At the Synodal Divine Liturgy
celebrated Sunday, June 1st 2025, at the Metropolitan Church of Athens,
presided over by His Beatitude Archbishop Hieronymos of Athens and All
Greece, for the 1700th anniversary of the convening of the First
Ecumenical Synod in 325 AD in Nicaea of Bithynia, His Eminence
Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou, Vice-President
of the Permanent Holy Synod, spoke on the topic: “The First Ecumenical
Synod and Its Significance.”
The First Ecumenical Synod and Its Significance
By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
The Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod, during this paschal period, leading up to the feast of Pentecost, is a wonderful one and rightly the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece determined to celebrate it magnificently. This is done with a Synodal Divine Liturgy, with hymns and God-befitting speeches, with a convocation of the Hierarchy of the Church of Greece and with events befitting this great feast, with the completion of 1,700 years since the convocation of the First Ecumenical Synod, which was called “Holy” and “Great” and became the model for the other Ecumenical Synods that followed, in which we, the Bishops, gave a confession that we will abide by their decisions.
This brief eucharistic homily, by decision of the Holy Synod, also falls within this framework.
1. The Significance of the First Ecumenical Synod
The First Ecumenical Synod was convened by Constantine the Great in Nicaea of Bithynia, and in fact in the Great Hall of the Palace of Nicaea. It began on May 20, 325, preliminarily, and then officially with the presence of Emperor Constantine on June 14, and ended on August 25, 325, i.e. it lasted about two months.
There were 318 Fathers present, according to the testimony of Athanasius the Great, who was present as a young deacon, accompanying his Elder, Archbishop Alexander of Alexandria. He writes: “For this reason the Synod at Nicaea became ecumenical, with three hundred and eighteen bishops assembled” (Athanasius, works 10, EPE, Thessaloniki 1976, p. 122). And elsewhere he writes: “There were more or less three hundred” Bishops (Athanasius, works 9, EPE, Thessaloniki 1976, p. 32).
The presidents of the Synod were Eustathios of Antioch and Alexander of Alexandria, and perhaps also Saint Hosios of Cordova, who formed a kind of presidency with Constantine the Great as the main president. (John N. Karmiris, The Dogmatic and Symbolic Monuments of the Orthodox Catholic Church, Volume I, p. 115)
The work of the Synod was divinely inspired and moved in two areas.
First, in the theological part (in the terms), as seen in the first articles of the Symbol of Faith. At the beginning, the Symbol of Faith denies Gnosticism, which maintained that the world was created by a lesser God, the Logos, and therefore explained the evil that exists in it. It then condemns the heresy of Arius, who denied the divinity of the Word of God, teaching that the Son is the first creation between God and matter, that He is “of a different essence” from the Father, that He is “liable to change” and ignorant of the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is also “a second created power and the first creation through the Son” (John N. Karmiris, The Dogmatic and Symbolic Monuments of the Orthodox Catholic Church, Volume I, Athens, 1960, pp. 53-56).
The second work of the First Ecumenical Synod were the canons, which regulated matters relating to the unity of the Church. Since the theological decision set the boundaries between the Orthodox faith and heresy, the canons regulated various issues that determine the unity of the Church.
The First Ecumenical Synod issued twenty sacred canons regulating canonical matters, such as the introduction of the Metropolitan System into the Church, when Eparchial Synods are convened, for the ordination of Bishops, for the catechumens and Paulianists, for the apostates, for the uncommuned, for “not bowing the knee on Sunday and Pentecost,” etc.
Regarding the issue of when Pascha will be celebrated, it is not mentioned in the canons of the Ecumenical Synod, but is recorded in various historical sources (John N. Karmiris, The Dogmatic and Symbolic Monuments of the Orthodox Catholic Church, Volume I, p. 121) as it is also described in the letter of Constantine the Great, which he sent to “the Churches and Bishops of the Holy and Great Synod of Nicaea”, where he writes that “regarding the most holy day of Pascha, the request made was deemed to be well-founded by common opinion, and on one day he assigned to all Christians the saving feast to celebrate the most holy Pascha” (Proceedings of the Holy and Ecumenical Synods, Volume 1, published by the Kalyva of the Holy Forerunner of the Holy Skete of Saint Anna, Mount Athos, pp. 193/281-194/282).
