there follows, all standing
Lifelong a prayerbook Christian, I love these words of our Eucharistic Prayer C:
God of all power, Ruler of the Universe, you are worthy of glory and praise.
Glory to you for ever and ever.
At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of
interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses,
and this fragile earth, our island home.
By your will they were created and have their being.
From the primal elements you brought forth the human race,
and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us
the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed
your trust; and we turned against one another.
Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.
Again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets
and sages you revealed your righteous Law. And in the
fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to
fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace.
By his blood, he reconciled us.
By his wounds, we are healed.
And therefore we praise you, joining with the heavenly
chorus, with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and with all
those in every generation who have looked to you in hope, to
proclaim with them your glory, in their unending hymn
Though I am less enthusiastic about the earlier prayerbook rubric that reads after
The Sermon
On Sundays and other Major Feasts there follows, all standing
The Nicene Creed
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Over my years as priest and celebrant I've been generally obedient to the rubric except when in my judgment as preacher it has been appropriate to follow a Sermon that calls for commitment and action, with the Baptismal Covenant instead.
Not a detractor, I'm not really an enthusiast of the Nicene Creed - - which, incidentally, is not precisely the Nicene Creed of the 325 AD Council of Nicaea, but the Creed of 381 AD Council of Constantinople, which basically took the Nicene Creed and expanded the paragraph about the Holy Spirit. It has been adopted by the church with rubrics ordering its regular recitation in the church's worship. It maintains what is termed the correct Nicene Faith.
In a nutshell, the Nicene Faith, as set forth at Nicaea and in the Constantinopolitan Creed that we say most every Sunday, is that Jesus Christ is Lord, God, eternal, begotten not created, one with God the Father, equal with God the Father, of the same substance as God the Father. That christology, together with condemning certain beliefs of its Time that the councils declared to be heresy, is the purpose of the Nicene Creed.
The creed is not a description of God, it is what church authority of the fourth century decided to require Christians to believe about God.
The church's road to adoption of the Nicene formula is a fascinating history, even a horrifying history of certainty, coercion, manipulation, intolerance, force, hatefulness, cruelty, politics, and all the rest of characteristics that make humans such appalling creatures. I can live with the creed knowing all that, because I know its history and I know that it's a human construct about God that humans decided I must say. It's important to me to bear in mind, however, that the creed says Πιστεύω (Greek) Credo (Latin), I believe, rendered "We believe" - - it does not say "We know".
The Nicene Faith rightly sets in concrete, the Christian church's orthodox foundational theology, meant to stand against diverging schismatic redefinition in every age and generation. As it is, that happens anyway, of course, as humans disagree on sacred and secular matters and congregations break apart and some build a church next door, and as denominations split and divide property, hopefully amicably, often contentiously and each side with its own certainties. And split and split and split because everyone has a mind of their own.
And with the personality and superego of every independent "nondenominational" congregation pastor.
Yet there stands the Creed symbolizing the Nicene Faith as the unchangeable, irrevocable basis of Christianity.
Why on this road this morning? My readings, various writings I enjoy, sometimes especially good ones from the website Academia.edu - - "The Lynching of Nestorious", essays about the Councils of Nicaea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD). Just so yesterday, an article on Academia.edu that asks to be cited as "Paul L. Gavrilyuk, 'The Legacy of the Council of Nicaea in the Orthodox Tradition,' in Young Kim, ed, Cambridge Companion to the Council of Nicaea (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, pagination pending)". An interesting essay that includes the Filioque controversy that I always enjoyed discussing with my Sunday school classes and Bible study groups. The essay is copy-and-pasted below (scroll down).
Reprinted without permission, if challenged I'll remove it, though having it out like this might help a few more people realize what's available for anyone who's interested in why we say the Nicene Creed.
