When Orthodoxy Ate the Family Tree: Nicaea, Paul and the Lost Kinship Church

Early Christianity was not monolithic. In the first generations after Jesus, rival movements coexisted. Some were Jewish Christians who insisted on Torah observance and reverence for Jesus’ blood relatives. These sects followed James “the Just” – Jesus’ brother – as their leader, insisting that even Jesus had been a man under Moses’ Law. They revered James as “true successor to Jesus” and rejected Paul as a false apostle who betrayed the Law. Others followed Paul’s vision: a universal, Gentile‑friendly faith with a cosmic Christology and salvation by “faith apart from works” (Galatians 2:16) rather than ethnic heritage or ritual observance. This tension shows up in Acts and the Epistles: James is portrayed as presiding over the Jerusalem council (c. 49 CE), urging only minimal requirements for Gentile converts, while Paul later describes James (the Lord’s brother) as initially pressing Gentiles to be circumcised. In short, Paul’s Gentile Christianity clashed with a Jewish‑Messianic Judaism led by Jesus’ kin.

James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the earliest Jerusalem church, taught a radically grounded faith—one that centered not on dogma or religious hierarchy, but on how we treat one another and walk humbly before God.

His gospel was simple, yet deeply challenging:

Love God. Love your neighbor. Live justly. Be humble. Show mercy. Forgive. Care for the poor. Uplift the oppressed.

James did not call for religious performance or blind loyalty to institutions. Instead, he taught that true faith is visible in action—feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, resisting favouritism, and keeping oneself unstained by the world (James 1:27). He echoed the heart of ancient prophetic tradition, much like the words of Micah 6:8:

"He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

To James, righteousness meant living in alignment with God’s will—not just believing in doctrines, but embodying the spirit of the law. He upheld the commandments, including observance of the Sabbath, not as burdens, but as holy rhythms of rest and justice that honoured both God and neighbour. The Torah wasn’t something to discard—it was the “law of liberty” (James 1:25), meant to free the human soul through love, not enslave it through legalism.

Importantly, James taught that the Kingdom of God is near you—not behind ornate church walls or locked in the sacraments of a priesthood.

 James 2:5:

"Listen, my beloved brethren: Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him?"

His message resonates with Jesus’ own words: “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). This was a faith of the heart and of the hands—a divine presence encountered in justice, humility, and compassion, not institutional power.

Yet over time, this path was buried.

As the Roman Church rose to imperial dominance, it began to replace the faith of James with a machinery of control. Bishops became magistrates, and the Body of Christ was politicized. The Church aligned itself with worldly power, enforcing hierarchy and dogma while suppressing the voices of prophetic conscience.

Instead of lifting the lowly, the Church often became the oppressor—crusading, colonizing, and silencing dissent. The living gospel that James preached—truth through discernment, not blind faith; was replaced by ecclesiastical decrees. The poor were no longer the Church’s priority; maintaining empire was.

In the end, the early wisdom of James; humble, rooted, ethical; stands in judgment over much of what the Church became.

But that wisdom is not lost. It is still here, speaking through Scripture, through the lives of the poor and the just, and through those who dare to say: faith without love is dead, religion without mercy is hollow, and God’s kingdom cannot be caged by thrones or miters.

Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles preached a radically universal faith. In Galatians and Romans, Paul argues that “in Christ… you are all children of God through faith” (Gal 3:26–29), nullifying distinctions of Jew or Greek, male or female. For Paul, Abraham’s righteousness came by believing God, not by obeying Torah – and so should all believers by faith (Rom. 4:2, Gal. 3:6). Paul taught that Gentiles did not need Jewish legal rites and he recounts confronting Peter and even James over this: despite initial resistance, Paul prevailed, opening the church “to a multitude of Gentiles”.

