An Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity – Fr. Thomas Hopko

Purpose

This is a summary of a well-known talk on the Trinity by a well-known Eastern Orthodox theologian, Father Thomas Hopko. I added some comments. I do not agree with everything which Hopko says, but I think he did a brilliant job of reconciling the ancient creeds with the Bible. The reader is advised to listen to that podcast before reading this article. But first, I would like to argue why we should listen to the Eastern Orthodox Christians:

The Eastern Orthodox Church

The beliefs of Eastern Orthodoxy is important because Christianity originated in the Eastern Roman Empire (in Judea) and because most of the Christian theologians of the first centuries, like Athanasius, Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, and Augustine of Hippo were from the Eastern Roman Empire, including Africa. For that reason also, most of the delegates at Nicaea in 325 AD were from the Eastern Roman Empire (God in Three Persons, Millard J. Erickson, p82-85). However, the Muslim conquests of the seventh century and later significantly weakened the church in the east. At the same time, the church in the Western Roman Empire – the Church of Rome – became a powerful force in Europe. For that reason, the theology of the church in the Western world today has been inherited, largely, from the Church of Rome.

There always were theological differences between the east and the west. For example, over the day on which Passover should be celebrated and the filioque controversy. As another example, at the Council of Sardica, somewhere in 342 to 347, many Eastern bishops left the meeting to hold another council in Philippopolis because they were fearing domination of the council by Western bishops (Pavao, p120). Pavao claimed that “Arianism was exclusively an eastern phenomenon even prior to Nicea” (Decoding Nicea, p115). Consequently, the development of theology in the east followed a different path than in the west. Furthermore, the persecution that the church in the east suffered over the centuries stifled the development of doctrines. The church in the east, for that reason, retained the theology of the early church to a greater extent.

For these reasons, I propose, it is important that we understand how the Eastern Orthodox Church understands the Trinity.

Summary

In this section, I summarize Hopko’s talk. According to Hopko:

The Trinity

The Trinity is the tri-hypostatic Divinity or Godhead; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; one in essence and undivided.

Jesus Christ

synagogue official came and bowed downJesus of Nazareth is “the Christ; the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). He is not created but begotten timelessly of the Father before all ages. Therefore, He is divine with the same divinity as the one true and living God. As the Nicene Creed says, “God from God, true God from true God … homoousios” with the Father. The term homoousios might be better translated as “who is of the same divinity as the one God who is His Father.”

He is the Logos (Word) and Wisdom and Icon (Image) of God. Since John 1:1c means that the Word is divine with the same divinity as God, it should be translated as “and the Word was divine.”

The One God

The one God in whom we believe is not the Holy Trinity. The one God is the Father of Jesus Christ. To say that there is one God who is the Holy Trinity is Modalism. We may use the terms tri-personal or tri-hypostatic divinity but there is no tri-personal God.

Of God

As the Son is the Logos and Wisdom OF God and the Spirit OF God, the Son and the Spirit belong to the Father.

Never Separated

The one true and living God, who is the Father Almighty, has never been and will never be separated from His Son and His Spirit. He would be God without the hundred billion galaxies but He would not be God without the Logos and the Spirit. He has with Him eternally His Son and His Holy Spirit.

One divinity

The church fathers would never have said that the Father is of one essence with the Son. They would only say that the Son is of one essence with the Father. As there is one God – the Father, there is one divine nature. Since the Son is “God from God” (Nicene Creed), His divinity is the Father’s divinity (or nature). The divinity of the Holy Spirit is also the Father’s divinity.

Hopko never explicitly describes the Son as part of God but he does quote Irenaeus saying that the Son and the Spirit are the two hands of God. And at another point, he implies that the Son is “an element of the divinity and being of God.”

Act as One

The Father, Son, and Spirit act as one. Every activity of God (creation, sanctification, redemption, etc.) comes from the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit comes forth from God by the manner of procession; He proceeds from Him. He is not another Son.

The Spirit of God does not proceed from the Father AND the Son together; He proceeds from the Father alone. The Spirit is also the Spirit of the Son because He proceeds from the Father and rests on the Son. Everything that the Son has, divinely or humanly, He has received from the Father. From the Son, the Spirit then proceeds to us. The Son is the agent of all of the Father’s activities in the world, including the sending of the Holy Spirit.

Hypostases

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three Persons or three hypostasies. But hypostases is a better term because there are three instances of divine life in perfect and total unity.

Incarnation

Jesus as human babyThis very one who is begotten of the Father is born as a man (as a human being) from the virgin Mary. The Logos is NOT so perfectly divine, as some say, that He cannot become flesh; that He cannot become man. As the Nicene Creed says, He became flesh (incarnate) AND He became human (was made man). He is a real human being but He is not a mere human being. He is the divine Son of God who is also Mary’s son, who is a real human being just like we are.

