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Bossey conference towards Nicaea

“Towards Nicaea 2025: Exploring the Council’s Ecumenical Significance Today” was held at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey.

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By Stephen G. Brown*

Titled Towards Nicaea 2025: Exploring the Councils Ecumenical Significance Today,” the 5-7 November conference was held at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, a centre for ecumenical formation, education, and study near Geneva.

The deep concern at Nicaea to be faithful to the unity of God and to the unifying love of God is still a powerful and inspiring witness,” said Rev. Dr Susan Durber, WCC president from Europe and former moderator of the WCCs Commission on Faith and Order, in a keynote address. 

The Council of Nicaea in 325 CE was the first gathering of bishops representing the whole of Christendom, who met under the patronage of the Roman Emperor Constantine to seek consensus on the central meaning of Christian belief. 

Their grappling for language to speak of a unity that is rooted in the unity of God and of Gods actions can still inspire us to deepen our own visions and recalibrate our own ecumenism,” she said.

Jointly hosted by the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey and the WCC Commission on Faith and Order, the conference gathered more than 130 participants online and in person - academics, church representatives, pastors, as well as the graduate students at the Ecumenical Institute.

With six keynote addresses, and more than 40 papers that were presented, participants addressed issues such as the contribution of Nicaea to ecumenical dialogue, its relationship to interfaith dialogue, the role of women at the Council of Nicaea, reimagining the Nicene Creed from the perspective of gender justice, and the relationship between Christian faith and empire.

The Council of Nicaea led to the later adoption of the Nicene Creed, which is still recited in churches today as an affirmation of faith in the triune God, and participants reflected on the significance of the Council of Nicaea and the Nicene Creed for Christian unity today.

In his comments at the conclusion of the three-day conference, Rev. Prof. Dr Benjamin Simon, said that the conference had helped demonstrate hope that the Nicene Creed offers possibilities for the liberation of marginalized and oppressed people, to work for integration and not segregation. Simon is dean of the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey and director of the WCC Commission on Ecumenical Education and Formation.

One of the outcomes of the council, as noted by Dr Johannes Oeldemann, a Roman Catholic theologian from Germany, in his keynote address, was setting a common date for Easter for all churches, rather than churches celebrating the resurrection of Jesus on different dates.

However, Eastern and Western Christianity now calculate the date of Easter differently, and their celebrations often do not coincide, although all churches will celebrate Easter on the same day in 2025.

The coming decade offers a good opportunity to dedicate our ecumenical efforts to the complex challenge of finding a common Easter date, because the calendar will allow to celebrate Easter together every three years,” said Oeldemann, director of the Johann-Adam-Moehler-Institute for Ecumenism in Paderborn.

Not least because of the involvement of the Emperor Constantine, the Council of Nicaea marked the transition from Christians being a persecuted minority to being recognized by the Roman state.

However, the primary concern of the emperor at the Council of Nicaea was not theological but political, to establish a unified Christianity that would contribute to the unity of the empire, argued Rev. Dr Kathleen M. Griffin, professor of church history in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

The legacy that remained for centuries within Western Christianity was this marriage between creed, sword, and empire that occurred at the Council of Nicaea,” she said, with particular reference to South America, converted to Christianity at sword point.”

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Bossey toward Nicaea conference

Rev. Prof. Dr Benjamin Simon, dean of the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey and director of the WCC Commission on Ecumenical Education and Formation, and Dr Andrej Jeftic, director of the WCC Faith and Order Commission.

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In his keynote address, Prof. Dr Charidimos Koutris of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki suggested that a renewed emphasis on the human nature of Jesus Christ as discussed at Nicaea could offer a solid basis for further ecumenical collaboration, and bringing together people of every faith.

The question as to what extent a creed developed in fourth-century Europe is able to be appropriated in different languages, histories, cultures, and traditions, was at the centre of the reflections of Prof. Dr Wong Wai Ching Angela of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

If Christianity is to change its identity from being a resident alien to a local in a non-western world, such as Asia, it must become incarnate in the life and thought of the local context and culture,” Wong stated.

If we accept that Nicene Creed was developed out of a particular context with a particular cultural environment,” she said, it should be facilitating a continued conversation between performing symbolic acts of Church unity and a conscious integration of the diverse practices of the various churches in different cultures.”

The colonial and decolonial tensions in the processes and outcomes of the Council of Nicaea were explored by Prof. Dr Masiiwa Ragies Gunda in his address, in which he underlined the reality of the existence of coloniality in the post-Nicene Christian communities, especially when combined with forms of Euro-Christianities.”

However, the outcomes of the Council of Nicaea also included decolonial impulses, even if unintended, and all Christian communities need to engage in an intentional reappraisal of the Nicene Creed for a decolonizing ecumenical movement,” said Gunda, WCC programme executive for overcoming racism, xenophobia, and related discrimination. 

The culmination of the WCCs activities in what it is calling the Ecumenical Year 2025 will be the Sixth World Conference on Faith and Order in October 2025, gathering near Alexandria in Egypt on the theme Where now for visible unity?” 

* Dr Stephen G. Brown is the editor of the WCC journal, The Ecumenical Review.

More information about Towards Nicaea 2025: Exploring the Councils Ecumenical Significance Today”

Photo Gallery

More information about the WCC and Nicaea 2025

Nicaea 2025 Bossey International Conference opens with reflections on unity (WCC news release, 5 November 2024)

Why did the emperor Constantine convoke the Council in Nicaea? (WCC feature story, 7 November 2024)