Afterward, Christian identity became spiritual rather than covenantal; no longer rooted in practices like Sabbath-keeping, which James and the Jerusalem community still upheld. As Paul wrote, “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything” (Gal. 6:15). Instead, Paul emphasized faith in Christ and a high Christology — Jesus as the divine Son of God, homoousios with the Father — a vision that ultimately formed the backbone of what became imperial orthodoxy.

By contrast, James the Just represented the Jerusalem Church’s Jewish Messianism. Church tradition (Eusebius quoting Hegesippus) says the apostles themselves elected James “the Righteous” as first bishop of Jerusalem. James’ Epistle reflects Torah‑loyalty: “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26) – a direct counter to Paul’s doctrine. James and his synagogue‑Christians observed kosher laws and Sabbath, seeing Jesus as Israel’s Messiah within Judaism. His famous pronouncement at Acts 15—advising Gentiles to keep just a few Jewish practices (avoid idols, etc.)—was conciliatory, but James retained a patriarchal, Torah‑centric ethos. As one biblical scholar notes, James exercised “authority not less than that of Peter” in Jerusalem. A commentator observes James was “kinsman to our Saviour, now being president of this council” (Acts 15).

The Council of Nicaea: Empire and Orthodoxy

Constantine’s rise changed everything. After 312 CE the Emperor "embraced" Christianity; likely as realpolitik to unify his empire. He summoned all bishops to Nicaea in 325 CE to forge religious unity. The result was a new empire‑church. Bishops (mostly Gentile) produced the Nicene Creed, declaring Jesus “of one substance” with the Father, and condemning dissenters (Arians). Significantly, Nicaea was not about Torah or bloodlines; it formalized a high Christology born in Pauline theology. It severed the tie to Jewish variants. As one scholar explains, Nicaea was “a critical theological and institutional watershed between the local and often diverse theologies… and the universal… credal statements of the imperial church”. In practical terms, the Council elevated bishops (male leaders) and imperial authority over any local or family‑based authority. Clerical succession became a matter of appointment, not ancestry. Constantine’s state church pushed Paul’s model: universal Christian identity under a uniform creed.

The Council of Nicaea in 325 CE was never a neutral gathering. From the outset, it was shaped by imperial politics and theological consolidation—not by a desire to preserve the full diversity of early Christian witness. Under Emperor Constantine’s patronage, the council silenced the legacy of Christ’s kin—James and the Desposyni—along with the Jewish-rooted traditions of the earliest Jesus followers. These groups, who upheld Torah observance and direct familial ties to Jesus, had already been marginalized following the destruction of Jerusalem. At Nicaea, they were fully erased from the conversation. The result was a creed built not on the voices of those who walked with Jesus or shared his blood, but on Gentile bishops, Greek metaphysics, and a Pauline Christology divorced from its Jewish soil. The Church became Roman before it could fully honour its roots.

Once Nicaea set the template, rival streams were marginalized. The old kin‑based “Desposyni” leadership died out: after James’ death (62 CE) the Jerusalem church did keep leadership in Jesus’ family for a time – Hegesippus reports that Simeon, “son of the Lord’s uncle, Clopas,” was chosen next bishop precisely because he was Jesus’ cousin. But by the 4th century, church leaders were Gentile officials, not Desposyni. Paul’s teaching “in Christ” (Gal. 3:28–29) had effectively erased Judaism’s bloodline model: followers were spiritually Abraham’s children, not biologically. As one historian notes, “subsequent history showed that Paul won the debate on circumcision and the Mosaic Law,” opening Christianity to Gentiles. By imperial times, some Jewish Christians were branded heretical. Yet ironically, their Torah‑faith and familial succession may have echoed the historical Jesus better than the later Vatican line did.

The Forgotten Feminine

In ancient Judaism, Wisdom (Hebrew Chokhmah, Greek Sophia) was personified as female. Proverbs 8 explicitly celebrates Wisdom as a woman present with God at creation.

Proverbs 8:22–30 (Key Highlights):

“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth...When he established the heavens, I was there...then I was beside him, like a master worker,and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.”

