The First Council of Constantinople (381) and the Holy Spirit

Every Sunday, Orthodox Christians confess that the Holy Spirit is "the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spoke by the prophets."¹ Almost none of those words were in the creed issued at Nicaea in 325. The Nicene fathers ended with a single line, "And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost," before their anathemas against Arius.²

The fuller confession is linked with a second gathering of bishops, held in Constantinople in the summer of 381 and later received by the whole Church as the Second Ecumenical Council. Its acts are lost and its leading theologian resigned in the middle of it, yet its creed is the one actually recited in the Divine Liturgy, and its silence on one point, the word Filioque, still divides East and West.

In brief

After Nicaea, the argument over the Son widened into an argument over the Holy Spirit. Some bishops, called Macedonians or Pneumatomachians ("fighters against the Spirit"), would not call the Spirit God. In 381 the emperor Theodosius I summoned about 150 Eastern bishops to Constantinople; thirty-six Macedonian bishops attended and left. The council reaffirmed Nicaea, condemned a list of heresies, and declared that the bishop of Constantinople ranked next after the bishop of Rome "because Constantinople is New Rome." The creed that now bears its name is first quoted in the record at Chalcedon in 451; the explanation given in Tanner's standard edition, following Lebon and Kelly, is that the council adopted it as a form of "the Nicene faith." Its article on the Spirit says he "proceeds from the Father," in the words of John 15:26, and says nothing of the Son. The later Latin addition "and the Son" became one of the main causes of the schism.

Thesis: The Council of Constantinople did not invent belief in the Holy Spirit's divinity but gave the Church its lasting words for it, and those words, received by East and West alike, should be confessed as the council left them.

The problem Nicaea left open

Nicaea's answer to Arius, that the Son is "of one substance with the Father," took decades to win acceptance. Meanwhile the same question was put about the Spirit. Socrates Scholasticus, writing in the following century, describes how Macedonius, a deposed bishop of Constantinople, "began to deny the Divinity of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity," and how his ally Eustathius of Sebaste said: "I can neither admit that the Holy Spirit is God, nor can I dare affirm him to be a creature." For this reason, Socrates adds, those who held the Son to be consubstantial called them "Pneumatomachi."³

The Nicene party answered on two fronts. In 362 a council at Alexandria under St Athanasius required those returning to communion to confess that "the Holy Spirit is not a creature, nor external, but proper to and inseparable from the Essence of the Father and the Son."⁴ In Cappadocia, St Basil the Great was attacked for praising God in church sometimes "with the Son together with the Holy Ghost" and sometimes "through the Son in the Holy Ghost." His treatise On the Holy Spirit defended the first form by arguing that the one who is worshipped with the Father and the Son shares their honor.⁵ The creed of 381 would confess the Spirit's divinity in the same language of worship.

St Gregory of Nazianzus, preaching in Constantinople shortly before the council, described how unsettled the question still was. "Of the wise men amongst ourselves," he said, "some have conceived of him as an Activity, some as a Creature, some as God; and some have been uncertain which to call Him." His own answer was plain: "Is the Spirit God? Most certainly. Well then, is He Consubstantial? Yes, if He is God."⁶ He also offered an explanation of why the Church had come to speak of the Spirit only gradually: "The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, and the Son more obscurely. The New manifested the Son, and suggested the Deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit Himself dwells among us, and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of Himself."⁷ The site's article on the Cappadocian Fathers explains their Trinitarian vocabulary in more detail.

An emperor, a summons and a walk-out

In 380 the emperor Theodosius I issued an edict that all the peoples under his rule should live by the religion the apostle Peter had given to the Romans, the faith followed by Pope Damasus and Peter of Alexandria, "that is that we should believe in the one deity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with equal majesty and in the Holy Trinity."⁸ On reaching Constantinople he asked the Arian bishop Demophilus to accept the Nicene Creed; when he refused, Theodosius told him to leave the churches, and according to Socrates the Arians, "after having been in possession of the churches for forty years," were driven out of the city.⁹

