12
1. Statement to a church council of 355 attributed to Constantius II, quoted in R. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God (Edinburgh, 1988), p. 849.
2. For the background to the politics of this period, see D. Hunt, “The Successors of Constantine,” chap. 1 in Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. XIII (Cambridge, 1998).
3. See Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, p. 166. I have drawn heavily on Hanson’s book for this chapter, as it provides the fullest account of the tortuous process by which an orthodoxy was eventually established. This again is an area where there has been some major rethinking in recent years. The traditional account is, as already mentioned in the previous chapter, that Nicaea affirmed traditional teaching, then “evil-minded” Arians (the term was often extended to include the Homoeans, who were termed “semi-Arians”) attempted to subvert orthodoxy until Theodosius triumphantly saw off the “heretics” at the end of the century. Discovering what really happened is particularly difficult for two reasons: (a) Christian history was effectively rewritten from the Nicene point of view, so that many texts supporting the alternative positions have been lost, and (b) there is very little evidence to show how the western view of the single Godhead evolved. See D. Williams, Ambrose of Milan and the End of Nicene–Arian Conflicts (Oxford, 1995), for the problems. As Williams suggests, it is very difficult to trace the revival or adoption of Nicene thought in the west, especially as there was virtually no western representation at Nicaea itself. Certainly the fight over the issue was as much a political as a theological one, and, in different circumstances, the question might have been left open or an alternative formulation adopted.
4. See H. Chadwick, chap. 19, “Orthodoxy and Heresy from the Death of Constantine to the Eve of the First Council of Ephesus,” in Cameron and Garnsey, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. XIII, and generally Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God.
5. C. Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity (Cambridge, 1994), p. 160.
6. Williams, Ambrose of Milan, p. 136.
7. Ibid., p. 19.
8. Chadwick, “Orthodoxy and Heresy,” p. 572.
9. M. Wiles, Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries (Oxford, 1996), p. 28.
10. Quoted in Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 363–64.
11. See ibid., chap. 12, and Williams, Ambrose of Milan, chap. 1. The two councils between them attracted some 600 bishops, twice as many as Nicaea and four times as many as the Council of Constantinople of 381. The pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus (The Later Roman Empire xxi, 16) memorably described the process by which the bishops gathered: “Public transport hurried throngs of bishops hither and thither to attend what they call synods, and by his attempts to impose conformity, Constantius only succeeded in hamstringing the postal service.”
12. See Williams, Ambrose of Milan, p. 27. Why they changed their minds is not clear. One report (by a pro-Nicene) suggested it was because they were “of weak character” but also “because of weariness of being threatened with expulsion into foreign lands.” In other words, the message from the east must have been that they would lose their sees if they did not accept the Dated Creed.
13. For short introductions to Julian, see D. Hunt, “Julian,” chap. 2 in Cameron and Garnsey, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. XIII, and the chapter “Julian the Apostate,” by M. B. Simmons, in P. Esler, ed., The Early Christian World, vol. 2 (New York and London, 2000). Julian is one of the most complex of the Roman emperors, and he has aroused approval and hostility in equal measure ever since his reign. R. Smith, Julian’s Gods: Religion and Philosophy in the Thought and Action of Julian the Apostate (London and New York, 1995), is a useful survey of the difficulties in coming to a fair assessment of him.
14. Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire xxii, 5.
15. “He turned to paganism with the zeal of the convert,” as G. W. Bowersock puts it in his Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, 1990), p. 6.
16. See Smith, Julian’s Gods, for a full and balanced discussion of Julian’s ideas. Smith (p. 183) quotes the pagan orator Libanius on Julian’s “conversion.”
And upon your arrival in Ionia you encountered a wise man, you heard of those who fashioned and maintained the universe, you gazed upon the beauty of philosophy and tasted its sweetest springs. Then you quickly threw aside your error [Christianity], released yourself from darkness and grasped truth instead of ignorance, reality in place of falsehood, our old gods in place of that wicked one and his rites.
Contra Galilaeos is available in the Loeb Classics (Works of Julian, vol. 3).
17. Julian, Contra Galilaeos 115 D–E, trans. W. C. Wright.
18. The destruction of the Temple was so deeply engrained in Christian thought as a symbol of God’s rejection of the Jews that its rebuilding aroused deep emotional reaction, and the fire was later used by Christians as convincing evidence of God’s continuing hostility to the Jews. It was “a fire from heaven,” as Ambrose of Milan was to put it. Ambrose’s Letters, trans. S. Mary Melchior Beyenka (New York, 1954), letter no. 2 in this collection, no. 40 according to the traditional Benedictine enumeration.
