Almost every Christian theologian and many a historian is rightly frustrated at the damage Dan Brown and his "Da Vinci Code" have done by creating a popular but totally inaccurate history of the development of the Bible in general and the NT canon in particular. In his books Brown maintained that Nicea was the place where the Bible was codified and where books that did not teach that Jesus is God were discarded.

But Nicea was not called to discuss which books should be in the bible or to edit the books contained in the bible, and it did not do this. Nicea was called in 325 AD specifically to address the the Arian heresy named after its chief advocate, a presbyter (elder) named Arius. The Arians were a movement who believed that Jesus was not actually the eternally begotten second person of the Trinity and thus actually God, the Son. They claimed Jesus was the first born of all creation and of “like” but not the “same” substance as God the father. Please note that neither camp was arguing that Jesus was a mere man, even the Arians held he was more exalted than all the angels, and the greatest of God’s creatures, but not actually God. The argument eventually turned on a “jot” the little mark in Greek over the letter o that changes “ homoousious” (of the same substance) into ”homoiousious” (of like substance).

The council itself was attended by bishops (episkopoi – or overseers, not the elders of the bible but not yet quite the Roman or Anglican office of Bishop as we know it today - at this point it was closer to the Eastern Orthodox office of “metropolitan”) from around the empire, most of whom had until recently been suffering through the terrible persecutions that preceded the relatively recent legalization of Christianity. Eventually, by an overwhelming vote the council upheld the biblical teaching that Jesus was of the same substance as the Father, and condemned the teaching of the Arians. The council also produced the Nicene creed which confesses that Jesus is “the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”

The other lesser points discussed at the council were: 1) The celebration of Easter (at this point the date for celebrating it was not fixed and was being argued over by the churches) 2) The Meletian Schism (a division in the church at Antioch), 3) The Baptism of Heretics (was it a legitimate baptism or did those baptized by them need to be baptized?), 4) The status of the lapsed in the persecution of Licinius (what should become of those who had renounced the faith under torture and persecution who now wished to be readmitted to the church?).

Determining which books were in the canon and suppressing the others WAS NOT DISCUSSED AT NICEA! In a follow up article to this post I’ll discuss the historical development of the canon, but if you need confirmation of this fact please check out:

The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge article on The Council:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/encyc08.n.iv.html

or even the Wikipedia article on the council: