Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

Just as the empire came together politically, however, a new and deadly heresy threatened to permanently rip it apart. It started in Egypt when a young priest named Arius started teaching that Christ was not fully divine and was therefore inferior to God the Father. Such a teaching struck at the heart of the Christian faith, denying its main tenet, which held that Christ was the incarnate word of God, but Arius was a brilliant speaker, and people began to flock to hear him speak. The church was caught completely off guard and threatened to splinter into fragments. Sporadically persecuted and until recently driven underground, the church was decentralized, a loose confederation of local congregations scattered throughout the empire. As the successor of Saint Peter, the bishop of Rome was given a special respect, but he had no practical control, and as the New Testament writings of Paul attest, the different churches had a strong tendency to go in their own directions. With no real hierarchy and little organization, the church had no means of definitively responding to Arius’s teachings, and the controversy soon raged out of control.

It’s typical of Constantine’s soldier mentality that he thought he could simply order the warring factions to stop fighting. Completely misjudging the depth of feeling involved, he wrote to the bishops in Egypt with a painful naïveté, telling them that their differences were “insignificant” and asking them to just work them out and live in harmony. When it became apparent that they could do no such thing, he decided on a radical solution. The problem with Christianity, he thought, was that it suffered from a distinct lack of leadership. The bishops were like the old senators of Republican Rome—always arguing but never coming to a consensus unless threatened. Thankfully, Augustus had solved that problem for the empire, allowing the senators to continue to talk but dominating them by his presence when things needed to get done. Now it was Constantine’s job to rescue the church. Under his watchful gaze, the church would speak with one voice, and he would make sure the world listened.

Announcing a great council, Constantine invited every bishop in the empire to attend, personally covering the cost of transportation and housing. When several hundred clerics had arrived at the Asian city of Nicaea, the emperor packed them into the main cathedral and on May 20, 325, opened the proceedings with a dramatic plea for unity. Constantine wasn’t particularly concerned with which side of the argument prevailed as long as there was a clear victor, and he was determined to swing his support behind whichever side seemed to be in the majority. The council started off with minor matters, discussing the validity of baptisms by heretics and setting the official manner to calculate the date of Easter, before turning to the burning question of the relationship between the Son and the Father. At first all went smoothly, but when it came time to write up a statement of belief, neither side seemed inclined to compromise, and the proceedings threatened to break down.

The main problem was that the proposed word used to describe Christ in Greek was homoiusios—meaning “of like substance” with the Father. This was, of course, the Arian position that the two members of the trinity were similar not equal, and the other bishops objected to it strenuously. Seeing that the Arians were clearly in the minority, Constantine turned against them and proposed a solution. Dropping an “i,” he changed the word to homousios—meaning “of one substance” with the Father. The Arians were upset with this ringing condemnation of their view, but with the emperor (and his soldiers) standing right there, they could hardly show their displeasure. The Arian bishops started to waver, and when Constantine assured them that equality with the Father could be interpreted in its “divine and mystical” sense, they bowed to the inevitable. The emperor had given them a way out—to interpret homousios however they wanted to—and the Arians left the council to return to their homes with their dignity intact. Arius was condemned, his books were burned, and Christian unity was restored.