The Legacy of the Council of Nicaea in the Orthodox Tradition:
The Principle of Unchangeability and the Hermeneutic of Continuity
Paul L. Gavrilyuk
Aquinas Chair in Theology and Philosophy, Theology Department, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
Abstract
The normative importance of the Council of Nicaea in the Orthodox tradition cannot be overestimated. A landmark event in cementing the authority of the Council of Nicaea was the Council of Constantinople (381). After the Council of Constantinople, the theological achievement of Nicaea became virtually unchallenged in Eastern Christendom. Unlike the councils of later centuries, Nicaea has remained a permanent reference point for all theological speculation. Among the fifth century theologians, Cyril of Alexandria was singularly concerned about promoting the Nicene Creed and making the interpretation of its second article a focal point in the Christological controversy. As a point of agreement in this controversy, the Council of Ephesus formulated the principle of unchangeability of the Nicene faith. The Council of Chalcedon reaffirmed this principle and, building upon the precedent of the Council of Constantinople, advanced a hermeneutic of continuity with the Council of Nicaea. In the sixth century, the Nicene faith passed into the Byzantine liturgy in the form of the Constantinopolitan (rather than the original Nicene) Creed. In addition, the role of the Council of Nicaea was safeguarded in the Orthodox Church’s liturgical memory through the feast days dedicated to different aspects of the Council. The Council also left a mark in hagiography and iconography. During the Filioque Controversy, the Nicene legacy, especially the Constantinopolitan Creed without the Filioque clause, was turned into a marker of a Byzantine Christian as opposed to Latin Christian identity. Most recently, the pan-Orthodox Council held in Crete in June 2016, used Nicaea’s title of the “Great and Holy Council” to emphasize Nicaea’s import for the revitalization of conciliarity in the Orthodox Church of our time.
Essay
The normative importance of the Council of Nicaea and its Creed in the Orthodox tradition cannot be overestimated. In the minds of the leaders and faithful of the Orthodox Church, whatever their doctrinal and political differences, the Nicene faith has been and remains an unshakable foundation. To clarify, the expression “Nicene faith” refers to the content that is broader than the “Nicene Creed.” The Nicene Creed is the original confession of faith and the associated condemnations of Arius and his followers set forth by the Council of Nicaea. By comparison, the “Nicene faith” refers to the teaching contained in the expositions of faith deemed compatible with but not restricted to the Nicene Creed. For example, the Constantinopolitan Creed, whatever its historical origins and its exact relationship to the Nicene Creed, was received as an authentic expression of the Nicene faith.
Not all Christian communions in the West take the Nicene faith as a valid expression of the apostolic teaching. For the Christian East, the situation is quite different: while it is legitimate to consider new doctrinal questions in light of the Nicene faith, it is not legitimate to question the authority of the Nicene faith itself. In other words, the rejection of the Nicene faith is paramount to the abandonment of Orthodox Christianity.
The Council of Nicaea was not the first gathering of bishops in the history of Christianity to issue canonical legislation. Before Nicaea, influential canons were issued, for example, by the Councils of Ancyra (314) and of Neocaesarea (315). While these Councils were significant for the development of canon law, the Council of Nicaea (325) established itself as an event that provided a blueprint for future church councils, especially those summoned by the Roman Emperors. In the Orthodox tradition, the reputation of the Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea have followed parallel courses: Constantine, despite his controversial conversion and his personal defects, was eulogized, mythologized, and turned into a ruler “equal to the Apostles”; the Council of Nicaea, despite the fact that the orthodoxy of its creed was strongly contested by several fourth-century councils, was eventually made the stuff of hagiography, hymnography, and iconography, and was recognized as the First “Ecumenical” Council. Thus, Constantine was turned into a Christian ruler whom all God-loving Eastern Christian emperors — Byzantine and Slavic alike — would be wise to emulate; the Council of Nicaea inaugurated a succession of ecumenical and other significant councils, all of which claimed their continuity with the faith professed by the “318 Fathers” who gathered at Nicaea.
Emperor Constantine had hoped that the Council of Nicaea would provide a solution to the problem of church divisions and thereby solidify the unity of his empire (divisive issues included the Arian controversy, conflicting calculations of the Easter date and the Meletian schism). However, during the emperor’s reign, Nicaea was a cause of turmoil rather than peace. While some local western councils defended Nicaea, no fewer than eighteen eastern councils offered creedal alternatives to the Nicene Creed. As it is well known, the most vocal supporter of the Nicene faith was Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373), who tirelessly promoted the Nicene Creed in the third quarter of the fourth century. However, during Athanasius’ lifetime the Nicene faith had not been decisively established as a common confession binding the Church together.
