Jesus Wars

by John Philip Jenkins

  Melkites Originally an insulting term for those followers of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy who lived in regions dominated by Monophysites. As they followed the religion of the king or emperor, they were called “King’s Men.”

  Miaphysites A form of One Nature Christology associated particularly with Cyril of Alexandria and his successors. In this view, the incarnate Christ has one Nature, although that is made up of both a divine and a human Nature and still comprises all the features of both. Christ is from two Natures.

  Modalists See Sabellius.

  Monophysites Believers in One Nature Christology. The term is often used generically to cover other less extreme approaches, including Miaphysitism.

  Monotheletes In the seventh century, the Roman Empire tried to overcome the long war between One and Two Nature approaches to Christ. Instead, the empire and church leaders argued that Christ had a single Will. Critics called this view the Monothelete (One Will) heresy, and it was eventually condemned as such.

  Nestorians Nestorius was accused of teaching that two Natures coexist within Christ but in a conjunction that falls short of a true union. Mary was thus the Mother of Christ, but could not be called Mother of God. Later scholarship tends to see Nestorius as much closer to mainstream orthodoxy than this description would suggest and not therefore a “Nestorian.”

  Paul of A third-century bishop of Antioch, Paul believed Samosata that the man Jesus became divine at the time of his baptism. This was condemned as a form of Two Nature heresy or Adoptionism.

  Sabellius Sabellius taught in Rome in the early third century. He believed that Christ had a human body but was identical to God in his nature: he had no real human nature. In this view, Father, Son, and Spirit are not persons, but modes of one divine being. Christ was one with the Father to the extent that it was the Father who suffered on the cross. This was an extreme form of One Nature belief.

  Valentinus A second-century Egyptian thinker, Valentinus taught a classic form of Gnostic Christology in which the divine Christ came to redeem the evil world, but he had no true human nature, and his body was always supernatural rather than truly human.

  Word/Flesh Theologians believed that God’s Word, the Logos, Christology became flesh (Sarx), so the Logos was the principle guiding Christ’s flesh or body. This Logos/Sarx approach tended to see Christ as a representative of humanity rather than, necessarily, a fully developed individual in his own right.

  Word/Man In this Logos/Anthropos approach, God’s Word, Christology the Logos, became human in the form of the man (Anthropos) Jesus Christ. Christ was not just a generic representative of humanity, but a fully individual human being.

  3

  Four Horsemen: The Church’s Patriarchs

  Alexandrians think the sun rises just for them.

  Severus of Antioch

  The story of church controversy in this era can be summarized in a line: Syria taught them, Constantinople consecrated them, and Alexandria tried to destroy them. In other words, Syrian schools taught the great church tradition of Antioch, and their graduates went on to hold high rank in Constantinople. But whether out of rivalry between the sees or suspicion of Antioch’s theology, Alexandria’s patriarchs promptly targeted them. And ultimately—in the long term—Rome benefited.

  Underlying the religious struggles were other conflicts, between individuals, but also between different portions of an already vast Christian world. Patriarchs and bishops were fighting one another for supremacy within the church and for the place of the church within a rapidly evolving Christian empire. The conflict had a central political dimension.

  Patriarchs and Popes

  Through the successive councils, we see the activity of certain powerful individuals, usually patriarchs or popes of their particular sees, men such as Leo of Rome, Cyril and Dioscuros of Alexandria, Juvenal of Jerusalem. But when they participated in church debates, they were speaking not just for themselves, but for much wider and older interests, for multiple generations of predecessors. Each was surrounded by a cloud of witnesses.1

  Of course, figures like Leo and Dioscuros had their personal interests and obsessions, but they also represented the much larger traditions of corporate entities, their sees or patriarchates. Each see developed its own sense of history, much as secular monarchies built on the traditions of their distinguished ancestors. In the see of Alexandria, Cyril was the great patriarch from 412 to 444. He in turn venerated such glorious predecessors as the early-fourth-century bishop Alexander and especially Athanasius, who dominated church politics through much of the mid-fourth century. Although sons did not succeed fathers as in pharaonic times, patriarchs did raise up and train their successors. Athanasius was “like a son” to Alexander and served as his secretary at the Council of Nicea. Cyril was nephew and secretary to his immediate precursor, Theophilus. Cyril’s own secretary was Dioscuros, who in turn succeeded to Alexandria. Even without a direct biological or family link, patriarchates looked monarchical in their sense of continuity and pursued the long-term goals of something very like a dynasty.2

