You Tube Theology

Fr. Khaled Anatolios’ keynote talk, “Athanasius’s Nicene Ecclesiology,” at Sacred Heart Major Seminary’s academic conference, “Nicaea at 1700: The First Council and the ‘Way Together,’” which took place Oct. 2-4, 2025.

Fr. Anatolios is the John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology and Chair of the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. From Fr. Anatolios:

“Although the Nicene Council has come to be regarded as the first ecumenical synod, it did not issue any pronouncements on the theology of synodality as such. Neither did it explicitly articulate a theology of the Church, despite the fact that its canons contain some disciplinary regulations. This apparent lacuna may be taken as indicative of Patristic theology in general, which, as has been often noted, was not preoccupied with articulating a theology of the Church.

“Instead, the Patristic theological vision of the Church is to be found primarily in its embeddedness within the central Christian doctrines of the Trinitarian God and the person and work of Christ. In this paper, I offer a sketch of the Christological foundations of Athanasius’s conception of the Church, as well as some reflections on how his Nicene Christology can illumine our contemporary understanding of the Church and its synodality.”