Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318-381

68

from Origen his antipathy to this w()rd. The third point where the evidence ofOrigen's influence on Arius

is difficult to determine is the knowledge of the Father possessed by the Son. Arius had, of course, decided that this was limited according to the limited capacity of the Son. Origen has a number of statements which seem to give support to this view. At Peri Archon 1.1.8 (106, 108) Origen declares roundly that no one can see God, nor ever has seen hiin, not even the Son, but that seeing and knowing are two different things; of course the Son knows the Father. This statement

that the Father is not visible to the Son is repeated at 11+3 (286) in a passage which Rufinus has probably a little altered. And at IV + 10 (428) occurs a much more explicit statement which survives in a Greek fragment. preserved inJustinian's letter to Mennas. It runs thus: 'If the Father comprehends

(.~nep(ex..)

all things, and the Son is

among all things, it is clear that· (he comprehends) the Son also. Someone else will enquire whether it is true that God is known by himself exactly as he is known by the Only-begotten, and it will appear that the text "the Father who sent me is greater than 1"45 is true in all respects so that in the matter of knowing the Father is known by

himself more fully (1) and more clearly and more perfectly than (he is known) by the Son.' Here no doubt the authentic Origen speaks, undoctored by Rufinus. But we must not rush to the conclusion that the concept of the Son's

knowledge of the Father was identical in Origen and in Arius. Origen's subordinationism compelled him to limit thus the Son's knowledge of the Father, but if we ask, what sort of participation or union did this imply, we find a very different picture. For Arius the Son participates in the Father, but by appointment (eta,,) not by nature (cpo".. ), he is united by will and grace but his participation is accidental or adventitious (Ka<" en'Il&~'lK6<;) not substantial (Kae' ao<6). Origen agrees that the union of Father and Son is a moral, volitional one, so that they are one 'in harmony and in agreement and 4SThe text is a conflation (quite well known elsewhere) of John XII: 49 and XIV:28; the expression 'more fully' a few line.s later has a question mark placed after it because the text is corrupt at that point. Rufinus' translation carefully removes the dangerous material in this passage; this is only one of many indications that he deliberately altered Origen's text in translating the Peri Archon.

The Origins

The Antecedents of Arius

in the identity of will.'" But this participation of will is also, and thereby, a participation in God's immutable goodness which is his essence. 47 And elsewhere Origen envisages the Son gaining his Godhead by contemplating the Father in a much.deeper and superior way to that in which even Moses or any mortal could achieve divinization. 48 This is much more than adventitious or external

foreknowledge of God, that the Father alone is God, the Son only so through grace. Several scholars have taken the same line, assuming that Paul taught a kind of Adoptianism and opposed any ontological union of the Son with Father, e.g. Prestige, who attempts too characteristically to harmonize all the sources, 52 Boularand,53 and Gregg and Groh. 54 The situation is complicated by the fact that the word homoousios was used in the arguments which ended in the deposition of Paul, though for what purpose and in whose favour it is not easy to determine. 55 It is worth noting that some writers take Paul to be the intellectual ancestor of a school of thought much opposed to Arianism, that of Eustathius of Antioch and Marcellus of Ancyra' 6 Most recently, Rowan Williams believes that the type of doctrine taught by Paul of Samosata would have appeared to be Sabellianism to Arius: 'the divine Logos is "internal" to the Father's

participation such as Arius envisaged.

This survey of the relation between the thought of Origen and that of Arius, then, suggests that though Arius probably inherited some terms and even some ideas from Origen, whether by direct acquaintance with his works or indirectly, he certainly did not adopt any hirge Or significant part ofOrigen's theology. We would not-be justified in saying that Origen explained Arius in any but comparatively minor details. 49

Many scholars have conjectured that the views of Paul of

substance and does not subsist in any other way; between Jesus of

Samosata, or at least of his school, must have influenced Arius. 50 Lorentz in particular in his Arius Iudaizans? has spent considerable

Nazareth and the divine principle of rationality there is no intermediary subsistent, no heavenly Son or hypostatic Word. '57

ingenuity in drawing out the resemblances between.the views ofPaul and those of Arius. 51 He sees no less than nine points of resemblance, of which the chief are that the Son did not always exist, and is less than the Logos, that the Son's union with God is by way ofleaming and not ontological, that the Son existed before all time in the

It certainly seems that if we can reconstruct the teaching of Paul at all, his doctrine is more likely to have been the inspiration of Eustathius and Marcellus than of Arius. Arius believed firmly in a pre-existent Son allied in some sense to the Logos, but apparently for Paul the Son was Jesus Christ the historical figure without any pre-

460vta. 560 'tij 6nOO"taa&l 1tpaYllu-ra, ev M tfj 6llovo{q Kat 1'ij O'ullqJoov{q Kai tij

existent history at all. And the stock accusation made against Paul by all ancient writers who mention him from the ivth century onward was that he declared Jesus to be no more than a mere man ('VIM<; livepro1to~), whereas this is an idea which all Arian writers after Arius

tuu.6'tlltl toG ~oui.:ill.1atOr; Contra Celsum 8.12. The phrase is echoed in the Second Creed of Antioch 341. See below, pp. 286--9. 47Peri Archon 1.2.10 (134-136 and esp. 1]5-136). 13 (140-142), S. 3 (178-182). Lorentz; in an otherwise admirable passage (op. cit. 76--78), insists upon writing as if in each of.th~se passages Origen referred to the Son sharing the Father's ousia; but of course we cannot conclude this because we only have here Rufinus' translation. It seems to me highly like1y that Origen used the adjective 00(nOO511<; in more than one of these passages, but that he did not refer to the Son sharing the Father's ousia, which would have meant for him a sharing of the Father's hypostasis. 48Comm. on John XXIl.27. 49Lorentz, Arius Iudaizansl, concludes that the resemblance did not extend much beyond the use of some common terms. For further consideration of this question,. see R, P. C. Hanson, 'Did Origen teach that the Son is ek tes ousias of the Father?', and 'The Influence ofOrigen on the Arian Controversy' in Origeniana Quarta (ed.~. Lies) 201-2 and 410-23. sOThe main works on Paul of Samosata are F. Loofs, Paulus v
sSThe use of the word in this controversy is considered at greater length below, pp. 190-202. The primary original texts are Athanasius, De Sententia Dionysii and De Synod,is 43.1-45.7. 56S 0 Sellers, Eustathius of Antioch, 8, Loofs 'Das Nicanum', 75-78 and A. M. Ritter, 'Arianismus', 695. The cases of Eustathius and Marcellus are treated at greater length below, cap. 8. s7R. D. Williams 'The Logic of Arianism', 60; cf. 60-61; cf. ibid., 'Origen and the Soul ofJesus', 133, where he states that Paul had two positive points, 'thatJesus had a soul, and that cpe Logos was not a "part" of him.'

70

71

(and, in my view, probably Arius himself) regularly rejected. There are grave obstades to envisaging Paul as an ancestor of Arius. But in

fact we know very little with certainty about Paul ofSamosata. It is a S2God in Patristic Thought, 115-116 and 200---209. 53L' Heresie d' Arius, 168-174. 54Early Arianism, p. 165.

The Origins

The Antecedents of Arius

delicate task to disentangle from the fragmentary accounts which we have any clear outline of his teaching. Any attribution ofinfiuence from Paul of Samosata upon Arius must rest almost wholly upon speculation. We would be best advised to follow the prudent exam pIe of Grillmeier, and conclude, concerning the affair of Paul, that 'the necessary critical conditions for its interpretation have not yet been created. '58 Athanasius, in his De Sententia Dionysii (1.1-3 (46)) tells us that the Arians of his day were adducing Dionysius of Alexandria as a great authority in the past who supported their doctrine; it was indeed to remove this slur on his predecessor in the see of Alexandria that Athanasius wrote this work. That the Arians invoked the authority of Dionysius is confirmed by Pseudo-Didymus of Alexandria (De Trinitate III.S (S49)) who witnesses that the Arians against whom he is writing use the very figure of the vine and the planter of the vine used by J?ionysius as a model of the relation between the Son and the Fatlrer. 59 Clearly Dionysius of Alexandria must be regarded as a potential source for Arian doctrine and perhaps as' an influence on Arius himself.·· Dionysius was bishop of Alexandria from 247/S to 264/5, succeeding Heraklas and his predecessor Demetrius both of whom were open opponents of Origen. Dionysius was involved in several controversies, but that which concerns us was his conflict with certain people in Libya whom he suspected of S·abellianism. The .sources for this affair are Athanasius, De Decretis and De Sententia Dionysii and Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto and Bp 9. Certain terms which Dionysius had used in writing to those whom he suspected of heresy caused his namesake, Dionysius of Rome, to write a work against both Sabellius and the views of Dionysius of Alexandria and also to address a letter of protest to the bishop of Alexandria; all we know of these objectionable terms is what

Athanasius and Basil quote from the letter of the bishop of Rome and from the work which the bishop of Alexandria wrote, Refutation and Defence (Blenchus kai Apologia), in reply to this protest. Those who had called the attention of the bishop of Rome to these suspect expressions of Dionysius of Alexandria charged him among other errors with virtually refusing to apply the term homoousios to the Son;61 Dionysius of Rome must have referred to this accusation in his work, but his words have not survived. The opinions complained of were conveyed in these words from Dionysius of Alexandria's Letter to Buphranor and Ammonius (the anti-Sabellian work):

SBCCT 165; Grillmeier (164-165) observes that Nautin has criticised de Riedmatten's reconstruction of the matter, and has promise!! a new edition of the fragments and a new account of his teaching. But neither has yet appeared. 59.See below, P.7"3: for a reference to Dionysius as a predecessor by an Arian writer, see below, P.127. 6°The best modern edition of Dionysius of Alexandria is still C. L. Feltoe The Remains oj Dionysius of Alexandria (1904), though it is not exhaustive. The best modem work on this writer is W. A. Bienert Dionysius von Alexandrien (1978). See also Barnard 'The Antecedents o( Arius', 176-179, Grillmeier CCT15j-159, Loofs, 'Arianismus' 9, H. Chadwick History and Thought ofthe Early Church XII, 175-179, Simonetti Studi 27-29. and Lorentz Arius Iudaizansl, 94-100. .

72

'the Son of God is a creature and generate (ltohUla Kai YEvY"j"t6v), and he is not by nature belonging to' (q)\)CrEl 'io~ov) but is alien in ousia from the Father, just as the planter of the ville is to the vine, and the shipbuilder to the ship; further because he is a creature (nohUla) he did not exist before he came into existence (aUK npiv -y6VTJtQ.l).'

nv

Athanasius defends Dionysius, though he admits that he wrote these words, on the grounds that the circumstances, since he was combating Sabellianism, justified such expressions, that when he referred to the Son as a creature Dionysius meant only the Son's human nature (a wildly improbable excuse), and that in a later work Dionysius modified and withdrew many of these views. Dionysius, he says, in his reply to the bishop of Rome wrote that the Son has existed eternally and that there was no time when God was not a Father, invoking the analogy of the sun and its inseparable ray; God is a sun which never sets. 62 And he quotes a remarkable sentence from this work: 'Thus we extend the Monad into an inseparable triad, and we pack up (cruYKEq>a'-atoUJ.lE9a) the undiminished Triad again inio a Monad.'63 D~onysius apologized for using 'two unsuitable expressions' (i.e. vine-planter and ship-builder) and accepted the term homoousios as applicable to the Son. 64 Later Dionysius made much play with the analogy for the relation of the Son to the Father of the relation of a word to a thought: 'the mind is like an immanent word, and the word like a mind expressing itself.'·5 Elsewhere Athanasius says that Dionysius allowed the. image of shoot from seed 61Athanasius De Sententia Dionysii 9.2 (52) and 10.1 (53). 62lbid. 15.1-6 (57). "17·3 (58). 64 18.1-5 (59, 60). 65 23 . 1- 3 (62,63), the quotation from 3 (63).

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The Origins

The Antecedents of Arius

and river from soutce to describe the relation of the Son to the Father.·· Basil, in his letter Ep 9, is much more outspoken about Dionysius of Alexandria, since the honour of his see is not involved. He says that Dionysius unwittingly sowed the first seeds of the Anhomoian error, by leaning too far in the opposite direction in his anxiety to correct wrong Sabellian views. He maintained not oQ,ly 'the difference (almost 'incompatibility' t,"p6,~,a) of the hypostases, but also the diversity of the ousia and the 'reduction of power and variation of glory' (within the Trinity). And sometimes he rejects the homoousion, because Sabellius used it incorrectly in denying· the distinction of hypostases, but sometimes he accepted it, when he was defending himself against the bishop of Rome. He also numbered the Holy Spirit among created things.· 7 And in his De Spiritu Sancto Basil says that Dionysius uses hypostases to mean, not ousia but 'separate beings. '68 Basil makes no mention of any expressions of Dionysius which modify these doctrines, as Athanasius does. Some have seen Dionysius as a straightforward disciple of Origen,·9 presumably relying ·on Athanasius' account of his doctrine. But there are strong grounds for rejecting this point of view. Lorentz thinks that he was reverting to an earlier conception of the immanent (endiathetos) and uttered (prophorikos) Word found in the Apologists and in Clement of Alexandria,70 and· even to Tertullian, but under the criticism ofDionysius of Rome he reverted to Origen's doctrine. of the eternal generation of the Son. Bienert, wpo ha's subjected the evidence to a very thorough examination, con<;ludes that Dionysius, who according to Eusebius (HE V1.29) took on the catechetical school at Alexandria when the anti-Origenist Heraklas.was made bishop, was a partisan of Heraklas and an opponent of Origen,though his attitude to Origen may have mellowed later. 71 Bienert produces several pieces of evidence which suggest that Dionysius did not sympathize with Origen's highly sophisticated speculative doctrines, but employed a simpler, more directly Biblical kind of doctrine which eschewed allegory and represented Christ not as the impossible clairvoyant figure Origen

depicted, but as one who suffered with us and aligned his will to the Father to give us an example, but still remained God.72 His literary work is rhetorical. not theological nor speculative, using the Bible as a mine of modem examples, not as a mysterious source of deeper theological meaning. Those who complained of his erroneous doctrines to the bishop of Rome accused him of dividing the Father from the Son, of denying the eternity of the Son, and, in the 'models' put forth in the passage which we have already mentioned, expounding the Son as the creature of the Father. 73 They particularly disliked his doctrine of the existence of three hypostases. 74 It can scarcely be denied, Bienert thinks, that Dionysius of Alexandria used these very damaging examples of the vinedresser planting the vine and the ship-builder making a ship, though he later refmed them by using the model of a poet creating a word. In his reply to the bishop of Rome, Dionysius said that he had rejected homoousios because it did not occur in the Bible. He apparently took it to be equivalent to 6110cpu1i<; (of like nature) or 6110Y&v1i<; (of like kind), expressing the likeness of essence between the Father and the Son. He must have held a kind of Dynamic Monarchianism which tended strongly to subordinate the Son. 75 It is clear that this was quite distinct from Origen's theology. His later doctrine, expressed in his Rtfutation and Defence, where his models are more refmed and carefully considered, may have owed something to Origen's ideas. 76 However Dionysius may have refmed his later theology, it is

66De Decretis 26.I-S (20, 21). 67Epistles 9.2, I-IS, IS-2I, 23-31. 68De Spiritu Stlncto 29.72 (2OIb). 69E.g. Ritter, 'Arianismus', 697-698. 70 A,ius ludaizans? 96, 99-100. 71 Dionysius von Alexand,ien 106-108.

74

72Ibid. 111-131, and especially 12S-130. 7lIbid.707-2IL 74Loof5, 'Arianismus' 8, suggests that they thought the three hypostases implied tritheism. Their solution was apparently to apply homoousios to the Persons (perhaps the unius substantiae of Tertullian). Perhaps these people took hypostasis to mean 'substance', and perhaps Dionysius of Alexandria took ousia to mean 'individual entity' . 75Bienert, op. cit. 207-21 I. 762-17-221. Luise Abramowski, in 'Dionys von _Rom und Dionys von Alexandrien in der arianischen Streitigkeiten des 4 Jahrhunderts' has succeeded in showing that much of Athanasius' account of the interchange between the two bishops and the remarks upon it of Dionysius of Alexandria has been coloured by the vocabulary of a later period and by the ideas of Athanasius himsel£ But whether we can really identify behind this account a forged or re-worked document of 339/40 by an unknown writer, embodying ideas taken from both Marcellus of Ancyra and Eusebius of Caesarea, must be regarded as uncertain. It is also hard to imagine that she is correct in conjecturing that the criticisms of the bishop of Alexandria by his namesake of Rome in the mid-third century had nothing to do with a dispute about the use of homoousios.

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The Origins

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impossible to avoid seeing some influence from his work in the

15:47). One cannot, however, press this word factus far. It could be translated 'he became' rather than 'he was made', and this would remove· the term from any Arian associations. All that he says of the Son's generation in his Rule of Faith is Iesum Christum ante originem saeculi spiritaliter apud patrem genitum. 81 Among the very few. modem writers who refer to Victorinus, Zeiller hazarded the view (though with no great confidence) that Victorinus was an Origenist and that his doctrine may have contributed to the spread of Arianism in the

theology of Arius. The later Arians and Basil were right. The damning passage quoted from 'his Ldter to Euphranor and Ammonius is altogether too like the doctrine of Arius for us to regard it as insignificant. A created Son and (at least in Arians after Arius) a Holy Spirit who is not divine, not to mention reserve towards the use

of

homoou,io" are the marks of Arianism. If, as seems likely, Arius put together an eclectic pattern of theology in order to attain the particular ends which he had in mind, Dionysius of Alexandria certainly· contributed to that pattern. 77 The period between the affair of Paul of Samosata and the first

Danubian provinces. 82 But the evidence is not nearly strong enough for us to be confident about these conclusions. Certainly we cannot

assume that Arius had read the works of this distant episcopal martyr.

works of Eusebius of Caesarea is almost a 'tunnel period' as far as

Something is known about the views of Theognostus, whose

works by Eastern theologians are coricerned. Three names have

fio,"it Harnack placed between 247/8 and 280 in the edition which he produced of the fragments of this writer. Photius (Bibliotheca. Cod. 106) gives an account of the main work ofTheognostus, Hypotypose" which is very reminiscent of Origen's Peri Archon. In this accoWlt

sometimes been suggested as representing Eastern theological views

during this dark period, those of Victorinus of Pettau, of Theognostus and of Pierius. Victorinus, bishop of Petavium, a Balkan see, wrote several works. only two of which have surived,

Photius among other points accuses Theognostus of saying that the

one De Fabrica Mundi and a kind of Commentary on the Apocalypse, both written in bad Latin. He was martyred in the Diocletian .persecution. Jerome says that he did not know Latin as well as he knew Greek," and this is the only pretext for calling him an Eastern

Son was a creature ("'{Gj.la).84 A significant fragment quoted by Athanasius (De Deeret 26.1-5 (20, 21» can be rendered thus: 'The ousia of the Son is not found to be something external nor was it introduced from non-existence (tIC J.lTJ 6V'tCJ)v), but it was of the Father's ousia, as the ray of the light, as the steam of water: for neither the ray nor the steam is the water itself nor the sun itself nor external (d).,).,6tP10V) to it, but an issue (dn6ppola) of the Father's ousia, since the Father's ousia does not endure division. For as the sun remains the same undiminished by the rays pouring from it. so the ousia of the Father suffers' no change though it has the Son as its image.'

theologian. He has sometimes been cited as evidence for the existence

Qf'Binitarianism', i.e. the belief in Father and Son but not the Holy Spirit. in the third century, but this is a highly precarious assumption. 79 His Rule of Faith shows no special feature which could connect him with the views of Arius, but in his De Fabrica Mundi he has the following curious statement about the Word: primus factus creaturae est, secundus hominis < vel> humani generis, ut ait apostalus,80 which presumably should be translated 'he is made first of the

This passage echoes Arian concerns in insisting that the Father· is not divided. but in other respects there are quite un-Arian views here,

creation and 'second of man or of the human race', i.e. in relation to creation first, in relation to the human race second (Col. 1:15; 1 Cor.

such as the acceptance of the Son as an issue of the Father and the association of the Son with the Father's ousia. This is not pure Origenistic doctrine either, for Origen denied that the Son was tIC
77Boularand, L' Heresie (J' A'rius 135-143, comes to the same conclusion. If we can accept No.1 among the Exegetical Fragments of Dionysius printed by Feltoe as authentic, then we must acknowledge that Dionysius actually wrote a work against Origen, for the Fragment is headed 'From the work against Origen·. 78 De Viris Ilfustribus LXXIV. 79See R. P. C. Hanson. 'The Rule of Faith of Victorinus and of St. Patrick' Studies 319-3 I. Victorinus has a particular interest in that the Rule of Faith which he gives in his Commentary on the Apocalypse was certainly the basis for the Rule of Faith of the ancient British Church. 8°8, II IO-I I (Haussleiter).

81 Comm. in Apoc". Xl. I, p. 96, 6, 7 ('Jesus Christ spiritually begotten by the Father before the origin of the world').

82Les Origines chretiennes dans les provinces Danubiennes de I'Empire romain 210-214.

i

1

! l

Cf. Grillmeier CeT 199· n 183. 83Theognostus, Fragments of the HypoJyposes (TV XXIV, Part II), 78, 79. 84Ibid. 74, 75.

77

The Origins

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of Caesarea. 85 Grillmeier thinks that we have here the origin of the expression U1tUpaAAaKtOe; tlKdlv tije; o~oiue; toG 1tutp6e; (exact image of the Father's ousia), which recurs in Asterius (Frag. XXI, Bardy) and in the Second (Dedication) Creed of Antioch of 341. 86 Another Fragment ofTheognostus, from Gregory of Nyssa (Contra Eunomium III (ii) 121) says tOV O&OV ~ouA6I1&VOV tM& to 1taV KUTUm<&lJcrucrOUl 1tproTOV tOV ulov ol6v ttvU Kuv6vu ttic; 6TJl1lOUpyiuC; 1tPOii1tOcrTticrucrOUl (,when God wanted to set up this universe he first caused the Son to become a kind of model of creation'). Gregory himself regards this opinion as dangerously heterodox, but it can hardly be equated with Arius' doctrine of a created Son. In Harnack's Fragment IV Theognostus discourses about the Son, the Word and Wisdom, but the passage is incomplete and what there is does not suggest affinity with Arius, especially as Theognostus insists that there is only one Word and one Wisdom. 87 Harnack describes Theognostus as 'an Origenist of the strictest observance', 88 and certainly he reflects Origen more faithfully (though by no means with entire exactness) than anybody else of the period known to us. 89 There is no reason to think that by ousia Theognostus meant anything except hypostasis (individual . entity). Barnard is anxious to see the work of Theognostus as contributing to the thought of Arius, in his des'cription of the Son as a creature, in his treatment of Word and Wisdom, whereby Logos, described as 'issue' (a1t6pp01u) and ray (U1tuuyucrl1u) refers to his origin and distinctness, and Wisdom, described as 'image' and 'mirror', refers to his resemblance and representation, and because he made the Son the personal name of the secon
by Gregory of Nyssa which does not necessarily bear precisely that interpretation, and Arius in his tum would have nothing to do with describing the Son as an 'issue', and tended to teach that there are two Logoi (one immanent in the Father and one a name given somewhat inaccurately to the Son), whereas Theognostus insisted that there was only one. We cannot glean any satisfactory evidence that Theognostus was a predecessor of Arius. About Pierius we only know what Photius tells us in Bibliotheca II Cod II9 (92-94). The only points at all relevant to our theme mentioned by Photius are that he taught two ousiai (of the Father and of the Son), and two physeis, but that he clearly by ousia meant hypostasis ('Person' in the significance ofPhotius' day), that he wrote in a heterodox way about the Spirit, saying that he was inferior to the glory Of the Father and of the Son, and that Pierus was known as 'the new Origen'.91 There is nothing here sufficient for theorizing effectively about Arius' relation to the thought of this writer. A figure to whom many scholars have looked in order to explain the origins of Arius' thought is Lucian of Antioch. It must be said at the outset that the practice indulged in by many scholars of first explaining Lucian by Arius, and, this accomplished, then explaining Arius by Lucian, may suffice to amuse the learned but is a most unsatisfactory mode of procedure which has resulted in a good deal of erudite but useless speculation. We know much less about the doctrine of Lucian than we do even about the doctrine of Arius. To try to interpret Arius by Lucian is therefore a classic example of obscurum per obscurius. All, and rather more than all, that is known of Lucian was gathered into an admirable book by Gustave Bardy, Recherches sur Saint Lucien d' Antioche et son Ecole, published in 1926. The salient facts as mustered by Bardy are these: the earliest reference to Lucian is found in Eusebius HE IX.6.3 where he is described as a presbyter of Antioch .who was 'well versed in sacred learning', was

8SSee above, PP.46-59. 86Grillmeier'GCT, 161, following F. Diekamp. 87Harnack, op. -cit. 77-78. 880 p. cit. 92. . 89IfMunitiz is correct in 'A Fragment attributed to Theognostus' in giving this small piece to Theognostus, then this author certainly followed Origen in his ideas about punishment. 9°'The Antecedents of Ariusl, 179-182. See also Radford, Theognostus, Pieriu$, Peter (a work which many refer to but nobody quotes, written too much in the subjunctive mood), and Simonetti, La Crisi 49 n. II, 58 and 59:

91C. de Boor (TU S, 1888) printed some fragments (the second text in the monograph, after that of De Aleatoribus) from the Historia Ecdesiastjca of Philip Sidetes, among them a few from Pierius, none relevant to the theme of this book. Pierius fl. c. 290-315 (that is if we believe with Jerome De Vir Ill. LXXVI that he was not martyred under Maximin Daia but retired to Rome and died there). See Prestige God j" Patristic Thought 188-192 (where he makes the highly doubtful statement that it was always unnatural to proclaim three ousiai), and GrilImeier, GGT 162, 163. See alsoJ. Barnes and H. Chadwick, 'A Letter ascribed to Peter of Alexandria', where the evidence is set out for concluding that Pierius lapsed during the persecution of Diocletian.

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The Antecedents of Arius

The Origins during the persecution of Maximinus arrest~ in Antioch .and brought t~ Nicomedia where the Emperor resided, was put Into prison and later killed. The next mention of him occurs in a p~ssage which we have already noticed, where Anus descnbes Euse~lUs of Nicomedia, to whom he is writing, as 'a genuine fellow-disciple of Lucian'.'2 Shortly after that Alexander of Alexandria, referring to Paul of Sam os ata (to whom he ascribes the origin of Arius' doctrine) writes 'Lucian succeeded him and he remained excommunicated under three bishops for a long period'! 3 A Commentary on Job written in Greek at some- point in the second half of the fourth century, perhaps earlier rather than later, by a writer called Julian o~ marked Arian views, cites a suggestion handed down by 'tou q>lA.Oxp!atOo ,.ulptOpo<; AOOlCUIVOO (,the martyr Lucian, dear to Christ'), and a little later he calls him 'dear to God' (Oeoq>lA.i]<;)!' Epiphanius in his Ancoratus refers to the' Lucia~ist~, whom he identifies with the Arians. 'Lucian and all the LuclanlSts', he says, 'deny that the Son of God took a soul [i.e. a human soul), 'in order that, of course, they may attach human experiences ("1100<;) directly to the Logos."5 A little later'· he produces two argumen~ used by the Lucianists. Isaiah 42'1 (Jacob my son, I shall uphold him; Israel, my chosen one, my soul (psyche) has accepted him,' ET of LXX) conflated with Matthew 3'17 produced the text, 'This is my Son, my beloved, in whom I am weIl pleased, whom my soul (psyche) has loved'., andJohn 1'14 was added. The first was to show that God has a soul. not a human but divine one, the second to show that the Logos had assumed flesh, but that nothing was said about God assuming a soul. They did have the grace to qualify this, says Epiphanius, in that, they allowed that the idea of God having a soul must be allegorized (tp01tlKclltepov e!p;jaOat). In his Panarion Epiphanius says no more about the Lucianists but refers once to a Lucian (who is to be distinguished from Lucian the Gnostic) whom the Arians have elected (&"'''''lq>!~OVta,) as a martyr, and a little later he describes this Lucian as 'he who lived recently in the time of Constantine the Elder' (meaning of course Constantine the Great)!' Sozomenus tells us that 920pitz Vrk III No. I. S (3)· 93Ibid. No. 14. 2j (36), ftom Theodoret HE 1.4·36. 94Julianus Arianus Comm. onJob 30.21-32. IS· 9!5Ancoratus 33.3. 4 (42). "35· 1-<1 (44. 45)· 97Panarion 43.1, 1 (186).

80

those who put forward the Second (Dedication) Creed of Antioch in 341 'alleged that they had found this creed written by the hand of Lucian who was martyred in Nicomedia, a man of the highest reputation and versed to the most exact degree in the Holy Scriptures', but that he could not be sure whether this was true!· Philostorgius denounces Eusebius of Nicomedia as 'he who is called "the Great", the _disciple of Lucian the martyr', and numbers also among these disciples Athanasius of Anazarbus and Antonius of Tarsus. '9 Jerome (De Vir. Ill. LXXVII) describes Lucian thus: 'a very learned man, a presbyter of the church of Antioch, worked so hard in the study of the Scriptures that even today some copies of the Scriptures are called "Lucianic". Some little works of his about the faith are in circulation and short letters to several people. He suffered at Nicomedia for his confession of Christ in the persecution of Maximinus, and was buried at Helenopolis in Bithynia."Oo Several other sources, legendary or more dependable. mention Lucian as a martyr and fragments of some short letters which he is said to have written on the occasion of the martyrdom of Anthemius bishop of Nicomedia may be authentic,lOl but nothing more survives which can give us any hint of what his doctrine was. The question of whether Lucian the martyr was the same as Lucian the teacher of Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia has been much debated, and also whether both or either of these can be identified with the Lucian who according to Alexander of Alexandria was a bishop of the continuing followers of Paul of Samosata in Antioch and was for long excommunicated. Hamack 102 and Bouiarand 103 were temerarious enough to assume that all three were the same man, but few have followed them in this reach of speculation. The debate lies between those who think that the martyr and the teacher were the same, and those who regard them as two different people. To the first category belong Zeiller,lO' Schwartz, !05 and Simonetti;!o. to the

I

!

L

98HE III.j.9. For a discussion of the connection of Lucian with this creed, see below pp.289-90. 99Philostorgius HE 1.8; IIl.IS. IOOMost of this information, and much more, is conveyed in Bardy, op. cit. 2-32. The references to Lucian by John Chrysostom and Rufinus are of no historical value for reconstructing his doctrine. lOISee Bardy, op. cit. 10--19. I04Les Origines Chretiennes 22] n I. I02History of Dogma IV.3ff. to!5Gesam. Schr. 111.7, 177. I03L'Heresie d'Arius 166-168. I06Crisi 19-20.

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second Loofs,!07 Bardy, Gwatkin!08 and Barnes.!o. It is difficult to imagine that Alexander would have spoken of Lucian in such contemptuous terms had he been a martyr; we should assume that the

There is one fact, and one fact only, which we can with any confidence accept as authentic about Lucian's doctrine. The statements of Epiphanius that Lucian taught that the Saviour at the Incarnation assumed a body without a soul (soma apsychon) is confirmed by the fact that this doctrine becomes an invariable feature of Arian teaching after Arius, and that Eustathius of Antioch, a contemporary of Arius, attributes it to his followers.11s This is a useful piece of information, but otherwise we are completely in the dark about Lucian's theology, influential though no doubt it was on Arius' thought. Speculation about what it might have been is useless. No less futile is the suggestion made by some scholars that Lucian represents one link in the chain of teachers of the 'Antiochene' schoo!."· It is only by indulging in fantasy that such a continuous train of docttine can be detected before the end of the fourth century. Too much fantasy has already been expended on Lucian of Antioch. Pinally, we should consider Methodius of Olympia as a possible source for Arius' views. Though he is in some respects indebted to Origen, he is one of his earliest critics,120 and in his De Creatis he produces some views which interestingly resemble those of Arius. God alone, he says, is ingenerate (aY&V1]<6,); nothing else in the universe is so, certainly not, he il:llplies, the Son, who is wholly dependent on the Father.!2! God the Pather creates by his will alone; God the Son, the 'hand' of the Pather, orders and adorns what the Pather has created out of nothing.!22 God the Pather is the 'unoriginated origin' (livapJ(o, apJ(ij), God the Son the beginning after the beginning (apJ(il 11&'t1l + accusative), the origin of everything else created.!23 It is pretty clear that Methodius regards the Son as the first of all created things. And he appears to disapprove of Origen's

excommunicated Lucian. successor to Paul, was neither the teacher of

Arius nor the martyr. Once we have decided this, it becomes very difficult to distinguish the martyr from the teacher because many of the most convincing reports of Lucian associate him with both functions. There is, of course, the third alternative of identifying the excommunicated successor of Paul with the teacher, but the evidence for this is more tenuous than that for identifying the teacher and the martyr. This seems to be the least implausible alternative. But when we have reached this conclusion, we still are left with very little evidence about the nature ofLilcian's doctrine. Many large reconstructions of this have been made. Harnack perhaps went furthest in this line of speculation,110 closely followed by Boularand ll1 and Lorentz. 112 Others have been more cautious, hut

still have been ready to characterize Lucian's docttine. Loofs can call it 'Arianizing' but also 'Origenistic dynamic-monarchian';113 Ritter, though he admits the difficulty of determining anything about Lucian, can describe his doctrine as Origenist. 114 Moreira is

perhaps most honest of all when he says that we can be sure that Arius drew on the teachings of Lucian, but that we do not know what Lucian taught.! IS Simonetti thinks that Lucian was responsible for Arius',doctrine of the creation of the Son out of non-existence, and that he may have been the originator of the concept of the Son as the 'exact image' (eikon aparal/aklos) of the Pather."· The only doctrine which Bardy can associate with Lucian the teacher (who, he thinks, is distinct from Lucian the martyr) is the Dedication Creed, and we shall see reason later to doubt the wisdom of accepting this attribution. ii7 107Paulus von Samosata, 183-186. 108SA 17.

t09Constantine and Eusebius 194. tl°History of Dogma IV.3ff. and Theognostus, Fragments 90· IIIL'Herbie d'A,ius 145. 112A,ius Iudaizans? 193-203. t 13' Arianismus' 10. ' '114'Ariansimus' 698. tlSPotamius de Ljsbonne 18. t16Studi 92, n 15; Crisi 50 n 14. I 17See below, pp.z89-9o.

.. USee below. p.212. I I 9This theory was dear to the heart ofLoofs. But Grillmeier, CCT 218,367, and Simonetti. Studi 19-20 and Cr;si 53-54. righdy discount it. For further views on Lucian, see "Sellers. Eustathius of Antioeh I I-IS. Kannengiesser. Colloquy 4J. 3. Luise Abramowski ibid. 50.1 do not think that the theory of Grill meier (CCT, 232-238) that Anus', doctrine can be explained by his deliberate and detailed reaction against the theology of Gregory Thaumaturgus can be sustained. 120Jerome. De Vir III LXXXII. 43. 44. is uncertain both as to his date and the place of his see, but it is generally agreed that he was bishop of Olympia in Lycia (not the Olympia in Greece) and that he was martyred in the DiocIetian persecution, not earlier. 121 Lxxvi (277)'1221Il.ix (498). 12.3IIl.xii (499-500).

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doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. 124 Though we need not assume that Arius was directly indebted to Methodius, this author provides an interesting example of how one who begins with the theology of Origen may develop in a direction which points to Arianism. 125

scholars to the philosophical background against which Arius wrote, with fruitful results. Arius has been, if not wholly explained, at least domesticated. He can no longer be regarded as the strange monster of heresy which Gwatkin, and even Harnack, depicted him to be.'2' It has sometimes been suggested that Arius was influenced by the thought of Aristotle, and his concern to preserve the ousia of God intact might be held to support this view.Jerome 12 • says of Arianism 'it borrows the streams of its arguments from the springs of Aristotle', but he is here almost certainly referring, not to Arius but to later Neo-Arianism. Loofs believed that an Aristotelian emphasis upon God's aseity was constitutive for Arius' thought. 130 An Aristotelian feature remarked on by several writers is Arius' statement in his Letter to Alexander of Alexandria that the Son does not 'possess being parallel with the Father, as some say who rely on the argument from relations';131 this, Arius thinks, would result in two ingenerate principles. This 'argument from relations' (tei np6<; tl.) is undoubtedly a reference to Aristotle, and goes back to Aristotle Categories 7b IS, applied in this instance to the relation of that which is known to knowledge. He said a little later that when an owner exists then a slave must also exist, and conversely (7b 20). Origen had applied this type of argument to the relation of the Father to the Son,132 but Arius rejected it here. 133 But that Arius knows of this type of argument cannot of itself convince us that he was an Aristotelian in philosophy, especially as he rejects it. It was no doubt by his day commonplace in theological discussion. A much stronger candidate for the philosophical source of Arius' thought is the tradition of Middle Platonist philosophy. This was the

2.

The Philosophical Background

Earlier writers on Arius, .such as Gwatkin, Harnack, Loofs and Prestige, tended to ignore or play down the philosophical background to Arius and Arianism. This was partly because they thought that his ideas could easily be explained as a form of pagan polytheism thinly disguised by Christian terms. '2 • But this is a most inadequate way of account.ing for Arianism. Quite apart from the fact that when the controversy started in 3 1 8, Alexandria, the place of its origin, was ruled by a non-Christian Emperor, Licinius, who would have offered no particular inducement to ambitious pagans to tum Christian and find in Arianism an acceptable form of Christian paganism, Arianism was a Trinitarian doctrine which arose out of the difficulty of conceiving of an eternal generation in God in which the Son while remaining distinct from the Father will nevertheless remain equal with him.'27 One might also point out that undoubtedly one of the chief reasons why George, the Arian bishop of Alexandria, was lynched in the year 361 by a mob largely consisting of pagans was because he had been particularly active in projects to pull down pagan temples. In recent years, however, much more attention has been paid by 124III.xii (499-500). 12!iStead believes that Arius was directly influenced by Methodius, see below, p. 96, though he has not here been followed by many other scholars. Grillmeier. CCT 166, points out that Methodius never mentions the human soul of Christ, here once more differing from Origen. I 26Even as late as 1940 Gericke can describe Arianism as 'an ethnic "distortion" of Christian "monotheism'" (Marcellus von Ancyra 18). ~ 27$0 Boularand, L' Heresie d' Arius 98; Boularand adds 'and consubstantial' to the 'equal' of my paraphraser. But in fact there is little evidence ofa widespread desire to declare the Son consubstantial with the Father before 325. Boularand rightly scouts the idea that Arianism was a1lied to the pagan cult of the Deus Summus, an idea which he attributes to Gwatkin, Harnack, Baritfol, Zeiller and Carcopino (op. cit. 94); he likewise rejects the theory that Arianism can have had anything to do with the worship of Sollnvictus or Mithraism (op. cit. 99-101).

128For the general backgound to this subject, see Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, 122-129; Boularand, 'L'Heresie d'Arius', 118-122; Dillon, The Middle Platonists; The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy, Parts I-V;]. M. Rist, Plotinus; Stead, Divine Substance, 25-187: 'The Platonism of Arius'; Barnard 'What was Arius' Philosophy~'; _Rieken, 'Nikaia als Krisis der Altchristlichen Platonismus'; Blumenthal and Markus 'Neo-Platonism and Early Christian Thought', 33-46; Ritter, 'Arianismus' 701. 129Dialogus contra Luciferanos I J (174), Argumentationum rivos de Aristotelisfontibus mutualur. 13°'Arianismus' 10. 1310pitz Urk III No.6. 3 (13) ouot. CillU"tip -nu"tpi"to dVUl £X£l, rot; nvet; AtYOI)(1l to. 1tp6t; n. See above, p. 8. 132Peri Archon 1.2.10 (132). 133See the very full account in Lorentz Arius Iudaizans? 56--7; cf. Barnard 'What was Arius' Philosophy?' 114-116 and Gregg and Groh Early Arianism 35 n 79. Stead remarks on this point, 'Platonism of Arius' 28-30.

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type of revived Platonism (we can call it no more than a type, not a school) which prevailed among the heirs of Platonic tradition from about 100 B.C. with Antiochus of Ascalon to about 300 A.D., by which time the Neo-Platonic philosophy expounded by Plorinus, ·Porphyry and Iamblichus was beginning to be widely known and followed. No one who has read Dillon's The Middle Platonists can believe that this particular type of Platonism lent itself readily to providing a model for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. But it certainly supplied material which the Christian theologians of the second and third centuries had thought useful for explaining the relation of the Father to the Son,'3' and several of its ideas and technical terms are to be found in the thought of Arius. One of these is the idea of pre-temporal time. Arius, it will be remembered, held that the Son was produced before all ages but yet there was a time when he did not exist. There are several analogies for this apparently self-contradictory concept in Middle Platonism. Eudorus of Alexandria (about 40 B.C.),

before it came into being'. could mean either that God was first a

'argued, with Xenocrates, that Plato's account of the creation must

not be taken literally, but that the world might be said to be created (genetos) though not "in time". since time is a product ofthe motion of the world itself. The world must thus be taken to have been created extra-temporally, in the sense that it is dependent on an external cause, to wit, GOd.'135

Atticus (c 180 A.D.) was similarly driven to postulate a kind of nontemporal time."" Another concept which finds an echo in Arius is that of the Monad and the Dyad. Arius calls God the Monad in his Letter to Alexander,'37 and he calls the Son the Dyad in the Thalia.'3. Dionysius of Alexandria had already employed 'Monad' and 'Triad'.'3' Lorentz points out that Arius' statement (De Synodis IS), 'Understand that there was a Monad, but the Dyad did not exist 134DiIlon op. cit. 359-]67 sets out several Middle Platonist accounts of ultimate reality. Rieken's article 'Nikaia als Krisis' is an excellent short expose of the use of Middle Platonist concepts as applied to the Son by Christian theologians. 135Dillon op. cit. 132. 136S0 Meijering God Being History 81-88. Lorentz calls attention to this concept in Middle Platonism also, {trius ludaizans? 55-56. 1370pitz.. Urk III No.6.3 (12); also in Athanasius De Synodis IS. 138Athanasius, De Synodis IS. Barnard calls attention to Arius' use of these terms, 'What was Arius' Philosophy?', I I I-I 12, but regards them as little more than names used in a theology which was basically Biblical. 139See above, P.7]. Stead, 'Platonism of Arius', makes the same point.

86

Monad and then on the appearance of the Son a Dyad developed between them, or that 'Dyad' was Arius' title for the Son. But an appeal to the usage ofXenocrates, Numenius (fl. c. 150 A.D.) and Plotinus makes it clear that the normal usage in Greek philosophy was the first alternative. It is more likely that this is what Arius intended, and so Athanasius understands him (Orat. con. Ar. 1.17).'·0 Stead, in his article 'The Platonism of Arius' makes it clear that by 'Platonism' he means 'Middle Platonism'. He thinks that indirectly Arius was considerably indebted to this type of Platonism, through Clement and Origen, and speaks of 'the Stoicized Platonism of Clement and Origen' and invokes the influence of 'classical Aristotelianism and Plotinus'.'" The dualism of Arius and his drastic subordination of the Son to the Father derive ultimately from the Platonic concept of idea and participant. Philo had held that the ideas are the thoughts of God and the Logos the place of them or the sum-total of thein. Origen on the whole reproduces this idea, especially when he distinguishes between various realities, such as Truth, Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption, Word, and

Wisdom, which the Father is in essence (ousia) as the archetype of them (with the Greek prefix UUtO-), and on the other hand, the image of all these things (the eikon) , which is what the Son is, being so not essentially but by participation (metousia) .'42 This kind of disrinction lies behind the words of Arius, for instance, when he contrasts what the Father is 'of himself' ontologically, with what the Son is accidentally or contingently (KUta cru~PEp1]K6r;). The distinction may go back as far as Numenius. Stead also calls attention to Arius' use of the terms Monad and Dyad. Monad implies indivisibility; Arius' God delegates but does not divide. Stead takes Dyad in the second sense outlined above, as a title of the Son. It implies inferiority and imperfecti<;m, like Origen's 'second God' (liEUtEpOr;OWr;). Philo (who in his way;was a Middle Platonist) applies the term to the Logos in contrast to pure unspoken thought. The concept, though not the word, can be paralleled in Numenius. 143 Stead is even able to believe that Arius' most exotic doctrine, that

of the creation of the Son out of non-existence, can be paralleled in 140 Arius ludaizans 60-61. 141'Platonism of Arius' 21-24, quotations from 2]. 142Ibid. 21. 143Ibid. 18-19.

The Origins Atticus. 144 Dillon, however, shows that this is too hasty a conclusion. Atticus in his commentary on Plato's Timaeus 'asserts, like Plutarch, that the universe was in disorderly motion before the creation of the cosmos, and, since Time is the measure of all things, Time existed before the cosmos. The universe in its unordered state does not have a beginning.'14S

Dillon then quotes directly from this work of Atticus: 'For God, desiring that all things should be good, and that, so far as this might be, there should,be nothing evil, having received all that is visible, not in a state of rest, but moving without harmony or order (plemmelos kai ataktos) brought it from disorder into order, thinking that this was in all ways \letter than the·other.'146 This doctrine is, of course, a long way from Arius' idea that the Son was created from non-existent things. This particular view of Arius

has never been supplied with a convincing antecedent. It has always been an erratic boulder in his doctrine, preventing that doctrine being

easily fitted into any known system and suggesting, more strongly perhaps than anything else, that his theology was basically eclectic. It seems to me best to ascribe it to the Biblical rather than the metaphysical side of Arius' thought. He inherited a well-established doctrine of God having made the world by a creatio ex nihilo. If the Son was to be placed among created things, then logically he too must be thought to have been created out of nothing. This was certainly the feature of Arius' thought which gave rise to more scandal than any other. His enemies were casting it up against him

long after he had relegated it to obscurity and his followers had ceased to profess it. 14 7

Stead does not believe that Arius was an uncritical and wholehearted devotee ofPlatonism. His insistence that the Son is not 'a part of God nor from the same underlying substance'148 is a disavowal of one strand in Stoicizing Platonism. 149 Lorentz points out that Arius' 44Ibid. 13 8. 145Middle Platonism, 253.

I

The Antecedents of Arius view that man was the purpose of creation is not identical with the

Platonic theory that creation was for the good purpose of God.'sO A quite different and largely new interpretation of Arius' relation to philosophy was put forward by Gregg and Groh in their book, Early Arianism. They do not think that Aristotelianism had any great influence on early Christian thought. The argument from relations was a commonplace by the third or fourth century and dialectic was not confined to the disciples of Aristotle; and Stoics had used it. '51 One of the main arguments of their book is an attempt to show that an acquaintance with Stokphilosophy lies behind the soteriology of Arianism.'52 They believe that the Son as represented by Arius, whether pre-existent or incarnate, was envisaged as an example of

certain virtues prominent in the teaching oflater Stoicism, especially in view of the Arian doctrine that. the Son, being mutable (,po",6<;), was capable of showing moral progress ("po"o,,~). The early Stoics held up as an example the Wise Man who had advanced beyond emotions to become imperturbable (u"a6iJ<;); but later Stoicism showed a tendency to emphasize the possibility and importance of progress towards perfection. The Arians, these scholars think, relied upon the Stoic link. between freewill and some emoti"ons such as

loving, 'innocent emotions' (ell"'leo,U1), and volition (pou1..1]"ae~<;) to God (De Decretis 10.5). Later Stoicism taught not only knowledge (episteme) as desirable, but also 'rational appetency' (061..oyo<; opeS'<;)' Hence it is that a new class of emotioq,s categorised under eupatheia can appear: . 'Thu{~he early Arians put forward a picture of Christ remarkably like the moderated Stoic advancing one (sic), who possessed the requisite aspiration to perfection and' virtue though lacking in perfected knowledge and complete control of his emotions. '153 Gregg and Groh criticize Stead's derivation of Arius' ideas from

146Ibid. 253. 147Barnard 'What was the Philosophy of Arius?' 113-114, and Lorentz, Arius ludaizans? 63-64. remark upon this doctrine's incompatibility with Platonism, or indeed with any form of Greek philosophy. 148Letter to.Eusebius oj Nicomedia No. 1.5 (3).

149Stead 'Platonism of Arius' 25-26. 88

150A,ius iudaizans? 63; Gregg and Groh Early Arianism, 25, note this point too. 151Ea,ly Arianism, 3S n7.

152Here I deal only with the subject of philosophy. The larger interpretation of Arianism by these authors is discussed a little further on PP.97--98. 153Ibid. 15-19. quotation from 18. 89

The Origins

The Antecedents of Arius

Origen and from Middle Platonism; they think that he rests his arguments too exclusively on De Synodis 15, and suggest that as we have only fragments of the Thalia we must recognize that other parts of his doctrine may have escaped us. And they point out, as has been pointed out in chapter 2 of this work, that there are more sources for early Arianism than Arius' words. 154 The use of the terms 'Monad' and 'Dyad' does not necessarily imply Arius' devotion to philosophical concepts. They can be paralleled in Scripture, especially in 1 Timothy 6:15, 16; to express by the word Dyad a view of the Son as a perfect creature existing by his Father's will was not necessarily to disparage him.'" The Arians had argned that the Son was related to the Father wholly by will, by a moral rather than an ontological bond or derivation. They reckoned that unless the Son was produced by the Father's will then he came either by necessity or against God's will. 15. Athanasius called this Valentinian emanationism. But, say Gregg and Groh, it is not; it is good Biblical doctrine, reproduced by Ignatius, Justin, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Asterius had argued (frag. XV Bardy) that if to will the Son was dishonourable to God, then to will creation was also dishonourable, but if to will creation was honourable, then to will the Son was even more honourable. For Asterius, as for all Arians, will means action. 157 This will does not involve undesirable pathos on the part of God but (so to speak) proper eupatheia (Asterius frag. XVlII). And conversely the pro-Nicene concept of the Father begetting the Son was material or corporeal, involving pathos to a compromising degree."· For the Arians, Y8VVclOl (beget) and 1C"t!~00 (create) and6p!~00 (appoint) all meant the same thing (and all, we may add, were derived from the LXX version of Proverbs 8:22fi".).159 Creation is election, and election for our sake. The authors mean that it is a soteriological rather than cosmological purpose which informs these ideas of Arius and his followers. '.0 Later in their work Gregg

and Groh traverse the view that Arius' doctrine of the participation (metoche) of the Son in the Father is derived from Platonic models, because Platonic metoche means communication of being and not simple participation. Behind this Arian concept was the Stoic distinction between 'things according to nature' and 'things according to participation'.161 'In the Arian controversy these categories have become polar opposites.' There was a Stoic concept of metoche in the ethical, rather than the ontological, realm.'·2 The Arian Christ is one 'whose perfection was achieved by perfection and moral advance',163 Athanasius was not maliciously distorting (as Stead believes) when he accuses the Arians of teaching that there are other 'powers' alongside Christ and like him.'·4 Arius did not teach a modification of an hierarchical Trinity capable of being fitted readily into a Platonic context:

1541bid. 120 n 19. 1551bid. 87-90. 156Athanasius Or. con. Ar. 1lI.59, 62. 157Ibid. 91""'94. 1·58Ibid. 94-9S: see Eusebius of Nicomedia Letter to Palllinlls, Opitz, Urk III No. 8.3 (16). Athanasius' reply was to say that nature transcends and precedes will. 159Arius Lette, to Ellsebius Opitz U,k III No. 1.4 (3): Alexander Encyclical Lette, Opitz Urk III No. 4b, 9 (8): Athanasius De Syn. IS. For the use of Pro v 8::z:ztf. see Simonetti Stud; 31-34. 160Early Arianism 95-97.

90

'Arians are arguing not for the stratification of the universe but for the dynamics of redemption whereby creatures, in emulation of the creature of perfect discipline, may ~e themselves begotten as equals to the Son.'165

Finally we must consider a paper by R. D. Williams which may well strike the reader as the most convincing attempt yet to analyse the philosophy behind the thought of Arius. Gregg and Groh insist that Arianism is primarily a soteriology, not an exercise in speculative thought about the relation of the Son to the Father. This, it seems to me, is ~he great merit ofthdr work, and my reasons for saying so will beconie clear later in this book.'·· Williams twice declares that Arianism is not a theology of salvation.'·7 Here he shows the limitations of his essay and the necessity, properly appreciated by Gregg and Groh, to go beyond the words of Arius if we are to understand the rationale of Arianism. But within the limits set by an 161 Ibid. 109-110. 162 IIO. 163 11 1. 1640,. con Ar. I.S: De Deeret 16; Stead 'The Thalia of Arius' 30-31. 165Early Arianism II2-II3. quotation 113. J omit here consideration of the attempt by Kannengiesser, Colloquy 41 3S-41, to show that the philosophy lying behind Arius' thought is that of Plotinus because it seems to me, brilliant tour de force though it is, to be little more than a passing thought thrown out in the course of discussion, and not in fact to represent a convincing 'fit'. 166S ee below, cap 4. 167'The Logic of Arianism' 57 and 80.

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exploration of Arius' actual doctrine and the metaphysic behind it

Son, it would mean that together they make up a third greater

Williams' work is most illuminating.

substance - and material at that! Arius understood God to be an

Alexander of Alexandria, Williams thinks, had maintained that the Son wa,,~<; tOU nutp6<; 0\l"{U<;i010<;, proper to the ousia of the Father. To say that the Son is idios (Proper) to the Father is to say that he is a property or quality of the Father, impersonal and belonging to his

'individual spiritual subsistent'. There can be only one of such a kind. The Son may be God by participation, but there can be no parity

substance. Properties or qualities cannot be substances, as is evident

·between Father and $on. 174 Another proposition which Arius condemned was that there were

from Porphyry's Commentary on Aristotle's Categories; they are not quantities. The statement then that the Son is idios to the Father is a Sabellian statement, like the doctrine of Paul of Samosata.'·s Arius and Arians always maintained strictly the reality of the pre-existent Son. In fact there were three hypostases. No such subject (hypostasis) can be reducible to 'being part of the defmition of another subject'.

two ingenerate principles (060 aytvv1jtu). He believes that this is what Alexander is teaching, and it implies, he thinks, the idea that God can be understood generically as a substance in which both Father and Son can participate. Non-dependence is essential in the Father and cannot apply to the Son. Eusebius of Nicomedia says of the Son 'he does not in any way participate in the nature of the Ingenerate' (t~<;
Each subject must have his own 'properties which are not those of

of his successors rejected the Platonic theory and substituted one

other subjects. Hence the Son cannot have the Father's properties

which held that for two substances to participate in each other they

such as eternity.169 'Father' and 'Son' therefore are not descriptions

had to be id~ntical, on the same level, to have the same essence, genus

of the essence of either but shorthand terms for two independently

and species: 'things are not constituted the kind of things they are by

existing realities. That they are related as Father and Son is not an essential part of the being ofeither. God anyway 'cannot be defined as

the causal agency of a paradigmatic individual substance in the

to what he is by reference to anything else' .'70 It is correct therefore ·to say that God was not always Father; the title identified him but

consubstantial would then be to say that they were co-ordinate. But God has no co-ordinates. Two ingenerate principles makes nonsense. The Son must have an origin, be a creature and a product. 177

does not define his essence. 171 Arius also denied that the Son is a 'consubstantial part' (meros

homoousion) of the Fathe~. The Son cannot be a component or

extension of God, for this would be to make God composite, indeed virtually material, either composed of substance prior to him or (if extended) mutable, in either case corruptible.'72 Iamblichus in his De Mysteriis uses the term (consubstantial) of a case where 'different elements combine to provide a unified reality'. This cannot apply to

transcendental intelligible order'.'7. To say that Father and Son were

Williams then suggests that Arius may have had his own doctrine of parti~ipation whereby the divine Logos and Wisdom would 'create in the Son their closest possible finite image in sO' far as he is directly their product. He demonstrates the immediate and unimpeded effect by Logos and Wisdom, and in some significant measure reflects what they are like.'178

transcendental realities which must be simple, incomposite. You

could say that in water, a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, the

This participation then is by contrivapce or contingency, not

two gases were consubstantial, but this cannot apply to intellectual substances. 173 If we were to apply homoousios to the Father and the

necessarily and so is in principle mutable, for they are not part of the

168'The Logic of Arianism', 58-60. For Williams' summary of Paul's doctrine, see above p.ooo. 169'The Logic of Arianism', 60, 61. 17°Ibid. 61. 171 62. 172 63-64. 1736 4.

92

essential. The Son possesses Logos and Wisdom eternally but not definition of his being. When Arius said that the Son possessed these 'metaphorically' or 'by courtesy' (KUtUXP1j<JtlKOO,) he did not mean, 1746 5.

175 66,67; Opitz Urk IV No.8.3 (16). 176'The Logic of Arianism' 67, 68, quotation 68. 177 69-7°. 178

73 --'74, quotation 74.

93

The Origins

The Antecedents of Arius

merely nominally, but rather that he is the perfect image of all the aspects (epinoiai) of God. '79 Finally, Williams turns to the subject of our knowing God. We can

3. Conclusions

only know God because he creates contingent manifestations of

wisdom, and supremely in the Son. 'The Son's revelatory importance lies in being a maximally endowed creature who manifests at once the immense and unbridgeable gulf separating even the highest creature from God, and the fact that God is not idle or indifferent but wills to create (necessarily fragmented) images of his own life. '180

We have here a kind of Christological basis for analogy in knowing God: 'As paradigm creature, Christ the.Son exhibits perfectly what kind of continuities and what kind of discontinuities exist between God and creation' .181 The Son is as wise and rational as any creature can be. Arius' 'not as one of the creatures'is a kind of saving clause.

The Son is the special case revealing to us concretely, not merely abstractly, the possiblity of wisdom and reason existing in our world.

He stands between ourinstability and God's stability, between God's Being and our Becoming, a 'becoming creature, and in that sense

ontologically unstable, yet perfectly in communion with the realm of Being, morally stable by the confluence of God's prior grace and his own unfaltering response'.182

This account of what liesbehind Arius' surviving words does not of course explain everything; it leaves unsolved the matter of the Son's creation out of non-existence, and the terms unmistakably

derived from Middle Platonism. But, partly by its invocation of Aristotelian rather than Platonic categories, it seems to me to make sense of a greater part of the evidence than any other account ·of the

philosophical background of Arius. It represents him as holding a consisteI\t and not ignoble position. And though this position may not amount to a soteriology, it can hardly be denied that it is

eminently open for a suitable soteriology to be developed from it. There is no reason why it should not be the metaphysical correlate to a soteriology. .

75r7 ·

179

77-'78, quotation 78. 78-80, quotation 78. 82 1 7 8--'79, quotation 79.

180 181

The study of the Arian problem over the last hundred years has been hke a long-dIStance gun trying to hit a target. The first sighting shots are very wide of the mark, but gradually the shells fall nearer and nearer. The diatribes ofGwatkin'83 and ofHarnack'o, can to-day be completely .gnored. Prest.ge hardly pays sufficient attention to Ar~an~sm to be able to. understand it. ISS Boularand consistently treats

Anamsm, fro,? the title of his book, L' Heresie d' Arius et la {oi de Nicee, ?nwards as If It had been from the outset an easily recognised heresy In contrast to a known and universally recognised orthodoxy, which

is far from being the case. More recent and more thorough exammation of Anarusm has brought a "more realistic estimate of it. Simonetti sees it as an extreme reaction against a Sabellianism which was at th~ time rife in the East,186 and a violent protest against the

Alexandnan theology represented by bishop Alexander.'o7 Stead sums up his impression of Arius' thought in these words: 'Arius draws upon a Platonic tradition evolving without the Church, rather than representing a violent incursion of alien philosophy. His theology fits naturally into place among the disputes which arose over the dis?er~al .of Ori~en's effects. His main debt to Origen is a subordmanomst doctrme of the Son, which he greatly intensifies and

, t83'A·dear step back to heathenism' (SA 2): 'an inevitable reaction of heathen thought ~gainst the d~finite establishment of~he Christian view of God' (ibid. 16); Alexa?dna. ~as particularly open to Arianism because it was a stronghold of pagam~m (Ibid. 17-18,20), the doctrine is heathen to the core, for the Arian Christ IS nothing but a he~then de~i-god' (ibid. 26); the Arians were morally deficient bec.a~se most ofthel~ extant I.Jteracure is polemical' (ibid. 27 n4. slightly modified ~.1)' an Eastern reac~lOn ofphdosophy a~ai~~t the gospel of the Son of God' (Ae J); tndee~, t~e s"y~tem IS hea~en to the core (IbId. 7), 'the triumph of philosophy' over reve~atlon (Ibid. 9); deSigned for people who were heathen 'with the thinnest poss~~le veneer ofC.hristianitr' (ibid. 12); not only had Arianism many intellectual affimtles to, h~a.themsm, but It also resembled heathenism 'in its generally lower ~oral tone ~lb~d. 44); the fact that so many Arian writers came from Phrygia is a sign that Ananlsm was half-pagan (ibid. 131 so also SA 245) 'YH if , . ~story 0 Dog~a ~V.7 and 3? denies that Arianism had any soteriology, 39-"44 damns It as AdoptlODlsm combined with Greek philosophy and using Biblical language. 18s'.And behind ~ll .expres.sion of Arian thought lay the hard and glittering syU~glsm that God IS ImpaSSible; Christ, being ),evvllt6c;, was passible; therefore Chmt was not God', God in Patristic Thought 156. 186Studi 124, n66. 187

94

Studi passim.

95

The Origins

The Antecedents of Arjus

divests of its qualifications. But he is indebted to Origen's critics, especially Methodius, for the doctrine of the Father's priority, which he considers necessary for monotheism. God the Father existed before all things and created all things out of nothing by his unprompted act of will. '188

can catch a brief glimpse of interest in -the Incarnation on his part. 193

Much turns upo~ whether we are to assume that Arius, and after him Arianism, paid any serious attention to soteriology. As we have

seen, R. D. Williams and Harnack denied that Arius, at least, had any soteriology. Most scholars have, perhaps unwittingly, come to much the same conclusion. It is understandable that this should be so, because almost every word (though not quite every word) by Arius that survives is concerned with the relation of the Father to the Son independently of the Incarnation. In -strong contrast to almost

everybod y who had preceded them in this field, Gregg and Groh maintain emphatically that Arius and Arianism had a soteriology, that the Arian Christ was specifically designed to be a Saviour, and that neither Arius nor Arianism can be understood 'until this point is

realised. 'Servanthood by a creaturely nature freely electing such and divine fatherhood by grace are the twin foundations of early Arian Christology' .189 Christ was one Redeemer, the one chosen, but there could have been others chosen. Hence the emphasis on the 'one', e.g. the 'one of a hundred sheep' of Athanasius of Anazarbus. 190 'Arians are arguing, not for the stratification of the universe but for the dynamics of redemption whereby creatures, in emulation of perfect

discipline, may be themselves begotten as equals to the Son."9' Gregg and Groh claim that the Arian Christ was not a demi-god, half god and half man, but 'a created Creator as well as a saved

Saviour' .192 The Arian Christ is vulnerable, mutable, passible, because he is the example given by God the Father to man and woman that they can, like him, achieve that moral progress (procopej which will enable , them to become divine as he is, or as much as he is.

This emphasis upon the soteriology of Arianism is welcome and timely. It is inconceivable that Arius had nothing to say about the Incarnation, and in the two fragments preserved by Constantine we

Another clear gain in the treatment of the subject by Gregg and Groh is their readiness to take early Arianism into account, and not merely the relatively sparse utterances of Arius which have come down to us. It is wholly unlikely that Arius was a vox clamantis in deserto. He

represents a school, probably the school of Lucian of Antioch, and the school was to some extent independent of him. It did not look back on him later with respect and awe as its founder. Even if we had no hint at all of Arius' concern about a doctrine of Incarnation, we

would have to ask, what was the point of Arius' theologizing, why did he think fit to disseminate this particular rather complex and certainly controversial account of the relation of the Father to the

Son? Surely he must have thought that it fitted into some general scheme of salvation. It is significant that the picture which R. D. Williams gives of the Arian Christ seems' to be designed for some soteriological end. The particular reconstruction of the soteriological aims and

intentions of Arianism presented by Gregg and Groh, though it is most important in its general approach and can be said to mark a milestone in the study of Arianism, is open to several objections. In the first place, we do not find any specifically Stoic terms in the vocabulary of Arianism, whereas we do find terms taken from Middle Platonism and Aristotelianism. If the Arians wished to present,~ passible Christ in contrast to an impassible father, they did not need any Stoic terms to do so, and it looks as if they did not in fact borrow such terms. The language of the Bible was sufficient. In the second place, though there is some evidence of the concept of a Son who makes progress towards moral perfection in Arianism, there are some indications to the contrary too. If God gave the Son grace in view of his foreseen merits, what was that grace supposed to effect? The answer is probably, sinlessness by grace, not nature. 194 But if the Son is sinless ab initio, well before he becomes incarnate, even though

only so by grace, he cannot make any moral progress at all. The third and most serious objection to the account of Arianism given by

Gregg and Groh is that the Son cannot give an example of human achievement of perfection • because he is precisely not a man. The Son 188'Platonism of Arius', 30; cf. 'The Thalia of Arius', 20-39. 189

Early Arianism 28.

assumed a soma apsychon, a body without a human mind or soul. This

190Ibid. 30, see above P.42. 19lIbid. II3.

192Ibid

liS-lIB. quotation from 117.

1935ee above, pp.8-1O. 1945 0 , quite persuasively, Lorentz, A,ius Iudaizans? 122-127. 97

The Origins

is one of the salient doctrines of Arianism and one which Gregg and Groh inexplicably never mention anywhere in their book. The Word incarnate in the Arian scheme may give some sort of example, but certainly not that of a human being making moral progress. We can at the end of this lengthy review of Arius' ideas conclude with some confidence that he was eclectic in his philosophy. He fits neatly neither into a wholly Platonic nor into a wholly Aristotelian

4 The Rationale of Arianism

nor Stoic picture. though he certainly has traits taken from the first

two at least. And one of his most startling doctrines, that of the creation of the Son out of non-existence, has no parallel in Greek philosophy at all. He was not without influence from Origen, but cannot seriously be called an Origenist. We can also, I believe. give him the credit for attempting to solve: questions which were not simply those raised by Greek philosophy. It is not just to dismiss him as one wholly preoccupied with philosophy. The very fact of his eclectism suggests that he has some ultimate purpose for which he is using the tools ofphilosophy, but which itselfis not philosophical but theological. He was in his way attempting to discover or construct a rational Christian doctrine of God, and for this his chief source was necessarily not the ideas of Plato or Aristotle or Zeno, but the Bible. Even after this long examination of the background of his ideas we afe left with a sense of incompleteness. Arius' complex and in some respects unusual theology was meant to fulfil some purpose. What that purpose was we shall attempt to explain in the next chapter.

I.

Sources for Arianism

Those who investigate the doctrine of the opponents of Arianism have a comparatively large fund of material available, quite enough for them to be able to deal with the early material first and the later material later in the course of an account of the history of doctrine. But the sources for our knowledge of Arianism are so sparse that we

cannot follow this method. In order to illustrate the true nature of Arianism it will be necessary to an"ticipate extensively and to include sources and materials which derive from periods long after Arius' day. But if allowance is made for certain developments of the kind

that inevitably occur in the history of any doctrine, it will be possible to show that Arianism was not, as some of its critics have claimed, a ju~
violently hosrile to Ariauism and likely to misrepresent it, but even these, suitably treated, cannot be simply swept aside and will yield some useful information. Directly Arian sources untainted by pro-

Nicene prejudice are rare. Some cifthem present problems of text and integrity which can hardly yet be said to have found a solution. But we are- not without materials. Owing to the labours of A. Mai.

corrected by C. H. Turner and R. Gryson, a number of unimpeachable Arian documents are to hand, though they date from the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century. We have the invaluable Arian glosses or commentaries to the Acts of the tMost of the material of this chapter has already appeared in a paper which I contributed to Arianism entitled 'The Arian Doctrine of the Incarnation'. There has been a little expansion in some places and contraction in others.

99

The Origins

The Rationale oj Arianism

Council of Aquileia in 381, recently edited by R. Gryson, and the account of the proceedings of that Council itself. We have a number of Homilies of Asterius, upon which we have already drawn, 2 as well as some other utterances of Arius' early supporters, considered already in chapter 2. We have two Arian Commentaries on Job dating perhaps from the middle of the fourth century, and two Arian Homilies from about the same period edited by Fr. Liebart. We have the Creed ofEudoxius and the Creed ofUlfilas. We have one curious fragment from that controversial f,gure, Potamius of Lisbon. We have the Pseudo-lgnatian Letters and the Clementine Liturgy in the Apostolic Constitutions, to be placed in the second half of the fourth century. And in the fifth century we have some writings of Maximinus, and that finest and most controversial of Arian works, the Opus Impeljectum in Matthaeum.'

middle of the fourth century consistently contrasts the suffering, obedient Christ with the sovereign Father, object of Christ's worship.6 Suidas preserves an extract from Demophilus, the last Arian bishop of Constantinople before the advent of Theo.dosius: 'The Son', he says, 'has been begotten by the will of the Father alone, timelessly, immediately, and has become the minister of the intentions of the Father.' God, he explains, could not come in contact with the creation which he intended to make, for he would have been under the necessity either of making everything gods so as to be worthy of him, or else everything would have disintegrated by contact with him. So the Son of God had to become a mediator between God and the things created by him.' Julian, the very learned and highly competent commentator onJob, not only strongly denies that the Holy Spirit is either divine or a creator,' but he can describe God the Father as 'incomparably greater than all. '9 He insists strongly that it is dangerous folly to liken his production of the Son to anything corporeal or anthropomorphic, 1 0 and carefully defines how God can generate a Son without in any way affecting his own

2.

A Reduced God

The first point to notice is that Arianism in its characteristic 'form always assumed that revelation and redemption on the part of God necessitated a reduction or lowering so that they had to be undertaken by a being who, though divine, was less than fully divine. The inferiority of the Logos to God the Father was necessary for a communication, and particularly for an Incarnation, to take place at all. As we have seen, this was not a new idea, but in Arianism it took a peculiarly drastic form. Asterius said that when God desired that created nature should come into existence he saw that nature could not endure his dir~ct hand «(l1CpC"OU X.,p6C;) and so 'he initially makes and created, himselfS(ile, a sole Being, and calls this Son and Word'; consequently, once this mediating Being had come into existence, the rest could be created ..4 Asterius may even have said that the Word learnt how to create in obedience to God who taught him as if God was an instructor or technician. 5 An Arian Homily of about the 2See above, PP.38-41. JI have not included here any definitely Neo-Arian or Eunomian texts, because the doctrines of Aetius and Eunomius appear to me to represent a divagation from original Arianism rather than an inevitable development. Nco-Arianism will be dealt with in its Own place later in this work; see below, cap. 19. 4Frag. VIII (Bardy) from Or. con. Ar. 11.24. virtually reproduced in De Decretis 8. SAthanasius, Or. con. Ar. 11.27: but Athanasius may have been exaggerating here;

cf. De Deeret. 7.1(6). 100

ousia: 'When God generates he does not generate by pathosll or division of· his own ousia and when he creates he does not need material or movement nor natural nor artificial instruments, but he generates and I!reates by will and power, for he is not dependent upon material nor '"does he use his own ousia instead of some material (for he has no need of anything), nor is he who is wholly independent dependent on himself.- He is alone omnipotent and unapproachable and greater than any cause or origin; immutable, unchangeable, he does not generate in the same way as fathers do with us nor create in the same way as craftsmen do with us, but as One who, is authentic and wholly independent he generates by his authority without any intermediate means and by his authority creates and by his authority controls his own products.'12 6]. Liebart. Deux Homelies Anomeennes 1.11.70. Incidentally, 'Anhomoian' seems to me a misnomer for these two little works. 'Homoian' would be a better description. 7Philosrorgius, HE IX.J4a.

8Comm. on Job 205.14-206.3. 9Ibid. 218.7; cf. 229.IOff. IOlbid. 270.12-19. 1\ Pathos as used by all ivth-century theologians is an almost untranslatable word; :it means anything that necessitates change or becoming or human experience. 12Comm. on Job 270.1g--271.3. !OI

The Origins

The Rationale of Arianism

There can be no doubt at all that Julian means to include the Son among the things created by God. He has made this clear a litde

has nothing whatever in common with' human generation, but was

earlier in his Commentary, when he says: 'Over these visible things Oob 37:22, 23 (LXX» there is a great and glorious and aweful Almighty One who has no one like to him nor equal to him in being or in power. in being because he is ingenerate (aytvl1t'o~). in power because he is the Father of the Son. There is therefore no other Cause of the universe nor Almighty. nor any other

Mediator of the origin of these things except the Only-begotten God, the Word who was in the· beginning ... '13 It is dear that this creation by pure will and power without importation of ousia comprehends the Son alone. The Son creates the Spirit and then everything else. Later, Julian calls the Son 'The subservient (ultlJpenGall&voc;) God, the Only-begotten God who is also the Son.'14

Latin-speaking Western Arians of the second half of the fourth century echo this doctrine. Gryson summarizes the Arian theology which can be reconstructed from the Arian scholia on the MS of the Council of AquiIeia. God is incommunicable and inaccessible. 'He does not condescend to human contacts lior human flesh'. 15 The Son

was begotten, that is made, by God. These Arians can usenasci (to be born) of the Son, and are not happy with the use of the term 'created', because this suggests that the Son is to be classified with other created things. He has been produced direcdy without mediation by God, and everything else has come into being through his mediation; ktisma (creature) is not applied to the Son in Scripture. Secnndianus, the other Arian bishop arraigned at Aquileia, did indeed appeal to Proverbs 8:22 to prove that the Son was created, and Ambrose, who was interrogating him, could only reply lamely that the text referred to Christ's human nature. This direct creation means that the Son has nobody like him; the Arians' favourite tit~e for the Son was unigenitus

(only-begotten,Jn 1"4, 18; 3:16). His production implies no division nor diminution of the Father, but has been brought about to manifest God's goodness and capacity to create. The Son originates from the

more like the engendering of a soul from a soul. The Son was produced before everything, before anything conceivable, but is still not co-eternal with the Father. The Father is the origin (auctor) of everything made, but the Son brings everything into actual existence. He is the mediator between God and us whereby we know

the Father, and it is he who appeared in the Old Testament epiphanies. He took a body to appear under the New Testament as Saviour and Redeemer. The Arians dislike dividing Christ's words and acts into those relevant to his human nature and those to his

divine nature. It was the God in Christ who died; he was that sort of vulnerable God. Christ is our God by whom we were made. He can and should be called 'God' and be adored, glorified and honoured. So God has produced a God, the Creator a Creator, but there is still a difference between them. God the Father is the God of God the Son who can be called secundus Deus (second God); the Father is greater than he (Tn 14:28, much used by the Arians from the beginning), and this is shown by the fact that the Son is sent by the Father, that he does the Father's will and exhibits obedience and subordination to the

Father, and he adores and praises the Father, not only in his earthly ministry but in Heaven. The Son has many of the Father's attributes, but he has received them from the Father. He is 'like according to the Sc~iptures' (Rimini 359 and Constantinople 360). Maximinus can even say that the Son's nature is-like the Father's, for both are spirit. 16 The Holy Spirit was called into existence by the Son as the first of creatures; he is not begotten nor unbegotten but created. He is neither cr~ator nor origin nor God nor Lord nor King and does not reign

wIth the Father and the Son and should not be worshipped, He is subordinated to the Son whom he regards as his God. But his greatness and dignity are such that angels desire to be able to contemplate him. He is present whenever anyone is baptised and whenever anyone invokes God. He illuminates, guides and sanctifies

the faithful. 17 The Arians always accuse the pro-Nicenes of confounding the

Father's will, and his production was impassible and immutable, and

Persons of the Trinity and failing to recognize the individual

lllbid.245.7ff. 14I~id. 310.19. It has been suggested that Julian is also the author of the PseudoIg~;tlan Letters and th~ Clementine Liturgy in the Apostolic Constitutions. Ad, humana contagIa nec ad humanam carnem non descendit, a sentence from Augustme's Collatio cum Maximino quoted by Gryson, Scolies Ariennes r84.

16Gryson, ScoI~es Ariennes 185-195. At 197 n 2 Gryson says that the Arians appear to hav~ devoted ht~e. thought to the Incarnation. I hope that this chapter will show that thiS statement IS mcorrect. Where the original Latin is quoted from this work, the page number is given first and the section number ·second. 17Ibid. 195-196.

102

103

The Origins

The Rationale oj Arianism

character of each. The difference, in the Arian view, does not merely apply to their relations towards each other, but to their natures. There is no common nature shared by Father, Son and Spirit, no divine 'substance' which they aU possess. The Son is not ingenerate nor eternal nor invisible nor immortal as the Father is. He does not possess the Father's negative attributes and only possesses the positive ones by participation. He is not 'Ie bon dieu' (p. 198); the Father is God, the Son God; the Holy Spirit merely performs a divine work. In the end there is only one God who is good, wise etc. We cannot number the Three, because the Father is incomparable. The Three are not equal, their difference ofnature entails a difference of degree. The manner in which these Persons are One is simply in their harmony and unanimity.18

in the Creed which, according to Auxentius," Vlfilas, bishop of the ,Goths, uttered on his death-bed in Constantinople."

'And indeed'. says Maximinus, 'there are many brethren but only one

Only-begotten. For the Son is the Good Shepherd and good God, but not good Ingenerate. And 'the good man takes out of the treasure of his heart good things' (Luke 6:45). but he is not compared with him through whom he has been made good. So the Sori is not classified (connumeratur) with him from whom he has received goodness along with existence ... 'For every creature of God is good' (I Tim 4:4; cf. Gen 1:31). Yes, but, as I think, the creature itselfis not compared with

the light by whieh it is filled, nor man with Christ, nor Christ with the Father.'19

But it is worth noting that in his own account of what happened at the Council of Aquileia Palladius explicitly disavows Anhomoianism. Ambrose accused the Arians ofsaying that the Son is 'unlike' the Father. 20 Palladius replies that t/iey do not characterize the Son as unlike (dissimilis), citing In 5:1 9, 'Or perhaps the reason why you think that he is said to be unlike by us is because we do not say that he is co-everlasting with the Ingenerate nor co-eternal with that same Father.'21 The same drastic subordination and reduction of the Son appears 18lbid. 196-200. 19Scolies Ariennes, text, 234.]9. The interesting kind of Rule of Faith which Palladius himself gives us (Scolies ] 18-320.136) makes it clear that his 'Trinitarian' doctrine is in fact a doctrine ofone High God. one demi-god and a superior angel. so that function alone will suffice to differentiate; the Three hardly need distinction of Persons because the distinctions of ontological constitution differentiate them already. 2°Scolies 264.81 (dissimiiem). 21Ibid. 264-266.82.

'I believe in one God the Father, alone ingenerate and invisible, and in his only-begotten Son, our Lord and God, artificer and maker of the whole creation. who has nobody like him (similem suum) - therefore there is one God the Father of all who is also God of our God - and in one Holy Spirit, the power which illuminates and sanctifies. as Christ said after the resurrection to his apostles (quotation of Luke 24:49 and

Acts 1:8). and he (i.e. the Spirit) is not God nor our God, but the minister of Christ ... subordinate and obedient in all things to the Son, and the Son subordinate and obedient in all things to his God and Father ... '24 Auxentius in his Letter gives his own account in a carefully worded formal statement of what Ulfilas, who of course is one of his heroes,

believed. It is not an expansion of the death-bed profession ofolfllas, but a longer, more elaborate statement, much of which is worth

quoting: 'He never hesitated to preach ... oue sole true God the Father of Christ according to Christ's own teaching, knowing that this sole true God is solely ingenerate, without beginning, without end, eternal.

supernal, high, exalted, the highest origin, higher than any superiority. better than any goodness, infinite, incomprehensible. invisible. immeasurable. immortal, indestructible, incommunicable. inc6rporeal, uncomposite. simple, immutable, undivided, unmoving. needing nothing. unapproachable, whole (inscissum), nQt subject to rule, uncreated, unmade, perfect, existing uniquely (in singularitate extantem), incomparably greater and better than everything. And when he was alone. not to create division or reduction ofhis Godhead but for the revelation (ostensionem) of his goodness and power. by· his will and power alone. impassibly himself impassible, indestructibly himself indestructible. and immovably himself unmoved he created and begot. made and founded the Only-begotten God. According to the tradition, and the authority of the divine Scriptures he (UlftIas) never concealed that this second God and 22This is a Letter cif Auxentius quoted by Maximinus; this Auxentius is not the Arian bishop of Milan unsuccessfully opposed by Hilary and. on his death in 374. succeeded by Ambrose, but Auxentius Arian bishop of Durostorum who came as a refugee to Milan while Ambrose was bishop there; he was welcomed by the Emp~essJustina. widow of Valentini an I and mother of Valentini an II. 23It was in 383. 24Scolies 250.63.

105

The Origins

originator of everything is from the Father and after the Father and because of the Father and for the glory of the Father, but he always showed that according to the holy Gospel he (Christ) is also the great God and great Lord and great Mystery and great Light ... the Lord who is the Provider and Lawgiver, Redeemer, Saviour ... the Originator, the first Judge of living and dead, who has this God and Father as his superior, because he (Ulfilas) despised and trampled upon the hateful and execrable, evil and perverse creed of the Homoousians as a devilish invention and doctrine of demons, and he himselfkn'ew and handed down to us that if the unwearying power of the onlybegotten God is openly proclaimed as having easily made everything heavenly and earthly, invisible and visible, and is rightly and faithfully believed by us Christians why should the impassible power of God the Father not be credited with having made One suitable for himself? But ... through his sermons and his writings he (Ulfilas) showed that there is a differt:nce of deity between the Father and the Son, between the ingenerate and the only-begotten God, and that the Father is the creator of the whole creator, but the Son the creator of the whole creation, and the Father is the God of the Lord, but the Son the God of the whole of creation. '25

3. The Inferiority and Imperfection of the Logos The next point to 'observe, which follows logically from the first, is that Arians taught that the weakness and limitations of the incarnate Christ applied to the divine Word as well as to the human body; indeed, these weaknesses and limitations were a proof of the inferiority of the Son to the Father. Our earliest witness here is Eustathius of Antioch, who was.probably writing in Arius' lifetime. From his polemic we can deduce that Arian writers pointed to Christ's having been born of a woman, his having submitted himself to the Jewish Law, his warning to Mary Magdalene not to touch him On 20:17), his crucifixion, as a proof that the Logos attached to the human organism was subject to weakness, limitation and death. 26 Athanasius gives us reasonably reliable information about a host of other instances. Jesus Christ showed fear at Gethesemane; he grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52); he asked questions, showing that he was 25Ibid. 236-238.42-46. 26M. Spanneut, Recherches sur les &,its d'Bustache d'Antioche 18(108), 23(102), 24(102,103), 2S(IOJ)and 27(103). But Eustathius' statement that the Arians said that is almost certainly a slander. Christ committed sin (S4(1

II»

106

The Rationale of Arianism

~gnorant; he uttered on the Cross the words of supreme weakness, My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?' (Matt. 27:46). He prayed to the Father, showing that he was in need; he was hungry and thirsty, subject to the needs of the body. 27 Arians particularly stressed Mark 13:32, 'Of that day and hour knoweth no man, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father', which appears to present us with a direct disavowal of knowledge by Christ.2S We find these arguments reproduced again and again as the target of antiArian writers, Epiphanius, Pseudo-Didymus De Trinitate, Gregory of Nyssa and Basil of Caesarea. 29 Gregory of Nazianzus gives us a convenientl y condensed account of most of the arguments of Eunomius (who here represents Arians of every complexion) in favour of the inferiority of the Logos, both pre-existent and incarnate: 'The words "Your God and my God" Gohn 20:17); the text "Greater (than I)" Oohn 14:28); the text "created (me the beginning of his ways," Provo 8:22); the text "he made (him both Lord and Christ)", (Acts 2:36); the text "whom he sanctified (and sent into the world", John 10:J6); (Christ's being) a slave, obedient; the text "he gave (all things into his hand)", Oohn 3=35); that he was commanded, that he was .sent,. his inability to do or say anything of himself, or judge or receIve gIftS, or take counsel ... his ignorance, his subordination, his praying, his asking questions, his growth, his being perfected ... his s~~eping, being hungry, tired, his weeping, his experiencing agony, hIS submission. '30

Another text frequently adduced by the Arians was Matthew 10:18, 'Why do you call me good?', where Christ apparently disclaims moral perfection; it gave the pro-Nicenes much trouble. We find Epiphanius wrestling with it, and Pseudo-Didymus. 31 Hilary of POI tIers In the West reproduces most of these arguments and tries to meet them: the Arians argue for the Son's inferiority on the grounds that honorem praeteritum reposcat (he demands back his former dignity, 270r. con. Ar. Il.26; 31. 28Ibid. III.4 2 . 29E'h' A piP. amus, ncoratus 17.2-6, 2S, 26; 20.1-10,28; 37.1-'1, 46, 47; 38.1-8, 47-49 etc. PanarlOn 66.3S.IO(?S); 69.60.1,.2. Ps.-Didymus De Trin, 21 PG 39:900. Gregory of Nyssa, Adversus -A.rlUm ~t Sabelilum 76,84, 8S. Basil, Bpp. 236. 1(876-877). I give my reasons for agreemg with those scholars who deny the De Trinitate to Didymus below, PP.6S2-'1. :;Th.eologj~al Orations (ed. Mason) III(XXIX).18; c( IV(XXX).6 and 12. E~lphamus, Ancoratus 18.1, 2, 26; Panarion 69.19.1-6(168,169). Ps.-Didymus, De Trm. 1.18, 3S-43(1I4-116); IIl.IS(864).

The Rationale oj A~ianjsm

The Origins

perhaps a reference to Phil. 2.S-II), et mori timeotet mortuus sit (and he feared to die and did die);32 they point to the cry of dereliction on the Cross, and the statements33 'The Son cannot do anything of himself (John 5=19), and 'not that Ishould do my wiJI' (John 6:37-38):34 They allege that Christ did not raise himself from the dead, but his Fat~er raised him." In short, Hilary says, the Arians attribute everything that was said or done through the assumed human nature (as Hilary sees it) to the defectiveness of his divinity.'· A remarkable fact in this part of Arian doctrine is the stress laid on the evidence that during his earthly ministry Jesus constantly prayed to the Father. From this the Arians inferred, logically according to their premises, that the Father was the God of the Son. 37 They pointed to such texts as Ps 4S (44):8, 'God, thy God, has ~ointed thee'.'. The pre-existent Christ who appeared to the Israelites, says Asterius in his Homilies, is exactly the same as he who was crucified, and the 'PuAa~6v "', KUPlB (,Protect me, Lord') of Ps 16 (IS):I (on which Asterius is commenting) is the prayer of Christ to the Father." In his Rule of Faith, Eudoxius'describes the pre-existent Son as 'pious because he worships the Father'. 40 Another crucial text for the Arians here isJohn 20:27 ('My God and your God'); it is constantly discussed and disputed. 41 A later anonymous writer in the documents brought to light by Mai and re-edited by Gryson says that the Son is 'God of everything that was made later than he and through Jesus (sic) by the providence of his God and Father, but the Father is God for the Son, whose origin he is, as he is of all'.42 It is therefore a clear mark of Arian origin when a prayer in the VIIth Book of the Apostolic Constitutions describes God the Father as 'God and Father of the

Christ and of those who direct their worship to him (trov el<; aoltov eol(Je~06vt"'v), 43

4. A Suffering God We perceive the reason for this determined subordination of the Son to the Father when we realize that it was a central part of Arian theology that Cod suffered. We have already noticed the trenchant sentence of Asterius: 'the Gentiles and the peoples crucified the God of the four comers of the earth, and crucified him because he tolerated it'.44 We have seen his remarkable analogies of the Emperor's orders, the Emperor's breastplate and the coats of skins in Genesis'" in short his explicit declaration that God suffered, was crucified, was buried. But Asterius is' not alone in this striking doctrine. We can find it in the Opus Impeifectum in Motthoeum. The author of this work can write, 'God placed human salvation even above his own immunity from suffering' (impossibilitotem).4. And there is a signifIcant interchange between Palladius and Ambrose at the Council of Aquileia, where we have Palladius' own account. Palladiusis asked, 'Is the Son the invisible God?', and he replies that he is not, he is the visible God (Le. the God capable of making himself visible).47 Shortly afterwards this dialogue takes place: ,!4mbrose: 'Palladius:

Is the Son the immortal God? No, he is not (i.e. he is the God who can do the dying whereas the Father cannot; and he cites 1 Tim 1:17 and 6:16 to show that the Father alone is immortal, and 1 Cor 15:3 (,Christ died for our sins') to show that the

Ambrose:

These texts apply to Christ's flesh (i.e. not to his

Son died). Godhead).

32Hilary, De Trinitale VII.6(26S). "Ibid. X.49(S03). "Ibid. IX.43(4I9); 49(42S-426). "Ibid. X.70(S26). 36lbid. IX.IS. It is noteworthy that Maximinus in his debate with Augustine much later makes no reference to Christ's weakness or limitations. It seems likely that later Arianism laid less emphasis on this point. 37We have seen this already above, p. 10S-6· 38Hilary, De Trin. XI.IO(S39). 39 Asterius, Homilies XXViII.6(2zS-ZZ6). 40Hahn Bibliothek, p. 261; the Greek is EUO'EPil SIC t"ou crEPElV t"ov TtQt"Epa. 41 E.g. Eunomiu$ (here characteristic of all Arians) in Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomjum lII(x).1(88S)· 42Cryson, Scripta Arriana Latina XVII, 25S-256 (IV Mai). 108

43 Didascalia et Conslitutiones Apost%rum (Funk) Vol. I Book VII, XXXVI (434-43 6)6. 44See above, p. 40: For a similar view from someone who was probably an exact co~teI?porary of Anus, see the statement from the Homily edited by Tetz ('Eine Arlamsche Homilie', 301-302) attributed by him to Athanasius of Anazarbus, 'the Judge of the earth was judged for your sake'. This refers to the trial ofJesus. Tetz misunderstands it as a reference to the Last Judgment. 4SS ee above, p. 39. It should b~ ~ote.d that this is precisely not Patripassianism, first because that error refuses a dIStinctIon between the Persons, of which nobody can accuse Arianism, and secondly because Arianism takes the most elaborate measures to see that the Father does not suffer. 46Ll.47(1928}. 47Gryson, Scolies Arjennes 290.106.

109

The Rationale of Arianism

The Origins Palladius: Ambrose: Palladius:

the incarnate Logos had a human soul, 51 and when in his late Commentary on Psalms he is compelled to recognize that Scripture actually refers to the soul ofJesus Christ, he fails entirely to see the significance of it. Marcellus of Ancyra, a theologian of a very

Do you think that 'Christ' is a human title?

(after a pause) Both human and divine. Then you should believe that not only the flesh suffered, but God and man, the Son of God and the Son

different stamp, seems to take no account of a human soul/mind in

of man, that is, the Lord of Glory was crucified in each associated condition (utroque statu socio).

the incarnate Word.' 2 That this doctrine of the somaapsychon assumed by the Logos was a prominent point in Arian theology is abundantly evidenced.' 3 Eustathius of Antioch early in the

Palladius here trapped Ambrose nicely. If Ambrose says that 'C;:hrist' was a purely human title Palladius can easily show from SCripture that it is not; if he says that it is a divine title, then he conced~s Palladius' point that the divine in the Son of God suffered. It lS surprising that Ambrose, who had been a bishop for ~even years, never seemed to have faced that question before. But 11 makes the point quite clear that Palladius' creed is that of a God ,:,ho suffers. This doctrine of a suffering God was achieved by two .deas which might almost be said to be the characteristic m~rks of Arianism, the acceptance of a soma apsychon and the rejection of a psi/os anthropos, or

controversy singles this out as an Arian trait: 'Why do they think it important'. he says, 'to demonstrate that Christ assumed a body without a soul, in the course of thinking up deceptions that savour of the earth? It .is in order that if they can bamboozle some people into concluding that this is true, then because they attach the mutable nature of passions to the divine Spirit, they may easily persuade these people that the mutable should be begotten from the Immutable (and therefore that the pre-existent Son was mutable).'54

in other words the doctrine that the incarnate Word took to himself a body without a soul or mind and' the convicti~n that he was not. 'a

Epiphanius tells us that this doctrine that the incarnate Word had no

mere man', but God inhabiting a body. Durmg the. debate w.th Ambrose at Aquileia, Palladius, according to the offic.al text o~ the Acts of the Council, asked his interrogator about the verse My Father is greater than I' Uohn 14:28). 'This comparison is of the Son of God', Palladius says, 'And can flesh say "God is greater than I", Either the flesh or the divinity is speaking. Who 10 thlS case was the flesh?' Ambrose replies, 'Fleshcannotspeak without a soul'.4> Behmd this interchange, as Ambrose well knew, lies an important.difference of doctrine. Palladius believes that Christ had no human mmd or soul to declare itselfless than God, and therefore that it is the Logos who is speaking; Ambrose believes that the human nature, endowed with a human soul, is speaking. For Palladius, the Word directly experienced all the human experiences; the body was Simply a soulless physical organism in which the Logos supphed the place of

human soul was characteristic of Lucian of Antioch and his· disciples. 55 As this is one of the very few statements about Lucian of

which we can be reasonably sure, and as Arius in his Letter to Eusehius of !yicomedia refers to both of them as OU:u..OUKlaVI.CJ't'U{, we may cohfidently assume that this doctrine was held by Arius himsel£ T~e next witness to this doctrine in point of time, if he is not actually the earliest, is Asterius. He does not directly mention the

absence of a human soul in Christ, but he brings in its correlative idea,

that Christ was not a 'mere man'. 'If he' (Christ), he says, 'was not

mind or soul. . This was not a new idea at the time. Simonetti indeed calls It 'widespread' .50 Eusebius of Caesa rea at one point directly denies that 48Ibid. 290, 292.107. . 49Ibid. Acts of Council 360(40); in Latin the dialogue runs thus: P. Quae emm comparatio est Filii Dei. Et caro potest dicere, 'Deus me maior est'? Caro loquebatur aut divinitas. Qui ibi erat carD? A. Caro sine anima non loquebatur. 50Studi 142 n44; cf. Crisi SI and 469·

no

I

l 's

51 Dem. Ell, VII.I, 23. 24; X.8, 74; Eee, Theol. 1.20, 87. Gericke Marcell von Ancyra 97-99, has noted this. See above. PP.54-5S. 52S 0 rightly Gericke, op. cit. 168. 53 Among the many scholars investigating this period who mention this doctrine we can list. in addition to Simonetti (already mentioned) Gwatkin (SA 17). Loofs ('Arianismus' II, who in connection with it refers to the 'bankruptcy in the Logosdoctrine'), Seeberg (Textbook of the History of Doctrines Vol. n. 204), Sellers (Eustathius of Antioch IS), Bardy (LUcien d'Antioche 154), Moreira (Potamius de Lisbonne 16), Boularand (Hbesie d' Arius 79-80), Ritter ('Arianismus' 702 & 717 n 8), Lorenz (Arius ludaizans? 211-215 particularly full references), and Wallace-HadriIl (Christian Antioch 118, 128). We have already observed (see above. P.9?-98) that Gregg and Groh curiously ignore this point. 54Spanneut, op. cit. 15(100); cr. ibid. 'La Position theologique d'Eustache d'Antioche', 223. 55See above, p. 80. III

The Origins

The Rationale of Arianism

master of them (darkness and sun), they would not have mourned in this way' (he is speaking of the darkness of the sun at the Crucifixion); 'if he was a mere man (Ilv9pw1to, 1jIl1..6,) they would not have bewailed him as their master ... He who is Lord of the Sabbath is Lord also of me and of the Day of Preparation; but a mere man (liv9pw1to, 1jIl)'6,) is not Lord of Days'. 56 It is the heretics who refuse to believe that Christ was not a mere man. 57 And this is followed by a long rhetorical passage insisting that it was not a mere man who was crucified, but God as well as man. 58 There is a revealing passage in Eudoxius' Rule of Faith which illuminates Asterius' words. It runs thus, referring to Christ:

from Mary and monitored him by the powers of divine activity, but the man lived by the motivation and nature of (the Word's) own soul.'61

'he became flesh, not man, for he did no.t.take a human soul, but he became flesh, in order that he might be called for men "God for us" (9£0; iU.liv) by means of the flesh as by means of a veil; there were not two natures, because he was not a complete man, but he was God in the flesh instead of a soul: the whole was a single composite nature; he was passible by the Incarnation (ohcovolJ.iav) for if only soul and body suffered he could not have saved the world. Let them answer then how this passible and mortal person could be consubstantial with God who is beyond these things: suffering and death.'59

Here we see into. the heart of Arianism. The Arians want to. have a God who can suffer, but they cannot attribute suffering to the High God, and this is what (with some reason) they believed the Homoousian doctrine would entail. The suggestion of Moreira"O that the Second Creed ofSirmium of357 (called by the pro-Nicenes 'the Blasphemy') intended such a doctrine as is sketched above in the words eamem vel corpus id est hominem suseepisse (,took flesh and body, that is man') is an attractive ane. Hilary sums up the Adan doctrine of the Incarnation'; ~ot without some exaggeratian, in these words: 'God the Word as some part of the powers of God, enlarging himself by some process of extension, dwelt in the man who began to exist 56Asterius Homilies XXXI.2(243). "Ibid. 3(243). "Ibid. 4-8(243-45). s9Hahn cp. cit. 261, 262. Simcnetti (Crisi 469 and 470. n 3) is right in deciding that this is net tce advanced to' be attributable to. Eudexius. but I do net fellow Simcnetti in thinking that E.:doxius has borrewed this pelemic against a twonature theory from Apellinaris. It fellows from the logic of Arianism itself. 60Mereira op. cit. 110. 112

According to Epiphanius, the Arians went so far as to say that the divine part ofthe Logos incarnate was in need afthe human (to do. the suffering), and therefore the divine part must be alien from and different to God the Father, who is in need ofnothing."2 But this may represent Epiphanius' muddled thinking rather than actual Arian teaching. We can find this doctrine even in the small amount which we have of Pseudo-Ignatius. In his version ofIgnatius Philadelphians 6, variaus heresies are denounced, amang them those which canfess Christ Jesus but hold that he was 'a mere man ... not Only-begotten God and Wisdom and Word of God, but that he consisted only of soul and body.'·3 As we have already seen in the case of Palladius, later Western Arianism did nat abandan this doctrine. A fragment from Mai/Gryson says that the evangelist John at 1:I4 'blocked the mouths of those who say that he took' a soul along with the body.'"4 ¥aximinus in his argument with Augustine in fact refers to. this favaurite Arian doctrine when he insists that the soul afthe incarnate Christ was divine, and Augustine is careful to. emphasize that it was ,human. 65 . The author of the Apostolic Constitutions, Book VII, speaks of the 'Only-begotten' God who 'accepted death through the Cross for our sake'; and declares that God at the end of the age sent his Son to became man for the sake af man and 'to. receive all human experiences' (pathi) apart from sin."" The Opus Imperfeetum in Matthaeum, which is the most sophisticated and able work ofArian theology known to us, commenting on Matt. 21:33 ('a man who was a householder who hired out his vineyard'), remarks as follows: 'Ifanyone thinks that Christ must have had only a human soul (anima) for this reason, because he is called "man". he should listen [to this text where] God the Father is called a man [i.e. a paterfamilias]. The Son of God. knowing beforehand that because of his being called by the 61De Trin. X.50(504). 62Panarion 69.19.7-8(169). 6JCureton, Corpus 19natianum 95. 64Gryson Frag. XX.228 (Mai XIII). 6SAugustine Collatio 9(727, 728) and 14(720.). 66Funk op. cit. XII:XLlI(448l3 and (449)4. 113

The Origins

The Rationale of Arianism

name of human being he would be blasphemously aIlege.d t~. be a

This author refuses to see Christ's human nature as complete, and

mere man (homo purus). called even God the Father who IS mVlSlble a man, so that since the Father is called ':man" the Son should be free from the blasphemies of the heretics.'67

therefore capable of taking the weight of human experiences off God's impassibility. If we accept this reconstruction of Arian doctrine, we ·need not ascribe to the author of the Apostolic Constitutions, who has the same doctrine, Apollinarian tendencies, as Funk conjectured.'o He is an Arian. The Pseudo-Ignatian Letters provide us with many more rejections of the doctrine that Christ was psi los anthropos; the writer continually polemicizes against this view." He emphasizes equally strongly the reality of Christ's flesh or body.72 He regularly

Homo purus here obviously correspo~ds to the ~r~ek p~ilos anthropos, meaning for the Arian not necessanly an Ebl~rute plctur~, of one who was human and not divine, but the pro-Nlcene doctrme of the incarnate Word possessing twO natures or elements, one of .which was a complete man with a human mind. This model would rule out the Arian doctrine that the divine Logos directly experienced human emotions and experiences and was not shielded from these. as from the middle of the fourth century onwards the pro-Nicenes tended to claim. by a human soul or mind. Later the same author says, 'If God the Father, who is only God and not man, is yet to be called ·'man". how much more necessary was it that the Only-begotten Son should be called "'man", eveD though he was not a mere man (homo '68 purus). as he assumed human nat~re.

What this writer attacks is not so much a two-nature doctrine as .a doctrine of two complete natures in which the huma~ nature .15 envisaged as supplied with a human ~oul. We have. seen Ju.st now m

Asterius and in Eudoxius' Rule of Faith that the Arlans beheved that this idea struck at the heart of the doctrine of salvation. A mere man who did not have the divine Logos as his mind could not save mankind. Their argument here is the same as that of the Apollinarians, but is not necessarily derived from them. The author of the Opus Irnperfecturn a little later has exactly the same argument as that of Asterius and Eudoxius. After enumeratmg several err~rs of the pro-Nicenes, he castigates them for saying: 'A mere man (purum hominem) was crucified in soul and body. not just God in a body. in which there was no deity ... For if a mere man suffered, I give up. because the death of a man. not of God. does not

save

US.'69

670pUS Imp! in Matt. XI(8S3).1 take the view that this is certa~n1y an A~an work of the fifth century which has at some point suffered orthodo?, mterl:'0latlons. But its' textual history and composition have by no mean~ been s~tlsfacton.ly se~tled ,Yet. See Zeiller Les Origines chrhiennes 474-82; and Meshn op. Cit. Les Aflens d OCCIdent 150-82.

"Ibid. XLI(859)'. "Ibid. XLV(889)P·

Il4

subordinates the Son to the Father in a manner very reminiscent of

Arianism.'3 He refers hostilely several times to people who subject God Almighty to human experiences or who identify the Father and the Son; this sounds like an allusion to pro-Nicene doctrine.'4 In all of these passages he mentions alongside them those who regard Christ as psi/os anthropos. There are one or two statements unmistakably affirming that the incarnate Christ did not have a human soul and that the divine Word dwelt in a body: inPhilippians6 he denounces various heresies, among them those who confess Christ

Jesus, but hold that he was a psi/on anthropon ... not Only-begotten God and Wisdom and Word ofGod, but that he consisted of soul and body, and these are dangerous Ebionites. 75 In the same passage he warns that even professing correct doctrine does not emancipate you

from heresy if at the same time you approve of illicit sexual unions, and in the category of orthodoxy he places the view that 'God the Lord dwelt (KatK.') in a human body, being the logos in it, as a soul 7°Funk op. cit.lntrod. XX. For views on this subject. see C. H. Turner 'Notes on the Apostolic Constitutions 1', 54--61; Meslin Les Ariens 109-10. 243. 2-44. 393. ?,lCureton op. cit. Phi/ad. 6(95); Tarsians 2(126, 127), 6(129-130); Antiochenes 5(136); PhiUpp. 3-12(149-155).

72lbid. Trallians 9(81). 10(83); Smyrnaeans 2(103): Philipp. 3(14.9). 5(153). 73lbid. Magnesians 11(69. the creed); Trallians 5(77); Philad. 4(91-2); Smyrnaeans 7(r09), 9(111); Tarsians 5(129); Hero 7(145)· 74TralIians 6(77); Tarsians 2(126, 127); Antiochenes 5(136). 75Page 95: as it is wholly unlikely that the sect of the Ebionites still existed in the writer's day, we may take this as an abusive epithet applied to the pro-Nicenes.. On the other hand a writer in Mai/Gryson Fragments (Gryson V. 236-237 (Mai XV») outlines a doctrine which is clearly that of psilos anthropos (hominem tantummodo .. . corpus et animum non Deum) and attributes it to Photinus and his predecessors (Marcellus, possibly also the pto-Nicenes). This is indeed a full Photinian position. as the writer makes clear, denying [he distinct existence of Christ before the Incarnation. For Photinus, see below, P·235-8.

lIS

The Origins

The Rationale of Arianism

in a body, because the dweller in it was God, but not a human soul' (ljIUXiJ).'6 Except for one or two places which so starkly contradict the rest that they must be interpolations,77 he gives every sign of being an Arian, probably an Homoian Arian rather than an Eunomian. because he does not, for instance, object to saying that the Son is begotten, though he is careful to define what he means by this.78 That he should sometimes describe the Son as immutable (li
5. More Detailed Christology

76Cf. Smymaeans 2(103). 6 ).6'Yo~ tv oapJCi 4)K1l0EV. 77Such as Philipp. 2(14) and 5(150). 78 Trallians 9(81). 79Letter to Alexander Opitz Urk III. No. 6.2(12); cf. Simonetti Stud; 9I. 80Letter to Paulinus ibid. No. 8.4(16). 810p. cit. 245.7-246.7 Gulian's Rule of Faith) lhpeapto~ liE Kat 6 "fEVVfJeEi~. 82See Turner EOMIA 1.668.14(1, 2) in hoc possidet invariabilem aput patrern

sirnilitudinem ... quod non imutatur bonitate. 83Syntagmation IS. so Kopecek op. cit. 124, 125. 171-2. 84Frag. XVI(250) Gryson (Mai I) hunc non profitentem in posterum sed statim perfecturn, and Frag. XVII(2jj and 256) Gryson (Mai XVII), invertibilis (255) and immutabilis natura (256). BSTumer 'St Maximus of Turin contra Iudaeos' 11.295.43-50, unus genuit ... aetemus aeternum. Turner later admitted that this was not by Maximus. 86Collatio 15(733) non perficientem sed perfectum. B7E.g. De Trinitate III.2.xxvii(797), where the condemnation of the soma apsychon view is more likely to be aimed against the Arians than the Apollinarians. 88PG 26:7(804). C. B. Armstrong 'Th<; Synod of Alexandria and the Schism of Antioch', 216-17. does not seem to be aware of this possibility. For the Tomus ad Ant. see below pp.639-53.

I16

Next we may look at all those passages. not many in number, where Arian writers give more than a passing mention to the theology of the Incarnation. Several say, as might be expected, that]esus came to give an example of a holy life. Both Pseudo-Ignatius and the author of the Apostolic Constitutions (who may be one and the same person) are fond of the expression (ocr!"" "o,",,£ucrUI1£vo,) (,exhibiting a holy Jife-style').89 The Son, says Maximinus in the Col/atio"o came to instruct us 'that the Father is greater than the Son, and than this Son, who is the great God.' Curiously enough that enigmatic figure, Potamius of Lisbon. apparently an Arian converted (with or without the lure of filthy lucre) from conventional Western orthodoxy, whose Latin style is reminiscent in its convoluted pretentiousness of Samuel]ohnson at his worst (or Amanda Ros at her best), has quite a complex account of the Incarnation, preserved for us by Phoebadius of Agen: 'the flesh and spirit of Christ fused together through Mary's blood and combined into one body, God made open to suffering.'91

Demophilus, whom we have met already,.2 made the extraordinary statement that 'the body of the Lord mingled with the divinity and was reduced to vanishing-point, Jike a pint of milk thrown into the 'whole mass of the sea.'93 But. we cannot regard this view as characteristic of Arianism. We have already seen the quite elaborate ideas of Asterius upon the subject. 94 The Logos directly took upon himself human experiences and suffering, inhabiting, as its soul and 89E.g. Ap. Const. VU.XLI.6(446); Ps.·Ig. Smyrnaea~ 1(163); cf. Trallians 9(81). Eunomius has the same expression Apologeticus (PG 30:27(865». 90Coliatio B2S(139). 91Phoebadius of Agen Contra Arianos (PL20)S(16): carne et spiritu Christi coagulatis per sanguinem Mariae et in unum corpus redactis passibilem Deum factum. For the complicated question of whether Potamius wrote the orthodox works attributed to him and ifhe did whether he wrote them before his adherence to Arianism or after. and whether the extreme Luciferans who accused him of ratting to Arianism because Constantius II bribed him by an estate are right or not, see Moreira Potamius de Lisbonne. I do not myself think that the people of the see ofLisbon can acquit their first known bishop of ending his days as a heretic. but I believe that the story of the estate used as a bribe is probably false. 92See above. p. IOI. 93S0 Philostorgius HE IX:I4. 94See above. pp. 38-40.

117

The Origins

The Rationale of Arianism

directing mind, a 'God-filled body' ("rolla lve.ov). The Godhead endured insult but no diminution (because, of course it was a reduced Godhead capable of enduring such things). He speaks of 'God in the flesh making his own the suffering and death of the flesh',"' and says 'God in the flesh was he who was crucified, and the Invisible was insulted in the visible';"· 'the body indwelt byGod ("rolla "va.ov) was crucified, and how could he who bore the body not be insulted?'" The author of Book VII of the Apostolic Constitutions presents the Incarnation as sheer paradox without qualification: 'the Impassible was nailed to the Cross, and he who was by nature immortal died and the Lifegiver was buried.'"' An anonymous Arian Commentary onJob originally written in Greek but preserved in a Latin translation has a not dissimilar view:

'When he himself, the mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ

the Son of the living God, at the time that he clothed himself with a human body, when he put round him a corruptible form, when he

came to the Passion and the Cross, he complained, and said, "Father if 1

it be possible let this cup pass from me" (Matt. 26:39), that is, the Passion, and he began to be afraid and mournful. Not because the divinity was afraid. but because he is showing the weakness of the flesh. So therefore the Lotd, that he might show that he was not a

spectre but had a really corruptible body, shows himself to be afraid of the pain and suffering of the Cross. '99 Later Arianism insists upon the direct exposure of the divinity of

Christ to suffering with equal firmness but is more inclined to emphasize that il) spite of this the divinity remained intact. The Mai/Gryson· Fragments give us several examples. There is a long passage in one of these which is worth quoting: 'Even in (the flesh) the impassible God the Word suffered, and the incorruptiBle God endured corruption, in order that he might alter our state to incorruptibility. But the Godhead of the Word himself did not die nor endure corruption, but the gradual separation of the 95Homilies on the Psalms XXIl.3(I73); 'making his own' renders Oba;tOltOlTJaallSvov. "Ibid. 11.6(6). • 7Ibid. 11.6(174). "Funk cit. VII.XII(so8)3J. 99PG XVII:iii.SIS. The author has certain points in common with Julian, but is certainly not he. Julian is much more learned than this author and does not indulge in the sententiousness which is the hallmark of this commentator on Job.

op.

IIS

Godhead from the body is evidenced as the corruption of the body itself. Yet God the Word suffered nothing except injury, simply for our sake. For if when we die our souls (animae) do not die, but the departure of the soul (animus) from the body becomes the corruption of the human being. much less does the divinity of the Only-begotten

God die; but when he those, at the will of the Father he died of his own accord, that is, he departed from the body, and the separation from it is called death.'lOO

Another fragment explains John 14:9 ('He who has seen me has seen the Father') by saying that 'he-who has seen me has seen the works of the Son, and through the works of the divinity he has known its power. he has seen, that is he has known. who sent me and commissioned these works for me- (to do) or rather he who is working through me.'lOl

Pseudo-Maximus Turinensis declares that the Son 'assumed a human

body that he might for a period darken his radiance through the veil of the body and God should speak to man through the humanity as an interpreter.'102 It is in accordance with this later doctrine, and not inconsistent with the earlier, that Jesus should be omniscient, for he

had no human mind to limit his divine mind; later Arianism probably modified the earlier emphasis on the limitations of the Word. A fragmentary anonymous Commentary on Luke edited by Mai/Gryson, speaking of the incarnate Lord, says 'the Only-begotten God. does nothing by discovery (inventu) but acts with divine knowledge."o, The richest source of our knowledge of the more developed Arian thought on the Incarnation, however, is undoubtedly the Opus Imperfectum, whose author was highly intelligent and well educated. He does not hesitate to speak of two natures in Christ,104 but one of them, the human, is incomplete. It was not the part of a human being to fast forty days and forty nights, he says; but then, it was not the part of God to be hungry. The reasons for Christ's temptations were, first l00Frag. XX(260), Gryson (Mai XIII). For a parallel to the curious 'except injury' (praeter iniuriam), cf. Proposition 7 in the Sermo Arianorum (PL 42:680): Christ's death was a contumelia to his divinity . 101 Frag. XVIIl(2S7-8) Gryson (Mai V). 102Tumer 'St Maximus of Turin Contra Iudaeos III.296.2o-2; the Latin for 'darken his tadiance' is fulgores obumbraret. 103Gryson 4.17.2II (Mai 199). 1040pUS Imp. IV(6S9)16; V(664)2.

119

The Origins

The Rationale of Arianism

to give us an example of fasting against temptation, and secondly to put a limit of forty days to our fasting.!OS And later, on the Lord's sleeping,

(purus homo) and not the Son of God was crucified?'"! He deals with the tricky question of Christ's apparent disavowals ofknowledge and goodness by saying, explicitly, not that Christ denied these attributes because the complete human nature was lacking in knowledge arid goodness (propter dispensationem humanam), but in order to show that the full knowledge and full goodness which he possessed came from the Father and not simply from himself.!12 Earlier Arianism would probably have said that the Logos was of his own nature limited in knowledge and goodness. But the argument of the author of the

'The Lord does not sleep from the necessity of human weakness but of his own free will. For although sleep does not occur in the eternal nature of God ... yet our Lord and Saviour, in order to show the reality of the Body which he has taken, condescends to fulfil all the attributes of human nature even to the extent of sleep. so that he

should plainly manifest the reality of the body which he has assumed.'106

Opus Imperfectum is no less ingenious than the ingenious evasiveness of

When he faces the objection that if Christ was God he could not die, but if he could die he could not be God, he replies by saying that Christ overcame and absorbed death rather than being absorbed by it.lo7 The incarnate Word was for him omniscient,108 and, as we have seen, this was almost a necessity at least for the later Arian view of the Incarnation. On the difficult subject of the query ofJesus about what David was saying in Psalm IIO (109}:1 (Matt. 22.41-44), he rejects the pro-Nicene interpretation of ' the heretics who are anxious to invent the lie of equality', that it was the human nature which must be called the Lord of David and envisaged as sitting at God's right hand. Christ 'according to the flesh' is David's descendant and not his Lord, but according to hi< divinity Christ is earlier than David and sits at God's right hand. 109 He refuses to allow human experience to be channelled into a complete human nature of the incarnate Word, but he distinguishes sharply between the divine and human in Christ. This be~omes rather clearer in a passage in which he rejects Nicene

theology, believing that it is equivalent to saying that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are all one Person, and that it implies an act of generation in the Godhead equivalent to a human act of generation. and that it means 'a mere man was crucified in body

and in soul, pot simply God in a body', because this would remove the effect ofour salvation. uo The same thought occurs in a passage which we have already noticed: 'how', he asks, 'could (the evangelist) convict the Jews of being murderers of the Son of God, ifa mere man

Athanasius and Hilary on the same subject.!!l Arid we have already noticed the fine sentence in which this writer declared that God placed our salvation above his impassibility.H4 Even a much less gifted Arian theologian, the author of the two Homilies edited by Liebart, can emphasize ib. forceful language the gennine weakness and suffering and human experiences of Christ.! 15 Even as late as the sixth century, Fulgentius of Ruspe in his works against the Arians devotes a great deal of space to disproving their view that Christ had no_human soul.

We can now perceive the rationale ofArianism. At the heart of the Arian Gospel was a God who suffered. Their elaborate theology of the relation of the Son to the Father which so much preoccupied their opponents was devised in order to find a way of envisaging a Christian doctrine of God which would make it possible to be faithful to the Biblical witness to a God who suffers. This was to be achieved by conceiving of a lesser God as reduced divinity who would be ontologically capable, as the High God was not, of enduring human experiences, including suffering and death. This might be called an exemplarist soteriology, not in the sense that they presented the example of a man gaining perfection by moral effort, but in the sense that it was an example ofGod suffering as man suffers. or at least what man suffers. in order to redeem man. Arian writers

are fully convinced of the genuine humanity of the body which the Logos assumed. They are not tempted to suggest, as many pro-Nicene writers do, that Christ's human nature, though genuinely human,

I05lbid. V(664)2. ·"XXIII(7S4)24. ·"XXX(788)39. "'XXXVI(833)33· "'XLII(87S)43. • "XLV(899132.

III XLIX(889)30. 112L(92I)26. tl3S ee below, pp. 446-58,492-501. 1I4LI(928)47; see above, p. log . 1l5Liebatt, op. cit. 1.3.58. 60. 120

121

The Origins

was not the same as

OUIS

The Rationale of Arianism

because it was derived from a Virgin

6. The attitude of Arians to Arius

without the interposition of male generation, though of course all Arians believed in the virginal conception of Jesus. But they insist that what this Word assumed when he became incarnate was a soma (body) without a psyche (soul). Arianism never seems to have faced, as Apollinarianism may be said to have faced, the question of the mind, the nous, nor of the spirit. the pneuma, of the incarnate Son. Because Arians were determined that the Son of God did genuinely, serious! y, undergo human experiences, within the limits of their doctrine they understood the scandal of the Cross much better than the proNicenes. Neither Athanasius nor Hilary nor the Cappadocians could ever have envisaged the self-emptying of the Son as Asterius did, nor have written etiam sui ipsius impassibilitatem praeposuit salutem humanam (he even placed human salvation hefore his own immunity from suffering). Here Arian thought achieved an important insight

One of the curious facts about Arius is that nobody, Arian or antiArian (with one possible exception), ever refers to or quotes any writings of his of which we do not know already, It is true that Constantine at one time ordered his works to be burnt and his followers to be branded as 'Porphyrians',116 But there is no evidence

into the witness of the New Testament denied to the pro-Nicenes of

whom their opponents called Arians to disavow discipleship of Arius. Those who composed the First Creed of the Council of Antioch of 341 began by saying 'We are not the followers of Arius (for how could we who are bishops follow a presbyter?),11B The Homoian

the fourth century, who unanimously shied away from and endeavoured to explain away the scandal of the Cross. We must give the Arians credit for this insight. But of course they only achieved their doctrine of the incarnation at the expense of an account of the

Christian doctrine of God which in effect taught two unequal gods, a High God incapable of human experiences, and a lesser God who, so to speak, did his dirty work for him. Most ofus will conclude that this was too high a price to pay. As· for the old contrast between cosmology or ontology and soteriology in Arianism, we have seen good reason to believe that this is a false problem. Arianism did not consist only of Prestige's 'glittering syllogisms' nor was it composed of two incompatible halves (Harnack). The ontology fitted the soteriology and the soteriology the ontology. Once we understand the true rationale of Arianism, we· realize that the two sides fit very well together, have in fact been devised to fit together, and that itis only by accident that we have been given the impression that either Arius or his followers

cared only for defining the relation of the Son to the Father. They laboured for and upheld that definition because they held a concrete and by no means contemptible doctrine of salvation which that definition was intended to undergird.

122

that this order was ever carried out, and the Arians are seldom called by this epithet thereafter, though their enemies are ready to apply many other opprobious na,mes to them,il? Late Roman Emperors tended·to find that their most ferocious commands were not always

translated literally into action. It seems reasonable to conclude that Arius did not leave a large mass of writings behind him, and certainly none of his disciples, as far as we know, took the trouble to edit his works after his death. We can even trace an inclination among some

bishops at Nice in 359 swore that they were not Arians,119 Ifwe can trust the Corpus Canonum produced, according to Dossetti. in the

time of the Arian bishop Euzoius at Antioch, apparently by Homoian Aria;'s, then we fmd Arians using the words 'Arius who blasphemed and said that the Son of God is a creature."20 More definite is the refusal of Auxentius, bishop of Milan, who when taxed with Arianism by Hilary, disowned any knowledge of Arius or connection with him: he said that when he began his career as a presbyter in the Church of Alexandria under the (Arian) bishop George he knew nothing of Arius, '2' and specifically declared 'I never knew Arius, I never set eyes on him. I do not know his

Urk. III. No. 33.1(67) from Gelasius HE 11.36. I. 117Gwatkin, SA 52-3. 118fU.tdC; O(lI" aK6J..ou60l 'Apdou y&j'6vaJ.l&v (n:~ yap ~1tiO"K01tOl QVU:C; aKoAOu9tlO"O~EV n:PEcrPUt£j)4);) Hahn. BibUothek 183-4; see Simonetti Crisi 154-155. Both Eusebius of Constantinople (Nicomedia) and Asterius were probably present at this Council. (See pp. 284-292 below). 119S ee Gwatkin, AC 99-101. 120Dossetti, II Simbolo di Nieaea e di Constantinople, 161-'7; but this seems to me doubtful. 121 Hilary Contra Auxentium (PL 10)8(614. 615). 1160 pitz

12J

The Origins

The Rationale of Arianism

doctrine.'!22 Equally significant is the disinclination of both Palladius and Secundianus at the Council of Aquileia in 381 to associate

knowledge. of Arius.!27 Later the following interchange takes place, on the subject of whether the Son is powerful (potens):

themselves with Arius, in spite of the intense eagerness of their

directly to Palladius, 'You have diverged for too long, answer now,

Ambrose: Therefore Arius was wrong? (and he added) And on this point you condemn Arius? Palladius: How am I to know who he is? I am answering you for my own opinions (pro me).128

Did Arius speak rightly when he said that only the Father is eternal?' This was a reference to Arius' Letter to Alexander. Maximinus, who is here giving his version of the Council's proceedings, points out that, defeated in the argument about the regularity of the Council (which

Similarly Secundianus, the other Arian bishop, on being asked to condemn a proposition of Arius, replied, '1 do not know who he was, I am ignorant of what he said. You must talk to me person to

opponents to link them with him. Ambrose at one point cut short a protest by Palladius against the irregularity of the Council, by saying

certainly was irregular), Ambrose resorts to direct leading questions. Palladius seems never to have heard of nor to have read the letter in question. Reasonably, he refused.to answer.123 Maximinus later says

that none of the Arians had ever heard of the letter of Arius produced by Ambrose, 124 and more than once Palladius remarks that Arius is

long dead. In spite of this Ambrose insisted upon leading the two Arian bishops through the offending clauses in Arius'letter, at each of

which the pro-Nicene majority bellowed 'anathema', so that the two arraigned bishops could not make a suitable reply.'25 During the long wrangle about the regularity of the Council which came first in the proceedings, Ambrose produced the outrageously unfair argument 'Condemnation from everybody's mouth falls on him who denies that the Son of God is eternal. Arius denied this. Palladius follows him because he is not willing to condemn Arius.' Palladius replied, 'I have never seen Arius nor do I know who he is.'!26 The official Acts of the Council confIrm that because Palladius would not debate about a document which he had no means of reading Ambrose assumed that he had refused to condemn Arius' Letter to Alexander, and was supported by the rest of those present at the Council in this subterfuge, and that Palladius denied sight or

122Ibid. 14(617)' numquam sdvi Arium, non vidi oculis, non cognovi eius doctrinam. Meslin, Les Ariens; commenting upon this encounter between Hilary and Auxentius (291-4), thinks that Auxentius rested his case on the Second Creed ofSirmium of 357 shorn of its subordinationist clauses, and on the canonical status of the Creed of Nice of H9. Hilary's attack on Auxentius took place c. 364. 123Grysan Scolies 208.10; 210.11. 124Ibid.276.90. 125Ibid. 284.98; it is clear from the words quae detineri non potuerunt that Palladius did not have the text of the letter before him. 1261bid. 226.27, 28. 124

person.'129 Evidently neither Palladius nor Secundianus regarded

Arius' Letter to Alexander as a classic document of their theology, nor looked on him with respect as a founding father of their creed. A fragment from the Mai/Gryson documents disowns the title of 'Arian': 'we are Christians to whom the false name of"Arians" has been attached.'13. Perhaps it is worth noting that when Eusebius of Caesarea was writing hi.s Commenary on Psalms at a time which cannot be earlier than 335, he makes no reference at all to the Arian Controversy,131 even when he is dealing with the seductive text Proverbs 8:22. And in his later Commentary on Isaiah, when he has to handle the text Isaiah 53:8 Chis generation who shall declare?') he shows a similar restraint.!l2 Perhaps Arianism and its alternatives did not 1!gure as prominently in the minds of Christian theologians of that·period as we are apt to imagine. We can even find Philostorgius at one point 133 criticizing Arius for saying that God was composite (a most unjust accusation, in fact), and that we cannot know God as he

is, but only as each can understand him. This of Course offended his rigorous rationalist adherence to Neo-Arianism. 127Ibid. 338.13, 14. 128Ibid·3 1(352). 12~Ibid. 66(376). For this whole enCOUnter see Zeiller, Les Origines 227 and Meshn, Les Ariens 302-3. IJOGrysan VI, 23t8 (Mai VIII, 223). 1310n Psalms 88(87):1 I (LXX), at PG 23:1064, he refers to Constantine's Church of the Anastasis in Jerusalem, which was begun in 335. 132PG 24:457, 460. 133HE X, 2. Simonetti says that the Eunomians regarded Arius as too conser~ative, especi.ally in his Letter to Alexander (Crisi 253-4). The refusal of EudoXlUS, Macedomus and others at the COUrt of Cons tans in 345 to condemn Arius was prob~bly n~t becau~e of their .reverence for Anus but because of their pique at the .way 10 w~lch their deputation, and the Creed which they carried, were received. See Simonetti Crisi 189-90. 125

The Origins

Generally speaking, Homoian Arianism of the type professed by Valensand Ursacius in the West and Eudoxius in the East preferred to take the Creed of Nice (359, confirmed at Constantinople 360) as its doctrinal standard. So says Simonetti.'3' Meslin thinks that this was the credal standard of Palladius also,135 and that this was the creed of the Empress Justina. 136 Valentinian II in 385 issued a law (probably from Milan) permitting those people to assemble for worship who agreed with this creed. '37 Schwartz thinks that it was the norm of faith for the Emperor Valens.'3s And Maximinus appeals to it in his Collatio with Augustine.'" Some Arians however took the Second Sirmian Creed of 357 as their standard; Germinius bishop ofSirmium who made a shift from extreme to less radical trinitarian doctrine later in his career, about 366, apparently changed from the Second Sirmian of357 to the Third Sirmian (the 'Dated Creed') of359,140 and some Homoian Arians had always favoured this last l . ' But Arius was not completely neglected or rejected by later Arians. There is some evidence for a preference among them for his Letter to Alexander as a doctrinal norm. We have seen that Ambrose tried to compel Palladius and Secundianus to accept it as a standard document of Arianism. Athanasius quoted it as such,142 and so does Hilary.143 Simonetti says that some Homoian Arians took it as a standard; 144 the ev~dence for this is scanty, ifnot invisible. Boularand is going much too far when he calls this letter the 'credo officiel de l'heresie' .'.5 An eighth-century MS in the Cathedral Library of Cologne of Arius' Letter to Busehius ofNicomedia in a Latin translation, earlier than that reproduced by Cassiodorus in his Historia Tripartita 134Crisi 253-4. The text of this Creed is to be found in Theodoret HE-I1. 21 3. 135Les Ariens 300-2. 136Ibid. 44-8. 137See N. Q. King, The Emperor Theodosius and the Establishment oj Christianity 55-6 ..

138'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 168-9. 139Collatio 2 (PL 42:110). But at 13(730) Maximinus, in a way characteristic of Arian writers, declares that he does not want to move an inch beyond the Scriptures, 140S 0 Medin, Les Ariens 294"""'9. 141Simonetti, Crisi 253-4. 1420r. con. Ar. 11.19, as Kannengiesser notes (Athanase 217). It is a fact that does not consort well with Kannengiesser's theory that Athanasius is in this work dealing with slogans and oral reports of the Arians rather than their literature. 143De T,initate V1.4. 5(198, 202). 144Crisi 254. 145L'Heresie d'A,ius 72.

126

The Rationale of Arianism

and different from the Greek versions of the same letter given in Epiphanius and Theodoret, shows that Arian interest in this document persisted; but it can hardly be called a standard document of the Arian faith."6 Kopecek points out that Eunomius reproduces the epithets applied to God the Father beginning with mono- by Arius in his Letter to Alexander. "7 The short creed which Eunomius placed at the head of his Apology was, according to Basil,"s one which had been set out by Arius in a letter which is now lost. 149 We can hardly take Candidus' vir acris ingenii ('a man of keen insight') in Marius Victorinus' Letter of Candidus as an unsolicited testimonial to Arius, because it is wholly likely that this piece of apparently Arian propaganda was composed by Marius Victorinus himself as an elaborate Aunt Sally.150 We have however two passages where Arians themselves give a list of their great men of the past. One of them comes from the Mai/Gryson Fragments, among those recovered from a Bobbio palimpsest, and brilliantly reconstructed by de Bruyne. 151 It mentions Athanasius of Anazarbus, Dionysius of Alexandria, and Theognis ofNicaea, but not Arius himself 152 The other. list occurs in Maximinus' comments on the Council of Aquileia, just before he gives Auxentius' Letter which contains the Creed ofUlfila and its expansion by Auxentius. This confession, says Ma~iminus, 'is the Christian profession according to the divine teaching of Arius, tltis also bishop Theognis (professed), thus too Eusebius the historian and many other bishops whose professions and names must be set down in what follows.'153 In the light of this evidence we cannot say that Arius was regarded by those who came after him as founding a school of theology. If 146See D. de Bruyne, 'Vne ancienne version latine inedite'. 147 History of Neo·Arianism 337. 148Adversus Eunomium (PG 29) 1.212. 149This is the only reference to a specific work of Arius of which we do not have any other knowledge. 150Marius Victorinus Candidi Epistola 11.1(49). 151See Gryson Arriana Scripta Frag. 4.235-6 (Mai XVI) and de Bruyne 'Deux Lettres Inconnues', also PL 13: 393ff. 152ft is presumably to this fragment that Meslin is referring Les Ariens I 13-29. He dates it, because of a reference in a later fragment to Ambrose's De Fide Book I, to 378 or later. He says that it mentions Arius and Eusebius ofNicomedia, but I cannot find any mention of these authors in the text itself or in Gryson's Concordance to the Bobbio Fragments. lS3Gryson Scolies 234.40. In fact not many other bishops are mentioned in what follows. 12 7

The Origins

anything, he was thought of as perpetuating the school of Lucian of Antioch. Arius was respected by later Arians, and some of his scanty literary works sometimes quoted. But he was not usually thought of as a great man by his followers. They would all have said that they were simply carrying on the teaching of the Bible and the tradition of the Fathers. In fact they were attempting to work out a rational doctrine of God which would be recognizably Christian while remaining true to the Bible and to what they regarded as right reason, as almost all theologians between 3 18 and 381 were attempting to do. For the Arians this took the form of accepting that the Scriptures witnessed to the suffering of God, and of devising an idea of God which would make such a doctrine possible within the limits of what the fourth century regarded as tolerable.

5 Events Leading to Nicaea Having surveyed Arius and Arianism, we must now tum to the history· of the controversy that was roused by Arius' views.

I.

From the Outbreak of the Controversy to the Council of Antioch 325

It is impossible to discuss the date of the beginning of the controversy evoked by the views of Arius and of his early supporters without taking into account many of the events which followed the outbreak of the dispute.' Almost all the relevant documents are usefully gathered and edited by Opitz in Urkunden III, but the question is also invqlved with the dating of the accumulating tension between the twoi'Emperors Constantine and Licinius, the outbreak of war between them and the conquest of Lieinius by Constantine (321-4). 1For discussion and account of these events see Gwatkin, SA 32-8: Loofs, 'Arianismus' -12, 14 (these first two know nothing of the Council of Antioch 325); Schwartz, Gesamm. Schrifi. 119-60; Hess, Canons oJthe Council oj Antioch 3; Meslin, Les Ariens 29 (he sits carefully on the fence as far as deciding the date of the outbreak is concerned); Boularand 'L'Heresie' 26-37 (a particularly good account); Grant 'Religion and Politics' 2; Tuilier 'Le Conflit entre Constantin et Licinius et les Origines d'Arianisme' passim (his attempt to show that the Arian Controversy was behind the conflict between the two Emperors can hardly be said to have succeeded; on Tuilier's own premises, it would have been all in Licinius' favour to let the Arian controversy continue because it would weaken Christianity, whereas his ban on the meeting of synods in fact damped down the dispute; and it is doubtful if the affair threatened public order all over the Eastern Empire); Simonetti, Crisi 26, 27ff. (with a good bibliography); Ritter, 'Arianismus' 699; Person, The Mode oj DecisionMaking 14-16, 38-9: Kopecek, History oj Neo-Arianism 35-45; Lorentz Arius ludaizans? 49-52; Kannengiesser, Colloquy 41 5 n 27; as well as the champions of opposing views discussed below. Simonetti and Gwatkin and perhaps Telfer appear to be the only scholars who do not accept that Arius returned to Alexandria after his visit to Nicomedia and Palestine. A careful and useful introduction to the Council has recently been provided by Colum Lubheid in his book The Council ofNicaea.

