Council Day 1 Reflection

Greetings Emperor Constantine, Ossius, and my fellow Council members,

It is I, Eusebius of Nicomedia. Today’s Council started off interestingly, mostly because I did not know what to expect. After the Creed was read by my fellow Arian, Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, this was the motion made by Theclus to remove “the Father” from the Creed. At first many of us, except for Arius did not have a problem with this, so we did an informal vote on it and voted to remove it. As the Council proceeded we discussed who God is, which at some moments were difficult to discern because as Emperor Constantine pointed out we did not want too many words to be in the Creed as not to cause confusion later. The main goal of this Council is to reach unity, as Emperor Constantine has stressed to us, but I think that some of my fellow bishops lost sight of that at times during our first Council meeting.
The Creed that was agreed upon on 17 March is not one that I completely deem acceptable because there was a vote where the majority voted to take “the Father” out of the Creed. This is all Theclus’ doing because he first brought up the motion during the beginning of the Council. Had it not been for him making that motion, “the Father” could have been kept and I think the Council would have been satisfied. The removal of “the Father” in a way makes it seem as though we are going against what Christ says. Constantly in the Scripture, Christ refers to our God as “the Father” and never as “the Mother” even though God may display some feminine aspects such as being compassionate and having a loving nature. Jesus even taught his disciples to call God “our heavenly Father” thus why should we have excluded “the Father” from the Creed. Suppose those who read this Creed wonder if they are only supposed to address God as God, could he go by another name, who is God to me, etc.?  I must say that I am a bit disappointed that some of the bishops have voted to exclude “the Father” from the Creed, but let us see how the coming days of the Council proceed forth.