CANON I.

THE Faith of the Three Hundred and Eighteen Fathers assembled at Nice in 

Bithynia shall not be set aside, but shall remain firm. And every heresy 

shall be anathematized, particularly that of the Eunomians or 

[Anomoeans, the Arians or] Eudoxians, and that of the Semi-Arians or 

Pneumatomachi, and that of the Sabellians, and that of the Marcellians, 

and that of the Photinians, and that of the Apollinarians.

NOTES.

ANCIENT EPITOME OF CANON I.

Let the Nicene faith stand firm. Anathema to heresy.

There is a difference of reading in the list of the heretics. The 

reading I have followed in the text is that given in Beveridge's 

Synodicon. The Greek text, however, in Labbe, and with it agree the 

version of Hervetus and the text of Hefele, reads: "the Eunomians or 

Anomaeans, the Arians or Eudoxians, the Semi-Arians or Pneumatomachi, 

the Sabellians, Marcellians, Photinians and Apollinarians." From this 

Dionysius only varies by substituting "Macedonians" for "Semi-Arians." 

It would seem that this was the correct reading. I, however, have 

followed the other as being the more usual.

HEFELE.

By the Eudoxians, whom this canon identifies with the Arians [according 

to his text, vide supra,] is meant that faction who, in 

contradistinction to the strict Arians or Anomaeans on one side, and the 

Semi-Arians on the other side, followed the leadership of the Court 

Bishop Eudoxius (Bishop of Constantinople under the Emperor Valens), and 

without being entirely Anomaean, yet very decidedly inclined to the left 

of the Arian party--probably claiming to represent the old and original 

Arianism. But this canon makes the Semi-Arians identical with the 

Pneuma-tomachians, and so far rightly, that the latter  sprang from the 

Semi-Arian party, and applied the Arian principle to their doctrine of 

the Holy Ghost. Lastly, by the Marcellians  are meant those pupils of 

Marcellus of Ancyra who remained in the errors formerly propounded by 

him, while afterwards others, and indeed he himself, once more 

acknowledged the truth.

EXCURSUS ON THE HERESIES CONDEMNED IN CANON I.

In treating of these heresies I shah invert the order of the canon, and 

shall speak of the Macedonian and Apollinarian heresies first, as being 

most nearly connected with the object for which the Constantinopolitan 

Synod was assembled.

-THE SEMI-ARIANS, MACEDONIANS OR PNEUMATOMACHI.

Peace indeed seemed to have been secured by the Nicene decision but 

there was an element of discord still extant, and so shortly afterwards 

as in 359 the double-synod of Rimini

 (Ariminum) and Selencia rejected the expressions hemousion and 

homoeusion equally, and Jerome gave birth to his famous phrase, "the 

world awoke to find itself Arian." The cause of this was the weight 

attaching to the Semi-Arian party, which counted among its numbers men 

of note and holiness, such as St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Of the 

developments of this party it seems right that some mention should be 

made in this place, since it brought forth the Macedonian heresy.

(Wm. Bright, D.D., St. Leo on the Incarnation, pp. 213 et seqq.)

The Semi-Arian party in the fourth century attempted to steer a middle 

course between calling the Son Consubstantial and calling him a 

creature. Their position, indeed, was untenable, but several persisted 

in clinging to it; and it was adopted by Macedonius, who occupied the 

see of Constantinople. It was through their adoption of a more 

reverential language about the Son than had been used by the old Arians, 

that what is called the Macedonian heresy showed itself. Arianism had 

spoken both of the Son and the Holy Spirit as creatures. The 

Macedonians, rising up out of Semi-Arianism, gradually reached the 

Church's belief as to the uncreated majesty of the Son, even if they 

retained their objection to the homoousion as a formula. But having, in 

their previously Semi-Arian position, refused to extend their own 

"homoiousion" to the Holy Spirit, they afterwards persisted in regarding 

him as "external to the one indivisible Godhead," Newman's Arians, p. 

