Did the church invent Jesus' divinity at the Council of Nicaea?

This is a popular myth (helped along by novels), but the history is clear. Belief in Jesus' divinity wasn't invented at Nicaea in AD 325 - it's there in the earliest layers of the New Testament, decades earlier. Paul, writing in the 50s, applies Old Testament "Lord" texts about God directly to Jesus, and an early hymn calls him "in very nature God" (Philippians 2:6).

Nicaea didn't vote Jesus into divinity; it gathered to defend the language that protected what Christians already believed and worshipped, against a teaching (Arianism) that denied it. The council clarified and confessed an ancient faith - it didn't manufacture a new one.