Did the Council of Nicaea invent the divinity of Jesus? Did a group of bishops in the fourth century determine which books belonged in the Bible? These are questions that apologists Wesley Huff and Andy Steiger addressed in the latest episode of their series “Can I Trust the Bible?”
“The Bible is arguably the most important book ever written. But among skeptics, there’s a popular claim that Christianity’s most central beliefs and even the books of the Bible were decided by a political council in the fourth century,” said Huff. “According to that claim, the Council of Nicaea actually invented the divinity of Jesus and chose which writings belonged in the Bible.”
“Well, Andy and I are back on the road to explore these questions and determine if there’s any truth to those claims,” Huff said. “We are beginning our journey in Turkey at the site of one of the most misunderstood events in church history.”
Wesley Huff and Andy Steiger on What the Council of Nicaea Actually Did
In the “Can I Trust the Bible?” series, Andy Steiger, founder and president of Apologetics Canada, and Wesley Huff, vice president of Apologetics Canada, travel to historically significant locations around the world while exploring questions about the Bible’s trustworthiness.
Topics they have covered so far include the Gospel of Thomas, whether the Bible’s meaning was changed through numerous translations, and if the Bible is reliable from a historical viewpoint.
The first episode and second episode in the series were released Dec. 12, 2024. The third, which focuses on the Council of Nicea, premiered April 3. Huff, who is working on a Ph.D. in New Testament, went viral in early 2025 for the articulate and balanced way he presented evidence for the Christian faith as a guest on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
In November, Huff publicly responded to claims by influencer Adam Allred that “the Bible was literally voted on by a bunch of politicians and bishops in a room deciding what made the cut and what didn’t out of mounds of texts, centuries after the fact.”
“The Bible, as we know it, didn’t even exist when Jesus walked the earth, not when Paul wrote his letters, not when Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John recorded their accounts,” said Allred. “The Bible was literally compiled hundreds of years later by a pagan emperor for political reasons. That should tell you something.”
Another example of this type of view in pop culture is Dan Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code,” which portrayed the Council of Nicaea as deciding that Jesus, a mere human, should be seen as divine. Notably, even biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, who was formerly an evangelical and is now a skeptic, has said this view is incorrect: “The idea that Jesus was the Son of God goes back as far back as we have any Christian sources.”
Did the Council of Nicaea invent the divinity of Jesus? Did a group of bishops in the fourth century determine which books belonged in the Bible?Click to Post
