Introduction

The early church was characterized by both success and hardship. Christianity successfully became a leading world religion despite persecution from the Roman Empire and later the Muslims. However, physical suffering was not the only issue that early Christians faced. They also engaged in refuting and combating many different theological problems and heresies, specifically false doctrines concerning the substance and personhood of God revealed in the Trinity and many false interpretations of Christology. They fought the good fight and defended the faith at organized synod meetings in the Apostolic Era, and later, they argued orthodox doctrine at various councils during the Patristic Era. The former meetings are revealed in the Scriptures, while the latter are revealed through church history and various creeds or confessions that were authored by men but align themselves with the sound teachings of Scripture. It is agreed in Protestantism that the creeds are “not co-ordinate with, but always subordinate to, the Bible, as the only infallible rule of the Christian faith and practice… The Bible has, therefore, a divine and absolute, the confession only an ecclesiastical and relative authority.”¹ These councils and creeds are bolstering pillars of orthodoxy because they reflect Scripture, and confessing Christians around the globe, even today would be wise to heed their advice and doctrines that are derived from God’s Holy Word.

1. Phillip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 1, The History of Creeds (Grand Rapids: MI, Baker Books, 1996), p. 7.

Creeds: The Fruit of the Early Councils

Albert Mohler, in the introduction of his book The Apostles Creed: Discovering Authentic Christianity in an Age of Counterfeits, claims that there are seven reasons to engage with the creeds, specifically, the Apostle’s Creed: “Creeds define the truth, correct error, provide rules and standards for God’s people, teach the church how to worship and confess the faith, connect us to the faith of [the] fathers, summarize the faith, and define true Christian unity.² If the creeds are so worthy of a Christian’s time and are to be trusted, a specific question is imperative: how did the councils and various church fathers arrive at the composition of these great confessions of the faith? The plain and correct answer is that the authors simply found the core teachings of the Scriptures and organized them systematically into various compositions. However, the process and history of the origin of the Christian creeds are much deeper. In this brief paper, the first four of the ecumenical councils will be succinctly summarized and examined in light of the glorious doctrines organized through them and the opposition that gave way to them.

1. Albert Mohler, The Apostles Creed: Discovering Authentic Christianity in an Age of Counterfeits (Nashville, TN: Nelson Books, 2019), pp. Xx-xxii.

The First Council of Nicaea

The First Ecumenical Council of the Patristic Era took place in AD 325 in Nicaea. It was presided over by newly converted Constantine I.³ The background of this council involves a specific man named Arius who was teaching that Christ, the divine Logos, was a created being and that He was not coeternal with the Father.⁴ This belief came to be known as the Arian Controversy.⁵ His opponent, the bishop Alexander of Alexandria, debated that Christ was coeternal with God. He concluded that the Logos, Christ, was a divine being and, therefore, was not created, but all created things were made through Him.⁶ Therefore, Alexander condemned Arius and excommunicated him from his posts in Alexandria, a decision that faced harsh opposition from Arius’ followers.⁷ Thus, Constantine, in an effort to avoid a divide in the Eastern church, called for the First Ecumenical Council, where a sect of bishops defended Alexander’s understanding of Christ’s divinity against Eusebius of Nicomedia, a representative of Arius as Arius was not a bishop himself.⁸ A deacon who agreed with the sect of bishops that defended Alexander’s position was the great defender of the faith, Athanasius, who would later become the great “champion of Nicene orthodoxy.”⁹

Another controversy involved with the First Council of Nicaea was that of patripassianism, or the belief that “the Father and the Son are the same, and that therefore the father suffered the passion.”¹⁰ This belief was in opposition to both Arianism and Alexander's position.

The council gave way to the composition of the Nicene Creed. It quickly became clear that Arianism and Patripassianism had to be condemned to the utmost degree. Therefore, Constantine proposed an official statement with the word homoousios, that is, “of the same substance,” to be included in it, ruling out Arianism.¹¹ The confession also states that Jesus was “begotten, not made” and “from the substance of the Father.” Athanasius would later see this as ruling out Patripassianism, but the bishops on the day of the First Council of Nicaea understood the phrase homoousios as leaving merit for the heretical position.¹² The signed document and statement that was born at the First Council of Nicaea has been adapted into many forms and various amendments have been made to it, and it is the most widely confessed creed of the church catholic.¹³ However, the composition of the Creed did not defeat the Arian Controversy. It was after Alexander’s death that Athanasius became the champion.¹⁴

Athanasius spent the rest of his life fighting Arianism and convincing the bishops of the church that homoousios was an acceptable phrase regarding the Father and Son’s substance in light of their Personal distinction.¹⁵ Just as Tertullian confessed, Athanasius preached that there were “three persons and one substance.”¹⁶ Unfortunately, Athanasius passed into glory before he saw the fruit of his fight ratified at the First Council of Constantinople in AD 381.¹⁷

1. Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (Broadway, NY: HarperCollins, 2010), p. 187.
2. Ibid., 184.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 185.
6. Ibid., 185-87.
7. Ibid., 188.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 189.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 191.
13. Ibid., 206.
14. Ibid., 188.
15. Ibid., 207.

