Christology, Science Fiction, and Nicaea

Pope Leo will travel to Iznik (ancient Nicaea) in Turkey as part of his first Apostolic Journey from November 27–30, 2025. This trip commemorates the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea. Before my recent illness, I still had dreams of traveling and thought Nicaea, now a laid-back Turkish beach town, would be a great Fall getaway. This Council has always fascinated me.

In 325 C.E., a relatively modest number of bishops, mainly from the East, met for three months, from May until the end of July, on the shores of Lake Ascanius, near Constantinople. It was a backwater on the main East-West trade corridor. One source says that Constantine invited all 1800 bishops of the Christian church (about 1000 in the east and 800 in the west), but only 318 — the traditional number — attended; more realistically, the number was probably about 250. And only five from the West, or Roman churches. In any case, that rounds out to about 15% of active bishops. Notably absent was Pope Sylvester I, whom the Emperor had appointed to the See of Rome. They spoke, wrote, and decreed in Greek.

Constantine called the Council to quash Arianism, which was tearing up his quest for unity and power. It is almost universally accepted that the early church widely accepted Jesus as a divine being, but the notions of what constitutes divinity were diverse and fluid. Constantine was undoubtedly aware that 32 of his immediate predecessors had been declared gods by apotheosis. The presbyter Arius preached that Jesus was divine but also created, that is, He had a beginning. For either the convert Constantine or his domineering mother, that wasn’t going to fly. I think it is entirely likely that before the Council was called, the fix was in. The only question was how the assembled bishops would declare Jesus coequal with God the Father.

Arius was present at Nicea to defend his position that Jesus, although God, was a created being. Approximately 22 bishops supported Arius when the Council opened, but this number dwindled to just two at the end. The two remaining supporters, Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonus of Marmarica, were exiled along with Arius. Constantine lifted the sentence on Arius 11 years later, but he was conveniently murdered in a public latrine just before his official rehabilitation. This I found in footnotes labeled facts about the Council of Nicaea that got buried.

What this handful of churchmen argued about, agreed on, and finally decreed over three short months formally introduced the concept of Being from Neoplatonism into the conversation about God. The statement that Jesus was “begotten not made” moved Christian theology firmly into the camp of Greek philosophy, and Jesus, the eternal Son of God, within the general definition of anthropomorphism.

That formulation dominated Western theology and argument for nearly two millennia, that is, until the Fall of 1963 in a classroom on North Benson Road in Fairfield, Connecticut. 

Father Harold O’Connor SJ, affectionately known as “Crazy Harry” at Fairfield Prep, taught Latin, Math, and Religion to Sophomores, or sof-o-mores, and proudly coached his winning debate team. In religion class, the most memorable anecdotes were a toss-up between his personal technique for curbing profuse sneezing while saying mass — so he wouldn’t look like he was picking his nose, but performing a sacred ritual gesture. In 1958, the first spacecraft, Sputnik, crashed back to Earth, and Harry had a very profound observation about the Person of Jesus declared at Nicaea: he said, “No matter what kind of life we discover in the wide universe, never forget the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost came to save us.” Yes, Crazy Harry, that statement has been wedged into my inner theological questioning for more than half a century.

All the inner contradictions of the debate at Nicaea resurfaced recently when a former Jesuit described writing poems based on the hard-fought doctrinal declarations of the Nicene fathers, and JD Vance’s publicly expressed hope that his Hindu wife follow him into the one, holy and apostolic Church. My former Jesuit confrere was getting carried off by words and language, while JD was looking for a seat with more leverage at the debating table. I should remind JD that although he has drawn Pope Leo into the debate, his wife’s Krisha is supported by Modi and the BJP. And India has nukes. But I digress.

How is it that Jesus, coequal with the Father, looked like a human from the beginningless beginning? Not only physical resemblance, but also shared human emotional responses of love, forgiveness, anger, and compassion, to name just a few.

Am I forced to revise Pascal’s bet to include a non-humanoid form of Divine Person? You think I’m kidding? Pascal's Law of Probability strongly favors the discovery of non-human life forms. If, for example, intelligent life were discovered on Proxima Centauri b, located about 4.24 light-years away from Earth, what is the probability that Jesus was born, died, and resurrected there to save its inhabitants? Less than zero.

But science fiction has been exploring these possibilities since way before George Lucas. 

Anselm said, “id quo nihil maius cogitari potest.” The reality of God exists because at the farthest edge of human understanding, the mind can go no further. We can move almost seamlessly into science fiction by allowing Anselm an imagination and, as part of thinking (distinct from brain function to satisfy all you materialists), he uses human beings’ proclivity to the phantasmagorical as a worthy vehicle to arrive at the reality of God, especially with regard to the Second Person, “id quo nihil maius imāginari potest.”