128

129

The Origins The traditional date for the outbreak of the dispute is the year 318. Tillemont had called attention to a remark in Athanasius' Letter to the Bishops ofEgypt (22) to the effect that it was now 36 years since Arians were expelled from the church by an ecumenical synod, and claimed that this letter must have been written in the year 356 because of a reference to George being sent by the Arians to Alexandriajust then, and concluded that Athanasius was referring in the first quoted remark to the excommunication of Arius in Alexandria in 321. The controversy therefore cannot have begun later than 321 and probably began earlier. But it is now accepted that Athanasius' Letter to the

Bishops was written in 361, when George the Arian was about to return to Alexandria for the second time; and the reference to the lapse of 36 years since then must mean the excommunication ofArius

and his followers after the Council of Nicaea in 325. 2 A number of well-established facts must be included in any survey of the question:

Events Leading tei Nicaea

others, some of which we have already had occasion to notice, and these too must be placed in their proper context.3

The only absolutely firm date in this whole series of events is that of the Council ofNicaea which met in May 325. Some have decided that the extent of seven years from 318 to 325 is too long, even allowing for a temporary cessation of councils caused by Licinius'

ban; so lengthy a period could not have elapsed before the Council of Nicaea was called in order to solve the dispute. Schwartz regarded it as impossible to place any part of the controversy before 3234 He believed that the fmal encounters between Constantine and Licinius took place in 323. The journey of Ossius to Alexandria, sent by Constantine to settle the dispute, must have taken place after Licinius' final defeat, and with it the anti-Arian Council in Antioch. During the perlOd of tenSion between the Augusti, no Eastern synods were

retreated to Nicomedia and later to Palestine. A council of bishops

permitted to meet by Licinius, so that between 321 and Licinius' fall councils in Nicomedia and Caesarea and Alexandria could not have taken place. Ifwe place these councils before 321 or thereabouts we must postulate a long interval between the official Encyclical Letter of

inspired by Eusebius of Nicomedia met in Bithynia, and vindicated the orthodoxy of Arius and his supporters. Another council met afterwards in Caesarea in Palestine, chaired no doubt by Eusebius of Caesarea, which again acquitted the accused Arians of heresy, but urged them to submit themselves to Alexander and seek

for support for his action (which was probably his response to the council held in Palestinian Caesarea) on the one hand, and COQstantine's Letter to Alexander and Arius on the other, an interval dUrfIlg which the Eastern Church was undergoing pressure or even a

Arius and his followers were excommunicated at a council held in

Alexandria and presided over by Alexander. The condemned men

reconciliation with him. Arius and his followers at one point returned

to Alexandria and caused considerable trouble to Alexander. The Emperor Lidnins, as his relationship with Constantine deteriorated,

tended to bring pressure upon Christians within his Empire and at one point imposed a total ban on meetings of bishops within its confines. After Constantine's fmal victory over Licinius which made him master'of the whole Roman Empire, Constantine sent a letter to both Arius' and Alexander dismissing the controversy as trivial and commanding them to be reconciled. This letter was carried to

Alexandria by Ossius bishop of Cordova, Constantine's chief adviser and agent in matters concerning the Christian church, where a council was held at which Alexander and Ossius were present. And a

council was held in Antioch very early in the year 325 mainly consisting of those who sympathised with Alexander. During this period several letters were written by Alexander, by Arius and by 2See Schwartz. Gesamm. Schrift. 167-8; Opitz 'Die Zeitfolge des arianischen Streites' 143-5. 130

Alexander announcing his excommunication of Arius and bidding

mmor persecution from Licinius. There is no hint of this in our 5 sources. In fact, Schwartz wanted to telescope all the opening events

of the controversy into a period of about eighteen months, from the autumn of 323 till the early Summer of 325. . Schwartz's theory collapsed when papyrus evidence was

d~s~o~ered which made it quite clear that Constantine's victory over LlcmlUs took place in 324. not in 323. It became impossible to assume that the whole affair blew up only after the fall of Licinius. Telfer, however. in 1946 attempted a reconstruction of the events which envisaged the controversy breaking out no earlier than July 323. and 3S~crates HE 1.5--'7. Sozomenus HE 1.15.1-16.5, Theodaret HE 1.1.1-6.10 and Gelaslus HE I.r I. 12: 11.1-4 cover this period only superficially and the evidence for ~ast of the. events here listed b~ found ~ other sources mentioned as the subject IS further discussed below. EPlpharuus Panarton 69.3-5 is useful but must be handled with caution. 4Gesamm. Schrift. 167. 168. sibid. 165, 166, 19I.

:viII

13 I

The Origins

tried to fit all the incidents into a space of 22 months. 6 He achieved his scheme by assuming that many of the events given by the church historians as successive were in fact simultaneous or contemporary, and that Licinius' ban on meetings only lasted from April to September 324. But in order to achieve this reconstruction Telfer was obliged to make a number of implausible assumptions, e.g. that as soon as he had defeated Licinius Constantine relIed on EuseblUs of Nicomedia (who had shown himself favourable to Licinius) for his understanding of the Arian Controversy; that if the dispute had begun in 3 I 8 Athanasius would have referred to It III hIS. De Incarnatione, which was in 1946 widely thought to have been WrItten about then (in fact many scholars today would place its composition twenty years later); 7 that both Socrates and Sozomenus have given us the order of events in the wrong order (though Socrates at least was relying on the much earlier church historian Sabinus of Heradea here); and that Constantine managed to gather together the CouncIl of Nicaea in a remarkably short period between March and May of 325.8 Boularand rejects any attempt to place the origin of the affair as late as 323, and makes quite a good case for the year 320 as the correct date for the start of the dispute. He points out that Jerome in his Continuation ofEu5ebiu5' Chronicle places the outbreak 2337 years after Abraham, i.e. 320. Licinius' various measures could then be distributed over the period of the 'cold war' between Constantine and Licinius, 320-4, his prohibition of the assembly of bishops coming only at the very end. After all, Alexander apparently brought together a gathering of 100 bishops for his grand excommUnicatIOn and appeal, and this could not have taken place very long before the year 325.9 Boularand points out that nobody knows precisely how the controversy began, whether by Arius criticising Alexander or Alexander Arius. Epiphanius (Panarion 69:3) gives some details. Sozomenus (I. I 5). here dependent on Sabinus, says that for some time Alexander r~frained from 'condemning Arius. and acted as arbiter between Arius and those who opposed his views. 10 6'When Did the Arian Controversy Begin?' 7Ibid. 129. 8Ibid. 138-142. Schneeme1cher ('Zur Chronologie der arianischen Streites' 394-6) has some trenchant criticism of Telfer's reconstruction. He believes that 322 is a firm date for Licinius' ban on meetings, and that 3 18 is the right date for the start of the controversy. 9L'Heresie 21-4. IOIbid. 26. But Sozomenus leaves us less confident about his accuracy when he

132

Events Leading to Nicaea

The chronology of this period, however, has been examined so thoroughly and minutely by Opitz, who himself was an outstanding expert on the Arian Controversy, and whose death early in the Second World War was an irreparable loss to scholarship, that it is wiser to follow his detailed reconstruction of the events.! 1 A careful consideration of all the evidence from coins, inscriptions and documents leads him to conclude that Licinius took measures against the Christians between 322 and late 323; that two decisive battles took place between Constantine and Licinius, one near Hadrianople in ThraceJuly 3rd 324, and one at Chrysopolis in Bithynia Sept. 18th in the same year, and that by December 16th the war was over and Licinius was a prisoner "in Constantine's "hands. 12 By the autumn of 324 the Arian Controversy must have been well under way.I3 The terminus post quem for the start of the controversy is uncertain; one can only say, not before 3 15 and not long after 3'7. The nearest firm date by which we can fix this is provided by Eusebius bishop, first of Berytus and then ofNicomedia (and fmally, of course, much later, of Constantinople). He was bishop of Nicomedia when Arius, driven out of Alexandria, arrived there, and he gave Ari~s refuge and comfort. In 314/5 a certain Eustolus was bishop ofNicomedia for he signed the acts of the Council of Ancyra which took place in one or ot~er of those years. But by the time that the Council of NeoCoesarea in Syria took place (317 at the latest) a man called Gregorius signed as bishop of Berytus. Between 3 I 5 and 317, therefore, Eusebius must ha ve moved to Nicomedia. It is therefore difficult to place his championship of Arius earlier than 317 at the earliest, but more probably Arius took refuge with him later than that. It is possible that Licinius w'as responsible for bringing Eusebius to Nicomedia.14 It goes on to represent Alexander as teaching that the Son is 'coeternal and consubstantial'. It is wholly unlikely that Alexander applied homoousios to the Son before Nicaea. II'Die Zeitfolge des arianisches Streites von den Anfangen bis zum Jahre 328', 13 1-59. 12Ibid. 140-41. 13

14.2.

3 . Eusebius was a friend of Constantia, Licinius' wife and Constantine's sister. See above, p.2,]-28. He could therefore have pulled strings with either imperial House; the expression of Sozomenus (1.15.9) (tv 'toi.; j3aalA€lol<; 't€tlJ.1T1J,!tvov) could apply to either; cf. Ammianus Marcellinus 22:9. It is however much more likely that Licinius' court is intended; Eusebius' career lay wholly in the Eastern Empire. Opitz, of course, agrees with Schwartz against Tillemont on the event referred to in Athanasius' Letter to the Bishops of Egypt 22 (see op. cit. 143-5). 14 142-

133

Events Leading to Nicaea

The Origins

more episcopal support. Epiphanius says that Arius went to Palestine. 19 6. Arius' activity achieves success; many bishops beyond Egypt join his side, including Eusebius ofCaesarea, though others oppose him.2o 7. Alexander writes a circular letter to all bishops warning them not to admit Arius and to reject any intervention by Eusebius ofNicomedia. Epiphanius tells us to whom trus letter was sem, Eusebius of Caesa rea, Macarius of Jerusalem, Asklepas of Gaza, Longinus of Aske1on, Macrinus ofJamnia, Zenon ofTyre and some bishops ofCoele Syria (all within much the same area of Palestine and Syria).21 8. A Council is held in Bithynia which declares Arius' views orthodox and demands his restoration by Alexander. Acius and his friends write a conciliatory letter to Alexander, making some concessions. This meets with no response, and the Acians betake themselves (from Nicomedia?) to Palestine. z2 9. A small Council takes place in Palestine in which Acius associates with his views· the bishops of Caesarea (Eusebius), Scythopolis (Patrophilus) and Tyre (paulinus); they again vindicate the soundness of Arius' doctrine and demand that he shall be reinstated by Alexander. Not long before this Council, Eusebius of Caesarea, having had conversations with Anus, wrote to Alexander protesting at the way in which Arius had been treated; Eusebius of Nicomedia had written to Paulinus ofTyre urging him to exert himself on behalf Qf Arius, and Paulinus had duly written to somebody unknown (perhaps Alexander) a letter of protest in the same cause. 23

was in 322, Opitz thinks, that Licinius passed an Edict forbidding Christian bishops to gather together, as this was the year in which he nominated his own consuls without consulting his fellow-Emperor. The pressure which he now brought to bearonthe Church can hardly be called a persecution: it was rather a politIcal move agamst people in the Eastern Empire who might. be. regarded as Constantine's friends. But it resulted in the prohlbltlon of synods, especially in Syria. All such gatherings in connection with the Arian Controversy must therefore be dated either before 322 or after the . . third quarter of 324." Following Opitz, then, we can now with faIr confidence reconstruct the order of events between the outbreak of the Arian 16 Controversy and the imposition of Licinius' ban thUS: I. Some clergy inform Alexander of Arius' unsatisfactory doctrine concerning the Son's relation to the Father. Epiphanius says that MeHtius denounced him. This is not impossible, even though later Melitians combined with Arius against Athanasius. 17 2. In order to avoid accusations of partisanship,. Alexander orders both groups, pro-Arius and anti-Arius, to appear before him, and ex~mines Arius' views. 3. The controversy continues, and Alexander summons a council of bishops which results in his putting a Confession ofQrthodoxy before Arius and requiring IUrn to sign it. He refuses to do so and he, along with many, including bishops, who followed his example, is excommunicated. Epiphanius says that Acius and some of his supporters were driven out of Alexandria. 1s Alexander writes a letter to his clergy (probably mainly of Alexandria and Mareotis) ~arning specially 'against a presbyter Pistus and the group around him. 4. Aliius finds considerable support. Epiphanius, contradicting himself, sllYS tha't Arius stayed in the city and founded a schismatic church. (It seems unlikely that he now founded a separate church, but he probably lingered in Alexandria for some time). . 5. The Arians (probably including Arius) travel to other sees to WID

19Here we place Arius' Letter to Eusebius o/Nicomedia (Urk. No. 1(1-3), dated here by Opitz 318. assuming it to have been written on the journey (to be 'found in Epiphanius· Panaro 69.6; Theodoret HE 1.5; Latin tr. in Marius Victorinus Adv. Arium etc.). The Letter 4 Eusebius 0/ Nicornedia to Arius (Urk. III No. 2(3), dated by Opitz here 318) is probably the answer to this appeal (Athanasius De Syn. 17). 2°Here we place the Letter 4Eusebius o/Caesarea to Euphration o/Balanea (Urk. III No. 3(4-6), dated by Opitz here 318, extracted from the Acta of the Second General Council of Nicaea). 21 This is Urk. III NO.4b(6-rr), dated here by Opitz 319 (Socrates HE 1.6 and Gelasius· HE 11.3.3-21). This letter in fact excommunicated Pistus and his group without mentioning them. It was the intervention ofEusebius ofNicomedia which had made this letter necessary. 22The Council is mentioned in Sozomenus HE LI5.IO (Urk. IU No. 5(12) dated here by Opitz c. 320). The conciliatory letter is to be found in AthanasiusDe SynotJis 16, Epiphanius Panarion 69.7, and a Latin version in Hilary De Trinitate IV.I2f. and

150pitz, op. cit. 145-6. . 160pitz op. cit. 146-8, a little amended and suppl~mented III places. 17Epiphanius Panarion 69.3-5; but then, Alexander dId not, as far as we know. use the methods employed by Athanasius in governing his see (see below, cap. 9); cf. Sozomenus HE LIS. 18Here we place Alexander's Letter to his Clergy. Opitz Urk. III. No. 4a(6), dated here by Optiz 318.

Vl.sf. (Urn. III No.6(I2-13 dated here c. )20).

23The letter ofEusebius of Caesarea to Alexander is Urk. III No. 7(14,15), taken from the Acta ofNicaea II. The letter ofEusebius ofNicomedia to Paulinus ofTyre is Urk.1II No. 8(1 5-18), to be found in Theodoret HE 1.6. I. Fragments of the letter of Paulinus are gathered in Urk. III No. 9(16, 17), extracted from Eusebius Con. 135

134

..

The Origins

Events Leading to Nicaea

At this point (322) the imposition of Licinius' ban on meetings of bishops intervenes, and we can place no meetmg nor councIl thereafter earlier than 324. and late in that year. This is the point at which we must place the Letter of Alexander of Alexandria to Alexander of Thessalonica 24 This describes the Arians as 'both d~molishing Christianity publicly and striving to exhibit themselves m the lawcourts and to the best of their ability rousing persecution against us where no persecution was' (tv ElpliVlJ)25 and as 'daily stirring up divisions and harassment against us, both troubling the law-courts by the pleas of disorderly females (yova"capiIDv) whom they have duped and also discrediting Christianity by the way in which the younger women among them immodestly frequent every public street. ~ This no doubt describes what has been happening in Alexandria during the period of prohibition of meetings. Constantine had spent some time in Thessalonica in the summer of 324. preparing for his trial of strength against Licinius. Alexander no doubt was preparing for imperial intervention on his behalf. even though he did not gamble 26 on Constantine winning the contest against his fellow Emperor. Arius has apparently by now returned to Alexandria and formed a schismatic church there. It was at this time too that Alexander wrote another letter in the same vein to some other (probably Eastern) bishops, which has been preserved in a Syriac translation,27 and a Letter to Silvester of RO"le. It mentioned an Alexandrian presbyter named George who had been excommunicated for his Arian opinions. This might be the presbyter George. fragments of whose

two letters we have already examined. Athanasius. who quotes these fragments. says that this George who wrote the letters was a presbyter of Alexandria but was then living (olatpi~IDv) in Antioch and was later bishop of Laodieea. We shall meet him later in connection both with Eustathius of Antioch and with Eusebius of Emesa. 28 Finally. Constantine at the end of 324 sent a Letter to Alexander and Arius, written in the usual blustering imperial style, urging them to be reconciled to each other, because they differed only over 'a controversy of futile irrelevance' (4VID'I>.'-ou<; upyia<; ep.crx.'-ia).29 Ossius of Cordova, Constantine's representative, brought this letter to Alexandria. and there a Council was held. Alexander must have convinced Ossius that the controversy must not be dismissed as trivial. The Council did not apparently deal with the question of Arianism (probably no Arians were admitted to it). but it discussed the subject of the method of determining the date of the Easter festival. The Quartodeciman Controversy in the second century had debated whether Easter was to be celebrated on the actual third day after Passover, no matter what day of the week it was, or always on a Sunday. By now it had been universally agreed that Easter must be celebrated on a Sunday. but the method of calculating which particular Sunday in each year was to be Easter Day differed from pl.,e to place. and especially between Western and Eastern practice. This Council also probably dealt with the troublesomeColluthus. an Alexandrian presbyter who appears to have been neither a Meletian nor an Arian, but to have produced his own peculiar difference in the course of which he apparently ordained himself, or had himself ordained. bishop.30 Colluthus was deposed from being a bishop but

Marcellum 1.4. A short account of the Council in Caesarea is given in Urk. III No. 10(18), ft:om Sozomenus I.I5.II. Opitz here dates the letters to 320 or 321 and the Council to 321 or 322. Opitz deals with these two Councils in Bithynia and Palestin!; in- 'Zur Zeitfolge' 148-5 0 . 24Urk.1II No. 14(19-29), to be found in Theodoret HE 1.4.1. The letter must be addressed' to.Alexander of Thessalonica (not, as Theodoret has it, Alexander of Byzantium, who was probably not then bishop). 25Ibid. 29, lines 9-II, 20, lines 7-10. 26But we cannot with Telfer (,When did the Arian Controversy begin?' 13 8-42) go to the ridiculous length of crediting Alexander with prophetic powers as early as Constantine's victory over the Sarmatian tribes (321) so that he (Alexander) should start harrying Arius for unorthodoxy because he realized that i) Constantine would attack Licinius. and ii) he would defeat Licinius. and iii) in that event the bishop of Rome. Silvester, would have an enhanced say in Eastern affairs and would begin requiring strict orthodoxy from Alexandria! 27Urk. III No. 15(29-31) here dated 324. with a retroversion into Greek by Schwartz, originally published by Pitra, Analuta Sacra IV. 196. Opitz deals with these lct.ters in 'Zur Zeitfolge' J 50.

2B A fragment of the Letter of Alexander to Silvester was quoted by Hilary (CSEL 65.91.24) and is printed in Urk. III No. 16(31). The fragments of the letters of George comprise Urk. III Nos. 12 and 13(19), taken from De Synodis 17. We have looked at them above, pp. 44-45; for further reference to George see below, pp. 349, 365-71,388. Opitz deals with Silvester and George 'Zur ZeitfoIge' 150. 29Urk. III No. 17()2-35) from Eusebius VC Il.64, the quotation from 33 lines ro, I I. Opitz approves Seeck's conclusion that this was written in Nicomedia after Constantine had driven Licinius out of that city at the end of September or the beginning of October 324. 30See the Letter of Alexander of Alexandria to Alexander of Thessalonica (Urk. III No. 14 (19 line II to 20 line I»). and Schwartz, Gesamm. Schrift., 154. 159-60. Opitz deals with Constantine's Letter to Alexander and Arius in 'Zur Zeitfolge' 151. The evidence for the Council in Alexandria in 324 attended by Alexander and Ossius comes from Athanasius Apol. Sec. 74, 76 which quotes the Letter of the Mareotic clergy to the Synod ofTyre in 355, and this referred to this Alexandrian Council.

IJ7

The Origins

Events Leading to Nieaea

permitted to remain a 'presbyter and not excommunicated. He and his survived to give Athanasius trouble in 335 but later merged with the Melitians. Ossius then set out for Antioch. One more point requires to be discussed before we move on to the next section, and that is, at what point in this flow of events did Arius produce his Thalia? It has usually been assumed that the work was written when Arius was in Nicomedia, with its bishop Eusebius. in 320 or 321. 31 But two scholars recently have argued for an earlier date. Kannengiesser in 1970 in an article devoted to the subject examined the sentence in Athanasius' De Synodis 15 referring to the Thalia and suggests that instead of saying that Arius wrote it 'when he had been expelled and when he was staying among the circle of Eusebius', Athanasius in fact says 'when he had been excommunicated and was under pressure from the circle of Eusebius',32 and this would place the composition of the work in Alexandria in 318 or 319 before Arius left that city for Nicomedia and Palestine. And in 1980 in Arius1udaizans? arguing from certain expressions in the Thalia which suggest an early period of Arius' thought on the subject of the con.troversy, expressions which he altered in his letter written later when his thought had matured somewhat. Lorentz came to the same conclusion about the date and place of the writing of this work. 33 In the absence of other evidence, we can provisionally accept this reasoning.

Arius in his Letter to Busebius of Nicomedia says that all bishops agree with him except PhiIogonius (of Antioch), Hellanicus (of Tripoli) and Macarins (of JerusaIem).3' But of course we do not know the views of any of them, except that Arius (Ioc. cit.) accuses them of teaching about the Son 'some that he is an eructation (tp£uyij), some an issue (npo~o"ij) and some that he is co-ingenerate' (cruvay.vv1]
2.

The Alexandrian Alternative Theology

When we ask, what theology was held by those who opposed Arius and his supporters. we have very little material with which to answer. 31S 0 Harnack History lIl.JO and Grillmeier ceT 234. J2The phrase is &!cPATl9Et~ !Cal &lm:plpEt~ trap« tOW trepi EUOEj3lO\I, which is patent of either in.rerpretation, so Kannengiesser, 'OU et Quand Arius Composa-t-il la Thalie?' in a'Festschrift for J. Quanen ed. by P. Grandfield and J. A.Jungman in 1970, I, 347-So. 330 p . cit. 49-S2. The chief term discussed here is &\1 Xp6VOl<; applied to the Son's generation in the Thalia (De Syn. 1 S) whereas in his Letter to Eusebius ofNicomedia he says that the Son was produced trpa Xp6V(!)\I Kat trpa a{wvoo\l (Urk.11I No. 1(3) line 2); cf. the np6 Xp6voo\l a{ciwoo\l of Arius Letter to Alexander Urk. 1II No. 6(12) line 7). On Arius' use ort!C tOU geou as a sign oflater revision of Arius' thought Lorentz is less certain. But as far as it goes this evidence for immaturity in the thought of the Thalia argues for the quotation in De Synodis I S being a genuine product of Arius' pen and not a collage put together (and put together in metre!) by a later author,

138

'God eternal, the Son eternal, the Son precisely parallel with (uJ.1a ... uJ.1a) the Father. the Son exists alongside the Father ingenerately, eternally generate, ingenerate-generate (a.elY£VVtl~, a.'Y£VVTJ't'o'Y£vti~). God does not precede, the Son in the smallest aspect or point, God eternal. the Son eternal, the Son is from God himself (t~ au'tou tOU 8e06).36

We must treat with equal caution Theodorees statement that the three bishops mentioned by Arius as agreeing with Alexander taught that the Son was 'eternal and pre-aeonian and of equal honour and cpnsubstantial with the Father'; this is language of a later age. 37 We can similarly discount Philostorgius' story that when just before the Council of Nicaea Alexander and Ossius met in Nicomedia they 34Urk. III No. 1.3(2). Theodoret HEI.S.6 reproduces these names as opponents of Arius' theology. 35S0 Harnack observes in his treatment of Alexander, History IV.2I-S; but we now have the Antiochene Council of 32S. Simonetti deals fuHy with Alexander Studi 110-34. 36Urk. III. No. 1.2(3) lines 1-3, from EpiphaniusPanarion 69.6 and TheodoretHE I.5. Only Theodoret has the extraordinary word o:ye\lV11to"fEVll~. Candidus' Latin fails to tran~late it, and neither does the Cologne Cathedral's Latin version edited by de Bruyne (see above. pp. 126-7). though this latter valiantly coins Latin terms to correspond to those of Arius in other parts of this passage. I do not think that Simonetti is justified in translating this term to mean 'created without having been generated' (,creato senzaessere stato generato', Stud; I 12). It is more likely that Arius intended it as a kind of ironical paradox - generate-in generate. But no doubt Simonetti is correct in maintaining (op. cit. 112-14) that Arius could not distinguish between the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son and the idea that he was unoriginated, and that he had not rid himself entirely of associations deriving from the analogy of human generation. 37HE 1.5.6. $0 Simonetti, Studi 113 n9, 125, 126. AJexander indeed seems to be avoiding homoousios.

139

The Origins decided to declare the Son consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father 3S Simonetti notes3 ' that Alexander in his extant utterances never uses homoousios, though there are several places where its application to the Son would have been apt. SO,crates tells us that Alexander employed the term tv tp'US, ~ovaSu. ( the lvi0nad m the Triad')40 and Simonetti observes that the term 15 remmlscent of the thought of Dionysius of Alexandria his predecessor." The Letter of Alexander to all Bishops i,s more concerned t~2de~o~ce Arius and his views than to set out the Ideas of Alexander. HIS chIef positive contribution in this letter is the ap~eal to proof-te~ts. to discredit Arius' doctrine. Clearly Alexander thinks that the Son IS like in ousia to the Father. 3 and unchanging in his nature, and that he knows the Father perfectly. 44 The texts which he quotes are John l:r, 3, 18; Ps. 45(44):2; 110(109):3; Wisdom 7:26; ColoSSlans 1:15; Hebrews 1:3 and Malachi 3:6 ('You know that I am and I do not change' LXX) which he remarks isjust as applicable to the Son as It IS to the Father, as well as several others.·5 We gain a much fuller picture of Alexander's doctrine in the Letter to Alexander of Thessalonica which he wrote when the controversy had already lasted several years. About a third of the way through this long letter, which may have been intended for the eyes of Constantme as well as for those of the bishop ofThessalonica, Alexander begins to set out his views at length. He ~elies heavily on St. John's Gospel for his JSPhilostorgius HE 1.7. His story that Alexander under imperial pressure subscribed to statements approving the term Stf:POUO'lOV as applied to the Son a~d condemning homoousion is equally suspect (11.1). His statement (11·7) t~at Euse:blUs and Theognis of Nicaea on being recalled from ex~le aft~r the Councll.ofNlcae.a held a synod which declared Alexander deposed IS possIble ~ut not h~ely. It IS involved with the difficult question of the career of Eustathlus of Antioch. See below, p. l08-11. Loofs (' Arianismus', 78-9) also discounts the story of Alexander and Ossius co~c;::octing the homoousios. 39Studi 125 n 76.

4°HE 1.5. 4tStudi II3 n II. See above P·73. 42We have seen 'above, pp. 16, Alexander's representation of Arius' doctrine set out in twO letters. 4'U,k.1II NO.4b. 13(9)· 44Ibid. 8-15(8, 9). . ' .. 45Ibid. 14(9}. Simonetti (Studi 123 n 65) remarks on this and notes that m hiS bttle Sermon on tile Body and the Soul and on the Passion (translated by Mai from the Syriac into Latin PG 18:585-608) he asserts the immutability of the divinity ofChns~ at rather greater length. In fact in this work he arrives at an unresolved paradOXical juxtaposition of ideas on the subject (§5(S9S».

Events Leading to Nicaea doctrine. Far from the Son being made 'out of non-existence' (a doctrine which by now Arius and all who sympathized with him were trying to forget), there is no interval (SlClat'l~u) between the Son and the Father, not as much as in thought.'· The evangelist John did not divulge how the Son was produced. He did not say that he was ingenerate (ayevv'lto<;) for only the Father could be that. But the 'indescribable hypostasis of the only-begotten God' is beyond the understanding of angels, much more of men. 47 In the interests of this argument Alexander invokes Isaiah 53:8 ('his generation who shall declare?'), a text which was destined to be constantly quoted by people of different points of view during the controversy.'s He points out how inconsistent it is to say that the Son was created before times and yet to assert that there was a time when he did not exist; the Son himself created time and times. 49 And he goes on to assert roundly the eternal generation of the Son: 'the Father exists for ever in the presence of the Son, which is why he is called "Father". In the eternal presence of the Son with him, the Father exists perfectly, needing no supplement in goodness, having .begotten (aorist tense) the only.:-begotten Son not in time nor after an interval nor from non-existence.'50

All Alexander's arguments tend to demonstrate the Son's inalienable a'1d natural (not adoptive) Sonship.51 When Christ said 'I and the Father are one' (In 10:30) he did not call himself the Father nor explain that natures which were two in hypostasis were one, and a little later he describes Christ as 'bearing as an impression (a1tO~U~a~Evo<;) his (the Father's) likeness in everything and being the exact image of the Father and the impression corresponding to the prototype' (t06 1tprotOtU1tOU ."t01to<; xapu"tTjp).52 He indignantly repudiates the argument that in rejecting the idea that the Son was made out of non-existence he is teaching two ultimate principles (860 ayEVV'ltu). The Son has a 'mediating only-begotten nature 46Urk. III No. 14.18(22). 47Ibid. 19(22). 48 2 1(23). 49 22, 23(23). 5°26(23). "E.g. 30(24). 52 37 , 38(25). This is apparently the first occurrence of the term 'exact image' (an:aptUAQI'tO~ eil«bv). It recurs in Asterius and crops up surprisingly in the Dedication Creed of Antioch in 341.

141

The Origins (Ile""euouaa cpuat<; 1l0VOrev1)<;)' ,53 through which the Father made all

things, Alexander next gives a Rule of Faith covering the doctrine of the Son's relation to the Father some of which must be reproduced here: 54 'A single ingenerate (ay&vvTjtOv) Father having no origin of his existence, admitting neither increase nor reduction. giver of Law and

prophets and gospels, Lord of patriarchs and apostles and all holy people. and one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten not from non-existence hut from the existing Father, not in ways resembling bodies by cutting or by issues arising from divisions,

as Sabellius and Valentinus think, but unspeakably and indescribably [reference to lsa. 53:8] ... since his hypostasis is beyond investigation by any mortal ('Y£vlltU) nature, just as the Father is beyond investigation because the nature of rational beings cannot cope with (xcopc:iv) the knowledge of the Father's divine begetting [reference to Matt. 11:27] ... and we have learnt this Gesus Christ) to be unchangeable and unalterable as the Father is, a Son without want and perfect, like the Father, only inferior to (As1.1t6J.1.Svov) him in the point ofingenerateness, for he is the precise_and exact image of the Father (ehcrov ftKP1ProJltVTj Kai lmapaA.A.aKto<;) for it is clear that the image is full of all the elements in which the likeness to the greater (lit. "the

greater likeness" ~ 1lE{~rov t~cptpEla) (consists) [with a quotation ofJn. I4: 28 J.' . There follows a long digression 55 in which Alexander makes it as plain as he can that in refusingany time to the origin of the Son he has no intention of declaring that the Son is ingenerate as the Father is. He goes on to say'· that we pay proper honour to the Father in asserting that he has no origin nor cause, and due honour to the Son 'when we ascribe to him the I'nbeginning birth (,~viivapxov rtvv~ow) from the Father', and we do not thereby deny his Godhead nor extend ingenerateness to him from the Father. He ends his Rule ofFaithS7 by referring in conve.ntional fashion, though not without side-glances at the Arian Controversy, to One Holy Spirit who inspired the 'divine instructors (natSeuta<; geiou<;) of the Old and New Testaments, to the "44, 4S(26). 54 46-14(.6-8). 55 49-52(27,28). Prestige remarks upon this, '{l'ytv[v)l1'to~ and "(£v[v]l1t6~', 492-5. 56 52(28). 57 53, 54(28). To call this creed, as Boularand does (L'Heresie 46-7) 'Ie credo de son Eglise dont la doctrine remonte aux Apotres' is unrealistic.

Events Leading to Nicaea one holy catholic and apostolic church, indivisible, to the resurrection of the dead (wh;re he takes the opportunity of asserting the real humanIty of ChrISt s body and the reality of his Passion a theme r.eite~ated in Mai's Sermon De Corpore et Anima), to assumptIon mto heaven and to his session on the right hand of the Majesty. .

his

What impresses Simonetti 58. most about this doctrine is the debt whicb ,it owes. to Origen. Alexander wholeheartedly endorses Ongen s doctnne of the eternal generation of the Son. The expression 'for there is one ingenerate (drtvVll'OV) the Father' of Alexander" is very like Rufinus' translation ofOrigen's text at Peri A~chon 1.2.6 nihil ingenitum, id est innatum, praeter solum deum patrem. 60 HIS statement that the Son has unbeginning birth from the Father.' resembles Origen's statement in Peri Archon IV.4.' that the Son can never have had an origin prior to which he would have been nonexistent; the Father has always constituted his origin. In a fragment fron: Alexander's pen preserved in Syriac·2 he says that the Son must be dIStInguIShed ,from the Father as the ray from the light, and so the Father IS the Son s cause, not because the Son is part ofhim, 'but as the caus; of the hypostasis of him whom he has generated through his wIll. SImonettI points out that Alexander here, as elsewhere, uses hypostaSis to express the individual reality of the Son, and can use it elsewhere to describe that of the Father (see above, p. '4,). A doctrine of three hypostaseis would not ofitselfhave been regarded by him as scandalous. He also uses the term physis both to mean 'nature' and to me~n distinct .entity.63 As we have seen, Alexander reproduces Ongen's doctrIne of the Son issuing from the Father as an act of will issues from the. mind (Peri Archon Lz.6), but having rejected all anthropomorphIc Images for the production of the Son he found hImself at a loss for words to describe it, and took refuge in Isa. 53:8 58S tu di I J6-20. S9Jbid. 19(22).

6°'there is nothing ingenerate, that is without birth, except God the Father' (Peri

Archon C & S 122).

Urk. III No. 14.5.2(28). 62]. E. Pitra Ana/eeta Sacra IV 199 and 433. 63When he speaks of the Son's 'mediating only-begotten nature' (Urk. III No. 14·44(26), ~ee :bove, p. 142}. But Simonetti's second example from the same lette~ (~8(25».ta~."t'(J 01toatuO"£lc5uo cp6a£t~J.I{avdvalis not so dear, unless Alexander here IS. n~dulgmg In sheer tautology; Alexander must mean that Father and Son have two dutw.ct natures as welJ as two distinct hypostaseis. See Simonetti Studi 124 125 and especlall y n 73. ' 61

'43

ii

l

I

I Ii

I,

The Origins

Events Leading to Nicaea

and an appeal to its indescribableness. Like Origen, he did not like

Arius was reacting against an established official tradition of Origenism in the see of Alexandria. We do not know, of course, whether Alexander favoured other more unusual features of Origen's theology, such as his doctrine of the pre-existence of souls and his use of Christ's human soul in his account of the Incarnation. We have no particular reason to conclude that he did. Origenism was already in Alexander's day under attack in more than one quarter. Alexander's leaning towards Origen was the result of his personal choice, not a perpetuation of the tradition of his see. Before we go on to consider the Council of Antioch that preceded shortly that of Nicaea, it is worth while asking whether Alexander was justifIed in branding Arius and his supporters with such violence as dangerous heretics and excommunicating them for unorthodoxy. If we read back later events and decisions into this early period, as almost all our ancient sources do, then there can of course be only one answer, and Gwatkin and Prestige and Boularand are quite content to do this. But if we exercise historical imagination and ask if Alexander was justified in denouncing Arianism as heretical at the time when it first arose , the answer is much less evident. To many highly intelligent people such as Eusebius ofNicomedia, his namesake of Cae sarea and Asterius, Arianism seemed at the worst one extreme and drastic but no~ unacceptable option among many. The limits of orthodoxy at th
using the term 'issue' (u1l6ppom) and preferred to fall back upon the old image of the ray from the light, one whIch OrIgen had permitted. 64 But he is so much convinced of the close union o~Father and Son that he can use the classic text thought to establISh the Father's superiority in order to show the closeness of their relationship, John 14:28.65 Simonetti also observes that Alexander does not wholly banish the subordination of the Son to the Father. He says thatin the point ofingenerateness the Son is inferior (411t6~evov, see above, p. 142) 66 Simonetti rightly notices that Alexander IS chary of using the word ousia. 67 His main development of Origen's thought was to consider the Son not only the agent of the Fathees activity, but also the existent (to ov) in which everythmg else had Its existence. It was perhaps in his 'attenuation of subordination' that Alexander was innovating. 68 Alexander, then, was certainly much indebted to Origen. Did he represent the official theology of the Alexandrian school? Ifh: did, then Arius was reacting violently against the theolo,!pcal tradItIOn of his own church, and can hardly have expected It to welcome hIS views when he ventilated them. Loofs would be justifIed in seeing Alexander as on the opp
145

144

L

The Origins

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3. The Council of Antioch of 325

champions of orthodoxy and destined, most of them, to take part in the Nicene Council, did not remember the homoousion. The author of this note must be the redactor of the Greek collection of canons which underlies this Syriac translation. The canons are obviously not Western but Eastern canons sent to the West. 72 Schwartz's MS was in fact not the only surviving evidence of this Council. His was a Paris MS (Cod. Par. Syr. 62). In '909 Nau printed in the Revue de I'Orient chretien (XIV,I-31) the Syriac text (with French translation) of another MS, from the Vatican (Cod. Syr. 148) which he collated with the Paris MS. And in 1958 H. Chadwick revealed the existence in the Mingana Collection in Selly Oak, Birmingham, of a Syriac MS (Mingana Syr. 8) very like the Paris MS used by Schwartz. It was a very late MS, copied ortly in 19II from a MS which was probably of the tenth century.73 The problem of identifying the Eusebius whom the two MSS of Paris and of the Vatican represented as being the first to sign the Statement of Faith of this Council long troubled the world .of scholarship. In 19' 1 a Russian scholar, A. I. BriIliantov, showed that by altering one syllable in the Syriac word for 'Eusebius' in the MS the name Ossius could be read, and this was enough for Opitz to print "00-0-<0<; in italics in his text at that point. But Chadwick's discovery of the Mingana MS solved this problem, because his MS read Ossius iristead ofEusebius as the first name on the list. 74 The reference to the great council due to assemble in Ancyra is explained by a letter of the Emperor Constantine published originally in a Syriac version by B. H. Cowper in Analeeta Nieaeana in 1857; the letter summoned the bishops due to assemble at Ancyra to meet instead. at Nicaea. 75 Most scholars now find this cumulative evidence impossible to resist. 76 It is surprising that no other ancient document mentions this

In the year 1905 the eminent German scholar Edward Schwartz published a Syriac text with a translation of it into (an~lent) Greek made by himself. It appeared to be an account of a Counct! whIch had taken place at Antioch under the presiden~y of so~ebody called Eusebius. The Council was clearly antt-Anan; the Itst of bIShops attending it suggested that it must be placed early in the history of the controversy, for it included names such as that of Eustathius (of Antioch, whose name appeared immediately after that of Eusebms). There was no mention of homoousios nor of any compound of ousta applied to the Son in the Statement ofFaith (Eethesis Pisteos) included as that which was endorsed by the Council, and at the end three of the 59 bishops who attended refused to accept this Statement and were excommunicated. Their names were Theodotus of LaodIcea. Narcissus ofNeronias and Eusebius of Palestinian Caesarea. But this condemnation was provisionally suspended (to give them time ~o repent) in view of the near approach of 'the great and holy synod m Ancyra'. The whole document takes the form of a letter written in the first person' and addressed to an Alexander. Alexand~r .of Alexandria is mentioned in it in complimentary terms as the vIctIm of Arian heretics and an Alexander signs quite far down the list of episcopal signatories. A number of canons are appended which cannot have been the original canons of the letter and Statement because they imply a later period after the Council of Nicaea.71 A curious historical note (not printed by Opitz) which appears at the end of this document is manifestly a later addition, for it informs us that this letter or its equivalent was sent to the bishops under the Ro';:'an see and that they replied agreeing to it and enclosing some canons for the Eastern bishops, and the note goes on to remark that it is strange that the bishops in this Antiochene synod though clearly 71 For this Council of Antioch see Schwartz Gesamm. Schrift. 6: 134-55; Chadwick 'Ossius of Cordova and the Presidency of the Council of Antioch' passim;]. N. D. Kelly Early Christian Creeds 208-10 (who gives an ~n~lish tr~slation of the Statement); Simonetti Cr;si 38-40; Person Mode of DeclSlonw.Makrng. 15-~6, 34;; J. Nyman 'The Synod of Antioch (324-325) and the CounCl! of ~lcaea p~sSl~; Kopecek, History ojNeo~A,janjsm 42-45' The text of Schwartz ~ Synac MS, ~~th h~s Greek translation. without the Statement or the names of the bIshops subscnbll1:g~ IS to be found in Opitz U,k. III No. 18(36-41). The controversy over the authenticity of this document. including a long exchange between an acrimonious Harnack a.nd a truculent Schwartz, 1S summarized by F. 1. Cross Church Quarterly ReVIew I28(1939)49 ff.

72Schwartz op. cit. 143, 144. Chadwick 'Ossius of Cordova' 29.,-8. This MS had in fact originally been edIted by Schulthess, who did not, however, perceive its importance. 741n 1935 Schwartz, who had in his original article argued in his usual aggressive style for another, wholly obscure and wholly improbable, Eusebius, accepted that Ossius should be read here. 751t was translated into English by Cowper in Syriac Miscellanies (1861), .and reprodoced by J. Stevenson in A New Eusebius (1957). Schwartz's discovery confirmed the authenticity of the letter, which had been doubted. It is printed in Syriac and Greek in Opitz Urk. III No. 20(41-2). 761n .r~cent y~ars only D: L; ~olIand seems to have argued against the a~thentlcl.ty of thIS document In DIe Synode von Antiochien und ihre Bedeutung fur Euseblus von Caesarea und das Konzil von Nizaa'. He tries to show that it is ~3See

'47

The Origins

Events Leading to Nicaea

Council. But then the occurrence of a second session of the Council of Nicaea (see below, pp. '74-8) is even more devoid of ancient documentation, yet many scholars find themselves compelled to believe in it. The name of Philogonius does not appear in the list of bishops signing the Statement of Faith, but that of Eustathius does, immediately after Ossius who signed first and who, as the Emperor Constantine's personal represenative, clearly presided. It is likely that Ossius went direct from Alexandria to Antioch, though he may have

ensure that it dealt with the current controversy. It is therefore wisest

to date this Council early in 325. The document represents a letter written by Ossius to Alexander of Thessalonica telling him, as a prominent bishop in touch with Western opinion, what had happened at Antioch. Neither Patrophilus of Scythopolis nor Paulinus ofTyre (who had been prominent supporters of Arius) were present at this Council which normally should have included bishops in their area. No doubt they realized that the sentiment of the Council would be hostile to them.

visited the Emperor at Nicomedia first. Ossius must have communicated with him somehow, because by the time the Council of Antioch has assembled Constantine has certainly changed his mind about the Arian Controversy. He has now called a 'great and hieratic synod' to deal with the matter, at Ancyra. Philogonius must have

Alexander of Alexandria was not present at this Council. Only a

very extraordinary occasion could have caused the bishop of Alexandria to leave his see for a council held at Antioch. But the doctrine promulgated in the Statement is very like his doctrine, and is particularly interesting as the only anti-Arian and pre-Nicene

been alive and presiding over the Church of Antioch when Alexander wrote his Letter to all Bishops excommunicating Arius, because there is extant a Syriac MS translating parts of a Greek

statement of doctrine which we possess besides the writings of

Alexander himself. The most important points in the Statement qf Beliif are thus expressed:

document containing extracts from this letter and clearly commended by Philogonius to some other person or persons. Opitz

(on what evidence I do not know) dates it to 324; it could equally

'And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son, begotten not from non-existence, but from the Father, not as made, but as genuine

have been written at any point between 319 and 324.77 But there is

product (r.vv~~a Kupiro,). and begotten unspeakably and ineffably,

good evidence from John Chrysostom that Philogonius died in December 324. 78 Eustathius then must have been very recently elected bishop of Antioch when the Council met. It is possible that it was due to meet in order to choose a bishop of Antioch anyway, and that Ossius seized the opportunity to take control of the Council and impossible to. envisage Eusebius of Caesarea in such humiliating circumstances as this document represents him experien~ing. But Holla~d can gi~e no altemativ.e explanation of how and why and when, If the document IS (as he thmks) a forgery, It could have becn produced, and, far from making Eusebius' conduct at !'Jicaea inexplicable (as Holland maintains), it throws considerable light on his behaVIour, as wc shall see (below, pp. 158-160). Nor are his arguments against the thcories of Lietzmann and Kelly concerning the relation (or absence of it) of N to Eusebius' Caesarcan creed convincing. 77This document is printed in Syriac with Greek rctroversion by Opitz Urk. III No. 15(29-31). 76At least in December; the ycar is reached by dcduction from other evidence. Scllwartz (Gesamm. Schrift. VI.I3I) gives the reference to John Chrysostom as Tomus 1.495d among the volumes ofMignc's text ofJohn Chrysostom in PG. But not only does this not tell us what exact work the references came from, but thc page~reference is wrong. It should be PG 47 (which is Tomus I of the text ofJohn Chrysostom in this series): 747-56 (De Beato Philogonio). Sce Bamcs, Constantine and Eusebius, 21); cf. Scllers Eustathius 21. Sce also Thcodorct HE 1.7.10.

148

because only the Father who begot and the Son who was begotten ',oknew [reference to Matt. II:27 and Luke 10:22] ... he (i.e. Christ) , who always exists and did not formerly not exist, for we have been taught from the holy Scriptures that he ,alone is an image, not unbegotten (dytvvrrtOv) - clearly from the Father -, not by appointment ... so that we believe him to be immutable and unaltera~le, and that he has not been begotten or come into existence

by will nor by appointment (9.",,,) so that he should appear to be from non-existence but in the way that was proper for him to be begotten, not (an idea unholy to conceive) by resemblance or nature or association in connection with any of the things that came into existence through him. But, because he transcends all thought and conception and argument, we confess that he has been begotten from the unbegotten Father, God the Word, true Light. righteousness.Jesus Christ, Lord of all and Saviour. For he is the image not of the will nor of anything else except the actual hypostasis of the Father. '79

, ~i oJ

790pitz Urk. III No. 18.8-13(38, 39). The last word in Syriac Schwartz translated 1tp6csoo1tov, not 61t60"'tao"l~ but Seeberg, followed by Opitz, prefcrred 61t60"'t0.0"1~, after Heb. 1:3. Clearly it means 'individual existencc' not 'substance'.

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The reference to the Holy Spirit in this Statement is very meagre. Anathemas were added, the first known anathemas against doctrinal deviations in any Church Council. They were directed against those who held that the Son is a creature or geniiton (i.e. belonging to those things that have come into existence), or not an authentic product (Y'vv~~a) or that there was a time when he did not exist, or that he is immurable by his own independent free-will, or those who derive his birth from non-existence and say that he is not by nature immutable as the Father is. 80 That this Statement is anti-Arian is overwhelmingly clear. But it is equally clear that it represents the. theology of Alexander of Alexandria. The particular way in which an apophatic approach to the generation of the Son is presented and the great emphasis on the Son's immutability suggest this. Alexander was not present at Antioch in body, but he was in spirit. Ossius has imbibed his point of view. We hear at Antioch no hint of any alternative theology to Arianism save that of Alexander. If, as Philostorgius says (iee above, p. 139-40), Alexander and Ossius were a very short time later to concoct a plan to introduce homoousios into the Creed, no such thought had entered tl)eir minds at tl)is stage. One curious little fact needs to be added in connection witl) this Council of Antiocl) of J25. Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Contra Marcel/urn reproduces an aneodote of Marcellus in which he says that Narcissus (of Neronias) in a letter which he wrote to Chrestus and Euphronius and Eusebius (presumably not Eusebius of Caesarea) narrated that 'Bishop Ossius asked him (Narcissus) i£like Eusebius of Palestine he taught that there were two ousiai, and that he (Marcellus) knew from his (Narcissus') writings that he answered that he (Narciss\1s)' believed that there were three ousiai'.81 It is very likely that this interchange took place at Antioch in 325, and it is an early example of the confusion about terms which was to dog continually the search for the Christian doctrine of God in the fourth century. No doubt Narcissus meant that there were three distinct realities (,Persons') within the Godhead, and no doubt Eusebius of Caesarea would have used ousia for hypostasis with the same meaning, but his

estimate of the Holy Spirit was so low that he would not have included him within the Godhead, and so would only recognize two hypostases. Ossius perhaps took Eusebius to mean that there were two substances, and Narcissus to mean that there were three, in the Godhead. 82 This little incident not only reveals the interesting though not surprising information that Ossius understood and

probably knew Greek, but that he came to the Council of Nicaea already under a misapprehension about the views of those who represented the opposite party to his. [Several scholars, from, Newman to Stead (who dealt with the matter in a paper given to the Tenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held at Oxford in August 1987) have observed the close correspondence of doctrine and vocabulary of Alexander's Letter to all Bishops (known as henos somatos from its opening words) with the doctrine and vocabulary of Athanasius, and its difference in some respects from Alexander's later letter to Alexander of Thessalonica

(known as hi! phi/archos). Stead has proposed the desperate remedy of postulating that Alexander requested Athanasius (aged 18 or 20, not yet ordained!) to write his synodical letter for him. Others have suggested that in place of Alexander's letter a much later letter of At~anasius has been substituted, though the original episcopal subscriptions were kept. Two observations may be made here: it is more likely that Athanasius learnt from Alexander than vice versa; it is

anyway difficult to avoid concluding that Alexander was one of the main sources of Athanasius' theology. Also it may be noticed that the Council of Antioch of 325, if we are to trust Schwartz's retroversion, begins its letter with precisely the same words as does henos somatos and its opening sentence voices exactly the same sentiments as the

opening sentence of that letter.)

"Ibid. 13(39-40). 8tEusebius, Contra Marcellum 1.4.39 and 53-4 (reproduced Opitz Vrk. III No. 19(41»: The ascription of speakers in brackets in this passage is rendered necessary by the fact that this is Eusebiu! reporting what Marcellus reported what Narcissus reported what Ouius and he had said. See Simonetti Crisi 76 n 1I7. and above. p.45. ISO

82R. M. Grant thinks that Eusebius and Narcissus really did mean what Ossius probably thought that they meant ('Religion and Politics' 4). See p. 167 below for a further discussion of this suggestion.

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The Council of Nieaea

6 The Council oj Nicaea I.

The Calling of the Council

The Council of Nicaea ' met from May to the end of July 325· An Edict of Constantine is dated May 23rd, from Nlcaea. Whlle the bishops were present at the Council they were able to celebrate Constantine's vicennalia Uuly 25th, 325), and a law of TheodoslUs 2 reveals that by July 30th Constantine was back in Nicomedia. It was the first time that any attempt had been made to summon a gener~1 council of the whole church at which, at least in theory, the church m every part of the Rom:mEmpire should be represented, and It was by far the greatest number of bishops ever gathered together up to then. The question of wh y Constantine called it has been variously a~sessed. The Syriac version of th~ Letter of Const3U~e summonmg the bishops to Nicaea gives his reasons for changmg the venue from Ancyra to Nicaea. 3 It would be easier for the bishops from Italy and the other parts ofEurope to reach Nicaea; the air was better there; and it would be a nearer place for the Emperor to reach (from Nicomedia). These are unexceptionable reasons. The Emperor and the Western bishops would be saved the long trek as far as the Anatolian highland to Ancyra (modem Ankara). Nicaea was very convenient to Nicomedia, and (so Optiz op. cit. 42) was noted for Its good air. But Constantine gives no hint in this letter why he IThe Council of Nicaea is covered by the Church historians of antiquity with varying degrees of amplitude and accuracy: Socrates HE 1.8-13; Sozomenus H~ I 17-24' Theodoret HE 1.7.1-9. 18; Gelasius HE II.5-I 1,25-35; Rufinus HE X·3 1f·, J~rome'Djal. con. Luciferanus 20(18). 183; Opitz, Urk: III ~os. 20-26. For modem scholars see Gwatkin AC 25-40 (grave over-slmph~cat~o~); Schwartz. ~e,samm: Schr. VI:n.,-68; Grillmeier CeT 264-'73; Grant RebglOn a~d PolitICS 6--9, Simonetti 77-87 (very useful, as usual) as well as authors clted b710w. . 2S0 Person, The Mode of Decision-Making 40 (n 20 to p. 15) followmg OpI~. Socrates and .Gelasius give elaborate dates to determine ~he year of the CouncIl. lSyriac text with Greek retroversion by Schwartz, OPitz Urk. III No. 20(4 1 - 2 ).

ensi

15 2

summoned a Council to Ancyra in the first place. It has been conjectured that a Council had been due to meet at Ancyra independently of Constantine and that Constantine simply took it over and transferred it to Nicaea. But the description of the proposed Council at Ancyra by the Council of Antioch as 'the great and hieratic Council' (see above, p. 148) suggests that those who were at Antioch already knew that this would be no ordinary Council. We do no.t know why Constantine originally fixed it at Ancyra. Perhaps he first intended to see that the Council met there but did not intend to be present himself, but later realized that he must control the Council and took steps accordingly. It has been conjectured that the result of the Council of Antioch made him realize that there was a strong party determined to excommunicate and depose bishops who showed any leaning towards the views of Arius. The excommunication of a man so universally respected for his scholarship as Eusebius of Caesa rea must have given him a shock. He wanted to be in a position to see that the anti-Arian party at the Council did not do' anything that would further exasperate the division already existing in the Church .. but rather heal it.' Schwartz's idea' that Const:mtine originally summoned the Council to deal with the Melitian schism in Egypt and that the Arian dispute was, ifan ything, subordinate to this, can be dismissed. Itis redolent of Sch'Yartz's conviction that hard political realities governed most of the motives of those who took part in the controversy and that theological ideas were pretexts rather than mainsprings of action, and suggests the Realpolitik of Bismarck rather than the mind of Constantine. The Emperor, rightly or wrongly, thought himself called to foster and protect the Church, and therefore to prevent as far as he coul~ the damage that was caused by controversy and schism. He had tried to act in this way towards the North African Church durmg the opening years of the Donatist Controversy. By now he had given up serious attempts to heal that particularly virulent dispute, but perhaps he had decided that he might have succeeded had he been able to attend to it it personally in Africa. Now he would see personally that the Arian conflict should be allayed at a relatively early point in its development. It was then certainly Constantine who convoked the Council of 4S0 Chadwick 'Ossius of Cordova and the Council of Antioch' 301-4, Ritter 'Arianismus' 704. 5Gesamm. Schr. 3.2(69-70),

153

The Origins Nicaea. Sulpicius Severus6 says that the Council was Ossius' suggestion (auctore iIIo confecta habebatur), which, though probably no more than an intelligent guess, may be true. Epiphanius, 7 most improbably, attributes it to Alexander of Alexandria. Philostorgius in two separate fragments' alleges that Alexander and Ossius plotted together at Nicomedia to persuade the Emperor to hold it. But this would have entailed their making a special journey to Nicomedia many months before even the Council was called to Ancyra. We may regard this as the sort of gossip which Philostorgius is too prone to retail. Religious partisanship has in the past led some scholars to suggest that Silvester, bishop of Rome, convoked the Council of Nicaea, but modem Roman Catholic scholars honourably dismiss this idea. 9 The evidence weighs strongly in favour of the view that Ossius, as the Emperor's representative. presided at Nicaea. In the great majority of MSS the list of signatories to the Council is headed by the name of Ossius. He had recently presided in a similar capacity over the Council of Antioch. His name is usually followed by those of Victor and Vincentius, presbyters representing Sylvester, bishop of Rome. Socrates purports to give a list of those who signed. 10 beginning with Ossius and going on with Victor and Vincentius, though his list as we have it in Greek has been drastically abridged; it survives in a much fuller form in the version of Socrates' History given by Theodorus Lector who compiled the Historia Tripartita in Latin. ll Further, Athanasius, who was certainly present at Nicaea, unmistakably witnesses to Ossius as the presiding spirit at the Council. In the Apologia Secunda the Council is described as 'the Gene'ral Synod ofOssius'.'2In his Historia Arianorum he actually says 611.40.5(94). 7Panarion 68.4.5. The lnterpretatio Caeciliana in the Collection oj Theodosius the Deacon (Turner, EOMIA 1.104) also says that Alexander presided. But as this document is probably in origin an Alexandrian one we may discount this evidence. 81.7 and 1.7a. 9Declercq Ossius oj Cordova 222. Boularand and Simonetti concur. The proRoman theory derives originally fTOm Damasus in the Decree of the Council of Rome of 372 (CCCXVIII episcopi atque ex vice sanctissimi episcopi urbis Romanae directi. Schwartz 'Codex Veronensis LX, 19.1.20, 21), but nobody can take this seriously. IOHE 1.13. 11 Declercq Ossius 228-32. 12 76. iJ KOlV1'I aUvooo~ 'Oaoiou. This is a late work of Athanasius, but here he is quoting a Letter of the Clergy of the Mareotis sent to the Council ofTyre in 335, a mere ten years after Nicaea.

154

The Council of Nicaea that Ossius composed the Creed ofNicaea, 13 and, though we cannot press these words because here he is putting words into the mouths of the Arians writing thirty years after the Council to Constantius II they show how the general opinion about the presidency of th~ CouncIl .of Nlca~a ran. Ge1asius alleges that Ossius presided as representmg the bIShop of Rome,14 but this is probably because an hIStorian writing in the second half of the fifth century could not Ima~me that a bishop of as obscure a see as Cordova could have preslde~ over a General Council unless he was a proxy for a much more Important ecclesiastic. In normal circumstances the

Metropolitan of the area in which the Council met would have preSIded, and in this case it would have been Eusebius ofNicomedia. But ~onstantine's ~epresentative, Ossius,: took precedence on this occaSIon (as he had Just done over Eustathius at Antioch). We have ~een reason to beheve (see above, pp. 28) that Eusebius was not at that Juncture of affairs in favour with Constantine. Eusebius of Caesarea

tells us that his namesake ofNicomedia made the opening speech of welcome to the Emperor. 1S

.We cannot calculate the number of bishops present at the Council

WIth complete ac~u~acy, because the earliest witnesses give us only round figures and It IS the later ones who provide factitious accuracy. One; of the earliest witnesses must be the statement of Eustathius of

Anti
the Council ( Zur Klrchengeschlchte des vierten Jahrhunderts' 159 n 45) , 16~heodoret HE 1.8.1-5· See Spanneut Recherches sur fes Eerits d~Eustache d Antwehe 32 (104. 105). Constantine in his Letter to the Church ofAlexandria (Urk III No. 25.5(53» puts the number at more than 300. . 17Dossetti ~imbolo 34-5: for the Letter. see Opitz Urk. III No. 23 (pp. 47-5 I )' it can b~ found 10 some of the MSS of the documents attached to Athanasius' DeeretlS; Socrates HE 1.9.1; Theodoret HE 1.9.2: Gelasius HE 1I.34.2.

De

ISS

The Origins

though in his later Letter to the Bishops of Africo he gives the number as 318. Hilary in his Collectio Antiariana says 'three hundred or more"8 By about 370 the conventional number of 318, the same number as the men of Abraham's household whom he led out to rescue Lot (Gen. 14:14), had been accepted everywhere, and this becam~ traditional. 19 Several other legends accumulated round this CouncIl in course of time. Ambrose (loc. cit.) already calls it an 'oracle' (oraculum). Philostorgius alleges (HE 1.9) that Eusebius ofNicomedia, Maris ofChalcedon and Theognis ofNicaea distracted the attention of their colleagues while they altered homoousion to homoiousion in the version of the Creed which they signed; Sozomenus (HE 11.21) that they were able later to efface their signatures to the Council's Creed surreptitiously. Bardy rightly dismisses these apocryphal tales. 20 All that we can say is that the number of bishops at the Council ofNicaea probably fell between 250 and 300. The Council was overwhelmingly Eastern, and only represented the Western Church in a meagre way. Ossius of Cordova, representing the Emperor's interest as well as, presumably, that of the Church of Spain, the presbyters Victor and Vincentius as representatives of the bishop of Rome, Caecilianus Catholic bishop of Carthage, Nicasius of Gaul, Marcus of Calabria and Dornnus of Pannonia. 21 There is no evidence that even the bishop of Thessalonica was there. It is more likely that the great majority of Western bishops did not know what all the fuss created by the Arian Cont~oversy was about, and saw no strong reason to make a long journey to a Greek-speaking city for so uncertain a purpose. Among the supporters of the views of Arius present were, as well as Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius of Caesarea, Menophantus of Ephesus, Patrophilus of Scythopolis, Narcissus of Neronias, Theonas of "11.9·7(149). 19$0 Damasus (see above, n.9); Gelasius HE 11.28.11; Ambrose De Fide I. Prologue 5(6). 18.120(5 I); and Interpretatio Caeciliana (Turner EOMIA 1.110). Even in Athanasius'late Letter to African Bishops 2(1032) the aura.oflegend is beginning to be visible. 2°Lucien d'Antioche 306-13. 21 So Declercq Ossius 227-8. Schwartz wished to eliminate even Marcus by reading Salambria instead of Calabria, but this is unnecessary. We are not told what see Marcus occupied in Calabria nor Nicasius in Gaul nor Domnus in Pannonia. Declercq conjectures that most Westerners received their summons to the Council too late to attend. But this is unlikely. Gaul was farther away from Nicaea than any Italian town, yet Nicasius arrived there. There were more bishops who could have been present in Pannonia and in the Danubian provinces than Domnus.

The Council


Marmarike and Secundus of (Libyan) Ptolemais!2 and we should mclude Theognis ofNicaea itself here also. Among Arius' opponents there were Alexander of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch Marcellus of Ancyra and Macarius of Jerusalem. Athanasius wa; certainly present as a deacon accompanying Alexander of Alexandria. He teHs us himself that he was present. 23 But it is equaHy certam that he can have taken no prominent nor active part, in spite oflater legends to this effect and the conviction of some scholars that he was the moving spirit in the Council. 24 A deacon would never have been permitted by the bishops to playa prominent part on such an occasion, and though he came with Alexander he was then by no means Alexander's natural and clearly designated successor. Rufinus (HE 1.1) says that Arius was commanded by the Emperor to be present at Nlcaea, and Epiphanius (Panarion 69.4) that Asterius and the Antiochene presbyter Leontius (much later to be Arian bishop of AntIOch) were there. They may have been lurking in the wings. They were certainly not there officiaHy. The proceedings did not take the form of a trial of Arius nor of anyone else. 25 The presence of the Emper?r ~onstantine was inevitable. He was not baptized: it is doubtful If he was even a Christian catechumen. But he had summoned the Council, had paid aH its expenses. He was a highly Interes,ted spectator. The bishops could not have kept him out.

2.

The Proceedings of the Council

We cannot reconstruct with any confidence the Course which the Council ofNicaea took, because no account, official or otherwise, of 22T he<:,doret HE 1.7.13. Rufinus (HE X.5) says that seventeen of the bishops present dIssented from the homoousion, of whom eleven later signed the Creed (but In ~act only two refuse~ t,:, sign). Sozomenus (1.20.1) says that seventeen backed Ar~~s ofwho~ the majorIty eventua~ly signed. Cf. Gelasius HE 11.7.43. De Decretts 3; Apol. Sec. 6; c£ HIlary Coil. AntiaT. B2 II.6 (CSEL 154) and Socrates HE 1.8. .

24~.g. Gwat~n ,A.C ~5-4?; Lucifer ofCalaris De Athanasio I.XXVII(46) can say even In Athanasll~s hfetIme when by God's power he (Athanasius) frustrated these very pe?pl7 at NI~aea long ago'. L<:,ofs ('Das Nidinum' 69) and Klein (Constantius 32-3) dIsmiSS the l~ea that AthanasIUs could have been active at the Council. The only.ear!y suggestIon that ~e was so is made by the synod of Egyptian clergy ~eetmg m 338 to protestagamst Athanasius' exile reported in Apol. Sec. 6. and theirs IS a very ex parte statement. 2sDeclercq, Ossius 252, dismisses the idea that Arius was present. 157

The Origins

the whole affair has come down to us. Perhaps, as this was the ·first

General Council, without precedents, no Acta were ever drawn up. The ancient church historians clearly have no consecutlve account at their disposal, and consequently tend to fall back on trivialities. All we have is a numb~r of descriptions by individuals of some events which happened at it, but we do not know their order and scholars have differed widely about their significance. We have. the. Creed which the Council produced and the twenty canons which It drew Up,26 but no more. We also know of some of the business which it transacted besides its main task ofattempting to settle the controversy about the nature of God. It made some decisions about settliog regularly each year the date ofEaster, and itlaid down the terms upon which the Melitian schism was to be healed (terms whIch neIther Athanasius nor the Melitians were ultimately to regard as satisfactory). . We can obtain some information about the course of proceedmgs at Nicaea from Eusebius' Life of Constantine, though this is mainly concerned with the appearance of the Emperor and is couched in such vague terms as to make it oflittle use, and mor~ from the letter whI~h he wrote immediately after the CouncIl to hIS flock at Caesarea m order to justify his having signed the Creed which the Council had drawn up. We have an account of some of the events of the CouncIl in an extract from Eustathius of Antioch preserved by Theodoret, and we have some brief references to the Council made by Athanasius in the course of his writings. But, useful though they are, these testimonies cannot be put together to reconstruct the order of business transacted at Nicaea. Eusebiu; in his Life of Constantine 27 gives the speech which Constantine delivered at the beginning of the Council. He tells us that the Emperor spoke in Latin which an interpreter rendered into 26The canons are set out in Greek by F. Lauchert (1896) Die Kanones der wichtigsten Altkirchlichen Concilien. 37-43,.as wen.as anywhere els~. A little earlier W. Bright had published the Greek text With Enghsh commentary 10 The Canons of the First Four General Councils (1892) IX-XV (text) and 1-89 (Commentary). In those happy days it was assumed that aU theological students c~ul~ re.ad Greek and would need no translation. See Gelasius HE 11.32.1-22; Chad"Wlck FaJth and Order at the Council ofNicaea' passim; H. Hess The Canons ofthe Council ofSardica 49-55. Hess shows that from about 350 to 500 in the West the Latin version of these Can,:,ns of Serdica was thought to be those of Nicaea, in spite of the eclajrcisse,!,e~t which took place between 418 and 421 in Africa ove~ the case of Aplanus. The arrangement about the Mditians was not included 10 the canons. 27VC 111.12.

The Council of Nicaea

Greek (though, Eusebius says, Constantine could speak Greek and did so in private conversations);28 it was during the course of the Council that the Emperor celebrated the twentieth year of his reign, 29 hIS vicennalia. Otherwise Eusebius' biography of Constantine gives us no information about the Council; at no point does he even hint at what was the subject of the controversy. In his Letter to the Church of Caesarea, Eusebius. writing immediately after the Council,30 gives first the Creed which he says that he presented to the Council in the presence of the Emperor; it ran thus:31 'We believe in one God, Father, Almighty, maker of all things seen and unseen;

And in one LordJesus Christ the Word of God, God from God, Light from Light, Life from Life, only-begotten Son, first-born of all cr~ation, begotten from the Father before all ages, through whom all thIngs have come into being, who was incarnate for our salvation; and spent his life (1tOA1'tEuaO:IlEvov) among men, and suffered and rose the third day and went up to the Father and will come again in glory to

judge the living and the dead; And we believe in one Holy Spirit. We believe that each of these is and exists (&lval Kai 61tO:PXElV), the Fa~h.er truly Father ~nd Son truly Son and Holy Spirit truly Holy SPlrlt, as our Lord saId when he sent his disciples to preach, "Go and ma~e disciples of all nations, baptising them into the Name of the

Fatller and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". We are deeply conVInced (Blapepaloulle9a) that these things are so and that this is our

belief and has long been so and that we hold by this faith until death, anathematizing all atheist heresy. We bear witness that we have always believed this with heart and soul, ever since we have been conscious of ourselves (e~ 061tEP iO"J..lEv tao'tou<;). and that we now

believe and truly proclaim God Almighty and the Lord Jesus Christ, and are ready to demonstrate by arguments and to persuade you that we have always so believed and so preached in times past.'

The obsessive repeated asseveration of this statement is easily understood. Eusebius was the most learned and one of the bestknown of the 300-ddd bishops present. He had written more books than anyone else. He had recently been accused ofheresy at a synod of 28III.rz, 13. 29

111.15. 300pitz Urk. III. NO.22(42-'1), from the dossier attached to Athanasius' De Deeretis; Socrates HE 1.8; Theodoret HE 1.2I.I; Gelasius HE 11.35.1. "Ibid. 4-6(43).

159

The Origins

The Council oj Nicaea

the great church of Antioch and had been provisionally condemned and excommunicated. He must now, in the presence of the Emperor and of his fellow-bishops, at all costs exculpate himself from the charge of heresy. And certainly his profession of faith, though It avoids all the controversial points raised by the Anan Controversy, was of a blameless orthodoxy according to the standards of 32 5. Eusebius goes on to say, 'When this statement offaith was laid before us there was no loophole for opposition, but our blessed (9~oCP1M"tato<;) Emperor himself was the first to witness that it was entirely orthodox'.32 Eusebius then goes on to deal WIth the Creed of Nicaea itself and this will be discussed presently. He does not say at what stage in the proceedings he brought forward his Creed. He gives the impression throughout this letter that Constantme took the initiative in all the matters that the letter deals with, apparently regarding himself as qualified to deal with any discussion about the profound questions raISed by the Chnstlan doctrme of God. . . Eustathius of Antioch, in an extract given by Theodoret m hIS Church History, written within a very few years of the Council, between 325 and 330,33 relates: 'when ... the greatest council gathered at Nicaea ... as the form. of the faith was being discussed, the blasphemous docume?t ofEusebIus, ~n being put forward, (c;:onstituted) a clear condemnatIOn. It was read ~ the presence of everybody and immediately produced among ::ts audience a restless sensation of shock (owupopav cicrtaO,..:r],t'ov tTJe; tKtponile; EV&1Ca) and earned indelible shame for its au~hor. B~t ,when the cabal (.pyacrt~plov) of Eusebius' party (trov a~cpl tOV EU".~IOV) was openly exposed, the transgressing document was torn up before the eyes 'of aU, then some, by a deliberate plot, using. the cause of reconciliation
This is a valuable account, even though it is violently partisan and couched in Eustathius'

usual

style of pompous

wordiness,

reminiscient of that of Mr. Sapsea in Edwin Drood. Scholars have debated about which Eusebius Eustathius was here referring to. "Ibid. 7(43-44). . . 33 HE 1.8.1-3. See R. P. C. Hanson 'The Fate of Eustathius of Antloch .

160

Spanneut,34 Ritter 35 and Chadwick 36 take it to mean Eusebius of

Caesarea; Stead 37 and Simonetti'· favour Eusebius of Nicomedia. But there can in fact be little doubt that Eustathius is here referring to Eusebius ofNicomedia. His expression 'the party ofEusebius' Occurs again and again in Athanasius' works and elsewhere (e.g. Sozomenus

HE II.P.7), in a slightly different form, to denote the party of the bishop ofNicomedia. Further, if we think Eusebius of Caesarea to be meant here, we must either conclude that the document which callsed such an uproar when it was read out and which was torn up by universal consent was the Creed which Eusebius of Caesarea (as we have just seen) alleges to have received unanimous approval (in

which case either he or Eustathius is indulging in unscrupulous mendacity), or assume that Eusebius of Caesarea submitted two documents to the Council, one of which occasioned a widespread demonstration ag;linst it and the other was met with universal

approbation - which would be absurd.'· Again~ as we have already seen, Ambrose in De Fide tells us that a letter of Eusebius of Nicomedia was read to the Council of Nicaea, in which he

discouraged the view that the Son was uncreated and apparently mentioned homoousios as a reductio ad absurdum. Ambrose says 'When this letter was read at the Council of Nicaea, the Fathers placed this (i.e. t~e term homoousios) in the Statement of Faith, because they saw that It caused alarm to their opponents. '40 It is possible, perhaps even

probable, that this was the document which, according to Eustathius, caused such a violent reaction in the Council. It should be noted that Eustathius says nothing of any intervention by Constantine in the debates. He also hints that his party Could have said more but did not; he may m'ean that the Nicene Creed was not extreme enough a

document to exclude the possibility of the supporters of Arius signing it. 34Recherches 104-5. 35'Arianismus' 705. 36'The Fall of Eustathius of Antioch'. 37'Eusebius and the Council of Nicaea' Silo-lOO. 38Crisi 81. Loofs had done so earlier, in 'Das Nicaenum' 79-80. 39See Hanson, 'The Fate ofEustathius of Antioch', 171-4. Stead (op. cit.) suggests that the document which caused so much alarm and despondency was Eusebius' Letter to Paulinus of Tyre (see above, PP.30-31); but if this were so then either Ambrose's account would be totally untrue Or this Eusebius would have read two letters to the Council - quod esset absurdum. 40De Fide III. I 5(125); see Opitz Urk. III No. 21(42), and above, p. 3 I. 161

The Origins Athanasius says that when the party which he regarded as orthodox at Nicaea wanted to declare the Son to be 'like' (6~0.ov) the Father, and 'exacdy as the Father in all things (d1tUpU).).UKTOV KUTa 1tUVTa Tq, 1tUTpl) and immutable (uTpe1tTOv) and always in the Father, the Arians present winked and muttered to each other that they could accept these epithets because they could fmd parallel expressions to all these applied in the Scripture to creatures and not God (and therefore that they could, while accepting these, continue to regard the Son as a creature). and that this is why the term homoousion was inserted in the Creed of Nicaea, and he goes on to quote the anathemas of Nicaea, though he modifies the most controversial and confusing phrase in them. 41 In the Letter to the Bishops of Africa he has much the same account, but he here includes the term 'from God' (ilK TOU aeou) which he said, as it was acceptable to the Arians, was rejected in favour of 'from the substance' (of the Father, ilK Tiie; o~
The Council of Nicaea

and Theonas of Marmarike, were deposed by the Council and exiled by the Emperor. Arius himself was exiled. But we do not know in what order these things happened.

3· The Creed of Nicaea The Creed which was drawn up at the Council ofNicaea (and which wdl henceforth by referred to as N) ran, as reconstructed by Dossetti, as follows: 'We believe in one God Father Almighty Maker of all things, seen and unseen: And in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten as onlybegotten of the Father, that is of the substance (ousia) of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not ~ade, ~onsubstantial with the Father, through whom all things came mto eXIstence, both things in heaven and things on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and became man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the dead: And in the Holy Spirit. Bll,t those who say, "there was a time when he did not exist" aq'd "Before being begotten he did not exist", and that he cam~ into be~n~ from non-existence, or who allege that the Son of God is of another hypostasis or ousia, or is alterable or changeable, these the Catholic and Apostolic Church condemns. '42

. Eusebius of Caesa rea, in his Letter to the Church ofCae sarea, gives the ImpressIon that N was no more than his own Creed which he . 42For the Greek of the original, see the Appendix I of this work, and Dossetti Simbolo 226-4I. I have translated Dossetti's Greek text here. I have left the terms Ilypostasis and ousia in the a?at.hema untranslated because they are so equivocal (see below, p. 1,81--90) .. For a printing of the Greek text ofN with apparatus criticus see Schwartz ?as Nlcaenum und das Constantinopolitanum auf der Synode von Chalkedon 78. For the copy in Athanasius' collection of documents see De Deeretis 37 (~6, 37) (for an earlier ~ersion than this see Dossetti op. cit. 34-5). For Hilary's verSion ofN, see Coil. Anttar. B 11.10(150). For the version of Lucifer ofCalaris see De Non ~arcendo in Deum Deliquentibus XVIII(229). For that of Gregory ofEl~ira, see n,e. FIde Orthodoxa 1(221). For the Creed in the early Latin canons of lnterpretatio C~ecrltana see Turner EOMIA 1.106-g. For N in Latin texts generally see Dossetti Simbolo 91-3· For the ~ld Latin text of N, see A. H. Bum JThS 2(05)(1901 ), I02-IO. See also AthanaslUs Letter 10 Emperor jovian 3 (PG 26:817); Basil Epp Il5.2 and Socrates HE 1.8·9 for early examples of the Greek text of N.

The Origins transcribes in his letter, with the single addition of the homoousion 43 This has led several scholars in the past to conclude that N is the local baptismal creed of Caesarea, with certain anti-Arian insertions deliberately placed in it.44 But this theory cannot be sustained. Eusehius' own transcriptions ofN immediately afterwards makes it quite plain that the Creeds are not identical. even when the antiArian matter has been removed from N. What Eusebius is really

saying is that the Council and Emperor approved of his own Creed,

The Council of Nicaea unmistakeable. All the more obnoxious doctrines of Arius and his ~ollowe.rs are struck at in N in the most impressive way. But it is mterestmg to observe how Eusebius, who cannot have found the Creed's doctrine congenial. explains to his flock his reasons forsigning N. One would, in reading his letter, hardly believe that N was designedly anti-Arian did not one have the Creed before one's ·eyes. He alleges that the Emperor himself qualified the addition of 'consubstantial' by saying that:

and then went on to produce another similar in content except for the word homoousion. It cannot he stated too often that the ancients did not suffer from the same passion for exact accuracy which modern

'the S?n is not to be said c~nsubstantial in the sense of any corporeal expenences, nor does he eXIst as a result of division or any subtraction from the Father; for the immaterial and spiritual and incorporeal nature cannot undergo any corporeal experience, and that it is right to hold such views about divine and recondite (anoppirrOlC;;) subjects of thought'.49

scholarship displays. What concerned them in comparing two documents was not verbal identity but similarity of content. What Eusehius is comparing here are not in fact two baptismal creeds hut

ultimately two Rules of Faith, which, though based in their structure on the baptismal creed, arc more fluid and variable in form. 45 Careful examination of Eusebius' Creed and N by experts 46 has shown that the two creeds, not least in their least important and least controversial features, are quite different. Lietzmann and Kelly conjectured that the basis of N was one of the Jerusalem family of creeds, but they concluded that no more detailed identification of it could be made. Person, in a useful review of the subject,47 is inclined to revert to the theory to which Harnack finally subscribed: the 'Jerusalem family' of creeds is an hypothetical entity, all of whose alleged examples occur well after the production ofN and may have been influenced by N; N itself may be the product of a number of different cieeds put together for the occasion. At least we can conclude that its p.articular vocabulary gives us no clear clue as to its origin nor first author n~r proposer. We have already seen 48 that according to Athanasius N was constructed as a deliberately anti-Arian document. Indeed. we do not need Athanasius to tell us so. Its consciously anti-Arian tone is "U,k. III No. 22.[, 2(4" 43), 7(44). 44E.g. Gwatkin AC 44 and Loofs 'Das Nidinum', passim, Burn and Hort; Harnack, for most of his career, subscribed to this view, and Seeberg (History of Doctritles 217). 45For the Rule of Faith, see R. P. C. Hanson Tradition in the Early Church, cap. 3. 75-129· 46Lietzmann 'Symbolstudien XIII' and Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 217-26. 47 Mode of Decision-Making 84-91. 48Above, p. 162.

After ~etting out the Creed N, Eusebius goes on to· explain carefully In what sense he accepts each of the anti-Arian terms in N. 'Consubstantial' and 'of the substance' mean that the Son is from the Father, but n~t a part of him nor a part of his ousia. Only thus could EuseblUs, WIth obvious reluctance, bring himself to accept homoousz'on, for the sake of peace. 50 He accepted 'begotten not made' b~<:,ause 'made' applies to the other creatures which were made through the Son and is not fit to apply to the 'superior ousia' of the Son, for he has been begotten in an indescribable and unsearchable way by the Father.51 One suspects that Eusebius is reserving the right to des~nbe the Son as a creature but not as something made, follOWing the example of his master Origen. He defends his acceptance. of homoousion on the grounds already stated but also because 'it establishes that the Son of God bears no likeness to creatures w?ic.h have :ome into existence (7tp6~ to. yevrrra KtioJlu'tu). but that he.'s likened In all things only to the Father who begot him and that he IS ofno other hypostasis and ousia but only of the Father'. 52 Euse.bius also explains how he could approve of the anathemas added at the end of N. They were, he says, a condemnation of the use of 49Urk. III No; 22.7(44). 50Ibid. 9, IO(45). 51

11(45).

52.13 (45-4 6) E.usebius adds that 'some famous bishops and writers' in the past apphed homoouslOS to the Son. One would like to know who they were. One :vonders too whether Eusebius deliberate1y says 'of no other hypostasis and ousia' lnstcad of N's 'hypostasis or ousia'. 16S

The Origins

The Council of Nicaea

terms which are non-Scriptural, such as 'from non-existence' and 'there was a time when he did not exist', and which he himself has never used in his works. 53 This is a strange admission from a man who has just signed a creed containing the terms 'substance' and 'consubstantial'! Eusebius l)ext defends the condemnation of 'before he was begotten he did not exist' (which is all but an affirmation of the eternal generation of the Son) on the grounds that everybody admits that the Son existed before the Incarnation, and ends his explanation by saying that the Emperor iu his speech (sv trp 1-oyrp autoii) maintained that the Son existed eternally before he was begotten 'since before he was begotten in act (tV£P'YEU~) he was in the Father

potentially

(~Uva~.,)

ingeneratdy

(ay.vv~t<»<;)

for the Father has

always been Fatherjust as he has been King and Saviour eternally; he is everything potentially (ouvulua) and remains just so exactly the same for ever.'54

Opitz thinks that Eusebius could never have written the last sentiment of his own accord and therefore must be quoting from some official account of the Emperor's explanation of the Creed. 55 But we have already seen Asterius voicing a rather similar opinion, 56 and it would not therefore be a doctriue altogether alien from Eusebius' thought; it certainly is the explanation of one who wishes to avoid a doctrine of the Son's eternal generation. We have no evidence as to whether Constantine either favoured or opposed this doctrine, or even ifhe understood it. Eusebius however enables us to see how somebody who was by no means an opponent of Arius' views could have persuaded himself to accept N. What was needed was a good deal of disingenuousness without the necessity of direct mendacity. His yvhole account confirms the impression that in the doctrinal discussions the opponents of Arius took the lead from the beginning and held it a1l the way through. To say that the Son was 'of the substance' (SK t~, ollaia,)of the Father, and that he was 'consubstantial' with him were certainly startling innovations. Nothing comparable to this had been said in

any creed or profession of faith before. Neither Alexander nor the recent Council of Antioch had described the Son's relation to the Father by introducing ousia or its cognates. The key-word homoousion will be discussed at greater length in the next chapter. For the moment it is enough to say that it probably had a looser and less specific meaniug than scholars till recently have attributed to it, but that nobody could pretend that it was Scriptural, and much the most satisfactory explanation of why it was put there is that it was certainly a word, quite apart from any philosophical or historical associations. which serious and wholehearted Arians could not stomach; Arius in his Thalia had specifica1ly rejected it, and, in his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, had attacked the idea that the Son is a 'consubstantial part' (meros homoousion) of the Father. Eusebius is clearly anxious that nobody shall conclude that the adoption of this term means that the Council has succumbed to the idea pilloried by Arius. The other really remarkable point about N is the condemnation in the anathemas at the end of the view that the Son is 'of another hypostasis or ousia' from the Father. This can only have been a highly ambiguous and extremely confusing statement. By the standard of later orthodoxy, as achieved in the Creed of Constantinople of 381, it IS a rahkly heretical (i.e. Sabellian) proposition, because the Son must be 6fa different hypostasis (i.e. 'Person') from the Father. And in fact there were present at the Council people, such as Marcellus of Ancyra, who were quite ready to maintain that there is only one hypostasis in the Godhead, and who were later to be deposed for heresy because they believed this. It also seems possible that Ossius at least believed in only one hypostasis, judging by the question about two o.usiai"which he put to Narcissus of Neronias at Antioch (see above, P·150), and by the letter which he wrote along with Protogenes ofSerdica after the Council ofSardica in 342 (see below, PP·3 01 -3). which roundly rejected three hypostaseis." But it is difficult to imagine that Eastern bishops would have permitted what was to them a rankly Sabellian statement to appear in the Creedofthe first General Council. Alexander of Alexandria himself uses the

"Ibid. 14. 15(46). 54 1 6(4 6 ).

55Marginal note in loc. 56See above, pp.]J, 35 (frag. IV). Note the remarkable "resemblance to the statement of Asterius in Frag. XX (P.35) in Eusebius' insistence in his own Statement of Faith to the Council, 'the Father truly Father and the Son truly Son and the Holy Spirit truly Holy Spirit'.

166

57S ee the expose of ass ius, manifesdy Sabellian ideas in G. S. M. Walker 'Ossius of Cordova and the Nicene Faith' 3 16--19. The statement in the doctrinal manifesto of the recent Council of Antioch that the Son is the image of the hypostasis of the

Father ~o7s not necessarily commit its framers to the view that there is only one "ypostaSlS In the Godhead. and anyway. the word is not quite certain. See above, p.149·

The Origins

The Council of Nicaea

expression 'the natures which-were two in hypostases' 58 in his Letter to Alexander of Thessalonica. He cannot possibly have used the word hypostasis to mean both 'substance' and 'Person' in the course of the same letter. It is much more likely that· to the Easterners this highly equivocal expression meant that the Son came from the Father's 'Person' because it was as Father that he begets the Son but also that the Son was not of a different nature (to use Alexander's term) or subsrance from the Father. They could not have intended to deny the existence of three distinct hypostases. Only by such an interpretation can this anathema be exculpated from manifest heresy. But, however interpreted. it was and was for long to remain a fruitful source of misunderstanding. It might be taken to mean that hypostasis and ousia were different words for the same thing, i.e. substance. But the word 'or' does not favour this view; the Creed had already used the word ousia for •substance' without producing hypostasis as a synonym for it. However we regard it, the Creed produced by the Council ofNicaea was a mine of potential confusion and consequently most unlikely to be a means of ending the Arian Controversy. It is significant that when Athanasius comes much later to quote N in his polemical writing, he slurs over this equivocal expression. 59 Gregory of Elvira does not reproduce the term exactly and several early Latin translations render it as substatltia vel essentia, which evades the difficulty.-o Not many who have written upon the subject of the Creed of Nicaea have observed this serious difficulty presented by it. 61

The debate upon the policy and purpose behind the doctrinal decisions of Nicaea, has, however, been lively, and in particular the question of who proposed the term homoousion. The view that it was Ossius who was responsible for introducing homoousion into N has long been popular. The Western theological tradition which Ossius represented at the Council (if anyone did) was largely dependent upon Tertullian. Tertullian had certainly taught a doctrine in which Father, Son and Holy Spirit shared a common substance (in fact a kind of divine thinking invisible gas called pneuma or spiritus), and the . Father and the Son could therefore be described as unius substantiae, 'of one substance'. Though we can detect no Greek-speaking writer before Nicaea who unreservedly supports homoousion as applied to the Son, and none of the main Eastern participants in the Council had hitherto shown any inclination to use the term, it could· well be regarded as a Greek translation of or counterpart to TertulIian's 'of one substance' (unius substantiae). The theory runs that Ossius realized that .i~ this word were inserted in the Creed at Nicaea any Western SUSPICIOns of Eastern theology would be allayed and Arianism firmly rejected, and that a large school of thought in the East, variously deSCrIbed as 'moderate Origenists' (Stead) and' Asiatics' (Simonetti) ac~~pted the term in exchange for the Westerners accepting the do~trme of the eternal generation of the Son, which is implicit in

J

S8See above, p. 141. S9See above, p. 162. 60Gregory. De Fide 'Orth. 1(221). For the early Latin texts see Schwartz, 'Das Nicaenum' 54; but some preserve the distinction carefully reading ex alia subsistentia vel substantia, ibid. 50;- 56, 57. 61Gwatkin is silent about it, and so is Seeberg (History of Doctrines 217), who blandly translates it as meaning 'from another person or being'. Prestige CPT 177 in a rather ambiguous statement appears to assume that here ousia = hypostasis = 'person', but does not seem to realize what confusion such an identification must create in N. Boularand evades the difficulty by assuming that here hypostasis means 'substance', and adds the unlikely theory that when Arius spoke of three hypostases he meant three dissimilar ousia; (substances), L' Heresie 76. Loafs 'Arianismus' (17) sees the ambiguity and notes it. Stead. who discusses the subject in Divine Substance 239-42, concludes that the anathema was not intended to deny the existence of three hypostases (which he thinks' almost everybody recognized) nor to establish the equality of the Son's hypostasis, but to' reinforce the asseveration of ek tes ousias and homoousion that the Son's source was not from outside the Father, but he does not comment upon the inevitable confusion arising from the anathema. Simonetti (Stud; 42.166, 168 and Crisi 136 n 6) fu11y recognizes

168

N.62

The theory that N can be accounted for as the result of a victory of Western theology has been considerably damaged by recent studies of the subject. In the first place, the Latin documents which contain N the ambiguity of the anathema and the disastrous confusion which it created. Person Mode of Decision-Making 102-4 wen acknowledges the ambiguity in the anathema. Even as. late as 376 or after, Epiphanius (Panarion 69.57.1(204» can treat hypostaSis and OUsla as synonymous terms. . 62Neither Stead nor Simonetti can be numbered among the favourers of this the~ry, t~ough they supply the terms to describe the Easterners who allied with OSSIUS to Ihtroduce h.omoousi~n on th~s ::iew. ,Its chief,fav~:>u:ers are Harnack (History of Dogma IV 5<>--9); Loofs (Das Nlcanum 80-1; Anamsmus' 14-15); Schwarz (~esamm. Schr .. III.7(182» and, ~ith a di~erence, Kraft (,OMOOYl:IOI' 9-13). Kraft thmks that O~SlUs was representmg the blShop of Rome, a theory which renders the prese~ce of~mcentius and Victor at the Council superfluous, and for which there is very ltttl~ eVidence. He also believes. on the authority of the Oralio ad Sanctos, that Constantme w~s welJ versed in theology and philosophy and that he knew exactly what he was. dOing when he sup~o.rted Ossius in insistin? on homoousion. Quite apart from t~e difficulty o~ ~etermtnmg where Constantine might have gained his theologIcal educatIOn, It IS by no means certain that the Oratio ad Sanctos is from his hand.

169

The Origins

The Council of Nicaea

or parts of it do not for the most part translate homoousion by unius substantiae nor by consubstantialis, but usually leave the Greek terms

difficult in th~ light o~ theological discussions which took place prior to the Council to believe that the ambiguity was accidental. '65

transliterated into Latin. Then, the evidence for strong Western

influence is lacking. Very few Western bishops took the trouble to attend the Council. The Eastern Church was always the pioneer and leader in theological movements in the early Church. It is well known that Hilary, for instance, never really understood the Arian

The role of the Emperor Constantine in the Council has been

variously interp~eted. If v.:e are to take Eusebius' words au pied de la

lettre, Constantme dommated all the proceedings, and indeed Schwartz represented him as playing off one school of opinion

Controversy till he reached the East as a result of being exiled. The

agamst another to gam the maxImum politiCal advantage for the

Westerners at the Council represented a tiny minority, and Ossius

Emperor, a Bismarck at the making of the Treaty of Berlin. As we have. seen, Kr~ft tho~ght of him as a well-educated theologian gUldmg the phIlosophICa~ deliberations to where he knew the ground would be safest. Certamly Constantine played some part, and

can hardly have been a theological agmen in ipso. He represented the policy of Constantine and he had been educated in the West, but he did not necessarily represent Western theology. His strength lay in the fact that he had been a confessor in the Diocletian persecution, and he was known to be supported by the Emperor. Recent studies on the word homoousios have tended to show, not that it can be reduced to two meanings, one identifying two ousiai as one, and the other conveying a 'generic' sense of'God-stu1f (Loofs), but that it was of a much looser, more flexible, indeed less specific and therefore less controversial significance. 63 Etisebius can hardly be completely

wrong when he says that Constantine ensured that the word should be glossed (so as to make it less offensive to Arians).64 Eusebius.

though he does not like it, finds it a less bitter pill to swallow than the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, which he simply sidesteps. It is a fact which has often been remarked upon that for nearly twenty years after Nicaea nobody mentions homoousios. not even Athanasius. This may be because it was much less significant

than either later historians of the ancient Chui:ch or modem scholars thought that it was. Person says of it: 'As it stands, the homoousios can be read either as an affirmation of the divine unity or as an affirmation of the equal deity of the Son, and it is

6JForthese ideas, see Stead' "Homoousios" dans!a Pensee d'Athanasius' (PTAA, 23]-47) and Divine Substance Cap. VIII, 190-221, and passim; Simonetti, Crisi 88-95; Person, Mode of Decision-Making 58-115; Ritter, 'Arianism us' 705-6 and 717 n 10 and Frauke Dinsen, Homoousios. Ritter puts forward the interesting theory that it was deliberately Sabellian, intending to recognize only one hypostasiS (= 'Person') in God. and thac this was the doctrine ofOssius and of Constantine. But we must envisage an overwhelming abandonment of traditional positions in the face of imperial pressure to picture this state of affairs, and there is no need to do trus. 64See above. p. 165.

perhaps at one or two ~ntlcal ~oments a decisive part, intervening to

support some suggestion which he thought likely to bring about re~onctlatl?n among the contending parties. But it is going too far to thmk of hIm as dominating the debates of the Council, either for polItIcal ~r for theological ends. He had not shown himself a great

dlplom~tlst In the affaIr of the Donatist Controversy, where at least all_ ~artles .were s~eaking his native language. It is unrealistic to

e~vISage him at N~~aea as a kind of Talleyrand at the Congress of :'I~nna. SImonetti estImates the Nicene Council as a temporary allIance for the defeat of Arianism between the tradition of Alexandria led by Alexander and 'Asiatic' circles (i.e. Eustathius, Marcellus) ,:,h?se thought was at the opposite pole to that of Arius. The OngemstlC school, he thinks, had split up, the radicals joining the An.ns, the moderates opposing them; and the moderates had the support of Ossius. This coalition was temporarily highly successful, capable ofovercommg the reluctance of the influential Eusebius of Caesarea (who ab iniuo was in a vulnerable position), and completely crushIng Arius. The 'Asiatics' were rootedly opposed to the thought of Ongen, and were able to mclude m N a hint of opposition to the three hypostases theory. It was a short-lived victory, allowed by Alexander who accepted VIrtual Sabellianism in order to ensure the defeat of ~namsm, but the price which he paid was too high. It was a

PyrrhIC vIctory.

h 65 ~ode of Deci7ion-Making 105· Chadwick ('Council ofNicaea' 175 n

II) believes was ambIguous, but n?t intentionally so. But Schwartz is (as too often) extravagant when he charactenzes homoousion as 'ein unverstandenes urn nicht zu sag~, unverstandlic~es ScW.agwort' (Gesamm. Schr. I1I.8.2I6): the h;moousion was not SImply a Greek tnvocatlon to call fools into a circle 66Crisi 94-5. .

t at

170 171

The Origins

The Council of Nicaea

The evidence available does not admit of our forming ingenious. elaborate and highly nuanced theories about the Council ofNicaea. Reconstructing the course of the Council is/an interesting but ~ather futile pastime. It is improbable that all the people who had prevlOusly seen nothing offensive in the doctrines of Arius should have surrendered tamely to an openly Sabellian creed. It is improbable that the heirs of any side of Origen's thought should have abandoned a doctrine of three hypostases. As N does not openly mention the eternal generation of the Son, so it does not openly declare that there is only one hypostasis in the Godhead. The homoousion was probably not a flag to be nailed to the masthead, a word round which selfconscious theological schools of thought could rally. But it was an apotropaic formula for resisting Arianism. It is obvious that the result was intended to condemn the views of Arius. It is likely that at one point at least Constantine intervened <;lecisively. It is going too far to say that N is a clearly SabeIlian document. It is anti-Arian but (perhaps owing to the intervention of Constantine) not e1iminatingly so. Eustathius appears to think that it did not go far enough in an antiArian direction. It is exceeding the evidence to represent the Council as a total victory for the anti-Origenist opponents of the doctrine of three hypostases. It was more like a drawn battle.

the only former favourer of Arius to do this. Arius too was banished by Constantine, probably to IIIyria. Shortly after the Council (Philostorgius (/.10) says three months), Eusebius ofNicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea were also banished by Constantine. Sozomenus says that this was because they signed N but would not agree to the sentence on Arius,71 but (as we shall see) Constantine (who ought to know) declares that their fault was to have received and communicated with some Arian presbyters in Nicomedia. Constantine wrote several extant letters directly after the CoUncil ofNicaea, one to the Church of Alexandria (Opitz, Urk.1II No. 25), one to all the churches about fixing the date of Easter (Urk. III No. 26), and one to the Church of Nicomedia (Urk. III NO.27(5 8-62». This last letter tells us of the fate of Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis ofNicaea. The letter begins with a series of theological commonplaces couched in language so cloudy and vague that it must have given the people ofNicomedia considerable trouble to understand it.72 The Emperor next launches into a violent attack on Eusebius of Nicomedia, which we have already had occasion to 73 notice. Finally Constantine reveals what is the immediate cause of his wrath. Eusebius and Theognis have recently received and shown hospitality and friendship to some Alexandrians of the Arian allegiance. The two bishops have in consequence been banished.7.

4. The Immediate Repercussions of the Council Secundus ofPtolemais and Theonas ofMarmarike, both Libyan sees, refused to sign N, \Vere deposed by the Council and exiled by Constantine. Arianism was strong in Libya. 67 Philostorgius says that they bitterly reproached Eusebius of Nicomedia as they left the Council. 68 They were both restored to their sees by Constantine at some time impossible to fix accurately but before 335. 69 Sozomenus says that the party ofEusebius ofNicomedia and Theognis ofNicaea at some time after Nicaea issued and circulated a statement explaining 'in black and white' (tlti p~tai<; tpJ.l~v.{a,<;) in what sense they accepted the terms ofN.70 Eusebius of Caesarea was not apparently 67See Chadwick 'Faith and Order at the Council of Nicaea' 175-9, 189-91, 192-5· '68HE 1.10. 69Philostorgius HE 1.10; Athanasius Apol. Sec. 84. They attended the dedication ceremonies at Jerusalem in 33S. 70Sozomenus HE 11.32.7, 8; cf. Chadwick op. cit. 173.

172

71 HE .1.21.3, 4· Schwartz thought that Arius was not immediately exiled to IIlyna but detamed by the Emperor in Nicomedia. Sozomenus also says that the Council forbade Arius to return to Alexandria. But could any ecclesiastica1 Council at this stage ~xercise suc~ power? Phi~ostorgius (1.10, according to Nicetas the Treasurer, see Bldez p . .J lIme 16) mentIons Illyna as the place of Arius' exile. No other historian giv~s the place. See Simonetti Crisi 87 n 29. Philostorgius' statement (HE 1.8) that Eusebius ofNicomedia and Theognis ofNicaea accepted the homoousion in t~e sense of homoiousion (of like ousia) on the advice of Constantia, Constantine's Sister, W.1S accepted by Loofs ('Ananismus' IS). But is it even sure that Constantia was alive by then? 72 1 - 5 (S8-g); but the language does not amount to an endorsement of Sabellianism. . 736--8(59); see above p. 28. 74 r 5, 16(62). Opitz thought that Arius was among them, and followed Schwartz in concluding that Arius (and presumabJy the friends ofhis who had been welcomed by the two bishops). were detained by the Emperor for some time in Nicomedia (~ote in Ioc.). But Philostorgius says that Anus was exiled to Illyria (HE 1.9), and it is dl~.cult ~o see what purpose Constantine would have had in detaining Arius while exdmg hiS supporters. Besides, Constantine has just mentioned Anus in the letter in another c?ntext (~3(6I», and surely would have said so had Anus been among the AlexandrIans receIved by the two bishops. Philostorgius says that they were sent to Gaul (HE II.I). At about the same time Constantine wrote a short and brutal letter

173

The Origins

The Council of Nicaea

There is also extant a Letter from the Council of Nicaea to the ~hurch ~f Alexandria informing them of what had been transacte at t e Council: the production ofN; J:he arrangements about ~~h:e~!t~I~~

f the Melitians' the decisions about the calculatIOn

0

~aster.'5 It is in;eresting to note that this letter ass~7'es t~ Nt;a:

condemned the view that 'the Son of God IS capa e 0 a m l m . own. Wl'11' , 76 presuma either evil or goodness by hiS . , bl y an 1 inter retation of the anathema against behevmg. that he IS alterab e or ctan eable'. The arrangements for the reception of the .Mehtlans g 1·teate d an d would obviously demand difficult declSlons are camp N' m a large number of different cases." Melitius had been present ~t. lca~a and had there handed Alexander a memorandum contammg t e names 0 f 5ome Melitian bishop5 and presbyters; they consututed a considerable number.'s .h h b· t Though the Melitian dispute was ~ot concer:ned

Wl,t

t e su ~e~

of the Arian controversy, nor with any doctn~al ~o~n~ at a1I'e 1::~ involved with one topic which must be const . ere . e ore w finished with the immediate results of the CounClI ofNlcaea, a~d ~hat is whether a second session of this Council ever took plac~. . t ~rs~ si~ht this seems a fantastic suggestion, because no ec~ eSlast~a

historian in the ancient world mentions such an e~ent an no ot e:

document directly refers to it as such. But the eVidence for such theory is stronger than appears at first glance.'9 Atha~aS1~ ~ t he A 010 ia Secunda 59.1--6(139, 140) recounts how t e. e ltlans involved in the Arian Controversy. When the Anan heresy arose, the Council of Nic~ea took ~lace:. the Anans were excommunicated but the Melitlans reconciled. FIve months had not et assed and the blessed Alexander died',s. and he goes on to say ihat the Melitians, like dogs unable to forget their vomit, were

b:co~e

. . h'1m n at to thek policy Eusebius and to Theodotus of Laodlcea warmng . himitate(U III Noof28(63». ' f . . the same PUnts ment ,. . Theognis pam Incurrmg ) Sacra tes HE I. 9. 1-14' 7sOpitzon Urk. III0 NO.2](47-51; . ' Theodoret HE 1.9.2- 1 3.

3

8

76 (47-4 ). hoesu I b·~ecto fth eMelitian Controversy from this point onward see 77Forthew . . I