He is divine with the same divinity as the one and true living God AND He is human with the humanity which all men and women have.

That is why He has two natures, meaning that He is fully divine but also fully and completely, truly human.

While the Godhead are three divine hypostases (Persons) with one divine nature, Jesus Christ is one hypostasis (one Person) with two natures because divine.

Conclusion

The Holy Trinity is the tri-personal Godhead; the one God and Father, the one Lord Jesus Christ, and the one Holy Spirit in perfect unity.

– END OF SUMMARY – 

Hopko’s Talk

In this section, I provide a summarized transcript of Hopko’s talk which I typed myself. Perhaps the reader will be able to listen to the talk while reading this. I added headings, comments, and text references.

The Trinity

The Trinity is the tri-hypostatic Divinity – the tri-personal Godhead; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; one in essence and undivided.

Importance of the Trinity

The dogma of the Holy Trinity is often called the dogma of dogmas, like the Lord of Lords, or King of kings.

Saint Gregory, the theologian, said that, when it comes to various other doctrines, not to get it completely totally accurate is not supremely dangerous for the salvation of souls, but when it comes to God – how the one God and Father relates to the only-begotten Son and Holy Spirit, if you don’t get that right, everything else is skewed, for all the other doctrines are rooted and grounded in the right understanding of the relationship and the communion that exists between the one God and Father, and His one only-begotten Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

The word Trinity

“Trinity” is not a Biblical word. It is a word that emerged in Christian history – very early – in the second and third centuries.

Who is Jesus?

The Trinity can only be properly understood when we begin with contemplating the Person of Jesus. The Trinity doctrine is the elaboration or outgrowth of the confession of who and what Jesus is.

Who Jesus is, is rooted and grounded in the gospel itself. The main question of the gospel is, “Who do you say I am?” That is the main question which Jesus asks in the gospels. After preaching, teaching, doing His miraculous signs – after He does all the things that the Scriptures said that the Messiah would do when he came, namely to bring the kingdom of God to the world and to bring all created beings in perfect harmony with the uncreated (God), Jesus asks, “Who do you say I am?

COMMENT: Here, Hopko says much more than what I typed. I think his argument is that God, through Jesus, when “the end” comes, will restore perfect peace in all the universe (1 Cor 1:24) and that the world had a foretaste of this when He was on earth. We see that in how He healed people and how He controlled the winds and the waves of nature.

In response, Christians confess that Jesus of Nazareth is the messianic prophet, priest and king; the Christ; the Son of the living God; the Lord. Christians confess that Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnate Word of God; the Logos and wisdom of God in human flesh. He is the Son of God; begotten of the Father before all ages and born of the theotokos Mary; the birth giver of God on earth. He is divine with the same divinity as the one true and living God. In the language of the Nicene Creed, He is “God from God, true God from true God; begotten of the Father; not created, of one very same essence (ousia) – one same being or divinity with God the Father Himself.”

All of that is the result of the confession of who Jesus is. The question is given by Jesus Himself: “Who do you say I am?” And that is where Peter confessed, in what may be called the fundamental Christian Creed: “You are the Christ; the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16).

The Rock

Jesus then said to Peter, “flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven” (Matt 16:17). He added that the whole foundation of the covenant church – the ultimate final church on the planet earth would be those who believe that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of the living God.

COMMENT: This is an interesting interpretation of Jesus’ words: “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church” (Matt 16:18).

God is not the Trinity

It is critically important to note that, in the Bible and, therefore, in the creeds, such as the Nicene Creed (325) and Creed of Constantinople (381), the one God in whom we believe is not the Holy Trinity. The one God is God the Father. In the Bible, the one God is the Father of Jesus Christ. He is the Father who sends His only begotten Son into the world.

And Jesus Christ is the Son of God. In a parallel manner, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God and, because the Christ is the Son of God on whom God the Father sends and affirms His Holy Spirit, the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ – the Messiah. This is very important because there are wrong understandings of the Holy Trinity.

Unitarianism

These are those who deny that there is a trinity of divine Persons – of divine hypostasies. Unitarians would say that God is just a unipersonal nomad and that He has no Son; the divinity is His and His alone, and everything that exists in addition to the one God is a creature – has been created by God – has been brought into being out of nothing – not an element of the divinity and being of God Himself.

COMMENT: The Nicene Creed also uses the phrase “out of nothing.” It refers to things that have been created, in contrast to the Son and the Spirit that are “out of” the uncreated being of God.

COMMENT: The phrase “not an element of the divinity and being of God Himself” implies that, in Hopko’s theology, the Son and the Spirit are elements of the divinity and being of God. That is similar to the pre-Nicene Fathers, who thought of Christ as “a derivation and portion of the whole” (Tertullian (AD 165-225), in Against Praxeas 9 “Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III : Against Praxeas”)

Here the orthodox Christian would say that that is just plain wrong. It is an incorrect understanding of what it means that Jesus is THE Son of God, THE Wisdom of God, and THE Icon of God. To say that the Word of God is a creature would be a wrong interpretation of both the New and Old Testaments. To say that the Spirit of God is a created being would just be totally wrong.

