Commemoration of the Second Holy Ecumenical Synod
Celebration Date: 22/05
After the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, new heretics appeared in the Church, such as the Pneumatomachi or Macedonians, under the heresiarch Macedonius of Constantinople, the Hemiarians, Apollinarius of Laodicea, Sabellius of Ptolemais, Marcellus of Ankyra, Photinus of Sirmius, Eunomius of Cyzicus with his teacher Aetius, Eudoxius of Constantinople, Paul Samosateus and others who attracted many followers.
The Christological question was raised because of the heresy of Apollinarius of Laodicea. Apollinarius (390 AD), like the so-called Alexandrian School, primarily emphasized the unity in the Person of Jesus Christ, often at the expense of the fullness of the human element. He taught that Christ is the Son of God, who is a perfect God and during the Incarnation he received only flesh (“God incarnate”), i.e. a human body and a horse soul, but not a human mind, because that would mean perfection (integrity) of human nature. Apollinarius believed that Christ, for the salvation of man, needed to be a perfect God. So that complete union in the One Christ was possible, he taught that the Word of God did not receive a perfect human nature during the Incarnation, but only the human body animated with an animal (horse) soul and not a human mind. He preferred to use the term “sarx”, but not in its biblical meaning. He insisted on the close union of God and man in Christ, but His humanity was not complete. He characterized the union of Word and flesh in one nature as “essential union”, “complex union” and “natural union”. The “truncated” human nature after the union must be considered absorbed and lost within the bosom of the Word, so that Christ is not a perfect man, but only a perfect God.
The Pneumatomachi or Macedonians denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, considering it “a creature and not God, nor consubstantial with the Father and the Son.” According to Basil the Great, the Spirit Warriors were considered not only to be fighting against God and the Son and to be fighting against Christ, but also to be fighting against spirits.
The Fathers of the Church reacted to the teaching of Apollinarius and Macedonius very early on and condemned him many times. However, the final condemnation of their heretical malpractice was made by the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381 AD.
The Second Ecumenical Council convened from May to the end of July 381 AD. in Constantinople, at the invitation of the emperor Theodosius the Great, to solve theological and administrative problems. The one hundred and fifty God-bearing Fathers, who participated in it, came from regions, which were politically under the jurisdiction of the emperor who convened them. In other words, it was about a Great Synod of the Bishops of the Eastern Roman State, and its recognition as the Second Ecumenical was made by the D+ Ecumenical Synod, which met in Chalcedon in 451 AD, which accepted its Symbol as equivalent and equivalent to that of Nicaea.
The Second Ecumenical Council acquired great importance for Christianity above all because it completed the sacred Symbol of Faith, after it dogmatized in particular the Spirituality of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, as well as other articles of faith, and thus constituted a milestone in its history of the Orthodox Church and a great station especially in the doctrinal definition of the ancient Church. The importance of this Synod and its Symbol lies mainly in the completion of the Trinitarian doctrine, through the establishment of the Godhead and the emanation of the Spirit “from the Father”, without this meaning that the importance of this teaching about the Church, baptism, resurrection is overlooked dead and eternal life.
This, first and foremost, formulated more broadly, more fully and more accurately the holy Symbol of Nicaea of Constantinople, “I believe”, because the first seven articles were drawn up under the First Ecumenical Council in 325 AD, against the great heresy of Arianism , which disturbed the Church for a long time, and which heresy denied the Divinity of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and the last five from the Second Ecumenical Council, against the Spiritualism which denied the Divinity of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity and the others as above sects. the sacred Symbol of Faith, “I believe”, is recited and confessed by all Christians as a confession of faith, as a baptismal text and as a liturgical text in the divine worship of the Orthodox Church, which recognizes and honors this as the work of the first two Ecumenical Councils.
What St. Gregory of Nyssa emphasizes in the Synod is that the Lord Himself joins the Spirit with the Father and the Son, given that he has all the characteristics of the divine nature and is life-giving, holy, righteous, wise, righteous, sovereign. This community of Names proves that there is no difference in energy between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And the identity of energy proves the unity of nature. No one should therefore deny the one Godhead of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. That is why the holy Father writes that “our life is one, which is generated through faith in the Holy Trinity, proceeding from the one God of all, produced by the Son, and finished in the Holy Spirit”. To the question of the Spirit Warriors how it is possible for the Spirit to be equal to the Father and the Son, since the Father is the Creator, and by the Son all things were created, he answers that they were always created in the Holy Spirit and excludes the coexistence and inseparability of the of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity and underlines that apart from the difference according to class and status “we do not understand the difference”.
In the Typical of Agia Sophia of Thessaloniki the commemoration of the Synod was held together with the commemoration of the 6th Ecumenical Council on the first Sunday after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (celebrated on September 14). Symeon of Thessaloniki is considered to be the speaker of this double celebration and the poet of the Sequence.
