The First Ecumenical Synod: Description and Significance
By St. Nektarios, Metropolitan of Pentapolis
By St. Nektarios, Metropolitan of Pentapolis
Arius
Arius was born in Libya around the middle of the third century A.D. He studied in Alexandria and became a follower of Origen, of Meletius, and of Lucian the Presbyter, head of the Antiochian School. His broad education, his philosophical training, and his skill in the knowledge of the divine Scriptures made him very well known, while his grave appearance, his somewhat proud manners, his imposing stature, and his handsome countenance inspired in all respect and sympathy. At first, after leaving Meletius, he was ordained deacon of the Church of Alexandria by its Bishop Peter.
From this period already there appears the strength of his character and his persistence in his convictions. Later, when Peter of Alexandria denounced the associates of Meletius and did not accept their baptism, Arius rose up for the first time, reproaching what had been done and protesting against this measure of his Bishop. Consequently, he was expelled from Alexandria. But afterwards, when the mild-mannered Achillas succeeded the deceased Peter, Arius, having asked forgiveness, was received back into the Church, and in the year 312 was ordained Presbyter.
The Christian dogma concerning the Triune God, which from its very appearance had scandalized Jews and Greeks, and which from the middle of the second century had produced the heresy of the Monarchians and caused many disputes, also swept away the unrestrainable spirit of Arius. His mind, finding difficulty with the unsurpassable barrier of the dogma and seeking the freedom beloved by the intellect — a freedom that leaps beyond all things and subjects all things to its own authority — broke the bonds of the dogma in order that in this freedom it might enter into the kingdoms of the mysteries and investigate them and, if possible, touch them and bring them under its own comprehension.
Arius, having carefully studied the theories of both the Alexandrian and Antiochian Schools, adopted from them what suited his own principles and formed a theory of his own, taking from Origen the subordination of the Logos, and from Lucian the denial of the Homoousion. In order to spread and establish his teaching, he composed various songs and poems and distributed them among the people. And his teaching found many followers both among the clergy and among the people, some embracing it as correct, while others regarded it as harmless.
Athanasios
Among the clergy surrounding the Bishop of Alexandria there grew and gained strength a certain young Deacon, small in body and insignificant in stature, yet containing within a small and weak body a fiery soul, the flashes of which shone forth from his eyes. This twenty-year-old youth, who was destined to fill the Christian world with his rare virtues, was Athanasios. A profound mind, powerful reasoning, broad learning, a flourishing style of speech, and incomparable rhetorical skill adorned him and made him a mighty combatant in this important conflict.
Athanasios, possessing marvelous sharpness of intellect, an exceedingly practical spirit, enviable eloquence, and irresistible boldness, understood from the very beginning what was at stake and immediately perceived the abyss into which our Faith was in danger of falling. Seeing the instability of his opponent’s character, his changeability and wavering disposition, Athanasios became convinced that Arius — whether not daring to explain himself clearly or not fully conscious of the ultimate conclusion of his own reasoning — nevertheless tended toward denying the divine nature of the Savior and reducing His preaching to the level of a human doctrine, delivering it stripped of the armor of divine revelation to the attacks of philosophical thought.
Therefore he rushed into the struggle with great confidence and in the end emerged from it victorious in triumph, dedicating his whole life and all his spiritual and bodily powers to the defense of the Incarnate Logos with such fearless courage that he was later rightly called “Great, pillar and supporter of the Church of Christ.”
Constantine the Great
Divine Providence, in Its care for the Church of Christ, had entrusted the scepters of the vast Roman Empire to the truly Great and Equal-to-the-Apostles Constantine, in order that he might save the storm-tossed ship of the Church from the tempest. Distressed at the schism threatening the Church, he first sent a letter to Alexandria addressed both to Alexander the Bishop and to Arius, exhorting them to lay down the weapons of controversy and, being reconciled, to restore the peace of the Church. But the voice of the Emperor’s wisdom and moderation was destined not to be heard. For the bearer of this peace-making letter, the Bishop of Cordoba, upon arriving in Alexandria, sided with Bishop Alexander and condemned Arius. Arius in turn wrote a somewhat insolent letter to the Emperor, complaining that suspension had been imposed upon him by those mentioned above (Eusebius, Life of Constantine 2, 64; and Socrates 1, 5).
