Neeson explained:
In the year 325 AD, Constantine called the world's bishops to the small town of Nicea outside the imperial city of Byzantium to grapple with the essence of Christian belief. . . . And the heart of the Nicean Creed and Christian faith is the Jesus was both God and man.
Ehrman commented:
The Council of Nicea was not called in order to decide whether Jesus was divine. It was called in order to decide in what way is Jesus divine. Is Jesus a secondary deity, a subordinate deity or, in fact, is he equal with God the Father. And the side that won out was the side that declared that Jesus was equal with God the Father, that he had always been God.
Further:
Constantine declared Christianity a legal religion and he stopped the persecution. But it's not correct to say that Constantine made Christianity the official Roman religion. In fact, he didn't make it the official religion. He did make it a favored religion and he started giving lands to Christian bishops and supplying funds for the building of churches and so forth. This made it a very popular thing to become a Christian, especially to become a Christian leader. So from going from being a persecuted small sect, it turned into an important religion that was favored by the emperor.
The program concluded by repeating the current claim that early Christianity was a diversity of belief systems and conceptions of the faith. The point of all that was made clear by Meyer's claim: "The struggle regarding orthodoxy and heresy never comes to an end and these battles about truth and inclusion and exclusion are with us to the present day."
To this day, yes. But this does not mean that there is no recognized orthodoxy – no standard and classical expression of the Christian faith. That standard was already in view when Jude instructed the church to contend for the faith – the faith once for all delivered to the church.
Programs like "After Jesus" can cause some Christians to wonder about the very foundations of the faith. But, in the beginning and in the end, the church must learn to trust the New Testament as the only authority for defining Christian faith and practice. The discovery and publication of "other gospels" should only serve to remind Christians of how thankful we must be for the four New Testament Gospels given by divine inspiration to the Church.
Christians should not be shaken by the recognition that centuries of development stand between, for example, the end of Jesus' earthly ministry and the adoption of the Nicean creed, along with the canonization of the New Testament. The orthodox faith was already defended and the truth about Jesus Christ was already confessed long before the Council of Nicea. Indeed, even as the New Testament books were already recognized, the true Gospel was already defended.
Christianity has nothing to fear from an honest investigation of the facts. Next time, let's hope that CNN invites some evangelical scholars to join their team of authorities.
But remember this – it is not the job of CNN to defend the Christian faith and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is the job of the church. Let's get to it.
Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., serves as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary—the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention and one of the largest seminaries in the world. He is a theologian and ordained minister, as well as an author, speaker and host of his own radio program The Albert Mohler Program.
