At the Synodal Divine Liturgy celebrated on Sunday, June 1st 2025, at the Sacred Metropolitan Church of Athens, presided over by His Beatitude Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, Hieronymos, for the 1700th anniversary of the convening of the First Ecumenical Synod in 325 in Nicaea of Bithynia, His Eminence Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou, Hierotheos, Vice-President of the Permanent Holy Synod, spoke on the topic: “The First Ecumenical Synod and Its Significance.”
The Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod, during this Easter period, leading up to the feast of Pentecost, is wonderful, and rightly the Sacred Synod of the Church of Greece determined to celebrate it magnificently. This is done with a Synodal Divine Liturgy, with hymns and speeches meet for God, 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 Sacred 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 “in the Royal Palace”, 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 Athanasios 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.” And elsewhere he writes: “There were more or less three hundred” Bishops.
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 Records 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 are the terms (horoi), 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” (eterousios) from the Father, that he is “subject to change” (treptos) 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 Records 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 diocesan Synods are convened, for the ordination of Bishops, for the apostate, for the uncommunicated, for “not bowing the knee on Sunday and Pentecost,” etc.
Regarding the issue of when Easter 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 Records 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 "concerning the inquiry regarding the most holy day of Pascha, it was deemed by common consent to be appropriate that, on a single day, all Christians everywhere should celebrate the saving feast of the most sacred Pascha" (Proceedings of the Holy and Ecumenical Synods, Volume 1, published by the Monastery of the Holy Forerunner, Holy Skete of Saint Anne, Mount Athos, pp. 193/281-194/282).
Matthew Blastares, in his "Syntagma," 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 Easter (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 quarters 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 terms/dogmas of the Ecumenical Synods are heretics. The First Ecumenical Synod, as well as the following ones, clearly set both the boundaries 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 at the First Ecumenical Synod, is that two theological movements were expressed in it, one is the philosophical-theological movement 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 Council 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 which resulted in heresies, and the empirical one which 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 Athanasios 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 the bishops who had assembled there were found to be confessors of the faith, having been mutilated in the persecutions by impious and lawless rulers—some having the sinews of their feet cut, others their eyes, and still others different parts of the body—on account of their faith in Christ and their confession thereof.” 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, including the sophist Asterios (John N. Karmiris, The Dogmatic and Symbolic Records 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, Athanasios 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” he writes that the heresies that “apostatized from the truth” invented a “mania” and their impiety “has long been manifest to all.” These heretics have distanced themselves from us and “the opinion of such has neither been nor is with us now.” One of these heresies is “the last one,” the heresy of Arius, which was interpreted as a precursor of the Antichrist, is “cunning” and “deceitful,” because it observed that the older “sister” heresies were condemned, “she acts hypocritically, cloaked in the words of the Scriptures, as her father the devil,” it dresses in sayings of Holy Scripture and tries again to enter the paradise of the Church “approaching it as a Christian,” in order to deceive some who think according to Christ “in the possibility of absurdities.” And further down he writes: “For what resemblance have they observed between heresy and pious faith that they babble as if saying nothing evil about the former?”
It is obvious that Athanasios 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 it with passages of Holy Scripture. He refers to Paul of Samosata, whose teaching is not of the Church. In fact, at one point, referring to the Arians, he writes: “‘Indeed, this is the mindset of Samosata: in regard to power, you also think along the same lines, but in regard to the name alone, you reject it because of men.”
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, "in the manner of the fishermen, not of Aristotle,” 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 understandable that we are not against correct 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 transhuman.
May you pray, Your Beatitude, and Your Most Venerable Brother Hierarchs, Members of the Sacred 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.
The Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod, during this Easter period, leading up to the feast of Pentecost, is wonderful, and rightly the Sacred Synod of the Church of Greece determined to celebrate it magnificently. This is done with a Synodal Divine Liturgy, with hymns and speeches meet for God, 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 Sacred 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 “in the Royal Palace”, 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 Athanasios 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.” And elsewhere he writes: “There were more or less three hundred” Bishops.
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 Records 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 are the terms (horoi), 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” (eterousios) from the Father, that he is “subject to change” (treptos) 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 Records 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 diocesan Synods are convened, for the ordination of Bishops, for the apostate, for the uncommunicated, for “not bowing the knee on Sunday and Pentecost,” etc.
Regarding the issue of when Easter 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 Records 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 "concerning the inquiry regarding the most holy day of Pascha, it was deemed by common consent to be appropriate that, on a single day, all Christians everywhere should celebrate the saving feast of the most sacred Pascha" (Proceedings of the Holy and Ecumenical Synods, Volume 1, published by the Monastery of the Holy Forerunner, Holy Skete of Saint Anne, Mount Athos, pp. 193/281-194/282).
Matthew Blastares, in his "Syntagma," 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 Easter (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 quarters 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 terms/dogmas of the Ecumenical Synods are heretics. The First Ecumenical Synod, as well as the following ones, clearly set both the boundaries 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 at the First Ecumenical Synod, is that two theological movements were expressed in it, one is the philosophical-theological movement 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 Council 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 which resulted in heresies, and the empirical one which 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 Athanasios 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 the bishops who had assembled there were found to be confessors of the faith, having been mutilated in the persecutions by impious and lawless rulers—some having the sinews of their feet cut, others their eyes, and still others different parts of the body—on account of their faith in Christ and their confession thereof.” 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, including the sophist Asterios (John N. Karmiris, The Dogmatic and Symbolic Records 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, Athanasios 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” he writes that the heresies that “apostatized from the truth” invented a “mania” and their impiety “has long been manifest to all.” These heretics have distanced themselves from us and “the opinion of such has neither been nor is with us now.” One of these heresies is “the last one,” the heresy of Arius, which was interpreted as a precursor of the Antichrist, is “cunning” and “deceitful,” because it observed that the older “sister” heresies were condemned, “she acts hypocritically, cloaked in the words of the Scriptures, as her father the devil,” it dresses in sayings of Holy Scripture and tries again to enter the paradise of the Church “approaching it as a Christian,” in order to deceive some who think according to Christ “in the possibility of absurdities.” And further down he writes: “For what resemblance have they observed between heresy and pious faith that they babble as if saying nothing evil about the former?”
It is obvious that Athanasios 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 it with passages of Holy Scripture. He refers to Paul of Samosata, whose teaching is not of the Church. In fact, at one point, referring to the Arians, he writes: “‘Indeed, this is the mindset of Samosata: in regard to power, you also think along the same lines, but in regard to the name alone, you reject it because of men.”
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, "in the manner of the fishermen, not of Aristotle,” 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 understandable that we are not against correct 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 transhuman.
May you pray, Your Beatitude, and Your Most Venerable Brother Hierarchs, Members of the Sacred 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.