As for the substance of the issue, Constantine at first had not formed a personal opinion or conviction, and indeed initially showed a certain indifference that almost touched the limits of contempt, as may be inferred from the aforesaid letter. From this one may reasonably conclude that Constantine, giving more attentive hearing to the reports concerning the teachings of Arius supplied by Eusebius Pamphilus — who was a faithful friend of his and favorably disposed toward Arius — considered the latter’s heresy insignificant and did not at first perceive the danger which the Faith faced from the destructive doctrines of Arius.
Yet Constantine quickly emerged from this deception, once Hosius of Cordoba returned unsuccessfully from Alexandria to Constantinople, and at the same time he learned that disturbances had broken out in Alexandria, during which the mobs did not even spare his own images from insult.
Enraged at these events, especially against the party of Arius, he sent new commissioners to Alexandria bearing a most threatening letter to those heretics, by which he summoned Arius to appear before him and explain the doctrine which he preached. Arius indeed appeared before the Emperor, but in the discussion which he undertook, he so entangled Constantine’s mind — untrained in such subtle distinctions — that he cast the ruler into many doubts.
Meanwhile the discord and turmoil of minds continued, and no remedy appeared possible, until the Emperor, in his customary greatness of genius, conceived what must be done in this difficulty. He summoned to Nicaea in Bithynia the Hierarchs of Christianity from everywhere to an Ecumenical Synod, so that, having examined the teaching of Arius, it might decisively resolve this great controversy and restore to the Church the longed-for peace.
The First Ecumenical Synod at Nicaea
Indeed, the regulation and safeguarding of Christian dogma was a matter of life and death for the world of that time, and upon this settlement depended the general moral renewal of mankind. Therefore, 318 Fathers of the Church, having been invited, assembled in Nicaea around the middle of June in the year 325 A.D. and formed the First Ecclesiastical Ecumenical Synod.
Among them presided Alexander of Constantinople and the aged Alexander of Alexandria, attended by his young counselor and Deacon, Athanasios the Great. Pope Sylvester of Rome and his successor Julius were represented by their delegates: Hosius, Bishop of Cordoba in Spain, and two presbyters, Vincentius and Viton. Present with them also were Paphnoutios, Spyridon, Nicholas, Iakovos, Maximos, and others, all adorned with apostolic gifts. Besides these there was also a great multitude of clergy, presbyters, and deacons.
During their first official session, held on the 5th or 6th of July, Emperor Constantine delivered the opening address in the Latin language, immediately translated into Greek, in which he declared that the law of this sacred religion had arisen from the bosom of the East, calling its ministers the leaders of the salvation of the nations.
After this, in due order, the opinions and doctrines of Arius and his followers were set forth, but they were courageously and logically opposed by the Fathers of the Church.
Importance of the First Ecumenical Synod
In order that the importance of this Synod may be understood, it is necessary here briefly to set forth the philosophical agitation of the minds of that age, which tended to subject dogma to knowledge — knowledge which sought, as it were, to touch with the hand and, if possible, to examine by sense every thing that Christianity delivered as mystery and as dogma of faith. Christianity, having appeared as a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, was approached by both Jews and Greeks through the furnaces of philosophy, so that they might transform it from a religion of revelation into some philosophical system, better satisfying the demands of man’s proud philosophy than giving rest to the religious feeling of man.
The philosophers, despising the demands of the heart, which delights in the mystery of religion, sought to satisfy the intellect in an absolute manner, subjecting every truth to it. But they were ignorant that there exist truths higher than our intellectual comprehension, truths not fully grasped by the finite mind of man; truths of which the mind receives knowledge, becomes persuaded of their reality, and bears witness concerning their supernatural existence. They did not understand that man was not born merely to become a philosopher, but also a religious being. Though they philosophized, they showed themselves unphilosophical toward man, because man is not only intellect, but also heart; and the powers of these two centers, mutually assisting one another, make man complete and teach him things which he could never learn through intellect alone.
If the intellect is the teacher of the natural world, the heart is the teacher of the supernatural world, after whose likeness perhaps the visible world itself was made. We learn the particulars of the visible world accurately only when through the heart we are taught the realities of the supernatural world. A philosopher without heart — that is, without religious feeling — is unphilosophical, because he sees not the whole, but only the part. And so long as he is not raised up to the whole — that is, to the universal conception of the world, in which both the visible and the invisible worlds are contained (for the world of the senses is only the partial) — he will never attain the whole without religious feeling teaching him the existence of that universal reality in the supernatural world. Under this one aspect both Judaism and Greek philosophy always examined Christianity.
