"The First Ecumenical Council was held in Nicea in A.D. 325 and set a pattern for all later Ecumenical Councils. It primarily addressed the issue of Arianism (producing the original version of the Nicene Creed) and set a universal pattern for calculating the date of Pascha—the Paschalion. It is also referred to as the First Council of Nicea."It should be noted that even though this first council was called by St. Constantine - who was emperor at the time - it was for unity among the empire that was the driving force. St. Constantine was not trying to make Christianity in to some new kind of religion filled with paganism. By this time in Church history a few heresies had popped up, most notably Arianism. This was causing disunity in the Church and the First Ecumenical Council helped put an end to Arianism.
(Note I edited this after I was informed that I was mistaken about the dating of Pascha)
Another issue resolved during this council was the calculation for the dating of Pascha (Easter), which the Orthodox Church still uses today. This was not a date set for Pascha but rather a way for the early Christians to celebrate feasts at the same time.
This council is know as the First Council of Nicea because it was the first council to be held in the town of Nicea. The Second Council of Nicea was the Seventh Ecumenical Council - the one that defended the use of Icons in the Church and over threw iconoclasm (which will be discussed slightly in the part two of the above link).
4 comments:
A blessed feast! A minor correction in that the Paschalion is not derived from Nicea: all that Nicea ruled was that we should feast on the same day and that we shouldn't use the Jewish Calendar (which had recently been reformed) to calculate the date.
Thank you, and I hope you had a blessed feast as well.
I thank you for the correction, but I was basing what I said from my sources (mainly being the OrthodoxWiki link I provided). I will seek out other sources and correct my post appropriately.
I also read your blog post today I have some thoughts that I will leave in a comment over at Doxos.
Another point of interest on the dating of Pascha:"Some times Pascha falls in line with other churches' dating of Easter and sometimes it does not as a result of the Orthodox Church still using the formula derived from the First Council."still is even more erroneous than Huw points out- not only did the canons of the council not set a specific date for Easter, but the Orthodox Church and the Western Church follow the same "formula" but the reason our Pascha celebration can be off by almost several months is that the Orthodox calendar is 13 days later- thus, a Pashcal full moon that falls in the West on March 22nd doesn't fall on the Orthodox calendar at all- the next such full moon which will coincide with the Julian Calendar is 28 days later.
Noted, and I will make some changes.
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