Unfortunately, this official condemnation did not prevent Arianism from continuing to disturb the Church's peace. After a very short time, Arius succeeded, with the help of powerful friends at court, in obtaining his recall from exile, and even contrived to banish Athanasius, the leader of the Orthodox party, who had been made Bishop of Alexandria at the death of Alexander. Arius, the cause of the whole disturbance, died in 336. A new party was then formed, whose members called themselves “Semi-Arians” and sought to reconcile Arians and Orthodox by substituting for the word “homoousios” (i.e. of the same essence) in the Creed the word “homoiousios” (i.e. of similar essence). But another party rose in opposition to these mediators, maintaining that Christ, being born of the Father, is neither “homoousios” nor “homoiousios,” but “anomoios,” or “unlike.” Thus the Church was more and more torn by dissension owing partly to the stubbornness of certain bishops, who disregarded their signature of the Nicene Creed, and especially to the forcible interference of the imperial court in theological disputes, for the tyrannical emperors Constantius (353-361) and Valens (364-378), who supported the Arians, persecuted the Orthodox party mercilessly. In the end, however, the Creed laid down at the Nicene Synod emerged triumphant as the only doctrine embodying the spirit of the Gospel, and sealed by the approval of the most eminent Fathers of the age, who included the three famous Cappadocians, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus. When, therefore, the Orthodox emperor, Theodosius the Great, ascended the throne, he immediately convened a second Ecumenical Synod which met in Constantinople in 381, and, confirming the decisions of the First Ecumenical Synod, pronounced them to be the Orthodox view of the Universal Church. From then onwards, Arianism disappeared, though it found a temporary refuge with the Goths, as has already been seen, and with other barbarian tribes. The Second Ecumenical Synod also condemned Macedonius, who taught that the Holy Ghost had been created by the Son, just as, according to the Arians, the Son had been created by the Father. It was, therefore, formally stated in the Creed that the Holy Ghost “proceeds from the Father, and is worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son,” partaking of the same divine essence and nature.

The Third Ecumenical Synod.

   The Second Ecumenical Synod affirmed not only the perfect divinity of Christ, but also His perfect humanity, by condemning the heresy of Apollinarianism, which began to spread in 362. This heresy consisted in the denial of a “rational” soul to the incarnate Logos, asserting that the God-Man took on only the “irrational” soul and material body, having His divinity in place of the rational soul. The Fathers protested against this, maintaining that if the incarnate Logos did not assume full humanity with its rational soul, He left our noblest part unhealed; “for that which He did not assume, He did not heal.” These were the arguments which the Fathers at the Second Synod opposed to Apollinarianism; but they had as yet no definite and crystallized idea of the manner in which the full divinity and the full humanity of Christ were united in His person. Some held that the relation was extremely close; others, extremely loose. Nestorius, the Archbishop of Constantinople, was of the latter opinion, and drew so sharp a distinction between the two natures in Christ, that he came eventually to recognize two persons in Him, maintaining that Christ, the son of Mary, was one, and Christ, the Son of God, was another; so that Mary should be rightly called “Christotokos” (i.e. Mother of Christ) and not “Theotokos” (i.e. Mother of God). To combat this heresy, Theodosius II summoned to Ephesus in 431 the Third Ecumenical Synod, which affirmed that the Church confesses one Christ, one Son, one Lord, Who is at once both God and Man, Who was born of the Father before all the ages, and became incarnate through the Virgin Mary at the appointed time. In his pride, Nestorius refused to yield to the unanimous decision of the Church, and preferred to retire into exile, where he died in 440. A similar fate befell his supporters; persecuted by the Orthodox, they took refuge with the Persians, who received them with open arms, as a hostile gesture towards the Byzantine Empire.