As a Neo-Nicene who takes up the cause of the homoousios and tries to defend the cause of Nicaea in the late 350s against coalescing parties of Anti-Nicene theology, we would expect Marius Victorinus to know the details of the 325 council, and to clearly reproduce the 325 creed of Nicaea somewhere within the lengthy four books of Against Arius. But we do not find it anywhere within Against Arius or his other trinitarian treatises, making us wonder whether or not he actually knows it and has it at hand, even though he speaks at length twice in Against Arius about the significance of the 325 council.
In Against Arius Victorinus quotes the 381-sounding formula of ‘one ousia in three hypostases,’ showing that he has an amazing grasp of currents in Eastern theology circa 362, but it is not clear whether or not Victorinus actually knows very much about the Nicene council or if Victorinus just has the ideal of Nicaea in his historical memory. He possibly possessed the text of the 325 creed, if he could quote the condemnations of Arius mentioned in the creed that had become commonplaces. But to quote a creed that had an embarassing modalist element would certainly serve against his interest, especially when among his stated opponents in arguing for the Neo-Nicene cause in the 350s are old Nicene figures such as Marcellus and Photinus. It was better to recreate a certain memory of Nicaea as a rallying standard of orthodoxy in the trinitarian definition finally emerging after the high-handed Anti-Nicene efforts that culminated in the brief Homoian supremacy of the last years of the 350s decade.
This paper could be placed within the Arian-Nicene Trinitarian Controversy category that deals with other Latin Nicenes such as Phoebadius of Agen, Gregory of Elvira, Hilary of Poitiers and others.
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