Linguistic Analysis and Appeal Procedure at the Council of Nicaea (325): A Unitary Study about the Documentary Controversy Happened in the First Ecumenical Council and the Homoousios Debate

Abstract

Both in Ancient sources and in Contemporary scholarly publications on the Council of Nicaea (325), there is a lack of a unified account of the identity and meaning of the interrelation of the various documents (letters, creeds) brought up at the first ecumenical council. This paper will present a proposal to fill that gap. Particularly, this article will offer, for the first time, a detailed documentary (not merely hypothetical) reconstruction of the concrete way in which the debate about the famous term homoousios arose in Nicaea. Not surprisingly, the homoousios is an element intimately linked to the articulation of the documentary dispute that took place at the Council. Thus, it will be argued that the main purpose of the conciliar convocatoin was the political and religious strengthening of the Roman Empire on the basis of a formula of faith that was to result from the linguistic-theological analysis of the creed that bishop Eusebius of Caesarea presented at Nicaea as an appeal against his excommunication at the Council of Antioch (325).