Nicene (nisen)

[ Νικαῖος, adj.), a name of several cities (see def.), eral councils which met at Nicæa. The first Nicene council, which was also the first general council, met in A. D. 325, condemned Arianism, and promulgated the Nicene Creed in its earlier form. The second Nicene council, accounted also the seventh general council, was held in 787, and condemned the Iconoclasts. The recognition of the first Nicene council as ecumenical has been almost universal among Christians of all confe ions; it is acknowledged to the present day not only by the Roman Catholic and the Greek churches, and by many Protestant churches, but by Nestor i ans, Jacobites, and Copts. The Anglican Church does not accept the second Nicene council as ecumenical.-Nicene Creed or Symbol, a summary of the chief tenets of the Christian faith, first set forth as of ecumenical authority by the first Nicene council (A. D. 325), but closely similar in wording to ancient creeds of Oriental churches, and especially founded upon the baptismal creed 3985 of the church of Cæsarea in Palestine. The distinctive word added at Nice to exclude the po ibility of an Arian con struct i on was homojusion consubstantial bicical use, however, was already well-established theological This creed ended with the words and in the Holy Ghost, and an anathema against the distinctive tenets of the Arians was subjoined to it. The second general council - that is, the first Constant i no pol it an (A. D. 381) - reaffirmed this creed, and also authorized, as subsidiary to it, an explanatory version previously formulated, probably in a local synod at Antioch, and closely similar to the baptismal creed of the church of Jerusalem, differing from the Nicene form very slightly in wording, but adding a fuller statement as to the Holy Ghost, directed against the heresy of the Maced on i ans, and concluding as in the form still used. At the Chalcedonian (or fourth general) council (A. D. 451), the second form was authorized equally with the first as the Nicene faith, and was officially and historically known from that time forward as the Nicene Creed; church historians, however, sometimes speak of it as the Nicæno -Constant i no pol it an Creed. Both these forms have been reaffirmed ever since by all councils claiming to be ecumenical. The sec ond form came into general use in the Eastern Church in the latter part of the fifth century, and has remained unaltered in that church to the present day. It remained unaltered in the West also for some centuries, but an important addition, namely, the word filioque, 'and (from) the Son,' after the words who proceed eth from the Father, in the last paragraph, was introduced in the sixth century, and, though still rejected by the Roman Church in the ninth century, had by the eleventh become accepted throughout all western Europe. It is this form, with the interpolated filioque, which is used by the Roman Church, the Anglican Church, and all Protestant churches which accept the Nicene Creed, and it is this last form, therefore, which is generally called by that name. The Western forms begin "I believe," not "We believe," as in the Greek. The Nicene Creed in its second form is the only authoritative creed of the Eastern Church. nicene (nis'nes), n. The character or quality of being nice, in any sense of that word. =Syn. See nice.