The defense of the Nicene faith was both a theological and a political task. After a succession of emperors that were not supportive of Nicaea, Emperor Theodosius undertook this task with great zeal in his decree Cunctos populos (380). This piece of legislation imposed the Nicene faith as a civic duty upon all law-abiding citizens of the Roman Empire:
It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue to profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity.
The decree prudently avoided citing the still controversial Nicene Creed, while at the same time deferred to the authority of Pope Damasus and Archbishop Peter of Alexandria (Athanasius’ successor), who were unflinching defenders of the Nicene faith in the face of strong opposition. The imposition of the Nicene faith as a requirement on all Roman citizens proved to be difficult to enforce, as the frequently repeated imperial proscriptions against heterodox Christian groups and non-Christian religions attest. Nevertheless, later imperial legislation, most especially the revision of the religious laws undertaken under the Emperor Justinian, did not relax the requirement established by Cunctos populos, but repeatedly attempted to reinforce it. The Byzantine and western medieval Christendom was erected upon the common metaphysical foundation enshrined in the Nicene faith.
All subsequent Ecumenical Councils of the Orthodox Church have emphasized their continuity with the Nicene faith. The Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople (381) marked a turning point in establishing the normative status of the Nicene faith, which for the preceding part of the fourth century remained the subject of acrimonious controversy. The first canon of the Council of Constantinople declares: “The Faith of 318 Fathers assembled at Nicaea in Bithynia shall not be set aside, but shall remain firm.” This declaration was followed by condemnations of heresies that had appeared in the aftermath of Nicaea.
The main debates of the fifth century were no longer about the soundness of the Nicene faith, which was by then nearly universally accepted, but rather about the interpretation of the Nicene faith in light of new challenges. These challenges clustered around the problem of how the properties of divinity and humanity could be clearly differentiated and ascribed to one subject, namely, the Son of God incarnate. The councils that addressed various aspects of this problem assembled in Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), and Constantinople (553 and 668). Like Nicaea, these Councils were surrounded by a tempest of controversies, which led to enduring divisions. Those who rejected the Council of Ephesus became known as the Assyrian Church of the East; those who did not accept the Council of Chalcedon became known as the Oriental Orthodox Churches. While these divisions have not been fully healed to this day, these Churches share with the Eastern Orthodox Church a common Nicene legacy.
Cyril of Alexandria and the Ascendancy of the Nicene Legacy
Among the fifth-century Christian authors, Cyril of Alexandria was both a witness to and a promoter of the ascendant authority of the Nicene faith. For Cyril, the Council of Nicaea was a divinely inspired moment when the former holders of his archepiscopal see, Alexander and then deacon Athanasius, demonstrated significant theological leadership. The Council of Nicaea could be trusted, because Athanasius was a man “worthy of trust and deserving of confidence,” and he in turn could be trusted because he was close to bishop Alexander, whom Cyril also held in high esteem. The Council of Nicaea boosted the authority of the Alexandrian bishopric at the time when its prestige was challenged by a newcomer, the archepiscopal see of Constantinople. Cyril personally supervised the dissemination of the canons and the Creed of Nicaea from the archives of his church to other churches in the Roman Empire. It was Cyril also who “fostered the idea that no creed could claim equality with N.[icene].”
Cyril made the Nicene Creed his point of departure in his argument against Nestorius of Constantinople. Cyril begins his second letter to Nestorius with an exposition of the Christological article of the Creed. Specifically, Cyril argues that this article identifies one subject, namely, “one Lord Jesus Christ,” who shares his divine nature with the Father and at the same time has typically human experiences of suffering, crucifixion, and death. Cyril builds a case for his Christology on the foundation of the second article of the Creed and his interpretation of the kenotic hymn in Phil. 2:5-11. In his response, Nestorius does not challenge the foundational significance of the Christological article of the Nicene Creed. Nestorius argues instead that Cyril’s interpretation of this article does not do justice to the fact that the Son, who is equal to the Father, is also said to “become man” and, therefore, to suffer and die as a man, not as God. The particulars of their arguments need not concern us here. It is significant, however, that Cyril presents the Nicene faith as an undisputed foundation and Nestorius accepts his premise.
