The Tomus ad Antiochenos

The Tomus ad Antiochenos (362) is the synodal letter of the Council of Alexandria, convened by Athanasius immediately after Emperor Julian’s amnesty allowed the exiled bishops to return. Addressed to the divided church of Antioch, it is a landmark of theological diplomacy: it declared that both “one hypostasis” and “three hypostases” language could be orthodox when rightly meant, defended the divinity of the Holy Spirit against the Pneumatomachoi, and rejected the Apollinarian denial of Christ’s human soul. Though it failed to heal the Antiochene schism immediately, it opened the road to the Cappadocian settlement and the Council of Constantinople (381).

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

Occasion: Julian’s Amnesty and the Council of Alexandria

On 9 February 362 the new emperor Julian (later called “the Apostate”) issued an edict of restitution recalling the bishops Constantius had banished — calculating, it seems, that a divided and quarreling Church would weaken itself. Athanasius returned to Alexandria on 21 February 362 and at once convened a synod, small but strategically composed, to consolidate the Nicene cause now that the pro-Arian imperial pressure had lifted. Among those present or associated with the council were Eusebius of Vercelli and Lucifer of Cagliari (Calaris), Western confessors recently returned from exile, along with Egyptian bishops (Tomus ad Antiochenos; Councils of Alexandria; encyclopedic summaries cross-checked against the NPNF II/4 introduction to the Tomus).

The synod’s chief business was the schism at Antioch, the most important see of the East, where the Nicene party was tragically split against itself.

The Antiochene Schism

By 362 Antioch had several competing claimants and communities:

The Eustathians (or Paulinians), the rigorist old-Nicene group descended from the deposed bishop Eustathius, now led by the presbyter (soon bishop) Paulinus. They insisted on strict “one hypostasis” language — mia hypostasis identified with ousia — fearing that any talk of “three hypostases” smuggled in tritheism or Arian subordination.
The Meletians, the larger community gathered around bishop Meletius of Antioch, who used the Eastern “three hypostases” idiom and were moving steadily toward Nicene orthodoxy, but whose terminology the Westerners and the Eustathians distrusted.
The Homoians under bishop Euzoius, the imperially favored Arian party, who were excluded from any reconciliation.

The tragedy was that Eustathians and Meletians were substantially agreed in faith but divided by vocabulary — and the intervention of the hot-tempered Lucifer of Cagliari, who consecrated Paulinus as a rival bishop, would deepen rather than heal the rupture.

The Reconciling Move: One Hypostasis and Three Hypostases Both Legitimate

The genius of the Tomus is its refusal to make a party-shibboleth out of a word. The synod laid down a minimal doctrinal basis for communion (Tomus 3): condemnation of Arianism (the Son is not a creature), acceptance of the Nicene Creed as the sufficient and exclusive standard of faith, and confession of the divinity of the Holy Spirit — anathematizing those who call the Spirit a creature separate from the substance of Christ. On that basis it adjudicated the terminological quarrel directly.

The synod examined both sides. Those who spoke of “three hypostases” were questioned and found not to mean three principles or three gods, nor a Son and Spirit foreign to the Father’s essence, but rather the three really subsisting Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and they affirmed the Son to be “of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father.” Those who spoke of “one hypostasis” were questioned and found not to be teaching a Sabellian confusion of the Persons, but using hypostasis as a synonym for ousia to affirm the single Godhead, while still confessing the Son and Spirit as truly subsisting (Tomus ad Antiochenos 5–6; trans. NPNF II/4).

The conclusion was a model of irenic precision: since both parties confessed the same faith, the difference was one of language, not doctrine, and neither formula should be made a barrier to communion. The synod therefore urged that both be received, provided each was understood in an orthodox sense, and that the contending parties forbear to condemn one another over the words (Tomus ad Antiochenos 6, 8). This is a deliberate distinction between ousia as the term of unity and hypostasis as the term of distinction — the distinction the Cappadocians would soon make standard, but which Athanasius here treats with a generous flexibility, declining to canonize even his own preferred usage.

The Holy Spirit and the Human Soul of Christ

Two further dogmatic clarifications give the Tomus its enduring weight beyond the immediate dispute:

Against the Pneumatomachoi. The synod required all parties to anathematize those who say the Holy Spirit “is a creature and separate from the substance of Christ” (Tomus ad Antiochenos 3). This advances pneumatology past the bare clause of Nicaea and runs parallel to the Letters to Serapion, written only a few years earlier (cross-link Letters to Serapion).
Against an early Apollinarianism. The synod also addressed those who said the Savior had “a body without a soul” — that the Word took flesh but supplied the place of the rational human soul himself. The Tomus insists that the Word did not dwell in a soulless body, but that “the Saviour had not a body without a soul, nor without sense or intelligence”; his humanity was complete, soul and body (Tomus ad Antiochenos 7, citing John 1:14). This is one of the earliest conciliar rejections of the error that Apollinaris of Laodicea would shortly make notorious.

Long-Term Significance for the Cappadocian Settlement

The Tomus ad Antiochenos failed in its immediate aim. Lucifer’s consecration of Paulinus had already split the Nicene party, and the Meletian schism at Antioch dragged on to the century’s end. Yet as a theological charter the document was decisive. By treating the “one hypostasis”/“three hypostaseis” quarrel as a difference of terminology resting on a shared faith, Athanasius made room for the Eastern Neo-Nicene theology that the Cappadocians would systematize as one ousia, three hypostaseis — the formula carried by St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory the Theologian, and ratified at the First Council of Constantinople (381) (cross-link St. Basil the Great: Ousia and Hypostasis).

It is precisely the Tomus‘s diplomatic restraint — its insistence that orthodoxy is not the property of a single vocabulary — that made the later settlement possible. Athanasius, the old champion of homoousios, used his authority not to impose a formula but to certify that two formulas confessed one faith. Scholars debate whether the document was as wholly “pacific” as it appears, given Lucifer’s parallel action, but its drafting under Athanasius’ hand reflects a settled conviction that unity in the apostolic faith mattered more than uniformity of phrase (Behr, The Nicene Faith; Anatolios, Athanasius).

References

Athanasius of Alexandria. Tomus ad Antiochenos (To the Antiochenes). 362. Translated in NPNF II/4 (Schaff and Wace, eds.), with the introduction to the Tomus.
Anatolios, Khaled. Athanasius. The Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 2004.
Behr, John. The Nicene Faith. Formation of Christian Theology, vol. 2. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004.
Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Council of Constantinople I (381). Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.