Barnard 'Athanasius and the MeJerlan Schism. . 78Athanasius Apol. Sec. 71-2, and see Barnard, op. cl~i ~f3-~ atkin SA 70' 79Several useful statements of the ~r~l~t~ ~~iea~~i~fo~~e' 6--9;' Barnard 5 History of Neo-Arianism 57-{).

~~~~~~~iu~:~~~~~ J.~~;~i~!IS8;~~~.2:~;~4; kopecek

Fullest and best of all i~ Simone!tl, em, I Il-Z4. i""~ 800 l51tOO yap Jttvu: JlllWC; 1tuPl1A90v, K
59.3(139)·

7

'AAt~av5po~

t&tEA.EUK£V,

troubling the churches from that time forward (i.e. from Alexander's death). The Index to the Festal Letters ofAthanasius dates the death of Alexander firmly to April 27th, 328. S1 Theodoret repeats this statement that Alexander died five months after the Council of Nicaea. 82 There is a curious statement in Eust;bius of Caesarea's Life of Constantine which is relevant to this topic. The fact that even after the Council ofNicaea strife continued in Egypt disturbed the Emperor, he says, but it did not anger him. Then: 'For instance he surrounded the Fathers (of the Council). or rather the prophets of God, with every honour and called them a second time (oell't'epov tKtlA.£l) and again (mIA-tV) acted patiently as a mediator to

the same people and agaio distinguished them by gifts, and he offered

('O~AOU) board and lodging in a letter and confirmed and put his seal

to the decisions of the synod. '83

Gelasius says that when Alexander died he had been bishop of Alexandria for 16 years, that is before the Council of Nicaea 9 years and one month and during the Council three years and 6 months and aft~rthe Council three years and five months. s, On any reckoning Gelasius' date for the death of Alexander must be mistaken, but it is surprising to find him calculating the length of the duration ofNicaea as\three years; he might be referring to the interval between the first and the second assembly of the Council. There is a Letter from two bishops who are not named but whom Socrates and Sozomenns identify as Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea. S5 It is a .very humble epistle. The bishops do not complain either of their condemnation nor of their exile, but say (2(65)) that they did not object to the homoousion, but to the anathemas, simply because they did 'not think that Arius deserved them, since they had had conversations with him and had corresponded with him. They accept docilely the judgment of the Council of Nicaea, but they wish to clear themselves of the charge of heresy (3(65). If Arius has been allowed back in order to explain himself, they think that they should be given the same opportunity (4(65)). The letter is not written to Constantine but to some unnamed bishops, who are asked to petition

Constantine for their recall. Sozomenus (HE II. 16.7) says that after 81S c hwartz Gesamm. Schr. III.7.189; Barnard op. cit. 3- 4. 18 18 821.26.1. 83VC IIl.23. 84HE III.I5.7. 8sOpitz Urk. III No. 31(65-6); Socrates·HE 1.14.2; Sozomenus HE II.16.3.

174 '75

The Council oj Nicaea

The Origins

this they were recalled and replaced in their sees. There is abo extant a letter of Arius and Euzoius from exile to Constantme petltlonmg for their return and submitting a quite innocuous creed whic~ touches upon none of the points of the controversy. 86 An~ there IS a sh~rt letter of Constantine to Arius full of sweetness and hght summonmg him to court so that, reconciled to the Emperor, he may return to ~IS native country.87 There are extracts from a letter fro~ Cons.tantme to Alexander informing him that Arius has come to him at hIS court and satisfied him about his orthodoxy and his acceptance of the decisions of the Council of Nicaea. 88 And finally there is evidence from a letter which Constantine sent to Arius several years later, which can be securely dated to the year 333. 89 In this Arius, who has written a letter to the Emperor parts of which Constantine quotes in his letter, uses expressions which can only make sense if we assume that he has been vindicated or restored some time ago by some ecclesiastical authority, that he is living in or near Alexandria, but that he has been refused re-admission to communion by the bishop of Alexandria.9o All this evidence provides a strong cumulative case for concluding that either a second session of the Council of Nicaea took place or some other official council at which Arius, on subscribing to the creed N, was formally re-communicated and reconciled (though not by the see of Alexandria), and that this council or councils took place at latest by p8. There could have been one council to restore Arius and a later one to reconcile EuseblUs and Theogms. That the Council of Nicaea continued in continuous session from 325 to 328 is of course out of the question. The evidence from Athanasius alone can be explained awa y by assuming that the process of reconciling the Melitians took a long time, from 325 to 327, and It was not qUIte five months after the end of this process that Alexander died. But the rest of the evidence (even if we assume that Theodoret is dependent on Athanasius) presents a formidable difficulty. To assume that for Athanasius the reconciliation of the Melitians and the end of the 86Urk. III No. 30(64). Socrates 1.2.6.2.. 87Urk. III No. 29(63): Socrates HE 1.25.7. . . . 88Urk. III NO.32(66); Gelasius HE III.IS.I. The reClple~t of this .co~ld be Alexander of Byzantium/Constantinople, but this seems unlikely. OPitz In loco refers it to the bishop of Alexandria. 89Urk. III No. 34(69-75); in the dossier attached to Athanasius' De Decretis, and Gelasius HE 1II.19.Iff. Schwartz is mistaken in saying (Gessamm. Schr. 111.3(75,7 6) that Socrates and Sozomenus quote this letter.

"5(69), 9, 10, II (70).

Nicene Council were two distinct events separated by years is a large assumption. Theodoret either assumed that they were the same event, or had separate information to the effect that Alexander died (in 328) five months after the Council of Nicaea. Philostorgius says that after three years in exile Eusebius ofNicomedia and Theognis of N Icaea were recalled by Constantine and a council was held at Nicomedia which declared Alexander of Alexandria deposed (and also Eustathms of AntIoch). 9. Philostorgius is a more than usually u?rehable hlstonan, preserved only in selections made by those who vIOlendy repudiated his views. But his council of Nicomedia may have taken place. The question has divided scholars. Schwartz, of course, and Opitz accepted ~ha~ a second session of the Council of Nicaea took place, a?d on thIS Side can be mustered the names of Seeck, Stein, Caspar, d Ales and Amann. But Bardy himself rejected it at the cost of regarding as inauthentic the humble letter ofEusebi~s ofNicomedia and Theognis. 92 In 1974 Martin could declare that almost nobody behev~s ,m a se~on~ ~ession o.f Nicaea. 93 Grillmeier thought that Eusebms word agam ("'IAlV) 10 the passage in his Life oJConstantine could be taken as referring to a re-convening of a council ofEgyptian b,l~hops. 94 Barnes In 1981 thought that a 'reconvening' of the Ciluncil ofNlcaea was an actual council held in Nicomedia in 327.9S S"lrnonettl'96 cannot ag.ree that the Council ofNicaea was in any sense re-assembled. He beheves that another General Council was not necessary to rehabilitate Arius, Eusebius ofNicomedia and Theognis. The doctrine adopted at Nicaea was not abandoned, but what took place was a readmission of individuals on their making fairly easy doctrmal declarations, and this required no more than a minor local council of a few bishops, perhaps at Nicaea or Nicomedia. The H.7. Earlier ~H.r) Phik~storgius had made the extraordinary statement that after N lcaea Constantine had exiled the adherents ofEusebius ofNicomedia because they had si~ned N with their tongue in their cheek, had recalled Secundus and his friends had clrcula~ed documents everywhere attacking the homoousion and commendin~ the heterouslon (!); that Alexander of Alexandria had accepted these documents and had become reconciled to the Arians, out offear of the Emperor's displeasure but lat~r ?ad r.etu.med t? his former views and again broke with Arius and his p~rty. ThiS IS qUIte IncredIble. 2 9 S 0 Bardy Lucien d'Antioche 306- 13. 93< Athanase et Ies Melitiens' in PTAA 37, n 13. 4 9 CCT 255. s 9 Constantine and Eusebius 229. 91

,

96Crisj 120-4.

177

The Origins authenticity of the humble letter of the two bishops need not be impugned. In dealing with D,onatists Constantine had previously exiled bishops and afterwards recalled them for a parley. Arius therefore was recalled on the quiet and reinstated in his former position by a kind of motu proprio of Constantine (though presumably he was never admitted to communion by the see of Alexandria).

PART II

Simonetti therefore reconstructs the succession of events thus: 327-328

Constantine recalls Acius from exile (probably to Nicomedia) by means of a small council of bishops brought together at Nicaea or Nicomedia, near the court.

328

Arius had made an innocuous profession of faith, hut his recall did not invalidate the conderruiation of his doctrine at Nicaea in 325. Eusebius and Theognis on hearing of this press their case with the bishops who had readmitted Acius. They are recalled from exile and reinstated in their sees. Constantine now writes to Alexander requiring him to readmit Acius. Alexander's death precludes his answering. When Athanasius succeeds, Constantine instigates Eusebius of Nicaea to request Alexandria for Arius' acceptance, with no result.

This, though not certain, is the most plausible reconstruction. It is highly likely that Constantine spent the years immediately after the Council of Nicaea trying to patch things up. The exile of Eusebius and Theognis is certain. It is equally certain that by about 328 Eusebius was back in Nicomedia, ready to take charge of a party which accepted the Creed of Nicaea but wished to limit its significance as far as possible. As far as outward appearances went, the Arian Controversy was over. But the search for the Christian doctrine of God was by no means finished.

Period of Confusion

7 Semantic Confusion I.

Hypostasis and Ousia

We have already had occasion to note that considerable confusion existed about the use of the terms hypostasis and ousia at the period when the Arian Controversy broke out. The surprise of Ossius at the news that not only did Eusebius of Cae sarea believe in two ousiai, but that Narcissus of Neronias believed in three,l and the ambiguous anathema in N against those who believe that the· Son is 'from another hypostasis or ousia than the Father'2 are examples of this unfortunate semantic misunderstanding. The search for the Christian doctrine of God in the fourth century was in fact complicated and exasperated by semantic confusion, so that people holding different views were using the same words as those who opposed them, but, unawares, giving them different meanings from those applied to them by those opponents. It was also prolonged and entangled by the involvement in the dispute of issues concerning ecclesiastical jurisdiction and ecclesiastical law which had no intrinsic connection with the orjginal and really important subject of the dispute. This last we shall begin to look at in the next chapter but one. But here we shall examine some examples of the semantic muddle, that is, unrealized ambiguity in the use of words. It has already been made clear that for many people at the beginning of the fourth century the word hypostasis and the word ousia had pretty well the same meaning. They did not mean, and should not be translated, 'person' and 'substance', as they were !,sed when at last the confusion was cleared up and these two distinct meanings were permanently attached to these words in theology which dealt with the doctrine of God. In fact for most (but not all) I See above. pp. ISO-I. 2See above, pp. 167-8.

lSI

Period of Confusion

Semantic Confusion

writers in Greek at the beginning of the controversy and for a long time after it had begun, there was no single agreed word available and widely used for what God is as Three in distinction fro~ what he i~ as One. All pre-Nicenes, Sellers tells us, found. difficulty m express~g the Son's personality.3 The word hypostasis IS virtually unknown m Classical Greek in its philosophical sense. It first emerges prommently in a philosophical sense with the Stoic Posidonius (ob. 50 B.C.), and later became a key-word in Platonism. It meant on the whole 'realization turning into appearance', but with this distinction that to Stoics each thing counted as non-existent before its realization, whereas to the Platonists (that is the neo-Platonists), the ground of the existence of each thing before its realization is 'more than existing'.4 The word occurs five times in the New Testament, at 2 Cor. 9:4 and II:I7, where it means 'confidence' (i.e. psychological support), at Hebrews 1:3, where it denotes God's being (NEB) or nature (RSV,JB), 3:14, where it again means 'confidence', and II:I where it means the assurance (RSV, 'what gives substance to' NEB, 'guarantee' JB) of what we hope for, again with the idea of ' support' prominent. The only strictly theological use is that of Hebrews 1:3, where the Son is described as 'the impression of the nature' of God. The word also occurs twenty times in the LXX, but only one of them can be regarded as theologically significant, even though several Christian writers of the fourth century tried to make out that they all were so. At Wisdom 16:21 the writer speaks of God's hypostasis, meaning his nature; and no doubt this is why Hebrews uses the term 'impression of his nature' (xapmm'tp tii~ 6ltoO"tao"EQ)~ aotoii). 5 Prestige points out that a double meaning of hypostasis can be found according as its significance is derived from the middle voice of the cognate verb, hyphistemi, or from the active voice of the verb. In the former case it means that which underlies (which could suggest 'substance'), and in the latter that which gives support (which would suggest

individual entity). 6 He thinks that the second sense is the normal one in the theological discourse of Our period, so that the emphasis came to be laid not on content but on individuality, whereas 'ousia means a single object of which the individuality is disclosed by means of internal analysis'. 7 But we must remember that for at least the first halfofthe period 318-381, and in some cases considerably later, ousia and hypostasis are used as virtual synonyms, not in one sense only but m two. Prestige is always apt, in his eagerness to see a continuous inviolate tradition of Trinitarian orthodoxy, to read later meanings, ~nd later harmonizations, into earlier texts. Stead notes that hypostasis IS used by some writers who appear deliberately to avoid the word ousia, though they would regard the words as synonymous (for mstance Alexander o~ Alexandria and Cyril of Jerusalem), because ousla does not occur m the Bible, whereas hypostasis does.8 Stead has devoted a comprehensive treatise to the concept of 'substance' (ousia) in his book, Divine Substance. The word has a wide variety of meanings: existence, category or status, substance stuff or material, form, definition, truth. 9 The expression 'beyo~d ousia' (tltEKElVa t~~ oOO"ia<;) is found often, but in several different meanings, when apphed to God, beyond material substance, beyond created (and . ~nge~oc) substance, beyond intelligible substance, beyond Some wnters do of course find it necessary or defimtlon. convem~nt I ~o describe God as ousia, among them Origen and AthanaslUs. Later m the fourth century It became conventional to distinguish God's substance, ousia, what he is in himself and his 'energies', that is God as we experience and meet him, and to hold that the first is unknowable to us, but not, of course the second. This was the alternative taken when the practice of distinguishing the Logos or Son as that whIch can experience multiplicity and change in the Godhead from the simple immutable Father was seen to be unsatisfactory.12 It was also thought possible to distinguish the

JEustatlJius of Antioch, 30. . 4'Mehr als seiend', Ritter' Arianismus·. 694. to whom this account of hypostasis In late Greek philosophy is due. But see also H. Dorrie lm6O"taO'1.C; Wort- un,d Bedeutungsgeschiehte (Gottingen 1955). See below, p. 862 n 170 for a comment on thiS work. 5The other passages in the O.T. are Deut 1:12; 1I:6;jud 6:4; Ruth 1:12; I Sam . 1):21,23; 14:4; job 22:20; Ps 39(38): 6(5); 69(68): 3(2); 89(88): 48(47); 139(138): 15; Jer 10:17; 23:22; Ezek 19:5; 26:11; 43:1 I and Nahum 2:8(7). Dorrie has examined the use of this word in the LXX, op. cit. 45--6.

6GPT 162; .th~ whole pas~age. 162-,]6, is informative on the subject. See also Lamp,e A Patnst" Greek ~exlCon sub Voe., and especially D4(145 8). 'IbId. 168, 169, qu.atattan from 168. Prestige (ibid. Intrad. XXIX) rejects the

theory orHamack (HIStory o/Dogma IV.83) that hypostasis was ever used to express a ~ense mIdway between "person" and "attribute". inclining to the former'. and this

Idea seems today to be generally discarded. 8 Divine Substance 160-1 . 'Ibid. 133-56. 1°161.

T

Semantic Confusion

Period of Confusion substance of-God, in the Aristotelian tradition, from his propertie~, which are distinct from the substance but invariable, and from hIS accidents which are distinct and variable, though some (e.g. Athanasi~s and many Arians as weill believed chac God's substance was without accidents. 13 Terrullian at the turn of the second to the third centuries had already used the Latin word substantia (substance) of God and used it in the most direct and literal way. For hIm God consist~ of spirit (spiritus), a kind of thinking gas. God therefore had a body and indeed was located at the o~ter ?oundanes of spa~e. He IS apparently immeasurable but not mfimte. It w.a~ possI.ble f~r Tertullian to think of Father, Son, and Holy Spmt shanng thIS substance, so that the-relationship of the Three is, in a highly r.efmed sense, corporeal. His metaphysic (if that is the right word for It) v.: as borrowed directly from Stoicism. 14 He can use the expressIon UnlUS substantiae ('of one substance'). This has led some scholars to see Tertullian as an exponent of Nicene orthodoxy before NIcaea, and even to claim that the West, represented by TertullIan, Novattan and Dionysius of Rome, had alway~ upheld the consu~sta?tiality ofthe Son. But this is a far from plausIble theory. Tertulhan s matertahsm is, when seen at all closely, a totally different thing from any Ideas of ousia or homoousios canvassed during the fourth century. HIS conception of substance would have struck most Eastern theolo~I~s as possessing precisely those faults whIch made many of them reCOIl from the use of the word homoousios. It Imphed a corporeal conception of God. Tertullian may well h.ave supplied the West w~th its Trinitarian vocabulary; he certamly dId not supply the East WIth its Trinitarian theology. IS The state of affairs as regards the use of hypostasis and ousia at the outset of the search for the doctrine of God occasioned by the Arian Controversy can therefore be stated thus: several alternative ways of treating these terms were prevalent. They could be regarded as synonymous and used either to describe what God is as, Three what he is 'as One; or hypostasis could be used to descrtbe the Pers.ons of the Godhead and ousia either ignored or rejected; or hypostasIs could be used for 'distinct existence' and ousia for 'nature'; or a general state of

0;

indecision and uncertainty as to how either of them should be used could exist in a writer's mind. We can fmd examples of all these alternatives. Origen certainly did not apply the word homoousios to the Son and did not teach that the Son is 'from the ousia' of the Father. 10 He used hypostasis and ousia freely as interchangeable terms to describe the Son's distinct reality within the Godhead,I7 but he did not usually employ ousia to describe the substance of God. He taught that there were three hypostases within the Godhead. Ritter indeed thinks that Origen must have contributed to the doctrine found in Plotinus of three hypostases flowing from the Godhead without diminishingit. I8 Ifwe are to believe Athanasius, Dionysius of Rome writing in Greek against Sabellianism said that it is wrong to divide the divine monarchy 'into three sorts of potentiality and separated hypostases and three Godheads'; people who hold this in effect produce three gods and 'three hypostases alien to each other entirely separated'.lo Gregory Thaumaturgus could describe the Godhead as 'three in aspect but one in substance' (hypostasis).2o Pierius had apparently referred to the Father and the Son as two ousiai rather than two hypostases. 21 Eusebius of Caesarea appears to accept the equation of hypostasis and ousia in the anathema ofN quite readily in his explanation of why he accepted that creed. 22 He uses ousia to mean substance several times in the course of the same explanation, and, as we have seen, was, at least before the Council ofNicaea, accustomed to regard the Son as the ei~n (mirror) or osme (perfume) of the Father's ousia. Eusebius of Nicomedia, as quoted by Marcellus (who is being quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea) said, concerning the relation of the Son to the Father, 'the image and that of which it is the image are not of course thought of as one and the same thing; but there are two ousiai and two facts (or 16S ee above, p. 68. See also Simonetti Crisi 91 for a useful treatment of this point. t7See above, pp.66-67. Further examples in Bethune-Baker, The Meaning of Homoousios 77-8. ls
19De Decretis 26.1-'7 (21-23), quotation from 2 and 3(23). 20t1ttv611~ ).tEv tpeir;. tmoo'tao£l at EV, (if they indeed be Gregory's words).' Basil

Epp

210.5.

215ee above, P.79. Photius Bibliotheca II9; cf. Prestige CPT 192.

13 164--6.

. 175-80. 15Neither Bethune-Baker (The Meaning of Homoousios, 15-23). nor P~est1ge (CPT 220-1) appreciate this. They are both preoccupied with the relatlOn of Tertullian's vocabulary to Roman legal terms. 14

IS

"Opi'z Urk.1II No. 22 .. 13(46) (Theodore, HE 1.12.13). See above pp. 165-6. For examples of Eusebius both equating hypostasis and ousia and using ousia to mean nature, see Hanson 'Did Origen apply the word Homoousios to the Son?' in Studies in Christian Antiquity, 53-'70.

Period of Confusion

Semantic Confusion

"things", ltpaY/lata) and two powyrs, just as there are so many different names for them'. 23 Alexander of Alexandria is no less ambiguous in his use of terms than others. He does not use the word ousia, but instead uses hypostasis for both 'Person' and 'substance', or, to be more accurate, he does not make a distinction between hypostasis = 'Person' and hypostasis= 'substance'. When he quotes Hebrews 1:3, 'impression of the hypostasis' (nature, substance), he cannot think that the Son is an impression of the Father as Father. 24 He can also say that the Lord 'does not reveal that natures which are two in hypostasis are one', 25 and on several occasions he uses hypostasis to mean the (distinct) existence of the Son.26 We have already seen that Arius is violently opposed to using homoousios, and spoke readily of the hypostases of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 27 He did not object to using the word ousia of God, however. In Constantine's Letter to Arius of 333 he quotes Arius as saying that there is 'One God .. .' and 'an unbeginning and unending Logos of his ousia'.28 Athanasius describes him as teaching that 'the Logos is alien and unlike in all respects to the Father's ousia and propriety' (llhot1]tOC;).29 And in De Synodis 15 Athanasius quotes Arius as saying that 'the Father is alien in ousia to the Son' and that the Son does not know his own ousia, as well as asserting that the Son 'has nothing in the structure (hypostasis) of his propriety (i.e. that wnich is peculiar to him) that is peculiar (iOlOV) to God' and that the hypostases of Father and Son are 'incommunicable' (aVElt(/lt1CtOl taUt01C;). Boularand accuses Arius of confusing 'substance' and 'Person'30 and of teaching three dissimilar ousiai

when he said that the hypostases were incommunicable. 31 Ifhe did, he was certainly not alone in this error. But in fact it seems likely that he was one of the few during this period who did not confuse the two. No doubt he believed that the Father and the Son were of unlike substance, but he did not say so directly. He said instead that their hypostases, distinct individual realities, were different in kind and in rank. Asterius certainly taught that the Father and the Son were distinct and different in their hypostases,32 that the Son is not Son 'because of the peculiarity of the ousia' (iOlOv tfjc; ouainc;);33 he equates ousia and physis (nature);34 he said that there were three hypostases. 3s But he also described the Son as 'the exact image of the ousia and counsel and glory and power' of the Father. 36 Once again we find a writer who clearly did not confuse ousia and hypostasis even though he thought that the resemblance of the Son to the Father was closer than Arius conceived. We can see therefore that the statement of Bethune-Baker that it was not till the Council of Alexandria in 362 that anyone regularly regarded hypostasis as anything more than a synonym for ousia is not borne out by the facts. 37 It is however likely that when Narcissus ofNeronias at the Council of Antioch in 325 declared to Ossius that he believed in three ousiai he was equating ousia with hypostasis. 38 If we can trust the translation, the doctrinal statement of the Council of Antioch of 325 said that the Son was the image of the Father as Father. 39 It in fact is an echo of Heb, 1:3 wh&e the Son is described as the impression (character) of the Father's hypostasis and this must mean his nature. 40 Ossius, who was one of those responsible for this doctrinal manifesto, must have been sorely puzzled by the intricacies of Greek theological terms. He

23Eusehius of Caesarea Contra Marcellum 1.4.26(72). This use of pragmata to denote whatlater theology was to call the 'Persons' of the Trinity can be found elsewhere; cc. Origen Contra Celsum 8.12 6Vta a60 t'ij tmOataaEl 1tpaYIlUtU, and Alexander of Alexandria Urk. III No. 14. IS(22). dx61pl
L

"Ibid. 76. "Bardy, Lucien frags. XXVlI(352), XXVI1l(3S2), XXX(3S2); cf. Kopecek History 56. "Frag. IX(l4S). 34Frag. XI(l4S). 3SFrag. XXIX(3S2). '·Frag. XXI(349). 37The Meaning oj Homoousios 78-g. Prestige realized this (CPT 187), but it is doubtful whether he was correct in saying that to speak of three ousiai always sounded unnatural (ibid. 188). 38See above, pp. ISO-I. 39S ee above. p. 149. Even if the original word was prosopon, this is a remarkable statement. 4°Opitz Urk. III No. 18. I I (39). Kel1y in his translation or'the doctrinal statement takes the word to mean 'substance' and so translates it (Early Christian Creeds

20!i-IO).

Semantic Confusion

Period of Confusion was evidently surprised and shocked at hearing that Eusebius of Caesarea believed in two, and Narcissus in three, ousiai, which suggests that he thought that ousia should mean 'substance' or 'nature'. At Antioch he subscribed to a manifesto which uses hypostasis to mean 'substance' or 'nature'; hewas shortly to subscrib~ to N, which apparently (but not qUite certamly) Identifies hypostas~s and ousia; and, as we shall see'" he was eighteen years later to put his signature to a document which proclaimed that there was only one hypostasis in God. . . The Creed of Nicaea itself made three statements mvolvmg the word ousia. It declared that the Son was 'from the ousia' (eK ouain,) of the Father. It said that he was homoousios with the Father, and it condemned those who taught that the Son was 'of a different hypostasis or ousia from the Father'. The subject of homoousios will be dealt with a little later. 42 The claim that the Son was eK ouain, (from the ousia) of the Father is an interesting one. Origen had rejected it.43 According to Athanasius (De Deeret 25) Theognostus had used this expression of the Son. Eusebius of Caesarea can say that the Son is 'from the Father's ingenerate nature and inexpressible ousia', but he very soon qualifies this statement, warning against materializing interpretations. 44 Eusebius ofNicomedia in his Letter to Paulinus of Tyre had apparently rejected the expression 'from the ousia', denying that the Son had any connection with the Father's ousia. For him ousia means 'nature or 'rank' or 'metaphysical status'.45 Stead thinks however that in N the expression 'from the ousia' was meant more to determine that the Son was not from any external source, but from God, and did not necessarily denote equal status. On' the anathema in N, Stead argues that it too was not intended to establish equality of status between Father and Son, but once again to ensure that the Son was not derived from some source other than the Father. He produces evidence from Tertullian, Irenaeus, Theognostus and Methodius that they recognised three alternative possibilities for the origin of the Son, from non-existence, from some external source and from the Father. He concludes from

'ii,

'ii,

4tSee below, p.301. 42See

cr.

Declercq Ossius 26.3--6·

below, pp. 190--202.

43The subject is admirably discussed in Stead Divine Substance 226-J2. I follow

him here. 44DE

V.LIS, 20.

45Eusebius Con. Marcellum 1.4; see Stead Divine Substance 226f.

188

this that this anathema did not in effect do away with a doctrine of three hypostases. 46 It may be noted that the only way in which such an argument can be supported is the assumption that in this anathema hypostasis and ousia were regarded as synonymous, and that it was meant to condemn the view that the Son did not derive from the Father's nature or substance (ousia). Prestige seems to take this view when he says that in this anathema ousia means 'individual objective source',47 though this last expression is itself a rather ambiguous one. Finally we may note that Ossius was not the only person confused by the ambiguity of these terms. The Emperor Constantine appears to have been so also. In his Letter to Arius of 333 he says of Arius and himself: 'You think it is right to subordinate the 'alien hypostasis', and indeed your belief is mistaken. But I recoguize that the fulness of that power which is supreme and which runs through everything is the single ousia of the Father and the Son. If then you deprive him from whom nothing at all can be removed, not even in the thought of those who are not serious, and imagine additional properties and in short define

far-fetched marks of recognition (yvOlp(a~n,a ~1],i)aEOlv) for him to whom (God) has granted entire eternity from himself, and incorruptible intellect (or thought, EVVOia) and has allotted belief in his immo,tality both through himself and through the Church -' the Emperor breaks off in disgust. 48 The translation can only be approximate because of the clumsiness and vagueness of Constantine's language. If it means anything it means that there is only hypostasis (= ousia) in the Godhead, and indeed the anathema in N would fit well with this view. Some have seen in this a coherent theology, 3kin to that of Marcellus of Ancyra (who was soon to be deposed for holding this type of doctrine). But it is more likely that Constantine, who is writing in Greek, a language with which he was not well acquainted, and who cannot amid all his preoccupations have had opportunity to make any profound study of theology or 46Stead, op. cit. 233-42; Tertullian Adversus Hermogenem 2.1; Irenaeus Adv. Haereses 2.10.1 (not 2.10.4 as Stead) (VOJ.1.274); Methodius De Autexousio ii.9. Theognostus, quoted by Athanasius De Deeret. 25. 47GPT 177. In this passage Prestige is speaking only of the word ousia in the anathema: but if hypostasis here does not stand simply as a synonym of ousia, but means 'distinct individual reality', then the Creed N is rankly Sabellian, and it is most unlikely that Prestige would have allowed that. "Opitz U,k. III No. 34.14, 15(71).

180

Period of Confosion philosophy, is simply floundering in water too d~ep for him. Like Ossius, his agent, he was defeated by the seman~lc con~uslOn. . Even those who distinguished hypostasis, meamng dlstmct reahty, from ousia, meaning 'nature' or even 'substance', must no~ be thought to have anticipated the later meanings of those terms given to them in the second half of the century by the great Cappadoclan theologians. The concept of what each Person of the Trinity is in hIs existence and proper form distinct from the others had not yet been distinguished from the concept of what all of them were as full and equal (or even as partial and unequal) sharers of the Godhead. Later theology would not have said that the Son was a mirror of the Person (hypostasis) of the Father, i.e. of the Father qua Father. Not only had no universally accepted term been achIeved for the concept of what we would now call the 'Persons' of the Trinity (unsatisfactory though that word in certain respects is), but the concept itself had barely dawned on the consciousness of theologians. A. more authentically Trinitarian theology had to be found, as It was eventually found by Athanasius and the Cappa~oclans, before the idea of 'Person' in this sense could reach matunty. 2.

Homoousios

Much scholarly effort has been expended upon the meaning of the word homoousios. 49 It was a word occasionally used by pagan writers. In Christian use, until the second half of the third century no examples of the word were Trinitarian in context, a,;,d the word was employed in a very fluid and diverse .way from whIch ~o partIcular conclusions can be drawn. 50 Tertuillan, wrltmg 10 Latm, nowhere uses any term corresponding to homoousios (una substantia, 'one substance', which is quite common with him, does not mean 'consubstantial'). He uses the epithet consubstantialis once (Adv. Hermogenem 44.3), of matter being hypothetically consubstantial with God, and here it does not mean 'of the same stuff', but 'equal in rank', and he may be quoting or translating the Gnostic Hermogenes; 'OSee Zahn Marcellus von Ancyra, 8-32; Gwatkin AC 25-37; SA 46. 47; Loofs, 'Das Nidinu~' 69"'"71; Bethune-Ba,ker The MeanIng of. !l0~oousjos; Borchardt, Hilary of PoWers 139-160; Kraft OMOOYl:IOt; TUlher Le sens du ter~e 6J.1.00UG10C;; Simonetti Studi 125--'7; Stead Divine Su~s~an,e cap: VIII; 'Homo0.usloS dans la Pensee d' Athanase'j Person Mode of DeclSton Maktng 94-109; Dmsen Homoousios . .50See Stead Divine Substance 190-202. Liddell and Scott and Jones are no use here. TOO

f

Semantic Corifusion and he uses consubstantivus once, probably taking it from the Gnostic Valentinus (Adv. Valentinianos 12.5; 37.2).51 Hippolytus quotes Gnostics as using the word homoousios, none of them suggesting Identity, nor even equality. 52 Clement of Alexandria also uses the word in quotations of Gnostic authors, as does Irenaeus, and in these contexts it means approximately, 'belonging to the same order of being': 53 Origen similarly uses the word only when he is quoting GnostIc heretlcs. 54 The term, as Ricken remarks, by the middle of the third century had a suspiciously Gnostic smell about it. According to hi~ it me~t 'sim~arity of nature of being' (,Gleichgeartetheit des Sems), denotmg thmgs belongmg to the same sort of being or substance of being (,Seinstufe').'5 Kraft agrees that the word had Gnostic overtones, and believes that it meant generally 'of the same kind'.'In the interchange which took place between Dionysius of Rome and DionYfius of Alexandria a little after the middle of the third century, the word homoousios certainly figured. But it is difficult to determine who used it first, and though there is little doubt that D~onysius of Alexandria was accused of rejecting, or at least of not usmg, the term, and that he later accepted it, we cannot be sure who. ~ade the accusation, whether the people in Egypt against whom the bIshop o.f Alexandria had originally written complaining about him to the b,sh?p of Rome, or Dionysius of Rome himself or a synod called by h~m. ~than.aslU~ devoted a whole book to the interchange, De Sententta Dtonysit. DlOnysius of Alexandria wrote a treatise To Euphranor ~nd Ammonius against a type of doctrine prevailing in Libya of a S~be.lhan cast. D~onyslUs of Rome wrote a work both against Sabell'~msru and agamst a heresy like Arianism (i.e. the views of ~lonyslUs of Alexandria) at the request of some people who were d,sturbe~ by the t~eatise of the bishop of Alexandria, people whom AthanaslUs, 10 retatling the story, regarded as themselves of unsound views. Dionysius of Rome sent his work, with a letter, to Dionysius 51 Stead op. cit. 202":"4. "Ibid. 204-{). 53lb'd • 1 • 206-9. Kraft (OMOOYIIOI: 3) caIls attention to one remarkable passage In Clement (Strom. 11.16.74 and IV:'J.I9) which brings IlSpo<; and 6~oo6(JIO<; into cIo:: prOXImIty. though not applymg the adjective to the noun. E.g. Comm.}ohn XIII.2S; XX.20 and 24. For the use of the term by Plotinus and Porphyry, see Stead op. cit. 214-16. 5S
Semantic Confusion

Period of Confosion of Alexandria, and the latter defended himself .in a work called Vindication and Defence from which AthanaslUs quotes some passages. 57 In his Vindication and Defence Dionysius said that he had not used homoousios because it was an unScripturai term, but he -:vas m fact ready enough to accept it, and it is cl~ar that h.e acce~ted It m a general sense, meaning 'of similar nature (61l0cpu'1.<;) .or of sImIl!~ kind' (61l0'YEVi]<;). In his other references to thIS mterchange Athanasius throws no more light on the subject of who first introduced homoousios into the dispute, though in his Letter to the Bishops of Africa he says, somewhat disingenuously, that both the bishops of Rome and of Alexandria approved of the word s homoousios. Basil of Caesarea in his reference to the affau • does not reveal who first used the term, but his account is more plauSl?le than that of Athanasius, because he frankly acknowledges that DlOnyslUs of Alexandria used language which was definitely unsound by the standard of Basil's day, and that he sometim~s rejecte~ homoousios because Sabellius used it incorrectly in rejectmg the dIS~mc~lOn of hypostases, but sometimes accepted it, in his defe~ce of hIS VI~WS to Dionysius of Rome. If we can trust Basil here, '~ '~ mterestIng to observe that Sabellius had apparently used homoouslOs In a TrInItarIan context early in the third century. Scholarly opinion about who used the word first, and whether Dionysius of Rome used It, has varIed. Loofs who agrees that the meaning of homoousios was so flUId that we 'm N aIone, 60 h as cannot, determine its meaning from . ItS appearance an elaborate theory that there existed from Tertullian onward and even perhaps in some form before him the idea that bef~re the creation the Son emerged from the Father and the Holy SpIrIt from the Father 'and the Son, and that at the end of history this Trinity would resolve itself back into a unity, so that the substance of the Godhead can be extended or retracted. Dionysius of Rome therefore logically, accepting this theory, found homoousios acceptable but 6 could not tolerate a division of the Godhead into three hypostases. • 57S ee especially De Sent. Dion. 13.1-3. and above, pp. ~2-'76, . 58De Synodis 43.1. 2, 4~ 44.1, 2; De Decretis 25; Letter to Bishops of AftlCa 23·6 (PG 26:1040 ); Theodoret HE 1.8.14-17). At no point does Athanasius actually say that Dionysius of Rome used the term. 5 9Epp.9.3· 1- 18 •

. ' . De Trlnuate 31.192 (ed. Loi) , and Dionysius of Alexandria's remarks about the Monad and the Dyad (Feitce Letters and Otller Remains 177. 178. 180 and 193)· 60'Da5

61 Ibid.

Nicanum' 69'""?I.

7 1 -'7 8. Loafs proof-texts are inter alia

NOVatl3n

He well might welcome homoousios if Sabellius was the first to use it in a Trinitiarian context, because on this view his doctrine could only with difficulty be distinguished from that of Sabellius! Kraft also thinks that Dionysius of Rome used homoousios, indeed that a synod in Rome ma y have censured the bishop of Alexandria for not using it and have condemned the doctrine of three hypostases as tritheism. 62 . Stead, on the other hand, believes that the bishop of Rome did not use homoousios. The word in Greek translation of Tertullian's una substantia would not be the word homoousios but mia hypostasis (one hypostasis); it was the people in Libya criticized by Dionysius of Alexandria who had introduced the term. 63 Simonetti agrees that it was not Dionysius of Rome who first used the word homoousios in the interchange. He thinks that Dionysius of Alexandria had 'rejected it because for him it implied that the Father and the Son had the same hypostasis, i\e. individual existence, and that he only accepted it in the generic sense of meaning that both had the same kind of nature. On the whole it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, whoever may have been the first to use the word homoousios in this affair, Dionysius of Rome at least took up or championed it. But we need not therefore assume that he used it in Loofs' sense or that he meant by it more than that both Father and Son shared the same kind of divinity. We can be quite certain that Dionysius of Alexandria disliked it and only adopted it with reluctance. The role played by the word homoousios in the condemnation alid deposition of Paul of Samosata between 264 and 272 is even more obscure. Athanasius in his De Synodis has to meet the objection to the use of the word that the fathers of the Council of Antioch which had condemned Paul of Samosata had also condemned homoousios. This particular objection was according to Epiphanius raised by George of Laodicea, speaking for the Homoiousian group of bishops, led by Basil of Ancyra, who had met at Sirmium in 358.64 Athanasius is embarrassed by this argument. He does not wish to appear to criticize the people who condemned Paul at Antioch but he cannot deny that 62'OMOOYLJOI:' 4-6. 63S tea d discusses the affair in Divine Substance 250--8. 64£piphanius Panarion 73.12.3 (where the condemnation is implied rather-than stated)~ Sozomenus HE IV. I 5.1,2; see Simonetti Crisi 242 n 68. Sozomenus says that these blShops persuaded the impressionable Liberius into renouncing the homoousion and ~ccepting their alternative slogan Of(5J.1010~ KUt' oiluiav Kat'Ct 1tavta. According to HIlary De Syn. 80 (534) the objection had been raised by Unacius and Valens at

Sirmium in 357.

Period of Confusion

Semantic Confusion

they danmed the epithet homoousios as applied to the Son. His way of resolving the difficulty is to argue that Paul and th~ up.holders of the Nicene formula in Athanasius' day used the word m different senses. The almost insoluble difficulty is to determine in what sense Paul used homoousios. Athanasius represents him as describing the word as unsuitable in a kind of reductio ad absurdum; he quotes one sentence from Paul himself:

It is impossible to determine in what sense Paul of Samosata used the word, whether he adopted it and so caused his opponents to condemn it, or whether he used it as an example of what one would be driven to if one opposed his views, and his opponents in condemning .the word repudiated this argument and explained that they did not feel driven to use homoousios. 68 The one point which is quite clear in this obscure affair is that those who condemned Paul also condemned the use of the word homoousios in a Trinitarian context. thereby causing considerable embarrassment to those theologians who wanted to defend its inclusion in an official doctrinal statement in the next century. It is significant that the victorious party at the Antiochene Council which condemned Paul were in all probability supporters of the views of Origen and were therefore most unlikely to have condemned homoousios had Origen, who had only died ~ little over ten years before. himself used it. Though the exploration of this incident has thrown no light on the meaning attached to the word by either Paul or his opponents, it has suggested that homoousios before it was placed in N must have been regarded as a term which carried with it heretical, or at least unsound, overtones to theologians in the Eastern church. and emphasizes the resolution of those who were ready to include it in the creed of the first General Council, and provides one more reason why that creed was vulnerable to criticism. Methodius uses the word homoousios when he purports to quote a fragment ofOrigen saying that the heavenly firmament is composed of material 'consubstantial with the angels'.69 The Dialogue of Adamantius, a work written in Greek either during or a little before the perseciJtion of Diocletian. and later translated into Latin by Rufinus, who thought that Origen was its author, uses the word homoousios three times, once in a non-Trinitarian context but twice in a Trinitarian. One of these last two is certainly an interpolation. and it is highly likely that the other is also. It is interesting to note that the author does not apparently distinguish sharply between ousia and hypostasis. Evil, he says, is neither according to physis nor ousia nor

'[fChrist did not derive from man, he is therefore homoousios with the father and there must be three ousiai, one chief and the other two deriving from it. '65

A few years later Hilary attempts to meet the same argument against the use of homoousios, that 'our fathers, when Paul of Samosata was declared a heretic, even repudiated homoousion', but the reason which he gives for this repudiation is that the word to them spelt Sabellianism. He clearly believes that Paul himself approved of homoousios. 66 Some years after Hilary, Basil of Caesarea, writing a letter on the subject of the adoption of the homoousion in N, says that those who repudiated this term are blameworthy because they are rejecting sound tradition, but that they can be a little excused because others also (he implies) of sound views had rejected it also. And then: 'Those who met over the case of Paul of Samosata accused the expression of being unsuitable. for these people said that the word homoousios presented the idea of a (generic) substance and things deriving from it, so that divided substance provides the name homoousios ('of similar substance') to the parts into which it has been divided.' Basil meets this objection very reasonably by saying that this particular analysis does not apply to God who has no parts and is not composite, and therefore the word is not liable in its use in N to this construction. 67 6'De Synodi' 43. 45 (quotation from 45.4(23 0)). 66Hilary De Synodis 81, 86, 87. 88: his reason is quia per hane unius essentiae

nuncupationem solittJrium et uHilum sib; esse patrern et filium praedicabat. which, presumably means 'because through this epithet of "of one substance" he was teaching that the Father and Son were a singl~ and sole individual', (81).

52.1 One could imagine that the fathers of ~tioch ~68 ml~ht have seen this point if it is a valid one, but Basil does not enter mto thiS question. I do not 67 Epp.

understand how Bethune-Baker (Meaning of Homoousios 27. 28), in discussing IJomoousios in the affair of Paul of Samosata, can say that Basil suggests that Paul objected to homoousios. Basil says nothing about Paul's attitude to the word.

68The difficulty, which Stead acknowledges (Divine Substance 216--7) has not of course prevented scholars attempting to solve the problem; see Gwatkin SA 47; Loofs·'Arianismus"9-IO and "Das Nidinum' 75-'7; Kraft 'OMOOYl:lo:r 6; Stead hims~lf 'Homoousios dans la Pensee' 233-42; Simonetti Crisi 92-3.

6'De Resurrectione II.XXX (387); fragment III (521) from Mai Script. Vet. Nova Coil. IX (619) referring to a consubstantial Trinity is of course spurious.

Period of Confusion

Semantic Confusion

hypostasis. 70 Though Eusebius of Caesarea never spontaneously uses homoousios of the Son, and though his explanation of why he accepted it at Nicaea involved his watering down its meaning considerably, 71 he uses it once in discussing the ideas of Plato.72 Our investigation of the use of homoousios before it was inserted in N, then, should have suggested strongly that it would be unwise to give the word a strictly defined or single meaning. Ever since the idea occurred to scholars to appeal to the Aristotelian distinction between 'first ousia', i.e. concrete, individual being, and 'second ousia', i.e. generic, shared being, and to pronounce that at Nicaea homoousios was used to mean 'identity of being', ousia being employed as hypostasis = individual reality, the tendency set in to assume that homoousios before Nicaea and at Nicaea meant 'identity', but that later it was enlarged to mean 'generic being' (cf. 'possessing ousia identically', 61'0il ooc:rlav ~J(rov', Marius Victorinus Adv. Arium IV: 10 and (scathingly) tautouc:rto<; ('of identical being') Ancyra 358). On this view in N and before N homoousios referred to first ousia but later among the Cappadocians to second ousia. 73 We have seen enough of the word to realize that it certainly did not refer to identity of being before 325. Its sense was far looser than that. It is not even enough to say that homoousios was before 325 used in a 'generic' sense of shared being, as Loofs and Prestige claim. 74 The word cannot be confined to

a meaning even as relatively wide as this. It had a good deal more than two uses and was not necessarily derived from the thought of Aristotle. 7S Why then was homoousios put into the Creed of Nicaea? Arius certainly disliked it. In his Letter to Alexander of Alexandria he had thrice rejected the view that the Son was a 'consubstantial part' of the Father, in the first reference branding it as Manichaean. 76 The same idea appears to recur in the words of Arius quoted by Constantine in his letter of333, 'whatever you take from him, you diminish him by that amount', i.e. if the Son is homoousios with the Father then by being distinct he deprives the Father of so much ousia. 77 Arius also in his Thalia objected to the application of homoousios to the Son on the ground that it represented the Son as equal to the Father, to whom in fact notlijng can be equal. 78 The same objection may be echoed in the fragment of Eusebius of Nicomedia preserved by Ambrose which argues that if you call the Son homoousios then you are in effect calling him ingenerate (which is probably what increalum means).79 Williams points out that the objection based on the Manichean tendency of the word assumed that it implied that the Son was a component or extension of God, thus representing God as composite, perhaps as material, and suggesting that there is a kind of common 'God-stuff' shared by Father and Son. Iamblichus, he points out, in his De Mysteriis, had used homoousios of a case where 'different elements combine to produce a unified reality'. But such processes cannot apply to transcendental realities which must be simple,

7°The three passages are in the GCS text III. VI p. 122 (836) where the use is non-

Trinitarian; V, p. 240 (871), and I. p. 4 (804). The GCS editor regards the last two as interpolations due to are-working ofehe text which took place 330-337. Rufinus' Latin seems to reflect the original, not the re-worked, text; at I P.4 (804) his translation renders homoousios as consubstantivum which suggests that the word was in the origiRal. But if it was and if Rufinus was anxious, when translating Pamphilus' Defence ojOrigen, to claim that Origen had used the word homoousios of the Son, why did he not mention also this passage, which would for him have been an example ofOrigen using the word of the Son? It is possible that Rufinus! Latin is also interpolated. Stead, Divine Substance 219, accepts this example as genuine. Adamantius' remark about evil.occurs at III p. 158 (846). Rufinus translates neque 'secundum naturam , neque secundum substantiam, indiscriminately. 7ISee above, p. 165. 72PE XI.2I.6. 73S0 Ritter, Konzil von Konstantinopel 270-4. Tuilier 'Le sens du terme 6J.100U<JlOC;' 421-30 wishes to explain Arianism by this distinction offirst and second ousia. His article is further marred by the assumption that a 'school of Antioch' existed as early as Paul of Samosata and was continued by t.he Arians, through Lucian of Antioch and later by the Homoiousians. It is remarkable how a title or classification, once coined, assumes a life ofits own and out of airy nothing takes a local habitation and a name. 74Loofs 'Das Nidinum' 71-8; Prestige GPT 209-1 I. Loofs also held that Western TO~

the~logians, especially Dionysius of Rome, were up to 325, and at the Council, relYIng on .the equation of Tertullian's unius substantiae with homoousios (,Arianismus' 8). But even if this were so, it remains to be shown that Ossius who was the main, almost the sale, Western representative at Nicaea made the'same equation. ' 75S 0 Stead 'Homoousios dans la pensee' 232, 247. Kraft 'OMOOYLIOI:' 6--7 agrees that homoousios did not derive from a philosophical background but from religi?us philos~phieal sp~culation. His statement however that it is usually translated by umus substantiae rather than consubstantialis(-ivus) and therefore was presumably equated with Tertullian's account of the relation of the Son to the Father should be qualified by the fact that the earliest Latin renderings of the word in N usually do not translate it at all but simply transcribe it. . 7~O.pitz Vrk III No., 6.3\12) and 5(13); cf. Epiphanius Ancoratus 48.1.57 for a not dISSImIlar account of Mamcheeism.

,

"

17Urk III. No. 34.73(29). 78Athanasius De Synodis 15. 79Urk. III, No. 21(42); see above, pp. 31,161, and Rieken 'Nikaia als Krisis' 337 Stead Divine Substance 243-5. '

Period of Confusion

Semantic Confusion

unmixed. If the word were applied to God it would mean that Father and Son together made up a third, greater substance - and a material one at that! 80 Later Arians repeated these objections and added others: that the word was not to be found in Scripture;81 that it involves the assumption that there is in God's ousia something contingent (crul1~E~l1K6~) or foreign or hidden, or that there is something necessary to complete his ousia. 82 Hilary's work reflects a few more objections: that the fathers of Antioch who condemned Paul of Samosata a century before also condemned homoousios as applied to the Son (an argument that we have heard before), apparently because it meant that Father and Son became identical in the Godhead;83 that since it implies this identity, and therefore that the Son is only an extension of the Godhead into the womb of the Virgin, therefore the name Son was only assumed with the body. 84 To insert the word homoousios into N, therefore, would certainly be to construct an obstacle which doctrinaire Arians could not overcome. There is no reason to believe that Alexander of Alexandria particularly favoured homoousios. Two writers on the subject at least believe that before Nicaea he deliberately avoided it.85 He was ready to use 'like in ousia' ()110to~ Kat' oocriav) of the Son,86 but was as anxious as Arius to avoid materializing descriptions of the relation of the Father to the Son. 87 Kraft indeed thinks that in this last passage Alexander is deliberately repudiating the 'Western' Trinitarian theology based on Tertullian, and perpetuated presumably by Novatian, Dionysius of Rome and Ossius. 88 It is time now to come to terms with the theory which in the past has been supported by scholars of great weight, that Ossius at Nicaea represented a 'Western' point of view anxious to impose Tertullian's 'of one substance' on the East. B9 Very little is in fact known about

Ossius' career before he appears on the scene in Alexandria at the end of 324. V. C. Declercq in 1954 published a full-length book on him called Ossius of Cordova. He established, one hopes finally, that the proper name of the bishop of Cordova is Ossius, and none of the several alternatives which the evidence from antiquity offers.90 Ossius was already an old man by 324; Declercq estimates that he must have been born about 256. 91 He had been a confessor in the persecution of Diocletian, presumably in Cordova or its vicinity. It has been widely assumed that he was the same person as the Ossius to whom Calcidius dedicated his translation into Latin (with a commentary) of Plato's Timaeus. Declercq, with many others, assumes that he was. 92 If this assumption were true it would make a consider~ble difference to our estimate of Ossius' contribution to the Council and Creed of Nicaea, because we could with some . confidence conclude that the issues debated by Eastern theologians would not have been strange to Calcidius' Ossius, who was certainly a Christian, quite possibly a cleric, and most probably a learned one, and even that Ossius was competent to initiate Constantine into quite advanced theology. But in fact we cannot make this assumption with any aSSUrance. The latest editor of Calcidius' translation of the Timaeus,]. H. Waszink, lends the immense weight of his learning to the conclusion that Ossius bishop of Cordova could not have been the person to whom Calcidius dedicated his work. Isidore of Seville, who is well aware of other learned Spaniards of the fourth century and who is not likely to have omitted any notable Spanish scholar of the past, says nothing of a Spanish Ossius of this or any other century. And internal evidence from the work itself suggests a date of composition considerably later than the lifetime of even long-lived Ossius. Waszink places the work about the year 400 'and in Italy."' Ossius attended as bishop the Council of Elvira in Spain which probably took place before Diocletian's persecution broke out, i.e.

BO'The Logic of Arianism' 63-5. quotation from 64. 81 Athanasius De Deeretis 21.2(18).

8'Ibid. 22.1(18); cf. 2P-5(l!r20). "De Synodis 80 (534). 84De Trinitate IV.4(103); cf. VI.12(208-IO). "Kraft, 'OMOOYl:Im:' 8, 9; Simonetti Studi 125~. 8·0 pitz Urk. III No. 4b 7(7). 87Ibid. No. 14.46(27). sSOp. cit. 9. 89The chief champions of this view were Harnack History IV.5D--9. and Loafs •Arianismus' 14-15 and 'Das Nidinum' (published quarter of a century later) 78-9. Prestige (GPT 219) agreed; and Bethune-Baker (The Meaning ofHomoousios 13) can

also be placed in this list. Declercq Ossius. of Cordova 250-66 joins their number, but takes a less doctrinaire view of Ossius' action. He introduced the word because it would exclude Arianism, not because it derived from Tertullian, though he knew the Western theological tradition. 90Declercq op. cil 44-8. 91lbid. 50-2. §,

,

'2Ibid.63·6!r75. 9.3]. H. Waszin.k Timaeus a Calcidio transJatus Commentarioque instructus (Plato Latrnus ed. R. Khbansky, Vol. IV, London and Leiden, 1975) Praefatio ix-xv' see aJso art. 'CaJcidius' in TRE 7, 546-50, by G. F. Kerferd. '

Period oj Confusion

Semantic Confusion

It is uncertain whether he met Constantine in Gaul 31I-3I2 or in Rome 312-313."4 He was probably in Rome for the Council summoned by Miltiades, bishop of Rome, in 313, at Constantine's request because he' certainly visited Africa Proconsularis to examine the Donatist a/fair on behalf of Constantine a little before that Council. He did not attend the Council of Aries in 314; it is likely that he was at that time in Trier and the Balkans with Constantine."s It was to Ossius that Constantine addressed his edict of 32 1 enabling slaves to be emancipated in the presence of a Christian bishop without further legal requirements. 96 Declercq concludes that Ossius was probably with Constantine during all the period 313 to 324."' He does not speculate as to what can have been happening to Ossius' see of Cordova during his prolonged absence. The rest of Ossius' movements up to the end of the Council of Nicaea we have already had occasion to follow. He visited Alexandria and became acquainted with its bishop Alexander at the end of 324. He presided over the Council of Antioch in the early days of 325, and over the Council of Nicaea in the early summer of the same year. Can we envisage Ossius as a man of considerable learning, one whose theological opinions Eastern theologians would respect, who was competent to find his way through the maze of semantic confusion presented by the dispute which he hoped to end? Declercq is ready to do so, relying both on the assumption tliat he is the Ossius of Calcidius' dedication and on the statement of Socrates (HE 1:7) that when Ossius was in Alexandria in 324 'he made an investigation into ousia and hypostasis, and this investigation in its turn became a cause of strife'''· and he is ready to take seriously (as few other scholars are) Philostorgius' story that Alexander and Ossius agreed together to introduce the word homoousios just before the Council of Nicaea, and he suggests that they had planned this tactic the year before in Alexandria."9 But we cannot conclude that Ossius was the recipient of Calcidius' dedication, far less that Constantine became under Ossius' tutelage quite a competent theologian. Ossius' obvious. bewilderment at the statements about the number of ousiai envisaged

by Eusebius and by Narcissus does not at all suggest one who wa, versed in Greek philosophy (even in translation) nor somebody who had recently devoted time to making a thorough study of hypostasiJ and ousia. The theory that Ossius was a well-informed and conscious representative of the Western theological tradition capable of persuading Easterners who knew little or nothing of it to enshrine its doctrine in a creed lacks solid foundation. To these arguments we may add those of Stead. He points out that the only credible ancient authority who attributes the introduction of homoousios into N to Ossius is Philostorgius, and he is writing (as indeed was Socrates) at least a hundred years later. We have no independent evidence for the views of Ossius at this period; the doctri,\al statement of the Council of Antioch of 325 is redolent of the thought of Alexander, and throws no clear light on that of Ossius. Eusebius of Cae sa rea did not like homoousios, and cannot have relished the decisions of the Council of Antioch of 325, but he goes out of his way to commend Ossius in his Life of Constantine.'OO Even if Ossius did support homoousios he may not have done so as a representative of Western theology, but because he thought it a counter to the doctrine of three ousiai which was strange to him. The word homoousios is not an exact reproduction of una substantia (,one substance') and we have no satisfactory evidence that it was a term at home in Western theology. The Western Council of Serdica of 343 produced a document, written by Protogenes ofSerdica and Ossius, which opted clearly for Una substantia meaning one hypostasis. It is probable that the bishops on the extreme opposite wing to the Arians thought that homoousios was not rigorous, not definitive, enough. Hilary, we must recollect, said (De Syn. 91) that he had not heard the term till he was abo~t to go into exile. Rome and the West can hardly have regarded the msertlOn of the word into N as a triumph.,ol St~ad suggests persuasively that the anathema in N against denvmg the Son from another hypostasis or ousia was not directly aimed at Arianism, but was intended to deny the doctrine that the Son originated from a source outside God. I 02 It is possible that

about

300.

94Dedercq op. cit. 85-102, 123-36, 148-55. 95Ibid. 161-')5. 96Ibid. I7!r-80. 97Ibid. 181-J. 98Declercq ibid. 69-75; 202-4. 99Ibid. 20J; Philostorgiu5 HE 1.7.8-9. 200

lOove II.6J. 101S~ Stea?_ Divine Substance 250--8. Person, Mode o/Decision Making 94-J02,in a useful dIScussIon of the subject also concludes that we cannot father homoousios either on ~estem theology or on Ossius. For the doctrinal statement afthe Westerners at Serdlca see below. p. 301. 10.2 Divine Substance 233-42. There is an interesting passage in JuHan's C;ommentary

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Semantic Confusion

homoousios was meant· to support this intention, and perhaps not designed to do very much more. Stead observes that Eusebius of Caesarea in his explanation of why he signed N takes this point of view, and does not apparently regard it as dangerously imperiling the distinction between Father and Son, though he does want to avoid the idea that it suggests material or corporeal rel~tions between the two. It looks as if Constantine did not allow the Eustathians (extreme anti-Arians) at Nicaea to interpret homoliusios in such a way as would fatally upset the Eastern Origenists.'03 We can therefore be pretty sure that homoousios was not intended to express the numerical identity of the Father and the Son. '04 If the fathers of Nicaea had meant this, says Person, why could they not have said SO?'05 It was not an importation from Western theology. It was intended to have a looser, more ambiguous sense than has in the past history of scholarship been attached to it. '06 It was indeed a term which Arius had repudiated and which his followers found distasteful, but not the drastic and final word which it has been made out to be. It is not probable that Constantine originated the term; we do not know who did so. But once he discovered that the Eustathians were in favour ofit, and that, when he had insisted that it did not have the objectionable meaning which Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia had attached to it, the favourers of Arius in the Council could accept it, he pressed for its inclusion. It solved the problem for the time, but left a dangerous legacy of confusion for the future.' 07

half of the Aria.n Controversy has attracted the attention of several scholars. These are yev(v)'lT6C; (gen(n)etos) and its form with the alpha privative, uytV(V)'lTOC; (agen(n)etos). Genetos and its privative are almost untranslatable into English. The positive form means 'having come into existence'. with the nuance of 'mortar 'transient' 'mutable', and the privative of it does not mean 'that which has neve; existed' but 'that which has never not existed'; that which has never had a beginning because it has eternally existed, and therefore that which is incorruptible and immutable. Gennetos, on the other hand means 'generated' or 'begotten' and the privative of it 'ingenerate', 'unbegotten', again not in the sense of non-existent but of eternally existent. Dillon gives us some information about the use of some of these ~erms in Middle Platonism. Calvenus Taurus of Berytus (fl. 125-165 A.D.) gives four different possible applications of the cognate verb gegonen of genetos. Two are relevant to this study: that which is always in process of generation, like the sublunary world which is always changing, and that which is dependent on something else for its existence.'os Apuleius was able to apply genetos to the world because, though it has always existed, 'its substance and nature are constituted from elements which have the characteristic of createdness',o9. Hippolytus' Platonic source (which was perhaps a kind of handbook) describes matter as coeval (synchronos) with God, and therefore agennetos and indestructible. But in as far as it is a body and composite it can be called genetos, because though it exists eternally it is periodically renewed in all its parts, as a wagon (or a cricket bad) could be. " 0 Kopecek, in the course of giving a careful history of the word agennetos in Plato, Philo, Justin Martyr, Athenagoias and Clement of Alexandria, says that they all regard God as ingenerate (though Plato in the Timaeus does not actually use the term), but all except Philo and Ignatius of Antioch hesitate about applying the epithet to the Logos, or they actually deny it to him. Origen in at least two places applies agennetos to the Son, though in a great many others he applies it to the Father. Kopecek thinks that Origen may just have begun to distinguish between agennetos and

3. Other Terms A pair of expressions which caused no little confusion during the first on Job (not commented on by Stead) which confirms Stead's view that, faced with the question of where the Son came from, the Arians opted for 'non-existence'. and their opponents for his origin from the Father, but both wanted to reject the idea that he came from some source external to the Father. 'Nothing existing', says Julian, 'must be attributed to the God of all existing things, for everything must be attributed to his will according to which he created them' (16.17.5-'7). i.e. God does not make things out of his own being but only by his will.

1·'Ibid. 258-60; see Opitz Urk III No. 22.13, 16(46). 104As

Zahn and Harnack suggested, thinking that it implied Aristotle's prole

ousia, and so Kraft. losMode 102. l06lbid. 105. l07Simonetti observes this Crisi 89; Rieken, 'Nikaia als Krisis' 337-8, comes to much the same conclusion. 202

108

The Middle Platonists 243.

109Ibid. 3 1 5. ~ 10Ibid. 41 I. Athanasius, De Decretis 28.2(24) says that some respectable philosophers were able to conceive that some things (such as nous and psyche) were ag~neta, though derived from something else. Opitz (note in loc) says that the phIlosophers meant Plate;> Phaedrus 24SCD and Timaeus 52A. 203

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Semantic Confosion

agenetos, 111 and Prestige in a similar survey"2 agrees with him. If so, it was a long time before any such distinction was definitely reached, and we have already seen one example of Origen using the two words as synonymous. 1I3 Both Lebreton and Prestige have written useful articles upon this pair of terms and their privatives. Agennetos al!d agenetos were from an early period in the history of Christian literature confused, or rather regarded as synonymous} 14 Robertson and Lightfoot were mistaken in assuming that there always was a distinction between gennetos and genetos and their privatives in the minds of those who took part in the Arian controversy. liS In either form a-gen(n)etos is a synonym for 'indestructible' (c\.vro:\.tepo~) and 'incorruptible' (li
sensitive to the danger of finding their doctrine of God in such a state that they are in effect recognizing 'two ultimate principles' (oue c\.'YtvvlJ~a, two agenneta). We have seen Arius' view on this.l2l Eusebius of Nicomedia in his Letter to Paulinus of Tyre explicitly mentions this danger. 122 Alexander of Alexandria knows that the Arians accuse him of teaching two agenneta, and emphatically denie! this charge. 123 Asterius taught that Christ is 'the chief of the geneta',124 and that 'that which is not made but exists eternally i! ageneton', 12S and that the Son 'is a creature and one ofthegeneta' .'26 i1 is particularly interesting to find Athanasius in one of his earliesl works reproducing precisely the confusion which we have seen illustrated here. He is attempting to meet the argument thai adhe~ence to the pre-Nicene doctrine results in two agenneta: if the Son is not unbegotten (agenneton), as he clearly is not then there musl have been a time when he did not exist. Athanasius first points OUI that agennetos is not a term found in the Bible, and then reminds hi! opponents that there are three different meanings of ageneton (with one nul; it can mean something which could come into existence bUI has not done so; it can mean something which has not come intc existence and never could do so, like a four-sided triangle or an even odd number; and it can mean that which exists but does not have an origin nor a father. 127 Inasmuch as the Son is eternal he is according to Asterius' criterion agenetos, but in that he has a Father, the Fathel alone is agenetos. But Athanasius denies that this means that the Son i, genetos: he is a product (gennema) who is the image of the Ingenerate . (agenetos) whereas on the Arian premises he must be a genetos who i! the image of the agenetos, and this is absurd. 12 • This account would have been less confusing had Athanasius been able then (as he wa, later) to distinguish between (a)genetos and (a)gennetos. This confusion between genetos and gennetos and their privative, might have been tolerable had not an important party in the

111 Kopecek

History 242-66. Ignatius has that remarkable sentence 'there is one

physician. fleshly and spiritual. genetos and agenetos, God in man, true life in death, . both from Mary and from God' (Ephesians 7.2). quoted by Athanasius De Syn. 47.1(271,272); cf. Ignatius Polycarp 3.2. 112Prestige CPT 37-52; perhaps it would be fairer to say that Kopecek agrees with Prestige; cr. Harnack History IV.I2-I4. tlJS ee above, p.63. 114Lebreton 'ArENNHTOl: dans la Tradition' 434-8. IISPrestige 'uytv(v)nto<; and yev(v)nt6<;', 495-6. 116Lebreton op. cit. 434-8. t 17 lbid. 439. II 'Ibid. 443. 119Prestige op. cit. 488. l2olbid. 488-9. 204

121See above, p. 8.

1220pitz Urk. III No. 8.3. 4(16). See Simonetti Stud; 172, 173.

'23Urk. III No. 14.44.45(26); cf. Prestige op. cit. 492-3. '24Bardy, Lucien frag. 111(343). 12'lbid. frag VII(344). 1261bid. frag IX(345). 1270rationes con. Ar. 1.30; here he quotes the sentence from Asterius which appears as Bardy's VII (see note US above). 128Ibid. 1.31. Prestige op. cit. 496 recognizes that an alteration in Athanasius' vocabulary took place later. 20 5

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Semantic Confusion

controversy embraced Origen's doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. As long as this confusion existed those who wished to maintain this doctrine were compelled to say that the Son was both, as eternal, agen(n)etos, and, as begotten of the Father, gen(n)etos. On this point a clarification of vocabulary was badly needed. The word 1tp6cromov (prosopon) does not figure prominently in the Arian Controversy. It might at first sight be thought that, had it been used consistently from the beginning to denote that which God is as Three in distinction to what he is as One, the word might have been helpful in avoiding misunderstandings. But the ancients probably had good reasons for being wary of this word. It could of course be used for the mask which actors in tragedy or comedy wore, and in the past scholars have conjectured that this use of it, suggesting a mere appearance not necessarily corresponding to reality, was what made theologians avoid it. Eusebius of Caesarea accuses Marcellus of believing in 'one hypostasis with three prosopa, just as he has three names',129 i.e. a God who has no distinctions within his being but only three appearances. In a note on the word prosopon Prestige says 'there does not seem to be any evidence whatever for the view that the term prosopon was ever discredited in orthodox circles at any period of theological development', and adds that it hardly ever means 'mask'."o To this one is inclined to reply, Yes and No. The theologians of the ancient Church were not great theatre-goers, and to them the use of the term prosopon would not normally conjure up this image. But on the other hand, prosopon had been used extensively since the time ofJustin to mean 'character speaking in Scripture', e.g. in some of the Psalms where the ancient theologians were accustomed to distinguish parts to be attributed to the character of God, parts to the character of Christ and parts to that of the Church, as well as some to the character of the author of the Psalms, David. 131 This was the normal theological meaning of the word, and one can see why theological writers who wanted to avoid Sabellianism would not have been willing to use prosopon to distinguish the 'Persons' of

the Godhead. Prestige does not mention this use of prosopon. But if it was possible for Eusebius to write of one hypostasis speaking in three names, then nobody could have identified hypostasis and prosopon. The word was unsatisfactory for Trinitarian discourse, and was on the whole recognised as such. The same may apply to the use of the word persona (,person') by Latin-speaking theologians. As there are virtually nO Latin-speaking theologians evident at the beginning of the controversy, this subject will be dealt with later. 132 Tertullian had indeed used persona boldly to mean the 'Persons' of the Trinity. But Sabellius had appeared on the scene later than Tertullian; it is possible that persona as a translation of prosoponl 33 had acquired in Western ears a Sabellian ring. That ther<\ is an astonishingly small occurrence of persona in Trinitarian contexts in the fourth century, and in one case a positive repudiation of it, will become clear later.

129J.1.iav ()1t60''t'ao"lV tplO'1tp60'(J)1tov OOO'1t£p Kai tptcrWVUJ,l.0v, Eee, Theol. 111.16(164). Asterius. however, quite often uses prosopon as a synonym of hypostasis. 130GPT 157-62, quotation from 162; earlier (p. II3) he has said that no ancient father till Basil uses the word in the sense of'mask'; normally it means an individual. 131 A useful note on this use of prosopon in Origen will be found in Marguerite Harl's edition of the Philocalia 1-20 (Paris 1983. SC ser. no. 302), 324 n I and 330-4. Sieben in PTAA 201-2 has a note on Athanasius' use of prosopon in this sense. It is mainly. but not exclusively, to the Psalms that this term is applied. 206

.llSee below, pp. 480, 486-7. 1331n fact prosopon appears in Hippolytus as a translation of persona; so BethuneBaker, in a useful note on persona/prosopon, The Meaning of Homoousios, 70-4. 207

Eustathius and Marcellus

8

Eustathius and Marcellus I.

Eustathius of Antioch

We must now consider two theologians who enter prominently into the story of the search for the Christian doctrine of God soon after the Council of Nicaea and whose writings illustrate a school of thought which we have not yet had much occasion to notice. They are Eustathius of Antioch 1 and Marcellus of Ancyra. Some parts of the career of Eustathius can be reconstructed with some confidence. He had been a confessor in the persecution of Diocletian and had been bishop of Beroea. 2 We have already seen how he succeeded Philogonius as bishop of Antioch late in 324 or very early in J2 5 and was present at the Council of Antioch in 325. 3 Theodoret gives us a useful extract from one of his works bearing upon what was done at the Council ofNicaea, which he of course attended. 4 He was clearly a vigorous opponent of Arius and Arianism and thought that the point of view of own his party had not been given sufficient expression at the Council. During his period as bishop of Antioch he was influential enougl) to acquire a strong following of people devoted to his doctrine who continued to form a separate group for fifty or sixty 1 For Eustathius see M. Spanneut Recherches sur les ecrits d'Eustache d' Antioche, and 'La Position theologiqued'Eustache d' Antioche'; R. V. Sellers, Eustathius of Antioch; E. Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte des viertenJahrhunderts' ISg-60 and Gesamm. Schrift. 111.7.170-5; F. Loafs, 'Arianismus' 17. 'Das Nidnum' 20; H. Chadwick, 'The Fan of Eustathius of Antioch' and 'Faith and Order at the Council of Nicaea'; Grillmeier CeT 296-301; Simonetti Studi 45-8, 51; Crisi 71-5; L. W. Barnard 'Church-State Relations A.D. 313-3 I'; R. P. C. Hanson 'The Fate of Eustathius of Antioch'; T. A. Kopecek History 53-4. 2Previously bishop of Beroea, Socrates HE 1.24, Jerome De Vir. Ill. LXXXV(44); confessor, Athanasius Apo/. de Fuga ), Hist. Arion. 4. Cf. Sellers,

EustatlJius 24.

3See above p. 148. 4Theodoret HE I.8.I-5~ see above. p. 160. 208

years afterwards and to refuse to recognize any bishop of Antioch who did not agree with their ideas; these (as we shall have to refer to them frequently in future) we shall call 'continuing Eustathians'. He also drove out of Antioch a number of influential people who disagreed with his views, many of whom later became bishops, among them George (later) of Laodicea, Stephen (later) of Antioch, Eudoxius (later) of Germanicia, Antioch and Constantinople, and Eustathius (later) ofSebaste.' He was certainly deposed from the see of Antioch by a council and exiled by Constantine, but when and on what charge has been much debated. It was conventional for long to regard the date of his deposition as 330 or 33 1. 6 The date cannot have been I~ter than 331, because Eutropius of Adrianople was deposed at the same time as he as the result of a grudge borne against him by Basilina, sister-in-law of Constantine. 7 Basilina died a few months after giving birth to Julian , later to be Emperor, in 331.8 However H. Chadwick in 1948 produced the startling theory that Eustathius was deposed as early as 326. 9 It is a complicated theory, based on a number of details and conjectures: on the assumption that the Eusebius mentioned by Eustathius in connection with the Council of Nicaea was the bishop of Caesarea, not the bishop ofNicomedia; on a calculation of 17 years back from the Council ofSerdica 343 (though Chadwick placed it in 342); on the assumption that the Empress Helena, Constantine's mother, made in 325 or 326 a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in reparation for the guilt incurred by the reigning dynasty from the recent affair of Crispus and Fausta, and on several other details. The case was well argued and convinced many people. But a careful examination of this theory shows that it is based on so many implausible assumptions that it is impossible to accept'O If Eustathius was only bishop of Antioch from early 325 till some time in 326, he could hardly have had time to build up a strong party supporting his views in Antioch, and little to encounter the enmity of 5 Athanasius Hist. Arian. 4. 6S 0 • for instance Bardy Lucien 323-4. Gericke Marcellus 8, Boularand L'Heresie 152; Sellers Eustathius 46ft". 7 Athanasius Hist. Ar. 4.5; Apol de Fuga 3. 8The calculation of date is that of Schwartz Gesamm. Schrift 111.8 (224--6). Declercq. however. for some reason places Eustathius' deposition in 333 (Ossius 293-4). 9'The Fall of Eustathius of Antioch'. lOThe whole question is examined in decail in R. P. C, Hanson 'The Face of Eustathius of Antioch',

Period of Confusion several people of opposite views whom he expelled. We can only assume that the Eusebius mentioned in Eustathius' account ofNicaea was the bishop of Caesarea if we are ready to believe that this Eusebius submitted two doctrinal statements to the Council, one of which was angrily rejected and torn up, the other warmly approved by everybody including the Emperor." But if Eustathius was referring to the Eusebius bishop of Nicomedia (as, it is obvious, he was) then Eustathius must have been writing his account in or after 328, for Eusebius was exiled very shortly after the Council and did not return to take charge of his see and of the anti-Nicene cause till 328; and Eustathius is manifestly writing his account ofNicaea and of Eusebius of Nicomedia's behaviour at it while he (Eustathius) is still bishop of Antioch and Eusebius bishop of Nicomedia. 12 Therefore Eustathius must have been still bishop of Antioch in 328, and we should revert to the usual dating of his deposition, in 330 or 331.13 That Constantine would have allowed his mother to make a much publicized pilgrimage of reparation after the disastrous deaths of Crispus and Fausta, thereby multiplying the very bad publicity already gained for the imperial house, instead of trying to hush the whole thing up, is unlikely in the extreme. 14 The immediate reason or reasons for Eustathius' deposition are difficult to determine, for the ancient authorities differ here. The real motive was of course his lIThat the same document is described by Eustathius as provoking a furious dissent and by Eusebius as being approved by everybody I refuse to believe, especially

as Eusebius actually gives us the (quite innocuous) contents aCthe document which was approved. 12A surprising number of people have failed to see this point and have assumed that Eustathips was referring to Eusebius of Caesarea, e.g. Harnack apparently, Sellers (Bustathius 27-30, 73) and Ritter 'Arianismus' 704, 705· On the other hand Loofs (,Das Nic.num' 79-80), Stead ('Eusehius and the Council of Nicaea' 85-roo)

and Grant (,Religion and Politics' 6) have perceived that the Eusebius intended mu.st be he of Nicomedia. 13EarHer rather than later in that period, because the quick and frequent succession of bishops of Antioch thereafter, each having only a brief reign, till we reach Flacillus, must be fitted in. 14We do not know exactly when Hdena died, except that she predeceased her son who died in 337. The attempt to fix her date by the re-naming of the town Drepanum as HelenopoHs (Barnes The New Empire of Dioc1etian and Constantine 9. n40) must fail because that a town was named after an individual in the ancient world was no proof that the individual was dead (any more than it is today). In addition to the very obvious example of Constantinople, other contemporary examples could be cited, e.g. in 299 or later Pannonia Inferior was divided into Valeria (north) and Pannonia Inferior (South), and the new Valeria was called after Valeria, Galerius' wife. who was certainly alive at the time (Barnes New Empire 223). 210

Eustathius and Marcellus championing of the Nicene formula and his opposition to those who disliked it and the theology it seemed to represent, which is mentioned several times by the historians. " It seems most likely that Eustathius was primarily deposed for the heresy of Sabellianism, in a council at Antioch presided over. by Eusebius of Caesarea, though there may have been other minor charges. I. The date of his death is not known for certain. Socrates has a story of his appearing many years later in the year 363 in Constantinople and then being banished once more. '7 But if he had been a confessor in Diocletian's persecution and had been made bishop of Beroea, say about 320, he would have been an immensely old man by 363. And, though there were-riots in Antioch at his deposition, 18 we hear of no disturbance in that city in the year 337 when Constantine died and several of the bishops banished by him returned to their sees, to the accompaniment of disturbances. Further, the pronouncement of the Eastern bishops after the Council of Serdica in 343 suggests (in a curiously indirect way) that he was by then dead. '9 It is wholly probable that by the time of Constantine's death in 337 Eustathius was dead. This is why he did not then return to his see of Antioch and why the Westerners at the Council of Sardica did not take up his case as that of a wronged man to be vindicated, as' they did the cases of Athanasius and Marcellus and others. Only one of Eustathius' works survives in toto, his attack on Origen's exposition of the story of Saul's consultation of the witch of Endor, which is usually called De Engastrimytho 'On the

15Socrates HE 1.23,24 (though Socrates is quite wrong in saying here (23) that Eustathius taught three hypostases); V1.13; Sozomenus HE 11.19.1; cf. Athanasius Hist. Arian. 4. 16See Hanson. 'The Fate of Eustathius of Antioch', 178-9. Schwartz ('Zur Geschichte' 159-60) regarded the silence of the Western bishops at Serdica as a sure sign that Eustathius had been deposed' on grounds of immoral conduct and not for heresy. But very different conclusions can be drawn from this; it is likely that the pro-Nicenes did not want to advertise the fact that their supporters had been convicted (not without colour) of SabeIlianism. It was an anti-Nicene, George of Laodicea who revealed that Eustathius was deposed for Sabellianism (Socrates, HE 11.7)· 17HE IV.I4, 15. 18Sozomenos HE 11.19.1-2 and perhaps Eusehius VC 59-62. t 90f Eustathius and Cymatius, de quorum vita inJami et turp; dicendum nihil est; exitus enim illorum eos omnibus declaravit (Hilary Col. Ar. A IV.27(66)). Declercq (Ossius 350) has no right to translate this as 'their recent fate'.

Period of Confusion

Eustathius and Marcellus

Ventriloquist'),20 but his fragments have been edited by Spanneut. 21 From these we can gain a fair idea of his theological outlook. 22 One outstanding feature of his thought is that he recognized the existence of a human soul or mind (psyche) in Christ, and did so because this soul was able to endure the human experiences which it was unfitting for the divine element in Christ to endure, in opposition to the Arians who taught that the Son suffered:

attached to the human organism is not affected by human

'Why do they think it so important to demonstrate that Christ assumed a body without a soul, in the course of thinking up deceptions that savour of the earth? It is so that they can bamboozle people into deciding that this is true; then because they attach the mutable nature of passions to the divine Spirit, they may easily persuade people that it is not possible that the mutable should be begotten from the immutable.'2' Christ's human soul, he says, preceded that of the Penitent Thiefinto Paradise. 24 His anxiety to protect God from human experiences shows itself in other ways: he said that the expression 'born of a woman' (Gal 4:4) meant that God initiated the birth, but· not that God was born of a woman; rather 'the man was born of a woman who was united with ("ayel<;) the Holy Spirit in the Virgin's womb.'25 It was not the Logos nor Wisdom who forbade Mary to touch him after the Resurrection (John 20:17), but the man composed oflimbs who had just risen from the dead. 26 It was not the Logos nor Wisdom that was crucified, but the man. 27 The Logos 2°Edited by Jahn Texte und Untersuchungen n.2. and preceded by a reprinting of Origen's trea~ment of the subject from cap. 16 of the Homilies on 1 Samuel. 2t5ee above, p.208 01. 22Accounts of Eustathius' theology as a whole can be found in Sellers Eustathius 85-120; Spanneut 'La Position theologique d'Eustache d'Antioche' 220-4; and Simonetti Crisis 71-5. No account is here taken of the Sermo Maior de Fide (which Schwartz was anxious to attribute to Eustathius) because its theological vocabulary,

though not that of the latest phase of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, is altogether toO far advanced to suggest the thought of Eustathius. For the same reason the works against Photinus are not considered. See Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 159-60; Spanneut Recherches 82-3,87"'"90, 127. The theory that Eustathius survived his deposition for a long time and in his later years developed and enlarged his theological vocabulary rests on tenuous foundations.

"Spanneut Recherches frag. 15(100). "Ibid. frag 17(100). "Ibid. frag 18(101). "Ibid. frag 24(102, 103). "Ibid. frag 25(103).

expenences:

'For if Paul declared that the Lord of glory was crucified, manifestly thinking of the man, there will be no need because of this to attribute human experience (pathos) to the Divine.'28

He distinguishes between 'the Logos who is God who is begotten by him' (i.e. the Father) and 'Christ's man' who was raised from the dead and is exalted and glorified. 29 He speaks of'he who anoints' who is God, 'He who has anointed' who is 'God by nature begotten from God', and 'he who is anointed' that is the human body who was adorned by the Godhead dwelling in it.'o God who dwelt in the hum'an body could not have been led to death nor slain like a lamb." There is a highly significant fragment found in a Syriac translation:'2 'in this hypostasis both (sc. Father and Son) accomplish wonders. The divine books over and over again refer their majesty to One, so that they produce duality out of singularity or declare singularity from duality, because there is one hypostasis of the Godhead.' This 'one hypostasis' of the Godhead was to become the slogan and rallying-cry of the continuing Eustathians. But the man whom the Logos assumed was a complete man: 'he consists of soul and body; it was proper that he should show by the human and innocent passions (i.e. the need to drink, to sleep, the manifestation of sadness, weariness etc.) that God wholly clothed himself with a complete man not spectrally nor hypothetically but in very truth. '3, And he uses the expression 'God-bearing man'.34 He calls God the Word 'the image of the divine substance' and the man his 'true temple', '5 and protests violently against attributing suffering to God the Word. 36 God hid 28lbid. 29lbid. ,olbid. "Ibid.

27(103): cf. frag 28(103), 29-31(104). 33 (106). 36(107); the context is Ps 45(44):8. 37(107).

32Ibid. frag 38(107); I translate here Lebon's translation into Latin of Asseman's Syriac text; Lebon's translation runs thus: Hac enim a";bo invisibili modo mira peragunt. Eorum porro magnificentiam multototies uni ita referunt librj divini < ut > -dualitatem ex singularitate introducant aut ex dualitate singularitatem praedicent quia divinitatis una est lIypostasis. '

"Ibid. "Ibid. "Ibid. '6lbid. 212

frag frag frag frag

frag 41(108). 42(108), 59(112), deiferum hominem, presumably 8eccp6pov liv8p<mtov. frag 44(109). frag 46(109).

Period of Confosion

Eustathius and Marcellus

the knowledge of the day of the Second Coming from the man,37 but the divine element in Jesus Christ was omniscient, hence Christ's rebuke to Mary at the marriage in Cana. 38 It is the man who sits at God's right hand.'9 He interprets the crucial text Proverbs 8:22 (LXX) 'The Lord created me the beginning of his ways', not of the Logos but of the human body ofJesus. 4o And he declares that 'Christ's man' was foreknown by God and determined in the depth of the divine mind. 41 Finally it is interesting to note that among the fragments of Eustathius' works there is one distinguishing carefully between 'created' (ktistos) and 'begotten' (gennetos) and insisting that the latter can apply to the Son but not the former. 42 Eustathius' essay on the Witch of Endor is a curious document. He violently attacks Origen in it, objecting to various points of his policy of allegorizing (none of which appears in Origen's extant treat~ent of the same subject). In fact in his exposition of the story Ongen specifically insists on its actual,literal, truth, asking, 'Is it true or is it riot true?', and refusing to allow that the witch merely pretended to consult the spirit of Samuel (a theory with which he is well acquainted), because, since Scripture records it, it must have happened. Eustathius maintains that the witch, possessed of a daemon, invented the whole business of recalling Samuel's spirit. His essay does not involve any.material relevant to his doctrine of God, except that at one point he tries to distinguish the Father and the Son, in connection with an appeal to Deut 13.1-3, which ends thus: 'for the Lord your God proves you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul'. Eustathius says;

the Son is that the Father is not, and has not thought out the theological consequences of this distinction. It is in some ways curious to find Eustathius attacking Origen, because he is one of the very few theologians in the first half of the fourth century to share Origen's view that the incarnate Logos had a human soul, and to see the significance of the Arians' denial of this doctrine. But he must have found Origen's doctrine of the three hypostases in the Godhead uncongenial, and he shows no sign of agreeing with Alexander of Alexandria in reproducing Origen's doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. In fact, anti-Arian though he w,,-,-" he shares with Arius the term Dyad in speaking of the relation of the Father to the Son. He has no objection to speaking of the 'begetting' of the Son, distinguishing it from creation. He appears to be confused about the relation of the Spirit to the Son. For him the Incarnation is an assumption of a man by the Logos so that the Logos dwells in him, as in a Temple; the human being absorbs all the human experiences attributed to Christ in the Gospels, leaving the divine element untouched. His weakest point is his incapacity to distinguish between the Father and the Son in the Godhead:' 'the Logos for Eustathius,' says Loofs, 'the advocate of the Ilia ouaia (one ousia) or 67t6a~a(Jt<; (hypostasis) of the Father and of the Son, has or is no proper hypostasis.'44 Sellers concludes, on the subject of Eustathius' theology:45 'it would seem that Eustathius, who never definitely expresses the

hypostasis of the Son, and who unflinchingly maintains the Ilia 8e6'1], (one Godhead), holds that the Logos is but an attribute of the one Divinity,. which when put forth becomes the divine tvtpyela (energy). Eustathius speaks of the Son as going forth from the Father and dwelling as an 'energy' in Jesus. We can only conclude that he regards the Logos - with which we include the other terms that he

'Here (the text) presents the Dyad (ouaoa) of the Father and the onlybegotten Son; naming one of them as the Lord who proves, but the other as well as this one as the Lord and God who is loved, so that it teaches the one Godhead out of the Dyad (ou6.oo<;) and the true divine begetting (etoyovlav).43

uses synonymously46 - as the potentiality of God, omnipresent as

God's activity.'

It is obvious here that Eustathius has no vocabulary to express what frag 49(110). frag 69(117). frag 50(110). frag 60(112). frag 61(112). frag. 57(1 II). "De Engasl,imylho XXIV

He probably understood the begetting of the Son in terms of the Logos-immanent and Logos-proceeding (Logos endiathetos and Logos prophorikos, which had been used ever since the second century), and represented the type of thought condemned by Arius for employing

"Ibid. "Ibid. "Ibid. 4·Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42Ibid.

:;) ,

(65).

44PtmiU5 von Samosata 296, 297, quoted by Sellers, Bustathi"s 88. 45 Eustalhius 90. 46For Eustathius '1tv£ijp.a (pneuma) was in some sense a synonym for Logos'. ibid. 85·

214

?T

c:

•

Period of Confusion

the concept of 'issue'.47 His theology appears very like that of Marcellus, and only differs from his in minor respects. He does not (pace Loofs) envisage the Logos or Son as later withdrawing into the Father again after his procession out from him, and for Eustathius the Son as Son is the image of God and the man assumed is the image of the Son. This is not Marcellus' doctrine. 48 There is no evidence that Athanasius was influenced by Eustathius; he might have used Eustathius' recognition of the human soul ofJesus to advantage, but did not. Nor can we confidently trace Eustathius as one in the series of theologians of the hypothetical 'Antiochene' school. 49 He does not object to allegorisation as such; his treatment of Pro v 8:22 shows that; he only dislikes some ofOrigen's uses of that ambiguous technique. His determination to protect the Godhead from enduring human experiences is not unique to him. Athanasius was a Iittlelater to show just as great an inclination to do so. It is not surprising, however, that Eustathius was condemned for Sabellianism. His insistence that there is only one distinct reality (hypostasis) in the Godhead, and his confusion about distinguishing Father, Son and Holy Spirit laid him open to such a charge. He could have replied (and, for all we know, did reply) that the notorious anathema in N gave him every encouragement to believe that there is only one distinct reality in the Godhead. He certainly would have had no difficulty in accepting the homoousios, nor in agreeing to the equality of Father and Son, though he was uncertain about how they were distinct. It was long before the confusion caused by N was to be cleared up. The existence of a school of thought holding Eustathius' views did nothing to clear the confusion. But it is easy to see that in this medley of opinions it is quite unrealistic to indulge in the business oflabelling some as 'heretical' and some as 'orthodox'. It is not even helpful to divide theological opinion at this point into 'Origenist' and 'anti-Origenist'; Arius, Alexander, Eusebius of Caesarea and Eustathius all have recognizably Origenist doctrines among their 47Ibid. 90; for 'issue' (probole) see above P·7. 48S e ll ers Eustathius 93-4; Simonetti Studi 44-8. 49$0 Sellers and several others: for later heirs of Eustathius' tradition, see Sellers I I 4-20. The fourth book of Or. con A,. (widely recognised to be non-Athanasian) -. may be a document of the continuing Eustathian group. It insists on the existence of only one IIYPoslasis (regarded as synonymous with the ousia) in the Godhead, warmly appr9ves of attaching the word homoousios to the Son and attacks both Arianism and a doctrine exactly like that of Marcellus and his school. 216

Bustathius and Marcellus

theological ideas. But none can be recognized as either an heir to Origen nor as somebody who owed nothing to him.

2.

Marcellus of Ancyra 50

It seems likely .that Marcellus was present, and indeed presided, at the Council of Ancyra, which is usually placed in the year 3 14. Some

MSS of the account of this council say that Vitalis. of Antioch presided, others give the name of Marcellus; probably Vitalis' name was substituted for that of Marcellus because Marcellus was known to scribes as an heretic. 51 He took an active part in the proceedings of the Council of Nicaea,· though precisely what part we do not know, except that it was anti-Arian. 52 About ten years after the Council of Nicaea he was deposed by a council held in Constantinople. The exact date of his deposition and the exact reason for it are disputed. It was in either 335 or 336, most probably in 336. Some time after the Council ofNicaea, perhaps about 330, he had written against a work of Asterius (not his Syntagmation but a letter defending Paulinus of Tyre), a book of an anti-Arian colour. 53 At the Council ofJerusalem and the Council of Tyre in the same year he had supported Athanasius. At the Council of Jerusalem he agreed to destroy his book, which was accused offavouring the ideas of Paul ofSamosata. But when at a council held in Constantinople (probably next year 336) the matter was brought up again, he refused to withdraw the book and was deposed for heresy. Basil, already eminent for his theological skill, was chosen to succeed him. It was immediately after 50For Marcellus, see Harnack, History IV.65, 66; Gwatkin AC 53-5 (including the extraordinary statement, 55, 'as far as doctrine went, there was very little to choose between Arius and Marcellus') SA 79-80; Gericke, Marcellus von Ancyra (28-70 review of previous scholarship on the subject); GriHmeier CCT 274 (bibliography) and 28S--9~ Simonetti Crjsi 66--71; Tetz 'Zur Theologie des Markell von Ancyra' I, II and III; 'MarceHianister und Athanasius von Alexandrien'. Jerome, De Vir. Ill. LXXXVI (44) is worth very little. For phases of Marcellus' career see Schwartz, Gesamm. Schrift. 6.122, 123; 8,230-6, 272-3; 9.269-71, 292-4. 301--'7; Loofs 'Arianismus' 21, 22; Ritter 'Arianismus' 707. 51 Gericke Marcellus 7. 52Evidence for this. frag 129 ('some people ... whom I refuted in the Council of Nicaea'); Athanasius Apol. Secunda 23, 32 (Gericke op. cit. 8»). 53According to Eusebius of Caesarea, Marcellus was attacking a formidable number of people in this book: Asterius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, Paulinus ofTyre (who was dead by then), Narcissus ofNeronias. Origen and Eusebius himself (Con. Marcel/urn 1.4.7,8 (24:752)). 7. T'7

Period of Confusion

Eustathius and Marcellus

Marcellus' deposition that Eusebius of Caesarea wrote his Contra Marcel/um, his chief attack on Marcellus' theological position. 54 Both Eusebius and Athanasius remark that Marcellus was already an old man when he was deposed and exiled. 55 On the death of the Emperor Constantine in 337, Marcellus, with all the exiled bishops still alive, returned to Ancyra, his former see, but was exiled again in the year 338 or 339, presumably by the Emperor Constantius and presumably because his presence in Ancyra was causing embarrassment, after another (smaller) council held at Constantinople. 56 Marcellus then moved to Rome, and waited there for over a year in expectation of a measure designed to vindicate his orthodoxy from the bishop Julius of Rome. After a year and three months he wrote a letter to Julius asking for this vindication, and enclosing a formal statement of his belief. This creed, which he says he received when he was taught religion by his parents, is closely related to one which can be reconstructed from Rufmns' Commentarius in Symbolum Apostolorum (PL 21:335-386), and this in its tum was identified by Ussher in the xviith century as the contemporary creed of the Roman Church. In response to this move,Julius, in the year 341, summoned a council to Rome, which vindicated the orthodoxy of Marcellus, as well as that of Athanasius who had reached Rome after Marcellus in the course of his second exile. 57 Marcellus remained in the West till the Council of

Serdica, in 343, when he accompanied the Western bishops to that town. After the disagreement between the Eastern and the Western bishops at Serdica, the Easterners renewed their accusation of unorthodoxy against Marcellus and added an atrocity story about his having insulted consecrated virgins. 58 The Westerners, on their part, in their circular greet Marcellus as 'most beloved brother and fellowbishop', call him the bishop of Ancyra, make counter-allegations of atrocities perpetrated by Eastern bishops, and say that Marcellus is innocent of teaching that Mary gave the beginning to God the Word (one of the charges mentioned by the Eastern bishops) and that Christ's reign shall have no end (the other charge), because he only put forward these views as suggestions without approving of them. 59 Not much is known of the rest of the career of Marcellus: In 344 or about then he probably returned to Ancyra. 6o Several other bishops returned at about this time (i.e. after Easter 344 when the debacle concerning Stephen of Antioch caused a temporary thaw in the cold war between East and West), but the retnrn of Marcellus again caused disturbances in Ancyra. 61 Hilary, on the other hand, says that

5450 most convincingly Simonetti C,jsi I3 1-2, except that he places the deposition in 335 and not 336. Cf. Gericke op. cit. la, Zeiller Origineschretiennes 218. Gericke thinks that he was deposed for having refused to attend the dedication of Constantine's Church of the Anastasis in Jerusalem in 335. but this is unlikely.

Eusebius says that Marcellus was deposed at a syno~ of bishops from Pontus, Cappadocia, Asia, Phrygia, Bithynia. Thrace and the parts beyond it, that Constantine tnen exiled him. and this in spite of the fact that Marcellus had flattered the Emperor greatly in his writings (Con. Marc. 11-4(58) (821, 824)). This suggests Constantinople as the venue for the deposing coood} rather thanJerusalem or Tyre. and does not fit well with the idea that Marcellus refused to attend the dedication of Constantine's church. Schwartz had placed the deposition in 330, misled by Socrates HE 11.42. Sozomenus HE 11.3.3.1-4 says that Marcellus was deposed for unorthodoxy, that he had refused to attend the councils of eitherJerusalem (with the dedication of the Church) or Tyre. and was finally condemned at Constantinople, and that the bishops who condemned him afterwards circulated a letter giving their reasons. Barnes. Constantine and Eusebius 240-2, accepts 336 as the date of Marcellus' fall. sSEusebius Eee, Theol. 2; Athanasius Hist. Ar. 6. 56 50 Gericke op. cit. 13, following Loofs; Opitz note in loco on Apol. Secunda p. 130; the evidence comes from Marcellus'letter to Julius; cf. Hilary Coll. AT. A IV.9(55), the Encyelical of the Easterners at Serdica, "See Barnard 'Pope Julius, Marcellus of Ancyra and the Council of Sardica'

218

69-74; Gericke op. cit. 13, 14 (though his dates differ a little); Simonetti Crisi 143-9 .. The theological content ofMarcellus' letter to Julius is considered below, pp. 230-1. The events of this period are traced in greater detail below pp. 262-'73 in connection with the career of Athanasius. The fact that Marcellus declares that what was clearly the local Roman creed was what he had learnt at his mother's knee need not give rise to suppositions (as it has with some scholars) that in Marcellus' creed we have the local creed of Ancyra, because when they make statements like these the ancients invariably refer to the content of the creed considered as a whole and not to its form nor its details; see R. P. C. Hanson 'Dogma and Formula in the Fathers' in Studies in Christian Antiquity. Incidentally Marcellus'·reference to learning Christianity from his parents does not agree with Gwatkin's suggestion (SA So nl) that his errors in quoting Scripture show that he was not born of Christian parents. "Hilary Coll. Arian. A 1V.2 (4!r5 0 ), 3 (50-1),9 (55). In 3 (50-I) they reveal that he had been condemned at Constantinople. 59Hilary, op. cit., B 11.1(105), 3(11 1),6(117'-8); the Encyclical is also available in Athanasius Apol. Secunda 44-9 and Theodoret HE II.S (Greek translations) and in Cassiodorus Historia Tripartita IV.24 (Latin tr. of Theodoret's Greek); see also Ossius' Letter written after Serdica Turner EOMIA I, 645, 648. For these events see Simonetti Crisi 172-3; Gericke op. cit. 17-19; Barnard 'Pope Julius' 75-9. Grillmeier CCT 272 is represented as saying that 'when the synod of Sardica in 342/3 took Marcel1us' side against the charges of the Orientals, Athanasius, the leader of the Nicenes, spoke only of "the tatters ofSardica" '. But Athanasius did not use this term of the Western Encyclical till about 20 years later. It looks as if Grillmeier's English translator has here in ignorance betrayed him, rendering as 'when' a word which should have been translated 'although'. 6°S chwartz, 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 142; Declercq Ossius 417-S (dating 347). 61 Socrates HE 11.24; Sozomenus HE 111.23-4; Athanasius Apol. Secunda I and 58.

Period of Confusion Marcellus never returned to his see, and that this argued a consciousness in him of his being heretical, and in the same pa~sage n declares that Athanasius, unconstrained by any synod~l declSlo (because he could not have recognized the condemnatIOn of the Eastern bishops at Serdica), and without reference to a~y particular work of Marcellus, about this time dissociated himself from Marcellus. 62 Several writers have accepted one or both of these statements as correct. 63 But it is probable that Hilary is wrong on both counts. Marcellus almost certainly returned to .Ancyra II'; 337, and very probably in 344 or 345. And AthanaslUs m wntmgs produced several years after this time continued to defend the orthodoxy ofMarcellus. 64 Epiphanius relates ~n mterestmg anecdote about this: he says that he once asked AthanaslUs wha~ he thought of Marcellus. 'He neither embarked on a defence of him nor on the other hand did he bitterly attack him, but by the appearance of a smile on his face he intimated that Marcellus was not far from er~or (~oXOT]piac;), but that he was to be excused.'65 Ath.anasius' expression may also have betokened a desire to get nd politely of an embarrassing question from a bore. But we may be sure.that, though he may temporarily at this period, when he was preparmg to return from his second exile, have wished to place a distance between himself and Marcellus, he had no intention of making a final break with him. It is doubtful if he ever did this. EpiphanlUs tells us that Marcellus died two or three years before the moment when he IS writing Panarion 72.1 (255), and this must m~an 374 or 375 at the latest. We do not know where Marcellus died; It may have been m or For the 'affaire Stephen' see below, p. 307. Klein Constantius II lIS ment.ions. this return and its result. dating it 343 or 344. I think that we must connect It With a sequel to Stephen's faU at Easter 344. so that 343 is toO early. "Coll. Antiarian BIl9.2(22) and 3(23). Hilary certainly regarded Marcellus as heretical; see De Trinitate VIl.3(262). . ,. . 63S hwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 145-0 (as far as Athanaslus dlstancmg c himselfis concerned)~ Zeiller Les Origines 265 ..who. thinks th~t Marcel~us may h~ve been in Illyricum. not Ancyra, when AthanaSlus disowned him; Meshn. Les Anens 264-6. Klein even talks of a 'final break' in 345 (Constantius 8?). . 64Apol. de Fuga (written 3S7) 3.3-{i(70); Apol. Secunda (also wntten in 3S7) 32.1-4 . . , (IIO, II I); Hist. Arian. 6 (written 3S 8). 65Panarion 7 2 .4.4(259). Gericke. who thinks that at the time of .Athan.aslus distancing himself from him Marcellus was in Illyricum. regarded t~lS partlcular expression of Athanasius as intending approval of Marcellus. He thlOks that the coolness was only temporary. and was accepted by Marcellus as such (Marcellus

2<>-2).

Eustathius and Marcellus near Ancyra, from where his disciples had for long carried on his theological tradition, and had thence sent a delegation to Athanas~us.66 If we make the reasonable assumption that Marcellus had preSIded as bishop of Ancyra over the council held there in 3 '4, I.e. he was then at least 30 years old, and probably, in view of the observatio?s about his age when he was later deposed, older, he must when he dIed have been a very old man. He had outlived Athanasius. Som~ of t~work of Marcellus can be recovered from fragments quoted I~ the books of those who wrote against him, mainly from EuseblUs Contra Marcel/um. 67 We do not know the title of the book which he wrote against Asterius and which Eusebius of Caesarea attacked. 6s We also have the text ofhis Letter to Julius ofRome written m. 3.41, preser~ed for us by Epiphanius. 69 Several other works ongmally attrIbuted· to a variety of other authors have been conjecturally assigned to Marcellus. Of these, one of the most likely is a short work known as Expositio Fidei attributed to Athanasius by the MSS.70 Its theology echoes certain points characteristic of Marcellus the rejection of 'three hypostases divided from each other' the use of the term 'the Lord's man: (KuplaKoc; iivOpolltoC;) for the h;man body of ChrISt .. The work IS neIther Arian nor Ca ppadocian nor Hom01o~slan. nor Pneumatomachian nor shows any influence from th~ Apollina~lal'; Controversy. There is also a work called variously Ep,stula ad L,benum and Contra Theopaschitas which has come down to .us m several forms, the most reliable version of which has been pnnted by Te.tz 'Zur theologie des Markell von Ankyra III' (159ft). It h~d been attrIbuted to Athanasius traditionally. Schwartz wished to gIve It to ~ustathius of Antioch, but Tetz has made a convincing case for asslgnmg the authorship to Marcellus'?' It insists that there is only 66See b~Jow, ~.222. Schwartz, 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 188, confidently places Marcellus death In 375, but then when did Schwartz not write confidently? Gericke (Marcel!us 26-7) opts ~or 374. and ~elieves that when in 371 his disciples sent a ?eiegatlon to A~ha?aSlUS he was In Ancyra. His age probably rendered him mno.cuous t~ BasIl hIS successor who did not on other occasions show himself tender to hIS enemies. . 67They are collected in the GCS edition of that work 68?ericke (op .. cit. 29 n3) conjectures that it was caned 'On Recognizing One God, (see Eusebms Bee. Theol. Praef. p.60 and frag. II S). 69Panarion 72.2.1-3.5 (256-259). 70PG 25:199-208: see also Scheidweiler 'Bin Glaubenbekenntnis' 237-8 a better text. '

7t:Zur .Th~ologie Ill', 14S-S8, also see PG 28:1441-S. The attempt of F. Scheldweder, Em Glaubenbekenntnis des Eustathius von Antiochien?' to show that

Period of Confusion one hypostasis and one ousia in God; it resembles the con~ession of the Western bishops at Serdica. It can hardly have been wntten early or very late in Marcellus' career as ~ ~riter. If we are to accept the address to Pope Liberius as authentic It should be placed between 352 66 A third work which we can attribute to Marcellus IS the dn a 3·. d'hh famous Sermo Maior de Fide,72 which is largely concerne Wit t e doctrine of the Incarnation; it may be placed between t~e .years 325 and 350. It consists of a number of quotations of the ongma! work culled from florilegia. There is also a work tr~dlt1onal~y ascnbed to Athanasius called De Incarnatione et Contra Artanos which has many striking resemblances to Marcellus' theology in it, resemblances hich Tetz has effectively drawn out. 73 But there are two features m work which suggest that it cannot have been written long bdore 370 (as Tetz admits, op. cit. 270), its careful doctrine of the dlvmlty ~f the Holy Spirit, and the reference to those who declare that the Son IS unlike (aV6)!010v) to the Father (1(983)), which suggests the eXistence of a Neo-Arian party. But by 370, indeed well before 370, Marcellus was probably a very old man. Th.e Marcella~ di~ci~les who se~t the document called the Eugenii LegatlO et Confemo Fldet t~ AthanaslUs m 371 mention Marcellus as still alive but do not claim to brmg a message direct from him. It seems highly hkely that by then he was not compos mentis enough to communicat~ with Ath~nasius. 74 It would therefore be temerarious to attnbute to him the De Incarnatione et Contra Arianos if, as seems necessary, we must place that document as late as 369 or 370. We must attribute this work to

~is

it was written by Eustathius is not convincing. His reasons ,for refusing it .to Marcellus are tenuous, and his own theory depends upon assummg that EustathlU~ lived well beyond 337 If the atfmities between this work and the Westerners Encyclical after Serdic~ are genuine. then,. on this theory. the silence of that Encyclical about Eustathius is incomprehenstble. . . . 72Text, Schwartz Sitzungberichte der Wiener Akademle der W,ssenschaftltche~. P~.­ Hist.-KI. Section, 1924.6, 3-63; PG. 26:1264--96 (a text w~ose errors J~stlfr Schwartz's description of it (p. S) as a cloaca maxima). See Tetz, Zur Theologle II . Schwartz wanted to give it to Eustathius, but once again ?n th~ ~ssump~ion that he survived for many years afler 337. The Christology IS strik~ngly lIke that of Marcellus. Tetz prefers to call it Epistula ad Antiochenos foll~wmg t~e ,ArmeOlan version (see R. P. Casey 'The Pseudo-Athanasian Sermo Malor de FIde, ]ThS 35 (1934) 394-5). and the Latin of Facundus of Hermtane. . 73'Zur Theologie l' 223-,/0; text to be found PG 26:983-IO.~8. 74For a full discussion and edition of the text of the Eugenu LegatlD, see Tetz 'Markellianer und Athanasios von Alexandrien', and for his discussion of the date, pp. II6-19. The text can also be found in PG 18:1277",,8.

222

Eustathius and Marcellus Marcellus' disciples rather than to Marcellus himself Then there is a little. treatise known as De Sancta Ecciesia found in a G~eek MS in the Ambrosian Library, Milan, originally attributed to Anthimus who was bis~op ofNicomedia and was martyred 302, but now universally recogmsed as of Marcellan provenance. 75 It has recognizably Marcellan d0-8I'ine in it, but the clear references in it to NeoArianism necessitate our placing it at a very late stage in Marcellus' life, so that the attempt to attribute it directly to his hand meets the same ~bstacle as that encountered by De Inc. et Con Arianos. 76 Finally, there IS the Bpistula Liberii ad Athanasium,77 which purports to be a letter of LlberlUs of Rome to Athanasius, but manifestly is a document exhibiting several Marcellan traits, such as an insistence on only one hypostasis with one ousia in the Godhead; Tetz thinks it cannot be by Marcellus because of its marked concern for the divinity of the Holy Spirit. It also insists that the Logos at the Incarnation assumed 'a whole man' (~eAelovlivBpCl>7tOV) i.e. a human body with an human soul. This trait Tetz takes to be anti-Apollinarian, but it could equally well be anti-Arian, rejecting the doctrine of the 'soulless body' (soma apsychon) of Christ. He believes that this document belonged to a corpus of Marcellan documents preserved by the followers of P~ulinus ~f Antioch at Antioch when the continuing Eustathians, With Paulmus as their bishop, and the followers of Marcellus coalesced there. 78 The fact that it opts for one hypostasis does not mean (as Tetz appears to think) that we must date it some time before the Council of Alexandria in 362. It is noticeable that this work at one point deliberately parts from a characteristic doctrine of Marcellus. It affirms (§1, p. 192) that the Son 'possesses his kingdom end~essly for infinite ages'. Marcellus had originally taught that the Son ~ kmgd.om would have an end. Later in his Letter to Julius, he mod~fied t~s eccentric d~ctrine; his disciples may have made a point of rejectm.g It. It IS most hkely that this document was composed by some of his school, who were ready to sacrifice one of their master's original doctrines which they considered unimportant in order to preserve the point' which. was to them crucial, that there was one "Published by G. Mercati Studi e Testi 5 (1901). Discussed by Tetz 'Zur Theologie 1'. 76For these signs of Nco-Arianism, see R. P. C. Hanson 'The Date and Authorship of Pseudo-Anthimus, De Sanda Ecclesia'. 77Text edited by Tetz, 'Zur Theologie III', 192-4. 78S ee Tetz 'Zur Theologie 1', 23 2 -S.

Period of Confusion Eustathius and Marcellus hypostasis with one ousia only. It is possible that the treatise 'was originally addressed to Athanasius (and therefore cannot be later than 373), but not, of course, by Liberius. . Marcellus' theological position can be reco~structed to so~e finr extent. Eusebius of Caesarea in his book attacking Ma~cellus gIves us several paraphrases and several extracts from Marcellus controversIal book. Marcellus, he says: 'assumed that the Son was a mere word (\jIlMv Myov) and testified that he was only a word, and constantly ~epeated this statement that the Logos was nothing else, immanent durmg. the !lme that the Father was silent, but active in fashioning t~e creatlOn, Just as o.~~ speech IS inactive when we are silent, but active when we speak.

And again, Marcellus taught that 'the Logos himself alone was united to God; and this (united being) was eternal and unbegotten, and was one and the same thing as God,. called by the distinct names of Father and Son, but one m oUSla and hypostasis.'80 In spite of the fact that this is almost a q~otation fro~ N, Eusebius regards· this doctrine as outright Sabelhamsm, that IS a faIlure to distinguish Father and Son. The much-quoted text 'The Father and I are One' On 10:30) referred, according to Marcellus, not to the umon of God the Father and God the Son but to that of God the Father and God the Logos, and he quoted some texts to show that there eXIsted a lack of harmony between Father and Son, Matt 26:39; Jn 5:30 and . 81 He asked 'What was that which came down before the 14·9· . h . h d h t Incarnation?' (i.e. made itself apparent to t e patrIarc s an prop e s etc. in the OT), and answered, 'Of course, Spirit'.82 It was not the Logos that was begotten, but the Son.83 It was not a matte~ ofon: unbegotten and one begotten God. The world and everything m It have been produced by one God-with-Logos. The Logos cannot be separated from God and regarded as 'produced.' any more. than a man's logos (word) can. God did not need anything for makmg the world more than 'the actual plan in his own mind'. 84 God is God "Contra Marcellum (1.1.4(24:717». s·Ibid·1.1.4(24:718). "Ibid. 1l.2.38(24:788.792) frag 64. 82Ibid. 1l.2.35(24:784), frag 82, 49. 83Ibid. 1l.2.36(24:785) frag 31. "Ibid. 1l.2.39, 40(24:792). frag 92. 93. 55. 53·

only ~nd there is no other than he: Logos is not a roundabout way of denotmg a second divine Being. 85 'There is no more recent God of any Sort. nor any other later God capable of cooperating with God.'86 The well-known text at Gn 1 :26 'Let us make man in Our own image' is not the proof of a second divine being. but it is an idiomatic usage, as if a sculptor were to say 'Come, let us make a statue' having first intended and designed the statue in his mind. 87 The Logos was only called Son orJesus or Christ after the Incarnation and if the OT calls him Son it is so only prophetically: the 'first bo~ of all creation' (Col 1:16, 17) is this Logos-with-human_body, and the much-used text Prov 8:22 referred to the incarnate, not to the pre-existent Logos.88 The flesh. which does not profit could not be destined to be associated permanently with the Logos: so 'this 'Son' would, in accordance with 1 Cor 15:28, eventually separate from the Logos and the Logos would return to the Father.89 Eusebius' Ecclesiastical Theology tells us a little more about the ideas of Marcellus. He objected to Asterius' statement that the Logos was begotten before the ages. For Marcellus, it is altogether too anthropomorphic to say that the Logos was begotten; better to say that he was put forth. John the evangelist had not said that the Logos was begotten: '(God's) Logos came forth from the Father in order that everything should come into existence through him. ' But when all opposing powers shall have been put down, then the Logos will retu~n to God. In orde~ to be created, the world needed (not merely Go~ ~ power (dynamts) whIch was always there, but) 'creative actIVIty (OPUO"tIlCi) tvtpysw)'. This the Logos supplied.90 Eusebius more than once accuses Marcellus of reverting to an earlier, and, to him: discredited, t?eology of an 'immanent' and 'proceeding' (endtathetos, prophonkos) Logos, entailing a Trinity which was not "Ibid. 1l.2.41(24:793) frag 68. 40. s'lbid. 1l.2.4I(24:793) frag 52. "Ibid. 1l.2.41-42(24:793-796) frag 52. S8Ibid. 1l·3.43-4, 46. 47(24:797. Boo. BOI) frag 36. 9. 10. 13. '4. 17. Cf. 1.2.9. 10(24:73 2-3) frag I; II. 12(24:737) frag 16. 109; 12(24:740) frag 23;

II.3.4~-4(2~:797) frag 36. He even makes the statement which must have been shockmg!y mnovatory to that 'God' (theos) and 'Lord' (kyrios) in the OT dld not denote two dlfferent bemgs, but were identical (Eee. Theol. 11.19. 4, 12 12 5 (frag 6B. 69. 50)). There was only one God in the QT. not two (ibid. 1l.19. I26(frag 67». Cf. SImonetti Studi 3B-40.

his.contemp~raries

"Ibid. n.3.45(24:BoO). frag 104. n.2.42(24:796) frag loB. 1l.B.106-B (frag 31, 2B, lOB, 54).

'·Ecclesiastical Theology

224

Period of Confusion

Bustathius and Maree lIus

al 91 But in fact Marcellus is probably doing no more t~an to that God did not create direct Eusebius gives us Marcellus Tr11Utanan theo ogy I s~ n b~ called) in a long extract, taken, as are all the extr;cts m th~ ~:clesiastical Theology, from the same book which cause so muc offence: t

~n~:

throu~h a~ i?te~mediar~ hypo(~~sls~~~~

'It is impossible that three who are hypost~ses should be ~n;~d hinl a

M d nless the Trinity has first had its ongm m a Mona . e ? y onasaid ,uthat they were summed up m . a Monad (Eph no) Paul . .' .and thiSls I no different from the unity which is God; the Logos and Spmt are on y . '92 · unity. distinct from Go d m

M

llus in this fragment, opposes Asterius' statement that there are ;stases' 'the Monad is indivisible and would extend mto ~ three YP .. f,or instance , were a separate Trimty' and I'f' th e Spmt, . . fhypostaSIS h S . . ;, m the Father he would not need the mmlstry 0 t eon, would be perfect, or, ifhe received from Fafither .. d . the Son's power then he did not ISsue rom t e . . d d f om the mmlStere grace 10 Father In fact Marcellus believed that the Spmt proceehae ~ 11 L . ot from the Father.9' Eusebius declares that w t rce us is 'that there are three Names to be found m one hypostasis.'9' , . f th A !"ttle more can be learnt about Marcellus conception 0 e Lo os his relation to the Son. Christ was the Logos who at one . 'g was Slen '1 t I'n the Father , as our logos (word) can be time . ISilent, .and d later active; as when our word speaks. Then for a partlcu ar 1en0r' less than forty years, 'he says th~t he took fldesh d~ nO~i~n~;be~:m~ and undertook the incarnate rmmstry, an on ~ t en .. . flesh and was called Jesus Christ, and King, and Image of the mVlSlble God and first-born of all creation, and not before. And M:rcellus se~a limit to this period of Christ's reign" s At the end of t IS reign t e flesh of Christ was to be abandoned, the body deserted, andthe L;g:s would return to God from whom he had (before the creation 0 t e

arc~

~~~:~e ~~

~he

a~d

r:~~~' ~elieves ~nd

?

·'Ibid. 11.11.112, 113 (frag 92, 108, 46, 48, 47); 15.118,119 (frag 53, 52, 82). .2Ibid. Ill.4.157 (frag 60). ·'Ibid. 158 (frag 60). ·
world) come forth. 96 Even when in Coil: 16, 17 Christ is called 'the first born of all creation', he is so only as incarnate,,7 Marcellus distinguished his position from that of Sabellius, because, he said, Sabellius would not recognize a Logos, but God can only be known through IUs Logos. 98 He frequently either substituted 'Logos' for 'Son' in quoting the utterances of Jesus or glossed the word 'Son' with Logos"9 Before the foundation of the world God existed without a Son. The Logos is not in himself Son but is identical with God. Neither Son nor Logos can be separated from God in either power or hypostasis. 100 His doctrine that the Logos was first 'silent' in God and later was put forth to become 'articulate' (crl]J!UVtlKO<;), always on the analogy of a silently conceived and then uttered word, is not really identical with the earlier (originally Stoic) doctrine of Word immanent and Word proceeding. The 'image of the invisible God' is the flesh of the Saviour; the only-begotten Son (i.e. Logos + assumed flesh) is not the image of God. 102 Marcellus' had, of course, a doctrine of the Incarnation. He took virtually all the texts which had from time immemorial been used by Christian theologians to apply to the pre-existent Son, and applied then instead to the incarnate Logos (i.e. in his view, the Son proper), not only Prov 8:22ff (by means of most implausible allegorization) but also Ps 109(110):3 and 97(96):1.10, He attributed Christ's mediatorial function simply to the Incarnation. And after the resurrection the human body (to which all the Scriptural texts about glory apply) was glorified by being made worthy of super-human 96Ibid. 6(24:721); cf. II. 1.3 1-2(24:777). Marcellus had attacked Eusebius himself on one of his weakest points, his doctrine that there was one God and one mediator between God and man (Con Marc. 1.4.2!r"-30 (frag 89, 90, 91, 7 2)). See above, PP·57-58. .7Ibid. 11.3.43-44 (24:800-801) frag 36. "Eccles. theol. 1.15.74, 75 (frag 38). ··Ibid. 1.16.76 (frag 38). to°lbid. 1.17·77, 78 (frag 62,55,93,56); cf. 11.1.100 (frag 51, 93, 9 2). ,ollbid. 11.3.101 (frag 92). l02Ibid. II.23.I34 (frag 82). Gericke (Marcellus von Ancyra 126) points out that Marcellus divided time into two stages, the period from creation to the Incarnation, which he called 'the first dispensation' (oikonomia) and the second from the Incarnation onwards (frag 9. 73. 43. 17. 19.70, IOO, 117). He conjectures, without evidence, that Marcellus counted a third 'dispensation' from the arrival of the Holy Spirit. But it seems more likely that he would have thought of the third as beginning with the disappearance of Christ's human body and the return of the Logos to God. IO'Con. Marc. 11.3.47-5 0 (24: 804-8) frag 18, 19,20,22,84; 11.3.50(24:8°9) frag 26; 11.3.5 1(24: 809) frag 35, 97.

Eustathius and Marcellus

Period of Confusion

glory.104 Not only was it incorruptible and immortal, but also 'seated with God on his throne in heaven"os (even though fated ultimately to disappear). It is only by his activity (Evepyetu) that the Logos is separate from the Father during th: Incam~tion. 'The flesh profits nothing' Un 6:64) is one of Marcellus favourite texts. But the flesh must be retained till the Judgment so that the Je~s can look on him whom they pierced (Zech 12:10), and then It will be dispensed with. There is no reason why it should exist eternally.'06 The purpose of the Incarnation was so that man who had be~n defeated by the devil should defeat the devil, and in Christ man (I.e. his human nature) has defeated the devil and is reigning over him. This process must be completed. That is all. '07 If anybody were to askabout the ultimate destiny of the assumed flesh, we must reply that this IS one of those things which we cannot know (1 Cor 13:12).1°8 I~ another extract quoted by Eusebius, Marcellus sets out his doctnne of the Incarnation: 'If we were to examine the Spirit alone, it would be reasonable to think that the Logos was one and the same thing with God. But if we were to examine the additional fact of the Incarnation in the case of the Saviour the Godhead would appear to be extended simply by activity (EvtPYE:U). so that in all likelihood the Monad is genuinely indivisible.'109

After reading this, we cannot be surprised that Mar~ellus was dep~sed for Sabellian leanings. He does, however, beheve m an Incarnation: 'Who would have believed before the demonstration of the fac~ that the Word of God would have been conceived through a vlfgm, would. assume our flesh, and would display the whole Godhead in it bodily?'"O The Saviour ascended with the human body,'" but Marcellus disavowed knowledge of what was ultimately to happen to thiS l04lbid. 11.3.50. 51(24:809) frag 94, 95, 96. lO5lbid. 11.3.51 (frag 98). l06lbid. 11.4.53, 54(24:813) frag 103. 104· l07lbid. 11.4.53(24:816) frag 104· l08Ibid. 1I.4.5S(z4: 8I 7) frag 108; see Marcellus' summary of quoted by Eusebius ibid. 11.4.56, frag 108. 109Eccl. theol. 11+102 (frag 64)· 110lbid. 11.3.146 (frag 13)· 111 Ibid. 111.10.167 (frag Il4)'

. hIS

. own

VIeWS

human body."2 Eusebius accuses Marcellus of saying that the Holy Spirit is 'neither God nor Son ... but one of the things produced through the Son.'"3 In fact this description is surprisingly like Eusebius'.own doctrine of the Spirit, 114 and it is probably a distortion of Marcellus' own doctrine. No doubt Marcellus believed that the Spirit was simply God with his Logos before the Incarnation and after the Incarnation was also God with his Logos, independent of the human body assumed. Gericke refers us to a statement by Theodoret quoting Marcellus to the effect that the procession of the Holy Spirit was 'an extension of the extension', the Logos being the first extension and the Spirit the second coming from the first."s The Spirit remains inseparably in God, but goes forth as activity (EvepYElu) from the Father and the Logos. 116 As far as the quotations by Eusebius go. there is no reason to conclude that Marcellus saw the necessity of postulating a human psyche in the flesh assumed by the Logos at the Incarnation. Whether he changed his mind on this point will be considered later. "7 Certainly in the extracts quoted by Eusebius the Logos appears to be the subject of all the human experiences ofJesus Christ, as Gericke points out." 8 It is the Logos who is born, who becomes flesh. The Logos + flesh is what is called Son, and Marcellus can call the Logos 'Saviour' and 'Lord'. It is the Logos, not the human Jesus, who reveals the Father, speaks at Gethsemane and sends the Spirit. Marcellus' theory, that the Logos-with-human-body is the Son, sometimes breaks down under stress of his desire to give prominence to the Logos. One point about Marcellus which is unequivocally clear is that he believed that God constituted only one hypostasis, as he had only one ousia. For 'him homoousios, whose presence in N he must have welcomed enthusiastically, meant not merely' consubstantial' or 'of "'Ibid. 111.10.166 (frag 108). 113lbid. 1II.6. 164. 114See above, Pp.55-56. . 115Gericke. Marcellus von Ancyra 128, referring to Theodoret Haer.Fab. 2.10 (PC 83:397). 116Gericke. referring to frag 67. 68. Gericke's long and careful account of Marcel1us' theology, op. cit. 73-190, is the most abundant recent account and is particularly useful, but is marred ,by t.he author's con.tinual attempt, following Loofs, to see Marcellus as standmg m an hypothetIcal, indeed non-existent . ' 'Antiochene' tradition of theology. 117See below, PP.233-4. Gericke (op. cit. 97. 168) denies that Marcellus ever spoke of a human psyche in Jesus Christ. 1180p. cit. 155-62.

Period of Confusion similar substance', but 'ofidentical being' (tautotiato<;). For him the anathema ofN which forbade Catholics to teach that the. Son was of a different hypostasis or ousia from the Father had preCISely t~e full Sabellian force which it appeared to have. There.was for him m God only one 'Person' in the later Trinitarian sense of that word. 119 The ambivalence of N might not have been so serious, and the reaction against it might have been less drastic, had not Marcellns (and perhaps Eustathius) represented a contemporary school of thought which was only too happy to accept N ~ a se~se which .appeared to rule ~~t any possibility of recognizmg distmcttons W!thin the Godhead. . It is interesting to examine Marcellus letter written to Julius ~f Rome some five years after his deposition to see If~e has. altered hiS views in the interval. He first sets out the ideas to which he IS ~pposed, that the Son is not the proper Logos of God, but that there ~s another Logos and another Wisdom and Power, and that there. IS another hypostasis different from the Father', 121 that the Fathe: eX1~ted ~efore the Son and that the Son is not the true Son 'from God., or Ifhe IS Son then only so as everything else is, ~n~ that the Son ~s a creature or something made, and he is to be d,stmgUlshed (~\OP~~E\V) from the Father.122 Clearly Marcellus had not changed hiS views ab?ut the nature of God. Next, he gives a careful declaration of hiS own orthodoxy: 'I believe ... there is one God and his only-begotten Son the Logos who has always co-existed with the Father and has never had any beginning of existence, who genuinely originates fro,m ,God, not

created, not made, but existing eternally, etem~lly rOlgnmg alon~ with God and the Father, whose kingdom, accordmg to the Aposde.' witness, shall have no end, and this is Son, this is Power, this 15 Wisdom, this is the proper and true Logos of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, indivisible Power of God, through whom all eXl5tmg things came into existence.'l23 119Cf. Gericke 108-9; Sellers Eustathius 31; Tetz 'Zur ~heologie Ill' lSI. . t20Declercq (Ossius 259) finds it difficult to admit that Marcel!us .was heretIcal; even by the standards of the fourth cen,tury, because he was vmdlcate~ by the Westerners at Serdica in 343. in a gathering whose canons gave such. satIsfactory authority to the bishop of Rome. Prestige, on the other hand: recogm~es that.t~e un thodoxy of Marcellus' views caused many who were not In fact Anans to Jam genuine Arians in their policy of dismantling N (CPT 222). 121Epiphanius Panarion 72.2.4(257). !22Ibid. 5(257). ! 23 Ibid. 72.2.6-9(257-258).

wi~~

230

Eustathius and Marcellus

Later he quotes a Greek version of the Old Roman Creed, which of course left Marcellus' doctrinal aberrations wholly unaffected,12 4 and later still adds some more theological explanations of his own: 'We ~ve learnt from the divine Scriptures that the Godhead of the Father and of the Son is indivisible. If anybody divides the Son, that is the Logos, from almighty God, he must either think that there are two gods, which has been judged foreign to the divine doctrine, Or confess that the Logos is not God, which also appears to be foreign to the correct faith ... but I have learnt strictly that the Father's Power (dynamis), the Son, is undivided and unseparated."25 It is obvious that Marcellus has now made some concessions to the critics of his doctrine. He no longer teaches that the Son's reign will have an end. He is much more willing to call the Logos the Son, and disguises or has abandoned his idea that the Son is no more than Logos-with-human body. But his refusal to see distinctions within the Godhead is as adamant as ever. Pope Julius and his associates who declared Marcellus' doctrine to be orthodox can have never met the works ofOrigen nor known anything of the theology of the Eastern Church. Finally it is worth taking a glance at those other works, mainly ascribed to Athanasius, which we have already mentioned and which scholarly opinion inclines to attribute to Marcellus, to see whether at a considerably lat" period his doctrine had altered further. 126 The first is the Expositio Fidei. The Son in this doctrinal statement is described as 'begotten without beginning and eternally'; he is not a proceeding nor immanent Logos but 'integral (aUtOtEAij) Son', the true image of the Father. He took 'our man' and this man suffered and rose as 'created the beginning of ways for us' (a clear reference to Prov 8:22), and as 'the Lord's man' (KUptaKO<; iiv9pOl1tO<;) he entered heaven as our fore-runner. 127 The document disowns Sabellians who teach 'the Sonfather (uI01tatEpa) who is of sole substance (Ilovoucnov) and not consubstantial (homoousion), and who thereby abolished the Son's existence, nor do we attribute the passible body which he bore for the salvation of the world to the Father, nor do we conceive of three !24Ibid.72.J.I(25 8). 125Ibid. 72.J.2, J(258). 126S ee above. pp.221-4. 127PG 25:200 and 201(1).

Period of Confusion

Eustathius and Marcellus

hypostases divided ... from each other, so as to think corporeally as if they were men, and so we avoid polytheism such as the pagans (maintain).'128

re,P d '. n man an Lord's body' ( ICtlPl.U!COC; UVuPOlltOC;, ICtlPIUICOV crOil'u). The bod he says, bore the suffermg, leaving the divine untouched 13. P yg. refers to ~he-Lord's body; what Stephen saw at God's ri ht h::~ .22 ;~e ~or~.' bboddY; Ps 11O(I09):I (,Sit thou at my right ha~d') refer:~ e or soy, not to the Logos.'35 So e blobod flfiowed not from the Spirit which is the Godhead of the

The statement goes on to support the model for the relation of the Son to the Father of a stream flowing from a source; the stream is distinct from yet one with the source, 'although they are two structures (crxi]I'U~u) and two names.' 129 And a note on Prov 8:22ffis added allegorizing it in the Marcellan manner to refer to the human body ofJesus and not to the pre-existent Logos, 130 and another note defmes the status of this human body, again calling it 'the Lord's man'. A strong distinction is drawn between the human body, which was created, and the pre-existent Logos who is a product (gennema}.'3' This could be Marcellus writing long after 341, perhaps in the late fifties or early sixties, a Marcellus who has learnt from the criticism of Eusebius, who wishes to distinguish God the Father and God the Son, but does not know how to do so, and who has abandoned or suppressed his peculiar confming of the name 'Son' to the incarnate Logos, but whose fundamental theological assumptions are still the same. Then there is the Sermo Maior de Fide. It is full of ideas which appear to fit Marcellus' theology like a glove. It is Jesus, the text says, who is to be subjected to the Father, not the Logos; Jesus, called Son of God, is to be subjected to God, that is to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 132 This Son, descended from David, is to be subjected to God. It is the Son born of Mary who does not know the date of the Judgment; God the Logos knows everything; and the author can say: 'Who at the consummation of the ages came down from the bosom of

the Father and took from the undefiled Virgin Mary our man Jesus Christ whom he handed over to suffer on our behalf by his own choice.' 133

T~e author throughout uses 'Son' both for the 'man' and for the

~xlstent Logos, and frequently employs the terms 'Lord's

t

ogos, ut rom the man whom he bore.'136

He calls God the Logos 'first born of all creation '137 Wh J . h' d' I . en esus IS hu W~~~Yh: siS I~P ays the .man, when he multiplies loaves, the God. d' 1 h ahs My soul IS exceeding sorrowful, even to death' he ISP ays t e uman body, and so on for many examples 138 On f ~~se frag~ents says that the Logos assumed a whole (ltA.'1plj) man :'~9 ere IS a ~ng fragment found in another collection from that which containS t e rest, but ascribed there to the Sermo Maior and apparently accepted as genuine by both the M' d" Schwartz."o It runs thus: Igne e Itor and 'So A~us ~as ignorant when he imagined that the Logos of God was ~reate ,an rendered ~he Father irrational, for whatever does not av~ a Logos by nature IS certainly irrational (a/ogos) Next h h attributed to him flesh by nature deprived of rationai soul w en e hIm to be passible and mortal and incapable of avol'd.' e proves (aICo,; ). h' mg passIOn no .~10~ • smce e IS the moving agent of the soulless flesh which has WI 0 . Its own. For flesh deprived of mind is removed fro natur~l wdl, .once granted that there is no will or mind fm ~ny anythmg or mdependent initiative of an intellectual soula~~::I~~

h

hwart.. 19(9)' PG 26'13 ch ,. . 1273). c wartz 21(10), PG [4(1269); 65(24); PG 28([281); 32(12, [3), PG [9([272, 13·S h 137 C wartz 20(10), PG 13( 1269). 13' Schwartz 22(10); PG 14(1269). Schwartz 60(20 21) PG 24([ ) b 13·S

135S

128Ibid. 204(2). 1"Ibid. 204(2). 130Ibid. 204-205(3). 131Ihid. 205 and 208(4). That either Marcellus or his· disciples continued to propagate his doctrines after the year 341 is shown not only by the fact that eastern

creeds continued to denounce his doctrine hut also by the non-Athanasian Or. ,on Ar. IV which cannot be placed late and which attacks doctrine that is recognizably his. See above, n 49. 132Schwartz. ut supra, 41(15); the passage does not appear in Migne, nor do the next three passages quoted. l"Ibid. 42(15); 45(15); 47(16); but cf. Schwartz 70(28), PG 32(f285), 72(29), PG 33(1288).

allows that the hum;n b~dy ofJ 277J.~ ~rve that MarceIius, unHke Athanasius. I39S chwartz 3(4) PG ( 6) eS'u, I 'ow fear (60(21)). 4 12 5' ch t ' . h (not in Migne) making the refe;ence~~r~~ ~e;sl~nd as a sentence preceding this 14°S chwartzFragII P 53'PGI2 I .nsts 0 y and soul clearer. whereas th~ others are' f;om' Florjle;i~~2~:~~~~;;:es fr~m the Doctrj?a Patrum 40.5. nO,t appear m the (admittedly not complete) Ar ~m .2,3. But thIS passage does edItor of this version, is not confide th' mema~ ~erslOn, and R. p, Casey the (see his The Armenian Version of th:~ a~lt ~~ an ~nglnal part ofthe Sermo Maior

seu

2 2

0-

t anaslan Letter to the AntiQchenes, 4).

Period of Confusion

Eustathius and Marcellus

strips the Lord's flesh of this, he makes it the flesh of some winged creature or land animal or fish, and to speak more plainly not even of one of these, because the flesh of no animal is lacking in soul.'

intention of the 'soulless body' of Arian doctrine. Here he was more observant than his contemporaries. They also both attacked Origen. The basic reason why they attacked his doctrine was because he had taught that there were three distinct entities (hypostases) in God, and these graded, the second subordinated to the first and the third to the second. It has sometimes been said that these two rejected any Logos-doctrine, and harked back to a more primitive, perhaps more biblical, doctrine, free from the complications entailed upon calling Greek philosophical ideas into theology. But in fact both men had a Logos-doctrine; indeed Marcellus accused Sabellius of rejecting one. What they were really trymg to achieve was monotheism; they believed that third-century developments in theology had threatened the traditional Christian belief in one God. What they were determined to avoid was "any doctnne that would subordmate the Son to the Father. Their ingenious but confused theology was designed to avoid that above everything. In the process they failed to distinguish the Son from the Father, and paid a heavy price for their failure. Marcellus probably matured and improved his ideas as time went on, but he could not find terms to express this distinction and did not see the necessity to do so. Later pro-Nicene writers borrowed their very implausible practice of reading into the Old Testament references to the incarnate Word at places where before everybody had seen references to the pre-existent Logos. This was their second legacy to posterity, and by no means a satisfactory one. We can however draw one confident conclusion from this examination of a theological tradition which was neither AI~xandriin nor Arian nor Western and which owed nothing to Ongen: If we are to take the creed N at its face value, the theology of Eustathms and Marcellus was the theology which triumphed at Nicaea. That creed admits the possibility of only one ousia and one hypostasis. This was the hallmark of the theology of these two men.

This fragment is most reminiscent ofEustathius in its content, though not in style. Indeed nowhere in his extant work does Eustathius express himself quite as fully as this, and nowhere else in any extant work does Marcellus refer to the Arian doctrine of Christ's assumption of a soulless body. Even though it is only in the Samo Maior that we have any example of Marcellus attacking Arius directly, this can hardly account for the explicitness of this passage. To insist that the human body of Christ had a human soul would have been quite consistent with the rest of Marcellus' doctrine, but the evidence that he did so is fragile. The rest of the Sermo Maior is, as we have seen, full of Marcellan doctrine. We need not withold the work from him. It is impossible to be confident about the time of its composition. It can hardly have been an early work. Eustathius and Marcellus clearly" stem from the same theological tradition. They certainly met at Nicaea. and no doubt were there able to join forces with Alexander of Alexandria and Ossius. It is quite probable that there Marcellus learnt the main lines of his theology from Eustathius. It was not till about ten years later that he produced (as far as we know) his first book. But, if they both came from the same tradition, what was that tradition? To say that it was 'Antiochene' is meaningless; Eustathius had indeed four or five years as bishop of Antioch, but that does not make him a member of an Antiochene 'school', any more than was Paulinus of Tyre who was also bishop of Antioch for a short time. Marcellus had no connection with Antioch whatever. The two characteristics of the later Antiochene school of Christo logy are usually reckoned to be a disinclination to use allegory and an insistence on the full humanity of Christ as an individual. Neither Eustathius nor Marcellus eschewed allegory, indeed allegory was necessary for their peculiar views about the interpretation of Prov 8:22ff. Eustathius at least, however, may have left a legacy to the later Antiochene school in his insistence upon the possession of a human soul by Christ as a means of avoiding a dangerous compromising of God with human experiences. But we have no reason for believing that he inherited this idea; it rose out of his objection to Arian doctrine, and it is remarkable that at the beginning of the controversy he alone perceived the significance and 234

3. Photinus

Phot.inus, bishop of Sirmium, is more famous for his tenacity in holdmg on to his see than for his theological views. 141 He came from 141For literature on Photinus, see Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 142-3. 147.

235

,

r Period of Confusion

Eustathius and Marcellus

Ancyra, was a devoted disciple of Marcellus of Ancyra, and was very popular as a bishop and as an orator. His doctrine (which will be considered presently) at an early stage brought him to the notice of the ecclesiastical authorities. He was censured by the Council of Antioch which met over the affair of bishop Stephen in 344, condemned at a Council of Milan held in 345, and at another which met in the same place in 347, but was only ousted and exiled finally by the Council of Sirmium which met in 351 in the presence of the Emperor Constantius. He was sucGeeded as bishop of Sirmium by Germinius. He had indeed the misfortune to propound a doctrme, at the meeting of the Eastern and the Western Roman Empire, which both Eastern and Western theologians could agree in condemning. He probably returned to Sirmium on the death of Constantius in 361, but was later exiled again by the Emperor Valentinian I (who wanted to stand neutral in religion but could act when both warring sides agreed on a condemnation) in 364. He died in 376. His doctrine left little impression in the Eastern Church, but had quite a long history of perpetuation into the fifth century in the Western 9hUrClt;- erhaps . . 42 because traditional Western theology was more c ngen 0 t. Photinus' doctrine appears to have been a form f at migh b called middle Marcellism, i.e. what Marcellus ri inally tau h before bis vicissitudes caused him to temper the edge f his doct· e and take account of the criticisms of his friends w is enemies,a little moderated. He certainly taught tha the humay ody ofJesus had a human mind or soul, insisting on its whJllenes
particularly to Isa 44:6 ('I am God and there is no other') in order to articulate a determinedly monotheist Christian doctrine of God. The Logos for him was simply a mode of manifestation of the Father, a power or aspect of him not in any serious sense distinct from him. He apparentlycoined the word 'Wordfather' (AoyoltChrop) and regarded Logos as wholly interchangeable with 'God'. Like Marcellus, he favoured the analogy of a man and his thought for the relation of the Father to the Son. He could hardly have used the concept of begetting in the circumstances. Like. the early Marcellus, he distinguished sharply the Son from the Father; the Son did not come into existence until the Incarnation and was defmed as the whole human being who was born of Mary; Christ had no pre-existence; theophanies in the OT were only God appearing. When the OT spoke of a Son of God (as at Dan 7:13) this was prediction only. Everybody in the ancient world accuses Photinus of reducing Christ to a mere man adopted by God, i.e. the union between Logos and man was one of inspiration and moral agreement only. Ambrose tells us that two favourite texts ofPhotinus were 1 Tim 2:5 ('there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ'), and John 8:40 ('You seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you'), and one can see why. 144 There is evidenced here a consistent determination to avoid recognizing any distinctions in the being of God. A recent study of references to Photinus in Ambrosiaster (fl in Rome 363-384) by Lydia A. Speller 145 confirms all these points. Ambrosiaster says of Photinus, 'because he did not regard Christ as . God on the grounds that he was born, he appears wise to the worldly' .146 This is probably a reference to the fact that the Emperor Julian, in a letter, part of which is extant, addressed to Photinus (c.362), congratulated Photinus on his refusal to believe that a god could be introduced into the womb. '47 Christ, Photinus said, did not exist before Adam, but Adam before Christ. '48 The sayings about Christ's celestial origins do not refer to his person, but to his teaching

150; Loefs 'Arianismus' 29. 30; Gericke, Marcellus 29-30; Declercq Ossius 413-4. 420-1; Zeiller Les Origines 260--70; Meslin Les Ariens 67-'7 I; Simonetti Studi 134-59; Crisi 202-3 (of these Zeiller and Simonetti, Studi, by far the best). The ancient authorities are Epiphanius Panarion 71.2.1-3(251); Hilary Coil. Ant jar, BII.S.4(I9)

p. 14'; BII9.1(.I) p. 146; De Trin. VII.) (.6.); Sulpicius Severus Hist. SO". I1.)6; Jerome De Vir. 111. CVII; Ambrose De Fide Il.I).1I7(99); IlI.8.58(129); IV.).'9(167); V.8.I04('j4); LuciferofCalaris De Non Conveniendo lX(178); De Non Parcendo XVIII (228, 229); Marius Victorinus Adv. Arium 1.21.18, 29. 30; Vii.32: Sozomenus HE IV.6.I-6, 14-16. as well as others quoted in the text below. 142This dating is not entirely certain, but is probable. There is a careful account of the ,problems in Zeiller op. cit. 262-,?o.Jerome De Vir. Ill. eVIl is our authority for the later movements of Photinus. 143'SO that, because the body and the soul of Eve were in sin, die Lord assumed the flesh and the soul of Eve also from the Virgin' (Hilary De Trin. X:20) is only one

23 6

example among several of the ascription of such doctrine to Photinus. It would in fact have improved Hilary's theology considerably had he taken it to heart. 144Ambrose De Paradiso 12:58; so also Hilary De Syn. 85(537)" 145'New Light on the Photinians: the evidence of Ambrosiaster'. 146Speller, op. cit. 104. 147JuHan, Letters 90(55) p.147. The fragment was preserved by Facundus of Hermiane. t48S peller op. cit. 105.

Period of Confusion and his character.'4. Photinus no doubt identified the Logos and the Spirit;'50 he can hardly have done anything else, on his own premises. He interpreted John 1:1 in such a way as to aVOid calhng the Word directly God.'st He wanted, in fact, to avoid saying that the Logos was God as a distinct hypostasis. He may have taught that ChrISt was only Son of God in the sense that all Christians are.' 52 Finally, Vigilius of Thapse in the sixth century, in a Dialogue against Arians, Sabellians and Photinians, alleged that the Photinians taught that 'jesus Christ (took) his beginnings from Mary, and he was adopted a Son by the Father on account of the pre-eminence of his hoI behaviour and the incomparable merit of his blessedness." The nstantly reiterated charge occurs here too that Photinus t~ ght that Jes s was a .'54 mere man promoted to divinity because ofh'S9'e~' There does not seem to be anything very ori /hal abou P otinus' teaching. He was a doctrinaire disciple of Ma cellus. He oes not reflect Marcellus' idiosyncratic concept of th limited ;term for Christ's kingdom, and is more emphatic than;M clll'f about the human soul of Christ. He probably reflects theipositiq,{ofMarcellus between 340 and 350, and perhaps might cause.us-tb consider again the conjecture discussed above' 55, that Marcellus did in his middle or later period admit a human soul to Christ, and that he played down his more eccentric earlier ideas. Photinus must have represented a considerable embarrassment not only to Marcellus, whom he followed all too faithfully, but also to all Western theologians. He displayed to them what ,could happen to those who insisted rigorously that there was only one hypostasis in the Godhead and how near they were to falling over the precipice of Sa bellianism. He may also have contributed to a prejudice against, or a blindness to the necessity of, ascribing a human soul to Jesus Christ.

149Ibid. 106. 150Ibid. 107.

15lJbid. I I1-I2.

152Ibid. 113. 'S3Vigilius of Thapse, Dialogus contra Arianos etc 1.4 (PL62:182) Speller, op. cit. 106. I 54Vigilius op. cit, 1.1O(187)-1l(188). I5'See pp. 233-4.

9 The Behaviour of Athanasius I.

Estimates of Athanasius' Character

'Amidst the storms of persecution, the Archbishop of Alexandria wa, patient oflabour, jealous offame, careless of safety; and although hi, mind was' tainted by the contagion of fanaticism, Athanasim displayed a superiority of character and abilities, which would have qualified him, far better than the degenerate sons of Constantine, fOI the government of a great monarchy'. So wrote Edmund Gibbon of Athanasius in the xviiith century,' and this tribute is particularly striking as coming from one who was far from sympathetic to. the cause for which Athanasius struggled. The historians of the xixth century were even more laudatory: W. Bright, paraphrasing the eulogy of Gregory of Nazianz us, says that 'he was not only too noble to become arrogant in his new dignity, but he had already begun to show something of that harmony of excellences which Gregory regards as his special glory: the business-like vigour in general administration which was consistent with discriminating and sympathetic attention to particular cases: the strictness which was not rigid, the gravity which could melt into geniality, the force which would make itself respected, the tenderness which could not but be loved.'2 And at the end of his account of Athanasius Bright mentions 'the affectionateness which made him so tender and generous as a friend, so patient and equitable as a peacemaker, - which won for him such enthusiastic loyalty, and endowed the great theologian and church-ruler with the capacities and opportunities peculiar to a truly loveable man.'J In a later work Bright quotes R. W. Church's rather I Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol III, cap. 21 (ed. J. B. Bury, London 1897, VolII p. 362); see L. W. Barnard 'Edward Gibbon on Athanasius', in Arianism, 361""70. 2 The Orations of St. Athanasius against the Arians, Introd. xxi. 3lbid. xcviii.

Period of Confusion

The Behaviour
patronising view that the Greeks saw in Athanasius just those qualities which they themselves lacked, including 'tenacity, soberness, inflexibility ofpurpose',4 and sees in all his artistry 'a majestic moral unity'.5 Gwatkin said of him, 'Athanasius ... was philosopher, statesman and saint in one. Few great men have been so free from littleness or weakness'. 6 Harnack echoed this sentiment: 'If we measure him by the standard of his time, we can discover nothing ignoble or weak about him'.' The twentieth century, however, favourable verdict of the ninetee provides such an instance. Schwa z des ribed A a sius as 'an obstinate fanatic',' and said that his b av, our was t at 0 political power-broker and not that of a theoli>gian and/clogmati ian. 9 A. Piganiol, the eminent French historian, throughout th fourth volume of his L' Empire chretien evinces a strong prejudi~e against Athanasius, accusing him of organizing pogroms.' 0 Ahrnes, in similar vein, charges him with organizing 'an ecclesiastical mafia', and adds 'like a modern gangster, he evoked wige'spread mistrust, proclaimed total innocence - and usually- -succeeded in evading conviction on specific charges' ." Klein in his book on Constantius II points to Athanasius stirring up trouble wherever he went on his return from his first exiIe,'2 and to his instant resumption of highhanded methods against his opponents on returning from his second exile. '3 From the point of view of Constantius, Klein contends with some justice, Athanasius constituted a standing threat to his jurisdiction in Egypt. The idealization of Athanasius in the interests of hagiography began in liis own lifetime with Hilary, who of course never met

him," and was continued in Gregory of Nazianzus' unrealistic eulogy on him. But even in the ancient world, where almost all the surviving sources were written either by Athanasius or by those who sympathized with his cause, we can find some critical and Some less than enth'7'iastic judgments. Socrates complains that the historian Sabinus of Heraclea, who was not sympathetic to the pro-Nicene cause, kept silence about the atrocities committed by his OWn side; 15 he does not say that Sabinus listed the atrocities committed by the pro-Nicene Athanasius (which Socrates says nothing about), but it seems a reasonable inference tq draw. Ammianus Marcellinus, the remarkably moderate pagan historian writing at the very end of the century, says that in his relations with Constantius Athanasius had pushed himself beyond his proper sphere (professio) and was trying to gain 'secular ends' (externa). He had dabbled in magic to foretell- the future and done 'other things inconsistent with the tenour of the law' (alia a proposito legis abhorrentia). In consequence he had been deposed and the historian seems to think that this was a just measure.' 6 Philostorgius as an extreme Arian was naturally hostile to Athanasius, but his hostility is surprisingly restrained. Rusche, in PTAA reviews all Philostorgius' references to Athanasius. Philostorgius represents him as arrogant and inflexible, very ready to resort to violence and even to murder, no respecter oflaw and unscrupulous in pursuing his Own ends, but does so in fairly moderate language. His testimony is consequently all the more worth considering.17 Before we begin tracing the events of Athanasius' early career, there are certain judgments which it is possible to make about his character. That he had courage, nobody could possibly deny. As a y?ung, relatively untried bishop he had twice resisted successfully direct orders from the Emperor Constantine." He spent much of his career defying the Emperor Constantius secretly or openly. At the end of his life he had reached a position when the threats and measures ofJulian and Valens, Emperors though they were, could do him little damage. Basil in OJ~e of his letters comments upon the courage evmced partIcularly In his excommunicating a brutal and licentious governor of Libya' 9 in the year 371. And as far as tenacity of purpose

4Histo,ical Writings of St. Athanasi",s lntrod. xcviii. slbid. xcviii. 6 Arian 7

Controversy 49.

History of Dogma 1lI.62.

8'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 142-3.

9Gesamm. Schrift 111.9.3 I 8 'cr wirkte als politische Personlichkeit, nicht als Theologer und Dogmatiker.' lOA. Piganiol, L'Empire chreti'en (325-95) Tome IV, deuxieme partie of Histoire

Romaine (Paris 1972). lIConstantine und Eusebius 230. 12Klein Constantius 113 1,32 nn 80 and 81; the accusation comes from the Eastern

bishops at Serdica (Hilary Coli. Antiar. A IV.7(54» and though of course biased may be ncar the bone. 13Klein, op. cit. 81, nn ISS and IS9~ see Socrates HE 1I.24.7. 240

,

.~

I·S O J. Doignon in PTAA 337-48. I'HE IV:>2. 16Rerum Gestarum Libr; XV.7.6-IO. 17PTAA 161-'77 and especially [72-4. 18At~anasius Apol. Sec. 59.3. 4(139). where part ofa threatening letter is given. 19Basd Ep 61. 2

1

eriod of Confu 'on

The Behaviour of Athanasius

goes, his career speaks for i self. He was not Ja.stingly vindictive, as, for instance, Marius in Rep lican Rome and :R:khat'l.tJLc>fEngland in the late Middle Ages were vindictive. By the time he diea'll;e had been reconciled to almost all f his enemies. We can even see something (If the gentleness a tact s oken of by Bright and' Gwatkin when we read his Epistfe Dra ntius, in which he is gently rebuking a monk who is also a bishop for neglecting his episcopal duties in order to pursue his career of asceticism. And he must have been a singularly attractive personality when he chose to appear so, because on more' than one occasion he disarmed the hostIhty of Constantine in a personal interview, and he had no difficulty in winning the Emperor Constans over to his cause in personal contact with him. There is, however, a darker side to Athanasius' character. He denied vehemently to Constantius that he had had any treasonable dealings with the usurper Magnentius who had murdered Constantius' brother Cons tans and seized power in the West from 35 0 to 355, but it seems probable that he had in fact showed himselfat least not hostile to the usurper, and had received a deputation from him,2o Klein conjectured that Constantine when he gained possession of Magnentius' correspondence had found a letter incriminating or compromising Athanasius,21 Athanasius certainly is at pains to accuse the Arians of having forged a letter which set him in an unfavourable light. 22 From about 355 onwards Constantme steadily accused Athanasius of treasonable behaviour. Athanasius' conduct over the possession of church buildings appears to have been less than noble. He refused to allow Arians or Melitians to meet for worship wherever he could prevent them.23 This contrasts with the tolerance of the Arian bishop of Antioch, Euzoius, who allowed both Melitians and continuing Eustathians in Antioch churches to worship in, even though he had the support of the Emperor Valens.

Athanasius' abuse of his opponents, even allowing for what he had suffered at their hands, sometimes reaches almost the point of hysteria. In the letters which he wrote to the church of Alexandria and the churches of the Mareotis after the Council of Serdica in 343 he seems determined to compensate for the Eastern bishops having' failed to excommunicate Gregory his rival in Alexandria by peculiarly violent denigration of him,24 and in his De Sententia Dionysii he tries to buttress a weak case by more than usually ferocious language about his opponents; amid a chapter 'consisting of sheer abuse devoid of argument, he reaches a climax of vituperation:

20 Athanasius'

6-11.

Schwartz

protestation of his innocence are found in Apol. ad Constantium ('Zur Kirchengeschichte' 14!rSO), Declercq (Ossius 41!r20) and

K. M. "Girardet in PTAA 75. and also Pietri, ibid. behaviour here. 21Constantius II 53. and n [17·

119.

suspect him of eqUIvocal

22Apol. ad Const 1I(137). . 23S ee Socrates HE 11.22.1-3; Athanasius Apol. Sec. 59:6, where Socrates could be

right in identifying the aggrieved party with the ~elitians. It is ev:ident t,hat Athanasius maintained this policy to the end of his life, from the ImmedIate reinstallation of the Arians by the Emperor on Athanasius' death.

'Who could possibly then call these, whose leader is the devil, Christians, and not rather agents of the devil?'2'

,,

In one of his later Festal Letters, while formally urging his flock not to indulge in hate, he expresses a venomous hatred ofJews and Arians. 2 • Klein has called attention to the abrupt switch that took place in Athanasius' attitude to Constantius after George had been reinstated as bishop of Alexandria by the aid of the arm y in February 3 57 and in 358 the dux Sebastianus had put down a rising of the supporters of Athanasius in Alexandria. In his Apologia ad Constantium, written in 356 and 357, Athanasius had taken a tone of almost servile respect towards the Emperor, making every possible allowance for him. By the time he comes to write the Histaria Arianorum, however (first half of 358), he changes his attitude entirely. Now he has no further hope of conciliating the Emperor, and lets loose the vials of his wrath upon him, branding him as the enemy of the Church of Christ and of the true faith in language only rivalled by the clumsy obloquy of Lucifer of Calaris,27 Athanasius could on occasion produce unexceptionable sentiments about the independence of the Church from the imperial power: 'If it is a matter of judging bishops, what business has the Emperor with this? If the Emperor has a right to issue threats here, what need is there for bishops nominated (as judges)? When was such a state of

24Both letters to be found in a Latin version in Turner EOMIA Vol I 654-6. 659 . But in fact Gregory was excommunicated; see below p. 300 and n 97. 2SDe Sent. Dio. 27.4(66, 67). 26Letter 37 (Lefort) 28, written in 365. 27Klein op. cit. 117-19.

The Behaviour of Athanasius

Period of Confusion

affairs ever heard of? When did the Emper·or-1r.t""" Church, or was (his) judgment in these onstantine

ajorityof bishops welcome the Emperor's interfere e V\!:lt en a ms, but,.as Klein points out,29 Athanasius himself r refuse ImperIal support when he could obtain it from Consdntine, from C nstantius and from Jovian. Indeed at the Council o~yre in 335 e directly appealed from an ecclesiastical court to the mperor. It is difficult to acquit Athanasius from the ha..g of having on occasion used equivocation, not to say mendacity. We can perhaps excuse his maintaining that there were British bishops present to support his cause at Serdica as rhetorical exaggeration,30 and his failure to note that though Val ens and U rsacius had recanted their expressions of opinion hostile to Athanasius, they had later recanted their recantation." And we can perhaps excuse his forcing of the language of Basil of Ancyra to express opinions about the Son issuing from the ousia of the Father and about using the word 'source' (peg€) to define the relation of the Father to the Son which Basil would not have endorsed. 32 But we cannot overlook his constant attempts to represent the case against him as a thinly-disguised doctrinal opposition when in fact it was invariably founded, not on hIS theological views, but on the manner in which he administered hIs see. No one ever seriously accused Athanasius of heresy, but his writings suggest time and time again that accusations of misconduct as a bishop should be ignored in order to concentrate upon the doctrinal issues. 33 Much more serious however, was his treatment at the Coun~i1 of Alexandria of 362 of the encyclical issued by 28Hist. Ar. 52.J(2IJ). 290p. cit. 105-108. 30 Apol. Sec. It 2(87) I1tuvirov, ruAA.irov, Bpettavirov. The list of countries represented by bishops in the Westerners' encyclical includes Spain and Gaul but not Britain, see Turner EOMIA Vol I, 644. 31 Apol. Sec. 2.3. 4(88). By the time this work was writt<:n (358) Athanasius must ha ve known of their second volle face. 32De Synodis 41: so Simonetti Stud; 179 "94. 33This is observed by. among others, Klein op. cit. 116. The fact that Athanasius

even in the bitterest attack on him by the Eastern bishops at Serdica is called sacrilegus, but not haereticus, has been noted by Loofs (' Arianismus' 30) and Girardet (in PTAA 71). The Easterners at Serdica launched a vague accusation of heresy against the Egyptian bishops who were present with Athanasius at the Council, but this cannot be taken seriously, see Hilary Coli. Ar. A IV.19(60-I). 2

Westerners at Serdica 19 years before. In the Tomus ad Antiochenos, which though it is in form a synodical letter certainly has the full authority of Athanasius behind it, the statement is made about the 'pamphlet about joctrine alleged to have been composed by the Council of Serdica' that 'the Council made no such statement', and no one is to put it forward because it can only cause dissension. 34 Athanasius was probably the only person present at the Council of Alexandria who had also been present at the Council of Serdica in 343, and he must have known that this statement was untrue. The Westerners at Sardica had officially and unequivocally stated that there is only one hypostasis in God. Athanasius knew this perfectly well and for several years after 343 held this belief. But by 362 he had realized that to maintain a doctrine of one hypostasis only without qualification would be to antagonize unnecessarily a large section of basically orthodox opinion in the Eastern Church and that a doctrine of three hypostases was compatible with Nicene orthodoxy. He therefore made this unblushing misstatement. 35 A not dissimilar unscrupulousness is evidenced when Athanasius accuses the Arians of depriving the Father of both Logos and Wisdom 3• and of honouring the locust more than the Saviour. 37 He must have known that in the first case Arian doctrine imputed both authentic Logos and Wisdom to the Father, though their application of these terms to the Son was weaker, and that they referred to the locust simply to show that the term 'great power' was applied to that insect in the Bible, in order to prove that the application of it to the Son was less significant than their opponents claimed. We wonder whether, when he quotes the controversial anathema in N, it is of set intent that he omits the words 'hypostasis or' in the term 'of a separate hypostasis or ousia.'3. We have already seen how remarkably unconvincing is his defence of the 34 Tom. ad Antiochenos PG 26:5(800-1); 1tltll.UCWV roc; tv tlj KUta. :EUplilKT)V uuv6licp UUVtUX9BV 1t£pi 1t{Ut£roc; .. . OUliBV yap tOWUtOV &plU£V iJ UUVOOOC;; cf. ibid. 10(808), where the prohibition against circulating it is repeated. 35Schwartz adverted upon this '-Zur Kirchengeschichte' 145-6; Simonetti Crisi 182 notices it, and observes that according to Socrates HEJI:2o and Sozomenus HE III, 21 some people at the Council of Alexandria had adduced the example of Serdica in favour of one hypostasis. Even H. Hess in The Canons of the Council of Sardica, whose conventional approval of Athanasius is seldom modified, can say that 'Athanasius' account does not seem to be wholly accurate' (p.73). 360n this, see Stead 'The Thalia of Arius' 35-39~ cf. Or. Con. Ar. I.24(25)~ De

Decret. 15.1-4(0). "De Synodis J9.4(265). 38De Deeretis 20.5(17).

245

'f\..jiu;~I

~~

""'"

.

r The Behaviour of Athanasius

,

0;

compromising statements Dionysius of ~xandria by ple~ding that they referred to Christ s human body, not to the pre-exlste~t Son. 39 Did Athanasius really believe this, r did he adopt this argument with his tongue in his cheek in order tQ save the orthodoxy of his distinguished predecessor? \" Athanasius could on occasion give voice to admita~senti'!lent~ about free speech: 'The truth is not proclaimed', he says, '1>-yswords and missiles, nor by means of soldiers, but by persuasion and discussion.' 40 As we consider his early career we shall have these words in mind; they will serve well as a criterion of his behaviour.

2.

Athanasius' Career to the Council of Tyre

The date of Athanasius' birth is uncertain, but most authorities allow that 297 is the most likely year. A Coptic text which Tetz thinks might be reliable41 says that he was aged 33 when he was consecrated bishop. This would place his birth in 295, because it is certain that Alexander died and Athanasius succeeded in 328. If we think that Contra Gentes et De lncarnatione was written before the Arian Controversy began, then,.w~ must place his birth as early as possible. But it is not necessary to conclude that this book was written before 318. Most recent authorities place it in 338 or 339. A History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria which represents local Alexandrian tradition says that Athanasius was of pagan parents,42 and some have accepted this as an explanation of why in Historia Arianorum 64 Athanasius says that he had heard about th~ persecution of Maximin (3 I 1-312) from his elders (ilKouO'a taw ltateprov) But this is an inadequate explanation because surely the persecution was striking enough for both pagans and Christians to hear about it. All we can conclude is that Athanasius in 3 I 1-3 12 was in some place where Maximin's persecution made no 395ee above. p. 73. In defence of Athanasius' sincerity here we may refer to Or. Con. A,. 11.6---9(73"""'7). where he argues that the expression in Heb 3:21tlO''t'OV ana tep 7tolT1GUvn a~t6v must mean that Christ was 'trustworthy' (a~161t1(n09 i.e. that he ought to be believed in by Christians. He will not even follow the logic of his own premises and say that Christ was 1tlat6<; as ma~ hut a~161tl(noc; as God. But this kind of exegesis hardly justifies Boularand's encomium. 'Dans Ie dedale de ces discussions, sa science de l'Ecriture et sa penetration d'esprit Ie servent :l merveille. On ne peut se defendre de les admirer' (L'Heresie 88, 89). 4·Hisl. Arian. 33-3(201). 41'Athanasius von Alexandrien' 333. 42 50 TeEZ 'Athanasius' 334.

impression, so that he heard about it only from those who had experienced it. In De lncamatione 56 he says of some of his teachers 'who also were witnesses (or martyrs) of Christ's divinity' (01 Kal lIaptUpe, tij, XPIO'toU Oeot1]to, yeyovaO'l). If this means that some of his teachers were actually martyred in the Great Persecution it is im possible to imagine that he was still a pagan in 3 I I, and we must place his birth earlier than 297. But the expression is an odd one; 'witnesses' could mean no more than 'confessors'; or the words could simply mean that in their teaching these teachers bore witness to Christ's divinity. Among the deacons who put their signatures to Alexander's Letter to All Bishops (which we have dated pI) are two called Athanasius, one of whom must surely be ours. 43 This means that he was a deacon by the time he was 24, if we place his birth in 297, and that when he was consecrated bishop he was 3 I. His enemies accused him of being made bishop under age,44 and this would fit in with the theory that he was 3 I when consecrated. It was a very early age indeed, but just not too early to be scandalous. We conclude that the generally agreed date of 297 for his birth is the most probable. On the subject of Athanasius' election as bishop the sources are even more confused than on the subject of the date of his birth. 45 The earliest source is the statement of the bishops of Egypt in the year 33846 who declare that Athanasius was elected openly with the acclamation of both laity and clergy, but admit that his enemies accuse him of having been consecrated by only six or seven bishops 'secretly and in a corner' (MOp~ Kal tv ltapapuO'tcp). Epiphanius has two contradictory, or at least confusing, statements. At one point 47 he says that when Alexander died Theonas was elected bishop by the Melitians but died very shortly afterwards. A little later he says that when Alexander died Athanasius was away and Achillas was elected bishop, but he died after a few weeks,48 and that Athanasius was then "Opitz Urk III No. 3.21(11). 44This was alleged at a Council of Antioch in 338; see note by Opitz on Athanasius' Encyclical Letter 10 Bishops of Egypl 3.2-5 (p.171). 45For various reconstructions based on the evidence, see Schwartz, Gesamm. SclJrifi. I1I.8. 192, n [; Simonetti Crisi [ID-I [5; Barnard 'Two Notes on Athanasius' 345-52; Tetz 'Athanasius' 335; Barnes Constantine and Eusebius 230; A. Martin, PTAA, 4<>-4' W. G. Rusche, ibid. 164-5. 4
F I l Period of Confosion

chosen. Sozomenus has an unlikely story of Athanasius, on Alexander's death, trying to escap~,C tion out of modesty, but being brought back and consecrat d with t e assent of all, and says that Alexander on his death-bed c lied for thanasius and predicted that he would be bishop of Alexa1'\dria. 49 ut he :i)so adds that the enemies of Athanasius alleged that flftr bishop\ duly assembled and took an oath to elect a proper s cessor to Ale I ander, but that about seven of them broke their oat and secretly eI ted Athanasius. A little later50 he says that the c~ncil of Tyre (in 335) accused Athanasius of receiving consecrati n from a fe oath-breakers. Philostorgius alleges that when the as embled bis ops were taking a long time to decide upon a successof-·to--Alexander, Athanasius brought two bishops secretly at evening into the church called that of Dionysius, shut the doors firmly, and then persuaded them to consecrate him bishop. The other bishops objected to this move, but Constantine was informed of it and given the impression that Athanasius was the choice of the whole city, so that the matter was accepted. 51 Athanasius, who of course endorses the account of his election given by the letter of the Egyptian bishops in Apol. Secunda 6, later in that work 52 gives the impression, not only that he did not approve of the arrangements for reconciling the Melitians reached at Nicaea, but that immediately on Alexander's death the Melitians began stirring up trouble again, and entered into an alliance with Eusebius ofNicomedia and his party against Athanasius and in favour of Arianism. We shall see reason to conclude that Athanasius has here telescoped events for his own advantage, and that it was not till they had experienced his policy towards them that the Melitians began lookmg roilnd for allies against him. But he says nothing here about their impugning or opposing his election as bishop of Alexandria. We know from the Index to the Festal Letters that Alexander died on April 17th 328, and that Athanasius was elected on June 8th in the same year. This is a remarkably long interval, even allowing for the 49Sozomenus HE 11.17.2-3; this story, he says, he has derived from 'Apollinarius

the Syrian', 50Il.2.5.6. Neither Socrates nor Theodoret gives us any useful information about th~ election of Athanasius, except that Socrates (HE 1.23) says that Eusebius of ~lcomedia and Theognis ofNicaea, on recovering their sees after return from exile.

Impugned the consecration of Athanasius on the grounds that he was unworthy to

be chosen and had been made bishop by untrustworthy persons.

"HE II.Il(22, 23). 52Apol. Sec: 59.

f

The Behaviour of Athanasius

I

fact that Athanasius was away when Alexander died. It looks as if Athanasius was indeed elected, but not by an immediate and unanimo~s acclamationyand not without suspicion of sharp practice. It IS pOSSIble that AthanaslUs refused to count Melitian bishops as qualified to elect. It had been traditionally the practice that the bishop of Alexandria should be chosen from among the presbyters of the see and Athanasius was not a presbyter. But he was not the first bishop of Alexandria who had not been an Alexandrian presybter, and this may not have caused much opposition to his election. Barnard suggests S3 that Athanasius took trouble to have Constantine confirm his election and that immediately after his consecration he set out on a long tour of his diocese. Neither of these facts suggests that he had an undisputed e1ection"by many bishops from all parts of the area within the jurisdiction of Alexandria to give him confidence. Though Athanasius declared that as soon as bishop Alexander died the Melitians began stirring up trouble again, we have no evidence of such trouble, even in Athanasius' own Festal Letters, till the year 332. The Letter for that year was issued late because the archbishop had been ill during the winter of 331-332. In it he mentions that his 'enemies have been covered with shame and rebutted by the church because of their unprovoked attack on us.' 54 It is significant that later in the letter he reveals that he is writing from the court of Constantine, that he has been accused by the Melitians, and that 'they were branded with ignominy and driven from here as slanderers and were reviled for many reasons', and he even gives the names of his foiled accusers.55 Epiphanius at one point admits that Athanasius had used fairly strong meas.ures. 56 Sozomenus reproduces part of a letter apparently written by Constantine to Athanasius which is also quoted by Athanasius. 57 He places it in the context of an accusation

[

!t

',,0

53'Two Notes on Athanasius' (345-52). But the evidence for this is admittedly

frail.

. .

