Was Jesus only declared God because of politics? That’s another claim that skeptics will bring up. It reached the public's imagination in the 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. There are many historical inaccuracies used as plot points in the book. One was a claim by a character, Ian Teabing, that until the Council of Nicea (AD 325) “Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless.” At Nicea, he says, Jesus was declared divine by “a relatively close vote.” Many readers of the novels have assumed its many statements of “fact”, including this one, were true. Is it?
William Lane Craig points to the work of several scholars as demonstrating that “within twenty years of the crucifixion a full-blown Christology proclaiming Jesus as God incarnate existed.”1 It is clear that Paul, who died around around AD 64-68, taught the deity of Christ (eg, Col 1:15-17, Phil 2:6-11). And it was not long before heresies appeared. The earliest we know of actually appears in the New Testament. A form of docetism, these people believed that Jesus only appeared to be human. This seems to be directly addressed by 1 John 4:2 ( “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.”) and possibly by some of Paul’s writings (eg, 1Tim 3:16).
There were groups who questioned the deity of Christ, though. One, the people that prompted the Council of Nicea, was called the Arians. Arius taught that Jesus was not fully God. Rather, he was the “firstborn over all creation” — the first and greatest of God’s creatures, a perfect being, but not equal to God the Father. Note that this is far from being a mere man. Arius revered Jesus but simply thought he was not quite God. In fact, his goal was not to “demote” Jesus but to treat the scriptures and the honor of God with respect. And his ideas found a lot of supporters. (They survive today in the Jehovah's Witnesses.)
The resulting drama was so divisive that Emperor Constantine insisted that the church leaders get together and work things out. So the Council of Nicea was called together. In a first for the Church, her leaders gathered together as guests of the Roman Empire with all the pomp and luxury that implies. Despite the claim of modern conspiracy theorists, the historical record shows that Constantine’s instruction to the assembled churchmen was basically “fix this” — not instructions on how to deify Christ.
After lengthy debates, the assembled bishops agreed on the terminology that we still use today, that the Son is of the same essence as the Father. Far from being a “close vote,” it was something like 300-2 (two sources disagree over exactly how many bishops were in attendance).2
We absolutely cannot let skeptics rewrite Church history. Though it was not entirely without debate, belief in the deity of Christ appeared early and was a part of Christian teachings for 300 years before Nicea and most certainly was not an invention of Constantine. It was a product of the teachings of the apostles and the Lord himself.
For more on this topic, Roger Olson and Adam English’s Pocket History of Theology offers a relatively short summary.
1 William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith
2 Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church vol. 3
Part of Christianity 101
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