​The Council of Antioch: The Four Creeds

​During the summer of the year 341, ninety bishops gathered in Antioch to dedicate a church newly built by the Emperor Constantius. The emperor himself was present and the leaders of the Arian party, Eusebius of Constantinople and Acacius of Cæsarea in Palestine, decided to take advantage of the situation to call a council in response to Pope Julius’s council in Rome earlier in the year. In their wish to convince Julius of their orthodoxy and undermine his support for Athanasius and Marcellus, they faced a delicate task. Since the council at Antioch was a mere regional council, it could not controvert the œcumenical Council of Nicæa overtly. It was necessary to find a creed whose wording would appear consistent with the Nicene Creed—in fact be as close to it as possible—but at the same time would allow an Arian interpretation, so permitting the Arian bishops to claim orthodoxy. And it would help if some anti-Sabellian clauses were included, because of the widespread suspicion in the East that the wording of the Nicene Creed permitted a Sabellian interpretation—that the Father and the Son were just two manifestations of a single Person. But the creed had to be silent on the key Arian claims—it could not assert that the Father and the Son are coeternal, or that they are of the same essence or subsistence (οὐσία or ὑπόστασις).

​Also, of course, though the bishop of Antioch itself, Flacillus, was a convinced Arian, most of the bishops present were not convinced Arians, although few were entirely satisfied with the Nicene Creed and few were supporters personally of Athanasius or Marcellus. Most wanted a creed that would resolve the crisis, although it was unclear how the divergent opinions could be bridged.

The first creed (given in Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, II.x.4–8; and in St Athanasius, De Synodis, 22) was obviously drafted by the Arian bishops present. They evidently felt the need to justify themselves, since they opened with the declaration, ‘We have neither become followers of Arius—for how should we who are bishops be guided by a presbyter?—nor have we embraced any other faith than that which was set forth from the beginning. But being constituted examiners and judges of his sentiments, we admit their soundness, rather than adopt them from him: and you will recognize this from what we are about to state [De Synodis; trans. A.C. Zenos, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, II, Schaff and Wace, eds., 1890, p. 39].’ They went on to give something close to the Nicene Creed, but adding the clause, ‘continuing King and God forever,’ aimed at Marcellus’s teaching that Christ’s kingdom would have an end, and concluding, ‘And if it is necessary to add this, we believe in the resurrection of the flesh, and the life everlasting,’ matters not addressed in the Nicene Creed. But they do not say that the Son of God is ‘of the essence [οὐσία] of the Father,’ or that he is ‘begotten not made,’ or that he is ‘consubstantial [ὁμοούσιον] with the Father.’ They only say that he is ‘subsisting before all ages, and co-existing with the Father who begat him.’ But of course, the Arians believed that the Son ‘subsisted before all ages,’ since he had created them; what they did not believe was that he and the Father had both always subsisted—that they are coeternal.

The second creed, called the Dedication Creed, is found in Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, II.x.9, and Athanasius, De Synodis, 23. It appears that the majority of bishops present, not being convinced Arians, found the first creed unsatisfactory and drafted a second and far longer creed, in fact almost three times as long as the Nicene Creed, in which they made a great effort to limit themselves to wording from Scripture. This creed made no obvious concessions to Arianism, in fact saying ‘who was in the beginning with God.’ They anathematize those who affirm ‘that there is or was a period or an age before the Son of God existed,’ but they also anathematize those who say ‘that the Son is a creature as one of the creatures, or that he is offspring as one of the offsprings,’ propositions which an Arian would equally deny. It is not explicitly anti-Marcellan, not mentioning Marcellus’s teaching that the Son will return into the Father at the end of the age and his kingdom would end, but it is distinctly anti-Sabellian, explicating the baptismal formula, ‘Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’ by specifying, ‘… that is to say of the Father who is truly the Father, of the Son who is truly the Son, and of the Holy Spirit who is truly the Holy Spirit, these words not being simply or insignificantly applied, but accurately expressing the proper subsistence [ὑπόστασιν], glory and order, of each of these who are named: so that there are three in person, but one in concordance [ὡς εἶναι τῇ μὲν ὑποστάσει τρία, τῇ δὲ συμφωνίᾳ ἕν].’

It does not use the term ‘consubstantial’ (ὁμοούσιον), the distinctive mark of the Nicene Creed, nor ‘essence’ (οὐσία) except for a clause that has drawn attention ever since: ‘exact Image of the Godhead, Essence, Power, Will and Glory of the Father’ [τῆς θεότητος, οὐσίας τε καὶ δυνάμεως καὶ βουλῆς καὶ δόξης τοῦ Πατρὸς ἀπαράλλακτον εἰκόνα]. This clause echoes one from St Alexander of Alexandria’s confession of faith in 324, ‘For he is the exact and precisely similar image of the Father’ [Εἰκὼν γάρ ἐστιν ἀπηκριβωμένη καὶ ἀπαράλλακτος τοῦ Πατρός] and expands it to refer specifically to the ‘essence’ [οὐσία] of the Father. This, of course, was unacceptable to Arians.

​The Dedication Creed became the preferred statement of the middle-of-the-road bishops and would be reaffirmed at regional councils held over the next two decades that were not under Arian control.

The third creed differed from the first two in being a personal confession. ‘And one Theophronius, Bishop of Tyana, put forth before them all the following statement of his personal faith. And they subscribed it, accepting the faith of this man.’ (Athanasius, De Synodis, 24; op. cit.) He had presumably been accused of Sabellianism and presented this creed in exculpation.

​The fourth creed is a bit of a puzzle. It was not drafted actually at the council but some months later by a small group of bishops whose identity is not known. Circumstances, however, suggest that they were the leaders of the Arian party who had drafted the first creed but who knew all too well that the Western bishops would be scandalized by it. We will see in a moment who some of them must have been. They needed something for immediate use in countering Pope Julius’s accusations and this was the result.

​It was longer than the Nicene Creed, although not as long as the Dedication Creed. Like the Dedication Creed it expanded considerably on the Nicene Creed’s laconic ‘and [we believe] in the Holy Spirit.’ It included a clause rejecting Marcellus’s teaching that Christ’s reign would end. Otherwise it attempted to stick as close to the Nicene Creed as possible while omitting the Nicene Creed’s references to ‘consubstantial’ and ‘essence.’ The only occurrence of the word ‘subsistence’ (ὑπόστασις) is in an anathema against those who say that the Son is ‘of another subsistence, and not of God.’ The corresponding anathema in the Nicene Creed condemned those who said he is ‘of another subsistence or essence’ (ἐξ ἑτέρας ὑποστάσεως ἢ οὐσίας). It anathematized those who said that ‘there was a time when he did not exist,’ (ὅτι ἦν ποτε χρόνος ὅτε οὐκ ἦν), which an Arian could accept, rather than the Nicene Creed’s explicit anathematization of the Arian formula, ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν (there was a ‘then’ when he did not exist).