54Let.ter 4. year 332, Migne PG 26;I37~.I. my translation of the Migne ed.'s tr. of the Synac. Lefort deest. The vague warnIng to avoid heretics in the Letter 3 for the year 33 [ (26:1376.5) is hardly significant. 55 26:1379.5; cf. Gwatkin SA 75. n l. 56Panarion 69.11.7(161) 6V8KclA£llCUi TpttlM:l, 6vOOOetEl Kal ot)aEl~ ilVetXEtO 'he ~sed to upbrai? and threa~e~ and, admonish. 3?d nobody objected' (or possibly

could endure

It •

though

It IS

unlIkely that Eplphanius would have said this: the

exact meaning of the last word is obscure). At 68.7 he quotes Melitian allegations of

atrocities against Athanasius. 57Sozomenus HE 1I.22.I-3; Athanasius Apol. Sec. 59.6.

/

The Behaviour oj Athanasius

Period oj Cor!fusion

made by Melitians (not Arians) to the Emperor against Athanasius, charging him with causing divisions and disturbances in his diocese, with preventing people from entering the church (i.e. the church building) and (charges made particularly by 'John', that is John Arcaph the Melitian leader, and the clergy associated with him) of murders and imprisonments and undeserved beatmgs and woundings and burning of churches, even though the victims were perfectly orthodox. Athanasius replied accusing John ?f uncan~ll1cal ordination and innovating upon the orthodox doctrme of Nlcaea, and also of causing divisions and insulting conduct towards the orthodox. Athanasius in his account of the incidents leading up to Constantine's letter puts the blame on the Arians and gives the impression that by this time the Melitians and the Arians had formed a deliberate alliance against him. But it is very likely that this alliance had not yet been formed. Epiphanius says5' that Melitius died before Alexander, and Alexander before his de.ath had begun to harass the Melitians (those who would not accept the arrangement made at Nicaea perhaps), that they attempted to appeal to the Emperor, but their plea was rejected without an interview, and he names a bishop John among the Melitians. This may be a confused me~ory.ofthe episode referred to in the Festal Letter for 332. AthanaslUs himself, after all, only dates the trouble with the Melitians from the death of Alexander (or, more accurately, his own accession to the see). Epiphanius goes on to say that the leaders of the Meli~ans were, aft~r their discomfiture, near the court (presumably at Nlcomedla, but If we accept Sozomenus' account possibly Constantinople) and we,: at that point taken in hand by Eusebius of Nicomedia who promISed that he would obtain for them an audience with the Emperor if they would receive and champion Arius, and, on their agreeing, the fusion of the causes of Arius and of Melitius took place. Some Melitians remained orthodox in faith, but not all. 59 Athanasius' account of the same incidents suggests that the Melitians had caused disturbances before they actually made a pact with the Eusebian party.60 Certainly the fragment of Constantine's letter quoted by both Sozomenus and Athanasius exhibits the Emperor peremptorily ordering its recipient to receive into the church certain people, whose allegiance is not mentioned but whom Sozomenus, as we have seen, identifies as 58Panarion 68.$.1-4· "Ibid. 68.6.1-6(146). 60 Apol.

or

Melitians, . under pain, the Emperor sending some official who would drIve the letter s recIpient out· of his see. It is perhaps impossible to reconstruct the exact order of events, but the evidence seems to point clearly to the conclusion that several years must have elapsed between Athanasius succeeding to the see of Alexandria and the first moves of the Melitians against him. 61 We can see why the Eusebians should have wished to intrigue against Athanasius. He must have been known as a resolute champion of the Creed ofNicaea which they found uncongenial and restricting. But why should the Melitians have been discontented with Athanasius? Ifhalf of what Sozomenus said was alleged by them was true, they had every reason for hostility to Athanasius. But, apart from specific accusations such as those connected with Ars'enius and Ischyras, which we shall consider shortly, was this more than wild hearsay? Had they any genuine grievances? We might dismiss the accusations against Athanasius retailed by Sozomenus and Epiphanius as the product of sheer partisanship and not worthy of credence, as, for instance, Gwatkin does, and many a church historian before and after him who was willing to take Athanasius' protestations of his innocence at their face value . We might believe the direct denial that Athanasius ever hurt or imprisoned anyone, made by the Egyptian bishops in 338. 62 We might dismiss the allegations of the Council of Tyre, and treat the accusations made against Athanasius by the Eastern bishops, at Serdica in 343, with the same scepticism as we read the defence of him made at the same moment by the Western bishops, or with even more. All these are statements made for propaganda purposes by very much interested parties, though even in those circumstances it would be unwise to refuse all credit to them. But, accidentally or providentially, we have available to us contemporary evidence which we cannot possibly 61 For

some interesting suggestions about the reasons for this alliance between the

~elitians

and the Eusebians, see A. Martin in PTAA 45-6. And for much useful Information about the Melitians at this stage, see Barnard 'Athanasius and the MeIitian Schism' 185-'7. Though Sozomenus thinks that this letter was sent to At~anasius by Constantine concerning the Melitians, Athanasius says that it was Written by the Emperor to him concerning the A,ians. On the whole it seems better ~o foHow Athanasius here and to place the letter at some considerably later time than Immediately after Athanasius' accession to the see. It could represent a reaction of ~onstantine to the letter of Arius (already referred to above, P.9) which must be mferred from Constantine's Lette, 10 A,ius and his Companions (Opitz U,k. III

No. 34(69-75)), and placed in 333. So Opitz takes it. 62Athanasius Apologia Secunda 4.2.(9r).

Sec. 59.6. 2 0

Period of Confusion

The Behaviour of Athanasius

dismiss as invention or exaggeratiOh-OI-pr.opa anda, to decide this .. point. . This evidence consists of papyrus letters dlscov red by Brltlsh archaeologists and published by H .. I. B in . ook Jews and Christians in Egypt.· J Two letters amon the many covered and published are particularly significant. T. ey PIUng~US n the middle of the events which concerned Athanasl s between e ears 331 and 335, and which will presently be related or~]: t the oment it is sufficient to note that one of these letters (papyrus 1913) as Written on March 24th 334, and consists of the official appoint ent by one Pageus who was an official of a Melitian monastic c mmu~ity at Hathor of his brother as his deputy in the monaste while he attended the Council of Caesarea. 64 The other letter, pafY!:!s 1914, was written by Callistus, a Melitian mO.nk o~ chic, in ba~ ?~k (as in papyrus 1913), and recounts the suffermgs mflicted on Melltlan~by Athanasius and his followers. It is a factual account written for peofrle under persecution, a private missive not intended for publication nor propaganda, and therefore all the more damning. It can be dated With confidence to a point just before the Council ofTyre, that is late May or early June 335. It describes Athanasius' state of mind just before embarking in order to attend the Council, and the barbarous treatment which he is meanwhile dealing out to those Melitians who have opposed him. The letter relates that several of the (Melitian) brethren came to Callistus and that they will be able to tell the recipient of the letter what has been happening: Isaac· s bishop of

Leto came to Herai~cus (evidently an eminent Melitian bishop) in Alexandria, wantmg to have supper with the bishop in the camp (near Alexandria, called Nicopolis). Some drunken adherents of Athanasius arrived at the 9th hour (3 p.m.), with soldiers. They shut the gates of the camp and began searching for Isaac and Heraiscus. Some soldiers in the camp had hidden them and when the Athanasian party could not find them, they attacked some Melitians whom they met coming into the camp and maltreated them and threw them out ofNicopolis. They then arrested five Melitians who were in a hostel imprisoned them for a time and then threw them too out of Nicopolis, and beat the keeper of the hostel for putting up Melitian monks. And they shut up somebody called Ammon in the camp because he welcomed Melitians into his house. So Callistus and his friends are afraid to visit Heraiscus in the camp .•• Athanasius is depressed and anxious because the Emperor has arrested and Impnsoned Macarius and Archelaus; Athanasius son of Capito went off to kidnap (u1tocnacre(I)v) Macarius, but John (Arcaph) in Antioch heard of it and had them arrested on the charge of slandering 7 Heraiscus.· The writer and his friends are in great trouble because of what Athanasius is doing to them. Here I quote the reconstructed text: 'For he arrested the bishop of the lower country and shut him up in the

meat market and he shut up a presbyter of those parts also in the lockup and a deacon in the great prison, and Herascius has been imprisoned since the 28th (of Pachon, an Egyptian month) in the camp. I thank the Lord God that the beatings which he was receiving have ceased. And on the 27th he (Athanasius) forced seven bishops to

63Vol. VI, London 1924. In a paper read to the Tenth International Conference

on Patristic Studies held in Oxford in August 1987. D. W. H. Arnold cast some doubt on whether it is really Athanasius who is referred to in papyrus 1914 and whether it is really the Melitians who are the victims of harassment. His arguments

were well presented, but were all hypothetical and tentative. The situa~ion and

t~e

names mentioned in the papyri fit the circumstances of AthanaSIUS and hiS

opponents too well for us to abandon the account presented here. But it

shoul~

be

pointed out that these papyri are by no means the only evi.dence for the c.ase agamst Athanasius. 4 6 Pageus was apparently a village priest, not a monk. Athanasius, as V:'e sh~ll see, had refused to attend the Council of Caesarea in 334, and never mentIons It, but even if we did not have unmistakable evidence about it here, we could know about it from Sozomenus HE 11.2.5; Theadaret HE 1.28.2-4; Festal Letters Index far the year 334 and the Letter ofthe Eastern Bishops afSerdica. Eusebius afCaesarea presided . over it if it actually took place. See Bell, ap. cit. 45-9. 6sDe1l op. cit. 57. Isaac was a Melitian who is known to have been present at ~he Council of Tyrc and to have campla~ned about Athanasius' ma1creatment af hIm

252

leave the area. Emis and Peter, son ofToubestis, are among them.'

They left the bread behind, 'in order that it might not be taken outsIde, on account of the bishop, to the intent that he might take it with. him. '.8 This last obscure passage probably means that ~era!scus, (perhaps the Melitian archbishop of Alexandria) had with him the supply of free bread provided by the state for the Melitians (Athanasius Apol. Sec. 64; Sazomenus HE 11.25). He signed the Eastern bishops' Encyclical at Serdica. "Bell op. cit. 58-61. 7

Ibid. 59.60. Archelaus had evidently been sent with this other Athanasius to remove Macarius from detention in Tyre by hook or by crook: 6

"Ibid. 60.

253

\~ Period of Confusion

. th bread under is control to (since Athanasius would. not give ~ h llistus and his Melitians), and the bread IS ~ow ~eyon t e r 69 . d h t with Heralscus III the ca p. . f fnen s, s u up I I h' evid nce agrees the hst 0 It is remarkable how c ose y t IS b S us' causing Melitian charges against A~ha~as;.s giv: ~~v:nt~ZOpe pie 'entering de erv beatings and divisions and disturban~es Ill. IS IOces, churches, murders and Imprlsonm~nts an h' h c uld not but be woundings. 70 Instead of 'the ten erness w IC and e uitable as tien loved', the gentleness wh~ch .made hi1m . '.. S? p; his c du~t and the k ' the 'majestic mora unity 0 a peace-rna er, . . ble in it we find Athanasius be ving freedom fro,;, a~t~t;h:;g~Ohired t; intimidate his en~mies. he ilke an emp oy B 11 arks makes it certam that the evidence of papyrus 191 4, e I rem ha~iour in his see made against at Serdica in 343 and charges of violent and unscrupu ous b e . Athanasius at Caesarea III 334, at Tyre III 71 335, many times thereafter were not baseless. .., B II 72 'that Athanasius, while 'It was always SUSpICIOUS, says e, dA . hich h ing the chalice an rsenIUS, W dwelling on the c arges ~once~hose which accused him of violence he could refute, says not mg~ litians The reason is nOW clear: these and oppreSSIon towards the e . nclude that there was a germ charges were m part true .. . We must co . . ies as a selfof truth in the picture given of Athana::: ~';;ph:~:~::hority with

willed, unruly man apt to treat even

contempt.' . h We are probably justified, he says earlier, in ~SSUm111ng t~a~afterl;~~e d fti· f his enemies Athanaslus a owe lmse filrustrate f 0 e~~~;~30It seems clear also that Athanasius' first efforts at uxury 0. r,p~1S h: d' h d nothing to do with difference of ngstensm III IS IOcese a b ga.. b t the subject of the Arian Controversy, ut were ~f:;:~e~ aa o;nst the Melitians. He had ~ot agreed with the g t made about the Melitians at N,caea. They may have ~;~:~~~:~~t a Melitian archbishop on Alexander'~ death. Once he was in the saddle, he determined to suppress them with a ~ong han!: and was not at all scrupulous about the methods he used.. e can no Id see why, for at least twenty years after 335, no Eastern bishops wou "Ibid. 62, 63. 70See above, pp.249-5 0 . 7tBell op. cit. 46-'7· "Ibid. 57· "Ibid. 46-7· 2

The Behaviour of Athanasius

communicate with Athanasius. He had been justly convicted of disgraceful behaviour in his see. His conviction had nothing to do with doctrinal issues. No church could be expected to tolerate behaviour like this on the part of one of its bishops. It is not surprising that the Melitians, harried unmercifully by Athanasius and unable at first to obtain help from the Emperor, turned to the ouly help available to them, that of the Eusebians. They thereby gave Athanasius an opportunity of clouding the issue by ascribing all protest against his outrageous conduct to bias towards Arianism, an opportunity of which he strove earnestly to take advantage. 74 But the alliance of the Melitians with the Eusebians did not alter the fact that Athanasius' offence had nothing to do with doctrine. The charge against him at Tyre was the unscrupulous use of strong-arm methods against his opponents, and that charge as a general accusation, whatever may have been said about individual incidents, was abundantly justified. We can see by virtue of historical hindsight that Athanasius in following this policy set an evil example to his successors of the use of force and intrigue. They learnt all too readily from him, Peter, Timothy, Theophilus, Cyril, Dioscorus, until the last draws on himself final catastrophe. When therefore we try to reconstruct the events which concerned Athanasius from his election in 328 until the Council of Tyre in the summer of 335, we must bear in mind that our main informant (Athanasius himself) is determined to conceal his violent behaviour by alleging that all was invented by people who were dangerous heretics, and that most of the rest of the sources, and most writers since, have taken this plea at its face value. 75 The first accusation which we know to have been made against Athanasius is obscure; it alleged some offence concerning the duty on the part of the Egyptians of furnishing the church of Alexandria with linen garments. This was made by Melitians to the Emperor in 330 but was rebutted by two of Athanasius' presbyters Apis and Macarius, who 74'Toute l'habilite d'Athanase consistera a masquer la veritable nature de l' opposition meIitienne derriere l'heterodoxie des eusebiens', A. Martin, PTAA 50. 75Some of the original sources will be referred to as we continue with the account. Much the fullest account is in Athanasius Apol. Sec. 59.83 which contains not only Athanasius' version of the events but many official documents which he quotes. Sozomenus 11.25.1-13 is the best account among the church historians, as part of it may be based on the account of the Synod of Tyre given by Sabinus, bishop ofHeraclea, cf. Hilary Coil. Ar. BII 5.1(16) p. 140. For modem historians, see Schwartz Gesamm. Schrift. 111.8.[96-200; Simonetti Crisi 112-17; 124-8; Martin PTAA 46-55; Barnard, ibid. 131-6.

---Pe";'~nfusion

,

happened to be at the court ~;;;;m ia at the ~ime. The seco~d accusation, by the same gr~'~,-~~ai~ to Const nt e, was made In 33 I, and it charged Athanasi s with gIVI g bo of old to a certain imperial official called Philou enusy 0 ha nee been suspected.of disloyalty to the Emperor; had tills charge been proved, AthanasIUs would have been guilty of encouraging treason. I ? rebut thIS charge, it was necessary for Athanasius to leave AlexandrIa soon after Easter 33 1 , and to defend himself personall y before the Emperor. He met Constantine at Psamathia, an imperial palace near NIcomedla,."nd succeeded in persuading him of his entire innocence.'"' He fell ill at Nicomedia and was not able to return to AlexandrIa tIll Just before Easter 33 2 , but when he did return he did so in triumph, supported ~y imperial favour. 77 When he was spending this long perIod In Nicomedia and during the summer of 332 twO further charges were made against Athanasius, again by Melitians, to th.eEmperor: that one of his agents, Macarius, had with his approval vIsIted a presb~ter in the Mareotis called Ischyras and had . used violen~e to him, breaking an altar (and perhaps a bishop'S chair) and smashing a. sacred chalice, and maltreating Ischyras personally; and that Athanaslus had either murdered a bishop called Arsenius or
The Behaviour of Athanasius Colluthus had never been consecrated bishop by anybody but himself, and in consequence his ordinations were invalid. 80 Another consequence of this was that the so-called church and its furniture cannot have been sacred, so that the charge of sacrilege could not stick. In short, his opponents cried 'Violence and sacrilege' and Athanasius replies 'No: only violence'. Opitz made the useful suggestion that Athanasius' brutal conduct as revealed in papyrus 1914 was inspired by a letter from Constantine which Athanasius quotes,81 dated 332, addressed to Athanasius, in which the Emperor complains about the emptiness of the charge concerning Arsenius, and enquires about the new charge concerning the broken chalice, and suggests that Athanasius should examine the matter officially (6(146)). Athanasius may have taken this as a sanction for using 'unusually ferocious methods against his adversaries. This letter also makes it clear that the charge about Ischyras and the chalice came after that about Arsenius. It is possible that Athanasius was able to deal with the charge about Arsenius when he was at Nicomedia in 331 and early 332. Arsenius' precise allegiance is not known; it is difficult in view of the evidence to identify him as either a Melitian or a Eusebian. 82 His accusers produced a severed hand, alleging that it was the hand of the murdered Arsenius, to be employed, of course, for magical purposes. Constantine appointed his brother-in-law, Dalmatius, to preside over an enquiry into the affair at Antioch. The agents of Athanasius discovered that Arsenius was alive and in possession of both his hands in the Thebaid; tracked down there, Arsenius fled to Tyre, but Athanasian agents found him there too, and had him identified' before Paul, bishop of Tyre. 83 The exposure of this manifestly false charge had a damaging effect on the Melitian case against Athanasius. Athanasius gives another letter from Constantine to John Arcaph, to be dated 332, congratulating SOFor CoHuthus see above pp. 137-8 and Opitz Urk III. No. 14.3(19, 20) and Apol. Sec. 12.1(97). 81Apol. Sec. 68.1-'7(146,147), and Opitz's notes in Joe. 825ee Opitz's note on Apol. Sec. 69.1-4(147. 148). Arsenius later submitted to Athanasius (Apol. Sec. 69.1-4(147. 148», but not till about 337. after Athanasius' return from his first exile. Socrates HE II.P.3 says that Arsenius signed the condemnation of Athanasius at Tyre. We may convict Athanasius of ferocity, but not of vindictiveness. He even was finally reconciled to Ischyras! 83 Apol. Sec. 6J-69; Sozomenus HE 1I.2J; Socrates HE 1.29. Martin (PTAA 48-50) thinks that Athanasius dealt with the matter of Arsenius by sending a deacon from Alexandria to the court. But if the case came before the Iscfiyras affair, this

would hardly be possible.

c/

The Behaviouro! Athanasius

Con sion

~ohn£rCaPh'

him on submitting to Athanas US. 84 who had been tisch ras, had to apologize to foremost in moving the charges a Athanasius, and he was summoned to Nic media and rebuked. It seems likely that from the summer of 332 for about a year A thanasius was left to his own devices. Constantine had shown no inclination to favour Melitian complaints about Athanasius, and, in spite of Athanasius' account (Apol. Sec. 59), there is no satisfactory evidence that the Melitians had yet united with the Eusebians. To the year 333 we have already allotted a letter of Constantine to Arius and his companions which, after a good deal of imperial bluster and abuse, shows a distinctly conciliatory attitude towards them. 85 And we have attributed to the same year a fragment of a letter of Constantine to Athanasius peremptorily ordering him to readmit an unnamed group and to restore their church building to them. 86 Constantine may have thought that an opportunity had arisen of bringing about entire unity within the Church by effecting the readmission of Arius and his followers to the Christian community in Alexandria. Athanasius (who had good reason to believe that he was now in good odour with Constantine) politely refused. Nothing happened to him. It was not unusual for Constantine to make threats of immediate punishment or suggest measures to his correspondents without following them Up.87 But in this year or in the next the Melitians found an ally in the Eusebians. Athanasius says that it was Eusebius of Nicomedia who prompted Constantine's demand, and he may be right. But it was not till the next year, 334, that the fruit of this alliance appeared. A Council was called to Caesarea in Palestine with the ostensible purpose of purifying the Christian people, but in fact to examine the conduct, not the doctrine, of Athanasius. 88 '4Apol. Sec. 70.1~2(148). "Opitz Urk. Ill. No. 34(69f1). See above, p. 176. ··See above pp.2S0-1 and n6I. See Schwartz Gesamm. Schrift. IlI.8(23!>-40). 87E.g. the letter given to us by Gelasius HE III.IS addressed apparently to Alexander of Alexandria, to be dated probably to 327 or 328 in which he says that he has summoned Arius to his presence with his companion Euzoiu5, that he wants to

discuss matters of faith with them in the presence ofothers, and he invites Alexander (if it is Alexander) to meet these two and see if he can find accord with them in doctrine. Alexander clearly did not respond to this invitation and nothing came of

it. The thunderous Edict against Arius (Opitz Urk. III No. 33(66-8) must be placed in the year 333 also; if so Constantine quickly accomplished an entire volte-face on the subject; it was riot out of character for him to do so. 88Athanasius never mentions this council. but it certainly was called. We have already seen papyrus 1913 which refers to its imminent meeting, but there is also the 2

8

Athanasius was summoned to it, but refused to attend or send a representative; he had disobeyed imperial commands with impunity before; he saw no reason why he should obey an ecclesiastical tribunal. Next year, however, in the summer of 335, the Council of Caesarea was re-constituted or re-summoned in Tyre. And on this occasion Constantine showed openly his support of this move by appointing an imperial official, the consular Dionysius, to oversee it. It was not a vast assemblage, there were only about sixty bishops present, but it held a wide representation. Alexander bishop of Thessalonica was at it and, curiously, two young and enthusiastically Eusebian bishops from Balkan sees, Val ens from Mursa and U rsacius from Singidunum, and Marcellus of Ancyra. 89 Flacillus of Antioch presided. Athanasius was unwillingly compelled to attend by threats from Constantine; he testifies himself to his reluctance (Apol. Sec. 71) and papyrus 1914, as we have seen (pp. 252-3), confirms this. There was little attempt to conceal the fact that this Council had assembled to investigate his conduct of affairs in his see. Not only did he suspect that Euseblans, well informed by Melitians, would be in control of it; they had arrested his agents; his political opponents in his see were informing against him. But he also knew that they had a strong case. It is not surprising that he was depressed and apprehensive. When Athanasius arrived at Tyre he found himself accused on a number of charges, all of them supplied with evidence from aggrieved Melitians, prominent among whom was John Arcaph, Index of Festql Letters for Easter of 334. the Letter of the Eastern Bishops at Serdica 7; Sozomenus HE I1.25. I and Theodoret HE 1.28. It is not certain whether this council ever .m~t. It certainly ~ccomplished nothing. Schwartz (Gesamm, Schrift. I11.8 (200. n I) InSIsted upon datIng it 333. not 33'4. relying on a phrase in the letter of the Easterners at Sardica, post alterum annum. and another in Apo!' Sec. n.77 1i1to 1tepucJl but the Index to the Festal Letters makes it clear that the date is 334. See Martin His/oire 'Akephale', 230, 23I. ' 89~ources for the Council. of Tyre: Eusebius VC IV.42 (Theodoret HE 1.29;

GelaslUs HE III. 1.7); AthanaSlus Apol. Sec. 73-81 (esp. 79); Sozomenus HE II.2S (RufiDus J:IE I. 17;, Socrates !IE 1.29-30; Theodoret HE 1.30); Epiphanius Panarion 68.8,9; Phdostorglus HE II.33. Details added Sozomenus HE II.33; Athanasius Apol. Sec. 7': Martm (PTAA 51 n48) gives the list of bishops present; he discusses the CounCIl 52-5; se,e also Schwa~tz Gesamm. Schrift. 11.8 247-56; Simonetti Crisi 1 2 4-8; Ba~nes C~nstan,tlne an~ EuseblUs 23 1-5. The Letter of Egyptian Bishops 7 suggests that A:nus d~rmg hIS Illyrlan exile had converted the young Valens and Ursacius to his

Vl~W po!nt. For t~e date of the Counci], which is certainly 335, nof336, see Martin HIS/OITe

Akephale 74-5.

~, C,"'"~

The Behaviour of Athanasius

" ' \ 'f

probabl~.

o

who was tia bishop of Memphis" Ecclesiastical councils were, and long 0 tinued to .be, intensely unsatisfactory organs ofjustice, without fo ms or standmg orders or presidents who could control them or even c piitjng of votes" , Whenever we have anything like a verbatim repo t of t1taOle or part o. f such a council, as we have, for instance, in the se oftli Council of Aquilela of 381, we realize this anew. The list 0 ccusati ns against AthanaslUs was a long one: the case oflschyras (to. . Macarius, now a prison~r, gave testimony), various types of VIOlence committed by A~~naslUs against individual Melitian bishops; the depositIOn of Calhmcus of pelusium who had broken with Athanasius over the affair ofIschyras; they even revived the case of Arsenius. They threw doubt on the validity of Athanasius' election; they produced charges of sexual irregularity which had become almost routine in such prosecutions (but which were dropped in the course of the proceedmgs); they alleged that he was unpopular with the people of Alexand~la. Athanasius had arrived (July I rth) accompamed by 30 Egyptian bishops who were his supporte~s, and who behaved during the session of Council in a disturbmg and threatenmg manner. HIS encouragement over several years to his supporters to behav.e like hooligans was now recoiling on his own head: He d~fended himself with spirit,, 2 After some time the CouncIl deCided to send a Commission to the Mareotis, whence Ischyras had come, to collect evidence on the spot. This in itself waS a perfectly reasonable measure, indeed for an ecclesiastical council a surprisingly fair one. But the membership of the Commission showed that those who were appointing it were distinctly anti-Athanasian, or rather,. proEusebian: Theognis of Nicaea, Maris of Chalcedon, UrsaclUS of Singidunum, Valens of Mursa, Theodore of Heraclea and Macedonius of Mopsuestia. When they arnved m Egypt, accompanied by Isch yras and a detachment of soldiers but without Macarius, they were given every opportunity to collect eVidence against Athanasius by the prefect of Egypt, Philagrius, a pagan. Protests were raised at these proceedings by groups of pro90See Apol. Sec. 71; at one time apparently Constantine ~ro~e .to]ohn Arcaph

promising him a reward ifhe would be reconciled to AthanaslUs (Ibid. 7~). We have already seen him at Antioch in 334 and 335. cr. Barnard 'AthanaslUs and the MeIetian Schism' I8S. 186.

91As Schwartz observes. op. cit. 251-5. 92Sozomenus HE 11.25; Epiphanius Panarion 68.8; Athanasius Apol. Sec. 8; Rufinus HE 1.17.

Athanasian clergy in Egypt and by Alexander of Thessalonica, and Dionysius the consular seems by this time to have thought the sending of the Commission a measure of doubtful wisdom,, 3 But Athanasius realised that he had no more to hope from the Council of Tyre. He secretly left the city and made his way to the court at Constantinople. In September the Mareotic Commission returned and reported. The result was that the Council ofTyre condemned Athanasius on a number of charges, deposed him from being archbishop of Alexandria, excommunicated him, and forbade him to return to his former see. Precisely what the charges upon which he was condemned is not altogether clear, but they probably comprised these: i. His refusal to appear at the Council of Caesarea ii. The contumacious behaviour of himself and his followers during the Council of Tyre iii. The affair of Ischyras and the broken chalice, which was assumed to have been proved against him. His Right in the middle of the Council was taken as an admission of guilt. They reinstated some deposed Melitian bishops and sent a circular letter to all bishops asking them not to communicate with Athanasius. The Council then adjourned to the congenial occupation of attending the dedication of Constantine's newly-built Church of the Anastasis at Jerusalem!' They had not convicted Athanasius of murdering Arsenius nor of any doctrinal error at all. 931n the Apol. Sec. Athanasius gives a long list of documents relevant to the Council, som!! of which should be listed here: I. a list ofMeiitian bishops, presbyters and deacons in Alexandria and its hinterland which had on two occasions been given .to the bishop of Alexandria when the Melitians had been ostensibly reconct1c:d. I~ sh~ws how very extensive was Melitian influence and allegiance. Athanaslus gIves It to show that Ischyras' name is not in the list (Apol. Sec. 71); 2. a letter of Count. Dionysius asking the whole Council to appoint a Commission to go to th~ MareotIs (72 and 81); 3. Protest letters from Egyptian bishops about the appoInt~e.nt of the Co~mjssion, addressed to the Synod and to the Count (77 and 78); a petItton of these bIShops appealing to Constantine, through Count Dionysius afte~ the depar.ture of the Commission (79); 4. a Letter of Count Dionysius to Flacl~lus of AntIoch and his followers warning him of the danger of their decision to appoInt the Commission (81); evidently the Count had had second thoughts; 5. a Letter ofAI~x~nder ofThessal.onica to the Count complaining about the despatch of the CommISSIOn (8o~; 6. Vano?s later letters of pr-otest from groups of Egyptian clergy about the unjust and hIgh-handed behaviour of,the Commission in the Mareotis (7), 74, 75, 76). 94The charges upon which Athanasius was condemned can be reconstructed

Period of Confusion

The Behaviour of Athanasius

This verdict was a crushing blow for Athanasius, one from which it took him a long time to recover; and perhaps only he could have recovered from it. Nobody can pretend that the proceedings at Tyre were a model of just dealing. The difficulty facing the bishops gathered there was that they could only condemn on specific, not on general, charges, and it was difficult to obtain evi nce on specific charges. But they had given Athanasius an opport ity to defend himself. The behaviour of his supporters d g trial was menacing and exasperating and suggested that concerned with coercion than with justice. It ust everybody that he had been for some time usin· ensible iolence in the administration of his see, even though it as not easy t bring him to book on exact charges. Martin notes that ~uring the curse of his many self-exculpations Athanasius makes a ca~eful choic of what accusations he mentions, i.e. the affair of the brokeh-m .ce and that of Arsenius, neither of which could be properly substantiated, and that even in the former he switches the attention from what was actually done to the status and history of Ischyras himself. He completely ignores the serious and well-attested evidence of his own continual use of violence. He suggests (not perhaps without justification) that the conduct of the Mareotic Commission shows th.e Eusebians themselves employing violence. He represents the Council of Tyre, which was a properly constituted and entirely respectable gathering of churchmen, some of whom had been confessors in the Great Persecution, as a gang of disreputable conspirators, and brands all his opponents as favourers ofheresy.95 When we have said all that can be said in criticism of the Council ofTyre, we must acknowledge that there was an air of nemesis about it.

on October 30th 335; he met Constantine in the street and obtained an audience with him, and there requested him to summon the Council ofTyre all over again. Constantine certainly did not do this, but he did require some of the Eusebian bishops to leave Jerusalem and come to him at Constantinople. The exact order of events cannot be reconstructed. It is evident that Athanasius had made some progress in regaining the Emperor's favour when something occurred to deprive him of it altogether and caused Constantine i~contin.ently to banish Athanasius to Trier in the Gallic provinces of his Empire, where he would be among complete strangers speaking a language prob~bly as yet unknown to him, well out of the way of causmg mischief. It was alleged that the cause of this change of attitude on the part of Constantine was the accusation that Athanasius had threatened to delay the cornships.97 Whether this charge arose out of some unguarded words used by Athanasius to Constantine or f~om an accusation made by some Eusebian bishop (perhaps Eusebius himself), now arrived in Constantinople, cannot be determined. ~hough th.e influence of Athanasius among the sailors in the port of hiS see ~Igh~ have b~en suffiCient to delay ships sailing from Alexandna With Egyptian com for the restless proletariat of the Empire's capital cities, it is in the last degree unlikely that Athanasius was fool enough to make such a threat when he was in the Emperor's power, a defeated man, struggling to salvage his status and career. Constantin~, .significantly, ignored protests from groups of Egyptian clergy at thiS Judgment, but took no steps to fill the see of Alexandria. Some authority, it is not clear what, consecrated one Pistus, an Alexandr~a':.8 pr~sbyter who favoured A~ius, as bishop of Alexandna. PlStus, however, never received any significant volume of Support, and a few years later faded out of history, an

/

3. From the Council of Tyre to the Council of Rome John Arcaph was thought by Constantine to have overplayed his hand at Tyre, perhaps in reviving the exploded affair of Arsenius. He was banished in consequence. 96 Athanasius reached Constantinople from Sozomenus HE 11.25.16-19. Some (e.g. Schwartz)·thin~.that the Council of

Tyre adjourned its proceedings temporarily to attend the dedication' in Jerusalem and then returned to Tyre for the verdict and sentence. 95Martin PTAA 52-5. 96Socrates HE 1.30; Sozomenus HE 11.3 I.

97 Athanasius Apol. Sec. 86, 87.1-3, Socrates HE 1.34; Sozomenus HE n.28. See Ge:amm. Schrift· 111.8(25 8-63); Simonetti Crisi 129.31; Pietri in A ~S n 7. OpitZ, n on Encye. Letter to Egyptian Bishops 5.5(174) observes that AthanaSlus had peculiar influence among the seafarers of Alexandria 98T~e Council of Tyre might have done this, but this seems imp~obable. It is more. lIkely that Secundus ofPtolemais. who had now been restored to his see, acted on hIS own authority as a prominent Egyptian (Libyan) supporter of Arius. Schwartz (Gesamm. Schrift 1II.6(98» declares that Pistus was made bishop of Mareotls. not of Alexandria. But (i) Athanasius suggests strongly (see n 99 below) that t~ere was no see in Mareotis and that it was absurd to make one. and (ii) the Eusebla~ party would hardly have asked Julius to_ communicate with a bishop of Mareons. .

~~A Schwartz

Period of Confusion

The Behaviour of Athanasius

'embarrassed and transient phantom'. The Melitians in Egypt were temporarily triumphant. The Mareotis was made ~ d cese, Isc~yras appointed bishop of it, and a handsome church built t serve his see. Athanasius later alleged that there was no populati n sufficient to justify a bishop there, that he had no presbyters an n ns, and that had bishop Ischyras ventured to visit his dio ese as .able be chased out of it by the local people. 99 Later A ana ius h d the impudence to maintain that Constantine had b is a him 0 t of kindness, to protect him from the virulent hostilit of the Arian . I 00 He travelled to Rome, where Sylvester was still bi Op,IOI and hen ave ought to Trier, where he spent most of his First Exile. He m some knowledge of monasticism (now well established in Egypt) to the West, and have made the acquaintance in Trier, an imperial Head Quarters, of Constantine II, Constantine's son. It is likely that he had not yet written any works apart from the Festal Letters. When the bishops were in Jerusalem for the dedication of the Church, Constantine, who had by now returned to his new capital, sent them a message stating that Arius and his friends had made a profession of faith to him which was orthodox, and commanding them to admit this group formally into the Church. I 02 It seems highly likely that this was a mere confirmation or more public reaffirmation of a move which had already been made,103 all the more important now that Athanasius had been removed from the scene, and may have been intended as a preliminary to the acceptance of Arius as a recognised presbyter of the church of Alexandria again. It was not, however, followed by the results which the Eusebian bishops, who had hastened to comply with the Emperor', orders,

p~obably expect~d from it, becau.se soon after this Arius suddenly dIed. The actual Circumstances ofhis death are difficult to reconstruct because the elaborate account of it which Athanasius gives in th~ letter WhICh he wro~e to his friend Serapion, bishop of Thmuis, mu~h la~er, probably m 358, called De Morte Arii, cannot be regarded a~ hIStoncally trustworthy. It gives a romantic picture of Alexander, blsh~p ofConstantinople, faced with a demand from the Emperor to admIt Anus. to commUnIon next day, spending all night in prayer. Next mornmg hiS p~ayers were answered, because early that day Anus dIed suddenly, m a lavatory. 10. Opitz, in loc., points out that have been bishop of Alexander cannot possibly Byzanti~m/Constantinople as late as 335 or 336; he was dead by 330. AthanaslUS plac~s Arius' death shortly after the Council ofTyre, and says that he gamed hiS mformation from Macarius who was in Constantinople at the time. 105 But during the Council and for some time after it Macarius was in prison in Tyre. We cannot be sure of the exact date of Arius' death, whether 335 or 336. Most authorities today place it in 336, ~nd agree that it took place in Constantinople. But we do not know ItS exact details, nor .do we know why at that pomt he was in Constantinople. 106 . Then on !"lay 22nd 337 Constantine died and everything changed. All the exIled bIShops were permitted to return to their sees Athanasius among them. Athanasius gives the letter which the ne~ co-Emperor Constantine II wrote to the church of Alexandria prepariI';g fo~ the return of their bishop, dated June 17th 337.'07 AthanaslUs dId not return Immediately, but made a long detour,

' X

"

IO'De Mo;te Arjj 3. 1-3(179). loslb'd 1 : 2.1(178-179). Socrates HEI.37, 38, SozomenusHEII.z9 and Rufinus HE

Apol. Sec. 85.1--'7(163-164). lschyras' village was called Eirene Secontarouros; it must have like erecting a cathedral at Ulubrae. or at Hogglestock. tOOHistoria Arianorum 50.2(212). and this is not the only place in this work where he makes this absurd claim. The Festal Letter for 336, describing the events, of course, of 335, is the earliest account of Constantine's exiling of Athanasius. The Apol. Sec. 87.1-3 (165. 166), written c. 357. does not make this claim. But a little late! 99

(88.4(166» he quotes a letter of Constantine II written on the archbishop's return from his First Exile,June 17. 337, which relates this legend (and Athanasius endorses it 88.1-3(167», so it must have been manufactured early. 10lSO Pietri in PTAA 96. 102Athanasius De Synodis 21; Apol. Sec. 84; Socrates HE 1".23: Theodoret HE I.~I. 103See above, pp. I7S-
1.12, 1.3 simpl~ follow Athanasius' account, though Rufinus curiously places the event In the epIscopate of Alexander of Alexandria (and he is not confusing the two

Alexanders). I

~,

06~ee

Opitz op. cit. (who is

r~ady

to place Arius' death as early as 334)

9.(273 275), Schwartz,. Gesamm. SChTift.III.8(256-?), who places it in JJ5 because he thInks that the CounCIl o~ Tyre took place in 334; Simonetti Crisis 128-g, who appears to favour 335; Meslm Les Ariens 225 n 2 and Kopecek His/ory 76, opt for 336. Paul the su.ccessor. of Alexander at Constantinople. attended the Council ofTyre in 335 and SIgned Its decisions (see Hilary Coil. AT. A IV.I.13(J7), cf. 18(60)). Pht1ostorglu~ (l-!E 11.10) says that Alexander of Constantinople died immediately after the dedIcatIon of the new capital, Le. in 332. For Kannengiesser's dating of the De Morte ArU to a much earlier period sec below p 419 107 I ',. . Apo. Sec. 88.4(166); see also Theodoret HE 11.2.2-4' see Klein Constan/ius II

29-31.

'

Period of

co~~

including the Danubian regions, Asia Min ,SYi:· Phoenicia and Palestine. He may have met the three co- mper rs, eirs to their father Constantine, Constantine II, Constans and tanti~ when they gathered at Viminacium in Moesia rima ear the Danube in September.'os The Eastern bishops at erdica st ed that wherever Athanasius went on his lengthy ret rn he sti ed up trouble, i.e. he supported anti-Eusebian bishops ret ning fro exile. In particular he may have accompanied Paul to nst tinople, where riots, which were apparently the invariable concomitants of that unhappy prelate, broke out.'09 But Athanasius returned to Alexandria in triumph on November 23rd, 337."° The same Eastern bishops go on to say that on returning to his see Athanasius renewed his high-handed and violent policy against his opponents, which is quite possible, though this source has confused some of the atrocIties of his enemies a little later with the measures taken by AthanaslUs. The first reference which Athanasius in his writings makes to Arians by name is in the Festal Letters 10, written in 338.'" This year was to see a renewal of the opposition to Athanasius on the part of Eusebius of Nicomedia and his party. After all, Athanasius had been formall y deposed by a properly constituted synod on charges which could hardly be refuted. It was against-all church order and tradition that he should be readmitted to his see on the bare word of an Emperor who did not even have any jurisdiction in Egypt. In the winter of 33~338 the standing committee (not a council but what was called it tv/i1Woiicra cr6v080<;) of the church of Antioch met and sent a letter to the three Augusti (of whom in the circumstances Constantius II, emperor of the Eastern part, was much the. most important)", accusing Athanasius of acts of violence committed by himself or by his deputy, impugning the regularity of his election and l08Mostscholars place the meeting at Viminacium and Athanasius' return in 337. but Martin Klein (op. cit. 31, 32)., and Barnard ('Two Notes on Athanasius' 35 2 -6), place both eventS in 338. Lorentz (Der Zehnte OsterfestbrieJ63) makes it clear that the

tenth Festal Letter was written in Alexandria before March 26th, 33 8. t09For Paul's stormy career, see below pp. 279-84. It is by no means certain that he sympathised with Athanasius' doctrinal views. Athanasius probably met

The Behaviour of Athanasius

recalling the uncancelled verdict of the Council of Tyre. They also sent a presbyter, Macarius, accompanied by two deacons, with a letter to Julius, who had now succeeded Sylvester as bishop of Rome. The letter requested him to have no dealings with any of the bishops who had returned to their sees on Constantine's death, and least of all with A thanasius, and forthe time being to address Pistus as bishop of Alexandria, "2 and they sent with these men a copy of the Report of the Mareotic Commission and some signatures of (Melitian) Egyptian bishops. Thismission came to nothing, but the appeal to the Emperor Constantius resulted in his writing a letter'13 accusing Athanasius of delaying the shipment of corn from Egypt; it was no more than a preliminary warning; Athanasius does not tell us to whom it was addressed and professes to believe that it might be a forgery. . In reply to this move, Athanasius held a grand council of bishops in Alexandria in 33 8." It sent a circular to all bishops which contained copies of many documents (to be found in Apologia Secunda 3-19), suggesting that his enemies were preparing to overturn the decisions of the Council ofNicaea. He sent a deputation with this document to Rome. This deputation met the deputation from Antioch and a lively interchange took place. During the discussion one of the Eusebian delegation let fall a remark which Julius was able to interpret as a request to him to call a Council. This certainly was not a formal request from the standing committee at Antioch to call a council, because the Eusebian party had no desire to appeal to Rome from the decision of the Council of Tyre, though Athanasius later represented it as such." 4 Julius therefore (still in the year 338) wrote to both paities, summoning them to a synod in Rome."s This was not much more than an excuse to avoid the request to treat Athanasius as excommunicate. It was in 338 that Anthony the hermit (whose life Athanasius was later to write) visited Alexandria for two days in order to declare his support for Athanasius. Simonetti thinks that this was a significant moment in the career of the archbishop.

Constantius twice, at Viminacium and later at Cappadocian Caesarea (see Barnes C

112Atha~asius Apol. Sec. 20 and 24. For the events leading up to Athanasius' Second ExIle, see Schwartz Gesamm. Schrifi. VII.9(278"'""'90) and Simonetti Crisi

and E 263-4).

139-4 2.

lt0See the Index to the Festal Letter. which is a reliable source for local events. Schwartz Gesamm. Schrift. 111.9(269-70); Zei1ler Origines 219; Simonetti Crisi 137--9; Tetz 'Athanasius' 337; Martin Histojr~ 'Akephale' 75-6. whose account is the most recent and reliable. II t See n 108 above.

266

:::Athanasius Letter ofB~shops of Egypt 18; cf. Apol. Sec, 3, 5. 7. 18 and Hist. Ar. 9. Apol. Sec. I ,2(87)i -ypa\jlavt'o~ El1u&f}iou; see Pietri in PTAA 97-100. Macarius had su.ggested that the report of the Mareotic Commission should be laid before a councIl.

IlSApol. Sec. 22; Hist. Ar. 9; Encycl. ofEg. Bishops 7.

Period of ConfUsion

From now on, the balance of power in Egypt shifts. The Melitians, whose main support was the Coptic-speaki -pe~ants, begin to weaken, and the cause of Athanasius begins 0 make a pP-<:~Lto the section of the populatIon from whIch the onks m'Y.f\1Y arne, slmp!~ uneducated people rather than the 'ari tocrati,C ~radi ion of the Didaskaleion'. The later fanatical attac men\ t . the person of Athanasius has its beginnings here, and th ove Impli led vulgar identification of the Nicene interpretation wit. the true faith. This vulgarisation of theology was to have far-reachmg ~n y no means wholly good results in the future."" During the winter of 338/339 the Eusebian party, stiII mlder the leadership of Eusebius of Nicomedia (who had become bIshop of Constantinople at the very end of 338) ,117 met in Antioch to plan future policy. They declared Athanasius deposed from the see of Alexandria again and then, completely ignoring Pistus, after Eusebius later bishop of Erne sa had refused the see, mose as bishop of Alexandria a learned Cappadocian called Gregory who had once studied at Alexandria. He was a much more presentable rival to Athanasius than Pistus, and he had imperial support, because Constantius issued an edict to the Alexandrians telling them that he approved of Gregory. Just before Gregory arrived in Alexandria, at Eastertime (Mar 18th), Philagrius, reappointed prefect of Egypt, appeared on the scene with a detachment of soldiers. They drove Athanasius out of his episcopal residence into the church ofTheonas, where he baptised several of his supporters, and then he fled from the city by sea. In the resulting riots two large churches went up in flames and several people were killed. Gregory then arrived and tried to compel everybody to treat him as patriarch of Alexandria,u 8 This was a grave mistake on the part of the Eusebian party; their chief justification in opposing Athanasius had been that he had certainly used violence in administering his see, and they were now fighting him with his own tactics. Perhaps it shows the hand of Constantius, 1I6C,is; 141-3. quotation I4I. 1I1S0

Barnard 'Two Notes on Athanasius'

252--6.

ocra tes (who confuses the meeting in Antioch in 338/9 with that which took place there in 341) HE 11.8; Letter of)ulius 29; Index to Festal Letter of339; Hilary Coli. Ar. AIl.S (p.55). Opitz has two notes on Pistus, at Encycl. Letter oj Eg. Bishops 6.2(17 8) and at Apol. Sec. 19.2(101), cf. Klein Constantius II 69-71, where he goes too far in seeing the rejection ofPistus as a rejection of Arianism by Constantius; Pistus 118S

had apparently been excommunicated (presumbly for Arian sympathies) when a presbyter by Alexander.

The Behaviour of Athanasius

less sensitive than that of his father; or it may be that the influence of Eusebius of Constantinople, who was a very able ecclesiastical diplomat, was waning. In March or April Athanasius published the Encyclical Letter of the Egyptian Bishops which had been provoked by the arrival of Gregory in Alexandria." 9 The letter was in effect addressed to Julius of Rome, and to Rome Athanasius came late in 339. 120 As a result of pressure put on him by Athanasius, Marcellus and other pro-Nicene exiles in Rome, Julius now wrote to the Eusebian party, (calling them invidiously by that name oi 1tepi EllcrEpwv) inviting them to a council in Rome iii the spring of 340, to be called for the purpose of investigating primarily the cases of Athanasius and Marcellus. The Eusebians did not reply to this letter for a whole year, partly no doubt in order to prevent any council assembling in Rome in 340, but mainly because political circumstances made any communication between the Eastern and Western parts of the Empire difficult and delicate. It was in the year 340 that the Emperor Constantine II made his unwise and disastrous attempt to depose his brother-Emperor Constans and take over his portion of the Empire, and in consequence met his death near Aquileia. We do not possess the Eusebians' delayed reply, but we can reconstruct much of its contents. 121 They defended the validity of the Council of Tyre and its decisions, acknowledged that the Eastern Church respected the see of Rome, but did not feel inferior to it, repeated the charges against Athanasius and Marcellus and threatened schism if Rome continued to commmlicate with . these two. In order to rebut the bishop of Rome's pretence to act as a court of appeal they cited the cases of Novatian (where the East had 119Ap. Sec. 3. 12°50 Barnard 'Two Notes' 352-6; Schwartz, Gesamm. Schrift. IIJ.9(294-300)

places his arrival in 340. Athanasius (His!. Ar. 9.1-12.3(187-9) in the course of a highly tendentious account of the events leading up to the Synod afRome of 341. says that he came to Rome, not only because of the violence which had been offered him, but also 'in order that the Council should take place, as he Gulius) desired'! Klein (Constantius II 39 and n 91) conjectures that Athanasius may have found supporters among members of the imperial house resident there. Eutropia (sister of Constantine! and mother ofNepotianus), and believes that Apol. ad Constantium 6.3 hints at this. Such a connection, however, would not fit well with Athanasius' friendly reception later of the representatives of Magnentius, who had murdered both Eutropia and her son. 121From Socrates HE II.n, Sozomenus HE III.8.4 and from the subsequent letter of Julius.

Period of Confusion not intervened) and of Paul of Samosata (where the West had not intervened). '22 Julius finally held his Council of Rome quite early in 341.'23 About 50 bishops attended it, in the church of the presbyter Bito (or Vito), who had been present at the Council ofNicaea~we have seen, '24 not only was Athanasius' conduct examined b this Council and pronounced blameless, but Marcellus' 0 hodoxy was investigated and declared to be sound. After the uncil was over, Julius wrote a letter to the Eusebian bishops w Antioch. '25 He again uses the invidious title for thoser,ho addresses th letter, 'the party of Eusebius'; he na es them Cappadocian Caesarea), presiding over a kind Eastern bishops, Flacillus (Antioch), sebius (Constantinople), Maris (Chalcedon), Macedonius (Mops la) and Theodore (Heraclea), 'and those who are with them from Antioch."26 The presbyters sent to Antioch (over a year ago) ,Julius says, have returned disappointed and dispirited; the reply which they brought was an unnecessarily uncivil one, '27 and he did not like their claim that each Council has its own jurisdiction and that a council which has made a decision is slighted if its verdict is reviewed by another.'2. But, says Julius, 'the party of Eusebius' have received Arians, and Athanasius and Marcellus, doughty opponents of Arianism at the Council of Nicaea, have been shamefully and unjustly treated. This was in effect to impugn the validity of a council- that ofNicaea.'2' The Eusebians in their letter had accused Julius of'lighting the flame of schism' by his behaviour, and of giving them too short notice of the Council of Rome (originally planned for 340). In retaliation Julius complained of the Easterners' practice of translating bishops irresponsibly from one 122S0 Simonetti Crisi 142--6. Schwartz (Gesamm. Schrift 1I1.9(297)) greatly

admires this (reconstructed) letter and calls it a 'masterpiece'. 123Athanasius Apol. Sec. 23-4 and 27-31; Theodoret HE 11.2.4. For a list of the various letters written in connection with this Council see Simonetti Crisi 146-7.

For the Council generally ,ee Schwartz Gesamm. Schrift 1l1.9(30'-7), 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 142-3; Loafs 'Arianismus' 26; Pietri in PTAA 103-1 II; H. C. Brennecke Hilarius lion Poitiers und die Bischojsopposition gegen Konstantius II 7-9. above, p.2I8. 125Given in Apol. Sec. 21-35. Socrates HE 11.17 reproduces from these. 126Apol. Sec. 21.'('OZ). 1271bid. Z1. 1-4(102, 103). 128 22.1--6(103. 104). 129 23 .2, 3( 104). 124See

The Behaviour of Athanasius see to another (which wa, formally forbidden at Nicaea). Thi, was an obvious hit at Eusebius.'30 Julius uncritically accepted Athanasius' account of the 'affaire Ischyra,', though it is pretty clear that he had read the report of the Mareotic Commission. 13l Julius next criticizes the manner in which Gregory of Cappadocia had been intruded into the see of Alexandria: none of the traditional rules for ordaining and installing a bishop were observed; he was not consecrated in Alexandria; the presbyter" deacons and bishops of Alexandria were not present; he was not consecrated in his own church by his own bishops; instead he entered this see surrounded by soldiers and hi, arrival was accompanied by disturbances and outrages. '32 Here Julius certainly was on stronger ground. The Mareotic Commission, he goes on to say, heard evidence in the presence of pagans, Jews and soldiers, and refused to hear the evidence oflocal c1ergy.'33 Marcellus i, perfectly orthodox and indeed at Nicaea proved himself a zealous opponent of Arianism.'3' The Eusebian party had written to Julius, 'choose communion with us or with Marcellus and Athanasius';135 it is clear that Julius prefer, the latter alternative. He next makes an important claim. The occupant' of important ,ee, founded by Apostles, he says, such as Alexandria (siel) and Ancyra, should be judged by the bishop of Rome: eOEI ypa
4 (IIO,

III).

1"34·3(I12). 136 35 .3- 5(112. I I 3), quotations from 3(113) and 4(113); the Greek means 'it was necessary to write to all of us ... or are you unaware that this was the custom, that we should be written to and so the just course should in consequence (or possibly "here") be determined.' It seems difficult (in spite of the 'all of us' which suggests the Western Church rather than the Pope) to avoid the conclusion that Julius is making a claim of universal jurisdiction. Opitz in loc .. takes it of the Western Church as a

whole, 137.

1370ssius 303. 138Crisi 149-50.

Period of Confosion

The Behaviour of Athanasius

was perhaps inevitable that the bishop ofRpme should ultimately be brought into so important a conflict, Juliu~' action had placed a new and unpleasant aspect upon the controve"~y. Hitherto the Emperor had been tacitly accepted as the final arbi kr of Church disputes, even (as in the case of the Donatist controve sy) beyond the arbitration of the bishop of Rome. Even less would e interference of the bishop of Rome be welcomed in this case. Be een 2 35 nobody had appealed to Rome. '3 • The bishop Ro e had al ays tended to support the bishop of Alexandria wh Jl.e c uld; it as therefore in accordance with this policy that Jp:fius no e dorse holeheartedly Athanasius' account of his trial.1[he Western 1S ops made no serious attempt to analyse the complexit'x of the sit tion which faced them; they had hitherto remained on the periphprY of the controversy; their traditional Monarchianism could square well enough with the little they knew of the Council of Nicaea; by an oversimplification they were able to see Marcellus as orthodox.'40 This intervention gave those in the East who wished to change the Creed of Nicaea an opportunity; the West's vindication of the manifestly heterodox Marcellus increased the disquiet which N had already created, for N appeared to favour the near-Sabellianism of Marcellus. The case of Athanasius also tended to press divergent schools of thought in the East into a united party. Even if some of the proceedings of the Council of Tyre were high-handed, it was beyond doubt that Athanasius had behaved with violence against the Melitians and evinced in his general conduct an authoritarian character determined to exploit the influence of his see. The Eastern episcopate were convinced that' Athanasius was a person to be held at arm's length as much as pilSSible.' 141 The Greek-speaking Eastern and the Latin-speaking Western areas of the Christian Church were now heading for a major rift, one which actually happened two years later. The cause of this was not primarily the doctrine of Arius. Theoretically at this point the Arian Controversy had been settled. Certainly Athanasius had up to this point taken no part in it at all: he probably had by now written the Conlra Genies el De Incarnaljone (338 or 339), which makes no overt

allusion to the controversy, but had not yet begun his series of polemical theological works. Though the controversy about Arius lay, really unresolved, in the background, this controversy formed only a minor part of the unhappy situation created after Julius had wntten his letter to the Eusebians of 341. The chief causes were the . intrigue ofEusebius of Constantinople, the opportunism ofJulius of . Rome, and the misconduct of Athanasius of Alexandria, and among these three causes we must judge the last to be the most serious.

tJ9lbid. ISO-I. 140Ibid. 151-2. 1411bid. 152-3. quotation I S3 ('che Atanasio fosse persona da tentre it piu lantano

possibile'). 272

27'2

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (341-349)

Attempts at Cree 34 -349 I.

. Phase

1,

Was there an Arian Conspiracy?

'As we have learnt from various letters which the bishops were writing to each other after the Council, the term homoousios was

troubling some people." So wrote the historian Socrates, and we have every reason to believe him. The production ofN by the largest council of bishops hitherto held, supported by imperial approval for those who agreed and imperial penalties for those who did hot, must have been deeply disturbing for many who could not seriously be described as Arian in sympathy but could not believe that God had only one hypostasis, as the creed apparently professed, and could not suddenly at the bidding of an unbaptized Emperor, however benign he had shown himself to the Church, abandon completely a subordinationism which had been hallowed ~y long tradition. The usual explanation of the next stage of the history of the search for the Christian doctrine of God describes the favourers of Arianism as setting themselves with deliberate craft and malignant intrigue to depose and replace every and any bishop who was known to be particularly favourable to N. And people who follow this conventional line can point to the fact that within ten years of the Council ofNicaea all the leading supporters of the creed of that Council had been deposed or disgraced or exiled - Athanasius, Eustathius and Marcellus, and with them a large number of other bishops who. are presumed to have belonged to the same school of thought, Asclepas of Gaza, Paul of Constantinople, Euphration of Balanea, Cymatius of Paltus, Carterius of Antarados, Eutropius of ISocrates HE 1.23; Declercq (Ossius 291) calls attention to this passage.

274

Adrianople, and his successor in that see, Lucius. 2 It is usually asserted that the leader of this remarkably successful conspiracy was Eusebius of Nicomedia (later of Constantinople). That Eusebius was the leader of a party, and that he was recognized as such by his contemporaries, there can be no doubt at all. 'The party of Eusebius', (01 7t8pi/aj.lrpi tov EucrtptOv) is an expression used by Eustathius, by Julius and by Athanasius. But to see his hand active in every case of a bishop being deposed, and to conclude that theological odium was the motive for such activity in every case, is more than.the evidence warrants. If we follow the recent trend (which is a wrong one, I am confident) to place the deposition ofEustathius and of Asclepas in 325 or 326 or 327, then Eusebius can have had nothing to do with these cases, for he was either in exile during those years or so recently returned from exile that he could not possibly have engineered the business. We have ·no reason to believe that Eusebius was a leading spirit in the Council ofTyre of 335; he did not preside; he was not one of the Mareotic Commission. He is not usually thought to be involved in the deposition ofEustathius nor of Marcellus. Of course, he may have acted as an eminence grise working sedulously behind the scenes in these cases, but this assumption rests on sheer speculation: Again, we cannot regard all the cases of the bishops deposed after 325 .as on a par and capable of being swept into a single general category of innocents wronged as a result of unjust intrigue. There was in fact no reason to regard Athanasius as a zealous supporter of the doctrine ofNicaea until at earliest his second exile (339-346). He had published no considerable work criticizing the doctrine of Arius and his supporters. He could not possibly have been, as he was later erroneously represented to have been, a leading figure at .the Council ofNicaea. He was, no doubt, known as a henchman of Alexander of Alexandria, and was recognized as having no love for Ariaps. But he was not until much later in his career an obvious target fOr those who were anxious either to limit .or to undo the achievement of the Council of Nicaea. And it is perfectly clear that he was fmally deposed at Tyre for reasons which had nothing to do with Arianism, nor with any doctrinal issue, but for misbehaviour in his see, disgraceful and undeniable, and that against Melitians rather than Arians. We have already noted 3 that Athanasius in his Contra Gentes 2These are the bishops listed by Athanasius in De Fuga 3 and Histaria of Arianorum 4. 3See above, PP.272-3. ?'" <

Period of C dSion

Attempts at Creed,making: Phase One (341-349)

et De Incarnatione (if, as seems eason e, we assign to this a later rather than an earlier date and usebi s of Caesarea in his Commentary on Psalms, whic~ were o~p sed during the period when Eusebius of Nicom~.\.c;,onst ino Ie was supposed to be intriguing in favour of A ·anis),l~·mal<. " 0 overt reference to the controversy at all. The subj t was not ·n the forefront of the minds of most theologians and churc,Ie rs between 328 and 340, though the development of the Christian doctrine of God could not be completely forgotten and remained an unsolved difficulty. Marcellus of Ancyra was certainly deposed for unorthodoxy in 336 and Eustathius of Antioch was deposed in all probability for similar reasons earlier. We can be sure that both of these men had been strong supporters of the homoousian line at Nicaea. But both also had put forward views which were open to the charge of Sabellianism. We can readily imagine that people such as Eusebius of Caesarea who were not whole-hearted supporters of the doctrines of Arius but who saw in N, if it were pushed to its logical conclusions, a serious threat to the proper distinction of Persons within the Trinity, would think it right to impugn the orthodoxy and reduce the influence ofEustathius and Marcellus. They would have said that they were not conducting a persecution in the interests of Arianism but trying to restore proper balance to the Chur-Ch's understanding of its doctrine of God. We must remember that there is no evidence at all that at the time of the deposition of these two Athanasius made any protest on behalf of orthodoxy. It is not until many years after Eustathius' deposition that Athanasius even refers to him, and on his return from his First Exile Athanasius showed no disposition to vindicate Marcellus. His cause was only linked with that of Marcellus when the two met in Rome in 340. Of course, both the eminent Eusebii, with others, had, at the command of Constantine, readmitted Arius and some of his followers to communion on at least one occasion, whereas the bishop of Alexandria had steadily refused to receive Arius back into his fold. But Arius and his friends had made statements which were ostensibly orthodox and, we must assume, had withdrawn the objections which they had held to N. For people in whose minds N was a dangerously one-sided document this must have appeared a reasonably satisfactory conclusion of the controversy. Our estimate of the activity and policy of the Eusebian party or of any other group within the Eastern Church at this peri0d is rendered peculiarly difficult by the obscurity which shrouds the chronological

order of events. We have seen 4 that it is probable that Eustathius was deposed by a council meeting in Antioch and presided over by Eusebius of Cae sa rea in 330. Eutropius of Adrianople was deposed at the same time, though we do not know on what charge. By 335 Flacillus was (we can be sure) bishop of Antioch, because he presided at the Council ofTyre in the Summer of that year. Between 330 and the;', no less than three people had been bishops of Antioch, succeeding Eustathius and preceding Flacillus; Paulinus (formerly of Tyre), Eulalius and Euphronius (and Eusebius of Caesarea had been offered but refused the see). 5 When and why Asclepas ofGaza was deposed is almost impossible to determine with accuracy. Such evidence as we have is confused and contradictory. Theodoret says that he was present at the Council ofTyre in 335;6 ifso, he presumably shared in the condemnation of Athanasius. Athanasius says that Asclepas was accused by Theognis ofNicaea by means of forged documents 7 and indicates that he was accused at Antioch in the presence ofEusebius of Caesarea,8 but gives no clue as to what was the charge. The Eastern bishops just after the Council of Serdica said that it was seventeen years since Asclepas has been deposed and that Athanasius himself condemned him by his own vote (sua sententia ipse damnavit), and that Marcellus never communicated with him. 9 These statements cannot be all true. The Council ofSerdica took place in 343; seventeen years before that brings us to 327. But in 327 Theognis was in exile and in no position to accuse Asclepas at a council. If Athanasius condemned Asclepas with his own vote, then Asclepas could not have been present at the Council ofTyre in 335. We must abandon attempts to place Asclepas' deposition either very early (326 or 327) or very late (after 335)". The Eastern bishops at Serdica calculated wrongly: Theodoret was misinformed about Asclepas' presence at Tyre in 335. Eusebius of Caesarea, in describing events at Antioch when he was offered the see, betrays the fact that at this stage Euphronius was made

276

4See above, pp. 209-1 I. . 5S ee ~usebius VC 111.59-62; Con. Marcel/um 1.4; Theodoret HE 1.22; PhdostOf?IUS HE 111.15; Jerome Chronicle sub ann. ]28, H. Chadwick History and Thought In the Early Church XIII.27-35; Simonetti Crisi 107-8; R. P. C. Hanson 'The Fate of Eusebius of Antioch'. 6HE 1.29.7. Martin in PTAA 51 n48 appears to accept this. 7 Apol. Sec. 45. sApol. Sec. 47. 'Hilary Coli. AT. AIV.II(56, 57), 13(57). This document is equally silent about the reason for Asdepas' condemnation.

277

l/

Period of Confusion~

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (J41-349J

bishop of Antioc 's th ref, re cannot have been the occasion upon which E stathius de osed. because he was immediately yee. and he by Eulalius. But Athanasius succeeded by Pa linus fro as deposed at Antioch. and in the presence of assumes that Ascle Eusebius of Caesarea. and the words of the Letter of Ossius and Protogenes written immediately after the Council of Serdica confirm this} 0 If the see of Antioch were vacant. or if the bishop of Antioch were under accusation. the most likely person to preside over a council held to investigate charges against a bishop in that area was the bishop of Palestinian Caesarea. We must therefore conclude that Eustathius and Asclepas were deposed at two different councils held in Antioch. Eustathius earlier (perhaps in 330) and Asclepas later (not later than early 331). At the second. Eusebius of Caesarea probably presided. He may also have presided over the earlier council which condemned Eustathius. though we cannot be sure of this. II What the charge was upon which Asclepas was deposed we do not know: the likelihood inclines to the conclusion that it was not a charge of heterodoxy because forged. or supposedly forged. evidence here would not have been much use if the accused was able to make an orthodox profession of faith at the trial. We need not distrust the evidence that Theognis of Nicaea was the accuser. or at least the person who gathered the evidence against Asclepas, and that Athanasius acquiesced in (i.e. was not present at but made no protest against) the sentence; he presumably did not do so either when Eustathius was deposed}2 Some moments in the rest of the career of Asclepas can be traced. He returned with the other bishops on Constantine's death in 337, but was anome point after that again extruded from Gaza on the ground that his presence was causing disturbances, in time for him to meet Athanasius in Rome in 340.13 He was present with the Western

bishops at the CouncilofSerdica in 343. 14 The Letter of the Eastern Bishops at Serdica says that at some point Asclepas accompanied Paul when he came to Constantinople, and that (either then or at some earlier period) frightful atrocities were committed as a result of Paul's (and perhaps also Asclepas') presence. IS Simonetti thinks that this particular incident took place in 341, when Paul returned to Constantinople on the death of Eusebius then bishop of that city.'" There is considerable evidence also that Asclepas was about 347 permitted by Constantius to return to his see (along with Athanasius, Marcellus, Lucius (Adrianople) and Paul of Constantinople), and that on this occasion (as Sozomenus specifically says) there were no disturbances in Asclepas' see.!? He may therefore have ended his days in peace. In his Apologia de Fuga (3.3-6(70)), written in 357, and in his Historia Arianorum (5 .2( 185)), written in 358, Athanasius lists Asclepas as a classic sufferer for the true faith. Asclepas then may have been dead by the time these two works were written. We know virtually nothing of the fate of Eutropius of Adrianople. It is remarkable that his successor in the see, Lucius, should have later figured among those who were thought to be unjustly deposed by the Eusebian party, because the presumption must be that he was chosen as bishop of Adrianople by that party. Sozomenus mentions him among those who were able to return to their original sees without disturbance about 347. It should be noted that none of the evidence so far considered presents a reliable picture of a systematic campaign by the Eusebian party against known opponents of Arianism. We cannot even say that no supporters of that party suffered, because it is likely that Lucius was one. All that we can say is that a number of bishops were deposed between 328 and 336 for various reasons, and that Eusebius ofNicomedia or some of his party had a hand in most, or all, of these depositions.1 8 They were perhaps controlling events, but not controlling them in the interests of forwarding Arianism. To determine the career and explain the fate of Paul of

10Turner E"OMIA 1.648. The Latin text of the Encyclical Letter oj the Western Bishops at Serdica (from a Greek version of which Athanasius is quoting in Apol. Sec. 4S. 47) iSlo be found in Hilary Coli. Ar. BII Itf(losff). The letter makes it dearthat Asclepas was present at Serdica. 11 We

know that he presided over at least one council held in Antioch because the

canons wrongly attributed to that of Antioch in 341 were shown by Schwartz to belong to an earlier council in the same city at which Eusebius certainly presided.

chwartz asserts (for Schwartz seldom conjectures) that Asclepas was deposed for despotic"behaviour in his see, 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 141, Gesamm. Schri}t. III.9 (272-3). "See Sch",artz Gesamm. Schrift. 1l1.9 (278-81); Pietri in PTAA 102. The evidence for Asclepas' second removal because of violent behaviour is found in the 12S

(very partisan) statement of the Eastern bishops at Serdica. Hilary Call. Ar.

AIV.9(SS). 14See n

10

above.

"Hilary Coli. Ar. AIV.20(61). 16Crisi 162. "Socrates HE 1Il.23; Sozomenus HE 1Il.24. 18Cf. Klein Constantius II 29-31, where he concludes that these depositions took place for various and sufficient reasons.

279

Period of Confusion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (341-349)

Constantinople is a more complicated task.'" We can be confident that Paul succeeded Alex~~S biS.hop of Constantinople, probably in the year 332. s amon ose who condemned Athanaslus at in 335,20 wh e he signed its decisions as bishop the Council ofT of Constantinop '. we must a:lcet'*iS fact if we are to believe our earliest source. T .s does not, 0 co se, mean that Paul was either pro-Arian or ago 'hh~doc. ine 0 N, but only that, like all th~ other Eastern bishops'lrt-dill( time, he equid not tolerate AthanaslUs misbehaviour in his see. If Paul was at Tyre, the story of Adus dying in Constantinople when Alexander was bishop cannot be true. Even if we accept Kannengiesser's thesis that the De Morte 4rii was written as early as 339, this does not constitute convincing evidence that Alexander was bishop of Constantinople when Adus died. But not long after this, perhaps in 336, Paul himself was deposed and exiled, though we do not know on what charge. He returned with all the other bishops on Constantine's death in 337, but was soon again accused by one of his presbyters, Macedonius, and again exiled in 33 8

at the command of Constantius. The year 337 is probably the best point at which to place the presence of Athanasius in Constantinople when Paul was accused by Macedonius. 21 Eusebius of Nicomedia, who may have engineered Macedonius' accusation, succeeded him in Constantinople. Socrates (HE 11:22) quotes a letter from the Emperor Constans to his brother Constantius, to be dated 339, saying that Athanasius and Paul are with him in italy, and requiring that they shall be readmitted to their sees. In 341 (or possibly early in 342), Eusebius died and the see of Constantinople was vacant. Paul returned to his former see. The result was the worst riots which the New Rome can have experienced in its short history. The magister equitum Count Hermogenes, had been sent by Constantius to eject Paul. His attempts to do so provoked an explosion of popular wrath which ended in the Count being killed and his body dragged ignominiously through the city. Constantius himself came with soldiers from Antioch, suppressed the riots, exiled Paul to Singara in the province of Mesopotamia near the eastern border of the Empire, and left the city without having appointed any successor to Paul. 22 Paul had on this occasion again been supported by a letter of recommendation from the Emperor Constans. Schwartz believed that Theodore of Heraclea and Theognis of Nicaea, who were the heirs of the policy ofEusebius 'the great', on this occasion supported Macedonius. 23 But Macedonius clearly was unable to establish himself firmly as bishop of Constantinople at this juncture. Paul was not long afterwards removed to lighter detention at Emesa, but he was not present at the Council ofSerdica in 343. The Western bishops in their manifesto after the debacle do not refer to Paul, probably because he ·was under imperial displeasure and because his exile was much more obviously the result of riots than of intrigue by his ecclesiastical enemies. But the Eastern bishops in their manifesto heap

19For Paul see Athanasius Apol. de Fuga 3; Hist. Arian. 7~ Hilary Coli. Ar. AIV.13(S7), 20(61), 24(63), 27(6S-6); Turner EOMIA 1.66J.I-664.2; Socrates HE 11.6.12,16.22,23.26 (V.9)i Sozomenus HE 111.3. 4, 7. 8, 9.10, II, 13.20,24; IV.2 (VII. 10); Theodoret HE II.S; V.6 (virtually useless); Gelasius HE 11.28.13 says that Alexander of Constantinople, then a presbyter, later the bishop, attended the Council of Nicaea accompanied' by a reader called Paul. Philostorgius does not mention Paul but assumes that Eusebius from Nicomedia directly succeeded Alexander shortly after the building of Constantinople (HE 11.10). The earliest sources for Paul's movements are the statements of the Eastern bishops ofSerdica (343). information given by Athanasius in various works written in 357 and 35 8, and a passage in the Historia Akephala dealing with events in Constantinople, written perhaps as early as 378" but possibly as late as 38 I. All the main church historians,Socrates, Sozomenus and Philostorgius, writing in the Vth century, give us some information. But the Easterners at Serdica (our earliest source) are violently prejudiced, and Athanasius, who is also prejudiced in a different interest, is certainly confused about some of Paul's movements; the Historia Akephala (1.2-6 (138, 140 ) ed. Martin) has brought together two incidents separated by several years, and refers anachronistically to Eusebius of Nicomedia instead of Eusebius the court chamberlain. And the fifth century historians also display considerable confusion and a tendency to schematize. The best reconstruction is that of ~imonetti (Crisi 132-33 and n 104, 162-3). but he places the meeting of Athanasius and Paul in Constantinople in 332. whereas the better date for this is 337; Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 148-g, Gesamm. Schrift. 111.19(273-5. 230-2) completely omits reference to the incident in Constantinople in 344, as do Loofs and Declercq; cf. Zeiller, Origines 220; Declercq Ossius 12-13; Ritter 'Arianismus' 45; Loafs 'Arianismus' 25, 26; Hess Canons 15, 16; Harnack History IV.63-4· 20Hilary Coli. Ar. A IV.I3(S7), the Leiter oJ the Western Bishops at Serdica; cf. Schwartz Gesamm. Sellrif/. 1I1.9(273-S).

280

21Historia Arianorum 7; Barnes (who places Paul's accession to the see in 337) thinks that Apol. de Fuga 3.sffand Apol. ad Const. 5 imply that in 338 Athanasius was arraigned for murder by Constantius in Cappadocian Caesarea, but acquitted (C and E 263-4). He places Athanasius' accompanying Paul to Constantinople in 337· 22Klein, Constantius ii 71-3. 64. n 50 says that this was in order to keep Paul near him, as he was engaging in a war with Persia on the eastern frontier, but this seems unlikely. Earlier (70) Klein had suggested that Paul was a fcHower of Eusebius of Nicomedia and a favourite of Constantius before the events of 338, but this seems equally unlikely. He places Paul's return on Eusebius' death in 342 and Constantius' action in 343. 23Gesamm. Sellrift. 111.9(230-2).

..•..

~

..

.~'", ---

)

\1

! .

Period o{ Confusion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (341-349)

obloquy upon~m; accusing hi'in-of being involved in frightful atrocities and crilege; the memory of the riots in Constantinople and the murder f Hermogenes is still green. They condemn hIm unequivocally.2 4 tt·~s.Jikely that Paul was able to return to Constantinople again in 344. Socrates has a circumstantial account of the prefect (presumably praeJectus urbi) Philip being ordered by Constantius to remove him, and of a trap laid to kidnap him in the baths ofZeuxippus and put him aboard a ship and whisk him away to his native city, Thessalonica. 25 As we have seen, some scholars have rejected this story, but there is nothing contradictory nor implausible in it, and Athanasius (Hist. Ar. 7) says that Paul was exiled four times, though he has confused the order of events. Paul certainly returned to his see city again in 347 or thereabouts, armed with another letter of recommendation from Cons tans and profiting from the better relations between East and West which prevailed at that time. He was free from attack now for some few years, but in the year 349 Theodore of Heraklea, Narcissus of Neronias (by now a very old man) and George of Laodicea who were at this point the leading representatives of the school of thought which had tended to sympathize with Arius and to find N unsatisfactory, approached him with the intention of winning him over to their side. He refused and thereby incurred theIr enmity. A little later, perhaps in 35 I, they were able to conspire with the court chamberlain Eusebius to have him exiled for the fourth and last time on a charge (which may not have been completely without foundation) of collaboration with the usurper Magnentius who had only recently been suppressed. The expression used by our source for this incident, the Historia Akephala, is de Constimte et Magnentio. 26 It may be that there is something in Klein's contention 27 that Constantius regarded Paul as suspect on the grounds that he had been 'planted' in Constantinople by Constans as his agent; in 339 or 340 Constans had handed over the diocese of Thrace (which included Constantinople) to Constantius. Anyway, Paul was now transported to Cucusus in Armenia where not long afterwards he died. The Pro-Nicene party alleged that he had been

murdered by imperial command. Macedonius apparently succeeded Paul at this point as bishop with little opposition. 28 Paul probably was, or at least fairly early in his career as a bishop became, a supporter of the Creed of Nicaea. He refused to have anything to do witlr the representatives of Arianism at the end of his career, and Sozomenus (who, with Socrates, accepts Athanasius' estimate of the significance of Paul) at one point goes out of his way to emphasize his loyalty to the pro-Nicene cause (HE III.I3). But, except for the last incident, all Paul's tribulations and periods of exile arose out of circumstances which had nothing to do with the dispute about doctrine, and even the last was probably more concerned with politics than widr theology. Paul's most persistent rival, Macedonius, was certainly not a fav0l4rer of Arianism and was destined within a short time of Paul's disappearance from the scene of history to be himself deposed because he was not enough in sympathy with explicitly Arian ideas. Paul's case is indeed a good example of the danger of assuming that all depositions of bishops in the Eastern half of the Empire up to the year 361 were motivated by explicitly doctrinal or ideological policies. Furdrer, by the time Paul encountered his fourth and final exile forces within the Eastern Church were manifesting themselves which put a very different face

)

24Hilary Coli. Ar. AlV. 13(57),20(61),27(65-67),27(66). 2S HE II. 16; Sozomenus 111.9. 1-14 reproduces this, clearly without relying on any other source. . '.Tumer EOMIA 1.663.1-664.2 (1.](138) ed. Martin). This account is confused and in some points manifestly incorrect, but not to he wholly di"strusted. 27Constantius II 76. 77. 282

28By the time Athanasius wrote Apol. de Fuga 3 and Hist. Arian. 7 (357 or 358) it is clear that Paul is dead, and is regarded as a martyr for the pro-Nicene cause. Klein (op. cit. P.74 n 149) says that he died in 351, I do not know on what authority. Socrates (HE V.9) and Sozomenus (VII. 10) describe how his body was in the reign ofTheodosius brought back with honour to Constantinople and buried in a church named after him. Most recently A. Martin has made an elaborate reconstruction of Paul's career. (Histoire 'Akephale' 35-48) which rejects the reconstructions of Schwartz and Telfer; regards the identification of Eusebius as the chamberlain as unnecessary and supported only by legend; places the choice of Paul as bishop of Constantinople in 337 and his first exile in 338; holds that he only underwent two exiles, in that year and in some year between 344 and 350; and suggests that the point at which Paul voted against Athanasius was 338, i.e. against his return to his see in spite of the verdict of the Council ofTyre (scarcely a year after he had apparently welcomed the returning Athanasius in Constantinople!). I cannot accept this reconstruction for the following reasons: i) Athanasius says explicitly that Paul was exiled four rimes (HA 7). not two; ii) the explanation of Paul's condemning Athanasius in 338 is very weak; iii) it is incredible that after the riots in Constantinople resulting in the lynching of a magister equitum sent specially by Constantius Paul (the main object and centre of the rioting) should have been left undisturbed; iv) the reconstruction given in the text of this book best accounts for the silence of the Westerners at Serdica over Paul. But I do not dispute that Martin is correct in envisaging the Hist. Akeph. as attempting to parallel Paul's career with that of Athanasius, to the advantage of the latter.

Period of Confusion

on opposition to N to that which existed at the beginning of Paul's troubled career. Certainly Eusebius of Nicomedia/Constantinople on his return from exile (probably in 328) to the moment of his death (probably' 341) t increasing control of ecclesiastical affairs in the East and, ssisted by a onsiderable number of bishops who were in sympathy. jth-his poli y, made every effort to oppose and damage those bi ops whQ id not agree with his point of view or who obstruc ed his path to wer. Eustathius of Antioch saw this as early as 328 r 329. 29 Bu we cannot lay all depositions of all bishops between 8 ang _ 4 at his door., nor must we assume that what Eusebius and his par were aiming at Was to substitute for the Creed of Nicaea a nakedly rian formula. What precisely they wanted to establish as doctrine Became quite clear when they showed their hand at the Council of An~ioch in 341. To that Council we must now tum. ~.

The Council of Antioch of 341

In the year 341 a council of ninety bishops assembled at Antioch, under the presidency of Flacillus, sometime between May and September. The formal occasion was the dedication of a church in Antioch which Constantius had built. Its leading spirits probably were Eusebius, nOw of Constantinople, and Akakius who had succeeded the church historian Eusebius at Palestinian Caesarea in 339. Gregory of Alexandria, George bishop of Laodicea, Eudoxius of Germanicia, Patrophilus of Scythopolis, Theodore of Heraclea, Narcissus of Neronias and Dianius of Cappadocian Caesarea were there. Dianius is said to have brought with him the eminent theologian Asterius. 30 The Emperor Constantius was in the city at the time, and attended the council. Klein is probably correct in scouting suggestions that at this point Constantius was anxious above all to promote Arianism and that he was using political means to attain this end. What he probably had in mind was a desire to prevent bishops exceeding the rights and limits of their sees (as in his view Julius of Rome was doing), and interfering with the decisions of other bishops and of councils far removed from their proper sphere "Theodoret HE 1.8.1-5. 30The Libellus Synodikos which records the presence here of Asterius, is not wholly trustworthy (see Mansi Coneil. II.I350and Bardy Lucien d'Antioche 326), but we shall see good reason for regarding it as truthful in this particular (pp. 288-9 below).

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (341-349)

of influence. 31 There can be little doubt that this Council of Antioch was co.nceived by those who organized it as an answer to Julius' CouncIl ofR0n:'e and the letter which he wrote to the Eusebian party after It, and whIch must have been received in Antioch early in that year. This council produced three credal formulae, and another gathering of bishops (we do not know who) a few months later in Antioch produced a fourth. Two of these creeds are of considerable importance. 32 The first creed is a colourless and innocuous statement interesting only for two points: 33 it starts with the words: 'We have neither been followers of Arius (because how should we who are bishops follow a presbyter?), nor have we accepted any other form offalth than that which was set out at the beginning but we have rather approached him as investigators and judges of his belief than followed him.'

The other point is that at the end of the Christological article it adds the words 'and remaining King and God for ever'. This is a palpable hit at Marcellus of Ancyra. It is obvious that the bishops who composed thIS creed are conscious of being suspected of Arianism by the Western church, but they made no attempt to disavow Arianism m thIS statement. It is not easy to determine why it should have been produced. It !s possible that this was the production of those among the mnety bIShops assembled who were most sympathetic to the vle~s. of Arius, and that the others (who were probably in the m'\Jorlty), illSlsted upon the composition of a longer and more carefully deVISed creed. ThIS Second Creed of Antioch, often known 31Co.nstantju~ II 166--9. 205-6. in connection with Constantius' relations with the Armentan patriarch Nerses. 32S~crates HE II.S and Sozomenus HE 111.5.3 give general accounts of this Co~ncl~. but they confuse this gathering with that which met at Antioch three years earlIer. m 338. But then E. M. Buytaert, LJHeritage litteraire d'Eusebe d'Emese 77-82, also co~fuses them! Sc~wartz Gesamm Schrift. 111.19.310-18 and Simonetti Crisi 153-5 ~Ive long and useful discussions of this council; cf. also Simonetti Studi 163, Gwatkm AC, 67,' ~-:t 12~4; Harnack H~story IV.67-8; Loofs. 'Arianismus' 25. 26; Boul~rand L He~esle 147-8. 150-4; Klem Constantius 42-3; Kopecek History 73. 80-3, Bardy LUCIen 85-132; Declercq Ossius 304; Person Mode of Decision-Making 164; Brennecke Hilarius von P. 13ff. 33To be. found Athanasius De Synodis 22; Socrates HE 11.10. Sozomenus HE 111.8.1-8 gives no more than a summary of its contents. It is printed in Hahn. Symbole 18 3-4 (§I53), Schwartz (Gesamm. Sch,!ft.1Il.J9(3IO) conjectured that [hi, was the creed which Anus submItted m order to be readmitted to communion.

Period of Confusion both in the ancient and the modern world as the 'Dedication' Creed, was the Council's most important result. It must be given in fulJ:34 ing the evangelical and apostolic tradition, we believe in one od fathe Almighty, artificer and maker and designer (ltpOVO'ltT]v) f the univer : nd in one Lor Jesus Christ his only-begotten Son, God,35 through w om(;;re 1 t ings, who was begotten from the father before the ges, Gbd fro od, whole from whole, sole from sole, perfect from erfect, King m King, Lord from Lord, living Wisdom, true ight, Way, uth, unchanging and unaltering, exact image of the G ead an the substance and will and power and glory of the father,36 first/born of all creation, who was in the beginning with God, God t~7Word according to the text in the Gospel [quotation of Jn I: I, 3 arid Col 1: 171 who at the end of the days came down from above a,{d was born of a virgin, according to the Scriptures, and became (;"an, mediator between God and men, the apostle of our faith, author of life, as the text runs [quotation of Jn 6:38], who suffered for us and rose again the third day and ascended into heaven and is seated on the right hand of the father and is coming again with glory and power to judge the living and the dead: And in the Holy Spirit, who is given to those who believe for comfort and sanctification and perfection, just as our Lord Jesus Christ commanded his disciples, saying [quotation of Matt 28:19], obviously (in the name) of the father who is really father and the Son who is really Son and the Holy Spirit who is really Holy Spirit, because the names are not given lightly or idly, but signify exactly the particular hypostasis and order and glory of each of those who are named, so that they are three in hypostasis but one in agreement. 37 Since we hold this belief, and have held it from the beginning to the end, before God and Christ we condemn every form of heretical unorthodoxy. And if anybody teaches contrary to the sound, right faith of the Scriptures, alleging that either time or occasion or age exists or did exist before the Son was begotten, let him be anathema. And if anyone alleges that the Son is a creature like one of the creatures or a product (yeVV'lllu) like one of the products, or something made 'I'

34To be found Athanasius De Synodis 23; Socrates HE 11.10; a Latin version in

Hilary De Synodis 29. 30 (PL 10:502-4); it is printed in Hahn Symbole 184-6 (§154)· 350r, depending on the punctuation, 'his Son, the only begotten God': but this IS a rather awkward expression. J·t~, 9.6t'1to, olla(u, Kui Po"~~, Kui a"va~."" Kui ao~'1' tOU nutpo, D.1tapaAAUKtOV ehc6va. 37m ; dVUl 'tij ~tv tmoO'tCr.atl tpia, tij Bt O'UI.U9rovi~ ev.

286

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (J4 1-349) (ltoi'lIlU) like one of the things that are made, and not as the Holy Scriptures have handed down concerning the subjects which have been treated one after another, or if anyone teaches or preaches . anything apart from what we have laid down, let him be anathema. for we believe and follow everything that has been delivered from the Holy Scriptures by the prophets and apostles truly and reverently.' This is a remarkable treed for many reasons. In the first place, unlike the other three creeds produced at Antioch in 341, it is not deliberately anti-Marcellan. It makes no reference to Christ's kingdom enduring for ever. 38 It is, of course, strongly anti-Sabellian, which suggests that it was drawn up, not with the teaching of Marcellus in mind, but in order to COunter what were thought to be the dangerous tendencies of N. It has been by different scholars branded as Arian and also as anti-Arian. 39 True-blue Arians would have found it impossible to accept the statement that the Son is 'the exact image of the substance (ousia) ... of the Godhead of the Father', and all but impossible to agree that there was no 'occasion' when the Son was begotten. On the other hand, they would have welcomed the formula that the Son was not a creature like one of the creatures etc., because that left it open to believe that he was a creature, though an unusual or unique one. And they might have welcomed the admission that the names of the Three signify the particular order and glory of each, because these terms would allow a graduated or subordinated Trinity. But we cannot regard these words as a sop to the Arians, because almost everybody in the East at that period would have agreed that there was a subordination of some sort within the Trinity. This creed is not deliberately contrived to permit Arian doctrine; in fact at places it explicitly excludes such doctrine. Its chief b2te noire is Sabellianism, the denial of a distinction between the three within the Godhead, and the most obvious recent example of a formula which appeared to make this mistake was N. Loofs comes nearest to the truth when he says that it is both anti-Marcellan and anti38Pace Schwartz Gesamm. Schrift. III.I9(3II-12}; Simonetti 157-8 and Loofs 'Arianismus' 25. 26. 39 Arian: Gwatkin (Ae 68, designed to let Arius through; Arians constantly

reproduced it - but were they Arians?); Simonetti (Stud; 163. deliberately acceptable to Arians, a judgment a little modified in Crisi r55-8); Boularand (L' He,esie 15<>-4, crypto-Arian): Anti-Atian: Schwartz Gesamm. Sch'ift. 1II.9 (210--3); Klein Constantius II 42-3. Hilary De Syn. 33(505. 506) defends it as perfectly orthodox. Athanasius (De Syn 36) regards it as Arian.

Period


homoousian,40 if for 'anti-Marcellan' we substitute 'anti-Sabellian~. It is interesting to note, with Simonetti, what significant terms m N . edication Creed does not reproduce: eK tii, otiaia, toli 1tatp6, (from tli ousia of the Father') 'begotten, not made', homoousion. All ,hese term would have been unacceptable to Origen. We ?ave se<;n a'i?OJ1!! that r~en repudiated 'from the ousia of the Father, and dId 10~P omo& sios to the Son, and that he was ready to regard the Son asin 0 esse a 'creature' (though he would not have said a 'thing made' 1t 'lJ!a)).4! The 'God from ?od', 'wh~le from whole' .. ~ressions were designed to disown the Idea, whICh was m abhorrent bot to Origen and to the Arians, that th e Son was, ' as It were, a brok n-otf piece of the Father, and the handlmg of the 'aspects' (epi. oiai) of the Son, such as Wmd, ,wIsdom, ~Ight, Way etc., in thislcreed accords better WIth Ongen s con~e~tIon of them than witlfthat of Arius. The strong em~has~s on tlIe dlstmct hypostases is remini~cent ofOrigen. 42 The expressIOn three m hypostasIs but one in agreement' also harks back ultimately to Origen (Contra Celsum 43 VIII.I2). Schwartz rightly calls it an 'Origenist' creed. One particular expression in this creed has always attracted attention, the statement that tlIe Son is 'tlIe exact Image of the Godhead, the ousiaand the will and the power ~nd tlIe glm~ of t~~ Father'. Gwatkin alleges that this expression denves from Orlgen, though in fact it does not. But he rightly points out m the same passage that the term 'exact image' is used by Alexander of 45 Alexandria of tlIe Son in his Letter to Alexander of Thessalonica and that it em be found in Athanasius Contra Gentes 4 1 ,46 and 47 and Or. con. Ar 1.26; 11.33 and 111.5 and I I, but that in his De Synodis he aVOIds using it except in an argument about the employment of unScriptural language (36). A much closer resemblance to thiS formula, however, is to be found in a fragment of AsterlUS where 4o'Arianismus' 25. 26; he attributed it to those who had constituted the 'm~ddle party' at Nicaea. But we do not possess enough evidence to be sure, that ,such a smgle identifiable party existed at that Council, far less that it had survived mtact for 16 years afterwards. 41See above, pp.63-64.

. 42Boularand's idea that this creed by three hypostases mtended three substances (L' Heresie 150-4) is very odd. 43Gesamm. Schrifi. II1.lO(JI 1-12). . ._ 44SA 12o-4~ he adduces Origen Comm.Jn XII~.36~ Kal YEv£u9al 'to eeA.TJ~a 'tou

u{ou aRupc\l.l.UKTOV tOU 9.1.~~utO' toil Rutp6" which IS not a close enough parallel to convince.

"See Opitz Urk III No. 14·)7, )8(25).

288

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (341-349) these precise words, from 'the exact image' to 'glory of the Father' (but omitting 'Godhead') are to be found. 4• Further remarkable echoes of Asterius can be found in tlIis creed. 'The FatlIer truly Father, the Son truly Son and the Holy Spirit similarly' occurs in fragment XX,47 and the hypostases (a term which Asterius certainly favoured) 'agreeing' (O\)J!IjIOlvolial, (J\)J!IjIOlviav) is applied to the Father and the Son in fragment XXXII. 48 The extreme Arian Philostorgius criticizes Asterius for having applied the term 'exact image of the substance' to the Son.49 It is impossible to avoid tlIe conclusion that Asterius had some influence on the composition of the Second (Dedication) Creed of Antioch of 341. The information from the Libel/us Synodikos that Asterius attended this Council becomes more plausible in view of this.s o One otlIer point has yet to be determined about this creed. Sozomenus says of it 'They used to say that they had found this creed copied out by Lucian' who was martyred in Nicomedia, a man who was not only of the highest reputation but who was supremely well acquainted with the Holy Scriptures; but whether they said this correctly or whether in order to exalt their own composition by the martyr's reputation, I cannot say.'51 Other authorities nearer to the year 341 than Sozomenus made the same claim; none of them is very convincing.s2 We know so little certainly about Lucian that this is a question impossible to d.ecide with any.confidence. If we could connect Asterius with Lucian, the matter would be clearer, but there is no particular evidence for such a connection. Two faint indications argue against the theory. Arius was certainly a disciple of Lucian, because he tells us so himself, but it would have been difficult for Arius to accept at least two statements in the Dedication Creed. And we have concluded earlier that the only doctrine of Lucian about

46Sec Bardy Lucien 125-7 and 349, frag XXI. See above, p. 36. 47Bardy op. cit. 349; above, p. 35. For the other occurrences of this formula see Lorentz AriusJudaizans? 191 (the remarkable parallel in Eusebius of Caesa rea's creed submitted to the Council of Nicaea (Opitz Urk III No. 22(42)) and in Con. Marc.

1.4), and Tetz 'Zur Theologie des Marcellus von Ankyra III' 193 (a fuller list). 48Bardy, Lucien 352-3; see above, p. _37. "HE I!.IS. 50S ee n 28 above.

"HE III.S.9; cf VI. 12.4. 52They are Passio Arlemii (PG 96:]20); Ps-Athanasius Dial. de T(initate III. 1,2, IS (PG 28:1204, 1225).

Period of Confusion which we can be sure is that he taught that the Saviour took to imself at the Incarnation a body without a soul. But the Dedication . -Cr declares that 'became man', in contrast to the First Creed of ( this c ncil which says that he 'took flesh', a statement more consona t with Arian doctrine. We must regard the theory that Lucian omposed the Dedication Creed as not proven. 53 This reed then appears as one undoubtedly intended to replace N. "'{iw:atl'j'nsays that Socrates tells us that this Council of Antioch 'spoke respec fully' ofN.54 But all that Socrates says is that 'they' (by which we a e to understand the Eusebian party) 'never criticized the for ulae of Nicaea', which is a different statement. The nearest ap roach to a reference to N is the words of the introduction to the Fir t Creed 'any other form offaith than that which was set out at the beglnning'; but this is a vague statement from which nothing definite can be deduced. The Dedication Creed is significantly silent about N, and is scarcely compatible with it.55 It can hardly be regarded as either a supplement to N or an interpretation of it. It is put forward as a substitute. It deliberately excludes the kind of Arianism professed by Arius and among his followers by Eusebius of NicomediajConstantinople. Simonetti, indeed, thinks that at the end of his life Eusebius shifted his views to support a less extreme position than that found in his Letter to Arius written perhaps twenty years before. 56 Many scholars have noticed the affinities between this creed and the kind of doctrine which Eusebius of Caesarea taught in his Praeparatio Evangelica and Demonstrato Evangelii, before the Arian Controversy came into the open. The ancestors of this creed are Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea and Asterius. 57 It represents the nearest approach we can· make to discovering the views of the ordinary educated Eastern bishop who was no admirer of the extreme views of Acius but who had been shocked and disturbed by the apparent Sabellianism of N, and the insensitiveness of the Western Church to

l:'

53Bardy. Lucien 9; Declercq Ossius 304; Lorentz Ariu5 1182-98; Kopecek History 81. Simonetti, Crisi ISS and 159 n 154. and Person (Mode i64) 3re sceptical. Batiffol had apparently conjectured that Sozomenus' information caine from Sabinus of Heraclea. One could ask on what occasion would Lucian have composed a creed? It is not an easy question to answer.

"SA 93, adducing Socrates HE 11.10, oM'v toov.v NI1,al'1Il"~1jIa~£vol. 55Boularand has seen this, L'Heresie 147-8, but few others. 56Crisi J 53-5. 57Bardy Lucien 119.32 gives his idea of the. pedigree of this creed, and 85-116 gives its later history.

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (341-349) the threat to orthodoxy which thi$ tendency represented. If the First Creed represents what the Arians of sang pur would have liked to see adopted as a standard of belief, the Second Creed shows us how the hitherto silent majority wished to modify this. They constituted a widespread point- of view, but we can hardly call them a party. The third Creed of this Antiochene Council is not really a manifesto by the assembled bishops, but an act of self-exculpation by an accused man. 58 Theophronius bishop ofTyana had evidently been accused of Sabelli anism, probably in the form ofleanings towards the ideas of Marcellus of Ancyra. This is a profession of faith, not intended to give any full or formal statement of belief, but to ensure that nobody can suspect him of Sabelli anism. Three expressions alone in his creed are significant: of the Son he says 'and existing distinctly (lit. "in hypostasis") with God'; later in the creed he describes the Son as 'remaining eternally', after the clause dealing with the Second Coming; and he ends his profession with a sentence explicitly dissociating his beliefs from those of Marcellus of Aneyra, Sabellius and Paul of Samosata. It is quite obvious that the chief object of this Council was to make an emphatic statement against Sabellianism. But if, as we have every reason to suppose, Theophronius was not deposed, we can conclude that those who were conducting this antiSabellian policy were genuinely concerned with doctrinal purity and were not anxious to depose those bishops who disagreed with them on any and every pretext . . The Fourth Creed of Antioch, which was not drawn up by all the bIshops who produced the First and Second and who witnessed the Third, but produced by an anonymous group in Antioch some m?nths later, is not easy to characterise."9 It is widely accepted that thIS creed was intended to function as a reconciling formula obnoxious to nobody and capable of being accepted by all. 60 It describes the Son as 'our LordJesus Christ who before all ages was begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, through whom (are) all things both 5~To ,be f~und Athanasius De Synodis 24.1-5 (250); Socrates HE n,lO; a Lacin ve~~on m Hdary De Synodis 29; Hahn Symbole 18S. 186 (§ISS). Athanasius De Synodis 25. I (250)-5(25 I) who tells us that it was composed some months afcer the others; Socrates HE II. 18. Loofs (' Arianismus' 26) thinks that it was produced,bya new council which met in 342. For the text see Hahn Symbole 187-8 (§IS6). Hdary (De Sy". 36. 37(SOI, S09» defends it as orthodox.' 60S 0 Simonetti, Crisi 164; Kopecek History 73,

\ J

~'\

Period of Confusion

which we can be sure is that he taught that the Saviour took to imself at the Incarnation a body without a soul. But the Dedication ) eed declares that 'became man', in contrast to the FIrSt Creed of t is council which says that he 'took flesh', a statement more , / onsonant with Arian doctrine. We must regard the theory that >/- Lucian composed the Dedication Creed as not proven. 53 This creed then appears as one undoubtedly intended to replace N. Gwatkin says that Socrates tells us that this Council of Antioch 'spoke respectfully' ofN. 54 But all that Socrates says is that 'they' (by which we are to understand the Eusebian party) 'never criticized the formulae of Nicaea', which is a different statement. The nearest approach to a reference to N is the words of the introduction to the First Creed 'any other form offaith than that which was set out at the beginning'; but this is a vague statement from which nothing defmite can be deduced. The Dedication Creed is significantly silent about N, and is scarcely compatible with it.55 It can hardly be regarded as either a supplement to N or an interpretation ofit. It is put forward as a substitute. It deliberately excludes the kind of Arianism professed by. Arius and among his followers by Eusebius of Nicomedia/Constantinople. Simonetti, indeed, thinks that at the end of his life Eusebius shifted his views to support a less extreme position than that found in his Letter to Arius written perhaps twenty years before. 56 Many scholars have noticed the affinities between this creed and the kind of doctrine which Eusebius of Caesarea taught in his Praeparatio Evangelica and Demonstrato Evangelii, before the Arian Controversy came into the open. The ancestors of this creed are Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea and Asterius. 57 It represents the nearest approach we can make to discovering the views of the ordinary educated Eastern bishop who was no admirer of the extreme views of Arius but who had been shocked and disturbed by the apparent Sabellianism ofN, and the insensitiveness of the Western Church to 5JBardy. Lucien 9; Declercq Ossius 304; Lorentz Arius 1182--98; Kopecek History 81. Simonetti, Crisi 158 and 159 n 154. and Person (Mode i64) are sceptical. Batiffol had apparently conjectured that Sozomenus' information came from Sabinus of Heradea. One could ask on what occasion would Lucian have composed a creed? It is not an easy question to answer. 54SA 93. adducing Socrates HEII.IO, oMs:v 'trov tv Nl1I:cltq.Il6J1.'I'aJ.lSVol. 55Boularand has seen this, L'Heresie 147-8, but few others. 56Crisi 153-5. 57Bardy Lucien II9.32 gives his idea of the pedigree of this creed, and 8S-II6 gives its later history.

290

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (J4 1-349) the threat to orthodoxy which this tendency represented. If the First Creed represents what the Arians of sang pur would have liked to see adopted as a standard of belief, the Second Creed shows us how the hitherto silent majority wished to modify this. They constituted a widespread point of view, but we can hardly call them a party. The third Creed of this Antiochene Council is not really a manifesto by the assembled bishops, but an act of self-exculpation by an accused man. 58 Theophronius bishop ofTyana had evidently been accused of Sabelli an ism, probably in the form ofleanings towards the Ideas of Marcellus of Ancyra. This is a profession of faith, not intended to give any full or formal statement of belief, but to ensure that nobody can suspect him of Sabelli ani sm. Three expressions alone in his creed are significant: of the Son he says 'and existing distinctly (lit. "in hypostasis") with God'; later in the creed he describes the Son as 'remaining eternally', after the clause dealing with the Second Coming; and he ends his profession with a sentence explicitly dissociating his beliefs from those of Marcellus of Ancyra, Sabellius and Paul of Samosata. It is quite obvious that the chief object of this Council was to make an emphatic statement against Sabellianism. But if, as we have every reason to suppose, Theophronius was not deposed, we can conclude that those who were conducting this antiSabellian policy were genuinely concerned with doctrinal purity and were not anxious to depose those bishops who disagreed with them on any and every pretext. The Fourth Creed of Antioch, which was not drawn up by all the bishops who produced the First and Second and who witnessed the Third, but produced by an anonymous group in Antioch some months later, is not easy to characterise."9 It is widely accepted that this creed was intended to function as a recondling formula obnoxious to nobody and capable of being accepted by all. 60 It describes the Son as 'our Lord Jesus Christ who before all ages was begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light, through whom (are) all things both s~To .be f~und Athanasius De Synodis 24.1-5 (250); Socrates HE 11.10; a Latin

ve~~on

In H~lary De Sy~odjs 29; Hahn Symbole 185, 186 (§ISS); Athanaslus De Synodls 25·1 (250)-5(251) who tens us that it was composed some months after the others; Socrates HE 11.18. Loofs (' Arianismus' 26) thinks that it was produced,bya new council which met in 342, For the text see Hahn Symhole 18 7-8 (§! 56). HIlary (De Syn. )6, 37(SO!, 509)) defends it as orthodox .. 60S 0 Simonetti, Crisi 164; Kopecek History 73,

2 91

(-Period of Confusion

I\ "

( \

in heav

and on earth, visible and invisible, who is Word and

Wi om and Power and Life and true Light'. It has a sp cial clause inserted against Marcellus (so its toleration is not \', unli t ), . . . - ;.

/

ose kingdom is unending

(ch.:ata.1tauO'to~) and remains ~or e~dless

/ ages (for he is seated at the right hand of the Father not only ill thIS age but also in that which is to come)'.

It ends with an anathema which may have been modelled on that of N but which is by no means identical with it: 'But those who say that the Son is from non-existence (t~ OIlK ovtrov) or of a different hypostasis, and not from God, and that ther~ was once a time or age when he did not exist, these the holy Catholic Church recognizes as alien'.

The omissions of this creed are more significant than its positive statements. It leaves out the word ousia and its compounds altog,ether; it makes no attempt to establish the distinctness of the 'Persons m an anti-Sabellian manner. It does not rule out the possibility that there was an 'occasion' or point oftime (kairos) when the Son did not exist, as the Dedication Creed does. It leaves it open to anyone to believe that the Son is a creature, as long as'it is acknowledged that he is begotten. And the only possible interp~etation of hypost~sis as used m the anathema is that it is meant to be Identical WIth ousla; any other interpretation would make this. out to be ~ flagrantly Sabellian statement. Except that this confeSSIOn does not mSlst upon the distmct existence of three hypostases, it leans much more to the left than to the right theologically. It may have been composed by a ~roup of bishops who were to the left of the majority who had sanctIOned the Dedication Creed; presumably these last had now returned to theIr sees."1 It is hard to see how it could have been regarded as likely to conciliate opinion in the West. But the fact remains that it was destined to be used for nearly fifteen years as the basis for all other creeds which were designed to be ecumenical. 61We cannot, however, with confidence trace the hand either ~~ Flacillus of Antioch or of Eusebius of Constantinople in it. because most ~uthont1es agree that

the latter died soon after the Council which saw the product1o~ of ~e first three

creeds of Antioch 341, though it has been suggesced that he surVIved till early 342 , and Flacillus also died not long after that Council, to be succeeded by Stephen. See also Brennecke Hilarius von P. 21-2.

292

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (;41-349),

3. The Council of Serdica 343 Early in the year 342 a delegation from the Eastern Church presented itself at the court of the Emperor Constans in Trier. It consisted of the bishops Narcissus of Neronias, Maris of Chalcedon, Theodore of Heraclea and Mark of Arethusa. It carried with it the Fourth Creed of Antioch 34' and asked the Emperor to consider it. As a gesture of reconciliation, this embassy was fruitless, because nobody in the West took any notice of the creed, and because the Eastern bishops were concerned with theological agreement and the Western authorities with reversing the formal deposition of several leading bishops of the Eastern Church."2 Under pressure, however, from Julius of Rome and Maximus of Trier, Constans decided to take the initiative in ecclesiastical affairs. 63 His brother Constantius was on the Eastern frontier occupied with war against the Persians and could not himself make such a move. He agreed to permit, at the suggestion of Constans, that a grand Ecumenical Council should take place, with the intention of resolving the tension between East and West in the Church, at Serdica, modern Sofia, a city carefully chosen as standing beween the Eastern and Western halves of the Roman Empire. The invitations to this large-scale gathering were sent off in 342. Meanwhile Constans was occupied in Britain. But in 343, in the autumn, about 90 bishops from the West and about 80 from the East set off to meet in Serdica 64 Constans himself, accompanied by 62The sources for this incident are Athanasius De Synodis 28, Socrates HE ILlS, Sozomenus HE III. 10.3-6; Sozomenus represents Constans.as taking the initiative in asking for a d.elegation from the East, but this is unlikely. See Simonetti Crisi 163-6; Schwartz Gesamm. Schrift. III.9(322-S); Loofs 'Arianismus' 26; L. W'. Barnard The Council of Serdica 343 is the fullest and best account of the Council. 63Athanasius Apol. ad Const. 4. 64Socrates HE 11.20 (eleventh year after Constantine's death) and Sozomenus HE IIJ.I2.7 (in the consulate of Rufinus and Eusebius) both place it in 347; both are certainly wrong. For long the accepted dated was 343, and Gwatkin SA 124 n 2 and 125 gives some perfectly good reasons for this choice. But Schwartz Gesamm. Schrifi. IIb(ro, II), 2(55-6), 9(325-34» argued for 342, mainly relying on the text of the Historia Akephala (consolatu Constantini et Constantini, emended to Constantis et Constantij, i.e. 342) and the possibility ofinterpreting the Index to the Festal Letters (which appear to place it in 343) by either the Egyptian or the Roman calendar. Opinion since has been much divided. The difficulty for those who opt for the earlier date is how to ftli the time between the end of the Council ofSerdica and the known dates of the death of Gregory of Alexandria and the return of Athanasius to Alexandria after his Second Exile; the difficulty for those, who choose 343 is how to account for the apparent fact that eighteen months elapsed between Constans

293

Period of Confusion

i'lthan~'~s and several other Eastern bishops who had been deposed d ring the past twenty years, attended the encounter, The de is~rs f this meeting were certainly not Eastern bishops. Socrates E I .20) expressly says that they did not want to come. It was a ..... ·smal group of Western bishops, influential with Constans. who planned the Council: MaximinusofTrier, Protasius of Milan. OSSlUS of i Cordova, Foftunatianus of Aquileia and Vincent of Capua. Julius of Rome was not a prime mover in the affair; he sent a comparatively

minor delegation who kept a low profile. 6s Though Constans was the Emperor who took the initiative, Constantius his brother was not indifferent to the outcome of the affair. He sent the comes Strategius Musonianus and the castrensis Hesychius, to assist the Eastern bishops in their journey and ordered Philagrius (an offIcial experienced in troublesome ecclesiastical matters, now comes in Thrace). to accompany them on their journey from PhiJippopolis to Serdica, and afterwards duly exiled Lucius of Adrianople and some Egyptian clergy who had met with the Easterners' disapproval. Had all the bishops met to constitute a regular General Council, it would have been a large one. Zeiller reckons that there. were one hundred and seventy eight bishops present, 98 from the West and 80 from the East. 66 The representatives of the· bishop of Rome were the presbyters Archidamus and Philoxenus and a deacon Leo. Ossius was generally regarded as the leader of the Westerners. Maximinus of Trier and Gratus, Catholic bishop of Carthage (who needed imperial support for his struggle against the Donatists and could not ignore the Emperor's summons) were prominent in their number. Athanasius,

Asclepas and Marcellus were present as Eastern bishops with a grievance. 'Gaudentius of Naissus and Protogenes of Serdica had originally been regarded as belonging to the 'Eusebian' party, but calling the council and its actual meeting in the autumn of 343 (as Socrates HE 11.20 observes). There are excellent resumes of the evidence in Hess Canons 140-4, in Zeiller Origines 228-30 and most recently in Barnard 'The Council ofSardica: Some Problems Re-assessed', and The Council of Serdica 343. 49-55. all of whom argue·

convincingly for 343. Sources for the Council of Serdica are Socra,res HE II. 20 and 22; Sozomeous HE III. 11.3-12.7, Theodorer HE 11.7. 8: Athanaslus Apol Sec. 36-50;

Hist: Arion. 15.3(190), 18:)(192); De Synodis 25:" Tomus ad Antiochenos s. 10; Hilary Coil. A,. B 11.1(103-126); Uber ad Constantium 1.1-11.3 (181-1.87). 6SS ec Athanasius Apol. ad Const. 4; Hist. Arian. 1St 44. and Pietri in PTAA 109-1 I. Simonetti Stud; 161-2 gives a useful account of the dispositions on both sides; see also Klein Constantius 11 1°9-13; Zeiller Origines 231-2: 660 rigines 232-4.

294

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (341-349)

had now changed sides and associated with the Western bishops. The leaders of the Eastern bishops were probably Stephen the recentlychosen bishop of Antioch, Akakius of Caesarea, Menophantus of Ephesus, Valens and Ursacius, Narcissus, Maris, Theodore, Basil of Ancyra and Eudoxius of Germanicia. They convened at Philippopolis, a town ninety-six miles south east of Serdica, and . prepared to travel as one body to Serdica. 67 The Council ofSerdica never met as a Council. It was in fact a debacle rather than a Council, and it is absurd· to reckon it among the General Councils, whether we look at it from the point of viewof the ~estetn or that of the Eastern bishops.6s The unwilling Eastern bIshops, spurred on by Philagrius, on reaching Serdica were housed ill a wing of the imperial palace and carefully kept from informal contact with the Western bishops. In spite of this tWo of their number, Arius of a Palestinian and Asterius of an Arabian see, managed to change sides and join the Western bishops. The Eastern bishops refused to join counsel with the Western bishops until these had separated themselves from the bishops who had been tried, condemned and deposed by regularly convened and ordered Eastern councils. This demand was the rock upon which the attempt to effect a council at Serdica split: 'At first sight', says Simonetti, 'it was a splitting of hairs and a pretext, but in reality it was a plea which sparked off the crucial point of the situation and of' the confrontation'.69 The Easterners had no intention of allowing the Westerners to review decisions which they were competent to make;

the Westerners had no intention of behaving as if the decision of a Council of Rome could be regarded as ineffective. The Easterners had a perfectly good case, and this fact till recently has not been sufficiently realized. Western bishops had no right to review the verdIcts of Eastern councils. The bishop of Rome had never before gone so far as to question the decision of an Eastern council. Metropolitan jurisdictions were fairly clearly established in the East but were still in an uncertain and unformed state in the West. 70 67S ee Zeiller.op. cit. 231-4; Simonetti Crist' i67-g. . 68For ~cco.u~ts of what happ~ned, s~e Schwartz Gesamm. Schrift. 1II.2(SS-62); Simonetti Cnsl 170-87; Barnard Councd ofSardica' 13-24; Brennecke Hilarius von

P.29-46. Meris; 170. 7°The word "!etropolitanus was not in use in the West until the fifth century. So ~uch for the claIm that the third British bishop who attended the Council of Aries In 314 was archbishop of Colchester (Camulodunum)!

295

Period of Confusion

",thanasius was deservedly unpopular in the East. 71 Serious attempts w~re made to overcome the impasse. Ossius more than ten years later ai 72 that he had gone so far as to offer to take back Athanasius with h' to Spain if the Easterners would join him in discussion, but the . istrustful Eastern bishops refused this suggestion. In return they suggested that a new commission should be sent to the Mareotis with Western representatives on it (only Theognis of Nicaea among the original members of the Commission had died). The Westerners rejected this unrealistic plan. Finally the Eastern bishops conveyed a message to the Western that news of a victory by Constantius over the Persians compelled them to return to their sees. They composed an Encyclical Letter or manifesto at Serdica, retreated to Philippopolis, and then published their manifesto. Both sides took the most imprudent measures towards the others. The Western bishops examined the cases of Athanasius, of Marcellus, of Asclepas and of Lucius all over again and declared them innocent. The Easterners excommunicated Ossius. Protogenes, Maximinus, Gaudentius and Julius. The Western bishops excommunicated Stephen, Theodorus, Akakius, Narcissus, Valens, Ursacius, Basil of Ancyra, Quintianus of Gaza, Menophantus, and even Ge()rge, just elected to the see of Laodicea, who was not present at Serdica. The Easterners branded all the Westerners as Sabellians. The Westerners stigmatized all the Easterners as Arians. Both charges were equally

~

ridiculous.

The Western bishops remained at Serdica for some time after the departure of the Eastern bishops and occupied themselves not only in launching anathemas and acquitting the' accused but also in producing 'several documents. The Eastern bishops only produced one document, that which was composed at Serdica and published at Phili ppopolis: 7 3 Gregory of Alexandria heads the list of bishops addressed at the head of the Letter. The bishop of Carthage is addressed by the name of 711The arbitrary behaviour and violence of which Athanasius had given full proof in the struggle against the Melitians had contributed to sharpen these antiAlexandrian sentiments', Simonetti. Cris; 171 04. 72Athanasius Hisl. Arian. 44. 7JTheir letter and profession of faith survive only in Latin in Hilary Coli. Ar.

IV.1-3(48-']8) and in Turner EOMIA 1.637 (profession of faith only and in a corrupted form). Hilary gives the profession of faith again in his De Synodis 33. 34. Hahn prints the profession of faith in Symbole 190-2 (§158). On the profession see Zeiller . .origines 238-9; Klein Constantius 1147-9.

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (341-349) Donatus (not Gratus the Catholic or anti-Donatist bishop}.74

Marcellus of Ancyra is violently condemned, both for teaching that the reign of Christ began four hundred years before and would end at the end of the world, and that 'the image of the invisible God' was created at t~e conception of the body ,of Christ and that it was then that he was made Bread and Gate and Life. 75 At a recent Conference in Constantinople in the presence of the late Emperor Constantine bishops from many Eastern provinces tried to dissuade Marcellus from his views, but he persisted and was condemned. A Liber Sententiarum (Book of Opinions) exists written against Marcellus by several bishops, and in this appear opini~ns adverse to Marcellus by Protogenes of Serdica and Cyriacus of Naissus, who now side with Marcellus. 76 They next tum their attention to Athanasius. They complain of his violent and arbitrary behaviour in his see, both before and after his First Exile; they give an exaggerated account of the affair

ofIschyras, but also supply a list of other violent acts such as floggings and incarcerations. 77 That the Westerners have accepted him is

contrary to 'the authority of the law, the law of the church and the holy tradition of the apostles'.78 They next complain of the coercive and ferocious measures used in their sees when they returned to them

after exile by Paul of Constantinople and Asclepas of Gaza. It is here that they say that it is seventeen years since Asclepas was deposed. The ~estern bishops are trying to establish a new principle, 'the Eastern

blShops must bejudged by Western'.'" Athanasius had assented to the deposition ofAsclepas and of Marcellus, Paul had personally agreed to t~e condemnation of Athanasius at Tyre. 80 Julius had wrongly given hIS support to Athanasius. 81 They display peculiar animosity against Protogenes and Ossius for their support of Athanasius and Marcellus. 82 Five of the (six) members of the Mareotic Commission 74Hilary Coli. Ar. IV.I. Praef. 48-9. "Ibid. IV.I, 2(49-50). . ,76Ibid. IV. 1.3(50-1). Cyriacus was probably dead by now, so that some scholars thmk that the name of Gaudentius, Cyriacus' successor, has fallen out of the text, and want to emend to some such words as Gaudentium ut immemorem decessoris sui Cyriaci ('~audentius who has apparently forgotten his predecessor Cyriacus'. the terms which are actually used of him at 27(66)). Gaudentius was on the side of the Westerners; cf. Sozomenus HE III.II.S who says that Gaudentius defended Marcellus whereas Cyriacus had taken the other side. "IV.1.6(5J); 8(54, 55). "IV. 1.7(54). "10(55)-12(57). 8° Il (57). "14(57, 58). 82 14- 17(57-9).

297

~~ Period of Confusion

\ )

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (34 1-349)

"

sur~:

t~eir

cd and were present at Serdica. Ossius, Protogenes and. associ tes rejected the suggestion of a re-constitut~d. Comm~ss~on exa ning the case on the spot. 83 Attacks on indIvIduals, glvmg

~ ils in language which. is often obs~ure ~o •us,, fol;ow, on / / / Protogenes. Dionisius of Ells, Bassus of Dlocicnan S CIty (. S~lona), Actius of Thessalonica 84 , At least the Westerners should realIze t.he wickedness of splitting the whole Church f~r. the sake ,of AthanaslUs and Marcellus. 85 These evil men are reqUlnng that whatever the Eastern bishops had determined in a Council should be opened up again by the Westerners, and likewise whatever the Westerners (had

decided) should be annulled by the Easterners,"· Therefore. the Eastern bishops now formally condemn, depose and exco~mum~ate the following, listing their misdeeds in the case of each: JulIUS, OSSlUS. Protogenes, Gaudentius, Maximinus (Trier)~. Marcellus and Athanasius. 87 In addition to their other enOrmitleS, they. are 8~lso heretics, because they follow Marcellus' new form of JudaIsm.

which appeared to rule out the moral union between the Father's being and that of the Son. Among the seventy-three bishops who signed this manifesto we are struck by the names of Stephen (Antioch), Akakius (Palestinian Caesarea), Eudoxius (Germanicia). Dianius (Cappadocian Caesarea), Basil (Ancyra), Valens (Mursa) and Ischyras (Mareotis).90 Their profession of faith cannot possibly be described as Arian. But neither is intended to be a supplement to N. It is the production of men who were searching for a substitute for N. From the assembly of Western bishops in Serdica. or in connection with them emerged no less than eight documents. 91 They are as follows; I.

Finally, the Eastern bishops set out a profession offaith. This formula is no more or less than the Fourth Creed of AntlOch 341, the one sent vainly to Constans, with an addition to the ;tnathemas at the end tacked on to it. The addition runs thus:

3·

'Likewise the holy and Catholic Church.anathematizes those who say,

4·

that there are three Gods, or that Christ is not God, and that before the ages he was neither Christ nor the Son ofGo~, .or that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the same, or that the Son IS mgenerate, or that the Father did not beget the Son by his counsel and Will.'89

Clearly they wish in this addition to allay Western fears that in maintaining the existence of three hypostases wlthm th~ Godhead they are falling into tritheism, and to reject Anan doctrme equally with Sabellianism. The last clause may be aImed both at the Anan playing down of the role of the Son as Logos and Wisdom and at proNicene doctrine of the consubstanttality of the Father and the Son

2.

5· 6.

7· 8.

A Synodical Letter to all Churches. including a profession of faith (to be found in Theodoret HE I1.8; Hilary Coll. Ar. BIl(I) 1-8( 105-24); Turner EOMIA I 645-53 and Athanasius Apol. Sec. 44-9).92 A Synodical Letter to the Church of Alexandria (Athanasius Apol. Sec. 37-40). A Synodical Letter to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya (Athanasius. Apol. Sec. 41-43. almost identical with the last). A Synodical Letter to the Churches of the Mareotis (EOMIA 1.657-5, Latin version). Letter of Athanasius from Serdica to the Churches of the Mareotis (EOMIA 1.65~2). Letter of Athanasius from Serdica to the Clergy of Alexandria and the Parembole (EOMIA 1.654-6; on the subject of the condemnation of the Eusebians and their refusal to attend the Council). Synodical Letter to Pope Julius (Hilary Coli. Ar. BII(2) 1-4(126-39». Synodical Letter to the Emperor Constantius (which is Hilary's Liber ad Constantium Imperatorem I. 1-5).

83 1 8(60).

84 20 (61).

85 22 (62). 86 2 6(6S). 87 27 (65-'7);

.

it is here (66) chat Eustathius is mentioned as Ifhe were deceased. .

"28(67). 89IV.2(72): Similiter et eos qui dicunt: tres esse Deos, vel Chnstu~ non esse Deum, et ante saecula neque Christum neque Filium eum esse Dei, vel eum Ipsum esse .p'atrem et Fifium et Spiritum Sanctum, vel innascibilem Filium, vel q~od neq!4~ consilIO neque vofuntate Pater genuerit Filium, anathematizat sancIa et cathollCa ecclesla.

90IV·3(75--'78): the Latin scribes find Ischyras too much for them, and render the name (76) as Squirius. 91For useful lists of them, see Declercq Ossius 401-4, and ZeilIer Origines 24 2 -3. 92Hilary's version may represent the Latin original but neither he nor Athanasius give the Profession ofFaich. There is also a Latin translation ofTheodoret's version in the Historia Tripartita ofCassiodorus IV.24. The text of the Profession of Faith given below is a translation of a careful collation by Loofs of the Latin in the Collection ofTheodosius the Deacon (ed. of the BaUerini brothers), Cassiodorus' translation of Theodoret's text, and the two most important MSS of Theodoret's

299

'~\ /

,

Period of Confusion

I~add~ion Ossius and Protogenes wrote a letter to Pope Julius which w~ shal consider below, with the others.

e esterners' Encyclical to all Churches begins by defending A/h.anasius, Marcellus and Asclepas on the ground that the o.o.4cc~sations made against them were false, their accusers had refused ( to come and explain themselves when summoned to do so by Julms, I and indeed the accusers themselves were guilty of many crimes. 93 The incidents of Arsenius and Ischyras and the Broken Chalice are briefly touched on, reviewed Wholly from the standpoint of Athanasius. 94 Marcellus has convinced the writers that his writings had been misinterpreted and that he was guilty neither of deriving the origin of God the Word from the Virgin Mary nor of setting a term to Christ's reign. 95 Asclepas had cleared himself by producing the proceedings of the trial 'which were carried out in Antioch in the presence of his enemies and ofEusebius from Caesarea, and from the expressed opinions of the bishops who were judging him and showed that he was innocent' 96 The leaders of the opposite party after the death of the two Eusebii are named, Theodore, Narcissus, Stephen, George (Laodicea), Akakius, Menophantes, Ursacius and Valens; they are suitably reviled, and the Encyclical goes on formally to expose and excommunicate Gregory of Alexandria, Basil of Ancyra, Quintianus of Gaza and the heads of the opposite party already mentioned. 97 Next follows the Profession of Faith of these Westerners. It is particularly significant and must be given in full: 98 1Th.

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (341-349) (I) 'We disqualify and extrude from the catholic church those who assert that Christ is indeed God, (2) but that he is not true God, that he is Son, but not true Son; that he is begotten and at the same time has come into existence (YEVVTJtO~ liJ,1a Kai 'Y£vTJt6~); for this is the way in which they regularly interpret "begotten", professing, as we have said above, that "begotten" is "having come into existence" (to

Y8Y8VV1111'VOV y8Vl)].lEVOV Eemv); [and that though Christ has existed before the ages they assign to him a beginning and an end which he has

not in time but before all time]. (3) And recently two adders have been born from the Arian asp, Valens and Ursacius. who declare and state, without equivocation, though they call themselves Christian, that the Logos and the Spirit was pierced and wounded and died and rose

again, and (what the heretical rabble likes to claim) that the hypostases of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit are distinct (Bw'l'6pou,) and are separate (1C8XCOP'''~'v'',), (4) But we have received and have been taught this (tradition), we have this catholic and apostolic tradition: that there is one hypostasis, which the heretics

(also) call ousia, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And if anyone asks, "What is the hypostasis of the Son?", it is obviously that which is of the sole Father. We confess that neither the Father ever existed without the Son nor the Son without the Spirit nor ever could [text corrupt hereJ. The witness of the Son himself is Un I4:rO] and Un 10:30]. (5) None of us denies the term "begotten" (... ) but begotten in what circumstances? (do we say), the artificer of archangels and angels and the world and the human race was begotten

text, Bodleianus Allet. E4 (18th cent. X (BI» and Bodleianus Allet. Ell (14th cent.

along with absolutely everything else which is called visible and invisible, because the text runs [Wisd 7:22] and Un 1:3]? For he could never have received beginning of existence, for the Logos of God exists eternally and has no beginning, nOr does he undergo an end. (6) We

XIA), printed (in Greek) in 'Das Glaubenbekenntnis def HOmOQllSial!-er vO,n

do not say that the Father is the Son, nor again that the Son is Father.

Sardica', Schwartz had discussed this document most illuminatingly in 'Ober dte Sammlung des Cod. Veronensis LX' (1936) 1-23. For a full discussion of the origin,

Butthe Father is Father and the Son (is) Son of the Father. We confess that the Son is the power (B6v,,~IV) of the Father. We confess the < h > e is the Logos of God the Father, beside whom there is no other, and the Logos is true God and Wisdom and Power. We have handed

history and significance of the MS from which the Collection of Theodosius is taken, see Telfer 'The Codex Verona LX (58)' 169-246. The Synodical Letter is very briefly summarised by Sozomenus HE 111.12.5. 9JHiiary Coll. Ar. BII (1)1-3(105-1 r). At 3{I 1I) Theognis ofNicaea (1'heognitus)

is accused of having forged letters to discredit Athanasius and Marcellus. which deceived Constantine. cf. above. p. 277 where the charge of forgery applies to the case of Asclepas. "Ibid. S(lll-I7). 95 6(117-19). '66(118). 9'7(119)-8(12.4): Athanasius apparently had not realized that Gregory was in fact excommunicated; see above. P.243. 98For the text tramlated here. see above n 94. Hahn printed Theodorec's version

300

down that he is true Son, but we do not name him Son as other sons are named, because they are named sons either by adoption or because they have been born again or because they deserve (the name), not because of the single hypostasis, which is that of the Father and of the Son. (7) We confess that he is Only-begotten and First-born; but the Logos is Only-begotten since he always was and is in the Father, but in Greek (Symbole 188-190. §I57). but his text is not as good as Loafs' reconstruction. I have placed square brackets round words at poihts where Loofs does not think that we can restore the text with confidence.

30 1

\

Period of Confusion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (;4 J -349)

\

th

ter~"\mt-born" applies to (lilUcptp£l) his humanity (t uv9pcilltcp)

an to t new creation, because he is also first-born from the dead. e co ess that there is onc God, we confess one ?odhead of Father

/

"S

(8) And nobody denies that the Father

somehow

-~- an~ate~~han the Son. not because of another hyp~stasis ?or because of e Ilf , d·"'erence but because the name of Father Itself IS gre~ter than any t t . they Iw

,

15

(ltOtE)

.

·'Son". (9) This is their blasphemous and corrupt mterpre a Ion.

contend that he said Un 1O:30J because of the agreement ~nd harmo~y. We who are catholics condemn this silly and wretched Idea of thel~s. Just as mortal men when they begin to differ, :o~front each other m their disputes and then again return to reconcIlIatIOn, so they sa~ that differences and disputes could exist between God the Fathe~ almIghty and the Son, which is altogether absurd eith~r tOr thmk or to . t (10) But we believe and affirm and so thmk, that he uttered ro~~ . hh . On 10:301 with his sacred voice because of the um~y oft e ypostasls, which is a single one of Father and of Son. T~lS we have ~lways believed that he reigns without beginning and WIthout end wIth.the

Father a~d that his kingdom has neither term (Xp6vov) nor declme,

because what exists eternally has neither begun to eXIst nor can decline. (II) We believe in and hand down the Comforter the Holy Spirit which the Lord promised and sent to us. And we beheve that he

was s;nt. And he (the Spirit) did not suffer, but the man whom he put on, whom he assumed from the Virgin Mary, the ~an who was ca·pable of suffering, because man is mortal but Go~ Imm~rta~. We

believe that he rose again the third day, and God d,d not nse m the man but the man in God, (the man) whom he also offered to the Fath~r as his gift, whom he had freed. We believe that at a pr0t:er an~ determined time he willjudge all men and all causes. (12) Such IS th~Ir folly and their mind is blinded by so thick a darkness that they cannot

see the light of truth. They do not understand the words of the text On 17"21. · I why "one" (is said) , because the apostles have J Itlscear

re~eived the Holy Spirit of God, but not however t~at they themselves were Spirit nor any of them was Logos ~r. WIsdom or Power nor was any only-begotten On 17:21]. B~t ,the dlv~ne .utterance carefully distinguished: "they may be one in us' ,It says; It dId not say " we are one I and the Father"; but the disciples are linked and among by their confession of faith, that they could be one in grace and worship of God the Father and ill the peace (cruYXroPtlcrEl) and love of our Lord and Saviour'.

u~~ted

~hemselves

s~

Several interesting points are to be noted in this piece of theology. The authors are determined to refute what they see as the mam errDrs of Arianism, and it is worth noting that their reference to the teachmg

of Ursacius and Valens «3)) shows that these two reproduced the regular Arian teaching about the Son suffering as God and not only as man. Clearly the framers of this profession of faith are Wholly unacquainted with the theology ofOrigen and have no conception of the distinction between hypostasis and ousia. They think that whenever the Eastern theologians use the word hypostasis they mean 'substance', and in fact the Latin version in Turner's EOMIA invariably translates hypostasis as substantia. This alone should dispose of the idea that Ossius, who certainly had a hand in producing this document, was the person to whom Calcidius dedicated this book, and was learned in Greek philosophical terms; and it confirms the 99 conjecture that when he heard Narcissus state that he confessed three ousiai he concluded that ousia and hypostasis were synonymous, and that they always meant 'substance'. And indeed the anathema of N reproduces this view. It is remarkable, however, that this document distinguishes, for the first time in the controversy, between gennetos and genetos, and here at least an advance in understanding the subject of the controversy can be noted ((2)). Most significant of all, however, is the fact that the writers of this profession of faith have no word for what was later to be called 'Person' in a Trinitarian context, and in fact their thought upon the subject is so confused that one can understand why they gave their opponents the impression that they were Sabellians. The Son, they are sure, is not the same as the Father and in some not very clear way is less than he. But they do not know how he is distinct, and it is hard to avoid the impression that the Incarnation consisted of the Spirit taking a body which did the suffering, and that the Son is not distinguishable from the Spirit ((3)); (they hold that ((II)) the Spirit (toiho, not UOt6<;) put on the man who suffered, though the Arians teach that the Spirit suffered the Pa,ssion). This is the first lengthy Western statement about the subject of the controversy. It makes clear how little comprehension the Western theologians had of the background and history ofEastern theological thought. Whether the profession is influenced by Marcellus or not carmot easily be determined. The Greek expression olacptpBl ('applies to', Latin adtinet) is used by Marcellus of the Incarnation and the use occasionally of 'God Almighty' rather than Father recalls Marcellus.'oo But there is a direct denial of Marcellus' doctrine about 99S ee

above, PP.45 and

IOOSO

Gericke Marcellus 18.

lSD-I.

302

30 3

~/

Period of Confusion

the reign!~f Christ and no suggestion that the Son only came into existenc4 at the Incarnation. though the reference to the humamty of Christ as the Only-begotten ((7)) is suspicious. Gericke's statement that the document represents 'normal homoousian theology' as found in Rome (Julius). in Spain (Ossius) and in Antioch. (Marcellus)'o, is absurd. Julius was not present. We have no re~son to think that Ossius represented a recognizable school of Spamsh (or even of Western) theology. and Marcellus qnnot plausibly be connected with an hypothetical Antiochene tradition of thought. Loofs saw the document as an official attempt. fostered by OSSIUS and Protogenes and accepted by the Western bishops. to produce. with the aid of Marcellus' theology. an interpretation of N which would satisfy the Westerners and oppose the Easterners. • 02 Th"IS IS perhaps the nearest we can come to classifying it. Zeiller·0 3 and Declercq'o, find the profession of faith gravely embarrassing. both because it appears to commit the Western church to a form of Sabelhamsm. approved or at least not reproved by the Pope. and by a Co,,:ncil which had also passed canons so congemal to later Ultramontamsm. and also because Athanasius. their paragon. in 362 violently demed that the Council ofSerdica had produced any such statement. though he certainly knew that it had.'o s A final count against thi~ document is that. in the words of Kopecek. 'It (the Western Councd) ISsued an 101[bid. 19.

