Why a Second Council
Nicaea had confessed the Son to be of one essence with the Father, but for more than fifty years afterward emperors and councils of bishops swung between parties. By 360 a creed backed by the emperor said only that the Son is like the Father. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, was exiled five times.
Meanwhile three bishops of Cappadocia, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa, refined the language of the Nicene party: God is one in essence and three in persons. A new question also pressed for an answer. Some who now confessed the Son's deity still denied that the Holy Spirit is God.
In 379 Theodosius I, a firm Nicene, became emperor in the East. In 380 his edict commanded all his subjects to hold the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria, naming its adherents catholic Christians and treating dissenters as heretics. In 381 he summoned the eastern bishops to his capital. Meletius of Antioch presided until he died during the sessions; Gregory of Nazianzus presided briefly before resigning.
Constantinople was an assembly of bishops of the state church, called by an emperor whose laws now treated dissent as a crime. It was not a gathering of New Testament local churches, and it holds no authority over any local church.
Loading the rest of this article