In the year 325, the first Roman emperor to become a Christian, Constantine convened the church's first ecumenical council held in Nicaea. The purpose of that council was to bring unity to the church, who was suffering from a theological division. Constantine believed, as had all Roman emperors before him, that religious unity was necessary for political unity and peace throughout the empire. Religion, in its various forms, had always played a daily role in Roman life. The two main results of the Nicene Council were the official condemnation of the heresy of Arianism and the establishment of the Nicene Creed.
While Constantine had hoped that Christianity would remain united, this was not the case. The Arian and Nicene parties continued to disagree and to form internal political divisions between them. After a few Arian emperors and a pagan one nicknamed Julian the Apostate, Theodosius the Great became the new Roman emperor in the year 379. Theodosius was faithful to the decisions and creed of the Nicene council and, like Constantine before him, sought to bring unity to the church. Acceptance of the Nicene creed was gradual. But it had gained momentum due to the writings and preaching of Athanasius of Alexandria and the Cappadocian fathers, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa.
Gregory of Nazianzus was offered the bishopric at Sassima in the year 372. However, after a brief time there, he decided to return to his hometown of Nazianzus. where he and his ailing father led the local church. In the year 379, Militius, Bishop of Antioch, asked Gregory to preach in favor of Nicene Orthodoxy in the capital city of Constantinople. Gregory did so with much success.
He preached out of a chapel known as the Anastasia, or Resurrection. His pro-Nicene preaching was received well by the new emperor and others in the city who wanted to see Nicene Orthodoxy become permanently established. In the year 380, Emperor Theodosius outlawed Arian congregations in the east and promptly removed Demophilus, the Arian bishop of Constantinople.
The people rejoiced in the election of Gregory as the new bishop of Constantinople, a position which came with much pomp and circumstance. The bishop of Constantinople was able to live a wealthy prince-like lifestyle in the city. But Gregory did not enjoy all the glamour and wealth.
Gregory gladly supported Nicene Orthodoxy over Arianism, but he faced physical opposition by Arian mobs and had never really been attracted to the political necessities of a large metropolitan sea. The next year, in 381, Emperor Theodosius called together bishops from eastern churches who were sympathetic to Nicene Orthodoxy to convene in a regional council in Constantinople. 150 bishops attended the opening ceremony held at the Imperial Palace.
The remainder of the meetings of the Council would take place in various church buildings around the city between the months of May and July. Another 36 leaders of the Macedonian party attended, but once they demonstrated inflexibility in bending to the wishes of the Nicene party, they left before the conclusion of the Council. The Council itself was presided over by Militius, the Bishop of Antioch. but he died shortly after the council began.
The responsibility of presiding over the council then fell upon Gregory, who reluctantly was the Bishop of Constantinople. He recommended that Paulinus fill the empty position of Bishop of Antioch. However, a group of church leaders arrived from Egypt with Timothy, the new Bishop of Alexandria, at their head. These representatives from the churches in and around Alexandria, opposed Gregory's translation from the sees of Sassima and Nazianzus to Constantinople and objected to his presidency over the council.
As a result of the manner in which these objections were raised and the general mood of the council, Gregory decided to retire from his positions as bishop of Constantinople and president of its 381 council. When the emperor and council agreed, Gregory returned home to Nazianzus, happy to be away from all the chaos and controversy in Constantinople. Emperor Theodosius asked the priests in the council to provide a list of suitable candidates to replace Gregory as the president of the council. When Theodosius saw the name of an elderly civil servant on the list by the name of Nectarius, Theodosius approved him for the position and the council, though surprised, agreed. Who was this Nectarius?
He was originally from Tarsus in Cilicia. Diodor, the bishop of Tarsus, had submitted Nectarius'name to the bishop of Antioch as a candidate for ordination. It is unlikely that Diodor knew Nectarius was not even baptized at the time.
When Nectarius was approved as president of the council, he had to get baptized right away and then ordained as a bishop. Nonetheless, he served as the council's president through its last meeting on July 9th of the year 381. At the Nicene Council back in the year 325, Arianism was considered a heresy, and a creed was created to specify what the apostles and other leaders in the church had handed down as truth especially regarding the Divine Trinity. While that creed was sufficient for explaining the church's views against Arianism, there arose other theologians who taught various views that the Nicene Creed did not anticipate.
