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Prof. Dr Wolfram Kinzigin, The Ecumenical Review published by World Council of Churches, Volume75, Issue2 April 2023 Pages 215-234.
Abstract
This article gives an account of the discussions about the creed that took place at the Council of Nicaea in 325. It considers major problems regarding its origin and history and outlines the circumstances of its composition, its peculiar structure, and its purpose on the basis of the latest research. Finally, it discusses the legacy of Nicaea for today's theology. The theological development that began at Nicaea in 325 and culminated in the victory of the Neo-Nicenes at Constantinople in 381 brought about a conceptual clarification that helped to establish a wide consensus regarding how the Christian God and God's saving work in Christ and in the Holy Spirit is described. This development continues to influence Christian theology after 1700 years, despite heavy criticism in recent decades, some of it justified. It is to be hoped that the anniversary of Nicaea is an encouragement to go beyond commemorating the golden age of patristics by developing new ways to communicate the significance of the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ for our salvation to a wider public.
Undoubtedly, the most important result of the First Ecumenical Council was the Nicene Creed.1 However, today it would only be of antiquarian interest had a revised version of the creed not been adopted by the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople (the so-called Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed) and subsequently been included by the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon in its Definition of Faith. To look at the Creed of Nicaea from the perspective of today's church means to look at it through the lens of the Creed of Constantinople, because in the later tradition, this latter creed was considered to preserve Nicene theology to such an extent that it superseded the original version and was often inaccurately labelled the “Nicene creed.”2 (Even today, in the English version of Wikipedia, the Creed of Constantinople is only mentioned in the article on the “Nicene Creed”.)
However, in what follows I will discuss the origins of the “pure” Nicene Creed as adopted by the Council of Nicaea in 325. It runs as follows (FaFo, §135c):
| Πιστεύομεν εἰς ἕνα θεόν, πατέρα, παντοκράτορα, πάντων ὁρατῶν τε καὶ ἀοράτων ποιητήν· | We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things both visible and invisible; |
| καὶ εἰς ἕνα κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν, τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ γεννηθέντα ἐκ τοῦ πατρός, μονογενῆ, τουτέστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός, θεὸν ἐκ θεοῦ, φῶς ἐκ φωτός, θεὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκ θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ, γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ πατρί, δι᾿ οὗ τὰ πάντα ἐγένετο τά τε ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ καὶ τὰ ἐν τῇ γῇ, τὸν δι᾿ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα καὶ σαρκωθέντα, ἐνανθρωπήσαντα, παθόντα καὶ ἀναστάντα τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ, ἀνελθόντα εἰς τοὺς οὐρανούς, ἐρχόμενον κρῖναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς· | and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through whom all things came into being, both things in heaven and things on earth; who for us humans and for our salvation descended, became incarnate, was made human, suffered, on the third day rose again, ascended into the heavens, will come to judge the living and dead; |
| καὶ εἰς τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα. | and in the Holy Spirit. |
| Τοὺς δὲ λέγοντας· Ἦν ποτε, ὅτε οὐκ ἦν, καί· Πρὶν γεννηθῆναι οὐκ ἦν, καὶ ὅτι ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων ἐγένετο ἢ ἐξ ἑτέρας ὑποστάσεως ἢ οὐσίας φάσκοντας εἶναι [ἢ κτιστὸν] ἢ τρεπτὸν ἢ ἀλλοιωτὸν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, τούτους ἀναθεματίζει ἡ καθολικὴ καὶ ἀποστολικὴ ἐκκλησία. | The catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes those who say, “There was when he was not,” and, “He was not before he was begotten,” and that he came to be from nothing, or those who claim that the Son of God is from another hypostasis or substance, [or created]3, or alterable, or mutable. |
The title of my article promises new answers to old questions. Within the limits of this paper, I cannot, of course, deal with the history of scholarship in any detail; instead, I would like to outline my view of the events at Nicaea as far as they concerned the faith. It will form part of my forthcoming book on the history of the creeds.4 In the process, I will come back to the old questions and will try to propose some new answers.