Modalism

The other terrible error is usually called Modalism. This is where people say that there is one God who is the Holy Trinity. They say, ‘He who is the Trinity’.

COMMENT: With this, I think, Hopko classifies the western understanding of the Trinity as Modalism (Sabellianism).

We orthodox Christians, following Scripture and the credal statements, can never say this. We say, there is the one God who is the Father, and He has with Him eternally, whom He begets timelessly before all ages, His only begotten Son, who is also His Logos (His Word) and His Wisdom and His Icon (Image), but this only begotten Son is divine with the very same divinity as the one true and living God. He is another (different?) Who from the Father.

Three Instances of Divine Life

There are three ‘Whos’; He who is the Father, He who is the Son and He who is the Holy Spirit. They are three Persons or three hypostasies. But hypostases is a better term because there are three instances of divine life in perfect and total unity.

The Son of God

But it is important to remember that the one God is the Father of Jesus: Jesus is the Son of God. As the Nicene Creed says, Jesus is “God from God; true God from true God.”

God’s Son, who is of the same divinity as the Father and who is born from Him; comes forth from Him. And this one true and living God also has with Him His Spirit who proceeds from Him – who comes forth from Him.

Begetting versus Proceeding

According to the Scriptures, the Son comes forth from God by means of begetting; He is a Son as a son is to a father. That is who and what the Son is.

And the Holy Spirit comes forth from God by the manner of procession. He is not another Son. It is a different kind of relationship.

The Son is the Son of God because He is begotten of the Father, meaning that He has no human begetter. He has no human father. His Father, literally, is God. God, who is His Father, begets Him before all ages.

Begetting versus Born

And then this very one who is God’s Son is born as a man (as a human being) from the virgin Mary. In Greek, the same verb, when it applies to the Father, is “beget.” When it applies to a mother, it is “born.” So, we would not say that Jesus was begotten of Mary humanly; He was “born” of Mary humanly. But we would also not say that He was born of the Father; He was begotten of the Father.

John 1

In John’s gospel, in the beginning, the Logos was with God, and the Logos was divine. All things came to be through Him (John 1:1-2). Orthodox Christians interpret these sentences to show that the Logos is really divine with the same divinity as the Father.

And then in the prologue of John’s gospel, it says that “the logos became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). As the Nicene Creed would say:

the only-begotten …
Who for us men, and for our salvation,
came down and was incarnate and was made man

You have those two words; that He became flesh (incarnate) and He became human (was made man), born of the virgin Mary. So, He who was divine became human.

If we ask who He is, He is the divine Son of God who is also Mary’s son, who is a real human being just like we are. That is why Eastern Orthodox Christians reject Nestorianism.

Arianism

We not only deny Arianism which says that the Logos – the Son of God was a creature. No, He is not a creature. He belongs to the being of God and His being is divine.

Nestorianism

But we also deny the Nestorians who say that the one born of Mary is NOT the same one as the One begotten of the Father; that the Logos is so perfectly divine that He cannot become flesh; that He cannot become man. The Nestorians say that He can be enjoined to or united with a man but He cannot really be born of a woman. Eastern Orthodox Christians say, o yes, He can and He did. Truly divine and truly human. That is why the council of Chalcedon would say that He is divine with the same divinity as the one and true living God – the One who is the one God – AND He is human with the humanity which all men and women have. That is why we say He is of two natures or has two natures, meaning that He is truly divine and truly human.

Jesus is called God.

And when He is divine, we can call Him God.

Thomas did call Him God. He exclaimed, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

Some of the sentences of Paul can be read as if Jesus is called God. It depends a little bit on punctuation, but like “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

Even certain Old Testament terms, like calling Him Lord in a divine manner, such as, “The LORD (YHVH) says to my Lord, Sit at My right hand” (Psm 110:1). He is using the same term for the one who sits at His right hand as for God Himself, for “the LORD” mean Yahweh and Yahweh is God.

And Jesus in John’s gospel even uses the “I am,” for example, “before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). That is a divine name. So, here, the confession is that the man Jesus is the divine Son of God.

Homoousios

And that is what the council of Nicaea defended. The Nicene Creed used one non-Biblical term to make this point, and that term is homoousios, which can be translated “of one essence” or “of the same essence” or “substance.” Sometimes to be clearest, we might better translate it into English as “who is of the same divinity as the one God who is His Father.” And that is how the Bible speaks.

The Trinity in the Bible

Many years ago, I went to my professor of theology and I said to Him, Prof, I do not find the Trinity in the Bible.