  The great patriarchs were also long-lived, creating a sense of the permanence and inevitability of their regimes, all the more so in an age when ordinary life spans were so much shorter than they are today. Between 328 and 444, just three men—Athanasius (328–73), Theophilus (385–412) and Cyril (412–44)—held Alexandria’s patriarchal throne for all but twelve years (including periods that Athanasius was in exile). By the time Cyril became patriarch at age 34, he probably never remembered a time when his uncle had not held the office.

  Although Alexandria offers an unusually clear case of a dynasty, something similar can be traced in many centers. In Rome a clergyman rose through the ranks, serving as archdeacon or emissary for one pope before succeeding in his own right. Under Pope Celestine (422–32), the deacon Leo held important diplomatic posts before himself succeeding as pope in 440. Leo’s archdeacon was Hilarius, who succeeded as pope in 461. As in Alexandria, some bishops had impressively long careers. Innocent I reigned as pope from 401 through 417 and endured all the disasters surrounding the Gothic sack of the city. Celestine held office for a full decade; Leo for twenty-one years. Through such connections, dioceses developed their sense of institutional memory and corporate loyalty.3

  At least according to a powerful historical theory, this long continuity linked the contemporary church to apostolic times. When the Fathers assembled at Chalcedon in 451, they awarded high praise to Pope Leo’s Tome, and they reportedly cried, “Peter has spoken thus through Leo!”4 In saying this, they were not just flattering Leo by comparing him to the apostle but were acknowledging a theory that underlies the religious and political interactions of these years: bishops owed their authority to a direct spiritual inheritance from distinguished predecessors, some of whom had shed their blood for the faith. Indeed, the tombs and relics of these earlier figures served as a material source of mighty gifts and blessings available to the faithful. If somebody asked a bishop by what authority he spoke on a particular matter, he might reply that while he personally was a mere worm, he stood in an unbroken succession from these spiritual ancestors. Ultimately, this line of inheritance could be traced back to an apostle and thence to those who had personally heard Christ speak. The most important dioceses looked to apostolic founders, most famously in the case of Rome, which claimed as its founders both Peter and Paul.

  Now, we have to be very careful about accepting such rhetorical claims, even if we do believe that the different apostles really did found the churches credited to them. The apostolic argument was not as ancient or universally accepted as Pope Leo’s partisans liked to believe. It impressed Westerners much more powerfully than it did Easterners, who knew that the apostles had actually visited countless small and undistinguished centers. Also, a glance at the historical record shows that the power and prestige of churches supposedly founded by venerated apostles was anything but constant over time and had in fact changed dramatically according to political vagari
es. During the fourth and fifth centuries, the leading churches were struggling both to expand their power and to find new legal and political justifications in which they could ground their claims, and the apostolic connection was one potent weapon in the spiritual arsenal. Rome especially was engaged in a furious process of invention and reinvention, from which emerged the titles and ideologies that would give the papacy hegemony over Western Europe for long centuries to come. The fifth-century councils provided the public setting—or rather, the theatrical stage—in which such claims were asserted and contested.

  Rising and Falling Stars

  Through most of the fifth century, four great churches held the greatest prestige throughout church and empire, and each played its role in the theological controversies. Three of these represented the Founding Triangle of early Christianity, namely, Antioch, Rome, and Alexandria; the fourth was Constantinople. All the councils witnessed the interplay of these four spiritual kingdoms.

