Creed promulgated
The Creed of this Council
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who spoke through the Prophets. And in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. I await the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.
Definition · No. 1
The Council's Answer
Claim refuted: "“The Holy Spirit is not God but an exalted creature — a divine minister or instrument, subordinate to Father and Son. He is to be honored but not worshipped alongside them.”" — If the Spirit is a creature, baptism is not union with God but union with God, his Son, and a creature. Sanctification through the Spirit — the entire life of prayer, repentance, and theosis — would not be a work of God but of an elevated being. St. Basil's argument: the Church worships the Spirit alongside Father and Son; worship belongs to God alone; therefore the Spirit is God.
Creed · No. 2
The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, 381 AD — The Article on the Holy Spirit
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who spoke through the Prophets. And in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. I await the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come. — Expanded at Constantinople I (381 AD) from the briefer “and in the Holy Spirit” of the Nicene Creed (325 AD) — still recited at every Orthodox Divine Liturgy
Canon · No. 3
Canon I
The faith of the 318 fathers at Nicaea is not to be set aside. All heresies are anathematized: Eunomianism, Anomoeanism, Arianism, Pneumatomachianism, Sabellianism, Marcellanism, Photinianism, Apollinarianism.
Canon · No. 4
Canon II
Bishops are not to go beyond their own diocese. The boundaries established at Nicaea are maintained.
Canon · No. 5
Canon IV
Maximus the Cynic and all ordained by him are not to be recognized. His ordinations are invalid.
Anathema · No. 6
Against Pneumatomachianism
“The Holy Spirit is not God but an exalted creature — a divine minister or instrument, subordinate to Father and Son. He is to be honored but not worshipped alongside them.”
Definition · No. 7
Witness — St. Basil the Great (Theological Architect)
"The Spirit is called “holy” as the Father is holy and the Son is holy, because holiness is the very nature of God. He is called “good” as the Father is good and the Son is good. He gives life — not receiving life from another but being himself the source and origin of sanctification. He fills all things, yet cannot be contained. He dwells entirely in each and is entirely everywhere." — St. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, ch. 9, 375 AD. Basil's method is characteristically patristic: rather than asserting the Spirit's divinity directly (which he judged too inflammatory for the moment), he accumulates attributes — holiness, goodness, omnipresence, life-giving power — each of which belongs to God alone, until the conclusion is inescapable.
Definition · No. 8
Witness — St. Gregory the Theologian (Council President)
"The Holy Spirit is God. And I say this emphatically. Now, consider what this means. He is God who is in the midst of us, and who in one sense is now being divided, and in another is always undivided; who is being distributed, and yet remains whole; who fills all things, yet is not himself filled; who imparts himself, yet is not himself diminished; who is Light, who is Life, who is known through Son and through Father, who is known with them." — St. Gregory the Theologian, Oration 31 (Fifth Theological Oration), 380 AD. Gregory's five Theological Orations were delivered in Constantinople just before the council opened, turning the theological tide in the capital city. Oration 31, “On the Holy Spirit,” is the most direct argument for pneumatological divinity in the patristic corpus.
Definition · No. 9
Witness — Macedonius of Constantinople (The Condemned Position)
"If we say the Spirit is God, and since God is unbegotten, and since the Son is begotten, and since there cannot be two beings both unbegotten and both begotten — then the Spirit must be a third kind. But what third kind could there be between begotten and unbegotten? There is none. Therefore the Spirit is not fully God as the Father and Son are God, but a divine minister of a different order." — Reconstructed from Gregory the Theologian's refutation in Oration 31. The Macedonian argument pressed a logical dilemma about divine origin. Gregory's response: the Spirit neither “proceeds” in the same sense as the Son is “begotten,” nor is he “unbegotten” as the Father. The mode of his existence from the Father is genuinely distinct — called “procession” to distinguish it from generation — without implying inferiority.
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