And so, in honor of Crazy Harry O’Connor, I will outline a course in science fiction leading up to the 1700th Anniversary of Nicaea.

Doris Lessing’s The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 describes the death of a small, prosperous planet in the Canopean Empire. Its happy, content people become victims of an unforeseen Ice Age. The storyline involves the building of a wall around the entire “girth” of the planet, the attempts of the once harmonious species to accommodate their dire circumstances, the arrival of Johor, an emissary from Canopus, who stays with the doomed inhabitants and helps them form a consciousness that allows the essence of their being and their civilization to survive its death. 

There were enough similarities with the esoteric teaching of the half-mad Armenian mystic and cult leader G.I. Gurdjieff to convince Bob Ochs that Lessing was a member of the Fourth Way whose storytelling did not devolve into Mr. G.'s unintelligible gibberish. Philip Glass was commissioned to write the music for Lessing’s opera, but it was never recorded, and the only known bootleg recording has been lost. Lessing did not win the Nobel Prize in literature for gibberish. It’s a wonderfully told story. The arrival of Johor fulfills my criteria for creating a Superior Being in science fiction. Though they share many humanoid characteristics, the Canopeans are a distinct species. In post-Ice Age theology, Johor might become the Second Person of the Trinity.

Philip Zenshin Whalen loved a cracking good yarn, and he loved Walter M. Miller Jr.’s 1959 A Canticle for Lebowitz. It all takes place on Earth after a devastating nuclear holocaust. Mary Doria Russell’s 1996 novel The Sparrow follows the psychological breakdown of Jesuit Father Emilio Sandoz after his encounter with alien life. 

Nothing is certain or without risk. This includes our belief in the Trinity. My approach to theology is anthropological. This adds a level of ambiguity to most dogma. I am certain that the early Church held that Jesus was divine, but the fathers at Nicaea did not irrevocably tie us to a Neo-Platonic notion of Divine Being. Look to the Emperor Constantine and his mother.

Science fiction opens a window to thousands of other possibilities. Let the imagination fly as far as it can go. Otherwise, we are forced to constrain our Christology to a vague cosmological Unitarianism in which the inhabitants of any world system we discover have an incarnate Deity that comes from whichever species on the planet is most evolved. Even within our own world, that eliminates far too many possibilities.

Crazy Harry sneezed, an intriguingly lovely conundrum appeared, and the Son of God was “born, not made.”

 “Id quo nihil maius imāginari potest.”

______________

Some Footnotes and Comments regarding the Council of Nicaea.

I did not do any formal study about Nicaea with a renowned Jesuit scholar, or even an unrenowned one, when I was at Woodstock or JSTB. Over the years in my own inquiry, I have become increasingly fascinated by how these three months 1700 years ago were so pivotal to the church we know today. So much so that today I’m devoting a huge amount of time and energy to finding out as much as I can.

It’s presented, like most recognized Church Councils, as the work of the Holy Spirit, “proceeding from the Father and the Son” to guide and enlighten us. In my view, this Spirit needs to be sent back to the seminary for some remedial work. Opps, I’m getting confused again. I mean me.

I currently do all my study in the equivalent of a friendly Motel 6 in Bangkok. My research library is subject to the vagaries of the WiFi in a developing country’s online economy. I can count the number of Jesuits I know in Asia on one hand. There’s a large Jesuit seminary in New Delhi and several others in India, given the language diversity. Thai Jesuits run one small parish in Bangkok. There is a small retreat house in the northern mountains near Chiang Mai. All this feels quite remote from Nicaea, and frankly, the work of Nicaea is light-years removed from the pastoral concerns of most Asian Catholic priests, even Jesuits.

I am free to follow my own discoveries and hunches. I am not preparing for a licentiate exam. That is an advantage. But not having access to a community of scholars and a huge library limits the scope of my inquiry. I found a story that Arius was murdered in a latrine after the Emperor Constantine lifted his exile, 11 years after Nicaea, but I cannot confirm it. And the evidence from Constantinople police records 1700 years ago would be sketchy at best. But it makes a hell of a good story, so it's in my account.

I can explore other scholarly work, but much of it is behind paywalls, and my budget is limited, although through my Zen connections, I have some workarounds. For example, I found a few short sentences in the agenda for Nicaea, references to special considerations for the Christian congregation in Jerusalem. I am almost sure that this refers to the Community of James the Lesser or James the Just, but I cannot be certain. But what piques my curiosity is the question of anti-Semitism. I do know that by the second century in the Gentile Christian communities, the story that Pontius Pilate washed his hands on Good Friday and handed Jesus over to the Sanhedrin for execution was emphasized. Did Nicaea try to deal with this? Inquiring minds.