The First Council of Constantinople

After the death of Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil the Great; Gregory of Nyssa; and Gregory of Nazianzus, took up the mantle against Arianism. Basil, their leader, was the older brother of Gregory of Nyssa, and they were good friends with Gregory of Nazianzus.¹⁸ An interesting fact about the Cappadocian Fathers is that they were all ordained as presbyters and bishops against their will, preferring the contemplative life of monasticism.¹⁹ However, the Lord saw it beneficial to His glory and the fight against Arianism to bring them into ecclesial ministry. Unfortunately, like Athanasius, Basil passed away before he could see the ratification of Nicene orthodoxy at the First Council of Constantinople. Still, his brother and his close friend were active leaders in the council.²⁰

In AD 380, Emperor Theodosius entered Constantinople, expelled all of the Arians there, and met Gregory of Nazianzus, making him bishop of the city. However, he later resigned as he was already bishop of Nazianzus, like his father.²¹ In AD 381, the emperor called for the council that reaffirmed the First Council of Nicaea as orthodox, making one addition: that the Holy Spirit, like the Son, is homoousios to the Father and, therefore, also homoousios to the Son.²² Also, the Cappadocian Fathers made the contribution at the council that while the Trinity was of the same substance, they were also of three different hypostases or three persons.²³ Gregory of Nazianzus commented that the main debate of the two councils so far was so central to the culture of the early church “that one could not even get one’s shoes repaired without getting into a discussion regarding whether the Son was homoousios or homoiousios [or of a similar substance] to the Father.”²⁴

The First Council of Constantinople also condemned the teaching of a particular Nicene Christian: Apollinaris of Laodicea. Apollinaris taught that the Divine Logos was part of Christ by virtue of taking the place of a rational human soul.²⁵ However, this view denies Jesus as being truly human as he becomes void of a human soul. Gregory of Nazianzus explains it this way: “[i]f any believe in Jesus Christ as a human being without human reason, they are the ones devoid of all reason, and unworthy of salvation. For that which he has not taken up he has not saved. He saved that which he joined to his divinity.”²⁶ If Jesus was not truly man, then he could not save humans. Therefore, Jesus must be both truly God and truly man.

1. Gonzalez, 211-14.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 213-16.
4. Ibid., 217.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 297.
9. Ibid.

The Council of Ephesus

The next opponent of Nicene orthodoxy was Nestorius, a follower of the Antiochene school of Christology, meaning while he confessed Jesus as both God and man, he diminished his divinity for the sake of his humanity. It was the same school that Apollinaris belonged to. The school in contrast to Antiochene, Alexandrine, often diminished the Son’s humanity for the sake of His divinity so that His divinity overwhelmed His humanity.²⁷ Nestorius, in keeping with the customs of Antiochians, taught that Christ had two natures and two persons, and therefore he was halfway correct.²⁸ However, being halfway correct with respect to Christology is missing the mark in its entirety. He further posited that “the human nature and person were born of Mary; the divine was not,” in as much as refusing to call Mary Theotokos or God-bearer.²⁹ Rather, he preferred the term Christotokos or Christ-bearer. It is under these circumstances that the Council of Ephesus was called by Emperors Valentinian III and Theodosius II in AD 431 where Nestorius was condemned a heretic without being given the opportunity to defend his position.³⁰

Then follows a series of councils from various theological perspectives where the verdict of Nestorius’ heresy as well as the heresy of those aligned with his theology was left uncertain. Therefore, another formal Council of Ephesus was called by Theodosius II in AD 449 due to the teachings of Eutyches, who taught that “Jesus was of one substance with the Father, but not of one substance with humans,” but the outcome of this council is so similar to the first that it is normally considered a continuation of the Council of Ephesus.³¹

1. Gonzalez, 268-98.
2. Ibid., 299.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 300.

The Council of Chalcedon

Due to the uncertainty of the verdict of the last council and the obscurity of Christology at this point, Empress Pulcheria and Emperor Leo I called for a Fourth Ecumenical Council in AD 451: The Council of Chalcedon.³² It was at this council that Nestorius and Eutychus were officially condemned as heretics, and the relationship between Christ’s human and divine natures was clarified in a letter written by Leo. It stated:

Jesus Christ is one and the same God, perfect in divinity, and perfect in humanity, true God and true human, of one substance with the Father in his divinity, and of one substance with us in his humanity… manifested in two natures without any confusion, change, division or separation… The union does not destroy the differences of the two natures, but on the contrary the properties of each are kept, and both are joined in one person and hypostases.³³