Therefore, at the Council of Constantinople, there were seven groups. who were proclaimed heretics on the way toward reaffirming and filling in the details of the Nicene Creed. The process went like this. Each ecumenical council would publish a list of canons, or brief laws regarding the conclusions of the council. The very first canon of the Council of Constantinople proclaimed that seven groups were heretics.
Who were these seven heretical groups? The first two were the Eunomians or Eudoxians. They were Arians who steadfastly maintained that Jesus was not even of a like substance as the Father, but rather was a creature himself.
Eunomius was the leader of the party at the time of the Council, but Eudoxius had been a strong representative of them as Bishop of Constantinople from the years 360 to 370. The third group was known as the Semi-Arians, Macedonians, or Numatomache. At the Council, they were led by Eleusius of Syzicus, and Marcion of Lampsacus. The Macedonians were named after Macedonius, bishop of Constantinople in the 340s and 350s. He was looking for a middle ground between the Arians and the Nicenes.
Macedonius agreed with the Nicenes that Jesus was uncreated, but he did not consider the Holy Spirit to be God or share in the divine essence of the Father and Son. He basically taught that the Holy Spirit was like a glorified angel. The fourth group was the Sibelians.
Now, Sabellianism had long before been considered a heresy, and there were no formal groups of Sabellians at the time, but their heresy was identified here as well. Sabellius and his followers had developed the idea that God is only one person who changed modes from the Father to the Son to the Spirit throughout the course of salvation history. This view is also often called modalism.
The fifth group was the Marcellians. Marcellius Bishop of Ancyra had taught that the Logos was a divine, impersonal power, created by God and possessing the human Jesus, who then became God's son. The sixth group was the Photinians. Photinus, the bishop of Sirmium, taught that the divine Logos rested on the human Jesus in a most exceptional way, but that Jesus was just a man. The seventh and final group were the Apollinarians.
In his zeal to defend the deity of Christ against the Arians, Apollinaris erred by saying Jesus'human spirit was replaced by the divine Logos, which compromised the full humanity of Christ. Apollinarianism had already been rejected as a heresy at a council in Alexandria in the year 362 and another council in Rome in the year 377. The council thus identified seven different forms of heresy which were forbidden to be taught in the churches. When identifying these groups as heretical, the Council was pronouncing anathemas, which are negative forms of doctrinal statement.
A positive form of doctrinal statement is the Creed. In our next video, we will turn our attention to the Nicene Creed, as it was originally written in 325 and later affirmed and added to a little at the Council of Constantinople in 381. Another goal of the Council of Constantinople was to address the political rivalries in the churches produced by the theological disagreements, and set some expectations regarding who is elected as a bishop and how bishops relate to one another in terms of their authority. The second canon of the Council specifies that the bishops are not to go beyond their dioceses to churches lying outside of their boundaries. The canon lists the bishops of Alexandria, of the East, of Antioch, of Asia, of Pontus, and of Thrace as being responsible for matters in their own jurisdictions. The canon agreed with the Nicene Council's canon 15 forbidding the translation of bishops between two different locations.
Synods held in every jurisdiction were to settle local matters in their respective regions, and all things were to be done consistently with the teaching of the church fathers throughout their generations back to the time of Christ. The third canon proclaimed that the bishop of Constantinople was to have the priority of honor. second only to the Bishop of Rome.
This was because Constantinople was the new Rome in the East. From this statement, there developed the idea in the future that no matter how much the Church grew and spread, the Bishops of Rome in the West and Constantinople in the East were to be considered preeminent among the other patriarchies or large areas of the Church. Originally, as mentioned earlier in this video, The Council of Constantinople was identified as a regional council, rather than as an ecumenical council. No Western bishops were invited to the council in 381, and neither was the Bishop of Rome. There were only 150 Eastern bishops invited, and they had already been known to be in favor of affirming the Nicene Creed.
The Western bishops already seemed to be in favor of Tertullian's explanation of the Trinity, as there being one god. existing eternally in three persons. It was largely the disputes between bishops in the East who required a council to settle the matter. The reason the Christian Church considers the Council of Constantinople to be ecumenical is because of how widely accepted the updated Nicene Creed became and how much the Church widely disagreed with the heresies that the Council of Constantinople had anathematized. If the Council had been numerically ecumenical, there would have been a significant presence of Western bishops invited and involved.
The Council of Constantinople is considered ecumenical among the Christian churches today, mostly because of the soundness of the creed it produced, which will be the subject of the next video in our current series. Thank you so much for watching our video today. We hope you found it insightful and enjoyable.
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