The seventh canon of the Council of Ephesus (431) summarizes this consensus position as follows: “[T]he holy Synod decreed that it is unlawful for any man to bring forward or write, or to compose a different Faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled by the Holy Ghost in Nicaea.” After the council, a group of Oriental bishops headed by John of Antioch and Acacius of Beroea demanded that Cyril abide by the principle of the sufficiency of the Nicene faith and withdraw his critique of Nestorian teaching. Cyril replied that he did not put forth a new creed, but was obliged to correct the Christological tenet that, in his judgment, distorted the Nicene faith. Like the Oriental bishops, Cyril held that the Nicene faith was unchangeable; unlike these bishops, however, Cyril could not accept that the profession of the Nicene Creed was sufficient since the new circumstance required a defense of the Creed against misinterpretation.
The Formula of Union, which Cyril signed with his opponents in 433, provided both a clarification of the Christological article and asserted the following about the Nicene faith: “We will not allow the faith, or rather the Symbol of the faith that was defined by our holy Fathers who formerly came together in Nicaea, to be unsettled by anyone. We will not permit ourselves, or anyone else, to change one word of what is laid down there, or to go beyond even one syllable.” In line with the seventh canon of the Council of Ephesus, this statement appears to go beyond the first canon of the Council of Constantinople that the Nicene faith must remain “firm.” The Council of Constantinople put forth a hermeneutic of continuity; these fifth-century pronouncements assert the principle of unchangeability and even the principle of sufficiency of the Nicene faith. While the principle of unchangeability was rhetorically powerful and psychologically compelling, when joined to the principle of sufficiency, it was also exceedingly difficult to put in practice, as the Council of Chalcedon and its aftermath would demonstrate.
At the Council of Chalcedon, the public reading of the “Exposition of faith of the 318 Fathers” was followed by acclamations: “This is the orthodox faith; this we all believe; into this we were baptized; into this we baptize,” and so on. After these acclamations, the “most glorious judges and great senate” ordered the reading of “what was set forth by the 150 holy fathers.” This designation is a somewhat elusive reference to the creedal formula that would come to be accepted on the authority of the Council of Chalcedon as the one put forth by the Council of Constantinople (381). Since the Acts of the Council of Constantinople are not extant, the matter whether this episcopal assembly has indeed put forth any new creed in addition to the Nicene Creed remains uncertain. What is certain is that the Council of Constantinople saw its confessional stance as in keeping with the Nicene faith.
Post-Chalcedonian Orthodox tradition maintains that the Constantinopolitan Creed is an expanded version of the original Nicene Creed. Contemporary scholarship has challenged this tradition on textual and redaction-critical grounds, the particulars of which are considered in J.N.D. Kelly’s classic study, Early Christian Creeds, and are beyond the scope of this essay. It is more relevant for our purposes that after the Council of Chalcedon, the Constantinopolitan Creed was gradually accepted and disseminated as an authentic and authoritative expression of the Nicene faith. The post-Chalcedonian prominence and wide distribution of the Constantinopolitan Creed attests to the fact that the principle of unchangeability of the Nicene faith, no matter how effective it was rhetorically and how often repeated, was in practice deployed rather as the principle of continuity. The church leaders gathered in Chalcedon were aware of the fact that the “faith of the 150 fathers” did not repeat the original Nicene Creed verbatim; nevertheless, they endorsed both formulations as valid. By implication, although without any explicit acknowledgement, they accepted the fact of doctrinal development and, de facto, had to set aside the principle of sufficiency of the Nicene Creed, which the Council of Ephesus put forth.
