Constantinople I

Oversimplified

  • The Second Ecumenical Council (381), which affirmed the full divinity of the Holy Spirit and completed the Nicene Creed we still recite.
  • It closed the Trinitarian controversy Nicaea opened: the Spirit, too, is Lord and God — not a creature.

Summary

The First Council of Constantinople (AD 381) is the second of the Ecumenical Councils. Where Nicaea I had settled the divinity of the Son, a new party — the Pneumatomachi ("Spirit-fighters"), or Macedonians — now denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, treating Him as a created power. The Council, under the presidency of St. Gregory the Theologian and shaped by the Cappadocian Fathers, confessed the Spirit as "the Lord, the Giver of Life... who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified." Gregory of Nazianzus It thus expanded the Creed into the form the Church confesses to this day.[^1] Cross-link The Trinity, Holy Spirit, St. Gregory the Theologian.

Completing the confession of the Trinity

Nicaea's Creed had said little of the Spirit — merely "and in the Holy Spirit." Constantinople filled out the third article, drawing the same conclusion for the Spirit that Nicaea had drawn for the Son: He is worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son, therefore He is God. The Cappadocians (Basil and the two Gregorys) had prepared the way — St. Basil's On the Holy Spirit arguing the Spirit's divinity from His work and from the Church's own doxology.[^2] Cross-link Monarchy of the Father, Holy Spirit.

"One baptism for the forgiveness of sins"

The Creed finalized here also confesses "one baptism for the forgiveness of sins" — a phrase with teeth. It binds forgiveness to baptism (baptismal regeneration), and it makes baptism one: water and Spirit are not divorced, so there is no separate, later "Spirit baptism" set over against the water. To confess this Creed is to submit to its account of baptism. Cross-link Baptism, Charismatic Movement.

[^1]: The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381). [^2]: St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit; St. Gregory the Theologian, Theological Orations.