some of the others. We shall now mention a number of their councils that followed those first two.

Fifty-eight years after the initial council at Nicaea they convened a third council. The ministers and military commanders gathered before the emperor and said, “People’s beliefs have become corrupted; the teachings of Arius and Macedonius dominate. Send a decree (1) to all the bishops and patriarchs, summoning them to assemble and set Christian doctrine aright.”

The emperor accordingly wrote (2) to every province, and one hundred and fifty bishops met in Constantinople. They examined the doctrine of Arius and found it to state that the Holy Spirit is a created, manufactured thing and not God (3).

The patriarch of Alexandria declared, “For us, the Holy Spirit is none other than the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God is His very life. If we say that the Spirit of God is created, we have asserted that His life is created; and if we say that His life is created, we have denied that He is living—an act of disbelief in Him.”

Whereupon they all anathematized anyone who professed this view, and they anathematized a group (4) of their own bishops and patriarchs who held other doctrines (5) they rejected. They proclaimed that the Holy Spirit is Creator, not created, true God (from true God) (6), of the same nature as the Father and the Son—one essence and one nature. They then added to the creed established by the three hundred and eighteen (7): “And we believe in the Holy Spirit…”