​The creed was obviously intended to undo the damage to the Arian party caused by Pope Julius’s council earlier in the year, because a deputation departed with it for the West immediately to lay it before the Emperor Constans in Trier. The deputation comprised Narcissus of Neronias in Cilicia, Theodore of Heraclea in Thrace, Mark of Arethusa in Syria and Maris of Chalcedon in Bithynia. Of these, Narcissus, Theodore and Maris had been members of the notorious commission to the Mareotis to collect evidence against Athanasius eight years before. They appeared before the Emperor Constans in Trier. Of this mission, Sozomen says, ‘Constans, determining that the bishops of the East had conspired unjustly against Athanasius and Paul [of Constantinople] in refusing communion with them not because of precise accusations or because of their conduct, as the statements of accusation claimed, but because of disagreements over dogma, he sent them away without their convincing him on the points that had motivated their coming.’ (Ecclesiastical History, III.x.6. Sources Chrétiennes No 418, French trans. André-Jean Festugière.)

John Henry Newman explains their lack of success: ‘In truth, no such exposition of the Catholic faith could satisfy the Western Christians, while they were witnesses to the exile of its great champion on account of his fidelity to it … The Occidentals, however unskilled in the niceties of the Greek language, were able to ascertain the heresy of the Eusebians in their malevolence towards Athanasius. Nay, the anxious attempts of his enemies, to please them by means of a confession of faith, were a refutation of their pretences … why should they themselves be so fertile in confessions, if they had all of them but one faith?’ (The Arians of the Fourth Century, London, 1919, p. 288.)

​Not long after the Council of Antioch, Eusebius, formerly of Nicomedia and then of Constantinople, died. Paul returned to his see but only briefly because riots broke out between his supporters and the supporters of the Arian claimant to the episcopate, Macedonius, that caused heavy loss of life. In 342 he found himself banished once again to the West.

Although the Eastern mission had been unsuccessful, it reminded Constans of the exiled bishops, giving Pope Julius and Athanasius the opportunity to press him to resolve the issue, and the bloody riots in Constantinople underlined the need. Constans now wrote to his brother Constantius proposing an œcumenical council to end the dispute. Constantius was unenthusiastic but, occupied on the eastern frontier in the war with Persia, was not in a position to refuse. The Eastern bishops, even the non-Arians, were even less enthusiastic, having no wish for Western bishops to inquire into their decisions, but could not refuse the command of the two emperors.

​The council was summoned to meet at Sardica in Illyria (present-day Sofia in Bulgaria), on the border between East and West, in the autumn of 343. It was organised by Protogenus of Sardica and St Hosius of Cordova. Ninety bishops attended from the West, accompanied by the exiled bishops from the East, St Athanasius of Alexandria, St Paul of Constantinople and Marcellus of Ancyra. (By this time, Marcellus had listened to his friends and given up some of his more contentious teachings, including that Christ’s kingdom would have an end.) Many of the Eastern bishops found excuses not to attend and, though the East had many more bishops to send than the West, finally only eighty set out for the council.

The Council of Sardica was a fiasco. The Eastern bishops arrived in Sardica but refused to meet those from the West unless Athanasius, Paul and Marcellus were expelled. The Western bishops reiterated their support for the banished bishops. The Eastern bishops then retired 90 miles back down the road to Philippopolis in Thrace (present-day Plovdiv in Bulgaria), where they issued a statement of faith identical to the Fourth Creed of Antioch and fired a salvo of anathemas and depositions at the Western bishops gathered in Sardica, fire returned in kind by the Western bishops. Then everyone went home.

The council was not just a fiasco, it was a disaster, making the divide between East and West glaringly obvious and revealing how little each side understood the other. Sozomen described the result: ‘After this council, there were no longer relations nor mutual communion as between people of the same opinion, the Westerners as far as the borders of Thrace and the Easterners as far as the borders of Illyria having separated themselves; and the churches, as is natural, were in confusion, a prey to discord and calumny. In fact, even though formerly one differed on dogma, at least by participating in the same communion the evil was less grave and one passed for having the same opinions.’ (Op. cit., III.xiii.1–2.)

Athanasius identified the leaders of the Arian party at the time of the Council of Sardica as Theodore of Heraclea in Thrace, Narcissus of Neronias in Cilicia, Acacius of Cæsarea in Palestine, Stephen of Antioch in Syria, Menophantus of Ephesus in Asia, George of Laodicea in Syria, Valens of Mursa (present-day Osijek in Croatia) in Pannonia and Ursacius of Singidunum (present-day Belgrade in Serbia) in Mœsia (Apologia contra Arianos, 36). Most of the Western bishops, with a few exceptions like Ursacius and Valens, supported Athanasius and the homoousion. Most Eastern bishops were not supporters of the Arians but also were unsure of the implications of the homoousion and distrustful of Athanasius personally, although the monks, led by St Anthony, supported him and the people of Alexandria were devoted to him.

The Council of Sardica was a shock to both sides, and was followed by efforts at reconciliation. Early in 344, a deputation of two bishops from the West, Vincentius of Capua in Italy and Euphrates of Agrippina (present-day Cologne) in Gaul, went to Antioch. Unfortunately, Stephen attempted a foolish bit of blackmail against Vincentius, worthy of a French farce, which was quickly exposed. The two bishops returned to the West in high dudgeon while a council met in Antioch to depose Stephen and replace him with Leontius, another Arian but less prone to gaffes.

​This council drew up another creed, one that became notorious as the Macrostich, ‘Long Lines,’ identical to the Fourth Creed of Antioch but, in place of that creed’s brief anathemas, it was followed by anathemas and commentary five times as long as the creed itself, aimed especially at those suspected of Sabellianism. A delegation took the creed to a council being held in Milan, but again without managing to bridge the gap between the Eastern and Western bishops.

