Dan Brown's Assertions about
the Council of Nicaea
In the Da Vinci Code Dan Brown makes some assertions about what The Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) concluded about Jesus' divinity. In the process he misrepresents the facts of history and makes up his own wishful alternative history in the process. Because he words his assertions like hollow sound bites for the evening news or a political rally he deceives and leads astray many people who haven't studied early Church history. In a nutshell he believes that before the Council was held Christians viewed Jesus as just a man, not God. Then Emperor Constantine hijacked Christianity for political purposes forcing the Council to determine that Jesus was divine.
In this article I address his assertions, quoting the actual dialogs in his book, providing the page number where it is found. I also include the chapter number in case the text appears on different page numbers in future editions. Second, I show how he is wrong. I know that many people are only seeking a brief answer and will be satisfied. For those desiring more explanation I provide links to other resources that give more detailed background information to support my answer.
Assertion: Jesus was "voted" to be divine at the Council of Nicea
Concerning the belief that Jesus is divine Dan Brown asserts that Jesus' early followers did not originally believe He was divine. Instead he was "voted" to be divine by the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. Furthermore, the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine convened the Council in a brilliant political move to consolidate his power.
In Teabing's little pseudo-history lesson to Sophie about the Council of Nicea he declares,
"until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet...a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal." (Sophie replies in shock) "Not the Son of God?" "Right," Teabing said. "Jesus' establishment as 'the Son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea." (Chapter 55, p. 233)
A little later in the conversation Teabing even uses hyperbole to stretch the truth about the Council's timing saying,
"Constantine upgraded Jesus' status almost four centuries after Jesus' death." (Chapter 55, p. 234)
Answer
Since Jesus died around 33 AD simple math would put the Council of Nicea (325 AD.) only 292 years after His death rather than "almost four centuries." But this is hardly the worst mistake Brown/Teabing makes. He shows he has either not read any actual history books or completely ignores them. Either way, what he says is pure fabrication. The idea that Jesus was not seen as divine before the Council of Nicea simply cannot be supported by the facts. Teabing's claim that "the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity..." (Chapter 55, p. 233) is simply wrong. Jesus' earliest followers, including the Apostles believed He was divine and worshipped Him as such.1 The majority of Christians and their leaders of the second and third centuries believed He was divine. Most leaders of Gnostic and other heretical groups believed He was divine but denied His humanity. To deny this fact is to ignore history.
The Council of Nicea did not gather to decide whether or not Jesus was divine.2 Everyone there already believed Jesus was God. The issue at stake was whether Jesus was of the same divine substance as God the Father and God the Holy Spirit or of a different divine substance. Another similar question was this: Did God the Father create God the Son or did Jesus always exist with the Father? This is called the Arian Controversy named after Arius, the leader of the minority view. Arius was a very devout Christian who held Jesus Christ in very high regard but wanted to uphold the Old Testament teaching that God is one God (Deut. 6:14). He thought that to say Jesus was also God who had no beginning would be to say there are two Gods, not one. Arius taught that Jesus, as the Son of God, was created by God the Father and therefore must be subordinate to Him. He believed that although Jesus was divine He did not exist throughout eternity with the Father. In other words, He was divine but not of the same divine essence as the Father.
This might all seem like just a game of semantics or splitting of hairs, but it was and still is a distinction of utmost importance. The early church struggled to understand the dual nature of Christ, that is, the ability for Him to be both God and man. They also struggled to understand the nature of the Holy Spirit, an issue that was sidestepped at this Council. The reason it took them so long to figure out the right answers was because they were still influenced by the Greek philosophy of subordinationism--the idea that some deities came from other deities and were therefore subordinated to them. In one sense the controversies were bad, often taking tragic turns banishing or executing dissenters, but God in His sovereignty used the controversies to finally steer men to a clear understanding of His triune nature. God's triune nature means essentially that Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit are all distinct personal Gods but share the same substance and will to such a full and perfect degree they are one. For a more detailed explanation of this please read The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity
The second idea in this assertion is that Constantine bullied the Council to vote the way he wanted them to in order to consolidate his political power. Unfortunately, records of the actual proceedings have not survived. What we know about the proceedings are from letters written by those who attended. Even so, these sources still give us plenty to work from. The Arian and anti-Arian factions came to a stalemate at which point Constantine intervened. He persuaded but did not force the Council to vote on the wording of the Nicene Creed saying that Christ is "of the same substance with the Father." The Arians could not accept this term. Certainly, some of the bishops might have voted with Constantine because of his prestige and fears of what might happen if they didn't. However, this could not have been the case with all of them. Many of them lived through earlier persecutions and proved that they were willing to die for what they believed was true. If they did not agree with him he would not have been able to bully all of them. Incidentally, only Arius and two of the council's bishops out of the 200 that attended dissented. Therefore, Teabing calling it "a relatively close vote at that" is simply wrong.