1 The Prehistory of the Council
The main purpose of what was later to be called the “council of the 318” but was, in fact, attended by 250 to 300 bishops5 is not easy to determine, because the precise series of events leading up to it remains obscure.6 Constantine's letter of invitation to Nicaea (Urkunde 20) is usually dated to spring 325. In it, the emperor mentions a previous invitation to Ancyra. It is, therefore, possible that the council had already been in the making as a great council of ecclesial unity by late 324, briefly after Constantine's victory over Licinius at Chrysopolis on 18 September 324.7 For that purpose, the date of Easter (which was observed at different times in the empire), the Melitian schism that threatened the Egyptian church, and a number of jurisdictional and disciplinary problems had to be settled.8 As regards the Arian controversy, the emperor considered this a nuisance to be removed ahead of the council by writing to Alexander of Alexandria and Arius and banging their heads together.9
At the same time, the Arian controversy was for Constantine probably not only a political but also a religious problem. He feared that strife in the church might anger the divinity who had granted him the victory over Licinius – Constantine's army had been accompanied by Christian priests whose prayers had obviously been more effective than their pagan counterparts on whose support Licinius had relied.10 An angry divinity, however, threatened the salus publica. Therefore, a speedy solution had to be sought in order to quell the disturbances.
To this end, the emperor first sent Bishop Ossius of Córdoba in the autumn of 324 on a mission aimed at reconciling Alexander and Arius and, for this purpose, gave his envoy a letter addressed to both adversaries in which he ordered them to solve their squabbles quietly among each other.11 This mission was unsuccessful. Ossius’ attempt to seek a solution at the council of Antioch in the spring of 325 was equally doomed to failure, because in the end the council suspended church communion with the Arian or “Arianizing” bishops Eusebius of Caesarea, Theodotus of Laodicea, and Narcissus of Neronias until they recanted at the forthcoming council at Ancyra (i.e., Nicaea). This must have angered Eusebius’ powerful namesake at the imperial residence, Nicomedia, who himself supported the Alexandrian presbyter.12 Eusebius may, therefore, have been the driving force in urging the emperor to use the proposed council of unity to reinstate the deposed bishops and to settle the theological issues.
When we look at the list of Arian supporters at the council,13 one particular group of powerful bishops stands out (Theognis of Nicaea, Maris of Chalcedon, Theodore of Heraclea, and, perhaps, Menophantus of Ephesus) whose sees were located not too far from Nicomedia, with Theognis and Maris even coming from the same province (Bithynia). Theodore excepted, they were also related to each other in the sense that, together with other prelates and theologians, they had been “Syllucianists” (συλλουκιανισταί14), pupils of the distinguished theological teacher Lucian of Antioch, who had perished in 312 during the Diocletian persecution.15 The bustling activity of this network may have reinforced the impression at court that most bishops in the empire were seconding the presbyter from Alexandria.
2 The Creed of Eusebius and Nicaea
It is important to keep this background in mind because it helps us to understand what happened at the council with regard to its creed. In some sources, a Eusebius is named as the bishop who opened the council in June 325. There is good reason to think that this was the bishop of Nicomedia, given that he was “the bishop of the current imperial residence and the local metropolitan.”16 Constantine was in overall charge and even seems to have attended at least some of the council sessions.17
It is most remarkable that he no longer imposed silence on the warring factions (as he had tried to do in his letter to Athanasius and Arius18) but actively sought a theological solution. A suggestion to this effect was first to be provided by the Arians. Eustathius of Antioch reports that Eusebius of Nicomedia produced some sort of doctrinal statement (γράμμα). It may be identical with a letter by Eusebius of Nicomedia to an unknown addressee which Ambrose of Milan claims was read at the council.19 However, Theodoret writes that the supporters of Arius “drew up” (or “dictated” – the Greek is ambiguous) a text which he calls “teaching of faith” (πίστεως διδασκαλία).20 We do not know whether all these documents were the same. Perhaps the Arians were asked to produce or to draft a written statement of their theological views, or perhaps the council from its midst formed a committee entrusted with drafting such a statement which would settle the controversy. In the latter case, the committee must have been dominated by Arians. Be that as it may, the Arian statement, whatever it was, caused an uproar. It was so completely unacceptable to the vast majority of the council that it was ultimately torn to pieces.21 However, as we will see, the anti-Arian creed drawn up at the synod of Antioch (FaFo, §133) in the previous spring must also have been known and discussed in Nicaea and, because of its anti-Arian stance, was likewise deemed unacceptable as it was.
