Article

Eyewitnesses to History: The Council of Nicaea in the Ancient Sources

On the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea · Part 3 of 3

Glen L. Thompson

Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly, Vol. 122, No. 4 (Fall 2025) · Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3

Athanasius, Deacon of Alexandria

It was as a budding theologian that Athanasius attended the council.⁴¹ The fifth-century historians refer to him as Alexander’s helper (so Gelasius and the Anonymous Church History) or advisor (Rufinus), yet Gelasius says it “was acknowledged by all that he had his share in the choir of those holy men” at Nicaea.⁴² In his Second Apology or Apology Against the Arians, speaking of himself in the third person, Athanasius says the Arians’ “hatred of him was greatly increased after they had experienced his piety toward Christ in the council assembled at Nicaea, for he spoke boldly against the impiety of the Arian madmen” (6). Socrates wrote that at Nicaea the Arians “were powerfully opposed by Athanasius” (1.8.13), and Sozomen (1.17.7) states that Athanasius “seemed to have the largest share in the counsel” concerning Arius’s teachings. No one provides specifics, however, so exactly how Athanasius participated is unknown. It was only several years later, when he had succeeded Alexander as bishop (AD 328), that we can begin to trace his rise as both the most eloquent defender of Nicaea and the most obvious lightning rod for its opponents.

Although theological and apologetic works began almost immediately issuing in profusion from his pen, it is a quarter century after Nicaea before the council becomes a major theme in Athanasius’s writing. For example, there is no mention of Arius or the council in his famous On the Incarnation, seemingly written just after the council,⁴³ and hardly a mention in his three Orations Against the Arians, written in the late 330s and early 340s. Only in his Defense of the Nicene Definition (De decretis), a collection of documents strung together by brief narratives in the early 350s, does this change.⁴⁴

After a brief introduction, Athanasius writes:

Now this is what happened to Eusebius [of Nicomedia] and his associates at the Council of Nicaea: Since they were contentious in their impiety and tried to fight against God, their terminology was totally irreligious. But the assembled bishops, who numbered about 300, mildly and charitably required them to explain and defend themselves in a pious way. Scarcely, however, did they begin to speak, when they were condemned, and one differed from another. Then, embarrassed on account of their heresy, they remained silent and by their silence confessed the disgrace which came upon their heterodoxy. On this the bishops, having rejected their invented terms, set forth against them the sound and ecclesiastical faith. (Decr. 2.6–3.2)

This confirms what Constantine had written to the church of Nicomedia about the efforts of their bishop Eusebius to promote at the council his unorthodox views.⁴⁵ And then Athanasius adds immediately:

Since all subscribed to it [the creed of Nicaea], Eusebius and his fellows subscribed to it also in those very words of which they are now complaining: “of the essence” and “one in essence” and that “the Son of God is neither creature nor work, nor one of the originated things, but that the Word is an offspring from the substance of the Father.” And what is strange indeed, Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine, who had denied the day before but later subscribed, sent a letter to his church saying that this was the church’s faith and the tradition of the Fathers, and made a public profession that they were before in error and were rashly contending against the truth. (3.2–3)

Here we have a bit of welcome chronology. Athanasius seems to place the debate with the bishop of Nicomedia first, followed closely by the discussion centering on the other Eusebius (of Caesarea). The latter at first refused to accept any statement with the term homoousios in it, and put forward his own creed without it, only to have it rejected. Then after an additional day of discussions, he was convinced to accept the use of homoousios and agreed to sign the council’s creed. His letter to the Caesarean church also seems to be sent very soon afterward.

Athanasius’ De decretis continues by shifting to Athanasius’s own theological discursus on the christological points at stake. He returns to Nicaea and the Arian supporters at the beginning of section 18, saying:

Now Eusebius and his companions had previously been examined at great length and had been convicted [of incorrect doctrine], as I said before. But now they subscribed, and after this change of mind they kept quiet and retired. . . . Now the aforementioned unspiritual phrases of Christ’s enemies were demonstrated to be, both then and now, totally sacrilegious. In contrast, what the council wrote and established against them, when accurately examined, will be found to encapsulate the truth completely, and especially if diligent attention be paid to the situation which gave rise to these expressions, which was reasonable. It was as follows. (18.1, 5)

Athanasius then explains to his current audience (c. 350) why doctrinal statements can properly use words that aren’t found in Scripture as long as they are understood to convey concepts that are scriptural. Then in section 19 he explains why the council decided to follow the phrase ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς μονογενῆ with the explanatory words τουτέστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός. In the following section (20) he tells how the Arians “were caught whispering to each other and winking with their eyes, that ‘like,’ and ‘always,’ and ‘power,’ and ‘in him,’ were, as before, common [expressions] to us and the Son, and so there was no difficulty for them to agree to these.” As a result, the orthodox bishops “were again compelled on their part to collect the sense of the Scriptures, and to restate and rewrite even more precisely what they had previously said, namely, that the Son is homoousios with the Father.” At the conclusion of the tract, after a final encomium on the Nicene council’s “zeal for truth” (32), he appends ten documents, mostly from 325 just after the council, our earliest surviving copies of most of those letters.⁴⁶

