A homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Christian Mission Church in Winfield, Pennsylvania, by Priest Paul Siewers, for the Sunday of the First Ecumenical Council, 7533/2025.
This year is the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicene, which we commemorate today on the Church calendar. It is the first Ecumenical Council of the Church, Ecumenical because it drew Orthodox Christian hierarchs and clergy from around the known inhabited world, the oikumene. The First Council is also a kind of stand-in and symbol for all the Orthodox Ecumenical Councils, inspired by the Holy Spirit. There are Seven primary such Councils, and a couple others appended to them in what are known less formally as the Eighth and Ninth Councils. The main contribution of the First was the core of the Symbol of Faith or Nicene Creed, which highlighted the serious error of Arianism (the whole Creed, most accurately known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, was completed at the Second Council, in Constantinople). Here are seven ways in which the First Council richly contributed to our Orthodox Christian faith in the Creed.
- First, the defeat of Arianism at the Council articulated further the basis for the Orthodox Church as the Body of Christ, in the core of the Creed or Symbol of Faith. “Consider this analogy,” wrote Blessed Theophylact. “Let us imagine that a spring of water represents the Father; the river flowing from that spring the Son; and the water itself, the divine nature. A man who draws water from the river is ultimately taking water from the spring which is its source. Similarly, because the Son has the same essence and characteristics as the Father, he who believes in the Son necessarily believes in the Father, the very source of good…. The Father and the Son are one and the same with no intermediary power between them, just as light and ray are one and the same.” (commentary on John 12:45-46). Such metaphors are imperfect but indicate what the First Council articulated. Western Christianity, while claiming the first four Councils as a point of unity with Orthodoxy, nonetheless has departed in spirit from it. With its adoption of the filioque and a thousand years or more of theologizing based on that false additionto the Creed, Western denominations have emphasized the oneness of the water, so to speak, at the expense of the distinctness of the Persons in unity. That has made for abstraction in theology, which enabled apostasy from the historical Church as the Body of Christ, nurtured heretical Deism and Unitarianism and individualistic rationalism in the West. Orthodoxy by contrast is not scholastic but ascetic and experiential, also hesychastic or meditative, and oriented toward illumination and theosis, or oneness with God’s uncreated energies.
*** - Second, the Council reflected the combination of conciliar and hierarchical spirit typical of Orthodoxy and known in Slavonic as sobornost. That sense of spiritual unity is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the centralized despotism of the papacy under Catholicism, and also from the tendency in Protestantism in early forms to be ruled by monarchs in so-called state churches, and then in more recent times by individual preacher-celebrities or by a kind of interfaith cloud of vague social religion affected by secularism. Our hierarchies in a conciliar sense are both vertical and horizontal, reflecting the working of the Holy Spirit and uncreated grace accessible to all believers.
*** - Third, related to this, the Ecumenical Councils also reflected the symphonia of Orthodoxy in relation to the secular State, because they were summoned by Orthodox Christian emperors. Symphonia is symbolized by the double-headed eagle and signifies a society with in effect two heads, the Church and the State, together in one body, but distinct in their functions. Even the founding documents of our country echo this, even if faintly in its original heterodox Protestantism and Deism. Those documents refer to the Providence of God as the basis of our country, as one nation under God, and prohibit national establishment of religion, which is a blessing for us because it would have been heretical, while providing that religious expression (at the time almost entirely Christian if heretical) should not be regulated, again a blessing for the Orthodox mission to North America today. The checks and balances of the American constitutional system stand testimony to the Christian understanding of the need for limits on fallen human will. (Following that insight, we ought to be celebrating Humility Month every month rather than Pride month that falsely would identify people with the slavery of their sinful passions.)
*** - Fourth, the First Ecumenical Council and those that follow it form our defense against the heresy of Ecumenism, which has risen with pride in our age and society, as a kind of aspirational global spirituality for the neocolonial West. That’s because the First Council defeated Arianism, a heresy that sought to degrade Jesus Christ. The view that Jesus was just another holy teacher feeds the modern heresy of ecumenism that all faiths are equal without recognizing the uniqueness of the Church of Jesus Christ.