At this point, Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea may have stepped in and may have produced his own creed (FaFo, §134a). After his suspension from office at Antioch, he may have been formally reinstated at Nicaea early in its proceedings.22 He may then have suggested what he considered as some sort of compromise, while at the same time trying to enhance his own status with the emperor.
Eusebius maintains that the Creed of Nicaea was based on this statement. Yet, a careful analysis of both documents reveals that, although there are many similarities between the two texts, Nicaea is not simply an extended version of Eusebius’ text.23 Admittedly, the agreements between the texts produced by Eusebius and Nicaea are considerable: in both cases there is a three-part, trinitarian pattern whose third part is very brief. Minor editorial differences notwithstanding, the first article of both texts is identical. In the second article, however, there are considerable differences that cannot really be explained as the result of an editorial process based on Eusebius’ creed alone. In addition, the Nicene Creed is followed by a series of condemnations that have no equivalent in Eusebius’ creed and to which we will return below. Nevertheless, the structural resemblances are so striking that there must be some literary connection between both formulae. These resemblances are even more obvious when we compare them to the creeds by Arius (FaFo, §131a), Alexander of Alexandria (§132), and the Synod of Antioch (§133), all of which look quite different.
Eusebius’ statement according to which Nicaea was his revised creed (which is often assumed to have been the creed of his diocese, Caesarea) is, therefore, hardly plausible, if it is assumed that he means the exact wording of the formula quoted by him. For the readers or hearers of his letter, it must also have been obvious that Nicaea could not have been the revised version of a fixed formula from Caesarea. If this is so, how else should we interpret Eusebius’ words?
As mentioned above, after the Arian formula had failed to find general agreement, the council must have reached a dead end. A formula of compromise was needed, and the learned bishop from Caesarea (who was not counted among the “militant” Arians) may have been considered by the emperor to be a suitable mediator between the two sides. He submitted a text to the council which was initially approved of by the emperor, who then referred it to a committee to add the adjective homoúsios (for which see below) at an appropriate place. Yet, this committee (which, perhaps, Eusebius did not belong to and in which the Arians were by now outnumbered) was unable to agree on Eusebius’ formula and drew up a “new” text instead, which was similar to that of Eusebius in some respects but was not simply an extended version. This new text (the Creed of Nicaea) was then discussed in plenary session, in particular the phrases τουτέστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός (“that is, from the substance of the Father”), γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα (“begotten, not made”), and ὁμοούσιον τῷ πατρί (“consubstantial with the Father”).
When we look at the way Eusebius introduces the quotation of Nicaea, it becomes clear that he was himself aware of the fact that Nicaea was not simply an extended version of his own creed. For he says that the bishops “composed this text [τὴνδε τὴν γραφήν πεποιήκασιν] on the pretext of the addition of the word homoúsios.” In other words, according to Eusebius, the “identity” between his text and that of Nicaea was not a verbal identity but an identity of content.24
However, there was no other formula on which Nicaea could have been based, since fixed local creeds did not yet exist (with the exceptions of Rome and, perhaps, of Jerusalem).25 In turn, the creed of the Synod of Antioch was also deemed insufficient because it insisted on the Son's being the “express image” of the Father (see Heb. 1:3), which may not have been considered clear enough. In the end, the committee members in Nicaea followed Eusebius: just as the bishop of Caesarea did not simply cite his fixed local creed (which did not yet exist) but presented a summary of baptismal teaching on the creed, the fathers at Nicaea based their draft on the “rule of faith”26 on which they had agreed, supplemented by material from Eusebius’ text and, probably, the creed of Antioch. Under imperial pressure, it was then stipulated that it be signed by the assembled bishops. Thus, the regula fidei turned from oral kerygma into a creed whose wording was fixed and whose normativity was established by the signatures of the bishops.27
3 The Theology and Biblical Basis of the Creed of Nicaea
Let us now take a brief look at the theological content of Nicaea and at its biblical basis. As we have seen, the Creed of Nicaea consists of four parts: three sections of unequal length are introduced by “we believe in” or simply “and in,” each referring to one of the persons of the Trinity. The final part contains a series of condemnations which I will consider below. Nicaea explains the relation between Father and Son and summarizes their respective actions in salvation history. The relation between the creator God and the incarnate God is described by using the metaphors of “Father” and “Son” and the verb “to beget” (γεννάω) to define their relationship, which is in every respect unique: the Son is the only being to whom this status is accorded (“only-begotten”).
