Council of Constantinople

The event

More than half a century after the Council of Nicaea, the theological controversy over the nature of Christ (and, increasingly, the Holy Spirit) had continued to divide the Eastern church through periods of Arian-favoring imperial policy. The accession of Theodosius I, a firm Nicene Christian, as Eastern emperor in 379 shifted imperial support decisively back toward Nicene orthodoxy.

Theodosius convened a council of Eastern bishops in Constantinople in 381 (Western bishops were not present in significant numbers, and the council was not initially regarded as fully "ecumenical" in the way Nicaea had been, though it later achieved that status). The council reaffirmed the Nicene formula regarding the Son and expanded the creed's treatment of the Holy Spirit, affirming the Spirit's full divinity against a group known as the Pneumatomachians ("Spirit-fighters") who denied it — producing the expanded text now generally known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

The council also addressed church governance, notably granting the see of Constantinople a rank of honor "second only to Rome," reflecting the city's status as the new imperial capital — a decision that planted seeds of later tension with Rome over the relative authority of the two sees.

Shortly before the council, in 380, Theodosius had already issued the Edict of Thessalonica, formally establishing Nicene Christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire, so the 381 council effectively consolidated, at both the theological and political level, the triumph of Nicene orthodoxy after decades of contested imperial religious policy.

Other witnesses

• Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381 text)

Further reading

• Catholic Encyclopedia (1913): First Council of Constantinople
• Wikisource: The Nicene Creed — primary source, including the 381 additions
• Christian History Magazine 51: Heresy in the Early Church — free full issue