INTERNATIONAL
THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION
JESUS CHR IST, SON OF GOD, SAVIOUR
1700th Anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea 325-2025 AD
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2 . The event of Wisdom: a new reality for human thought .
3. The ecclesial event: the Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council
Chapter 4 – Keeping the Faith Accessible for All God’s People
Introduction: the Council of Nicaea and the conditions of credibility of the Christian mystery
1 . Theology at the service of the integral character of salvific truth
2 . The mediation of the Church and the inversion of the dogmatic order: Trinity, Christology, Pneumatology, Ecclesiology
3 . Safeguarding the deposit of faith: Charity at the service of the littlest
Conclusion: Proclaiming Jesus Our Salvation to Everyone Today
JESUS CHRIST, SON OF GOD, SAVIOUR
1700TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ECUMENICAL COUNCIL OF NICAEA 325-2025 AD
PRELIMINARY NOTE
In the course of its tenth quinquennium, the International Theological Commission chose to carry out an in-depth study of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea and its dogmatic relevance today . The work was carried out by a special SubCommission, chaired by Fr Philippe Vallin and composed of the following members: Mgr Antonio Luiz Catelan Ferreira, Mgr Etienne Vetö, I .C .N ., Fr Mario Ángel Flores Ramos, Fr Gaby Alfred Hachem, Fr Karl-Heinz Menke, Prof . Marianne Schlosser, and Prof . Robin Darling Young . General discussions on this subject took place both at the various meetings of the Sub-Commission and at the plenary sessions of the Commission itself, held in the years 2022-2024 . This text was put to the vote and unanimously approved in forma specifica by the members of the International Theological Commission at the plenary session of 2024 . The document was then submitted for approval to its President, His Eminence Víctor Manuel Cardinal Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, who, after receiving the favourable opinion of the Holy Father, Pope Francis, authorised its publication on 16 December 2024 .
INTRODUCTION: DOXOLOGY, THEOLOGY AND PROCLAMATION
1 . On 20 May 2025, the Catholic Church and the whole Christian world remembers with gratitude and joy the opening of the Council of Nicaea in 325: ‘The Council of Nicaea is a milestone in the Church’s history The celebration of its anniversary invites Christians to unite in a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the Holy Trinity and in particular to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, “consubstantial with the Father”, who revealed to us this mystery of love . ’1 This has remained in Christian consciousness mainly through the Creed, that Symbol which gathers, defines and proclaims faith in salvation in Jesus Christ and in the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit . The Nicene Symbol professes the good news of the integral salvation of human beings from God himself in Jesus Christ . Seventeen hundred years later, we are celebrating this event above all with a doxology, a praise of the glory of God, since this glory has been manifested in the priceless treasure of faith expressed by the Symbol: the infinite beauty of the God who saves us, the immense mercy of Jesus Christ our Saviour, the generosity of the redemption offered to every human being in the Holy Spirit . We join our voices to those of the Fathers, like Ephrem the Syrian, to sing this glory:
Glory to that One Who came to us by His First-born .
Glory to that Silent One
Who spoke by means of His Voice .
Glory to that Sublime One
Who was seen by means of His Dawn .
