Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt of Chapter 6 of Elder Alexander B. Morrison's book, Turning from Truth: A New Look at the Great Apostasy. We will publish this chapter in two parts. Reading and understanding the history and context of the Council of Nicea will help us understand the doctrines that emerged from this meeting and set the rest of the Christian world at odds with the teachings of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. This chapter is reprinted by permission of Deseret Book Company.

On 28 October a.d. 312, Constantine, one of the four “tetrarchs” who then ruled the Roman Empire, fought a battle that was, in retrospect, one of the turning points of history. Constantine was at the time a pagan who had grown up in the court of Diocletian, the major author of the “great persecution.” Bold, vigorous, a master politician, both supremely confident and competent, he had broken with the fragile ruling coalition and launched himself and his legions across the Alps into an invasion of Italy. Now, at age 28, after an already brilliant military career, Constantine stood at the threshold of momentous historical change.

His opponent, Maxentius, had many more troops but foolishly left the shelter of the walls of Rome and ventured out to give battle in the open field. It was a day, stated Eusebius, when God intervened miraculously in human affairs. ¹Constantine proclaimed that the day before the battle he and “all the troops” had seen a sign of the cross in the noonday sky, inscribed with the words in Latin “by this conquer.” That night, said Constantine 's biographer, Eusebius, Constantine was visited in his dreams by the figure of Jesus Christ, who bore the same symbol and commanded the emperor to use its likeness in the forthcoming battle with his foes. Constantine had his troops paint the symbol of the cross on their shields. The God of the Christians, he was sure, favored him.

The ensuing battle, known as the battle of the Milvian Bridge, soon was decided in Constantine 's favor. Maxentius, fleeing the scene, drowned in the Tiber, and Constantine established himself with Licinius (his brother-in-law) as joint emperor. The Edict of Milan, issued by the two of them the next year, a.d. 313, gave unrestricted freedom to the Christians and provided for complete restoration of all church property still remaining in the hands of the state or of individuals after the persecutions of the previous decade. Though it did not “establish” the church, the edict signaled the end of persecution. Whether out of gratitude, fear, or in hopes of future benefits, Constantine was beginning to pay back the debt he felt he owed to the God of the Christians.

By September a.d. 324, Constantine had defeated his remaining rival, Licinius, who soon turned up dead, professionally strangled, probably at Constantine 's order. Constantine was henceforth the sole ruler of the Roman world. From then on, there would be no “live and let live” relationship between the Christian God and the old gods of Rome. The empire would, over time, become Christian and Roman. Or so, at least, Constantine concluded. Constantine became the imperial patron of the Christians, but he chose to recognize only that group of them that was the largest and best organized, a group he called “the lawful and most holy Catholic [international] Church.” ² In time, he would suppress all others.

Soon vast benefits began to accrue to the church and its officials. Church officers became privileged, not persecuted. Members of the clergy became authorized to serve as civic officers, with the same jurisdiction as magistrates, able to hear cases as though they were a secular tribunal, including the right to release slaves from their servitude. Meeting places belonging to Christians were restored to them “without payment and without any demand for compensation,” and without any delay. Generous grants of money were provided to Christian ministries, and an Eastern bishop was advised not to “hesitate to ask . . . for whatever [funds] you find necessary.” But all of these benefits were available only to ministers of the “lawful and most holy Catholic Church.” All others got short shrift. Under Constantine 's patronage, the boundaries of the orthodox faith were being established—in fits and starts, to be sure—and state-church relationships that would determine Western history for a thousand years were beginning to jell.

Historians have debated endlessly over whether Constantine truly was converted to Christianity, or whether he simply used it for his own political purposes. ³Without question, Constantine believed he had found in Christ an all-powerful patron, whose favor he would be wise to seek after and maintain. Yet he continued, at least initially, to support paganism, even though he may have had a personal conviction that the Christian God favored him. His personal beliefs remain controversial, elusive. Was he the first Christian emperor or just a shrewd opportunist? Perhaps he exhibited elements of both. He cared little about the theological differences between various Christian groups; though he “favoured Christianity among the many religions of his subjects, . . . [he] did not make it the official or ‘established' religion of the empire.” ⁴What he wanted was peace and quiet in the empire, with his own position fully secure. If the Christians could help him attain and maintain necessary unity and domestic peace, so much the better. Constantine was quite prepared to suppress dissent, with ferocious intensity if need be, in the interest of imperial unity, and, not least, in the maintenance of his own imperial position and power. With Constantine , other considerations came second. He treated Christian bishops as though he owned them: summoning them, enforcing whatever opinions the majority of them decided upon, less interested in what was decided than that unity prevailed. Christian doctrine was never allowed to take precedence over affairs of state or political advantage.

