Our Hearts Have Someone Greater to Imitate
Cozzi | Ruisi - “The Council of Nicaea is not just an event of the past but a compass that must continue to guide us towards the full visible unity of Christians,” said Pope Leo XIV at the symposium Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium: Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity (Rome, June 4-7, 2025). “It is not simply a Council among others or the first in a series, but the Council par excellence, which promulgated the norm of the Christian faith, the confession of faith of the ‘318 Fathers.’”
We asked Don Alberto Cozzi—a professor of systematic theology at the Theological Faculty of Northern Italy, the Higher Institute of Religious Sciences, and the Archiepiscopal Seminary of Milan, and a member of the International Theological Commission—to help us understand the importance that the Council of Nicaea, convened in 325 AD by Emperor Constantine, still holds today, 1700 years later.
Let's start with some considerations on the origin of the Council. What factors (religious, ecclesiastical, and political) motivated Emperor Constantine, who was not even baptized, to convene it in 325? What did he hope to achieve for the Empire and for the Church?
Emperor Constantine saw his role as guardian of the empire's peace and leader of its peoples as including the duties of Pontifex Maximus. He was therefore concerned with bringing order to religious matters as well. At one point, he considered himself a “bishop in charge of temporal matters” and took this role seriously. He had already responded promptly to Bishop Cecilian of Carthage, who had asked the “imperial power” to return to the Church the property confiscated during the Donatist schism. Donatus's followers were strict Christians who had not renounced their faith during the persecutions. They considered themselves the true Christians, to the exclusion of others, and for this reason, they took possession of churches and other ecclesiastical property.
Similarly, to resolve the disputes related to this schism in North Africa, Constantine convened a synod in Arles in 324. It should therefore come as no surprise that an emperor, in interpreting his role in the Roman Empire, was concerned with matters of the Church. Concepts such as the secular nature of civil power or the separation of spheres of competence were not in keeping with the Roman and imperial mentality of the time. The emperor had to concern himself with the integral good of his citizens.
To what extent is it legitimate to speak of religious intent in his imperial initiative?
The novelty of Nicaea lies in the fact that the emperor himself presided over the Council's work, demonstrating the importance of the issues at stake. He had a competent advisor on theological matters, Bishop Hosius of Corduba. Some historians emphasize that Constantine was sincerely devoted to the bishops, whom he often showered with donations of grain or money or flattered with invitations to banquets.
It must be said, however, that Constantine had explicitly chosen the Christian God in 324 and therefore sincerely adhered to the Christian faith, for what that meant at the time. In fact, he made the cursus publicus, the travel system used by imperial officials and messengers, available to the bishops, facilitating their movement. He thus convened the first ecumenical council, attended by more than two hundred bishops.
What did he hope to achieve for the Empire and for the Church?
Constantine intended the final approved text to be a kind of “memorandum of understanding” that would end all disputes and restore religious peace in the Empire. But this did not happen until around 380.
The Council used a new word—consubstantial (homooúsios)—to speak of Jesus in relation to God the Father. How does the definition of consubstantiality between the Father and the Son help to clarify the identity of the Son?
In the Nicene symbol, the term is preceded by “that is” (which would be removed in the First Council of Constantinople and therefore in the Creed we say now at Mass): “Begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father.” This “that is” is very instructive. First, it shows there was no desire to modify the symbol of faith—the baptismal Creed—by adding other articles of faith, but only to offer anti-heretical clarifications that would exclude error and preserve the faith of the Apostles.
Second, it says that the Son, begotten by the Father, has a special relationship with Him from the beginning—a relationship in which God the Father communicates what He Himself is, His nature, not something inferior. A generation “of the same substance” means that it is not a creation “out of nothing,” nor the fruit of the Creator's will at the beginning of creation. It is a generation “of the same substance” from the beginning—indeed, before all ages. As in human generation, a father and mother give their own human nature to their child, so it is in God.
This means that the Son, who appeared in Jesus and is considered the Logos, is not just a special creature or God's plan for the cosmos—a kind of divine project resulting from creative wisdom, from which all things would then be made. The Son is indeed God in the full sense, like the Father: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1–2); “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30); “Now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (Jn 17:5). Jesus, therefore, makes us participants in the divine nature, being fully equal to the Father.
Why was it so important for the bishops to affirm that Jesus is consubstantial (of the same substance) with the Father?
The term consubstantial had been rejected by Arius and his party as dangerous and ambiguous because it seemed to reduce the divine nature to a kind of divisible and shareable substance. But the meaning of the term must be understood in light of the explanatory phrase “that is”: the Logos, or Son, is begotten before time, from eternity, from the same substance as the Father, and not from nothing in time. Its true meaning can be rendered as follows: the Son is in all things equal to the Father, so that what I say of God the Father I must also say of the Son (eternal, omnipotent, wise), with the exception of their distinct identities as Father and Son.
Let us come to the present day. We live in a society marked by religious pluralism and ethical-symbolic interpretations of the figure of Jesus. What relevance does Nicene Christology, which affirms both Christ's divinity and full humanity, have today?