This clarification reaffirmed and strengthened what had occurred at the First, Second, and Third Councils, and this “Definition of faith soon became the standard of Christological orthodoxy in the entire Western church, and in most of the East.”³⁴ It officially declared a few important facts: “a true incarnation, the precise distinction between nature and person, the God-Man as a result of the incarnation, the duality of the natures, the unity of the person, the whole work of Christ is to be attributed to His person and to neither nature exclusively, and the enhypostasia.”³⁵ The last of the facts demonstrates that Christ’s personality is derived from His divine nature as his human nature did not exist prior to the Incarnation, and he was not without a personality prior.³⁶ The personality of His person in His human nature was but a shadow of the divine as it adopted it. While this letter that became the Creed of Chalcedon, although never officially an ecumenical creed as the third and fourth councils determined to have no other creed than the Nicene,³⁷ brought much unity in terms of Christological discussion, there remained some who opposed the doctrines it contained. There were the Nestorians, who persisted in distinguishing the natures of Christ, and the Monophysites, who believed that Christ only had one nature. The orthodox position and the position defined in the Chalcedonian Creed is called Dyophysiticim, meaning two natures. The following councils condemned these teachings and monothelism, the belief that Jesus had only one will, but Chalcedon and the previous councils already answered these accusations. Therfore, any new additions are insignificant to be discussed in this essay.³⁸ Monothelism, for example, can be addressed the same way that Apollinarism is addressed: “[a] man without a human will is not fully human.”³⁹ The will of Christ is not a blended one, rather it is two distinct wills.

1. Gonzalez, 301.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 302.
4. Schaff, 30-33.
5. Ibid., 33.
6. Ibid., 35.
7. Gonzalez, 304-5.
8. Ibid.

The Athanasian Creed

A creed that encapsulates all of these doctrines is the Athanasian Creed. It is often called the Symbolum Quicunque, or “whoever wishes,” based on its opening lines.⁴⁰ While its origins are obscure, like the Apostles Creed, it was often ascribed to Athanasius, who was previously discussed, until the seventeenth century.⁴¹ Similarly to the Chalcedonian Creed, the Athanasian Creed was never given ecumenical authority, but it is a “remarkably clear and precise summary of the doctrinal decisions of the first four ecumenical councils and the Augustinian speculations on the Trinity and the Incarnation.” The creed comprises two sections separated by three anathemas: before the section on the Trinity, before the section on Christology, and once again at the end.

The first section focuses on the Trinity. In great detail, the author of the creed describes the three-in-oneness of the Trinity while simultaneously excluding “every kind of subordination of essence.”⁴² The exclusion of subordination demonstrates the three divine Persons as coequal and coeternal. The Creed also mentions that each Person of the Trinity is found in the other Two. This means that They “share a perpetual intercommunication and motion within the divine essence.”⁴³ That is, they exist to glorify each other in their unity, yet they each have their own Personal characteristics: the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit is proceeding or Spirated out of the fellowship between the Father and the Son. While this creed does a tremendous job of describing an orthodox understanding of the Trinity, it is important to remember what Augustine said: “God is greater and truer in our thoughts than in our words; He is greater and truer in reality than in our thoughts.”⁴⁴

The second section is on Christology, which greatly reflects the Christology of the first four ecumenical councils. Within the first stanza, it posits that Christ is both God and human, equally. Furthermore, it claims that “Christ had a rational soul, in opposition to the Apollinarian heresy, which limited the extent of his humanity to a mere body with an animal soul inhabited by the divine Logos.”⁴⁵ Moreover, it also “excludes the Nestorian and Eutychian or Monophysite heresies,”⁴⁶ all of which are heresies discussed in the first four ecumenical councils. That is to say, the Athanasian Creed is strictly Chalcedonian in its Christology, as the Council of Chalcedon is the culmination of the four initial ecumenical councils.

The three anathemas are present within the Creed to exclude from the faith those who reject the doctrinal truths contained in it. However, these damnatory clauses are under much scrutiny, and many theologians and Christians question whether they should be there at all. They posit that the original Nicene Creed had an anathema against the Arians attached to it, but it was quickly omitted in revision.⁴⁷ Instead, they claim the Creeds should not be “polemical and partake of the character of manifestos of war, [but rather be] confessions of faith and thanks to God for His mighty works.”⁴⁸ The validity of including the anathemas will continue to be debated for some time.

1. Schaff, 35.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 37.
4. Ibid., 38.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 39.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 40.
9. Ibid.

Conclusion

The ecumenical councils of the early church are helpful to study as they teach much about the nature of God and Christ. The ecumenical confessions such as the Nicene Creed and various other creeds like the Athanasian Creed contain the truths of Scripture within them and, therefore, are sanctifying articles of the Faith. Once again, Christians aspiring to know more about the Lord and orthodox doctrines, particularly the Trinity and Christology, should consider the various creeds’ statements with great wisdom and eagerness, for in them the Faith is expressed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation. Broadway, NY: HarperCollins, 2010.

Mohler, Albert. The Apostles Creed: Discovering Authentic Christianity in an Age of Counterfeits. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books, 2019.

Schaff, Philip. The Creeds of Christendom. Vol. 1, The History of Creeds. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996.

#34 The First Four Ecumenical Councils

#35 Romans

#33 Missions Matter