Biserica să fie Una! 1700 de ani de la Sinodul I Ecumenic
Let the Church be One! 1700 years since the First Ecumenical Council

Summary/Abstract: The importance of the Council of Nicaea is primarily linked to the victory of Truth. Compared to the other councils, no act or protocol has come down to us from Nicaea. We only know that Arianism was condemned and, in the formula of the Creed, the specification was introduced on the relationship between the Father and the Son, in which the Son is consubstantial with the Father, therefore equal to Him in divinity. Even though this condemnation of Arianism was definitive, the term homoousios was often an occasion for scandal and misunderstanding within the Church. Confusion will mark the 56 years that will separate the works of the First Ecumenical Council from the Second (381). The council also drew up the first 7 articles of the Symbol of Faith (Creed), which have been recited in the Church since then to this day. Most participants in the Council of Nicaea accepted the condemnation of Arius, which represented an obvious distortion of the Church’s tradition, but they had difficulty understanding the term consubstantial. The word had been proposed to Constantine by a small group of theologians, who understood that a condemnation of Arius was insufficient and that an unequivocal concept was needed. For most bishops, the word was difficult to understand and their participation in Nicaea represented the condemnation of a heresy. The great theologians of the 4th century would resume the Nicene formulas, deciding on the classical definition: one God, with one being or nature and three distinct persons or hypostases, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Also on this occasion, an attempt was made to establish the date of Easter, which was celebrated differently in various parts of the Empire, and it was decided that all of Christianity would celebrate this day on the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox.

• Details
• Contents