Slavery. One of my ongoing interests is the huge presence of slaves in the early communities. Almost a third of the population of the Roman Empire was enslaved. The early church was a refuge for the lower class, and I think that probably translates to a disproportionate number of slaves among the faithful. It could be more than a third. In the first and second centuries and the persecutions, slaves who were also Christians made up a huge number of the early martyrs.

https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-christian-church-and-slavery.html

Undoubtedly, there were slaves participating at Nicaea. They were scribes, accountants, porters, and cooks. I am unsure whether any slaves were ordained. I am always looking for ways that the presence of slaves colored the conversation about freedom.

At Nicaea in 325, the New Testament canon was not settled. How many churches, bishops, scholars, preachers, and catechists used what we call gnostic texts? Did Arius use any? It’s a persuasive argument to highlight the titles and honorifics used to describe Jesus in early texts, and their connection with the case for His divinity. But I am not going to buy in until I see some evidence of how they were used, and in which communities.

One of the most startling facts about Nicaea is that it was short, with only a tiny number of participants, yet had such a far-reaching effect. These were working bishops who met outside the political hotbed of the new capital, close to their transportation back home when their work was done. They’d been summoned by the Emperor, not the Pope or a committee of Patriarchs. I don’t think that they spent any time lolling around on the beach or kibbittzing in a Turkish coffee bar. Constantine wanted help to consolidate his rule, so let’s get on with it. And they changed the face of the Church.

An Inquiry into Belief and Faith

 "Opinions are like noses." —Anon

I find myself scrutinizing the appointments of our newly minted Pope, thinking well, let’s see where Leo takes this thorny issue, hoping it might veer in a direction I find appealing or at least palatable, but then, when I turn to my more reflective side, I wonder what stirs my interest? What does any of this have to do with my world, or indeed any world? I pretend that I’m seeking a few clear tenants, directions, words of encouragement, but is it anything more than just a confirmation of my beliefs, or, God forbid, cherished opinions? I’m 81 years old, and that means that I’ve seen a few things in my trips around the sun, and for whatever reason, I hold onto thoughts, beliefs, working principles, or just opinions —“my truths” which are far more useful than others. At least I am open-minded enough to realize that there are other views, yet part of me clings to the belief that if somehow humankind could come around to the more tolerant frame of mind I espouse, we’d all be better off.

This is, of course, not reasonable. If I take a step back, it is just hooey. Yet I always click on some YouTube bait about Cardinal Burke’s possible return from the exile that Francis imposed on the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, reclaiming the fancy digs from which the darling old poofter was unceremoniously evicted, and he returns to dictating Eternal Truth. My highly charged opinions are not solid ground to support the rock of faith’s foundation. 

The dictionary definition of “hooey” is silly or worthless talk, writing, ideas, etc, or just nonsense and bunk. But to cool the conversation, other words or phrases might also describe the “speech acts” that I‘m referring to: 

• Opinion: a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

• Belief: An acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.

• Thinking: the process of using one's mind to consider or reason about something.

• A school of thought: a particular way of thinking, typically one disputed by the speaker.

• Point of view: a particular attitude or way of considering a matter.

When god speaks to us, at least publicly, He, She, or It uses some version of our imperfect human language. If we fail to account for that, we do so at our peril.

My position is neither laudable nor enviable. There’s always a Catch-22: Because I am selective, I can’t escape the fact that my decision to support or reject Leo’s appointments is to some degree (which I can’t even accurately assess) based on emotion. I know that theologians or philosophers far wiser than yours truly have carefully restricted the truth confirmation of any proposition regarding faith and morals, but again, trying to be honest: how can I reject Humanae Vitae and accept Laudato Si, given the prejudiced emotional bias which I acknowledge? 

Human language is limited, and we misuse it. The hinge of the Nicene Creed is not only the substance of God in Greek terms, but also, in “Nouvelle théologie,” the distinction between “incarnational” theology and an antiquated anthropomorphic concept of God. The Fathers that Constantine gathered needed to affirm that the Church believes that Jesus was divine, and do so in a rapidly changing world, more than 300 years after the ministry of Jesus.

The explicit reason for calling the Council was the influence of Arius, a dissident who wanted to take Jesus from the divine realm. The language of the Council was Greek, although the actual pronouncements were in both Latin and Greek. The usual view is that the deliberations reconciled Trinitarian theology with Neoplatonic philosophy. However, what is often overlooked is that the notion of humans being or becoming gods was integral to the ancient world, and Constantine wanted to put an end to that.