Matthew Vlastaris in his “Constitution” makes a very extensive analysis “on Holy Pascha” and records the four “determinations”, of which the first two are determined by the canons of the Holy Apostles (7) and the others “from unwritten tradition”. First, it should be celebrated after the vernal equinox, second, it should not be celebrated together with the Jews, third, it should be celebrated after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, and fourth, it should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon of the vernal equinox (Rallis and Potlis, Constitution of Divine and Sacred Canons, Vol. VI, ed. Vasiliou Rigopoulou, p. 420). And Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite has a very insightful commentary on the celebration of Pascha (Pedalion, ed. Papadimitriou, Athens 1970, pp. 8-11).
From this it is clear that the boundaries of the Church are specific, and those who are within these boundaries are members of the Church, while those outside these boundaries are outside the Church. But even those who live within the Church, confessing the Orthodox faith, must know “how to behave in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).
This is important, because we hear from many sides the view that the Church decides who its members are and does not decide for those outside it. However, members of the Church are those who confess the same faith, strive to observe the Holy Canons, and those who are outside the boundaries determined by the limits-dogmas of the Ecumenical Synods are heretics. The First Ecumenical Synod, as well as the following ones, clearly set both the limits and the conditions for truth and error.
2. The Two Theological Movements in the First Ecumenical Synod
What is important and noteworthy, as we study what happened in the First Ecumenical Synod, is that two theological movements were expressed in it, one is the philosophical-theological movements of the Arians that was condemned, and the other is the empirical movement that was expressed by the Holy Fathers and was based on the Revelation of the Word of God to the Prophets, Apostles and Saints, and is the Orthodox one. This also shows the prerequisites of Orthodox dogma and ecclesiastical life.
To see this, we must consider that in the issue that the First Ecumenical Synod addressed regarding the Divinity of the Son and Word of God, with its two interpretations, one philosophical and the other theological-empirical, it must be noted that a thorough discussion preceded it, and in fact the decisions of the First Ecumenical Synod were based on the decisions of the Synod of Antioch in 268/269 AD.
When the Apostles left Palestine and the Christian world entered areas where Greek philosophy, especially Aristotelian philosophy, prevailed, a debate immediately began about who He was who was revealed to the Prophets of the Old Testament and whether He was uncreated or created.
In Antioch of Syria, which was a center of studies of Greek philosophy, its Bishop Paul of Samosata denied the divinity of the Word, using Aristotelian philosophy. Then a Synod was convened in 268/269 in Antioch, which condemned Paul of Samosata and expressed the truth that all the revelations of God in the Old Testament were revelations of the Word without flesh. And this Pre-Incarnate Word became man, therefore Christ is God. The important thing is that this Synod of Antioch is the foundation of both the First Ecumenical Synod and the subsequent ones, and provided the material for the theology of the Fathers (George Siskos, The Person of Christ in the Tradition of the Church [1st -3rd century], The Synod of Antioch of 268/269 AD Ostracon, July 2020). The views of the condemned Paul of Samosata were continued, somewhat differently, by Lucian and then by Arius.
Thus, already from the 3rd century AD, these two ways of theology appeared in the Church, the philosophical one that resulted in heresies, and the empirical one that is the decisions of the Ecumenical Synods.
This is evident from the members who formed the First Ecumenical Synod. On the one hand, there were Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church, among whom were Athanasius the Great, Saint Spyridon, Saint Nicholas and other confessors of the faith. In fact, Saint Germanos of Constantinople, in his work “On the Holy Synods and Heresies,” writes: “Many of those gathered bishops who were confessors of the faith, were tormented during the persecutions by impious and lawless kings, and some had their feet, their eyes, and other parts of their bodies cut off, for their faith and confession in Christ.” And on the other side were Arius and some of his advocates, the Bishops, about seventeen in number, to whom must be added philosophers and rhetoricians with the sophist Asterios (John N. Karmiris, The Dogmatic and Symbolic Monuments of the Orthodox Catholic Church, Volume I, pp. 114-115).