*** - Fifth, the Councils highlight the inspired teaching of key Church Fathers. The Three Hierarchs and Cappadocians, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom, as well as St. Gregory of Nyssa, then St. Maximus the Confessor, and others, are all among the key figures. The two important supplemental additional Councils from the ninth and fourteenth centuries, what are sometimes called the Eighth and Ninth Councils, they highlighted the holy teachings of St. Photius the Great and St. Gregory Palamas.
*** - Sixth, the Creed connects with all aspects of that which makes Orthodoxy true and complete as a medicine for soul and body and a firm foundation for family, the Church in the home. For example, Western heterodoxy has encouraged a view of sexual passion as natural in a way that encourages today’s pan-sexualism and obsession with sex, transgenderism, etc. Passions are not our identity. We understand that in Orthodoxy. But Western individualistic rationalism and desire for individual comfort above truth has strayed from the traditions of the Church and Scripture. This comes from the type of abstraction of theology outside the Creed as mentioned, which is at odds with the spirit of the First Council of Nicaea and its successors.
People today notice Orthodoxy avoids the follies of Arian abstraction and individualism that taints the theology and anthropology of the West. A recent BBC report cited the growth of Russian Orthodoxy in America among men as a sign of how Orthodoxy supports real manhood and not secular gender ideology. Details of that article are sensational and have been critiqued by Orthodox writers, noting that true manhood is self-control through God’s grace. But it is true that traditional views of men and women in Christ found in Orthodoxy are appealing to many as a basis for family life. Jennifer Galardi, who briefly attended our mission services while living in Lewisburg, this week wrote an article for a national publication about how Orthodoxy of course is for women as well. “Orthodoxy impeccably balances the masculine and feminine modes of the rational and mystical,” she wrote. “Its holistic approach to Christianity pairs stark truth with relentless grace. It is the perfect blend of the rational head and the emotional heart. It allows for the word or logos of God to rule alongside His unimaginable, unfathomable love without compromising either. It corrects me with the sternness of a father, but also the tenderness of the sweetest mother.”
*** - Seventh and finally on this list of what the Councils clarify for us, the sobornost of spiritual unity voiced in the Creed (recited in the Divine Liturgy at all Orthodox Churches in languages around the world) that emerged from the first two Councils is a protection. In this world we shall have trials, our Lord tells us, but we should be of good cheer, for He has overcome the world. As St. Cyprian of Carthage put it, he who would have God as a Father must first have the Church as his Mother. The Church highlighted in the Creed is our protecting ark. Today we see continued attack of the secular global technocracy upon traditional Christianity. There is news of persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, our sister jurisdiction, and also just this week reports of legal threat to St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai. But there are always also signs of hope. One for which we are grateful is our new Church here in Northern Appalachia, in an area that had no Orthodox Church before. Another is the visit of the myrrh-bearing Hawaiian Iveron Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos to our Cathedral in Mayfield Pennsylvania this past week. The mysteries of the Church as our ark, indicated in the Creed, continue all the more in persecution by the spirit of this world, often as a hidden leaven at work in the world.
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In all this, the Nicene Council reminds us of the spiritual fortress of Orthodoxy, in the Symbol of Faith as an articulation of the Gospel and Apostolic Tradition. We can pray for the intercession of the Fathers of the First Council for our mission and for our lives and families today. Consider the Symbol of Faith, the Creed, as a type of prayer for us to declare and to help strengthen our faith and bring healing to our spiritual and daily lives. It unites us to the Church Councils and through them to Pentecost, which the Church will commemorate next Sunday.
How do we apply this in our own lives? Consider how the Fathers of the Councils had to stand for their beliefs amid persecution and martyrdom. Many arrived at Nicaea with wounds on their bodies from persecution. Brothers and sisters, we need to pray for rigor in our practice of Orthodoxy, in our fasting, in our attending services, in our daily prayers and struggle with God’s grace, in our missionary work. We and our families, whether we always see it or not, are on the front line of spiritual warfare. But, with God’s help, the gates of hell cannot prevail against our Lord’s Church. The Ecumenical Councils and their achievements stand as proof and encouragement. Let them inspire and give new purpose to our lives as Orthodox Christians. Pentecost is both here in the mysteries of the Church and on the way. For Christ is Ascended! From Earth to Heaven!