There is no doubt Constantine was impressed by many aspects of Christian morality. Their peacefulness, their humble acceptance of the trials and troubles of mortality in the hope of happiness beyond the grave, their emphasis on faithful marriage and family life, their submission to the secular power—these and other admirable qualities could, Constantine knew, be of great value to him in purifying, strengthening, and reinvigorating the empire, even restoring its ancient virtues and discipline.

Throughout his reign Constantine, a consummate politician, continued to play to both pagan and Christian sensibilities. In his exhortations he used vague monotheistic language that both pagans and Christians could embrace. He was careful not to antagonize the army, which remained largely non­Christian. He restored pagan temples as he built Christian churches. He continued to pay public homage to the sun, sol invictus. In dedicating his new capital, Constantinople, he used both pagan and Christian rites.

But over time, as his power base became more secure, Constantine came out more and more in favor of the Christian cause. He gradually shifted the allegiance of the empire from the old “immortal gods” of Rome to the Christian God. The cynic would say that the Christians won the day because of imperial patronage. But in truth the Christian message had broad mass appeal. Many who had hung back in harder times, fearful of persecution, now pressed for baptism and sought public allegiance with Christianity. It was now safe to do so.

Money was given to needy Christian congregations, and Christian bishops were authorized to distribute food to the poor from the imperial grain supply. Churches were given vast endowments of land and wealth, and church lands were exempted from taxation. Bequests to the church were legalized and encouraged. It became both politically correct and profitable to be Christian.

At the same time, however, meetings of heretical Christians were banned, and the rights of the Jews were restricted, as Christian prejudices against the Jews became translated into legal liabilities for the latter.

Constantine 's personal life was hardly in keeping with Christian morality. Though he got along well with his mother, Helena, Constantine ordered the execution of his son, Crispus, his nephew Licinianus, and his second wife, Fausta. ⁵After their deaths, his mother, Helena, emerged as the doyenne of the imperial court. She championed Christianity and traveled to Palestine distributing gifts, claiming to have found the “true cross.” At the end of his life, after reigning thirty years, Constantine was baptized, a sacrament he purposely had deferred until that time, in recognition of the compromises required of rulers and in hopes he could leave this world washed clean from his sins. Historian Will Durant indicates there are “signs that remorse weighed heavily on his declining years.” Still, give him full credit for associating an aging empire with a vigorous young religion. As Durant notes: “By [ Constantine 's] aid Christianity became a state as well as a church, and the mold, for fourteen centuries, of European life and thought.” ⁶

The Facade of Christian Unity Is Shattered: The Donatist Schism

Constantine soon became deeply involved in matters of discipline within the church, matters that had there been apostolic direction would have been dealt with locally by internal administrative procedures, not by an autocratic and heavy­handed emperor who was not even a church member. Pent­up tensions within the Christian church in North Africa burst into the open, focusing on how to deal with clergy who had recanted their Christian allegiance under earlier Roman persecution. A volatile and zealous priest named Donatus, who had himself survived torture and imprisonment by the Romans, but had not been broken by them, opposed the return of priests and bishops he considered traitors, men who had succumbed to Roman coercion, perhaps even betrayed others. He felt they had lost their ability to perform their priestly functions in a valid manner, and were, in truth, a stench in the nostrils of God. Corrupt clergymen, the Donatists believed, could not function as God's representatives. In their view of things, even lay persons who had lapsed during the persecution would have to show extraordinary repentance before they could return to the Christian fold.

Since large numbers of Christians, clergy and lay persons alike, had folded under Roman pressure, many bishops felt this rigorous and puritanical position was more than a little extreme. Most just wanted to put the bad times behind them, to forgive and forget. After all, most clergy had themselves made compromises of one sort or another, to save their own skins. Behind that view was the dubious principle that a priest's personal holiness had little to do with his right to perform priestly functions. The Donatists just couldn't embrace that idea.

The bad feelings between the “betrayers” (the traditores ) and those who had remained faithful, compounded by interprovincial rivalries and personal bickerings, soon threatened to tear the North African church apart. Caecilian, bishop at Carthage, was accused by other bishops of having been consecrated by a bishop who had himself been a traditore, and a council of other bishops deposed Caecilian and elected another in his place. The replacement bishop supposedly was free from the taint of having been a traitor to the Christian cause. The Donatists set up rival bishops whenever the existing prelates did not meet their exacting standards.

