Council of Nicæa: Outlawing Heaven’s Calendar

The King James Version (KJV) is mostly used in these lessons. Click here to access the KJV online.

The significance of the Council of Nicæa is found in the fact that the decree outlawed the Biblical calendar.

Since the second century A.D. there had been a divergence of opinion about the date for celebrating the paschal (Easter) anniversary of the Lord’s passion (death, burial, and resurrection). The most ancient practice appears to have been to observe the fourteenth (the Passover date), fifteenth, and sixteenth days of the lunar month regardless of the day of the [Julian] week these dates might fall on from year to year. The bishops of Rome, desirous of enhancing the observance of Sunday as a church festival, ruled that the annual celebration should always be held on the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday following the fourteenth day of the lunar month.¹In Rome, Friday and Saturday of Easter were fast days, and on Sunday the fast was broken by partaking of the communion. This controversy lasted almost two centuries,²until Constantine intervened in behalf of the Roman bishops and outlawed the other group.³

The point of contention appeared deceptively simple: Passover versus Easter. The issues at stake, however, were immense. The only way to determine when Passover occurs is to use the Biblical luni-solar calendar, for only by observing the moon can one count to the 14th day following the first visible crescent. Because the seventh-day Sabbath was also calculated from the first visible crescent,⁴a ruling in favor of Easter being observed on a Julian date would also affect the seventh-day Sabbath. Prior to this time, true Christians commemorated Passover, ignoring the pagan Easter.

Up until the Council of Nicæa, the Christian Easter, especially in the East, had been celebrated for the most part at the time of the Jewish Passover, and "indeed upon the days calculated and fixed by the Sanhedrin in Judæa for its celebration."⁵ On the contrary, in Europe, "some earlier, some later, were intercalating the months . . . the Europeans were placing their cycle at the equinox, and were celebrating the Passover on the next full moon after the equinox."⁶

These contentions had agitated the churches of Asia since the time of the Roman bishop Victor, who had persecuted the churches of Asia for following the "14th-day heresy" as they called it, in reference to the Passover.⁷ But at the Council of Nicæa, "the last thread was snapped which connected Christianity with its parent stock."⁸The future Easter observance was to be rendered independent of Jewish calculation according to these words, which have been attributed to Constantine:

"Henceforward let us have nothing in common with this odious people; our Saviour has shown us another path. It would indeed be absurd if the Jews were able to boast that we are not in a position to celebrate the Passover without the aid of their rules." ^{9 10}

This is civil legislation enforcing the pagan Julian calendar. Calendars calculate time and at the Council of Nicæa it was decreed that Christians were to remain independent of Jewish calculation because the paganized Christians did not want to be associated with the Jews in any way. The Council of Nicæa accomplished three goals, all of which are still in effect today. The decree served to:

1. Standardize the planetary week of seven days making dies Solis the first day of the week, with dies Saturni the last day of the week.
2. Guarantee that Passover and Easter would never fall on the same day.
3. Exalt dies Solis as the day of worship for both pagans and Christians.

By establishing Easter on the Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox, the Roman Catholic Church guaranteed that it would never fall on the Jewish Passover. At this time, the Jews were still using the luni-solar calendar of Creation, intercalating by the barley harvest law of Moses. Because the seven-day weeks of the Biblical lunations cycled differently than the pagan solar calendar, Passover, the sixth day of the Biblical week, would fall on different days of the Julian week. Likewise, First Fruits, the true day of the resurrection on the first day of the Biblical week, appeared to wander through the Julian week, sometimes falling on dies Martis, or dies Veneris, etc., and only rarely coinciding with dies Solis.

Vestiges of the resulting confusion when attempts are made to reconcile a solar calendar to a luni-solar calendar may still be seen. Easter is never on the same date of the Gregorian calendar from one year to the next. The Israelite feast of First Fruits, when calculated by the Biblical calendar, always falls on the 16th of the month, a First Day. Easter, however, because it is linked to a corruption¹¹of lunar calculation does not fall on any specific date, as does Christmas, nor a specific day of the month, such as Thanksgiving in the United States, which always falls on the last Thursday of November. Thus, while the true date of the resurrection always falls on the same day of the week and the same date of the month, Easter on the Gregorian calendar appears to "float" through the month.

The long-term effect was that "Easter Sunday" entered the Christian paradigm as The Day of Christ’s resurrection. The corollary to this realignment of time calculation was that the day proceeding Easter Sunday, Saturday, became forever after The True Bible Sabbath. This is the true significance of Constantine’s "Sunday law" and it laid the foundation for the modern assumption that a continuous weekly cycle has always existed.

The fall-out from this edict was immediate. The law made it illegal to use the Biblical calendar and it persecuted those who still tried to use it. David Sidersky says, "It was no more possible under Constance to apply the old calendar."¹²

In subsequent years, the Jews went through "iron and fire."¹³The Christian [papal Roman] emperors forbade the Jewish computation of the calendar, and did not allow the announcement of the feast days. Graetz says, "The Jewish [and apostolic Christian] communities were left in utter doubt concerning the most important religious decisions: as pertaining to their festivals."¹⁴ ." The immediate consequence was the fixation and calculation of the Hebrew calendar by Hillel II.¹⁵