  By Constantine’s time, certain sees occupied a special status through their place in Christian history but also from the prestige and wealth of the cities in which they were located. In 325, the Council of Nicea identified Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch as the preeminent churches. When the emperor Theodosius I established Christianity as the official faith of the Roman realm in 381, he naturally had to specify which particular version of that religion was being approved, and he did so in terms of the belief held at Rome and Alexandria. Rome’s Christianity was the religion laid down in the time of St. Peter, “and which is now professed by the [Roman] pontifex Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria.”5

  Each great see presided over a wider region comprising several civil provinces, within which lesser bishops acknowledged the supremacy of the local bishop-of-bishops (The word “patriarch” evolved in the early fifth century). Each patriarchate constituted a kind of regional empire within the church, with boundaries that had to be defended against ambitious outsiders. That meant that established patriarchs were always likely to see up-and-coming bishoprics as potential rivals. In turn, rising contenders struggled against established incumbents, adding an element of instability to the ecclesiastical order. Any contemporary with the slightest knowledge of history knew that patriarchates could come and go and that centers could gain or lose prestige over time. There could, and probably would, be other popes. That fact contributed mightily to conflict between churches, however much those issues of power were disguised in theological terms.

  A number of great churches could easily become candidates for patriarchal status in the future, joining or replacing existing centers. By all rights, Carthage should already have won this status at Nicea, and it would have done so if that church was not constantly tearing itself apart in bloody schisms. Milan was another promising candidate for future glory, while the Gaulish see of Arles had its aspirations. The Mesopotamian capital of Seleucia-Ctesiphon wanted to serve as the center of a great Eastern church beyond the Roman frontier, and that church’s head actually did become patriarch of the East in 498.6

  By far the most important addition to the patriarchal list was the city of Constantinople, New Rome, which was planned in 325 and consecrated in 330. It was developed as a doublet of Rome, with its own prefect and magistrates and a senate three hundred strong. Critically, its vast and superbly constructed walls—developed from 408—made it all but impregnable. Whatever other parts of the empire might slip away, Constantinople would for foreseeable ages serve as an indispensable bastion. The advantages of that position became obvious as the empire’s military and political situation fell apart. Whatever happened to Rome or Antioch, Constantinople was there to stay—and it did remain a Christian center until 1453, when Turkish forces finally acquired heavy cannon.

  As it became ever more clearly the capital of the Eastern empire—and ultimately, of the whole empire—the city naturally gained prestige within the church. In 381, the Council of Constantinople proclaimed that: “The Bishop of Constantinople shall have the primacy of honor after the Bishop of Rome, because it is New Rome.” In fact, the city would often be referred to in later councils by the auspicious title of “Constantinople New Rome.” This claim attracted opposition, and not just from the Roman popes, who refused to ratify the clause. After all, making Constantinople number two in the hierarchy destabilized an already fluid order. If acknowledged, the new status automatically demoted the other great sees—Alexandria to number three, and Antioch to four. And talking of New Rome implied an Old Rome—old, perhaps, in the sense of decrepit or obsolete.7

  The balance of power between the great sees shaped church politics of the fifth century. Always in the background were the struggles between Alexandria and Antioch, but in addition, Constantinople was everyone’s target. The upstart city could usually count on deadly opposition from Alexandria and, commonly, interference from Rome itself: Rome and Alexandria easily made common cause against Constantinople. The council of 381 marked the beginning of a three-sided war between those cities that culminated only at Chalcedon, in 451. On three occasions—in 404, 431, and 449—Alexandrian dabbling brought down bishops of Constantinople, in each case generating a wholesale imperial crisis. In 458, Alexandrian-inspired discontent provoked the murder of a fourth patriarch of the imperial capital.