Early Christians sometimes identified this Lady Wisdom with the Holy Spirit. Jewish mystical tradition further glimpsed a feminine divine presence in the Shekhinah (God’s dwelling), literally God’s “glory,” and the Hebrew word for Spirit (ruaḥ) is feminine. One source notes that in ancient texts the Holy Spirit was literally “thought to be female”: “the Greek word… is neutral, but the Hebrew [ruaḥ] and Aramaic [shekhinah]… are both female words and imply a feminine divine presence”. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran) hymn a Lady Wisdom:

Psalm 154 (non‑canonical) speaks of Wisdom in the feminine – “She is made known to man… those who are far from her gates”. Thus feminine imagery was woven into early faith: Jesus himself hinted at it (“Wisdom is vindicated by all her children,” Luke 7:35).

However, let her not be mistaken with the pagan Queen of Heaven or Mary.

But by the Nicene era, that feminine imagery had been squeezed out. The new orthodox Trinitarian theology offered no space for “Lady Wisdom.”

Mary’s title Theotokos (God‑bearer) was eventually affirmed at Ephesus (431), but the primary persons of the Godhead were declared Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (each explicitly “He”). In short, once the state church defined doctrine, divine femininity was largely reduced to a few faint echoes while Scripture was read with male pronouns. The hierarchical, male‑dominated clergy replaced the older intimate, kin‑based practices – and the Lady Wisdom, vanished from the official narrative.

Timeline: From Jerusalem to Empire Church

• c. 30 CE: After Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, the apostles elect James “the Just” (Jesus’ brother) as bishop of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem church, rooted in Jewish law, becomes a center of Christian teaching.

• 48–50 CE: The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) debates Gentile conversion. James presides as “brother of the Lord” and rules that Gentiles need not follow all Jewish rites. But Paul’s account later depicts James initially insisting on circumcision.

• 50s–60s CE: Paul writes his letters (e.g. Galatians, Romans), arguing vehemently that faith in Christ, not the Law, justifies believers (Gal. 3:28; Rom. 4:2). His universalist gospel spreads Christianity through the Gentile world.

• 62 CE: James the Just is martyred (Jewish sources). This removes the chief pro-Torah leader in Jerusalem.

• 70 CE: Jerusalem falls to the oppressors: Rome. Surviving disciples and kin of Jesus convene and choose Simeon (son of Clopas, a cousin of Jesus) as the new Jewish-Christian bishop. The church in Israel remains ethnically Jewish under Desposyni leadership – for now.

• 2nd century: Jewish-Christian groups survive but splinter. Gentile “proto‑orthodox” Christianity (Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, etc.) grows, often condemning Jewish forms as heresy. Hegesippus (mid-100s) writes that Simeon (the Lord’s cousin) succeeded James in Jerusalem, but soon bishops of other cities dominate.

• 312 CE: Emperor Constantine "converts to Christianity". Pagan persecution ends; the church gains imperial favour. This marks the beginning of Christianity as a tool of statecraft.

• 325 CE: Council of Nicaea: Over 300 bishops (mostly Gentiles) meet to define doctrine. They produce the Nicene Creed (affirming Christ’s divinity, etc.), creating a uniform orthodoxy enforced by the Emperor. Local Jewish Christian practices and teachings are sidelined.

• 381 CE: Council of Constantinople: Emperor Theodosius I officially adopts the Nicene Creed as the empire’s faith, quashing remaining theological disputes. The triumvirate Father–Son–(Holy) Spirit language is set in stone. Christianity has fully morphed from a diverse, kinship‑rooted movement into a centralized imperial church.

And we know what followed: oppression disguised as religion, bloodshed in the name of empire, the elevation of men as gods, and the forced worship of the sun—kneeling to swallow a sun-shaped wafer while claiming to hold the one true faith. Rome did not convert to Christianity; it conquered it, rebranding power as piety and silencing the true gospel beneath gold, swords, and thrones.

