This week's lecture gives theological background to the Nicene Creed by explaining the Arian controversy: Arius, a priest in Alexandria, taught that the Son/Word was created (“there was a time when the Son was not”), leading Bishop Alexander to condemn him and prompting Constantine to convene the first ecumenical council at Nicaea (325 AD), where the Church defined the Son as consubstantial with the Father. Abbot Ankido explains why Christ must be fully God and fully man for salvation, and briefly traces later councils (Constantinople 381 on the Spirit’s divinity, Ephesus 431, Chalcedon 451). He then introduces the Trinity—rejecting modalism and partialism—defining nature as “what” and person as “who,” describing the Son as the Father’s eternal Word and the Spirit as the love between Father and Son, and applying this to human life: made for relationship, loneliness and self-isolation contradict personhood, and the Cross shows love as self-gift.

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