19. For the reigns of Jovian through to Theodosius, see J. Curran, chap. 3 in Cameron and Garnsey, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. XIII.
20. The most lively account of this disaster is to be found in Ammianus Marcellinus’ history, The Later Roman Empire xxxi.
21. Ibid., xxx, 9.
22. J. Rist in “Plotinus and Christian Philosophy,” in Lloyd P. Gerson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus (Cambridge, 1996), p. 396. For Athanasius’ writings and a critical discussion of his theology, see Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, chap. 14. There is also a good chapter on Athanasius by David Brakke in Esler, The Early Christian World, vol. 2, chap. 44.
23. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 239–62.
24. Ibid., p. 436.
25. Ibid., p. 446, for the text of Athanasius’ analysis of the Incarnation followed by Hanson’s own assessment of it.
26. Quotation from ibid., p. 449.
27. The quotations from Origen and Athanasius come from J. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 1 (Chicago and London, 1971), pp. 282 and 285. Pelikan’s section on “The State of Christian Anthropology,” from which these quotations are drawn, is helpful in exploring the development of Christian ideas on the nature of sin and free will. Some idea of Athanasius’ polemical style can be gauged from the following quotation from Against the Arians, discourse II, para. 58.
A heretic is a wicked thing in truth and in every respect his heart is depraved and irreligious. For behold, though convicted on all points and shown to be utterly bereft of understanding, they show no shame, but as the hydra of Gentile fable, when its former serpents were destroyed, gave birth to fresh ones, contending against the slayer of the old by the production of the new, so also they are hostile and hateful to God, as hydras losing their life in their objections which they advance, invent for themselves other questions, Judaic [sic] and foolish, and new expedients, as if Truth were their enemy, thereby to show that they are Christ’s enemies in all things.
For the rhetorical devices used by Athanasius, see the article by C. Stead, “Rhetorical Method in Athanasius,” Vigiliae Christianae 30 (1976): 121–37. As suggested in the main text, this kind of polemic helped undermine the tradition of rational argument, and it was deeply unfortunate that it became such a prominent part of Christian discourse. Not least, it undermined the concept of a loving God who could accept diversity among his creatures. As will be seen, Jerome and John Chrysostom, and, to a lesser extent perhaps, Ambrose, sustained this tradition so that the more measured works of Augustine, despite their underlying pessimism, come as something of a relief.
28. See Williams, Ambrose of Milan, chap. 2, and Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God
, chap. 15. As Williams points out, one must be cautious in the use of “Nicene” for the beliefs of the bishops of the west. Speaking of the 340s, he suggests that “outside Rome, the Nicene creed appears to have been known but not relevant to the confessional needs of western bishops” (Ambrose of Milan, pp. 16–17). There is no evidence that Hilary of Poitiers even knew of the creed before the 350s. One cannot stress too strongly the lack of any immediate impact on the church from the Nicene Council, which really deserves to be called an imperial council rather than a church one.
29. See Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, chap. 21. For a good résumé of the Cappadocians’ case, see T. Hopko, “The Trinity in the Cappadocians,” part 1 of chap. 11 in B. McGinn and J. Meyendorff, eds., Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century (London, 1986).
30. Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture (New Haven and London, 1993), p. 175.
31. Ibid. Pelikan shows how “natural theology,” based on classical philosophy, was woven into the Cappadocians’ work so that they would use reason, “the natural apprehensions of humanity,” analogies from the physical world and so on in the search for support for Christian orthodoxy. The difficulty was how to distinguish between those aspects of pagan philosophy that they could use to support Christianity from those they had to condemn as pagan. Then they had to reconcile the parts of pagan philosophy they used with the teaching of the scriptures. No one can doubt the quality and ingenuity of the minds of the Cappadocian Fathers, but, as Pelikan shows, they often had to indulge in special pleading to achieve results that coincided with Nicene orthodoxy. A more supportive view is that of Hopko:
Their glory . . . lay in their ability to overcome those elements of this
[Greek philosophical] tradition that were incompatible with Christianity,
particularly in regard to the vision of God, and to coin new terms and
formulate new explanations to protect and preserve the authentic
experience and proper understanding of Christians.
Hopko, “The Trinity in the Cappadocians,” p. 261.
32. H. Chadwick, in “Orthodoxy and Heresy,” chap. 19 in Cameron and Garnsey, eds., The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. XIII, p. 573, does suggest the connection between the Cappadocians and Plotinus, but J. Rist, in “Plotinus and Christian Philosophy,” in Gerson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, argues against it, pp. 397–401. Rist’s view is in its turn rejected by Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, who concludes (p. 866): “It seems impossible to deny that Basil knew something of the work of Plotinus and consciously employed both his ideas and vocabulary when he thought them applicable.” For an overview of the whole problem from a philosophical point of view, see Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, chap. 15, “Substance and Persons.” The Cappadocians were certainly not blind followers of Plotinus, because the latter made it quite clear that his three hypostaseis were in a hierarchy, while the Trinitarian formulation insists that they are equal to each other.