.

ca ee his 'Das Glaubenbekenntnis der Homousianer von Sardi .' 37-9· I030 rigines 240 n I and 241. I040ssius 365--"71. . lOS Achanasius Tomus ad Antiochenos 5 and 10. See above, pp. 244-5· Gwatkm (SA 724-7) can b.elieve Athanasius' denials. Few lacer scholars can: There can be no doubt that Ossius and Proto genes were the authors (or mam authors) of t?e statement see Sozomenus HE III.I2.6 and Turner EOMIA 644· AthanaSlus admitted iliac a 'broadsheet' (1tlt'taKlov) had been circulated, but denied that it ~ad any significance. Hilary omits the creed from his version ofth~ Westerns' Encychcal in ColI. Ar. Scheidweiler and Tetz (see Tetz 'Zur Theolog1e des Mar~eIlus v?n Ankyra' III. 171, 188 n 2 12) observe. that l~ter Marcellans (perhaps. UnIting With continuing Eustathians (Paulinians) in Antioch) knew, and used this .cre~d. And Telfer conjectured that Aetius of Thessalonica and his suc~essor Achohus Ulvested the Creed ofSerdica with peculiar importance as representmg Western orthodoxy from which Pope Liberius had fallen ('Codex Verona LX (58)' 198""'9). Declercq maintains simultaneously that Ossius had only an indirect influenc~ on the formula and that its original language was Latin, not Greek, theses whl~h are scarcely compatible. Harnack had called it 'the most unambiguous expression of Western thought on the subject' of the Trinity (Lehrbuch der D~gmengeschic~t~ 5th ed 11. 2 46 n, quoted by Kelly Early Christian Creeds 277). Kelly himself calls It an extreme a~d highly provocative statement' and agrees that it did form part of the official I02S

30 4

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (341-349)

encyclical which defined Arianism so broadly that nearly every easterner who had ever heard of Origen was considered Arian." 06 The Letter sent by the Western bishops ofSerdica to Julius is of no great importance. because it is mainly concerned with a summary of the Council's Encyclical. without giving its profession of faith.'o, Ossius (ab Spania Cordobensi. which suggests that he was still in control of the see of Cordova) signs first. followed by sixty others. Several bishops came from the Balkan provinces and from Italy. but apparently only one from the Gauls. Verissimus a Gallia de Lugduno. The letters of Athanasius to the clergy of Alexandria and to the Churches of the Mareotis consist almost wholly of uruimited abuse of his opponents. especially of Gregory in Alexandria. who. he alleges • was not condemned and excommunicated at Serdica, to Athanasius'

secret disgust. The letter sent by Ossius and Protogenes to Julius was simply a covering letter for their despatching to him of the Encyclical of the Western bishops. The only point of interest in it is that they describe the formula with which the Encyclical ends as simply a justification and clarification of the creed ofNicaea.' 08 Had this letter come into the hands of an Eastern theologian it would only have confirmed his suspicion that N was of a dangerously Sabellian tendency. The other letters of the Western bishops at Serdica consist of much the same material as those of Athanasius. that is plentiful abuse. several allegations of atrocities committed by their opponents. and regular treatment of those opponents as if they were Arians to a man.'09 The Letter qf the Western Bishops to Constantius sent from Serdica is. however. of rather more interest. They beg the Emperor to let the people of each see choose their own bishop (a measure which wotild not have pleased either Western or Eastern theologians had it been applied to Photinus); they do not want Arian bishops appointed. They ask that those who were unjustly exiled should be recalled. and they mention as containing particularly dangerous heresies works written by the two Eusebii. Narcissus. Theodore. Stephen, Akakius. Menophantus. and by 'those two inexperienced Encyclical (op. cit. 278). Declercq's defence ofOssius here (op. cit. 371-6) is very la~e: A~I that he .can say in response to the remarks of Harnack and Kelly is that the Trlmty IS mysteriOus anyway (376). See also Prestige CPT 182, Sellers Eustathius 58; Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 145-6; Klein Constantius II 49-51. I06History 85. '''Hilary Coli. AT. BlI(2)(126-J9). I08Turncr EOMIA 1.644. I09For the sources of these letters, see p. 299.

305

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (34'-349)

Period of Confusion

. d V I '110 Almost and outrageous young men, UrsaCIUS an a ens. . . nothing written by these last twO has come down ~o us, but It IS interesting to note that they were not simply eccleSlastlcal powerseekers but had entered into the field of th.eologlcal dISpute on a clear! Arian side.' 11 . . So :nded the Council ofSerdica. '12 Intended as a means ofhealmg a dangerous rift which was developing between the Eastern and Western Church, it succeeded only in widening that nft to an a parenti y unbridgeable extent. It revealed how little elther stde k~ew of the theology of the other. It exasperated dangerou.sly bot~ the theological and the canonical disputes. Were the deCISIOns 0 either side to be taken seriousl y, it meant that elther the leaders of the Western or those of the Eastern Church were. dep~sed and excommunicated and that either the East was steeped m Anamsm or the West in Sabellianism. In fact the two sides were not as !ar apart theologically, and neither side was as monochrome m ItS behef, as the utterances of the Council would lead the reader of them to expect. And, as events were soon to show some sort of reconcihatlOn was I

possible.

4. Period of Reconciliation Clearly, after Serdica the leaders of both sides thought ~at they had gone too far, and were shocked that what had been mtended as a 110Hilary Liber ad Constantium I, printed as an Appendix by Feder to the Collectanea Antiariana. 181-4. . hI' 1 .' 'n the ltlWe ha~e already seen a reference to thelf t eo oglca opmlOn,s ~n ' 0 profession offaith of the Western ~ishops. See above, p. 3 I. M ~U:;!~;a b'o~~e et son Temps 86, 90-1, calls attentIon t~ the fae: tJ:at V. an . I • though he connects it with the Counell of Anmmum. h C 1121 do not here enter into the complex and v,exed qu~stion of t e . anons produced by this Western Council of Serdica, For mformatlon on ~~~ s~Ject '~if Turner 'Genuineness of the Sardican Canons.' and H,ess The Cano~ oJ~:rk ~~nt~e~e Sardiea It is almost impossible to doubt their genumeness afithter t d h two m~n; Hess in particular gives a comprehensive~urvey of, e su ~ect,.an sows . -135) how well they fit the situation which prevaded at Ser
Jud

b'

306

process of reconciliation had turned into an explosion. Both sides were ready for peace feelers. The first sign of this was the arrival in Antioch at Easter-time in 344, the Easter after the Council ofSerdica, of a Western delegation consisting of two bishops, Euphrates or Euphratas bishop of Cologne, and Vincentius bishop of Capua; the latter was probably a representative, formal or informal, of Julius. This visit unfortunately proved abortive owing to the mischiefmaking proclivity of Stephen bishop of Antioch. He attempted to ensnare Euphrates in a false charge of fornication by planting a prostitute in his bedroom. The plot miscarried and the instigator of it was exposed. Stephen was deposed from his see and defrocked. Leontius was chosen bishop in his place. ll3 The two Western bishops returned home in understandable umbrage. It is highly likely that when Constantius heard of this he began for the first time to doubt whether the ecclesiastics whom he had hitherto relied upon to give him guidance in theological alfairs were as reliable as he had thought them to be, and to incline more readily to listen to Western voices suggesting compromise or concession. The chief of these Western voices was that of his fellow-Emperor Constans. Undoubtedly Constans was at this point pressing his brother strongly to recall Athanasius to his see of Alexandria. Five ancient church historians are unanimous about this, and they even go so far as to say that Constans threatened war ifConstantius would not acquiesce. ll4 Socrates and Philostorgius give us alleged extracts from threatening letters written to Constantius by Constans. Schwartz regarded these extracts as spurious.'15 and though they have been accepted as genuine by recent scholars such as Simonetti, it is dilftcult to believe that Constans would have been ready to plunge the Empire into civil war, no matter how irresponsible he may have been, for the sake of the restoration ofa few bishops. The fact that Athanasius, who 113Athanasius HA II.20; Theodoret HE 11.9.1-10.2. Neither Sozornenus nor Socrates mention the incident. See Gwatkin SA 149; Simonetti Crisi 188-9. 114S ocrates HE 11.22,23; SozomenusIII.2o. I; Philostorgius llI, 12; Theodoret HE 11.8·54, 55; Rufinus HE X.20. Philostorgius alleges that Athanasius had bribed E~stathius, the comes privatarum rerum of Cons tans. to persuade the Emperor to make thiS threat, but his account is confused because he appears to think that at this time George. not Gregory. was Athanasius' rival at Alexandria, See also Rusche. in Politique et TMoJogie 16'{8, Klein Constantius II 5 1-2 {who gives many details of the correspondence between the brothers). For the whole period, see Simonetti Crisi I89-201; Klein Constanlius 1179-80. 11S'ZUf Kirchengeschichte' 139.

307

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (;4'-349)

of Confusion

friends by the followers of Gregory. We know that by 346 he had not yet returned to Alexandria, because in a letter written in preparation for Easter 347 to his flock he says that he expects to celebrate Easter among them in 347.'22 He probably met Constantius in Antioch some time in 345, and in the same year attended a small council held by Maximus ofJerusalem which purported to undo the work of the Council of Tyre of 335 by acquitting Athanasius of the charges on which he had been convicted ten years before.'2' But this comparatively minor gathering could scarcely be regarded as capable of seriously annulling the decisions of Tyre. In other parts of the church, the prevailing temper was also one of reconciliation. The Council of Antioch which had deposed Stephen and elected Leontius as bishop of Antioch in 344 also produced a creed, which was conveyed to the Western church by a delegation of Eastern bishops, Eudoxius of Germanicia, Macedonius of Mopsuestia, Demophilus of Beroea and Martyrius of an unknown see who arrived in Milan where a council was sitting in 345. 124 The creed which was brought on this occasion was that universally known as the Macrostich (Eethesis Maerostiehos, 'Long-Liner' Manifesto').'25 The first part is much the same as, if not identical with, the IVth Antiochene Creed of 34' (the creed produced some time after the other three and later sent to Constans, see above pp. 291-2). To the anathemas of that creed, however, it adds a few more, and then spends the rest of this very long document explaining why further views are ruled out. The added anathemas are against those who say;

was not b ckwaid in me ion' g facts which told in his favour, does not mentio this threat e. against its authenticity. But Constans did indeed press .s-br er to restore Athanas~~s. Constantius was preoccupied with e Persian King Shapur hImself, was not m a position to refuse his importunity, and agreed to recall AthanaslU~. Another reason hich must have weighed with Constantlus In hIS decision to recall Athanasius was that Gregory, his rival bishop of Alexandria had failed owing to illness to attend the Council of Serdica and was probably by 344 known to be mortally ill.. He died on June 26th 345."6 Athanasius gives the text of three letters WrItten to him by Constantius in flattering terms requesting him .to retur~ to his see, two from the Emperor to the people of AlexandrIa preparIng them for the return of Athanasius, one to an Egyptian offiCIal requiring him to make the necessary preparation and a letter from Julius of Rome to the Church of Alexandria also preparing them for A thanasius' return. 11 7 Athanasius was slow in acting on the invitation. After the Council of Serdica, he had visited Trier and stayed in Naissus with its bishop Gaudentius. He spent Easter 344 there, and we know that he was In Aquileia, with its bishop Fortunatianus, for the Easter of 345· He probably stayed at Petavium in the interval."· It was at AqUllela that 1I9 He he received the first summons from Constantius to return. made a very slow journey back. He was anxious to secure by diplomatic negotiations with the Emperor that his followers in Alexandria should receive amnesty and restitution"'o He also may have doubted the good faith ofConstantius. Athanasius at one point wrote of Constantius 'He thought that I was luke-warm about returning liecause I was alarmed by the events which had happened in the past"2' - probably the bad treatment meted out to Athanasius'

'that there are three gods. or that Christ is not God, or that neither

Christ nor the Son of God existed before the ages, or that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the same, or that the Son is unbegotten. or

that the Father did not beget the Son either by his counsel or by his

116Athanasius HA.4.1-3(I94) and Opitz's note in lac.; Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 139-40; Martin Histoire 'Akephale' 76. 117HA 51.1-8(13.-133); 52.1-53.6(133. 134); 54.1-55-7(136); 56.1-3(1)6); 57.1-'7(136, 137). all reproduced in Socrates HE Il.23· . . 118S ee his Apol. ad Const. 3.3(280) and the notes of Opitz In lac., and 3. and see

Zeiller, Origines

261-2.

.

.

.

.

1190pitz. note on HA 21.1-3(194) believes that negotla~lOns, for AthanaslUs return began as early as 344. but Schwartz ('Zur Kirchengeschlchte I.39-14~) seems

to have more probability on his side when he says that Constantlus waIted for Gregory to die before opening communication with Athanasius. 120S 0 Schwartz, op. cit. 140-1. 121 HA 21.1 (194) £V6J.ll~& 'Yap Ola 'tov 1P6~ov 'tOW 1tpo'tE:Prov Y&V0J.lEvrov 6J. 1'Y ro p&iv J.l& 1t&pi 'tliv 81t('lVOOOV.

WiU'.126

122Festal Letter XI (PC 26:1429.8) Lefort deest. The same letter (1430:10) makes it clear that Arsenius has now made his peace with Athanasius; he has been made bishop of Hypesala and has 'returned to peace with the church'. Athanasius reached Alexandria in fact on October 21st 346. He was to remain relatively undisturbed there for ten years - the longest period of uninterrupted residence in his see that he was ever to enjoy. 123Socrates HE iI.24; see Klein Constantius II 80. 124Athanasius De Syn. 26.rff(251). 125Socrates HE 11.19 (summarized Sozomenus HE III. I I), Athanasius De Syn. 26, printed in Hahn Symbole 192--6 (§159); the divisions of the text marked by Roman figures are these of Hahn, and the Arabic figures those of Hahn's pages. 126Hahn 11(192).

30 9

·...

~"J

/'\

/~app

Period of Confusion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (34 1-349)

) ded explanation can be divided into seven parts:

S~n

non-exis.te~ce (t~

It is t.afe either to say that the is from OIlIC 6vtd,v), because the Scriptures do not say so; nO,r that he IS from ~ome di1fe~ent underlying hypostasis from the Father, but we defme hIm as 'genuinely begotten from God alone'. Only the Father of Chnst 15 unbegotten and unbeginning. 'But ~e do not take, the dan?erous course of declaring that there was a tIme when he dld not eXlst and

envisage an interval of time preceding him,. but only Godwho begot him timelessly' (preceded him). Though tlm~S and age~ were made through the Son we must not think of hIm as co-umnltlated and counbegotten' «J\)vavIlPXov ICal 'lUvaYEVV1]tov) with the Father. No father and son can seriously be said to be co-ummuated and coingenerate. The Fathe'[ begat the Son in, a manner inaccessibl~ and incomprehensible (cl.v&
na~e.l~9

Next comes a rejection of the doctrine of pe?ple called Sabellians m the East but 'Patripassians' (Ilatpoltaa",avol) m the West, that there IS only one Object (1lpay~a) and Person (ltp6a':'ltov), but three names. 130 The idea is next rejected that the Father dId not produce the

Son by h.tention and will, but that 'necessity devoid of plan or choice' (cl.VUY1C1]V cl.pou""tOV Kal a1lpoa(pEtov) must be attributed to God. This is against generally accepted ideas (KOtvU~&VV01.at. almost 'natural theology'), and against the Scriptures, espeCIally Pro; 8:22. But the Son was not created as other 'creatures and products (KtiaJ.1U'tU Kat n0111J.1U'tU) are produced; he cannot be compared with them, because 'the only-begotten Son is begotten sale and solely'. 131 Finally, strong emphasis is laid on the union of the Father and the Son, whIch IS still 1271I1(193). I28IV(193). I,.V, VI(I93-4).

called 'harmony' (a"~<provia) and 'conjunction' (a"va
130VII(I9~).

IJlVIII(194-S),

310

3[[

/

~C

••

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase One (341-349) Period of Confosion

d h D d

•

I C

. .

/

./

···W re no of the same school as those who produce t e e Icatlon \ Cr ed i 341, but were of those who stayed on rather longer in .. to publish the fourth creed, a more drastic statement. But / .... . they e, from that position, trying to make all the conceSSIons to the w¢it that they can. Some have seen in the Macrostich the hand of the n{wly-appointed bishop of Antioch, LeontlUs, the patron of AetlUs. He appears to have been of a tolerant disposition: Sozomenus relates an anecdote about him which has the ring of truth. Leontlus once touched his head whose hair was white with age, and said, 'When this snow melts, there will be plenty of mud'. 134 Perhaps he realized that the apparent homogeneity of the Eastern Church's theology could not last much longer. The deputation which in 345 brought the Macrostich to Milan did not succeed in its aim of reconciliation. The CouncIl of MIlan condemned the doctrine ofPhotinus (though it was unable to depose him) and gave audience to the Antiochenes with their creed. Before rhe Council would consider the Macrostich, however, they demanded that the Eastern bishops should condemn Arius. The Eastern delegation refused to do this, not assuredly because they were unwilling to condemn Arius, but because they thought it insulting to be suspected and arraigned in this way. They returned to AntIoch, their purpose unaccomplished. l35 Meanwhile the opponents of Athanasius had gathered at Antioch and protested agamst hIS readmission to his see. It is possible that this was the point at which George, a learned Cappadocian, friend of the (later) Caesar Gallus was chosen as bishop of Alexandria to replace Athanasius (when and if he could), but this is not likely.130 Though George was to cause Athanasius'plenty of trouble later, before he met his bizarre end, at the moment he and his supporters lacked imperial support. Constantius was pursuing a policy of reconciliation, when he had time to tllrn his attention to ecclesiastical affairs, and the enemies of

\~~ ~iOC

Athanasius were powerless. 134HE UI.20.9. 13SHilary Coil. Ar. B 11.4(142-3); the Letter Obsecro of Liberius (see below p. 33 8); Athanasius De Syn. 26. Photinushad by now been c~ndemned and deposed (in intention only) twice, once at Antioch 344. once at MIlan 345· 136Sozomenus HE IV.S.Jf. (probably relying on Sabinus of Heraclea). For the reasons for dating this gathering to 346 or 347 see Klein Constantius ii 81, 82 (and n 2, 82); cr. Kopccek History 103-5. For the date of George's consecration, see below

p. J 2 5· 3 12

Though the Eastern and Western bishops were unable to agree on positive Trinitarian doctrine, they we.re able to combine in condemning the egregious Photinus. He was condemned, not only at Milan in 345, but also at another council in Milan in 347, and at a council in the same year, 347, or in 348, held in Sirmium. 137 At the councils of Milan, Valens and Ursacius, hitherto banner-bearers of the extreme anti-Nicene cause, reversed their policy, condemned Arius and expressed their willingness to communicate with Athanasius. Nothing could indicate more clearly that the watchword at this period was Reconciliation, when these two expert students of the imperial wind began to Veer towards the pro-Nicene side.'" They wrote a letter to this Council which has not survived but which is referred to in a later letter which they wrote to the bishop of Rome, Julius. All that they did was to withdraw their opposition to and accusations against Athanasius, condemn Arius, his doctrine and disciples, and write a polite and purely formal letter to Athanasius, making no mention of doctrine at all. They were not required to affirm the homoousios. This was not a 'return to communion with Rome'. nor an 'abjuration of their errors' nor 'a restoration of their churches to them'. They had never been deprived of their sees. 139 The Council ofSirmium of 347 or 348 was held in the presence of Constantius, who happened to be passing through the town. Its formula offaith was so vague as to be not worth noticing. It noted with satisfaction Milan's condemnation ofPhotinus in 347, but remarked upon Marcellus' association with this heretic, and called upon Athanasius to dissociate himself from Marcellus. This was the furthest point reached in the attempt by Constantius to bring about 137The precise chronology of the councils which condemned Photinus is confused and has never been exactly established. He was to be condemned at one more ·council yet (see below PP.325-6). For the chronology of the affair see Harnack History IV.7D--2; Loofs 'Arianismus' 28; Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 144-5; Zeiller Origines 262-5; MesHn Les Ariens 264-8; Simonetti Crisi 202-3. 138Because of the confusion in the available sources, it is not clear when precisely they recanted. AU we know for sure is that they did so in two stages. In 345 (Milan) and 347 (also Milan). Or in 347 {Milan) and 351 (Sirmium)? It seems rather more likely that the two councils of Milan in 345 and 347 witnessed their volle face. The actual recantation is to be found in Hilary CoIl. Ar. B II 6 and 8 (143, 144) (Greek Cr. Athanasius Apol. Sec. 58). For this period generally our sources are Athanasius Apol.

Sec. 2, 58, 88; HA 26, 44 (Latin Hilary Coil. Ar. BlI.6-8 (14J-4»: Hilary Coil. Ar. BI1.7(144), 9(1¢-50); Socrates HE 11.29; Sozomenus HE IV.6.ltf. The Council of Milan 347 was held in Constans' presence. 13950 Meslin us Ariens 266-8, convincingly.

313

Period of Confusion unity in tl)e church by sweet reasonablene~s. When a little later events were to play into his hands, he would try the alternative method of coerClon.

II

Attempts at Creed-Making: Phase 35 0 -357 I.

2}

Constantius II

We now enter a period of our account dominated by the figure of the Emperor Constantius II, because there occurred in the year 350 a political revolution which resulted within a few years in his being undisputed master of the whole Roman Empire and alone responsible for the policy exercised by the Roman government towards the Christian church and its warring factions. Constantius was born on August 7th 317, the second son of Constantine by his second wife Fausta.' He had been named Caesar in his infancy and had been entrusted by his father with various military commands at an early age. When Constantine died in Ma y 337, none of his three sons was near him, but Constantius was the first to reach Constantinople. The testamentary dispositions of the late Emperor were disturbed by the massacre of two uncles of the three Caesars, both of whom had been given some part of his Empire to govern in Constantine's will, and of several cousins. Whether this massacre took place by the act of the army without Constantius, in order to prevent a multitude of Caesars competing against each other and threatening civil war, or whether the army merely arrested the victims and waited for Constantius' verdict about their fate, is quite uncertain. Certainly Constantius made no effort to punish their murderers. Even at his most complimentary in his Panegyric Julian can only say: 'But he may perhaps have been compelled by circumstances unwillingly to refrain from preventing others from committing the crime'. 2 In his Letter to the Senate and People of Athens 1

Minervina, his first wife (if wife she was), an obscure figure, was mother of

Crispus. 2Panegyric 12(29).

3 14

31 5

Period of Confusion

l1ttempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (350-357)

written from Sirmium in 361 when he was in open revolt against Constantius, Julian spoke in a very different vein, directly blammg him for the murders and alleging that Constantius was filled with remorse for them and regarded his childlessness and his ill success m the Persian wars as a punishment for them.' But Julian's judgment was curiously defective, though his intellect was considerable;4 he

year had gamed control of the whole Western Empire which had been ruled by Constans. He had no difficulty in suppressing an attempt by Nepot.anus, a nephew of Constantine, to maintain himself as Emperor in Rome. But he could not prevent Vetranio, in command of the troops m the Pannonian diocese, from declaring h.mselfEmperor. Constantius, occupied with defending the frontier with Persia, was taken at a disadvantage. In this crisis he called on a member of the Imperial family, Gallus, son of a brother of Constantine, to assist him. He made him Caesar and left him in charge of the prefecture of Oriens, at Antioch, under the supervision of a praetorian prefect, while he himself moved westward to deal with the usurper. By the end of 350 he had reached N aissus,having succeeded in persuading Vetranio, whose conduct suggests a policy of Slttmg on the fence until he saw the strength ofMagnentius and of ConstantlUs, to abdicate and retire into private life. In the summer of 35' he ~as able to gam a decisive victory over the army of MagnentlUs near Mursa, close to the river Drave in what was then Lower Pannonia. Sulpicius Severus (Chronicle 11.38(91-2)) relates that ConstantlUs remained in prayer in a church near the battlefield during the engagement and that the news of victory was brought to h.m by Valens, bishop ofMursa and a champion of the anti-Nicene cause, in such a way as to suggest that Valens had received the news by supernatural agency. Gibbon of course sneers at Constantius for this unwarlike conduct. 5 But in his many military operations elsewhere Constantius had not shown himself averse to danger nor did he make any attempt to promote Valens thereafter, thou~h he used hlm as an agent on more than one occasion. Constantius passed the winter of 351/2 in Sirmium, and in 352 he forced the passage of the Alps and drove Magnentius out of Aquileia, wh.ch he had made his Head Quarters. Magnentius won a victory agamst the forces of Constantius near Pavia, but was gradually compelled to abandon the Italian and African provinces and to retreat into Gaul. His desper~te attempts to raise money, supplies and troops ahenated the provmc.als. He lost a decisive battle at the foot of Mt. Seleucus inthe Cottian Alps, and in August 353 was compelled to commlt sUlclde. Constantius was now in control of the whole Roman Empire. For the next four years he remained in the West, for

was much prejudiced against his cousin, to ~~~~e acts as a young man

of twenty suddenly laden with vast responslbihtles we should perhaps give the benefit of the doubt. In September 337 the three Caesars, Constantius II, Constantine II and Constans, had declared themselves Augusti, and at Viminacium next year (338) they parcelled out the Empire among themselves. Constantme II mherlted the GalliC, British and Spanish provinces (residing chiefly in Trier); Constans received the Pannonian, Italian and African provinces (making Sirmium his Head Quarters), and Constantius controlled the dioceses of Oriens, Asia, Pontus, and Egypt (livmg for the most part m Antioch). The diocese of Thrace, including Constantinople, had originally been allotted to Constans, who, as much the youngest of the three brothers, was nominally under the tutelage of Constantme II. But in 339/40, facmg attack from his brother to the West, Constans entrusted the diocese of Thrace to Constantius. Constantius had hitherto of necessity spent most of his career as Augustus engaged in a Persian war, either staying in Antio.ch or occupied in actually directing the military operatIOns. In hIS milItary activity he appears to have been conscientious rather than bnlhant. He won no resounding victory; he suffered no crushmg defeat. But m the year 350 he was compelled to pay .attention to events m the Western Empire. In that year MagnentlUs, a general of barbanan ancestry in high command at Autun (Augustodunum) m GailIa Lugdunensis I, where the Emperor Constans was at the time reSldmg, engineered a coup d'etat in which his troops ha.led h.m as Emperor; he succeeded in capturing and killing Constans, and by the end of the '3(2'5, 2.6). . .. f h' 4Nobody who has read Julian's Misopogon can doubt the l~s[ablhty ,0 IS judgment. This extraordinary effusion of the pagan Puri~an, pur~umg ~ pohc~ the exact opposite of Disraeli's 'never apologise, n~ver expla~n', a satire which a,t times breaks down into direct self-defence. laced With quotatJons from the clasSICS and appeals to pagan gods, was the very last sort of statement which a Roman E~peror should make and was least of all calcul:;ated to appeal to the people of Antioch. It reads as if Jean Jacques Rousseau had written Queen Elizabeth I's speech to the troops at Tilbury.

5.Declj~e and Fall of the Roman Empire (cd. J.B. Bury) Vol.lI, 240. For a conSideration of the effect of Magnentius' revolt, see Brennecke Hilarius von P. 65-'71.

3 17

Period of Confusion

( e most p rt making Milan his Head Quarters. He only once visited

~

ome, for a few weeks, in 357. The days were long past when Rome wa the a inistrative centre of the Empire. he ch racter ofConstantius has mostly been p~inted by historians in ark lours. Gibbon regarded all Constantme s sons as weak and _,_ egenelj"te. He accused Constantius particularly of c~uelty: :as the timid are always cruel, the mmd of Constantms was maccess.ble to mercy'." He described the execution of Gallus as adding 'a new crime to the long list of unnatural murders which pollute the honour of the house of Constantine.'? Harnack called Constantius 'an Oriental despot" and said that in Milan he 'actually ruled the Church, but with a brutal despotism'. Constantius has also been accused of inconstancy of purpose, of changing his mind and his policy as every new counsellor influenced him. Imperator mobilis (inconstant Emperor) is the expression of Aminianus Marcellinus. 9 And of course the ecclesiastical historians and writers generally in both ancient and modern times have branded him as a full-blooded Arian determined to persecute the pro-Nicene party out of existence and to stop at no atrocity in doing so. In recent times only Richard Klein, in his Constanti"s II und die Christliche Kirche has defended Constantius. He has indeed made a good case for a re-assessment of Constantius, though one gains the impression from his book that Constantius could do no wrong. Klein has, however, been a vox clamantis in deserto. One point can immediately be made about Constantius. He cannot have been altogether without culture. In the ancient world he had a considerable reputation as an orator, or at least as aspiring to be an orator. When Gibbon says 'he was indifferently skilled in the arts of rhetoriC','o he is unjust. We might dismiss Julian'S fulsome compliments on Constantius' rhetorical power and skill in Panegyric

~

as mere flattery,l1 but Aurelius Victor, Socrates and Zosimus repeat

the compliment.' 2 And we can sympathize with the motives of 60 p. cit. Vol. II, 244. ?Ibid. 247. 8History IV, 63.

9Harnack History IV.73.nl. For inconstancy, see Hilary Lib. con. Const. PL 10:25. 26 (600, 601). lOOp. cit. II, 237. 11

Panegyric 26(47-8); but still this is not completely insignificant. Even a

panegyrist does not compliment Nero on his domestic harmony nor Henry VIII on . 12Aurelius Victor (Epitome de Caesaribus ed. F. Plchlmayr, rev. R. Grundel, Leipzig 1961) 42. I 8 jacundiae cupidus quam cum assequi tarditate ingenii non possel, aliis

his chastity.

3 18

!Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (;50-357)

Constantius in executing Gallus. Gallus during the years 250 to 254. when he was left in charge of the East, had resented the presence of Co~stantius' praetorian prefect, had made no headway in operations agamst thePe.rSlans, and had proved himself at once independent, feroCIOUs and mcompetent. He may even have been meditating that treason agamst Constantius which his half-brother Julian later succes~fully deployed. Even Julian admits his incapacity, and his brutality. 13 What can be done with a failed and impenitent Caesar?l4 The ecclesiasti~al writers compile a list of atrocities for which they behev~ C~nsta?tms to be responsible. Athanasius' Apologia de Fuga and RlStona Ananorum are full of atrocity stories about the behaviour of troops and officials in Egypt, sent by Constantius, in persecuting those who were loyal to Athanasius' cause between 356 and 360. Even allowing for exaggeration, we must accept that Constantius' troops never had any hesitation in forcing their way into churches and suppressing popular demonstrations ruthlessly. We must, however, remember that the frightful riots in Constantinople in the year 342 must have impressed strongly on Constantius' memory what can happen if a mob demonstrating in some Christian cause is allowed to get out of hand. And Constantius had some substantial grounds for thinking that Athanasius was no ordinary doctrinaire blShop supported by an ordinary crowd of adherents. In the eyes of ConstantlUs, Athanasms had committed, or had come to the verge of commmmg, high treason. He m.. y have believed that Athanasius had incited Constans against his brother-Emperor. He had received a deputation from Magnentius; Athanasius' protests about his mnocence on this occasion ring hollow. is He had celebrated the eucharist iri a church built by Constantius in Alexandria but not yet consecrated, an act which was for various reasons at that time thought to be a grave offence.'" The quite unexpected murder of Constansand the swift initial success ofMagnentius must have given Constantms a shock and made him uncertain as to what bishops who had had any relations with the Western church he could trust. invideba~; Zosim~s Historia Nova 1I.44f; Socrates HE 11.28 who represents him as per~uadm~ by hiS oratory the troops at Sirmium to desert Vetranio (an episode which Juhan makes the best of in Panegyric 25(46, 47)). tJLetter to Athens 4 (217-8). t4See Klein Constantius II 2lo-II and esp. n 76 (210). 15S ee above, p. 242. t~Apol ad Const. 6-11; 14-18; and see Girardet, in PTAA 90 and Pietri ibid. 119; OPitz on HA 29.1-2(198), and Klein Conslantius II 87-9.

31 9

Period of Confusion

,I

Further, no Emperor could be expected to view with unconcern the influen e-w~'ch Athanasius had gradually achieved within Egypt. Hi ry in fine piece of rhetorical invective in his Liber contra Cons antium 17 gives a list of Constantius' misdeeds: it is rumoured that e caus .' some exiled bishops to wear on their foreheads labels prod . m' g their condemnation; he waged war a~ain.st th~ see of Alexa ria and against its officials, secular and ecclesIastical, III order to p event Athanasius preaching Christ; he exiled nume.rous Western

--.__ ~lfuhops; he desecrated churches in Milan and eXIled Its bIshop; he exiled Liberius, bishop of Rome (,you wretch, I do not know whether you showed greater impiety in exiling him or in recalling him');l. he committed various atrocities (not specified) in Toulouse. This is not, all things considered, a very grievous indictment. Its very mildness suggests that Hilary would have liked to rake up worse charges, but could not. The Collectio Avellana gives us th~ highly coloured atrocity-stories retailed by the Luclferans MaXlmmus and Faustus. Constantius had forced Maximus bishop of Naples into exile; the bishop was of a delicate constitution and, his health shattered by the experience, he died in exile; another, Rufimanus, was murdered even before he could be exiled: 'Epictetus. that cruel and grim bishop ofCentumc~llae, forced ?im to run in front of his carriage, and while he was runnmg a long dIstance his vital organs burst as a result and his blood poured out and he died. The people of Naples in Campania witness to this, because there his

bloodstains drive out devils from the bodies of the sick, thanks of course to the creed in defence of which he shed his blood' ,19

Saint Janu'lrius had his rival in those days. .' Lucifer of Calaris is the most ferocious accuser of ConstantlUs. HIS charges are so wild and so extravagant that it is difficult to make a plausible selection. Constantius, he says, has 'initiated false accusations, persecuted the worshippers of God, brought idolatry into the church of God, cut the throats of those who believe in the only Son of God by the agency of his soldiers.'20 He has compelled orthodox bishops to communicate with Arians, wishing to

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (350-357) contaminate them with his OWn sacrilege. 2' He has exiled Dionysius bishop of Milan, who could not subscribe to Arian doctrines, though he was willing to condemn Athanasius. 22 Constantius has slaughtered large numbers of people in Alexandria. 23 He is keeping Christians shut up in prison, is depriving them of their property, driving them overseas, torturing them, murdering them. 2' Apart from exam pies of bishops in the West being exiled for their beliefs, the stories of actual outrage and violence referred to by Lucifer all come from Egypt; no doubt he picked them up while he was in exile. Against this indictment there can be set a fairly substantial body of evidence suggesting that Constantius was, by the standard of the late Roman Emperors, tolerant and even at times merciful. Julian in his Panegyric picks out this characteristic to emphasize. He says that he was 'milder than his father', 25 and that he 'rules more mildly and more humanely than the other (emperors)' .26 Even later, when he is under no necessity to flatter Constantius. he admits that he had a

reputation for mildness when he says that 'he was not by disposition invariably mild, even though he appeared to be so to many'.27 Julian notes the Emperor's compassion in sparing the little son of a certain

Silvanus who had had a very brief and unsuccessful career as a pretender to imperial status'>· It is interesting to observe that when the Senate at Rome received a copy ofJulian's Letter to the Senate and People of Athens setting out his reasons for rebellion against Constantius, they protested against his ungrateful treatment of his be~efactor. Constantius' ~onduct did indeed rouse some pro-Nicene

wrIters, such as Athanasius and Ossius, to protest (as we shall see) that the Emperor had no authority over the church, and that people should be permitted to worship as they chose without interference from the State. But Ossius did not protest when Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis ofNicaea were exiled for doctrinal reasons, nor did Athanasius for a moment permit Arians freedom to worship as they chose, and both were quite ready to invoke imperial aid when "Ibid. u.VU(go). 22Il.VIlI(go, 91). 23Moriundum Esse pro Dei Filio II (267); cf. VIII (281. 282).

(PL 10:587""""9). 180 te miserum qui nescio utrum maiore impietate reiegalleris quam remiseris (5 89);

171 I

Hilary is of course referring to the conditions under which Liberius was allowed to return.

19Collectio Avellana 25-26(13). 20De Athanasio I.VlII(I6).

24De Non Parcendo XXII (237). "7(19). 26II(z8)~ he says much the same thing at greater length 39(67). 27L~tters 33(13) 40, 41, oli at "to KnO' eav"t6v xnv'tu1tacnv 1tpUOV, d Kat tMK6l 1tOI..I..Ol<; "tolofi"to<;.

28Panegyric 39(68). So Constantius was not always 'inaccessible to mercy'.

320

32 1

Period of Confusion /

\

,

it s (ted the . We cannot place figures such as these in the same class as c mpio s of ecclesiastical authority against secular violence such as Th m a Becket, Pope Gregory VIIth, John Knox and Dietrich Bonh er.29 It is even possible to contrast Constantius' relative mild ss with the ferocious coercion more than twenty years later of \he-Emperor Theodosius, and not least with his part in choosing an --" unbaptised layman, Nectarius, as bishop of Constantinople, an act to which the pro-Nicene party raised no objection. 30 There is no doubt that Julian is correct in saying that Constantius had a reputation for mildness. Klein is able to quote Aurelius Victor, Ammianus MarceIlinus, Libanius and Themistius in his favour." But humanity is demonstrated more effectively in actions than in words. Constantius was remarkably tolerant to Hilary, who repaid him by abusing him after his death. After exiling Hilary in 356 he allowed him to travel during his exile to Constantinople (though he would not give him an audience nor permit a public debate with Saturninus of Arles);32 Hilary was then able to attend the Council ofSeleucia in 359 and later to return to his see while Constantius was alive and in control of the government. According to Athanasius,33 Constantius at one point (we cannot determine when, but certainly before 357) summoned Ossius to Milan and tried to persuade him to condemn Athanasius. Ossius refused, and the Emperor then allowed him to return to Cordova. Declercq expresses surprise at this leniency, 34 but in fact it is quite characteristic of Constantius. The most remarkable instance of Constantius' mildness is, however, his treatment of Lucifer of Calads, as Klein has perceived." Lucifer may indeed be said to have waged a kind of pamphlet' war with Constantius. Lucifer _quite often quotes Constantius' retorts, conveyed in some form of imperial propaganda,36 to his taunts: Constantius calls him and his friends 29Klein makes this point effectively Constantius II 143-4' 30S 0 Klein op. cit. 152-6. N. Q. King in The Emperor Theodosius and the Establishment of Christianity 94-5 compares Theodosius' actions with those of Constantius, but it must be conceded that Constantius comes better out of the comparison than Theodosius. J10 p. cit. 149 and 0265. 32Sec C. F. A: Borchardt Hilary of PoWers' Role in the Arian Struggle 173-4. 33HA 42-45. 340ssius 445'""'9; see Athanasius HA 42-45. 35Constantius II 148-52. 36S ce De Non Parcendo 11(198) con vincent te libelli redtati a te et dati Romae episcopis etiam catholids ad hoc videlicet ut omni in loco tua roborar; posset blasphemia.

322

Altempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (350-357)

'enemies of peace, foes of unity, opponents too of brotherly love'," and claims '/ desire peace to prevail in my Empire'. 38 He had said 'You have insulted me, Lucifer'.39 And Lucifer is aware that he is being treated with restraint and rather resents it: 'Why do you not revenge yourself on me, Emperor? Why do you not condescend to repel the insults aimed at you, to retaliate against a man who tells lies'40 (presumably Constantius had, with ample reason, called Lucifer a liar). Certainly Lucifer had written attacks upon the Emperor which would have richly justified Constantius had he cut off his head or had him strangled. His works consist of almost no arguments in favour ofN, which he scarcely understands, but rather of one continued shrill monotone of abuse. Constantius is a murderer, an idolator, worse than the Jews, than the pagans, as bad as all the worst rulers in the Old and New Testaments. He is to be shunned as a heretic; he is not to be obeyed as a ruler. When Lucifer produces this sentence he is hurling one of his less obnoxious insults: 'But you realize, even as you stand behind the veil in your palace, that all the servants of God support my propaganda designed for their sal~ation. support it with their mind, with their will. their activity, theIr strength, their words. despising your worthless authority.'41

Lucif~r looks forward to the period when from Heaven he will behold Constantius in the liquid flames of Hell. 42 He faintly realizes how unbecoming to his episcopal status it is to be occupied in such :~enzied rantings at the Emperor: 'No doubt you are saying in reply The Lord WIShed you to be gentle because you are his bishop," and yet you are showing yourself consistently aggressive (pervicacem) to me. '~3 But·this passing thought is dismissed, and the violent jeremiad continues. Yet, In the face of such open defiance of his dignity and authonty and such blackening of his reputation, all that Constantius did to Lucifer was to exile him to various places in the Levant forbidding him for a period to be visited by his friends but permittin~ hIm the full use of his virulent pen. A mild martyrdom indeed! 37De Non Conveniendo cum Haeretids 1( 16 5). 38Ibid. III(170); cf. De Regibus Aposlatids I(I35); 11(138); VI(I47); De Athanasio I.XXIX(49); De Non Po,eendo II(I97; I98), XXII(2SS). 39De Nml Parcendo XIII( 2I 9). "Ibid. XIII(2I9). 41 Moriendum Esse 1(266). 42De Non Parcendo XXXIU(25S). 43Moriendum Esse V(276).

323

Period of Confusion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (350--357)

Iy is not easy to estimate justly the underlying policy of C9'nstantius. Estimates have ranged from that of Schwartz, who scribes him as waging war against the homoousios,44 to that of lein who denies that he was wholly influenced by Val ens and / Ursa~ius and sees his motives as rather political than doctrinal,45 formed by a desire to obtain unity in the church. It must be noted that Constantius was a devout man. Hilary says

358. The ancients, as we have seen, accused him of inconstancy. so But on the whole he followed, perhaps because he saw in this the best chance of uniting the church, the Homoian line. And he must have died in the conviction tht he had indeed united the church round this innocuous but vague doctrIne.

)

~

'You welcome bishops with a kiss ... you bow your head for a

2_

The First Sirmian Creed (351)

blessing ... you condescend to dine (with bishops) ... you free them from the poll-tax ... '46

(though he does not think that this .will d~ Constantius any good). And that Constantius was not lackmg In IntegrIty IS shown by hIS nominating on his deathbed Julian as his successor, in spite of the fact that Julian was at that moment in arms against him. We must credit him with sincerely desiring the welfare both of the church and of the Empire. Klein is no doubt right in making the point more than once that he was understandably anxious that bishops should not exceed the bounds and rights of their sees and interfere with the decisions of other bishops and synods,47 and we have seen that this is precisely the 48 charge that Ammianus Marcellinus lays against Athanasius. But it is only by confining me meaning of ,Ad an ism' to the doctrine of the Neo-Arians, Aetius and Eunomius, that Klein can contend that Constantius never committed himself to a doctrine which is recognizably Arian. 4' He certainly desired the unity ~fthe Church, as his father had, and felt himself bound to follow a pohcy that would secure it. But his actions in the years which we are about to consider, 351-357, and later during the closing years of his life; do not suggest that he was only concerned with unity, political and ecclesiastical. We shall see that he favoured one solution to the problem of the Christian doctrine of God, that which is best called Homoian, and that he rejected others, the Homoousian and the Anhomoian. He did not pursue this policy consistently; he wavered both between 344 a~d 35 1 and briefly, when he was flirting with the HomOlouSlan party, In 44'Zur Kirchengeschichtc' 153. 4sConstantius II 87-9.

46Liber contra Constantium 10(587). 470p. cit. 166, 205. 48S ee above, P.241. 490p. cit. 157-8.

324

A Council held in Antioch in 351 (or possibly in 352) protested against the re-admission of Athanasius to his see, and probably appointed in his place George, the learned Cappadocian, patron of Aetius, who held strong views on the necessity of demolishing pagan temples where possible. But there was no immediate prospect of his being able to enter Alexandria. 51 The centre of interest as far as doctrine was concerned had shifted, with the Emperor, farther west, first to Sirmium and then to Aries and Milan. While Constantius was in Sirmium in the winter of 351, a Council was held there. For the fifth time Photinus was condemned after a debate held between him and Basil of Ancyra, reported by Epiphanius. 52 Constantius then banished Photinus, and he now ceased to figure in the Arian Controversy. He was replaced by the anti-Nicene Germinius 50C[ Theodoret HE 11.3 I and from the oppOsite end of the spectrum Philostorgius HE V.S(69). 51Sozomenus HE IV.8.4. He mentions as the leaders of the thirty bishops who assembled for this council Narcissus (Neronias), Theodore (Heraclea), Eugenius bishop of Nicaea, Patrophilus ofScythopolis and Menophantus of Ephesus, whom we may regard as the continuers of the theological tradition ofEusebius of Caesarea. For the alternative date for George's appointment, see above, p. 3 12. s2Panarion 71.1-5(249-55). Socrates HE II.29, 30and Sozomenus HE IV .6. If give a~ ac~ount of this C~unciJ. but they both confuse it with the later (3rd) Council of Slrmlum of357. ThIS one must count as the Second Council ofSirmium which produced the First Creed of Sirmium. The two historians also differ as to what bishops attended this Sirmian Council of 351. They agree on the names of Mark of . Arethusa. Basil of Ancyra and George of Alexandria, Valens of Mursa and Ossius, but Socrates adds Pancratius of Pelusium and Hypatianus of Heraclea (what has happened to Theodore?). It is most unlikely. in my opinion, that Ossius was present on this occasion, but it isjust possible that this was when Constantius asked him to condemn Athanasius and when he refused with im punity. Whether George had been consecrated bishop of Alexandria by now and so attended the Council is uncertain. In fact we cannot place much confidence in the lists given us of the members of this Council.

325

Period of Confusion

(Athanasius HA 74). This Council produced a creed, which must be examined here. 53 The main body of the creed was precisely the same as the Fourth Creed of Antioch of 341, which had already been used at least twice in the business of devising creeds, and its first anathema is identical with the one and only anathema of that document. 54 In the First Sirmian Creed, however, twenty-six more anathemas were added. They ran thus, condemning the views: 55 II III IV V

VI VII VIII IX X XI

XII

That the Father and Son are two gods. That the Son of God, who is Christ before the ages, did not operate under (t'mouPY'l'c6ta) the Father to create the universe. That the Ingenerate (aytvv1]tov) or a part of him, was born ofMary. That the Son (existed only) in (the) foreknowledge (of the Father) before (his birth from) MaryS. and he was not begotten from the Father before the ages, [and with God and all things were made by him]. That the ousia of God is extended or retracted. That the Son is the ousia of God extended, or the extension of his ousia. That the Son is the immanent (tv1)Ui06tOC;) or proceeding (ltpOCPOPIK6C;) Logos of God. That the Son is only a man from Mary. That God and man who were from Mary is the Ingenerate (aytvv1]tov). If anyone interprets the text 'I am God the first and I am after those things and apart from me there is no God' (Isa 44:6 LXX) [which applies to the destruction of idols and things which are not gods1as implying the destruction of the Only-begotten [who is God before the ages1in the Jewish tradition. If anyone interprets the text 'the Word became flesh'

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (35(}-357)

XIII

XIV XV XVI XVII

XVIII

XIX XX XXI

53Sources for this creed are Athanasius De Synodis 27; Socrates HE 11.30. (Latin'

version Hilary De Syn. 37; see Hahn Symbole 196-9 (§I60). For this Second Sirmian Council, see Gwatkin SA 149; Zeiller Origines 269-71; Loafs 'Arianismus' 30;

Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschic,hte' ISO; Meslin Les Ariens 268-70; Declercq Ossius

XXII

420-1.

XXIII

545ee above, PP.291-2. 55The views of the authors of this creed, as distinguished from the propositions which they are condemning, are put in square brackets. 56The compilers arC here using a kind of theologians' shorthand.

XXIV

326

Gn 1:14) so as to mean that the Logos was converted Into flesh or in taking flesh suffered change. That accepting that the Only-begotten Son of God was crucified means that his Godhead endured corruption or suffering or change or reduction or destruction. If anyone says that at Gn 1:26, 'Let us make man', God was talking to himself [and not the Father to the Son]. That Abraham did not see the Son but the ingenerate (ayevv1]tov) God or a part of him. ThatJacob did not wrestle (Gn 32:24-32) with the Son In the gUIse of a man, but with the ingenerate God, or a part of him. That Gn 19:24 ('The Lord rained down fire from the Lord' LXX) is not to be applied to the Father and the Son but he rained from himself. [(In fact) the Lord the Son rained from the Lord the Father]. If anyone reading that the Father is Lord and the Son Lord and that the Father and Son are Lord [(because he is Lord from Lord)] says that there are two gods .,. [we do not make the Son equal to (cmvtacrcroll6v) the Father, but subordinated (oltOt6taYlltvov) to the Father. And he did not come down to Sodom (Gn 18:21) WIthout the wIll of the Father nor did he rain from himself but from the Lord, that means at the command of the Father, nor does he sit at his own right hand, but he obeys since the Father says 'Sit then at my right hand' (Ps IIO(I09):I).] T"'at the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one Person (ltpocr
\~

\1

'I

/) " "

XXVI

XXVII

Period of Confusion

That the Father begot the Son without willing it, [for the Father did not beget the Son under compulsion, driven by some physical necessity against his will, but he achieved it by begetting him from himself as soon as he willed both timelessly and without suffering (ultl19co<;) ]. That the Son is ingenerate and unbeginning (uytVV'1
Much of this statement consists of a dispute over texts which had long been thought crucial for the establishment of the Christian doctrine of God, and here certainly reflects the argument between Basil and Photinus of which Epiphanius can give us a brief impression. S7 Its main weight certainly is directed towards stamping out the doctrines of Photinus and beyond him those of Marcellus and beyond him of Sabellianisrrt generally (note the use of prosopon which was not characteristic of Marcellus but was apparently used by Sabellius). At least fourteen out of the twenty-six new anathemas are' directed against this kind of doctrine (IV, VIII-X, XIV-XXIII, XXVII). Three could be said to strike at extreme Arianism (XIV, XII, XIV)", though there is no sign in this creed that the Neo-Arianism of Aetius and Eunomius has yet emerged into view, unless we are to regard the frequent application of ,in generate' (uytVV'1
58And. of course I, which was repeated from the Fourth Antiochene ofj4J.

32 8

'Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (35{}-357)

appealed to N in defending his views, and perhaps the authors of this creed may have hoped to persuade the Western bishops that doctrines such as those ofPhotinus and Marcellus are the inevitable outcome of the doctrine expressed in N. The creed may even have been partly deSIgned in opposition to opinions of Athanasius, which would by now have become widely known. This creed marks a definite shift towards a more sharply anti-Nicene doctrine, though it cannot quite yet be said to be explicitly pro-Arian. It foreshadows rather than anticipates the next creed of Sirmium, that of 357. 59 Opitz conjectured 60 that it was at this council that Valens and Ursacius withdrew their earlier recantations. Those reliable wind-cones may well at this point have thus signalled that the imperial wind was changing to an anti-Nicene quarter.

3· The Councils of Aries (353) and of Milan (355)

Now that as a result of the collapse of Magnentius' short period of power. Constantius found himself committed to spending an mdefimte period governing the Western Empire, he inaugurated a pohcy of persuading or coercing the churches of the West into agreement, or a semblance of agreement, with those of the East. It has been much debated whether at this point he contented himself with attempting to induce the western bishops to renounce their support of Athanasius, or whether he demanded from them acceptance of some doctn~al formula as well as renunciation of Athanasius. No such clearly-acknowledged formula backed by coercion and widely Imposed IS given us by the ecclesiastical historians writing in the fifth century until they reach the Councils ofSeleucia and Ariminum and their sequel in the year 359, though at least two creeds were produced before then. But we have to remember that the Greek historians of the fifth century were generally ill-informed about events which took place in the Latin-speaking West. Further, almost all authorities are agreed that most Western bishops had no deep-rooted objection to dlSowmng AthanaslUs, who by this time can have been only a 59

1 cannot there.fore agree with Klein when he maintains (Constantius II 59-60 (and n 127» that chiS creed wasas anti-Arian as its prototype, the IVth Antiochene of 34r. 6°Note on Athanasius HA 29.1-2(198).

329

(

\

Period of Confusion

Artempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (;50-357)

distant memory to most ofthem.· ' If all that was demanded of these bishops by the Emperor was a renunciation of Athanasius, and perhaps a recognition of George as bishop of Alexandria, it is difficult to imagine why any Western bishop refused the Emperor's request, especially as we know that the bishop of Rome, Liberius, and the bishop of Milan, Dionysius, were willing to disown Athanasius with or without conditions (see above P.321 and below pp. 33 I, 338-9)· The only motive we can ascribe to those who objected and refused is that they were also being asked to accept a doctrinal formula which was uncongenial to them. The arguments of Klein to the effect that in 353 and 355 Constantius required no doctrinal assent from Western bishops are not convincing.· 2 In fact Girardet has made an interesting case for concluding that Constantius did submit a doctrinal statement for the bishops at the Councils of Aries and Milan to sign. He refers to an expression of Sulpicius Severns (Chron II.39(92) epistolam pravitate infeetam), and some passages from Lucifer of Calaris detailing uot only the requirements concerning condemning Athanasius and recognizing George set forth by Constantius at Milan, but also a doctrinal demand, comprising erat quando non erat, etfaetus est ex nihilo, et non est una potentia patris etfilii (there was a time when he did not exist, and he was made from notliing and the power of the Father and the Son is not the same).·3 We may agree with Klein in regarding it as wholly unlikely that Constantius required as drastically Arian a statement as this to be accepted at either Aries or Milan. But Girardet calls attention to a statement by Hilary concerning something which 'they

laid down in a lett~r', meaning apparently some formulae put forward by Eastern bIshops at some point in the process of getting rid ofPhotmus whIch was designed to do more than this: it included the words

61S ee the statement of Lucifer about Dionysius of Milan and Hilary Coil. Antiar. AVII.S(92); Sulpicius Severus Chron 11.39(92); and also Gwatkin SA 152; Zeiller Origines 271-3; Giarardet in PTAA 71-83; Brennecke Hilarius von P. 133-146,

157""9 8 .

620p. cit. 55--6, 59""'""60. He cites Hilary's statement (De Synodis 91) that until he reached the East after being exiled he had never heard of N. But Western bishops did not need N to teach them that the doctrine of those in the East standing in the tradition ofEusebius of Caesa rea was not consistent with their tradition. MesHn (Les Ariens 270-3) had anticipated Klein in refusing to believe that Constantius submitted a doctrinal formula to those who attended these councils. Brennecke throughout his work (Hilarius von P.) argues in this sense also, but I find it impossible to believe that Constantius could have been so irresponsible as to base his whole ecclesiastical policy over four years simply on a vendetta against a single bishop. 63Girardet in PTAA 66-83 and lucifer in De Athanasius n.30; 1.10; 11.25, and De '10'1 Conveniendo VI (quotation from the last).

33 0

'there is one ingenerate God the Father and one only Son God fi God , L·19h t firom L·19h t, fiIrst-bom of all creation, and the Holy ' rom Spirit the Comforter'. 64

Hilary says that these statements, perfectly orthodox in themselves were designed t? link together in the minds of the unwary th~ rejectIOn of Photmus, the alleged guilt of Athanasius and ultimately the abandonment of the Catholic faith, and that what they really mtended to teach was 'made Out ofnothing, there was a time when he dId not eXISt and before he Was begotten he did not exist' (ex nihilo factum, erat quando non erat, priU5quam naseeretur non erat). It would be typIcal of LucIfer to transform what Hilary said was intended but not stated. mto an accusation that Constantius actually laid down the offenSIve words. This may well, then, have been the gist of the formula whIch Constantius imposed at Aries and at Milan and which caused such alarm to well-informed minds in the West . Constantius was at Aries in the autumn of 353. It was ;hirty years smce h~ had. been made Caesar (at the age of six!) and he was celebratmg ?~S trieennalia, the last embers of Magnentius' revolt recently extmgUlshed. He took the opportunity of summoning a councd, attended by several Western bishops .• ' Liberius, who had succeeded Juhus (ob Mar 12th 352) on May 5th in the previous year was represented by two bIShops, Vincentius of Capua and Marcellu; of so'."ewhere in Campania. Valens of Mursa was Constantius' agent at thIS council. Liberius had expected that when his agents had condemned Athanasius, as they were ready to do, the rest of the bIshops would then on their part condemn Arius. We have no strong

~4Col~. Antiar. 11.9.4 (147. 148) unum qUidem ingenitum esse deum patrem et unum ;nuumfi lurn 1 ~eum ex deo 1 lumen ex lumine 1 primogenitum omnis creaturae 1 and Spiritum anctu~ paracluum. These words are in fact remarkably like some of the last few ex~~essl0ns of the Second .Creed of Sirmium of 357. C /I S~ur~es for the Couned of ArIes are Sulpicius Severns Chron II 39(92-3)' Hilary L'~ '. n,ttar. AVII. 1~(89-?4). (Liberius' Letter Obsecro); Uber ad Constant. For AICe~~~ ~areer eo~sldere~ 10 ?re~ter d;cail, see ~elow pp. 338-41. See also Gwatkin .. 3, SA 152, Loofs Anamsmus 30; OpitZ on HA 29.I-2(19~200)· Z ·11 0 rrgtnes 272-)' S' .C . . 7 • el er '" ' ImOnetrl ffSl 2J5--'7:).Gaudemet ConcilesGalloisduIV . 18' Pletn In Politique et Tlleologie 121-2. slee e 2,

i.8.

33 1

/(\

\

)

'~~~--r

Period of Confusion

reaso~\for thinking that Valens and Saturninus of Arles (who was. an

adhere~t of his point of view) would have objected to condemnmg Arius. But in fact they did not, and it is likely that they required those present to sign a doctrinal formula which seemed to the discerning among them to admit an Arian interpretation, as we have seen. Apparently the Pope's legates signed whatever they were asked to sign. This greatly disturbed Liberius when he heard of It, and he hastened to disown his representatives (see below, pp. 338-9). Paulinus of Treves alone refused to sign, and was exiled. He died in exile.·· Lucifer of Calaris, who was a friend and supporter of Liberius, now suggested to the Pope that he should request Constantius to summon a General Council at Aquileia,·7 and LucIfer was one of the delegation which brought this request, of which Liberius approved, to the Emperor at Milan. At some point about now, dIfficult to determine exactly, a council took place at Biterrae (Bezlers) which was attended among others by Hilary who in 353 had been consecrated bishop of Poi tiers. We do not know its exact date, though we can conjecture 356 with some probability, and we have no information about what precisely took place at It. The result of ~t was, however, that Hilary was exiled by the Emperor. Probably thIS was one of a number of local councils held throughout Gaul at the Emperor's behest at which a doctrinal formula open to an Arian interpretation was presented to those who attended; Hilary refused to sign it; Saturninus of Aries, to whom Hilary shows consistent hostility, informed upon him to Constantius, and this sentence was the result.· 8 We do not know how many bishops attended the Council of Milan in 355, but hardly enough to make it into the general council for which Liberius had asked.· 9 It is impossible to reconstruct what 66Athanasius Apol. ad Const. 27. 67S 0 Declercq Ossius 430-1. 68HiJary Lib. con. Const. PL 10:2(579). As Hilary associates the ye~r of his exile with the exilings ofDionysius. Eusebius. Lucifer (all in US) and PauIinu~ (35.3). we

cannot be sure of the precise date. He attributes his sentence to the machma~lon~ of

Satuminus, Valens and Ursacius. This reference and Jerome De ScrlptoTlbus Ecclesiasticis 100 (PL 23:699) are the only aUusipns to the synod of Biterrae w~ich survive. See Gaudcmet Conciles Gallais due IJftmt siecie 86. For the date see Zeiller Origines 274. Brennecke has his own construction, op. cit. 23~4S· . 69Sources for the Council ofMilan are Hilary Liber ad Constanttum 1.8; AthanaslUs HA 31-34; Rufinus HE 1.20; Socrates 11.36; Sozomenus HE IV·9; TheodOI:et H.~ 11.1-5. See also Loofs . Arianismus' 30; Zeiller Origines 273-4; SimonettI CrISt 217-220; Girardet as above, p. 000; Pietri PTA 121-2. Baronius discovered a list of

33 2

~

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (350-357)

precisely took place. Klein alleges that Dionysius of Milan presided and that Paulinus of Trier, though under sentence of banishment, was permitted to attend. 70 Hilary says that Eusebius of Vercelli was ordered, indeed entreated, to come to Milan, yet when he came for ten days he was prevented from entering the church where the council was held, and when he was able to appear, along with Lucifer ofCalaris and 'Roman clergy', all had been fixed beforehand. He was called upon to condemn Athanasius, but he replied that as there were heretics present he must safeguard the faith, whereupon he produced a copy ofN and declared himself ready to condemn Athanasius if the others would sign this creed. Dionysius of Milan was preparing to Sign the document when Valens knocked the pen out of his hand, crying 'This sort of thing can't be done here' (non posse fieri ut aliquid inde gereretur). There was a popular outcry; the proceedings were removed from the church to the imperial palace, where the Emperor and his agent' could control them more readily.7! Athanasius gives a lively but not altogether reliable account of precisely what Constantius is supposed to have said on this occasion when he met opposition" to his wishes: 72 When people objected to Constantius' demands and said 'This is no-t the church's rule (eICICATJcnacrt"ucQv ICuv6vu) " in reply he (Constantius)

said 'But what I wish, that must be the rule; when I said this those who are called the bishops of Syria allowed it. So now either give in or you

will be exiled!' And Athanasius adds that the bishops at the time warned Constantius 'not to destroy the customs of the church nor to confuse the government of the Roman empire with the ordering of

the church'. No doubt Athanasius is here describing what in effect Constantius intended, but it is very unlikely that he used these actual ~ords and even less likely that any bishops on that occasion dared to address him as boldly as this. The upshot of the proceedings was that almost everybody present acquiesced in the Emperor's demands, abo~lt 30 names in the arc~ives of the church of Vercdli (since lost) which he c6ruec~:ed to refer to the bishops at~ending this council. The n:t.me of Eusebius of

~erceIh IS absent. but apparently Dionysius of Milan and Rhoclianus of Toulouse signed the final document, which seems odd. See Brennecke Hilarius von P. 165--6. 7oConstantius JJ 88-9. But he admits that Valens intervened decisively at the end of the Council. 71Hilary Uber ad Canst. 111.1(186-7). See also Eusebius Vercelli Ep I • .. 72HA 33.7; 34.1(202).

333

/

......+- ..

)

'-

Period of Confusion

condemned Athanasius, and probably also signed some formula which was not openly Arian but was patient of an Arian interpretation. Those who refused, Dionysius of Milan, Eusebius of Vercelli and Lucifer of Calaris, were deposed and exiled. Auxentius, a protege of Gregory of Alexandria who did not even know Latin, was made bishop of Milan. 73 Constantius was now able to tum his attention to the man whom he might well have regarded as his most formidable opponent, Liberius, bishop of Rome.

4. Ossius and Liberius We have already seen that Ossius presided at Antioch in 324/5, at Nicaea in 325 and at the gathering of the Western bishops in Serdica in 343,74 and that he may have paid a visit to the Emperor at Milan subsequently when he refused to accept his demands. 75 He clearly did not attend the Council of Milan of 355. 76 Athanasius gives us a letter which he says that Ossius wrote to Constantius when the Emperor's policy in the West after the defeat of Magnentius began to be clear, perhaps in the year 356.77 The part of it which Athanasius gives is remarkably frank in tone. It rebukes Constantius, whose grandfather Maximian, Ossius said, had conducted a persecution (in which Ossius suffered), for interfering in ecclesiastical affairs where he has no right to intrude, and vindicates the right of the church to manage its own affairs independently of the Emperor: 'Do not intrude yourself into ecclesiastical affairs, and do not give orders to us about such subjects, but rather learn about such matters

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (350-357)

fr~m us. God has assigned the Empire to you, and has entrusted us WIth the affairs of the church'.78 So much do these sentiments suit just what Athanasius thought about the, behaVIOur of Constantius at the time that these words were wn~ten that some have impugned the authenticity of the letter. Klem, for mstance, suggested that Athanasius simply invented it; it is mconSlstent, he thinks with Ossius' previous attitude to the imperial government, when he was the trusted agent and confidant of 79 Constantine. But the letter scarcely merits this drastic treatment All parties in the Arian Controversy were as ready to champion th~ freedom of the church when they were out of favour with the Emperor as they were happy to accept his assistance when he supported them, , The only other known facts about Ossius are that Liberius wrote hIm a letter m 353 describing his disappointment at the outcome of the Council of Aries, 80 and that in the year 357 he was, though then an Immensely old man, perhaps a centenarian, at the order of the Emperor brought from Cordova to Sirmium and there, faced with the demand t~ condemn Athanasius and to assent to the drastically subordmatIOnIst creed just produced by the third Council of that city, he, refused the first but gave in to the second demand.81 AthanaslUs makes three references to Ossius: at Apologia Secunda 89 he wntes: 'for a shor~ time he was frightened by Constantius' threats and decided not to reSIst them (the ~rians), b~t the great violence and despotic government of ConstantlUs, and hIS many injuries and blows make it

clear that he (Ossius) did not condemn us, but, because through the 73For Auxemius see Athanasius HA 7S~ Sulpicius Severus Chron. II 39(92-3). Eusebius was exiled first to Scythopolis, where he was lodged with its bishop Patrophilus (Epiphanius Panarion 30.S; Eusebius Vercelli Ep. II.). then to Cappadocia and then to the Thebaid. Dionysius was sent to Sebaste in Armenia and soon died there (Basil Ep. 197). Lucifer was sent off to. Germanicia in Syria where Eudoxius was then ~ishop. then to Eleutheropolis in Palestine and then to the Thebaid Gerome Vir. Ill. 95; Socrates HE Ill. 5; Sozomenus HEV .12). It was becawe they had been relegated to the Thebaid that Eusebius and Lucifer were able to attend Athanasius' Council of Alexandria in 362. 74See above, pp. 147-8, 154,305. He is the first to sign the doccrinal statement at Serdica, Hilary Coli. Antiar. B 1I.4{131"'""'9). 7SSee above, p.322. 76S 0 Declercq Ossius 417. "So Declercq op. cit. 346; cf. 397.

334

7SA

h

'

79 t anasl~S HA 44.1-11(.20'7."'""'9), 9uotation 7(~08). . C~nstantlus II 133-4; h~ thmks Its greeting O(JlO~ KcovO"taV't{vcp paoH•.£l tv KVPt(P IS oddly bare. and t~inks he can detect ringing all through it Athanasius' hatred of Valens and Ursaclus 80See below, p. 340. . 81Sources ~o! Ossius' final submission are Athanasius' Apol. Sec. 89; HiJar De Syn. 87: ~UJpl~lus Severus Chron 1I.40{93-4); Philostorgius IV.3 (very vague) Yand s~urce.s gIVen l.n ~he text below. G. S. M. Walker's article 'Ossius ofCordov~ and t e Nlcene Fal.th . suggests that what Ossius really did here was to repent of his extreme S~bel1iamsm. That the document produced by him as the e~cyclical of the Western. blsho~s at. Ser~ica is disastrously near Sabellianism cannot be denied, but t~at OSSl~S at SlrmlUm m 357 meant sincerely to recant his near-SabeIlian views is s ~er c~llJectu~e unsupported by any evidence. Declercq Ossius 474-500 has an ex austlVe reVIew of the sources; cf. Moreira Potamius 86-j.

335

Period of Confusion weakness of old age he could not bear the blows, he yielded to them temporarily' .

In Apologia de Fuga 5 (1-3(71)) he laments the fate of the aged Ossius, compelied by blows and threats to sign an Anan formula, 0 .and , agam In

he suggests that it was only a temporary weakness on SSlUS part. Historia Arianorum 45 he says that Constantius summone.d OSSlUS to · S· IrmlUm and kept him there a whole year in spite of hIS. great b tage he until he agreed to communicate with Valens and UrsaclUs, u. steadfastly refused to condemn Athanasius. And just before he dIed ( resumably now back in Cordova) he ~ondemned the Anan heresy, exhorted everybody to avoid it. It IS admItted now by VIrtually everybody that what Ossius signed was the Second SlrmIan Creed of 357·'2 . . . , The title of the creed of Sirmium of 357 as gIven. m HIlary s De Synodis is Exemplum Blasphemiae apud Sirmium per. OsslUmet PotamJUm conscriptae. 83 We shall later discuss the authorshIp of thIS creed (see below pp. 345-6), but it is most unlikely that OSSlUS, very, very old and hitherto stoutly anti-Arian, should have wntten or. collaborated in writing this formula. In another work HIlary agam suggests a connection between Ossius and the writing of thIS creed, when, giving a list of creeds produced between 325 and 358, he refers to deliramenta Osii et incrementa Valentis et Ursacii. '4 Two other ~lluslOns to Ossius' presence at Sirmium in 357 appear in the De SynodlS. One IS almost kindly:

a~d

'because at Sirmium a creed had broken out consisting of a new form

ofimpiety and yet one that had long festered, through ,~~e agency of Ossius who had forgotten his former words and acts. 82Even Declercq admits that Ossius signed this (op, cit. 502-25). Opit~ (o?te on In 3.57 before the E~peror arrived and signed the creed after hi~ arrival. Whether ?~lUS

HA 4S in lac) thinks that Ossius communicated Wlth Valens and UrsaCIUS

really recanted his submission to Arianism before h~ died must be regar e as doubtful. Neither Hilary nor Phoebadius say anythmg about such a volte face. Declercq accepts it as true (op. cit. 50 5-2 5). . . . . D 83' A copy of the Blasphemy of Sirmium wntten by OSSlUS and PotamlUs , e 8 Sy•. 11(4 7). . . dd") f V I and 84'The lunacy of Ossius and the mterpolatIons (or a ~tlons 0 a ~ns . Ursacius' (Lib. con. Constantium 23 (598»; the first phrase certamly refers to Slrm;~~ 11 357' but it is not dear what the rest of the sentence refers to; perhaps to the c 1 of Sir~ium 359; conceivably to the creed of Nice, which, it was alleged, Va ens tampered with. "De Sy•. 63(523).

"-

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Two

(35(}--357)

And later in the same work, pointing out how little opposition there was to N in the West, he says that nobody wanted to drop it 'except the aged Ossius, and as for him, he was too much in love with the tomb."6 Phoebadius of Agen, who was greatly surprised by Ossius' assent to the creed of 357, after recalling his valiant service at Nicaea and against Arianism and suggesting that we can hardly take his change of view seriously, remarks shrewdly 'For if his doctrine was wrong when he was nearly ninety, I cannot believe that it was right When he was over ninety.'87

And as he concludes this passage by a quotation from Ezekiel 33: 12 The righteousness of the righteous man shall not save him in that day in which he shall err', it is clear that he knows nothing of a later and final change of doctrinal allegiance by Ossius. The list of atrocity stories gathered by Maximinus and Faustinus in the Collection Avellana includes some awful warnings involving Ossius. Ossius had earlier dOnounced Potamius of Lisbon as an heretic among the Spanish bishops. But Ossius himself'summoned before the Emperor Constantius on a complaint lodged by Potamius' gave way, agreed to heresy, and was allowed back to Spain with the injunction to persecute any non-Arian bishops there. There follows a long and implausible account of how Gregory of Elvira, commanded by Ossius to adopt Arianism in the presence of the (pagan) vicarius Clementinus at Cordova, refused, whereupon Ossius was seized with a fit which appeared to be (but apparently was not) fatal (to survive a stroke at one hundred years old is a remarkable achievement!). Clementinus refused to try the accused and Gregory departed, 8 vindicated: ' Again, Florentius, bishop of Emerita (Merida) had not signed any Arian formula but had communicated with Ossius and Potamius. He met an exemplary death, falling down in a fit every time he tried to occupy his (episcopal) throne, and finally expiring as a result of this infirmity.89 It is as unlikely that Ossius, on returning to Cordova from Sirmium in 357, occupied himself in persecuting Supporters of the 86Ibid. 87(539); presumably Hilary means that he was senile. 87Co1ltra Arianos 23 (PL 20:30): i.e. ifhe was wrong at Nicaea and Serdica, why should he be right at Sirmium? 88Coll. Avellana (2) 32-41(13-17), quotation 32 (15). 89lbid. 43-46 (18). Epiphanius (Panarion 73:14) says that Ossius was hurried into signing a document which opted for anhomoion kat'ousian, which is not strictly correct.

337

Period of Confusion

Nicene Creed in Spain as that he finally recanted his submission to Arian allegiance. His great age is quite sufficient explanation for his yielding to imperial pressure without assuming that he experienced a genuine change of heart so as to adopt Arianism or that he was reacting against previously held Sabellian views. He did not compose the Second Sirmian Creed of357, but he lent the great weight of his reputation to it. He probably died in Cordova in the winter of 357/8.'0 . The case of the other man who recanted under pressure from Constantius at thisperiod, Liberius, is more complicated, because at one stage in his career he made some concessions to the Arian or nearArian doctrine which the Emperor wished him to embrace, and it is a matter of difficulty to determine precisely how far he went in compromise. The Council of Eastern bishops which met in Antioch in 351 or 352 and which probably elected George bishop of Alexandria wrote to Liberius accusing Athanasius anew of the actions which had caused his deposition at Tyre in 335 and requesting him to recognise George, not Athanasius, as bishop of Alexandria. In reply to this offensive Athanasius called a synod of bishops in Egypt which vindicated his conduct and he then sent a representative to Rome to protest his innocence." Liberius himself gives two different accounts of this incident. In the year 353 or 354 he wrote a letter to Constantius, sending it by the hand of Lucifer of Calaris.' 2 In this letter. which is known by its opening word in Latin, Obsecro, Liberius regrets that he cannot command the Emperor's agreement, not only about the affair of Athanasius, but about other affairs as well. 93 The Emperor had accused him, in a communication which has

not survived, of suppressing letters from the Eastern bishops about the misdeeds of Athanasius. We did not suppress them, says Liberius, but on the contrary published them. But afterwards he had heard that a

synod of eighty Egyptian bishops had denied the allegations made against Athanasius; the statement was left with Liberius by one

Eusebius before he hurried back to Africa (clearly this was the synod called by Athanasius to rebut the offensive from Antioch and the representative sent by him to Rome was Eusebius). Vincentius of 90S 0 Dec1ercq Ossius 528. . 91 Athanasius Apol. ad Const. 2, 3. 5. 6-7. 14. 19; Socrates HE II.26; Sozomenus HE

IV.I; Theodoret HE 11.16.

92This is the letter Obsecro. to be found in Hilary Coll. Antiar. AVII.I-
Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (J5(}-357) Capua, sayS' Liberius, took this Egyptian statement with him to Aries and also a xequest for the calling of a counc~. 94 I have behaved in no worldly way, Liberius protests, in no way unbecoming to my office,

an office to which I acceded unwillingly. Nihil addi episcopatui urbis Romae, nihil minui passus sum ('I allowed nothing to be added and

nothing to be substracted from the see of the city of Rome'). I have kept the traditional faith.95 The Easterners complain. Liberius goes.

on, that I will not join in peace with them. But eight years ago four bishops from the East in Milan refused to condemn Arius' heresy and left the council in a rage (see below p. 307). The doctrine· advocated under colour of Athanasius' affairs is that which caused Alexander Athanasius' predecessor. to inform Silvester, my predecessor. that h~ had excommunicated eleven presbyters and eleven deacons for

holding it. These outcast people have now set up factions (conciliabula) with which George in Alexandria says that he is now in communion. 96 Consider, please, that my legates suggested that they would agree with the demands of the Easterners (i.e. to condemn Athanasius) on condition that they in their tum would condemn the

teaching of Arius. A council (at Aries) was regularly held, and my legates were informed that the others (the Easterners) could not condemn Arius' doctrine but that Athanasius should be excommunicated. In these circumstances, should not Athanasius' case be carefully considered?97 A concern for true religion should then persuade you to preserve the Nicene faith firmly and to concede to my legates, Lucifer, Pancratius and Hilary, the calling ofa Council.98

This is just such a letter as one would expect from the successor of Julius. But he wrote in a different style from exile two or three years later when he was desperately anxious to regain his see. Then, in a letter Stud~ns Paci to the Eastern bishops" he says that, having receIved letters about the case of Athanasius and others directed to his deceased predecessor, he sent two presbyters of the city of Rome to Alexandria, ordering Athanasius to come to Rome to have his case tried there, and telling him that if he refused he would be out of communion with Rome. The' presbyters returned and announced that Athanasius was not willing to come. Consequently Liberius now "2(90). 95 3 (90, 9.1). Evidently .Const~ntius suspe~ted Liberius of being as anxious to extend the 10fluence of hIS see (10 ConstantlUs' view, iJIicitly) as Julius has been . "4(91, 92). "5(92). "6(92, 93). 99Hilary ColI. Antiar. B III 1(154).

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declares himself to be in communion with the Easterners and out of communion with Athanasius. It 'is pretty clear that this is a misrepresentation of the facts made out of an intense desire on the part of Liberius to return from exile at all costs, and we must accept the earlier letter as giving us the true account. IOO Liberius' account of what happened at Aries in 353 is confirmed by a fragment of a letter which he wrote to Ossius in 353 or 354, quoted by Hilary.'o' In this Liberius informs Ossius that he with many bishops from Italy had come together to request the Emperor, as he himself (Liberius) had approved, to summon a council to Aquileia. He sent Vincentius of Capua and Marcellus, a bishop from Campania, to this council (he omits saying that it took place in Aries, not Aquileia), but not only did Vincentius not achieve anything, but he was led into deceit, leaving the Pope now very unhappy. The legates at Aries did not even dare to report to Liberius personally but wrote to him.l02 Liberius' representatives at Milan in 355 were wholly unsuccessful in obtaining what he wanted. Eusebius of Vercelli was exiled. The deacon Hilarius was flogged (we do not know why). In the summer of 356 Constantius sent a eunuch Eusebius with gifts to the memorial chapel at Peter's tomb in the Vatican outside Rome. Liberius would not allow Eusebius to present these gifts, and he returned disgruntled to his master. The consequence of this was that the prefect Leontius in circumstances of great secrecy arrested Liberius, and brought him to the Emperor at Milan. Here after an interview with Constantius Liberius was banished to Beroea in Thrace.,03 That Liberius well knew that he was likely to be exiled is shown by his letter Quamvis sub imagine written in 355 to Eusebius (Vercelli), Dionysius (Milan) and Lucifer

(Calaris) who were all then in exile, saying that he is imminently expecting to be exiled in the same cause as theirs, praising them highly and assuring them that they are destined for heaven.'oo In the place of Liberius Constantius caused a man called Felix to be appointed bishop of Rome. Jerome says'o, that Acacius of Palestinian Caesarea caused him to be chosen, but this seems most unlikely. All the Sources agree that Felix was no favourer of Arianism. The frightful strife which took place between the party of Felix and the party of Liberius over the election of a Pope when Liberius died in 366 suggests that Felix had a considerable following in Ro~e; but he certainly did not command the support of all the clergy and people.'oo Athanasius was on the whole sympathetic to Liberius. In the Apologia Secunda he concludes that 'even ifhe did not endure the affliction of exile to the end, yet he remained for two years in exile, and he recognized that a plot had been hatched against us. "07 A little later, in the Historia Arianorum all that he says is: 'But Liberius later when he had been exiled for two years gave in (tIIKAQ"') and out of fear of death with which he was threatened signed' (a compromising formula).'os We shall later consider the attitude of Hilary of Poi tiers to Liberius' conduct.,09

100SO Declercq Ossius 422-:--5; Moreira Potamius 77-80. lOIColl. Antiar. B VI(I67). 102$0 Pietri in PTAA 121-2. I03Athanasius HA 36.I-S(203) gives a largely fanciful account of what was said by Liberius to Eusebius in Rome, and 39.1-4 describes, again with s~me imaginative rhetoric, the circumstances ,of his exile. Theodoret HE 11.16.1-26 gIves

an alleged dialogue which took place on this occasion at Milan between the Emperor and the Pope. It is simply a piece of pro-Nicene propaganda produced about 358, deriving originally perhaps from Athanasius HA 35-40; the account of Sozomenus HE IV.I 1.3-10 probably derives from the same source, and recounts the same story about Liberius refusing the Emperor's money as does Theodoret immediately after giving the imaginary dialogue. To both of them Liberiu~ is a hero, not a traitor. For Liberius' c1andestine removal from Rome, see Ammtanus Marcel1inus XV.7.6-IO.

5· The Third Exile of Athanasius We are particularly well informed about the circumstances of the Third Exile of Athanasius, because we not only have the accounts of Athanasius himself,"° but also the very detailed and reliable '04Hilary Coll. Antiar. B VI.2(164--6). Other sources for the exile ofLiberius are Hi~ary Ad Constantium 1.8; Athanasius Apol. de Fuga 4.2(71); Rufinus HE 1.40. See Ze~Uer Origines 273-4; Declercq Ossius 440-1 (he accepts Theoderet's dialogue as a

reliable report). . IO~De Vir. Ill. XC::VIII.47;·Athanasius, more plausibly, says that Constantius' tool In thiS case was Eplctetus of Centumcellae. backed by George of Alexandria HA 75.2(225)· l06S?u:ces for the intrusion of Felix are Jerome Chronicon sub ann. 352 (which of Course IS mcorrecr); Cesta inter Liberium et Felicem in Collectio Avellana 1(1-14). 107 89.3. 108 4 1.3(206). 109See below pp. 358--60. 110Ap. ad Constantium 19-32; HA 54. 71-'74, 75, 81; Apol. de Fuga 6, 7. 24.

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Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Two (;50-357)

evidence of the Historia Akephala.'" On May 9th 353, a delegation led by Serapion ofThmuis travelled to Milan to protest Athanasius' innocence. On May 23rd an imperial officer, Montanus, reached Alexandria bearing a summons to Athanasius to come to the Emperor at Milan. Athanasius refused, alleging that the summons was forged. At the end of that year bishops assembled at Aries, with only one exception, dutifully condemned Athanasius, and recognized George as his supplanter. The implied threat did not materialize until August 355, when the notary, Diogenes, arrived in Alexandria charged to compel Athanasius to leave the city. The Council of Milan had now taken place, and Constantius was ready to regard Athanasius' refusal to attend it as equivalent to high treason. 11 2 On September 4th Diogenes attempted to arrest Athanasius in an attack on the church where he was ministering. This attempt failed. Athanasius moved to another part of the city and occupied himselfin baptising a number of people. Diogenes did not nave enough troops at his disposal stationed in Nicopolis to effect his purpose. He left Alexandria on December 23rd, re infecta. In January of the new year, 356, the dux Syrianus with the notary Hilarius and fresh supplies of troops entered Alexandria. On the night of February 8th to 9th his soldiers made an attack on the church ofTheonas, where Athanasius was. Once again he escaped, and now took to flight. Until June: however, the supporters of Athanasius occupied the churches of Alexandria. But onJune loth the prefect of Egypt, Maximus, was replaced by Cataphronius, who entered Alexandria accompanied by Count Heradius. OnJune 14th the proAthanasians were dispossessed of their church and on June 15th the churches were handed over to the followers. of George. Though George himself did not reach Alexandria till February 358, from the summer of 357 until the death of Constantius a policy of coercion, which Athanasius and the Historia Akephala represent as a reign of terror, was strictly enforced in Egypt wherever the imperial troops could do so. The supplies of free wheat which the Emperor customarily gave to the church for the benefit of the poor and needy were transferred to the Arians. The dux Sebastianus was the main actor in this persecution. It was when he was away from the city that

the Athanasians attacked George while he was in the Church of Dionysius, in August 358. He was rescued by the prefect's police and two months later left to join the other bishops of his party to help to prepare a creed which would serve as a basis of agreement for the General Council on a large scale which Constantius was planning. On October 11th, after George's departure, the Athanasians were strong enough to gain possession of the churches again. But on December 24th the dux Sebastianus returned to the city and once again dispossessed the supporters of Athanasius of the churches. During all this period, until the news of the death of Constantius reached hjm early in 362, Athanasius was in hiding in the hinterland, usually among the monks in the desert, where he composed a series of works justifying his conduct and policy and at first attempting to conciliate, but fmally by about 358 steadily vilifying Constantius. He managed during all that time to evade the imperial police who were searching for him. Popular monastic literature was later to be full of stories of his escapes and evasions. At some point in 356 or 357 Constantius sent a letter to the people of Alexandria. It was couched in the usual imperial style, a mixture of pomposity and woolly verbiage. ll3 It is full of abuse of Athanasius (whom he calls 'this pest', 6 oM6poC;, and 'most wicked', (l.lOx6'lP6tatoc;) (153)), and it commends George to them. The fact that all attempts to arrest Athanasius failed is a tribute to the remarkable and widespread popularity which he had attained among the ordinary people not only of Alexandria, but of Egypt.

ItlTumer EOMIA I 664(31)--665(6). but also Martin Histoire 'Akephale' 89-97. which is the version followed here. See also Simonetti Crisi 225-'7. and Opitz n. in loco (p. 16"/) on Apol. Sec. 88. t 12So Klein Constantius II 218--9 and n 133.

34 2

6. The Sirmian Council of 357 In the year 357 a small. council met at Sirmium and produced a creed which was of great significance. Who precisely attended this council is a matter upon which authorities differ, though all agree that the number of those present was smal!.'14 We can be sure that 1~3It is quoted in Athanasius' Apol. ad Const. 30(151-3). Kopecek (History 134-5) conjures, a,ut of the Let~er to t1~e Bishops of ~gyPt 7 a meeting of Eastern bishops antagomstlc to AthanaslUs. a hst of whom IS to be found there, and a doctrinal stat~ment produ~ed ~t it, text, place. and date unknown, unmentioned by the anCIent church hlstonans. I do not thmk that this can be done. I 140riginal sources for th.e council ofSirmium in 357 are Athanasius Apol. Sec. 39; Apol de Fuga 5; HA 45; Hilary DeSynodis II; Phoebadius of Agen Con. Arianos 3 (PL 30; 15); Sozomenus HE IV.6. 1-16 and 12.6; Socrates HE 11.29. See also Gwatkin

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Germinius who was by then bishop of Sirmium, Valens and Ursacius ~ere there. It is wholly likely that Potamius of Lisbon, by now the leading Arian in the provinces west ofitaly, was present, and Ossius unwilling but assenting. Sozomenus and Socrates add other name;such as Mark of Arethusa and Basil of Ancyra, but they have confused this council of Sirmium with that of 351 held in the same town, and it is unlikely that more bishops than these first six named attended, though we might add the name of George of Alexandna, whose tenure of the see of Alexandria in the Arian mterest never seemed to have prevented him absenting himself to attend to wider affairs."s It is not even possible to determine whether ConstantlUs himself was present or not."' The creed was originally written in Latin. Hilary'17 gives us the text of it, which is here rendered into English.

is called, there should be no mention of it whatever. nor should anyone preach it. And this is the cause and reason, that it is not included in the divine Scriptures, and it is beyond man's knowledge nor can anyone declare the birth of the Son, and it is written on this

'Since there was thought to he no little difference concerning the faith, all the points were carefully considered and d~scussed at Sir~~m. Our brothers and fellow-bishops Valens, UrsaclUS and GermlIllUS wer.e present. It is agreed that there is onc almighty God and Father. as IS believed throughout the whole world, and his only Son Jesus Christ the Lord, OUf Saviour, born (genitum) from him before the ages; but there cannot be two gods, nor should they be preached. as the text runs Un 20:17]. Therefore there is one God of all, as the apostle taught [Rom 3:29, 30], and the'rest (of the passage, or of the Scnptures) agrees and can contain nO ambiguity. But as for the ~ac~ that some.' ~r many, are concerned about substance (substantia) whIch IS called, USIa ~ Greek, that is, to speak more explicitly, homousion, or homoeuslon a~ It SA 161-4; Zeiller Origines 276-8; Meslin Les Ariens 270-3; Moreira Potamius 111-17; Decl~rcq Ossius 46-5. 512-); Simonetti Crisi 22~30.. . . 115S ozomenus' list of those present is like, but not Identlcal With, the hst of bishops given by Socrates HE 11.29 as attending the c?un~il of.Sirmium of3.S I.,.so much so that Martin (Histoire 'Akephale' p. 198 n 7) mamtams WIth ~om.e plauslblhty that he, like Sozomenus, is giving a mingled account of both Strmlum 35~ a~d Sirmium 357; but even ifhe is, it would be unwise to trust th.e accuracr of his lIst. !16Simonetti thinks that he was either present at the council or. near It; Ham~ck (History IV.76) thought that he was present. Klein says that at the time Constantlus. though present, was distracted by disturbances bot~ on the ~an.ube and the Euphrates frontier and cannot have had an opportumty of co~sldenng .the creed produced by this council carefully (Constantius II 64), and this seems likely; t~e council was, after all, a small one. Klein however is going t?O far when .he demes that this creed was an expression of Arian doctrine and calls it a first .rea.ctlon to ~he appearance ofNeo-Arianism (63. 64). I do not know what his authonty IS for saymg (63 n IJ2) that Eudoxius of Antioch was present there. 117De Sytiodis II; see Hahn Symbole 199-201 (§16I).

344

subject [Isa 53:8]. For it is clear that only the Father knows how he begot his Son, and the Son how he was begotten by the Father. There is no uncertainty about the Father being greater: it cannot be doubted by anyone that the Father is greater in honour, in dignity. in glory, in majesty in the very name of "Father", for he himself witnesses Un 14:28, in the form "he who sent me is greater than I"]. And nobody is unaware that this is catholic doctrine, that there are two Persons (personas) of the Father and the Son, and that the Father is greater, and the Son is subjected in common with all the things which the Father subjected to him;· that the Father has no beginning, is invisible, immortal and impassible; but that the Son is born from the Father, God from God. Light from Light, whose generation as Son, as has

been said already, no one knows except the Father; and that the Son of God himself our Lord and God, as it is said, assumed flesh or body, that is man from the womb of the Virgin Mary, as the angel foretold. As all the Scriptures teach, and especially the teacher of the Gentiles himself. the apostle, he took human nature (hominem) from the Virgin

Mary, and it was through this (man) that he suffered. But that is the summary of the whole faith and the confirmation of it, that the

Trinity should always be preserved, as we read in the gospel [Matt 28: 19]. And the Comforter the Spirit is through the Son, who was sent and came according to the promise, so that he might support, teach

and saoctify the apostles aod all believers.' This creed quickly acquired the name of 'The Blasphemy of Sirmium' from its opponents.' 18 Phoebadius of Agen produced his Liber contra Arianos, probably within a year of the appearance of this creed, attacking it in detail. Hilary called it 'Ossius' lunacy'."9 It is not certain who composed it. In De Synodis 11 Hilary attributed it to Ossius and Potamius, in Liber contra Constantium 23 to Ossius alone,

associating perhaps Valens and Ursacius with him (see above p. 336). Athanasius says nothing directly about its author when he mentions it I t8Ccrtainly by 378, when a pro-Nicene Profession of Sirmium caused the Arians to caIl this 'The Blasphemy ofSirmium' in contrast to the creed of3S7 (see Gryson Scolies Ariennes 310-320(128-38»), but probably much earlier. If the title given to the creed in Hilary's De Syn. I I Exemplum Blasphemiae apud Sirmium, is original. then the term was current as _early as 360.

!!9Lib. con. Const. 23(598).

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in De Synodis 28.'20 The style indeed is loose and inelegant and is not at all reminiscent of Potami us' inflated attempts at grandiloquence in those of his writings which have come down to us, but one would hardly expect individual style to manifest itself in a document like this. It is best to assign the authorship of this creed to Valens, Ursacius, Potamius and Germinius. Though Ossius signed it, the likelihood that he had a hand in composing it is minimal. It is certainly an Arian creed, but not in the sense that it carefully reproduces all Arius' chief doctrines. There is nothing about the relation of the Son to the Word, nothing about the Son being produced out of nothing, not even 'there was a time when he did not exist', unless the statement that the Father is immortal be taken to imply that the Son is not. There is no hint at all that the Son is created. The authors have no difficulty in applying the concept of begetting and birth from the Father to him. But the document is clearly Arian in its drastic, consistent and determined subordination of the Son to the Father, in its insistence on the unique status of the Father, in its explicit rejection of the concept of substance (probably because the use of this word was thought, as it was always thought by Arians, to introduce corporeal notions into the Godhead), and in its careful account of how the Son did the suffering, by means ofhis body (flesh or man but, one can be pretty sure, not human mind). It is the Son who suffers, through his body. The Father is incapable of suffering. This is a doctrine of God suffering, and the suffering is done by a lower God who can endure such experiences. In spite of a certain crudeness and simplification, this is a recognisably Arian creed, Arian according to the less subtle, less philosophically-minded Western mode, buntill Arian. It is manifestly not Neo-Arian. If Aetius and Eunomius have by now begun promulgating their doctrines, they have not yet penetrated as far as Sirmium. On the manner of the Son's generation the creed is completely agnostic. Ingenerateness is only once attributed to the Father and not made a central and critical attribute. The use of ousia is rejected, not on philosophical but on Scriptural grounds. It is a remarkable fact, whose significance will be estimated later, that this Latin creed is the first document in history to use the word 'of like substance' (homoiousios). It was thirty-nine years

since the Arian Controversy had begun, and it was to last another twenty-four years. Only now has there appeared that difference which gave Gibbon the opportunity of saying that the controversy at one pOlnt was about a smgle iota (homoousios and homoiousios). But G.bbon could never resist sacrificing history to epigram. In spite of, indeed because of, its extreme character the Second Creed of Sirmium of 357 constituted a landmark.' It is not a compromising nor reconciling creed. It makes no concessions at all to the pro-Nicenes. It is certainly not meant to take the place ofN, but it attacks ~, no longer covertly, but directly and openly, as it also attacks the DedicatlOn Creed of 341. It is the manifesto of a party, of the party that stood in the tradition of Arius though it did not precISely reproduce his doctrine. And as a manifesto it was also a catalyst. It enabled everybody to see where they stood. At last the confusion which caused Westerners to regard Easterners as Arians can be. cleared up. This is an Arian creed. Those who support it are Anans. Those who are repelled by it are not. And we shall see in the next chapter that there were many in the East to whom the Second Creed of Sirmium came as a shock so that they felt as if they had woken out of a dream. Very faintly, like the softest appearance of hght befo~e the dawn, the solution to the Arian Controversy begins to be pOSSlbk The penod of confusion is slowly coming to an end.

1200pitz however, in loc., attributes it to Valens, Ursaciu5, Germinius and Potamius. Moreira debates whether Potamius had a hand in it, Potamius 145--9. Vigilius ofThapsus Dialogus contra Arianos J.2I (PL 62) 194 attributes it to episcopi vestr; (i.e. the Adans).

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12

Attempts at Creed-Making: Phase 3 (JS7-3 61 ) 1.

The Rise of the Homoiousians

The notable Second Creed ofSirmium of357 had been produced by only a small gathering of bishops. But when not long afterwards Leontius bishop of Antioch died and was succeeded by EudoxlUS (probably in 358), the new bishop summoned a sy'.'od to Antioch which welcomed and approved of this Second S,rnuan Creed. ThiS act must have given the creed publicity in the East which it might not otherwise have received.' Eudoxius was certainly at that period a supporter of Aetius, the extreme neo-Arian, and, though Aetius' chief work, the Syntagmation, was probably not yet wntten, hiS ,deas were becoming widely known. They were not precisely the ideas expressed in the Second Sirmian Creed, but they were sufficiently like them to suggest that a new and radical theology, a development of that of Arius, had now appeared over the horizon.> This new phenomenon very soon gave rise to a reaction which was a very significant 'one, and which we must noW examine. lSee Sozomenus HE IV.I2.3-'7 and Historia Akephala 4.5 (p. 156, Martin) and Martin's note p. 196 and Loafs' Arianismus' 34; the Egyptian do~ument's ~cc~unt is muddled. Sozomenus said that Eudoxius gained this see by dIrect apphcat~on [0 Constantius. who was on the Eastern Front, over the heads ofthe other candIdates, George of Laodicea and Mark of Arethusa. ." 2$ozomenus (IV. 12.5,6) says that the bishops attendIng thl~ Antl0chene synod of 358 were, as well as Eudoxius, AkakiusofCaesarea an~ Ura~lUs.ofTyre, a~d ~at the synod (whose encyc1ical, ifit issued one, has not survived) Justified the reJ~ct1on (by Sirmium II) of both homoousios and homoiousius on the grounds that thiS was pleasing to the West. Their only justification for this odd s~atement was the pr~sence of Ossius at Sirmium 357. Sozomenus also says that OSSlUS and the other blsh~ps who attended Sirmium 357 were there to end the quarrel between Valens, UrsaCIUS and Germinius. This is curious, and may be a muddled reflection of the later disagreement between Germinius and the other two.

The name most prominently associated with this reaction is that of Basil of Ancyra. He had been appointed to the see of Ancyra when in 336 Marcellus was ejected from it. He had held that see ever since, or at least had succeeded in holding it more firmly than Marcellus ever did after that date. It is possible (though not likely) that there were periods when Marcellus was in possession of the see and not Basil. Basil had probably attended the Council of Antioch in 341. He had signed the creed (the Macrostich) sent to the Emperor Constans in 342 or 343. He had been excommunicated and (on paper) deposed by the Western bishops at Serdica, and had signed the encyclical letter of the Easte~ bishops on that occasion? Now early in 358, when winter was still making travel difficult, he summoned a council of bishops to Ancyra. There were twelve bishops present, among them, as well as Basil, were Macedonius of Constantinople, Eugenius ofNicaea, and Eustathius ofSebaste; George of Lao dicea signed the statement issued afterwards, though he was not present at the council. The statement which emerged from this council (it can hardly be called a formal encyclical), and which was certainly composed by Basil himself, marks the emergence of a new and coherent theological point of view. This is the theology of those whom Epiphanius, quite undeservedly, calls 'Semi-Arians', but who are usually today thought of as Homoiousians, a designation which is more accurate but still a little misleading. 4 Gwatkin described the group as a 'Semi-Arian position modified by an Athanasian influence's and Ritter as the right wing of the Eusebian party." Neither of these judgments is entirely satisfactory, as we shall see when we examine the evidence. The members of this school do not actually use precisely the word 6~OIOUcrtO~ (homoiousios). It first apparently occurs, in Latin, in the Second Sirmian Creed in the form homoeusion (though in his version of this creed Hilary does not clearly represent it as mentioning

3See above, p. 296. 4For this school ofihought see Harnack, History IV.76--?, 81, notes 81 and 82; Gwatkin SA 736-7, AC 90'-91; Loofs 'Arianismus' 32-3; Prestige CPT 267-8; Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 153--6; Meslin, Les Origines 279-81; Simonetti Stud; 72-74, 166-185; Crisi 239-41, 266-7; Ritter Das Konzil von Konstantinopel 28.2--6; F. Dinsen Homoousios 137-43; Kopecek, History 129-32, 183-97; J. N. Steenson Basil of Ancyra and the Course of Nicene Orthodoxy (unpublished thesis)· passim. Epiphanius' judgment of this school (Pan 73 .1.4--'7 (268» is almost worthless. sSA 247. 6Das Konzil 26.

349

Period of Confusion homoeousion 7 ), and the word occurs in Aetius' Syntagmation (which we shall date to 359), there of course condemned· It certainly was

not a slogan designed to unite a party, but a convenient way of referring to a theological group, used perhaps more by those who did not form part of the group than by those who did. The immediate cause of the summoning of this Council of Ancyra of 358 was a letter written by George of Laodicea in Syria. If we are to assume that in our records of the Arian Controversy there is only one George, bishop of Laodicea, 9 he must be the same presbyter George who wrote a strongly Arian letter to Alexander of Alexandria about 322 , '0 who was expelled from Antioch by Eustathius about the year 32 6 , and who later composed a eulogy ofEusebius of Ernesa. He must have considerably modified his views by the year 358. He addressed his letter to Macedonius, Basil, Cecropius (of Nicomedia) and Eugenius (of Nicaea), and in it he complained that the city of Antioch, under Eudoxius as bishop, was likely to be wholly dominated by the doctrines of Aetius and his theology of anhomoios.' , On this pretext Basil summoned his council to Ancyra. It issued a long doctrinal statement, addressed to fellow-bishops in Phoenicia 'and the others who believe as we do' .'2 This letter is of the highest importance for an understanding ofHomoiousian theology, and must be examined here: The letter begins by listing a series of recent events which have been important for those who have composed the letter: 'the things which

happened at Constantinople because of Marcellus' [presumably his deposition in 336 for SabellianismJ; the statement offaith produced by 7 De

Synodis I I . 8Epiphanius Panarion 76. I 1.4 cr. the expression in the Expositio Patricii et Aetii, whose date can scarcely fall lacer than 360, et si quis dixerit substantiam Filii similem substantiae Patris non nQti t blasphemat (Historia Akephala (Martin) 4.6 (15 6». Philostorgius never mentions the word 6~Ol06crtor;. but on three separate occasions associates Basil and his followers with 6J.looi>O'lo~ (HE III.I6; IV.9 and 12). 9Everybody seems to do so, but the conclusion is not certain. George was a very common name; we have already seen one of Alexandria. There were, also, several Laodiceas; three, besides that in Syria, are listed in the index of the Atlas of the Early Christian World ofF. van der Meer and Christine Mohrmann, and in the Everyman Atlas of Ancient Geography (1908 repro of 190 7). '·Opitz Urk Ill. No. 13(19). 11Sozomenus HE IV.13.I-3. 12Epiphanius Panarion 73.2.1(268-9). The Letter is given in 73.2.1-II.II (268-284). Hilary gives his account of this document in his De Synodis (PL 10) 13(490) - 28(SOI).

350

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (35?-3 61 )

the Syuod of the Dedication at Antioch [34IJ; the statement offaith put out at Serdica [Eastern bishops' statement 343]; 13 the events which happen at Sirmium in the case of Photinus [presumably 1st Sirmian Creed 351]; 'the arguments which we set out when we were questioned in each point of the faith by those in Serdica who were dissenting from the East'14 [i.e. the Macrostich of 345, later repeated for the benefit of the Westerners].

All scholars till recently have assumed that the reference to the creed 'on the occasion of the dedication of the church in Antioch' (to quote the exa~t words) ;neant t~e S,econd C:eed of Antioch, which is very often called the Dedl~atIon Creed m antiquity.15 There is good reason for thiS conclUSIOn, because not only is this creed, with its statement that the Son is 'the exact image of the ousia of the Father' and its firm a~herenc.e to three hypostases, highly congenial to the thought of Basil and hlS school, but Basil and his followers a year later at the ,?ouncil of Seleuci~ opted for this creed, and an Homoiousian Councd of Lampsacus m. the year 364 chose it also. Recently, however, J.N. Steenson, m an unpublished thesis, has made an Ingenious case for concluding that the creed intended here was the Fourth Antiochene Creed of 341, and not the Second, mainly on the grounds that Basil is appealing to a consistent tradition of credal statements; and the Fourth Antiochene had been used on several occasions in the whole history of creed-making between 341 and 358, In th~ Macrostlch, and m the Sirmian Creed of 351, which are here ln~ntlOned, whereas the 'Dedication' Creed (the 2nd) had not.'6 But thlS theory ignores o?e fact and has to encounter one grave difficulty. FlrSt, the ancients did not prize accuracy as highly as we do, nor demand the kmd of consistency which we require. Even though "2.2(269). 14~.3(269). The introduction also refers (73.2.8(270» to a letter from George of L~odlcea enclosed. hut Our MSS show no such letter. It may be that this is the letter given by Sozo~enus HE IV.I3.1-3 (see n I I above), but if so Sozomenus has probably only gIven us an extract from this letter. See Gregory of Nyssa Con. Eunom. 1.35(37) and Steenson, Basil of Ancyra 45-6. 15See above, pp.286-SH. 1~J. N. ~~enson, Basil of Ancyra and the Course of Nicene Orthodoxy 39-40 and paSSIm. ThIS IS a fine study of ~ subject :vhi.ch has had no thorough investigation for seventy years, and deserves Wider pubhcaoon. Its chief defect is an occasional failure ~f the a.uth?r to control his English. He twice uses 'compromised' when he means compnsed (46, 63); he constantly writes 'conceptualities' for the simpler and clearer 'thoughts' or 'ideas', and he spells 'relevant' as 'relevent' (1I8 n68) 'controverts' as 'contraverts' (II9) and 'altar' as 'alter' (141). '

351

Period of Cotifusion

Antioch IV was reproduced several times later, ihis would not have prevented Basil and his companions regarding the Eastern Creeds drawn up between 341 and 351 as reproducing in effect the theology of the Second (,Dedication') Creed of Antioch. Secondly, the Fourth Creed of Antioch was not drawn up on the occasion of the Dedication of the church in Antioch, but several months later; some even think it was drawn up in 342.'7 And it was drawn up, not by all the bishops assembled for the Dedication, but by a much smaller group, of which in all probability Basil was not one. In fact 'the Creed at the Dedication' can only mean the Second Antiochene Creed of341, and it is forcing the evidence too far to apply this term 'to the Fourth Creed. Steenson's conjecture, however, that 'the statement of faith put out at Sardica' does not mean the encyclical of the Eastern bishops made after the debacle of 343, but the Macrostich, which may have been composed at that point, in 343, and sent in a slightly modified form later to the West,'8 is not improbable. Basil begins the account of his theological position by defining carefully why it is necessary to think of the Father and the Son both in terms of a Father-Son relationship and in terms of a creator-created relationship. We are not baptized into a 'creator and a created' but into a Father and

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (35?-361 )

fat~er of an ousia which is like his'. 21 Ifwe remove this resemblance of ousta,. then we· are reduced to the simple (and in Basil's view unsatIsfactory) terms of creator/creature, not Father/Son. 22 God is not

m~rel~ a creator of the Son's power (energeia), but of his ousia which

eXIsts m accordance with the power; as operating power God is a ~reat~r, but not a Father. 23 But if on the other side, fearing the Infe~tlon ~f corporeality in the thought, yo~ remove the Father/Son ~e~atlOnshlp, you are left with some sort of product, not a Son.24 And It IS ~o use trying to. distinguish the Son by his function as agent in creation, be~ause this does not exempt him from the category of

products (n011111utu) any more than the tongs which lift a coal from the altar are exempted from the category of being used or created by the fact that the user does not touch the coal directly.25

This arg~ment that God must be both Father.and creator and that the hkeness In oUSla IS necessary to prevent the relationship becoming merely that of creator/creature is a kind of first draft of the argument later to be used by the Cappadocians, that when all analogies are exhausted what remains in Common between the Father and So i nature (physis). It is .. Iso, Basil believes, necessary as a safegu:rl agaIns~ Sabelha~l1sm: that WhICh IS like can never be the same as that to whIch It IS hke' (73. 8 .8 (279».

a Son, and creator/created is one thing and Father/Son another. Ifwe argue from our human experience of fathers and sons we can observe certain points: i) we notice that the Son is like (<>JlO1.ov) the Father; ii) we must not allow the thought of passibility to cnter this relationship (as we must in the case of human fathers and sons). nor of corporeal

~as~l next deals with. the Biblical evidence for his theology in an IntrICate 3.rgument whIch must be omitted here. 26 In the COurse of this h: ~akes It clear that he prefers the term 'image of the ousia' (ehcrov tti o\)~tat:;) to de~ne the Son's relationship to the Father;27 it is wort~ notmg .that thl~ term was favoured by Eusebius of Caesa rea before the

existcnce~ but with these safeguards we can (ktisma) ~nd 'creator' (ktistes) to Son and

CouncIl of Nlcaea, and also is found in the Second ('Dedication') Creed o(Antloch 341.28

apply the words 'creature'

Father'9 Thus, when all

proper eliminations and allowances have been made, 'there shall be left the single concept of likeness'. 20 Basil goes on to analyse this argument more carefully. We must distinguish between the relationship of creator/creature and that of Father/Son. The salient irreducible clement in the latter is 'the begetting (yevecroopyia) of a living being that is like in ousia, because every father is thought of as a I7See above, P.29I.J. T. Lienhard 'The Epistle of the Synod of Ancyra 358: a Reconsideration', 3 IS, adds the useful point that the expression 'teM:10V etC n:A.eiol) found in this document (Panarion 73.6.6(276)) is one that occurs in the Second Creed of Antioch 34I. t8Steenson, op. cit. 41-3. t9Epiphanius Panarion 73.3.1-8(271, 272). 201l6Vl11tClpaA€.Up91lcre:'tCll fvvo\(l 'tou 61loiou, 73.4.1(272).

35 2

Basil next plunges into a complicated attempt to prove that there is an analegy between the begetting of the Son and his Incarnation; during whIch he skIrts the edge of the precipices both of Docetism and of ~nall1sm, argU1~g that as the Son is like the Father in ousia but not entlcal WIth hIm, so the Son when incarnate is like mankind but 21 73 .4.2, 3(272, 273).

"3(273). " 4(273). 24 5(273). "6, 7(273, 274). 26 5. 1-8.8(274-9). "4(277).

28S ee above, pp. 50-51,286.

353

Period of Confusion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (357-3 6.)

(not having been conceived in a normal way) not identical with mankind. 2 '

analogous to Godhead which is not generic. 32 So far Basil's statement strikes us as a resolute but not wholly successful effort to overcome the weaknesses of Arian theology. He accepts the idea of the Son as a creature, though he modifies it considerably; and he has not rid himself of subordinationism. The theological discourse is followed by nineteen anathemas which reveal more clearly the position which Basil is attacking. They are, m short, the apparent Sabellianism of Marcellus of Ancyra, rad~cal Arianism which declared that the Son is 'unlike' (anhomoios) in ous,a to the Father (and the two are more than once grouped in the same anathema), and, less frequently, the homoousion. 33 Some interesting points arise out of these anathemas:

'For as he who was in the likeness of men and was a man yet not a man in all respects, human in that he took human flesh, for "the Word

became flesh" [John 1:14], yet not human in that he was not born as men are (not. that is, from seed and copulation), so the Son before the ages is God in that he is Son of God Gust as he is man as Son of man),

but not identical with the God and Father who begot him Gust as he is not identical with human nature) in that there is no question of emanation and process (pathos) Gust. as [in the case of the Incarnation] there is no question of insemination and sexual pleasure). And as he was in the likeness of sinful flesh, in that he experienced hunger and thirst and sleep in the flesh, passions by which bodies 3rc motivated towards sin (It,.1apnKii:u; lClveltQ.l.). yet while experiencing these passions which I have mentioned he was not motivated towards sin by them, so also the Son, since he was the Son of God and "being in the form of God" and "equal to God" [Phil 2:6, 7], had the characteristics of Godhead and was in his ousia incorporeal and like the Father in Godhead, incorporeality and activities (energeias). Andjust as he is like flesh in that he is flesh and experiences the passions of the flesh, but is

not identical [with flesh], so though he is God but he is not the form of GOD, but of God, nor is he equal to GOD, but to God, nor as genuinely as the Father.'30

Shortly afterwards Basil says that those who deny that the Son is 'like in ousia', (011010<; Ka,'oo,,{av) say in effect that the Son is not a Son, but only a creature, and the Father not a Father but only a creator. 31 This comparison of the Son's relation to the Father with his relation to humanity _when incarnate is unsatisfactory for two reasons: it deprives the Son of genuine solidarity with human beings, because he is not fully (or at least not normally) human (an error which was widely committed by the pro-Nicene writers) and the comparison does not hold because human nature, a generic concept, cannot be

2973.9.1-'7(279, 280). 30The quotation is from 9.1-5(279, 280). I have expressed the virtually untranslatable distinction made by Basil (following Origen and many others) between God with the definite article,(o eeOC;) and God without it (eeor;) by printing the first in capitals and the second in the usual type. I have a.Iso ~foll~wir:g the example set by Steenson} omitted the words in the text supplted m thiS difficult passage by Holl, the GCS editor. 316(280).

354

Anathema 12 (3(283)) strikes him who declares that the Son's likeness to the Father consists in power (energeia) but not in ousia. Anathema 13 (4(283)) damns him who declares that holding the likeness in ousia of the Father and the Son means that the Son is identical with the Father or 'constituted by division or emanation or process' (x:uta Jltpo~ ICUt'o:noppoiav, ICQta na9~). This is manifestly directed against N. Anathema I4 attacks him who assumes that the distinction between ~he ~at~er and the Son, what Basil calls Uh6tr)'ta 'trov npocram(Ov, lmplIes that the Son is unlike in substance (ousia).34 Here a useful technical vocabulary distinguishing what God is as Three from what he is as One is beginning to emerge, with ousia referring to the latter, not the former. And anathema 19 (10(284» condemns anyone who teaches that the Father is indeed Father of the Son in authority and substance (ousia) [in contrast to the Arians, who would say in authority, but not in substance], yet describes him as consubstantial (6JloOUO'1pv) or-identical in substance (tautoucrtov) with the Father. Steenson fmely describes this theology as 'a picture of distinctly 32Steenson (op. cit. 158--9) points out the latter defect. 3373.10.1-11.10(280-4). Steenson (op. cit. 164-5) thinks that there is a lacuna ?etween anathema 14(11.5(283») and anathema 15(I1.6(283}). Steenson's argument IS partly based. on the fact. that Hilary, though he apparently reproduces the anathe~as of th~s ?ocument In De Synodis, yet he later (90(542-3}) says that certain matters In the ongmaJ letter were suppressed which he had seen included in a reliable version; and also Hilary omits the last two of the anathemas in the Greek version al.together. It is difficult to determine precisely what document Hilary had before him. Steenson's other objection is the striking change of subject which he fancies to be visible at anathema 15. 34 5(28 3); but anathema 17(8(283)) speaks of the Son as coming ~K 1tatpo~ 61tocrt6.cre~ and also of the ingenerate ousia of the Father, with little clear distinction between them.

355

'1

:j

.~ '!

Period of Confusion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (J57-3 6I )

subsisting Persons, the [ulness of the one perfectly imaged in the other',35 and says that Basil taught that in the relationship of Father and Son 'there is an energeia which insures [sic] an essential similarity', and this energeia is the unique generative operation of the Father, distinct from his creative activity.3. And he compares this interestingly with Athanasius' argument that in God generation precedes creation and that God's 'productive substance' (Kap1t6yovo<; ouaia) which is above his will, produces the Son (Or. con Ar. 11.2).37 But it cannot be maintained, in view of the evidence which we have already seen, that the only objection entertained by Basil to the homoousion (which Athanasius was by now strongly defending) was the old Origenistic, Arian and Eusebian charge that it introduced a notion ofcorporeality.38 Anathema 13 links the error of thinking of the Father/Son relationship in corporeal terms with that of making the Son identical with the Father; and anathema 19 regards homoousion as synonymous with tautousion (of identical substance). Sozomenus (HE III:! 8) remarks percipiently that to the Homoiousians spiritual substances could not be homoousios; only material substances could be that.'9 And this may well explain the precise difference between the views of Basil of Ancyra and those of the champions of homoousios. But this does not affect the clear conclusion that Basil thought that to use the homoousios of the Son was, as well as involving undesirable corporeal ideas, to say that his ousia was identical with that of the Father. When all has been said and done, however, this Ancyran document of Basil's represents a new and fruitful departure in the confused melee of theological opinions to which the theology of Arius had given rise. For the Arians 'the divine printiple in their system was energetic not substantial, and thus not fundamentally on the level of God's being."o This assumption Basil had strenuously challenged, and in doing so had given to his contemporaries a specific point to which they could rally, an opportunity for clear thinking, and for a new alignment of views

about the central subject which had been for so· long and so inconclusively debated.'!

350p. cit. 149. J60p. cit. 182, and see generally 174-195. 370p. cit. 190-2. The question of the influence of Achanasius on the Homoiousians is considered below, P.371. 38S0

Steenson attempts to argue, op. cit.

202-4.

39Steenson caUs attention to this, op. cit. 204-5. 40Steenson op. cit. 90.

2.

The Council of Sirmium of 358

Basil and his companions followed up the issue of this document by . sending a delegation with it to Sirmium, where the Emperor now was with his court. The delegation consisted of Basil himself, Eustathius ofSebaste and El 1taTpi (like the Father in ousia). Eunomius was banished to Midiaeos, a town in Phrygia, Aetius to Pepuza in the same country, Eudoxius was sent packing to his native town in Armenia, and several others of the same persuasion were incontinently exiled at the suggestion of Basil.' 3 Basil indeed seems to have used the opportunity offered by his possession of the Emperor's ear with considerable ruthlessness. He also persuaded the Emperor to call a council to the city of Sirmium. This fourth Council ofSirmium produced a statement of doctrine, but this 'third Creed of Sirmium' does not survive. The only 41Compar~ the :emark of Prestige on this theological viewpoint: 'It was at long last seen that If.scrIptur~1 term~ were cap~ble of being expounded in diametrical1y op~osed meanmgs. phdosophlcal analYSIS was needed to define precisely how Scn~tu~e ought to be understood. Theology does not consist in the parrot repetition of!Ibhcal texts, but in rational thought about Biblical data' (CPT 153). Sozomenus IV. 13.4-6; 14.1-"7 (the letter). 43Philostorgius He IV.8-lo. PhiIostorgius (IV.!) says that this was the moment when lv!acedon!us of Constantinople changed from favouring Eudoxius' views to supportmg BaSil, and several scholars (e.g. Loofs 'Arianismus' 34) have accepted thiS. B~t w~ ca.n~ot be sure ofPhiJostorgius' accuracy here. Macedonius is a most mysterious mdlvIdual: we have already seen how difficult it is to determine his exact status and support in Constantinople (~ee above pp. 280-4). Socrates (HE 11.28) and Sozomenus (HE IV.2o.2-8) relate variOUS atrocity stories about his persecution of the Novatians in Constantinople.

357

Period of Confusion

connected account of the council which we havel that of Sozomenus,44 is meagre and gives few details. The Emperpr was present,and Basil and Eustathius and Eleusius, Ursacius, Valens, Germinius and some bishops from Latin-speaking North Africa (Athanasius, Alexander, Severianus and Crescens). Some decision (which we do not possess) made at the Council of Antioch which condemned Paul of Samosata (possibly its rejection of homoousios) in the third century, the First Sirmian Creed of 35 I, compiled at the Second Sirmian Council at which Photinus was exiled, and the Second (,Dedication') Creed of Antioch were re-affirmed, and some statement approving of the application of'like according to ousia and in all things' to the Son was recorded. 45 Clearly this Council marked the temporary ascendancy of Basil of Ancyra and his school of thought. At this juncture Liberius was freed from detention in Beroea, having signed some statement which satisfied the Emperor sufficiently to enable him to return to his see of Rome. But what statement did he sign? Controversy has raged upon this subject. Some letters ofLiberius covering this period are extant, which throw light upon the question but do not clear up all difficulties. These letters are given us in Hilary's Collectio Antiariana. - Their authenticity has been questioned but they are now regarded in almost all respects as genuine by scholars of all traditions. Hilary leads up to the first by a piece of narrative: 'Later Liberius tendered wholly useless everything which he had either done or promised when, sent into exile, he corresponded with the heretical Arian traitors who had unjustly c'ondemned that orthodox bishop Athanasius' .46 Hilary then quotes from a letter of Liberius, known by its opening words, Pro deifieo timore, addressed to the. Eastern bishops. Liberius gives way entirely on the subject of Athanasius. whom he is now ready to condemn. He had only defended him. he says, out of reverence for Liberius' predecessor, Julius, and he has sent a letter of condemnation to the Emperor Constantius by the hand of Fortunatianus (bishop of Aquileia).47 He then refers to a document which he had signed, and 44HE IV.I5.I-4. 45S 0 Sozomenus IV. I 5.3, and Hilary's statement (De Synodis 78, 79) that Valens and Ursacius approved of the homoiousion seems to confirm this. Philostorgius' statement that Basil and his followers at this point agreed to the homoousion (HE IV.9) may be a muddled recollection of it. For this Council of 358, see Zeiller, Origines 279-8o~ Meslin les Ariens 279-82; M"oreira Potamius "194-5; Klein Constantius II 89-90; Kopecek History 172-6; Pietri in PTAA 169.' 46Coll. Antiar. B VII.7(167-8). See A. Hamman in Hilaire et son Temps 43-50.

47lbid. VII.8.1 (168).

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (357-3 61 )

~his part of the letter is interspersed with angry expostulations inserted y some very early hand, quite possibly that of Hilary but if not of ~Somehcontehmporary of his who shared his disgust at Libe'rius' action 48 o t en t at you should k I h . J,ai:h in this letter mine, .ra er meus commums) Demophilus (Arian bishop of Be roe a in Thrace 1~ whose charge Liberius was th,en detained) has been kind enou h of hIS food;ess ~o set out your creed and the Catholic creed whic; was exp alne. an accepted at Sirmium by many of our brothers and fellow-bIShops [that which follows is the Arian treacher and branded It, not the renegade Liberius] by all who w y, . ( I have . h -' . , e r e present or were [~t : Ix;p~~al Presence). This creed I have accepted with a free 'assent

~f

e

0

Y

I

r::.~r~u;~J c~:r!;.:;'y t:~~~;~n(~o~~n::~~

ary pronounces anathema against him anathema h

b

;:~;~:.:; ~o~, Liberius, and to your companions!]; I h~ve contradi::ed ~:

e conceded my agreement, I follow this creed, this is aV[A y me gam anathema to you d fi h' d . Liberius!J.49 There follow r f " an or a t " tIme, traitor held b '

;ebtetterr~yaNl at S!rmiumT'h(as d~i~ar;tc~lls ~:i~~~;r:~~:~:St~!b;~e:~di~ge . arClSSUs eo ore B '1' Ed' C

. .' ,asllus, u OXlUS, Demo hilus ecroplUS, Silvanus Ursacius V .P , a IE' Exupeiantius, Terenti~us Bassus' G d en~, Mvagnus,. Hireneus, . . ' • au ennus, acedomus Marcus Ak lei 'I '. a us, luhus, SurIllus, Simplicius and Iunior 50 Th know Q" . . e next etter U ? as V ~,a SCJO vos, IS a humble request from Liberius in exile t~ th~:acIus, ~ ens and Germinius to intercede with the Emperor so now t h' 'h . hat he has condemned Athanasius and excommunicated 1m, e mIg t return to Rome 51 H h h .. with his fellow b'sh E" e says t at e IS III communion W . - lOpS plctetus (of Centumcellae a Ie d' . estern Anan) and Auxentius (Arian bishop of Milan) ;'h .~ I~g I~:e~%ede for him. And this letter evokes another angry inte~p::ati~~~ ~ ~ 1ema p~onounced by me to the traitor along with his Arians"J 52 Th . a~~~ . etter, finown as. Non doceo, is addressed to Vincent ofCa~ua an~ Urbi~u:e~tas rbom eXlkle. I~ comp~ains that his dear Son and deacon . h een ta en lrOm him b V (imperial secu . Y enerlUS t e agens in rebus of C . nty officer) and asks Vincentius to gather all the bishops retur:m~~:a :~:te~er. so that they ~ay petition the Emperor for his , e IS at peace wIth the Eastern bishops. It ends

48Th '. 49CorerYAare"glVeVnllln square brackets in the text, in italics.

so . '

n lar.

IbId. VII 9(170).

8.2(160-.,0).

:~ Ibid. VII. 10(170-2). VII. IO.2(I72).

358 359

Period of Confusion pathetically with the words 'It is your responsibility if you want me to

die in exile, God will judge between me and yoU.'53

Athanasius deals more gently with Liberius. In his Apologia Secunda he says that Liberius suffered much for the good cause: 'And even ifin the end he could not tolerate the misery of banishment, still for two years he remained in exile, recognising that a conspiracy had been formed against U5'.54 And in the Historia Arianorum he contents himself with remarking that Liberius was banished, without a companion, and 'later after two years' space he gave in and, in fear of

death with which he was threatened, signed', 55 but Athanasius does not tell us what Liberius signed. Sozomenus says that Liberius was

brought to the Fourth Council ofSirmium,that of 358 dominated by Basil of Ancyra, and in the presence of the Eastern bishops and some local prelates he was compelled to declare that the Son is not homoousios with the Father, and that 'under the pretext that some were attempting to revive the heresy of the homoousios' he was induced to sign the doctrinal statement of that council and that he signed a confession condemning those who denied that the Son is like the Father 'in ousia and in everything' (Kat'ml"lav Kai Kataltlivta) and that he was then allowed to return from exile to his see of Rome. 5. Philostorgius echoes this when he says that Li\>erius gave way to what was demanded of him and signed a documen~ condemning the homoousion and Athanasius. 57 Sozomenus also says that Eudoxius and his followers in Antioch who adopted Aetius' theology used to try to make out that Liberius had rejected the homoousion and adopted the view that the Son was unlike (avoIlOIOV) the Father. 58 IfLiberi\ls was present at the. Council ofSirmium of 358,no doubt he signed its creed, the lost formula of Sirmium 358, which comprised in all probability a condemnation of the homoousio» (whether taken from the Antiochene council of the third century or newly coined for the occasion), the Second (,Dedication') Creed of Antioch of 34', the First Sirmian Creed of 351, and a statement accepting 'like in ousia and in everything else' as the proper definition 53VlI. I I(172-4): the words quoted run in Latin vos videritis si volueritis me in exilio deficere, erit deus judex inter me et vos. 54 Apol. Sec. 89.3: Opitz in loc points out that in fact Liberius remained in exile for three years (355-8). 5sHA 41.1-2(205). 41.3(206). from which the quotation is takeJ;1. 56HE IV.15.1-3. "HE IV.J(6o). SRHE IV.IS.3.

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (357-3 6,)

of the Son'~ relatio~ to the Father. But if, as seems much more probable, "LlberlUs did not attend Sirmium 358 , a andshl g dn ' eda '. compromISIng document earher, m 357, while he was in exile, the formula referred to m Pro deifieo timore, which was it? It is evident that th~ mterpolator in that letter thought that he had signed the radical Anan creed of357 (the 'Blasphemy'). We have seen that this is what EudoXIUS and his friends alleged, and Brennecke has made a strong :ase for thiS solutIOn. 59 It IS not Impossible that Liberius did sign this creed m 357; ~e seems to have been in a state of mind which would allow him to ~Ign anythi?g as long as he could return to his beloved Rome. But It IS not certam that he did so. Sozomenus implies that he had not assented to the anhomoion. If the list given us by Hilary of bishops. who also signed the formula which Liberius. signed is authentiC, he could not have signed the 'Blasphemy'. Only a few bishops were present when that creed was produced, and they did not ~nclude BasIl,who figures in Hilary's list. In fact this list is a mystery' It could not represent the bishops who were present at Sirmium 358: because neither Eustathius of Sebaste nor Eleusius of Cyzicus are mentIOned m It nor the Western North African bishops mentioned by Sozomenus (unless Surinus is the same as Severianus). It could, ho,,:ev~r, bea dIsplaced list of the bishops who attended the Council of SlrmlUm of 351 (second Sirmium); the presence of Gaudentius and the ab~ence of Germinius ale perhaps significant. If we regald this list as havmg nothmg to do with the Sirmian creed of 357, then one objectIOn to the theory that Liberius signed this is removed. There still rem~ms the qUite strong objection that Liberius says that the creed which he agreed to, at the suggestion of Demophilus was also Signed 'by many of Our brothers and fellow-bishops' and p~rhaps he says that It was signed in the presence of the Emperor, whereas it is not certam that Constantius was present at Sirmium 357, and there were only a few bishops there. Of course, Constantius may have been present, and Demophilus may have deceived Liberius about the numbers. of bishops present at the Council. Contemporar scholarship seems to agree on the whole without very solid reaso;' t

a

~~H<".has s.hown that it was virtually impossible for Liberius to have'been present Irmlum

In

June 358. The Emperor. who attended the Council was not there

~eforeJun~, and the Fourth Sirmian Creed was produced in his pres~nce. Liberius is

nown to aV<.' l'ntered Rome on August 2nd; had he left Sirmium in late June he could IJIJot have reached Rome as carly as this. See Hilarills l'Oti P 276-88 and m'ore gelll'ra y 2654)6. .

361

Period of C onfosion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (357-361)

that the document signed by Liberius in 357 was the First Sirmian Creed, of 35 I.'0 But this is, perhaps, because the alternative is so distasteful. It is difficult to see wh y precisely Demophilus should have presented this creed to Liberius, though certainly Liberius would have signed this formula more readIly than that of 357, whIch must have been very distasteful to him. The matter must be left open. But there can be no doubt that Liberius condemned AthanaslUs and signed a formula which his pro-Nicene contemporaries unanimously regarded as unorthodox. On returning to Rome, he naturally refused to adopt Constantius' ridiculous proposal that he should be Jomtbishop with Felix. The people of Rome favoured Llbenus on the whole, and Felix soon retired into a private life."

severe earthquake in that vicinity crippled the town and made even the neighbouring Nicaea, which had also been proposed, unsuitable. The Emperor, after some negotiation with Basil, whom he still apparently regarded as his chief adviser in ecclesiastical affairs, finally decided to split the council and gather the Eastern bishops at Seleucia in Cilicia and the Western in Ariminum in Italy. The Emperor himself would appear at neither, but would remain at Constantinople, about halfway between both places· 2 But before the double council met, Constantius decided that it would be wise to produce a document which could be submitted to both gatherings. He consequently summoned a few leading bishops to Sirmium to draw up this document. We have no official list of those who were at Sirmium when this Fourth Sirmian Creed (at the Fifth Sirmian Council) was drawn up, but we know the exact date of its composition (or rather ofits publication) because it was, for some reason, dated (arid hence is usually known as the 'Dated' Creed), May 22nd, 359. 63 It was actually composed by Mark of Arethusa, but

3. The 'Dated Creed' of 359 Constantius nOw thought that he saw an opportunity of achieving lasting agreement in the Church on the vexed subject of the Christian doctrine of God. If he excluded the extreme Arians, represented by Eunomius and Aetius, at one end of the spectrum, and Athanasius and his followers, whom he probably regarded as beyond hope of reconciliation, at the other, there seemed a firm prospect of achieving an understanding between Basil and his party and the main body of bishops such as Macedonius, Eudoxius, Germinius, Valens, UrsaclUS

and Akakius who were firmly against any revival of N and yet who had at Sirmium in 358 shown themselves capable of reaching agreement with the Homoiousians. The West; nOw that Liberius had capitulated; he was confident of managing. For this purpose he recalled from exile all those clergy whom he had recently bamshed, and announced the assembly of an ecumenical council. The first place which he thought to be suitable for the council was Nicomedia, but a 60Lietzmann, Opitz, ZeiIler, Meslin, and Declercq agree on this. For this creed, see above pp. 325-8. . 61S ozo menus HE IV,lj.4--6. Neither Socrates nor Theodoret can bn~g themselves to record Liberius' fall from grace, though they both menti~n his exIle and return. Theodoret HE II. 16.1-26 is occupied by a curious and wholly imaginary dialogue between Constantius and Liberius which is supposed to h~ve taken place at Milan just before Liberius' exile. Sozomenus has a sum~ary of 1~ HE ~V. I 1:3-8. Both probably derive from Athanasius HA 35-4? Whl~ Its~lf IS an Imagt.nary conversation held between Liberius and ConstantlUs. It IS a p1ece of pro-Nlcene propaganda of about the year 358.

Germinius certainly had some hand in it because, in a letter preserved in Hilary's Collectio Antiariana written many years later to a friend

called Rufinianus, Germinius recalled that when he, with George of Alexandria, Pancratius ofPelusium, Basil of Ancyra, and Valens and U rsacius (to whom in fact he is addressing his words, though he writes nominally to Rufinianus), was drawing up the 'Dated' Creed, after a night's discussion they agreed to accept the formula of Mark (of Arethusa) 'the Son like the Father in everything as the holy Scriptures declare and teach'." The creed runs thus: 'We beJic:::ve in one sale and true God, the Father Almighty, creator

and maker of all things: And in one only-begotten Son of God who before all ages and before all beginning and before all conceivable time and before all comprehensible substance (oocr{ar;)65 was begotten impassibly from God, through whom the ages were set up and all things came into existence, begotten as only-begotten, sole from the 62Sozomenus HE ~V.I~.1~22. Socrates HE 11.37 is useless as a guide to the antecedents of SeleuclajAnmmum; see also Hilary De Synodis 8. 63For comment on the 'Dated' Creed, see Loafs" Arianismus' 35; Simonetti Stud; 183 n. 109. Crisi 245; Klein Constantius II 91-2; Borchardt Hilary'S Role 165 n. 3. The cree? its:Jf was o~iginally P?blished in Latin (as Sozomenus tells us) but only survIVes In Greek m Athanaslus De Synodis 8 and Socrates HE II.37. 64Filium similem patri, per omnia, ut sanetae dieunt et docent scripturae, Coli. Ant jar. B VI.3(I63)· 65Socra tes has &Jtlvoia~ (aspect) for ousias, but this is not a likely reading.

Period of Confusion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phas.e Three (35?-36, )

sole Father, like to the Father who begot him, according to the Scriptures. whose generation nobody understands except the Father

who begot him. Him we know to be the only-begotten Son of God, who came down from the heavens· at the Father's bidding in or~er .to

put an end to sin, and was born

(ysvv~e"vta)

from Mary the Vltgm,

and went around with his disciples and fulftlled all, the strate.gy (ohcovoJ.Liav) according to his Father's will; he was cruclfie~ an~ d.led and went down to the subterranean places and fulfllied

hIS mISSIon

there, and the gate-keepers of Hell (Hades) shuddered when they saw him' and he rose from the dead on the third day and conversed wIth his disciples and fulfilled all the dispensation (oIKovoJliav) and when the forty days were fulfilled he was taken up into ~eaven and IS seated

at the right hand of the Father, and will come agam on the last day of resurrection in his Father's glory to reward everyone accordmg to

hIS

deeds: And in the Holy Spirit whom the only-begotten of God Jesus Christ himself promised t.o send to the race of men, the Paraclete,

according to the text [conftation ofJn 16.7, 13f.; 14.16f.; 15.26]. The word ousia because when it was naively inserted by our fathers though not' familiar to the masses, it caused disturbance, and because the Scriptures do not contain it, we have decided should be re~oved, and that there should be absolutely no mention of ousia relation to God for the future, because the Scriptures make no mentIon at.all. of

in.

the ousia of the Father and the Son. But we declare that the So~ IS like the Father in all respects (3Jlo\oV also declare and teach.'

KU'tU

1tIlvta), as the holy Scnptures

This creed has been widely, and no doubt rightly,judged as a careful compromise which would be acceptable both to the Homoran (I.e. moderately Arian) centre party represented by people such as Akakius and Germinius, and the Homoiousians, I.e. the school of thought represented by Basil of Ancyra. 66 It would not ~e easy for the extreme Arian followers of AetlUs, to accept It, for ItS subordinationism would not be radical enough for them, and of course it rules out the champions of homoousion, indeed positively describes them as naive (n"'-olicn:spov). It is worth noticing that whrle the creed itself refuses to use the word ousia, its rejection of that term 66S ee Loofs 'Ariaoismus' 3S; Simonetti Studi 183 o. 1~9 and Crisi 245--6; KI.ei~ Constantius II 91-2 (Klein hails the Creed a~ a trl?m,ph ~or .Co~s~antlUs statesmanship). Athanasius (De Synod;s 3.2(232» Jeers at It; Whde ~m glvfg. th~ date] they caJled the Emperor eternal they deny that .the S~n IS e~er astl.n~ (airovlOV)' considenng the opening expressions of the Chnstologlcal article. thIS IS quite unf~ir. The Creed is remarkable for the attention which it pays to the Descent into Hell.

is much milder than was the rejection of it by the Second Sirmian Creed of 357. To say that the use of ousia confuses the laity and is not found in Scripture is not to rule out its use among the theologians. But even so Basil had some qualms in signing this creed. Epiphanius 6 tells us ' that in giving his signature he added to the term 'like in all respects' the note 'in all respects, not only according to will but according to hypostasis and according to constitution (u"ap~,,) and according to being' (to sIva,) - in other words according to ousia without ousia being exactly mentioned. On the other hand, a curious little appendix, also in Epiphanius, at the end of the letter of George of Laodicea (with which we shall presently deal), added apparently by somebody other than George, informs us that when Valens came to sign the 'Dated' Creed he added the note 'How (or that "iii,) we have signed on the eve of Pentecost the foregoing signature, those who are present know, alld the pious Emperor, to whom we have borne witness both orally and in writing'; and also that Valens wished to sign to the term 'like the Father', but not to the term 'in all respecrs', and that the Emperor observed this and compelled him to assent to the term 'in all respects'. It was indeed this that constrained Basil to add his own gloss to the creed there and then. 68 These qualifications added in very different interests might have warned Constantius that in attempting to reach a compromise creed based on a consensus he was walking a tightrope and that to achieve what he wanted he would have to USe force or fraud or both. They may also have strengthened his resolve to arrange the ecumenical council in two different places. Valens would be kept apart from Basil by much space of shadowy mountain and sounding sea. With this 'Dated' Creed the Letter of George of Laodicea is usually associated. The authorship of this Letter, which Epiphanius gives us directly after the document composed by Basil after the Council of Ancyra of 358, 69 is not certain. The document composed by Basil in 358 ends with the words 'The memorandum .of those who were of the party of Basil and George is finished', ,0 and the next document (the Letter) begins without a title. But the words could equally well be divided thus: 'It is finished' [i.e. Basil's document of35 8J and the next 67Panarion 73. 2 1.7(295). 68Ibid. 73.21.5, 6. 69Panarion 73. 12.1-22.4(28 4-5).

