The REAL Truth about the Council of Nicaea | Jeremy Ryan Slate

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Christianity being legal in 313 is a is a really big deal because it had been this thing that was persecuted a number of times by a number of different emperors and then by 380 under Theodocious the great it becomes the official religion of Rome.

[00:00:14]>> So Aurelian's killed around 275 >> 274 >> 274 >> he rule he he rules for about 5 years dies in in 274 >> and then who takes over for him again?

[00:00:25]>> Tacitus Tacitus.

[00:00:26]>> He's not going to be an emperor for very long. He totally takes away all the monetary reform.

[00:00:31]>> You have a series of smaller emperors until Dialesian who's going to be ruling for from 284 to 305. So a little over 20 years.

[00:00:39]>> And then it's Constantine.

[00:00:40]>> Constantine is in 311 is when he wins the battle of Milvian Bridge. Uh and he's going to be emperor. I think 336 or 33 337 when he >> What happened at Novian Bridge again?

[00:00:51]>> So Milvian Bridge um is kind of where he has this Christian conversion. He sees um the kai and the row, the two Greek letters that stand for Christ in the sky.

[00:01:00]>> And he sees this this hears this phrase under this sign you will conquer. So he has his soldiers uh put this sign on their shields and he goes against um because basically what he's trying to do is be the emperor ruling all the empire again because there had been d so I guess to go backwards because once again they have to understand some stuff.

[00:01:20]Dialesian creates this system called the tetrarchy or rule by four. Two senior emperors, two junior emperors. So now we have four emperors. What Constantine wants to do is kind of be the only guy in charge. So it's down to just two emperors at that point. Him and a guy named Maxentius. So if he beats Maxentious, well now he's the guy in charge of everything again. He wants to be the one emperor to kind of rule everything. So at this battle of Milvian Bridge after seeing under this sign you will conquer he beats Maxentius and then in 313 the edict of Milan he makes Christianity legal because Christianity had been practiced and unless times were bad it was permitted.

[00:01:58]>> All right let's dig into this history a little bit because you mentioned earlier the different times where there were Christian persecutions. You mentioned the what was the one in 250 again?

[00:02:06]>> 250 was an adishious.

[00:02:08]>> Okay. So, so this uh I get one of his coins.

[00:02:11]>> This guy Jesus Christ exists within the Roman Empire >> down in the Holy Land. He's killed >> the point of Dishius in the 270s.

[00:02:22]>> Okay, cool. And look at that. Yeah, that one's hard, too. So Jesus dies in roughly 33 AD, >> which may have been off by a few years because the English monks that put the dating together, >> give or take, >> might have done their math wrong. So in that area 30 to 40 AD he does and the empire obviously continues along. He's also it's so interesting when you look at when his life was and all the stuff that was going on outside the holy land at that time the battle of Actum all this stuff is happening. No, >> that battle vacuum is 31, right?

[00:02:54]>> BC.

[00:02:55]>> That's >> Oh, that's BC.

[00:02:57]>> BC.

[00:02:57]>> Ah, Sorry. But there's still a lot going on in that.

[00:03:00]>> This would have been during the time period of the second emperor >> who was >> Tiberius.

[00:03:06]>> Tiberius. Okay. So, you have Rome massively expanding though in a relatively new what's now termed empire.

[00:03:12]And then in the midst of this empire, you have the Holy Land where you have >> and they would have called it a principe. They wouldn't have like called it empire.

[00:03:18]>> Okay. You have this guy Jesus who lives and then dies and then his story is written down over the next century by a bunch of people. It starts to get passed around underground. You were defining earlier what Roman religion looked like.

[00:03:32]It was a bunch of different gods that would be termed now like pagan gods >> and the Christians were like an underground viewed as like an underground kind of cult. But eventually it grew to if I'm remembering correct me correct me if I'm wrong it's like 20 20 to 25% of the empire by the time of Constantine was following Christian >> it's more to like 2 to 5% by >> two to five to five so it wasn't really it wasn't really a major >> like known religion at that point in time >> it was in there somewhere 25 two to five >> and Romans didn't quite understand the difference between Judaism and Christianity it was a little confusing to them so there's is um if you look at um I think around the year like around the year 80 AD so somewhere around there um Vespasian who's actually the emperor that builds um the amp the uh Flavian amphitheater which is what we call the coliseum >> um it's a little bit before that because he dies in I think around 78 or something like that but anyway he's writing to plenty plenty of the elder is writing writing to him and he's describing these early Christians and he's kind of confused by how to explain it. Well, they're they're not Jews, but they are Jews and um they um eat some guy's body. Like the the the letter is very confusing. So, they didn't quite understand Christianity, but unless times were bad, they permitted it. And that's how they were with most religions.

[00:04:59]>> Okay.