​Stephen’s farcical escapade seems to have shaken Constantius’s confidence in the Arian bishops who had been advising him. His brother Constans had been pressing him to restore Athanasius and, when the usurper of the Alexandrian see, Gregory, died in June of 345, Constantius invited Athanasius to return. Athanasius, understandably wary of Constantius, returned slowly, meeting with the bishops on his route and probably with Constantius as well, arriving back in Alexandria to a tumultuous welcome in the fall of 346. At about the same time, St Paul of Constantinople was allowed to return to his see.

​And here for the moment everything rested, both sides having reached a stalemate.

​Constantius becomes sole emperor

​In the year 350, the stalemate came to an abrupt end due to an unexpected political event in the empire. One of Constans’s generals, Magnentius, rebelled, killing Constans, aged only 27, and seizing control of the West. Constantius, occupied at the time on the eastern frontier with the interminable Persian war, moved hastily westward, regaining control of the Balkans, Italy and North Africa. He spent the next few years in Sirmium and Milan, pushing back Magnentius’s forces in Gaul, until the latter’s final defeat in August of 353. Constantius was now sole ruler of the Roman Empire, no longer with his brother Constans to defend the Nicene party against the Arians whom he favoured. He shifted from a policy of toleration in church matters to one of coercion.

​Arian doctrine at this time still held to Arius’s basic teaching, that God the Son is not God in the same absolute sense that the Father is God, but is subordinate, not eternal as the Father is eternal, but was in some unfathomable way given existence by the Father to do the things, like suffer, that are not appropriate for the Father as an impassible deity. But other aspects of the doctrine had developed since Arius’s time. For example, Arians no longer taught that the Son originated from the void, but that he originated from the Father’s will. Still other developments had created fissures in the Arian party that were becoming deeper at this time. The emerging parties were identified by the specific way in which they contradicted the Nicene Creed’s doctrine that the Son is ‘the same in essence’ (ὁμοούσιος) as the Father.

​First are the Anomœans, from the Greek ἀνόμοιος, ‘not like,’ founded by a Syrian, Aetius, with a checkered career including tradesman, physician, philosopher and theologian. He was ordained a deacon in Antioch at one point but his teachings always tended to shock people, even other Arians, and he was defrocked. He took Arianism to extremes, teaching that the Son was other than the Father, with no likeness to him. His disciple and most effective propagandist, after whom the party came to be named, was Eunomius, born in Cappadocia, who began his career as a teacher of shorthand and went on to become a teacher of rhetoric and a theologian. He also was ordained a deacon in Antioch but not defrocked. As we will see later, by disguising his Anomœan views he would become a bishop, if only briefly.

​Second are the Homœousians, from the Greek ὁμοιούσιον, ‘like in essence.’ They emerged in opposition to the Anomœans and were led by Basil of Ancyra in Galatia and George of Laodicea in Syria. Their watchword was ὁμοῖος κατ’ οὐσίαν, ‘like according to essence.’

​Finally are the Homœans, from the Greek ὅμοιος, ‘like.’ This variant of Arianism borrowed from the teachings of Eusebius of Cæsarea in Palestine. The leaders of the party were Eusebius’s disciple and successor Acacius of Cæsarea, Eudoxius, bishop of Germanicia in Armenia and later bishop of Antioch in Syria, Germinius of Sirmium, Valens of Mursa (both in Pannonia) and Ursacius of Singidunum in Mœsia. They were prepared to say that the Son was ‘like’ the Father but rejected associating the words οὐσία or ὑπόστασις in any way with the Father or the Son.

​The Emperor Constantius, although a militant opponent of orthodoxy, never quite managed to keep a grip on these differences. John Henry Newman gave a scathing account of him: ‘Constantius, indeed, may be taken as a type of a genuine Semi-Arian; resisting, as he did, the orthodox doctrine from over-subtlety, timidity, pride, restlessness, or other weakness of mind, yet paradoxical enough to combat at the same time and condemn all, who ventured to teach anything short of that orthodoxy. Balanced on this imperceptible centre between truth and error, he alternately banished every party in the controversy, not even sparing his own; and had recourse in turn to every creed for relief, except that in which the truth was actually to be found.’ (The Arians of the Fourth Century, London, 1919, p. 297)

​These divergent strands of Arianism had been developing for several decades but it was in the period 350 to 360 that they became widely recognised and identified by name.

​The participants in the conflict were also changing. A quarter of a century had passed since the Council of Nicæa and several of the original actors had died, including Arius himself, the Emperor Constantine the Great, St Alexander of Alexandria, St Eustathius of Antioch, St Sylvester of Rome, Eusebius of Nicomedia (and later of Constantinople), Eusebius of Cæsarea, St Macarius of Jerusalem, Theognius of Nicæa and Paulinus of Tyre. Among those still active from the time of the council were most notably St Athanasius the Great of Alexandria and St Hosius of Cordova. And new faces were appearing on the scene, including St Hilary, bishop of Poitiers in Gaul, who would become famous as ‘the Athanasius of the West,’ and St Liberius, bishop of Rome, who succeeded St Julius in May 352. As well, St Cyril had become bishop of Jerusalem in 352 in succession to St Maximus. Also at about this time, St Paul of Constantinople was exiled for the last time and died soon after. He was replaced on the patriarchal throne of Constantinople by Macedonius.

​In the winter of 351, the Emperor Constantius was in Sirmium in the Balkans organising the campaign against Magnentius. Sirmium (present-day Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia) was the Roman headquarters for the Danube frontier, the residence of a prætorian prefect and occasional imperial residence. The bishop of the city, Photinus, was a disciple of Marcellus but had not made the accommodations with orthodoxy that Marcellus had made, leaving him open to the charge of Sabellianism. Several efforts had already been made to depose him, without success, and Basil of Ancyra decided to take advantage of the emperor’s presence in the city to call a council there to depose him once and for all. Only a few bishops attended but Constantius approved of their initiative and banished Photinus.

The bishops present went on to draft a creed, known as the First Creed of Sirmium, found in the Latin original in Hilary of Poitier, De Synodis, cap. 38, and in Greek translation in St Athanasius’s De Synodis, cap. 27, and Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, II.xxx.5-30. It was virtually identical to the Fourth Creed of Antioch, but imitated the Macrostich in that the real polemical work was done in the appended anathemas, more than three times the length of the creed itself. It is not explicitly Arian, and most of the anathemas are directed against Sabellian teachings, but it has two features sympathetic to Arianism. First, it strongly emphasises the subordination of the Son to the Father, and second it permits the interpretation that the Son is not coeternal with the Father. Hanson says of it, ‘This creed marks a definite shift towards a more sharply anti-Nicene doctrine, though it cannot quite yet be said to be explicitly pro-Arian.’ (The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 1988, p. 329.)