Judaism and Greek philosophy, meeting together in Egypt upon a common field and mutually benefiting one another, formed various theories and philosophical systems. Alexandria, built at the boundary of three continents — Europe, Asia, and Africa — and standing, so to speak, at the center of the ancient world, became the hearth of a living exchange of ideas and the fertile ground of new systems.
The Pythagorean philosophy, which long before had been enrolled among extinct philosophical systems, reappeared after the beginning of the last century before Christ under the form of Neo-Pythagorean philosophy. The Jews in Alexandria, believing that through the study of Greek philosophy they penetrated more deeply into the mysterious wisdom of Moses, devoted themselves to it. This pursuit produced a kind of intellectual movement commonly called Alexandrian theosophy, whose character consisted in a blending of Mosaic theology and Greek philosophy, especially Platonic and Stoic ideas. This is clearly shown in the most mature product of Alexandrian theosophy, the writings of Philo, in whose formation Mosaic theology and Greek philosophy contributed equally.
The philosophical systems of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics found fervent followers in Alexandria and were studied profoundly. The philosophical spirit, unable to rest either in accepting the doctrine of Monotheism — which placed God absolutely transcendent above the world and in no relation with it — or in the pantheistic theory, according to which the divine is dissolved into nature, sought to discover some middle principle reconciling the truth contained in both. Thus it found itself in a state of intense philosophical agitation.
At this very time Christianity appeared, promising the complete satisfaction of these demands. The followers of the various systems, finding in it the bond uniting the partial truths existing both in Judaism and paganism, appropriated it to themselves. Yet because Christianity is wisdom by revelation, and cannot be fully comprehended by those who measure everything by philosophical standards, it was not accepted in its entirety, but only in part. Since the part could not satisfy the demands of the philosophical mind, each formed his own system, imagining that in it the whole truth was found.
This system, when rejected by the Church, was called heresy. In this manner the various heresies were formed, which were nothing other than philosophical systems clothed, instead of in the philosopher’s mantle, in the Christian purple robe. Their Christian character was merely an external coloring; in essence they were pure products of Neo-Platonic philosophy.
The development of the teaching of Arius sufficiently demonstrated the philosophical character of such doctrines. Therefore Christian teaching, appearing in an age full of philosophical life and intellectual ferment, and attacked on every side, would certainly have been entirely distorted and corrupted had divine and sacred Synods not immediately been convened from the beginning to exclude effectively the false teachings from the orthodox doctrines of the Church, and had they not composed Symbols, Dogmas, Canons, and Ordinances for the guarding and preservation of its purity and holiness.
The Teaching of Arius
Arius, teaching as was said above that the Son and Word of God existed indeed before all time, but was not eternal in being — “there was a time when He was not” — and that He was not begotten of the Father, but was created out of nothing by the will of the Father, and therefore was a creature made from non-being; that God was not always Father, nor did the Son exist before He was begotten, that is, created; and furthermore that He was not from the essence of the Father but foreign to Him in essence, and therefore not truly God, but deified only by participation — thus Arius developed his philosophical system, that is, his heresy, by which he believed he reconciled Monarchy and Monotheism with the Christian dogma concerning the Triune God.
Judgments Concerning the Heresy of Arius
The struggle against Arianism within the Church became exceedingly fierce because its conception of God was not simply Jewish in character, but was a mixture of Jewish and pagan elements, and in this Arianism became especially dangerous. Instead of the higher unity which gathers within itself the truth contained in the religions before Christ, Arianism proposed a merely apparent unity, combining what was false in Judaism and paganism while excluding what was true in them.
The truth contained in Judaism is the distinction between God and the world; the truth contained in paganism is the inward unity between divinity and humanity.
Both of these truths are contained in the Orthodox Christian Faith. The falsehood in Judaism is the separation between God and the world, while the falsehood in paganism is the confusion of divinity and humanity. Arianism, excluding the truth found in both, accepted only the falsehood in each. For, accepting from paganism the mixing of divinity and humanity, it attributed divine qualities to creation — among which it also ranked the Son, whom it regarded as a creature — and made Him both creator of the world and object of divine worship. On the other hand, accepting from Judaism the separation between God and the world, that is, dualism, it regarded the coming-into-being of the world as something entirely arbitrary, and thus the relationship between God and the world rested upon an arbitrary principle.