Therefore, from the members who formed the First Ecumenical Synod, these two theological movements are visible, namely the theology based on the Revelation-Manifestation of the Pre-Incarnate Word of God to the Prophets and of the Incarnate Word to the Apostles and Saints, and the theology based on philosophy that is outside the Orthodox tradition, and this is what must be particularly emphasized.
The protagonist in the First Ecumenical Synod, Athanasius the Great, in the texts he compiled after the end of the Synod, refers to these issues. From his four texts “Against the Arians” we derive interesting information about the background of the Arian heresy.
At the beginning of the first text “Against the Arians” it is written that the heresies which "have apostatized from the truth" have devised "madness" and their impiety "has long been evident to all." These heretics have distanced themselves from us and "neither has there been such a phronema, nor is there one now." One of these heresies is "the last", the heresy of Arius, which has been interpreted as a precursor to the Antichrist, being "deceitful" and "cunning", as it has noted that the earlier "sister" heresies were condemned, "it pretends, cloaked in the words of the Scriptures, as its father is the devil", it is adorned with scriptural phrases and attempts again to enter the paradise of the Church "filling itself as a Christian", in order to deceive some who think according to Christ "by the probability of absurdities". And further down he writes: “Why do the heretics of heresy, speaking as if they were saying nothing bad, babble like that?” (Athanasius, works 2, EPE, Thessaloniki 1974, pp. 28-30).
It is obvious that Athanasius the Great is referring to heretics who were condemned by the Synod, and that the “Arian heresy”, while using the philosophical way of thinking, tries to clothe itself with biblical passages. He refers to Paul of Samosata, whose teaching is not of the Church (Athanasius, Works 2, ed. an. pp. 102,1. 136,15. 250, 21. 334,17). In fact, at one point, referring to the Arians, he writes: “This is the phronema of Samosata, which you also believe in power, but you deny in name only because of men” (Athanasius, Works 3, EPE, Thessaloniki 1975, p. 150).
From the above it can be deduced that in what preceded the First Ecumenical Synod, in what took place during it, and in what followed, these two theological tendencies are clearly distinguished. The first was based on the interpretation of the Holy Trinity with philosophical reflections, which came, sometimes from Plato, sometimes from Aristotle, therefore from classical metaphysics, and the second was based on the empirical teaching of the Prophets, Apostles and Fathers. The phrase of the Creed that the Son and Word of God is “light from light” is characteristic. This clearly refers to the revelation of the Pre-Incarnate Word to the Prophets and of the Incarnate Word to the Apostles and the Saints in the Light. Thus, philosophical reflection clashed with the empirical-revelatory theology of the saints.
And this is a lesson for all of us contemporary Bishops and theologians, who must theologize according to the words of Saint Gregory the Theologian, who fought for the ratification of the decisions of the First Ecumenical Synod “as fishermen, not Aristotelians” (Saint Gregory the Theologian, Works 1, EPE, p. 378), that is, according to the Revelation of God given to the fisherman-Apostles and not according to those who follow the Aristotelian-philosophical way of thinking in the mystery of the Holy Trinity and in the mystery of the divine Economy, the incarnation of the Son and Word of God. This must be the most important conclusion from today's feast of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod and this Synodal Divine Liturgy.
And this is connected with the fact that, unfortunately, today rationalism, logicocracy, dominates everywhere, even in Christianity. It is understood that we are not against sound reason and logic, but against rationalism and logicocracy, which overlook the God-man Christ and the deified man and elevate man, even to the superman and the meta-man.
Pray, Your Beatitude and Master, and Your Most Eminent Brother Hierarchs, Members of the Holy Synod, that we may not be mere celebrants of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod, but rather “receivers, guardians and transmitters” of both the preconditions of the Ecumenical Synods and their decisions.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