​As Constantius regained control of territory in the West, he began summoning local councils of the Western bishops with the object of bringing them into line with the Eastern bishops. They were required to renounce support of Athanasius and sign a document that allowed of an Arian interpretation. The document has not come down to us but may have been the First Creed of Sirmium. Most bowed to the emperor’s commands. Those who did not were deposed and banished, including Paulinus of Trier in Gaul, Dionysius of Milan in Italy, Eusebius of Vercellæ in Liguria, Lucifer of Cagliari in Sardinia, Rhodanius of Toulouse and Hilary of Poitiers, both in Gaul.

Hilary was exiled to Phrygia in Asia Minor. This had beneficial consequences like those that resulted from Athanasius’s exile in the West in 335: Hilary learned Greek and became familiar with the recent theological developments in the East, which he was later able to communicate to a Latin-speaking audience in his magisterial work De Trinitate. 

​Constantius found it more difficult to rid himself of Athanasius, who had the unwavering support of the people of Egypt, but accomplished it at last on the night of 8-9 February 356 by sending in the army. George the Cappadocian usurped the patriarchal throne, and soon made himself equally unpopular with both the Christians and the pagans of Alexandria. Athanasius was in exile for the third time, spending it in hiding in Egypt.

​Meanwhile, Liberius, the bishop of Rome, was arrested in the summer of 356 and brought to Milan where Constantius interrogated him personally. When he refused to condemn Athanasius or sign the Arianising document, Constantius exiled him to Berœa in Thrace. Constantius next turned to the one remaining towering figure among the supporters of Nicæa, St Hosius of Cordova. Athanasius describes his treatment of the aged saint:

​‘[Constantius] sent for Hosius, and instead of banishing him, detained him a whole year in Sirmium. Godless, unholy, without natural affection, he feared not God, he regarded not his father’s affection for Hosius, he reverenced not his great age, for he was now a hundred years old; but all these things this modern Ahab, this second Belshazzar of our times, disregarded for the sake of impiety. He used such violence towards the old man, and confined him so tightly, that at last, broken by suffering, he was brought, though hardly, to hold communion with Valens, Ursacius, and their fellows, though he would not subscribe against Athanasius. Yet even thus he forgot not his duty, for at the approach of death, as it were by his last testament, he bore witness to the force which had been used towards him, and anathematized the Arian heresy, and gave strict charge that no one should receive it.’ (History of the Arians, 45: trans. M. Atkinson and Archibald Robertson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Schaff and Wace, eds., 2nd Series, IV, 1892, edited for New Advent website by Kevin Knight.)

​Athanasius’s judgement of the lapse of Liberius was equally charitable:

​‘But Liberius after he had been in banishment two years gave way, and from fear of threatened death subscribed. Yet even this only shows … his support of Athanasius, so long as he was suffered to exercise a free choice. For that which men are forced by torture to do contrary to their first judgment, ought not to be considered the willing deed of those who are in fear, but rather of their tormentors.’ (History of the Arians, 41. Op. cit.)

​The Orthodox church, faithful to the witness of St Athanasius, recognises Liberius as a Confessor and saint, and Hosius as a saint, their feasts celebrated both on 27 August.

​At the same time as these deeds, Constantius, preparing to turn his attention back to affairs in the east, appointed his first cousin Julian, then only 23 years old, and the last surviving heir of Constantine the Great, cæsar in Gaul with the task of defending the Rhine frontier against the barbarian tribes. This was an event pregnant with future consequences.

​The various Arian factions, encouraged by Constantius’s banishment of orthodox bishops in both the Greek east and the Latin west, now began the final moves toward their goal, the summoning of an œcumenical council that would at long last rescind the Nicene Creed. Their confidence was all the greater because they could now represent Liberius and Hosius to the recalcitrant as having come round to their opinion.

In the year 357 a small gathering of bishops took place at Sirmium led by Germinius, bishop of the city, that drafted a creed that was to be a turning point in the debate. They began, ‘Since there appeared to be some misunderstanding respecting the faith, all points have been carefully investigated and discussed at Sirmium in the presence of our most reverend brothers and fellow-bishops, Valens, Ursacius and Germinius,’ and then went on to a creed that made no effort to conceal its Arian roots. The original Latin text of the creed is found in Hilary of Poitiers, De Synodis, cap. 11 (quotations trans. E.W. Watson and L. Pullan, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Schaff and Wace, eds.,  2nd Series, IX, 1899. Edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight), and the Greek translation in Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, II.xxx.31–40.

Typically of Arianism, the creed is of an extreme subordinationism: ‘There is no question that the Father is greater. No one can doubt that the Father is greater than the Son in honour, dignity, splendour, majesty [honore, dignitate, claritate, majestate; but note that the Greek translation is τιμῇ καὶ ἀξίᾳ καὶ θεότητι, ‘honour and worthiness and divinity’], and in the very name of Father, the Son Himself testifying, ‘He that sent Me is greater than I’ [quoting John 14:28].’

​It stresses that the Father is without beginning but does not say that the Son is coeternal:  ‘[Everyone knows that] the Father is greater, and that the Son is subordinated to the Father, together with all things which the Father has subordinated to Him, and that the Father has no beginning and is invisible, immortal and impassible, but that the Son has been begotten of the Father … and that the generation of this Son, as is aforesaid, no one knows but His Father.’

It banned any use of the term substantia in Latin or οὐσία in Greek and any inquiry into the generation of the Son: ‘But since some or many persons were disturbed by questions concerning substance [substantia], called in Greek usia, that is, to make it understood more exactly, as to homousion, or what is called homoeusion, there ought to be no mention made of these at all. Nor ought any exposition to be made of them for the reason and consideration that they are not contained in the divine Scriptures, and that they are above man’s understanding, nor can any man declare the birth of the Son, of whom it is written, ‘Who shall declare His generation?’ [quoting Isaiah 53:8] For it is plain that only the Father knows how He begot the Son, and the Son how He was begotten of the Father.’

Hilary said of this scathingly, ‘while it is affirmed that His birth is unknowable, we were commanded by this Compulsory Ignorance Act [per hoc ignorantiæ decretum, (Migne PL 10, col. 486)] not to know that He is of God: just as if it could be commanded or decreed that a man should know what in future he is to be ignorant of, or be ignorant of what he already knows.’ (De Synodis, cap. 10; op. cit.)

