LUTHER 1527 The Council of Nicaea, 325

LUTHER 1527

That I should show visibly with eyes and finger that Christ’s body is at the same time in heaven and at table, as the fanatics ask of us,  (Oecolampadius: “The nature of a body is to be in one place. A body which can be at the same time in many places will not be regarded as a true body. A body has location, unless it can be shown otherwise from Scripture.” Reasonable Answer. St. L. 20, 603.) of course I cannot do. -Martin Luther


The Council of Nicaea, 325

Thus ended the council of Nicaea.
It is the first and most venerable of the ecumenical synods, and next to the apostolic council at Jerusalem the most important and the most illustrious of all the councils of Christendom.
Athanasius calls it “a true monument and token of victory against every heresy;”
Leo the Great, like Constantine, attributes its decrees to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and ascribes even to its canons perpetual validity;
the Greek church annually observes (on the Sunday before Pentecost) a special feast in memory of it.
There afterwards arose a multitude of apocryphal orations and legends in glorification of it, of which Gelasius of Cyzicus in the fifth century collected a whole volume.
The council of Nicaea is the most important event of the fourth century,
and its bloodless intellectual victory over a dangerous error is of far greater consequence to the progress of true civilization, than all the bloody victories of Constantine and his successors.
It forms an epoch in the history of doctrine,
summing up the results of all previous discussions on the deity of Christ and the incarnation,
and at the same time regulating the further development of the Catholic orthodoxy for centuries.
The Nicene creed, in the enlarged form which it received after the second ecumenical council,
is the only one of all,
the symbols of doctrine which,
with the exception of the subsequently added filioque,
is acknowledged alike by the Greek,
the Latin,
and the Evangelical churches,
and to this, day, after a course of fifteen centuries,
is prayed and sung from Sunday to Sunday in all countries of the civilized world.
The Apostles’ Creed indeed,
is much more generally used in the West,
and by its greater simplicity and more popular form is much better adapted to catechetical and liturgical purposes;
but it has taken no root in the Eastern church;
still less the Athanasian Creed,
which exceeds the Nicene in logical precision and completeness.
Upon the bed of lava grows the sweet fruit of the vine.
The wild passions and the weaknesses of men,
which encompassed the Nicene council,
are extinguished,
but the faith in the eternal deity of Christ has remained,
and so long as this faith lives,
the council of Nicaea will be named with reverence and with gratitude.
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH Schaff Volume 3 NICENE AND POST-NICENE CHRISTIANTY A.D. 311-600
(Pages 630-332)