Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 29:1 (Spring 2025)
Article: From Nicaea To The Full Nicene Creed: Sixty Years Of Confusion And Controversy
Author: Bryan M. Litfin

From Nicaea To The Full Nicene Creed: Sixty Years Of Confusion And Controversy1

Bryan M. Litfin

Bryan M. Litfin is Professor of Bible and Theology at Liberty University. He earned his PhD from the University of Virginia. He is the author of The Story of the Trinity: Controversy, Crisis, and the Creation of the Nicene Creed (Baker, 2025). Bryan is married to Carolyn, and they have two adult children. He is a member of Rivermont Evangelical Presbyterian Church, and he may be reached at www.bryanlitfin.com.

Although church history has bequeathed many famous heroes to posterity, few people have ever heard the name of Cadmus of Bosporus. Even the most knowledgeable church historians would be hard pressed to place him. He was an obscure bishop from the Crimean Peninsula along the coast of the Black Sea. His contributions to church history remain entirely unknown to us except for one thing: his signature. In the ancient manuscript lists for the Council of Nicaea, Cadmus (or Kadmos in Greek) appears as the final signatory— number 220 — who put his name to the Creed of Nicaea.

When the ink of Cadmus’s signature had dried on the parchment and all the bishops went home after the summer of 325, it’s tempting to believe the Trinitarian controversy had been solved forever. We like our history in neat packages. We tell ourselves that once the council had done its job, orthodoxy reigned forever after. The good guys had won the day. The bad guys— the instigator Arius and two recalcitrant Libyans who joined him— had been crushed underfoot like heretical snakes. Greek Orthodox icons still depict Arius groveling at the feet of the triumphant councilmen. Some icons even show St Nicholas of Myra— the inspiration for the later figure of Santa Claus— giving

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the rebellious heretic a well-deserved slap to the face. The deity of Christ had triumphed, never again to be questioned. All of this sounds great to our ears— except it’s not what happened. The real events that unfolded in the decades after the council were much more messy.

The Fate Of Arius

Though Arius had been excommunicated, he didn’t disappear into the dustbin of history. He hung around Palestine and the eastern Roman Empire, where his theological ideas found widespread support even if few people attributed them to their ostensible founder. Among those who sympathized with Arius’s type of thinking was the great church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea. To complicate matters, another prominent supporter of Arius—perhaps the most powerful bishop of his age— also bore the name Eusebius. His church at Nicomedia was a see in one of the main imperial capitals, so this second Eusebius was wel...