Council Day 3 Reflection (Eusebius of Nicomedia)

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

In today’s council session, I am proud to say that we, Arians and Alexandrians alike, were able to reach an agreement and now have a Creed that has been agreed upon by both sides. However, reaching this point did take some time and many compromises and sacrifices were made, specifically on the Arian side, but no matter because we have achieved a small success. Despite reaching this point there are some parts of the Creed that I find acceptable to me as Eusebius of Nicomedia and an Arian, but there are some areas of the Creed that I find unacceptable.

Upon the signing of the Creed, I did not think that there was an exact winner or loser when it was signed. Despite saying this, if we were to analyze how much Alexandrian language there is in the Creed compared to Arian language, then the Alexandrians seem to be the victors in this fight. We must remember that as long as there is some Arian language in the Creed and that we did not give up our beliefs, but fought for them until the bitter end to get this Creed passed, then our job has been done when it comes to the Creed, so it will be time to move onto the canons. Within the Creed, I agree in general about what we have written about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, particularly in the section about Jesus Christ, where it describes Jesus as “Son only-begotten before all time”. Although it is not plainly said, this is an Arian belief that Jesus Christ was not always with God since the beginning of time, but that He was in a way created, which is what I and my fellow Arians believe as well. The only part of the Creed that I find unacceptable was that we took out the Father in the the first part of the Creed that discusses God because if all throughout scripture Jesus Christ refers to God as “the Father”, then that should not have been taken out of the Creed. To others this may be a minor issue, but to me as well as the other Arians, this was a major issue; an issue that we lost.
Though there are things that we all did not agree on we were able to get a Creed that was neither Alexandrian or Arian, but was a mixture of the two, which reinforced the entire purpose for Emperor Constantine to call this council; the purpose of unity.