359/360

Athanasius, Letters to Serapion: The Deity of the Holy Spirit and the Synod of Alexandria (362)

At Nicaea all that was said about the Spirit was "and in the Holy Spirit," and until the mid-4th century attention was focused on the relation of the Father and the Son. In 359/360 Bishop Serapion informed Athanasius of an Egyptian group that acknowledged the deity of the Son but held the Spirit to be created out of nothing; Athanasius called them "figurists" (tropici). In the Letters to Serapion he set out for the first time a detailed doctrine of the Trinity and maintained that the Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and "proceeds from the Father" (John 15:26): if the Spirit is related to the Son as the Son to the Father, neither is a creature. The Synod of Alexandria in 362 condemned the view that the Spirit is a creature and so extended the controversy to the Holy Spirit.