​At about this time, Leontius, the bishop of Antioch, died and Eudoxius, bishop of Germanicia in Armenia, who happened at the time to be at Constantius’s court in Sirmium currying favour, hurried to Syria to occupy the see, claiming imperial support. He ignored completely George of Laodicea and Mark of Arethusa, the principal bishops of the province, who had a right to participate in the choice of Leontius’s successor, and they were understandably angry. Although he himself was Homœan, he welcomed the Anomœan Aetius to Antioch and summoned a council that ratified the Greek version of the Arian creed just proclaimed at Sirmium.

​This was a shock to the moderate bishops of the Greek east, both orthodox and Arianizing. For the first time, a blatantly Arian creed had been put forward, seemingly with the agreement of the Western bishops and with imperial sanction. The creed was soon notorious as ‘the Blasphemy of Sirmium.’ Its consequences would be far-reaching. It revealed to the Homœousians for the first time that they did not in fact share a faith with the Homœans and still less with the Anomœans. They began to see that they might have more in common with the Homoousians whom they had been denouncing for the past 35 years. However, it would take another two decades for these realisations to work themselves through.

George of Laodicea and Mark of Arethusa, the aggrieved bishops of Syria, were even more outraged by Eudoxius’s open support of Anomœism. They wrote immediately to Basil of Ancyra, asking him to summon a council there to challenge Eudoxius, lest the whole of the East turn Anomœan. This council took place just before Easter in the year 358 and resulted in a lengthy letter that Basil and eleven of his colleagues sent to the bishops of Phœnicia and elsewhere ‘who are of one mind with us,’ seeking their support against the Anomœan heresy. This letter, found in Epiphanius of Salamis’s Panarion, is important as a full and clear statement of the Homœousion position at this time, and reveals the extent to which its supporters had moved away from a strict Arianism.

They open, ‘It is our purpose to give an accurate description of the catholic church’s faith in the holy Trinity, as we said, and of the form of the innovation besides, replying to it only as the Spirit has permitted us,’ (Panarion, Sec. 73.2.7; trans. Frank Williams, Leiden, 1994, II, p. 435) and go on to base their doctrine of the Trinity in strictly orthodox fashion on the baptismal formula: ‘Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you [Matthew 28:19–20].’ (Ibid. 73.3.1; p. 436.)

They ask whether the terms ‘creator’ and ‘created’ can be substituted for ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ in the baptismal formula. None of these terms can be used of the deity in the sense that they have in everyday life, since they are burdened with material, physical connotations. In each case, everything that is material or physical must be subtracted from the concepts until only a root significance is left. ‘When all physical features [of ‘creature’] were eliminated, the notion of its creator’s impassibility was left, but the notion of the creature’s perfection, of its being as its creator intended, and of its stability, so we shall say of the Father and the Son that, with all physical features eliminated, only the generation of a living being of like essence [ἡ ὁμοίου [καὶ] κατ’ οὐσίαν ζῴου γενεσιουργία] will be left—for every ‘father’ is understood to be the father of an essence like his [ὁμοίας οὐσίας αὐτοῦ]. If, however, along with the elimination of all other physical notions from the terms, ‘Father,’ and ‘Son,’ the one which enables us to think of the Father as the cause of a living being of like essence is also eliminated, our faith will no longer be in a Father and a Son but in a creator and a creature.’ (Ibid. 73.4.2–3; p. 437) They thus rule out categorically the Arian teaching that the Son is in some sense a creature.

They reject the interpretation of the Son as Wisdom being derived from the wisdom of God rather than from God himself on the grounds that it requires God to be a compound of deity and wisdom, with the Son derived from one but not the other. But God cannot be a compound; his wisdom is inherent in his essence, and so the essence of the Son whom he begets also has wisdom inherent in it: ‘The Son will subsist as an essence like the essence of the wise Father [ὁμοία ἔσται [καὶ] κατ' οὐσίαν τοῦ σοφοῦ πατρός], from whom the Son originated as Wisdom.’ (Ibid. 73.6.8; p. 440.)

In the same way, they reject the interpretation of Jesus’s words, ‘For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself [John 5:26]’ as entailing that the Son is unlike the Father in essence: ‘For plainly, as the life which is held to be in the Father means his essence, and as the life of the Only-begotten, who is begotten of the Father, is held to be his essence, thus the word, ‘so,’ denotes the likeness of essence to essence [τὴν ὁμοιότητα τῆς οὐσίας πρὸς οὐσίαν].’ (Ibid. 73.10.9; p. 445.)

They reject the Arian proof texts showing that God has many sons: ‘I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me [Isaiah 1:2]’; ‘Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?’ [Malachi 2:10]; ‘But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name [John 1:12]’; concluding, ‘The Only-begotten is not to be understood as Son in these senses but in the proper one, as an only Son begotten of an only Father [ἀλλὰ κυρίως, ὡς μόνος ἐκ μόνου], in the essential likeness of the Father [ὅμοιος κατ’ οὐσίαν ἐκ τοῦ πατρός] whose Son he is called, and is understood to be.’ (Ibid., 73.5.5–7; pp. 438-439)

They go on to provide an exegesis of the proof text that was at the very origin of the Arian controversy: κύριος ἔκτισέ με ἀρχὴν ὁδῶν αὐτοῦ εἰς ἔργα αὐτοῦ. ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways, for the sake of his works.’ (Proverbs 8:22; NETS ©2007) They pair it with Proverbs 8:25: πρὸ τοῦ ὄρη ἑδρασθῆναι, πρὸ δὲ πάντων βουνῶν γεννᾷ με. ‘Before the mountains were established and before all the hills, he begets me.’ (NETS ©2007) Their exegesis is in fact much the same as that which St Alexander of Alexandria provided at the beginning of the controversy, insisting that the verses cannot be read in isolation from other texts that allow us to distinguish literal senses from figurative senses. They cite St Paul: ‘Who is the image of the invisible God [εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου], the firstborn of every creature [πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως]: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him [Colossians 1:15-16],’ and John’s Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made [1:1-3],’ concluding, ‘And if anyone, on hearing the Son’s, ‘He created me,’ and, ‘He begets me,’ [Prov. 8:22, 25] does not take ‘begets me’ literally and as a reference to essence, but says that ‘He begets me’ means the same as ‘He created me,’ thus denying that the Son is designated by the two terms as the perfect Son begotten without passion, but, on the basis of these two terms, confessing that he is a mere creature and not a Son—for Wisdom has conveyed the godly meaning by the two terms—let him be anathema.’ (Ibid., 73.11.1; p. 445.)