Glory to the Spiritual One
Who was well-pleased that His Child should become a body so that
1 FRANCIS, Bull of Indiction for the Ordinary Jubilee of 2025, Spes non confundit, 17 .
through Him His power might be felt and the bodies of His kindred might live again!2
2 . The light shed by the assembly of Nicaea on Christian revelation allows us to discover an inexhaustible richness that continues to deepen over the centuries and across cultures, and to show itself in ever more beautiful and fresh ways . These different facets become current for today especially through the prayerful and theological reading that the greater part of Christian traditions give to the Symbol, each with a different relationship to the very fact of the existence of a symbol . It is also an opportunity for them all to rediscover or even to discover its richness and the bond of communion between all Christians which it can constitute . ‘How can we not recall the extraordinary importance of such a commemoration in the search for the full unity of Christians?’ asks Pope Francis . 3
3 . The Council of Nicaea was the first council called ‘ecumenical’, because for the first time the bishops of the entire Oikoumenē were invited . 4 Its resolutions were therefore intended to have an ecumenical, that is to say “universal” significance: they were received as such by believers and by Christian tradition in the course of a long and laborious process . The ecclesiological implications are crucial . The Symbol is part of the gradual
2 EPHREM OF NISIBIS, Hymns on the Nativity, III, 3, ed . and trans . by E . Beck, Secrétariat du Corpus SCO, Louvain 1959 (CSCO 186 / Script Syr 82, p 21; CSCO 187 / Script. Syr. 83, pp. 18-19, modified trans.); Eng. trans. by J. Meyendorff (Paulist Press, New York – Mahwah 1989, p . 83) .
3 FRANCIS, Address to the Members of the International Theological Commission, 30 November 2023 .
4 CONSTANTINE, Letter to the Bishops: “Since at first it had been agreed that a synod of bishops should take place at Ancyra of Galatia, it has now appeared to us, for many [reasons], that it is better that it should gather in the city of Nicaea, in Bithynia: both on account of those bishops coming from Italy and the other regions of Europe, and on account of the good climate, and because I shall be in a proximate way an observer of and a participant in the things that are going to take place” (Athanasius Werke, III/1, 1, ed by H -G Opitz, De Gruyter, Berlin-Leipzig 1934, pp 41-42 = Urkunde 20; Eng trans : Fontes Nicænæ Synodi. The Contemporary Sources for the Study of the Council of Nicaea (304-337), ed and trans by S Fernández, Contexts of Ancient and Medieval Anthropology 10, Brill-Schöningh, Paderborn 2024, p . 129) .
adoption by Christian teaching of the Greek language and forms of thought, which were themselves, so to speak, transfigured by their contact with Revelation . The Council also marked the ever-increasing importance of synods and synodal modes of government in the Church of the first centuries, while at the same time constituting a major turning-point: in line with the exousia conferred on the Apostles by Jesus and the Holy Spirit (Lk 10:16; Acts 1:14-2:1-4), the event of Nicaea opened the way to a new institutional expression of authority in the Church, the authority of universal scope henceforth recognised in the ecumenical councils, as much for doctrine as for discipline This decisive turning-point in the manner of thinking and governing in the community of the disciples of the Lord Jesus will have thrown light on essential elements of the Church’s teaching mission, and therefore of its nature .
4 . A clarification is in order before going any further. We are basing ourselves on the symbol of Nicaea-Constantinople (381) and not, strictly speaking, on the one composed at Nicaea (325) . In fact, it took about fifty years to accept the vocabulary of Nicaea’s Symbol and to agree on the universal significance of the first Council. The process of accepting the Nicene symbol continued during the conflict with the Pneumatomachi between Nicaea and Constantinople, introducing some significant textual changes, particularly in the third article . In the opinion of the Fathers, however, this process, which culminated in the NiceneConstantinopolitan Symbol, did not involve any alteration of the Nicene faith, but its authentic preservation . In this sense, the preamble to the dogmatic definition of Chalcedon, which was preceded by the transcription of the symbol of Nicaea and the symbol of Nicaea-Constantinople, ‘confirms’ what was said in the symbol of the ‘One hundred and fifty Fathers’ (Constantinople), since its meaning lies, in its own terms, in the specification of what concerns the Holy Spirit against those who deny his lordship . 5 The magnitude of what happened at Nicaea
5 See COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON, preamble (DH, 300) .
can be seen in the prohibition of the Council of Ephesus against promulgating any other formula of faith,6 for in the period after Nicaea, the proponents of orthodoxy thought that the discernment crystallised in the Nicene symbol would suffice to guarantee the faith of the Church for all time . Athanasius, for example, said of Nicaea that it is ‘the word of God that abides forever’ (Is 40:8) . 7 This living and normative process of Tradition continued between the fourth and ninth centuries, with its adoption in baptismal liturgies, particularly in the East, and then in Eucharistic liturgies . It should be noted that the Filioque, which is found in the current Western versions of the Creed, is not part of the original text of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, on which this document is based . 8 This point continues to be a subject of misunderstanding between the Christian confessions, such that the dialogue between East and West continues to this day .