7°tx~TJpWaTJ trov m:pi BaaiMlov Kai reooPYlov 0 6JtoJ.1vTJJ.1attaJ.16~. Holl supplies a

title

'EJttat6~TJ fecopyiot) to the next document, but it is not in any MS.

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (35?-361)

Period of Confusion words would then be the title of the Leller, 'The Memorandum of those who were of the party of Basil and George'. We do not in fact know who wrote the Letter. But just before transcribing Basil's document of358 Epiphanius has said that he will set dow? 'how each wrote a letter, Basil one, and George of Lao dice a along with Basil and his followers another. '7 I There is therefore a strong presumption that this Leller was written by George, or by Basil and George jointly. Certainly it exactly echoes the doctrine of Basil' s Ancyran document; it is an Homoiousian Manifesto. It is usually assumed that this Leller was written as a direct result of the production of the 'Dated' Creed, between May 22nd and the period when the Council ofSeleucia met in the autumn, in the year 359, and was intended to make it clear that Basil's party had not deserted their original ideas because Basil had signed the 'Dated' Creed, but on the contrary they regarded that Creed as quite compatible with their theological standpomt. This dating of the document which we shall henceforwar~ refer to as George's Letter is highly likely. One is, however, left with a lurkmg suspicion that everything said in George 5 Letter. and e:ren the epilogues dealing with the glosses put by Valens an~ Basil, could apply to the Third Sirmian Creed of 358, and If any eVidence turned up linking George's Leller to the Creed of 358, not that of 359, It would not be surprising. J

George at once plunges. without preface or greeting, into an argument about the substantial, real independence of the Son,72 'The word ousia is not found actually in the Old or New Testaments' , he writes, 'but the meaning is expressed everywhere'.73 Paul of Samos at a and Marcellus admit 'Son' only as far as the teeth, but in fact mean Logos only. But those who condemned Paul of Samosata [Antioch 26H] wished to declare that 'the Son has hypostasis and is genuinely existent (U1tllP'X-roV) and is in existence (ow)' and is not a mere utt~ranc.e (tnlllu) but an ous;a, distinguishing himself from that whICh IS 'without self-sufficient existence' (leaa' tauf6v avunapKfov). The fathers called the Son otls;a in order to show tha~. though he was Logos as interpreting and executing the will of the Father, he was more tha~ that. God's words are not ousiai but 'uttered powers' (A£KtlKUl.

"Ibid. 73.1.8(268). 72 12 .1-8(28 4-5). 73u. I (284). 74 12.2, 3 (quotation's from 3) ( 28 5).

366

tvepY£lUl)= 'But the Son, though he is Logos. is not an uttered power of God. but because he is Son he is an ousia.'75 This hypostasis the Fathers called ousia. 76

In this Letter George is concerned, more even than Basil was in his statement made after Ancyra 358, with particular heretics whose views he wishes to counter. He has indeed the Second Sirmian Creed of 357 in mind, but even more those who are currently being attracted by the theology of Aetius, and, as we shall see, he quotes later some of their utterances. We oppose. he says, when we hold that the Son is like the Father in all respects, those who teach that he is only like in will and power, 'but th~t in being (KaTa ") sIva.) he is unlike (UV6!lOlOV) the Father'. 77 They say that he is not begotten from God. but only a creature (ICtiO'j.ta) differing from other creatures· in that he is greater in grandeur (li.EySO£l) in that'all other things were made by him, and in that he alone was made directly by God. 7' The next section continues this attack on heretics who are more likely

to be Aetian or Eunomian Arians than the compilers of the Second Sirmian Creed of 357, little though George may have relished that document. After a side-glance at Sabellians who identify the Father and the Son (perhaps homoousians),7. he accuses his main target, the Neo-Arians, of preferring 'Ingenerate' and 'Generate' (UytVV1]TO, and ytVV1]TO,) rather than 'Father' and 'Son'so and of describing the Son as unlike (anhomoion) the Father in ousia, 'just as they thought that they were condemning the Church by means of the letters which they extorted from the venerable bishop Ossius'.'1 This may simply refer to the Second Sirmian Creed of 357, of which Ossius was reputed to be an author,.2 but it may suggest that before permitting Ossius to return to Cordova the authorities at Sirmium induced him to sign some letters recommending others to accept this creed. It 75 12 .6(2 85). 7612.8(285). It is not clear who 'the Fathers' are. They could hardly be the Fathers of Nicaea 33 years earlier. George may be referring to Eusebius of Caesarea or to Origen or to the compilers of the lost statement of Antioch 268. 7713.1-4(285-6). quotation 2(286). 78 13 ·3, 4(286); the disinclination to describe the Son as begotten is. reminiscent of Neo-Arianism rather than an earHer form of Arianism. 79 14 . 1 • 2(2~6).

8° 14 .3- 5(286--7). " 14.7(287). 82S ee also. PP.345-6.

------~~"i'-:·:'"·:yE"~-·)"":*"Y~T

I

Period of Confusion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (357-361)

certainly suggests that George did not see any ma;erial ~ifference between the writers of this creed and the neo-ArIans doctrIne, even though the creed did not exhibit a pointed contrast between Ingenerate and Generate nor describe the Son as unlIke the Father. But Easterners, George continues, recently commg to .Sl~;nlum contradicted these dangerous statements and opted for ousla. God inspired the Emperor to call a council which would prevent the heretics 'design of canonizing "unlike". ~c~ordmg to. bemg and origin' and 'like (only) according to wIll, and whIch ~ctually promulgated 'like in every respect', and this term of course mcludes likeness according to ousia. 84

George soon after alludes to a longer treatment of the likeness of the Son to the Father, and here he apparently means Basil's treatise composed after the Council of Ancyra of 358, but perhaps a longer form of it which is not in our hands. 88 George goes on to elaborate the analogy which we have already seen set out in Basil's work between the relation to the Son to the Father and the relation of

Next, George produces a fIrm declaration about the di~tinct existence of all three Persons of the Trinity. 'N obod Yshould be disturbed by the word hypostases, because the East~r~ers (o{ a~a"t~A.1.Koi) use hyposta;:! to express the subsisting and eXlStmg propnencs the :ers~n~. .

?f

Each Person, including the Holy Spirit. can be descrIbed as subslstmg (6Ijlt
86

For the first time in the controversy a clear distinction has been. made between the relation of the Son to the Father and the relatIOn of Christ incarnate to our human nature." In this argument only a few passages need detain us: . . 'The Easterners confess that there is onc Godhead embracIng all things through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Whik th~y confess ,one G.odhead and one Kingdom and one ultimate prmClple (cipX~v), still they devoutly recognize the Persons (n:pocrOO1toov) in the propnety of. then hypostases perceiving the Father as existing in his fatherly sovereIgnty

(uv9£vtI'1) and confessing the Son, not as a part of the Father, but

simply begotten and existing from the Father. perfect ~rom perfect. and recognizing the Holy Spirit. whom the holy Scrl~~ure names Parac1ete. as existing from the Father through the Son. 8314.8(287). It is not easy to reconcile this statement with th~ 'D~ted' Creed, f~r it actually excluded the use of ousia, whereas the statement ofSumlUm 35 8 cert3mll included an approval of'like according to ousia'. Yet not only Ste~nson but Loo s ('Arianismus' 32-3) and P. Hadot (Marius Victori~us 276) before h~m.had accepted this. Simonetti's explanation (Studi, 183 n. 109) IS not very convmcmg. 84 15 .1-4(287"""8). ) 85ta C; Uh6t lltac; troY n:pocrcOn(Ov \Xp8O'toocrac; Kat 6n:apxoooac;, 16.1. 2(288. quotation from 2. 86 16.2(288). . IC I' M 87 16.3,4(288--9); this part ends with a reference to the baptlsma ~onnu a In att 28:19 (6(289)).

368

Christ incarnate to our human nature. 89 In this argument only a few

passages need detain us: In one of these George says that 'the Person (hypostasis) of the Son is like the Person (hypostasis) of the Father; he is Spirit from the Father and as far as the aspect (evvOlu) goes the same, just as he is the same [as we are] as far as the aspect of flesh goes; yet not the same, but like, because the Spirit which the Son is is not the Father. and the flesh which he assumed is not [flesh] from semen and sexual pleasure.'9o

This statement could be· said to support the theory advanced originally by Harnack but adopted by many others since his day that the Homoiousians held a 'generic' doctrine of the Trinity, which the Cappadocians later borrowed. Then in several passages George insists that the Son does not act 'in sovereign power' (uvgevflIc&<;) as the Father does, but 'in the ministerial capacity' (01tOUPYlIC&<;) and yet that his likeness to the Father does not consist simply in will and activity (or power), but in authentic substance or existence'" Almost all the rest of this Letter is occupied in challenging those whom George clearly regards as his most formidable enemies, ·the Neo-Arians. He rejects their insistence that the prime category in which to think of the relationship between the Father and the Son is that of IngenerateJGenetate (aytvVIlfo<;jy£VVl]f6<;); this is a wrong classification, because it places the Son in the same order as all other products (Y&W~fa)"2 The words 'Father' and 'Son' imply a relationship and each part of that relationship implies the other, the whole involving a sharing of nature (fij, IjlUa£Ol<; f1jV OilC£lOf1]fU) and this does not apply to the terms 'ingenerateJgenerate',,3 It is in terms 88 17. 1(289); see above, p. 355 n.33· 89 18.1-8(290-1). 9°18.1(290). 9118.3-8(290-1); cf. Kat'atno"to dVal Kai ocp80"taVal Kai unapX8lV, 8(281). 9219.1-2(291-2). 93 19. 3- 5 (292). There is not the faintest hint of a contrast or confusion of (&;}Y8VVl\t6C; and (&;)YEVTJt6C; here, which Prestige thought to play an important part in the Arian Controversy.

Period of Confusion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (357-361)

of Father/Son that the New Testament speaks, and we were baptised, not into the Ingenerate and the Generate, but into the Father and the

at least rudimentary form in the minds of Basil of Ancyra and his associates. Some of the vocabulary had already been fixed and the basic structure of their Trinitarian thought was well on the way to being formed. But we must observe that Basil and George were still implicit believers in the subordination of the Son to the Father in a way which we cannot attribute to the Cappadocians. Basil of Caesarea and the two Gregories had sti\[ to make important advances of their own. Did the theology ofBasil and George owe anything to the work of Athanasius, which by 358/9 was available and capable of exercising an influence? The nearest approach, as we have already seen, to the central . Trinitarian ideas of Athanasius manifested by the Homoiousians was in their conviction that likeness in ousia necessary implied a community of nature between the Father and the Son; and we have seen George using an expression very like this (tii.; '1'6"'00'; tijvoIK.,ot'lta).99 Steenson discusses this question usefully, but finds that he has to come to an open verdict. 100 On the whole it does not seem likely that, even though Basil and George are much less troubled by the pro-Nicenes or Sabellians than they are by nascent N eo-Arianism, they were influenced by or had acquaintance with the theology of Athanasius. Their approach to the theology of the Trinity is really quite different from his, as their persistent subordinationism and their entire disuse of the concept of the eternal generation of the Son show. It is all the more remarkable that their theological ideas converge towards those of Athanasius in some important points. Perhaps we have here the explanation of why a consensus on the subject of the Christian doctrine of God eventually emerged iIi the fourth century.

Son. 94

George at this point begins quoting from some Arian source which we cannot identify.9s It is not Aetius' Syntagmation, and it does not suggest the Homoian theology of Germinius, Valens, Ursacius and Akakius. It is much more like the doctrine of Eunomius. It is interesting to observe, however, that George ascribes this doctrine to those who have just signed the 'Dated' Creed (or possibly the statement ofSirmium 358) along with Basil. 96 Evidently the party of Basil, as we have already had reason to suspect, did not distinguish between the doctrine of the Second Sirmian Creed of 357 and the doctrine of the nascent school of Aetius and Eunomius. These people obnoxious to. George argue in six short quotations which he gives that it is wrong to. say that the Son is like in ousi'a to. the

Father because though he can be said to be like in will and activity, and though he derives his ousia from the Father, he is ingenerate (agennetos. and also. agenetos (without beginning of existence» and the Son generate (gennetos), so that the Son must be regarded as 'of a different ousia' from the Father. 97

George finally places before his opponents the fact that though they stand for 'like in will, unlike in ousia', they have just signed a creed which declared that the Son is like the Father in all respects, and this term necessarily includes likeness in ousia. 98

This important document of the Homoiousian party, along with Basil's statement issued after the Council of Ancyra of 358, makes it clear that when the Cappadocian theologians began their work of theological construction which was to resolve the Arian Controversy the foundation had already been laid by the Homoiousians. It was by nO coincidence that the early theological associates of Basil of Caesarea were of this persuasion. The tradition of Trinitarian theology which was destined ultimately to prevail already existed in 94 2 0..1-5(29 2-3), 95 2 1,2--6(293-4) . 96 2 2.1-4(294); George

4. Constantius' Final Solution Neither of the twin councils followed at first the path which Constantius had designed for them, and neither finally went the way

accuses them of being in their 'Anhomoian' doctrine inconsistent with declarations to which they had previously set their hands. 97St&pOUO"l.O~ (heterousios). 21.4(294); this term was the watch-word of the Eunomians. They did not use anhomoios (though it occurs once in the Thalia), as their opponents claimed. because they believe that there were some ways in which the Son was like the Father, though not in ousia. 98 22.1-5(294-5).

99See above, P.369. 100B if A nerra 23~4I. It has been suggested also that Athanasius was . . ast./ o. acquamted WIth an HomOlousian. document akin to Basil's statement after Ancyra 3~B, but. mor~ expanded (perhaps that which Hilary may have known). See Simonetti Studt 17J n. 53, DInsen Homoousios 140, Steenson, Basil of Aneyra 265-8. Some have. even thought that Marius Victorinus knew this document, but this does not seem hkely; see Steenson op. cit. 277-9.

370

37 1

Period of Confusion

in which Basil and his party on the one hand and the majority of the Western bishops, on the other, who were no friends of Arianism, had hoped that they would go. The Emperor discovered that he could only persuade bishops to accept formulae which he regarded as necessary by using pressure and threats and even on occasion trickery.

No effective consensus yet existed among the bishops in the East, and no understanding among the bishops in the West of the theological problems which the leading Eastern theologians were trying to solve. IOI

The Council of Seleucia was as much a debacle as that of Serdica had been sixteen years before. l02 When the bishops assembled, amounting to about 160,'03 a number of prominent churchmen remained in the vicinity but took no part in the preliminary proceedings because they were under accusation in church courts for various alleged misdemeanours: Basil of Ancyra, Cyril ofJerusalem (who was involved in a feud with Akakius of Caesa rea which appears to have had nothing to do with doctrine), Macedonius of Constantinople, Patrophilus ofScythopolis and Eustathius ofSebaste in Armenia.' 04 The conduct of the council had been placed by Constantius in the hands of two imperial officials, Leonas a civil and Lauricius a military officer. Those present could be roughly divided into two parties as far as theological opinion was concerned: one was the Homoiousians, whose most prominent representatives were

Eleusius of Cyzicus, George of Laodicea, Silvanus of Tarsus and Sophronius of Pompeiopolis (either the Cilician or the Paphlagonian town). The other party was the Homoians, whose leadership lay in the hands of Akakius of Caesarea, George of Alexandria, U ranius of Tyre, and Eudoxius of Antioch. No representative of the extreme

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (J57-361)

Neo-Arians was present, unless we count the slippery Eudoxius among their number.1 os

The first day was taken up with futile accusations and equally futile suggestions about a new credal statement. Some wanted to re-affirm N, merely omitting the homoousion. Finally the majority of those present subscribed formally to a re-affirmation of the Second (,Dedication') Creed of Antioch 341, though not the party of Akakius. The only significant incident on the second day was the production by Akakius of a creed which he was anxious that all should adopt. On the third day Basil of Ancyra and Macedonius of Constantinople joined in the debate, against the protests of Akakius' party. However Akakius on this day was able to proffer his new creed to all present. It began by referring to the confusion produced by varying opinions and by the presence of some who were under accusation, paid a compliment to the imperial officials, expressed the writer's readiness to accept the Second (,Dedication') Creed of Antioch 341, rejected both homoousion and homoiousion, and also anhomoion as unsuitable and commended 'like' (homoios) simply, after the example of Col I:IS, and then continued: 'We confess and believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible; And we believe in our Lord Jesus Christ his Son, who was begotten

impassibly from him before all the ages. God Logos God from God, only-begotten, Light, Life, Truth, Wisdom, Power, through whom all things came into existence, things in the heaven and things on the earth, whether visible or invisible. We believe that at the end of the ages in order to abolish sin he took

flesh from the holy Virgin Mary and became man, suffered for our sins. rose again, and was taken into heaven, and is seated at the right

hand of the Father, and he is coming again in glory tojudge the living and the dead. IOIFor the events of this period see Gwatkin SA 174-83. AC 92-104; Harnack History IV.78-9; Locfs 'Arianismus' 36-7; Zeiller Origines 284-6; Meslin Les Ariens 285--91; Klein Constantius 11 9I-'7~ Kopecek History 199-215; Simonetti Crisi JIJ-J8. I02The original sources for this council are Hilary Contra Constantium (PG 10) 590-600 and Coli. Antiar B VII.r(I74-S); Athanasius De Synodis 12.1-4(239-40). 29.1"'"'9(257-8); Socrates HE 11.39. 40; Sozomenus HE IV .22.1-25; Philostorgius HE IV.II (very summary); Theodoret HE II.25.4-II. I03Socrates HE 11.39; Theodoret reckons 150. I04Hiiary of Poitiers. by his own account, was present at Seleucia (Con. ColtStantium 12(590»; Sulpicius Severus corroborates this and gives a litde more information about how and why he came (Chronjea 11.42(95--6».

I05Epiphanius Panarion 73.23.1-8 (296--7) gives us an interesting but not altogether reliable analysis of the state of parties in the East at this time. He ascribes considerable importance to the feud between Akakius and Cyril. It has been conjectured that it was during the Council of Seleucia that the strongly Arian 'Confession of Pat ric ius and Aetius' (Hist. Akeph. 4.6(154-8» was circulated. The extreme Arians had no satisfactory mouthpiece at Seleucia, because Eudoxius would hardly have dared to ventilate there doctrine as extreme as this. For this doctrinal formula see below PP.577"'"'9.

37 2

373

We also believe in the Holy Spirit, whom the Saviour our Lord also called the Paraclete. when he promised that after his departure he

Period of Confusion

Attempts at Creed-making: Phose Three (;5J-361)

would send him to the disciples, and he did send him; tbrough whom he also sancitifes those in the Church who believe and who are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

standard) at least in words; they believed that the Son 'was Son from God, that is from the substance of God'. The Anhomoians denied that the concept of 'substance' can be applied to God, or that God could generate; generation was simply creation and nothing more. The Son was created and was derived from non-existence. 'That is why the Son is not like the Father'.107 Hilary also adds some odd information about the views of Eudoxius, which will be dealt with later. l08 He must have consorted at this council with several NeoArians, who were at that time more or less patronised and protected by Eudoxius; the extreme views which he gives here were not prominently voiced at the council. But there must have been many undercurrents of opinion, some of which Hilary picked up. He also says that there was a fourth view (i.e. neither homoousian nor homoiousian nor heterousian) which insisted that the Son was like the Father, but its exponents, when interrogated, declared that the Son is like the Father qua Father, because God can make anything like himself if he chooses, but he is not like qua God, not in his substance.,09 This might be regarded as the view of the Homoians, though, as we shall see, "0 it could be reconciled with the Neo-Arian theology. Hilary elsewhere gives us the text of a curious letter which he says was written by the 'orthodox' bishops at Seleucia after the end of the council warning the Westerners gathered at Ariminum to hold out against Arianism. In fact all that the letter does is to address Valens, Ursacius, Germinius, Justus, Gaius and several others otherwise unknown (whose names appear to be Greek rather than Latin), assumed to be part of a delegation from Ariminum to the Emperor; it warns them against the heresy of denying that Christ is like the Father and alleges that Constantius is equally anxious to discourage this error, and explicitly names Aetius as the author of the doctrine which it repudiates. '1 1 The letter could have been sent from an Homoian group as readily as from an Homoiousian; its origin and precISe purpose are obscure. Athanasius' account of the Council of Seleucia is unsatisfactory and adds little to our knowledge of it. He does not mention any of the Homoiousians, but he says that the majority of those present accepted the conclusions of N, 'but they

Those who preach anything else except this creed arc alien to the Catholic Church. And that the creed recently put forth in the presence of our pious Emperor at Sirmium [i.e. the 'Dated' Creed] is to the same effect as this one those who have examined it know. 106

Except for a rather longer reference to the Holy Spirit (but one which made no theological advance whatever), this was a wholly characterless, insignificant creed (though it may have represented the kind of doctrine which the Emperor at that moment favoured), and it is not surprising that it did not find favour with the majority of the bishops present at Seleucia. A confused debate followed, during which the party of Akakiu~, on being asked in what sense the Son was 'like' the Father, answered 'only in will, not in ousia' (which was by now the stock Arian answer). Next day (the fourth) Leonas, seeing that it was impossible to reach agreement between the contending views, tried to dissolve the council. But the Homoiousians insisted upon assembling again in order, as they alleged, to hear the case, as a kind of court of appeal, which Akakius could make against Cyril whom he had deposed from the see of Jerusalem, as well as the evidence against some others who had been deposed. Akakius refused to attend, whereupon, in the manner of most fourth-century councils, the assembled bishops proceeded to depose, on paper at least, a list of those of whom they disapproved: the chief among them Akakius, George of Alexandria, Uranius, Patrophilus and Eudoxius of Antioch. They then elected a man called Anianus as bishop of Antioch in place of Eudoxius. He was promptly arrested by Leonas and Lauricius and subsequently banished by the Emperor. This singularly unproductive council then broke up. Hilary adds a little more information about the Council of Seleucia. The first impression which he gained was that about 150 bishops present favoured homoiousion (similis essentiae), 19 favoured heterousion (dissimilis essentiae) and only the Egyptians (with of course the exception of George of Alexandria) held fast to the homoousion. He believed that the Homoiousians were orthodox (according to his I o6This creed can be found in Epiphanius Panarion 73.2S. 1-10(298-9); Athanasius De Synodis 19,1-9 (257-8); and Socrates HE 11.40. The version of Epiphanius is the fullest. It is printed in Hahn Symbole §I6S. 206--7.

374

I07Con. Constantium 12 (590-1). I08S ee below, PP.583-4.

'·'Hilary ibid. 14(592-3). II oSee below p.634. III Hilary ColI. Antiar B VII. 1(174-5).

375

Period of Confusion

only excused themselves from using the homoousion, alleging that it was suspect because of its obscurity.'l12 . On the dissolution of the Council of Seleuc.., each of the dissenting parties sent a delegation of ten bishops to meet the Emperor at Constantinople, where he now resIded after returnmg from military engagements on the Persian front. The Homman delegation, however, which was headed by Akakms, arrIved first and secured the Emperor's ear.113 Constantius had already been In touch with the bishops at Ariminum for some time, and to the e,:ents whIch took place there in the council parallel to that of Seleuc.. we must now turn. 114 There were 400 bishops present. llS They ?,et In no conciliatory mood towards the Emperor. The representatives of the party nOw favoured by Constantius, Valens, Ursacms, Germmms, Gaius and Demophilus wanted the bIshops to adopt a creed equivalent to the 'Dated' Creed produced, earlie~ th~t year (though probably without the clause 'in all respects after hke), but the great majority of the bishops would have none of It. They expressed themselves as unwilling to countenance a new creed and as faIthful to 112De Synodis 12.1-4(239-4°). quotation from 4(240)· He refers here to Geo~~)e of Alexandria as (, 8trox9&iC;41t6 rile; ohcou~VllC; (,who was ch~s~d out of the eart .

This can hardly refer to George's departure from Alexandna In the year 3 58, b~t must surely be a brutal reference to his death in December 361 at the hands of t . e

Alexandrian mob. This supports the view that this work was written. not in 359 but

f?3l

in For what happened immediately after the Council ofSeleucia (though ~n the Council itself Socrates is more informative than Sozomenus, w~o largely relies on him (Sabinus ofHeradeia is behind both» Sozomenus HE IV .23 IS more useful than

. . .. < bl d r tl riginal sources for the Council of Arlmmum (which 10 Lac~ assem . e. a It e than' did that of Seleucia) are Hilary, CoIl~ctlo Antlarrana A

Socrates HE [1.41. 1140

earlier

V(r)-VI(J)(7 8- 88 ); B VU.,(r76-7); Athanasius De SynodlS IO.I-1I.'('J7/8),

55. 1--7(277-8); Socrates HE 11.37; Sozomenus HE IV.17.!~I9.I2; Theodoret ~E 11.19.5, 20.1-:-3; Jerome Adv. Luciferano~ 17-18; SUlpl.CIUS S~v~rus ChronlCa 11.4 1-45(94-9) who is relying on an eyewItness, the S~msh GavldlUS. The ~hree historians follow Athanasius, but his account is not as s~tlsfactory as that ~fHtlary. Sozomenus gives uS a little more light on the proceedmgs of the delegatIOn from Ariminum to Constantius than does Socrates, but both mistakenly assume that Liberius was involved with the Council of Ariminum. In fact he was not present, nor did he send a representative, not even Vincentius ofCapua (see a statement by a later synod presided over by Damasus at Rome Theodoret Il,E Il.22.9~. ~hoebadlUs of Agen's Contra Arianos was written before t~e Counctl of Anmmum, ~nd Gregory of Elvira's De Orthodoxa Fide, thoug~ wntten after~ards, cells us n~thmg about the Council. For a careful but highly conjectural analYSIS of the proceedmgs at Ariminum, s~c Y.M. Duval in Hilaire et son Temps 5 1- 103. . IlSS ozomenus HE IV.I7.2. Sulpicius says that only 80 were Arlans.

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (35?-36,)

N, and they wrote quite a long letter to the Emperor conveying these sentiments: Having told him of their opinions about creed making, they went on to inform him that they had excommunicated Valens, Ursacius, Germinius and Gaius for their inconstancy in doctrine, asking the Emperor to take no notice of the opinions of these men concerning removing the proper elements of the faith [presumably they mean the use of ousia and of homoousion J; they requested that he would require them to change nothing, but to let them depart to their own sees and pray for his welfare. 1l6

They then sent a delegation of ten of their number (consisting of bishops, led apparently by Restutus or Restitutus of Carthage, of whom we know virtually nothing; they were matched by ten of the Arian party, among them Valens) to interview the Emperor. This was, of course, not what Constantius wanted. He had at some earlier point sent them a letter warning them not to make any decision affecting the Eastern bishops. Anything which they may have determined in that respect he declares by his imperial power to be null and void: 'a decision which our edicts now declare to be deprived offorce and application can have no power'; they are to send ten men to his court. 117 He kept them waitin% without seeing them for some time· at Adrianople and then, still without having admitted the delegation from Ariminum to an audience, replied directly to that council in a letter. It was a polite letter, simply informing them that he is too busy at the moment to attend to their delegation and asking them to wait a bit longer to hear his reply. 118 The bishops' reply to this letter 'Yas polite in form but brusque in content. It said that they would not tolerate this postponement; they affirmed in the strongest language that they would never rescind their decision about doctrine. Wint.er was coming on. They asked permission to return to their homes and churches" 9 Constantius was even less inclined than "·Hilary Coli. Antiar A V(I-')(78-85); ibid. [X(r-J)(96-7) gives the actual resolutions which are reported in the letter. I 17Hilary Coil. Anliar VIII.I, 2(93-4): the words quoted run thus in the original

(2(94)): non enim ullas vires habere poterit definitio cui nostra statuta testantur nunc robur et copiam denegari. This letter must be a different one from that which is next referred to, because this requires the bishops to send a delegation and the next acknowledges that the delegation has arrived. 118 Athanasius, De Synodis 55.2-3(277-8).

U9lbid. 55-4-7('78).

377

Period oj ConJusion

before to agree to their request, but he saw ~he n~cessity of acting quickly to prevent the bishops at Adrianopl: dissolving ~he. council of their own accord. He moved the deleganon from AnmInum to a small place called Nice in Thrace, apparently in order to impress the delegates with the resemblance of its name to Nlcaea, and then by means of his agents began bringing pressure upon them .to accept the creed which he favoured, hinting that refusal would Impenl their tenure of their sees and lead to banishment. He sent Valens back to Arminum with orders to persuade the bishops there to sign the desired formula. The delegation from Seleucia was apparently detained in Constantinople, where the Emperor was at the nme. Jerome, in his far from plausible attempts to relieve the Western bishops from the blame of having signed an unorthodox creed, tells us something of the method whereby Valens succeeded in his enterprise. Valens first publicly declared, in. the presence. of Taurus the pretorian prefect, that he was not an Anan an~ heartily dl~hked Arian doctrines. '2 • In the course of the proceedings MuzonlUs, a bishop of Byzacena (the Eastern province of Roman North Africa) suggested that a document of doctrinal importance should be read out, and, on all agreeing to this, Claudius bishop of Picenurn in Italy read out a series of anathemas to which Valens, 'IS well as everybody else, was required to assent. They ran thus: 'If anyone denies that Christ the Son of God was born before the ages... . If anyone denies that the Son is like the Father accordIng to the Scriptures ... If anyone denies that the Son of God is, eternal with the ~ather ... If anyone says that the Son of God is denved from non-eXIstence (de

nullis extantibus) ... If anyone says that there was a time when the Son did not exist '121

Next Claudius, in order deliberately to test Valens, added this anathema.

120Dialogus adversus Luciferanos (PL 23) I8(I80~.. . 1211bid. 18(180); Sulpicius Severus has a not dissimilar though more sumJ?ary account Cllronica 11.44(97-8). He says that Phoebabius of Agen and Servatlo of Tongres led the resistance of Arianism. but that even they were in the end persuaded to sign.

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (357-361) 'If anyone were to say that the Son of God existed indeed before all ages, but not before any time at all (sed non ante omnino tempus), so

that anything existed before him .. .' Jerome asserts that Valens assented to all these propositions, and to others unspecified which Claudius put to him.!22 By this time the delegation from Ariminum at Nice had consented to. sign the required creed. The news of this event, and the conviction that the imperial authority could not, after agreeing to these anathemas, interpret the·creed in an Arian sense, allied to their intense desire to return to their sees, caused the great majority of the bishops at Ariminum at that pbint to sign the required doctrinal formula. A positively servile letter survives which they then wrote to the Emperor, thanking him in an adulatory manner for bringing them to the conviction that once usia or omoousia was omitted from the statement of faith all would be well and harmony would prevail, and asking once more for permission to return home. 123 Permission was given and the council broke up, their earlier brave resolutions all abandoned. The Homoiousian delegation from Seleucia in Constantinople took longer to come to the same decision, and it was only after a session lasting most of the night of the last day of 359 that the Eastern bishops of this persuasion gave in and signed the creed

I 22Ibid. 18(I8l). Jerome is emphatic that the information which he gives here is reliable: quod si quis a nobis ./ictum putat, scrinia publica scrutetur. Plene sunt certe eulesiarum arcae, et reeens adhuc rei memoria est (18(181». Virtually all of these propositions are in fact susceptible of an Ariari interpretation. Most Arians had probably bY.now abandoned the doctrine that the Son was derived form nonexistence and held that he came from the will of the Father. which was eternal, at least in predestining the existence of the Son. Only.the doctrine of the eternal generation. and perhaps the introduction of a compound of ousia could have repelled an Arian as flexible as Valens. Socrates justly says of both Valens and Ur~acius 06t01 yap de! n:po~ totJ~ ~'J1'l1cpa'toijvtar; ~lttKA1VOV (HE II.n). For various Anan glosses on terms designed to exclude their views, see Hilary Call. Antiar. B VIll.2 (r76-7). 123~iJary Cofl. Ant jar. A VLI-3 (87-8). The remark of Ambrose in Ep 75.15(3°) on .A:lminum bears out, as far as it goes, the interpretation given here. M. Duval (H~/~"e el s~n Temps 63-'71) assigns the bishops' final letter to an Arian group wrnmg durmg the course of the council. not at the end. but this seems to me unnecessary. To most Western bishops the insistence on ousia in N would have seemed strange and not necessarily connected with Tertullian's unius substantiae, as it would have see~ed to Hilary before 355. The bishops would have thought orthodoxy suffiCIently safeguarded by the anathemas which Valens had been induced to sign. See Brenneck, Hilarius von P. 295, 319.

379

Period of Confusion

Attempts al Creed-making: Phase Three (357-361)

which is usually known as the Creed of Nice. This creed '24 is to all intents and purposes identical with the 'Dated' Creed, so. that Constantius had won his way in having this document, ongmally designed by the twin councils, accepted formally by both. But there was one significant change in the Creed of Nice. Its last paragraph

Homoian party by a wholesale attack on those who were likely to disagree with it. Almost all the prominent supporters of the Homoiousian theology were deposed by the council and exiled by the Emperor, but on charges which were not doctrinal but ranged over a wide variety of misdemeanours. Basil of Ancyra (whose ruthless conduct towards his opponents for the short period when he had the Emperor's ear had made him particularly vulnerable) fell a victim, and so did Macedonius of Constantinople (who died in exile not long afterwards), Eleusius ofCyzicus, Eustathius ofSebaste, Cyril of Jerusalem, Silvanus of Tarsus and Sophronius of Pompeiopolis. Eudoxius succeeded Macedonius as bishop of Constantinople, leaving the see of Antioch vacant. Meletius was sent to succeed Eustathius at Sebaste (where he encountered fierce local opposition); a man called Athanasius went to Ancyra; and Eunomius, not yet notorious for his Neo-Arian views, was made bishop of Cyzicus. As Eunomius had- been honoured, one would have expected the much better-known Aetius, his teacher, to share in the rewards. But the contrary happened. Aetius had published his Synlagmation in the autumn of 359. Philostorgius says that Aetius while at Constantinople at the end of 359 challenged Basil, who was later to be bishop of Cappadocian Caesarea, and was already in deacon's orders, to debate the Trinitarian subject publicly, and that Basil and his friends reluctantly agreed and were signally defeated in the encounter.'26 This may have been the reason why Aetius attracted the Emperor's attention. Constantius did not encourage public debates on theological subjects; he had refused to allow Hilary to debate the current issue with Saturninus of Aries; and he had earlier roundly condemned Aetius in an imperialletter. '27 After examining Aetius personally in a brief interview he banished him to Phrygia. It has reasonably been conjectured that Constantius regarded Aetius as politically suspect as weIl as doctrinaIly unsound, because Aetius had been a quite close friend of the disastrous Caesar Gallus. '2 • George of Laodicea seems to have escaped the general deposition. This may be because he ostentatiously changed sides to join the Homoians at this point; presumably he had originally deserted the early Arian

ran:

'But the word ousia because when it was naively inserted by the Fathers. though not familiar to the masses, caused di~turbance. and because the Scriptures do not contain it, we have deCided should be removed, and that there should be-absolutely no mention of ousia for the future, because the Scriptures make no mention of the ousia of the

Father and of the Son, nor should one hypostasis be applied to the Person (prosopon) of the Pather and Son and Holy Spirit. But we declare that the Son is like (homoion) the Father, as also the Holy Scriptures declare and tcach. And let all the heresies which have already been previously condemned, and any others which have recently grown up opposed to the creed set out here be anathema. J

The words placed in italics in this statement represent additions made to the 'Dated' Creed. But more significant was the fact that the words 'in all respects', which appeared in the 'Dated' Creed after 'like the Father' were omitted in the Creed of Nice. A formula of f31th had been formally accepted by something that could be at a stretch called a General Council, and that formula was capable of recelvmg the assent of Homoian Arians such as Valens, U rsacians, Germinius and

Akakius, and even at a pinch could be acceptable to Neo-Arians like Aetius and Eunomius. The frail hope of the Homoiousian party 'like the Father in all respecls', had been destroyed. 8. The Aftermath of Nice

Early in the year 360 a council was held in Constantinople presided over by Akakius, who was noW Constantius' chief eccleSiastical adviser in the East. The bishops mainly came from BIthyma; MarIS of Chalcedon is mentioned. But Ulfilas bishop of the Goths was also there.'2' Its main function was to signalize the triumph of the 124Preserved in Athanasius De Synodis 30 and Theodoret HE IL2I. It is given in Hahn Symbole §l64(20S-{i)· . . 125For the proceedings of this council, apart from the creed which It a~opted, ~ee Socrates HE 11.42 and Sozomenus HE IV ,24.1-26.1 (much fuller); cf. Philostorglus HE IV.12(64).

:;

126HE IV.I2(64-S); c( Theodoret HE IV.27.12. 127See above, P.357; for Hilary's offer to debate see Sulpicius Severus Chronica' II.4S(98-j». 128For several interesting details about Constantius' movements and motives at

this period, see Klein Constantius II 93--6.

Period of Confusion Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (357-3 61 )

theology to join the party of Basil of Ancyra. Basil of Caesarea later in a letter described the Creed of Nice as 'the creed promoted from Constantinople by the party of George.'12' But it is possible that Basil is referring to George of Alexandria, and that George of Laodicea was left alone because he was known to be dying. He died in 360. This Council of Constantinople in 360 formally promulgated the Creed of Nice, word for word as it had been agreed to by the twin councils, and it now for a short period became the official ecumenical creed of the Church, replacing N, and thenceforward the standard creed of the majority of the Arians. 130 One more incident relevant to the history of doctrine which occurred during Constantius' reign and in his presence must be recorded. Meletius l31 had been appointed to the see of Antioch on Eudoxius transferring to Constantinople. Meletius had previously been bishop of Beroea in Syria, and of Sebaste in Armenia.''' He himself came from Armenia originaily and there owned an estate at a place called Getasa, to which he used to retire on those occasions when he was exiled. 133 As bishop of Antioch, the protege of the Homoian party, it was incumbent upon him at an early point to declare publicly his doctrinal allegiance, and about a month after his enthroning as bishop of Antioch, at some point probably in the

;:~t~;: ~~I:::361, h; ;a~equired to take part in a session ofsermon-

~~ur~ 0t Antr:~~.oFi:s; A~t~:~~n~:~~~rie~~~~:~~;;';:~~:i~fa~

en e etlUs were .to pre~ch upon the crucial text, Proverbs 8:22 It was. then that MeletlUs dehvered himself of a critical discourse which given us by Epiphanius. '

IS

I After a cautious beginning MI' ' I ' e etlUs p unges boldly int Chnsto ogical d.octrine: the Son is 'th . bl . 0 I bI e mscruta e mterpreter of the .nscr~ta e. a perfect and abiding product (1.vv~~a) from him who

d'

IS per ect an who abides in his identity, not an emanation fro Father, ?r somet~ng cut off and divided. but impassibly and :t:~~

pro~eedl~~from hlm who never deviates from what he possessed a pro uct _ 1 e the Father and accurately reproducing the i ... (xapa"t~pa) of the Father' ... it is not the case that 'he b'd mpress who is diffi b d ales ill one

cre?t ~t oe~ not subsist independently, but he is the pro duct w h 0 IS actlve and who p. [, d I this '134 Wh MI' er orms an a ways preserves all . en e euus reaches the point of expo d' h .1 ~roverbs ~:22 he.says that Christ is the im~ge (ikon)':f:: ;a:h~:u~~t owever as a lIfeless Image of ali' , prod d b vmg person, nor as a power

uce y art not as the effect (altot...."~a) of power b t th oIEspflng ofhlm who b hi' ( L ' U as e Sctipt b h h egot m 1ovv~~ato61.vv~"avto,).135The ure says ot t at God created him and that he b hi

cobnt.radictory statements, but 'created' signifies ~~~~ :hi:~t ~s su Slstent and enduring' and ' b ' .h IS attribute of the Only-be~otten' ~~~~:eans t e choice .and peculiar s ~arnings about trying to s eak too :u: mon ends With elabo~ate ~lvine mysteries which are "beyond usJ37 and to pry too far mto

129Ep 51.2(4-5) 'ttlr; 1t{crteror; 61to trov Kepi n:mpYlov (btl> KrovCTtavtlvou1t6A£ror; KOJucr8Ei011t;. The Chronicon Paschale (PG 92:736) gives a list of those who were present at the enthronement of Eudoxius in Constantinople, including a George. But this is much more likely to be George of Alexandria than George of Lao dieea.

We have no reason to think that Basil and Eleusius and Macedonius did not sign or eventually assent to the Creed of Nice. yet they were deposed. A declaration of

allegiance to the Homoian party would hardly have saved George of Lao dice a, who had been so promment a supporter of Basil's cause, from deposition. tlOThe Creed of Constantinople is given by Athanasius De Synodis )0.1-10(258-9) and more fully by Theodoret HEII.21.)-6. For the use of this creed by later Adans see above p. 126. IllFor this incident see Gwatkin SA 248; Schwartz, Gesamm. Schrift. )5. 'Zur Geschichte' 161-3; Simonetti studi 76-7, Crisi 342-5; Klein Constantius II lao-I. The original sources are Epiphanius Panarion 7).29.1-33.5(363-8); Socrates HE 11.44: Sozomenus HE IV.28.6-7; Theodoret HE II.) 1.8; Philostorgius HE V.4: and frag 33(2)0) Historia Akephala 2.7(146, 148). Il2It is possible that Meletius' superseding ofEustathius at Sebaste took place at an earlier period, that he had found the opposition there too strong and, retiring, had then fallen back on being bishop of Beroea. Sources for his early career are Ammianus Marcellinus XX.I I; Socrates HE 11.44: Sozomenus HE IV.28.3; Philostorgius HE V.I; Theodoret HE II.) I; Jerome Chronicle sub ann. 360. tllSee Basil ofCaesarea Ep 99.),5.6,27. Epiphanius Panarion 1).34.1(309) says that Meletius came from the Pontic region, but this is most unlikely.

i?IS was certainly not an Homoousian discourse, as Philostorgius and em represent it, nor was it a completely Homoiousian one It makes no mention of the Son's nor the Father's ousia from be' :

J~si~:d ~~~;~ ~~:tn;;:ea ;~~s:C:O~ily Hom~ian statement efc~e~~~~

linked the Son's creation with t~is. ~~::~e :~::~~!a:~er, and it ~~~e denvmg purely from the will of the Father; there Was a~~~~ t~~ if ~~ subor~matlOmsm m it. The stress on the inscrutability of God no mg ese, would have been offensive to Neo-Arians. Th~ Il4n

.

Fa,naTlOn 73.29.4-']'(305). "IbId. 31.5(306). 'J6Ib'd I . 31.5-
ICui J..lov1llOY and to £~aipstov TOU

IJ7Ibid

(

. 32. 1-33.5 307-8).

.

h

..

... are In t e oogmaJ to tVU1toO'tQt6v tS J.l.ovoysvouC; Kai i.l)(a~ov .

Period of Confusion

authorities realized that they had backed the wrong horse. A council was hastily summoned and Meletius was exiled, though not on a charge of false doctrine. We cannot doubt that what to Constantius and Akakius and George was the unsoundness of his doctrinal views constituted the real cause of his banishment, though the fact that in his short period in charge of the see of Antioch he had readmitted to the ministry several clergy, probably of Homoiousian views, may have contributed. Almost no ancient authority imagined that he had been exiled for any other reaSOnS than doctrinal ones 13 ' Schwartz, who always tended to see doctrine as a mere mask for political motives and forces, attempted to represent Meletius as a man of consummate shrewdness and cynical self-seeking who always managed to come out on the right side. But this is an extraordinary interpretation of the evidence. Meletius was in the course of his career exiled three times;

he cannot possibly have known in 360 either that Constantius' death was near (the Emperor was then aged 43), nor that nearly twenty years later an Emperor would appear who would support his cause. We may reasonably ask, with Mark Anthony, 'Was this ambition?'. Certainly from the moment that he preached this sermon he became something of a popular hero, and was able for the next twenty years, whether in Antioch or in exile, to command a considerable following in that city. He was for the moment replaced in the see by Euzoius, one of the early companions of Arius who had shared his exile with him. Euzoius was an Arian sang pur, that is to say he was tolerant towards both the continuing Eustathians and the followers of Meletius, allowing each body their own church to worship in, but was an inveterate enemy of the Neo-Arian school, whom he must have regarded, not without justice, as a dangerous and unnecessary deviation from the pure doctrine which he was commissioned to preserve and teach. In February 360, Julian, Gallus' half-brother and Constantius' younger cousin, who, having been sent to command in the Gauls with the title of Caesar, had showed himself unexpectedly able both in financial administration and in military affairs, was hailed as Augustus by some of his troops, who took this means of ensuring that they should not be transferred to the Eastern front where Constantius needed them for the war against the Parthians. Julian accepted this tJaE.g. the Historia Akepllala 2.7 'he would not agree to their evil ideas' (nolente eorum rnalae ment; consentire).

Attempts at Creed-making: Phase Three (357-3 61 )

title, thereby declaring himself equal in authority to Constantius, and therefore not obhged to accept his appointments to the office of praetonan prefect nor compelled to send him troops on dema d d n . Constanuus heard of this move when he was i C Caesa b d . n appa OClan rea, ut rna e no Immediate move to counter Julian's action He spent the summer..nd autumn in and around Edessa, but returned to AntlOch for the wmter. In fact he must have spent most of 361 in ~ntlOch, whence presumably he could control affairs on the Eastern ron tier but was also m a position to hear news from the West qUIckly. Juhan made no Overt move to challenge Constantius' authonty m the East for some time, though he certainly intended ultimately to do so and began making preparations for a move to the East. Durmg the su~mer of 361 however he crossed the Alps with an ar~y, mtendmg d~rectly to attack Constantius. Constantius at last ~earzed that Juhan s challenge was serious and in the autumn of 361 e eft AntlOch and began moving towards Constantinople, which he m~st defend agamst the usurper. During the journey however he fell ~enously III and I~ November at Mopsucrene in Cilicia he died, after avmg been baptized by Euzoius. On his deathbed he had the largemmdedness to bequeath the Empire to Julian. Constantius' death not only meant the collapse of his ecclesiastical pohcy. Italso sealed the fate of George ofAlexandria. George had not shown himself a zealous pastoral bishop. He had spent most of his eplscopa~e hitherto far away from his see taking part in hi h .. gd· eccleSiastical POhtlCS, in councils and plans and d . . epOSItlOns an appomtments. Alexandna had seen very little of h' Ad' dl whenev h d'd " h' 1m. mItte y er e I ViSIt IS see he tended to be met by a rioting flock and he depended for his security on the support of Roman spears. Bu; eve; when he was present, he had shown no desire to mitigate the VIO ence which Constantius' officers used in opposing the art of Athanas~us. In addition, he had evinced a peculiar zeal in a;tac~n a:d pUlhng down pagan places of worship. 139 What happened whe g ~ e ~~ws .of Constantius' death reached Alexandria can best h~ escn ed m the words of a first-rate local, almost contemporary Source, the Historia Akephala:14o ' I 39S ee chapter 16 PP 348-9' R P C H Compare also Sozo~en~s HE I':; 30 '2(~8~) .~nson

.

~/udl"SI in

Christian Antiquity, because h d h'" e partlcu ar y annoyed the pagans and he holdi?g their t,raditionai festivals their statues and dedications and th x 0 gfYPht I?to the CIty and confiscated 140 2 ,8-10(14 ). e Ornaments 0 t elr temples', 8

int;o':::ce~oa~~::~~l~i~~ as:~r:~;i: a~~

Period of Confosion 'd arrived in Alexandria in the month of

'So George. as has been ~'d' [Nov 26th] and remained in the city Athyr, on the the ~'rtlet Ba~ n th~ fourd, day of the [next] month in safety for three ays... u a d th death of the Emperor the prefect Gerontius announce t ~ d the whole Empire [Nov. Constantius and thatJulithia~ alohne ~~n rooefAlexandria and everybody h h h rd s t eCltlzens . 30th]. W en t ey e~ Ire and arrested him at once and put him

raised a cl~mo~r agatnst ~eoh~ twen -seventh day of the month, for

in fetters 10 prISon ... until t h ty. hth day of the month [Dec. twent~-four days. Thenlon t t ~~::~~l:~opulace of the city brought

I3 Eusebius Of Emesa and Cyril of Jerusalem

24th]. m the mo~mg a mas. h him the man who was with him, the George out of prISon, and wit . I building which is called the

Count. in cha~g~ll~~ t~:m'~!t~:nd paraded their corpses thro ugh CaesarlUm , an • a camel but men dragged .ddl f h city· George s was on , the mt e 0 .t e d hen they had maltreated their corpses . Dracontius' with ropes, an 'hwh [ 'clock] they burnt them.' I

in this way. about the sev~nt

our one

0

We cannot directly accuse the followers ofbAlet~~~a~~: (~ynh~h:~t~~ . I d . d m nO way responsl l' m A exan rta an C sti atin this murderous riot, but

:~:~~~~!I~~~a~~~~~:~~ns~op~t. iheir ~olicy was that of the poet Arthur Clough: 'Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive

Officiously to keep alive'.

I.

Eusebius of Emesa

The two figures who have been chosen to form the subject of this chapter have only this is common, that while they must be placed at different ends of the spectrum of fourth-century theological opinion, neither of them can be readily fitted into a conventional category. Neither is a manifest supporter of the homoausias and yet neither can be described as a rank Arian. They therefore illustrate well the variety and diversity of opinion which prevailed in the Eastern Church in the mid-fourth-century and bring home to the reader how unwise it is to divide theological opinions at that point into 'orthodox' and' Arian'. Eusebius of Emesa 1 must have been born about 300 in Edessa. Syriac, no doubt, was his native language, but he learnt Greek early and well. He studied under Patrophilus in Scythopolis and then in Palestinian Caesarea under its famous bishop Eusebius, for whom he conceived a lifelong admiration. He certainly could read the Old Testament in its original Hebrew. About the year 330 he went to Antioch and there joined the circle of those who disapproved of Eustathius of that city. Euphronius, who was bishop not long after I The indispensable source for knowledge of Eusebius of Emesa lies in two books by B. M. Buytaert, who must be given credit for bringing this writer as fully to light as possible in modern times, L' Heritage litteraire d'Eusebe d'Emese and Eusebe d'Emese, Discours conserves en Latin (consisting of Tome I La Collection de Troyes (Discours I-XVI) and Tome II La CoIlection de Sirmond (which is Sirmond's original edition re-edited and re-numbered». The Greek fragments in my text are quoted from L' Heritage 62--g6, the Latin remains from Discollrs. Some material will also be found in PG 86.1.532-62. The chief ancient authorities on Eusebius are Socrates HE 1.24,11.9: Sozomenus HE III.6.I--'7 and 14.42 and Jerome De Vir. Ill. XCI.. But several more references to him in antiquity have been collected by Buytaert, L'Heritage 4--61. On Eusebius generally, see Grillmeier CCT 303-6, 352.-60, and Simonetti erisi 193--'7.

Period of Confusion Eusehius of Ernesa and Cyril ofJerusalem

the deposition ofEustathius, wanted to ordain Eusebius priest, but for some reason Eusebius left Antioch and went to Alexandria, where he continued his study of theology and philosophy. About 335 he returned to Antioch, where Flacillus (Placitus) was now bishop, and it was probably now that he was priested. He was present at the Council of Antioch of 341; he delivered a eulogy on Eusebius of Caesarea shortly after the death of that prelate (339 or 340). At some point (it is difficult to determine when, either 341 or 343) he refused to be appointed to the see of Alexandria, which the opponents of Athanasius at Antioch were anxious to fill, but not long after his refusal he was appointed to the see of Emesa (modern Hams). But when he presented himself at Emesa he was met with hostility by the local population who, we are told, disliked his learning (an objection to bishops not unknown in Anglican circles, but they probably mistook his expertise in astrology for sorcery). He was compelled to retire and to take refuge with his friend George of Laodice a in his see. George led his friend to Antioch and from there Flacillus and others used their influence to have him reinstalled in Emesa. On this occasion he had to face another accusation, this time of Sabellian heresy (possibly because he was not thought to be sound on the doctrine of three hypostases), but he survived it, and remained bishop of Emesa for the rest of his life. He accompanied the Emperor Constantius on one of his Parthian campaigns (either 342-50 or 357--
Roman number followed by an Arabic number in square brackets and then another to indicate the page of Buytaert's edition in the Discours. The Latin' Discours' are numbered in large Roman figures consecutively through Tomes I and II, but the

Arabic figures denoting pages which follow the Roman figures (after the figures in square brackets denoting sections) refer to pages and begin again in Tome II at No. I. The account of Eusebius' career follows mainly Buytaert L' Heritage 62-94.

38 8

knowledge of Origen or O· . through the thought of Eu bngemfsmC at all except at second-hand se IUS 0 aesarea He sh . f o concentrating especially on att k. . .. ows many SIgns suggestion that God hates created t~C mg th~ relIgIon of Mani, his different God,3 and that God has l;g~oOr t 4 at the Son is a Son of a attacked the doctrine of M 11 dy. He also on occasion e US that Christ's kingdom w:rlcd h of Ancyra, especially his theory . u ave an end 5 and th Ad . . OptlOmsm ascribed to Paul of Sam 6' e .errors of detected referring oblique! t h zsata. He can occaslOnally be mentions ousia or hypostasi;nOt e omoousion, though he _never these in translation 7 He is or any word which might represent anxlOUS to aVOld bein th h . dogmatically or arro anti A . . g aug t to speak that I have decided a;d sp~ t o~ehPOlbnt he WIltes: 'Certainly I think en neIt er eyond (the r ·t f) S . nor th at of nature'.s He carefull avoid Iml 0 cnpture party-cries of the day and hardl Y skmos t of the slogans and . . ' yeverattac sanyoneb G sense IS mdeed one of his distin uishin . . y name. ood consciousness at all of th g g charactenstlcs. He shows no e eXIStence of Neo A·· H· ·h w hlC was much admired in anti . .. . -. namsm. IS style, of histrionic questions and sh t qUIty, IS mdlvldual, rhetOrical, full . or sentences and cond . mOvlng argument. It is reeo nisable' . uces to a sWlften perhaps even in an English g. fevh m the Latm translation, and . verSlOn 0 t e Latln He . . It, on the self-emptying of the Son; . re IS an example of 'He abandoned all this he hid h·

I

estate, he walked alon~ with u I~ gory, he too~ on himself Our mean us: he was spat on by us, sent:~ceeda~e along WIth us, .slept along with y us, as far as hIS human nature went. '9

His theology cannot be d ·b d though it has SOme 'A' , ~sc~ e as characteristically 'Arian' the Father he is neare;l:: l:~ts m. it. ~n the relation of the Son t~ anaslUS t an to Anus. He frequently J De Quinque Panibus VIII f l . ' . . conce.mp.oraries, could not or ~o~~~' It 15 d~k~ly t~at Eusebius, like many of his MarcIOmtes. not IStlngUlSh between Manichaeans and

. 4De incorporali et Invisibili Deo XX [ dIscourses XXI-XXIV (r0 3fi') f Ii 32J 98 and passim; see also the next fo :De Fide. J~I [24193, [3 0 ) ~;.c. or attacks on Manichaeism De FWo I [3] 4~~

, ,

j'

De Arb""o I [40J 41" h . 'De Fide III [ J8 ( ''per:psDeFJ/io II [28J 63.

J 9 5 agaInst a second inge ' 17 114, I IS (identification of Fath ~e~ate , nonnatum), Adversus Sabellium ;De Filio ~I [45J 78. er an on to be rejected). . De Openbus Bonis XXIX [26 J PotJphar's wife tempted Joseph D R232; cf: th~ very vivid depiction of how e esurrectlOne 1 XVIII f38J 33-4. IV [

389

!

·1 ·,1

I

I ,/

I

Period of Confusion Eusebius of Emesa and Cyril ofJerusalem defines this relationship in terms of nature (not, as Arians waul?,. of creatureliness nor of will alone). 'God born from God took on us (;:~. our nature) he writes.'o His nature was from God." We have 'de from God communication, he by nature. 12 He is 'God from Go : not God from man, not God by being exalted to be Son by nature, t ebody who was promoted to being God because of h,s no som '13 And behaviour, but somebody who is from (God) by nature. while Eusebius hardly ever denies directly th~t the Son was created, he comes very close to doing so: No created th~g can ~e compared to the Only-begotten." There is no conceIvable time or s~ace distinguishing the Father from the Son. It is not enough to say the Son before the ages', because this is not what the fourth Evangehst

by

meant in his first chapter, 'Not tha~ he has come into eXistence n0.w, as some witless people want (to interpret); "was" says the evangelist,

positing no interval of time because he is from the Father.'" The Son is indeed subordinate to the Father, but not in times nor spaces, only 'in rank and in honour'.16 and on John 1:1 again, 'Because the t~: (God and the Logos) are placed side by side, why do you drag I inconsequential points? Whether it is time or age or any other created thing that you drag in, it is not introduced: (m the text).17Perhaps strongest of all is the saying 'For it was fittmg th~t he who was not m'ade should come down to those who are made. ,. The hght of the sun was created Ifactus) on the fourth day, 'But· the Son was not (created) on the first day, nor on the fourth, nor in any day, nor m an hour nor in times nor in ages."· We are sons by grace, but he by natu;e,20 Eusebius insists upon the incomparability of the Son: 'and he is Only-begotten in that he alone knows the On~ and 1S consequently only-begotten by his knowledge; further he 1S OnlylOIn a sermon extant in Armenian on the Transfiguration 39*-44* [17] (Latin tr.

77:~De Filio If [301 64, cf. Adversus Sabellium IV [22]

118 ex Deo autem propter

naturam. ' no t by election . 12De Imagine V [7) 132; cf. [II] 134. he is k'mg b y nature, 13De Galice IX [30] 23S. "De Fili. II ['4] 54. "Ibid. II [15] 54. '-De Fide III [28] 95. 17De Hominis Assumptione XVI [7] 366. . 18Part ofa sermon surviving in Syriac 33*-34* (Latin tr. *71).

"De Fide III [25] 94· . " . . iJ 2°149* 14. a Greek fragment on GalatIans 4.4-11 by nature 1$ K (/) cr£roC;.

begotten also in love because he alone honours him who begot him, alone loves, alone knows him. '2' 'The Son is the only-begotten of the Father, not one among the mass, but "through whom all things are", not after everything but before all, not honoured apove all others, but "he who made everything". '22 He also insists that the Incarnation

did not mean a diminishing of God, quoting Phil 2:6 'he who was in the form of God', he says that 'was' (constitutus) does not imply that he began to be in the form of God or once was not SO.23 The Son did not reduce himself to become man nor convert himself into a man, but remaining God assumed man; 'it was not an act of conversion but of

compassion, not a fall but a rescue'.2. He denies, too, that that Son's being 'highly exalted' (Phil 2:9) was a reward for his obedience. 2. As the Son alone knows the Father, so he alone knows the Father's will: 'but he knows it not by hearing it spoken aloud nor by finding it thr~ugh mental activity, but his Own nature possesses knowledge which gives him recognition' (of the Father's will).2' None of these opinions can be reconciled With Arianism unless We are to deprive that term of most of its meaning. On the subject of the generation of the Son, Eusebius is agnostic, as were many of his contemporaries, citing, as they did, Isa 53:8. We must not, he says, curiously examine how the Father generates the Son; we do not even know how we ourselves are generated.27 The Father generated the Son impassibly. No human model taken from plants or the sun or elsewhere will suffice to explain this generation; it 2 lS better to say nothing. • This generation was not by process (passio = pathos) or division or scission. 2• Sometimes he expresses the doctrine in terms ofan image. The Son is the true image of the Father, m whom 'tbe truth oflikeness is found'. So 'the Father is King. The Son also IS Kmg, but not as a nval, but the Son is not King to him who begot him, but he is subordinate and obedient. For the nature of the 21 De Fili. II [3 I] 65. 22Ibid. II [r7J 56. "Ibid. II [r8J 57. 58: cf. III [I9J 90 91. 24De C?lice IX [3 2 ] 236 (non casus seisalus); cf. De Fide III [10] 86, and [19] 90, 91. "De FIde III [3 0 ]97. 26De Imagine V [5] 130; cf. De Imagine V [26J 144, 145, De Apostoliset Fide i XIII [6J 294. De Calice IX [6] 2r8, 219. 27 De Fide III [26] 94. 28Adversus Sabellium IV [19J 116, II7. "De Filio II [13] 53. "De Imagine V [7J 132: cf. V [9J 133.

390

391

Period of Confusion Son is not a destruction of the monarchy, but rather the offspring of the Ingenerate in his glory'. 'For the Son is the true image, not artificial, not deceiving, not invented but like in power.'30 The Son is the imitation and form (figura) of the Father, 'living God from living God', generated not of passion, scission nor anything comparable to human birth (Isa 53:8 cited). You cannot even say of the generation that it was 'before times, before ages'. 31 But Eusebius (like his namesake of Caesarea) never went as far as to speak of an eternal generation. On the subject of the Incarnation Eusebius' doctrine is perhaps at its most interesting. His ideas approach most closely to those of Asterius, but he cannot be said exactly to reproduce his. The Godhead suffered in Christ's suffering indeed, but he emphasizes more than Asterius that it was not damaged by the suffering. Quite a long passage relevant to this subject survives in the original Greek. Eusebius wants to establish that the soul of Jesus Christ (which he

Eusebius of Emesa and Cyril ofJerusalem

~aS3~~tinguished or was no longer in existence. It certainly did not

dIill~'

It ~id not receive the nail. (Succeed in) transfixing a soul, and I w admIt (the same in the case of) the Power' 36 H elaborate his conviction that soulish substance (tho~gh h edgoes on to th t )' . I ' e oesnotuse e en~ IS SImp y ~capable of experiencing corporeal pain. But it

was capable k b . of a certam sympathy with the flesh . 'The Powerwasnot ;~c , ut It was hurt (ii).YTJcrtv). Certainly hurt follows on injuries'. . at then does It mean ~o say that Christ died for our sins? 'The spirit retIred, the body remamed deprived of spirit' (dnvoov). Then he essays an analogy, denved from two Johannine sayings 'the bread of

~Od came down from heaven' and 'this is my flesh' (6:33 and 51). Did

t e.flesh of the ~on of God come down from heaven? No. What the

~aymgs mean IS Smce the Power which took (flesh) came down from eaven, ,what t?e Power possesses has something corresponding to it

~~va).oYl~ttal} m the flesh. Therefore, conversely (dvttcrtptljlov) what he flesh su?,ers has so~ethmg corresponding to it (dva).oyi~&ta,) in t

e ~owe~.

38

~ll the lllsults and injuries done to the body 'have a

almost certainly regards as divine and riot human) could not be

~;la"onshlp to him who dwells in it' (dvacpBptta, 611:' tOY tvollcoovra).

damaged by what the flesh suffered. The Lord could not have faced

you throw a stone at the Emperor's picture, you insult the Emperor If you tear the Emperor's ~arment, you are attacking the Emperor. 3~

death because for him death was 'the withdrawal of the divine power from the flesh. The Power did not receive the nail so as to cause fear'. Even our own souls do not suffer when the flesh suffers because the soul faints and retreats. 32 Therefore 'he who created the soul and

formed the body, it is he who suffers what (happens to) the body, especially ifhe receives to himself the suffetings of the body'" (i.e. the divine Logos directly endures suffering, no interposition of a human soul is envisaged, though it is not directly denied). 'That which was arrested was arrested; that which was crucified was crucified; but he who had power both to dwell in (the body) and to quititsaid "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit" without those who were hastening his death compelling him'34 (i.e. the Logos was in control and was not conquered). But on the basis of this originally Arian concept of the

incarnate Word he builds a psychological theory which largely deprives it of that insight which conventional Arianism did possess. 'The Power was not able to receive the sufferings_of the flesh'. You cannot say, he contends, either that the (divine) Power disappeared or

Eu;ebi~s is here reproducing an analogy used earlier by Asterius 40 . d n t e next discourse, Eusebius elaborates his theory of ;he m estructlbillty of the psychic: Things ~nlik~ a.ccording to nature cannot be associated: if I sa that a hY camel flIes, thIS IS unnatural and incredible so 'that p tern I h" . ower w 0 IS prepor~: w .0 IS;corporeal in its na ture, who is impassible in its rank

e

:~e .. pOsmon m t e scale of being}. who is with the Father (npo, tOY . t pal (In I:I), who IS alongside the Father (napa t&natp() h' hIS nght hand wh " l'f . , w olSat , . . 0 IS ~ gory, 1 I were to say that this incor oreal nature suffers -It IS an llltolerable thought 41 Y d P

angel .th d d . ou cannot amage an soul c WI a swor ,an you cannot damage a soul with a nail. The annot be cut or burned, because it was created like that.42 You

"De Imagine V 17J 132: cf. V 19J 133. 31 De Calice IX {8] 219. 220; cr. IV Adv. Sabellium [16] 113, 114 (the Father is the fons et principium, and though the Son is good he yields in goodness to the Father; all the same the Son is incomparable). 321.9* .

33lbid. [I) 10*. "Ibid. 12J 10*.

392

393

Eusebius if Emesa and Cyril ofJerusalem

Period of Confusion cannot put th

e power to death and you cannot cause the indestructible

'h' 1 . 43 anm I atlOn. h . . . ion of Arian doctrinc.44 emp aSlze Eusebius can also, m the best tradlt h C . L"'e d'led' God was f h P . andte roSS. '1' , the paradox 0 t e aSS1~n d' 'he who was in glory was subject to crucified; the Judge wasJU ge , . . I' G 0 d d'Ie. d 45 And he expands thIS further. .msuts~ h hole Sanhedrin of the Jews that he 'Stephen confessed before t ~ ~od Understand and see if these are

sou1 to d·Ie. It would means

.

Its

unchanged by the Passion, what occurred to it was not damage, nor diminution, but insult. 50 When the Son during the Agony in the Garden asks that the cup may pass from him, he was not asking to be excused the Passion, but he did this simply to show his obedience to his Father's will and that he was not following his own. 51 And, like all Arians, Eusebius attacks the idea that Christ was 'a mere man' (homo purus). 52 And again, like all Arians, he maintains that the Son exists in order to do what the Father could not do without disaster:

who wa~ crUCIfied by them [; themselves compel you to confess appropnate to a man .' ., the act

'The Father did not generate the Son because he was insufficient, but because those things which were created were insufficient to endure

that he who was

Mediator',53

crucifie~ wJ~'w~~:ng with the pagans slanderously

For he IS not a man, ,as t e . L'r. . h looked like man mdeed ' . sentlflg theIr own lLC, e ill call h1m, mlsrepre . h . God But perhaps you w ft d mIracles because e IS . 'f and he per orme h ' f i d,n But you must know that 1 "Ifh . G d how was ecruO Ie . . d say. eiS o. 'fi d't ouldnothavebecomeplainthatheha he had ndotbbeedn cSruo~~esu~e;:d as man and raised the dead as God' ,46 assume a 0 y.

kes his osition a little clearer: he does not deny that P d b ried and rose again. But he does Elsewhere he rna . ld not do so 'The Christ was crUCified, dead an u deny that the nail pierced the ,~~d~e~; ~~~~aining that 'he felt Power did not see corruption. that the nails pierced the Power, sympathy' (compassus est) you mea~ d the power you are in danger. 0Br eVifen pierc;~nt~~a~~~: ~:~;Pleltemisery (tristi;ia), not for hims~f, ut you m . concede this' Christ felt sorrow .Lor but for the flesh, yes, EuseblUs c~n " t up But this is not the same the flesh because he waS d~~m:. t~;a~s:t~r h" asks in what sense was as saying that the power e t e:r. r seem's to be present but

~~::~fr~!~~~~;'~~:i:~~~~I:~~(~~:~;~~~d~!:£~:L~~~~~:l

endured have an apphcatlon to . reJeru~ 'were assed on to h' h his attackers dared agamst hiS body P . d w IC h P '49 The divine nature remalne (transmiltebantur) t e ower. 8 43(3l 14*. The Larin translation of much of this can be found in I [35--'7] 3 -40; II [!rIol 4!r52, [34-51 68""70 , [37170 . 44See above, Pp·39-40 '

.

sermon extant in Syriac 35* (Latm tr. 46 35 *. 36* (Latin tr. 73*)' 45A

47 De

Filio II [37l 70 .

"Ibid. [38171. 72. 49[4I1 73. 74'

394

* 72 ).

the power of the lngenerate. therefore he speaks through a

Eusebius then in his doctrine of the Incarnation does not move far beyond the conventional Arian doctrine, that this taking of flesh by the Son of God meant' that God suffered, that there was no intervening human soul to protect the Godhead from suffering. But his strong emphasis on the impassibility of the soul (divine or human) and its immunity to damage or diminution, which is not present in Asterius nor in much later Arianism, leads him to water down this

doctrine. He certainly did not, any more than other Arians, envisage the Word of God as taking an entire man, with human mind as well as human body. For his Jesus Christ was certainly omniscient; he did not ask questions in order to gain information. 54 In this Eusebius was more like later Western Arians. The earliest Arians, such as Athanasius of Anazarbus, would have pointed to Christ's ignorance as a sign of the imperfection of the pre-existent Son. Eusebiu. is also typically Arian in his refusal to allow divinity to the Holy Spirit. Here perhaps he was doing no more than reproducing the theology of his namesake of Caesarea. He allows indeed that the Spirit existed before the Incarnation. 55 But he can write 'Worship the one Ingenerate and the one Only-begotten, and do not despise the 5°[42174.75: quantum ad naturam specIal I niltil laesusest; quantum enim ad id quod ausi sunt ;niuriam irrogarunt. C( De lncorporali et lnvisibili Deo XX [2179 (the sufferings of the body do not-touch the immortal soul). and [29] 96, 97 (the Power inhabiting the body of the incarnate Son gave his saliva and clothes capacity to heal). SIDe Calice IX [18] 227. "De Fide III [2J 80. "De Fide III [32198. s4De Homil/is Assumplione ii XVII [4J 373. "De Fide II [231 60.

395

Period of Confusion

one Spirit' [but do not worship him].56 At o~e point his discourse progresses in an upward direction, first dealmg wIth the human body, then the human mind, then to angels and then to the Holy Spirit, andnot long after he ascends one step higher, to t~e Son 'from whom the Spirit received'.57 The Father does not work ~ the Son as he did in the prophets: 'For in the prophets the Holy SpIrIt wa~ active; but the Son had no need for the Spirit because it is he who gIves the

Spirit. 'sS . In as far as he has any Trinitarian theology, that IS any attempt to distinguish what God is as Three from what he is as One, he is nO pioneer. He reproduces one old formula, probably culled from Eusebius of Caesarea. 59 'The only thing proper to say is that the Father really is, and the Son really is, and the Holy Spirit ... the Father ingenerate and alone ingenerate; the Son only-begotten and alone only-begotten, and the Holy Spirit is too, and he is s.cnt from the Son according to the Father's wilL'6o There IS a dlstmctIOn between the Father and the Son, the one is ingenerate and the other only-begotten,61 but there are not two Gods. 62 Just as the Father is pre-eminent and above all nature because he is ingener~te, so the S~n is believed as above all in this, that he IS the offsprmg (progenies ytvv'1l1u) of the Father. 63 The angels have a rank, ~?t a place, which marks their pre-eminence in honour, and the Spmt IS before then.' and the Spirit offers you to the Son, but the Son wIlldeclare (enarrab.t de) the Father.64 'The Father is entreated; the SpIrIt IS sent ... there IS one who goes, there is one who sends, the Father; the Son ~ntreats, the Father sends, the Spirit is instructed.'6' In the next dIscourse Eusebius tries again to distinguish Father and Son without h~vmg a~y term to distinguish them, unable apparently to use hypostaSIS or ousta. All he can say is that the Father is the Father and the Son the Son and that there are not two Gods, but one. 66 His ascription at the end of a '.De Fide III [40]IOJ.

57De Imagine V [16] OS. 139 [231 143 (quotation from the last).

S8Ve Quinque Panibus VIII [S} 199· 59S ee above, pp·52-3· .oDe Fide III [20]91. .llbid. 1211 91, 92. .'Adv. Sabellium IV [141 IlJ.

"Ibid.

Eusehius of Emesa and Cyril ofJerusalem

discourse runs 'Now to the ingenerate God through one onlybegotten Son be glory, honour, power and majesty in one Holy Spirit'.67 Both Altaner and Quasten describe Eusebius of Emesa as 'semiArian'.6s If this means anything other than that he was a follower of the theology of Basil of Ancyra and his school, the term is so vague as to be useless. If it means that Eusebius was an adherent of Basil of Ancyra's school of thought, it is manifestly incorrect. He never mentions ousia or homoios kat' ousian (like according to ousia) once. He shows no sign of reproducing the interesting doctrine of the intimate connection between generation and creation in the Son's relation to

the Fath~r which distinguish:d that school. Eusebius is certainly not a conventional nor typIcal Arlan. Though his motto appears to be 'No na~es, ,no p~ck-drill', and he is anxious to avoid the controversy whIch IS ragmg around him, he covertly distinguishes himself in many ways' from conventional Arianism in his doctrine of the relation of the Son to the Father. He carefully avoids saying that the Son IS created or made, that he was produced from non-existence that his production depended wholly on the Father's will. He insist; that he was begotten incomprehensibly and out of all relation to time, though he never says that he was eternally begotten. He does not at all emphasize the imperfection or limitations of the Son, preeXIstent or mcarnate, and he allows that the Son has perfect knowledge of the Father. Whether or or not the Son has a human soul does not enter his head; he does not go out of his way to deny a human soul to Jesus ChrIst, but clearly It does not occur to him that he had one. On the other hand, he is not a pro-Nicene theologian either. His doctrme of the Incarnation rests on basically Arian premises, i.e. that the Son took a body but not a mind and his Godhead was thus dIrectly affected by human experiences and sufferings. He can in co~sequence sometimes appreciate the scandal of the cross as no proNlcene wrIter every could. But even here he seems anxious to break away. The Godhead did not feel bodily suffering, only the body did that. The Godhead perhaps could feel sorrow for the body, but endured no more than msult, no damage. Eusebius says nothing whatever about hypostasis or ousia. Nobody could gather from his

\21 I 1J8.

"De ApoSlolis e. Fide XIII [71 2 95. • 'Ibid. [291 J 12.

MDe Apostofis et Fide ii XIV (21) 33 8.

67De Arbilrio I 14I} 43 . 68Altaner. Palrologie 201; Quasten Patrology 111.349.

397

Period of Confusion writings that the creed N had ever existe~. He has no word for what God is as Three in contrast to what he IS as One, scarcely sees the necessity for one. His is not a seriously Trinitarian theology. He subordinates the Son sharply to the Father, though he allows that he lS divine by nature. He regards the Spirit as an inferior Being, not apparently to be worshipped, lower in status than the Son as the Son is lower than the Father. . . Eusebius is not an Origenist, or, to be precise. to c~ll him 3? Origenist would not add anything to our understandmg of hIs position. As regards the soul and the general contrast between the intellectual and the corporeal he is a Platonist. But he IS far removed from Origen's doctrine either of the Incarnation or of the Trlmty. Any Origenist ideas he may have had :",~re derived from his master, Eusebius of Caesarea, whose faithful dIsCIple he IS m most (but ?ot m all) things, and not least in his careful attention to the text of SCripture and in his knowledge of Hebrew. He is even more sober and cautious than Eusebius of Caesarea in using allegory. He IS above all, as Buytaert says, a man of good sense and in many ways an admIrable character. He is assuredly a standing warnmg agamst throwm~ around irresponsibly labels like 'Arian' or 'orthodox' or 'Seml-Arlan when dealing with this period.

2.

Cyril of Jerusalem

Cyril was probably born in Palestine, perhaps in Caesarea, about 313.69 He was probably made deacon about 330 by Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, to whom Arius refers contemptuously m h~s Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, 70 and certainly priested by Macarlus su~cessor Maximus. Maximus had taken part in the condemnation of Athanasius at Tyre in 33 5, but at Serdica in 343 had left the Eastern bishops andjoined the party that supported Athanasius and Marcellus 69For literature on Cyril of Jerusalem see Gwat~in SA 744. AC 693; Harnack History IV. 70-1;]. Lebon 'La Position de Saint Cynlle de Jerusalem da~s les lettres provoquees par l'arianisme'; W. Telfer Cyril of Jerusa/~m an.d .Nef!Jeslus of Emes~ 19-<>3. 199; A. A. Stephenson 'St Cyril of Jerusalem s Tnmtanan Theol~g!. Simonetti C,;si 206-9. 530; F. L. Cross St Cyril ofJerusalet!l: Lectures on the ChrtSt,a~ Sacraments (Introd. Greek text, ET by R. V(. Church~; ~rt 'Cyrillus vonJeru~ale~

in TRE 8 (261-6) by E.). Yarno!d (1981, WIth fullerblbhography); R. Gregg eyn! of Jerusalem and the Arians' (Arianism 85-105). 'OOpitz Urk III No. I. 3(2).

Eusebius of Emesa and Cyril ofJerusalem and excommunicated the leading Easterners. Maximus died about the year 348, and there is some confusion concerning the circumstances under which Cyril succeeded him as bishop of Jerusalem. Rufinus says of this affair: 'At Jerusalem however Cyril received the episcopate after Maximus; the circumstances of his ordination were uncertain, and he began a career of vacillation sometimes in belief, more often in allegiance'.71 .

Jerome, who, we must remember, was prejudiced because he had quarrelled (exhibiting his frequent and most unsaintly habit offailing out with his friends) with John, Cyril's supporter and successor in the see, gives a more detailed account Oflhis incident: 'Maximus was bishop ofJerusalem after Macarius died. After him the

Arians took possession of the church, that is Cyril, Eutychius. Cyril again, Irenaeus, Cyril for a third time, Hilary, Cyril for a fourth time' and he goes on to relate that when Maximus died Akakius promised to make Cyril bishop if he would renounce his ordination as presbyter

by Maximus and serve as deacon in the church. Cyril agreed, and was then instrumental [presumably by Acacius' help] in deposing Heradius 'whom Maximus on his death-bed had put in his place', and in consequence Cyril was made bishop of ]erusa~em. 72 Socrates says 'Akakius and Patrophilus thrust out Maximus of Jerusalem and put Cyril in his place', 73 and Sozomenus echoes this.74 Theodoret on the other hand in his first mention of Cyril in the Church History tells us that Maximus succeeded Macarius and Cyril Maximus with no hint of either dissension or Homoian sympathies; on the contrary, he describes Cyril as 'a keen champion of the apostolic doctrines' (i.e. Nicene orthodoxy).75 We should have no difficulty, however, in deciding which of these accounts is the more reliable, especially when we remember that Jerome was writing the Chronicle as early as 380, and he could have supplemented it with information gained later when he was in Jerusalem. Cyril, whatever he may have been earlier, from 348 onwards was not a supporter of ,,71

Hiero~olymis vero .Cy~illus post lv!aximum sacerdotjo confusa iam orajnatione suscepto

abquando

In fidel saeplus En communlone variabat HE X.2. This is in fact as good a summary account of Cyril's career as any. 72Jerome Chronicle sub ann. Constantius XII [?U3] PL 27: 502-3.

"HE 1I.38(1!7-8). "HE IV.2C>-1(169-7o); cf. 5.1. "HE IL2S.6.

398 399

Period of Confusion

Eusebius of Emesa and Cyril ofJerusalem

the cause of Athanasius nor, we may infer, at that point 'a keen champion of the apostolic decrees'. T~~odor~t, with ~he benefit of hindsight, is anxious to whitewash Cyril s earher affimtles, as anxIOUS asJerome was to expose them. IfMaximus, as seems likely, ordained Heradius alone on his death-bed, it was in the fourth century a hIghly irregular though not completely unprecedented action, motivated perhaps by his knowledge that Heradius alone in that area was proAthanasius and pro-Nicene. It is not surprising that AkaklUs, who was formally the metropolitan of the see ofJerusalem, took action to quash this ordination and to instal Cyril as bishop ofJerusalem, at the cost of his disowning Maximus as far as he could. In 357 or thereabouts, however, Cyril fell out with Akakius,'6 and was at the latter's instigation deposed by an ecdesiastical synod. The ultimate cause was probably a dispute about jurisdiction between the sees of Caesarea and of Jerusalem (the latter having been given an incentive to enlarge its authority though no actual increased jurisdiction by a canon of Nicaea 325 which mentioned its honourable status). But the actual charge was misappropriating church furniture which Cyril was alleged to have sold for the benefit of the poor of his see and which found its way into disreputable hands. Cyril was slow to answer Akakius' demand that he should explain himself and when he was finally condemned he appealed to the Emperor. But he was deposed and went to Tarsus where Silvanus the bishop (certainly one of Basil of Ancyra's followers) was sympathetic to him.77 He appeared at the Council ofSeleucia in 359, was acquitted by the Homiousian majority at that council, as Akakius was deposed. But this availed him as little as it did Anianus." He was deposed arid exiled in the general condemnation early in 360. Not only was his doctrine by now uncongenial to Akakius who held a controlling position in ecclesiastical affairs, but Cyril had apparently further offended Constantius by selling a garment (again for eleemosynary purposes) which Constantius had originally presented to the church in Jerusalem.'· On Julian's accession Cyril returned, and was able to promote, or at least support, more than one candidate

for the see of Caesa rea when Akakius died in 365 or 366.'0 In 367 or 368 howe."er, the Emperor Valens, rendered more suspicious and

76 1 put together here Socrates HE II:40(127) and Sozomenus HE IV 25.1-4; cf. Theodorct HE II.2S. 7. 77Theodorct HE 11.25.7. 8. 78SCC above p. 374; Theodoret HE II.2S.9. 10. 79Theodoret HE Il.27.I. 2. The earlier charge related by Sozomenus may be a doublet of this.

400

apprehenSIve for hIS throne than previously by the recent rebellion of Procopius. which had won unexpected support, decreed that all bIShops exlled by Constantius in 360 were to return to exile. He could trust apparently none but Homoians, who agreed with his theology. Cy~1 agam went to exile, and probably his nephew Gelasius too. Cynl had probably returned by 378, when Valens was killed in battle agamst the Goths, for Sozomenus says that at the accession of TheodoslUs all the churches in the East were in Arian hands except Jerusal~m .. By thIS tIme Cynl had, with many other original H~molouSlans, Jomed th~ pro-Nicene party as far as theological opmlOns were concerned. 1 The Council of Constantinople of 382 went out of Its way to emphasize the regularity ofCyri]'s ordination and the orthodoxy of his. views.' 2 Cyril continued unmolested in possession of his see of Jerusalem till his death in 386, or, more probably, 387.• 3 Only three surviving works can with any confidence be ascribed to Cyn!. The Catecheses, addresses delivered to catechumens in

8°~his-is what we might conclude from the confused narrative of Epiphanius, PQnano~ 73:23.7(296) and 37.1-6(312), but Jerome's account of frc ueot alt~rnatlon~ In th,e see ofJerusalem between Cyril and others must be given p~oper weight. EplphanlUs, w!t0 came from Palestine and was writing earlier than Jerome, makes out that EutychlUs ofEleutheropolis was Cyril's enemy, though he does not say that he wa~ a nval for the see ~f Jerusalem, which Jerome indicates. Gelasius nephew ofC:ynl, was at some point In this melee probably made bishop of Caesa rea' pushed ~Y his ~ncle. ~ozomenus HE IV.3O-3 says that on Cyril's departure in 36~ Herenmus ob~alned h?s s,ee, and. then Heraclius and after him Hilary, but that Cyril returned on TheodoslUs accession. This seems a likely account of the succession to ~h~ see ~etween 360 and 378 and is not wholly incompatible with Jerome's Inlormatlon. .81.Socrates HE V:8 and Sozomenus HE VII.7.3 say that he had abandoned an ongmally Macedoman pos~tion. As will become evident, this could not be correct because :v.hatever else Cynl may be accused of, depreciation of the status of the ~olY Spmt c~nnot be attributed to him. Probably these historians really mean that l~ h~d heJd with the Homoiousians. Sozom.enus' statement about Arians possessing a t e sees (HE VII.~.2) cannot be entirely correct, as is evident from the correspondence of BasIl of Caesarea. 82Theodoret HE V·9·J7. Lebon (op. cit. 191) cites this as evidence of Cyril's constant adhe~ence to Nicaea. But Yarnold (op. cit. 261-2) more convincingl ~uggests that It sho,:",s that both Cyril's ordination and his orthodoxy had be~ Im pugned .. Yarnold I~ wrong, however. in attributing this suspicious vindication to t he Councd of 38 I, Instead of that of 382 83See Yamold. op. cit.262. .

401

Period of Confusion Eusebius of Emesa and Cyril ofJerusalem Jerusalem in the year 3So, a Letter to the Emperor Constantius, written in 351 to describe the appearance of a cross in the sky above Jerusalem which he took to be miraculous, and a short Homily on the Paralysed Man, whose date is not known. 84 The question of whether Cynl wrote the last five Catechetical Lectu~es which are usually distinguished from the others as Mystagoglcal Catecheses, has been uch discussed and is by no means settled. 85 These five, however, do ::'ot offer useful material for determining Cyril's positIOn ~ the search for the doctrine of God, so the subject of their authorship need ?ot mformatlOn concern us . 'Thl's means that virtually our sole . source I 'of hi 86 on Cyril's theology is a work produced qUite ear y m s care~r. Early in his Catecheses Cyril sets out the ~reed which he beheves and which he expects his catechumens to believe. As he goes through his course of instruction he refers to various articles of a creed which can be filtered out and put.together but which is cU~lOusly deVOId of interesting or significant features and does not even mclude the clause 'he came down from heaven'. The earlier creed. however, IS, worth reproducing here. It is a purely Christological statement, lackmg the first article and any following the second m a normal creed. It runs thus: 'Believe then in the Son of God, the one and only. OU~ L~rd Jesus Christ, who was generated as Light from Light, who 15 lik~ m all respects to him who generated him; who does not possess eXIstence within time but has been generated before all ages eternally and

incomprehe~sibly from the Father, the Wisdom of God and t~e

Power having independent existence (tvU1t60'tUtov) [He SIts at God s

right hand through all ages and not merely after his earthly work j,. he is sovereign along with the Father. and is t~e cr~ator of every thin?

through the Father, having nothmg lacking 10 the rank of his Godhead, and knowing him who generated him, as he 15 known by him who generated hj'rn.' And the statement ends with a confiatlon of

In

10:15

and Mtt

11:27. 87

84Telfer op. cit. 35-8 is useful for dating the Catecheses. .. 85Telfer op. cit. 39-40 and Ya~old op. cit. 261-:-3. who take opposae VIews, resent a succinct account of the views for and agamst. .. p 86Jerome De Vir. Ill. CXII says that he wrote his Catecheses in adulescent.a, which must be an exaggeration. f th C h ('8) N .B. In the text used here books I-XI e ' atec f eses atecheses IV ·79v-· h 0 'b h

"c

occupy volume I and books XIII-XVIlI Vol. II, and in Vol. II t enum enog 0 t e pages begins again at 1.

402

This creed is manifestly anti-Arian in many places. It explicitly embraces the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son; it is at one point deliberately anti-Marcellan. But at no point does it make mention of ousia in connection with the Son's relation to the Father (except in as far as it attributes independent existence to the Son's hypostasis, a doctrine which N apparently directly denied). Nobody could imagine that it is a disguised form of the creed of 32 5. Without going further we could say that it is a clear piece of evidence that during the period of confusion which we have been surveying in the last few chapters of this work we must hot make the mistake of classifying the doctrine which we can find people professing simply into 'orthodox' (i.e. pro-Nicene) and 'Arian' (i.e. everything else). The closest affinity' of this formula is perhaps to be found in the thought, not of Eusebius of Caesarea, but of Alexander of Alexandria. A further investigation of Cyril's thought makes it perfectly clear that he taught the eternal generation of the Son. God, he says, was never childless (lilta1C;) nor did he become a Father by changing his mind, 'but before all substance (hypostasis) and before all sentience (aluSlju.CJl<;) before times and before all the ages God possessed the status of Father.' And he did not become Father by coition (UUllltA.OK~<;), nor by inadvertence nor emanation nor diminution nor 88 alteration. The perfect Father begot the perfect Son. 89 And in another densely Christological passage he says that Christ is: 'the Son truly, the Son by nature (cpUUIK6v), without beginning «(ivapx ov); he did not achieve promotion to Sonship from a servile status, bu.t as Son eternally he has been generated by a birth which is beyond investigation and comprehension ... he is not something different as existing from what he was when generated; but he was 'generated Son from the beginning, Soq of his Father, in everything like him who generated him, generated as Life from Life, Light from Light and Truth from Truth. Wisdom from the Wise and King from the King, God from God and Power from Power.'90

The Son had no beginning; he is 'Son of God before all the ages'. And Cyril interestingly applies to him the text Isa 53 :8, in order to prove . 88Ibid. VII.S; for this statement that God was never childless nor generated by madvertence or careful planning cf. XI.8(3 00 ). 89 214 .

90XI.4(294). It should perhaps be noted that Stephenson wanted to erase as later interpolations every OCCurrence oflivapxo~ applied to the Son in Cyril (op. cit. 237).

403

Period of Confusion

Eusebius of Emesa and Cyril ofJerusalem

his eternity not as it had usually been used up till then, to show the mysterious~ess of his generation. He also uses Ps 2:7 i'Thou a~t mi n this da have I begotten thee'} to prove the eterna generatIOn 0 SOh : .' h Y d "to-day" (does) not (mean) recently but eternally; '91 G d .s spirit so thlS C fISt. t e wor "to day" is timeless, before all the ages. 0 I d' '. . I WI'thout any me latlOn nor be -ettin is spiritual, not Ph YSlca. . time; and he was begotten perfect, wlthouht anbY to . d II 92 As true God the Fat er egot 1m achieve perfection gra ua y. d ' 93 He did not beget who is true God and Son by nature not a. option.. air' him as mind produces a word which dISSolves mto the .

int~rval ~f

nee~

'We acknowledge Christ begotten not as Word put forth (logon h 'k ) but as Word subsisting inde.pendently (enhypostaton), prop on s, oken by the lips and dissoI ved , but bego tie n from .. Or!not ..the ete:ally and indescribably and in hypostasis' [i.e. subSlStmg distinctlyJ. 94

~:;~;;

The Begetter, he later says, knows ~hat he h~ ~egoltte~oae~d ;~: Be otten knows who has begotten hIm, but no 0 y e se . Be:etter does not have a father nor the Begotten a brother,

but the Father who exists eternally and ineffably generated the Son, a

single son who has no brother; and there are not two ultimate

principles (archai), but the Father is the Head of the Son, a single

Origin (archl).'97

The readiness to use hypostasis of the distinct existence of the Son, the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son and the complete absence oflanguage using ousia all resemble the position of Alexander before the Council of Nicaea. Cyril is anxious to avoid Sabellianism, whose chief contemporary representative is in his eyes Marcellus of Ancyra. In one of his rare identifications of the exponent of a view which he is attacking he speaks of 'another head of the dragon which has recently arisen in Galatia'.98 He warns more than once against the doctrine of Sa bellius (without naming him) which envisaged a 'Sonfather' (ulonatchp). 'but believe that there is one only-begotten Son of one God, God the

Word before all ages, the Word not uttered (prophorikos) and dissolved into the air, nor the Word likened to things without independent existence (anhypostatois), the Word who is the Son,

nor are there two Ingenerate nor two Only-he.gotten but :~e in enerate (liytvvrrro~) Father is one, and the Son IS one, etem y

maker of all rational beings (logikon), the Word who listens to the Father and himself speaks.'99

from the Father 'not begotten in times but begotten before ages; not promoted by improvement (tIC npoICon;jc;), but begotten as

This condemnation ofMarcelJus is significant. The Catecheses cannot have been written after the year 350 because they refer at one point to the existence of Emperors in the plural (i.e. Constantius and Constans).lao It was seven years, or perhaps less, since the Westerners at the Council of Serdica had resoundingly vindicated Marcellus' orthodoxy, and Athanasius among them. We have no reason to think that Athanasius had made any public renunciation of these views since 343· This does not suggest that Cyril regarded himself at this time as either indirectly or in a disguised form a partisan of Athanasius.

be~otten

that which he is now'. 95

And finally comes an entirely clear statement: 'He begot him eternally, and begot him much mo;eswiftly than our words

01'

thoughts 96

...

in the case of divine

acnVIty gen~ratlon IS

. Iess, an d ... he did not transfer the Son fromh nan-eXlstence to time h d t . ted'

existence, nor did he introduce into Sonship one W

0

a no

CXlS

,

91S(294-6). But at XI.II-12(302. 304. 306) C yn'I de plores attempts to discover

how the 8Son is begotten. early " (29 ) R Gregg notes how constan tly Cyril polemicizes against the _ ). his . . of t h e Son ae h"' by progression (tIC TtPOICOttll<; m Arian7 doctrine levmg G,0 dhead , article 'Cyril of Jerusalem and the Anans . 93 9 ()aa). 94 10(302).

1 )()a6).

.

b

.

h' h actually had a beginning,

96This could be taken as implymg a egetcmg w 1~. d S . t C rille' 7- ) 20 8 but I think that Lebon is correct in conclu~ing ('L~ P~i~:lpO:rt ~es~~:ed ~o emphasise that this is only a rather awkwa.rd expression on yr the timelessness of the generation. 95

We have already seen that Cyril defined the union of Father and Son as one of 'nature' (cpurrlc;).'OI Cyril recurs to this point often. Christ, he says, must not be thought of as 'appointed' Son, but Son by "14()06, )08). "XV.27(194-2). 99IV.8(9 8): this is one place where he refers to UI01tUtciJp; another is at XV.9( 4, 16 166) uWltatop(a, where he also condemns the ex ouk onton of Arianism, and another XI.I6()08, ) la), and anather XI.17() (0).

lOoXIV.14( 124).

101'S on by nature' at XJ.4(29S) quoted above on p.ooo.

Period of Confusion

nature, 'for the rank of deity and birth from the Father does not admit an equal'.102 He is not a Son 'by bei~g prom.oted by appomtment, but because he is generated by nature. 103 He IS also re~dy to call the Father 'fount' (ll'1yij) of the Son: 'the Father is the timeless ongm (arche) of the Son, incomprehensible, without beginning'. The Fat?er is 'the fount of the river of righteousness of the Only-begotten (a striking phrase), 'he who begot him in a ~anner which he alone knows' .104 But with this immensely hIgh estimate of the relation of the Son to the Father we are startled to fmd Cyril occasionally expressing a decided beliefin the subordination of the Son. He sp~aks of 'God who begot, and God who is begotten; God of everythmg, but claiming (elllYPuqJoJ.lSVo., middle voice) the Fath~r as ~IS God (~r 'claiming God as his Father,).'05 And .he can wnte, the Son IS subordinated to (OllOtUcrcrOJ.lSvo.) the Father .. , he will be subordinated not because .at that point [1 Cor 15:28] he begms to submit to (lleI9uPxillv) the Father (because he always does that whIch . is pleasing to him invariably), but because. that IS the pomt when he obeys.'lo. Cyril is not after all so extraordinary an exceptIon among the exponents of Christology in the mid-fourth century. When he comes to speak about the Incarnation, Cyril insists that the divinity and the humanity of Christ were both real, the one invisible the other visible. His flesh was really like our flesh: 'he really d'107 slept in ,the boat as man, and he walked on t h e water as G0.. There is no sign anywhere in his work that he saw the neceSSIty ?f postulating a human mind or soul in Jesus ~hrist. He does not, 10 Arian fashion, deny that it was there, but It SImply do.es not occu~ to him to discuss the subject. When Christ asked a question concernmg the paralysed man it was not because he was ignorant; he was, CyrIl clearly believes, omniscient. I os He tends to play down the scandal of the Cross; the Son of God could not have been really weak or helpless: 'He came then to his suffering deliberatdy, rejoicing at the

I02X1.2(290, 292). IO'X.4(264). I04XI.20(304)· I05XI.rS(3 12). IO'XV.30 1I.19S. I07IV.9(IOO); cf. Homilia in Paraiyticuffl 6(410, 412).

108Hom. in Parai. 3(406. 408).

Eusebius of Emesa and Cyril ofJerusalem achievement. smiling at the reward (an:cpcivcp), rejoicing at the salvation of mankind.'109

And the only reason he can give for the necessity of Christ dying consists in some puerile and unconvincing fulfilments of predictions made in the Old Testament. I 10 On the other hand, the reason which he gives for the necessity of the Incarnation is very sound and does not in the least suggest the desire to safeguard God which was so prominent a feature in fourth-century Christian thought. 'This is the reason, then', he says, 'since nobody was able to see the face of the Godhead and live, he took the face of humanity, in order that we might see this and live'.' 11 We could not bear the unveiled sight of God: 'Since then man wanted to listen to someone o£ the same appearance (llUP'OIlOlOllPOcrrollOU) as himself the Saviour took a nature with a psychology like ours (t6 61l010llu9t.), that men might be the more easily educated'."2 It is obvious that for Cyril the Incarnation was not in any sense a degradation or dilution of God . On the subject of the Holy Spirit, Cyril is perhaps more remarkable than on any other point. He describes the Spirit's functions but also comes closer to defining his status than anybody else in the mid-fourth century. The Spirit is 'undivided, multiple in power, active in many directions but himself not split up' and he is 'honoured with (the same) dignity of status (t~. a~(u. t1llii tet(Il'1tat) as the Father and the Son'; with the Father and the Son he 'sanctifies and brings apotheosis to everybody; he has spoken in the Law and the Prophets, in the Old and New Testaments.'113 Only the Holy Spirit, along with the Son, can fully see God. ll4 He is ab.ove and not comparable to angels of any rank. I IS The Father gives (everything) to the Son, and the Son shares it with the Spirit. II. He is 'honoured with the Father and the Son and at the time of the holy baptism included in the Holy Trinity.' I 17 But Cyril deprecates unnecessary IO'Cat. XII1.6(SS). l1°XlII.S(60, 62), 9-3S(62"96). 11IX.7(.6S). 112XII.14(16, IS): cf. XIV.S(1I4). IIJIV.16(106, lOS). 114VI.6(162). 11 'XVl.23 (234), I 16XVI.24(23 6 ). II7XVI.4(208); the reference may be an appeal to the practice of Christian bapti,sm. or possibly (though less probably) to the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.

Period of Cotifusion

Eusebius of Emesa and Cyril ofJerusalem

speculation about the Spirit, especially curious inquiry about nature (Physis) and hypostasis; 'if (this term) was in Scripture, we would have used it; but we should not venture (to use) what is not written.'"· This looks like a disavowal both of the supporters of N and of the favourers of a doctrine of three hypostases. On the subject of the divine status of the Holy Spirit Cyril is however unambiguous:

It is remarkable that Cyril never uses the word ousia nor any ofits cognates to express the relation of the Son to the Father.'23 An isolated fragment of an anonymous Arian author remarks that those who accuse Cyril ofJerusalem of having suppressed the homoousion because of the simplicity of those many pagans who came to be baptIzed m Jerusalem as a consequence of their amazement at the shining Cross observable as a meteorological phenomenon in the heavens are slandering him. '2'. This suggests that Cyril's shunning of the word ousta was noted by his contemporaries. Cyril uses the term hrp~stasis, however, ,to mean 'substance'. in spite of his expressing his dIslIke of speculatIOn about hypostasis and its absence from Scripture. '25 He can put the objection, 'But someone will say, if the dIvme substance is incomprehensible, how is it that you are discoursing on these subjects?', and in the same passage speak about the hypostasis, i.e. the total substance, of trees whose fruit has hard shells.'2. He say~ that we can never explain the hypostasis of the Holy Spmt, once agam meaning perhaps his substance.'27 Cyril ofJerusal~m; then, deliberately avoided using any language about God whIch mvolved employing ousia or its cognates. Was he m spite of this, a disguised Homoousian? The very strong language i~ which he speaks about the unity of nature between Father and Son his clear rejection of almost all the doctrines peculiar to Arianism and the determination with which he ascribes full divinity to the Son have led some people to think so. In particular Lebon,l2S in a long

'The same Holy Spirit, living and distinctly subsisting (6'1'£O"t6,) and always present along with the Father and the Son, and not speaking or breathed out and dissolving into the air from the mouth and lips of the

Father and the Son, but subsisting distinctly (&vUlt6crtatov) himself speaking and working and managing and sanctifying; yet the single undivided harmonious, saving strategy towards us from the Father,

Son and Holy Spirit is there.'"9 Cyril does his best to distinguish the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, without the benefit of a single word to indicate what God is as Three in distinction from what he is as One. The Son, he says, only just (l1ovovooXI) falls short of identity with the Father, but instead of indicating identity he says that he is in the Father and the Father in him, and he does not say 'We, I and the Father, are one' (tV sO"llEv) 'so that we may avoid alienating (them), nor bring about an amalgamation of Sonfatherhood' (crovat.01'1'liv o!01tatopia<;); and he goes on to give a list of the points in which Father and Son are one _ Godhead, sovereignty, unity of will (there is no ola<j>Olvia nor olllO"taO"I<;) and creative activity.'20 The points in which the Father and the Son are distinct are that the Father was not incarnate, did not suffer for us; that we must avoid saying that there was a time when the Son did not exist and that this implies his eternal distinction from the Father; if we honour the Son, this is not to call him Father, nor do we honour the Son by calling him one of the Father's creatures: 'but let one Father be worshipped through one Son, and let not the worship be divided."2' The ,Son is 'like in all respects to him who generated him ... God from God, and the attributes (xapmC<1lP&<;) of Godhead are unchanged in the Son ... and, to speak summarily, we must not divide nor must we make an amalgamation. '122 , "XVI,'4('l6). , 19XVII.s('S6). "'XI.16(l08, 310); cf. XVI.4(.08). '''XI.17(lI0). . 122XI.I8(3 12). Cyril goes on to reject a number of other positions, that the Son IS alien to the F~ther. that the Father was first Father and then Son, that in producing

Wisdom and Power he thenceforw~rd lacked wisdom or energy, that in begetting God he ce~s:rl to be God, that he diminished or deprived himself thereby, that the Begotten IS If! any way Jacking; both, in fact, are perfect. 123N . d d . or 10 ee 10 any other context. The fact that Mystagogical Catech'eses V. 15(308) ~efers to the ousia (substance) of the Son might indicate that the work is no:t b~ Cynl, b~t ~e c~ntext is ~e discussion of 'Give us this day our daily (Gk ep/olIsJOn) bread; th.ls might ha~e mduced him to use it here. I accept, with many others who have WrItten on Cynl, that the occurrence ofhomoousios at the end of the Letter to Constantius is an early interpolation. 124Philostorgius HE frag. 25a p.22I. 12SS ee above, PP.407-8. 126Gat VI.S(160). '27XVI.S(.10); cf. XVII.7(>?'), 128And,. ~ne c?~ld ~dd. Telf~r and ~arn.old, in as far as they express any opinion about Cyril s Tnmtanan doctrme (whIch lS not far in either case). Lebon believed that ~e ~hurch of. Cyril's day had of course rejected subordinationism, as it had Sabelhamsm (op. CIt. 362). No statement could he much further from the truth In 350, w~th ~he.exc~ption of Athanasius. every single Eastern theologian accep~ed subordmatlOOlsm m one form or another.

Eusehius of Emesa and Cyril ofJerusalem

Period of Confosion and carefully written article to which we have already referred more than once, argued that behind Cyril's language w~l.ch ~as not explicitly Homoousian one could detect an actual pomlOn Idenncal with that expressed finally in the Creed of Constantmople of 38J. Lebon, writing in 1924, suffered from the illusion (apparently shared by Telfer) that there existed from the beginning of the controversy a large body of opinion which knew and always had known that the Christian doctrine of God was that there were three Persons (hypostases) united in one substance (ousia) , that what God is as One was always distinguished clearly from what he IS as Three, and that Cyril in a cryptic form acknowledged. this. Where he appears to admit subordination or refuse ontological umty, Lebon suggests, Cyril was referring, and knew that he was referring, to the 'Persons', or atleast to the function of the 'Person' of the Son, but where he was referring to the 'nature' of God, or of the Father and the Son, then he meant the essence or substance of God which all the three equally possessed, and in which they were united in a numerical, .and not merely a 'generic', unity.'2. Lebon was a scholar of ablhty and integrity, and he admitted that Cyril fairly conSistently Writes of the Son as 'like' (homoios) the Father, but never as 'like-in-substance' (homoiousios), but he does not think that this excludes numencal unity.130 He relies for his argument particularly on. a p~ssage which we have already looked at, where Cyril lists the pomts ill which the Father and the Son are one,'3' and on another, where Cyril says that the only-begotten Son is 'sharer' (KOlVCJlv6C;) of the Fa:her's ~odhead with the Holy Spirit.,32 To say that the Son IS sharer of the Godhead, he thinks, is going well beyond saying that he is merely 'like'.133

.

. This account of Cyril's thought, however, will not stand scrutiny. Cyril never uses the word ousia; his comparatively rare uses of the word hypostasis as 'substance' do not include any suggestIOn that the three have the same hypostasis, though he believes that they have the same nature. If Cyril had seen fll to use the word ousia, it is morally certain that he would have said that the Father and the Son (and probably the Holy Spirit also) were 'like in ousia' (01'0101 Ka,' o"olav); 129Lebon, op.cit. 364-81 in particular. 130E.g. op. cit. 371-6. 131Cat. XI.I6(308, 310). see above p. 408. "'VI.6(I6.). 133Lebon op. cit. 381-2.

this was the watchword of the party of Basil of Ancyra, which he later joined. The points in which Cyril declares Father and Son to be one (Godhead, sovereignty, unity of will, creative activity) do not necessarily imply a numerical unity of substance, in fact the third rather makes against his suggestion. To speak of the Son and Spirit as 'sharers' of the Godhead is not to subscribe to the theory that they possess a numerical unity of substance. We have already seen'34 that Basil of Ancyra and his followers, who certainly had no doctrine of numerical unity and explicitly repudiated the homoousios, had a doctrine not unlike this one. To suggest that Cyril, who never distinguishes clearly between 'personal' and 'essential' relations in the Godhead, and had indeed no word in his vocabulary to express the concept of 'Person', in fact, or in equivalence, did retain and believe in this distinction, is the device either of those who have never carefully examined his work or of those who are determined at any cost to uphold a theory of original 'orthodoxy'. A. A. Stephenson, in a perceptive article on Cyril's theology, argues well against Lebon's theory.'3S As well as pointing out that the passage detailing the respects in which Father and Son are one does not effect what Lebon wanted it to do,'36 he adduces several passages from Cyril's Catecheses which are clearly 'subordinationist' in character: the Son obeys the Father's will and acts as his agent;'37 the Father reserves 'supreme authority' (a"Bsv"KTJ t~ouoia) for himself,'3. and the Son owes his separate subsistence (tvUlt6o,amc;) to the Father'39 who is the Son's source and origin."o If, as is quite clear, Cyril does not distinguish between nature and Person, this evidence cannot be dismissed as referring only to the Person of the Son without affecting the alleged numerical unity of substance.'" Stephenson himself believed that Cyril held a 'generic' conception of the unity of the Trinity derived from Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea, and that behind his language lies an originally Aristotelian analysis: no Immatenal species can have more than one instance, because what distinguishes members of the same species is their matter. He thinks 134S ee

above, PP.369(0.

135'St Cyril of Jerusalem's Trinitarian theology'.

1360p. cit. 235. 13'Cat XI.22, 23(316, 318). 138XJ.22(3I8).

"'IV.7(9 6). 140XI.I4. 20(308, 314). For aU this see Stephenson op. cit. 236-7. 141Stephenson op. cit. 141.

4II

Period oj ConJusion

Eusehius oj Emesa and Cyril ojJerusalem

that Cyril believed in three hypostases. 'As subsistent species belonging to the same genus, Father, Son and Holy Ghost will be unique', and there is room for a sort of hierarchy in the Trinity, which in fact Cyril postulated. 142 This means of course that homoousion could apply only to material things (an argument we have heard before), but homoiousion could cover immaterial examples." 3 If this argument holds, it can only apply to Cyril at a later stage in his development than the point at which he produced the Catecheses, for when he wrote that work he carefully avoided any theological language which included ousia or its cognates. It may well be an explanation, however, of how later he was able to join Basil's group. He does not fit, in 350, into the category ofHomoousian. He cannot precisely at that point either be classified as an Homoiousian (or 'Semi-Arian') because he does not espouse the term 'like according to ousia' and he shows "no sign of the interesting combination of the concepts of generation and creation of the Son which is characteristic of Basil of Ancyra. In fact it is difficult to imagine the Cyril of 350 accommodating himself to any doctrine of the creation of the Son. He was, however, in doctrine probably an accommodating person, and it is possible that he later decided to join Basil's party because it represented the nearest approach to his own theological position, while it did not precisely reproduce it. Just as he never actually names the Arians as his theological opponents, though he often argues against them, so it is likely that some of his attacks on Sabellianism and the concept of the 'Sonfather' are aimed not only at the longdead Sabellius, nor only at the doctrine of Marcellus, but at the homoousion and the creed N, even though he never mentions either. The Cyril
the image of the substance (e!lerov tii, ouain,) of the Father. Cyril on the contrary warmly embraced the doctrine of .the Son's eternal g~neration, firmly maintained the divinity of the Spirit, and neither elkon nor ousia appear in his vocabulary. Cyril's ancestors are Alexander of Alexandria and beyond him Origen, however and wherever he may have found these antecedents. Eusebius of Emesa and Cyril of Jerusalem provide an interesting study Just because they do not fit readily into any conventional category. Eusebius has certainly retained some Arian traits but he cannot be called a typical Arian, any more than he is a 'Semi-Arian'. Cyril has no Arian traits at all, but cannot be called a typical proN.cene. Both have m common their rejection of the party cries and theological slogans of their day. We might describe them both as 'Origenists', and 'Origenist' is a label which has been and still is freely d1Stnbuted by scholars among the theologians of this era. But it helps !1ttle toward~ a serious dissection of the controversy, any more than Seml-Arlan does. Except for Marcellus of Ancyra almost everybody at this period borrowed parts of Origen's doctrine, AthanasIUs, Anus, Alexander, Eusebius of Caesarea, Asterius and many others. Almost nobody (with the possible exception of Marius VlCtonnus) was."n Origenist in the sense of consistently following his thought and .reJectmg what clashed with it. The two figures who form the subject of th1S chapter remind us usefully of the diversity, the fluctuatIOn of opmIOn whIch lay behind the sometimes app~rently monolithic parties during this period of confusion. They remmd us that orthodoxy was achieved, not by the defence against the attacks of heresy of a doctrine which had always been known, but by a process of tnal and error in which the error was never confined to a single party or outlook. but made some appearance in all.

'42Ibid. 238"""'9, quotation on 238. 143Ibid. 239 n I. 412

4 13

Part III The Rival Answers Emerge

14 The Doctrine of Athanasius I.

The Dates of Athanasius' Works

Before we approach an analysis of Athanasius' doctrine, it is essential to consider the dates of his writings relevant to our investigation, some of which have been in the past and still are disputed. By common consent the earliest of these must be the Conlra Genies el De Incarnatione. Because there is no overt reference to the Arian Controversy in this book some scholars have been anxious to place it before the outbreak of the Controversy, i.e. before 3 IB or at the latest 323. But this is a difficult theory to sustain: in 31B Athanasius would have been a very young man, perhaps no more than 21 years old; even on the extreme assumption that Athanasius was born before 297 and that the Controversy began ouly in 323, he would have written the work at a young age. In the ancient world very few young men in their twenties wrote theological works (any more than they do today), and it would be difficult to explain a silence of nearly twenty years between his first work and the next. At one point in the book he says that he does not have theological books readily at hand,' and at another he remarks that the Roman senate decrees 'that some emperors shall be regarded as gods quite recently, and perhaps even up to now'. 2 The uncertainty expressed here does not suit a period, 3 IB or 323 or earlier, when the Eastern Empire was ruled by a pagan Emperor and when nobody could have foreseen confidently lContra Gentes I.I3ff.

2Ibid. 9.50. A recent article by M. Slusser, 'Athanasius, Contra Gentes et De Incarnatione'. argues for a date in the early thirties for this work. His argument from references to other countries by Athanasius is a good one, and we should perhaps place this work as early as he suggests. But there is no need to see in it, as Slusser does,

hidden references to Arianism. At that point the coalition of Arians and Melitians had not yet taken place, nor had Athanasius realized the value of an anti-Arian line in justifying his conduct.

417

..

The Rival Answers Emerge Constantine's ultimate control of the whole Empire, nor have conjectured that Constantine would fo:bid the Senate to deify him (in fact he did not do so and they did deify him): The remark IS more suitable to a time when ConstantIne was stIll alIve but when he was increasingly making his support for Christianity felt. Finally, a marked dependence of the whole of this work on the Theophany of Eusebius of Caesarea, which we have placed towards the end of his career (perhaps 335, but not later)3 argues for the late rather than the early date for the Contra Gentes et De Incarnatione. It is perhaps best to place it during Athanasius' First Exile, in 335 or 336. The fact that It does not refer to the Arian Controversy does not rule out a date as late as this. Athanasius, whatever he was to claim in his later polemical writings, had not been exiled because of his opposition to the doctrine of Arius, and knew it. The period was one when theoretically the Arian Controversy had been resolved. Neither Eusebius of Caesarea nor, as far as we know. Marcellus referred to Arius in their writings which fall within this period. Athanasius can have seen no great reason to refer to this controversy. It had apparently not yet occurred to him that his best defence against the all too damaging accusation of misbehaviour in his see was to move the attention of the public from the issue of episcopal administration to that of soundness of doctrine. The work called Orationes contra Arianos survives in four books, the fourth of which is now universally allowed to be by some other hand than that of Athanasius. Kannengiesser in his Athanase d' Alexandrie has argued that the third book is not by Athanasius either, but this position can hardly be described as established. Kannengiesser had, however, rhade it likely that we must recognize that the third book was written later than the first two. There is only one reference to the word homoousios in the first three books (1.9). The work must be placed before the period when Athanasius began to tum his attention to defending that term, i.e. about 356, and indeed cannot be placed very near that date. In these Orations he is quite content to allow the idea that the Son is 'image of the substance' (eikon tes ousias), a term which occurs in the 'Dedication' Creed of 341 and in many other later sources (e.g. 1.26), and the same applies to 'like in all respects' (1.40). The expression 'precise image' indeed occurs several times in this work, but it is directly rejected in the later De Synodis 36.6 (343). JS ee above. P.47 n 94.

,

,

The Doctrine of Athanasius

By about 357, i~ fact, he w!ll not tolerate these expressions. There is one ref~rence 11l 1.,0 which conceivably could indicate a date. AthanaslUs says that Arians with whom he is arguing 'appeal to the protection and the threat ofConstantius'. This means of COurse that the book Was wntten aft~r 337, but that is no great discovery: nobody has ever suggested that It was. Wfltten earlier than 339. In that year AthanaslUs was m exIle, havmg been driven from his see by the agency of ConstantlUS. From 345 onwards until 356 Athanasius was nommally on good terms with Constantius, and he is unlikely to have wntten as brusquely about the Emperor as this. After 357 he would . perhaps have written even more violently. It looks as I~ we should therefore place the composition of the Orationes contra Artanos between 339 and 345, perhaps envisaging their production as a fairly long-drawn-out process over that period. !I.e have already seen that there is doubt about the date of De Morte A",. It might have been written early, 336-337, or much later, in the middle three-fifties. Our decision will partly depend on how we reconstruct the chronOlogy of the career of Paul of Constantinople. But thiS s~ort work m fact does uot contribute much to Our understandmg of Athanasius' doctrine anyway. With one exception, there is a general agreement, varying only by a year or two, about the rest of the writings of Athanasius relevant to OUr theme. The Encyclical Letter to all Bishops must be placed in 338 at a pomt when Athanasius is leaving Alexandria for Rome. The Le;ter to the Monks must be connected with the De Morte Arii and placed accordmg to our placing of that work, but, like that work, its theological conten~ is not significant. De Decretis we can date to 356 or 357; It IS a first direct defence of the Council ofNieaea undertaken when the uneasyten-~ear peace between Athanasius and Constantius (Whom AthanaslUs nghtly recognised as an Opponent of N) had broken. dow.n (th~ alternative date 350 is too early for this). The De Sentent,a DlOnyslI follows directly on this work, because it is defendmg a predecessor in the see of Alexandria against belittling the homoousios. The Apologia ad Constantium, a mild, deprecating work should be placed somewhere in 3S6 or early 357; Athanasius has no; yet given up hope of coming to terms with Constantius. The 4See above. p. 280. If ~e identify the weighty work about to appear mentioned in the, Lelter!o th~ Monks With the His/oria A,ianorum we must place it (and De Morte A~~) ~a~e; If, with Kannengiesser, we separate the Letter to the Monks from the HA to

w IC It appears to be a preface, then we can pJace it early.

418

4 9 '

The Doctrine of Athanasius

The Rival Answers Emerge Apologia de Fuga was written between the .middle. of 357 and the beginning of35 8 (Leontius of Antioch, WhOI~ mentIOned In It (I an~ 26) is stilI alive). The Encyclical Letter to the BIshops oJEgypt, protest ing against his ejection in 356, must be placed early In that year; The Apologia Secunda, whose tone is. far from mild: may reflec Athanasius' increasing exasperatIOn wIth ConstantlUS In late 357. or early 35 8.5 The fiercely polemical Historia Arianoru~, denouncmg and vilifying Constantius, must be dated to 358; the vIolence shown by the Emperor's troops in Egypt early in that year has rende:ed reconciliation with Athanasius impoSSIble. The Letters to Ser~plOn, dealing with the subject of the Holy Spirit which had been ventIlated by nobody earlier, should be placed between 359 and 361. The Tomus ad Antiochenos is certainly to be placed m 362, after th~ CounCIl of Alexandria of that year. We put the Epistula ad AdelphlUm m 37 0 or 371, and the Epistula ad Epictetum in.371. If we a:e to regard the Epistula ad Aftos Episcopos and the EplStula ad MaxImum as genume, we must date them to 369 and 370/1 respectively. The Epistula ad Iovinianum must be placed in 363. The Festal letters date themselves. The exception to this relatively agreed list of datmgs IS the De Synodis. Various indications in this work suggest that AthanaslUs was writing part of it at least in October 359, after the break-up of the Council of Seleucia and before the Council of Anmmum had ended in a debacle. The opening words have been thought to reflect thIS situation: 'Information concerning the present much-advertl~e~ council has perhaps reached yoU.'6 Some have held that AetlUS Syntagmation was an answer to De Synodis; this work of AetlUs was produced in December 359. References to George bIShop of Alexandria in the De Synodis are ambiguous. In chapter 12 he IS described as 'chased off the earth' (litOlX9Eie;cbto tiie;oiKouI'eVl]e;) WhICh suggests an allusion to his having been lynched in Decem?er 361 , b~t chapter 12 alludes to him as 'thrown out of Alexandna (eK.p1.1]9Ele; altO tiie; 'A1.E~ClvapdCle;) and plentiful abuse follows but no mtImatIon 5The attempt of A. H. M. Jones in 'The Date of the, Apologia ~ontra Arianos of Athanasius' to date the Apologia Secunda much later than Its conventlOnal date by the reference (or apparent reference) to an Augustal Prefect in cap. 83 does n,ot rest upon firm foundations. It entails assuming either that all the MSS of thiS w,ork are mistaken or that some of the records cited by Jones are mistaken (or defiCIent). In cap 89 the reference to the surrender of both Liberius and Ossius compels us to place it at earliest in the end of 357. But the rest of the contents make a date as late as 367 (the earliest Jones' theory can allow) very improbable. 6 I. I

&€p9am: J.lEV taror;: Kal nap 'OJ.ldr;: fJ aKo1) n&pi 'tiir;: Kai vUv 9PUAOUj.ltVT)C; auv6oou.

420

that he is dead. The first reference therefore could be no more than a wild exaggeration of what the second intends, but it could represent a revision of an earlier mention not of his death, but of his expulsion. Athanasius described in some detail the first proceedings of the Council of Ariminum (caps. !)-I!, cf. 32) during which those who favoured Arianism were deposed and N re-affirmed, but says nothing about the later acts in which all the bishops signed an Arianising creed. This may be because when he was writing chapters!)-I 1 he did not know the outcome of the council. But it is more likely that he did know but chose to make no allusion to it, because his later reference (cap 32.1) to the deposition of the Arians at Ariminum comes directly after chapter 31 (1,2 (259, 260)) in which he reveals that he knows of the baptism of Constantius On his death-bed and his death. Chapters 30 and 31 of the work give us the text of the Creeds of Nice and of Constantinople. The first Sentence of the whole work could be translated differently to run 'Information concerning the council, which indeed is now much talked of, has perhaps reached you', suggesting that though the council is in the past it is stiII in the news. It is noticeable, too, that whereas at the beginning of De Synodis Athanasius classifies the followers of Basil of Ancyra along with all other Arians as equally heterodox, in the later chapters he distinguishes them from the others and is more sympathetic towards them. The most satisfactory conclusion then is that De Synodis was written over a period from late 359 to 361; perhaps a first draft was published towards the end of 359 and the work was later somewhat hastily revised and published again in 361.

2.

The Theology of Athanasius: the Father and the Son

The eminent German scholar Eduard Schwartz maintained that Athanasius was motivated purely by political considerations and that his theological opinions and pretensions were no more than pretexts to cover his desire for power. Certainly Athanasius had a desire for power; he suppressed ruthlessly whenever he could any opposition to him within his diocese; he aroused the sharp suspicion of the Emperor Constantms as one who in effect challenged his imperial authority in Egypt, and towards the end of his life he had reached a position in which his power, not only ecclesiastical but also political, was virtually beyond challenge, no matter what measures the Emperor 421

The Rival Answers Emerge (of whatever theological complexion) might take. But it would be a great mistake to follow Schwartz's opinion. The appearance of Niccolo Machiavelli's II Principe was more than a thousand years in the future in Athanasius' day. Schwartz was as mistaken in presenting Athanasius as a kind of Medici prince as was Jacob Burckhardt in presenting Constantine as a kind of Bismarck, cynically playing off against each other people of different convictions in the game of power-politics. In the fourth century everybody took theology seriously, difficult though it may be for modern scholars to realize this. Even the protean Valens and Ursacius cared about the doctrines which they favoured enough to write about them. And Athanasius, though an unscrupulous politician, was also a genuine theologian. It is impossible for anyone who has read his works with an open mind to miss the passion and conviction which inform them. Though Athanasius' tho.ught is deeply indebted to philosophy and he defends constantly what is a philosophical principle, the ontological unity of the Father and the Son, his philosophical language is all devoted to what was ultimately a Scriptural argument. He is no favourer of Greek philosophy; he decries it in the Contra Gentes, though he can occasionally refer to philosophical doctrines which are apparently like Christian teaching, as when he compares the Stoic doctrine of the Logos dwelling immanent in the whole world to the doctrine of the Incarnation. 7 But the main and paramount source of his doctrine is the Bible. He can on occasion appeal to the practice of baptism, 8 but this takes no prominent place in his thought. He was capable, perhaps alone among his contemporaries, of freeing himself from the enticing but damaging tendency to speculation about the relation of the pre-existent Son to the Logos of the philosophers. 9 H.J. Sieben observes that for Athanasius the burden or central message (skopos) of Scripture is indeed a mystery, but it is not (as it is to Origen) a mystery hidden under a veil, requiring decoding by allegory: 'In Athanasius' eyes Scripture is no longer the letter 'which casts a veil over all truth and all wisdom which are in principle conceivable; it carries the message of a single truth of its own.'

The Doctrine of Athanasius

~or

him both skopos and content of Scripture, in Old and New edstaments, are the two modes of existence of Christ as Son/Lana an ,as lncarnate 10 For hi t G d' I ' ' 6. S static but d ' .. h m, 00, 0 Sre atlOn to the world was not to reveal y~:,:~, Tehwasd~o remote ?od who required a lesser god . e Ivme OUsza he says . , d . , (ICap1toy6vo,) 12 As h b £j' , IS pro uctlve . as een requently observed Ath . approaches the central theological problem of. his 'da £janaslUs soterlOloglcal. not from a cosmological, viewpoint HeYre::e~ ~ltogether the problem raised and apparently solved'b b . rom MIddle Platonism, viz how God or the Su y orrowmg ~~mHeinto ~ontdact with the world, with transitor:.r~~!eaa;:Trsc:~ . e rerUse to use the pre-' Ch . ' hiloso h· " eXIstent fISt as a convenient togas i: t~~a~~~::~~'3 For the Father creates everything through the

~~~ ~~~e~a~o :ediator· to c~eat~ the world. So the concept of the

of the world re e~:edLman~~nd IS to be separated from the concept principle.'14

~~d~r:ated

'Or. con. Ar.I.)4; 11.41; De Syn. )6.) ()6)); Ep.ad Serap. I.2), 28, 2!)-)0; ).6; 4.5. He was not the first to do so; Eusebius of Caesarea had preceded him. 9S 0 Ritter, 'Arianismus' 710-11.

e

ogos on

IS

a redemptive, not a cosmic

t

ings ,. hehstoutl y maintains, can bear the direct hand of . me latar In t IS sense was unnecessar 15 W . tendency even as early as the Contra Gentes; d'hrist is~ can see thIS 'ahgood offspring (ytvvn ) f h G . .,J.l.a 0 t e ood and by origin a true Son' h . e P?we.r and WIsdom and Logos of the Father and this n~t e IS

t

partICIpatIOn nor because these attributes attach to him e t

ll:Y

:~:s;~~:~~;e a:~orSa~~~!7 ~~mh~: are made ~ise .thro:g~r~tmYan~

~~~~l.t;~t-:~:~;~~~~~:~~~_~~ ~r~;~rh;o~e;~~~:e~i~:::s:~ .

virtue-i -h' If n Imse,

himself, nghteousness-m_hlmsel£

yes and Impress ( , ) , (alta6ya""a) and image (e!IC",v) A d xapaICt~p and reflection . n, to sum up, he IS by origin the

l°Sieben in PTAA 20 _ . B W Ik . " 5 II, quotation (my translation) 211 . ' . a er In Ibid. 272; the whole of h' . . subject; he cites Or. con. Ar. 1II.52- and Dt IS essay (256-73) IS relevant to this 120r. (011 . A r. II .2. 53 e Inc. 17· erap ad Sk . 3·5, see Ricken 'Nikaia als Krisis' 339-40 . arnac Dogmenges(hichte (Grundriss (T b' . ukl~geEnTI92~)6 p. 21 7. quoted by Rlcken op. cit. 340 (my translation)' cf IV.26-38. • . arnac In HIStory 111.139-44 and 15De Decretis 8.2-4 (7, 8).

"J

::fI'

7De Inc. 41.1-'7.

'"

.tl

422

42 3

,.

The Doclrine of Alhanasius

The Rival Answers Emerge

wholly perfect product (ICUpno<;) of the Father, and ~l~ne his'Son, the precise image (€lICO>V ultapa).).alCto<;) of the Father. 1 It is evident that at this early stage the chiefinfluence upon Athanasius is Alexander of Alexandria, and indeed we can identify no predecessor who had a greater influence upon Athanasi~s than he. For Athanasius God is indeed transcendent: he IS mVlSlble. and unapproachable to transitory «oi<; y&vv1]
theological idea and one entirely consonant wIth. Scnpture. Athanasius is often wholly astray on the details of the BIble, but he has a remarkably firm grip, indeed in view of his career one might say the grip of a bull-dog, on its main n:'essage. . . The consequence of this far-reachmg mnovatlon mtroduced by Athanasius. is that the doctrine of the Trinity is not just a necessary corollary of the Christian view of God's relation to the world, but at the heart of his theology of the Incarnation, as it ought to be. He accuses the Arians with some justice of in effect teaching that God was not always a Trinity because the Son has not in their view always existed and also of dividing the Trinity because they allot dIfferent nature; to the Father and the Son"o As a consequence the Arian, really believe in two gods, and whereas they claim to avoid the error 16Contra Gentes 46.j2-61. I7Or. con. Ar. 1.63. 18Ibid. II.2j, 26. . t9Ibid. Or. con. Ar.II.73, 74; but the whole of Book II is devoted to the openmg verses of Proverbs S. 2°lbid, 1.17, IS.

424

of believing in two ultimate principles (uYEVV1]
universe in him (the Spirit) through the Son'.23 To sum up Athanasius' general theological position in a paraphrase of the words ofLoofs: 24 As early as his first work (Conlra Genies el De Inca~nation~). :,~hanasius had adopted the Origenistic concept of God s md,vlSlblllty and had rejected all emanation theories. He maintained the eternity of the Logos and his eternal generation, and had never adopted Marcellus' theory of the limitation of the Son to the Incarnation. He disti~guished himself from Eustathius by. Identlfymg firmly the hlstoncalJesus and the Logos without denying that the Logos was ImpaSSIble. He never accepted the Origenistic concept of the Logos as a mediating agent within the Godhead, and in fact overcame the obstacle presented by the idea of a Logos borrowed from philosophy. He linked the Incarnation and the redemption firmly. In order to communicate immortality to the human race which had become subject to decay (cp66pa), the Saviour must becon:'e man. He saw at an early stage the latent polytheism in Anamsm and was a convinced monotheist; this is why he so resolutely hnked the Father and the Son and insisted continually that . the Son was the Father's own (t01O<;). The relation of the Son to the Father was almost always at the centre of Athanasius' concern, but not in the sense that it was to the

Arians. For them the problem was how to reconcile an incomparable 2tIbid. III.16.

22Ib~d. 16: the last words are

23Ibld,

1 j.

Kata tl'Jv {6l0tT/ta Kat O{KetOtT)ta tfjr; oUaia r . ~

24'~rianismus' 17. IS, But in his pre-occupation with the thought of Origen ~oofs has here forgotten to give credit to Alexander of Alexandria as the main Influence on the young Athanasius.

425

The Doctrine of Athanasius

The Rival Answers Emerge

and impassible God with the biblical message that God suffered for man's salvation, and they believed that the only way to achieve this was to postulate a lower god related to the high~r, a god ~ho could encounter the suffering without compromISIng the high God. Athanasius, as we shall see, was not much interested in God suffering, but was deeply preoccupied with the self-revelatIOn of God. The Arians were in the end not prepared to allow that God could or would communicate himself. Athanasius was quite certain that he had communicated himself in Christ. Arian theology tend~d to see the Son as a safeguard against God the Father commg mto dangerously close contact with the world, and they had behmd them a long and respectable tradition of Logos-theology, borrowmg from contemporary philosophy. AthanaslUs beheved that the Son was, on the contrary, a guarantee that God had come into the closest contact with the world and with humankind. Arlan theology was mdeed a theology of suffering which took seriously one impo.rtant aspect ofSt Paul's thought, but it did so at the cost of makmg .. ~angerous disjunction between the Son and the F.ather. AthanasiUs theology was one of revelation, though he paid the price of completely ignoring the particular aspect of the New Testament:, witness to Christ which the Arians had perceived. For him St John s Gospel IS at the very centre of tlfe Christian faith; the Synoptics., on. which the Arians relied heavily for their picture of ChrISt, he sometimes found an obstacle, presenting tiresome evidence which had to be expl~med away. There were twO capital texts for AthanaslUs,John 10:3 0 , I and the Father are one', and John 14:9, 'He who has seen me has seen the Father'. He regarded them, in his own work, as 'a bulwark agamst every impious thought.'2' In the Father we have the Son: thIS IS a summary of Athanasius' theology. There is no doubt that It IS a proper and balanced presentation of the message, the skopos, of the New Testament. It was inevitable from the circumstances which prevailed in the fourth century that this message should be expressed in the vocabulary and the thought-forms of contemporary Greek philosophy. No other alternative was available, even. though thiS expression brought with it unavoidably a certam distortIOn and blurring of the thought of the New Testament. For AthanaslUs a necessary corollary of the revelatory relation of the Son to the Father was their full ontological unity which could only be properly 25De Synodis 45.

defended against distortion and misunderstanding ifit was set out in some terms which closely connected the Son to the ousia of the Father. His favourite words for expressing this relation are all Scriptural: they are 'image' (&i1CIDV 2Cor 4:4; Col 1:15), 'effulgence' or 'reflection' (altauya0J.1a Heb 1:3), 'stamp' or 'impress' (xapaK
«"

260r. can. Ar. 1.20. For a treatment of Athanasius' images in this connection see Studies in Christian AntiqUity, cap. II, 25)--65. 27Contra Gentes 46; Or. con. Ar. 1.26; 11.33; liLlI, s. It is noteworthy that this use of the term continues unchanged in book III, a point which is not in favour of assigning it to another author. 28E.g. Or. con. Ar. 11.33; 111.4.

