meaning ‘I believe’) was issued by the council, after which it was
called the Nicene creed. This statement is still regarded by most
Christian groups as the basic definition of orthodoxy.
But how many bishops attended the council of Nicaea and
subscribed to its creed? This question might seem to be of rela-
tively minor importance, but in seeking to answer it we discover
much about how the history of the council of Nicaea was written
and interpreted to suit later theological agendas. We get some
inkling of the complexities of this issue if we return to the issue
of the creed formulated by the council. For the Nicene creed
recited by modern Christians the world over is not, in fact, the
statement of faith issued by the bishops at Nicaea in 325; it is,
rather, a revision of that creed formulated by another council of
bishops that met at Constantinople in 381 (J. N. D. Kelly 1972:
296–301).
This is plainly a confusing set of affairs; but how did it
arise? If we return to the question of how many bishops were at
Nicaea we can begin to formulate an answer. The simple fact
is that we do not really know. None of our roughly contempo-
rary sources tells us the exact number. They give instead rather
vague formulae such as ‘more than 250’ or ‘about 300’. Modern
scholars can do no better and place the number of bishops at the
council somewhere between 250 and 300 (Hanson 1988: 155–6).
Yet churchmen in the later fourth century claimed to know the
exact number, not strictly of all bishops who attended the council,
but of those who subscribed to the Nicene creed. That number
was 318 precisely.
What are we to make of this? It could be argued, perhaps,
that fourth-century churchmen simply knew better than we do, or
that they had better sources (such as copies in their archives
of the Nicene creed followed by a list of signatures, which they
diligently counted). Given the vagueness of other (and earlier)
fourth-century sources, however, this seems unlikely. Another
possibility presents itself, and suggests a rewriting – or at least a
reinterpretation – of the history of the council of Nicaea to suit
later theological agendas. This is connected to the fact that whatORTHODOXY AND ORGANIZATION IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY
144