The Teaching of Athanasios and the Distinguished Fathers of the Church
Such was the teaching of Arius, which the defenders of the Orthodox Faith were obliged to combat, and such was the reason for the convocation of the First Ecumenical Synod. What the teaching of the Fathers was, and how wisely it united the two truths contained in both Judaism and paganism, we shall explain in what follows.
Against the mixture of falsehood drawn from Judaism and paganism represented by Arianism, there had to be opposed the genuine Christian conception of God, which is the true and higher unity of the elements of truth contained in Judaism and paganism.
This genuine Christian conception of God was first developed against Arianism by Athanasios, and afterwards by other distinguished Fathers, especially Gregory of Nazianzus. The Fathers of the Church overcame both the pantheistic and dualistic principles by ascending to inward distinctions within God Himself.
Athanasios proceeds from the principle that God, as the living God, wills to reveal Himself in all His glory. Man, moreover, has need of God and is capable of receiving Him. Human reason longs for the archetypal Reason, for communion with God and for knowledge of His essence; and we are able to have direct communion with Him if God wills to have communion with us.
In Christ and in the Holy Spirit are contained the full revelation of truth and the full self-communication of God. But if Christ is to be the complete revelation of truth, it is necessary that the Word incarnate in Christ be of the same essence as God, equally perfect as the Father. Otherwise the full truth would not have been revealed, since the Revealer would not contain the whole truth. Likewise, the Holy Spirit could not bring us to God if He were not God, because we are not meant to be united with some creature or limited being, but directly with God Himself.
Athanasios and the distinguished Fathers of the fourth century taught that God must necessarily be living within Himself if the world is to proceed from Him. Therefore, according to them, that conception of God is false which sees Him only as a transcendent being, because God is eternal life and movement.
But if God is eternal life and movement, He must possess inward distinctions within Himself. Without inward distinctions, according to Saint Athanasios, God would not even be able to possess existence from Himself. According to him, the divine fountain is never dry, and its light never lacks radiance. God is not barren or unproductive within Himself, because otherwise He would necessarily be inactive and incapable of creating anything.
Since God is productive life within Himself, He is also creative outside Himself. First of all, He eternally produces Himself, because God is the eternal causality of Himself, insofar as He is at once both cause and caused. And because God is within Himself eternal movement and life, He is able to bring forth the world.
This self-causality within God, by reason of which He is both cause and caused, Saint Athanasios applies to the hypostatic distinctions within God. The causative principle in the Godhead the Church calls Father, while the caused principle within it the Church calls Son; yet both are of the same Essence.
According also to Gregory of Nazianzus, God is not a simple Monad, because such a Monad in its isolation would be contrary to itself; it would necessarily have to go out from itself in order to be movement and life. In God there is no uncontrolled natural overflow; rather, the Monad, having moved from the beginning into Dyad, came to rest in Trinity. Thus, through the Christian conception of God developed by the Fathers of the fourth century, the abstract and motionless simplicity of the divine essence was overcome.
According to Saint Athanasios and Hilary, God possesses self-consciousness, insofar as God the Begetter — that is, the Father as cause — beholds Himself in the caused One, in the Image, and rejoices in this Image. Therefore, according to Saint Athanasios, the distinct hypostases within God partake also of divine self-knowledge.
Because of the distinctions within Himself, God is not confused with the world in His communion and self-communication with it, but preserves His transcendence and exaltedness. For every self-communication of God presupposes self-preservation. Through the inward distinctions within God, He preserves Himself in self-communication and in self-preservation communicates Himself through love to the world.
Once the Fathers of our Church, in their struggle against the Arians, showed that the Monad, in order to be conceived as movement and life, must be understood as proceeding into Dyad — since otherwise God could not be conceived as the living God — it could easily be shown that, because divine unity must not be destroyed by the Dyad, reason itself requires a third principle which brings the Dyad back into unity.
This was demonstrated in the struggle of the Fathers of the Church concerning the Holy Spirit, whom the Arian Macedonius regarded as a creature superior only to the Son.
