325

The First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea

Constantine convened a council at Nicaea. By various counts, between 220 and roughly 300 bishops attended, mostly from the East. The treasury covered the costs.

Eusebius of Nicomedia set out Arius's views. The council rejected them, and the scroll containing them was torn up. The creed was based on the baptismal formula presented by Eusebius of Caesarea. At Constantine's insistence the non-biblical term "homoousios" ("of one substance") was added to it – probably under the western influence of Hosius of Cordoba.

The adopted creed confessed the Son as "begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father." It closed with anathemas against formulas such as "there was when He was not." Arius and two bishops refused to sign and were exiled, and Arius's books were burned.

The council also adopted twenty canons establishing the primacy of Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch. It fixed the date of Easter according to the Roman-Alexandrian custom and addressed the lapsed and the Meletians. But the ambiguity of the term "homoousios" prolonged the Arian controversy for more than another half-century.