226; or as Tillemont says (Mem. vi., 527), "the denial of the divinity 

of the Holy Spirit was at last their capital or only error." St. 

Athanasius, while an exile under Constantius for the second time, "heard 

with pain," as he says (Ep. i. ad Serap, 1) that "some who had left the 

Arians from disgust at their blasphemy against the Son of God, yet 

called the Spirit a creature, and one of the ministering spirits, 

differing only in degree from the Angels:" and soon afterwards, in 362, 

the Council of Alexandria condemned the notion that the Spirit was a 

creature, as being "no true avoidance of the detestable Arian heresy." 

See "Later Treatises of St. Athanasius," p. 5. Athanasius insisted that 

the Nicene Fathers, although silent on the nature of the Holy Spirit, 

had by implication ranked him with the Father and the Son as an object 

of belief (ad Afros, 11). After the death of St. Athanasius, the new 

heresy was rejected on behalf of the West by Pope Damasus, who declared 

the Spirit to be truly and properly from the Father (as the Son from the 

Divine substance) and very God, "omnia posse et omnia nosse, et ubique 

esse," coequal and adorable (Mansi, iii., 483). The Illyrian bishops 

also, in 374, wrote to the bishops of Asia Minor, affirming the 

consubstantiality of the Three Divine Persons (Theodoret, H. E., iv., 

9). St. Basil wrote his De Spirits Sancto in the same sense (see Swete, 

Early History of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, pp. 58, 67), and in 

order to vindicate this truth against the Pneumatomachi, as the 

Macedonians were called by the Catholics, the Constantinopolitan 

recension of the Nicene Creed added the words, "the Lord and the Life-

giver, proceeding from the Father, with the Father and the Son 

worshipped and glorified" etc., which had already formed part of local 

Creeds in the East.

*From the foregoing by Canon Bright, the reader will be able to 

understand the connexion between the Semi-Arians and Pneumatomachi, as 

well as to see how the undestroyed heretical germs of the Semi-Asian 

heresy necessitated by their development the condemnation of a second 

synod.

THE APOLLINARIANS.

(Philip Schaff, in Smith and Wace, Dict. Christ. Biog., s. v. 

Apollinaris.) 

Apollinaris was the first to apply the results of the Nicene controversy 

to Christology proper, and to call the attention of the Church to the 

psychical and pneumatic element in the humanity of Christ; but in his 

zeal for the true deity of Christ, and fear of a double

personality, he fell into the error of a partial denial of his true 

humanity. Adopting the psychological trichotomy of Plato 

(    swma        yukh   ,     pneuma   ), for 

which he quoted I. Thess. v. 23 and Gal. v. 17, he attributed to Christ 

a human body (    swma   ) and a human soul (the 

    yukhalogos   , the anima animans which man has in common 

with the animal), but not a rational spirit (    nous    

    pneuma        yukh        logikh   , anima 

rationalis,) and put in the place of the latter the divine Logos. In 

opposition to the idea of a mere connection of the Logos with the man 

Jesus, he wished to secure an organic unity of rite two, and so a true 

incarnation; but he sought this at the expense of the most important 

constituent of man. He reached only a     Qeos    

    sarkoForos   as Nestorianism only an     anqrwpos    

    qeoForos    instead of the proper     qeandrwtos   . 

He appealed to the fact that the Scripture says, "the Word was made 

flesh"--not spirit; "God was manifest in the flesh" etc, To which 

Gregory Nazianzen justly replied that in these passages the term 

    sarx    was used by synecdoche for the whole human nature. 

