Creed, chaos, and consensus

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[ABOVE: Anonymous, Christ with Three Faces (The Holy Trinity). Mid-17th Century. Oil on wood. National Museum in Kraków—Public domain, Wikimedia]

In the 15 or so years following the council, the Nicene Creed seemed to bring up more questions than it initially answered. Division festered within the church. Trinitarian controversies continued. But out of these divisions, theological debates, and a series of catalyzing events, an alliance of prominent pro-Nicene bishops emerged. It would take over 50 years after Nicaea, but this alliance would achieve lasting ascendancy for the Nicene position, solidified at the Council of Constantinople in 381.

The "Fourth Creed"

Forging a consensus, however, was more easily said than done. As the focus of controversy shifted from Arius to Eustathius of Antioch (died c. 337), Marcellus of Ancyra (died c. 374), and Athanasius of Alexandria, fracture lines within the church deepened (see pp. 32–35). Eusebius of Caesarea accused the first two of Sabellianism (see p. 23) and orchestrated their deposition and exile (Eustathius in 327 and Marcellus in 336). Some also targeted Athanasius, who had been convicted of church misconduct in 335, making him suspect to many Eastern bishops. In the decade after Nicaea, Eastern bishops came to view Western support for Marcellus and Athanasius as tolerance of Sabellianism, while Western bishops increasingly viewed Eastern bishops as harboring Arian views. 

The Dedication Council of Antioch in 341 became the first major attempt to work for a new consensus. The bishops there positioned orthodoxy as the center between the extremes of Arianism and Sabellianism and hoped to garner widespread support with a minimalist creed. While this so-called fourth creed of Antioch failed to achieve its immediate aim, for nearly 20 years in the East it was the basis for other conciliar creeds. Early attempts sought wider acceptability by using a minimal number of “anti” statements within the creed; but then they supplemented the creed with detailed explanations and anathemas (formal curses that denounced false doctrine) to ensure interpretation in a particular (anti-Arian and anti-Marcellan) manner.

In 353, after Constantius II (317–361), son of Constantine, became the sole ruler of the Roman Empire, he convened a series of synods, trying to collect episcopal agreement to a creed based on the minimalistic fourth creed of Antioch with supplemental anathemas. But he made a strategic mistake with his support of the Second Sirmium Formula of 357, which condemned all ousia terminology for God and explicitly prohibited, for the first time, the terms homoousios (same-in-substance) and homoiousios (like-in-substance). 

Later called the Blasphemy of Sirmium, the Second Sirmium Formula’s stark subordinationist agenda was a rejection of the centrist approach of the fourth creed of Antioch and provoked widespread unease among all participants in the trinitarian debates. Yet even prior to this, Constantius’s heavy-handedness in promoting his imperially endorsed creed had generated opposition and began a drive toward accepting Nicaea. Western bishops such as Eusebius of Vercelli (283–371) and Phoebadius of Agen (died c. 392) promoted the Nicene Creed as the basis for consensus, and Athanasius attempted to refute objections to key Nicene phrases in his On the Decrees of the Council of Nicaea written from 353 to 356.

The Blasphemy of Sirmium sparked the emergence of new theological approaches, such as the heteroousian theology of Aetius and Eunomius—which emphasized that the Son was “different in substance” (heteroousios) from the Father—and their opponents, the homoiousians led by Basil of Ancyra and George of Laodicea, who preferred to say that the Son was “like the Father in substance.” Others endorsed a theology called “homoian,” because it ambiguously affirmed that the Father and the Son are “alike” (homoios) without much further specification. 

Eventually Constantius convened two councils that promulgated a homoian creed, and in early 360 it was imposed across the empire. Yet the settlement was fragile. Constantius died in 361, and with his death the politico-theological machinery that had sustained the creed collapsed. This crisis proved decisive: it transformed scattered sympathies into a coherent movement and made Nicaea a rallying point for those seeking stability in doctrine, despite real differences. Athanasius of Alexandria and Basil of Caesarea represented the most important figures in this shift.

Nicene renewal

In his treatise On the Councils (359), Athanasius engaged directly with the Homoiousians, showing that “like according to substance” need not conflict with the Nicene homoousion. He argued that the latter term did not imply materialistic conceptions of divinity but safeguarded the biblical teaching of the Son’s true divinity. In the Antiochene Tome of 362, Athanasius proposed a way to reconcile two apparently contradictory traditions: those confessing that God had “one hypostasis” and those confessing that he had “three hypostases.” Athanasius argued that three-hypostases language could be used in an orthodox, non-Arian manner; likewise, one-hypostasis language could be used in an orthodox, non-Sabellian manner. In his view these seemingly opposed terminologies could actually express compatible theologies.

