The capital of the Roman Empire from 330 to 1453 was the city of Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, today Istanbul. From its beginning when Constantine moved the capital there it was a Christian city, capital of a Christian empire, thanks to the conversion of Constantine shortly before he made the decision to move his capital. Because of its critical importance, the city hosted three of the seven ecumenical councils, called to enable church leaders to establish true theology regarding the nature of Christ.
Foremost among the turbulence rampant in the church in those early years was the question of Christ: was he human and divine equally, or more human or more divine? Various sects arose challenging the doctrine that Jesus Christ was totally human and totally divine yet one person. Much of the confusion arose from the teaching of Arius, an elder from Alexandria in Egypt. His teaching spread rapidly through churches in the East, so much so that the emperor Constantine called all bishops of the church everywhere to assemble at Nicaea, just across the Bosporus from Constantinople. As all bishops were called from everywhere, it was known as an ecumenicalcouncil, the first of seven.
Arius denied the Trinity and taught that Jesus was a created being, either created from nothing or some substance, but not of the same essence as the Father. Arius based his conclusion on the passage in Psalm 2 that said “Thou art my son, this day I have begotten thee.” He interrupted his teacher, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria in the midst of his lecture to shout “There was a time when the Son was not!” His followers set that saying to music and sang it far and wide. On one occasion, with Arians singing on one side of a river and Trinitarians trying to worship on the other, the Trinitarians had enough and responded with a song of their own as they tried to drown out the singing of the Arians: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen, Amen. Thus, was born the Gloria Patri.
The council met in 325 in the imperial palace in Nicaea, and significant sessions were
held in the adjacent church of Hagia Sophia. The estimated 318 bishops out of the 1800 who were invited, debated the issue, and decided in favor of the doctrine that Christ was two complete natures in one person. Eusebius proposed a baptismal formula that he used in Caesarea as a basis of a creed that would incorporate the decision of the council. An initial draft was drawn up, but the final edition, published as the Nicaean creed was composed at the second ecumenical council held in the capital city in 381. The official name of the creed was the Nicean-Constantinoplitan creed.
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