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Course 12 · Lesson 3.3

The Cappadocian Fathers and the Council of Constantinople (381)

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 12 outline

Module 1: The Apostolic Fathers and the Early Apologists

  1. Who the Apostolic Fathers were: Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and the Didache
  2. Church order, worship and martyrdom in the second century
  3. Why Christians wrote apologies: charges, persecution and public defense
  4. Justin Martyr, philosophy and the Logos

Module 2: Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen

  1. Irenaeus against the Gnostics: the rule of faith and apostolic succession
  2. Tertullian and the beginnings of Latin theology
  3. Origen: biblical scholarship, allegory and speculation
  4. Heresy and orthodoxy: the scholarly debate about early diversity

Module 3: Creeds and Councils: Nicaea to Chalcedon

  1. From baptismal confession to creed
  2. Arius, the Council of Nicaea (325) and Athanasius
  3. The Cappadocian Fathers and the Council of Constantinople (381)
  4. Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451): one Christ, two natures
  5. The seven councils and how the churches receive them

Module 4: Augustine, Chrysostom and the Desert

  1. Augustine: life, conversion and the Confessions
  2. Augustine on grace, the Pelagian controversy and the City of God
  3. John Chrysostom: preacher, pastor and critic of wealth
  4. The Desert Fathers and Mothers: Anthony, Macarius and Amma Syncletica

Module 5: The Medieval Church and Scholasticism

  1. The medieval setting: monasteries, cathedral schools and universities
  2. Anselm and the method of scholasticism
  3. Thomas Aquinas: life and the structure of the Summa Theologiae
  4. Aquinas on faith, reason, nature and grace
  5. East and West: the growing divide and the schism of 1054

Module 6: The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

  1. Luther and the question of justification
  2. Zwingli, Calvin and the Reformed tradition
  3. The Radical Reformation and the English Reformation
  4. The Council of Trent and Catholic reform
  5. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant readings of the Reformation

Module 7: Modern Theology and Tracing a Doctrine

  1. The Enlightenment and its challenges to inherited doctrine
  2. Schleiermacher, liberal theology and Karl Barth
  3. Vatican II, Orthodox renewal and the evangelical and Pentecostal movements
  4. How to trace a doctrine: development, change and corruption

All courses

Program / Course 12: Patristics and Historical Theology / Lesson 3.3

What you will learn

  • Name the three Cappadocian Fathers and say what each is known for.
  • Explain the formula of one ousia and three hypostaseis and why it helped end the Nicene dispute.
  • Describe the controversy over the Holy Spirit and how the Council of Constantinople answered it.
  • Separate what is known from what is debated about the origin of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

The big idea

After Nicaea, the question was how to say that Father, Son and Spirit are one God and yet really distinct. Three friends and relatives from Cappadocia, in what is now central Turkey, gave the answer that most Christians still use: one being (ousia) in three persons (hypostaseis). They also defended the full divinity of the Holy Spirit. The Council of Constantinople in 381 confirmed the Nicene faith and added a fuller statement about the Spirit.

Key terms

Ousia
Greek for being or substance. What God is, shared by Father, Son and Spirit.
Hypostasis
Greek for a concrete individual existence. The Cappadocians used it for each of the three: Father, Son and Spirit. It is usually translated person.
Pneumatomachi
A Greek name meaning fighters against the Spirit. It describes those who denied that the Holy Spirit is fully God.
Doxology
A short formula of praise to God, such as Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
Procession
The way the Spirit comes forth from the Father. John 15:26 says the Spirit proceeds from the Father.
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed
The creed recited today in most churches, usually called the Nicene Creed. It is based on the creed of 325 with additions.
Apollinarianism
The teaching of Apollinaris that Christ had no human mind, only the divine Word in its place. The council of 381 rejected it.

Background

The Council of Nicaea had stated that the Son is of one substance with the Father, but the word substance was not clearly separated from the word hypostasis, which could also mean substance. Some thought that three hypostaseis meant three gods, and some thought that one hypostasis meant that Father and Son were the same person. Confusion about vocabulary kept good-willed people apart for decades.