The Sacred Symbol of the Orthodox Faith
Having occupied itself for about twenty days(1) with the most important religious questions, the First Sacred Ecumenical Synod at Nicaea resolved within this very brief period — besides other secondary matters — the most difficult issue which shortly before had disturbed the Church, establishing the principle of the consubstantiality (homoousios) of the Father and the Son. This principle the Orthodox Faith thereafter accepted through the divine and sacred Symbol known to all, in which the Son of God and Word was proclaimed true God, consubstantial with the Father, that is, of the same — and not merely similar — nature and essence as the Father, and therefore possessing the same glory, authority, lordship, eternity, and all the other divine attributes proper to the divine nature. It runs thus:
“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the essence of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, through Whom all things came to be, things in Heaven and things on earth; Who for us men and for our salvation came down, and was crucified and became man, suffered, and rose again on the third day, and ascended into the heavens, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and shall come again to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit. But those who say ‘there was a time when He was not,’ and ‘before He was begotten He was not,’ and that ‘He came into existence from non-being,’ or who assert that the Son of God is of another hypostasis or essence, or created, or changeable, or alterable — these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.”
This Symbol Theodore of Jerusalem called “the right confession of faith.” Damasus of Rome called it “a wall against the weapons of the devil.” And throughout the whole Church it is generally called the distinguishing banner of the Orthodox, separating them from false brethren and evil-believers.
The word Symbol was taken metaphorically from military terminology, because among soldiers the symbol was the secret watchword distinguishing the soldiers of their own camp from the hostile armies.
This Synod also dealt with the question concerning the determination of the day and time of the feast of Pascha, which the Eastern Church still observes unchanged today (Apostolic Canon 7, and Canon 1 of Antioch; Rallis and Potlis, Vol. 2, p. 10), and it composed twenty Sacred Canons.
The acts of this Sacred Synod, however, have not survived either in Greek or in Latin. What survives today are the accounts written by Eusebius Pamphilus, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Jerome, and others, especially what Gelasios of Cyzicus — who later became Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine — composed during the reign of Zeno in 476. The work of Gelasios is called “Acts” by Niketas Choniates, while Photios refers to it rather as a historical work than formal acts; John Kyparissiotes also mentions the work of Gelasios (Dositheos, Dodekabiblos, p. 108).
The Result of the First Ecumenical Synod
By the definitive solution of this most thorny and important religious problem — which had long divided the Church into two opposing camps and thereby disturbed the State — Orthodoxy received the Sacred Symbol of the sacred First Ecumenical Synod at Nicaea, while those holding contrary dogmas were anathematized, and the heresiarch Arius together with his most stubborn followers were exiled to Galatia in Asia Minor.
The two Eusebii, after hesitating for a short time to sign the confession of Faith, finally yielded to the overwhelming majority, especially since Emperor Constantine demonstrated that he was firmly resolved to support to the utmost the decrees established by the Sacred Synod and ratified by his imperial hand. At the same time he issued his own imperial decree against the dissenters, in which he expressly called Arius a disciple of Porphyry, one of the followers of Neo-Platonic philosophy. He ordered the writings of Arius to be burned and imposed the death penalty upon anyone discovered hiding any of these heretical books.
The Benefit Derived from the First Ecumenical Synod
The First Ecumenical Synod at Nicaea, by condemning the teaching of Arius, saved Christianity from an obvious corruption. Had this Ecumenical Synod not condemned Arius as heterodox and heretical, his teaching — apparently rationalistic as it seemed — would quickly have become the teaching of the Church, which almost came to pass later during the reign of the Arian Valens, had not the First Ecumenical Synod stood as a fortress through its decrees against the assaults of Arianism and fenced about the territory of the truth of the Faith in Christ.
If we owe to Christ the Savior the true knowledge of God, we owe to the sacred First Ecumenical Synod the defense of that knowledge. For if this Synod had not been convened, I dare say that the true Orthodox Faith would have disappeared, and the work of salvation would have remained incomplete.
The convocation therefore of the First Ecumenical Synod took place by the will of Divine Providence, so that the work of salvation might be preserved whole and handed down safely to succeeding generations as by a trustworthy guardian. Surely the divine Fathers who undertook the struggle against Arius were moved by the Holy Spirit, and the great Emperor Saint Constantine, by divine inspiration, proceeded to convene the sacred Ecumenical Synod.