The Son's generation is then more closely defined: the Son receives its being from the “substance” (οὐσία) of the Father (and not from some other substance); the Son is “God from God” and differs from all creatures which have been “made” and came into being not from God but out of nothing (although the creation ex nihilo is not explicitly mentioned). This is then summarized in two clauses: “begotten, not made” (γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα) and “consubstantial with the Father” (ὁμοούσιον τῷ πατρί).
With regard to the created order, the Father's actions consist in producing the entire universe, whereas the Son is ascribed a cooperation that remains undefined. By contrast, more information is given about the Son's saving work on our behalf: his incarnation, passion, resurrection, ascension, and return at the end of days to preside at the final judgment. The Holy Spirit is only mentioned as an object of faith, without any further detail as to its nature.
Nicaea is drenched through in biblical language, although it contains only two actual quotations: the statement that “through him [i.e., the Son] all things came into being” (John 1:3, 1 Cor. 8:6) and that he will come “to judge the living and the dead” (2 Tim. 4:1; 1 Pet. 4:5). With regard to the underlying biblical grammar, down to the incarnation Nicaea largely follows John 1:1-14, without, however, using Logos terminology.
Matthew 28:19 probably provided the basic trinitarian pattern. Other important passages that have clearly influenced the text include Ephesians 4:5-6, 1 Corinthians 8:6 (oneness of God the Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ); Revelation 1:8, etc. (the Father's omnipotence); 1 Corinthians 8:6, Colossians 1:15-16, Hebrews 1:2 (Father as creator, Christ as intermediary/helper); John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 1 John 4:9 (only-begotten); John 1:4, 9; 8:12 (light; see Heb. 1:3); John 3:33, 1 John 5:20 (true God; see John 17:3); John 1:9; 3:13, 19, 11:27 (descent); 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (death, burial, and resurrection); Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, Acts 1:11, 1 Peter 3:22 (ascension); Matthew 25:31, Acts 1:11 (return); Acts 10:42, 2 Timothy 4:1, 1 Peter 4:5 (final judgment), and many others.28 However, the creed's key term, homoúsios, is not found in the Bible, and the underlying noun ousía occurs only in Luke 15:12-13, in a quite different context. This was one of the reasons why in the aftermath of the council, the Creed of Nicaea was by no means immediately accepted.
4 The Homoúsios
We must, therefore, take a closer look at this adjective homoúsios. How did the statement that the Son is “consubstantial with the Father” come to be inserted in the Creed of Nicaea, and what did it actually mean? Let us first recall the circumstances of its insertion. Eusebius (who skips the episode of the Arian creed) says that the council first discussed his own credal text in the presence of the emperor. The emperor then asked for the homoúsios to be added and for the participants to sign this creed, thus expressing their agreement.
As was said above, the council must have entrusted a committee with the necessary revisions, because Eusebius indicates that Nicaea was “dictated by them” in the general assembly (ταύτης τῆς γραφῆς ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ὑπαγορευθείσης).29 Dictation was probably necessary, because unless they wrote it down, the council fathers could not discuss this document. Eusebius is, however, coy about who was actually behind this draft.
