The belief that Jesus was the only son of God, or even God himself, a form of Jesus God, was first established in 325 AD at the Council of Nicene. Any Christian or believer in Jesus should not overlook the history of Christianity, where it was the Roman Emperor Constantine who laid the foundations of the Roman Catholic Church based on his desire for a uniform Empire.  

   Eusebius of Caesarea recorded that in Constantine’s Letter to the Churches about respecting the Council at Nicaea, Constantine said this:

Having had full proof, in the general prosperity of the empire, how great the favor of God has been towards us, I have judged that it ought to be the first object of my endeavors, that unity of faith, sincerity of love, and community of feeling in regard to the worship of Almighty God, might be preserved among the highly favored multitude who compose the Catholic Church…so that no room was left for further discussion or controversy in relation to the faith.

   History is very clear that Jesus’ Kingdom of God became the Kingdom of the Rome and that Christians went from being persecuted to being the persecutor with the Roman Empire behind it as the official state religion.

The religion that turned Jesus into Christ was born out of great turmoil and we find many different beliefs and interpretations within the church.

   Today after discovering the Gnostic Scriptures, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other so-called lost books of the Bible we know that there were many different views and even Gospels in early Christianity.

   In about 170 AD, Irenaeus, a church leader in France condemned these other Gospels in this way: "The heretics boast that they have many more gospels than there really are. But really they don't have any gospels that aren't full of blasphemy.”

   However, among these so-called “heretics” we also find great discontent for the other side as in the Gnostic Gospels, which call the God of the Bible “the jealous God” because this God said: “I am God, and there is no other.”

   At the center of this age old debate, we find the question of the incarnation which was fiercely disputed for more than a thousand years and is still alive and well today. After having concurred the entire Roman Empire in the name of Jesus, in 325 AD the emperor Constantine called for the council at Nicaea to settle what was called the Arian conflict.

    Arius, a popular presbyter in the Alexandrian church, was condemned for his belief that the Trinity was a hierarchy from top to bottom: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He firmly believed that while Jesus as the Son was great, he was not God incarnated.

   Alexandria where Arius lived was at this time a melting pot of religious belief through the conquests of Alexander the Great, and many religious figures were translated into other religions as common ground for religious understanding was sought.

   Much like today’s global community, where many forms of fundamentalism are clashing, it is reasonable to suggest that Arius’ saw the danger in the absolutism of interpreting Jesus as divine as it would be a source of conflict.

   The Nicene Council voted against Arius and established the Nicene Creed that is still being read today where Jesus is the “only” son of God and divine as “God from God.” However, the view of Arius that Jesus was not God had many supporters, and just 11 years later in 336 AD Constantine reversed the condemnation of Arius because he became convinced that this view was held by a majority.

   Many bishops supported the view that the Son was not God, since the creator was believed to be unborn and uncreated whereby God could not become incarnated in absolute form. Thus, Arius’ challenge: “Is Jesus unbegotten?” – Meaning that since God is un-manifest as absolute divinity and Jesus was a manifest man; the two are not the same.

   If we look at NDE research where people tell us that their experience is beyond human comprehension and the 80 percent that I found in agreement with their experience being hard to “interpreted precisely in human language.” And if we look at the fact that most people say that they experience an unearthly realm or dimension that is non-physical, then we can see what Arius meant that Jesus is not un-manifest as God. 

   After almost 350 years of heated debate on this issue, in 680 AD, Emperor Constantine IV called the Third Council of Constantinople to establish that Jesus had two wills: one human and one divine.

   This is the classical view of moderate Christians that we find today but because our western mind does not like duality, we have a tendency to mix the earthly with the divine. In this confusion of logic, no other event in the Christian religion shows us the danger in making Jesus God more evidently than the Crusades.

   In 1095 at the Council of Piacenza the will of Christ, which began as the Lamb of God, had transformed into the support for the Crusades against the Muslims. Pope Urban II, who began the crusader movement in the name of Christ, is famous for saying that “God wills it” and that “Christ commands it.” In Robert the Monk’s account of Pope Urban’s speech at the council, Urban is quoted as saying: 

Let this then be your war-cry in combats, because this word is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, let this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: It is the will of God! It is the will of God!

   It is logical that when you incarnate God, rather than keeping the divine and human separate, you end up in a paradox where a God that says “Thou shall not kill” has changed his mind. Also without us being humble it is very easy for our own human fallible mind to get mixed up with the divine. 

   Clearly when we look at the life of Jesus and how the Price of Peace walked his talk, his will was taken to the extreme. But this extreme interpretation is the same dispute we find today when we accept the killing of others in the name of Christ and God.

   Going back to my research of Near Death Experiences, with the agreement that God is within, I also found that 80 percent agreed with the statement: “God is within; we are God.” Relating to Christianity again, we could say that if Jesus is the son of God then we are all sons and daughters of God. While Jesus unquestionably was a truly great inspirational figure, if he was God then we are all God.

   Here the statement “we are God” is not meant as we humans are perfect as God, or as great as Jesus, but it is meant to focus on that if God is in everything then God is also a part of us – God is within. The important factor about this insight was as we saw in the beginning of this chapter that locating God within our neighbor makes us understand the Golden Rule at a deeper level.

   If we listen to the evidence from people that have Near Death Experiences then we can get out of this conflict by understanding that loving God and obeying the Golden Rule are in fact one and the same. Since God is in everything; God is also in our neighbor, even if this person believes in ‘another’ God, and thus, by loving our neighbor we are also loving God.

   So, if we put the love of God and the Golden Rule together, instead of putting the commandment to love one specific God first, then we will find that the two commandments are one and the same.

   “Thou shalt love thy God with all your heart, mind and Soul and the second part is just as important: Thou shalt treat your neighbor as yourself.” Chris R. here tells us that the second part; to love our neighbor is “just as important” and this is what we can learn from the NDE.