The First Council of Constantinople

After taking the churches of Constantinople from the opponents of Nicaea, Theodosius I summoned the bishops of his own, eastern, part of the empire to confirm the Nicene faith and to give the capital a bishop (Socrates, Church History 5.8) (Theodoret, Church History 5.7). About 150 came. Thirty-six bishops of the Macedonian party, who would not call the Son of one substance with the Father, were invited as well; they refused the Nicene creed and went home (Socrates, Church History 5.8).

The council met in May 381. Gregory of Nazianzus, who had gathered the Nicene congregation in the city, was confirmed as its bishop, and Meletius of Antioch died while the council sat (Theodoret, Church History 5.8) (Socrates, Church History 5.9). Sozomen says that Gregory gave up the see when the Egyptian bishops and others objected (Sozomen, Church History 7.7); Socrates has him resign before the council met (Socrates, Church History 5.7). His farewell address to the 150 bishops survives (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 42.20–27). In Sozomen’s account the emperor then chose Nectarius, a senator not yet baptised, from a list drawn up by the bishops (Sozomen, Church History 7.8); in Socrates’s the people seized on him (Socrates, Church History 5.8).

The bishops reported to Theodosius that they had ratified the faith of Nicaea, condemned the heresies opposed to it and drawn up canons, and they asked him to confirm their work (Council of Constantinople (381) letter to Theodosius). The first canon declares that the faith of the 318 fathers of Nicaea shall stand and anathematises, among others, the Arians, the Pneumatomachi or “fighters against the Spirit”, and the Apollinarians (Council of Constantinople (381) canon 1). The second forbids bishops to intervene in churches outside their own region (Council of Constantinople (381) canon 2). The third gives the bishop of Constantinople “the prerogative of honour after the Bishop of Rome; because Constantinople is New Rome” (Council of Constantinople (381) canon 3).

The canons and the letter contain no creed, and the council’s minutes are lost. The creed that carries its name is known from the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which set “the Creed of the one hundred and fifty holy Fathers who were assembled at Constantinople” beside that of Nicaea (Definition of Chalcedon). It is not the text of 325. That creed said only “And in the Holy Ghost” and ended with anathemas (Creed of Nicaea (325)). This one has no anathemas and confesses the Spirit as “the Lord and Giver-of-Life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified” (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed). The bishops who met again in 382 summed up the same faith for Damasus of Rome and other western bishops as one Godhead, power and substance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in three perfect hypostases (Council of Constantinople (381) synodical letter of 382).

Under the name of the Nicene Creed this text became the common confession; the Catholic catechism of 1992 says that it remains common to all the great churches of East and West (Catechism of the Catholic Church 195). One clause is not common to all. In the West the words “and the Son” were added to the statement that the Spirit proceeds from the Father; they are absent from the Greek text (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed Latin form).