The council met in May 381. Socrates counts one hundred and fifty bishops "of the Homoousian party," among them Timothy of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem and Meletius of Antioch, and thirty-six Macedonian bishops led by Eleusius of Cyzicus. Theodosius hoped to win the Macedonians over. They were reminded that they had once professed agreement with the Nicene faith, but they "chose rather to maintain the Arian dogma" and left the city; Sozomen tells the same story.¹⁰¹¹ No bishop from the Latin West took part; Norman Tanner's edition of the councils notes that all the members were Eastern.¹²

The first president, Meletius of Antioch, was not then in communion with Rome. According to Theodoret he confirmed Gregory as bishop of Constantinople and died during the sessions.¹³ Gregory presided until bishops from Egypt objected that his transfer from another see broke the canons; he then resigned, urging the bishops to "find then some worthy man of sense ... and make him bishop."¹⁴ (Socrates places the resignation before the council opened; Theodoret, Sozomen and Tanner place it during the sessions.)¹⁵ His farewell oration includes the line "Farewell, my throne, envied and perilous height."¹⁶ The bishops chose Nectarius, a man of senatorial family who was not yet baptized; he presided until the council closed on 9 July 381, and Theodosius ratified its decisions later that month.¹⁷ Tanner notes that Gregory afterward "criticised and censured" the council; the site's life of St Gregory of Nazianzus tells his side.¹²

What the creed says about the Spirit

The creed's third article, in the Orthodox Church in America's translation, reads: "And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spoke by the prophets."¹

• "The Lord" and "the Giver of Life." Both place the Spirit on the Creator's side of the line between Creator and creature; a creature receives life and cannot be its source.
• "Who proceeds from the Father." The phrase comes from Christ's words in John 15:26: "the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father" (NKJV).¹⁸ It names the Spirit's eternal origin in the Father, as the Son's is named by "begotten."
• "Together is worshipped and glorified." This is Basil's argument from the liturgy turned into a confession: one receives the same worship as the Father and the Son.

The creed does not call the Spirit "God" in so many words, nor does it apply homoousios to him. Some have read this as a compromise. But the bishops who met again at Constantinople in 382 wrote to Pope Damasus and the Western bishops that the Nicene faith teaches "one Godhead, Power and Substance of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; the dignity being equal, and the majesty being equal in three perfect essences and three perfect persons," and they rejected the "Pneumatomachi" for bringing a created nature into "the uncreated consubstantial and co-eternal trinity."¹⁹ The bishops did not doubt the Spirit's full divinity; they stated it in the language of Scripture and worship, as St Peter does when he tells Ananias that in lying "to the Holy Spirit" he has "not lied to men but to God" (Acts 5:3-4, NKJV).¹⁸

Did the council write the creed?

This is the main historical puzzle about 381. The acts of the council are lost, and no surviving source before 451 quotes the creed we now call "Niceno-Constantinopolitan." At the Council of Chalcedon in 451 it was read out as "the Creed of the one hundred and fifty holy Fathers who were assembled at Constantinople," alongside the creed of Nicaea, and Chalcedon's definition says that this "wise and salutary formula of divine grace sufficed for the perfect knowledge and confirmation of religion."²⁰ {{very-strong: The creed now recited in the Liturgy is attested as the creed of the 150 fathers of Constantinople in the acts of Chalcedon (451), which received it alongside the creed of Nicaea.}}

Earlier scholars drew sceptical conclusions from the seventy-year silence. F. J. A. Hort argued that the council never issued a creed, and Adolf von Harnack judged the text one a Pneumatomachian could have signed; Henry Percival, editing the councils in English in 1900, rejected both views.²¹ The old Catholic Encyclopedia notes another theory that traced the creed to the Ancoratus of St Epiphanius, written in 374, where a nearly identical text appears, and Hort's own view that the creed was a revision of the baptismal creed of Jerusalem.²²

Tanner's edition of the councils presents the solution worked out by Joseph Lebon, J. N. D. Kelly and A. M. Ritter. In the later fourth century the Nicene creed circulated in several forms adapted for baptism, all called "the Nicene faith." The council of 381 endorsed one of these forms and added to it the clauses on the Spirit. Chalcedon then identified that form by the name of the council that had approved it.¹² This explains the silence before 451 and the differences from the creed of 325, and fits Socrates' report that the bishops "again confirmed the Nicene Creed."¹⁰ {{moderate: The council of 381 itself adopted the expanded creed, as a confirmed and enlarged form of the Nicene faith.}}

For Orthodox Christians the historical question does not decide the creed's authority, which rests on its reception by the whole Church, as the site's article on how the Church recognises ecumenical councils explains.

