the human: we must develop the body, the heart, the mind, orienting them to their end, which is God. This element has as its model the human nature of Jesus Christ, in whom however everything was perfect right from the beginning. For us, on the contrary, perfection is a point of arrival toward which we must press with all our strength.
The third element is the union of the divine and the human, through the action of grace, which brings divine life to our soul. We cannot do anything good without the action of divine grace that enlivens our human faculties. This element corresponds to the union, without confusion, of the two natures in Christ, the human and the divine.
Finally, the fourth element is the complete submission of the human to the divine, of our will to the will of God, in such a way that, so to speak, there is only one Person, which is not ours, but that of Jesus Christ who lives in us. This is what happens in Christ, in whom the one divine Person absorbs the two natures.
Our life as Christians is a seed that must develop, pressing toward the perfection of the four characteristics that we have found in Christ. This is the great horizon, the great goal of the Christian soul: a lived Christianity, strong and virile, full of great passion, but without anything languid or treacly. In this way, to Jesus’ question, “But who do you say that I am?” we could answer, with our words and with our life, as Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Mt 16:13–20)
To be continued next week with “The Council of Nicaea and Vatican II”.
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