A decade later, c. 360, Athanasius wrote another apologetic work, this one an analysis of the recent twin synods of 359, On the Synods of Ariminum and Seleucia (de Synodis). In it he provides our only extant longer extract from Arius’s Thalia (15). The ongoing Arian conflict caused him to include documentary evidence from the earlier period—Arius’s early letter to Alexander (16 = Dok. 1) as well as a series of other short letter fragments dating to the years of the controversy’s development (Doks. 6, 7, 11, and 16, all found in section 17). He also provides texts and analysis for eight later conciliar creeds all meant to replace that of Nicaea. So we find much of interest regarding the background of the council and the Arian controversy, but little about the council itself. Yet this work does illustrate how the status of Nicaea continued to grow. The orthodox bishops at the 359 Council of Ariminum (Rimini) are held up as an example for having stated, “New pleas for councils will no longer circulate, for the bishops at Nicaea have anticipated them once and for all, and done all that was needful for the catholic church” (8). In sections 36 and 45 Athanasius again summarizes the debates that led to “from the ousia of the Father” and homoousios, but adds no new details.

In his Letter to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya (361), Athanasius warns of the circulation of a new creed meant to “cast a shadow over the Council of Nicaea and the confession of faith then put forth against the Arian heresy” (5). When writing about the same time his Tome to the People of Antioch, where a serious schism was taking place, he said that when trying to achieve unity there should be no demand beyond acceptance of the Nicene Creed (4). The following year in a letter to the new young emperor, Jovinian, Athanasius also counsels him “to learn from us the faith of the catholic church, . . . of the faith confessed by the fathers at Nicaea” (1), assuring him that it contains the faith “preached from time immemorial” and that “churches in every quarter” assent to it (2). He ends by appending the creed itself (3).⁴⁷

About 369, the aged bishop penned a final substantial tract, a Letter to the Bishops of Africa, which again proclaims that the Nicene bishops breathed “the spirit of Scripture” (5) when they condemned the Arian teachings.⁴⁸ They had taught that “the Word was not a creation/creature” (4) and condemned the Arian ideas that the Word was created from nothing (like the rest of creation), that there was a period when he did not exist, and that by nature he is changeable (5). Those bishops “collected from Scripture those passages” which showed these teachings to be false, and they did not do this on their own, but also through “the testimony from the fathers” (6). Even Eusebius of Caesarea had been forced to admit to his home church that homoousios had been used by earlier orthodox fathers (6). Thus he can conclude that “this council of Nicaea is in truth a proscription of every heresy,” and he even extends this to teachings about the Holy Spirit that by the late 360s had begun to be a point of contention.

To sum up we can say that while the large corpus of Athanasius’s writings add surprisingly few new details, they provide a general confirmation of our picture of the council. They also document the increasing importance given to the council and its creed as touchstones of orthodoxy. As he says of Nicaea in another letter of 370, this one to a certain Epictetus, Nicaea “was a monument of victory over all heresy, but especially the Arian” (1).⁴⁹

Eustathius of Antioch

It is Theodoret’s Church History (1.7.18–8.6) which provides a short quotation about the council from a fourth participant, Eustathius of Antioch. While explaining Prov 8:22⁵⁰ in a work against the Arians, Eustathius gives a brief reminiscence of events at the council. After confirming that there was a heated debate with Eusebius of Nicomedia, he mentions that the latter also put forward a creed as well. Eustathius is quoted as follows:

When the largest council was summoned at Nicaea, about 270 bishops were convened. . . . When they began to investigate the nature of the faith, the formulation of Eusebius [of Nicomedia] was brought forward. It contained undisguised evidence of his blasphemy. Its public reading caused the audience great grief because it departed from the faith while bringing permanent shame on its author. After the Eusebian gang had been clearly convicted and their unholy writing had been torn up in the presence of everyone, some of them, under the pretense of preserving peace, joined in silencing all the ablest speakers. The Ariomaniacs,⁵¹ afraid that they would be ejected from the church by a council of so many bishops, sprang forward to anathematize and condemn the doctrines which had been condemned, and they unanimously signed the confession of faith. Thus they retained possession of their episcopal seats through the most shameful deception, even though they should have been dismissed.⁵²

The Canons and the Council’s Letter to the Alexandrian Church (Dok. 25)