It is true that Constantine was motivated by a desire to hold his new empire together, but this controversy was not the only threat to that. He had just won a civil war started by his power hungry co-emperor and brother-in-law Licinius. He also realized that the success of his rule would involve the ever increasing and highly organized Christian population. According to research done by sociologist Rodney Stark, the population of Christians would have been around 12 million or 20 percent of the population of the Roman Empire around the time of the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. They were growing at a rate of about 40 percent every 10 years. At this rate a full half of the population would have been Christian in 350 A.D. Some have asserted wrongly that the new Christian Roman Empire forced Christianity on the masses; however, as Stark puts it, "Constantine's conversion would better be seen as a response to the massive exponential wave in progress, not as its cause."3
In addition, working with the Christian population rather than trying to suppress it was the wisest strategy. Constantine was not the first to discover this. The persecutions by the emperor Diocletian in 303 and his successor Galerius in 305 failed to limit Christianity's growth and influence. Galerius, in 311, and then Constantine, in 313, made edicts of toleration that set official state policy in a new direction of tolerance toward Christianity. Yet that was not enough. The growing doctrinal divisions in the Christian population were a threat to the stability of the Empire. Something had to be done to reunite them.
But if consolidating power was all Constantine was concerned about, why would he have patiently stuck out the whole six months of deliberations at the Council of Nicea? Certainly he had other pressing matters as Emperor. He demonstrated his great patience and a conciliatory strategy more than a tyrannical iron fist. Given the enormous weight of responsibility as Emperor it is amazing that he took the time and trouble to become an expert in the issues involved and to attend the Council. This shows how important the crisis had become. It also shows how large a part of the population was Christian. In addition, regardless of his motivation, he conceived and proposed a brilliant theological solution. His understanding of the divine nature of Jesus Christ is the position that theologians agree with to this day, not because they have simply been indoctrinated and can't think for themselves, but because it is the best answer to a tough question. This does not justify the atrocities he committed to deal with dissenters over the course of the rest of his life, and it does not justify the Crusades or the Inquisition or any other such actions of later Church leaders. It does serve, however, as a good example of how God is sovereign in the affairs of imperfect men.
Conclusion
When we take the time to study the ancient documents it is not difficult to conclude that Dan Brown has no idea what he is talking about. He obviously did not do much objective research or worst, he is deliberately misrepresenting history for his own theological and political purposes. The belief that Jesus' is divine did not originate with Constantine and the Council of Nicea. Jesus' followers acknowledged His divinity from the very beginning of the Christian movement.
I feel bad for Sophie Neveu as she is being deceived by Teabing's false history. I feel even worst for the mass public that reads The Da Vinci Code. Sophie's literary purpose for existence seems to be to symbolically represent the average reader who is ignorant of history. Yet she is being taught a false history. All this is deceiving the masses and it is a travesty.
References
1 Hurtado, Larry W. Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2003. 2.
2 See the following references on the Council of Nicea and the role of Constantine:
Davidson, Ivor J. The Birth of the Church: From Jesus to Constantine, A.D. 30-312. Consult. eds. John D. Woodbridge and David Wright. Series ed. Tim Dowley. Vol. 1 of The Baker History of the Church. Grand Rapids: Baker. 2004.
Eusebius. The History of the Church. 1965. Trans. and Introd. G. A. Williamson. New York: Barnes & Noble. 1995.
Hinson, E. Glenn. The Early Church: Origins to the Dawn of the Middle Ages. Nashville: Abingdon. 1996.
Smith, M. A. From Christ to Constantine. Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity P. 1971.
3 Stark, Rodney. The Rise of Christianity: a Sociologist Reconsiders History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1996. 6, 7, 10.
Online resources
The following webpage contains the Nicene Creed and explains each phrase:
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/history/creed.nicene.txt
Copyright 2005. Gary C. Burger and New Media Ministries. This article may be reproduced and distributed freely as long as it is done so in its entirety. If quoted it must be properly cited as a reference.