Of course, in those days I had a very skewed idea of the Trinity. I thought of the Trinity as one God who is somehow three, like three-leave clover or water could be liquid or steam or ice. In fact, I have come to learn that those symbolisms are modalistic. They are not accurate. You can speak of God as fountain and stream or something like fire and heat and warmth as emanating from God the Father through His Son Jesus Christ and His Spirit, but not all analogies are apt.

To understand the Trinity properly, you begin with Jesus and you read the Scriptures. Then you can contemplate how the one God is God the Father WITH His Son and WITH His Spirit. Very often the preposition “with” is used but “and” is also used. For example, in the baptismal formula, we baptize in the name of the Father and, therefore, also of the Son because there is no Father without the Son and, therefore, also the Holy Spirit because there is no Holy Spirit without the Father and the Son. And there is no Son without the Father and the Spirit. And there are no Son and Spirit without the Father.

The church fathers of the fourth century, like Gregory the theologian, would never have said that the Father is of one essence with the Son. They would only say that the Son is of one essence with the Father. The reason is that the Son’s divinity is the Father’s divinity. The Son is “God from God” (Nicene Creed). He is a divine Person “from” the one God.

In the Old Testament, there is also the “word” of God and the “Spirit of God” who is not God but is “of” God and divine with the same divinity as God. The Spirit of God inspired the prophets. You will read texts like; the heavens were made by the Word of the LORD; all the earth by the breath of His lips.” You will find sentences about the son of man that is presented to the Father (Dan 7:13).

You cannot read the New Testament without God, who is clearly God, who is not Jesus and who is not the Holy Spirit. And you can’t read the New Testament without Jesus Christ who is not God the Father and who is not the Holy Spirit. And you can’t read the Scriptures without meeting at every page the Holy Spirit, who is not the Son and who is not the Father. But when you read the text, you see that the Son and the Spirit are OF the Father – FROM the Father – BELONGING TO the Father.

Yet, they are divine. They present themselves as fully divine and like the two hands of God (quoting Irenaeus). God is not without His hands. He never works with only one hand. When God speaks His word, He breaths, and when He breaths, He speaks. You cannot even think of God without His Son. Then you come to the conclusion that the one true and living God is the Father. The one true and living God is not the Creator. God would be God without the hundred billion galaxies. But God would not be God without the Logos and the Spirit; without the Word of God and the Breath of God.

So, even if you would speak to a good orthodox Jew and ask, is God ever devoid of His wisdom? A good orthodox Jew would say, never! Is God ever without His word? Never! Is God ever without His breath? No, no, He is the living God; the Spirit of God is divine. So, we Christians could say, see, you believe in the Holy Trinity because you cannot conceive of God without His Word and without His Spirit.

The Son of God is a real human being but He is not a mere human being. He is the human being that the Son of God has become when He was born of Mary.

John is the great theological gospel that shows the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But if you just take Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

When they speak of the birth of Jesus, they say He would be called the Holy One, the Son of the Most High; that He will establish the kingdom of God, His Father is God.

He has no human father. He is conceived of the Holy Spirit. Just like the Spirit of God brooded over the emptiness at the beginning of creation, so the same the Holy Spirit brooded over the barren womb of Mary and then God speaks His Word and His Word is incarnate in Mary’s womb. The Word becomes flesh in Mary’s womb.

When He goes to the temple, He says He must be about His Father’s work and He is filled with the Holy Spirit.

At His baptism, The Father speaks and says, “this is my beloved Son” and the Spirit rests on Him in the form of a dove.

The Spirit is the Spirit of God who is His Father, but then He says that the Spirit is His own Spirit because everything that He has, divinely of humanly, He has received from the Father.

In Hebrews, it even said that it was the Spirit of God who led the Son of God to be crucified in the flesh for the salvation of the world. In John’s gospel, He says the Father is always with Him (John 8:29; 16:32).

So, as a Christian, you cannot contemplate God without immediately and necessarily contemplating the Son and the Holy Spirit. The minute I think about God, I think about Christ and the Spirit. You cannot think about one without thinking about all three.

Filioque

The Spirit is the Spirit of the Son because He proceeds from the Father and rests on the Son. That is why we orthodox is against the filioque in the creed (“and the Son” – Athanasian Creed). There was a break with the West. We claim that the Spirit of God does not proceed from the Father and the Son together. We believe that He proceeds from the Father alone. And He rests on the Son from all eternity and does the same thing when the Son becomes man. He rests upon Him as a man too. We can say that the Spirit proceeds to us from the Father THROUGH the Son. That is true. The Son is the agent of all of the Father’s activities in the world, including the sending of the Holy Spirit. As Jesus said, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father” (John 15:26).

Three in Perfect Unity

So, you always have these three in perfect unity. Therefore, when I think of one, I immediately think of all three together.

