Trial and Rebuttal Evidence against Eusebius of Caesarea at the Council of Nicaea (325)

A New Account of What Happened in the First Ecumenical Council

Abstract

Through a comparative analysis of texts taken from authors such as Eustathius of Antioch or Ambrose of Milan, it will be shown that, at the heart of the first ecumenical council, there took place a trial against the excommunicated Eusebius of Caesarea, an outstanding representative of the episcopate who still adhered to the Arian doctrine, already ecclesiastically condemned before 325. In such a trial, Eusebius’ creed must be seen as a plea of defence or recantation in which he was to prove before the Nicene court of appeal that he had abjured Arianism. In the face of such a creed, however, Eusebius’ enemies exhibited some sort of rebuttal evidence against him in order to ratify the excommunication that had been hanging over him since his condemnation at the Council of Antioch, held a few months before the Council of Nicaea. It is argued that the aforementioned evidence was the letter Ἡ πίστις ἡμῶν (Opitz’ Urkunde 6), an Arian creed also endorsed by Eusebius of Caesarea himself, but as this creed was evoked in the letter of Eusebius of Nicomedia to Paulinus of Tyre. In order to be acquitted, Eusebius was forced to confess the famous homoousios (contained, for its rejection, in Ἡ πίστις ἡμῶν) and to accept other modifications in his creed, which was to be imposed on all bishops. This is how the Nicene creed was composed.