The challenge of today's culture is less about pluralism and more about semantic atheism. While traditional atheism denies the existence of God, semantic atheism denies the very name of God, believing that religious language is meaningless. Paradoxically, religious pluralism reminds us that every human being and civilization has its own form of religiosity and that the search for God is inscribed in the human heart. Semantic atheism, on the other hand, is the condition in which one realizes that one never needs to speak of God to express the meaning of what one is experiencing. In our social and cultural context, we do not need to talk about God to give meaning to what we are doing or experiencing. This results in a silence about God that makes Him irrelevant and makes talking about Him a matter of indifference.
What does the Council of Nicaea tell us at this point?
The dogma of Nicaea, on the other hand, reminds us that when we speak of Jesus—of his historical reality under Pontius Pilate, of his crucified and risen humanity—we must speak of God the Father and of the gift of the Spirit to truly understand what happened.
Jesus teaches us to read humanity and its history in the light of the divine Mystery. I must not take anything away from humanity to make room for God, nor must I diminish the divine to give substance to humanity. God's presence is inscribed in our history, in the fibers of our humanity, and gives a deeper meaning to the things we experience.
It is precisely the “true humanity” of Jesus that has communicated to us the truth of God, making present among us the “consubstantial relationship” between Father and Son. But only the power of the Spirit, His grace, can draw us into that relationship (“No one knows the Father except the Son, and no one knows the Son except the Father...” Mt 11:25–27). Moreover, Nicaea reminds us that faith in Jesus involves a communication in which God not only reveals to us the secrets of the cosmos or the meaning of things but opens to us the secret of His eternal divine life (the consubstantial generation), calling us to communion with Him for eternity. At stake is our ultimate destiny—that for which we are made. We have in our hearts an infinite desire to receive the same divine life as a gift to be shared forever in Christ. It changes the horizon of our lives.
St. Augustine wondered why God revealed such profound and difficult things about Himself to us, and he answered that He did so to prepare us for the blessed vision in Paradise. It is a foretaste of eternal life with the saints: incohatio beatitudinis in nobis (the beginning of blessedness in us).
For Christians, why is it so important to say that Jesus is “true God and true man”? What difference does it make to our lives if this is true? What is the connection between the faith we profess in the Creed and the way we conceive of ourselves as human beings?
I respond with a beautiful quote from Henri de Lubac, a theologian and cardinal, in his masterpiece Catholicisme, where the Jesuit theologian points out that faith asks us to scrutinize the depths of God to discover the depths of the mystery that is man. This is the opposite of what various forms of ideology claimed to do when they proclaimed that they knew what man is and how he works. In reality, man infinitely surpasses man and remains elusive in his mystery: "The Gospel... digs new depths in man that bring him into harmony with the ‘depths of God,’ and launches him out of himself to the ends of the earth; it universalizes and interiorizes; it gives personality and unifies... By revealing the Father and being revealed by him, Christ ends up revealing man to himself. By taking possession of man, grasping him and penetrating to the depths of his being, he also forces him to descend into himself to discover regions hitherto unsuspected" (Catholicisme, pp. 257f).
The most beautiful commentary on this passage by De Lubac is a quote from St. Ambrose on the “leaps of the Word,” who comes to meet human beings. Those who set out in search of the Lord Jesus soon realize that it is He Himself who hastens to come to us; indeed, the Son of God makes real leaps to reach us. We must therefore follow the leaps of the eternal Son who comes from the bosom of the Father to the womb of Mary, then leaps into the tomb, and from there ascends to heaven.
Following these leaps, we scrutinize the world in which we are called to live and marvel at its vastness, which borders on the eternal life of God: "I desire that my love be awakened, I consider myself wounded by love, and behold, my love itself is even more eager to come to me. I said to him, ‘Come!’ And he leaps and passes over... Let us look at his leaps! He leaps from heaven to a Virgin, from her womb to the manger, from the manger to the Jordan, from the Jordan to the cross, from the cross to the tomb, from the tomb to heaven. Confirm these leaps of his to me, David! Confirm his race" (Ambrose, Commentary on Psalm 118, 6.6).
Christian anthropological reflection has its roots in the Trinitarian faith and in the sonship of Christ, “true God and true man.” What is the great challenge that this vision of man must face today?
Something of this challenge was already intuited in the first half of the 1800s by Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman in his works on the Arian heresy of the fourth century. In a few dense pages, he warned us against a form of Christianity that seeks in the Gospel truths that appeal to the intellect rather than the heart—human values that confirm our experience rather than transforming us to expand our horizon of meaning toward a higher destiny.
“The basic insight,” in Newman's words, “is that the Arian heresy is not an isolated episode in the history of the Church, but the sensational explosion of a conflict between two ways of conceiving Christianity: the Arians conceive it as the revelation of a truth that addresses above all the intellect, while the orthodox conceive it as a regenerative force that addresses man in all his faculties, and above all in his heart. This different way of conceiving Christianity entails a different way of approaching it: the Arians approach revelation with a concern to understand it, as something that speaks first and foremost to the intellect, so that scriptural and ecclesiastical concepts and categories are interpreted according to the demands of the reasoning intellect.”
