Commemoration of 318 Pontiffs participating in the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea

This council is the First Ecumenical Council in the history of the Church. It was the great religious discussion of the 4th century: a gathering of Christian bishops from throughout the world, convened by no less than on authority than the Roman Emperor Constantine I.

The reason for convening the council was because of the viewpoints of priest Arios of Alexandria, who denied the Divinity of Christ and thus the entire Christian doctrine was endangered. Archbishop Alexander of Alexandria was opposed to Arianism. In his sermons he stressed that God is eternal and the Son is eternal, Father and Son are of the same time. Father does not precede the Son even for a moment, Father has always existed and Son has always existed.

In 325 AD, a town in the Black-Sea province of Bithynia played host to 318 scholars of the church who met to deliberate on the burning theological questions of the day. The false teaching of Arios (Arianism) was condemned during the first Ecumenical Council and it was declared to be heresy.

We remember it today as the Council of Nicaea: the first attempt to forge a truly “ecumenical” Christianity, that is, a Christianity that encompassed all the world’s human habitations by coming to a consensus on church doctrine.

The most significant result of the council was the Nicene Creed: the first uniform expression of Christian doctrine. The Creed would be elaborated upon in subsequent councils, but its essential form, conceived during that historic gathering in Nicaea, remains the fundamental statement of orthodox faith, embraced by churches throughout the world and repeated during every Armenian badarak as the Havadamk (“We believe”).

The Armenian Church participated in the council, with St. Aristakes, the younger son of S. Gregory the Illuminator, representing his then ailing father.