266. Clearly then, there was an ancient Word on earth, especially in the Middle East, that predated the Israelite Word. This earlier Word is still extant in heaven among the angels who lived during those centuries. It is also still extant today among the nations in Great Tartary, as you can see from the third memorable occurrence after this treatment on the Sacred Scripture [279].

632. The Concept of a Faith That Assigns Us the Merit and Justice of Christ the Redeemer First Surfaced in the Decrees of the Council of Nicaea Concerning Three Divine Persons from Eternity; from That Time to the Present This Faith Has Been Accepted by the Entire Christian World

The Council of Nicaea was hosted by the emperor Constantine the Great in his palace in Nicaea, a city in Bithynia. He had been persuaded to call the council by Alexander, bishop of Alexandria. All the bishops of Asia, Africa, and Europe were invited. Their charge was to challenge and condemn, using Sacred Scripture, the heresy of Arius, a presbyter in Alexandria who was denying that Jesus Christ was divine. The council occurred in the year of our Lord 325.

The participants in the council came to the conclusion that three divine persons had existed from eternity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is particularly easy to see from the two statements called the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed.

In the Nicene Creed we read the following:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, born before all the ages, God from God, who has the same substance as the Father, and who came down from the heavens and was incarnated by the Holy Spirit through the Virgin Mary. And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, and who along with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.

[2] The following statement appears in the Athanasian Creed.

The catholic faith is this, that we venerate one God in a trinity, and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. Just as Christian truth compels us to confess each person individually as God and Lord, so the catholic religion forbids us to say that there are three gods or three lords.

That is, it is allowable to confess three gods and lords but not to say three gods and lords. We do not say three gods and lords because religion forbids it, but we confess three gods and lords because that is what the truth dictates.

The Athanasian Creed was composed immediately after the Council of Nicaea by one or more of the people who had attended that council. It was accepted as an ecumenical or catholic creed.

Clearly, then, that was when it was decreed that the church should acknowledge three divine persons from eternity, each of whom is individually God, although there should be no mention of three gods or lords but only of one.