We know from scripture and the stories of martyrdom that participation in the emperor’s divine cult was forbidden to Christians. Those practices in the Roman Empire began before the birth of Jesus when Julius Caesar was officially deified in 42 BCE by the Roman Senate. Augustus was declared a god in 14 BCE and functioned under that title during the life of Jesus until his death in 14 CE. His successor, Tiberius, did not claim nor was he given the title “divinus.” Emperor Theodosius, who officially established Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire in 380 CE, played a key role in the decline of pagan practices, including the deification of emperors. The trend began when Emperor Constantine is believed to have converted to Christianity around 312 CE.  There were 13 emperors “dvinini” among the 16 between Augustus and Constantine. [Google is also telling me that there were 55 Roman Emperors who declared themselves gods, but there is obviously something off in the figure. Perhaps Google is counting 55 divine emperors total in the Roman world, which would include Alexander the Great and Cleopatra.] We can say with certainty that the cult of the emperors was an important part of life in the Roman world for several hundred years.

The reason for my foray into the divination of the emperors is not just my amusement, although that plays a large part. I wanted to show that people in the Roman Empire, both free and enslaved, were exposed to “divine men.” From when they first got up and walked to the public latrine until the end of the day at the communal baths, they saw “evidence” that these god-emperors demanded and commanded respect for their power and influence. Their cults and priests were active; their temples part of the power structure of civilized life. There was also the formidable influence of the mystery cults, but I do not need to wade into those murky waters to demonstrate the divine beings were part ot the intellectual and linguistic landscape.

 

It may be entirely my personal problem trying to mesh Zen into an Abrahamic creed that is very clearly tied to particular historical circumstances. Is there a tack for these statements to uncover what I’m going to call the objective truth? Does this same conundrum exist outside the world of a Christian worldview based on Abrahamic beliefs? Being able to navigate this conundrum is not easy.

We assume that if “the truth” exists, we can know it. We may not have discovered it or invented a precise, workable tool to get there, but we will, given enough time and luck. But these are assumptions. There may be “truths” which we will never know. The fact that there is widespread agreement that the world exists or “is” a certain way only indicates that there is agreement; it does not necessarily make the statements true or false. It will increase the chances of getting butter instead of salt when you ask for butter, but it does prove that Jesus is God in the same way the Fathers of the Nicene Council would have us believe.

Let’s turn our attention to the myths that lie beneath the cultural accretions aimed at satisfying our human thirst for transcendence. Many of my friends say that if we sift through the evidence found in world religions, we discover a philosophia perennis that points to a non-sectarian god that [who] might work in any given scenario. We assume that intelligence will yield the truth. That is simply not true. It can also yield cunning lies. Very bright people are not immune from delusion.

I talked about the misuse of language. We say that God is compassionate, just as we can be or might be when we are on our best behavior. This is extrapolation. There is a time-honored tradition in the Roman world where myths about the gods take a distinctly anthropomorphic twist. Useful for storytelling but less useful for philosophy. We know that the Divine Mind is compassionate because stories in the narrative of Jesus use similar metaphors. We say we are created in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, Divine compassion must be like the compassion we experience, but to the nth degree beyond which we cannot imagine. This, however, is a belief statement with a decidedly anthropomorphic feeling despite Anselm.

This kind of thinking leads to statements that the nature of God is shared equally by God the Father and the Son, which becomes an argument that lasts a thousand years or longer. This hooey is the lifeblood (and paycheck) for a very rarefied group of clerics and scholars that puts most seminarians into a deeper sleep when it comes up in class.

In Buddhism, belief statements are not exempt from the law of impermanence. They fall into one of the five Skandhas, which include mental reactions, "mental formations" (samskaras), or "emotional reactions," arising from a combination of perception, feeling, and thought processes. These reactions are not inherently good or bad, but rather conditioned responses that can lead to suffering (dukkha). They are not just allowed to change. They must change.

After more than 50 years of meditation experience, I will concoct a new Zen maxim—because why not? Live with as few beliefs as possible, and don’t fall back on them until you've been pushed to your limit. I am limiting my caution to belief or opinion, not faith. 

Arvo Pärt was awarded several doctorates in theology. "Tintabulation" refers to ringing bells. The Estonian Orthodox composer coined the word “Tintinnabuli” to describe his compositional style. He was also awarded the Joseph Ratzinger Prize in 2017. I would have made him a Doctor of the Church. This bell-ringing music does not use words, but in the context of meditation, has pointed me towards faith in the divinity of Jesus. If asked to assent to the belief in the Nicene Creed, I might give you a half-hearted “yeah sure, what not?” But when I sit quietly and listen to Pärt, I am more likely to say, “Let Jesus be born in your hearts!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YqF69HLkj8