On the question of when the Son came to be, they repeat the Arian rejection of the notion that the Son had an origin in time: ‘the only-begotten Son has originated impassibly from the Father beyond all times and differently from any human thought.’ Although they do not acknowledge explicitly that he is co-eternal with the Father, they come close: ‘[the Apostles] rejected time with reference to the Father and the Son, but faithfully taught us, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ [Jn 1:1].’  (Ibid., 73.11.6; p. 445.)

​They explain why they say that the Son is like the Father according to essence and not the same, comparing it to the Son’s incarnation: he was made ‘in the likeness of men’ [Philippians 2:7], ‘in the likeness of the flesh of sin’ [Romans 8:3], but he was not the same since he did not sin. This opens a question of the relationship between the divinity in Christ and the humanity that had not been addressed heretofore, and would not be until later œcumenical councils. At this time theirs is one possible interpretation, not obviously heterodox. And it leads to typical Arian subordinationism when applied to the relationship between Son and Father: The Son is ‘in the form of God’ and ‘equal to God,’ [Philippians 2:6] but not in same sense as God the Father is God. ‘Nor does he have the Godhead with full sovereignty like the Father. For as he was not moved to sin like a man, and yet behaved like a man, so, as God, he behaves ‘like’ the Father. ‘For whatsoever the Father doeth, the Son also doeth [John 5:19]’.’ (Ibid., 73.8.8; 9.4-5; pp. 442-3.)

The final anathema (Ibid., 73.11.10) condemns the homoousion, implying that it is linked to Sabellianism. 

​With this letter in hand, Basil of Ancyra set off immediately to Sirmium with a delegation including Eustathius of Sebaste in Armenia, Eleusius of Cyzicus in Hellespontus and a priest Leontius who had been a servant of Constantius. Constantius was shocked by Eudoxius’s flirting with Anomœism and his usurping of the see of Antioch, and immediately sent off a letter disowning him. (Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, IV.xiii.5, 6–xiv.) Basil made use of the brief period when he had the emperor’s ear to secure the banishment of a number of his opponents among the bishops, something that would make him thoroughly unpopular and lead to accusations against him. At the same time, he and his colleagues, believing that the moment had come to impose the Homœusion heresy on the church, convinced the emperor to summon an œcumenical council for the purpose of burying the Nicene Creed once and for all. However, it would turn out that these Homœusion leaders were no match for the alacrity and guile of their opponents.

​The Twin Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia

​Basil of Ancyra’s mission to Constantius was accomplished by the summer of 358 but it was almost a year later before the stage was set for the œcumenical council he wanted. By that time, Acacius of Cæsarea, Eudoxius of Antioch, Valens of Mursa and Ursacius of Singidunum had regained their place in the emperor’s confidence. Realising that the bishops would be harder to control if they all met together, they convinced Constantius to summon twin councils, the western bishops to meet at Ariminum (now Rimini) in Italy and the eastern bishops at Seleucia in Isauria (now Silifke in southern Turkey). And they arranged for a creed to be drafted in Sirmium, where the emperor could oversee it, for presentation to the councils. It has been known ever since as ‘the Dated Creed,’ since, like any other government document, it bore a date—22 May 359.

The Dated Creed is found in Athanasius, De Synodis, cap. 8, and Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, II.xxxvii.18–24. It is twice as long as the Nicene Creed but not long compared to the other creeds produced in the meantime, and in particular it does not have the lengthy anathemas that characterised the Macrostich and the First Creed of Sirmium. The creed avoids the word ‘essence,’ οὐσία, and instead uses the Homœan formula, ‘like to the Father who begat him, according to the Scriptures [ὅμοιον τῷ γεννήσαντι αὐτὸν πατρὶ κατὰ τὰς γραφάς].’ (Socrates, op. cit., II.xxxvii.19; trans. A.C. Zenos in Schaff and Wace, eds., 1890, p. 61) It ends with a statement like what Hilary called ‘the Compulsory Ignorance Act’ in the Blasphemy of Sirmium: ‘As for the term ‘substance’ [οὐσία], which was used by our fathers for the sake of greater simplicity, but not being understood by the people has caused offense on account of the fact that the Scriptures do not contain it, it seemed desirable that it should be wholly abolished, and that in future no mention should be made of substance in reference to God, since the divine Scriptures have nowhere spoken concerning the substance of the Father and the Son. But we say the Son is in all things like the Father [Ὅμοιον δὲ λέγομεν τὸν υἱὸν τῷ πατρὶ κατὰ πάντα], as the Holy Scriptures affirm and teach.’ (Ibid., II.xxxvii.23–24; p. 62)

St Athanasius was still in hiding in Egypt at this time and was certainly not one of the bishops invited to the twin councils. He had, however, always had a good intelligence service and kept in close touch with events in the Church throughout the empire. It is a striking tribute to the devotion to him of the people of Egypt that he could maintain this network even on the run from Constantius’s soldiers and could draft De Synodis, written as the councils met, to explain his position to the supporters of the faith of Nicæa. He was scathing on the Dated Creed: ‘After putting into writing what it pleased them to believe, they prefix to it the Consulate, and the month and the day of the current year; thereby to show all sensible men, that their faith dates, not from of old, but now, from the reign of Constantius.’ (De Synodis, cap. 3; trans. John Henry Newman and Archibald Robertson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, eds. Schaff and Wace, 2nd Series, IV, 1892. Edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.)

​Constantius was not so naïve as to think that the bishops would accept this creed readily, and his planning of the councils was designed to leave them no choice. For skulduggery, fraud and coercion, the twin councils of Ariminum and Seleucia were such as had never before been seen in the church.