In this way Apollinaris established so close a connection of the Logos 

with human flesh, that all the divine attributes were transferred to the 

human nature, and all the human attributes to the divine, and the two 

merged in one nature in Christ. Hence he could speak of a crucifixion of 

the Logos, and a worship of his flesh. He made Christ a middle being 

between God and man, in whom, as it were, one part divine and two parts 

human were fused in the unity of a new nature. He even ventured to 

adduce created analogies, such as the mule, midway between the horse and 

the ass; the grey colour, a mixture of white and black; and spring, in 

distinction from winter and summer. Christ, said he, is neither whole 

man, nor God, but a mixture (    mixis   ) of God and man. On 

the other hand, he regarded the orthodox view of a union of full 

humanity with a full divinity in one person--of two wholes in one whole-

-as an absurdity. He called the result of this construction 

    anqrwpoqeos     , a sort of monstrosity, which he put in the 

same category with the mythological figure of the Minotaur. But the 

Apollinarian idea of the union of the Logos with a truncated human 

nature might be itself more justly compared with this monster. Starting 

from the Nicene homoousion as to the Logos, but denying the completeness 

of Christ's humanity, he met Arianism half-way, which likewise put the 

divine Logos in the place of rite human spirit in Christ. But he 

strongly asserted his unchangeableness, while Arians taught his 

changeableness (    treptoths   ).

The faith of the Church revolted against such a mutilated and stunted 

humanity of Christ which necessarily involved also a merely partial 

redemption. The incarnation is an assumption of the entire human nature, 

sin only excluded. The     ensarkwsis    is 

    enanqrwphsis   . To be a full and complete Redeemer, Christ 

must be a perfect man (    teleios        anqrwpos   ). 

The spirit or rational soul is the most important element in man, his 

crowning glory, the seat of intelligence and freedom, and needs 

redemption as well as the soul and the body; for sin has entered and 

corrupted all the faculties.

In the sentence immediately preceding the above Dr. Scruff remarks "but 

the peculiar Christology of Apollinaris has reappeared from time to time 

in a modified shape, as isolated theological opinion." No doubt Dr. 

Schaff had in mind the fathers of the so-called "Kenoticism" of to-day, 

Gess and Ebrard, who teach, unless they have been misunderstood, that 

the incarnate Son had no human intellect or rational soul 

(    nous   ) but that the divine personality took its place, by 

being changed into it.By this last modification, they claim to escape 

from tire taint of the Apollinarian heresy.(1)

THE EUNOMIANS OR ANOMOEANS.

(Bright, Notes on the Canons, Canon I. of I. Const.)

"The Eunomians or Anomoeans." These were the ultra-Arians, who carried 

to its legitimate issue the original Arian denial of the eternity and 

uncreatedness of the Son, while they further rejected what Arius had 

affirmed as to the essential mysteriousness of the Divine nature (Soc., 

H. E., iv., 7; comp. Athan., De Synod., 15). Their founder was Aetius, 

the most versatile of theological adventurers (cf. Athan, De Synod., 31; 

Soc., H. E., ii., 45; and see a summary of his career in Newman's 

Arians, p. 347); but their leader at the time of the Council was the 

dating and indefatigable Eunomius (for whose personal characteristics, 

see his admirer Philostorgius, x., 6) He, too, had gone through many 

vicissitudes from his first employment as the secretary of Aetius, and 

his ordination as deacon by Eudoxius; as bishop of Cyzicus, he had been 

lured into a disclosure of his true sentiments, and then denounced as a 

heretic (Theod., H.. E., ii., 29); with Aetius he had openly separated 

from Eudoxius as a disingenuous time-server, and had gone into 

retirement at Chalcedon (Philostorg., ix., 4). The distinctive formula 

of his adherents was the "Anomoion." The Son, they said, was not "like 

to the Father in essence"; even to call him simply "like" was to obscure 

the fact that he was simply a creature, and, as such, "unlike" to his 

Creator. In other words, they thought the Semi-Arian "homoiousion" 

little better than the Catholic "homoousion": the "homoion" of the more 

"respectable" Arians represented in their eyes an ignoble reticence; the 

plain truth, however it might shock devout prejudice, must be put into 

words which would bar all misunderstanding: the Son might be called 

"God," but in a sense merely titular, so as to leave an impassable gulf 

between him and the uncreated Godhead (see Eunomius's Exposition in 

Valesius's note on See., H. E., v., 10). Compare Basil (Epist., 233, and 

his work against Eunomius), and Epiphanius (Hoer., 76).