29lbid. II.80, 81. 30Ibid. II.24",

427

The Rival Answers Emerge Father, 'for the thought and understanding of the Son is knowledge concerning the Father, because the Son is his own offspring derived from his oUSia'.31 Athanasius' point is that only paternal begetting can make the Son him who wholly reveals the Father. His insistence upon the ontological unity of Father and Son rests upon his conviction about the Son's function as revealer. This expression 'own offspring

derived from his ousia' (i8IOV, or i810V yEVV1]/.lU, tfie; ouolue;) occurs several times in those writings which precede the point at which Athanaslus begins to promote the homoousios. 32 Since the Son is an authentic product (rVl]OIOV ytVV1]/.lu) of the Father, not only can he not be united to him merely by participation, but the argument that Father and Son are united only by a moral union, 'by the harmony of their thoughts and by the Son's not dissenting from the Father' must be rejected. 33 The Son is in the Father ontologically, but we by grace and obedience and common life (koinonia), by appointment (thesis), not by nature (physis); only so can we become 'gods' (In 10:35).34 And Athanasius uses an argument which Arius had explicitly denied: you cannot say of God 'Father' without implying a Son; it is possible to use the term 'Maker' without implying any specific thing made, but to say 'Father' implies the existence (GltUpl;,le;) of the Son. When therefore God in the Bible is referred to as 'alone' or 'only' in such passages as Exod 3:14; Deut 32:39, and Isa 44:6 andJn 17:33, this does not affect the status of the Son. 35 By the same line of reasoning Athanasius denies that the Son is changeable, as he accuses the Arians of saying. His ontological unity with the Father precludes his mutability. He is appalled at the Arian statement that the Son exercises his own judgment of free-will (ltPOUlPEOtl "Uta t6 UUttI;,0IlOIOV).36 He refuses to believe that the Son earned his exalted divine status as a reward for his virtue, as the Arians, citing very reasonably Phil 2:9, 10 and Ps 45:8, argued: 'for if he received what he possessed as a reward for his choice, he could not possess it unless he performed a function (which showed that) he was in need of it. and obtained it as a result of his virtue and

The Doctrine of Athanasius improvement, and then he might reasonably be called "Son" and "God" and yet he is not true God. '37

Athanasius, however, does his best to avoid Sabellianism, though he can find no term to express what God is as Three in distinction from what he is as One: 'for they are One . .. not like a One named twice over so that he is

sometim~s ~he Father an~ sometimes the Son . .. ' (the; are One) 'in the pecuhanty and proprIety of their nature and in the identity of the o~e Godhe~d' (tij IS16t1]tl "?l 0IK,,6t1]tl tiie;
be said of the Son, except his being called 'Father'." Athanasius allows that the Father is the 'source' (or 'well') of the Son (pege),. and he racks the Bible for texts which display this word _ JeremIah 2:13; 17:12; Baruch 3:12. But without the Son he would be a dry spring and without Wisdom or Life. 39 It is correct to say that the \ather 'pre-dates' (ltPOUltUPXtiv) everything, but the Son 'predates everythmg along WIth hlm.40 This is the kind of point at which AthanaslUs, not through lack of good intention but through lack of vocabnlary, verges dangerously close to Sabeilianism. Athanasius of course has to deal with the manner in which the Father produces th~ Son; ~e cannot and does not take refuge in the agnostIc or apophatJc solutIOn of appealing to Isa 53:8. He insists that the right term is not 'create' but 'beget': Itis better, he says,41 to say unashamedly that the Father begot the Son ?eca~~e this implies a common nature (Physis). This is not an IllegItImate anthropomorphism, because 'God is not like man and men are hot like God. Men were created from matter, and m'deed mutable (or 'vulnerable' 1tu9rrmcfjC;) matter, but God is immaterial and incorporeal' (5, 6). Even ifsome texts of the Bible treat God and ~e~ in ~he same way, still it is the business of percipient people to dlstmgUlsh between the nature of things referred to and not to confuse their meanings.

Against the Arian argument that if you say that the Son is co-eternal 3IIbid.1.16. 320r. con. Ar. 1.20, 26; 11.32; IIl.6. Note once again the recurrence of this expression in the third Book. .3JDe Synodis 48.1-4 (272-3). 340r. con. Ar. III,I9; c( 111.3. 35Ibid. III.6. For Arius' rejection of this argument, see above, p.8 n 21.

"Ibid. 1.35.

37Ibid·I.37; cf. t~e ~ong pa~sage 38 - 52 pursuing the same argument. Athanasius mostly argues that thIS language of exaltation and progression applies to Christ's human body, not to his divinity.

"Ibid. 1Il+ 39Ibid. 1.19; cf. De Deeret. 15.1-4 (13). 4°De Decret. 18.1,2 (15). "Ibid. 10.4-<> (9).

The Rival Answers Bmerge

The Doctrine of Athanasius

with the Father then he should be called Brother and not Son, Athanasius answers that if we simply said that he was eternal and no more, this argument might hold, but in fact we say that he is the eternal Son.

Nous is produced by the One. But this illustration comes at the end of a long discussion of the same point in which Athanasius has made his ideas clearer:

'For the ousja of the Father was never incomplete so that that which is

its own (t6 i3t.OV a6tfic;) should later accrue to it; the Son is not engendered as a human being is from a human being, with the result

that there might be some diminishing of the paternal existence; but he

Everything in creation waS planned and willed before it was made, but 'his own Logos engendered from him by nature is not subject to forward planning' ("pO~OU4t111). God's will is in him through whom he creates; there is no need to postulate two Logoi, as he thinks the Arians in effect do. 47 The Arians argue that 'ifhe did not come into

is the offspring of God, and asthe own (t01OC;) Son of God who always exists. he exists eternally. It is the characteristic of human beings to

existence by (God's) will, then God has a Son by necessity and

engender within time because their nature is incomplete; but God's offspring is eternal because his nature is eternally complete.42

between willing and not willing but between that which is willed and that which is natural (to "ata
Against another Arian objection that if the Son whom the Father produced is eternal, then the whole of creation which the Father has made must be from eternity, he replies that that which is made (1toI1111(') is external to the maker, but that the Son is 'the own offspring of his ousia'.'3 And he points sensibly to the Incarnation as one example which the Arians must allow of God doing something which was not from eternity." To the Arian ploy of accosting matrons in the market-place and asking them if their son existed before he was born (a kind of anticipation of modem field studies in theology), Athanasius retortS by suggesting that the husbands of these good women should be asked, 'Did you become fathers by your own intention (alone), or by nature and your intention? Or are your children like your nature and substance?'45 On the subject which this question brings up of the contrast or combination of will and nature in the production of the Son, Athanasius is no less resourceful. He denies the Arian thesis that the Son was produced only by a sheer act of the Father's will and thought. He is Son by nature, and this in fact precedes and transcends (though he never says it replaces) will and thought. Rather oddly, he takes the old analogy of the sun and the ray for this: the ray does not need a preceding will or thought to be produced.'· One wonders whether he has been influenced here by Plotinus' account of how the con. Ar. 1.14: cf. 1.26. 43(S10V tii~ ouu(ac; 'Y£VVTJJla, ibid. 1.29. 44 29 .

unwillingly'. To this Athanasius returns that the contrast is not

to do so, but he produces a son by natural process. You might as well

say that God is only good because he wills to be good assay thathe has a Son because he wills to have a Son.48 Reducing the question ad absurdum. he asks if God exists because he wills to exist. There is no

prior will (etA.~crlC; 1tpo~you~tv~ is apparently the term used by his opponents) attached to the existence of the Son any more than there is attached to the Father's existence. 'Rather, he (the Son) is the living will of the Father, in which all these things come into existence'.49

The same argument goes for God having thought of the Son (
Father's will, just as God is good without willing to be good; even though his origin is not from God's 'will, still the Son is not involuntary (unwilled, aesA.~t6C;). The fact that the Father and Son love each other and that the Son honours the Father shows this. 51

The Son can of course be called an 'offspring' (ytvv~Ila), but not 'something made' (1t611]Ila).52 'From God' (t" to;; eso;;) can refer to something made, produced simply by the will of the Creator, but the expression in N 'from the substance' (of God) (t"tijc; o"criac;) denotes an offspring (ytvv~Ila), and in this passage (as elsewhere) he argues 410r. (on. AT. III.6I.

42 Or.

48Ibid. 62. 496 3, 64 quotation 64.

"Ibid. 111.67.

51 66.

46Ibid. IIl.66. For this subject see Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism 176-83.

43 0

5°65.

52De Synodis 35.4 (362).

43 1

The Rival Answers Emerge from the practice of baptism: we cannot be baptized into the Name of 53

a creature. .' fi ard his account of the hin ul Athanasius has to face, m putting orw . f th Son the charge that he is in effect teac g two begetbng 0 . I e fa. i"nmta)' if the Son is not unbegotten (a.Y&VVTltOS), tlmate prmClp es , Y .'" , b' h he did not as he clearly is not, then there must have een a time w en no exist In his Orationes contra Arianos AthanaslUs (,;h? makes . disti~ction Iiere between 'unbegotten' (agennetos) and wltho~t .orlgm of existence' (agenetos» reminds the Arians that ~~:~;:::a~nte::g:~~ on this argument about agennetos usmg a nO~-N ~ d' so aiso 54 that they cannot therefore blame the framers 0 or. omg a ene;o$' He then explains that there are three different meanmgs of g . (i) (ii)

(iii)

It can mean something which could come into existence

but has not done so, like a tree which is n~t yet a boat. It can mean something which has not come mto eXIstenCe and never could, like a four-sided triangle or an even odd number. . It can mean that which exists but, ha,s not come mto existence from any source ()ITt yev1]8ev Be EK nvo.s), a~d he quotes Asterius as saying 'that is ageneton which IS not made but has eternally existed.'55

call On these premises of course, Athanasius' logical course wf:as toth 'II ') b t he will not go as ar as IS. the Son agenetos (as we asgennetos" u ..' t Agenetos, he says, really ap~lies only to God ~n t~S ::~:oi~ ~~;:::o:~ things which have come mto eXistence, an e ( h' h irrelevant to the Son. It is better to think of God as Fa~er w IC . I es the Son) than to think of him as agenetos (which Involves InVOV . ,. S' I and open to 56 Calling God agenetos In fact IS un cn ptura ) creatures. . but the term suspicion as possessing more than o~e. mean~ng .. . " n' "Father" is simple and Scriptural and IS simply mdlcatlve of the SAo d' ho do not know the Son. n Agenetos is a term usedb y t h e G ree k s, w . f b . 57 once more he invokes the appeal to the practice 0 aptlsm. d Athanasius repeats these arguments at De Deeretis 28. 1--6 (24, 25), an "Ibid. 36.2, 3 (363); cf. Or. ,on. 540r. con. Ar. 1.30. 5slbid. 30. "Ibid. J3. 57 34 .

Ar. 1.8.

The Doctrine of Athanasius here explicitly says that the first two meanings of agenetos which he has listed cannot be applied to God, but that the third can, and he denies the Arian objection that it cannot be applied to the Son, 58 but once again he eschews the use of the word, prefers the Scripture term 'Father' and invokes the argument from baptism s9 Had Athanasius at this point been able to distinguish between agennetos (un begotten, unengendered) and agenetos (not having had an origin of existence), he would have saved himself some confusion, because it would have been possible to claim that the Son was eternally begotten (and therefore not agennetos) and at the same time that he had had no origin of existence (and was therefore agenetos).60 It is however, significant that Athanasius here turns from the vocabulary of contemporary philosophy to choose instead biblical terms. It is characteristic of the basic trend of his thought. He returns to this tricky question in De Synodis 46 and 47. Here he still virtually identifies agennetos and agenetos, but takes a rather different attitude to the question. Here he argues that though agennetos does not appear in the Bible, many reputable people have used it, and it should be analysed. It has, he says, two meanings: it can either mean 'that which exists but has never been generated nor has had any cause (uinoS) of existence', and· in this sense it cannot apply to the Son (because he is generated); or it can mean 'uncreated', and in this sense it can be applied to the Son (46 (2<)6!7)}. And Athanasius goes on to quote Ignatius of Antioch, Ephesians 7, 'There is one physician, fleshly and spiritual, genetos and agenetos, God in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God'. In this case, Athanasius says,genetos means born of Mary and refers to Christ's human body, and agenetos means the eternal Son (47 (297)), Here, of course, he introduces another theme on the same' subject, and one which is to be found often in his works. 61 This theme is that all apparent references in the Bible to God creating the Son refer to the creation of the human body of the incarnate Son, As far as we know, the first person to devise this highly implausible argument was Marcellus of Ancyra, and it seems most likely that it was from him that Athanasius learnt it, perhaps through 58De Decret. 5. 6 (25). "Ibid. 31.1-4 (27). 6°Shapland, in his edition of Athanasius' Epp. ad Serapionem at I .IS points out. that the same confusion troubled Athanasius when dealing with the procession of the Spirit. 61Kopecek discusses these passages History 221-2.

432

4JJ

The Rival Answers Emerge The Doctrine of Athanasius having read his works, or through direct contact (which cannot be assumed to have taken place before 340). Athanasius devotes virtually the whole of Book II of the Orationes contra Arianos to the text which was considered by all sides to be crucial for this subject, Proverbs B:22/f. We shall not here follow through the devious windings of his attempts to prove that the obvious is not true. His basic insight that the Son of God cannot be created we can readily allow. His explanations that the passages in the Bible which appear to say that he is created, and above all this text in Proverbs, which was in the fourth century fought over by the theologians as in the Iliad .the Greeks and Trojans fight over the body of Patroclus, are somenmes mgemous but almost always unsound. 62 He also has other difficult texts to overcome, e.g. Hebrews 3:2 ('faithful to him that made him') and Acts 2:36 ('he has made him both Lord and Christ'), which he copes with as well as he can, always wherever possible referring them to the human body and not to the pre-existent SOn. 63 'The texts', he says at one point, 'do not remove the (concept of) nature' (i.e. the sharing of the Son in the divine nature), 'but rather the (concept of) nature attracts the texts to itself and alters their meaning'. 64 Athanasius' hermeneutical method was to keep the basic message, the skopos, of the Bible firmly in sight, and then to let individual texts looks after themselves. In summarizing Athanasius' ideas of the begetting or production of the Son, it is useful to refer to the account of E. P. Meijering: In his anti-Arian treatises, says Meijering. Athanasius strongly

deprecates any idea that there is a 'preceding origin' (npounapxouoa apx1\) for the Father and Son (which the Arians allege to be the logical conclusio"n of his ideas); he insists that we are not dealing with a Greek theogony, and that we must not apply human categories to the generation of the Son. It is his desire to avoid a pre-existent ousia or

arche (origin) that makes him insist that the eternal Father is the origin of the eternal Son. He uses archl in two senses, as indicating a beginning in time (which he denies to the Son) and as an 'eternal origin'. which he allows and places in the Father. On the subject of cause, he is obscure. That which causes is in his (Platonic) view superior to _that which is caused; it will not do to say .62He refers to this crucial text elsewhere, of course, e.g. De Decretis 13.1--6 (II, 12); '4.2 (12). 6lSee, for instance, Or. con. Ar. II.I, 2, 6, 7, 8, 12-14. 640r. con. Ar. 11.3.

that God created the Logos in order to cause mankind for then man must have been more important than the Son and sh~uld have been

caused . b~fore him:

'temporal priority implies ontological

~upenonty . yet Athanasius Can hardly deny that the Father as agenelos

IS uncaused, whereas the Son as genetos is caused. But Athanasius does not .want ~o ~ay that the F~ther's ou'sia ~s .cause of the Son's is superior to hIS. He m~lsts that there IS only one dIvme ousia and one divine arche. Arch.e fo~ hIm almost means Godhead. In short. 'to Athanasius the Son lS neIther an addendum in time to the Father ... nor a kind of ~ternal addendum to the Father ... but the Father's perfection consists

,

m the fact that he is the Father of the Son:'6'

It is worth noting that one of the lessons which all pro-Nicene wnters eventually learnt from the Arian Controversy was the analogous nature of all language used about God. We ha I d ··. veareay seen Ah t anaslUs mSls.ting m~re than Once that human examples and IUstances when used m relatIOn to God must not be pushed too far It was not only when the Arians took the phrase 'Son of God' ·so literally that they denied the Son's eternity, that Athanasius makes thIS pomt, nor when he disowns analogies between human and divine begettmg, but when they objected to the identification of Son and God (Logos): 'How can the Son be Word, or the Word be an image of God? For a human word is composed of syllables, and simply sIgnifies t~e mean~g of the speaker, and at once ceases and dlsapp~a;!? AthanaslUs of course makes his usual anSWer: 'God is not as man. And shortly after this Athanasius warns against handling famIlIarly profound and difficult doctrines concerning God: 'It is better to say nothing in bewilderment and to believe than to lose behef through being bewildered.'67 We must not, he says in De Synod.s, take parables and texts in a human way· and once aga!· 'G d t '68T ' n 0 IS no as man. 0 counter the Arian argument that if the Son is like fi 65Mreij]erinSrGOd Being History [911-[96] paraphrased and abridged quotations rom 94 an . ~]. We have seen Athanasius using the word aitios (cause) above. p. 43.3. In fact, It IS doubtful whether the word 'cause' can have any mea' h' ~ppl.led to two eternally ex!sting divine Beings. Anselm expresses doubtsn~~~; thl~ In hIS work on the Procession of the Holy Spirit; see Studies in Christian Antiquity cap. 12. , 660r. con. Ar. II.H, 35. 67Ibid. 36 . 68De Syn. 42. ~ (267-8); cf. a little earlier: gennema (offspring) must not be taken anthropom.orphJcalJy;. those W?O oppose calling the Son a creature do indeed employ' human analog~es, but With this c~nditjon, that 'God is not as man, nor is the generahtl~nkof t~e Son hke human generation, but as it is fitting to God and properto us to t In of It' (41.4 (267».

434 435

I

i Ii I

I I

I i .'

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Doctrine of Athanasius

the Father in all respects, then he too should have a Son, Athauasius replies that this is a corporeal and all-too-human way of conceiving of the relation. 'God is not as man'. The Father himselfhas no father, as all our fathers have had fathers, nor has the Son a son: 'he is not engendered by a father himself engendered, so he is not begotten in order himself to beget'. And he goes on to claim that this divine paternity is the authentic one, whereas ours is' imperfect. 69 The argument that fathers must precede sons in time is countered by saying that this does not apply to the image of 'reflection' (Iillaoyacrlla) nor of ,source' (pege), and that, as before, the image of human begetting must not be pressed: the Son is also Wisdom and Logos, which are not susceptible of misunderstanding in this way: no vulnerable (lla9'ltOiv), temporary or human analogies will suffice to denote the begetting of Wisdom and of Word. 70

the Western bishops in 343, who would not have been at all troubled about appearing to serve the purposes of the bishop of Rome. It is more likely, in fact, that the word homoousios when it was inserted in N did not hav~ the crucial importance in the eyes of people of that tIme whIch rt was later supposed to have. Our previous consideration of the word73 has already led us to this conclusion. It was impossible to rid the term in the minds of many of Sabellian, if

3. Homoousios Athanasius makes one reference to the word homoousios in his Orationes contra Arianos, early in that work, when he described the Son as 'true God, by origin (ullapxoov) consubstantial (611000crIO,) with the true Father. '71 But thereafter there is a complete silence'in all ecclesiastical writers for nearly twenty years. Even the Western bishops at Serdica in 343 did not mention the word; one recalls the words of Sherlock Holmes about the dog not barking. It is not until he writes the De Decretis (356 or 357) that Athanasius again mentions the word and begins to defend it. This silence has puzzled scholars, and variou~ hypotheses have been put forward to explain it. Kraft, for instance, suggested that the word was associated with the policy of the bishops of Rome and with Western Trinitarian doctrine generally, and that Athanasius did not wish to appear to be unduly subservient to that influence. 72 But this does not explain the silence of 690r. (on. AT. 1.21, reiterated 23. 7°Ibid. 1.27. 27. For further account of this subject, see R. P. C. Hanson Cambridge History of the Bible voH, 447-8 and Studies in Christian Antiquity cap. 13. 71 1.9. For literature on Athanasius' use of homoQusios, see Gwatkin SA 46-so, 133 n I; G. L. Prestige CPT 194-5. 2IS-I8; Bethune-Baker The Meaning of the Homoousios 28-30; Kelly Early Christian Creeds 242--60; Simonetti Crisi 268-'79; Stead in Politi que et Theologie 247-53 and Divine Substance 262-5; Kopecek History 94 n I; Klein Conslanlius II 44 n 102; Dinsen Homoousios II 5-34; Ritter Das Konzil 270-<)3· "'OMOOYl:IOl:' 13.

not Gnostic, ~ssociations. ~thanasius in his earlier works saw no great

need to use rt or defend It. He had plenty of other expressions to denote the ontological unity of Father and Son, to iolOv tlj, ot\cr[a, (pe~uliar belonging of the substance), or tlllapa1..1..aKtO, .IKOOV tlj, oIlO1a,. (exact rmage of the substance), or iolOV ytVVT]lIa tlj, O1lcr[a, (pecuhar o~spnng of the substance), even occasionally (\11010, Kata llaVta (hke m all respects), and (\11010, Kat' ot\cr[av (like in substance, Or. con Ar. I.20; 111.26); and he constantly teaches that the two share a common nature. He writes of 'the identity of nature' (taut6tTJta tTj~ 'I'0cr&oo,).75 He says that 'the existence of the Son is the form and Godhead of the Father' and speaks of 'the identity of Godhead and the umty ofsubstance',76 and of the Father and the Son being one 'in the peculiarity and particularity of their nature' (tii I016t'ltl Kat oIK&16t~tl tlj, 'I'"cr&oo,) and in the identity of their Godhead', 77 and of the Son as 'belonging to and inseparable from the One according to the peculiarity and particularity of his substance'. 78 So emphatic are these words, that we might well ask why AthanaslUs took the trouble to defend the term homoousios at any pomt, when he had plenty of expressions available to define the way 7JS ee a~ove. pp. 190-202. It surely is significant that the word homoousios does not occu~ In B~ok III of the Orationes con Ira Arianos, whereas it does occur in the (pseudeplgra~hl~al) Book IV (9, 12): Had Book ~II been written by someone else after At~anaslUs d~ath, as Kannenglesser argues In his Alhanase d'Alexandrie, it is wholly hke1y that It would have contained a use (if not a defence) of this word. It could of course be ~rgued that Book III is written in the 340S or 350S by somebody other than AthanaslUS, but this reasoning is too like that of the man who suggested tha,t4the Odyssey was not written by Homer but by somebody else of the same name. . Or. con. :4r. 1·40 6JlOIO~ Ka't'cl 7tclV't'a, 1.20, III. [J, 26 OJlOlO~ Ka't" ooo-iav. Once again we notice community of vocabulary between Book III and the earlier book' ef. De Syn. 38.2 (263) and 45.7 (270-1). ' 75 0,. con. Ar. m.22. 76III.3. the latter expression is n'lv)ltv 't'av.6't'TJ't'a'ti'j~ Be6tT}'t'or;:, 't'1'Iv at. tv6't'T}'t'a 't'fjr;: oucriar;:. 771II·4.

78IIl. I6. For these expressions see Dinsen Homoousios

437

116- 17.

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Doctrine of Athanasius

in which he thought of the unity of the Father and the Son, and when homoousios itself was far from being a clearly accurate and universally understood word. He began to use it first in the De Deeretis and thereafter regularly in his theological works, defending it fiercely against all criticism ofit. Ifwe place De Deeretis in 356 or 357, we can perhaps see the reason for this change of policy. By then it had become abundantly clear not only that Constantius was everywhere trying to isolate Athanasius himself from ecclesiastical support both in the East and the West, but, if we assume, as seems likely, that at Aries in 353 and Milan in 355 a doctrinal formula which did nothing at all to forward the doctrine of the unity of Father and Son regarded by Athanasius as the only orthodox one, was forced upon those who attended these councils, we can imagine that Athanasius decided that he must begin a policy of defending the very words ofN as a slogan or banner round which to gather. And when the Second Creed of Sirmium of 357 appeared, which explicitly denied the propriety of using ousia in connection with the Son's.relation to the Father, this conviction must have deepened, to the point where he actually repudiated some of the expressions, such as 'like in all respects' and 'exact image of the substance' which he had used and welcomed earlier. The very significant emergence of the Homoiousians at first made no impression 0'1 him, partly because they explicitly repudiated the homoousios; they must have seemed to him at that point (358) merely another variant of those many groups favoured by the Emperor who had rejected the strait and narrow path of orthodoxy. In the De Deeretis Athanasius says that the party at the Council of Nicaea wliich he regards as orthodox found that they could not safeguard orthodoxy sufficiently by using such expressions as 'like the Father' and 'in all respects exactly as the Father' (t'lltapa....mctov), because the Arians at the Council could interpret even these words in a manner which admitted of their concept of the Son as created and limited in regard to time. This was why they introduced into the Creed ofNicaea the word homoousios." Even if the expressions used in N are not biblical, still 'they contain the intention of the Scriptures: Bo He also tries to answer the Arian objection to

homoousios that it implies that there is in God's ousia something contingent (c:ruI1P&P'lICO,) or foreign or hidden or that something is necessary to complete his ousia. B' Athanasius meets this argument by pointing out that the orthodox as well as homoousios use 'light' and 'reflection' to describe the relation of the Son to the Father, and ihis corrects any tendency to draw wrong conclusions from the use of homoousios, because these analogies do not suggest anything produced from outside and created; they do not refer to a fire kindled by the sun's heat but to the phenomenon of a ray coming from the sun, which is genuinely unchangeable and unalterable, and represent this quality in the Son's relation to the Father, and this relation he ~escribes as 'the identity (tautot'lta) in relation to the Father (that is, Identity of ousia).B2 He adds that to speak ofhomoousion then is not to lapse into corporeal nor anthropomorphic expressions implying partition or division of the Godhead. The analogy (ltapaS&IYl1a) of light and reflection is a very suitable one because, though ultimately it is based on a physical phenomenon, it expresses consubstantiality. B3 The rest of his defence of homoousios in this work is occupied with discussing its use, and the use of the other terms, by, some of the great men of the past, Theognostus, the two Dionysii and Origen.84 Athanasius' defence of the homoousios in the De Synodis is longer and is complicated by the fact that since his writing of the De Deeretis a. party has emerg~d,. that of Basil of Ancyra, which explicitly dISowns blatant Artarusm, opts for the use of ousia in defming the relatIOn of the Son to the Father, but rejects homoousios as leading to Sabelharusm. He first attacks strongly the doctrine (as he alleges) of Akakius and Eudoxius that the Son is a creature: he is an 'offspring' (gennema) but not somethmg made (poiema). and the phrase tIC tfi, ouaia, ofN can apply to the former but not to the latter. B5 He again tackles the objection to homoousios that it is non-Scriptural: this time he cites a number of non-Scriptural words used by his opponents,

79 20.1-3 (16). This is where Athanasius quotes the embarrassing anathema efN. omitting, perhaps deliberately,the compromising words 'ij {m;o
438

(18). ~223:I, .2. (I?). In this pa~sage (3(~9}) At~anasius discusses several other cognates of OUSIO~. mc~udmg heterouslOs hu.t. mterestIngly. does not accuse his opponents of holdmg thIS last. In fact heterou.slO.s was the watchword of the foHowers ofEunomius (not anlromoio.s), and this suggests that when the De Decreti.s was written the Eunomian doctrine was still litde known. In So. I (274) he produces the terms dllo'tptoumot; and avoJ,l.Dlouatot;. 8324 .1- 5 (19, 20). 84 26. 27 (20-23). Cf. De Sententia Diony.sii and De Synod;.s 43-45 (268--'70 ). 85 J ).I-"7 (J62). J6.2 (J6J). 81 22. 1

439

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Doctrine of Athanasius

'from non-existence' (t~ OUK l)Vtcov), agenetas, 'three hypostases', 'not without beginning' (OUK I!vapxoc;), and the term used (as he expressly says) in the Second ('Dedication') Creed of Antioch 34', 'exact image (ultapa....uKtovoiK6vu) of the ausia and will and glory' (of God). 86 He does not mention that he himself had in his Oratianes contra Arianas used 'exact image' more than once as a quite satisfactory theological term. A little later he reproaches the Arians for saying that the Son is 'from another hypostasis' than the Father's.87 Clearly for him hypostasis and ousia were still synonymous, and he had not yet realized that a doctrine of three hypostases was consistent with what he regarded as orthodoxy. He now turns to the Homoiousians (as they were called) having in mind both Basil of Ancyra's document issued after the Synod of Ancyra in 358 and the treatise called the Letter aIGeorge (of Laodicea) published in 359 not long before the Council of Seleucia met. 8~ His tone is now quite eirenic; he realises that the followers of this school cannot be classed as out-and-out Arians, as he had classed them earlier. His argument is simply that if anyone has advanced as far as these bishops had in theological understanding, they might as well adopt the homoausios. What he does not realize is that Basil and those who thought like him had progressed farther than Athanasius in beginning to distinguish what God is as Three from what he is as One, and that to them an acceptance of homoousios without some sort of distinction like that towards which they were moving would naturally appear to involve them in pure indiscriminate Sabellianism. Athanasius, though his goodwill is evident, gives them very little help:

Athanasius returns to a consideration of the word agennetos, which we have examined already,90 and then produces some more points in favour of homoousias. The Son, as a genuine offspring of the Father, cannot be united to him merely 'by participation' (tK "Etouaiac;), and the relation between them cannot be merely by the agreement of their ideas and by the Son not dissenting from the Father, as the Arians say"l Presently he produces another argument: only he who is consubstantial could bring apotheosis (OEoltoi'lmc;) to US. 92 Then he confronts the Arian objection that calling the Son homoo-usios implies that there is a common ousia shared by Father and Son and superior or prior to both, and that anyway in such circumstances the two divine Beings should be called brothers and not Father and Son. His answer is the rather curious one of saying that sons are consubsta~tial with their ~athers but brothers are consubstantial, not with each other (for each IS heterousios, of a different substance, in relation to each other), but with the ousia of their father. This suggests that in his view homoousios has some derivative force in it; Sons derive from fathers, but brothers do ?ot derive from each other. And he ends the passage by exhortmg hIS readers not to allow material and low ideas to corrupt their concept of God .. ' He goes on in the next passage to make a senous attempt to define the unity of the Father and the Son:

'If now tbey admit that the Son is from the ousia of the Father and not of a different hypostasis and is not a creature nor something made, but an authentic and natural offspring and, as Logos and Wisdom he has eternally co-existed with the Father, they are not far off from accepting the term homoousios. '89

It is evident here, as in other places, that Athanasius really thinks that the term homoousias must be balanced and modified by the use of otl,er expressions and models in order to achieve the proper understanding of the Son's relation to the Father. 9s The great slogan of the pro-Nicenes is not all-sufficient. Athanasius ends his defence of the hamaausios by a linguistic argument. 'Like' (5"OIoC;) applies to

After a section dealing with Paul of Samosata and the two Dionysii, 86 36.4-6

(363); cf. 38.1-4 (264-5); it is significant that he still regards 'three

hypostases' as the watchword of his adversaries. 87 40.3

(266). above, pp. 348-57, 365--?1. . 89 4 1.2 (266); more eireniclanguage 41.5 (267). cr. in the same chapter 'we do not attack them as mad Arianizers, as opponents of the Fathers, but we discuss as brothers with brothers who have the same outlook as we but who only disagree about the word'. 88S ee

440

'\Vedo not speak of two gods, we do notthink of the unity of the Son with the Father in terms of the resemblance of their teaching. but in terms of substance (ousia) and reality. So that thus we do not speak of two gods, but of one God who exists as one form of divinity. like the

relation of the light to the ray.'94

90 46.1-47.2 (271-2); see above, Pp.432-3. "4 8. 1 -49.5 (272-4). 92 51.2 (74); here he uses the expression 'his ontological divinity', oo(m'0511~

9&6'['11<;:·

93 5 1.2,3

(274-5). (275). 9~ShapJand. P·99 of his edition of Epp. ad Serapionem, observes this, and cites particularly Or. con. Ar. 1.28 and Epp. ad Serap. 1.6 and 4.5. 9452.1

44'

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Doctrine oj Athanasius

'structures and qualities' (crXlll'UTU Kui 7[016T1]T&<;), but not to ousia:

Athanasius is uneasily aware of this, but is handicapped by lacking any word to dlstmgUlsh what God is as Three from what he is as One. Loofs in his earlier work said that Athanasius swung between the Sabellian and the anti-Sabellian tendencies in his thought,'OO and in hIS later essay he saId that Athanasius wavered between an interpretation of homoousios which was 'generisch-generativer', i.e. ~eaning 'belo?gin~ to the same genus because generated by it', and smgulamcher , whIch expresses identity or near-identity.'O! Dinsen suggests that consubstantiality in God means for Athanasius something that exists peculiarly between God the Father and God the ~on, not really, t~e same ~~ human consubstantiality, but denoting two quantItIes ( Grossen ) which exist for each other' ,02 and she points out that for Athanasius homoousios also meant th,'t the Father wa~ the Origin, Root and Source of the Son,'03 and this is a point whIch we have noted already. There is a 'derivative' sense which Athanasius reads into the word. This thought is expressed differently by Stead m a useful and perceptive passage on the meaning of the homoousios in his Divine Substance. 104

'In the case ofsubstances (O~"(OlY) one would not speak oflikeness, but of identity (TUOT6T1]<;). A human being, for instance, is said to be like another human being. not in substance (ousia), but in form and type ("X~l'a Kai xapaKT~pu); they are of the same nature (61'0
An illustration of this is that when we shall be like Christ (IJn 3:2), it will not be a sharing of a common ousia (i.e. we shall not be of the same nature), but only like in sonship which we shall share with him.96

In his Epp. ad Serapionem Athanasius describes the Spirit as 'belonging to (tSIOY) the Logos who is one and belonging to God who is one, and consubstantial' (homoousion).·' And at the end of his Ep. ad Jovinianum (written in 3(3), having given a highly partisan account of the Arian Controversy to date, he defends the homoousios ofN in the following terms: 'For they did not simply say that the Son was like the Father, so that he should be believed in as true God from God, not merely like God, but they wrote 'consubstantial' (homoousiGs), which is the attribute (lSIOY) of an authentic and real Son, derived from a real and natural Father.

Neither did they divorce the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, but rather they glorified him along with the Father and the Son in the single faith of the holy Trinity, because there is one Godhead in the holy Trinity,'·' It is not e:isy from these examples of Athanasius' use of the word homoousios to determine its precise meaning for him. Bethune-Baker asserted unequivocally that for Athanasius and for all pro-Nicene writers the word implied numerical identity.·· But this is too absolute a statement. Some of the examples which we have seen cannot bear this interpretation. Though Athanasius can use the word 'identity' (TUUT6T1],), a father cannot be described as being identical with his son, nor even as having an identical being with his son. 96De Synodis 55.1-3 (276-7). On the De Synodis see Kopecek History 216-25. 971.27; also 3.1. Athanasius' doctrine of the Holy Spirit is examined separately

below, PP.748-53.

. 98Theodoret HE IV.J.Il. 14. It is ironical that at the beginning of this letter Athanasius should greet as 'Victor' (NncTttTlC;) an Emperor who has just negotiated a humiliating peace with the Parthians after a crushing defeat, and wish many years of successful reign to one who was destined to die within a few weeks.

99The Meaning of Homoousios .2.8-30.

He notes that Athanasius is much restricted in his use of this word

retaining it "tictly to defme the relation of the Son to the Father and

not vice versa, and not for any other purpose; he does not, for inst~nce. introduce the epithet into his handling of images of Word or ~isdom; it is to be reserved for the Father/Son image. He does not use It In or~er ~o .establis~ that the Father and Son constitute a single ousia, or one mdlvldual belllg. What the term means is (in the words of a

xixth cenmry edit?r ?f Athanasius, Robertson) 'the full, unbroken contInu~tJon ofbem&". Bu~ eve~ sO',the relationship is asymmetrical. A common stutfmamfests ltselfm dIfferent forms, as with the spring and the stream, the sun and the ray, the branch and the shoot, The idea is not o~e a single reality. but of organic continuity. Occasionally Ath~na~lUs use of language suggest!. genuine rather than organic COntlnUl~y. but not .when he uses homoousios and never decisively. Perhaps U1 De SynodlS 51, he suggests that homoousios denotes that the total reali~y of Father a~d Son is comparable to a single personality and may Imply numerIcal unity, but even here the asymmetry of

?f

l0 0 'Arianismus' 19. IOl'Das Nicanum', 70, 71, 79.

I02Homoousjos 130, IOJJbid. 13 I; she observes reasonably that this was not what those who framed N meant by the word, 104260-6.

443

• The Rival Answers Emerge function is preserved: the Son is agent of the Father, not vice versa: the Father remains the ultimate source. On the whole then, we may conclude that in using homoousjos Athanasius did not mean the equal dignity of Father afld Son as members of the same species, and he did not mean that Father and Son possessed numerical identity, though he moved further in that direction than his predecessors.

What gave an inevitable lack of balance to Athanasius' use of the word homoousios and his championship of it was his incapacity to define effectively what God is as Three in distinction from what he is as One. As long as he had no proper vocabulary to express this, he could not fail to give many the impression that he did not distinguish between the 'Persons' of the Trinity. This was not his intention; he

was not a Sabellius, not even a Marcellus. But until he could come to terms with a theology which admitted the existence of three hypostases, and no longer regarded the word hypostasis as a synonym for ousia, he could not fail to give the impression that he was in danger of falling into Sabellianism. For Athanasius ousia is what God is, what makes God God. 'oS But what did hypostasis mean to him? We must answer, almost nothing. He alj,oids using the word.as far as he can, at,'d, at least till he wrote the Tomus ad Antiochenos 'o • In 362, he treats It as a sImple synonym of ousia. '07 He had attended the Council ofSerdica among the Western bishops in 343, and a formal letter of that Council had emphatically opted for the belief in one, and only one, hypostasis as orthodoxy. Athanasius certainly accepted this doctrine at least up to 359, even though he tried later to suppress this fact. He makes efforts to avoid Sabellianism. The Father and the Son are One, he says, 'but not in such a way as One is named twice (i.e. has two names, Father and

Son) nor that the same is sometimes Father and sometimes Son'.'o, Everything that can be said of the Father can also be said of the Son, says so emphatically in De Deeretis 22 (18,19). I06This work is dealt with in another chapter, below, pp.639-53. I07That Athanasius had no word for 'Person' at least till 362, and that he avoided using Ilypostasis is now widely recognized: see Armstrong 'The Synod of Alexandria' 217-19. Loofs' Arianismus' 19, Simonetti Crisi 276 and esp. n 77, Ritter Das Konzil28I n 83. Prestige CPT 180-1 can only quote spurious works in order to find examples to the contrary. I take it that In Illud Omnia cannot possibly.be by Athanasius, if only because of its much too neat reference to three hypostases In one 105He

ousia

(PG

25: 220,

§6).

1080r. con. Ar. 111.4.

444

The Doctrine of Athanasius except that he is not named (MY8G8at) Father. loo But this is of course a very it,'a?equate explanation. Apparently Athanasius thought that hypostaSIS In theologIcal contexts always meant ousia, and that if any spoke of thr~e. hypostases they must mean three ousiai, and probably dIfferent OUSJat at that, and so must be well on the way to Arianism. ThIS IS odd, because Alexander of Alexandria had not hesitated to use the word hypostasis. lIo But the evidence that for Athanasius hypostasis was the same as ousia is unmistakable. He quotes Paul of Samosata as saYIng that under a certain hypothesis 'there must be three ousjaj, one superior and the other two derived from that'; 111

probably he thought that this was the same as postulating three hypostases. And when he commends the party of Basil of Ancyra for confeSSIng that the Son is 'from the ousia of the Father and not from another hypostasis', he shows the same conviction.1I2 He clearly approves o~ the sentence of Oionysius of Rome that it is wrong to dIvIde the dIVIne monarchy into 'three powers and separate hypostases and three Godheads', thereby postulating 'three diverse hypostases wholly separated from each other'.lI' And he quotes Origen to show that the Logos IS not of'a different ousia or hypostasis' from the Father, and cItes hIm as describing the Logos as 'the image of the unspeakable and unnameable and Ineffable hypostasis of the Father', manifestly meanIng the ~ather's ~ubstance.'14 Even after the composition of the Tomus ad AntlOchenos In 362 Athanasius preferred to regard hypostasis as a synonym of ousia; indeed his most explicit statement of this . preference occurs later than that work:

'An~ hypostasis is ousia and ~t has no other meaning except Being itself to .6v) ... for hypostasis and ousia are existence' (finap~I<;).l15

(a6to

Athanasius never uses prosopon in Christological contexts. l09Ibid. 4. 1lOSee above, p. 14I. HIDe Syn. 45.4 (270). 112Ibid. 41.2 (266). 113De Deeret 26.2,3 (22). 114Ib'd I .27·2 (23)· Of course Origen frequently said that the Son's ousia was not the same as the Father's. But Athanasius either does not know or does noc admit chis lIS~C 26: 10 36 Ep. ad Afros 4: Achanasius is here referring to the rendering of Jere~lah LXX 9:9 O~IC i]lCouaav cproVl'lv 01t'41pl;eror; (NEB 9.10 'they hear no lowing of. cattle ); the cransl~cors .used u?tup!;tr; to mean 'livestock'. Athanasius, determined to ~ead the word o~sta?r Its eqUivalent somewhere into the Bible, seized on it and gave t a perfectly unJustified, nay ridiculous, phiI,?sophicaI sense. For the equivalent of

445

The Rival Answers Emerge 4. The Incarnation We are fortunate in possessing a whole treatise of Athanasius on the Incarnation written before the theological implications of the Arian Controversy had made themselves clear to him, as well as many remarks of his in opposition to the Arian doctrine of the Incarnation later. He sets out his account of the Incarnation in the first eighteen chapters of De Incarnatione: God made the world through the Logos, out of nothing, not (as Plato said) out of pre-existing matter. Man was by nature subject to corruption or decay (tp90pa), like the rest of nature, but God gave to man the special gift of being in his own image (eikon). and this meant being rational, capable of enjoying blessedness and obeying God's law. But by disobeying God's command man, in the person of Adam, fell back into non-existenc:e and corruption: evil, to which he turned, is non-existence. In consequence human· sinfulness exceeded all bounds. It would have been unworthy of God to leave man in this condition, condemned to corruption by God's own law; mere repentance~ight have stopped man sinning. but would not have summoned man from a natural condition into one of incorruption. Ohlythe Logos of God could achieve this, could recreate everything, suffer on behalf of everybody and intercede effectively for everybody. Redemption, in fact, must be more than simply moral; it must affect the whole state of human existence. The Logos determined to take to himself a human body in order to effect this recreation. His motives were pity and love of humankind. He appropriated the body as an instrument (opyavov De Inc. 8:3), becoming recognisable in it and living in it. He delivered this body to death on behalf of all men, and the law ordaining corruption could then be repealed. By assuming the body the Logosrescued the human race who were kin to the body. The Logos gave his body as a ransom (avthvuxov 9:2) for all men. Just as some great monarch does honour to a town by coming to live in one of its houses and frees it from oppression and injustice, so the Logos by dwelling in this body benefitted the whole human race. God's dignity was thus vindicated and hope of a resurrection of the body offered to men. God had originally made himself known to men by creating them in his own image, but they refused to take advantage of this, ousia and hypostasis c( another part of the Ep. ad Afros recoverable from Theodoret HE II.23.9, where Athanasius declares that the Arians at about the time of the Council of Ariminum dared to say 'it is not necessary for God to possess ousia or hypostasis' .

The Doctrine of Athanasius worshipping idols, serving demons and believing in I M could have known God not nI b . astro ogy. an observing the phenomena of thO . y y possedssbIng his image. but by e umverse an y pay' . the prophets and holy men of Id G d h mg attention to the situation by sending h' 0 0 a no alternatIve but to repair own ~~ge, so that men could know him by this true Image OnlylSth . e actlVlry of the L . h b e ody was sufficient; it was as if an old inscription 1 og~ carved. The Incarnation was an accorn 'd o~g e ace , was freshly d" rna anon to men's earthliness teachin death A::::;;P~:In~ by ibts! example, both in the Saviour's life and . se VISl e to those who could 1 'b things (a!,,6~t!i 16:1). The activo f th on y see senSl Ie the body, but he continued d~lo e Logos wa~ not ~onfined to g the Incarnanon hIS work of sustaining creation' the Lo d' body Th L d' l ' :gos Id not suffer but rather he sancrified the mira~ulo:s :::gsw:~: t~: b~:y :~~ting everything, and by the manifesred that he was the Logos. e he was the body he

d

i

In;

In

There are certain notable feat b . Incarnation. In the first place ther~r~s a out thIS doctrine of the reduction of the divinit h IS no hmt that the Incarnation is a 0 . something which the Farh ~ e Logos, or that the Son was doing r do; and Athanasius consist: , ecau~e o~hlS hIgher status, could not writings. We have seen tha~~~ ;::,~~~~,~ed thIS position in his later glory as a reward "or his If. . t at ChrISt achIeved exalted " se -emptymg 116 Th k' says, did not enslave the Word wh db e ta mg of flesh, he was an emancipation of all hum 0 ;;,as?r y nature, 'but rather it Athanasius firmly places the m:~ia ~mg (1[<10'% av6pC01[6t~toC;).117 within the Godhead but in th I tm~ actIvIty. of the Logos, not e divine Being who ca~ und t k ncamatlon. For hIm the Son is not a . h .' er a e contact WIth humanity b h IS ow, m contrast to God the Fath h' d' '" ecause t at one who represents the way in wh~;i. ~ ;~~lIty IS constituted, but such contact. This was in th c h 0 Imself chooses to have revU I t'lonary,new . pregnant with,. e wllrt century IaO doctnne not apparently provok::~:t~nt co~sequences for the future, and Controversy. p y un er the pressure of the Anan

f

i

Next, we must examine the manner i h' h the Incarnation as taking place Th Ln w IC Athan~sius envisages h' II e ogos takes to h,mself a body (whose mind or soul as . is a vl'rtu IyI 'Ignore d) as an Instrument ( . , h we s a see, organon IS t e word used more than once by Athanasius), I t6S ee above p.428 "'0 . . T. con. Ar. II.14.