5 . So, in the first chapter, we shall propose a doxological reading of the Symbol in order to draw out its soteriological and therefore Christological, Trinitarian and anthropological resources . This will be an opportunity to underline its significance and to receive from it a new impetus for Christian unity . But welcoming the richness of the Council of Nicaea, seventeen hundred years on, also leads us to perceive how the Council nourishes and guides everyday Christian life: in a second chapter, with its patristic content, we shall explore how liturgical life and the life of prayer were made fruitful in the Church after the Council . Nicaea was such a turning-point in the history of Christianity that, in the
6 See COUNCIL OF EPHESUS, 6th session of the Cyrillians (DH, 265)
7 Quoted in K . SCHATZ, Allgemeine Konzilien – Brennpunkte der Kirchengeschichte, Brill-Schöningh, Paderborn 2008, p 41
8 PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN UNITY, The Greek and the Latin Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit : “Catholic Church acknowledges the conciliar, ecumenical, normative and irrevocable value, as expression of the one common faith of the Church and of all Christians, of the Symbol professed in Greek at Constantinople in 381 by the Second Ecumenical Council No profession of faith peculiar to a particular liturgical tradition can contradict this expression of the faith taught and professed by the undivided Church” (Eng . trans . from: L’Osservatore Romano, 13 September 1995) .
third chapter, we shall look at how the Symbol and the Council bear witness to the event of Jesus Christ himself, whose irruption into history offers unprecedented access to God and introduces a transformation of human thought, in other words, an event of Wisdom . The Symbol and the Council also bear witness to something new in the way the Church of Christ structures herself and accomplishes her mission: they translate what was an ecclesial event . Finally, in the fourth chapter, we shall analyse the conditions of credibility of the faith professed at Nicaea in a moment of fundamental theology, which will revisit the nature and identity of the Church as the authentic interpreter of the normative truth of the faith through the Magisterium, guardian of believers, especially the smallest and most vulnerable . 6 . ‘When a lamp is lit, it is not put under a bushel, but on the lampstand, and it shines for all who are in the house’ (Mt 5:15) . This light is Christ, ‘the light from light’ . To wonder at this light is also to find a new impetus to present this good news with even greater strength and creativity in the Holy Spirit . This light shines vividly on our times, which are plagued by violence and injustice, filled with uncertainty and a complex relationship with the truth, and in which faith and belonging to the Church seem to be under threat . The light is all the more vivid and radiant when it is shared by all Christians who can confess their faith in the same martýria, the same witness, in order to help draw the men and women of today to Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour:
What is essential, most beautiful, most attractive and at the same time most necessary for us is faith in Jesus Christ . Together, God willing, we will solemnly renew our faith in the forthcoming Jubilee, and each one of us is called to proclaim it to every man and woman on earth . This is the fundamental task of the Church . 9
9 FRANCIS, Address to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, 26 January 2024 .
CHAPTER 1
THE SYMBOL FOR SALVATION: DOXOLOGY AND THEOLOGY OF THE NICENE DOGMA
7 . To celebrate Nicaea on its seventeenth hundredth anniversary is, first and foremost, to wonder at the Symbol bequeathed to us by the Council and at the beauty of the gift offered in Jesus Christ, of which it is like an icon in words . We shall therefore begin our study of Nicaea by examining this Symbol in order to bring out the extraordinary immensity of the Trinitarian faith, Christology, and soteriology it expresses, as well as its anthropological and ecclesiological implications, before concluding with its ecumenical significance. This is, so to speak, an act of doxological theology . It does not aim to go into depth on each theme of this ‘concentrate’ of Christian faith that is the Creed – a task that would have been of little use and in any case impossible within the framework of the present work – but it does seek to draw out the richness of the statements and truths offered by the Nicene Creed from a dogmatic point of view, particularly those that present the greatest challenge and fruitfulness for this period in the history of the Church and the world, at the very moment when we are celebrating the anniversary of Nicaea .
