modern Christians call the Nicene creed is actually the formula
drawn up at Constantinople nearly sixty years later. For while
Constantine supported the creed drawn up at Nicaea in 325, in
the remaining twelve years of his reign he changed his mind about
it quite drastically. By the time of his death, many bishops who
had been condemned at Nicaea for not agreeing to the creed were
back in favour, while supporters of the Nicene creed now risked
being sent into exile.
This is not the place to get bogged down in the complexi-
ties of the theological disputes over the nature of the Trinity that
raged throughout the fourth century. It is enough to point out that
for much of the period those bishops who were in the ascendant
(in political terms, with the backing of an emperor) either ignored
the creed of Nicaea or regarded it as heresy, and supported instead
other creeds close to (but not identical with) the theology of
the priest Arius. In the end, and again with imperial support, the
adherents of the creed of Nicaea won the day at the council of
Constantinople in 381. There they reaffirmed the Nicene creed,
but reformulated it to take account of more than half a century
of theological wrangling. Reformulated or not, however, the creed
of Constantinople was regarded as being true to the orthodoxy of
the creed of Nicaea.
This act of theological gymnastics did not appear out of the
blue in 381. It reflected a tradition of theological debate that had
developed among supporters of Nicaea during the fourth century.
They had argued consistently that Nicaea’s status as a council –
and so, therefore, of its creed – was special. Nicaea was the first
ecumenical council, they maintained, and therefore its decisions
should enjoy priority. They asserted also that it had been called
under the inspiration of God. Proof of this could be seen in the
number of bishops who supported its creed. The precise number
of 318 was not random, but resonated with symbolic meaning.
It was the number of servants who had assisted the Old Testa-
ment patriarch Abraham against his enemies (Genesis14.14). In
Greek numerals, moreover, the number was written as TIH: the
T symbolized Jesus’ cross, while IH was the first two letters of
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