The Nicean Creed

Now it is time to discuss the New Testament and how it came to be. Most of us who are familiar with the New Testament are familiar with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They will also be familiar with the writings of Paul, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Book of Revelation. What many people do not know is the process of how these works came to be in the New Testament, what books may have been excluded, and why. 

Again a history lesson is in order here. At the time of Christ, very little was written about Him. Then some time after He died, people realized that it would be important to write down the things He said and taught, and events that took place. These written records became the Gospels. However, it stands to reason that those four Gospels were not the only ones written about His life. And as history is proving, they weren't. Different authors remembered different things of what He said and taught and recorded them. Likewise of the Apostles. These records were all individual isolated writings and had not yet been collected to a singular volume. 

By the third century AD, Christianity was very fragmented. There were many different groups divided on different doctrines. Add to this that a Roman Emporor name Constantine claimed to have received visions and that he was a Christian. A political push ensued to define Christianity. So a council was held, which came to be know as the Counsil of Nicea, in which many church leaders, scholars, historians, and writers discussed what the official doctrine was going to be. 

While they were far from united,  several ideas were adopted. They decided that Christ was God himself in a mortal form, that he was not a mortal man, that He lived a celibate lifestyle, and that He passed his authority on to His Apostles who passed it on to the church. Many of the ideas have become a firm tradition in the Christian faiths even though there is little to no scriptural backing. And once they established these ideas, then only scriptures that aligned with these views were accepted. And over time scriptures that had not been accepted as canon were deemed to be heretical and were outlawed and such books were usually destroyed. 

One of the main areas where differing opinions occurred, and one of the main reasons this Counsil took place was the role of the church. On one side was the church, which claimed to have received authority which had been passed down to administer the saving ordinances to the people, and that the leadership of the church had authority to represent God here on the earth. On the other hand you had groups such as the Gnostics (derived from Greek it means knowing or ones who know) who claimed that people could establish personal relationships with Christ and receive instruction and teaching from Him without having to go through the hierarchy of the church. Each group had their religious texts which supported their view. Since the churches outnumbered the Gnostics and had political allies, ultimately the Gnostics disappeared as did their gospels. 

Today however fragments of many of these texts which were lost have been found and their contents call the actions and traditions and beliefs of the churches into serious question.