One of the most-discussed lines of questioning regarding the Council of Nicaea concerns where the term homoúsios came from, why it was inserted in the creed, and what the role of Constantine in this context actually was. The painstaking research of the last 50 years, notably undertaken by Frauke Dinsen, Christopher G. Stead, and Martin von Ostheim, has cleared up the history of the term as much as possible.31 By the beginning of the 4th century, the term could mean different things to different people. This was partly related to the fact that the underlying term ousía could mean “generic, shared being” but could also refer to an individual “being” (and was then largely synonymous with hypóstasis32), just like the word “car” could be used to refer to cars as such (“he drove by car”) or to an individual specimen (such as a pink Mercedes identified by a certain licence plate). To add to the confusion, in the Valentinian Gnosticism of the 2nd century, it could mean “belonging to the same order of being” within the Gnostic three-tier hierarchy of being.33[The Son] was not called homoúsios with regard to corporeal affections; therefore, the Son did not subsist from the Father either by division or abscission, for a nature which was immaterial, noetic, and incorporeal could not possibly be subject to any corporeal affection, and it befitted [us] to contemplate such things with divine and ineffable expressions. Such was the philosophical view of the subject taken by our most-wise and most-pious emperor.30
Furthermore, the homoúsios had also played a certain role in a controversy between Dionysius of Alexandria (247/8–64/5) and Dionysius of Rome (259–68), in which the former declared it unscriptural. He accepted its use nevertheless with reluctance and equated it with ὁμογενής (“of the same descent/kind,” such as between parents and children) and ὁμοφυής (“of the same nature,” such as between seed and plant).34 Much ink has been spilt about who introduced the term in the trinitarian debate of the 3rd century and about the role it played in this context. In addition, Paul of Samosata may have been censured for using the term, which contributed to his condemnation and deposition in 268. However, details of Paul's use and understanding of the homoúsios remain blurred and need not concern us here because “the one point which is quite clear in this obscure affair is that those who condemned Paul also condemned the use of the word homoúsios in a Trinitarian context, thereby causing considerable embarrassment to those theologians who wanted to defend its inclusion in an official doctrinal statement in the next century.”35
Arius and others very carefully distinguished between God/Father and Son, because – as Arius put it – the Son “is neither part of God nor [does he exist] from any underlying being [ἐξ ὑποκειμένου τινός].”36 In his letter to Alexander, Arius rejected any idea that the Son was a “part” (μέρος) of the Father and therefore “consubstantial” or some kind of emanation (προβολή).
In a letter to Paulinus, bishop of Tyre, Eusebius of Nicomedia had expressed himself in a similar vein. He tried to ward off a “materialistic” interpretation of οὐσία: if something undergoes (“suffers,” πεπονθός) change, it must possess some form of material substratum that is actually able to change. Yet, God's immutability would suffer if a being issued from God “by some quasi-physical process of generation involving change or loss.”37 Οὐσία and φύσις (he uses the terms synonymously) must not be understood to refer to some kind of material reality. If it did, the Son's coming into being would be like a cell division (my term). Yet, Proverbs 8, in its Christological interpretation, points to the “creation” of the Son, which, temporal factors notwithstanding, necessarily implies a substantial distinctness of the Son from the Father.
Here the rift that must have opened up between Constantine and his Arian advisers becomes especially palpable: both the emperor and Eusebius of Nicomedia denounced a “material” interpretation of the homoúsios. Yet, whereas Eusebius used this argument to reject the homoúsios and to deny the full divinity of the Son, Constantine advocated its use to affirm the Son's full divinity.
Unfortunately, however, the emperor was unable to supply a positive definition of the term, simply affirming that one should “contemplate such things with divine and ineffable expressions.” He defined the divine nature (φύσις), which he appeared to identify with οὐσία, as “immaterial, noetic, and incorporeal” (ἄυλον καὶ νοερὰν καὶ ἀσώματον). Whereas it was clear what φύσις was not (i.e., neither matter nor body), it was less clear what it actually was, except that it could only be perceived by the νοῦς (and not by the senses).38