The Cappadocian Fathers cleared up this confusion. They were Basil of Caesarea (about 330 to 379), his friend Gregory of Nazianzus (about 329 to 390) and Basil’s younger brother Gregory of Nyssa (about 335 to 395). They were educated in Greek philosophy and rhetoric and were also monks and bishops. Their sister Macrina, remembered for her holiness, helped shape the family’s faith. All three worked for the Nicene position at a time when emperors, especially Valens, favored its opponents.

In 378, Valens died in battle, and the next emperor, Theodosius, supported the Nicene faith. In 381 he called a council at Constantinople. Roughly 150 bishops from the East attended.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: One ousia, three hypostaseis

Basil offered a way to separate the two words. Ousia is what is common, like the word human, which names what all people share. Hypostasis is what is particular, like the individual Peter or Paul. In God, the common ousia is the one divine being. The three hypostaseis are Father, Son and Spirit, distinguished by their relations: the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds.

Critics have long pointed out that the analogy with three human beings can sound like three gods. Gregory of Nyssa wrote a short treatise explaining why Christians do not speak of three gods, because the divine activity is one: all three act together as one. The Cappadocians also insisted that God’s being is beyond human understanding and that analogies have limits.

Step 2: The Holy Spirit

By the 360s, some Christians who accepted the divinity of the Son still held that the Spirit was a created servant. Basil wrote On the Holy Spirit around 375 to answer them. He pointed to baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit (Matthew 28:19) and to the church’s prayer of praise, and argued that to praise the Spirit together with the Father and the Son shows that the Spirit shares in the glory of God.

Basil was careful. He did not use the plain phrase the Spirit is God in every setting, partly out of pastoral caution toward those still uncertain. Gregory of Nazianzus, in his Theological Orations, was bolder and said it plainly. The difference of approach is a good example of two ways of defending the same truth.

Step 3: The Council of Constantinople, 381

The council confirmed the Nicene faith and condemned several errors, including the denial of the Spirit’s divinity and Apollinarianism. Gregory of Nazianzus, then bishop of Constantinople, presided for a time and then resigned in the midst of disputes among the bishops, leaving the council to continue. A canon of the council also gave the see of Constantinople a place of honor second to Rome, which later became a point of dispute between East and West.

The council is counted as the second ecumenical council by the Catholic and Orthodox churches, even though only Eastern bishops attended. Its status came from the later acceptance of its decisions by the whole church, an idea taken up in a later lesson.

Step 4: The creed of Constantinople

The creed now called Nicene is also named after Constantinople. It keeps the main statements of 325 and expands the third article on the Spirit: the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets. The earliest sure evidence of this text comes from the Council of Chalcedon in 451.

Whether the bishops of 381 themselves composed it, or adopted an existing baptismal creed, is debated. Most scholars treat the question as unsettled. The fact that Chalcedon read it as the faith of the 150 fathers is not in doubt.

Step 5: What was left open

The creed says the Spirit proceeds from the Father. In the West, a later addition, the Filioque (and from the Son), became a major issue between the Eastern and Western churches. The Cappadocians themselves said the Father is the source of the Son and the Spirit, and Orthodox theology often appeals to that. A later lesson takes up the dispute.

  1. Why was it so hard to find agreement when both sides said they believed in one God?
  2. What does the difference between common and particular teach about the words ousia and hypostasis?
  3. What are the limits of a human analogy for God?
  4. Why would Basil be cautious in how he named the Spirit?
  5. What does the way a church praises God tell you about what it believes?
  6. Why might the whole church’s acceptance matter for a council?

Examples

Peter, Paul and humanity

Basil points out that Peter, Paul and Barnabas are three, yet share one humanity. Their common nature is not three natures. He uses this to explain how three can share one divine being, while warning that the analogy is imperfect, since the three persons of God act together as one.

