AT THE beginning of this month, the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association celebrated the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea with an ecumenical pilgrimage to the sites of the first four General Councils of the Christian Church, all of which lie in the territory of modern-day Turkey.
Co-led by Metropolitan Nikitas, Orthodox Archbishop of Great Britain, and me, the party of more than 60 pilgrims included Orthodox, Anglicans, and Roman Catholics, among them the Bishop in Europe, Dr Robert Innes, and the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Revd Jonathan Baker.
The whole party was received with notable warmth by the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew. He recalled that when, in the negotiations leading up to the Treaty of Lausanne in 1922, there was a proposal to expel the Patriarchate from Constantinople/Istanbul, the Church of England was in the forefront of opposition to the plan. Memories are long in this part of the world. It was good to be reminded how effective Anglican diplomacy once was.
After Constantinople, site of the Council of 381, we crossed into Asia and visited Chalcedon, where the Fourth General Council was convened in 451.
Nicaea (Iznik) is some three hours from Istanbul. The modern city stands on the shores of Lake Iznik, beneath whose waters lie submerged the remains of the church in which, modern scholars believe, the Council of 325 was held very close to the imperial palace of the Emperor Constantine.
THE problem being addressed had arisen from the teaching of the Alexandrian priest Arius. Anxious to defend the faith in one God, Arius taught that Christ, although a divine being, was not on the same level as the Father and Creator of all. In the words of a popular Arian hymn about Christ, “there was when he was not.”
For centuries, however, as the Roman governor Pliny reported to the Emperor Trajan, Christians were singing hymns to Christ as to God. There was a tradition of prayer and devotion at stake. In the event, the Council concluded that Christ was of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father. Jesus Christ, who lived among us and gave his life on the cross, is not just “like God”, but is very God of very God.
The Emperor Constantine looked to the Council, which he convened to consolidate the unity of the Empire. For the 318 bishops who attended, it must have seemed a miracle. Some of them bore the scars of the torture that they had experienced in the last great official persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire; now, they were welcomed into the palace for a banquet under the protection of the imperial guard. The bishops were mainly from the Greek-speaking East, but there were representatives of the Bishop of Rome, as well as Ossius, Bishop of Cordoba, a friend of the Emperor.
The fruit of the work of the Council, largely confirmed by the subsequent gathering in Constantinople, still stands as a fundamental statement of the faith of the Undivided Church, which, in the form of the Nicene Creed, is proclaimed in Anglican churches week by week.
Preparations for the visit of the Patriarch on the actual anniversary were well advanced, although, alas, the hope that he would be accompanied by Pope Francis was overtaken by the latter’s death just after Easter. It will be an important sign of the priorities of Pope Leo XIV if he decides to make the journey to Nicaea with the Patriarch.
In their own journey, the pilgrims worshipped together in the Anglican Church of St John the Evangelist, in Izmir. The Chaplain, the Revd James Buxton, one of the organisers of the pilgrimage, was appointed a Canon in recognition of his outstanding service to ecumenism. The diocesan registrar even wore his wig.
UNUSUALLY, the celebration of the resurrection in 2025 fell on the same day for Churches of both the Western and Eastern traditions (News, 25 April). The Anglican and Eastern Churches Association was founded in 1864 to pray for the reunion of Christians East and West. As Archbishop Nikitas insisted, the third Christian millennium is full of promise for closer relations, but also of peril.
The prayers of John Mason Neale, and the other founders of the Association, have been partially fulfilled, but the situation faced by Christians in the ancient womb of our faith is challenging. The pilgrimage was itself a microcosm of the Christian world, and a reminder that mending the net of common belief that holds us together should be everybody’s urgent concern.
The rebirth of the “one holy catholic and apostolic Church” must come first from revisiting the sources. As Anglicans say in the Declaration of Assent, professing “the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds” is the foundation on which we must build.
This is not some species of antiquarianism, but essential if we are to read the signs of promise and peril in our own times and draw out of our common traditions something fresh, so that the world can see Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and — amid so many threats to human flourishing — the life.
The Rt Revd Lord Chartres is a former Bishop of London.
He reviews The Strand: A biography here.
