Public Lecture

As part of the ‘Byzantine Month’ program at the Resurrection of Christ Church in Kogarah, Father Anastasios Bozikis, Associate Lecturer in Church History at St Andrew’s, offered a lecture on Thursday, 15 May on the legacy of the First Ecumenical Synod in Byzantium. By exploring the political and historical context at the dawn of the Byzantine Empire, Fr Anastasios demonstrated to the audience how the Church interacted with the Emperor to convene a synod like no other and overcome the threat of heresy.

In 325 AD, heresy came in the person of Arius, who was a priest of the Church of Alexandria claiming that Jesus Christ was a creation of God and therefore different in essence from the eternal Father. The Emperor, St Constantine the Great, convened the First Ecumenical Synod in Nicaea, and the bishops of the Church, East and West, declared that the Son and Word of God is of one essence with the Father, true God of true God. In doing so, they composed the symbol of our faith, the Nicene Creed. And yet, they added nothing new to the revelation of Truth. They simply sought to shed a little light on the mystery of God and crystallise the thinking of the Church regarding this mystery.