It was the Divine Spirit which gave to the Holy Fathers “mouth and wisdom,” against which all their adversaries were unable either to resist or to speak. It taught them to proclaim rightly concerning the Incarnate God and to worship God in Trinity — the true and saving philosophy.
The Gratitude Owed by Christians — and Especially by the Greeks — to the First Ecumenical Synod at Nicaea
Before the sacred commemoration of this sacred Ecumenical Synod, we who confess its Faith ought to uncover our heads and celebrate its name yearly with reverence, so that by deed we may manifest what we accept in word. We ought to pour out our hearts before God with feelings of gratitude and glorify the Holy Fathers, the invincible champions of the Orthodox Faith, chanting harmoniously those things which they rightly dogmatized and set forth in sacred hymnody.
And among those divinely inspired men who shone forth during that great age of crisis and flourishing of religion, the foremost place in our gratitude must certainly belong to the first among all and leader of all, the great Athanasios. For he, having established that “this is the catholic Faith: that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the Hypostases nor dividing the Essence,” cast aside among the unbelievers everyone who did not wholly accept the entire series of these ineffable truths. He opened an impassable chasm between Arius and the Church, fortifying Christian unity with an armor that sufficed for it through fifteen whole centuries; and through the security with which he surrounded the Faith, he breathed unconquerable courage and conviction into all the heralds of the divine Word from his own time until today.
But also the 318 God-bearing Fathers who courageously and nobly struggled together with Saint Athanasios ought indeed to be revered by all Christians, but especially by the Greeks. For they, besides the religious reason for which gratitude is owed to them, also possess political and national reasons on account of which the Greeks ought to honor and venerate their memory. And indeed, in this sacred Synod, Hellenism — scattered abroad since the time of Alexander the Great, who prepared the way for Christianity — was gathered together under the Emperor Constantine the Great, Roman by race and office, yet Greek in disposition because of the influence of the religion developed in the Greek tongue. It assembled from the farthest ends of the Roman Empire at Nicaea in order to regulate the faith of the Roman subjects, authoritatively to pronounce judgment against the ancient error, and to proclaim the true dogma which the whole civilized world was obliged to embrace as the rule and guide of the truth that directs the noblest sentiments of man.
In this Synod Hellenism conquered not only heresy, but also the pagan error of the ancient worship and even Roman domination itself. In it the power of the Greek element revealed itself. This Synod was the first spark of the Hellenism that afterward blazed forth. It was the first leaven that gathered around itself and permeated all Romanism, which within a short time it transformed into Hellenism; and it was the furnace that purified the elements of the Empire and recast the Byzantine Greek Kingdom.
Greek philosophy shone brilliantly within it, and Plato and Aristotle were allies and champions fighting for the truth. Surely divine Providence brought them forth before Christianity so that they might assist it in its struggle against falsehood. In this Synod the trophy of Hellenism was erected. In it Hellenism, like another Athena, sprang forth from the head of the Roman Empire so that through its wisdom it might guide the consciences of men and counsel what is best.
Nicaea, this most thoroughly Greek city, was the triumph of Athens over Rome; it was Rome’s downfall and the rise of Constantinople, the new capital of Hellenism. In it the strength of Hellenism appeared, its dominion was manifested, and the glory of its spirit shone forth. Behold: in it everything was Greek — the members of the Synod, the language, the discussions, the proceedings, the decrees, and in general everything characteristic of a Greek assembly. This Synod is a badge of honor which adorned, adorns, and shall adorn the breast of every Greek. In it it was shown that Hellenism does not die, but that, falling, it rises stronger; that it possesses the mystery of spiritually conquering those who conquer its lands; and that it is destined to live so as to give life.
This First Ecumenical Synod ought to teach nations and peoples that they are bound to respect and honor Hellenism both for the great services it has rendered to humanity in general and for its unique advantages through which it may always prove beneficial to mankind. Such was this First Holy Ecumenical Synod, and such were its virtues and services both to humanity and especially to Hellenism. Therefore all people ought to honor it, but Hellenism especially, because for it this Synod became a ship that preserved and exalted both religion and national identity.
Thus glory was rightly rendered to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good will among men.
Notes:
(1) According to others, this Synod lasted three and a half years; according to Gelasios, as cited by Photios, six and a half years, consisting of 256 Fathers.
Source: Excerpt from the book of Saint Nektarios, The Ecumenical Synods of the Church of Christ, first published in 1892. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
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