​Four hundred bishops from the Latin-speaking West met at Ariminum a week after the Dated Creed was issued. The Roman church historian Sulpitius Severus tells us in his Chronica: ‘Imperial officers, therefore, being sent through Illyria, Italy, Africa, and the two Gauls, four hundred and rather more Western bishops were summoned or compelled to assemble at Ariminum; and for all of these the emperor had ordered provisions and lodgings to be provided. But that appeared unseemly to the men of our part of the world, that is, to the Aquitanians, the Gauls, and Britons, so that refusing the public supplies, they preferred to live at their own expense. Three only of those from Britain, through want of means of their own, made use of the public bounty, after having refused contributions offered by the rest; for they thought it more dutiful to burden the public treasury than individuals.’ (Chronica, II.xli; trans. Alexander Roberts, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, eds. Schaff and Wace, 2nd series, XI, Edinburgh, 1991, p. 116)

​Ursacius and Valens, the leaders of the Homœan party in the West, took charge and immediately presented the Dated Creed for approval. The supporters of Ursacius and Valens numbered only eighty among the bishops. The rest were scandalized and insisted on reaffirming the Nicene Creed. When Ursacius, Valens and their supporters refused to anathematize the Arian heresy, the council voted to depose them. Ursacius and Valens, with eight colleagues, set off immediately to Constantinople to appeal to Constantius, who was resident there on his way to the east to deal with the Persian war. The orthodox bishops chose ten of their number, led by Restutus of Carthage, as a delegation to present their case to Constantius. The council was thus suspended in July and the bishops waited to learn Constantius’s decision.

​The situation of the Eastern bishops was more complicated, since there were a number against whom formal complaints had been laid before the emperor. They included Macedonius of Constantinople, Patrophilus of Scythopolis, Basil of Ancyra and Eustathius of Sebaste. Also St Cyril of Jerusalem was appealing to the emperor against his recent deposition by Acacius of Cæsarea, the Metropolitan of Palestine. The council did not meet in Seleucia until late in September of 359. Constantius sent a high official, Leonas, from Constantinople to control them, and ordered Lauracius, commander of the army in the province, to back him up. A hundred and sixty bishops met, with the Homœousian majority led by George of Laodicea and Eleusius of Cyzicus, while the Homœan minority, no more than forty bishops, was led by Eudoxius of Antioch and Acacius of Cæsarea. Only the bishops from Egypt were still orthodox, apart of course from the Arian usurper of the see of Alexandria, George.

​By chance, Hilary of Poitiers was present at the council of Seleucia, although not as a delegate, and gives us some fascinating glimpses of it in his Against Constantius, written not long after. As a Western bishop he would have been at Ariminum if he were not in exile in Phrygia. The governor of Phrygia received the order to send the bishops of the province to Seleucia; no special mention was made of Hilary, so the governor despatched him along with the rest. Following the publication of the Blasphemy of Sirmium and after the Council of Ancyra, but before he was sent to Seleucia, Hilary had written a long letter, De Synodis, to the Western bishops, attempting to counter some of the doubts Western bishops held about the orthodoxy of Eastern bishops due to the confusion resulting from translations of Greek creeds into Latin.

​He added a postscript to the Eastern bishops who accepted the homœousion but rejected the homoousion, arguing that they in fact agreed with the Western bishops on what was important: ‘Holy brethren, I understand by ὁμοούσιον God of God, not of an essence that is unlike, not divided but born, and that the Son has a birth which is unique, of the substance of the unborn God, that He is begotten yet co-eternal and wholly like the Father. I believed this before I knew the word ὁμοούσιον but it greatly helped my belief. Why do you condemn my faith when I express it by ὁμοούσιον while you cannot disapprove it when expressed by ὁμοιούσιον? For you condemn my faith, or rather your own, when you condemn its verbal equivalent … Have we to fear that ὁμοιούσιον does not imply the same belief as ὁμοούσιον? Let us decree that there is no difference between being of one or of a similar substance … Forgive me, brethren, as I have so often asked you to do. You are not Arians: why should you be thought to be Arians by denying the ὁμοούσιον?’ (De Synodis, cap. 88; trans. E.W. Watson and L. Pullan, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, eds. Schaff and Wace, 2nd series, IX, 1899; edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight)

​When the Council of Seleucia convened, several of the bishops who were under accusation were in the neighbourhood but not present, including Basil of Ancyra and Macedonius of Constantinople. At first the majority refused to proceed until the charges against the accused bishops were heard but Acacius insisted on presenting the Dated Creed and demanded that it be approved. The majority insisted that the only creed that should be considered was the Dedication Creed of Antioch.

Hilary gives us an idea of how the debate proceeded: ‘Among those who proclaimed the ‘like in substance,’ some proposed certain formulas that were orthodox: the Son proceeded from God, that is to say, from the substance of God, and he had always existed. By contrast, the defenders of the ‘unlike’ affirmed only the worst impieties: nothing could resemble the substance of God and he could not exist by generation from God, but Christ was a creature. Thus, the fact that he had been created might pass for a birth, but he was drawn from the void and in consequence he was neither the Son of God nor like God.' (Ad Constantium 12; Sources Chrétiennes No 334, pp. 193, 195 French trans. André Roger.)

Then Acacius presented a new text, claiming that the Dedication Creed had been overtaken by events: ‘Since, however, the terms homoousion and homoiousion have in time past troubled the minds of many, and still continue to disquiet them; and moreover that a new term has recently been coined by some who assert the anomoion of the Son to the Father: we reject the first two, as expressions which are not found in the Scriptures; but we utterly anathematize the last, and regard such as countenance its use, as alienated from the church. We distinctly acknowledge the homoion of the Son to the Father, in accordance with what the apostle has declared concerning him, ‘Who is the image of the invisible God’ [Col. 1:15].’ (Socrates Scholasticus, op. cit., II.40.11; trans. A.C. Zenos, op. cit. p. 69)

Hilary tells us how this was received. ‘In the judgement of those who heard them, they were contradicting themselves. I therefore questioned one of them who had approached me on purpose to sound me out. Pretending to be ignorant of what had just happened, I asked him the sense of this declaration: those who had condemned the same substance of Son and Father, who had even refused the likeness of substance, how could they condemn the unlikeness? Then he told me that Christ was not like God but like the Father. Now the sense seemed even more obscure to me. To a further question on my part, this was his answer: ‘I say that he is not like God, but that one can understand him as like the Father, the Father having wished to create a creature such that it had a will like his own; this is why the Son is like the Father, because he is the son of his will rather than of his divinity; but he is not like God because he is neither God nor born of God, that is, of the substance of God.’ At these words I remained dumbstruck, not believing what I’d heard…’ (Ad Constantium 14; trans. op. cit. pp. 197, 199.)

​Several days of fruitless wrangling ensued, whereupon Acacius and his followers deserted the council to appeal to Constantius in Constantinople.

