Nicaea and the Future of Christianity

Commemorating the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, this volume offers an original examination of the enduring impact of the single most famous gathering of Christians since the apostolic age.



Despite the longstanding historical and theological study of the Council of Nicaea, several central questions remain. Was Nicaea a theological event or a political one? What does it mean if it was both? Was Constantine’s intervention without precedent, or was he simply continuing a long-standing role of a Roman emperor who was responsible for leading religious cult (albeit now for a different faith tradition)? And what about the actual theological debates of Nicaea and our ability to understand them? Scholars might never exhaust this avenue of inquiry, despite the numerous studies in recent decades.

For many scholars and Christian activists today, the significance of Nicaea centers around the idea of conciliarity and what this has meant, both historically and theologically, for the Christian community. Why and how did Nicaea become foundational for thinking that the church operates in a conciliar manner? How did that work historically in different parts of the Christian world? And how should it work today?

Nicaea and the Future of Christianity offers a fresh, globally-diverse, ecumenically-minded approach to these questions with an impressive collection of both senior and junior scholars, reflecting a diversity of views within the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant traditions. The great benefit of this wide-ranging approach lies precisely in its ability to see the many ways in which Nicaea continues to speak to the future of Christianity.