There is one God because there is one Father. And there is one God because there is one divine nature of the Father, which is the nature of the Son and the nature of the Holy Spirit too. So, the Son and the Spirit are of the same essence as the Father. That is what Scripture teaches us, if you put it in philosophical terms. That is what the Bible teaches. They needed that word (homoousios) to defend the Bible.

And when you contemplate the activities of God, you see that every activity proceeds from the Father. The Source of every divine activity – creation, sanctification, redemption, whatever God is doing, it comes from the Father – it is God’s. But the Agent is always the Son. God creates through His Son. He speaks through His Son. He redeems through His Son. So, the Son is His Word. The Son is the Savior, but then, all these activities are accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit. So, every activity of God is from the Father, through the Son in the Spirit. Or, you can say from the Father, AND the Son AND the Spirit.

So, we worship the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit – the Trinity; one in essence; undivided. We pray to thee, o one God and Father, AND thy only-begotten Son AND thy Holy Spirit.

The Son is incarnate and crucified, but the Father is in Him at all time. He is never separated from the Father. Even when He experiences in His humanity the abandonment of God to die the death, He is not separated from the Father. God is in Him. The Holy Spirit is in Him. God, the Father, is raising the dead through Him by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, when we think of the one God and Father, who is never devoid of His Son and Spirit, we think of the one divinity.

No Triune God

In eastern orthodoxy, the term triune God is not a traditional formula. You find the term tri-personal or tri-hypostatic divinity. There is no tri-personal God. There is the one God and Father Almighty. That is the one God. But then that one God is Father eternally with His Son who is God from God, and with His Holy Spirit.

Is the Spirit called theos?

The Nicene Creed did not call the Holy Spirit theos (God). Gregory, the theologian, was the first one to do that – late in the fourth century. The Bible never calls the Holy Spirit theos. The Nicene Creed called the Son “God from God” but it did not call the Spirit “God from God.” The closest thing in the Bible is when it says that Ananias and Saphira lied to “God.”

Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit … You have not lied to men but to God” (Acts 5:3-4).

And then Jesus said that the one sin that is unforgivable is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. And blasphemy can only be done against God – a divine Person.

Three Persons with one divine nature

What we say is that the Godhead are three divine hypostases (Persons) with one divine nature. There is one God and Father, whose nature also belongs to the Son and Spirit and there is one divine activity with three who act; the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Then we say that Jesus is one hypostasis (one Person) with two natures because He is fully divine but, because He is also born of Mary, He is fully and completely, truly human.

So, we have, the Godhead being three Persons in one nature, and then we have Jesus Christ being one Person in two natures.

Conclusion

So, how must we think about the Trinity? We begin with the Scriptures, we contemplate Christ, then we contemplate how Christ relates to the one God and Father, how He relates to the one Holy Spirit. We see how the unity of the divine divinity belongs to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is what we must always remember and never forget – it begins with Christ and it begins with the Scriptures. It begins with the activity of God in saving the world in the Person of Jesus. It begins with the question, “Who do you say I am?” And when we say, “You are the Christ, the Son of God,” the result will be the dogma of the Holy Trinity – the tri-personal Godhead; the one God and Father, the one Lord Jesus Christ and the one Holy Spirit in perfect unity.

Article Series on this Website

Jesus Christ and the Trinity

Daniel

      • Is Daniel a Fraud? – It is claimed by liberal theologians that Daniel was written in the second century before Christ, presenting history as if it is a prophecy. 
      • Daniel 2, 7, and 11 – These prophecies should be read together. 
      • Daniel 9 – Discussion of the Four Major Interpretations of the 490 years

Revelation

Other

The Council and Creed of Constantinople 381

Authors / Sources

This article series is based largely on the books of two world-class scholars and specialists in the fourth-century Arian Controversy:

RH = Bishop RPC Hanson
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God –
The Arian Controversy 318-381, 1987

LA = Lewis Ayres
Nicaea and its legacy, 2004
Ayres is a Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology

When people talk about “the Nicene Creed,” they often mean the creed formulated at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381. But there were two ‘Nicene’ creeds: Hanson refers to them using the following codes:

      • N = Creed of Nicaea of 325
      • C = Creed of Constantinople of 381

The Proceedings of the Council

“The Council of Constantinople met during May, June and July 381.” (RH, 805)

Not an Ecumenical Council

This is sometimes called the second ecumenical council but this council was not ‘ecumenical’ at all. Ayres says:

“The details … of this council indicate the problems with later presentation of the meeting as an ‘ecumenical’ reaffirmation of Nicaea.” (LA, 255)

For example:

      • The delegates were drawn only from a limited area.
      • Only bishops supporting one specific views were invited.
      • Already in the previous year (380) the emperor made the Trinity doctrine the state religion of the Roman Empire, outlawed all opposition, and exiled the main leaders of the anti-Nicenes.