Eusebius stressed that the use of the phrases γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ πατρί (“begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father”) was used to ward off the (Arian) idea that the Son's ousía was in any way comparable or identical to earthly matter and that the Son, therefore, belonged to the created order. In this respect, he also used the term hypóstasis synonymously with ousía: the Son was not of a different hypóstasis than the Father. However, it remained obscure what homoúsios meant exactly: if Eusebius’ account of the discussions is to be trusted, it did not necessarily mean “of identical substance” but that the Son “resembled the begetting Father only in every respect.”40On their dictating this document, we did not let it pass without inquiry in what sense they used the expressions “from the substance of the Father” [ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός] and “consubstantial with the Father [τῷ πατρὶ ὁμοούσιον].” Accordingly, questions and explanations took place, and the meaning of the phrases was examined in rational argument. And they professed that the phrase “from the substance” was indicative of the Son's being indeed from the Father, yet without being as if a portion of him [τοῦ ἐκ μὲν τοῦ πατρὸς εἶναι, οὐ μὴν ὡς μέρος ὑπάρχειν τοῦ πατρός].39
This imprecision may have been imported into the creed on purpose: the emperor or his advisers may have thought that the homoúsios (although clearly not acceptable to the Arians) was a fuzzy enough description of the ontological proximity of Father and Son, sufficient to be adopted by the council's majority. In the Creed of Nicaea as a whole (including the anathemas), ousía and hypóstasis were largely used synonymously. Given the debates that took place at the council, οὐσία in the Creed must, therefore, be translated as something like “ontological manifestation.” Homoúsios then meant that the Son possessed the same “ontological manifestation” as the Father, and this implied that he, too, was immutable and did not belong to the created order. In other words, ousía filled the terminological gap that had opened up when one tried to preserve the distinction between Father and Son and, at the same time, to emphasize their unity in such a way that it was not just terminological but existed on an ontological level, thus marking the categorical difference to the relationship between the creator and the created order. For the present purpose, it was perfectly acceptable that homoúsios could mean the identity of the essence of Father and Son, but also, in a wider sense, a fundamental similarity between the two as long as it was clear that this similarity emerged from some kind of common ontological substratum (their shared ousía or hypóstasis) that was not merely conceptual but not material either. Given this fuzziness, the homoúsios served less as a definition of the divinity of the Son but rather determined the ontological incomparability of the Son's ousía to that of the created order (which excluded his origin from any other hypóstasis or ousía than that of the Father).
Athanasius, who participated in the council as Alexander's secretary, says as much in his defence of Nicaea (De decretis Nicaenae synodi, written perhaps in 352/3): The Fathers “wrote ‘from God's substance’ [ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ θεοῦ], in order that ‘from God’ [τὸ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ] might not be considered common and equal [κοινὸν καὶ ἴσον] in the Son and in things originate, but that all others might be believed as a creature, and the Word alone as from the Father.”41 Incidentally, this is probably also the reason why the term “Logos” was not used in the Creed of Nicaea, because according to traditional doctrine, it could be understood either as the Father's λόγος ἐνδιάθετος (“inner-mental word/thought”), in which case the distinction between Father and Son would not have been clear enough), or as his λόγος προφορικός (“spoken/uttered word”), which not only made it difficult to express the unity between Father and Son but could also be misunderstood to mean that the Word was some kind of (material) emanation from God, as the Gnostics, Stoics, and Neo-Platonists supposedly held.42
Where did the homoúsios all of a sudden come from? We have conflicting information in this regard. On the one hand, Basil of Caesarea repeatedly mentions that Hermogenes, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, “wrote” the creed.43 But this is rather unlikely, since he does not appear in the lists of the episcopal participants (instead, the city's bishop is given as Leontius44). It is also unclear whether Basil regarded Hermogenes as the sole author, as the head of the drafting committee, or as some kind of secretary to the council. On the other hand, Philostorgius claims that before the council, in Nicomedia, Ossius and Alexander of Alexandria had schemed to adopt the homoúsios and to condemn Arius45 – but how would the Church historian have known about this? Nevertheless, Philostorgius may not be entirely wrong, because in his Historia Arianorum – written many years after the event (late 357) – Athanasius mentions that Ossius “had set out the faith in Nicaea [τὴν ἐν Νικαίᾳ πίστιν ἐξέθετο] and had everywhere proclaimed the Arians as heretics.”46
Whatever the authorship of the creed, in another context Athanasius reports that “the council” first wanted to compose a creed entirely based on scripture but was then forced to introduce the homoúsios for greater precision, after the “Eusebians” had given the original draft an Arian interpretation.47
