Council of Nicaea I on Original sin & the human will
No position located on this map
Searched in the sources read for this figure and not found. A limit of the reading rather than a claim about the figure — a source not yet read could settle it.
Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man.
THE POSITION
The creed's whole anthropology is the clause "for us men and for our salvation" — a statement of why the Son came, not of what the fall did to the nature he came for. All twenty canons were read and every one is disciplinary or jurisdictional: ordination, metropolitan jurisdiction, the readmission of the lapsed, lending at interest, posture in prayer. The question this locus asks — what the fall did to human nature, and whether the will can turn to God unaided — is nowhere addressed. Searched and not located, rather than unavailable to be asked: Tertullian had argued for sin transmitted with the soul in De Anima 40–41 a century before this council sat. The category existed in the Latin West and these Greek bishops, whose business was the Son's relation to the Father, did not take it up.
WHAT OTHERS HOLD HERE
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Settled that the Son is homoousios — of one substance — with the Father, against Arius. Also fixed a common date for Easter and issued 20 disciplinary canons.
Cite this page
"Council of Nicaea I on Original sin & the human will", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/nicaea-1/original-sin (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/nicaea-1/original-sin).