The main issue that the Council of Chalcedon had to determine was not the compatibility of the two creeds, but rather the agreement of the Tome of Pope Leo with the Nicene faith. The vast majority of the Council Fathers commented that in their judgment the Tome was indeed consistent with the Nicene faith. However, some expressed their reservations, which after the Council of Chalcedon would fester into a permanent division between the Churches that accepted and those that rejected the Chalcedonian Definition and the Tome as its authoritative interpretation. This division shows that in the minds of some Christian leaders, the Council of Chalcedon was a departure from the Nicene faith, particularly its Christological aspect. Thus, the hermeneutic of continuity with the Nicene faith, professed by the subsequent councils, was itself a matter of controversy, which had enduring consequences. It is clear, then, that by building on the Nicene faith the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon offered no mere repetition of Nicene orthodoxy, but rather attempted its Christological development. The fact that the non-Chalcedonian Churches rejected the legitimacy of this development only confirms the point that the hermeneutic of continuity was no mere repetition.
The Nicene Legacy in Worship
Ironically, the original Creed of the Council of Nicaea — in contrast to the Constantinopolitan Creed, or the Apostles’ Creed — has never enjoyed a particularly broad ecclesiastical circulation. In fact, there is no evidence that the Council’s original Creed was ever deployed in the context of worship. The Nicene Creed as well as the other fourth–fifth century conciliar creeds were not immediately proposed as replacements of local baptismal creeds. On the contrary, there is ample evidence to suggest that more than a century after the Council of Nicaea, various local creedal formulations continued to be used in the rite of baptism in different parts of the Empire and beyond. Baptismal and conciliar creeds had somewhat different, although overlapping functions. Early baptismal confessions of faith varied widely, were drawn upon in baptismal catechesis, and were not formally debated at councils. In contrast, the Nicene Creed was the first conciliar attempt to establish a common standard of orthodoxy. As long as the local baptismal creeds could be interpreted as broadly agreeing with the Nicene faith, they continued to be used in catechesis and in baptism.
After the Council of Chalcedon endorsed both the Nicene Creed and the Creed of the “150 Fathers gathered in the imperial city,” the Constantinopolitan Creed, not the original formula of the Nicene Creed, began to replace local baptismal creeds. This development was gradual and by no means universal, with many churches continuing to adhere to their local ancient practices. The Constantinopolitan Creed had acquired this significance because it was widely believed to express the Nicene faith in light of the doctrinal challenges that arose in the aftermath of Nicaea. Just as the Council of Chalcedon was a defining moment for establishing the authority of the Constantinopolitan Creed, the Council of Constantinople was a defining moment for establishing the authority of the Nicene faith.
Prior to the sixth century, creedal formulae were not yet a regular part of the liturgy. Apparently, the first church leader to introduce the creed into public worship was patriarch Timothy of Constantinople. The patriarch, who was leaning in the miaphysite direction and was suspicious of Chalcedonian Christology, ordered that the Constantinopolitan Creed be recited during worship in Constantinople, wishing to increase the public significance of the Creed and hoping, by implication, to decrease the doctrinal significance of the Chalcedonian Definition. However, Timothy’s anti-Chalcedonian intentions were lost on his contemporaries, who embraced the practice of the recitation of the Creed during the second part of the liturgy (the Liturgy of the Faithful, as it is known in the Christian East) without sharing his plan for consigning the Chalcedonian Definition to oblivion. It is true, of course, that most Eastern Christians today are more familiar with some version of the creed than with the Chalcedonian Definition, precisely because the former, but not the latter is regularly recited in public worship. The introduction of the Constantinopolitan Creed into public worship at a relatively late date also explains why some non-Chalcedonian Churches, such as, for example, the Armenian Apostolic Church, use a creed better suited for its tradition, rather than the Constantinopolitan Creed, in its worship.
The Nicene legacy in Orthodox worship is not limited to the recitation of the Creed. In the church calendar, the Council of Nicaea is commemorated on three major occasions. The most prominent is the remembrance of the 318 Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council on the first Sunday after the Ascension. Second in order is the commemoration of the Council itself on May 29. Finally, the Slavonic liturgical tradition also adds the Feast of the First Six Ecumenical Councils, which includes the Council of Nicaea.