Although the homoúsios was hardly used to provoke the Arians, it could well be that the term was introduced into the debate by the letter of Eusebius of Nicomedia and was then inserted in the Creed of Nicaea as “an apotropaic formula for resisting Arianism”49 precisely because it would have been rejected by cocksure Arians like Arius himself and Eusebius of Nicomedia. Conceivably, the staunch anti-Arian bishop of Antioch, Eustathius, and Ossius of Córdoba, who insisted on the one hypóstasis of Father and Son, may have been responsible for the inclusion, but the evidence remains inconclusive.50 Be that as it may, it is difficult to believe that the emperor himself was behind this move; instead, he probably relied on the counsel of his theological advisers, who by that time must have included anti-Arians such as Eustathius and Ossius.When this letter had been read at the Council of Nicaea, the fathers inserted this word [i.e., homoúsios] in their treatise on the faith [in tractatu fidei], because they saw that it would shock their adversaries, in order that they, as it were, might take the sword, which their [opponents] had drawn, to sever the head of their own blasphemous heresy [see 1 Sam(1 Kings) 17:51].48
In that respect, it may be significant that Eusebius does not actually say that Constantine was the one who introduced the homoúsios into the debate, but only that he added it and also provided the key to interpreting the text (ἑρμήνευε). Indeed, the bishop points out that he himself knew that “even among the ancients some learned and illustrious bishops and writers” had used it “in their theological discourse about the Father and Son,” which may suggest a larger discussion among the council fathers in which traditional authorities were cited. It is even unclear whether the emperor admitted the addition and went on to provide a series of qualifications or whether he actually urged for the addition and added some explanations in order to make it digestible for those opposing the term, because ousía could be understood to refer to corporeal affections (τῶν σωμάτων πάθη) and to presuppose some kind of materiality of the Father and the Son that needed to be cleared out of the way. Ultimately, it is impossible to give a conclusive answer as to who suggested the homoúsios, although Eustathius, with the support of Ossius, probably had a hand in it in some way.
5 The Anathemas of the Creed of Nicaea
- the temporal beginning of the Son
- his creation from nothing
- his origin from another ὑπόστασις or οὐσία
- his mutability
These are precisely the same tenets that were already rejected in Antioch some months previously, although summarized in a more succinct fashion. It is, therefore, probable that either the authors of Nicaea had the creed of the synod of Antioch at their disposal or that, at least, those bishops who had drafted the earlier creed were also involved in the drafting of Nicaea.
Not only are the anathemas in the creed clearly based on those of Antioch with regard to theological content: they also follow Antioch in not condemning specific persons. This was already remarked upon in antiquity and was attributed to the council's “moderation.”51 However, there is also a characteristic difference between Antioch and Nicaea in this regard. In Antioch, a synod condemned certain dissident doctrines (and communicated this decision to other churches). The synod spoke in the first person plural: “we condemn.” In Nicaea, it was the “catholic and apostolic Church” that performed this act. The weight of Nicaea's anathemas was increased even further by postponing the subject to the end of the sentence. In addition, it was not a church (or synod) but the Church whose eminence was underlined by the qualifying adjectives “catholic” and “apostolic.” Thus, two claims were made: first, the Church pronouncing the anathema was “universal” (καθολικός) as opposed to the particular minority view of the heretics; second, it stood in one unbroken and continuous line with the apostles (as opposed to the new-fangled heresies). Clearly, these claims were not historical: it quickly turned out that many, if not most, bishops did not accept the Creed of Nicaea, because they held views similar to those that were being outlawed here; likewise, it was easy to prove that the real innovation consisted not in the subordinatianism of the Arians but in the introduction of the unbiblical homoúsios. Yet, that was not the point: the phrasing was meant to conquer and defend a certain discursive space and to display the hegemony of one group of bishops, supported by the emperor, over dissenting views. The anathemas of Nicaea thus served to increase the normativity of the creed even further. From then on, the creed was used to test episcopal orthodoxy; dissent was sanctioned in the anathemas.52
Yet, in the long term, this discursive strategy was not altogether successful: the anathemas were not seen as forming a unity with the creed but continued to be separate. Thus, in Constantinople, they were no longer appended to the creed but were included in canon 1 of the synod and were here directed against certain groups that were each labelled with a collective term.53 In Nicaea, it even seems that signing the creed and signing the anathemas were two distinct procedures, because Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea signed the one but not the other.54
As regards the legal implications of the creed and its anathemas, we may therefore summarize our results as follows: the bishops at Nicaea followed the precedent set by Antioch in defining the faith in writing by means of a three-part creed. In addition, they appended anathemas to the creed (as had happened already at Antioch). These anathemas were, as it were, the flipside of defining the faith by means of a fixed formula. Yet, they did not necessarily follow from this definition; instead, they helped to mark even more clearly the boundaries of what was permitted to say about the Trinity and what was not. There is some evidence to suggest that the document was ultimately forced upon all bishops by threatening them with immediate exile should they refuse to sign it.55
