Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-30T02:01:13.867Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - The Reception of Nicaea and Homoousios to 360

from Part IV - The Aftermath

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2020

Young Richard Kim
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago
Get access

Summary

The main acts of Nicaea were gradually reversed over the years 327-60. Constantine honored its name and canons throughout his life, but recalled Arius from exile, leaned on church leaders to restore him to communion, and sidelined Arius’s opponents. Constantius II flouted Nicaea’s canons and officially replaced its creed. Nonetheless, Nicaea’s pronouncements on the Son’s relationship to the ousia of the Father, including the term homoousios, which had been a response to Eusebius of Nicomedia’s Letter to Paulinus of Tyre, continued to be debated throughout this period in a succession of mutually allusive theological works. These include Eusebius of Caesarea’s Letter to his Church, Eustathius of Antioch’s Against the Arian Madness, Asterius the Sophist’s Defence of Eusebius of Nicomedia, Marcellus of Ancyra’s Against Asterius, Eusebius’s Against Marcellus and On Ecclesiastical Theology, Acacius of Caesarea’s Against Marcellus, Marcellus’ Letter to Julius of Rome, Athanasius’s Orations Against the Arians, the Profession of Faith of Sirmium 351, and Athanasius’s On the Decrees of Nicaea. The last of these, together with his formidable political skills, established the Nicene Creed against all the odds as the only formula which was able to command widespread support among bishops across the empire after the death of Constantius.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Select References

Anatolios, Khaled. 1998. Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Anatolios, Khaled. 2011. Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.Google Scholar
Ayres, Lewis. 2004. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barnes, Timothy D. 1993. Athanasius and Constantius: Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Burgess, R. W. 2008. “The Summer of Blood: The ‘Great Massacre’ of 337 and the Promotion of the Sons of Constantine.” DOP 62:551.Google Scholar
Cartwright, Sophie. 2015. The Theological Anthropology of Eustathius of Antioch. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hanson, R. P. C. 1988. The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.Google Scholar
Kinzig, Wolfram, ed. 2017. Faith in Formulae: A Collection of Early Christian Creeds and Creed-related Texts, 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lienhard, S. J., Joseph, T. 1987. “The ‘Arian’ Controversy: Some Categories Reconsidered.” Theological Studies 48:415–37.Google Scholar
Lienhard, Joseph T. 1993. “Did Athanasius Reject Marcellus?” In Arianism after Arius: Essays on the Development of the Fourth Century Trinitarian Conflicts, ed. Barnes, Michel R. and Williams, Daniel H., 6580. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.Google Scholar
Parvis, Paul. 2006. “Constantine’s Letter to Arius and Alexander?StPat 39: 8995.Google Scholar
Parvis, Sara. 2006. Marcellus of Ancyra and the Lost Years of the Arian Controversy, 325–345. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Parvis, Sara. 2008. “‘Τὰ τίνων ἄρα ῥήματα θεολογεῖ;’: The Exegetical Relationship between Athanasius’ Orationes contra Arianos I–III and Marcellus of Ancyra’s Contra Asterium.” In The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Montréal Colloquium in Honour of Charles Kannengiesser, 11–13 October 2006, ed. DiTommaso, Lorenzo and Turcescu, Lucian, 121–48. The Bible in Ancient Christianity 6. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Parvis, Sara. 2010. “Joseph Lienhard, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Marcellus’ Rule of Faith.” In Tradition and the Rule of Faith in the Early Church: Essays in Honor of Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., ed. Rombs, Ronnie J. and Hwang, Alexander Y., 89108. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.Google Scholar
Spoerl, Kelley McCarthy. 2016. “Eustathius on Jesus’ Digestion.” St Pat 74: 147–58.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×