1 . GRASPING THE IMMENSITY OF THE THREE DIVINE PERSONS WHO SAVE US: ‘GOD IS LOVE’ – INFINITELY
8 . The Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol is structured around the affirmation of the Trinitarian faith: We believe in one God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
the only-begotten, who was begotten of the Father before all ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not created, consubstantial with the Father, by whom all things were made; [ . . .]
And in the Holy Spirit, who is the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is co-adored and co-glorified, who has spoken through the prophets [ ] 10
1 .1 The greatness of the fatherhood of God the Father, foundation of the greatness of the Son and the Spirit
9. The starting-point of the Nicene faith is the affirmation of the unity of God . Christianity is fundamentally a monotheism, in continuity with the revelation made to Israel . However, the Symbol does not first of all posit ‘God’ as such, and even less so the one divine nature, but rather the first divine hypostasis, which is the Father . As ‘creator of heaven and earth’ (cf . Gen 1:1; Ne 9:6; Rev 10:6), he is Father of all things . 11 Moreover, Christ reveals God’s unheard-of intra-divine paternity, the foundation
10 We follow the Greek version of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol, unless otherwise specified.
11 The theme of God the Father as creator is very present in the early Fathers of the Church CLEMENT OF ROME says “Father and creator of the entire world” (To the Corinthians, 19, 2 and 35, 3: ed . by A . Jaubert, SCh 167, Cerf, Paris 1971, pp . 133 and 157; Eng trans by B D Ehrman, LCL 24, Harvard University Press, Cambridge [MA ] 2003, pp 71 and 97); JUSTIN OF NABLUS speaks of the “Father of all and Lord God” (Apology on behalf of Christians, 12, 9; 61, 3: ed . by Ch . Munier, SCh 507, Cerf, Paris 2006, pp 156 and 288-290; Eng trans by D Minnis – P Parvis, Oxford Early Christian Texts, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, pp 107 and 239); TATIAN THE SYRIAN also speaks of the “Constructor of spirits” and the “Father of the things perceptible and visible” (To the Greeks, IV, 3: ed by M Marcovich, PTS 43, De Gruyter, Berlin-New York 1995, p 12; Eng trans by M Whittaker, Oxford Early Christian Texts, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1982, p . 9) . Plato considers God to be “the author and father of the whole universe” (Timaeus, 28c; 41a: Eng . trans . by R .G . Bury, LCL 234, Harvard University Press, Cambridge [MA ] 1929, pp 30 and 40-41; see also EPICTETUS, Discourses I, 9, 7: Eng trans by W A Oldfather, LCL 131, Harvard University Press, Cambridge [MA .] 1925, p . 64) .
of his paternity ad extra . If Christ is the divine Son in a unique way, this implies that there is a generation in God: God the Father gives everything he has and everything he is . God is not a poor and selfish principle: he is sine invidia.12 His fatherhood, like his omnipotence, is the capacity to give himself entirely . This paternal gift is not merely one aspect among others, but defines the Father, who is entirely fatherhood . 13 God has always been a Father, and has never been a ‘solitary’ God . 14 This fatherhood of the One God is the first aspect of the Christian faith that provokes wonder and whose immensity we must celebrate by rediscovering Nicaea seventeen hundred years on . Our aim is to explore the implications of this for our understanding of the Trinitarian mystery .