The Divine Feminine Forsaken: Wisdom's Banishment by the Church

For many Christians today, information like this hints at a forgotten truth: God’s Wisdom; Sophia  ; was long viewed as a living, feminine aspect of the divine. As author Joyce Rupp observes, “Sophia... is an expression of the feminine aspects of God.” The Bible itself personifies her in female language: As seen above Proverbs 8 says, “When he established the heavens, I was there… then I was beside him like a master workman.” In other words, Wisdom (Sophia) declares herself present at creation. The Greek word Sophia translates the Hebrew Chokhmah, both of which were understood not merely as abstract intelligence, but as a sacred, active presence. Yet today, Rupp laments that Sophia “is hidden from many” and that “so much of this heritage has been lost and must be recovered.

Early Christian testimonies reveal a much richer and more feminine understanding of the Holy Spirit than what later orthodoxy preserved. In the Gospel of the Hebrews, an early Jewish-Christian text quoted by Origen, Jesus is recorded as saying, “Even now did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away.” Here, the Spirit is not an abstract force, but literally referred to as his Mother. Similarly, the Odes of Solomon, a 2nd-century Syrian Christian hymn, offers a deeply maternal image of the Spirit: “The Spirit of the Lord rested upon me, and She lifted me up… She brought me forth before the face of the Lord… so She made me…” — unmistakably using feminine pronouns. The maternal language continues in the writings of the Syriac Church Fathers.

Aphrahat, a 4th-century Persian Christian, describes a man in right relationship with God as one who “reveres God his Father and the Holy Spirit his Mother.” Early Syriac liturgies even preserve this maternal framing, with John 14:26 rendered: “She shall teach you everything, She shall remind you of all I say.” All of this is grounded in Jewish linguistic tradition, where ruach in Hebrew and rucha in Aramaic — both words for “Spirit” — are grammatically feminine. The earliest Jewish followers of Jesus naturally carried over this imagery, conceiving of the Spirit not as male or neutral, but as a nurturing, maternal presence — a kind of divine Bride, intimately woven into the lives of the faithful.

Again, not to be confused with the later pagan conceptions of the "Queen of Heaven," which diverged sharply from the biblical and early Christian understanding of divine Wisdom.

Patriarchal Rewrite

The rise of the institutional Church in the Roman Empire brought a sharp shift. By the 4th century, Christian doctrine was formulated in Greek and Latin, where pneuma (Spirit) is neuter and Spiritus is grammatically masculine. In practice the Spirit was recast with male language. In 381 AD the Council of Constantinople dogmatized the Trinity’s equality, but the Church retained the Fathers-and-Son vocabulary. As Susan Ashbrook Harvey notes, for Syriac Christians there “was real meaning in calling the Spirit ‘She’”, but in the Catholic tradition the Holy Spirit came to be referred to as “He” in liturgical texts. In short, Sophia’s voice was muted. As Van Oort observes, “the earliest Christians – all of whom were Jews – spoke of the Holy Spirit as a feminine figure”. But after embracing Greco-Roman patriarchy, the Church largely dropped feminine imagery. By medieval times the Trinity was firmly male-coded, and venerating Sophia as anything more than poetic metaphor was discouraged if not outright suppressed.

Spirit vs. Obedience

The loss of Sophia—the feminine presence of divine Wisdom—has profound implications. In the earliest expressions of faith, the Spirit was not mediated through hierarchy but came directly to those who believed. The old understanding of the Spirit, often seen as maternal and nurturing, empowered individual believers with discernment, insight, and divine connection. In contrast, the emerging masculine hierarchy of the institutional Church demanded obedience and submission to clerical authority. The implication is clear—the Spirit is not mediated by priests, but given freely through faith, love, humility, forgiveness, mercy and truth. Similarly, the letter to the Ephesians declares that “through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit,” affirming that access to God is not reserved for a spiritual elite. First Peter echoes this by calling all believers “a chosen people… a royal priesthood,” underscoring the radical idea that every soul, not just the ordained, can share in God’s presence. This vision stands in stark contrast to a Church structure built on layers of mediation, where access to the sacred is filtered through obedience to a clerical class.

