What really happened at Nicaea
Constantine and the bishops shown at the council in AD 325 on an icon with the creed
Alamy/GL Archive
The words of the modern statement of faith are those of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, supposedly an edited affirmation in 381, in Constantinople, of what had originally been thrashed out in 325 at the first ecumenical council in Nicaea.
Arius’ infamous reputation, and indeed the very construct of a cohesive “Arianism”, owes more to the rhetorical prowess of Athanasius – a junior colleague of Alexander at Nicaea, later his successor as bishop in Alexandria, and the most vocal exponent of Nicene theology – than to any underlying reality.
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