In light of this insight, what is the challenge of Nicaea?
It is to think and speak of the unity of the Father and the Son not on the basis of human experience of unity, but on the basis of the experience of unity in Christ—that is, in the horizon of a new life, transformed by God in his Spirit.
This results in a radical difference in the way of knowing. Faith requires a transformation of thought so that it may be open to the newness of Christ, allowing itself to be expanded beyond its usual limits: "But there is also a difference in the intellectual process: the Arians interpret the words and concepts used in Sacred Scripture and in ecclesial tradition according to the data of common experience, while Catholics take as their point of reference the Christian mystery as it is lived in the Church."
This explains why the concepts of father and son in relation to God and Jesus are understood in such different ways. As E. Bellini writes in his Introduction to J.H. Newman, Gli ariani del IV secolo (Jaca Book-Morcelliana, Milan 1981, pp. 21-27), where he paraphrases passages from Newman's Apologia pro vita sua, Catholics take a different starting point: "Catholics, on the other hand, take as their point of reference the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood in Christ as experienced by the baptized, and argue as follows: since the baptized live a new relationship with God the Father and with Jesus—a relationship radically different from that with their father and brothers according to the flesh, because thanks to it they are one with the Son and with the Father, while each retains his or her own unmistakable personality—the concepts of father and son, when referring to God, must be understood differently."
The formula of the Creed approved at Nicaea (325) and confirmed at Constantinople (381) is also recognized by other Christian confessions, in addition to the Catholic one. What are the main points of ecumenical convergence around it today, and what theological issues remain to be resolved?
The Nicene faith is the shared basis for ecumenical dialogue, the adequate expression of the apostolic faith, and as such is shared by Christians. However, there are different perspectives in considering the normative value of the profession of faith and, therefore, of the Creed's contents. In many Christian denominations, more space is given to the act of faith as an experience of new life and to the reading of Sacred Scripture, while Tradition, with its dogmas, takes a back seat, even though it is recognized.
Catholics and Orthodox Christians, on the other hand, attach great value to the Nicene symbol. However, the addition made by Catholics regarding the “Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son” has created a strong doctrinal division. This addition, which matured in the Latin world in the fifth century but was officially inserted into the Creed after the year 1000, is known as the “Filioque” question.
Nevertheless, the Nicene symbol remains a milestone of the common faith. This is surprising, especially considering that it initially created great divisions in Christianity and required a long synodal process of reception and dialogue, which ended with the Council of Constantinople in 381. In those years, a shared formulation of the Christian faith regarding the true face of God—the consubstantial and eternal Trinity—was shaped and forged.
Have there been recent references to the value of the Nicene symbol?
Yes, the ecumenical importance of the Nicene symbol was highlighted by Pope Francis in the Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee (Spes non confundit, n. 17, 2024): "The Council of Nicaea is a milestone in the history of the Church. The anniversary of its celebration invites Christians to join in praise and thanksgiving to the Most Holy Trinity and in particular to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, ‘of the same substance as the Father,’ who revealed this mystery of love to us. But Nicaea also represents an invitation to all Churches and ecclesial communities to continue on the path towards visible unity, never tiring of seeking appropriate ways to respond fully to Jesus' prayer (Jn 17:21).”
The Creed speaks of the “resurrection of the dead” and “eternal life.” How can we understand these truths of faith in a world dominated by a mentality strongly influenced by materialism and science? And how can we transmit them in a way that is understandable and meaningful to new generations?
The proclamation of the resurrection and the destiny of full life in Christ has been part of the original proclamation, or kerygma, from the beginning. Nicaea simply reaffirms an essential article of faith characteristic of the baptismal faith.
An interesting way to rediscover this proclamation as good news could be to recover the symbolic value of material reality, starting with the body. Material and corporeal reality refers to something else and pushes beyond itself. It is never just raw material to be used for one's own purposes, but a trace of something greater, a fragment of a vaster and interconnected totality, a network of dynamic, living realities pulsating with an energy full of information that organizes itself into expanding dynamics.
What we call the Son or Logos indicates this intelligible and symbolic network of meanings and references in which we live and scrutinize our mystery. The Risen One is the anticipation of the fulfillment of this life-filled cosmic process, as Pope Francis wrote in Laudato si' (2015) in nos. 79–83:
“The Spirit of God filled the universe with the potentiality that allows something new to always sprout from the very womb of things: ‘Nature is nothing other than the reason for a certain art, especially divine art, inscribed in things, by which things themselves move toward a specific end.’ […] The goal of the universe’s journey is found in the fullness of God, which has already been attained by the risen Christ, the center of universal maturity. In this way, we add another reason for rejecting any despotic and irresponsible domination of human beings over other creatures.
We are not the ultimate purpose of other creatures. Instead, they all advance, together with us and through us, toward the common goal, which is God, in a transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illuminates everything. Human beings, in fact, endowed with intelligence and love, and attracted by the fullness of Christ, are called to lead all creatures back to their Creator. Precisely because they have to do with matter, human beings should feel a tension toward fulfillment, already anticipated in the Risen One, who draws us to himself (cf. Jn 12:32).”