This is confirmed by the following:

“When Theodosius had entered Constantinople in November 380,” he immediately exiled the Homoian bishop Demophilus. (LA, 253)

The council was summoned by Theodosius; not by the church. (LA, 253)

“It seems unlikely that this meeting was intended as a universal council to rival Seleucia/Ariminum or Nicaea itself. … Those present at the council initially came from a fairly restricted area and the majority from areas known to be favourable to Meletius.” (LA, 253)

“Only about 150 bishops attended and they appear to have been carefully chosen from areas which would be friendly to Meletius, who was its president, that is areas under the influence of the see of Antioch.” (RH, 806) Meletius was the leader of the Pro-Nicene faction in Antioch.

Rome was not involved in this council at all. Hanson refers to the “tenuous contact which the council might have been thought to have with the see of Rome.” (RH, 807)

Dominated by the Emperor

There are several indications that Emperor Theodosius dominated the council:

He summoned the bishops.

“Theodosius welcomed the participants in his magnificent throne-room in the Imperial palace. … Theodosius did not appear at any session of the Council, but remained in the wings, as it were, holding a watching brief.” (RH, 806)

“The wording of the pneumatological article owed something to indirect pressure from Theodosius who saw that a larger number of bishops would accept C if it were expressed in a cautious way.” (RH, 815)

After Theodosius had exiled the Homoian bishop of Constantinople (Demophilus) in November 380, he “accepted Gregory Nazianzen (one of the Cappadocians) as de facto bishop” (LA, 253) of Constantinople. “The first act of the Council was to affirm that Gregory of Nazianzus was the Catholic and legitimate bishop of Constantinople.” (RH, 806; cf. LA, 253-4) In other words, the council merely ratified the emperor’s selection of Gregory as bishop.

The meeting began with Meletius as the presiding officer but, “during the council Meletius suddenly died, and Gregory of Constantinople was chosen to succeed him as president of the council.” (RH, 807) 

“At some point he (Gregory) seems also to have lost the support of Theodosius.” (LA, 255)

“In Gregory’s place Nectarius, an unbaptized civil official in Constantinople, was chosen” (LA, 255), “who then became president of the council” (RH, 807).

After Gregory had resigned, “the Council found itself in a quandary over the choice of a new bishop of the capital city. … They finally picked … an unbaptised layman, Nectarius, who had been praetor urbanus in Constantinople. It was as if today the cardinals had chosen as Pope … the mayor of Rome.” (RH, 811)

So, Theodosius had one of his civil servants appointed as presiding officer and as bishop.

Homoiousians

Ayres often mentions the Homoiousians in the context of the 381 council. For example:

    • Gregory of N “had strongly opposed any compromise with the Homoiousians.” (LA, 255)
    • The creed was formulated for the purpose of a “debate with the 36 Homoiousian bishops.” (LA, 256)
    • Some think that “the omission of ‘from the ousia of the Father’” “resulted from negotiation with Homoiousians” (LA, 256)
    • “The very ambiguity of Constantinople’s pneumatological clauses enabled it to serve not only as a negotiating tool to draw in as many Homoiousians and ex-Homoiousians as possible” (LA, 258)

This is important to understand the context. “The pro-Nicene faction in the capital (Constantinople) was small.” They were “a marginalized group.” (LA, 244) The faction of the Arians that dominated the church during the years before the council was the Homoians but the Arian faction nearest to the Pro-Nicenes was the Homoiousians. Therefore, at the council, the pro-Nicenes attempted to draw in the Homoiousians.

The Creed of Constantinople

Produced in 381

“The first question to decide about C is whether or not it was produced by the council which met in the capital city of the Roman Empire in 381. … No surviving document reproduces C until it is … read out at the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451, seventy years after the date at which it was supposed to have been composed.” (RH, 812)

Hanson discusses “some evidence, tenuous but not easy to explain away, that the existence of C was known before the year 451” (RH, 813) and concludes, “as seems almost certain, C was indeed composed by the council of 381” (RH, 815).

Gregory of Nazianzus

One “piece of evidence that the Council of 381 drew up C comes from the words of Gregory of Nazianzus us about the council.” (RH, 814) “He is complaining that the majority of the council, motivated by a mixture of ignorance, cupidity and fear of imperial displeasure, added to the creed N words which were not unorthodox but were inadequate and inappropriate.” (RH, 815)

The Creed

Similar to the Creed of 325, the Creed begins by saying:

“We believe in one God,
the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth
and of all things visible and invisible.” (LA, 255)

It continues to describe “Jesus Christ” as

One Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, the Only-begotten,
begotten by his Father before all ages,
Light from light, true God from true God,
begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father,
through whom all things came into existence” (LA, 255)

The Creed continues with the usual description of Jesus Christ from His incarnation until His return. The creed then has a much longer description of the Holy Spirit than in N:

And (we believe) in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord and Life-giver,
who proceeds from the Father,
who is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, who spoke by the prophets; (RH, 816)

Hanson lists 12 differences between N and C and says that “most of these twelve differences have no significance at all.” (RH, 816) The significant differences are the following:

No end to his kingdom

In the description of the Son, the creed adds, “and there will be no end to his kingdom.” (LA, 255) It “was certainly inserted as a precaution against the doctrine of Marcellus.” (RH, 817)

From the substance of the Father

This Creed omits the statement in the original Nicene Creed that the Son was begotten “from the substance of the Father.” Various possible reasons for this omission have been proposed. For example:

    • Hanson says the omission was “out of indifference or carelessness.” He says that “the bishops in 381” probably did not “use a creed as a carefully-designed formula to assert a complicated theological doctrine.” (RH, 818)
    • Ayres proposes that this phrase “probably meant far less” in the pro-Nicene theology of “Basil and Meletius.” (LA, 257)

The Holy Spirit

Compared to the Creed of 325, the 381-Creed “added clauses on the Spirit to insist (though without directly asserting that the Spirit was God) that ‘with the Father and the Son He is worshipped and glorified’.” (LA, 434) The creed says that the Son is homoousios with the Father and that He is “true God from true God” but does not say the same about the Holy Spirit. Why not? Hanson says:

“C’s article on the Holy Spirit … summarizes very nicely the doctrine of Basil of Caesarea; it does not directly call the Holy Spirit God and it does not apply the word homoousion to him, but it does clearly declare that he is an object of equal (not inferior) worship with the other two Persons.” (RH, 818)

Basil and “many who were not Macedonians” others “did not wish to take the further step which gave Gregory of Nazianzus no difficulty, of directly calling him God (rather than divine, theion) and consubstantial.” (RH, 818-9) [What the Macedonians denied that the Holy Spirit “is worshipped and glorified” “with the Father and the Son.” (RH, 818)]

“This is why Gregory of Nazianzus objected so strongly to C: it declared a ‘half-way’ doctrine which was not unorthodox but which did not go as far as Gregory wanted it to go. Better, he thought, to leave the bare statement of N and permit orthodox theologians to read the full doctrine into it, as Athanasius and Damasus had done.” (RH, 819; cf. LA, 257)

No Anathemas

“There is no difficulty in accounting for the omission in C of the anathemas of N, for owing to the change in the meaning of hypostasis and ousia one of them (the anathemas) had become an embarrassment rather than an asset.” (RH, 819)

But Ayres says that “Nicaea’s anathemas” were omitted because “the creed was not designed to exclude a party present at the council.” (LA, 256)

An Update of the Nicene Creed?

Not a Precise Marker of Orthodoxy

Today, we often use the Creed as “a precise marker of orthodoxy” but scholars seem to agree that that was not the original intention:

Contrary to how these creeds later became to be used, “part of the reason for the lack of reference to this creed until the council of Chalcedon in 451 is the lack of intention of its framers that the Constantinople creed serve as a precise marker of orthodoxy.” (LA, 256)

J.N.D. Kelly said that this creed was intended merely for one specific debate. “Kelly argues that in debate with the 36 Homoiousian bishops, it was necessary to state in a simple form the ‘Nicene faith.’” (LA, 256)

“The Fathers of the ancient church were not concerned about the exact wording of formulae.” (RH, 820)

An Independent Document

Did the council begin with the 325-Creed and revised it?

Britannica says that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 “was probably … an independent document and not an enlargement of the Creed of Nicaea.”

Hanson says similarly:

“These meaningless variations (between N and C) make it quite clear that C is not an amended form of N, but that its original was a quite different creed.” (RH, 816-7)

“If we take this view we can also rid ourselves of the illusion that the compilers of C ‘omitted’ the clause ‘from the ousia of the Father’. In their view, and in the view of their contemporaries, this clause was not ‘omitted’ because it was still in N, of which C was a re-affirmation. C did not in their eyes cancel N, but rather enhanced it.” (RH, 820)

A Revised Theology

The Same Theology

But the more important question is whether the Creed of 381 teaches a different theology compared to the Creed of 325. Ayres and Hanson seem to agree that the two creeds say more or less the same thing in different words:

Ayres says: “Nobody intended this (381) creed as a replacement for Nicaea, merely as a statement of Nicaea’s faith.” (LA, 256)

Hanson states: “Those who drew up C … and used it for the next fifty years did not think of it as a new, separate, creed … but simply as a reaffirmation of N, an endorsement of what it really meant by means of a little further explanation.” (RH, 820)

However, there are also many indications that the Creed of 381 does say something different and that it is an improvement of the Creed of 325:

Nicaea increased the Confusion.