The canons: heresies, boundaries and "New Rome"

The council issued disciplinary canons along with its doctrinal work. The first confirms that "the Faith of the Three Hundred and Eighteen Fathers assembled at Nice in Bithynia shall not be set aside" and anathematizes Eunomians, Arians, "Semi-Arians or Pneumatomachi," Sabellians, Marcellians, Photinians and Apollinarians.²³ The second forbids bishops to interfere in churches beyond their own regions. Another declares that Maximus the Cynic, who had been irregularly consecrated for Constantinople, "never was and is not now a Bishop."²³

The most consequential canon, now numbered third, reads: "The Bishop of Constantinople, however, shall have the prerogative of honour after the Bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is New Rome."²⁴ Socrates gives the same decree in nearly the same words.¹⁰ Its stated reason was the city's rank as the new imperial capital, not apostolic foundation. Percival's note observes that it did not touch Rome's own position but "did seriously affect Alexandria and Antioch," which until then had ranked next after Rome.²⁴ Tanner adds that canons 2 to 4 were aimed in part at the ambitions of Alexandria.¹²

Rome did not accept the canon. When the Council of Chalcedon in 451 cited "the canon ... of the One Hundred and Fifty Bishops" to give Constantinople "equal privileges" with Old Rome in its canon 28, Pope Leo the Great protested to Anatolius of Constantinople that this sanction, given "60 years ago," had been "never brought to the knowledge of the Apostolic See."²⁵ Rome nonetheless received the council's faith. Pope Gregory the Great wrote around 591 that he revered the first four councils "as the four books of the Gospel," including "the Constantinopolitan also, in which the error of Eunomius and Macedonius is refuted."²⁶ {{strong: Rome received the faith of the council of 381 while rejecting its canon on the rank of Constantinople.}}

The canon shows how the early Church ranked its sees: by honor, assigned by councils, and openly tied to a city's standing. Chalcedon's canon 28 says the same of Rome itself: "the Fathers rightly granted privileges to the throne of old Rome, because it was the royal city."²⁵ The canon gives Rome the first place of honor in plain words, but as a primacy of honor among sister churches; nothing in it supports the later Roman claim to universal jurisdiction over the whole Church.

The missing words: why there is no Filioque

The creed of 381 says the Spirit "proceeds from the Father." It does not say "and from the Son." That addition, the Filioque, arose later in the West. A joint statement of the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation (2003) traces its first credal use to the profession of faith drawn up for King Reccared at the Council of Toledo in 589. After Western monks in Jerusalem were denounced for singing the creed with the addition, and Charlemagne's court sought papal approval for it, Pope Leo III in 810 affirmed the doctrine but "explicitly disapproved its inclusion in the text of the Creed of 381," and, according to the Liber Pontificalis, had "two heavy silver shields" displayed in St Peter's with the original text in Greek and Latin. Only in 1014, at the coronation of Henry II, was the creed "including the Filioque" sung at a papal Mass.²⁷ {{very-strong: The creed received at Chalcedon as the creed of the 150 fathers says the Spirit proceeds from the Father, without "and from the Son."}}

The Orthodox Church has two objections. Doctrinally, the Father is the one source of the Son and the Spirit, and the Spirit's eternal origin is from the Father alone, though he is sent into the world through the Son. On authority, a creed received by the whole Church was altered by one part of it. Canon 7 of the Council of Ephesus (431) declared it "unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different ... Faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicæa."²⁸ Catholic theologians reply that the canon forbade a rival creed, not an explanatory phrase. The site's article on the Filioque covers the theology and the later councils in detail.