As we have seen, the emperor sent out imperial letters to announce the council’s decisions to the various churches. The twenty canons or resolutions that were passed regarding other more practical matters were also circulated widely. They inform us that various other issues were discussed dealing with various aspects of the qualifications for the clergy (canon 1), their proper ordination and call (2, 4, 9), their proper conduct (3, 15–18), and their removal from office (5, 10). Policies for regional church administration and oversight were also discussed and agreed upon (6–7). Paths for the readmission of laity who had lapsed in various ways (11–14), for repentant followers of Paul of Samosata (19), and for the schismatic Novatian clergy were also agreed upon (8). These discussions were not mentioned in the eyewitness accounts which focused on the three main agenda items—Arius, the Melitians, and the celebration of Easter.

Finally, another letter survives penned in the council’s name and specifically addressed to the church in Alexandria, the focal point for several of the key issues dealt with. Athanasius (Decr. 36) and several later church historians⁵³ preserved this letter. While again the letter gives us very little new information, it does confirm the picture presented by the other eyewitnesses discussed above: that it was Constantine who summoned the council; that the first order of business was to examine in the presence of the emperor “the impiety and wrongdoing of Arius and his adherents”; that it was unanimously decided that he and his heretical statements (and two of his unrepentant followers, Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais) should be anathematized (3); that the council also dealt with the “rash actions of Melitius and those ordained by him” (5) and that, “moved by compassion,” it allowed him to remain in his position and came up with lenient ways to reincorporate the clergy in his camp (6–10); that the celebration of Easter was also “harmonized” and “happily settled through your prayers” (12); that all the other ordinances and decisions would be explained to the Alexandrians by “our Lord and most-honored fellow-minister and brother Alexander, since he has participated in all we have done and has in fact been a leader” (11).

The detailed description of the reintegration program for Melitius and his clergy is the most valuable new information. Melitius himself was allowed to retain the title of bishop, but because of “his former disorderly conduct and because of the rashness and fickleness of his character,” he was not allowed to participate in any ordinations or involve himself in any other church affairs outside his own city (6, 10). Those he had ordained should be reconsecrated by the local legitimate (i.e., catholic) clergy and they then could continue to serve in their previous duties, although they were to be subservient to the clergy who had been properly appointed by Alexander (7). They must do everything with the agreement of the local catholic bishops and clergy. If such a Melitian clergyman showed himself obedient to this procedure, when the catholic clergyman above him died, he could advance to take his place, but only with the permission of the bishop of Alexandria (9).

Note that although both Arius and Melitius were seen as instigators of disunity and both were singled out at the council as tremendously misguided and disruptive to the church, they were handled in two very different ways. With Arius it was a matter of doctrine, and so he and his followers who remained unrepentant in their teaching were condemned and anathematized. With Melitius it was a matter of church order and brotherly procedure, so “moved by compassion” (6) he and his clergy were offered a path back into the church, just as the Novatians were in canon 8.

Conclusion

While we could wish for more eyewitness accounts of the first great church council, the ones we do have are sufficient to confirm the general account of the early church historians who produced more complete pictures a century later. This study has tried to be honest about their shortcomings. One can see why those who wish to be skeptical about any certain knowledge of the events can satisfy that urge. However, despite the lack of detail in many areas, the pieces of the puzzle that we do have hang together, even if we have many duplicate pieces and others that have been lost. We have little evidence that the many opponents of Nicene Christology openly questioned what took place. Only Philostorgius, writing several generations later, claimed there was some strong-arming among the orthodox, and even he agrees that the Arians who signed the creed there did so duplicitously.⁵⁴

As we celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the council and its creed, we can do so with the confidence that we know the general outlines of what took place there and what was decided. Thanks to all the modern editors, we now also have critical editions of all the necessary ancient sources from which to work—and reasonable, if still dated, English translations. Certainly it was not a perfect gathering, but the fact that it is being remembered with thanksgiving by nearly every branch of the church on earth is a testament to its importance. The creed would be revised significantly fifty-six years later, yet it would retain the basic structure and terminology hammered out in 325. The bishops of Constantinople in 381 and those of the ecumenical councils that followed were adamant that in its final form it was still the creed of Nicaea. And we are correct to regard it as such yet today.

Notes

⁴¹ It has been suggested that Alexander of Alexandria’s early conciliar letter Ἑνὸς σώματος (Dok. 2.2, c. 320), which spelled out Arius’s teachings, was actually written by Athanasius, then still the bishop’s young deacon and possibly his secretary.

⁴² Gelasius, Eccl. hist. F12; Anonymous Church History 2.11.8; Rufinus, Hist. 10.5. Socrates also said that the Arians “were powerfully opposed by Athanasius” at Nicaea, implying that he played an important role there (Eccl. hist. 1.8.13).