He also advanced the earlier strategy of supplementing a creed with authoritative interpretation; just as earlier consensus formulas had been accompanied by explanatory anathemas, so Nicaea, he argued, should be received with its true meaning clarified. His insistence on interpretive supplementation laid a foundation for later pro-Nicene theology. It also helped to disarm the suspicion that Nicaea was inherently Sabellian, and managed to create space for the incorporation of Homoiousians into the pro-Nicene alliance.

Basil, meanwhile, emerged onto the theological stage from a roughly homoiousian milieu. In his anti-heteroousian Contra Eunomium (364–365), Basil articulated a theology of God’s unitary substance and the distinctive features that characterize the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit without appeal to technical terms. At first he was cautious about the homoousios and preferred formulations such as “exactly and indistinguishably alike according to substance,” which seemed a more accurate way of expressing the relation between the ousiai of the Father and the Son. But in time Basil came to view homoousios as the better term.

In the 370s as bishop, Basil ceaselessly promoted confession of the Nicene Creed as the means to unity, as long as it was interpreted soundly—the creed, he believed, required some supplementation to ensure correct understanding. This included refusing to call the Holy Spirit a creature and anathematizing those who did.

Athanasius required a similar anathema in the Antiochene Tome. Both theologians were responding to Pneumatomachians, or “fighters against the Spirit,” who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Writings from both Athanasius and Basil, as well as Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Holy Spirit Against the Macedonians from the early 380s, represent early attempts to argue systematically for the Spirit’s full divinity. Affirmation of this understanding of the Spirit became a key element of pro-Nicene theology. 

Imperial muscle

Athanasius died in 373 and Basil on January 1, 379, with hopes for a lasting pro-Nicene alliance still unrealized. Heteroousian theology resurged when Eunomius at long last decided to respond to the now-dead Basil with his Apology for the Apology, issued between late 378 and the early 380s. Basil’s brother, Gregory of Nyssa, circulated his own Contra Eunomium, a refutation of Eunomius, between 380 and 383. In 379 Gregory of Nazianzus was summoned to minister to the embattled pro-Nicenes in Constantinople. Here in the summer of 380, he preached a famous series of five theological orations in which he boldly articulated an anti-Arian, anti-Eunomian, anti-Marcellan, and anti-Pneumatomachian, pro-Nicene theology of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that emphasized the paradox of divine unity and multiplicity. Unlike Basil he even called the Holy Spirit “God” and extended the homoousios to the Holy Spirit as well as to the Son, insisting thus that the Holy Spirit is from the substance of the Father as much as the Son is. Gregory solidified the distinction between the way Son and Spirit are from the Father—the Son by “begetting” and the Spirit by “procession.”

The final breakthrough for the pro-Nicene alliance came with the accession of Theodosius I. In late 380 Theodosius entered Constantinople, expelled the homoian bishop there, and installed Gregory of Nazianzus in his place. Then in 381 the emperor convened the Council of Constantinople. Initially presided over by Meletius of Antioch, and later by Gregory himself, the council reaffirmed the faith of Nicaea, condemned the Pneumatomachians, and issued a new creed. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed did not reject the Nicene faith but instead restated it in the current context, which required a fuller affirmation of the Spirit’s divinity. 

 Theodosius ensured this creed’s enforcement through legislation summarizing the trinitarian logic according to which the creed should be understood. For example his decree All the Peoples (February 380) announced: “We shall believe in the single deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, under the concept of equal majesty and of the Holy Trinity.” Neither All the Peoples nor No Place for the Heretics (January 380) nor Handed Over to the Bishops (July 381) put forth the homoousios as a key marker of pro-Nicene orthodoxy; rather, the emphasis was on articulating the logic of three divine persons within the unitary divinity, without any insistence on particular technical terminology. Through these measures, the creed became entrenched as the empire’s official religion. 

Like previous movements, the pro-Nicene alliance sought to occupy the center between extremes, to craft a creed minimalist enough for broad assent but substantive enough to exclude heresy, and to supplement that creed with authoritative interpretation. Unlike earlier creeds it possessed a theological synthesis capable of resolving earlier ambiguities, bishops of intellectual stature able to articulate its logic, and an emperor willing and able to enforce its decisions. By the close of the fourth century, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed had secured its place as the measure of orthodoxy.

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By Mark DelCogliano

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