Arianism and the Council of Nicea

Before the beginning of the 4^th century, all creeds and summaries of faith were local ones; even the Old Roman Creed. It was taken for granted they enshrined the faith as it had been handed down from the Apostles. Beginning with the Council of Nicea, synods or gatherings of ecclesiastics began to meet in order to articulate their agreement on matters of faith. These new creeds were intended to have a far wider application than mere local authority.

As one scholar put it, “The old creeds were creeds for catechumens, the new creed was a creed for bishops.” Older creeds were associated with baptismal confessions, while testing orthodoxy was the primary motive in the new type of creed. And the proliferation of heretical sects like the Arians in the third century brought the need for such an ecumenical declaration of orthodox belief to the attention of the Church leaders of the early fourth century. When the ecumenical synod called by Constantine formulated the creed of Nicea, it became the first to rightly claim universal authority.

The opening session of the Nicean Council was on June 19, 325. There were around three hundred bishops and hundreds of lesser clergy and laymen in attendance. One of the most important orthodox influences was a young priest among the lesser clergy from Alexandria named Athanasius.

Soon after he conquered the Eastern provinces, the Emperor Constantine organized the Council to resolve the Arian controversy and consolidate the Church on the widest possible measure of doctrinal unity. He viewed the Church as the spiritual sphere of his empire, and he wanted it to be without conflict as well. Accordingly, the emperor’s opening address focused on the danger of internal strife in the Church, and voiced his longing for peace and unity among the bishops. The bishops in attendance assumed from the beginning the circumstances called for an agreed statement of faith.

At the third session of the Council on October 10^th, the drafted creed of Nicea was read aloud to the assembly. Emperor Constantine said it sounded entirely orthodox to him, and he held to exactly the same teaching. He said the bishops in attendance should sign it, and suggested the addition of a single word, homoousios or “consubstantial,” meaning of the same substance (It’s found in the clauses, “from the substance of the Father” and “of one substance with the Father”). The use of the term homoousios was in clear opposition to Arian belief that the Son was alien from the Father’s substance. But the term was also not used in Scripture.

Athanasius, who had a significant influence in the final anti-Arian content of the creed, said the Arians had twisted the original use of scriptural language by saying the Son was “from God,” and He was “the true Power and Image of the Father” to harmonize with their own beliefs. So while the terms were biblical, they could be imputed by the Arians with their own particular meaning if used in the creed. A semi-Arian compromise was suggested, using homoiusion (of like substance), instead of homoousios. But Athanasius recognized there could be no middle term between ‘God’ and ‘not-God.’ He persuaded a considerable majority of the Council to reject both Arian and semi-Arian language in the creedal formulation.

In the end, the Nicene bishops were forced to use the non-scriptural term homoousios in the clauses noted above to be unambiguous as to what they meant, as the Arians had co-opted the Scriptural terms noted above to support their theological beliefs about Christ. Arius and two others chose to be exiled rather than sign their name to the creed. Eusebius of Nicomedia and two others later rescinded their signatures and were sent into exile as well. All the other bishops signed off on the creed of Nicea. The following discussion points to the rationale for using some of the anti-Arian phrases within the creed of Nicea.

Arius said the substances of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are different and have no share in each other. Saying Jesus Christ was “true God from true God” denied the Arian claim that only the Father was “true God,” while Arius said:  “Nor is the Word true God.” The next phrase, “begotten not made,” distinguished between begotten and made, which the Arians did not. Saying Jesus was of “one substance with the Father,” asserted the full deity of the Son, thus completely rejecting the Arian position. All the phrases in the anathemas challenged typical Arian catchwords or slogans. See the following chart.

The creed of Nicea went further than Eusebius and other had anticipated it would, not only with the addition of homoousios, but also the anathemas at the end. After saying Jesus Christ was “from the substance of the Father,” and “of one substance with the Father,” the concluding anathemas were seemingly a knockout blow for Arianism. But the creed of Nicea was rarely referred to in the Western Church for a generation after Nicea.

First and foremost, it was a creed for bishops—formulated to address a doctrinal crisis in the church. It was not initially intended to replace the existing baptismal confessions used within the local churches. Secondly, there was a widespread ignorance of the relevant documents of the Arian controversy in the West, including the creed itself. One probable reason was because the earliest Latin translation of the documents was not done until 355. By 325 there was a Western-Latin, Eastern-Greek language barrier in place within both the Roman Empire and the Church. Another likely reason was because Arius and his beliefs weren’t completely vanquished by the Creed of Nicea.