Given the emperor's involvement in the proceedings at Nicaea and the measures taken in its aftermath, in Nicaea the creed had turned from an expression of faith into a legal document. Henceforth, dissent was in principle (though not always in practice) subject to secular punishment that involved deposition and exile. It is true, therefore, to say that “Constantine's interference in the conflict and the establishment of an ‘official’ doctrine ‘criminalized’ theological dissent.”56 Yet, developments had not reached a stage at which the Creed of Nicaea was made compulsory for all Christians – for the time being, its force remained restricted to the clergy. Moreover, as far as we can see, Constantine did not even make this creed compulsory for all clergy. He was content with having established the peace. In his letter to the church of Alexandria of June 325, he called the local clergy to settle their differences on the basis of the decisions of Nicaea, where the bishops had “confirmed one and the same faith” (which remained unspecified).57 In his encyclical letter to all the churches, he did not even consider it necessary to mention the doctrinal issues discussed in Nicaea.58 He also imposed a poll tax on the bishops who followed Arius that was ten times higher than usual and withdrew certain privileges.59 Finally, he ordered the heretic's writings to be burned, like those of the anti-Christian philosopher Porphyry.60 In the emperor's eyes, the purpose of Nicaea was not to establish a specific creed but to achieve unity by whatever means necessary.61
Constantine's hope for peace in the Church was soon quashed. But the Creed of Nicaea and the council that produced it came, over time, to be seen as a milestone in the definition of “orthodox” Christian theology.
6 Theological Postscript
When we commemorate Nicaea, we should, I think, remember its ambivalent legacy. The theological development that began at the first Ecumenical Council in 325 and culminated in the victory of the Neo-Nicenes at Constantinople brought about a conceptual clarification of terms that helped to establish a wide consensus regarding how we describe the Christian God and his saving work in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. It continues to influence Christian theology after 1700 years all over the world. However, with the rise of evangelicalism and Pentecostalism, trinitarian theology has come under heavy criticism, some of it justified. But we should not be too quick to belittle the achievements of the church fathers. The trinitarian debates of the 4th century have shown that the biblical evidence is not unequivocal, but that patient conceptual work is needed to ensure a coherent and communicable discourse about God.
Nevertheless, these debates also had problematic consequences that burdened the theology of the following centuries. On the one hand, as I hope to have shown, it promoted the exclusion of those who, for good reasons and with honourable motives, maintained that the Nicene theology did not do justice to the entire biblical evidence, either because they sought to hold on to the monarchy of the one God or because they feared that the Nicene way of speaking about Jesus unduly overshadowed other aspects of his ministry and teaching. On the other hand, the Nicenes contributed significantly to the formation of an “elitist” theology, which was henceforth discussed at academies and could no longer easily be communicated to ordinary Christians.
Both burdens are, in my opinion, clearly noticeable in the Protestant tradition to which I belong. In our churches, there is both an inability and an unwillingness to explain the achievements of 4th-century trinitarian theology in a way that resonates with the congregation. The doctrine of the Trinity is considered incomprehensible, being bound up, as it is, with a theology that deprives the individual believer of their intellectual independence and does not sufficiently take into account the diversity of human spirituality. This leads all too many pastors in their homilies to resort to simple biblical paraphrases or to problematic moralizing.
There are no easy solutions to this dilemma. In order to come to terms with the biblical evidence, most church fathers took recourse to a Platonic ontology that gave the divine substance pride of place, whereas the environment in which we live and which is characterized by manifold and often conflicting ideas, experiences, and emotions was accorded a lesser degree of reality in the hierarchy of being. In an age in which scientific explanations of the world dominate, such an ontology is no longer plausible. It is to be hoped that the anniversary of Nicaea encourages us to go beyond simply commemorating the golden age of patristics by developing new ways to communicate the significance of the incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ for our salvation to a wider public.
Biography
Prof. Dr Wolfram Kinzig has been professor of church history at the University of Bonn, Germany, since 1996.
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