Aristotle has the resources to solve the Conjunctive Problem of Happiness and thus to vouchsafe the necessity of ethically virtuous activity while clarifying the kind of priority that contemplation has. Among these resources is his theory of predication as articulated in the Organon, his toolkit for all sorts of philosophical inquiry. This theory allows us to understand the coherence of what have appeared to many to be fundamentally discrepant answers to the question about what kind of activity happiness is.

The main acts of Nicaea were gradually reversed over the years 327-60. Constantine honored its name and canons throughout his life, but recalled Arius from exile, leaned on church leaders to restore him to communion, and sidelined Arius’s opponents. Constantius II flouted Nicaea’s canons and officially replaced its creed. Nonetheless, Nicaea’s pronouncements on the Son’s relationship to the ousia of the Father, including the term homoousios, which had been a response to Eusebius of Nicomedia’s Letter to Paulinus of Tyre, continued to be debated throughout this period in a succession of mutually allusive theological works. These include Eusebius of Caesarea’s Letter to his Church, Eustathius of Antioch’s Against the Arian Madness, Asterius the Sophist’s Defence of Eusebius of Nicomedia, Marcellus of Ancyra’s Against Asterius, Eusebius’s Against Marcellus and On Ecclesiastical Theology, Acacius of Caesarea’s Against Marcellus, Marcellus’ Letter to Julius of Rome, Athanasius’s Orations Against the Arians, the Profession of Faith of Sirmium 351, and Athanasius’s On the Decrees of Nicaea. The last of these, together with his formidable political skills, established the Nicene Creed against all the odds as the only formula which was able to command widespread support among bishops across the empire after the death of Constantius.