The 2003 Consultation recommended that the Catholic Church "use the original Greek text alone in making translations of that Creed for catechetical and liturgical use." It also distinguished the Spirit's divinity, "a received dogma of our Churches," from "the manner of the Spirit's origin, which still awaits full and final ecumenical resolution."²⁷ These are a commission's recommendations, not Church decisions.

The strongest objections

"It was an imperial, Eastern meeting, not an ecumenical council"

Theodosius summoned it, no Western bishop attended, its president was out of communion with Rome, and its canons were rejected in Rome. The bishops of 382 already called it "the œcumenical council held at Constantinople," but Tanner notes that afterward it "was hardly ever mentioned."¹⁹¹² The Orthodox reply is that no council becomes ecumenical by the origin of its members. Constantinople I holds its rank because the whole Church, East and West, received its faith at Chalcedon and afterward.

"The Spirit's divinity was a fourth-century invention"

Skeptics and Unitarian Christians argue that the New Testament never calls the Spirit God and that the doctrine was decided by vote. Gregory himself admitted that the Spirit's deity was "suggested" in the New Testament rather than spelled out.⁷ But baptism in the name of "the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19), passages like Acts 5:3-4, and the Church's worship of the Spirit all came before 381. The council named what the Church already prayed. The site's biblical case for the Trinity sets out this evidence.

"The Filioque is a legitimate clarification" (a Catholic objection)

Catholic theologians argue that Latin procedere is broader than Greek ekporeuesthai, that Greek Fathers spoke of the Spirit coming "through the Son," and that the Filioque expresses the Son's real role without denying the Father's primacy. The Orthodox answer is clear. The Spirit's eternal procession is from the Father, as Christ said and the council confessed; the Filioque, as a doctrine of eternal procession from the Son and as an insertion into the common creed, is an error, however sincerely held.

"Orthodoxy won by force"

Theodosius did expel the Arian bishop and hand the churches to the Nicenes, and his edict put the power of the state behind one confession. The Orthodox Church need not defend every use of imperial power. The Nicene faith had been held through decades when emperors favored the other side, and it outlived the empire that once enforced it.

What we can say confidently

• About 150 Eastern bishops met in Constantinople from May to July 381; 36 Macedonian bishops attended and withdrew.
• Meletius of Antioch presided first and died during the council; Gregory of Nazianzus presided and then resigned; Nectarius succeeded him.
• The council confirmed the faith of Nicaea and condemned the Pneumatomachi among other groups.
• Its canon on Constantinople's rank gave the city second place after Rome "because Constantinople is New Rome"; Rome rejected the canon but received the council's faith.
• The creed received at Chalcedon as the creed of the 150 fathers confesses the Spirit as Lord and Giver of Life who proceeds from the Father, and contains no Filioque.

What remains disputed

• Whether the council composed the expanded creed, adopted an existing baptismal form, or simply approved a text that Chalcedon later associated with it.
• The exact timing of Gregory's resignation, on which the ancient historians differ.
• Whether canon 7 of Ephesus forbids any addition to the creed or only a rival creed.

Conclusion

The Council of Constantinople was not a tidy event. An emperor convened it, rival parties walked out, its first president died and its second resigned in sorrow, and its acts were lost. Yet the Church has recognized in its creed the faith handed down from the apostles: one God, the Father; one Lord, Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son; and the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and is worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son.

The Orthodox Church, which confesses herself in that same creed as the "one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church," keeps it without addition because it is true and because it is a shared inheritance, received by East and West together; an exact common confession of it remains one of the clearest paths back to unity. The site's article on Nicene Christianity traces how this creed still defines historic Christian belief.

