Letter to the Bishops of Africa (Ad Afros)
A synodal letter sent in the name of ninety bishops of Egypt and Libya, Athanasius among them, to the bishops of Africa, urging them to hold to the creed of Nicaea. In it Athanasius gives the number of bishops at Nicaea as 318.
Read the text at newadvent.org ↗The same translation with its introduction (CCEL) ↗
Athanasius wrote this letter near the end of his life, in the name of a synod of Egyptian and Libyan bishops, to warn the African churches against accepting the creed of the Council of Ariminum (359) in place of the Nicene. The editor of the standard translation dates it between 368 and 372.
In it he calls Nicaea an ecumenical synod and says that 318 bishops met there (2). In an earlier work he had put the number at about three hundred. The figure 318, which is also the number of Abraham’s trained men (Genesis 14:14), became the standard one: the Council of Chalcedon speaks of “the three hundred and eighteen fathers”.
Cited in
- May AD 325, firm date