  But other centers, too, had their distinctive agendas. Constantinople’s rise was parlous news for Ephesus, supposedly the home of the apostle John and of the Virgin Mary herself. In the fourth century, these associations allowed Ephesus to hold senior ecclesiastical rank, with jurisdiction over most of western Asia Minor, a rich territory critical to the empire’s survival. But if Constantinople was to be a great patriarchate, then its bishop needed to control his own set of provinces, and there was no way to develop such a power base except at the expense of Ephesus. At the start of the fifth century, Constantinople’s archbishop John Chrysostom intervened freely in Ephesus, and it was only a matter of time before Ephesus fell entirely under the sway of the imperial city. That was, of course, unless Constantinople itself could be weakened as a nest of heretics. When Constantinople’s Nestorius came under attack in 431, the fact that the great council called to settle the issues was held in Ephesus was a welcome gift to his enemies.8

  Another controversial up-and-coming see was Jerusalem, which traced its glories back to the birth of the church. The Council of Nicea granted the city an honorary primacy, although keeping it for administrative purposes under the metropolitan of Caesarea. Jerusalem’s later bishops fought to transform that honorary status into real power. The most important person in this story was Juvenal, who held the see from 422 through 458 and who repeatedly surfaced as a player in the intrigues surrounding the councils, always seeking the greater glory of his see. Carving out a suitable home territory meant detaching provinces from the patriarch of Antioch, who had to be weakened accordingly. This gave Juvenal a powerful motive for attacking Antioch’s theology, as well as its alumni, like Nestorius. At the great council of Ephesus, then, Juvenal joined Memnon of Ephesus and the Alexandrians in opposition to Constantinople’s bishop. Juvenal finally won patriarchal status for Jerusalem in 451, creating the system of five great patriarchates that endured for centuries.9

  These regional interests could trump ideology. Although Juvenal was an extreme example of the type, he was not the only church leader to pursue power and office whatever official theology prevailed at any given time. Looking at some of the players in these struggles, British historians recall the fictional Vicar of Bray. The vicar is the antihero of an eighteenth-century song put in the mouth of a clergyman who has survived countless changes of regime and doctrine and has played along with all of them. Royalist? Republican? Presbyterian? The vicar will fly whatever flag he needs to. The ultimate pragmatist, his sole guiding principle is that of survival. The chorus boasts, “That whatsoever King may reign / I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!” The vicar had many predecessors in the fifth-century world. A contemporary wrote of one bishop that he “never abided
by one opinion, being a double dealer, a waverer, and a time-server, now anathematizing the synod at Chalcedon, at another time recanting, and admitting it with entire assent.”10

  In the diverse Christianity of late antiquity, each patriarch in a sense lived in a different world, with a different political and geographical outlook, and a different perception of traditional allies and foes. Different patriarchs also enjoyed very different relationships with the empire. From the time of Constantine, the church was drawn ever more closely into the process of government, and at least two of the patriarchs—Rome and Alexandria—became so powerful over large regions as to appear almost royal in their own right. As they grew in power, spiritual and secular, older traditions reasserted themselves, traditions not just of apostolic succession but also of royal authority.

  Rome’s Imperator

  Although we know in hindsight that Rome would be the great survivor, that fact was certainly not obvious at the time. Roman popes tried to act like emperors, and they inherited many of the attitudes and behaviors that in earlier years might have characterized an emperor rather than an early Christian bishop—but increasingly, they found themselves marginalized. Rome was stranded on an exposed and dangerous corner of the civilized world, cut off from the heart of cultural and intellectual life. Everything popes did in the various councils has to be seen in this context of vulnerability, the desperate need to cling to power and status within church and empire.

  Although the papacy traced a lineal heritage from Peter and Paul, the institution had not always had the centralized structure it possessed in the fourth and fifth centuries. By the time of Nicea, the papacy was well established, with a prestige reinforced by a long succession of incumbents who had suffered persecution or martyrdom. But it was above all in the decades after 370 that the papacy emerged in anything like the awe-inspiring form that we know from later eras, with its famous titles and institutions, its rhetoric, and its claims to universal power. In 370, the bishop of Rome was a venerated cleric who mainly exercised power in Italy. By 460 the bishop was at least claiming a kind of universal headship and an immunity from the restraints of civil power. While at first the popes could do little actually to enforce their wishes in the secular world, later political events would give them enormous scope to expand their powers and aspirations. In terms of its later impact on European—and global—affairs, this ideological change constitutes a revolution of the first order. We are witnessing the creation of the key institution of medieval Europe.11