The liturgical memory of the Council of Nicaea, as reflected in church hymnography, includes some curious hagiographic material. For example, the hymns of the Feast of St. Nicholas of Mira and Lycia (later turned into Santa Claus) have the saint confront Arius at the Council of Nicaea: “Teaching incomprehensible knowledge about the Holy Trinity, thou wast with the holy fathers in Nicaea a champion of the confession of the Orthodox Faith. Thou didst confess the Son equal of the Father, co-everlasting and co-enthroned, and thou didst convict the foolish Arius. Wherefore the faithful have learnt to sing unto thee: Rejoice, sanctuary of prayer and devotion […] Rejoice, thou who didst expel the demonic Arius from the council of the saints.” The method of Arius’ expulsion is specified in one hagiographic account, which has St. Nicholas growing so indignant with Arius as to strike the heretic on his face. While this particular story was pure fiction, the reality of verbal abuse and occasional physical violence during the conciliar proceedings was not.
As a mythologized, or rather demonized character, Arius also provided ample opportunities for one of the most common rhetorical devices of Byzantine church hymnography, namely, antithesis. For example, the hymnography of the Sunday of the 318 Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council extols the theological achievement of Nicaea and pours pious vitriol on the waywardness of Arius, ascribing to him the following end: “Arius fell into the precipice of sin, having shut his eyes so as not to see the light, and he was ripped asunder by a divine hook so that with his entrails he forcibly emptied out all his essence and his soul, and was named another Judas, both for his ideas and the manner of his death. But the Council in Nicaea loudly proclaimed you, Lord, to be Son of God, equal in rank with the Father and the Spirit.” Whatever its literary qualities, the story filled a gap in popular imagination: the archheretic, who rejected the full divinity of the Logos, died the death of the betrayer of Jesus. Orthodox hymnography and hagiography of Nicaea reinforced in popular imagination the Athanasian interpretation of the Council as primarily anti-Arian.
The Council of Nicaea in Orthodox Iconography
The artistic potential inherent in the figure of Arius as an antipode of the orthodox proponents of the Nicene faith was not lost on the iconographers. The first known depiction of the Council of Nicaea in the Orthodox tradition belongs to the hand of Michael Damaskinos and is quite late. Dated 1591, the icon, which shows strong western influences, depicts the council participants seated amphitheater style (in three rows of semicircles), surrounding the Gospel Book, which is enthroned in the center. Emperor Constantine is placed to the right of the throne with a papal figure (pope Sylvester?) seated in the same row to the left of the throne. Arius, defeated and condemned, is lying on the foreground in front of the seated bishops. To remove any doubt about his condemnation, the heresiarch holds an unrolled scroll with an inscription that says: “Arius enemy of God and the first of those who burn.” The composition follows a relatively typical Byzantine and western scheme of presenting conciliar decisions. This general scheme, often with the Emperor, rather than the Gospel Book, placed in the center, was also followed in the later centuries. In some versions of the icon, the open scroll features a part of the creed, specifically its second article with the assertion that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. Other later versions of the icon also feature St. Nicholas slapping Arius on his face (as we saw earlier, this episode came from hagiographic sources). Compared to the influence of hymnography, the iconographic tradition of depicting the First Ecumenical Council was a relatively insignificant factor in shaping the popular reception of the Nicene legacy.
The Appeal to the Nicene Faith in the Filioque Controversy
While providing a common foundation for all Eastern Churches, the Nicene faith was also a part of the shared heritage of Eastern and Western forms of Christianity. Nevertheless, one controversy over the wording of the Constantinopolitan Creed has played a significant role in cementing the division between the Byzantine East and the Latin West. This difference, which had to do with the pneumatological article of the Creed, became the subject of the Filioque Controversy of the eighth and later centuries.
The original form of the third article of the Nicene Creed of 325 was quite succinct: “And in the Holy Spirit.” In light of the Pneumatomachian controversy, which challenged the divine status and hypostatic character of the Holy Spirit, the Creed of the Council of Constantinople (381) expanded the third article to read: “And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father,” and so on. In the West, the clause “and from the Son (Filioque in Latin) was added to some local versions of this Creed. As one of the unfortunate accidents of history, it is the version of the Constantinopolitan Creed with the Filioque that became widely accepted in the West.