Notes

1. Orthodox Church in America, "Symbol of Faith (Nicene Creed)," Prayers, https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/prayers/symbol-of-faith.
2. Creed of the Council of Nicaea (325), trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm.
3. Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 2.45, trans. A. C. Zenos, NPNF2 2, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26012.htm.
4. Athanasius, Tome to the People of Antioch 5, trans. H. Ellershaw, NPNF2 4, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2818.htm.
5. Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 1.3, trans. Blomfield Jackson, NPNF2 8, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3203.htm.
6. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 31 (Fifth Theological Oration) 5 and 10, trans. C. G. Browne and J. E. Swallow, NPNF2 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310231.htm.
7. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 31.26, same translation and URL.
8. Codex Theodosianus 16.1.2 (380), in Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., The Library of Original Sources, vol. 4 (Milwaukee, 1907), Internet Medieval Sourcebook, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/codex-theod1.asp.
9. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 5.7, trans. A. C. Zenos, NPNF2 2, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26015.htm.
10. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 5.8, same translation and URL.
11. Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 7.7, trans. Chester D. Hartranft, NPNF2 2, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26027.htm.
12. Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), introduction to the Council of Constantinople I, reproduced at https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/council-of-constantinople---st-damasus-i-constantinople-1455.
13. Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 5.8, trans. Blomfield Jackson, NPNF2 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/27025.htm. On Meletius being out of communion with Rome, Percival (note 21).
14. Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 5.8, same translation and URL.
15. Compare Socrates 5.7-8 (resignation before the synod's business) with Sozomen 7.7, Theodoret 5.8 and Tanner (note 12).
16. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 42 ("The Last Farewell in the Presence of the One Hundred and Fifty Bishops") 26, trans. C. G. Browne and J. E. Swallow, NPNF2 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310242.htm.
17. Tanner (note 12); the canons are dated "on the VII of the Ides of July" in NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3808.htm.
18. John 15:26; Acts 5:3-4; Matthew 28:19, New King James Version, https://www.biblegateway.com.
19. Synodical letter of the Council of Constantinople (382) to Damasus and the Western bishops, in Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 5.9, trans. Blomfield Jackson, NPNF2 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/27025.htm.
20. Council of Chalcedon (451), Definition of Faith, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3811.htm.
21. Henry Percival, "Historical Introduction" to the First Council of Constantinople, NPNF2 14 (1900), https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.ix.ii.html.
22. "Nicene Creed," Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11049a.htm.
23. Canons of the Council of Constantinople (381), trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3808.htm.
24. Canon 3 of Constantinople I with Percival's notes, NPNF2 14, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.ix.viii.iv.html.
25. Council of Chalcedon, canon 28, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3811.htm; Leo the Great, Letter 106 to Anatolius, 5, trans. Charles Lett Feltoe, NPNF2 12, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3604106.htm.
26. Gregory the Great, Register of Letters 1.25, trans. James Barmby, NPNF2 12, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360201025.htm.
27. North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation, "The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue? An Agreed Statement," Washington, DC, 25 October 2003, https://ecumenism.net/archive/docu/2003_na-o-rc_filioque_en.php.
28. Council of Ephesus (431), canon 7, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3810.htm.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• Percival, Henry R., ed. and trans. The Seven Ecumenical Councils. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 14. New York, 1900 (creeds and canons of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon, with Percival's introductions and notes).
• Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen. Ecclesiastical Histories. Trans. A. C. Zenos and Chester D. Hartranft. NPNF2 2. 1890.
• Theodoret. Ecclesiastical History. Trans. Blomfield Jackson. NPNF2 3. 1892.
• Codex Theodosianus 16.1.2. In Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., The Library of Original Sources, vol. 4. Milwaukee, 1907.
• Leo the Great, Letter 106; Gregory the Great, Register 1.25. NPNF2 12. 1895.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Athanasius. Tome to the People of Antioch. Trans. H. Ellershaw. NPNF2 4. 1892.
• Basil of Caesarea. On the Holy Spirit. Trans. Blomfield Jackson. NPNF2 8. 1895.
• Gregory of Nazianzus. Orations 31 and 42. Trans. C. G. Browne and J. E. Swallow. NPNF2 7. 1894.
• Orthodox Church in America. "Symbol of Faith (Nicene Creed)." oca.org.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. London and Washington, DC, 1990 (summarizing Lebon, Kelly and Ritter on the creed).
• "Nicene Creed." The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11. New York, 1911 (reporting Hort, Harnack and the Epiphanius theory).

Sources from the traditions being discussed (Catholic and joint)

• North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation. "The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue?" 2003.