In a faith truly animated by the Spirit and inspired by divine Wisdom, each person becomes a living vessel of God’s presence, fully capable of receiving guidance, truth, and love directly from the Source. In such a model, spiritual leaders—priests, bishops, teachers—are meant to be servants and guides, helping others discern God’s will, not gatekeepers of grace or lords over faith. Yet as the institutional Church grew in power, particularly under Roman influence, many of these leaders began to function not as shepherds but as sovereigns, claiming divine authority while violating God’s covenant. Nowhere is this clearer than in the audacious replacement of God’s holy Sabbath with Rome’s day of the sun, a move made not by divine command but by ecclesiastical decree—a profound symbol of how human authority dared to override God’s eternal word.

In these obedient, top-down hierarchies, the spiritual life became externalized; measured by ritual, compliance, and clerical approval;rather than cultivated through inner transformation and communion with the Spirit. But the Holy Spirit, as the personified Wisdom of God, undermines this structure by Her very nature. She does not dwell in temples made by human hands, nor speak only through sanctioned hierarchies. She speaks in stillness to the humble, instructs the sincere in heart, and makes her home in those who hunger for truth, not authority. Her presence is both gentle and subversive, offering a profound challenge to any system that exalts control over communion, institutional power over spiritual purity, or replaces divine Wisdom with the imitation of pagan goddesses falsely crowned as the Queen of Heaven.

Ironically, one of the world’s grandest churches is literally named “Holy Wisdom”, yet its golden domes give little clue to Sophia’s true nature.

Rising like a crown of stone and light over the ancient skyline of Istanbul, the Hagia Sophia is one of the grandest churches the world has ever known. Built in 537 CE under the command of Emperor Justinian I, it was the pride of the Byzantine Empire, the beating heart of Eastern Christianity, and a marvel of sacred architecture. But its name tells a story far more subversive than its domes suggest.

By the time the stones of Hagia Sophia were laid, that divine Wisdom had already been silenced.

As Christianity merged with imperial Rome, it inherited more than just legal status. It absorbed the patriarchal worldview of empire — one that had no room for divine femininity. The Spirit was stripped of her maternal language and recast in neuter or masculine grammar. Wisdom, once alive and vibrant, was reduced to an abstraction or reassigned to Christ alone, bypassing her feminine identity entirely. The Church became a hierarchy of men, crowned with political power, stamping out the voices of mystics, prophets, and the poor — the very voices through whom Wisdom had always spoken.

That is the irony. One of the most magnificent churches ever built — hailed for centuries as the greatest cathedral in Christendom — bears the name Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, while embodying a structure that no longer welcomed Her. The name survives, but the spirit it once honoured was driven underground.

Sophia, the divine Wisdom who rejoiced at creation, who whispered to prophets, who lifted up the humble and confounded the proud; was no longer proclaimed from the pulpit. Instead, her memory was buried beneath marble, incense, and gold. The Spirit became mediated by clerics, the sacred bound to ritual, and access to God locked behind ecclesiastical gates.

Yet Wisdom was never far. Even as institutions grew deaf, she continued to speak; in quiet hearts, in moments of discernment, in the cry for justice. Her voice still echoes: “She calls out in the streets… at the city gates she makes her speech.” (Proverbs 1:20–21)

Hagia Sophia stands to this day — a monument to both glory and loss. Its domes may no longer ring with her name, but the stones remember. And perhaps, just perhaps, Wisdom waits for those with ears to hear. Not in empires, but in the hearts of those who seek not control, but communion. Not in power, but in truth.

Sophia is not gone. She is calling.