Firstly, the 325-creed was intended to bring an end to the Controversy but it actually increased the confusion:

“The creed of Nicaea, sanctioned by imperial decree … only added increased confusion and complication to the problem it was intended to solve.” (Boyd, p38)

“The Creed of Nicaea of 325, produced in order to end the controversy, signally failed to do so. Indeed, it ultimately confounded the confusion because its use of the words ousia and hypostasis was so ambiguous as to suggest that the Fathers of Nicaea had fallen into Sabellianism, a view recognized as heresy even at that period.” (Hanson)

Nicaea caused Controversy.

In fact, the description of the Son as homoousios (of the same substance) as the Father, is found for the first time in the Nicene Creed of 325 and was the cause of the continuation controversy after 325.

, as indicated by the names of the sides in that controversy, the controversy after Nicaea was specifically about the word homoousion:

 

  • Homoousian = Same Substance,
  • Homoiousian = Similar Substance,
  • Heterousian = Different Substance,
  • Homoian – In this view, we should not talk about God’s substance because His substance is not mentioned in the Scriptures

“In 357 a council held in Sirmium in Illyria forbade the use of ousia (nature) in speaking of the relationship between the Father and the Son. With this, the homoousios of Nicaea became a dead confession.” (A Short History of the Early Church, Harry R. Boer, p117)

Theology Evolved

My point is that the 55 years of Controversy after Nicaea were a period of evolution of theology, on both or all sides of the Controversy. The Pro-Nicenes did more than just defend the Nicene Creed. Rather, they developed new theories.

“The century is understood as one of evolution in doctrine.” (LA, 13)

In the older account, “a clear Nicene doctrine (was) established in the controversy’s earliest stages.” Now we know that the ‘orthodoxy’ as we know it today did not exist at the beginning but was worked out through that struggle. (LA, 11-12)

In the traditional account of the ‘Arian’ Controversy, the eventual pro-Nicene formulation simply was “the clearer restatement of an original Nicene theology.” “This (original Nicene) theology is understood as defended (if not defined) by Athanasius (and) taken up and given more precision by the Cappadocians.” (LA, 236-7) However, Ayres says, “there is no one original Nicene theology that continues unchanged through the century.” (LA, 237)

Firstly, they redefined the word hypostasis in order to deal with the confusion caused by the Nicene Creed:

“It was mainly under the influence of the Cappadocian Fathers that the terminology was clarified and standardized so that the formula “three hypostases in one ousia” came to be accepted as an epitome of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.” 1González, Justo L. (1987). A History of Christian Thought: From the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon. p. 307 (Hypostasis)

Secondly, they also developed the view of the Holy Spirit that was taken up in the 381-creed:

“Constantinople’s account of the Spirit seems to mirror Basil’s cautious strategy of insisting that we accord the Spirit equal glory and honour, but refrain from using the terms God or homoousios.” (LA, 257)

The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, “God,” p. 568, states that the teaching of the three Cappadocian Fathers “made it possible for the Council of Constantinople (381) to affirm the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which up to that point had nowhere been clearly stated, not even in Scripture.”

Proposal

I propose, therefore, since that same controversial and unscriptural word appears in the creed of 381, that the 381-creed was a revision of the 325-creed. 

Although the creed of 381 reads very similar to the creed of 325, the Arian Controversy stimulated a huge jump in the development of the Trinity doctrine and that, what the authors of the 381 creed meant by that creed is significantly different from what the authors of the 325 creed meant.

 

Purpose

CONSTANTINE THE GREAT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Egyptians and Westerners could not object because they had acquiesced seven years ago at the choice for the important see of Milan of an unbaptised officer in the imperial service, Ambrose. Nectarius was … the protege of Diodore … supporting the Eustathian cause in Antioch.”  This is an indication of the control which the emperor exercised over the meeting.

“In the council itself Gregory seems to have quickly made himself unpopular.” (LA, 254) “Gregory wanted the council to elect Paulinus in place of Meletius as bishop of Antioch, but it preferred to choose Flavian.” (RH, 807)

Bishop of Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the empire and, therefore, a very important city.

The council agreed that “the bishop of Constantinople is to enjoy precedence in honour next after the bishop of Rome because it is the New Rome’.” (RH, 808)

 

Pre-Nicene texts

“Socrates and Sozomen report that on the suggestion of Nectarius Theodosius asked the representatives of each sect to say whether they revered the earliest Christians who lived before the current divided state of the Church and then whether they were prepared to defer to the witness of those Christians. Socrates reports that this suggestion caused consternation among all present: everyone had now become sensitive to the ways in which pre-Nicene texts could not easily be used by any of the late fourth-century theological parties!” (LA, 259)

“This ‘end’ to our narrative is thus only the beginning of the end of non-Nicene theology in the east.” (LA, 260)

 

FOOTNOTES

  • 1
    González, Justo L. (1987). A History of Christian Thought: From the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon. p. 307
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