The Orthodox Formulas 2: The Council of Constantinople (381)

What is sometimes called the “Nicene Creed” and recited in churches is actually from this later council, which is a reaffirmation, interpretation, and elaboration of the Nicene Creed of 325. This council put an end to a long period of theological infighting, handing a victory to those opposed to what are usually now called “Arians” and/or “neo-Arians”.

I would say that it is the first truly trinitarian creed. I’ll just add a few brief comments below.

First Council of Constantinople (381) The exposition of the 150 fathers

We believe in one God the Father all-powerful, maker of heaven and of earth, and of all things both seen and unseen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all the ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things came to be; for us humans and for our salvation he came down from the heavens and became incarnate from the holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, became human and was crucified on our behalf under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried and rose up on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; and he went up into the heavens and is seated at the Father’s right hand; he is coming again with glory to judge the living and the dead; his kingdom will have no end. And in the Spirit, the holy, the lordly and life-giving one, proceeding forth from the Father, co-worshipped and co-glorified with Father and Son, the one who spoke through the prophets; in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. We confess one baptism for the forgiving of sins. We look forward to a resurrection of the dead and life in the age to come. Amen.

A letter of the bishops gathered in Constantinople

…What we have undergone — persecutions, afflictions, imperial threats, cruelty from officials, and whatever other trial at the hands of heretics — we have put up with for the sake of the gospel faith established by the 318 fathers at Nicaea in Bithynia. You, we and all who are not bent on subverting the word of the true faith should give this creed our approval. It is the most ancient and is consistent with our baptism. It tells us how to believe in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Spirit: believing also, of course, that the Father, the Son and the holy Spirit have a single Godhead and power and substance, a dignity deserving the same honour and a co-eternal sovereignty, in three most perfect hypostases, or three perfect persons. So there is no place for Sabellius’s diseased theory in which the hypostases are confused and thus their proper characteristics destroyed. Nor may the blasphemy of Eunomians and Arians and Pneumatomachi prevail, with its division of substance or of nature or of Godhead, and its introduction of some nature which was produced subsequently, or was created, or was of a different substance, into the uncreated and consubstantial and co-eternal Trinity. And we preserve undistorted the accounts of the Lord’s taking of humanity, accepting as we do that the economy of his flesh was not soulless nor mindless nor imperfect. To sum up, we know that he was before the ages fully God the Word, and that in the last days he became fully man for the sake of our salvation. So much, in summary, for the faith which is openly preached by us. …

Some thoughts:

• You may well ask: How did this put an end to the controversy stemming from 325? Some would say that theologians had finally worked out the necessary language. But in fact, this settlement was enforced by the might of the Roman emperor Theodosius I (pictured here) in a series of decrees after this council. For the details, see Charles Freedman, AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State. Forget about Constantine; this is really where an emperor decisively shaped catholic tradition.
• Note that in this creed they still have the NT habit of using “Father” and “God” as co-referring. “God” is not yet used primarily of the Trinity, though it soon will be.
• The Holy Spirit seems to get a sort of promotion here. The Holy Spirit isn’t an object of worship in the NT (unlike the Father and the Son). And as far as I’m aware, there wasn’t a strong, unequivocal Christian practice of including the Holy Spirit alongside the Father and Son for worship in the Christian church up till this time, though they frequently affirmed belief in the Holy Spirit, and baptized using that name, and so on.
• Also asserted: that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from” the Father. That the Son “is generated from” the Father. Both procession and generation are meant to be incompatible with creation, and are presumably supposed to be eternal/timeless processes. The positive content of these terms, and how they differ, is of course less than clear.
• What, precisely, is the objection to Sabellius’ “diseased theory”? (i.e. Serial FSH modalism.) Is it this?
  • Sabellius identifies the three, but clearly, the three are not numerically identical – they simply share a “Godhead”.
  • or is it: There are three Persons “in God”, but Sabellius treats them as one Person, which is mistaken.
    
  • Sabellius could, it seems to me, affirm that the “Persons” were not numerically identical, so long as he insists that this point is about non-identical modes and/or manifestations of the one God. Of course, they would all be modes of one and the same thing, God.
  • So why didn’t they simply object to Sabellius that the “Persons” aren’t serial, but overlap in time? (Probably, I suppose, because they denied that any divine person could ever be in time!)

• single Godhead and power and substance” – this is the crux of the matter. What does this mean, and is it even possibly true? Thinking Christians are still arguing about this.

Update: Writing this entry, I was treating this council purely on the level of theology. But the story of how the council happened is appalling, and should disqualify it from being an “ecumenical” council which was the free expression of the mind of the (majority of) the Church. I explain the invalidating factors at the end of this more recent post.