January Aperture: “The Council of Nicaea’s 1,700th Anniversary”
With the Reverend Dr. Bill Hawkins
Wednesday, January 15, 7:00pm, In-person & Zoom
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Annually, we are prompted to recall everything from birthdays, graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and reunions, commemorating significant events in the drama of our lives, our nation, and our world. For our January 2025 Aperture, I’m encouraging members of WPC to draw their attention to one such event that has proved of more critical importance in Christian History than all others since the canon of the New Testament was closed: The Council of Nicaea in Greece, and the creed it produced in the year 325. Realize for the moment that the Council met 42 years before the 27 books of the New Testament were claimed to be “Scripture.” It is a reminder of how faith statements like creeds proved necessary and thus found not only alongside but within Scripture itself!
The Council of Nicaea was convened by the recent convert and Roman Emperor, Constantine I. Emerging victorious over his rival Roman general Maxentius in the year 312, and then persuaded by Christians that it was Christ who gave him the victory, he returned to Rome a convert to Christianity. Thirteen years later in 325, weary from contradictory testimony about Jesus’ divinity and/or humanity, Constantine called a council of 318 Christian leaders over which he presided. The council was tasked to decide and declare from the approved writings (that later became the New Testament), to speak with a unified voice a standard for what is right belief or orthodoxy, from what is wrong belief or heresy.
Ever since, Christianity has been anchored in the summary teachings named in the Nicene Creed. 1,700 years to this day, it is the singular creed that still speaks with one voice for the Christian faith throughout the world.
A native of Roanoke, Virginia, the Rev. Dr. Bill Hawkins has been married for 48 years to his high school sweetheart, Lori. A retired psychologist, she was ordained and installed as a deacon at WPC last September. Lori and Bill have two grown daughters and five grandchildren. In WPC, belongs their youngest daughter and her family: Leah, Rob, Will, Marion, and Jack Bressler. In Brooklyn, NY, lives their oldest daughter Abigail Hawkins, and her two daughters, Beatrice and Clementine Frumes. Bill received his theological education at Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, VA, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT, and San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, CA. After forty years in parish ministry, with the last 18 as Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, New Bern, Bill retired in April 2019. The Hawkins moved to Durham in 2021.