​Leonas, declaring that he was told to oversee a united council only, refused to meet the remaining bishops, who were mostly Homœousian. They met on their own, cleared some of the accused bishops, including St Cyril of Jerusalem, and engaged in some fruitless depositions of the absent bishops. Among them was Eudoxius of Antioch; they appointed an Antiochene priest, Adrian, in his stead; the hapless Adrian was promptly arrested by Leonas and sent into exile. The bishops chose delegates, as had the bishops at Ariminum, to present their case to Constantius. Then they went home.

​It was now October. The Eastern bishops had gone home but the Western bishops were still in Ariminum, ordered by Constantius to remain until he interviewed their delegates. Constantius knew that the longer he kept them there, the more tractable they would be. They had been away from their sees already for over four months and were worried by the prospect of having to journey home in the winter.

​The business of the councils was now in the hands of the delegates who had been despatched to Constantinople by the various parties to appeal to Constantius. Constantius refused to see the representatives of the orthodox Western bishops, requiring them to wait first in Adrianople, then in a village called Nice in Thrace west of Constantinople. The Homœan party now came up with a slightly modified version of the Dated Creed, drafted by Valens, a creed that would be known as the Creed of Nice—Constantius had chosen the village because its name was similar to that of Nicæa. Athanasius cites the creed in De Synodis. For the most part Valens made only cosmetic changes to the Dated Creed, keeping its description of the Son as ‘like to the Father that begot Him according to the Scriptures; whose origin no one knows, except the Father alone who begot Him.’ However, he made two significant changes to the final provision forbidding the use of the term οὐσία, ‘substance’ or ‘essence.’ It now forbade the use of the term ὑπόστασις, ‘subsistence,’ as well. And instead of concluding, ‘But we say the Son is in all things like the Father [Ὅμοιον δὲ λέγομεν τὸν υἱὸν τῷ πατρὶ κατὰ πάντα], as the Holy Scriptures affirm and teach’ (Socrates, op. cit., II.xxxvii.23–24; p. 62) it says merely, ‘But, we say that the Son is like the Father [Ὅμοιον δὲ λέγομεν τῷ Πατρὶ τὸν Υἱὸν], as the divine Scriptures say and teach.’ (Athanasius, De Synodis, cap. 30; op. cit.) The omission of κατὰ πάντα, ‘in all things,’ removed the last concession of the Homœans to the Homœousians.

​Pressure was put on the Western delegates at Nice, who were at length induced to take the newly-drafted creed back to Ariminum. The waiting bishops were at first outraged that their delegates had so far surrendered. The delegates, however, offered the arguments used on them at Nice, that the term ‘substance’ (οὐσία) is not found in Scripture and, by its novelty, is a stumbling block for many among the simple, and therefore the Eastern bishops were agreed that it should be suppressed, not caring about the word as long as the sense was safe—and the Western bishops, for the sake of unity, should do likewise.

Jerome provides a vivid description in his Altercatio Luciferiani et Orthodoxi of what happened next. A rumour had run through the town that there was a fraud in the statement brought back by the delegates. The church was crowded with bishops and laymen. Then Valens stood up in the crowd and began to shout out anathemas, condemning loudly things that the crowd would think of as Arian, but which a true Arian could accept with qualifications.
He shouted, ‘If anyone says that the Son is not like to the Father according to the Scriptures [Filium similem Patri secundum Scripturas], let him be anathema!’ To which the whole crowd responded with the shout,  ‘Let him be anathema!’
‘If anyone says that the Son comes from the void, and not from God the Father, let him be anathema!’ and all shout, ‘Let him be anathema!’
‘If anyone says that the Son of God is a creature like the other creatures, let him be anathema!’
And more of the same. As Jerome says, ‘At this moment, in truth, all the bishops and at the same time the whole church greeted the words of Valens with, so to speak, applause and dances of joy.’ (Ibid., 18; French trans. Aline Canellis, Sources Chrétiennes No 473, p. 159.) Convinced of Valens’s good faith by this performance, and in addition wearied by their long wait and their anxieties about returning to their sees, most of the bishops succumbed at last and signed the Creed of Nice. Those who refused were banished forthwith. The council then broke up at last.

​Jerome goes on to say, ‘And if anyone thinks we are inventing [he is writing about twenty years after the event], let him examine the official documents! The archives of the churches are full of them; the memory of the affair is still vivid; there are men alive who attended this synod and, which confirms the truth of the facts, not even the Arians deny that things happened as I have said.’ (Ibid., 19)

​Of this event he made his well-known remark: ‘The whole world groaned in astonishment to find itself Arian!’ (as quoted by John Henry Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century, London, 1919, p. 350.)

​The same trick was then played on the Eastern delegates in Constantinople, who were told that the Western bishops were all in agreement with the Creed of Nice. Late on the night of 31 December 359, the last delegate was induced to sign—and Constantius had his victory.

​To complete the work of the councils of Ariminum and Seleucia and promulgate the Creed of Nice, a small council met soon after in Constantinople under Acacius of Cæsarea, now Constantius’s chief ecclesiastical advisor, with bishops mostly from Bithynia, including Maris of Chalcedon, but also Ulfilas of the Goths. They rejected the depositions carried out by the majority at Seleucia and went on to wholesale depositions of their own of bishops in the East who did not agree with them, including Macedonius of Constantinople, Basil of Ancyra, Cyril of Jerusalem and Eleusius of Cyzicus. Eudoxius of Antioch, now rehabilitated, replaced Macedonius at Constantinople and was in turn replaced at Antioch by Meletius. Eunomius (not yet notorious for Anomœan views) now became bishop of Cyzicus.

​After 34 years of plotting, subterfuge and back-stabbing, the Arians had at last accomplished their goal of abolishing the Nicene Creed. The Church, East and West, was now united under the Creed of Nice, but only because the heavy hand of the Emperor Constantius lay upon it. It appeared that the faith of Nicæa was no more, but the Holy Spirit had not abandoned the Church—all of the elements that would lead to the final resolution of the Arian crisis at the 2nd Œcumenical Council in Constantinople in A.D. 381 were now at hand, and had only to be brought together. This would be the work of three great saints and theologians of the Church, known to history as the Three Cappadocians: St Basil the Great, bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, his brother St Gregory, bishop of Nyssa in Cappadocia, and St Gregory the Theologian, who would become Patriarch of Constantinople. To this we turn in the next section.