33. Gregory of Nazianzus illustrates how fluid the concept of the Holy Spirit was at this stage: “Of the wise men among ourselves, some have conceived of the Holy Spirit as an activity, some as a creature, some as God; and some have been uncertain which to call him . . . And therefore they neither worship him nor treat him with dishonour, but take up a neutral position.” Orations 21.33, quoted in Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 1, p. 213. Pages 211–25 give a full account of the difficulties involved in defining the Holy Spirit as God.
34. Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture, p. 245.
35. Ibid., pp. 237–38 for the problems with the terminology of Father and Son and pp. 195–96 for Basil’s views on the Holy Spirit. The key passage from the New Testament is Matthew 28:19 where Jesus calls upon the disciples to baptize “all nations . . . in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” However, this says nothing about the relationship between them, which is so crucial a part of Trinitarian orthodoxy, and according to Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 1, p. 212, the lack of any direct reference to the Spirit as God in the scriptures was “a source of considerable embarrassment” to Gregory of Nazianzus. In his letter to his flock after the Council of Nicaea, Eusebius of Caesarea assured them that the use of homoousios was consistent with Matthew 28:19 being interpreted in terms of a “ hierarchy” of Father, Son and Holy Spirit (see R. Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution [Oxford, 2000], p. 60). The point about Hebrews 1:3 is made by Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 1, pp. 219–20.
36. These points are taken from chap. 15 of Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture, “The One and the Three.”
37. “If your own Scriptures are sufficient for you, why do you nibble at the learning of the Greeks?” Julian had asked in his Contra Galilaeos (quoted in Smith, Julian’s Gods, p. 198). For the philosophical problems created by the Trinity, see the entry “Trinity” in Edward Craig, ed., The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (London and New York, 1998).
38. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1a 3c.1c.
39. Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture, p. 241.
40. Ibid., pp. 246–47.
41. Ibid., p. 233:
The Nicene dogma did not abolish the need for apophasis [assertions about God expressed in a negative form], as a shallow interpretation of orthodox doctrine might have led someone to suppose. If anything, orthodox trinitarianism intensified that need, for any increase in knowledge about God (above all the revelation of the knowledge of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) ultimately consisted in an increase in the knowledge that God was and remained incomprehensible and transcendent.
42. See, for this, Wiles, Archetypal Heresy, pp. 40–51.
43. N. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley, 1994), p. 106.
44. Quoted in Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, p. 821. Hanson has full details of the Council of Constantinople, but I have also drawn on Deno John Geanakoplos, “The Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople (381): Proceedings and Theology of the Holy Spirit,” in his Constantinople and the West (Madison, Wis., and London, 1989).
45. Hanson The Search for the Christian Doctrine, p. 828. There is one theory that the final form of the Nicene Creed (that is, with the Holy Spirit fully part of the Godhead) dates from the 370s, although another says it was originally a baptismal creed from Constantinople that was developed. The first known recitations of the creed in a service date from much later, from Antioch at the end of the fifth century. Rome did not adopt the creed officially until 1014 (and so it is hardly surprising that Augustine does not seem to have heard of it). See entry “Nicene Creed” in F. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1997). The links between Theodosius, the council and the Cappodocian Fathers still needs further research, particularly concerning the degree to which the council drew directly on the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers. For divine condemnation, note the words of the theologian Ambrosiaster from these same years: “Those people who have discordant opinions, their thoughts being different from the Catholic faith about Christ . . . their exchange of thoughts will accuse them on the day of judgement.” Quoted in Peter Garnsey and Caroline Humfress, The Evolution of the Late Antique World (Cambridge, 2001), p. 137.
46. Gregory of Nazianzus is worth quoting in this context:
If the truth be told my attitude towards all gatherings of bishops is to avoid them. I have never seen a good outcome to any synod, or a synod which produced deliverance from evils rather than the addition to them . . . rivalries and manoeuvres always prevail over reason [sic] . . . and in trying to decide between others it is easier to get accused of wickedness itself than to deal with their wickedness. Consequently I have withdrawn to myself. I consider retirement to be the only means of saving my soul.
Epistle 130, quoted in Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gregory of Nazia
nzus, Rhetor and Philosopher (Oxford, 1969), p. 48.
47. Wiles, Archetypal Heresy, p. 44.
The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason Page 52