⁴³ On the Incarnation is difficult to date. It contains no references to the Arian controversy, but if it was written before the Arian controversy began, Athanasius would still have been a teenager when he wrote it. But if he wrote it afterwards, why does he not refer to the Arian controversy, especially since the treatise deals with subjects under discussion in the controversy? Barnes (Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993], 13) hypothesizes that Athanasius wrote it soon after the Council of Nicaea (c. 326–28), when it briefly seemed that the controversy was resolved. According to this view, Athanasius used this opportunity to show his theological skill as he anticipated that he would succeed Alexander as bishop of Alexandria (which he did in 328). He did not refer to the controversy because Arius was in exile and refuting him would have been superfluous.

⁴⁴ The critical text is that of Opitz in Athanasius Werke 2.1–2, pp. 1–45. The Decr. may have been written c. 352 for Liberius, the recently elevated bishop of Rome. The Roman bishop had received a letter from the Eastern Arian bishops condemning Athanasius on a variety of charges, and the Decr. was Athanasius’s written defense.

⁴⁵ See above on Dok. 31 = Decr. 41.1–17, especially sec. 14–15.

⁴⁶ This dossier includes (in order) Eusebius of Caesarea to his congregation (Dok. 24), the two letters of Alexander of Alexandria (Dok. 2.1, 2.2), the Nicene council to the Alexandrian church (Dok. 25), the council’s creed (Dok. 26), and the five letters of Constantine that were written just after the council (Dok. 29, 28, 27, 31, 32). Only the two early letters of Alexander opposing Arius are not from the immediate post-council period. Interestingly, the two letters that Eusebius inserted in his Vit. Const. (Dok. 19, 30) are not repeated by Athanasius, perhaps indicating that he assumed his readers would be familiar with his imperial biography of Constantine.

⁴⁷ To the Bishops of Egypt and Libya = Athanasius Werke 1.1, 1–64 (Greek) and NPNF² 4:223–35 (English); Tomos ad Antiochenos = Athanasius Werke 2.8, 340–51 and NPNF² 4:483–86; Epistula ad Jovianum = AW 2.8, 352–56 and NPNF² 4:567–68.

⁴⁸ Greek text in Athanasius Werke 2.8, 322–39 and English translation in NPNF² 4:488–94.

⁴⁹ CPG 2095 (G. Ludwig, ed., Athanasii epistula ad Epictetum [Jena: H. Pohle, 1911] and PG 26:1049–69; English translation in NPNF² 4:570–74 [Ep. 59]): “The faith there [at Nicaea] confessed by the Fathers according to the divine Scriptures is enough by itself at once to overthrow all impiety, and to establish the religious belief in Christ. . . . No synod should be cited in the Catholic Church save only that which was held at Nicaea” (1).

⁵⁰ “The Lord created me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old” (NHEB).

⁵¹ If this writing of Eustathius was penned before he was deposed by a council in 330, this would be the first preserved usage of this derogatory term for Eusebius of Nicomedia and other supporters of ideas similar to those of Arius.

⁵² Theodoret, Eccl. hist. 1.7.18–8.6, who concludes, “these are the words of the great Eustathius.” Although Eustathius only refers to Eusebius, this passage must refer to the Nicomedian bishop who went on to become the leader of the heretics after Arius’s demise and not Eusebius of Caesarea. The larger context in Theodoret’s narrative also makes this clear.

⁵³ Socrates, Eccl. hist. 1.9; Theodoret, Eccl. hist. 19.2; Anonymous Church History 2.34.2.

⁵⁴ Philostorgius (Bidez, Philostorgius, 1.9) states that Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis of Nicaea, and Maris of Chalcedon “defected” from their Arian comrades to the position of the council, but “did so in trickery” and “concealed” their homoiousios beliefs when using the term homoousios.

The Rev. Dr. Glen L. Thompson was assigned to Lusaka, Zambia, where he served for 6 years (1977–1983). While studying ancient history at Columbia University, he started the first WELS church in New York City. His twin loves (missions/evangelism and scholarly study) would continue to guide his career as he taught at Michigan Lutheran Seminary and Wisconsin Lutheran College, and began what is now the WLS Pastoral Studies Institute. In 1999 he was invited to lecture for SALEM in Hong Kong, and this began a series of teaching visits that ended with his serving full-time at Asia Lutheran Seminary as Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament and Church History (2011–2020). In retirement he continues to teach in world missions and the WLS Grow in Grace program, as well as research and write and operate his www.fourthcentury.com and www.PaulineRoads.com websites. His many books can be seen on his Amazon author page.

First published in Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly, Vol. 122, No. 4 (Fall 2025).