381 (acceptance – 451)

The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed: composition, the debate over its origin, and acceptance

According to Lebedev, the creed of the Second Ecumenical Council corrected and supplemented the Nicene one: "God from God" and "from the substance of the Father" were omitted (replaced by "begotten before all ages"), the teaching on the incarnation was set out more fully ("from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary", "crucified under Pontius Pilate", "of whose kingdom there shall be no end"), and the article on the Holy Spirit was unfolded ("the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father…"). Lebedev holds that the creed was directed above all against Marcellus and Apollinaris rather than against the Macedonians, and that the idea of a new creed could only have come from the Antiochenes who led the council. An almost identical baptismal creed is already given in Epiphanius's Ancoratus (373 or 374); Harnack's hypothesis that the creed was only later attributed to the council of 381 rested on this fact, and Lebedev rejects it. Rome and Alexandria long refused to recognize the council and its creed; the creed was finally established at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.