10 . Faith in the Father bears witness to the superabundant fullness of God. The first article is not simply a definition of God, but first and foremost a praise that is part of the doxological tradition of the Jewish liturgy and the first Christian liturgies.15 The ‘allpowerful (pantokratōr)’ God echoes various Old Testament expressions, such as, for example, ‘Lord Sabaoth’, taken up in
12 Contrary to AESCHYLUS, who speaks of the ‘τῶν θεῶν φθόνος’, ‘gods’ high jealousy’ (The Persians, v 362: ed by M L West, Teubner, Stuttgart 1991, p 21; Eng trans . by P. Burian – A . Shapiro, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, p . 51), see THOMAS AQUINAS, Summa contra Gentiles, I, chp . 89, n . 12: Invidiam igitur in Deo impossibile est esse, etiam secundum suæ speciei rationem: non solum quia invidia species tristitiæ est, sed etiam quia tristatur de bono alterius, et sic accipit bonum alterius tanquam malum sibi.
13 HILARY OF POITIERS, On the Trinity, IX, 61 (ed . by P. Smulders, CCSL 62A, Brepols, Turnhout 1980, pp 440-441; Eng trans by S McKenna, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D .C . 1954, pp . 383-384) .
14 See HIPPOLYTUS, Against Noetus 10, 1-2 (ed and Eng trans by R Butterworth, Heythrop, London 1977, pp 68-69) TERTULLIAN, Against Praxeas, 5, 2: Ante omnia enim Deus erat solus, ipse sibi et mundus et locus et omnia. Solus autem quia nihil aliud extrinsecus præter illum. Ceterum ne tunc quidem solus; habebat enim secum quam habebat in semetipso, rationem suam (ed by A Kroymann – E Evans, CCSL 2, Brepols, Turnhout 1954, p 1163; Eng trans by P Holmes, Lighthouse Publishing, Savage 2018, p . 13) .
15 See the Martyrdom of Saint Polycarp (ed by P Th Camelot, SCh 10, Cerf, Paris 1958, pp 241-275); JUSTIN, Apology on behalf of Christians, 63 (ed by Ch Munier, pp 294301; Eng . trans . by D . Minnis - P. Parvis, pp . 245-249) .
the New Testament as part of the heavenly liturgies (Rev 4:8; 11:17; 15:3; 16:14; 19:6) .
11 . The revelation in Christ of the fatherhood of God also manifests the immensity of the Son and of the Spirit If God the Father gives everything but his fatherhood, this means that the Son and the Spirit are fully equal to the Father in their divinity . In the Symbol, the Son is ‘one’, he is ‘Lord’ (Kyrios, which translates the Tetragrammaton in the Septuagint), ‘Son of God’, ‘the only begotten’ (ho monogenēs) in the Father’s intimacy, ‘God from God’, ‘light from light’, ‘true God from true God’, consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father . We should note, for example, that in the Fourth Gospel, the Son is called theos several times: Jn 1:1; 5:18; 20:28 . The Son is begotten ‘before all ages,’ which means in the Symbol that he is co-eternal with the Father (cf . Jn 1:1) . This is aimed at the positions of Arius, according to whom ‘there was a time when [the Son] was not’, ‘before he was born he was not’, and ‘he came to be from what was not’,16 or ‘the Son is from nothing’ by the ‘will and counsel’ of the Father . 17 This is why the Son can be confessed as the one ‘through whom all things were made’ (cf . 1 Cor 8:6; Jn 1:3) . God is so great that the Father is able to beget another who is equal to him in divinity . God exceeds all that we can conceive or imagine, because his Unity assumes a real plurality that does not rupture the Unity .
12. The Father also gives everything to the Spirit, who is defined in terms specific and reserved to the divinity: ‘Spirit’, ‘Holy’ and ‘Lord’ (once again recalling the Tetragrammaton) . Just as the Father is the creator and the Son is the Word through whom the Father creates all things, the Spirit is professed to be the ‘giver of life’ . Just as the Son is begotten of the Father, the Spirit ‘proceeds from the Father’ . The statements on the Spirit intentionally echo
16 See the anathema directed against Arius at the end of the Nicene symbol (DH, 126) .
17 ARIUS, Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, 5 (Athanasius Werke, III/1, 1, ed by HG . Opitz, De Gruyter, Berlin-Leipzig 1934, p . 3 = Urkunde 1; Eng . trans . from: Fontes Nicænæ Synodi, p . 41) .