May–July 381

The Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople

The council was convened by Theodosius I and gathered one hundred fifty eastern bishops. It was initially presided over by Meletius of Antioch and, after his death during the sessions, by Gregory of Nazianzus. Gregory soon resigned the see in favor of the unbaptized senator Nectarius.

The council confirmed the Nicene creed and condemned every form of Arianism – Anomoean and Homoian. It also condemned Pneumatomachianism (the teaching of Macedonius) and Apollinarianism.

The council proclaimed the doctrine of the Trinity and added to the earlier creed an article on the Holy Spirit: "the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified." It did not, however, call the Spirit directly God, and it left open the question of the Spirit's relation to the Son. In this form the text became fixed in later tradition as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. Its origin and its precise connection to the council itself remain disputed among historians.

The council's third canon gave the bishop of Constantinople, as the "New Rome", primacy of honor immediately after Rome. Both Rome and Alexandria long rejected this rule.