The Creed with Filioque was introduced into the Mass in the West under the following circumstances. Wishing to oppose the Arian heresy, the Visigothic king Reccared replaced the old Roman Creed, whose archaic formula rendered the precise relationship between the Father and the Son rather ambiguous, with the Latin text of the Constantinopolitan Creed, which included the Filioque clause. Ratified by the Council of Toledo (589), the king’s original intention was to bring the Spanish Church in line with the “customs of the Greek Fathers” and to oppose Arianism, which was still strong in the Latin West. At the time that the Constantinopolitan Creed with the Filioque was introduced into the Mass, the difference between the Byzantine and western creedal formulae was lost in translation. Due to the isolation between the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West, the Filioque addition was at first ignored and became an international scandal only in the eighth century, with the Latins insisting on the legitimacy of the Filioque and the Greeks protesting against it.
One of the strongest opponents of the Filioque in Byzantium was Patriarch Photius of Constantinople (c. 810 or 820 – 893). In On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, Photius marshals a range of arguments against the theological implications of the double procession of the Spirit and the legitimacy of inserting the Filioque clause into the Creed. Addressing the point of legitimacy, Photius cites the following decision of the Council of Chalcedon:
After the exposition of the faith which the First and the Second Councils established and handed down, the Council [of Chalcedon] says: ‘Therefore, this wise and salutary Symbol (symbolon of divine grace is sufficient for full knowledge and confirmation of piety.’ It says full, not partial, or requiring any addition or omission.
In the conciliar decision, the term symbolon refers to three confessions: the Nicene Creed, the Constantinopolitan Creed, and the Chalcedonian Definition. Photius was aware of the fact that the Council of Constantinople did not leave the Nicene Creed unchanged and that by adopting the Constantinopolitan Creed alongside the Nicene Creed, the Council of Chalcedon accepted that the creedal formulae could be altered in light of new doctrinal challenges. However, for polemical reasons, Photius interpreted the decision of the Council of Chalcedon as an endorsement of the principle of unchangeability not just of the Nicene faith broadly conceived (which by then included both the Constantinopolitan Creed and the Chalcedonian Definition), but specifically of the Constantinopolitan Creed. Photius went on to argue that the Fifth and the Sixth Ecumenical Councils had reaffirmed the same principle. In Photius’ hands, the principle of unchangeability of the Nicene faith, stated by the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, became a weapon against the inclusion of the Filioque clause into the Constantinopolitan Creed. Such an interpretation of Chalcedon’s intention was appealing to Photius’ Byzantine contemporaries, although it did strain the historical evidence.
The principle that a creed is unchangeable was on occasion invoked in the West too and, ironically, was used by some Latin Church Fathers in support of retaining the ancient Roman Creed or the Apostles’ Creed in worship instead of the “newer” Constantinopolitan Creed. The weakness of such an argument, and this would also apply to Photius’ argument for the unchangeability of the Constantinopolitan Creed, is that at earlier points in history the creedal formulae were regarded as more fluid and subject to alternation and expansion. By endorsing both the Nicene and the Constantinopolitan Creeds, the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon by implication accepted the legitimacy of using two different confessional formulae in order to express one Nicene faith. While they insisted on the unchangeability of this faith, they also put forth a new Christological Definition, which some Eastern Church leaders interpreted as a departure from orthodoxy that made it necessary to separate from the Chalcedonian Churches. In other words, the claim that Chalcedon offers a legitimate interpretation of the Nicene faith was not accepted universally; for the Oriental Orthodox Christians, the Nicene faith was indeed sufficient and the Chalcedonian definition was superfluous at best and erroneous at worst.
The long-term outcome of the Filioque controversy was to turn the Nicene faith (and especially the Constantinopolitan Creed) from a shared doctrinal legacy into a field of theological battle between the Byzantine Church and the Latin Church. The Creed without the Filioque clause became a marker of the Eastern Orthodox identity, just as the Creed with the Filioque clause became a marker of the Roman Catholic (and for some Churches of the Reformation also Protestant) identity. While the bulk of the Nicene legacy continued to be shared, the fixation on the difference over the Filioque under the sufficiently intransigent church leadership and in especially tumultuous political circumstances led in the eleventh century to a schism between the East and West. As a result, the Byzantines came to regard their western counterparts as compromising the Nicene faith; the two versions of the Creed, with and without the Filioque, came to be deployed as weapons of identity politics in the subsequent confrontations between the Byzantine East and the Latin West, especially after the historical trauma of the Crusades. Behind the smokescreen of the Filioque, both traditions often failed to appreciate the significance of their shared Nicene legacy.