Dismayed by the thought that Christianity might not be the unifying force he had hoped for, Constantine got into the middle of the fight. He appointed a panel of bishops from Gaul and Italy to investigate the matter and report back to him. Their report, which favored the opponents of the Donatists, was appealed on the basis that many of the “judges” had themselves been traitors in previous years. So Constantine asked another tribunal, consisting of 33 bishops and 13 other clergy, with judges personally selected by him, to meet in a.d. 314 at Arles, in Gaul. This was the first general council ever held in the Western church, and the first that gathered under the patronage of the emperor. Their report, which again went against the Donatists, brought no peace. Constantine was angry. Why, oh, why couldn't these Christians just get along together? Didn't they understand that lack of unity might offend God and weaken Constantine 's favor with the Almighty? He took matters into his own hands, declaring that as supreme magistrate and pontifex maximus (chief priest) of the empire, he would make the decision himself. He, and he alone, would serve as God's representative. He would have unity even if he had to force it on those too obstinate to reach it of their own accord. He ruled against the Donatists, confiscating their property and exiling their leaders.

But most of the North African bishops were neither impressed nor cowed. They viewed Constantine as one who used money and gifts to undermine the faithful. The state, they felt, remained in hostile relationship to the church, despite all the flattery and bribery used by Constantine. His resort to force had failed, not just because the North Africans disliked being pushed around by him, but also because the North African church felt that profound social and religious grievances existed between it and other parts of the Christian West. Five years later, Constantine threw in the towel. Never again would he try to beat into submission a dissident faction. The Donatists continued to prosper in Africa, but the unity of the Western church was shattered. The power of the civil authority had been used to enforce orthodoxy, and that not for the last time.

A century after the controversy, the Donatist and mainstream churches of North Africa remained locked in civil war. Augustine, the celebrated bishop of Hippo in the fifth century, advocated violent suppression of the Donatists, including mass killings if needed. Only when invading Vandals suppressed all North African churches, Donatists and orthodox alike, did the conflict end.

Constantine soon faced the most challenging threat to orthodoxy in the first thousand years of church history, a controversy that swirled through society for centuries, dividing churches and communities, fostering lynch mobs, and raising tempers to the boiling point in a dozen parts of the empire. Around a.d. 318, Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, heard that Arius, a popular cleric in a wealthy parish in that city, had been preaching that the Christ, the Word of God, was not only subordinate to the Father, but having been “begotten” must necessarily have had a beginning of existence, and a time, therefore, when He was not. If the Word was made ex nihilo (from nothing), He must then be a “creature,” and not as is the Father “alone unbegotten, alone eternal and alone without beginning,” as Arius said. ⁷Such a “creature,” Alexander feared, could not have been fully God, and certainly would not be capable of redeeming mankind.

Heresy of this magnitude could not be permitted. Alexander convoked a council of bishops, which condemned Arius and exiled him. But Arius had important and influential friends, and strong pro-Arian camps soon arose, particularly in the Eastern churches in the Roman provinces of Bithynia, Asia, and Cyrenaica. Many bishops there had no quarrel with Arian ideas.

Constantine soon heard of the troubles in Egypt. His concerns were not theological but related to the need for unity. Christianity was to be the single religion of the empire, and that being so, Constantine wanted squabbling and bickering to stop. Frivolous debates between rival philosophers (which is what Constantine considered Arius and Alexander to be) and hashing and rehashing trivial (to Constantine ) theological differences had no place in the emperor's agenda: he wanted sweet dreams at night, and glorious peace each day.

Constantine, ever ready to settle disputes, by force if needs be, decided to act as mediator. A universal church council would do the trick, he felt. Every problem afflicting the church, including the question of Arius, the dating of Easter, and the best way to deal with schismatic groups could then be settled. And once settled, unity, blessed unity, would at last prevail, and Constantine 's troubles would be over. Or so he thought.

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Don't miss tomorrow's conclusion to this chapter excerpt from Elder Alexander Morrison's Book: Turning from Truth: A New Look at the Great Apostasy. In part 2 of today's excerpt you will be carefully walked through what really happened at the great council of Nicea.

1 Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, 291–96.

2 Ibid., 323–24, 326–27.

3 See Sordi, The Christians and the Roman Empire, 133–43.

4 Chadwick, The Early Church, 127.

5 See Durant, Caesar and Christ, 663.

6 Ibid., 664.

7 Quoted in Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 494.