A doxology in dispute

In some churches, believers prayed glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Others prayed glory to the Father with the Son together with the Holy Spirit. Basil’s treatise argues that both forms are right and that the second shows the equality of the three.

A bishop who resigned

Gregory of Nazianzus, a shy man who loved retirement, was made bishop in the capital during the controversy, and later left the office in frustration. His writings, called the Theological Orations, are still read as masterpieces.

Different perspectives

Orthodox

Orthodox Christians revere all three Cappadocians as saints. Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus, with John Chrysostom, are honored together as the Three Holy Hierarchs. Their formula is the standard Trinitarian language of the East, and they stress the Father as the source of the Godhead. Orthodox teaching holds that the Creed of 381 must be said without the Filioque.

Catholic

The Catholic Church counts Basil and both Gregorys as Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and accepts Constantinople I as an ecumenical council. The Latin church recites the creed with the Filioque, which it understands as consistent with the faith of the Fathers. Catholic theology sees a harmony between Cappadocian and Augustinian language.

Protestant

Protestant churches generally accept the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as a faithful summary of Scripture. Many Western Protestants retain the Filioque. Recent discussion among Protestants has sometimes asked whether the Cappadocian emphasis on the Father as source should be better represented.

Scholarly views

Historians debate how much was due to the Cappadocians personally, how much to political change after 378, and how the creed of 381 came to exist. They also debate whether Cappadocian language is truly different from Augustine’s, with some saying the differences are real and others that they are a difference of emphasis.

Why it matters

The way Christians speak of the Trinity still rests on the work of these three men. Their achievement was less to invent a new idea than to settle the words so that Christians could stop talking past each other. That is a lesson for any age: sometimes an old quarrel ends when people learn to use the same words in the same way.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: The Council of Constantinople wrote the Nicene Creed as it is used today.

Correction: The creed is based on Nicaea, but whether the council of 381 composed the longer form is debated. It is first clearly attested at Chalcedon in 451.

Misunderstanding: Three persons means three gods.

Correction: The Cappadocians denied this. They taught one divine being, one will and one activity, shared by the three.

Misunderstanding: The Spirit’s divinity was never in question before 381.

Correction: Many believers did not clearly state it, and a group denied it. The controversy over the Spirit was a live issue in the 360s and 370s.

Misunderstanding: The Cappadocians used Greek philosophy to replace the Bible.

Correction: They argued from Scripture and worship and used philosophical terms to clarify, while insisting that God goes beyond human concepts.

Knowledge check

Who were the Cappadocian Fathers?

They were Basil of Caesarea, his friend Gregory of Nazianzus and his brother Gregory of Nyssa, from central Turkey in the fourth century. They were bishops, theologians and monks who clarified the language of the Trinity and defended the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

What is the difference between ousia and hypostasis in their usage?

Ousia names what is common, the one divine being shared by all three. Hypostasis names what is particular, the individual existence of Father, Son or Spirit. By separating the words, they showed how God can be one and three without contradiction.

What did the Council of Constantinople decide about the Spirit?

It confirmed the Nicene faith and rejected the view that the Spirit is a creature. The creed associated with it describes the Spirit as Lord and giver of life, proceeding from the Father, worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son.

Why is the origin of the longer creed debated?

The earliest clear evidence for the text comes from the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Scholars disagree about whether the bishops of 381 drafted it themselves or adopted an existing baptismal creed. All agree that Chalcedon accepted it as the faith of 381.

Think it through

  1. Have you ever argued with someone who meant the same thing you did but used different words?
  2. What might it mean to say that God is beyond human understanding and yet can be spoken of?
  3. How does singing or praying to the Spirit affect what a church believes about the Spirit?
  4. Why do you think Gregory of Nazianzus resigned?

Independent assignment

A glossary of Trinitarian words

In your notebook, write a glossary of six words from this lesson and the previous one (ousia, hypostasis, homoousios, begotten, proceeds, doxology). Define each in your own words in one or two sentences and give an example of how it is used in the Nicene Creed or in a prayer. Aim for 350 to 500 words.

Further study