The Legacy of Nicaea in the Orthodox Church Today
The life of the Church is shaped as much by the controversies as by the matters that are taken for granted. The Nicene faith has been something that the Orthodox Church, beginning from the fifth century, has taken for granted as its unshakeable foundation. As we have seen, several Ecumenical Councils have both insisted on the principle of unchangeability of the Nicene faith and have attempted to follow the hermeneutic of continuity with Nicaea. For this reason, with the exception of the first-century Apostolic Council in Jerusalem (Acts 15: 6-29), no council in the history of the Orthodox Church could rival the Council of Nicaea in its doctrinal significance and historical impact.
Several canons of the Council of Nicaea refer to the gathering as “the great and holy council,” or “the holy and great council,” or simply “the great council.” Building on this precedent, the 2016 Pan-Orthodox Council that met in Crete also called itself a “holy and great council.” The Council of Crete was convoked by the Patriarchate of Constantinople and attended by delegations of ten out of fourteen self-governing Orthodox Churches. In the absence of the emperor, who in ancient times could enforce the participation of the delegates from different provinces of the Roman Empire, four local churches (Patriarchate of Antioch, Russian Orthodox Church, Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and Georgian Orthodox Church) opted against attendance. This separatist impulse demonstrated that Orthodox conciliarity, while important in theory, is not always followed in practice. Following the pattern of the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Crete did not refer to itself as “ecumenical,” for this would be both historically presumptuous and theologically erroneous. Instead, the Council of Crete chose the title “holy and great council,” which was meant to signal its continuity with the Nicene faith.
Before the Council of Crete, influential traditionalist voices within the Orthodox Church raised objections against the legitimacy of any new Pan-Orthodox council by appealing to the principle of unchangeability. More moderate voices sided with the church leaders, who pointed out that the principle of unchangeability did not rule out the possibility of future conciliar gatherings. In fact, in some circumstances, this principle required the assembly of new councils in order to defend the Nicene faith in the face of new questions and controversies. There is no shortage of such questions and controversies in our time.
The Encyclical of the Council of Crete addresses the conciliar nature of the Orthodox Church in the following terms:
The Orthodox Church, in her unity and catholicity, is the Church of Councils, from the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem (Acts 15.5-29) to the present day. The Church in herself is a Council, established by Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit, in accord with the apostolic words: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15.28). Through the Ecumenical and Local councils, the Church has proclaimed and continues to proclaim the mystery of the Holy Trinity, revealed through the incarnation of the Son and Word of God.
While the Encyclical does not mention the Council of Nicaea explicitly, the Nicene vision of God and Christ are foundational for the Orthodox understanding of the Trinity and incarnation. If the Nicene faith had been compromised or distorted, the history of the Orthodox Church would have been very different. It is adherence to the Nicene faith that has been and remains the foundational marker of Orthodox Christian identity.
The Council of Nicaea was an inspired experiment in communal truth-seeking and truth-articulating, which later councils sought to imitate, both “spiraling back” to the Nicene faith and unpacking the content of this faith in light of new theological questions. In the realm of politics, the closest analogy to an assembly of this sort was the Roman Senate. However, political assemblies rarely, if at all, involved questions of metaphysics, which were typically addressed by the late antique philosophical schools. While such schools provided a framework for debate, they lacked sufficiently robust structures for public adjudication and dissemination of philosophical views. For example, late Platonist metaphysics has never been a matter of dogmatic definition or imperial legislation. Whatever means philosophers had of transmitting their teachings, they certainly could not rival the structures of the Church and the state, which ensured the teaching of the Nicene faith through her episcopate, the passing on of the creed in the rites of initiation, and the reaffirmation of the same faith in the liturgy, and in imperial legislation. It is by these means — episcopate, baptism, liturgy, and councils (with the notable exception of imperial decrees) — that the Nicene faith continues to bear fruit in the life of the Orthodox Church.