Lecture 18: Theological Crisis and Council—The Trinity
• Such teaching was regarded as heretical by those who had already
resisted other forms of adoptionism and Monarchianism, seeing
them as a threat to the full divinity of Christ. The internal dispute
was intense and widespread enough to threaten the unity of the
church and, therefore, of the empire.• The emperor Constantine summoned the Council at Nicaea in 325
to establish religious unity in the empire.
o After the opening convocation by the emperor, Bishop Hosius
seems to have presided as legate (some think Eustathius of
Antioch presided). Of the more than 300 bishops attending,
only 7 were from the West, plus 2 priests serving as legates of
the bishop of Rome.o Opinions were sharply divided, but an expanded version of the
traditional creed emerged and was promulgated, focusing on
the nature of the Son.o The Nicene Creed uses biblical images to assert the equality
of Father and Son: God from God, Light from Light, True
God from True God. But because the challenge was based on
rational categories (philosophy), the creed incorporated, for the
first time, language that was also philosophical. The Son was
“of one being” with the Father (homoousios = “consubstantial”)
and was “begotten not made” (gennetos ou genetos), respective
responses to Arius’s views.o The Council was “ecumenical” (the first of seven so-called)
because it involved the “universal church”; in addition to the
creed, it issued excommunications of Arius and his allies. It
also definitively settled the dating of Easter, the problem that
had upset relations in the late 2nd century.• The Council of Nicaea, however, by no means ended the theological
controversy; it raged on for another 50 years with a resolution in
favor of orthodoxy not at all certain.