[00:05:00]>> So, that's kind of the scene you're sitting in is like, so you have the fire of Rome in 64 AD. Nero blames it on the Christians and there's a big Christian persecution. You have Dishius in the 250s that you mentioned earlier that he's trying to restore the peace of the gods. So he's going to persecute Christians, Jews, anybody that won't sacrifice to the Roman gods to bring back this peace of the gods. Dialesian is going to do that as well because he's trying to kind of in his mind bring the peace of the gods.

[00:05:26]>> So Christians are very often persecuted.

[00:05:29]So to go from Christianity being legal in 313 is a is a really big deal because it had been this thing that was persecuted a number of times by a number of different emperors and then by 380 under Theodocious the great it becomes the official religion of Rome. So you have this kind of over 313 to 380 this morphing from a pagan empire to a Christian empire.

[00:05:51]>> So Constantine has this moment where he believes Christianity helped him win this battle.

[00:05:58]>> Yeah. And I guess the thing I have to say about that is you have to realize that there's also political means at at at work too, right? If people are under a whole bunch of things, to bring them under one thing makes a lot more sense.

[00:06:10]So there's definitely the spiritual aspect of it, but I think there's also political aspects of it. So to say it's all one thing is um to not really look at the reality of it, >> right? Obviously, he's taking advantage of the situation for sure because he sees an opportunity, correct?

[00:06:24]>> And he sees a way to use power. But then there is the very highly debated council of Nika in 313.

[00:06:32]Well 313 to what? 325 is while they were deciding >> 325 I think was Nika. Don't don't quote me on that but I think it's around 325.

[00:06:39]>> Can we pull that up to make sure we got that right?

[00:06:42]>> What happened in 313?

[00:06:44]>> 313 was the edict of Milan which made Christianity legal.

[00:06:47]>> Yeah. Yeah. So the council na happens in 325 but basically there's a period that's what it is. There's a period from the edict of Milan to the council of Nika where this transitional period is happening >> when a lot of people had the wrong idea about what Nika was about and they often say oh the books of the Bible and things th those weren't done at the council of Nika those were done at later councils the council of Nika was just to decide well what do we believe in Christianity because there was a number of different sects of Christianity going around the biggest one was called Aryanism and it was a kind of molding of Christianity and Zoroastrianism >> and it was under this preacher named Aras. So they were trying to decide what what is kind of Orthodox Christianity versus what's heresy. That was really the purpose of the council of Na. Now the interesting thing about that is it doesn't exactly stamp out Aryan Christianity because Constantine dies and his son Constantius II ends up becoming an Aryan Christian. Mhm.

[00:07:46]>> So it is something that's going to take a while to change. But really the purpose of the council of Nika is to say what do we believe? You know what does Christianity believe? And the emperor attends but he's supposed to attend as a layman. Once again we don't know how much control he had over the situation.

[00:08:00]But it is this idea of getting all the bishops together and deciding well what does Christianity believe? Because we have this this heresy we're trying to handle. Well that's the strange part too. And like I've had people from all different backgrounds in here talk about the council na from my mannostic informant to Wes Huff which is like two very opposite ends of the spectrum and everyone in between >> but like you have this base story you have historical record written down you have a bunch of different historical records written down and again you said it wasn't decided at council na which ones they were like going to make the bible and all that.

[00:08:35]>> It definitely wasn't too long after that. I don't remember which council it was. It was Yeah.

[00:08:39]>> with the council na. It's fascinating to me that a bunch of guys got in the room 300 years later and said, "This is what we're going to decide it is and therefore that is >> this is the edict and that's what it's going to be."

[00:08:57]>> And it doesn't make the story fake or anything like that, but you wonder what aspects of the story were potentially changed there. and then it later% true right that's very >> true because I think that the problem is >> and and you can even look at the like medieval church about this if you look at like you know the Boura popes or you look at the Medici pop or the Medici popes and things like that you have to understand that people are corruptible right they're political they're also going to look at what makes them powerful that's right >> it doesn't make religion bad but it does mean that men can use it for their own means so I think there's a mix between people wanting to just handle beliefs and there's others are like, well, I want good politics, right? So, there there there is definitely a lot of different things that go into it. You know, it's a kaleidoscope of things a lot of times.

[00:09:44]>> Yeah. And I don't want to get, you know, it's tough with any ancient tradition that points to any organized religion to not get cynical about some of that. But when you see the term power and political power specifically mixed in with what is decided as a belief system, it does make you question.

[00:10:06]>> It once goes back to who writes your history, right? That's a big part of it.

[00:10:10]And that's >> it can be the difficulty in it. And I so that's why I think it's hard to say 100% divine inspiration with no human agency.

[00:10:18]There's always human agency, right? And humans are motivated by what's good for them.

[00:10:21]>> So I think it's looking at something for the good it can cause and also at the same time, you know, realizing that human agency can create some of the bad, you know.

[00:10:32]>> Thank you guys for watching the episode.

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