In 327 Arius and Euzious submitted a creed to Constantine (see the above chart), hoping to be readmitted to the Church. Arius said his creedal statement of faith was based on the Holy Scriptures, where the Lord commanded them to go teach all nations, baptizing them in the three-fold name. “Yet it can scarcely be claimed that his formula was more than distantly related to [then] current baptismal forms.” His creed seems to have been a concoction based on the original 325 creed of Nicea, however it carefully excluded the distinctive teaching of Nicea. Notice how the Christological article and voice is either missing or radically rephrased by Arius in his creed, especially avoiding the confession of being one substance with the Father.

Incredibly, his strategy worked. Constantine accepted his creed and reinstated Arius in the church. Remember what was said earlier about how Constantine (and other Roman emperors after him) wanted a united Church undisrupted by warring theological factions. “So from the first recognition of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine in AD 313, politics and religious orthodoxy [often] went hand in hand.”

Then in 328 Eusebius of Nicomedia was recalled from exile AND became a trusted advisor to Constantine. “The Emperor completely reversed his position.” From then onwards there was a purge conducted against Nicene bishops. The culmination was when Athansius, now bishop of Alexandria, was removed from office and driven from his see in 335. This was the first of five times Athansius would be exiled from his position over the next several decades of political and ecclesiastical turmoil.

Arius died in 336; and Constantine died two years later in 338. For a time, there was peace with the empire as it was divided between Constantine’s three sons. The exiled bishops, including Athanasius, were returned to their sees. But in 339, Eusebius of Nicomedia became the Patriarch of Constantinople, and he again expelled Athanasius from Alexandria. Athansius went to Rome, where he was received and supported by Pope Julius I. After Eusebius of Nicomedia died in 341, Athansius again returned to Alexandria in 346.

Eventually, one of Constantine’s sons, Constantius, became the sole ruler of the Empire in 356. Unfortunately, he was anti-Nicene and imposed those beliefs on all the domains of the now united Empire. Athansius was once again exiled in 356.

In 361 Constantius died and Athansius returned briefly to Alexandria, only to be “sent on his travels” within the year. Yet before his exile in 362, Athansius helped forge a formula at a synod held in Alexandria that said the Godhead contained one substance (substantia) and three persons (persona). “A specific doctrine of the Spirit was also agreed, that he was not a creature and was inseparable from the Father and the Son.” This distinction became a crucial element in the formulation drafted at the second ecumenical synod at Constantinople in 381.

The Emperor who replaced Constantius was known as “Julian the Apostate.” He tolerated all Christian sects, in the hopes that they would destroy one another. Towards that end, he recalled the orthodox bishops from exile, including Athanasius, who returned to Alexandria in 263. Perhaps fortunately for the Church and the Empire, Julian died after reigning for just two years.

Although several different councils or synods were held between 341 and the Council of Constantinople in 381, none were as broadly ecumenical as the Council of Nicea. An historian commented that the imperial transport system was repeatedly disrupted by the bishops traveling to-and-fro from the various synods that were held.

Adding to this theological and political tangle was the emergence of heretical beliefs concerning the Holy Spirit, such as those of the Pneumatomachian. Initially, they did not garner much attention, as the church Fathers were focused on their struggles with the theological, political and ecclesiastical consequences of Arianism.

Orthodox thinking held that if the Son was fully divine, it followed that the Spirit was divine also. The Pneumatomachi (meaning “Spirit Fighters”) denied this. They said there was a lack of evidence for the Spirit’s deity. Further, they saw no warrant for adding another relationship to those of the Father and the Son within the Godhead. They typically saw the Trinity as a hierarchy, allowing the Son to be less than the Father and the Spirit to be created. The Alexandrian synod held by Athansius in 362 was the first to condemn the Pneumatomachi.

Their origin has been attributed to Marcellus bishop of Ancyra, in Galatia, who believed the relationship of Sonship in the Godhead was limited to the Incarnation and would disappear when its purposes were accomplished. Marcellus was one of the bishops at the Council of Nicea in 325 and a strong opponent of Arianism. He seems to have been a life long “frienemy” with Athanasius. But he was accused of Sabellianism, exiled and condemned by a synod in Constantinople in 336. He went to Rome and with the help of Athanasius, he was cleared of  “the falsehood of Sabellius” in 341.

He was again removed from his see in 347 by Constantius and died in exile in 374. Several Eastern creeds formulated in the 340s and 350s contained anti-Marcellan clauses. But the controversy over his doctrines, to a large extent, passed away after his death. However, the Nicene Creed seems to have added the phrase “whose kingdom shall have no end” in order to counter Marcellus’ teaching.

The Arian controversy had kept questions about the status of the Holy Spirit in the background. But some church fathers like Basil the Great of Caesarea had begun to realize a change was needed within the Nicene faith, as the 325 Creed only briefly mentioned the Spirit. This eventually led to the Council of Constantinople in 381 and the formulation of what is the modern Nicene Creed. For more on the early creeds and heresies of the Christian church, see the link: “Early Creeds.”