Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, April 1 2025
Professor Samuel Fernández held a seminar for the ROR presenting the work of re-editing the sources of Nicaea (with critical text and facing translation), already published in English, Spanish and Italian editions: Fontes Nicaenae Synodi: The Contemporary Sources for the Study of the Council of Nicaea (304-337), translated as Le fonti antiche sul Concilio di Nicea (Città Nuova 2025).
The Chilean professor presented the problem of sources, focusing his reflection on the role that Athanasius and Eusebius had in conciliar history, also addressing the problem of the homoousios in light of its original context.
The sources are many, but many of the texts depend on Athanasius and also on Eusebius’s Life of Constantine. The main problem is that we possess texts quoted by others: the attempt to extract them and relocate them in their context represents a true hermeneutical challenge.
Athanasius, the first chronicler of history, wrote immediately after Nicaea. He lived always in struggle against the Arians and crypto-Arians, for this reason it is not possible to expect a balanced account from him. Eusebius, instead, is one of the first authors to directly quote texts, a peculiar fact because Greek historians did not use to do this.
Fernández anticipated to the participants that he had come to distinguish three categories of sources: first-hand narratives (historical works that describe the controversies of the first century); second-hand testimonies (accounts of controversies written by those who participated in the events); contemporary documents to the facts, transmitted by ancient Christian writers.
Having said this, a separate discussion should be reserved for the original doctrines of the authors, while second-level sources are the deductions regarding the original doctrines: deductions depend on certain principles or macro-principles that must be applied. Precisely the second level, that of deductions, appears the most interesting for scholars.
In the second part of his intervention, Fernández dedicated space to content analysis. The oldest text of the Arian crisis is Arius’s letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia (FNS 6,2-3); it contains the very first summary of the so-called Arian doctrine. From the text emerges a clear message from Arius to Eusebius and the other bishops: Bishop Alexander condemns me, but in reality with me he condemns all of you (Eusebian bishops).
In light of this text, Fernández emphasized how the events of the Council can be fully understood only if one looks at it as a “conflict that arose between Bishops”, and, specifically between Alexander and the group led by Eusebius. The latter understood that they were being accused in their tradition that affirmed that the Son was posterior to the Father, although all, including Arius, accepted the rule of faith according to which the Son comes from the Father before all ages.
In the events of Nicaea, the professor observed, the divinity of the Son is a legitimate derivative. The real object of discussion, the real discrepancy was established between the co-eternity of the Son and the contrary thesis of the priority of the Father with respect to the Son. It should also be kept in mind that Arius’s theology is deficient under the aforementioned aspect but has not denied the divinity of the Son.
Commenting, moreover, on some interesting texts of Eusebius (d.e. 5.1,19 and d.e. 4.3.5), Fernández highlighted the peculiar use that the Bishop of Caesarea makes of the classic metaphor of the ray and the light, in order to affirm that the Father pre-exists the Son, being the only “unbegotten” one. Some scholars in the same text believe, instead, that the ontological dependence of the Son transpires, a position with which Fernández does not agree: there would be no reason, for example, to use the metaphor of light differently from Origen.
Another interest concerned reflection on the use of the word “begotten”. What elements of generation – Fernández asks – do we apply to the Son? The difference between Eusebius and Alexander lies in the fact that, while using the same term, while one affirms that before and after are part of generation, the other excludes before and after. The central motive for Eusebius is this: one is unbegotten and the other begotten (see d.e. 4.3,5). All this justifies for Fernández, in full right, the emergence of the Arian crisis.
Having said this, the focus of the presentation was directed to some peculiar texts, including d.e. 5.1,13 and 5.1,13 of Eusebius. In the first, Eusebius explicitly declares himself contrary to the theology of the two stages of the Logos. He believes that this latter doctrine implies that there are two unbegotten realities, the Logos and God, and that God has mutable parts in himself: he does not admit any change, given the presupposed simplicity of God. Interesting, in Eusebius d.e. 5.1,15, is the distinction drawn between the way the Son comes from the Father and the way creation comes from him. The text, Professor Fernández emphasized, is used to distinguish Eusebius’s position from that of Arius: the Son came from nothing but “not” like other creatures.
Having said this, the three main theological antecedents of Nicaea can be identified: in the encounter of Christianity with philosophical monotheism; in the theology of the two phases of the Logos; in the theology of eternal generation. Regarding the encounter of Christianity with philosophical monotheism, Fernández emphasized how the underlying problem is to affirm the divinity of the Son without denying monotheism (heresies like monarchianism and Sabellianism had this root).
The session concluded with the examination of two texts of Alexander (FNS 8, 15 and 26). Fernández highlighted the opposition of the Bishop of Alexandria both to the posteriority of the Son and to his birth “from nothing”.
Regarding the homoousios, Fernández emphasized that its interpretation is deductive. If, however, the proposed reconstruction is correct, the only gap between Eusebius and Alexander subsists in the fact that the first supports the temporal priority of the Father, the other the co-eternity of the Father and the Son.
Having said this, and given that the division between the two groups is largely derived from the way of understanding the homoousios, Fernández observed that if these two points of view are put together, the content of the homoousios can be understood in the sense of the “co-eternity of the Father and the Son”, that is, that one cannot think of the Father without the Son. In this sense, one should speak of the expression “Son consubstantial with the Father”: two subjects in mutual relationship. This would also mean that when the Cappadocians began to reflect on this concept, they could count on a solid starting point. Instead, the professor observed, reflection, over time, has focused more on the word than on the relationship.
Initially, in fact, the homoousios had a negative basis, that is, the opposition between the two parties (trivially: “since they don’t accept it, we accept it”). For Fernández, one can instead reasonably maintain, always starting from a speculative point of view, that the expression has a specific sense and content: The Christian God is not acceptable without the Son, eternally there is the relationship between the Father and the Son. Nicaea, in fact, did not define eternal generation but the eternity of God’s paternity.