446 447

The Rival Answers Emerge The Doctrine of Athanasius . . theI and within this body he operates as he chooses, both permlttmg body to endure normal human expenences (or rather), mbost nhorma Imself erformin human experiences, thoug h not a11 , as w e shall see,f ut unaffected by these experiences, and he IS cap:b~e ~ ~ We ca~ su er-human or preter-human acts by means,o t ~s 0 Y', ust as p I describe this doctrine as a 'Space-suIt Chnstology . J in order to operate in a part of the UnIverse where there . . d 'where he has to experience weightlessness: puts on an IS no aIr an .. h. r and act m thIS new, elaborate space-suIt WhICh enables 1m to Ive b d which enabled B t his unfamiliar environment, so the Logos put on a 0 \ . him to behave as a human being among human emgs.. u relation to this body is no clos~r th~n that o~an astr~:~t~~dh~i:P::~ suit. The Logos, says AthanasIUs, though e was ur body and by using this as an instrument (organon) became man for.o k s' 118 The body was subject to corporeal needs and restnct~ons sa e . thirst, suffermg, .weanness . ) (hunger, etc, and evenhtheh d,vme bod actIOns .11' which the Saviour performed were done throug t e y.

~~~;::r~naut

'Of course when the need arose to revive Peter's mother-~-!aw w~~ was suffering from a fever, it was as m~n th~~2~e strete e out IS hand, but as God that he arrested the dIsease.

Even though the sufferings of the body did not affect ~(bl~IV) foth: Logos still they were the sufferings of the Logos an t er~ or rede~ptive12I If the activity of the Godhead had not h een accomplished through the body, 'the human race could not ave h . d' 122 All the weaknesses and apparent defiCIenCIes been apot eOSlze . b scribed to of Christ incarnate, cowardice, ignorance, etc, are to e a Christ's human body: 'the Logos is by nature incapable of human experience (:7ta~i]~, im assible)

still because of the Resh which he assume

cx:erience: are related of him since these are peculiar to the the body is peculiar to the Saviour. He hImself remams

impassible by nature, unaffected

W

t ese

:es~:~~ at

b;

(11~ ~AU1n6I1"voc;)

bY tern, h hu rather erasing and destroymg . tern. h B ut human bemgs , because t elr 118Ibid·III.3 I; notice .. hiS analogy lor ChI t e ncama t'on 1 Or . con. Ar. II.7I, a man who goes into a house is not part of the house. I t 911I·3I. 12°32. 121 122

3 2..

33 .

human weaknesses (pathi) are changed into impassibility and done

away with, become beyond suffering (impassible) and free of these experiences themselves for etemity.'123

This account of the Incarnation enabled Athanasius to meet in his later writings the Arian argument that the limitations and weaknesses of the incarnate Christ were a demonstration of the inferiority in divine status of the Son in contrast to the Father. All the compromising evidence could be channelled into the human body and prevented from damaging the divine status of the Logos. Even the 'highly exalted' of Phil 2:9 must refer to the flesh ofJesus, which was '2 glorified. ' He rules out both 'reward of virtue' and 'progression, moral improvement' which the Arians ascribed to the incarnate Word.'25It is doubtful ifhe would even allow this to Christ's body; indeed if the human mind and soul are ignored it could hardly apply to the body. When Christ was anointed with the Spirit at his baptism, 'he was giver and receiver, giving as God the Logos, receiving as

man'.126

Logically Athanasius ought to have said that the human body was capable of making human decisions, was morally responsible for its actions, as Jesus Christ in all the four Gospels manifestly was, and the Arians did not fail to point this out. But Athanasius will not allow this, he will not admit thatJesus Christ was 'alterable' «P&ll
449

The Doctrine of Athanasius

The Rival Answers Emerge Th wkward text taken by both sides as applied to Christ by David, 'T:e\ord is right~ous and has loved righteousness' (ps 1 ~ (!~l:8(7~ means that Christ loved righteous people and hated the eVIl. ,je~ s Christ does not exercise faith, for this w,ould be to show c?a~ty ho~ ' d Athanasius involves hlmselfm the most ar- etc e moraI ch OIce,an h' h b' I . t ex lain away some of the texts W Ie 0 VIQUS Y eXPlanatl0jns 0 Ph m' g faith 129 Christ's conduct and life is represent esUS as a v , I I therefore an example to us, but not a human examp.. , on Y an example of God operating through a not-qUite-human Instrument, Christ is a paradigm and an example, and this kind of example is the best for imitation. 'Man's behaviour is capable of change', but If he looks towards that which is by nature incapa~le of change h~ ~::

avoid what is bad and model himself on the highest examples, For Athanasius in fact our sinfulness is bound up with our chan eable corrupt state. 'What we must be redeemed from ,IS not prim!ily si~ or disobedience but corruptibility, from which sm and ' 'h' disobedience flow. One of the curious results of this theology of the Incarnation IS t at it almost does away with a doctrine of the Atonement. Of course Athanasius believes in the Atonement, in Christ's death,.s savI~g, but he cannot really explain why Christ should have died. W ,.n m cha ters 19 and following of the De Incarnatione he begms trymg to ex 1ain the necessity of Christ's death, he can only present a senes of pu~rile reasons unworthy of the rest of this treatise. The fact IS that hi~ doctrine of the Incarnation has almost swallowed up any doctrm~ 0 the Atonement, has rendered it unnecessary, Once th~ Logos has ta . en human flesh on himself, in a sense, certainly m prmclple, rede;"1 ~~IO: , I' h d St Paul said 'One died for all, therefore a Ie IS accomp IS e . , hI" (2 Cor 5' 1 4) but Athanasius pushes this act back mto t e ncarnatlon, this is b~cadse what constitutes the solid~rity of human fallenn:ss ~s not for him sin but transitoriness, corruption, human mor~allty Sm, J RoldaniiS 'takes on the character of a defect rat er t an an says _,' ccence ' ,;, When Christ was baptised in the Jordan, says actual ow . , h' b tf< r Athanasius, this was not because he was lacking m anyt mg, u 0

h

128 52.

.

con. Ar. U.6 - 9· d' d' t" of the 130lbid. 111.20; a highly disputable st~tement, and a lrect contra Ie IOn

129 0,

teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 1l1Lt" Christ et I'Homme 189·

45 0

our sanctification. We were anointed with the Spirit when he became man; we were anointed as sharing in his body.'32 In expounding the words in 1 Pet 4:1 'Christ suffered for us in the flesh', he appears to put human fragility and mortality, our proneness to hunger, weariness" sleep and ignorance, in a list alongside our proneness to sin. 133 Sometimes he gives the impression that our redemption is a kind of sacred blood-transfusion, or an affair of mass-transference almost independent of our act offaith. 134 He does however insist that Christ offered his human body to God and that he died in order to destroy death. Even though we may not go quite as far as Harnack when he declared of Athanasius' doctrine of the Incarnation that 'every feature which recalls the historical}esus of Nazareth was erased','3s we must conclude that whatever else the Logos incarnate is in Athanasius' account of him, he is not a human being. The chief reason for, Athanasius' picture of Jesus being so completely unconvincing is of course that, at least till the year 362, it never crossed his mind that there was an y point in maintaining that

jesus had a human soul or mind. He accuses his Arian opponents of many things, but never of omitting this feature in their account of Christ. 13. In his anthropology, as Rolandus points out, Athanasius does not really envisage a trichotomy of flesh or body (sarx or soma), soul (psyche) and mind (nous), He sees no necessity for a mediating element between mind and body.'37 As we shall see, in his Tomus ad con. Ar. 1.47.48. 133Ibid. III.34; cf. JI; all these passages noted by Rolandus op. cit. 154, 182-J. 134Rolandus discusses this tendency usefully op. cit. 207-12. He thinks that certain expressions in Or. con. Ar. 11.66 vindicate Athanasius from this charge; but even in this chapter the author seems to me to tremble on the brink of falling into this 'collectivist' error. But admittedly Rolandus is right in saying that for Athanasius our redemption is only potential. GriUmeier can say (CCT 318) after discussing Athanasius' concept of the human body of Christ as an organon that it 'seems to be rather dangerously exaggerated'. '35History IV.45. J.B. Walker in PTAA attempts to argue from references to Christ's human nature as (j)umr; and to the term 'one in substance' (I1v Kat" oGcr(av) in Or. con. Ar. 11.28 and 70 that Athanasius regarded Jesus as completely human; but until the~matter of his human soul is faced, such arguments are unconvincing. And the evidenceagainstAthanasius seeing any real point in attributing ahuman mind to Christ is very strong. 136For literature on the subject of the soul ofJesus Christ in Athanasius' thought, see Grillmeier CCT 287 and 308-28; M. Richard 'St Athanase et la Psychologie du Christ selon les Ariem'; Rolandus Le Christ et ['Homme 2J 5-70; C. Stead' Athanasius and ~he Soul of Christ', and R. Williams 'Origen on the Soul of Jesus'. 137Richard op. cit. 54-55. The subject is discussed again in connection with the work of G. D. Dragas below, pp.645-51. 1 320r.

45 1

The Rival Answers Emerge

Antiochenos 7 (PG 26:804-5) he did formally acknowledge that Christ's human body was not soulless (Ii'llo;>;ov), and in his late Ep. ad Epictetum he says 'our salvation of course was not an illusion nor only salvation of the body, but of the whole man, really soul and bod~' .13" But it is now widely admitted that this realization of the necesSity of allowing a human soul to Jesus came to Athanasius only late and had nO effect at all on his thinking before the year 362. Before that date It does not occur to him to admit such a thing. As early as 1947 M. Richard had realized this fact. He said that it was not the case that nobody had raised the subject and consequently Athan.asius di~ ?ot refer to it. The Arians (as we have seen agam and agam) exphcltly denied a human mind or soul to Jesus Christ, and yet (as we have seen), violently though Athanasius at~acked the. A~ans, he never accused them of this. 13 ' In copmg with the Arlans ascription of weakness and fear to Christ, when he has to cope with the awkward text in Jn 12:27 'My soul is troubled' (1'1 '110;>;1'11100 <&tapaK~al), he boldly equated 'soul' with 'life', ignoring the psychological difficulty of the text. I' O Athanasius simply glosses over or Ignores the prickly problem presented by the fact (which ~as expressly noted by the Arians) that Christ prays to the Father. Richard ends hiS treatment of the subject with the uncompromising words: 'It must therefore be frankly acknowledged that his [Athanasius'] authority as a theologian of the Incarnation has been exaggerated. As far as the human psychology of Christ is concerned, it evidently does not exist' .142 .

Twenty-one years later Rolandus was a little more reserved on the subject, but could not help coming to much the same concluSion as Richard. Some people at the CouncIl of Alexandria of 362 temporarily persuaded Athanasius of the necessity of recognizing a human soul in Jesus, but he could hardly have taken thiS senously; he envisages no human subjec~ in the incarnate Word. ~4~ Grillmeier allows that Athanasius does not take the step of recognIzmg a human "'7 (PG .6:1061). '3 9 Richard op. cit. 3-11. 140Ibid. 21-3 8; the place where]n 12:27 is referred to is Or. con. Ar. IIL54~ further useful exposition by Richard 38-46. 141Richard op. cit. 42-4· 1420p. cit. 54. 143Rolandus Le Christ et fHomme 250-364 and esp. 261-3, 268-']0 and 362-4 (summary).

The Doctrine of Athanasius

soul in Jesus, any more than Marcellus did, and he notes that Athanasius avoids expounding Luke 22:42 (,Not my will be done, but thine) which, had he taken it seriously, would have been fatal for his doctrine of the moral fixity of Jesus. '" In fact Athanasius has completely forgotten the human mind of Jesus. The Logos wholly dominates the human actions of Jesus. 14S At Alexandria in 362 he formally acknowledged its existence, but failed altogether to see its significance. ". Stead observes that Athanasius in his Commentary on Psalms recognizes where his master whom he is imitating, Eusebius of Caesarea, recognizes a human soul in Christ, but only in those passages where he is reproducing direct mentions of it in the Bible; and acknowledges that till the year 362 he does not include this feature in Christ, even where one would most expect him to do SO.I'7 Stead suggests that he avoided the subject because Marcellus had allowed Jesus a human soul. But we have seen that it is far from sure that Marcellus did introduce this feature into his Christology.I'" The result of this refusal to accept the existence of a human soul or mind in Jesus was that when Athanasius has to deal with Jesus as a human person with human limitations he is immediately in difficulties. The Arian theologians whom he was opposing made, as we have seen, a great point of the infirmities, weaknesses and

limitations of the historicalJesus, his vulnerability to hunger, thirst, weariness, ignorance and fear, in order to argue that these frailties

demonstrated that the pre-existent Son was an inferior deity to the Father, who was free of such things. Athanasius was determined that his picture of Christ, by way of contrast, should be as far as possible devoid of weakness. God, he says, must not be weak. I.' The 'scandal of the cross', as presented forinstance in I Cor I: I 8-3 I, has no appeal to him whatever. When his opponents cite examples ofJesus asking questions in apparent want of information, Athanasius admits that it

is the property of the flesh to be ignorant, as of the Godhead to be omniscient, but he will not follow the logical consequences of his '44Grillmeier CCT 286-']. 145Ibid. 308-28, and esp. 312-3 15. 146Ibid·319. '47Stead 'Athanasius and the Soul of Christ'. He chinks that Eusebius wrote his Commentary on Psalms early, and that Athanasius as a boy of fifteen could have met him in Alexandria and learnt from him his manner ofhandJing the book. But this seems to me a hazardous conjecture. 148See above, pp.229-30, 233-4. 1490r. con. Ar. 11.25.

453

The Doctrine of Athanasius

The Rival Answers Emerge

admission, and tries to show that Jesus was not really ignorant. His questions do not necessarily betray ignoranc~; there are examples of Christ asking for informatIon whIch he certamly had already, and at places (e.g. Jn 2:25 and I1:I4) he displays more than human knowledge. ISO Perhaps his flesh was ignorant, but the 0~1llSClenCe of the divine mind overcame the ignorance, indeed ab~lished It. He only asked questions in order to encourage others to gam knowledge of him etc. ISI Dealing with Mark 13:32 ('About that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, not even the Son; only the Father) Athanasius labours to show that the text does not mean what it quite obviously does mean. It is inconceivable that Chnst should not have this knowledge. 152 It IS no derogatlOn to the Son to say that he did not know: 'As Logos he knows the hour of the end of all things, but as man he is ignorant'. He did not say that the Holy Spirit was ignorant of the day; if the Spirit knew (as he cert~mly did), how much more did the Son know. '53 He only professed Ignorance to show that men were ignorant, and so· on. '54 The fact t.hat Luke wrote that Jesus 'grew in knowledge and in wisdom and m favour ·th God and man' (2:52) gives him great trouble. Men of course ;:ow in wisdom, butJesus was more than man. It is unthinkable that the Logos should grow in this way; as a man he grew. or rather the Logos increasingly manifested himself in the .man: 'But the human part (to UV9pOlXlVOV) grew in wisdom, gradually overstepping the human nature (cpuO'w) and being made d.ivine,. a~d becoming an instrument (organon) of the Godhead itselffor Its acnvlty and its illumination and appearance to aU'.

How a human body if the human mind is ignored can .grow in wisdom he· does not stop to explain. Next he reaches passages In the New Testament where. the Arians alleged, Jesus IS recorded as showing fear and dismay-Jn 12:27; Matt 26:39; Mk 15:34· It IS not to be allowed. Athanasius declares, that the Logos should have shown fear or weakness.'S6 But he will not even allow that the hum.an instrument did so; this was perhaps logical. ifit did not occur to hIm that this instrument had a human mind. The man showed these "'Ibid. 151 Ibid. 152 42 .

154

quotation from 43·

4 5.

155

'It was God who made the act of will. but as he had become man he wore flesh which was afraid. and by this flesh he mingled his own will with the human weakness in order that he should by abolishing this (weakness) render man more courageous in the face of death ... Just as

he abolished death by dying ... so by his so-called (vo~ll;o,,"V1]) cowardice he removed our cowardice and caused men no longer to fear death.'158

Does Athanasius think that Christ was really afraid? Only minds can fear, not mindless bodies. It seems likely that what he really thought was that Christ could not have been afraid; his divine mind cast out all fear which his human part·might be thought to experience. He only pretended to fear,just as he only pretended to be ignorant. In his late Ep. ad Epictetum he says 'What the human body of the Logos suffered. that the Logos. dwelling . in it. applied (uve'P£p£v) to himself, so that we might be able to share in the Godhead of the Logos'. Consequently the Logos was he who suffered and did not suffer and remained impassible in a passible body.

'The body held in itself the impassible Logos. who abolished the weakness of his body.'lS9

Athanasius could have said that the human mind ofJesus endured the suffering, leaving the Logos unscathed. But even in this work, where he appears to acknowledge formally the existence of a human mind in Jesus.'6n when it comes to the crux he will not do so. Two points in Athanasius' account of the Incarnation remain to be dealt with. Can we say that Athanasius actually taught a doctrine of two natures within the incarnate Logos? At times it looks as ifhe did:

157 158

56. 57 .

. >596 (PG 76: 1060).

16°The refusal of Athanasius to alJow that Jesus could have actually been ignorant or subject to fear has been widely acknowledged. See GrilImeier CeT 3 I 5-17 (who points out that even at Christ's death it is the Logos, not the psyche, who descends to the Underworld in Atha!!i!sius' view, Or. con. Ar. 11.57; De Inc. 22; Ep. ad Epictetum 5 'and 6): B. Fischer in PTAA 309-10: Richard 'Athanase er rAme du Christ' 28-46

1l1.J7. 38.

1534 3.44.

infirmities, he says, simply to show how men could overcome them.' 57 The passage 'Not as I will but as thou wilt' (Matt 26:39) is peculiarly difficult because it seems to attribute a human will to Jesus. independent of the divine will. But this must not be allowed:

(Ignorance de droit. non de £tir' 45); Roldanus Le Christ et l'Homme 183-6.

53.

156 54_,

454

455

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Doctrine oj Athanasius

'And just as we would not have been emancipated from sin and from

Athanasius indignantly asks whether they are trying to climb up into heaven and make themselves like the Highest (Isa 14:13).'.7 We are urged by Scripture, he says, to emulate Christ and become like him,

the curse unless the flesh which the Lord put on was by nature human, SO the man would not have been divinised unless he who became flesh was by nature from the Father and his true and own Logos. Therefore the union (cruva
the nature «ij> Ku
And at times he almost approaches the doctrine ofthe .Tome oj Leo a century later; 'he enquires as a man

":h~re. Lazarus IS laId, but as G~d

he raises him' .•• 2 But in spite of thIS .t " better to conclude w.th Fischer'.3 and Rolandus that Athanasius does not actually reach the point of envisaging tWO natures in J~~us Chmt. Nature, says Rolandus, is for Athanasius 'al\ empmcal term rath~r ,than .a philosophical expression, more descriptiv~ t~an metap.hYS1c~I., and" concerned with function.'.· A wholly d.vrne Berng inhab.trng as a space-suit, or even as if dwelling in a house, a human body whose mind or soul is not brought into play cannot reall~ be sa.d to be subsisting in two natures. The other point to note IS one that has already been incidentally brought up, that Athanasius sees some for,:" of apotheosis or divinisation (theopoiesis) as the goal ofhumamty rn Christ. This process has already happened to Christ's human body. It is the destiny that awaits our bodies. It must be understood th~t rn the fourth century the word 'God' (theos, deus) had' n".t acqUired the significance whieh in our twentieth-century world It has acquired (mainly in fact as the result of the creed of381 having, so to speak, entered the bloodstream of European culture), viz. the onea~d sole true God. The word could apply to many gradations. of dl,:,rnlty and was not as absolute to Athanasius as it is to us. The rntentlon of the Incarnation, says Athanasius, was 'that we should sh~re the Spmt and be capable of divinisation', but in undergorng th".expenence, he adds, we do not abolish our own ousia.'. o Agarnst ~he;"r.lan argument that though Christ is 'like' the Father we too are hke him,

,.5

1610r. can. Ar. 11.70. C h 162Ep. ad Maximum Philosophum (a late I.etter) PG 26:1089 (3)· ompareo~~

reference to the healing of Peter's mother-m-Iaw at Or. can. Ar. III. 3 2 qu above, P·448 . 1631n PTAA 327· d ' th' f 16"Le Ch,ist et l'Homme 54-55; Rolandus here is partly repro uClng e VIeW 0 Prestige.

165De Decretis 14.4 (12). 166Ibi.d. l (12).

but not to share his nature (i.e. his divine nature; we can on

Athanasius' premises hardly imitate his human nature, because he is not wholly human, and it is significant that Athanasius makes no reference to his humanity in this passage). We can be called 'gods' On 10:35), but 'not in the same way as the true God or his Logos, but in the way in which God who has kindly conferred this on us has chosen'. We are made sons by appointment and grace through him when we share his Spirit. The Son is in the Father ontologieally, but we by grace and obedience.'·s It is only, he says later, because he is homoousios with the Father that he can divinise us. '~9 But this divinisation is not, in spite of2 Pet r:4 (,sharers of the divine nature') a participation in the divine nature. Athanasius is quite clear about this. Such then in outline are the main features of Athanasius' doctrine. His theology is not without dangerous /laws and he is capable of indulging in some bad logic in the process of expounding it. He blatantly begs the question: when arguing about whether 'becoming' (greater than the angels) is equivalent to genetos (having had a· beginning of existence) and whether the Son can or cannot be compared to angels, he solves the matter by assuming simply that whieh he has to prove."o His exposition of Proverbs 8:22-27 involved assuming that Solomon in this passage switches without warning from referring to the pre-existent Christ to speaking of the incarnate Christ and back again, and he puts a wholly unjustified weight on a single Greek particle BE, which of course represents nothing in' the Hebrew original. 17' He can produce the fantastic argument in the account of Moses at the Burning Bush that Moses sees an angel (not Christ) but hears Christ (not an angel) .'72 Stead has pointed out several more examples of bad logic or polemical sharp practice on the part of Athanasius.' 73 He followed, says Stead, 'a 1670r. con. Ar. III.I? 168Ibid. 19.20; c( De Synodis 55.13 (276-7). 169De Synodis 51.2 (274). Cf. Ep. ad Maximum PG 26.1088 (2). and Ep. ad Adelphium 4 (26:1077). On divinisation see Rolandus op. cit. 166. 170 0,. con. Ar. 1.53-58. 171 Ibid. II. 53--60. 1721bid. JII.I4.

173'Rhetorical Method in Athanasius' 121-137; he calls what I call begging the question 'the Mosaic method'.

457

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course which the rhetorical conventions of his age permitted but which our own more exacting requirements of candour preclude'.'74 But when all is said and done it must be conceded that Athanasius' achievement in his doctrinal works was a great one. He established the ongoing search for an adequate Christian doctrine of God on a quite new basis, pulling it away from its traditional preoccupation with the identification of the Son with a principle of Greek philosophy. And in spite of his constant use of and championship of philosophical terms he vindicated a theology of revelation with a soteriological intention against an obsession with the cosmological or metaphysical implicates of the subject, and that without paying the price of postulating a higher and a lower Deity. He laid the ground for a rapprochement between his own point of view and its supporters on the one hand, and on the other that tradition of theology which was beginning to distinguish itself significantly from the theological heritage of Eusebius of Caesarea and of Arius, and which was soon to take maturer form in the work of the great Cappadocian theologians. With his contribution to the theological debate the materials were now being prepared for a resolution of the search for the Christian doctrine of God.

15 The Western Pro-Nicenes I I.

I

~

Hilary of Poitiers: his Career and Works

Having examined the doctrine of the first great Greek-speaking champion of the Creed ofNicaea of 325, we must now turn our attention to those in the Latin-speaking West who also undertook the defence of that creed, and among them indisputably the greatest was Hilary of Poitiers.' We know nothing about the date or place of Hilary's birth and almost nothing at all about his life until he was made bishop of Poitiers about the year 353. In fact until he attended the Council of Biterrae in the year 356 we have only the most meagre information about him 2 He must have been born between 310 and 320. When he became a bishop he was married. We are certain that he wrote his Commentary on Matthew before he became actively engaged in the Arian Controversy.3 Some have attempted from the remarks in his Preface to the De Trinitate to reconstruct a sequence of events leading from his first being interested in intellectual affairs to his conversion and final elevation to the episcopate but Doignon has shown that Hilary's language here is so much indebted to the themes and expressions of traditional rhetoric that we cannot trust it to give us autobiographical details. 4 This fact however reminds us that Hilary was very well acquainted with secular Latin literature, as well (as we IFor Hilary, see Gwatkin SA 152-4. AC 84; Zeiller Les Origines 274-5; P.

Smulders f:a doctrine T.n.nitaire de S. f!ilaire de Po!tiers; M.M. Thomas The Christology of St. Htlary of Pottlers (unpublIshed theSIS); C.P.A. Borchardt Hilary of

1140p. cit. 136.

Poitjets' ROle in the Arian Struggle; J. Doignen Hilaire de Poitjets avant rExil; Simonetti Crisi 298-3 12; Klein Constan/ius II 125-3 I; E.-R. Labande (ed.) Hilaire de Poitiers, Eveque et Docteur and Hilaire et son Temps; Brennecke Hilarjus von P. 2Lack of materials however has not prevented Doignon writing an erudite book of over 600 pages on Hilary's career up to 356. JS ee below, P.468. 4Summary of Doignon's findings op. cit. 155-6.

459

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Western Pro-Nicenes I: Hilary of PoWers

shall see) with the Latin Christian writers who had gone before him. And this argues a considerable period of study and formation before he took up his pen to instruct his Rock, as he certainly regarded himself as doing in his Commentary on Matthew. He was not like Cyprian, placed in a responsible position in the Church after comparatively little time to mature his theological ideas. It is most unlikely that he took any part either in the Council of Arles of 353 or in the Council of Milan of355. Indeed he does not seem to have been aware of the issues which were agitating the minds of his contemporaries in the East and which the ecclesiastical policy of the Emperor Constantius had since at least 353 been bringing home to many in the West. It is well known that in one of the works written in the middle of his career as a bishop he tells us that he did not know N until he was about to go into exile: s

information as far as Hilary was concerned was that, further stirred by the second series of exilings which followed the Council of Milan! he publicly excommunicated the chief executor of Constantinus' policy in Gaul, Saturninus bishop of Arles, and with him Ursacius and Valens. The fact that a temporary usurper, Silvanus, was at the time (355) in rebellion may have emboldened him to take a step which he must have known to be unpleasing to Constantius. 9 The next event in his career which we can identify is his appearance at the Council of Bitterrae (Beziers). Very little is known about this council; it was probably one of several which were at that time being held throughout the Gallic provinces at the instigation of Constantius, designed to implement his ecclesiastical policy. It was held, Doignon concludes, 'scarcely a year after Milan' .'0 Hilary's reference to this council, simply refers to 'the profession of the synod of Biterrae, in which I had denounced those who wished to spread this heresy in the presence of some of you [the bishops of Gaul to whom he is appealing] as witnesses' ." A recently promulgated edict of Constantius had laid down that bishops who had complaints against other bishops must meet at an ecclesiastical (not a secular) court and there confront each other and ascertain all the facts. 12 It is likely that the Council of Biterrae was convened partly at least to

'I did not become acquainted with the Nicene Creed until 1 had been baptised for some time and had been a bishop for some short period, when I was about to go into exile.'

We can confidently conclude from this that Hilary was not baptised as an infant, though whether he came from a pagan or a Christian background we cannot know. We can also infer the point at which Hilary became aware of the existence of a doctrinal crisis in the church. It was the exile of Paulinus of Trier after he had at the Council of Arles refused to condemn Athanasius along with Marcellus and Photinus. 6 And when he learnt that Eusebius of Vercelli had at the Council of Milan produced a copy of N and had been prevented by Valens from inducing those present to sign it, this may have been the point at which his attention was first called to the existence of that creed. 7 The result of these events and this 5De SYllodis 91 (545) Regeneratus pridem et ill episcopalu aliquantisper manens fidem Njcaellam numquam nisi exulaturus audivi. Doignon (op. cit. 166-8) insists, quoting parallels, that aliquantisper must mean 'a few months'. If we take his argument au pied de La lettre we must therefore conclude that Hilary was made bishop at the earliest in 354 and perhaps even in 355. But it is not necessary to press the word to yield so exact a meaning. Hilary's statement here is confirmed by fragment XII of the meagre remains of his Apologetjca ad Reprehellsores (PL 10:548) where; commenting on this passage in the De Syn., he says me dixi cum nomina homousii atque

homoeousii nescissem I tamen per ullitatem similitudinem recepisse. 650 Doignon op. cit. 440-45. 75ee above, pp. 332-3 and Doignon op. cit. 433-'7, 445--6. Doignon (op. cit. 451) believes, following 5. Prate, that in his accoum of both Aries and Milan Sulpicius Severus is wholly dependent on Hilary, so that the details given in Chronicle 11.39

derive from Hilary, and not least Valens' colloquial utterance 'You can't do that there here!' (lion posse fieri ut aliquid inde gereretur). I cannot agree with Brennecke's attempt (Hilarius VOII P.I75-87) to impugn the veracity of this account. The Council had begun by condemning Marcellus and Photinus, thereby betraying its intention to deal with doctrine. Hilary wrote his account only two or three years after the event. 8Jerome (Chronjcon sub. ann. AUC 2370, reign of Constantius XII (?3S3), pp. 239-40), describes two waves of banishment, after Arles those of Paulinus of Trier and Rhodianus of Toulouse and after Milan of Dionysius of Milan, Eusehius· of Vercelli. Lucifer of Calaris, Pancratius a presbyter and Hilary a deacon. Cf. Doignon op. cit. 431. But it seems more likely_ that Rhodianus was exiled later, along with Hilary. 9See Doignon op. cit. 457-8; for Hilary's excommunication of Satuminus see also Borchardt op. cit. 24-5. For Silvanus see Brennecke Hilarius von P. 202-10. lOOp. cit. 454; cf. 461. Borchardt, op. cit. 27-30, also places it early in 356. 11 post synodi Biterrensis prtifessionem in qua patronos huius hacreseos ingerendae quibusdam vobis testibus denuntiaveram, (De Syn. 2 (481-2)). Hilary refers to Biterrae again Con. Constantiam 2, and also at Coli. Antiar. Bl.5 (101-2), if we accept an ingenious emendation of Duchesne; for ex his quibusve terris gesta sint he suggested ex his quibusque Biterris gesta sint.

I2Cod. Theod. XV!.2.l2 (Sept. 23rd, 355). Doignon think, (op. cit. 461, 465) that this was a pro-Arian move, but it seems rather to have been dictated by common sense.

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Western Pro-Nicenes I: Hilary of Poitiers

enable other bishops to hear why Hilary had taken the drastic step of excommunicating Saturninus. Neither the acts nor the signatures of the bishops attending Biterrae survive. Jerome says that it banished Hilary to Phrygia, but this is most unlikely.' 3 We cannot even conclude that Hilary was deposed by the Council of Biterrae , because eight years later, when he was facing Auxentius in Milan, he protested vigorously that he had not been deposed, as Auxentius alleged that he had.'" He complains, in another part of a passage already referred to, that at Biterrae the proceedings were hurried and irregular, and they would not let him appeal to the Emperor." But which Emperor? It was not till 356 that Julian arrived in Gaul, with the title of Caesar, not yet having openly declared his departure from Christianity. Borchardt assumed that the Council of Biterrae asked Julian to deal with Hilary, and that Julian, much preoccupied with military affairs, refused to .concern himself with Hilary's case.'6 All that Biterrae can have done, then, was to refuse to support Hilary in his excommunication of Saturninus and to reverse the sentence which he had passed on him; Hilary experienced a rebuff, but not a deposition. Some little time later, however, Saturninus, whom Hilary consistently regarded as his enemy, informed Constantius of Hilary's conduct, and this resulted in a sentence of exile being passed

on him. It seems wholly unlikely, however, that Constantius would have exercised jurisdiction in Julian'S territory thus arbitrarily, without consulting his new Caesar. It is probable that he first gained Julian's assent before exiling Hilary, and Hilary's words suggest this:

13Jerome De Scriptoribus E"lesiasticis Ioo(PL 23:699), Hilariu! u,bis PictavQrum Aquitanicae episcopusjac/ione Saturnini Arelatensis .episcopi de synodo Biterrensi Phrygiam re/egatus. J. Gaudemet Conciles Gallois du IVeme 8iecle 85-6 teUs all that can be

known for certain about this council. 14Contra Auxentium 7 (PL 10:613-4).

1SEt necesse fujI in eo sermone omnia esse praepropera, incomposita, confusa, quia, qllanlO nos inpensiore cura audientiam quaereremus I tanto ill; pertinaciorj studio audienliae contrairent. The audientia must be that of the Emperor, Coli. An/jar. BI 6 (102). '6Borchardt op. cit. 27-30. Brennecke, on the other hand, appears to know a good deal more about Biterrae than the evidence warrants: that this council deposed and excommunicateq Hilary (Hilarius von P. 230-1); that sentence of exile for political, not doctrinal, reasons immediately followed it (ibid. 207, 217, 230-1, 237, 239-43. 245)· Hilary himself directly contradicts the -first conclusion, and the second, though embraced by some scholars (Chadwick, Klein) is a matter of pure conjecture. It is much more Jikely that Hilary was exiled as several others had been. not on suspicion of supporting the revolt of Silvanus. which lasted for only about a fortnight and took place at the other end of the Gallic provinces from Poitiers, but for refusing to condemn Athanasius and to agree to a doctrinal statement of doubtful orthodoxy. His reference to Biterrae in Contra Constantium 2 (PL 10:578/9) can o~ly be taken as meaning that he first excommunicated Satuminus, Valens and Ursac1Us and then was later (postea, 579) summoned before the council as a result of this action. If we cannot accept this evidence, we can accept none.

'I am in exile not for any offence, but by an intrigue (factione) an~ by false reports sent from the council to you, pious- Emperor . . . informed

against by wicked men ... But everything which they produced to ensure my exile was false ... I shall 'show ... that you, Augustus, were tricked and your Caesar de·ceived' ,17

If we are to believe the statement of Sulpicius Severus that Martin, later bishop of Tours, visited Hilary before his exile and spent some time with him (Vita Martini 5.1), it is best to place this visit in the not inconsiderable interval between Hilary's appearance at Biterrae and his actual departure in the autumn of 356, just before the period during which journeying by sea was regarded as dangerous or impossible. '8 All we know of Hilary's exile is that the place to which he was sent was somewhere in Phrygia, that he was able while in exile to maintain a correspondence with the bishops in Gaul, that during that period he learnt some Greek, having previously progressed no further than being able to use a Greek/Latin Lexicon without reading Greek fluently, that he became acquainted with the recent history of the Arian Controversy and in consequence gained a certain sympathy with several trends in Eastern theology, which showed itselfin his De Synodis,'9 and that he may have read orin some way mastered the contents of a few Greek books by Origen and by Eusebius of Caesarea. as we shall see, he certainly wrote much of his theological 17Ad Constantium II 2 (Feder 198, PL 10:564-5). See Doignon op. cit. 504-5.

18S 0 Doignon. op. cit. 506--7; for contact between Hilary and Martin, see J. Fontairie who in Hilaire Eveque et Docteur (58-86)"accepts this visit as historical; but Meslin, in Hilaire de PoWers et son Temps 25. casts doubt upon its feasibility, and Brennecke (Hilarius von P. 243--'7) discounts it. 19Doignon op. cit. 174-5 argues that Hilary's acquaintance with Greek before his exile was of the most exiguous; cf. 14,22, I70ff. In his Excursus I (531-43) he tries to show that Hilary even after the exile 'n'avait pas Ie pratique des textcs grecs' (543). arid needed a translator for Greek books; and in Excursus II (545-55) he labours to prove (as.-in my view, is correct) that in his Commentary on Matthew Hilary was in no way indebted to Origen's work on the same Gospel. For a summary of Hilary's activity during his exile in Phrygia, see Simonet.ti Crisi 248-9. For Phrygia as place of his exile, see Jerome De Vir. Ill. C and Sulpicius Severus Chron. 11.42 (95). But Meslin (Hilaire et son T.) 26 suggests that he was able to move freely within the Asian diocese.

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Western Pro-Nicenes I; Hilary of Poitiers

work in Latin during his exile. 20 We know that in 359 he was able to attend the Council of Seleucia (which is in Cilicia, not in Phrygia). Nobody can explain why Hilary was permitted to attend this council, because ifhe was to attend any it might have been expected to be that of Ariminum, which was for Western, Latin-speaking bishops. Perhaps in giving a general invitiation to all exiled bishops to return to these councils which, Constantius hoped, would solve the doctrinal dispute, the Emperor was not particular about which bishops attended which council. We have already heard something of Hilary's impressions of the Council of Seleucia. 21 Sulpicius Severus sa ys that he was there to defend the Westerners against the charge of Sabellianism. 22 Hilary records a conversation which he had at the council with a radical Arian who maintained that the Son was the product of God's will rather than of his Godhead.23 From Seleucia Hilary went on, following the development of the policy of the Emperor, to Constantinople and remained there, hearing much argument about it and about, till 360. This was the point at which he offered to debate the doctrinal issues publicly with his opponent Saturninus, but the plan was vetoed by Constantius. 24 After the Council of Constantinople early in 360 Hilary was allowed to return from exile to his own see which apparently had not in his absence been filled by any intruder. He was returned there, says Sulpicius, 'as a source of discord and disturber of the East, without his exile being cancelled. '25 But it is much more likely that Hilary did not appear to be a dangerous sower of dissent in the East in imperial eyes, especially if he was not fluent in Greek, and this is just one more example of Constantius' tolerance.

On returning to Gaul, Hilary occupied himself with active measures to combat Arianism in Gaul. The Western Empire, at least west of the Balkans, was now under the control of Julian who had shown himself an able administrator and successful military commander and who was in no mood to act as ifhe was subordinate to his Augustus, Constantius. It is probable that he at least put no obstacle in the way of the efforts of Hilary and those of his party to discountenance those prelates whom Constantius had favoured and to reverse the effect of the Council of Ariminum which Constantius had called. 26 The only one of what must have been several gatherings assembled at this period to forward Hilary's policy which we know anything of is the Council ofParis. 27 The date of this Council is not certain, but it must have taken place in 360 or 36 I. Hilary gives us the text of a letter sent by this council, speaking for all the Gallic bishops, to the Eastern bishops, in reply to letters brought from Eastern bishops (presumably the Homoousian or at least anti-Arian ones) by Hilary.2.

2°He is, for instance, certainly in exile when he is writing Book X of his De Trinitate, for he says so X:4. 2tSee above, PP.374-6.

22Chronic/e 11.42 (95--6). $uJpicius cannot understand either how Hilary was able to attend Seleucia, using the Imperial post. Simonetti (Crisi 327) says that it was because the authorities had received no order to exclude him. 23Contra Constantjum 14. 24S ul picius Severus Chronicle 11.45 (98): Satuminus was present in Constantinople, Hilary Ad Constantium II.2 (565). 25Chronide II.4S (98) quaSi discordiae seminarium et perturbator Orientis redire Callias iubetur J absque exiliI' indulgentia. The meaning of the last three words is obscure. but I take it to mean that though he was permitted to return. sentence of exile was not formally repealed. Cf. Borchardt op. cit. 173-4. Meslin thinks that Hilary simply took flight from Constantinople and that the Emperor let him go as unimportant. (Hilaire et son T. 37-8); also Brennecke Hilarius von P. 359.

They deplore the fact that several bishops in the East are as a result of the councils of Ariminum and Nice compelled to eschew the use of the word ousja, because it is essential to combating Arianism. Th.ey disown Sabellianism which teaches a union (unio) of Father and Son, but they profess a unity (unitas) instead. They do not think of the Son as part of the Father, but regard him as 'born whole and perfect only-

begotten God from the whole and perfect ingenerate God'. They insist on the use of the term unius usiae vel substantiae (of one ousia or substance) in order to avoid the suggestion that the Son is created or

adopted, 'because he must be from (God) himself, as a Son from a Father, a.God from God, as Power (virtus) from Power, as Spirit from Spirit, as Light from Light'. They allow the concept of likeness (similitudo), but the likeness must be one worthy of the truth, 'which is (likeness) of true God to true God, so that we must realize not a union but a unity of Godhead, because a union signifies singularity (sit 26S 0 , convincingly, Klein Constantius II

101-5.

But see Sulpicius Severus II.4S

(98).

27Sources for the Council of Paris and Hilary's policy in Gaul are Rufinus HE 1.30; Altercatio Heracliani et Germinii PL Suppl. 1.34.5; Sulpicius Severus Vita Martini 6; Jerome Adv. Luciferanos 19; Hilary ColI. Antiar. AI.I-4 (43--6). See also Simonetti Crisi 357; Borchardt op. cit. 178-9; Thomas op. cit. XIII; Gaudemet op. cit. 88--90. It seems likdy that on Hilary's return to Poitiers Martin. who had already declared himself stoutly pro-Nicene, settled near the town, to live an ascetic life for a few years (Sulpicius Severus Vita Martini 7). "Coli. Antiar. AI 1-4 (4)-<».

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Western Pro-Nicenes I: Hilary of Poitiers '

singularis) but unity the fullness of him who is born according to the truth of his birth'. They also reject 'he did not exist before he was

had been deposed several years ago. He submitted a creed which was

born', and yet do not regard the only-begotten God as ingenerate

composed before the Arian Controversy it was a quite innocuous and irrelevant one,,32 He never believed in two gods, two Fathers or two

(innascibilem). While inclined to pardon as deceived the other Western bishops who had gone from Ariminum to Constantinople and back, the council singles out for excommunication on the ground of heresy Auxentius, Ursacius. Valens, Gaius, Megasius, Iustinus and Satuminus

(who has already been excommunicated by alI the bishops of Gaul), and they reaffirm the homoousion. It is remarkable that at no point does this document use the word persona. Only Gallic bishops were affected by the excommunications pronounced here. The others remained intact.

One other incident in Hilary's career is known. In the year 364 he attempted to have Auxentius, bishop of Milan, deposed for heresy. His attempt was unsuccessful. A new Emperor, Valentinian I, was now in control of the West. His ecclesiastical policy was as far as possible to remain neutral without involving himself in controversy. He was in Milan from November 364 till the autumn of 365, and it was to him that Hilary appealed. Because Hilary later wrote his Contra Auxentium we know the details of the case?" A council of bishops in Milan had met and considered the subject of orthodoxy. They then presented Auxentius to Valentinian as an heretic liable to be deposed. Hilary and Eusebius of Vercelli were apparently the moving spirits in this enterprise. The Emperor ordered a quaestor and a magister with ten bishops to investigate. Hilary believed that Milanese Arians, led by Auxentius, were ready to confess that Christ was Deum verum filium. meaning 'the true Son of

God' and not 'true God the Son'. But Auxentius, who had submitted a number of documents to Valentinus designed to show that he

believed as the Emperor believed, was ready to say that 'he believed tbt Christ is true God and of one Godhead and substance with God the Father: 30 He said that he had never met Arius even when he

(Auxentius) was a presbyter in the Church of Alexandria under George as bishop.31 He appealed to the authority of the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia which had produced a creed not to be

abandoned at the request of a few bishops who (Auxentius alIeged) 29As well as this work, see Simonetti Crisi 382-3. On the whole episode, see M'eslin Hilaire et son T. 39-4 I. 30Cotltra Auxentium (PL 10) 7 (614). For comment on this odd statement, see

below pp. 596-7. 318 (314, 315); '4 (617).

probably the traditional creed of the Church of Milan; as it was Sons, but 'one Son from one Father, Sole from the Sole, God from God ... and that is why we profess one Godhead. '33

As a result of this statement of Auxentius, Valentinus dismissed the case, declared himself ready to communicate with Auxentius, and ordered Hilary to return to Gaul (and cease to make a nuisance of himself). Hilary had nO alternative exceptto obey. He had failed to show that Auxentius was heretical. His interference in a see and a province of the church quite removed from his must have roused resentment. All that he could do was to write his book Contra Auxentium. Under the rule of Julian. and in the years immediately succeeding his death, now that Constantius' hand was removed, with some exceptions such as that of Auxentius, a regime favourable to the proNicene cause was established everywhere west of the Balkan provinces. A letter of Liberius, now restored not only to his see in Rome but also to the liberty of expressing pro-Nicene views, dating from 362 or 363, is given us by Hilary as a sign of thisstate of affairs. 34 It is worded obscurely, but we can see that it is designed to justify the policy now pursued by the Roman see (and certainly favoured by Hilary) of leniency in dealing with bishops who under pressure had signed Arian or near-Arian documents (and who required such leniency more than Liberius himself?). Hilary gives us another letter, dating from 363, addressed from the bishops ofitaly to the bishops of Illyricum welcoming those who had returned to the Nicene faith, condemning outright the decrees of Ariminum, and damning U rsacius and Valens by name as supporters of heresis Arrianae vel Aedanae {the heresy of Arius or of Aetius.)"·The terms of return were ro condemn Arianism (probably in the form of the creeds of Nice or Constantinople), and to affirm N. We can envisage Hilary as spending his last years occupied in this work of reconciliation, and probably also in repelling the criticisms and insinuations of Lucifer of 32 14 (617); cf. the Roman creed which Marcellus signed in 340; see above, p. 218. 33 '5 (618). 34Coli. Ant jar. BIV.I (156--7). Some chink chat this document and the next were added to the Collectanea by another hand.

"Ibid. B IV .• (158-9).

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Calaris and his followers who regarded the policy of leniency as a betrayal. Sulpicius Severus says that he died six years after the Council ofParis!6 Jerome, more vaguely, in the reign of Valentinus and Valens. 37 Modem authorities opt for 367, 368 or 369. A.J. Goemans, after a survey of all the evidence, decided that ISt Nov. 367 was the likeliest date. Determining what precisely Hilary wrote, how much survives and when each piece was written is a complex business, but not beyond solution. It is agreed on all hands that his Commentary on Matthew was written before he was exiled, indeed before he became seriously aware of or involved in the Arian Controversy." It is certain however, that Hilary was already a bishop when he wrote this work, mdeed he regarded such activity as part of his duty to instruct his flock. When he wrote this work he was dimly aware of the existence of Arian doctrine; he' can write:

The task of fixing the dates and deciding the form of most of the rest of Hilary's literary output is one of greater delicacy. Once Hilary had become well-informed about the threat to his conception of true doctrine represented by the Councils of Arles and of Milan, some time in 355, he began writing an apologetic work portions of which survive and which Jerome calls Liber contra Valentem et Ursacium(in three Books). At some period between Jerome's reading of this book and the early sixth century (Fulgentius Ferrandus 520-547). this work had become fragmented and parts of it had been lost, but an anonymous compiler had collected the separate fragments into a single work. This work was in three parts (corresponding to but not wholly comprisingJerome's three books of Contra Vet A), consisting of (i) material concerning the Council of Serdica put together between the Council of Biterrae and Hilary's departure for exile; (ii) material concerning the C.ouncil of Ariminum and some Letters of Pope Liberius, put together perhaps in 360; (iii) material concerning events after 359 such as the results of the policy of the Homoian party after Ariminum and some documents about the relations of Germinius, Valens and Ursacius a few years later, perhaps included by someone other than Hilary. This work was published in a speculative reconstruction of its order, and based on a manuscript from the collection of Peter Pithou of the XVth century, now lost, by Nicolas Le Fevre in 1598, and this order was followed by Coustant, the Maurist editor, in 1693. The work was at that time called the Fragmenta Historica. This was the form and title of it in the Migne edition of 1845. In 1916 however A. Feder, editing the work for the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, relying on his own researches 'and those of A. Wilmart and B. Marx, produced a different order for the constituents of this book, based on the order of an older manuscript, the archetype of that used by Le Fevre, and indeed the order of Le Fevre's own manuscript. He entitled the book Collectanea Antiariana Parisina, for his earlier MS, of the IXth century, was in the Bibliotheque de I' Arsenal in Paris. This order, and this edition is now generally used and is that which has been followed in this book. Feder divided the material into a Series A and a Series B

'he (Christ) refuted all distortion of the faith for the future, that is of whose who deprive the Lord of his dignity and participation in his Father's substance, and have boiled over into various schemes of heresy.'39

And he is aware that some people teach that Christ did not come forth from eternity Ror derive from the Father's substance but was made from nothing. 4o But he is not aware yet of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, and he can occasionally produce sentIments which are not strictly in accordance with pro-Nicene orthodoxy.41 J6Chronjcle 11.45 (99); for the attacks of Luciferans see Brennecke Hi/arius von P. '55, )66. 37De Vir. l~[. C. fHiIarY,'s work~ D~ ~jr. Ill. C. Borchardt op. cic. 14-17 glv~s a review of the subject; cf. SimonettI Cnsl 355-'7. Both Borchardt (13-17) and DOlgnon (op. cit. 165-8) place it here. See also P. C. Bums 'Hilary of Poitiers' Confrontation with Arianism' 287-8. "Gomm. In. Mott. lu8 (284); cf. 7.8 ('0'); 12.17 (,84); lu8 (,86)' ,6.5 (19 8-'00). ' :~3 I.~ (328, 330)~ cf. Kannengiess~r in Hilaire et son T. 127-42. I?olgnon, op ..Clt. 167 calls attention to Comm. in Matt. 31.3 (228) natum esse ex eo qUI erat: et hoc In eo esse qui notus est quod is ipse est penes quem erat ante quam nas,er~tur, w~ich.presumabJy must be translated, 'he (the Son) was born from Him who IS: and m him who was born there was that which he is with whom he was

before he was born', i.e. the Son was in the Father before he was put forth as an independent entity. Doignon concludes that this work must have been written

before the spring of 355. Smulders had 'earlier noticed this, La doctrine Trinitaire 78-9.

The Rival Answers Emerge and added to it a document which he called Appendix to the Col/ectanea Antiariana but which is usually known as Liber I ad Constantium (and sometimes, in earlier works Adversus Valentem et Ursadum), properly part of the Col/ectanea; and then a separate work, called Liber II ad Constantium which is really an appeal made to the Emperor by Hilary rather than a collection of documents with a narrative text combining them, which is the character of the Col/ectanea. The materials composing the whole work edited by Feder must have been put together at different dates. Series A and B of the Col/ectanea represent material assembled at three different periods, 356, 359-60 and 367 (though these periods do not exactly correspond to the division between the series, which is derived from the MS and perhaps is the work of the original compiler). Liber ad Constantium I must have been written in 355 or 3S6 and Liber ad Constantium II in 359, when Hilary was in Constantinople, though it cannot have been published till after Constantius' death. Both these . ·books addressed, or supposedly addressed, to the Emperor are mild and respectful in their tone. Hilary also wrote, in the year 359, a booked called De Synodis retailing for the benefit of readers in the West most of the councils and their creeds and statements which had taken place between 341 and 3S9 and showing a sympathetic understanding towards aU of them except for the radical Second Sirmian Creed of 357. In 360, disillusioned by the upshot of the Council of Ariminum, Hilary wrote a book known as Liber contra Constantium; the Latin preposition here is important; the work was not an appeal addressed to Constantius, but a violent attack on him, full of scorn and vituperation. Needless to say, it was not published till after the death of Constantius. As we have seen, his Contra Auxentium was written in 364, after his failure to have Auxentius deposed for heresy. These are all the polemical or controversial works of Hilary. 42 ~~For information about these works, see, in addition to what Feder says in his edmon of the Collectanea along with Uber I Ad Constantium and Uber II Ad Constantium. Simonetti C,jsi 224.355-'7; Borchardt op. cit. 25-26, 3 1-33. 139-40, 167',I?o-I, 174-5',1,81, 183; Declercq Ossius 469; Quasten Patrologia III (Inst. Patnstlcum ~ugustlmanum 1978),45:-46; Doignen, op. cit. 426-32, 455-']. 503-5; Bums, op.. en. 288; B,rennecke H,larlus von p, 248-65. Brennecke attempts in his book to show that HIlary wrote no doctrinal or polemical work (apart from the omm . ?n ~att.) before he ha? been in exile for some time, and that what prompted hiS begm~m~ the work agamst Valens and Ursacius was the production of the Second SumJan Creed of 357 (see especially op. cit. 217 and 297-312, 325, 361-2).

c.

470

The Western Pro-Nicenes I: Hilary of PoWers Immensely important for our knowledge of the Arian Controversy though the Collectanea Antiariana and the other works already mentioned are, even in an imperfect form they do not constitute Hilary's greatest work. This was undoubtedly his long theological work in twelve books which had traditionally been entitled De Trinitate, even though this was not the name which Hilary gave to it. Many scholars have believed that the fmt three books of this work were written before Hilary left for his exile, and were called. by him De Fide. 43 Certainly the work was finished while he was in exile (though not wholly while he was in Phrygia) some time before he wrote De Synodis. Two more short extant works of Hilary, neither of which is much use for determining his doctrine of the Trinity, Tractatus super Psalmos and De Mysteriis, as well as some hymns, are to be placed between the year 361 and his death, when, restored to his see, he could resume the work of writing to edify his flock rather than to engage in controversy .

2.

Hilary'. Theology: Introduction

It is not a simple matter to determine the sources of Hilary's thought. That he was well acquainted with Latin literature is perfectly clear. He may have picked up some philosophical ideas from Cicero and from Seneca and unwittingly some Stoic doctrine through Tertullian. H. D. Saffrey, in an interesting essay in Hilaire et son temps44 demonstrates how wholly divorced from philosophical speculation was Hilary's bent of mind. He certainly knew no Greek philosophy before his exile; he was no Platonist. 45 He may have But Brennecke tends sometimes to ignore proper critical principles in order to fit all the evidence into his scheme, which is based on the assumption that no doctrinal issue was debated or demanded until Sirmium 357. Thus, Hilary's account of the events at Milan is discounted simply because Lucifer does not happen to mention them, though Lucifer insists that after Milan the Emperor issued an edict requiring doctrinal uniformity. 4JSee Borchardt op. cit. 40-43; Doignon op. cit. 82-3; Burns op. cit. 288-90. Burns follows Simonetti and Kannengiesser in concluding from some apparent references to the Homoiousians in these three books that, though begun before his exile, they must have been finished while he was in exile in Phrygia in 357. Meslin (Hilaire et son T. 26) disputes the assumption that Books I-III were written in Gaul. See also J. Moingt in Hilaire et son T. 169-70. 44247--65. 4sCf. Doignon in Hilaire et son Temps 366.

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encountered in Asia the Pergamene school of theurgic NeoPlatonism professed by people like Iamblichus and Maximus and patronised by the Emperor Julian; if so, he reacted strongly against it. In fact he rejected and suspected all pagan philosophy as likely to lead to error or doubt or atheism and regarded the Scriptures as the source of all true philosophy. He regarded Christianity as 'a liberation from the limits of pure reason, which he considered inadequate when one broaches the problem of the supreme principle, and he thought of the Arians as unhappily restricted within these limits'.46 By far the most important of his sources are the Christian Latin writers who had gone before him, Minucius Felix, Cyprian, Novatian, Victorinus of Pettau, Fortunatianus of Aquileia, and above all Tertullian. He can write patronisingly of Tertullian (the subject is prayer):

something about Arian teaching when he wrote his Commentary on Matthew,'· but was equally certainly not aware of the full implications of the issue at stake in the controversy. In this work he can produce doctrine which is not in accordance with what Eastern pro-Nicenes would have regarded as orthodoxy, nor with what he later was to set out in his De Trinitate. 51 We have already seen that it was only just before going into exile that he learnt of the contents of N.52 The question concerning Hilary's debt to Athanasius is a vexed one, and various opinions have been held about it.53 On the whole it is difficult to see any clear influence of Athanasius' thought on Hilary, who must be given the credit of working out his own Trinitarian theology according to his own lights, except in two particulars. By the time he is writing in exile he knows and accepts the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, though not in a form which is recognizably either Origenistic or Athanasian, and by then too he is ready to attribute, as Athanasius frequently did, awkward texts apparently limiting the nature and capacity of the Word to Christ's human body or his humanity. He could conceivably have learnt this idea from Marcellus of Ancyra, who apparently originated it, but this seems wholly unlikely. It is perhaps wisest to assume that Hilary did not have any first-hand acquaintance with Athanasius' works, but that in conversation or discussion with those pro-Nicenes whom he met during his exile he had picked up some of Athanasius' ideas and had woven them into his own theology. That he knew something of the work of Basil of Ancyra by the time he came to write his De Synodis (in 359) is evident from his references to the events of 358 in that work. Hilary's' immunity from Origen's influence is perhaps most obvious in his interpretation of the text of the Bible. He allegorizes, of-course, but in a mode quite different from that of Origen; the proper test of different modes of allegory is the result: what kind of material does the allegorization (which is by its nature wholly subjective and detached from any contextual obligation) produce? In

'Although Tertullian too had written a very useful (aptissimum) book on the subject. this author's later error [Le. his defection to Montanism] deprived of authority writings which were much to be commended',47

But in fact Hilary relies constantly on Tertullian: he followed him in almost every detail (though not quite every detail) of his theology. In a most TertuIlianic manner, for instance, he can comment on Col !.Is: 'this means that in him (Christ) the material (materia) of everything visible and invisible is hidden and placed', reproducing Tertullian's materialistic concept of reality." At least till he went into exile, then, Hilary's sources were all Latin. And even after that point he cannot have read extensively in Greek theology; influence of Origen, which is not at all visible in his interpretation of Scripture, if it came at all, came through other authors. 49 He certainly knew op. cit, 263 (my tr.). 47Comm. in Matt. S.I (ISO). 4BColl. Antiar. BILl 1.3 (30). p. 152: so Doignan Hilaire avant l'Exil494-S. Bums, 'Hilary of Poitiers' Confrontation with Arianism from 356 to 367', 293. tends a little 46S atfrey

to play down Hilary's indebtedness to TertuUian, pointing out that the two writers had two different purposes in their theological work. 49 50 Doignon, Hilaire avant J'Exil 14, 22, 155-6, 179, 198 and Excursus II 545-55. Jerome (Epp 82.7) alleges that Hilary translated Odgen's Homilies onJob (which are not extant) and 'many treatises on the Psalms'. But this does not seem likely. By the time Hilary wrote his late Tractatus in Psalmos he may have learnt something more ofOrigen"s handling of the Psalms. The attempt of5mulders (Hilaire et son Temps 175-212) to show that Hilary was much indebted to Eusebius of Emesa is quite unconvincing. Doignon wi1l not even allow that Hilary had read lrenaeus (op. cit. 194-200).

472

50E.g. Comm. on Matt. 12.18 (284); 31.3 (328, 330); cf. Bums op. cit. 287 . . 51S ee above, n 14. 52S ee above. p. 460. 53Danielou (Hilaire de Poitiers, Ev2que et Docteur 17) thought that he knew the work. not only of Athanasius, but also of Origen, Marcellus, Basil of Ancyra and Photinus! Thomas (Christo/agy of Hilary 44) attributed knowledge of Athanasius to him. But most recent scholars (especially Doignon) are much less confident.

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the case of Hilary, the hermeneutical principle is, as Danielou perceived, 'Ia tradition ecclesiale', resembling that of Irenaeus, Cyprian, Novatian and Tertullian,54 dealing much in types and resulting in the Rule of Faith of the church. Origen's allegory was employed for a different purpose, that of reading into the text a complex system of doctrine which owed much to contemporary philosophy. Doignon characterises Hilary's treatment of the Gospel of Matthew as 'une conception ·tres equilibree de l'intelligibilite spirituelle de I'Evangile.'ss Others might see it as a dreary jungle of empty fantasy, but it certainly is not like that ofOrigen. On the other hand, Hilary's allegorisation resembles remarkably that employed by Fortunatianus of Aquileia in the few fragments of his work that have

allegorised, because it would be absurd to think that women are cursed for being pregnant, and it makes no sense to effect a distinction here between her who is suckling her child and her whose child is weaned. 61 So Hilary proceeds to allegorise both passages in order to make them refer to various points in the Rule of Faith of the Church, that is, the traditional doctrine generally of the Church as far as it was known to him· 2 It is interesting to observe, further, that Hilary's interpretation of the key passage in the Arian Controversy, Prov 8:22ff, is rather different in his early Commenlary on Matthew from what it is in his later work. In his Commentary on Matthew he can employ the expression 'that Wisdom which is created Wisdom', referring to Prov 8:22 but reproducing the thought of Tertullian (Adv. Praxean 6.1). In his De Trinilale however he deals with this capital text in the last book (XII.35fi): by now he teaches that Wisdom has been generated from all eternity; verses 23 and 25 refer, he thinks, to the eternal generation of the Word and verse 22 to the Word's assisting the Father in the creation of the world; but he also sees this verse as referring to epiphanies of the Word in the Old Testament. But in De Trinilate XII 45-50 and in De Synodis 17ffhe produces another interpretation: both vv. 22 and 25 refer to the birth of Jesus Christ from the Virgin Mary, whereby the eternally generated Word was temporarily born as man. 63 In short, then, the intellectual influences which formed Hilary's mind were more Latin than Greek. He did indeed, once he left Gaul for exile, come into contact with Eastern theological thought to an important extent. But the foundations of his theology and some its its main principles were already present in his mind before then.

come down to us. 56 Fortunatianus gives the reader an interpretation

of every detail, conceivable and inconceivable, of the narrative so as to refer them to the Rule of Faith of the church; his method is no less fantastic than that of Origen, but much less adventurous and less sophisticated. It is thought that Hilary refers to Fortunatianus at Comm. in Matt 18.12 when he says that some think that the ass at the entry into Jerusalem refers to pagans. 57 Doignon declares that Hilary in his Commentary on Matthew' develops the implications of a spiritual typology, while holding firmly to the historical reality of the facts narrated'.5. This is-only a half truth. There are places in the Commentary on Matthew where Hilary directly repudiates the literal sense. 'There afe many passages,' he says, 'which do not permit us to take the words of the Gospel in a direct sense' (simplici intelleclu).5'

'Let him who is on the roof not come down to take anything away with him' (Matt 24:17) cannot be intended literally, because the escaper would have to come down anyway if he is to escape. 60 Similarly' Alas for those who are with child, and those who give suck in those days' (Matt 24:19) cannot be intended literally and must be 54HUa;re, Ev2que et Docteur I.I. Doignan, similarly, echoing Simonetti, describes Hilary's exegesis as 'nullement reduccible acelle d'Origene'. Hilaire de P. ,want l'Exil 14· 550 p. cit. 294; cf. the whole section 227-294· 56S ee Corp. Christ. SeT. Lat. 9 (1957) 366-70. S7Doignon Hilaire de P. avant l'Exil 201 says so. But in fact in the fragments collected from the editions of Wilmart and Bischoff in Corp. Chr. Ser. Lat. Fortunadanus consistently interprets the ass as meaning the Jewish people. 580p. cit. 524. 59Comm. in Matt. 20.2 (102).

,oIbid. 25.5 (186).

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3. The Relation of the Son to the Father Because he owes little or nothing to philosophy, Hilary in his theology, in keeping with the burden and genius of Christianity, holds that God is completely independent of the world, that there is no scale of being at whose summit he should be placed, no 'continuity 61lbid. 25.6 (188, 190). 62For chis concept of the Rule of Faith, see R. P. C. Hanson Tradition in the Early Church, cap. 3 (75-129). 63S ee Simonetti Stud; 77-82, referred to by Danielou Hilaire Eveque et Docteur 14.

475

The Rival Answers Emerge of being between the temporal an~ the eternal'. 6. I~ his Introduction to Book I of the De Trinitate he disparages any aid m thinkmg about God which could be provided by mere reason, by the .general opinion of mankind and by 'the futile speculations of philosophy'.·5 But he was, he tells us, at an early stage of the process of his bein~ drawn towards Christianity greatly impressed by the '\ am that \ am (ego sum qui sum, lit. '\ am who am') and the 'He who is has sen~ me to you' (Misit me ad vos qui est VL, Vulg; '\ am has sent me to you RSV) of Exod 3:14. He expresses succinctly the nature of God's presence with us: 'And so he wholly comprehends himself both within and without ~nd though he is infinite is neither absent from anybody nor does anythmg not exist within him who is infinite. '66 God cannot be understood (i.e. fully grasped or comprehended), but he can be believed in (and therefore of course known).·7 The means by which he is known is his revelation of himself recorded in the Bible: 'But investigation of thy doctrine educates us to a perception of divine knowledge, and the obedience of faith carries us beyond the ideas of reason;.68

But Hilary spends almost no time at all in discoursing about God in the abstract, apart from how he is known in his revelation through Christ. He reaches the subject of the Incarnation by the thirteenth chapter of the first book of the De Trinitate: 'Remember', he says later on, 'that the Father has not been revealed to you as God, but it has been r~vealed to you that God is the Father', God is essentially, not accidentally, Father.·' And he begins his serious and detailed theological argument at the commencement of the Second Book of De Trinitate (11.1) from the triple formula of Matthew 28: 19, recallmg to all Christians their baptism. Even before that in the First Book he has produced a careful formulation of the Trinitarian faith: 64Thomas, Christology 24. 65De Trin. 1.4-13; the last expression (13) is inutiles filisofiae quaestiones: cf. V.21. 66Ibid. 1.6 adque ita totus ipse intra extraque se continens neque infinitus abesset a cunctis, neque ,uncta ei qui infinitus est non inessent. "Ibid. 1.8. 681.37, sed doctrinae tuae studia ad sensum nos divinae cognitionis instituunt et ultra rationalem opinionem fidei obedientia provehit; cf. 1.22. 69 111.22.

476

The Western Pro-Nicenes I: Hilary of Poitiers 'so that they (Father and Son) in our belief are each one reality, not [togetherJ one Person and we do not profess that the Two are the same

nor some compromise between a true and a false (God); because his birth does not permit him who is born as God from God to be either identical or separate. '70

He refuses to allow that the Son was created for the sake of the 71 world. He will sometimes use the argument from relations (the pros ti argument disliked by Arius), that a Father necessarily implies a Son.72 He directly denies Tertullian's unguarded statement that the Son is a 'part' (portio) of the Father. 73 It is clear even from the meagre evidence so far produced that Hilary is an unusual theologian. He has been called the Western Athanasius. In fact· his thought little resembles that of Athanasius, but in originality and insight he is nearly his equal. Early in his great work he asserts unequivocally the full divinity of the Son. 'Jesus Christ is to be confessed as nothing else than God in the fullness of Godhead.'7' Again and again he asserts that the union of the Son with the Father is one of nature, not merely a moral nor voluntary union. It is by the metaphysical, natural union with the Son that God reveals himself: 'He described his birth by naming the Father. He teaches that the Father is known when he himself is known. He confesses a unity of nature since the Father is seen when he is seen. He testifies that he is inseparable from the Father since he abides in the Father who abides in him.'75

He cannot be a Son of God like other sons, sons by adoption such as we were. 7. It is mistaken to believe that the likeness of Father and Son lies only in power (virtute) and not in substance (essentia), or activity 701. 17 ut unum ~n fide nostra sint ~terque non unus neque eundem utrumque neque inter verum ac fa/sum a/Iud confitentes; qUIa Deo ex Deo nato neque eundem nativitas permittit esse neque aliud. 7IXII·43.

72E.g. Lz8; Thomas calls attention to this, Christo!ogy 27. 73D~ Trin. II.8.22; see Thomas op. cit. 28-32; Tertullian's expression is to be found m Adv. Praxean 9· IncidentaUy, this comment of Hilary, who surely knew the meaning ofTertullian's Latin better than we do, implies that the offensive term is to be taken in its literal sense and cannot be explained away. 741.13; cf. VI.IO. 75VIII.4. 76VI.28, 30, 36.

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(efficacia = energeia).77 He goes into some detail in explaining why moral or voluntary union, which was postulated by the Anans, IS not sufficient. We must distinguish between voluntary and actual unity (in re);78 the correct belief is in a unity of nature and a uniform (indifferens) substance of Godhead. 79 In effect John 17:21 ('that they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may also be in us') means that the disciples of Christ should take as an example for their voluntary union with Christ and among themselves the metaphysical union of Father and Son. 80 We are naturally in Christ in the sense that he took our human nature upon him and he gives us his nature in the eucharist; why then should our union with Christ not be an analogy for the natural union of Father and Son?81 Father and Son are of course united by will as well as by nature. 82 As far as the distinction of the will of the Son and that of the Father goes, Hilary is more realistic than Athanasius. He insists that the Son's activity is the Father's,83 but he allows that the Son has an independent will of his own, which he voluntarily aligns with the Father's will. 8' He never raises the interesting question, whether this will of the Son is a human or divine will. The theologians of the early church, of all complexions, show remarkably little interest in the psychology, as contrasted with the metaphysical constitution, of Christ. When in the De Trinitate Hilary comes to explain]ohn 10:30 ('I and the Father are one'), he treats the union much more in terms of nature than of substance, and this is perhaps what has led several scholars to characterise Hilary as teaching a generic unity of Father and Son:

And this is how elsewhere he expounds the same text John 10:30: '1 and the Father are one, because I and the Father are names of realities (rerum); one, now, is the declaration of the nature, because neither differs in that which is; ,we are however rules out identity (unionem). And here because we are one is not identity, the generation (nativitas) makes them to be one'. 86

Hilary has thought carefully about the character of the unity between Father and Son. 'There is the only-begotten God: and the word "only-begotten" does not allow an only-bego~ten partner Gust as ingenerate (innascibilis) does not allow a ~artner m respect of being ingenerate), for he is One from One. Nor IS there any other only-begotten God besides the Only-begotten God. Each therefore is One. and Sole, in the peculiarity, t?at IS, III each ofmgenerateness and oforigin. And so each is one God, smce between One and Ohe, that is One from One, there is no other nature of the eternal Godhead. '87

'We confess the same likeness both of power (virtutis) and of Godhead in both'. 'But he goes on, adducing Heb 1:3 (imago substantiae eius in

Latin) to say (the author) 'distinguishes him who is from him who is the image of his substance only (to ensure) beliefin his actual existence

(subsistendi fidem), not so that any dissimilarity of nature should be understood'.85

77De Synodis 19 (495. 496); a little later.(2I-~3 (497-8) he admits that similarity of essence can be misunderstood to mean IdentIty. 78De Trin. VIll.6-9.

79Ibid. VIII.lo. 80VIll.l I.

81VIll.13-17. 82VlII.I9.

831X.44-47. 84IX.4g-S0. 85 111.23.

.,

And a little later: 'God the Father and God the Son are One un~ondit~onally (absolute), not by identity (unione) of Person, but by umty (umtate) .of substance. '88 He further defines this natural unity by saymg that It IS not effected 'by any corporeal means, but by divine powers, and not by a communication (transfusione) of nature to nature, but by the mystery and power of nature', and not by ~epnvatlOn or extension or process of God to God. 89 He does not like the model, devised ~y a certain Hieracas, of a torch kindling ~nother torc~, and he rejects the notion that this unity of nature I~phes the eXistence of a pre-existent material common to both: 'the birth of the Only-begotten is not a succession, but a production (progemes), n?t a ~rocess (tractus), but light from light'.90 And the same umty IS eVIdent when the activity of Father and Son IS conSidered rather than the nature. 91 Thus: 'The Father therefore is in the Son and the Son in the Father God in

God; not by a meeting of two types joining together, no; by the Implantmg of the nature of a more capacious' substance ... but :6VII .2S ; he always prefers unitas to unio; 'IV.l3; cf. lI.lI. 88IV·42 . 89V.37. 90VI.I2.. 91S ee VII. 17-2. I.

479

cr. VI.II.

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through the generation of a nature which is living fro~ the Living One' seeing that the situation does not alter, that generation does not

He is ready to use the concept of 'image' for the Son, as we have already seen, reproducing the 'image of the substance' of Hebrews I :3.0' Material images, he says, are made of paint or wood or stone or metal and are not the same as the original. But the Son, as an 'image of the invisible God' is not an image in this way, 'because he is a living image of the Living One; and, being born from him, has no diversity of nature, and because he is diverse in no point he possesses the power of that nature from which he is without diversity',96 And Hilary regards the model oflight coming from light with particular favour: it exhibits 'the radiance oflight, the warmth of nature, the power of burning, the upward motion of a flame', and yet remains fire entirely, and this is its whole nature. Further, it appears to be the communication of a nature without division and partition. even though it has the disadvantage of being a material substance which dies with the death of tha.t substance!' We have already seen that in the Commentary on Matthew Hilary had not yet heard of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, but still held to Tertullian's conception of the Son as produced from the being of the Father, having resided in that being from eternity, to become a distinct entity for purposes of creation, revelation and. redemption!' By the time that he comes to write the De Trinitate, however, Hilary has encountered and accepted the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, though never in any form that can lead us to suppose that he is directly quoting either Origen or Athanasius. On the whole he gives the impression that the new ideas which he has met during his residence in the East were gained in conversation and discussion rather than by reading books. And if we are to accept Doignon's'estimate of this paucity of his acquaintance with Greek, this seems a likely conjecture. In the De Trinitate he can write:

dam;ge the nature of God, that nothing is produced other than the birth of God into God from God, that there is here no novelty, nothing extrinsic, nothing detachable, etc. '92

In this conclusion th~t God is God through God Hilary approaches unconsciously to the dynamic concept of God as Trlmty which hes ultimately behind Origen's thought and which was b~ought out prominently in Karl Barth's Trinitarian theology .. He IS perfe~tly capable ofintroducing the word 'subst~nce', but this IS not the ousla of N and of Athanasius, but the substantia of Tertullian, which Hilary 93 employs as early as his Commentary on Matthew. If we ask,. as Smulders and several others have asked, whether his concept of umty is of a generic or numerical unity. the a~swer is O?t obvi?us. On th~s subject, which did not directly present Itself to Hilary, hIS thoug~t IS fluid. But, as we have seen, he insisted that Father and Son are one God' (unusdeus), the substance which they share, ifw.e are.to speak of substance, is one; and he rejects 'union' which to him Implies Identl.ty, in favour of 'unity'. Hilary introduces 'nature' (natura) (which Tertullian never uses in Trinitarian contexts) especially when treatmg of generation, equality and likeness. Essentia (essence) n~ver appea~s in the De Trinitate. It first surfaces in the De SynodlS, where It translates ousia and is introduced in deference to Greek theology. He seldom uses persona to distinguish Father and Son, nor does he ~ry to distinguish persona and natura; in fact persona played httle part m the debates sparked off by the Arian Controversy among the Latmspeaking theologians, and this is a puzzle which no scholar has, yet explained and few even have recognized. Tertulhan had used one God' (unus deus) of the Father, but Hilary concluded that the Father IS unus Deus as generating and the Son unus Deus as generated, but neither is salus Deus (sole God). He never uses 'single' (unicus) of God, because this, he believes, would imply Sabellianism!4

'But we profess a generation (nativitatem) which has existed (subsistentem) timelessly, we declare God the Son as God of no diverse

95De Trin. m.23. 92Vll.J9· 93S ee Comm. in Matt. 23.8 (162). 94The foregoing remarks are much indeb~ed t~ J. Moingt, in Hilaj~e et son Temps 16 4-5. Smulders in his earlier work had said qUite co~~ec:l~ that Hilary ~o.es no~ distinguish between numerical unity and what he calls I umte purement specmque (La doctrine Trinitaire 234-5, cf. 245). Generally ,peaking, .though the Fathers recognised the danger of imagining a kind of 'GodpstufF. behl1~d and beyon~ the Persons, they did not see the necessity (if such neceSSIty eXists!) of makmg a distinction such as this.

96VII.37· C£ the statement in De Syn. 13 (490) that the image must have the species, natura and essentia of that of which is an image, and the careful sentence a little lat.er. (discussing likeness, which must include likeness ofgenus, species andforma) 'and thJ~ IS t~uly to ~e a.Son, to reproduce the truth of the Father's form equally imaged (collnagmatae) m hImself by a perfect likeness of nature' (IS (491, 492). 97VII.29· 98S ee above, PP.468--9. Compare Comm. in Matt. 31.3 (228) and 16.4 (52). Borchardt, Hilary of Poitiers' R6Ie 88, 89 and n 159 remarks upon this. See also Moingt in Hilaire et son Temps 162-3.

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Western Pro-Nicenes [: Hilary of PoitieTS

nature from God the Father, nor equal to the Ingenerate by reason of

exists through the Son; not from non-existence because nothing in

ingenerateness, but because of his generation as Only-begotten not

God is alterable or empty; not part of himself either divided or cut off

dissimilar'.99

Much of the seventh book is indeed occupied with expounding the eternity of the Son as distinct Son, what Hilary calls 'the mystery of his perfect and indescribable generation'''oo Later he can write: 'Our faith therefore, though it does not conceive of a beginning of generation. always professes an only-begotten Son. be~au~e hi~ natur.e is not consistent with a belief that he has ever had a begmmng smce hIS 'generation is beyond every temporal beginn~ng. But .though it confesses that he has existed always and before times, yet It does not

doubt that he is born in timeless infinity, yet it proclaims him to derive . 0 f'mgenerate M'In. d "0' from a generatIon

And again: 'Por where the Father is the originator (auctor), there generation is also present; yet where the originator .is e~ernal, there i~ ~lso eternit~ of generation, because just as generatIon IS from the ongmator, so bIrth from an eternal originator is eternal.'

And he explicitly identifies birth (nativitas) and generation (generatiD, a rare word with Hilary).!02 Hilary is careful to clear the concept of divine generation from misunderstanding. He speaks of the origin of the Son 'from the Eternal, not himself from a beginning, but from the Unbegun (ininitiabili); not by his own initiative (per se ipsum), but from him who is for ever without origin (a nemine), born from the Eternal, taking his birth in fact from his Father's eternity'.,03 The proper understanding of generation has nothing to do with Valentinus' concept of prolation, and it has no such human attributes as 'copul~tion, conception, process, delivery'.' 04 In one passage as early as the third book he makes several careful distinctions on this subject: 'In this case therefore the Ingenerate begot from himself before all time a Son, not from some material substratum, because everything 99X.6: the last expression is one of Hilary's best lapidary definitions, neque ex

innascibilitate innasc.ibili coaequalem, sed ex generatione unigeniti non disparem. looVII.27. '·'IX.S7: cf. XII.14. 102XII.lI.

IOlIV.6. I04VI.9·

or extended because God is impassible and incorporeal ... But

incomprehensibly, indescribably before all time and ages he procreated from that which was ingenerate in himself, imparting to this generation by love and power everything which God k And so the only-begotten Son is perfect and eternal from the perfect and eternal Father.'lOS

This is certainly not the eternal generation as described by either Origen or Athanasius. Three books, and perhaps a year later, he can express the same concept in significantly different terms: 'it is not a fragment. not a section, not a reduction, not a derivation, not an extension, not a process (passio), but it is the generation (nativitas) of a living nature from the Living One. God is moving out (exiefis) from God, not a qeature appointed to bear the name of God. He did not have a beginning so as to exist from nothingness, but he

proceeded (exiit) from the Abiding One. And "proceeding" has the meaning of generation, it does not have that of commencement (inchoationis). For a substance to begin is not the same thing as God to proceed from God'.1 06

Hilary does his best to establish a distinction between the Father and the Son, without (as we shall see) having the advantage of an agreed formal terminology for this task. At an early stage in the De Trinitate, interpreting John 14:28 ('the Father is greater than 1') he can write: 'And who will not allow that the Father is greater, as the Ingenerate (is greater t4an) the generated, as the Father than the Son, as he who sends than he who is sent, as he who wills than he who obeys'.lo7

Later, in the ninth book, he says 'he who exists (subsistit) as God according to the nature of divine generation from the existing (subsistente) God is not separable in the truth of his nature from him who is alone true God'.'oS He can make the distinction only by C£ Smulders Lz doctrine Trinitaire 150, 'Telle est I' essence de la paternite' Ie fils tout ce qui constitute sa propre substance; l'essence de I~ fihatlon consIste en cc que Ie fils re~oive tout ce qui est dans Ie pere.· t06VI.35; notice the dynamic note in this account. 107 111.12; it is this sort of language which inclines one to agree with those who conclude that the first three books of this work were written before Hilary's exile. I o8IX.36. Cf. De Syn. 69 (526) Patri subiectus est ut auctor; (see Smulders Ie doctrine 1051II.].

~e ~ngendr~ ~

Tr;nitaire 187-8).

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Western Pro-Nicenes I: Hilary oj PoWers

elaborately defining the nature of the relationship without, in the De Trinitate, achieving a vocabulary which will enable him to make himself clear on the point. 109 Later when he is writing his De Synodis he is rather more aware of the necessity of making this distinction, though his vocabulary is confused:"o

Son,'14 e.g. the subjection of the Son spoken ofinJn 6:38 etc is 'not subjection implying a renewed obedience but a mystery of (God's) strategy'.'15 And he sometimes seems to take away with one hand what he gives with the other: 'So the Father is greater in that he is Father. But the Son, in that he is Son, is not less. The generation of the Son makes the Father grea ter. Yet the nature of the generation does not permit the Son to be less. The Father is greater in that he is entreated to give glory to the man who has been assumed. The Son is not the lesser in that he resumes his

'Because the Godhead of the one born is not diverse (indiscreta) from

that of the begetter, this is no reason why the Generator and the Generated should be the same; clearly he who generates and he who is generated cannot be other than two distinct things (alius et alius) , no~ on the other hand can he who is born and his begetter be dissimilar'.

And he can speak of 'the significance as a Person' (personalem significantiam) of the Son. 111

But within the limits which he observes in the De Trinitate Hilary has worked out the relation of the Son to the Father with admirable care: 'For if God is from God or God is in God he does not effect a duality of Gods, as long as One from One remains in the nature and name of One; nor does he lapse into a solitary God because One and One does not signify Sole',112

We have seen that in the course of attempting to distinguish the Father and the Son Hilary can admit a certain subordination of the Son to the Father, if only because the Father is the Son's origin. 113 He often evades apparently subordinationist texts by applying the relevant words to the human nature of Christ, not to the pre-existent I09E.g. 11.22: 'Let them learn that there is one ingenerate God the Father and one only-begotten Son of God, perfect offspring of a perfect. Father; no~ begott~n. by reduction, not cut off from any part of a mass, but possessmg everythmg, reC~IV1ng aU the implications of generation (genuisse omnia consecutum (Smulders), a difficult phrase: one suspects a c'orruption in the MSS); not produced by derivation or process (/luxus), but from everything and in everything born from him who does not cease to exist in everything and in which he exists; free from time; unaffected by the ages; through whom all things were made, for he cannot be (classed with) those things which were established by him'. 110For Hilary's formal terminology see below, pp. 486-92. . 11 t De Synodis XI 8 (496); cf. ibid .. 68 (S2S) where he insists that 'of one substance' must not be taken to mean that the Son differs from the Father only in name, and a very clear expression in De Trin. IV.42, non unione personae sed substantiae unitate. Smulders (Le doctrine Trinitaire 118) calls attention to a sentence at IV.21 personarum

autem ita/acta distinctio est, ut opus referatur ad utrumque. t 12Vll.33; 'neither a solitary

nor a diverse God' is indeed Hilary's watchword: cf. 39 'seeing that though he is not singular yet he does not tum into two gods, and though he is not two he cannot be thought to be solitary'. t1JSee Thomas Christology 28-32.

glory with the Father. Thus it is that the mystery of generation and the strategy of incarnation (dispensatio corporation is) is fulfilled'.1l6

But he allows that though the Son is equal to the Father in divine nature, yet the Son is not his own origin nor did he generate himself from nothing, 117 and the fact that the Father confers on the Son his name and his honour justifies the text 'the Father is greater than 1'.'18 And m the De Synodis he concedes that the Father is greater 'only in the authority conferred by ingenerateness' ."9 He has considerable difficulty in the same book in reconciling his views with the XVIIth anathema of the First Sirmian Creed of 3SI which had declared 'we do not rank the Son alongside the Father, but he is subordinated to the Father'. All Hilary can say at this point is that the mission and activity of the Son in obedience to the Father do not affect his metaphysic~l status:. 'but the subjection motivated by duty (pietatis) is not a reductIOn ofhlS substance (essentiae) nor does the activity arising from sacred obligation (religionis officium) cause his nature to be defective: (De Synodis SI (SI8, S19». There is however one important passage ~ the De Trinitate, to which Simonetti has called attention,'20 where Hilary appears to go further. It Occurs in the fourth book (42). He describes the Son as 'God visible and palpable in man,' and calls him 'one Mediator between God and man mediator inthe giving of the Law, in the assuming of a body'. So fa'r so good; HIlary has aVOIded the danger of making the Son a mediator within 114E.g. IX.SI; X1.30, 59. . It5Xl.30 subjectio haec non novae obedientiae sed dispensandi sacramentum est: cf. XI·49, dispensatiol.non demutatio. 116IX.S6. 117IX.S3.

18IX.54. 47 (SIS). 120Crisi 30S n 188.

I

U9

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Western Pro-Nicenes I: Hilary of Poitiers

the Godhead. But a little later, having mentioned some of the activities of the pre-existent and incarnate Son, he says:

reproducing it from either Tertullian or Novatian, in the sense of that which God essentially is.'24 In De Synodis 32 (504, 505) he makes a distinction; speaking of the 'Dedication' Creed of 34"

'No other god will be reckoned with this one. These activities are appropriate to this only-begotten God alone. And this one God has been born from God in this peculiar blessedness of his powers'.

Hilary has here avoided Arianism, but has he avoided the suggestion that the Son was constituted as Mediator in such a way that the Father was not, that he was doing something which the Father could not do? A brief attention to Hilary's terminology will be perhaps useful at this point. We have already noted'2' his apparent reluctance to use the word persona, one supplied to him by Tertullian, and one which, it might be thought, if regtilarly used to express what God is as Three in distinction from what he is as· One, would have considerably clarified his thought. The word never occurs in that work where Tertullian's influence is strongest, the Commentary on Matthew, nor any substitute for it.'22 It is used from time to time in both De Trinitate and De Synodis in this sense,'23 bnt by nO means exclusively and not in contexts where it could have prevented confusion of thought. Perhaps we have to remember that between the writings of Tertullian and Hilary's day lay the appearance of Sabellius and others of his school. It may be that persona was associated in the minds of the writers of the fourth century with Sabellianism. It was not perhaps fitted owing to its associations to express distinct subsistence. Smulder notes (La doctrine Trinitaire 288) that at De Trinitiate VII. 39, Hilary repudiates the 'theatrical use of pmontl. The word to express what God is as One in distinction from what he is as Three which comes most easily to Hilary is nature (natura, occasionally genus as a synonym) which Tertullian never uses in this sense, not substantia (substance) nor essentia (substance also). The great defect of Hilary's theological vocabulary is that he uses substantia both to mean what God is as Three (hypostasis in the later Cappadocian sense) arid for what God is as One (ousia in the Cappadocian sense), and in some contexts it is almost impossible to determine which sense he intends .. In his Commentary on Matthew he uses substantia several times 121See above. P.480.

122so Doignan observes Hilaire avant ['Exi1.356 n 8. Smulders La doctrine Trinitaire 280-89. has some useful cemar.ks on Hilary'~ ~erminology. 123E.g. De Syn. 14 (491); De T,in. VI1.40. Smulders (Lt doctrine T,initaire 268-9, 289) notes that Hilary never directly calls any of the Three persona. The nearest approach is De Syn. 32 (504) subsistentium personas per substantias edocentes. "

'They said there were three substances (substantias) inculcating by 'substances' the Persons (personas) each of the distinctly existing (or subsisting, subsistentium) Ones, not separating the substance (= common Godhead) of the Father and the Son by the diversity of a dissimilar essence (= common Go"dhead)'.

If Hilary had kept to using substantia=persona=what God is as Three, all would have been well. But even in this carefully devised statement uncertainty is introduced by his use of substantia to mean what God is as One at the end of the passage. It is worth noting that Hilary here uses the verb subsistere (to subsist) in order to refer to the Persons of the Godhead, as distinct from its essence or substance. He is consistent in using this verb only to refer to the Persons, but he does not often so use it.'25 It is of course in the De Synodis that Hilary has most often to use the word substantia because he is interpreting or translating the creeds which had been produced between 34' and 358, and here hypostasis and ousia cropped up again and again. It cannot be said that Hilary maintained any consistent and clear rule of translation and use, even when he was attempting to define his terms. To give a host of examples in the text would be to run the risk of boring the reader.126 One example must suffice: 'Not two ingenerates because by the authority of his ingenerateness God is one; and the Only-begotten is not thereby not God, because his 124E.g. 5.1'5 (168); 12, 17 (284-); 7.8 (32) is the example from Novatian's De Trin. JI. 125Cf. De Trin. X.6 nativitatem subsistentem. 126B . fI . ric y to e':1Um.er~te, .one can instance: De Syn. 12 (490) an attempt to define essentla and also m dlstmctlon from it substantia, (in the course of which he uses sub~tantia in t~e definition of essential); 25 (499) hypostasis translated by substantia and ousla by. essentla; but 28.(501) um:us substantiae translates homoousion; and 27 (5 0 0-5 01 ) substanllO translate~ OUSJa (of which the. Logos was declared an eikon in Ancyra 3.5 8); 35 (5 08 ) commentmg on the IVth Antlochene Creed of 341 he uses substantia in both sense of ousia an~ hypostasis ~. Perso~; 47, (515) substantia certainly means ousia here; 55 (S~9) subs~antla of the Splrlt meamng Person', but 61 (522) substantia of the Son meanmg ous.a. In Coil. Antiar. BU 11.5 (153, 154) he defines essentia as substantia agai~: !=sse?tia i~ '~at which always is, and because it needs no external aid for sustaInIng Itse.lf It JS a~so called substantia, because within itself it is that which (is) eternal and ex~sts (subslstat) by the po.wer of its eternity'. This is useful as far as it goes but does nothmg to clear up the eqUIvocal use of substantia. See Smulders Le doctrine

Trinitaire 287.

r

The Rivar Answers Emerge

The Western Pro-Nicenes I: Hilary of Poitiers

origin is ingenerate substance (substantia = ousia). Not one Person (lit. "subsister", subsistentem) but one uniform substance (substantiam non differentem, ousia). Not one name of God among diverse natures, but uniform substance (essentiam = ousia) of one name and nature. Not one

fr~~ the Father, and that nothing of the substance in which he was eXlstmg :was removed. from the Father by the generation of the Son, and that It was not regIstered that the Son is homoousios with the Father by men who were holy and zealous for the doctrine of God for th w~ong reasons (vitiis causisque) listed above; in case anybody shoul~

(of the Three) superior to the other in type of substance (substantia = ausia) , but one subordinated to the other by the

thmk that the generation of the only-begotten Son was abolished by

generation of his nature' ,127

By this time Hilary has reached the stage of using substantia fairly regularly to mean ausia, what God is as One. But he varies his vocabulary to use essentia in the same meaning, and natura also. As he has frequently up to this used substantia to mean 'Person', what God is as Three, this late regularity of usage leaves him with no word to use for 'Person'. All he can produce for this is a verb, subsistere. It is not surprising that in the next chapter he apologises for the insufficiency of language in speaking of these deep matters. 12 • Hilary does not of course discuss the word hamaausian in his Commentary on Matthew, because he had never heard of the word when he wrote that work. Once or twice he produces in the De Trinitate expressions which are close to the word though not identical with it, such as 'uniformity of an inseparable nature' (naturae indifferentiam inseparabilis) and 'nature preserving through generation the authenticity of substance' (natura tenens per nativitatem substantiae veritatem).129 But in only one place in this work does he deal with the famous watchword of the pro-Nicenes at length (IV.4-'7). Here he first describes the terms as 'promulgated by bishops in the past' (ab anteriaribus episcopis praedicatum), presumably a reference to the Council of Nicaea, and then goes on to list the Arian objections to it.'3o He defends the term against these accusations: it does not imply an identity of Father and Son; and it does not import corporeal notions into the Godhead: 'These arguments have been stated in case a,ny suspicion should lirtger about the mention of homoousion as adopted by the Fathers and in that creed which was to last for ever, so that it should be recognized that the Son exists (subsistere) in the substance in which he was generated 127De Syn. 64 (523, 524). 128 65 (5.24). He only uses essentia once before De Syn. (Smulders Ie doctrine Trinitaire 281). 129De Trin. VlI.I I. Cf. Smulders Le doctrine Trinitaire .245-50. 130IV.4; for another list of these objections, see below P.490. Cf. Smulders Le doctrine Trinitaire 108, .243. The other mention of homoousios is at Vl.IO.

means of ousla because he was said to be homoousios with th Father.'131 e

He then decbres that he will spend the rest of the book explaining why hamoauSlan was necessary, arguing only from the text f th Bibk 132 In the Callectanea Antiariana he defines hamaausian bri~tly a~ Uleamn~ :;;erni~y is alone like itself and that which exists eternally is 1n God. It IS dou,btful w?ether there is enough evidence to suPpOrt. the statement of Momgt that in the De Trinitate Hilary usually mtended to mean numerkal identity when he used homoousios of the Son, whereas in the De Synadis he permitted a generic mterpretat~on ~f the word for the sake of accommodating the

HO~OlouSlans. 34 In the first place, it is uncertain whether homoousios ~o precise a meaning as to denote identity of ousia outside

earned

Athanas1Us' use of it, and in the second the so-called Homoiousians never actually used the word hamaiausias, which was attributed to them by the Second Sirmian Creed of 357, but preferred the expreSSIOn homoios kat' ousian.

But certainly in the De Synadis Hilary made a determined effort to explore and analyse the word hamaausias. In this. work he translates the term in Tertullian's phrase unius

substan~la.e (of one substance), and at the outset encounters and

rec~?mses the sli~periness of the word substantia: 'this word holds waltmg for the behever both conviction (conscientiam) and deceptio ' If we ar~ s~eaking of likeness of nature, we rightly mention only o~~ substant~a: ~n~ substance, as long as it does not abolish the Person who eXIst~ dIstInctly (personam subsistentem) nor divide one substance separated Into t:wo, will be maintained in an orthodox sense'.135 On the other.han~, If we take 'ofone substance' to mean that the Son is the Father, dlffenng only in name, oris a part of the Father divided off, we 131

6.

132 . 7 B n sa

.2;3 3 sll~I.\(3.2d ~p'. 1.53 ~n~

154· Doignon 'Hilaire avant l'Exil496 n 4 and 497 134~/' at t IS e ninon IS mdebted to Seneca Epistle 113.5 and Dialogue 7 16 3 13S I atre et son Temps 165-6. . .

De Syn. 67 (525).

••

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Western Pro-Nicenes I: Hilary of Poitiers

plunge into error; and a third and equally wrong interpreta~on is to

Hilary of course was also ready to accept the homoiousios which was attributed to the followers of Basil of Ancyra. His De Synodis was written partly for the benefit of the Gallic bishops, to make them realize that the development in the East of the doctrine of God as witnessed in the many formulae produced between 34' and 358 had not been wholly mistaken nor wholly in vain, and to commend to them the formula 61101000'10<; (homoiousios) which the group round Basil had recently appeared to favour at Ancyra. The work's stimulus was certainly the widespread alarm caused in both East and West by the production and publication of the Second Sirmian Creed of 357. This was the subject of chapters '-'77, and the whole work opens with an impressive address to the Gallic and the British bishops (but, curiously, not those of Narbonensis Secunda, Viennensis, Alpes Maritimae or of Spain). But the latter part of the book, chapters 78-9', switches its addre,s to the bishops of the Eastern Roman Empire who had at Ancyra in 358 made a protest against the Second Sirmian Creed of 357 and had produced a document favouring 011010<; Kut'otlO'iuv. 142 This part is designed not onJy to express Hilary's joy at the appearance of this document, but also to commend, gently and politely, to these bishops the homoousion of N and that creed generally. The suggestion made by A. D. Jacobs that these chapters were originally a letter addressed by Hilary to Basil of Ancyra is an interesting one. 143 Hilary's attitude to homoiousion is open and generous. Indeed during his survey of the various creeds produced between 34' and 358 he condemns outright none except the Second Sirmian of 357 (though he can occasionally criticize a detail), not even the statement of the Eastern bishops after Serdica in 343. He applauds the declaration of Ancyra that the likeness of Father and Son must involve likeness of ousia. '44 God's generating something similar to himself and communicating life does not affect

take substantia as a reality prior to both Father and Son, of whIch they both partake. 136 When we say 'one substance', we must know what we mean: 'not another god in the genus "substance". but one Go~ through the essence (essentia) of a uniform substance. ~he one God 15 not a Person (persona) but is a nature, be~ause he W~O.lS ?or.nl~~d he who generates has ~othing in himself diverse or dlsslmtlar .

Later in the work he gives the reasons alleged by the Arians (represented by Valens and Ursacius direcring affairs at. the th~rd Sirmian Council of 357) against using homoousJOs: It Imphes a pn?r substance behind Father and Son; in the case of Paul of Samosata m the third century the Fathers had condemned the use of the word because it implied that God was solitary and smgle (unlCus); the bishops at Nicaea had adopted it only under pressure [presumably from Constantine) against .those who called the Son ~ creature, bu;;! should not be accepted because it does not appear m the BIble. Hilary replies to the last charge by saying that the Father.s of N~c~;; had adopted the word because the Arians had expressly. rejected It. . He next gives the Latin text of N and adds an mterestmg comment. 'Surely this is no other than our belief, that he (the Son) does n?t distinctly exist from any other source and that he does n~t eXIst differently? Or does the profession of homoousion mean ~nythm.g else than that one and the same essence (essentia) ofhoth exists accordmg to the offspring of nature because the essence of the Son is not from another source? And since he is not from another source both are properly believed to be of the same essence, bec~use the Son does not possess the substance (substantia) of his generation except from the · a f his F ath' authority er s nat ure '14D .

And finally he defines precisely what he means by homoousion: 'By homoousion ., . I understand God from God, not of a different substance (essentiae), not divided offbut born, and fro~ the substance of the ingenerate God a co-generated only-begotten bIrth for the Son. according to likeness' .141 >3'68 (525, 526). 13769 (526). 13880 (534). 139 83 (535)· 1408 4 (53 6). . . ' 'b 141 58 (55 ); Hilary is of course mterpretmg h~moo.us,o~ to accord a~ far as pO~Sl Ie 0 with lIomoiousion.lt is interesting to compare thiS wah hIS reproduction ofN m the

490

Coil. Antiar. B 11.10, (p. ISO): he does not translate Jlovoyevi'j after yevvTJ9&vta £K tOU 7tatp6~, for 6Jlo6ucnov he has 'unjus substantiae cum patre, quod Graeci dicunl "omousion"'; in the anathemas he glosses ex nullis extantibus with quod Graeci (ex u( onton' dicunt, and translates ii t~ t-ttp~ 01tocrtclcrec.o; i1 o1)cria; simply by vel alia substantia without attempting any distinction between ousia and hypostasis. In his reproduction of N in De Syn. 84 (536) he translates the expression vel ex alia substantia aut essentia. 142See PP.348-57. 143He is, however, anxious also to commend the document of Ancyra 358 to the Gallic b~hops, see 13ff (490fI). 14415 (490, 491).

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the possession of a common substance (essentia) by the two." s He can even accept Basil's readiness to regard the Son as created, granted the conditions under which Basil believes this notion; in effect he agrees that creation means generation, and, allied with the concept of generation, excludes production by sheer will or power.·· 6 He agrees with Basil in rejecting the idea that generating a Son means a reduction in God's substance (essentia), and other misunderstandings of the doctrine." 7 With Basil he refuses to allow that the Father is the God of the Son or that there is any difference of time or age between the Two."· He assents to Basil's refusal to identify the Person of the Father with that of the Son." 9 He commends the doctrine of the Son as image of the Father propounded by Basil:

suggests that it was something which the Son by his divine constitution was peculiarly well-equipped to accomplish. He allows that God had no need to become incarnate. God assumed a body only so as to become intelligible to our weak minds.' s, Late in the De Trinitate he gives a careful account of the reasons for the Incarnation:

'Where the Son is declared to be the Father's image because of the authenticity of the likeness he does not differ as dissimilar in substance from the substance of the' Father whose image he is',1s0

He notes without comment that the Ancyran document rejected .the use of homoousios. Later, still addressing the Gallic bishops, having carefully explained the right and the wrong way to understand 'one substance' (una substantia) he announces confidently that 'of like substance'can be understood to have the same meaning as 'one substance'.'s, Though he points out, reasonably, that objections can be raised to homoiousios, as they can to homoousios,152 this is a treatment of the theology of Basil of Ancyra and his followers much wiser and more generous that the somewhat patronizing and uncomprehending words of Athanasius in his De Synodis.' 53

4. Hilary's Doctrine of the Incarnation As we might expect, Hilary does not regard the Incarnation as a reduction of divinity on the part of God and never (or almost never) '·'16 (492, 493). 17- 19 (494-496). '·'20 (496)-21 (497). '·'23, 24 (498, 499). 14925-26 (499-500); most confusingly the Larin translation of the twelfth anathema of Ancyra quoted by Hilary renders hypostasis as substantia, 'and Hilary in his comment follows suit. '15°27 (SOO, 501). Here substantia manifestly means 'substance' (ousia). lS'71 (527), 76 (530).

,.6

'''8~ (541). Cf. Smulders 1535ee above p. 440.

La doctrine Trinitaire 246-50. 49 2

'Now these are the sacred purposes (sacramenta) of heavenly mysteries

determined before the foundation of the world: the only-begotten God was to choose to be born as nian, and man was destined to abide for ever in God; God was to choose to suffer so that when God took on

himself our weakness the devil should no longer rage among the paSSIons of human weakness and uphold the law of sin in us; that God sho~ld choose to ~ie to prevent any arrogant authority standing agamst God and bemg able to pervert in itself the nature of mortal g~o~ne5s.

seeing that immortal God would have placed himself

w.thm the law of death. Consequently God is born that we might be raised, he suffers next that we might become sinless, finally he dies to avenge us: thereby both our humanity abides in God, and the passions of ~ur weaknesses a~e associated with God, and the evil powers are

subjugated by the tnumph of the flesh since God dies in the flesh' .155 This is a much more robust and satisfying account of the Atonement at least than any Athanasius could give, deriving much ofits content from Tertullian and manifesting already those characteristics which would in the future distinguish Western from Eastern theology. It is noticeable that Hilary, following his master Tertullian does not hesitate to say that God was born and God died. Accordin~ to Hilary . the Incarnation meant that 'when Christ was born as a man he introduced to himself a new nature, not by the loss of divinity and power but by a change of condition. '.56 This looks like a doctrine of two n~tllres, but in fact is not so; what Hilary says here is, not 'a new nature but 'newness of nature' (naturae novitatem), and 'condition' (habitus) is not the same as 'nature'. Elsewhere he says '(his) flesh exalted our flesh without incurring the shame of our constitution' (elementorum) .• 57 IS4De Trin. m.3. l~sDe T~in. IX.7. B.urns ('Hilary's Confrontation with Arianism' 296-7) makes t~e Illte!es~n:g sug~estlOn that though in places Hilary conceives of Christ's body as sl~ply mdlvldual, III other places he seems to think ofit as corporate, i.e. he took on hImself t~e whole human race; he gives as instances some passages in Comm. in Matt. but admits that at least in De Trin. 11.24 and III.I6 the body is individual lS6De Trin. IX.38. " 157III. I9 and Hilary is as ready as Tertullian to accept what one might call the

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The Western Pro-Nieenes I: Hilary of Poitiers

The Rival Answers Emerge The Incarnation was of course in Hilary's view foreshadowed in the Old Testament. He sees this as a paradox, much in the style of TertuIlian: 'He who had existed is born; he who is iITlmutable grows up; he who is impassible suffers; the Living One dies; a dead man lives. for everything in him is contrary to nature',iSS

In accordance with the tradition established by Marcellus of Ancyra and Athanasius, Hilary is ready on occasion to refer awkward or embarrassing texts to the incarnate rather than the pre-existent Son.
(Christ) according to his humanity (secundum hominem) were said as a <. . nat result of the impenectIon 0 f h'15 d'Ivme ure' . 15"

This is one way of disposing ofJohn 14:28 ('the Father is greater than 1'): 'Have you forgotten', he asks rhetorically, .'the strategy of the Mediator and the birth, infancy, growth, suffermg, cross and death involved in it?'!60 The anointing referred to in Ps 45 (44):7 must be applied to Christ's human body, and this is the best way of disposing of the embarrassing language of St. Paul m Cor 15:24-28 about the subjection of Christ to God.!6! But Hilary does not follow Ongen m ultimately dispensing altogether with Christ'~ humanity.'62 and, unlike Athanasius, he holds that it is absurd and ImpIOUS to thmk that God cannot ordain an added glory for himself.163 messiness of the Incarnation: 'he experienced all the humiliations of our nature in conception. birch. crying, swaddling-bands ... If anyone will ~egard these ,as unworthy afCad, he will acknowledge himsel~th~t much m~re obhged for the gIft as these conditions are the less suitable to the dIgnity of God, 11.24· But see bel?w pp.496-S02 for what is in effect a modification of thiS. att~tude whi~h Te~tulhan never envisaged. Smulders (Le doctrine Trinitaire 197) mamtalns that HIlary dId have a doctrine of two natures. lS8V.I8; the passages foreshadowing the Incarnation are the angel with whom Jacob wrestled (19), the figure who stood at the top ofJacob's ladder (20), he whom Moses saw in the Burning Bush (21, 22), and he who ga,:,e Moses the law on ~t. Sinai (23). These of course are not the only places where Htlary sees an adumbratIon of the Incarriation; he works his· way implausibly through the prophets also. t59IX.S· 16°IX.SI. t6tXI.2I-3 z ; earlier at XI.II-16 he has explained)n 20:17 ('My God and your God') as uttered only in forma servi. t62E.g. XI40. t63XI.43·

494

Hilary indeed is remarkably free in referring to the kenosis, God's act in emptying or humbling himself in the Incarnation: 'He emptied himself of the form of God, that is from having been equal with God; he did not through arrogance (rapinam) think of himself as equal with God although, in the form of God and equal with God he remained marked as God through God'.!64 But he did not, because he could not, empty himself of the nature of God.'65 This rather confusing statement is'made clearer in the next book. What Christ emptied himself of was theform of God, since he could not at the same time possess the form of God and the form of a slave. Therefore the abandonment (evacuatio) of the form is not the destruction of the divine nature because whoever abandons himselfis still present to himself (non caret sese).'66 And later he says that while he accommodated, reduced and emptied himself to become man Christ remained unemptied and unrestricted as God: 'He remained in the form of God and took the form of man, not

altered but having emptied himself, and though himself reduced (vacuifaetus) remaining secretly (latens) within his being and within his power ... The fact that he maintained himself reduced within himself brought no damage to his power because during this unselfish process

ofemptying himselfhe still used the effect ofall the power ofwhich he had emptied himselC!67 Hilary is perhaps inevitably obscure here. He seems to want to say that Christ abandoned the form, that is the appearance and condition, ·of God without abandoning any of the powers of God and without ceasing to be God. He is making a much more serious effort than Athanasius' ever did to take the Pauline doctrine of God's selfemptying seriously, but (as we shall see) some of his fundamental convictions about the Incarnation were to land him into great difficulties. Just because he faced the dilemma of the Incarnation more resolutely than Athanasius he fell into graver disaster. But he should be credited with better intentions than those of the bishop of Alexandria. Hilary knows reasonably well the kind of arguments· about the constitution of the incarnate Word advanced by the Arians of his 164VIII.4S· 165 46. 166IX.14. 167X1.48.

495

The Rival Answers Emerge time. It is not likely that he was deeply read in Arian literature, but he knew enough to maintain the debate with them. At De Trinilale IV.12, 13 he quotes a Latin translation of the profession of faith in Arius' Leiter to Alexander of Alexandria and refers to it again at VI.4, 5 with quotations. '08 He knows that his opponents ascribe to the imperfection of Christ's divine nature the limitations which others would attribute to his humanity.'oo And he knows that the Arians deny a human mind and will to the incarnate Christ,170 though his account of why they hold this doctrine is confused and implausible. '71 In reply to the Arian doctrine of the Incarnation Hilary is quite clear that Jesus Christ had a human soul or mind (anima). He was fully human as well as fully divine.17 2 It was this human soul which he commended to God on the cross.1 73 This point alone should make it clear that Hilary's doctrine of the Incarnation owed nothing to Athanasius. Christ also had a human will. '74 But having reached this point of insight into the account ofJesus given us in the Gospels, Hilary pulls himself up short. In the Commentary on Matthew he had already insisted that in asking the disciples the number of the loaves in their possession (Matt 14:13-17) Christ did not display ignorance. '7s He repeats this conviction in the De Trinitate. 17o He is hard put to meet the Arian proof-text on this point., Mk 13:32 (par. Matt 24:36) 'Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, or the Son, but only the Father'.'77 It is inconceivable that Christ should not know the day of his return; it is inconceivable that the Father should have kept him in ignorance on this point; Paul says that all the treasures of knowledge 168Smulders had already observed this. La doctrine Trinitaire 97-9. This fact would indicate pretty strongly that he had begun the doctrinal controversy before he left Gaul for exile, because it is most unlikdy that he would have found a Latin translation of this document in Asia. For a list of the pro,,:,Nicenes who used this letter in their anti-Arian propaganda, see note (c) attached to p. 104 in PL 10,

probably that of Coustant. 169IX,IS. 170X.50 hominem ilium qui a Maria esse coepit habitaverit et virtutibus divinae operationis instruit, animae tamen suae (i.e. the eternal Son's) motu naturaque viventem. 1?lX.51 1?lX.52. 173X.57-63. 174IX·49. 50.

175Comm. in Matt. 14.10 (20); so again 26.4 (196, 198). 176De Trin. VII.19.

171The difficulty is presented IX.58.

The Western Pro-Nicenes I: Hilary of Poitiers are hid in him (Col 2:2, 3}.'78 Hilary's explanation is as follows: 'In all matters in which God says that he is ignorant. he professes ignorance certainly, but he is not restricted by ignorance. seeing that in regard to what he does not know this is not the imperfection of ignorance, but either it is not an occasion for speaking or a strategy to obviate action'.179

God rations the revelation of his knowledge according to time and circumstance. '8o The 'I never knew you' of Matt 7:23 means that these people were unworthy of Jesus' knowledge. 181 So with all Jesus' professions of ignorance or questions apparently requiring inf~rination: 'In the case of him who knows everything, the things which he does not know are a device for saying sometimes that he does not know'.182 'He took on himself these .things (human weaknesses). not so that the unalterable nature should be reduced to an imperfect nature, but that within the unalterable nature there should be a sacred purpose (sacramentum) of assumption [of humanity], seeing that he who was God is man and he who is man does not cease to be God'.183

Christ pretended to be ignorant about the Parousia in order to keep us on our toes waiting for his Return. '84 How a human mind can be omniscient he does not attempt to explain. In his Commentary on Matthew Hilary had declared that Christ did not hunger for bread but for human salvation,'8s that Christ displayed no fear for his own welfare in the Agony in the Garden nor sorrow no~ weakness,'86 that he was only afraid that his disciples, desertmg hIm, would commit the sin against the Holy Spirit. '87 In the later works he takes this type of argument to extravagant lengths. Even when he was incarnate the divine Word dis pia yed immutability, 'powers in his miracles, glory on the mountain, knowledge of human hearts in his thoughts, confidence in suffering, 178IX.59, 60, 61, 62. 179IX.63. 180IX.64. 18lJX.65. 182 66. 183 66. 18467. 185 3 . 2 (113- 1 14). 186 3 1.2 (226, 228). 187 31 .4 . 5 (230, 232).

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life in death' .'BB And he gives a summary of his ideas on the

This statement leads Hilary on to an amazing account of the Passion:

IBO

subject. 'Although he submitted himself to suffering yet the Word which was made Besh was not affected by the weakness of suffering. For he was able to suffer and yet not be passible ... because he is unalterable God, even when the Word was made flesh (events) found in him the material (materiam) for suffering without the weakness of suffering.'

In the De Trinitate he had spelt out the details of this extraorclinary theory. Signs of fear and pain and distress, such as are apparently witnessed to in Matt 26:38, 39 and 27:46 and even in Luke 23:46 (,Father, into thy hands .. .') are incompatible with Christ's possessing the nature of God who is i",,:pass!ble, but sugg~st th~t he possessed an inferior divine nature. ChrISt himself urged hIS dISciples not to fear death, and he himself had power over his own departure from this life. What had heto fear from death? He knew that his body would be raised in three days and that his spirit would go to the Father.'oo But perhaps he was afraid of the pain of his passion? The answer to this question requires a short analysis of human psychology: It is the presence of the soul (anima) in the body which registers pain; if the soul is dulled by an opiate it does not feel pain.'" But Hilary denies that Christ's body could have been precisely like ours in such a way that it 'felt the pain our body feels, of our soul and body'. In his birth Jesus Christ had heredity from his mother, but as far as hIS human origin went he was God. Still Hilary allows that he had a human soul. 192 It cannot even be said without reservations that Mary imparted its origin to Christ's body, 'for Mary did not contribute the

origin to 'his body, though she conferred everything which naturally belongs to her sex towards the (embryonic) growth, and birth of the body'. The Besh drew its origin [i.e. its conception] from the Word.193 Christ's human nature, though it was human nature, was not human nature like ours because it was united with the divine word. 194

'''De Sy., 48 (5.6). 18949

190De

(5. 6).

Trin. X.g-I2.

191X.I3. 14., 192 1 S·

193 1 6. We must remember that the ancients held the mistaken theory that in human conception all the positive initiative came from the male while the female only acted as a passive receptacle of the semen. 194 23.

'So the man Christ Jesus the only-begotten God, by Besh and the Word both Son of Man and Son of God, assumed the true man according to the likeness of our manhood without departing from

being God. And in him though the blow struck or the wound fell upon him or the knots tightened or the ropes raised him, they brought to him the force (impetus) of suffering, but not the pain of sutfering 195 . .. but suffering inflicted in these instances does not preserve its character. seeing that it is not natural that water should be pierced nor flIe struck nor air wounded even though it is of the nature of the weapon to wound or strike or pierce', So with Christ's passion; suffering operate:d as far as suffering could,196 but 'the power of the body accepted the ~orce of the violence which was savaging it without the feeling of the violence' (Christ's body, if it could perform the miracles which it did perform, could not have experienced pain as we experience it). 'That flesh; that is that bread, is from heaven, and that

man is from God; he had a body liable to suffer and he did suffer, but he did not have a nature capable offeeling pain' (naturam non habens ad dolendum)'97 Itis inconceivable that Christ could really have thirsted, hungered or mourned. He only underwent these apparently human experiences to demonstrate that he was genuinely human, he did not need to endure them: 'or when he took drink or food he was not

giving way to the demand of the body, but to convention'.'" 'He had a body, but one appropriate to its origin.'199

Consequently Christ could not have been afraid;20. he could not have been 'sorrowful unto death' ?Ol He could not have seriously asked that the cup should pass from him. 202 The utterance 'My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?' could not have meant any consciousness of the absence of God's presence. 203 The cross represented no weakness and no disgrace?o. In short 'although suffering was inflicted on the body, yet it did not introduce the 195 At this point Hilary gives some examples of things in nature not susceptible to beating or wounding, air, water, fire. 196 197

23 23

. .

198 24 . 199

25 .

200 2 6, 28. . 201

29 30 . 203 I. 3

202

204 22- 23 .

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The Rival Answers Emerge

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quality of pain into the body'. Because his body was conceived of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit it did not have the weakness imported into our bodies by sin and therefore the necessity of experiencing pain. 20 ' 'Sorrowful unto death' meant sorrowful in such a way that death

favourably with Athanasius in that he recognized a human soul in Jesus, but admits that he taught that the Word so transfigured the human body that it felt no pain. 2' 3 Doignon's treatment of the subject is uncharacteristically undistinguished and uncritical. 214 None of these scholars is at ease when dealing with Hilary's account of Christ's Passion. None of them will admit that he was nakedly Docetic. And yet Docetic he certainly was, albeit in a sophisticated way. R. D. Williams is much more open and more convincing. If the Logos, he argues, becomes the animating principle in Jesus Christ, then the suffering of the incarnate Lord belongs to the flesh alone. This was what Athanasius unreflectingly believed. Hilary enlarged upon the implications of this assumption, with disastrous results: 'Jesus becomes incapable of mental suffering of any kind, indeed incapable of anything we normally regard as "experience"'. In later theology 'Once it has become customary to attribute suffering only to the flesh, the addition of a human voG, to the person ofJesus makes very little difference; vaG, assuch is in an y case generally agreed to be impassible.'2" Hilary believed that Jesus Christ had a human soul, and he held that the human soul normally does experience suffering. He did not follow the line of either Athanasius or of Eusebius of Emesa. His insight had provided him with the materials for a much more satisfactory Christology than either of these authors produced. But his undeniable ability was in this case completely lost, and he presents us with a more unrealistic, more implausible, and - it must be said - more unorthodox Christ than either of the other two. This was partly because he went into greater detail in his Christology, partly because in spite of his disavowal of philosophical influences his mind was deeply dyed with the axiom that God is impassible (and that Jesus Christ was fully God), but partly too because he made the disastrous mistake of allowing the story of the Virgin Birth, which plays so insignificant a part in the New Testament, to control the whole of his Christology. In effect he concluded that at the very point where Christ's solidarity with humankind is most crucial, in his suffering, Christ was not really human. Not only does this bring our redemption under question and do away explicitly with that central conviction of St. Paul, the scandal of the cross, but it leaves us

would terminate the sorrow. 206 Jesus was omniscient because he was

God. 20 ? He was sad not for himself but for his apostles. The bloody sweat was no sign of weakness. He did not need any comfort. 208 And so Hilary continues to the end of the tenth book, concluding by a reversion to the cry of dereliction on the cross when with tortuous logic clothed in rhetoric he takes this as a sign given to others that Jesus was human and going to die but not an indication of weakness in Christ himself. 20 • This startling doctrine of Hilary has, not surprisingly, caused . several students of Hilary something of a shock. Smulders, who devoted surprisingly little space to the subject, can only say (La doctrine Trinitaire 203-6). that Hilary fell into Apollinarianism, not Docetism. I do not think that it is fair to accuse Hilary of A pollinarianism, for he certainly recognised a human soul in Jesus Christ. It is in his failure to acknowledge the reality of Christ's flesh that he erred. Borchardt, after reviewing the history of scholarship on the subject, attempts to deal with it himself in a rather heavyhanded way, concluding that Hilary taught that Christ did indeed suffer pain, but only in his own way because his soul was ignorant of sin, and pointing out that Hilary admitted that Christ died (an admission which he could hardly have avoided!).2'0 Thomas does his best for Hilary, but not in an impressive way: he observes that Hilary certainly believed that Jesus Christ had a human soul; he admits quaveringly that there were 'docetic elements' in Hilary's doctrine, but believes that on a final assessment he cannot be charged with Docetism. 211 Boularand speaks nervously of a Christology 'whose originality and daring sometimes surprise the reader', but believes that Coustant in the XVIlth century and Galtier in the XIXth have vindicated Hilary's orthodoxy.212 Grillmeier compares Hilary 205

35.

206J6.

2°'37· 208

39.

209

7 1.

210Borchardc, Hilary's ROle 117-130. 211Thomas Christ%gy 190, 19). 194· 212Boularand. L'Heresie 9D--92.

500

213Grillmeier CeT 396-7. 2"14Doignon Hilaire avant "Exil 274-9. 215R. D. Williams 'Origen on the Soul of Jesus' 50!

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uncertain as to whether such a figure can seriousl y act as our Mediator.

'They cannot be other than One whose characteristics (propria) are of

s. Conclusion Hilary in expounding his theology did ,,:ot fail to give attention to the Holy Spirit, though, like almost all WrIters up to the second half ?f the fourth century he devoted little space to him. Several chapters m the Second book of the De Trinitate deal with the Holy Spirit and part of the eighth book. He insists that the Spirit is a gift. 'He is given, received, he is gained', he says, and 'so from now o~ sla~derous t~

should cease concerning whether he exists and IS gIv;n and IS possessed and is ofGod.'216 His chief proof texts. for the SpIrIt are the story of the Samaritan woman m John 4, endmg at verse 44 wIth 'God is Spirit', and 2Cor 3"7. He sees the Spirit's activity conventionally as inspiring prophets and legislators in the Old Testament, and as given to apostles and believers in the New so that they could recognize the truth. 217 A curious contlation ofJn 16:7, 12, 13,14 and 14:16-17 precedes the statem~,,:t that this e,:pl,ains 'the will of the giver and the purpose and condItIOn of the gIft, so that the Holy Spirit assisis our faith in the Incarnati?';l by his in~ercessi~n"18 Hilary further illustrates Iris ideas on the SPIrIt by quotmg a m~xture of Rom 8:14-15 and 1 Cor 12:3-II which supply us, he says, wIth the Spirit's 'cause and rationale and power'. We must 'drink' ~fthis gift of God by faith.>'> In the eighth book he defines the relatron of the Spiriteo the Father and to the Son, basing himself onJn 16:12fi': the Spirit receives from the Son and proceeds from the Father, but what he receives from the Son lie also receives from the Father.220 He next gives a long account of the inseparably close relationship of the Spirit to the Father and to the Son, so that the word 'Spirit' (Spiritus) can mean the Spirit of the Father or the Spirit of the Son or of the Paraclete. 221 He ends with a summary of his doctrine on the Holy Spirit: il6De Trin. 11.29.]0 fact, as Smulders observes (La doctrine Trinitaire27b), me IPropriety or peculiar characteristic of the Spirit is for Hilary munus or donum; ef.

De Trin. II. 1,33-34. 21711.31 ~ 32..

33 . 34 . 22°VIIl.2o, 218

219

22IVIII.2I-l9· 502

One (or from One): seeing that in the same Lord the Son and in the same God the Father one and the same Spirit distributes in the same Holy Spirit and perfects every thing.' 222

And in the De Synodis he makes the remarkable statement, concerning the Holy Spirit: 'It is the height of impiety for him to be described as ingenerate (innascibilem) who was sent by the Son for our comfort'.223

And a Iitde later he says that the Holy Spirit has substantiae suae officium et ordinem, which presumably means 'the function and rank belonging to his own Person' (substantia here meaning hypostasis),224 Moingt remarks that among the defects with which Hilary has been charged is that of having no conception of the personality of the Holy Spirit. 225 If this means ihat he tended to see the Spirit as an impersonal intluence rather than as God encountered in a personal mode, we may allow the charge. But ifit means that Hilary failed to see the Spirit as possessing distinct existence from that of the Father and the Son, we have seen enough to realize that this is not accurate, and Moingt acknowledges this later.226 He points to a statement in De Trinitate VIII. 19 where the Spirit is described as consistens (existing alongside) the Father. Hilary's argument here (19-21) is that though the Spirit proceeds or goes out from the Father he receives from the Father and the Son. And in chapters 22, 23 and 26 Hilary is concerned to show that the Spirit is both the nature of Father and Son (for both are spirit) and also what he calls res naturae, by which he apparently means a distinct manifestation of the divine nature. But in the same passage Moingt also points out that in thus expounding his doctrine of the Spirit Hilary makes it clear that the Spirit's role in the economy of salvation for him is the Spirit's distinctiveness. He does not, as he does in the case of the Son, identify his role in the economy with his eternal existence within the Godhead. Hilary, however, says 222 39 .

22JDe Syn. 53 (519). Smulders (La doctrine' Trinitaire 265) remarks that Hilary never actually calls the Spirit God. 224 55 (5 1 9). 2251n a list of defects charged on HHary, Hilaire et son Temps 159"-62. 226Ibid 166--7. Smulders (Le doctrine Trinita;re 86-8) admits that Hilary tends to identify the Spirit with the divinity of Christ. This is the sign of a certain immaturity of thought.

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explicitly that the Spirit is neither created nor generate. (De Trin. XII.SS·) Ifwe try to speak of Hilary's doctrine of the Holy Trinity, then we must speak circumspectly, because he does not teach that the Holy Spirit is included in the internal relations of the Godhead. Smulders (La doctrine Trinitaire 267) notes that at De Synodis 32 (505) Hilary explicitly approves the statement in connection with the 'Dedication' Creed of 341 that the Spirit is united with the Father and the Son rather by 'moral harmony' (consonantia, crull
of the Father and the Son and says so explicitly in one of his most careful defmitions of relationship:

instance:

'co profess God from God and God in God, not by reason of corporeal relations hut divine powers, and not by flux of nature into nature but by the mystery and power of nature. For God is not from God as a result of amputation or extension or process (derivationem), but he subsists by virtue of birth from nature into the same nature'.228

No room is made for, no account taken of, the Holy Spirit here. Hilary certainly believed in the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son, but he would only have said 'in the Spirit' in the sense that spirit is what constitutes God anyway?29 He believed in the equality 227Moingt (Hilaire et son Temps 173) renders the expression 'L'incognoscibilite de Dieu est dans Ie Pere, qui est sans principe,l'intelligibilite de Dieu, dans Ie Fils, image du Pere, et la science de Dieu se trouve dans l'Esprit, qui est Ie don de Dieu' - a Targum rather than a translation. Thomas also refers to this passage admiringly, Chriitology 6,7. Smulder refers to it, La doctrine Trinitaire 110, 191. 228De Trinitate. V.37. Smulders acknowledges this shortcoming briefly (La doctrine Trinitaire 278). 229We can hardly agree then with Thomas (Chr;stology 59"'"62) when he says that Hilary taught the mutual indwelling of the Persons of the Trinity; the expression wi1l apply to the Father and the Son in Hilary's thought but cannot be said to be true in the case of the Spirit. Thomas uses the word circumincessio, which I cannot find in Hilary and which does not appear in Blaise or Souter and in Latham (Revised

50 4

'We are orthodox in proclaiming one substance, as long' as we understand one substance as a likeness of characteristic, so that the fact that they are One denotes not a singular, but equals. I say "equality", that is uniformity of likeness, so that likeness should be regarded as equality; but equality can be said to b~ One, because it is similar (par); but One in which similarity is meant, but not so that One should be upheld as singular. Therefore, one substance, as long as it does not destroy the actual (subsistentem) Person nor divide one substance separated into two, will be "declared orthodox; and this substance because of the characteristic of the generation and because of the likeness of the nat\lre is so uniform that it can be called One. '230

We cannot precisely call Hilary a Trinitarian theologian; he was, on the whole, less of a Trinitatian than Athanasius, rudimentary though Athanasius' Trinitarian theology was.23! But we cannot withold from him the credit of having made great steps towards a Trinitarian theology, of having striven valiantly to create a satisfactory vocabulary for formulating the Christian doctrine of God, and of having emancipated himself, in spite of scanty literary and philosophical resources, from some of the difficulties and confusions which had up to his day attended the great subject to which he devoted his career and his principal writings. His native genius overcame many limi~ations and made a permanent contribution to the theological thought of the Western Church. Finally we must note that Hilary is just as much aware as is Athanasius of the inadequacy of human language in treating of the Mediaeval ~ord-~ist (Oxford 1965)) is first instanced in the XIIIth century. Thomas compares ~dary s doctnne t~ the Greek concept of 1t£ptXroPTJ
505

The Rival Answers Emerge

deep things of God, and this not because of any particular philosophical predilection. We are, he allows, compelled to use human analogies in thinking and speaking about God, but

16

'every analogy must be thought more useful to man than suitable for God, because it indicates the state of our mind rather than satisfies

it. '232

There is some advantage to be had in using the analogy of human generation to understand divine generation, in spite of what Hilary seems to think the shameful materiality of human birth, because human generation is after all a communication of life from Iife?33 God is, after all, ready to accommodate himself to our understanding by using examples from human birth. 234 Certainly - for understanding the generation of the Son there is a point at which human analogy breaks down: we must exclude 'coition, conception, lapse of time, delivery~. 235- We do not even know how we ourselves were generated, how we achieved life, feeling and understanding. Far less do we understand the generation of the Son which is unknown to US?3. Hilary fully appreciates the uncertainty of thought to understand and of language to convey the idea of God: 'God is invisible, ineffable, infinite, and for speaking about him speech

falls silent, for exploring him intelligence is blunted, for grasping him understanding is chained' ,237 And, a little later: 'Ordinary language collapses and words do not set out the matter as it is ... Our confession when we name him therefore fails us and use

whatever form of words may be employed. They will not speak of God in his reality and his greatness. Perfect knowledge is so to know

God that you may know him to be, not unknowable, yet

indescribable.'238

Assuredly Hilary does not open himself to the accusation of overconfident dogmatism when he is writing about God. 232De Trin. 1.19. 233Ibid. VIl.28: tametsi elementa ilia inanima et turpia quibus nascendi causae

incohantur in hominem alterum dJluant. 234XI1.8: 'From the womb before the daystar I begot them', Hilary's version of Ps 110(109) : J. 235VI.9; cf. Thomas Christology 57; cf. De Trin. VI.9. VII.28. 236 11.9; in 10 he produces the old proof-text Isa. 53:8. 23711.6. 238 7.

506

The Western Pro-Nicenes II r. Eusebius of VercelIi and Lucifer of Calaris One major and four minor figures encounter us when we seek for further Western champions of the Nicene cause besides the figure of Hilary of Poi tiers. The major figure is Marius Victorinus, and he will be dealt with last. The minor figures are Eusebius ofVercelli, Lucifer of Calaris, Phoebadius of Agen and Gregory of Elvira. We can reconstruct the outlines of the career of Eusebius without difficulty. He was apparently born in Sardinia, but had moved to Vercelli, of which he waS chosen bishop, perhaps the first bishop of the see, about the same time as Hilary was elected to Poi tiers. He was summoned to the Council of Milan not only by his fellow-bishops but by the express command of the Emperor. At Milan his attempt to VInd,cate the doctrine of Nicaea was frustrated. He refused to sign whatever was demanded of him, and was exiled to Scythopolis in Palestme, placed in the custody of its bishop Patrophilus. He and a number of clergy who had accompanied him were harassed and subject to some deprivation while in custody. At the death of Constantius he was no longer in Palestine but was in the Thebaid along with Lucifer. He attended the Council of Alexandria of 362: and later followed Lucifer to Antioch, but was unable to undo the damage which his fellow-bishop had already wreaked there. 1 Eusebms presumably then returned to his see of V ercelli; we hear of no intr~der occupying it during his absence. In 364 he joined with HIlary In an unsuccessful attempt to have Auxentius of Milan d~posed. He is usually thought to have died about the year 370. The bIShop of Rome, Liberius, corresponded with Eusebius whom he regarded as his ally in supporting pro-Nicene doctrine during the years before his exile. But all that survives ofEusebius' literary work 1

See below, pp.643-4.

507

The Rival Answers Emerge is two letters, the first very short, merely expressing to Constantius his intention of immediately setting out for the Council of Milan, the second rather longer, describing from exile in Scythopolis, for the benefit of his friends and supporters in Vercelli, the indignities and deprivations which he is undergoing at the hands of Patrophilus. 2 It is impossible to reconstruct the details of Eusebius' doctrine of God. All that we can glean from the Second Letter, written from Scythopolis, is a kind of credal or Trinitarian formula, which runs thus: •Almighty God ... his only begotten Son born indescribably from him who while eternal God for the sake of our salvation assumed a

perfect man ... the Holy Spirit ... the Catholic Church'. 3 It is also abundantly clear from the Second Letter that Eusebius believes himself to be in exile for doctrinal reasons, because he has opposed the' Ariomaniacs\ in defence of the true faith. He gives not the faintest hint that his exile was decreed simply for refusal to condemn Athanasius nor for some form of treason. We have already had occasion to form no very high opinion of the subtlety of thought or elegance oflanguage of Lucifer ofCalaris' His talents lay in producing vituperation rather than constructive theology.5 Lucifer was probably converted as an adult from lBulhart printed the treatise De Trinitate in Cor. Chr. Ser. Lat. IX as from the hand ofEusebius ofVercelli, but I follow the great majority of recent scholars in finding it impossible to allow that Eusebius wrote this work. and even less possible to place it, as Bulhart does, between the years 345 and 347. Not only is its theological vocabulary much more developed than any which we could ascribe to Eusehius. reminiscent indeed of the Church after 38 I. but even the short example ofEusehius' Latin style which his letters afford us is enough to show that the style of the author of De Trin, is quite different from his. The third letter ascribed to Eusebius, and printed by Bulhart along with the other two, is now almost universally allowed to be a later Luciferan forgery. Had Eusebius held the views expressed in it he could hardly have brought himself to co-operate with Hilary in attacking Auxentius. 'Ep. 11, V.l(106). 4See above, pp. 32.0, 322-3. Almost everybody who writes about Lucifer finds him an intolerable bore and bigot except G. F. Diercks, who in the Introduction to his admirable edition of Lucifer's works in Cor. Chr. Ser. Lat. VIII mildly deprecates such judgments. For Lucifer, see also Simonetti Crisi 443-5; Klein Konstantius II 121-5; on his theology Diercks op. cit. CXIV-CXVIll. 51 cannot help. in concluding this particular subject, giving one more example in which Lucifer almost reaches eloquence in his vilification; calling Constancius: 'a son of pestilence, a fountain of darkness, a whirlpool of every evil, the leader of every sort of iniquity, a path of all blasphemies. an instigator of heresies, a root of

508

The Western Pro-Nicenes II paganism to Christianity. 6 He was at some point, we cannot know exactly when, made bishop of Calaris in Sardinia. He was a trusted friend and confidant of Pope Liberius, accompanied Eusebius of Vercelli to Constantius' court at Arles to convey Liberius' request to the Emperor to call a general council, and was his representative at the Council of Milan, and received confidential letters from Liberius. 7 It is not at all impossible then, that Lucifer was originally on the staff of the church of Rome in some capacity and was at Liberius' prompting made bishop ofCalaris. He did not have enough education to fill a more important see, but could be trusted to be faithful to the Pope's orders. We have seen that at Milan he was one of the few who refused to sign whatever was required of the participants of the Council of Milan and was in consequence exiled. He spent his exile, from 355 to 361, in three different places, in Germanicia in the province of Cilicia II and the district of Commagene, about 75 miles NE of Antioch, under Eudoxius who was then its bishop from 355-358; in Eleutheropolis in Palestine (when Eudoxius was translated to Antioch), under its bishop Eutychius from 358 to 361; and, when he proved too obstreperous for Eutychius to control, in the more remote Thebaid in Egypt, from 361 to 362. In 361 on Constantius' death he remained for some time in Egypt, and was able to attend Athanasius' council held in Alexandria in 362. He left this council before its conclusion, went on to Antioch, and there anticipated the plans of everybody else by consecrating Paulinus, the lay leader of the continuing Eustathians, bishop . • He then returned to Italy. If we could take au pied de la lettre the statements made about Lucifer in the Collectio Avellana we could reconstruct some of his movemenrs at this point, but it is difficult to reconcile them with known historical facts. All we can say is that he may have had a hostile encounter with Zosimus bishop of Naples. 9 To the authors of this bitterness, a tree destined for the fire and bearing deadly fruits, an enemy of God. a foe of the Chur~h, ~ falsifier of truth, a supporter of wickedness, a lover of injustice, an opponent ofJusttce, wholly steeped in darkness, and darkness from which there is no escape, who has become more truly than the truth a temple of every daemon'.

(De Atll,",s;, l.XIX (35)). 6S0 he suggests De Non Conv. XIV (190). 'See above. PP.332-4. Hilary Coll. Ant. A.V11. 89-93. 8S ee below, pp.643-4. 9The story ran that Zosimus had succeeded at Naples Maximus who had been exiled for his beliefs, and who continued to denounce Zosimus from exile but that when Lucifer returned 'from his fourth exile' and arrived in Naples he r~fused to communicate with Zosimus-with, of COurse, dire results for the latter. But Lucifer

The Western Pro-Nicenes II

The Rival Answers Emerge material Lucifer is of course a hero and confessor for the faith, as he is to Athanasius toO.IO Whether Lucifer fmally founded a separate sect ofLuciferans who protested against the leniency show'.' to those who had temporarily yielded to Arianism, or whether trus was formed after his death is hard to determine. Jerome in his book attacking the Luciferans, written in 392, clearly does not know the answer to trus question; he speaks of Lucifer gently and sp~ringly, and declares t~at he cannot believe that he left the Cathohc Church, and that he differed from us in words, not in facts'. 11 In favour of Jerome's judgment is the fact that Hilary, in the few fragments of his Defence against his Critics (Apologetica ad Reprehensores), among whom certainly Lucifer was prominent, calls him 'brother' .12 He probably returned to his see of Calaris but continued to make a nuisance of himself until his death, which must have taken place within about ten years of his return from exile. Of Lucifer's literary work there survives one genuine letter, 13 briefly exhorting Eusebius ofVercelli to attend the Council of Milan, and five vehement pamphlets written in exile, all attacking Constantius. They are named Why it is wrong to associate with Heretics (De Non Conveniendo cum Haereticis), probably to be assigned to the year 355 or 356; Apostate Kings (De Regibus Apostaticis), probably written in 356 or 357; Athanasius or Nobody should Try or Condemn a Man in his Absence (De Athanasio, vel Quia absentem nemo debet iudicare nee damnare), written in 358; We Must Not Spare Sinners against God (De non Parcendo Delinquentibus in Deum) to be assigned to 359; and Be Prepared to Die for God the Son (Moriundum esse pro Deo Filio), composed in 361. The titles of these works betray their lurid contents. The work defending Athanasius is little more than a string of passages from the Bible applied to the cases of Athanasius and Constantius without pattern or form except that the texts are taken in their

biblical order. Similarly there is little form in his earliest work, which associates or identifies Constantius and the Arians with all the enemies oflsrael in the Old and of Christians in the New Testament, again keeping to the biblical order. It is remarkable that in his De Non Parcendo he omits to use any texts from the Revelation of St. John; though there is plenty of material for vindictive vilification lying to hand in that book. To the very end his chief objective is the Emperor Constantius and only secondly Arians in general, though he does not spare these. In the course of these invectives Lucifer betrays little knowledge of history beyond that ofrus own day. He assumes that Athanasius was the moving spirit at the Council ofNicaea, 14 and he confuses at least two different early exiIes of Athanasius. 15 But on recent history he is well-informed and accurate. He knows that Constantius did not demand condemnation of,Athanasius from all Western bishops, but only that they should communicate with the party which the Emperor was favouring and that Dionysius of Milan was ready to condemn Athanasius but would not sign a formula which he regarded as unorthodox. 10 He knows that Constantius once wrote a letter to the Church of Alexandria commending Athanasius to them. 17 He has heard of Constantius' inconsistency in at one point attacking Eudoxius publicly when he was bishop of Antioch and exiling him, and not long after recalling him and approving of his doctrine, I 8 and his wavering between radical Arianism and the creed of Basil of Ancyra. 19 He is well informed about the intrusion of George into the see of Alexandria, and about the misbehaviour of the imperial forces there and in Egypt generally}O He numbers among the desertets of the cause of orthodoxy not only Valens and Ursacius but Saturninus (of Aries) and, twice, Epictetus (of Centumcellae, modem Civitavecchia),21 but not Potamius of Lisbon nor Ossius nor

never endured more than one exile (is there a desire to match Lucifer in the matter of exiles with Athanasius?) and when he did return there is no reason to think that Maximus would not also have returned too and replaced Zosimus. See Epp. Impp. Ponti. Aliorum (Call. Avell.) (.) 6.-64 ('3-'4); later a ten-year exile is wrongly

14De Athanasio I.xxvii (46). "Ibid. l.xxix (49) .. 16Ibid. ILvii (90); viii (90, 91); it is at Moriundum II (268) that he refers to Constantius' edict demanding doctrinal unifor.mity, but other references could be adduced. 17Ibid. I.xxix (49); I1.xviii (r08). See above P.308. "Ibid. l.xxx (50). 19Moriundum XI (288). 'ODe Arh.l.ix (16,17); xxix (49); Il.xxii (I14. lIS); Mo,iundum II (.67); Vll1 (.81, .8.). "De Non Conv. VII (175); Moriundum VII (.81); cf. De Alh. I1.iii (80).

attributed to Lucifer, as well as four separate exiles (ibid. (2)85(32) and 89(32»·

'OApol. de Fuga 3.3-6(70). IlDialogus contra LucYeranos 20(183). 12iii (PL 10:546). Diercks reconstructs much of Lucifer's career op. cit. VII-XVIII and XXVII-XXXIV. 131n Dierck's numbering No. VII, p. 319. The other letters ascribed to Lucifer are generally recognized as forgeries by ardent Luciferans.

SID

5II ;, ':';

,i'

n..

The Western Pro-Nicenes II

The Rival Answers Emerge

Liberius. He once mentions Hilary as reckoned to be an enemy of Constantius (and therefore a friend of Lucifer).22 In the course of conducting his campaign of vituperation against Constantius, Lucifer says surprisingly litde about the doctrine which he is defending and which, in his view, Constantius is trying to suppress. Abuse suits his style better than theological statements. But occasionally of course he mentions the doctrine which is dear to him. In the De Non Conveniendo he ventures a fairly long statement: 23

In another passage of the same work Lucifer includes the Holy Spirit in the Godhead: 2•

We affirm, he says, in contrast to Constantius' Arian doctrine, a common deity between Father and Son. 'We have often said that, seeing that there are tWO Persons (personae), Father and Son ... he (God) desires us to follow no other doctrine than that there is one eternity of Father and Son, one glory, one power and one majesty

Lucifer more than once produces a Trinitarian formula.27 He speaks of'the perfect Trinity and the single (unicum) Godhead of Father , Son and Holy Spirit', 28 of ' a belief ... which confesses both that there is a perfect divine Trinity and that it has a single substance' (substantia).2. and of 'one majesty and one power in the Father and in his only (unico) Son and in the Holy Paraclete Spirit'.'o Lucifer, unlike Hilary, is well acquainted with a Latin version ofN and quotes or refers to it, or to a loose form of it, several times. Whenever he wishes to make a formal statement of his faith he produces it.'1 At one point (De Non Pare. XVIII (229» he inserts 'maker of things visible and invisible' in the article dealing with the Father. He always renders homoousion as unius substantiae cum patre, quod Graeci dicunt 61100U
(magnitudo) ... (quotation ofJn 10:30) seeing that the verb is plural and manifests two Persons and one power of these two Persons, that is of

the Father and the Son'. In the De Athanasio 2' a statement about the Incarnation appears: 'Antichrist, in whom Adus believed, in reality "was when he was not",2S and on the contrary our Saviour, Lord and God the only Son of God is not, as you prefer, Constantius, a creature, but is the Lord of creation; he is eternal, beyond reckoning (inaestimabiUs). just as he is whose Son he is. Now, he put on a perfect man in the last days from the womb of the Virgin, but even though he had taken on the maD, he remains immutable, beyond decay, indescribable and incapable of alteration (inconvertibilis), just as he has been and he whose Son he is (has been); for he could not as a result of assuming the man change into anything other than what he had always been, seeing that he is in the form of God his Father, seeing that he is the Son equal to the Father'.

The problems raised by this belief Lucifer does not attempt to face, as Hilary tried to face them; incidentally, Arians never claimed that the Incarnation changed the Son, only that it demonstrated that the Son was not wholly like the Father. "De Reg. Apost. V (145)· 23De Non Conv. XIV (188. 189). 24I.xxxiii (57).

25Fwit qwando non]uit, a very condensed way of saying 'there was a time when he did not exist', and one which occurs quite often in Lucifer in one form or another; it is a literal translation of ftv ot£ nOt£ O~1C 1\v. cf. ibid. Lxxxiv (57)~ XI (69)~ lLii (77)~ Lxx (I I I); De Non Conv. IX (178); XII (184); De Non Pare. XXIV (242); De Reg. Apost. VII (150).

512

' ... iflike the blessed Paul you believe that Jesus Christ is the true Son of God, if you will have declared that he has always reigned with the Father and will always reign. that is without beginning and without end, if you do not resist the ringing statements of the Holy Scriptures

to the effect that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit enjoy a single eternity'.

26I1.xxxiv (132). 27 And he has no hesitation in using persona in such a context, e.g. Moriundum III (27 1). 28De Non Conv. IX (179). 29De Non Parcendo XVIII (229). JOlbid. XXV (246); cf. Moriundum XIV (298) patrern etfilium et Spiritwm Sanctum

perjectam esse trinitatem et wnam habere deitatem. 31 De Alh. I.x. I (68.69) a paraphrase; Il.xi (95); De Non Pare. XVIII (229), with its anathemas. 32Cf. De Non Parco XXIV (242) 6jJooualOv t natpi, which the Greeks say, but we Romans say 'of one substance (unius substantiae) with the Father'.

513

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Western Pro-Nicenes II

examine them nor analyse them. But his bare and stereotyped doctrinal statements are enough to assure us that he owes nothing to the teaching of Hilary. His acquaintance with N as the doctrine par excellence to defend, his use of unicus, which Hilary eschews in Trinitarian contexts, preferring unigenitus for the Son, his facility in the employment of persona, all point away from the direction of Hilary. He never uses natura of God. He knows the word 'substance' (substantia) and can use it in distinction from persona, but he prefers to use in order to denote what the Persons of the Trinity have in common some such word as 'eternity' or 'Godhead' (dealitas or deitas). Though Lucifer sometimes quotes homoousion in the original Greek, he is innocent of any knowledge of Greek theology. The distinction between or identification ofousia and hypostasis does not come within his cognisance. The inheritance from Te.rtullian is obvious, but what influences can we detect in his thought more recent than Tertullian? He can hardly have learnt his theology (such as it is) in Sardinia. It is wholly likely that what we see in Lucifer is a stereotyped, even vulgarized, version of the theology of Liberius. Perhaps disgust at the thought that Constantius has seduced his master into heresy has contributed to render his abuse of the Emperor all the bitterer. In one place Lucifer refers to a variety of heresies." SabeIlius

which he sometimes adds other propositions, 'that there is not one power (potentia) of Father and Son'.'6 He constantly repeats the accusation that the Arians teach that the Son is not a real (verus) Son and that he was made out ofnothing, or is notthe only (unicus) Son of God,37 or that the Son was only 'adopted'. 38 On several occasions he accuses Constantius of idolatry.'" He does not usually say why this charge can be justified, but of course the reason is that the Emperor's Arian leanings lead him, in Lucifer's view, to worship a creature, the Son. He also charges the Arians with teaching that the Holy Spirit was made out of nothing, 40 and that he is not the real Spirit ofGod. 4' They deny the homoousion,42 and Constantius wishes to abolish N. 43 At one point Lucifer makes a fatuous comparison of Constantius (as a theologian) to Photinus:

'was he who dared to defend the view that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one Person, because he dared to say that Father and Son and Holy Spirit are the same; he waS cast Qut because he did not hesitate to say that the Father himself was incarnate in the womb of the Virgin and

had suffered ... Mardan denied the Incarnation. Paul of Sam osat a, the master ofPhotinus. was excommunicated because he said that the Son

of God was "only a man'" (hominem tantum, not hominem purum).

But of course the deviation which Lucifer attacks constantly and savagely is Arianism. Ifwe ask how much he knew of Arianism, we must answer that he derived his knowledge of Arianism, as he probably did his knowledge of any other part or version of theology, from text-books and not from original texts. He sometimes sums up Arianism in a series of catch-phrases repeated in almost· the same terms, 'that God had no true Son, that he was when he was not (or 'there was when he was not'),34 that he was made from nothing',35 to

"De Non Conv. IX (178) "See above, p. 512 n 25

"DeAth.l.x.1(69).

5 14

Next, I ask you to answer, What difference is there between you and your companion in darkness whom the people of Sirmium called, reversing the true order, PhotinuS?44 ... Photinus professes that the

Son of God was only a man (hominem tantum), he says that before the Virgin Mary he did not exist. Your profession also is this; that he is the

Son of God before everything indeed, that is, before the heavens, the earth, the sea and everything that is in them, but that he exists from non-existence, but that he is a creature. What difference do you think is there between you and Paul of Samosata or that companion in darkness (conscotinum) your disciple [i.e. Photinus], except that you say "before everything", but he "after everything"?'45

This is a theology of slogans or catchphrases, bandied about for propaganda purposes. Lucifer's intellectual level never rises higher than this. l6De Non ConI!. XII (185); another rather similar list De Ath .. Il.xx (I 1 I); De Non Parco XXIV (2.42). 37E.g. De Ath.Lxvi (29); Il.ix (93); xxiii (ll 5); De Reg. Apost. VII (ISO); IX (155); De Non Parco XXIV (242). l8De Non Parco XXV (242). "E.g. De Ath. Lvui (.6); ILxxiii (lIS); De Non Parco XIII (220). "De Reg. Apost. VII (ISO). " 41 De Non ConI!. IV (172). 42De Non Parco XXIV (242). 4JDe Ath. Lxx (36). 44Lucifer is making a very feeble and indeed, when we consider how often the silly pun is made in Patristic literature, we may .say threadbare play on words: Photinus in Greek means 'Light giver'; Lucifer calls him Scotinus 'Darkness-giver'. The pun isa Greek one. Lucifer must have known some Greek, though assuredly he never read a Greek theological book. Similarly he always calls Eudoxius Adoxius. 45De Non Parco XVIII (228, '229).

SIS

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Western Pro-Nicenes II

A sect ofLuciferans, who were strong enough to move Jerome to write a book against them as late as 392, was formed perhaps during Lucifer's lifetime and ifnot then shortly after his death. 4• Their chief points of difference seem to have been a refusal to agree to the lenient policy of Hilary and others after 360 in re-admitting to communion bishops who had lapsed into countenancing heresy, and, at least at a later date when they were led by somebody called Faustinus, a refusal to admit three hypostases (Latin substantiae) in God. 47

358.49 He knows no Greek. He has read no work of Hilary, with the possible exception of the first part of his original historical work. He writes an elegant and correct Latin. He knows the arguments of the Arians (presumably the Latin-speaking ones) pretty well. He has read some of the lost works of Potamius of Lisbon. 50 He is deeply influenced by Tertullian's Adversus Praxean; in fact he attempts, not without success, to use Tertullian's book against a Monarchian account of the Christian doctrine of God to repudiate a quite different account, that of the Arians. He knows, admires and defends N, calling it 'the perfect rule of Catholic faith'.51 He knows the Arians' arguments in favour of their theology much better than Lucifer does, that the Son is shown to be inferior to the Father by his accepting a reward, by his reference to the Father as the sole true God, by his disa.vowal of goodness, by the limitation of his knowledge On 20:17; Phil2:9;Jn 11'3; Luke 18:9; Matt 24:36). He meets them all by saying that all these apparent derogations from deity apply to the man assumed by the Son, not to the Godhead. And he describes the incarnate Word in precisely the language used by Tertullian in his Adversus Praxean - 'a double condition', which the Arians wish to envisage as 'mixed not associated' (Tertullian had said 'associated, not mixed'). 52 He knows· that the Arians say that God (the lesser God) suffered, and he quotes a contemporary Arian (perhaps Potamius of Lisbon) as writing 'the Son of God himself assumed a man from Mary and by means of that man he suffered with him'. Phoebadius does not like this doctrine: 'Look!,' he says 'if God is immune from passion he is obviously immune from compassion'.53 And in the same passage he reverts to Tertullian's use of 'substance' (substantia) to denote the two elements in Christ: human and divine. But he is capable also of using substantia in a different (but also Tertullianic) sense, apparently to translate ousia, which he is defending because it occurs in N. He defines 'substance' as:

2.

Phoebadius of Agen and Gregory of Elvira

Phoebadius was the first-known, and perhaps in fact the first, bishop of Agen (Aginnum or Civitas Aginnensium, about 75 miles SE of Bordeaux) in the province of Aquitania II. He must have been consecrated to the see some time in or before (but more likely before) 357. He attended the Council of Ariminum, took a prominent part there in defending N and inducing Valens to make apparent doctrinal concessions, but finally signed the document which Constantius required the assembled bishops to sign. We can readily conjecture that on Julian declaring himself independent of Constant ius, or even before, in 360, he joined those who were repudiating the work of Ariminum and demanding a return to N. He was present at the Councils of Valentia in 375 and of Saragossa in 380. He lived. to extreme old age. When Jerome was compiling his De Viris Illustribus, about 392, he said that Phoebadius 'was still alive though fallen into senility'.48 A single work of his survives, Liber contra Arianos, written as a reaction to the Second Sirmian Creed, and therefore in 357 or 46S ee above p. .5 10. 47See the Collectio Avellana pp. 1-46; the Faustin; presbyter; confessio (which is also called the Fides Luciferi) Diercks, ,Corp. Chr. Ser. Lat. VIII, Introd. xxxi-xxxvii and Appendix; Jerome Dialogus contra Luciferanos; Moreira Potamius 86-94; Simonetti Crisi 443-5. The sect existed in the East as well as in the West. In 383 or_384 they

appealed to Theodosius to stop their being harassed by local Italian ecclesiastics and he ordered that this was to stop. According to Simonetti, Gregory of Elvira was their leader in the West, and in the East an anonymous bishop of Oxyrhyncus. According to Jerome (Dial. contra Lucif. 22 (185) and 26(189)) a certain deacon Hilarius (who just may have been the deacon Hilarius who was flogged by Constantius' order at Milan in 355) started a sub-sect even of these. 48,;ivit usque hodie decrepita senectute, De Vir. Ill. CVlII. But this only means that Jerome had not actually heard ofPhoebadius' death. See for Phoebadius Simonetti Crisi 284, Kelly Early Christian Creeds 287; Moreira Potamius 114-15, 223·

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49Brennecke, somewhat imaginatively, conjectures that the work represents the encyclical of an otherwise unknown Gallic council which condemned Saturninus in 357 or 358 (see. Hilarius von P. 325-34) cf. Smulders La doctrine Trinitaire 37. 50See above. p. 117 and n 91. 51Liber contra Arianos 6 (PL 20:17). 52Duplicem statum, Contra Arianos 4(15, 16).5(16). and conJusum non coniunctum

(5(16)).

.

53Ibid. 19(27); the last quotation runs: Porro autem si impassibilis Deus, utique et incompassibilis.

The Rival Answers Emerge 'that which eternally originates in itself: that is, what subsists

The Western Pro-Nicenes II

by its

own intrinsic (intra se) power; and this force applies to the sole and true

God'.54 He also alleges that virtus (power, Gk. dynamis) is a synonym for substantia and that this word is applied to Christ at Col 1:29 and I Cor 1:24.55 The Arians, he says, cite Isa 53:8 to show that Christ's origin is later than the Father, but they are wrong because 'Who can describe his generation?' means that nobody can describe a beginning which never took place. 56 And shortly afterwards he directly avows belief in the eternal generation of the Son. 57 And here he has moved beyond the doctrine ofTertullian. But his identification of substantia and ousia becomes less convincing when he describes in further detail what he means by the Son being the 'true image and express figure of his substance' (Heb 1:3): 'that is the Word of God, ~ot the sound of a voice but the substantial

reality (res) and because substance, corporeal' (corpulentiva). And . Phoebadius goes on to speak of the Spirit as the. body (corpus) of the Word in language reminiscent ofTertullian. He is a 'body of its own type' (corpus sui generis). invisible and incomprehensible spirit, but still corpus. And he applies Prov 8:27 and 30 to the Holy Spirit, notto the Word, which is unusual. The Spirit is Wisdom. 58

This is precisely the use of the concept of substance which Arius and Eusebius of Caesarea were anxious to avoid and which Athanasius was anxious to disavow in his use of the word ousia. Phoebadius, as we might expect, is appalled by the drastic subordinationism of the Second Sirmian Creed: 'If this is the case, then we are committing blasphemy every day when we render. thanks and offer sacrifices',59

The fault of Sabellius, he says, was to teach that the Father and Son are .547 (17). He goes on (18) to give a list of passages in the Bible which he alleges to contain the word substan'ia - Ps 69(68):): 139(138):15; 39(38):8, 6(LXX); 109(I08):II(LXX); Wisd 16:':Jer .): •• (LXX): Prov 10:15: IJ:22; Tobit ~:9, 7; IJri 3:17; Luke 19:8; 11:1 (bUI nowhere the obvious places Heb 1:3; lI:li Phoebadius certainly had Hebrews in his canon). "8(18). 569 (19). 57 11 (21), one should perhaps say his eternal birth. Phoebadius is not directly borrowing from Origen. 58 20(28); at IS (24) he refers Prov 8:22 to the Son but not the incarnate Son. 59 12 (21).

518

one Person, of Arius to say that they are two substances. The Catholic faith teaches two Persons and one substance. 6o And later he declares that if we say one God we are liable to fall into Patripassianism, but if we admit number into the Godhead we are in danger of Arianism. So we must follow the Rule of Faith and believe that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father Un 14:20). This Rule 'preserves one substance in two Persons and recognizes the structure

(dispositionem) of the Godhead'. And we must add that the Spirit is from God: 'he who was a second Person in the Son has also a third in

the Holy Spirit Un 14:16). So the Spirit is distinct (alius) from the Son just as the Son is from the Father. So there is a third Person in the Spiri; as there is a second in the Son: but all are one God, for the Three are

One' (unum).61 Phoebadius is an intelligent theologian whose thought has been almost wholly formed by Tertullian and perhaps Novatian, but who is struggling, equipped with inadequate resources, to face the problems and decisions in the theological field thrown up by the contemporary doctrinal crisis. It is difficult to determine what other influences apart from these two have reached him. There is no serious sign of Hilary's theology in his. It is possible that some of the features of the thought of Marcellus of Ancyra, whom Phoebadius did not mention in his one surviving work, have played a part here; he and Athanasius, after all, had spent some time in the West about twenty yea:s before Phoebadius wrote. It is possible that their ideas, though theIr works can hardly have been translated into Latin, had percolated into the thinking of intellectuals of the Western church. Gregory of Elvira (Illiberis in the province of Baetica in S. W. Spain) wrote a work called De Fide Orthodoxa as his contribution to the doctrinal crisis. We know almost nothing about his life, except that he was after Lucifer's death regarded as the leader of the uncompromising party who refused to accept a policy of leniency towards those who had temporarily veered towards Arianism. Jerome says that he wrote several other works in indifferent Latin as well as this De Fide in good Latin, and that he survived to extreme old age and was still alive when he wrote (i.e. about 392).62 His De Fide

6° 13 ('3). 6122(29, 30), quotation 30.

62!J~ Viris lllustribus CV. Some short treatis~s on various parts of the Scriptures, consIsting almost wholly of aHegorising which s.trikes the modem reader as

519

The Rival Answers Emerge Orthodoxa was first written about 360, but, on the author's own admission, revised four or five years later, and both versions survive.63 His main. reason for making this second edition appears to

have been a desire to escape the reproach of Sabellianism. 64 Gregory has a good appreciation of the particular doctrines of Arianism which he dislikes. Rigorist as he is, he rejects the Homoiousian argument as Arian but he has a proper notion of what it is.6s He says that the Arians accused the pro-Nicenes .of worshipping homoousion rather than the Son. 66 He meets the Anan objection that homoousion was not Scnptural by an. unusual argument: he asks whether the ten,;, is wrong because It IS not mentioned in the Bible or because It IS not to be beheved, quotIng Rom 10:10 to distinguish between what is believed and what is said.67 Next he launches into a fuller account of Arian doctrine: 'The statement of the Arian fault (is) that it denied that the Father and the Son are of one substance (substantiae [essentiae]) for this reason, that it presents the Son of God as made, sometimes from nothing, sometimes from the Father. but out of a different substance, when he chose and as he chose, invariably pretending that he has come into existence from some other source and not from that which the . Father is. And although it says "born". yet it does so only to this exteIit that in turn it understands everything which is born to be made, just as we are said to be born of God, and it is agreed that we are creatures. '68

He exposes the old trick of '(a creature but) not as one of the creatures'.69 And he cites two Arian objections to the use of 'substance'in describing God, one of which is quite new: it implies a corporeal conception of God, and every substance must have a contrary, yet God cannot have a contrary.70 It is obvious that Gregory is not simply, like Lucifer, bringing out old and threadbare exegeticaUy worthless, have been identified wit~ some confidence as Gre~ory's. They contain very little useful to the theme of thiS book, but th~y a~e occasIOnally referred to. They are to be found in the Supplementum to Mlgne s P,L, Vol. I. 63The words of the later version (N), as edited by Bulbart, are given whe~ necessary in the text in square bracke~s: 64See Simonetti Stud; 82-3 and CrlSl 285-6· 656jlOlOUOlOY, id est similemjactori Su? {similitudinem g~nitorisl De Fide 22,(225). Likeness does not imply, Gregory replies, that the Son IS what the Father IS. 66De Fide 32 (228). 67Ibid. 33. l4 (228). 6')5 (228. 229). 6'37 (229). 70 45 ; 46 (23 1).

The Western Pro-Nicenes II versions of Arianism as an Aunt Sally to aim at, but knows what

contemporary Arians were saying. He may well have known Greek. Even when he reproduces the very old Arian argument that the Son is made out of nothing, an argument which had long been abandoned by most Arians, he attributes it to Arius himself, and not to the Arians of his day.7l His account of Arianism also makes it likely that there were in circulation at that time more than one Arian work written in

Latin apart from those which have survived. Perhaps the theological works of Val ens and Urscacius were among them.72 It is interesting to note also that Gregory takes the same unconventional interpretation of Pro v 8:22f as does Phoebadius, regarding Wisdom as the Holy Spirit, not the Son, and relegating createdness not to its nature but to the effect of its operation. 73 Gregory, like Phoebadius, has the distinction between Persons (personas) and substance (substantia) derived from Tertullian firmly in his mind. Because in his first version he had said 'one God' some people thought, Gregory tells us, that he was 'denying the Persons'. 74 And his second version corrects most references to 'substance'

(substantia) into 'essence' (essentia). So he can change 'from the Fathers' tradition of substance' to 'from the Fathers' tradition of one essence'.75 And in his second version he changed 'with the Father one substance' to 'with the Father of one substance'. 76 And he can employ a much-used formula to distinguish the Persons as well: 'But which of the Catholics does not know that the Father is really (vere) Father. the Son really Son, and the Holy Spitit is really Holy Spirit?'"

His version of N has 'of one substance (unius substantiae) with the Father, which the Greeks ca1l6"ooucnov', and omits the ambiguous anathema against those who deny that the Son is of the same ousia or hypostasis as the Father. 78 In order to rebut the argument of the 7123 (226) ut idem Arius tradidit [dixit]. 72See above, PP.301, 305-6 and below P.533. 73 27- 29 (227). Simonetti (Studi 82-83) sees here the vestiges of Tertullian's concept of the two-stage production of the Logos, still archaistically retained within a group which had largely embraced the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. 747 (222), 75 18 (224), ")6 (229). 77 10 (222, 223). 78 1 (221).

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Arians about the contrary to a substance, Gregory defines the word 'substance', as far as it applies to God: 'What is the substance of God? That very thing which God is.' God does not have a contrary.'· God cannot be 'something empty and vacant ... therefore God to know whom is eternal life exists in his substance'. He is indescribable and incalculable (inaestimabi/is).80 Gregory is here freeing himself effectively from becoming involved in the formal terms of philosophy. He goes on to elaborate this point:

which Gregory proceeds to enumerate and explain. 84 Later still Gregory asks:

'Therefore the very thing which is, that is [will be] the substance of the [this] thing whose existence is asserted.' We cannot describe nor comprehend what he is, all that we can say is that he is, and is of such a sort that 'from that which God is there is derived a Son so that he is a

real (verus) Son and the real Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father. This will be 6J.1.oo6o\o<; that is of one substance [this is of one essence] with the Father' (quotation of]n 14:10: 10:30; 14:9)."

You cannot compare God with any other object: 'in fact it is enough that God, to whom nothing can be likened, should be believed in as himselfbeing perceived [to exist], since he desires that he should be believed in, not judged [nor analyzed],.82 You cannot, for that matter, explain or describe 'what the expression applied to the Son, which the Arians accept, 'Light from Light' means. 83 Unlike Lucifer, who accepts doctrinal formulae as statements to be believed in without understanding them, Gregory knows not only what he believes but why he believes it. We may detect in this anti-Arian reasoning the recognition on Gregory's part that the pro-Nicenes are facing a new kind of rationalising Arianism (which will. be examined in a later chapter). In this he is more au fait with the situation as regards the development of argument about the Christian doctrine of God than was Hilary. Later, Gregory sets himself to give an account of the distinction between the Father and the Son. There is, he says, a certain principle (ratio) which the Greeks call Logos whereby the Persons (personae) of the Father and the Son are distinguished; and the Son himselfis called 'principle' (ratio), as also he is distinguished by a host of other titles,

'What is the Son (who is) from that which the Father is?' And he answers: 'He is distinct (alius), for this is

'The Son of God is this which

why he is called "Word" (verbum) because he proceeds

other (a/iuel), that is, he through

from the very divine mouth.'

the Father is, not something whom all things were made, for

this

is

also

called

word'

(verbum).85

Gregory has clearly altered his wording to avoid the charge both of regarding the Word as a mere utterance of syllables and of making an Arian division between the Father and the Son. But he is not less anxious in the original version of his book to avoid falling into ditheism: 'But in case anyone takes [seizes] a pretext from my asserting two

Names or two Persons (personas), that is of the Father and the Son, (to believe that) I am declaring two gods, in the same way as they (the Arians) pretend that there are two, we so mention Father and Son that in these Persons and Names we teach one God. '86

8°S I ('32).

81 52 (232, 233).

"57 ('33). 83 5 8, 59 (.3J, '34).

"

And two careful statements reinforce his position: 'When I declare Father and Son, I register (assigno) a unity of nature (generis), and in divide it (the unity) into Persons. yet the distinctions of Persons in tum by the principle of the association of nature allot those Names to the unity'. 87

Some of the vocabulary here is borrowed from Hilary, such as unitas (unity) not union (unio), and genus for nature. And again: 'Do not imagine that I am speaking with that arrogance by which Sabellius was carried away which confesses that the Father himself is the Son himself. We do not thus force all into a single substance [essence]. so as to be caught by the deceit of other heretics. But because 8463 ('3 6).

8769 ('39).

522

,

.

856 4 (23 6): the right-hand version here is not from the MS which contains the later edition (N), but from a work which Buthart calls 'Ps-Augustine' and which o~viously represents (at least ~n part) another recension or tradition of Gregory's De Fide Orthodoxa, and one whlch more resembles (N)'s version. 86 68 (23 8). The later versions omit the reference to Arians teaching two gods.

7.50 ('3')'

:i

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,, ,

The Rival Answers Emerge

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in this word "Persons~1 (personarum) the Wldifferentiated Sovereignty

but so as to supply immortality to the assumed humanity and the

is recognised, and the Son gains his name from the Father not by his nature (genere) bu~ by his Person (persona liter), it follows that ,!,C assign all that the Son is [has1to the Father and all that the Father IS [has1to the Son ... and since it is agreed that the Father and the Son are of one

eternity of the heavenly life. For although the Apostle says that he emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, we do not interpret

substance, so each one is called one GOd.'88

Gregory also tackles the subject of the Incarnation. The Arians think, he says, that for God to have a real Son would mean a degradation and change of circumstances for him. 89 God is almighty, invisible, eternal. Such a Being could not have become visible and changeable so as to appear, for instance, to the patriarchs under the old dispensation. Only somebody who was of a different substance from the supreme God could have thus involved himself in change and transience. And this is even more true when applied to the· Incarnation. 90 Gregory's first point in meeting this argument is that when the Son of God appeared to men he did not appear simply as God is but as men can accept him, and he revealed himself to different people differently as they were disposed to comprehend him: 'he may change his condition, he does not alter his substance, and he does not lose the characteristic of his nature (proprietatem qualitatis),

but he adjusts the quality (temperamentum) of his majesty according to the merit of him who is seeing him'.91

Before the Incarnation nobody could see the Son of God except in a disguised and provisional form: 'For who could behold the Son of God before he adopted material which could be observed in the manner which he chose [which was his choice] or condescended to put on humanity (hominem) itself?'92

Even in the Incarnation nobody saw God nakedly. 93 The whole Godhead did not appear then, but rather a mirror-image (imaginem veritatis, non ipsum Deum).9' Consequently, 'Even when he condescended to assume human nature (hominem) he did not introduce a fault into eternity so as to convert Spirit into flesh, 6672 (239, 240). "73 (240). 90 74 , 75 (240, 241). .91 76 (241). 9279 (242). 9'86 (243). 94 87 (243, 244)·

"emptied" so tha't he became anything other than what he was, the

same Spirit, but so that he should put on a human body having temporarily laid aside the glory of his majesty, and by putting on that he should become the salvation of the nations.' It was like the sun

going behind a cloud. 9 • When he became incarnate, the Son of man altered neither his nature (status) nor his rank (ordo) nor his substance. 96 And when we speak of Christ dying, 'because anything which that man was suffering was all referred

(riferebatur) to the originator (auctorem), therefore the death and passion of the Lord is signified [was spoken of].'

And Gregory goes on to reproduce Tertullian's 'two substances (i.e. human and divine) in one person (persona).'97 If we accept the attribution to Gregory of the Tractatus de Epithalamio we can throw a little more light on his doctrine of the Incarnation. In this at one point 98 he says 'For ever since Christ the Son of God condescended to come as a man, and to take the flesh and soul (carnem anjmamque) of a man like a Bride.

from then on the Law and the prophets ceased'. This obviously implies that Gregory followed Hilary in attributing a human soul to Jesus. And two more quotations from works recently ascribed to Gregory also suggest that he followed Hilary in his ideas about the Incarnation: 'so even in Christ's flesh. even though the substance of God and man

was mixed and (there was) a mingling like the noon-day atmosphere, yet the spiritual heat prevails more than the fleshly weakness functioned';99

and again: 'If he had endured the weaknesses of the flesh only, he might have been thought a mere man (purus homo) but because he did divine acts 95

88 (244); I have omitted alternative versions in this passage. (245) . "94 (26). 96Tractatus de Epithalamio 1.475. 99lbid. 11.481. 96 93

524

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The Rival Answers Emerge

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and also bore human (limitations) he as it were looked through

order implies priority but the substance is not divided."o, If we could attribute to Potamius the work known as De Substantia we would know more of his thought. This is a short piece written in Latin on the meaning of substantia. It defines substance thus:

windows or through lattice-work at men, so that he should seem God

from his miracles, and be hidden·as a result of his sufferings, and yet

. Ies. "00 · nurac should be recognised as more t han human bY hIS

Towards the end of the De Fide Gregory produces one of the earliest statements of the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit. 'He sent the Holy Spirit to us', he says, 'from his own and his identical one substance [from one and the same substance] as Defender, Sanctifier [Sealer] and Escort to eternal life' .'0' And he concludes the work by setting out a Rule of Faith ending with the words 'three Persons of one substance' (tres personas unius substantiae), and a reference back to N.'02 These terms are however less impressive than they might appear to be because Gregory is, as Phoebadius was, si,:,",ply reproducing Tertullian's concept of substance. Had the pro-Nlcene Eastern theologians known that this was the meaning of the use of 'substance' by these Westerners, they would have recoiled from it as reproducing precisely that concept of corporeality which they were anxious to disown in their use of ousia and of homoousion, and which their Arian opponents constantly accused them of adopting. A few more pieces of literature representing the work of proNicene Westerners may be briefly noted here. Potamius of Lisbon in his orthodox phase, which is the only period of his life represented by the extant literature attributed to him, apart from a few fragments, wrote a Letter to Athanasius congratulating him on his maintaining the true faith and in particular on teaching the substantial unity of the Father and the Son. His proof-texts for this doctrine areJn 10:30; 14:9 and 28 and I: 1. His instances of the use of the word substantia in the Bible areJer 23:22; Ps 69(68):3; Ecclesiastes 2:8; Luke 15:13 (none of them relevant to his argument). He believes thatJn 6:38, adduced by the Arians for their own purposes, refers to the activity of the incarnate Son.'03 Of the Son's relation to the Father he says 'the IOOExplicatio in Cant. Cantjeorum cap I, p. 507. . De Fide Orthodoxa 96 (246). The Tractatus de Libris 58 XX.47Q-472 gives a long list of the functions of the Spirit but nothing about his nature or status. 102 9 8 (246, 247). cr. Tractlltus de Libris S8 XIV.443 'Nobody conquers except him who believes in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit of equal power and undifferentiated might.' , I03Epistuia ad Athanasium PL8:1416-1418: his congratulation and proof-texts 1416. his treatment of In 6:38 1417. his instances of substantia in Scripture 1418. There is a better text of Potamius' De Lazaro in A. Wilmart's 'Le De Lazaro de Potamius de Lisbon' 298-3°4. Wilmart justly observes of Potamius' style, 'd'un 101

'The substance of a thing is every thing through which it exists. For substance either stands under something or indicates that something is standing under it.' 105

The writer is quite ready to use persona, speaks of 'double persona, single Godhead'.'o. uses 'nature' (natura) as a synonym for substance.'o, stresses the unity of activity and will of Father and Son'os and can write 'of course the substance of the Father, that is Christ, had not yet arrived in the flesh."o, He makes almost no reference to the Holy Spirit, so that he cannot be placed late. His theology, while certainly pro-Nicene, seems to be uninfluenced either by that of Hilary or by any Greek writer. He is still a devout disciple of Tertullian."o mauvais gout, d'une obscurite et aussi d'une fatuite qui n'ont pas ete souvent egalees' (op. cit. 289). Potamius seems to have had a taste for the Grand Guignol atmosphere in'literature,' See' above. p. -117 and n 91. A better text of the Epistula can be found edited by Wilmart Rev. Benedict. 30 (J 913) 579-80. 104Ep. ad Alh. 1417. ordo praeponitur, non substantia separatur. 10SPotamius Epistula de Substantia Patris et Filii et Spiritus Saneli (Migne PL Suppl. I) 3 (203); cf. I I (206) substance res est cuius est res, and 18 (208). 106Gemina persona, singularitas deitatis 10 (206). 107 13 (2 0 7),

108'9 (209). 109 20 (2 0 9). 110The reason why I cannot ascribe this work to Potamius is the very marked difference of style between this work and the other works known as Potamius'. De Lazaro, De Martyrio Isaiae Prophetae and the Epistula ad Athanasium. Wnmart CLe De Lazaro' 297) remarks upon this change of styl~ ('il etait capable acertains moments de bien 'ecrire, simplement et clairement') though he still thinks that Potamius wrote the De Substantia. Simplicity and clarity do not distinguish any of the works attributed to Potamius except the De Substantia. It is true that most (though not all) of the biblical quotations in the De Substantia occur also in the Epistula and that De Sub 20 132 (209) to (210) 12 are almost the same. word for word, as Epistula 1418 Ih8-43. But this may mean no more than that one author has copied the other. The mention of the Council of Ariminum occurs at the inscription of the Epistula and cannot with confidence be attributed to the author. Ifwe can detect (as some have thought they could) a deliberate intention in De Sub. of contradicting the Second Sirmian Creed of 357. at whose production Potamius was present. it is even less likely that he wrote the work. It is. moreover. hard to imagine that even the leniency of Hilary would have pardoned Potamius, so deeply had he implicated himself in the Arian cause, I do not believe that the fragment of an otherwise

527

The Western Pro-Nicenes II

The Rival Answers Emerge

There is also extant a Latin Commentary on the Nicene Creed which probably dates from abont 370.111 It may have been wntten against Urbanus bishop of Parma, whose depoSItIOn the councIl of Aquileia asked the Emperors to confirm in 381. It foll~ws a conventional distinction of substance and Persons, meets the kmd of Arian arguments that were current at the time (e.g. that the Son was produced simply by the will, not from the substance,. of the Father), shows no sign of wishing to combat either Apollmanamsm n?r Macedonianism, insists upon the eternity of the Son a.nd bases Its defence of the homoousion firmly on the fact of revelatIOn: 'and from this invisible God the Father he wished to become visible for the sake of the human race, so that we might be able to see the invisible God through the visible.'l12 Finally there is a curious little work called Altercatio Heracliani Laid cum Germinio. l13 It describes an interchange between three laymen, Heraelianus, Firmianus and Aurelianus, and Germinius, the Arian bishop ofSirmium, and it is dated quite certainly to the year 366: by which time the Western Emperor was Valentinian, who was aUlaoUs not to involve himself in ecelesiastical disputes. The dialogue takes place in the presence of a mob hostile to the laymen, who have been brought out of prison, and who (in the person ~f Heraclianus o'.'ly) defend the Nicene cause. The mob IS hosttle, not, as Zeiller ingenuously suggests,I14 because they have been coerc~d by the Arians, but because they are sincerely attached to their Anan bIShop Germinius, as their predecessors fifteen or twenty years before had been genuinely attached to Photinus, and regard. the pro-Nlcen:s as sowers of dissension in their city. The argument (m which Germmlus is the chief interrogator for the anti-Nicene side) mainly revolves round the equal divinity of the Father and the Son, and ~pends .a surprising amount of time on the divinity of the Holy Spmt .. It IS conducted at what is intellectually a pretty low level on both Sides. Heraelianus had apparently been prominent earlier in opposing

unknow.n letter of Athanasius to PotamiU5 quoted by A1cuin (PL IOI(I 14). cap 61 of his Contra Felicem Urgellitanum Episcopum) is part of a ge~uine letter. 11lTo be found in Turner EOMIA Vol. I, 330-47 and Migne PL Supp. I. 220--40. 112Tumer 340 (I, 2).

llJMost readily available in Migne PL Supp. I. 345-5 0 . U40r;gines 293--?·

52 8

Photinus, and his theological authorities are Hilary and Eusebius of Vercelli. When he comes to set out a formal Trinitarian statement it is

taken almost word for word from Tertullian. He takes the model of the sun and the sunbeam, and remarks that God has not changed his 'material' (materia). I IS Germinius cites 'Eusebius' as his theological authority, by which he probably means Eusebius of Caesarea, whom he could have known when he was a young man. The pro-Nicenes are roughly handled by a fervent deacon and a pious lector during the interrogation and at the end the mob want to hand them over to the imperial authority for execution (probably on the charge of inciting sedition). But Germinius protects them and insists upon their being released. All these Latin-speaking champions of the Nicene cause, with the exception of Hilary in the middle and later stages of his career, were writing without the benefit of an adequate knowledge or understanding of what had been happening in the world of Greek theology during the previous hundred years, unless they had picked up some conception of it at second-hand, not through written works. They did not know Origen; they had never read Eusebius of Caesarea. They knew of Athanasius but had not read his works. Their great authority was still Tertullian, who had written some ISO years before their day. An exception should perhaps be made of the case of Zeno bishop of Verona who is unknown apart from one reference (Ambrose Epp. 15.1, PL 16:891) which makes it probable that he was recently dead in the year 380. Because of his eulogy on an obscure Mauretanian martyr, (Tract 1.39), he is generally thought to have been of African origin. But two books of altogether ninety-two very short essays or sermons (Tractatus) have survived. He is no philosopher; he calls himself 'a man of very little skill and no eloquence',ll6 but he writes vigorous and colourful and not inelegant Latin. He has a nasty streak of anti-Semitism and a strong desire for social justice. He is a disciple of Hilary; his allegorisation is like his; he sometimes quotes pieces from Hilary's work on the Psalms; in as far as he uses Trinitarian language it is Hilary's (substance, nature and occasionally persona). He insists again and again on the equality of Father and Son (and even of the Spirit) in substance, dignity and Godhead: e.g. 'a double person, a double 115Page 350.

116homo imperit;ssimus el elinguis, Tractotus II.Li.I (145).

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The Rival Answers Emerge name, but tbere is One substance of original eternity and deity' ."7 He allows readily that the Son took flesh, human narure (homo), and that this constirutes his mediatorial work,"8 but without affecting his Godhead. He is quite ready to say that God died.'" But though there is one reference to Arianism (a purely conventional one),120 he is remote from the controversy. He is no intellectual, tbough an attractive writer. Arianism cannot have been much in evidence in North Italy. He must be placed late rather than early in the period 360-80. We now turn to a Latin writer of a different stamp who was well au fait with what had been happening at least in the world of Greek philosophy.

The Western Pro-Nicenes III I.

Marius Victorinus: Introduction

Marius Victorinus was a pagan rhetor and philosopher who had written several works on philosophy; among others he had translated into Latin Porphyry's study of Aristotle's thought called Isagoge, though none of his works written when he was still a pagan survive, except an Ars Grammatica, a suitable production for a rhetor.' He was an African, though his career lay in Rome. About the year 355 he was converted to Christianity, and Augustine gives a lively and rhetorical account of his conversion, as he had heard tbe story of it thirty years later, in his Confessions VIII.2. Marius Victorinus had never been one of tbose pagans hostile to Christianity; Augustine is probably correct in representing him as sympathetic, but as only seeing the necessity of baptism and public profession of his new faith late in life, as an old man. On Julian's accession he resigned his position as official rhetor in Rome, probably because he would have been expected to deliver speeches at pagan rites and perhaps to allude to pagan deities as ifhe believed in them. He must have died in 363 or shortly afterwards. He was a Neo-Platonist philosopher in the tradition of Porphyry, i.e. of Porphyry's interpretation of Plotinus. He must also, like Porphyry, have had an interest in Aristotle's logic at least. He is in fact regarded as one of those responsible for bringing the knowledge of Aristotle's thought to the West and so inaugurating a kind of renaissance of Aristotelian tbought, the same revival which in the

t 17 duplex persona. duplex vocabulum I sed originalis perpetuitatis at deitatis est una substantia. Ibid. 1I.8.ii·4 ('77).

'\811. I2.ii.4 (.8S). '19E.g. 1.)6.iX.29 (99). '201I.8.i.. (176).

tFor an authoritative survey of Marius Victorious' philosophical thought see P. Hadot, Marius Victorinus. Hadot is not in that book greatly concerned with Marius' theological work. Simonetti Crisi 287-98 gives a good brief survey of this. Hadot's edition of Marius' surviving works is used here, together with his informative Prolegomena to that edition. See also Grillmeier CeT 405-6, and Mary T. Clark 'The Neo¥Platonism of Marius Victorinus the Christian' in Blumenthal and Markus, Neo-Platonism and Early Christian Thought.

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The Rival Answers Emerge Eastern Roman Empire was contributing to the emergence of the New Arianism of Aetius and Eunomius. But we cannot classify Marius Victorinus as an Aristotelian philosopher. He was a late Platonist, and had a far greater understanding of Platonism, at any rate of developed Platonism, than any of his contemporaries in the West known to us. This may explain why he appears to have had virtually no influence on any of the Christian theologians in the Latin-speaking world of his day. Jerome says that he wrote books against the Arians 'which were couched in a dialectic form and very recondite, which could only be understood by scholars'. 2 Augustine indeed appears to be the first Latin author known to us who, long after Marius' death, was influenced by him. But certainly he had a knowledge of contemporary philosophy vastly in excess of that possessed by any of the pro-Nicene Western writers whom we have so far considered, and his approach to the Christian doctrine of God is correspondingly more sophisticated than theirs. It goes without saying that he knew Greek. Indeed he frequently quotes Greek terms in his text. His anti-Arian works have fortunately been preserved. Hadot divides them into twelve short volumes, as follows: I

II

m

Candidi Epistola I (Candidus the Arian on divine generation addressed to Marius Victorinus the rhetor). Candidus is no historical character but a fictitious name invented by Marius to serve as a straw figure against which he tilts. In Candidum (Marius Victorinus the rhetor of the city of Rome in reply to Candidus the Arian). Candidi Epistola II (Candidus the Arian's reply to the Right Honourable Marius Victorinus).3

These three works must be dated before the year 359, perhaps in 357 or 358, evoked, like so much other literature, by the startling Second Sirmian Creed of 357. IV V

Adversus Arium I (Against Arius Book 1), dated to 359· Second Part of the same Book I.

'De Vir. Ill. CI. 3By 'Right Honourable' I am translating VC which means virum c1arissimum, a formal title of honour conferred by the Emperor. He is given this title in the headings to several other of his works.

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VI

Adversus Arium II (Against Arius Book II; alternative title, The Book about Homoousios against the Heretics in Greek and Latin).

These last two are to be assigned to the year 361. They are concerned with the events of 359 and 360 as far as they touched the Arian Controversy.

VII and VIII Adversus Arium III and IV (Against Arius Books III and IV; alternative title On Homoousios) , non-polemical works discussing the whole subject of consubstantiality. They must be dated 362 (see Adv. Arium II.2.35). IX De Homoousio Recipiendo (On accepting Homoousios), written in 362. X, XI and XII consist of hymns about the Trinity written at uncertain periods by Marius Victorinus; Hadot tentatively dates them 358-359. It is possible that Adv. Ar. II is a reply to a book put out by Valens and Ursaciusjustifying the proceedings of both Seleucia and Ariminum. 4 If we ask how much Marius knew of the Arianism which he attacked in his works, we must answer that he knew more than all and also less than all about Arianism. The first letter of Candidus to Marius (whose author is of course Marius himself) produces a coruscating array of arguments against the Son being consubstantial with the Father, arguments concerned with 'existence' and 'existentiality', substance and simplicity, and nine different modes of generation from God. This kind oflanguage would have been quite beyond any Western Arian writer known to us, Potamius, Palladius, Ursacius, Valens or Saturninus, virtually incomprehensible to Hilary and wholly so to Lucifer, Phoebadius and Gregory. It could be conjectured that Marius Victorinus is producing the arguments of some very learned Western Arian wholly unknown to us, but this is in the last degree unlikely. Nor does his parade oflearned argument reproduce the language and thought of Aetius and Eunomius in the East. Marius is simply giving an exhibition at once of his erudition and (more legitimately) of his competence to tackle the subjects with which he proposes to deal. At the end of this first letter of Candidus 4For works which we have reason to infer were written by this pair but which do not survive, see above pp. 301.305-6,521. I have here omitted reference to M.V·s In

Epistolas h. Pauli. Liber ad lustinum Manichaeum and De Verbis Scripturae (PL 8:1145-1294).

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he suddenly trots out a number of conventional well-used Arian arguments and proof-texts, and among them the doctrine that the Son was produced from nothing, This last argument had long been abandoned by Arian writers, as even Phoebadius knew. When Marius comes to write Candidus' second letter to Marius Victorinus, it is surprising to find that the letter consists simply of a Latin translation of Arius' Letter to Eusehius of Nicomedia (1(49-51», followed by a translation of part ofEusebius ofNicomedia's Letter to Paulinus of Tl're (2(51-53». These extracts are preceded by the following statement, written in the character of Candidus:

But because God is potentiality and beyond being he is also the cause both of what is and of what is not. 6 There are four definitions of ' that which is not':

'M y friend Victorinus, you may heap together a lot of arguments and examples by which you may strive to prove that the Son is born, not made; but Arius, a man ofkeen intellect, and his disciples and Eusebius who was outstanding among the best of them, produced ideas on the subject in their letters. And we now lay these letters before you' (1(49)). . In short, there is no satisfactory evidence that Marius Victorinus had any genuine knowledge of Arianism as it was in his day. He could exercise his intellect more rhetorico in producing arguments which he was later to refute, and he could reproduce some old Arian documents which had long become the stock texts for controversy, but that was all. He occasionaIly refers to Marcellus and Photinus, but shows no cIose acquaintance with their doctrines.

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

What What What exist. What

is altogether deprived of existence. has changed from one thing to another. does not yet exist, is in the future and still could is above all things that are.

Clearly God falls into the fourth category. He must be described as above the existent (-to 6v), in fact as 'the not existing' (to 6v) not because he is void of existence, but because he is the cause for the purpose of generation (generationem) of those things that are.' God, in short, is existence above existence, pure potentiality. Marius explains this doctrine further in the same work:

II"

'What then really is God, ifhe is not even one thing (unum), nor what really (vere) are nor what are, nor what are not really nor what are not?

For God stands behind (praestat) all these as cause for them all. Yet it is wrong to conjecture that God is among these things which really are

not. We necessarily shall say that God, by reason of superiority and excellence above the existents (trov 5vtrov) is above all existence

(existentia); above all life, above all knowledge, above all that is (ov) and that really is (OVtOlC; (lvra), in fact unintelligible, infmite, invisible, without intellect, insubstantial, unknowable, and as above everything

2.

Marius Victorinus' Christology

Marius Victorinus' conception of God was eminently Platonic. He tends to use apophatic language in defming God, and to do so with little concern for making himself readily intelligible: 'If therefore God is not what is not, yet he is above that which is really existent (!Iv) the potentiality of the existent (tau !lv~oc;) itself, which, once its activity in generating had been aroused, generated by an ineffable action the existent (to !Iv) perfect in every way, wholly the existent from the totality of potentiality; God is therefore wholly outgoing (np6LOv) but Jesus is the same total existent (!Iv) yet now in existence (existentia) and life and understanding (intelligentia), the universal existent perfect in every way'. 5 5Ad Candidum 2 (18). At Ad",. Arium 1.40 (U7) he curiously quotes Arius'

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having nothing to do with those things which are and, because beyond that which exists, shares nothing with those things which are.

Therefore God is not existent (1'1\ ov).· He can describe God as beyond all existence and conception, 'prior to all essentiality, substance, subsistence.'" And he plunges into paradox deliberate travesty ofwhat Alexander taught without apparently realizing that it is a travesty, and without knowledge of any of Alexander's writings. He also of course knows and dislikes the Second Creed ofSirmium (357), quoting from it Adv. Ar.1.9 (66, 67). 'Ibid. 3 (19)· 'Ibid. 4 (19, 20). 8 13 (30). Marius has earlier (8 (25)) distinguished in a descending order of existence: 'really existent' (6VTCilIi 6VTa), 'existent' (6v'ta) 'not really existent' (JlTJ 6vtf.tl1i 6v'tu) and 'not existent' (p,'I) 6vta). Here he is distinguishing nihil de his 'nothing concerned with' and nihil ex his 'nothing from among'. 9 Adversus Arium 1.49 (143, 144), essentitatem, substantiam, subsistentiam.

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The Western Pro-Nicenes III: Marius Victorinus

The Rival Answers Emerge in attempting to do justice

to

'without origin, without being, without mind, without life (uvtiltapKTo<;, uv6ucno<;, livou<;, li~OlV), without existence, without substance, without knowledge (intelligentia), without life, 14. not of course KaT" CJ'tEP1]O'lV, that is by way of deprivation, but by way of eminence' (supralationem, that is being beyond these attributes). And Marius goes on to coin words like 'super-existence' (praeexistentia), 'super-knowledge' (praecogniscentia) and 'super-livingness' (praeviventia), with corresponding verbs. 15 Porphyry, Plotinus' disciple, Mary Clark observes, was, unlike Plotinus, able to attribute Being, Life and Intelligence to the One, but in such a way that they do not imply multiplicity nor dependence nor comparability to anything else. This was how Marius Victorinus was able to reconcile the Neo-Platonic doctrine of the One and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.'6 But of course he did not repudiate Plotinus. On several occasions in his works he quotes direcdy from the Enneads. Like all Neo-Platonists, Mary Clark goes on, Marius 'rejected the tradition of a first immobile God and a second creative God. The One-One was for Victorinus the One-All. Plotinus made possible the reconciliation of the divine simplicity with the divine activity by his own discussion of the mode of begetting among divinities (Enneads V. 1.6-8)'. True substance is first movement, and a kind of movement which is a state' of r<~pose (Adv. Arium 1.30, 20-26)." Marius Victorinus deals In a sophisticated way with the subject of the Son's generation. Writing as 'Candidus' the Arian he lists nine different modes of generation, and then eruditely explains how none can apply to the Son of God,' 8 and then abruptly throws in some conventional Arian objections to the generation of the Son,19 on the . obsolete assumption that the Arians were teaching that the Son was made out of nothing. In reply Marius argues that God did not produce the Logos from some other source, nor from nothing, but out of himself, and the Logos was 'the existent' (T" ov) or 'the outgoing' (T" ItpOwv) which is above the whole range of existents (generale OV genus) and of really existents (OVTOl<; OVTU). When Moses

this superessential abstract Deity:

'a thrice-potent in the power of
and beyond spirit ... himself his own place and dweller (m It) ... existing everywhere and nowhere ... the power of oneness of counion. without any co-unioo'.10

And when he expresses this in terms of substance, either ousia in Greek or substantia in Latin, it appears as the statement that God is not enousios (equipped with substance) but anousios (without substance) not in the sense oflacking substance but of being beyond substance (hyperousios). He is his own substance, primal (prima) substance, 'substance prior to substance'. And he can after all be described as enousios (equipped with substance) in that he made everything and in that he is Father." It is scarcely necessary to say that this account of substance in relation to God is as far as possible removed from Tertullian's idea of substance which provided the theology of the early Hilary, of Phoebadius, Gregory and Heraelianus. When described in terms of number this account of God is thus set out: It is one thing 'to be in that which is', another 'to be in that which is in a certain mode' (ita); the former denotes substance, the latter quality.

This holds good for sensuous and mundane things, but not for the

eternal and divine. In these. 'Everything which is here is simple

(simplex), and God is this, as Light, as Supreme Good (optimum). as Existence (existentia), as Life, as Understanding ... Everything therefore in this case is substantially (substantiaUter) simple. without parts (inconexa), one, one in number, and not Qne in number but one

beyond number (or beyond the number one), that is beyond the one that is in number, in fine simple. sole, so that it is inconceivable that it

should be other'. Consequently the image born from this Godhead cannot be section nor emanation nor effulgence nor extension but manifestation (apparentia), not the duplication of potentiality but the

activity of potentiality (potentiae actio).12

God, he says in a later work is 'thrice potent (Tp1ouvaIlO<;), that is, possessing three potentialities, to be, to live, to understand'," and though he is existence, life and mind he must also be described as ,, ,.

'Olbid.

50 (145).

"Adv. A,ium II (169). "Adv. A,ium 111.1 (193). 13 Adv. A,ium IV.2J (247).

14Marius is here simply translating into Latin the Greek terms which he has just used. for the benefit of his less educated readers; hence the apparent repetition. "Ibid. 23 (260, 261); cf. 24 (262). 16'The Neo-Platonism of Marius Victorinus' 155. 17Ibid. 158. "Candidi Bpistula 1.4(5) - 6(1l). 09IO(12)-II (13).

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The Western Pro-Nicenes III: Marius Victorinus

said 'If! am asked who sent me, what am I to say?', he received the answer 'Say then, the Existent' (dicito 6 {bv, Exod. 3:13-14).20 In the same work Marius Victorinus defines what he means by the Logos:

impossible to fmd a name worthy of God, we name God from what we are familiar with, re:alizing that we are not really naming him. '26

certain potentiality p,ut into action from the Father (patrica) which is both in motion and which itself constitutes itself so that it is in action '3

not in potentiality.' The high God is also Logos, but 'Logos silent and at rest'. and also of course Logos which is not generated. 21

Marius Victorinus has effectively overcome the traditional difficulty that the Son must appear inferior to and separated from the Father because he thinks of the Son as the activity of the Father who is pure potentiality. He does not approach the subject of the Christian doctrine of God by, as it were, trying to fit the Son into the Father. 'These are two; I mean two according to power (virtutem). but according to the conception of simplicity one and sole. If therefore

Being itself (ipsum esse) is the cause of activity he (the Son) is generated from that which is Being (ab eo quod est esse). The Father then is Being, the Son therefore is action' (operart).22

Marius argues for the acceptance of the homoousion because to act and to be are identical in God, so if the Logos is God acting he must be consubstantial. 23 In no circumstances does God ever make things purely out of nothing (far less the Son), because he never produces anything which does not have the possibility of existing. But there can be no such possibility in things which do not exist. 24 Had Marius h~d any genuine acquaintance with Arian theologians he might have dIScovered that they were ready to concede this last point. Asterius had produced a statement not unlike it.25 Marius raises another difficulty about this subject, only to answer it. 'How can (we say) homoousios when no substance exists?' (i.e. no substance in God). In fact ?f course only a Neo-Platonist could have raised this objection; thIS IS not an Anan argument. He answers it quite readily: . 'Names are devised and taken from those things that are of later origin, from things which are more recent than God. And because it is

20

This is how he explains awkward texts such as Prov 8:22, 25; Acts 2:36;]n 1:3-4 and Gal 4:4. Apparent referencesto the Son being made or created really mean, 'not that he was made in order to exist, but that he was brought about (effectus sit) to be as he is'. These texts do not in fact apply to his existence, 'but to his activity and the implementation of his potentiality and power'. 27 This is a new and ingenious argument, of which no other contemporary Latinspeaking pro-Nicene writer known to us would have been capable. When he comes to describe the relation of the Father to the Son in detail Marius Victorinus is, as in other points, ingenious and original beyond any Western theologian before him. He who is the Logos through whom all things were made, he states, cannot be from no underlying reality (subiecto). And he who was in the beginning must have always existed. The Son is 'main cause' (principa/is causa) of everything, but the Father is 'super-cause' (praecausa). The difference between the Two is this: 'So the Son will be different in this, that he is moved and acts for the purpose of revelation (ad manifestationem), as the Father by his mighty Godhead operates in a maIUler unknowable to US.'28

What the Father is as Being, the Logos is as activity. 29 The Sonl Logos is both equal to the Father and unequal, his inequality does not, however, consist in his being incarnate (which is not mentioned): (The Father) 'again is, however, greater, because his movement is inactive (inactuosa); for he is more" blessed because he is without disturbance and impassible and the source of everything that is, in rest, perfect in himself and needing nothing. The Son however receives his existence and (the power to) act on that which is, moving from action and arriving at perfection, and by motion is rendered fulness, is made everything which is. But because all things come into existence in him

and to him and through him, he is eternally fulness and eternally receptacle; and by reason of this he is both impassible and passible. Consequently he is both equal and unequal. So the Father is greater'. 30

Ad Candidum 14 (3 1-32).

17 (35). (37, 38). "23 (39);· cf. 27 (42, 43). 2424 (40). "See above, pp. 33. 35 (frag. IV). 21

2'Ad Candidum 28 (43). 27lbid. 29 (44). 28Adv. Arium 1.3 (58-59). "Ibid. 4 (5g-;\0). 3Olbid. 13 (71, 72); cf. Adv. Ar. 1.37 (122).

22 20

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The Rival Answers Emerge

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A little later he sets out in a long passage the subordination of the Son as a matter oflogical rather than ontological order: the Father is 'that which it is to be' and the Son 'that which it is to act'. Action is only in the Father potentially, but actually in the Son, and this makes him lower (iunior). The Son is also 'that which it is to be', but proceeding from the Father into activity:

distinguished, according to which as motion and life and Word from the Father he quickens and creates and grants mind to everything. 37 And he can relate this concept of motion to substance also:

'Since the Father is one according to that which it is to be, and the Son one according to that which it is to act, each at the same time existing in the other, as has been shown, therefore (they are) homoousioi'.31

In his next book he compares Father and Son in relation to substance. Because God exists, we can say that he has substance, though in fact he is above substance, and that substance is called 'spirit' or 'true light'. Just as in the material sphere there are bodies, and in the incorporeal sphere there is soul (anima), so spirit is God's substance, or super-substance, or at any rate potentiality of substance (potentia substantiae). Christ has substance from the Father, 'Light from Light, God from God'. He is not only potentiality but also activity (and the Father activity in him). 32 Or rather 'the Father is potentiality and the Son activity' (actio).33 Elsewhere Marius says that the Father is the unmoving cause of the moving Son: 'It is the characteristic of that which primally is Being to be at rest; but it is the characteristic of the Logos to be moved and to act, and not to be moved locally nor by removal into a place. but by a motion which pertains to the soul, higher and more divine, and which by its own motion gives life and brings forth intelligences, subsisting in itself and not divided for purposes of acting from its proper potentiality. '34 The Son exists 'according to motion', the Father 'according to rest'

(cessationem).35 Later he can say that both Father and Son are motus (movement), but the Father is 'movement at rest, that is interior and nothing else than movement', not movement in motion (motione), but the Son is movement in motion, though both are movement. 3 • Marius can also describe the Son in terms of existence and motion "20 (86). J2Adv. Arium 11.173, 174. 33 175 ; cf. Adv. Ariurn IV.7 (232-5). 34Adll. Ariurn 1.27 (102).

"[bid. 28 (IOJ). 36Adv. Arium IV.29 (269). This is the sort of thing which must have mystified Jerome, as it might mystify anybody.

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'So movement is life which, whether existing in itself and turned in on itself, is its own substance for itself, or whether it looks outwards, and is better called movement; for inward movement is rest or rest in motion (mota) and movement in rest. For God must be of both sorts, I mean rest and movement and parent and substance itself, because as it were by association and by form he is the source of both, himself simple and one and eternally one and sole and, as we have said already,

whole' (totuS).38 He has no difficulty either in relating the Father and the Son in terms of will, though he shpws no awareness that contemporary Arians were proclaiming that the Son is the product solely of the Father's will, not of his nature: 'Moving himself out from himself (he is) Father, generating himself from himself, Son; for the Son is will ... the will of course proceeding into activitated potentiality, not, however, departing from the substance, by its own and same motion. For these three are one, substance, motion, will. The Father is substance and by the same token

(iuxta id ipsum) motion and will. Again the Son is motion and will, and by the same token also substance. And this is homoousios'. 39

Marius can revert to this argument later,"O again without betraying any acquaintance with contemporary Arian ideas upon the subject, nor, for that matter, with Athanasius' arguments about the priority of nature to will. He can also relate the impassible and the passible by invoking this relationship: The potentiality of vision is at rest when vision itselfis in motion, 'and the passions exist in connection with vision, while the potentiality of vision remains impassible and without passion generates vision.'41 37Adv. Arium 1.51 (1.46, 147). 38Adv. Arium m.2 (194). Similarly he can meet the difficulty presented by the subordinationism of I Cor 15:28 by distinguishing motion from potentiality: 'when everything has been emptied out, active potentiality is at rest, and God will be in himself according to what it is to be and according to what it is to be at rest, but in aU other things spiritually according to his power and his substance', Adv. Arium 1.39 (126). 39Adv. Arium 1.32 (112). 4°Adv. Arium 1lI.9 (206). 41Adv. Arium 1.24 (127); cf. 42 (132).

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The Western Pro-Nicenes III: Marius Victorinus

The Rival Answers Emerge He can also express the relationship in terms of'image' and of'form': 'For in the Father everything dwells potentially, and therefore Jesus the Logos is the image of God the Father; this very thing which is potentiality to be. this is now what to be activity is. For everything which results in activity is also the image of that which is potentially, and the Son of that which is potentially is that which is in activity. This is why Son and Father are homoousios. '42

The Son can be called the 'image' and 'countenance' of God (with appeal to Phil 2:6 and Col I: I 5 and Exod 33:20 and 23 (posterganea mea videbis, an odd reading, Vulg posteriora)). The Father must be distinguished from the Son because the te«t 'who raised his Son from the dead' (Rom 8:II) implies this distinction. But Marius prefers to put the matter thus: 'So with the "form of God" (Philz:6). the form is one thing, God is another. There is indeed a form for God, but the Son of God is the form revealed (in manifesto), (the form) of God is hidden.''' A word which Marius Victorinus likes to use in order to describe the actual function of the Son/Logos in distinction from that of the Father is apparentia, which meanS manifestation. In a passage in which he has been pulling out technical terms many of which, one suspects, have been coined by him for the occasion - existentialitatem. substantialitatem, essentialitatem, with their Greek equivalents added, and where he has been contrasting God the Father as above mind and truth. as potentiality (and therefore not form), and also as silence and cessation. with the activity and communicating function of the Son, he returns to this word apparentia. From such a super-essential unmoving God movement and act do not mean leaving behind what is moved from, but rather apparentia: 44 'This activity. if God is silence. is called Word, if (God is) rest, (it is called) movement, if being (essentia), life, because, as we are explaining, in that which is being (esse) is also life (vivere), in that

which is silence is also an unspoken (tacem) Word and in that which is quiescence or rest there inheres either a hidden movement or a hidden activity. '45

Like a good philosopher, Marius Victorinus defines his terms carefully. and. as we would expect, his range of theological and philosophical words is largely different from that of his contemporaries. We have already seen him introducing the word homoousios, almost always in the original Greek, several times and throwing light on what is the meaning which he attaches to it.46 At one point he justifies this practice, realizing that his readers may object to his constant reversion to the Greek term, on the grounds that there is no Latin equivalent of it (neither consubstantialis nor eiusdem substantiae appeal to him). The Greek word was approved by the Fathers ofNicaea and also by the father of the present Emperor. 47 He produces at one point an extraordinary argument in favour of homoousios. He quotes I Cor 2:8, 9 and declares that God is 'incomprehensible or scarcely comprehensible'. He then observes that other,less satisfactory, accounts of the relation of the Father to the Son are quite comprehensible: 'What can you say in the light of these verses of Christ being thought to be from non-existence or of like substance? They are

understandable and definite. But to be homoousion not only is incomprehensible but contains many contradictions. For if he is homoousios, is he also ingenerate? If homoousios, how can he be distinct,

how can there be Father distinct from Son? Ifhomoousios, how did one suffer and the other not?48

In short, homoousios is right because it is incomprehensible, just like God! In the next book. however, Marius is rather more luminous. He here explains that to say that two things are homoousios is to say that they have the salne substance (Godhead, Light, Logos, Spirit). but different qualities: the Father's qualities are pateruity, omnipotence, goodness, infinity, the Son's filiation, being a Saviour or being]esus Christ. 'Consubstantial'means having the same substance in two or more manifestations: 'deriving the same substance simultaneously not from any other source than from God's eternal potentiality' .49 But Marius prefers to think of the adjective in terms of simultaneity. Homoousion means to have substance at the same time 'simultaneously· endowed with substance (substantiatum): above, pp. 541, 542. Arium 11.9 (183-5). This shows that this work must have been written some time before the end of 361. It is at 12 (IS9) that he rejects Latin equivalents. 48Adv. Arium I.So, Sx. 49Adv. Arium H.w (ISS. IS6, quotation from IS6). 46S ee

'2Ibid. "Ad•. 44Adv. "Ibid.

25 (98). A,ium IV.30 (269. 270); cf. Ad•. A,. I (Vol IV) 19 (83. 84)· Arium Ill.7 (202). 7 (203).

47 Adv.

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simultaneously God and Logos, and from eternity everlas?ngly Father and Son simultaneously'. 50 This simultaneous possessIon of substance means having 'an equal force and power of existing and the same nature of substance' in the Father and thS e on. 51M" anus definition of substance is relatively simple: it is 'to be that which is' . 52 At one point he elaborately distinguishes existence (exsistentia) and substance but admits that they are to all intents and purposes. identical, ,and that he will treat them as the same. 53Hh e as at ~!s fingers' ends all the conventional proof-texts alleged for the BIble s mention of substance. In one particularly obscure passage he appears to identify substance, being and life. 5 ' 'Candidus' had argued, m the Arian cause but with a reasoning which no Arian ever used, that God

had hitherto eqjoyed undisputed popularity among Latin-speaking theologians. Marius may indeed be regarded as positively antiTertullianic in both thought and vocabulary. It is not easy to see why he so flatly refuses to use the term persona. He seemed to think that it did not sufficiently distinguish the Persons. The use of it, he says in . one passage, lands us into Patripassianism. 5 ' In fact the question of ,,:hy TertulIian used persona and why the fourth-century theologians dId not use It has yet to be explored properly. Marius is of course well aware of the Greek word hypostasis, and does not hesitate to use it. At one point he tries to explain in what sense he uses the word:

was above substance and existence, S5 but, as we ·have seen, Manus

was able to accept this contention in one sense, as he was able to say that God is above ousia. 56 Marius Victorinus defines what he means by Logos thus: 'a certain paternal activated potentiality which also is in moveme~t and which itself constitutes itself in such a way that It IS m activIty, not m potentiality'. 57 But when he approaches the difficult problem of how to describe what God is as Three which he is not as One he runs mto trouble. One remarkable feature of his vocabulary here, which has not been sufficiently noticed, even by Hadot, is the persistent and explicit refusal of Marius Victorinus to use the word persona in a Trinitarian context: 'It is therefore wrong to say "two Persons (personae) one substance". but: two, Father and Son, out of one substance, as the Father gives substance from his substance to the Son in this, that he has generated a Son, and consequently they are both homoousioi'. 58

This is a quite deliberate rejection of Tertullian's vocabulary which "[bid. 10 (187); cf. 2 (172). 51Adv. Arium IV.IO.240. 52Adv. Arium I.3I (IIO), illud quod est esse. 53Adv. Arium 1.30 (I07. 108). 54Adv. Arium IV.9 (238): non ut substantia sit et sic "ivens, sed ipsum quod est "ivens hoc ipsum substantia est. Neque enim cum ipsum vjvens ac vivit et v!vere esse .et quodammodo esse inteIligatur, non suum sibi esse quod sit substantia est. Let hIm who wIll translate this. "Adv. Arium [(1)-4(4). S6S ee above pp. 534-'7. "Ad Candidum 17 (:l5). s8Adv. Arium I.II (69).

544

'Whatever is endowed with form (formatum), this is existent (esse): but form is that which makes that which is existent intelligible. To be existent then we ascribe to God, but form to Christ, because the Father

is known through the Son, that is, what is existent (is known) through the form'. He then goes on to say that both God and the Son are ti1t(lP~IC; (individual entity),60 and that 'potentiality is prior to that which is form'.6! The existent (5v) exists with form and it can be called subsistentia (subsistence) and exsistentia (existence) and substantia (substance). Whatever has form and substance is called hypostasis. So the Son can be called hypostasis, but also the Father: 'Subsistence therefore is properly named in both cases, and that is substa~ce, because ~hat w~ch is original existence (esse principale) with form IS caUed subsIstence, though it can also be called substance. So we can say 'three subsistences are from one substance, so that that whi~h is exi~tence subsists in three forms (tripliciter), God himself, and

Chnst, that IS Logos, and the Holy Spirit'. Subsistentio can also be called hypostasis. 62 Ma~ius next proceeds to maintain, confusingly, that hypostasis and ousla.mean the same thmg, and tries to prove this from Scripture by quotmg Jer 23:18 and Ps 139(138):15, both by now conventional proof-texts in the hands of pro-Nicene writers, and then from the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:12-13). And that hypostasis and 59lbid. 41 (129). Here he says that to use persona, ipsa substantia est et egit omnia et passa est. We are not, he says, Patripassians. 6°Adv. Arium 11.4 (176). ·'Ibid. 4 (177)· .'. (177. 178).

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ousia are synonymous is a proof that Father and Son are homoousioi. 63 As we shall see, Marius' chief theological weakness is a tendency to fall into Sabellianism, and here ·he has done so. That he had the authority of N in identifying hypostasis and ousia is scarcely sufficient defence. Certainly this excursion into terminological exactitude is calculated to create rather than dispel confusion. He can elsewhere repeat in almost the same words the formula 'one substance, three subsistences' (una substantia, t,es subsistentia},64 and he can later say that each of the Trinity has the same substance but each his individual existence (exsistentia), 'existing, that is, distinctly' (singulis quidem exsistentibus}.65 But he does not maintain this vocabulary consistently throughout his works. He has in fact, having thrown away pe,sona, nothing to put in its place. He can say that it is as divine substance that the Father and the Son coinhere; the Father, as Father, cannot be in the Son, nor the Son, as Son, in the Father. We can say of Christ 'God of God, Light of Light', but we cannot reverse the proposition. 66 But, though this is clear, it does nothing to establish a consistent and viable vocabulary. Part of the purpose of Marius Victorinus in writing his books Against A,ius is to oppose the doctrine of Basil of Ancyra and his school, whom he always thinks of as Homoiousians, though in fact, as we have seen, their watchword was 'like according to ousia'.67 He knows quite a lot about the antecedents and history of this school of thought. 68 His objection to homoiousios is basically philosophical: immaterial substance cannot be like in substance to anything, ouly material substance can be that. And if we say that one substance is like another, we allow that it is other and not the same. 69 Indeed, he

thinks it blasphemous to call the Son homoiousios because if we accept the distinction (originating from Philo and publicised by Origen) of man's rationality as that in which he is the image of God, but his progress in moral goodness as that in which he is the likeness of God, then to say that the Son is like in substance is to say that he is so by gradual moral effort.70 He has some knowledge of the Ancyran document issued by Basil in 35 8 (though none apparentl y of the later Lette, ofGeo,ge of Laodice a issued by the same school in 359), because he says that the Basilii (Basil and his disciples) attribute the Son's production to a combination of generation and creation, and he strives to rebut this view.71 His later work De Homoousio Recipiendo (Vol. IX), written after the death of Constantius and during the revanche in the West in favour of the Nicene cause is a brief treatise composed in an eirenic spirit designed to convince Homoiousians that they really believe in the homoousios, much in the spirit of Hilary's De Synodis. Most of the venom of the attack on the school of Basil by Marius seems to be confined to Adve,sus A,ium I.

63Ibid. S (178, 179). 6 (179). In De Homoousio Recipiendo I (278) he makes the same identification (hinting that he could distinguish them, but has not space to do so), and says that the Greeks use both indiscriminately whereas the Latins have only one word, substantia, and adds that a few Greeks only use ousja, and they seldom, but aU use hypostasis. This shows a complete ignorance of Athanasius' works at least. 64Adv. Arium 111.4 (198). 65 Adv. Arium IV.33 (277). 66Adv. A,ium II.II (188). 67S ee Hadot, Marius Vic/orinus 263-6. 68Cf. Adv. Arium 1.28 (103)-29 (105); and 43 (132) where his reference to the IIlyriciani. those Balkan sees where Western . Arianism seem to have found its greatest strength, is interesting. "Ibid. 23 (93),24 (97), 43 (132); cf. 30 (107). We should probably accep' Hado,'s emendation at 15 (75) of Non igilur omnino OIlOOU(]'\OV to non igitur omnino 0j.1010Uc:nOV.

3. Marius Victorinus' Doctrine of the Incarnation Marius Victorinus takes care to include a doctrine of the Incarnation in his theology, though it does not playa very prominent part there: we are given warning of this when he asks in Adve,susA,ium II, 'If homoousios, how did one [the Son] suffer and the other [the Father] not?'72 And he argues from the Incarnation to the Son's consubstantiality with the Father. Christ, he says, did not 'assume man', but 'was made (or became) man' (Phil. 2:5-II). This means that he assumed the form of the substance of man. If, as Paul says, he was originally in the form of Cod, then he must have been in God's substance too. And in the same passage Marius asks 'What then is this "he emptied himself'? The universal Logos is not universal in as far as he is the logos of flesh and became flesh.'73 This leads to a discourse about passibility and impassibility, which are the main subjects raised for Marius by the doctrine of the Incarnation: 7Olbid. 20 (88); cf. 22 (90). "Ibid. 45 (137)· 72 18 (81); cf. 14 (74) 'and it is not to be thought that the Father suffered· for it was not he but his humanity' (homo). • "Ibid. 22 (90, 91).

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The Rival Answers Emerge

'It is said then of the Son that he is impassible and passible, but his passion is in his career (in progressu), but particularly in th~ final part of that career, that is, when he was in the flesh. The followmg however are not called passions, his generation from the Father, his primal movement and his being creator of everything.'74 It must be remembered that for Marius Christ's 'career' (progressus) when he was liable to encounter 'passion' began with the history oftheJews at latest and perhaps with the creation of the world and the converse of the pre-existent Son with Adam and Eve in the Garden ofEden~ and ~so

that the word 'passion' had for him a much wider range ofmeanmg than it has for us, comprising all transience and change and all human experiences.

Marius Victorinus is always conscious that he may be accused of the heresy of imputing to God the Father the experience of suffering. In order to avoid this charge he describes the relationship of the Father and the Son as 'one, not sole one, but one and one, an impassible one distinct (a/jut!), and a passible distinct'. 75 He sets this out in detail next:

associated himself with the suffering of the assumed human nature. 77 Elsewhere, comparing the Father to the still fount and the Son to the stream issuing from the fount and running, he says that in the course of his running the Son: 'accepts passions, not in as far as he is substance, but in activity and functioning.' He endured suffering not only in his Incarnation and Passion, but also 'in the primal act of his existence, as we have learnt from many books, the passion of departure from the Father was present. '78

This is drastic and unusual doctrine, and he produces doctrine as unusual when he adds that the Son was in the body as the Holy Spirit is in us, 'not completely - for God is everywhere - but as part of him. ' But in all divine things the part is as the whole, as the soul in the body, as courage and discipline are in souls, as the sun or its light is in our eyes. 79 This idea is expressed rather more clearly in a kind ofRnle of Faith which he sets out in Adversus Arium I:

'And according to this argument he (the Son) too is unchangeable

'Jesus Christ . .. the same unalterable, unchangeable . . . in respect that

(inversibilis) and immutable, but in those things which fall into the categories (genera) of objects which are different from each other (alius et alius), by this very fact that he is the cosmic (universalis) Logos,

he is Logos and that he is eternally Logos. but in respect that he is the creator of everything and particularly that in matter (hyle) he

remaining the same with the Father. When then do human experiences (passiones) come in? Neither in the Father nor in the Son, but inasmuch as they in their category do not contain the whole power of the cosmic Logos, for each thing of any sort exists and he gives to it its proper force, whether of angels, potentates, thrones, dominions, sensuoUS things, and flesh itself. Passion therefore is in

unchangeable. impassible. beyond all motion, when it flows and

them, and according to this theory (iuxta haec), but does not belong to the Logos. Therefore the Saviounuffered according to the flesh, but according to the spirit he was without passion.'76

.

Marius then goes on to a detailed analysis of suffering. He insists that the divine nature of the Son cannot suffer, but appears to want to establish two principles: first that in referring to God we use expressions like 'suffering' as an accommodation to our limited understandings, because we can only speak of God in terms of our own experience; secondly that as not merely the soul but the reason and the spirit associates itself with the suffering, so God in a sense 7422 (92). 7SIbid. 44 (134)· "44 (134. 135)·

experienced activity impassibly, like the source of any river becomes a river, it is believed to suffer from its bed and the types and varieties of the terrain, it continually preserves the potentiality of its water and in the form of a river irrigates the ground without experiencing any diminution as far as its being water goes, so Christ is that river of which the prophet speaks (Gn 2:6) ... 80

Later he can speak of the Son 'enduring apparent reduction (diminutionem) and being born of a virgin and in the very apparent reduction by dint of his paternal power. that is his diviner and primal existence, rising and being renewed and returning to the Father, that is to the Father's existence and potentiality.'·' Marius leaves us in no doubt that the Son when he was incarnate had a human soul. At one point he states that the Son assumed universal human soul or mind in order to save men's souls: 7744 (135, 136); but Marius is by no means dear here. 78 Adv. A,ium 3 I (273). "Ibid. J2 (274). 80 47 (139. 140). 81 5 1 (147. 148).

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He took the whole (universalem) logos of flesh. 'But he also took the whole logos of soul. For it is clear that he had (the logos) of soul, since the Saviour says' -and then follow a string of texts from both Old and

are, ~r~m one sub~tance, a~d so the three are homoousion. The Holy Spint IS from ChrIst as Chnst is from God and there One is Three. '85

'If God is spirit and Jesus is spirit and the Holy Spirit is spirit, the three

New Testaments designed to show that Christ, both pre-existent and

God is 'spirit, perfect and beyond spirit'.·6 The word 'spirit' means to live and to be life and to give life. God is spirit both as Father and as Son and as Holy Spirit, and so to the same conclusion, the three are consubstantial.· 7 The Spirit is the substance of all three, but there is a difference, which he does not at this point elucidate, except to say, confus!ngly, tha( it 'belongs to substance' (substantialis).·. The Spirit IS also. th~ p,?mal inw.ard movement, w?ich is the Father's thought' (excog,tatto) , that IS, hiS thought about himself. For super-thought is higher than thought.'·' There is, he says later, 'a double potentiality of the Logos towards God, one revealed (in manifesto), Christ in the flesh, the other secret (in occulto), the Holy Spirit ... So all Three are One, the Father silence which is not silent, but a voice in silence; the

incarnate. had a human soul. He showed anxiety, anger and desire. s2

Later in the same book Marius explains that God is never said to have a soul. He is discussing Jn 10:17-18, where Jesus speaks of laying down his soul (life, psyche) by his own authority. Divine spirit, Marius says, is far superior to soul: 'We must therefore conclude that logos and pneuma 3fe superior to the soul by reason of their higher substance, and that the substance of the

soul is very different and inferior, because it was breathed in by God and generated' (genita).83 The soul, he goes on to say, which was made in the image of God is inferior to God and to the Logos, and not to be identified with either. It can be taken up or laid down. It can be called homoiousios with the Logos (but not, one is left to infer, homoousios). Spirit. when it assumes anima (soul) descends to the world and when it lays down the soul it leaves the world.·' Marius Victorinus, then, accepted, at least in theory, a full doctrine of the Incarnation, in which the Son assumed not only human flesh but human soul and made some tentative attempts at explaining how this could take place within the theological framework which he adopted. But, being a thorough Platonist in the tradition of late Greek philosophy, he inevitably showed more interest in the relation of the Son/Logos to the Father and to the world than in the doctrine of the Incarnation.

Son, next, the voice, the Paraclete the voice of the voice'. 90 The

reference to the Spirit as secret means the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds of believers, as is evident in a passage in a later book: :Next the Holy Spirit is in another mode Jesus Christ himself, secret, mward, conversing with souls, teaching (the foregoing) and giving ways of understanding, generated (genitum) by the Father through Chnst and

'But Jesus and the Holy Spirit are motion, indeed motion in

movement, operating then outwardly, but Jesus is the Spirit openly,

Marius Victorinus does not neglect the doctrine of the Spirit. He declares on more than one occasion that God is Spirit: ,':

550

ChrIst, because of course Christ is the only-begotten

This is in one sense fairly traditional, but not in another. What does it mean to call the Holy Spirit 'voice of a voice'? And if the Holy Spirit IS generated (or begotten), then either the Son is not only-begotten or he IS Identical with the Spirit. Marius tries to explain the relation of the Son to the Holy Spirit in other passages:

4. Marius Victorinus' Doctrine of the Trinity

82Adv. A,ium Il!.3 (196 (from which the quotation comes), 197). The texts are Matt. 26:3; Ps 16(15): 10(11); Ezek. 18:4; Matt. 10:15 (which MV mistakenly imagines to have been spoken at the incident of the cursing of the fig-tree); Matt. 26:39· 83 11 (210, 211. quotation 211). 84Ibid. I2 (211, 212).

In

(unigenitus) Son'.91

;~

"Adv. Arium I(IV)14 (74); cf. 8 (64,65), and 16 (78).

,

"Ibid. so

87

(145).

Ad,,: ~r.jum IV ..IO (238, 239). Cf. Adv. Ar. 1.15 (75) where he insists that the

Holy Spmt

IS

also light and substance along with the Son and the Father

"Adv. Arium 1.55 (152).

.

'9Ibid.

57 (156). 9°13 (72); the formula is repeated Adv. Arium 111.16 (21 9). 91 Adv. Arium IV.33 (27 6 ).

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that is in the flesh, but the Holy Spirit is the secret Jesus, for it is he who inspires ways of understanding. no longer he who does miracles or speaks in parables', 92

which was destined to be taken up by Augustine many years later. He calls it an 'example' (exemplum), and instances the possibility of sight, s~eIng ItSelf, and understanding. 99 He occasionally attempts to dIStIngUIsh the Persons, but never in any way that gives promise of clarity. He can speak of all three

If God is homoousios with Christ, then Christ must be homoousios with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit consequently also homoousios with God. The Holy Spirit has come forth from God ... he is knowledge and understanding and existence and power and potentiality for knowledge. The text 'he has all things from me' shows that the Spirit is distinct from the Son, because 'he' and 'me' are distinct. 93 Marius also thinks that the Triple Name in which Christ commands baptism to be given at Matt. 28:1!)-20 shows that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the same (idem) 'distinct of course in their method of operating, because one teaches understanding and the other gives life'. And thisshows that not only God and Christ but also the Holy Spirit is homoousios. 94 In his hymns Marius also refers to the Holy Spirit as 'begotten' or 'generated', and also calls him notio, (recognition or knowledge, but nearer the former) and conexio (link, an idea which he does not develop in his prose works).95 There are several Trinitarian formulae to be found in the works of Marius Victorinus: 'But the Three are One and the One Three and the Three are thrice One, and the One is the same and sole.'96

They occur more often in his hymns, 'Love, Grace, Communication', or 'Majesty, Movement out, Return' or 'Substance, Form, Recognition',97 or 'Existence. Life, Understanding',98 The last formula Marius actually turns into a model for the Trinity 92Adv. Arium III.I4 (215). 93 Adv. Arium IV .17 (249.250). MV's staccato and note-like style makes it difficult to determine his exact meaning: 'He has all things from me' is a kind of summary of In 16:14-15. MV often quotes the Bible in a carele~s way. cr. Adv. Arium 1.47 (141) 'So we confess the Holy Spirit also who has all things from God the Father, because the Logos, that is Jesus Christ, gives him everything which Christ has from the Father'. . 94Ibid. 18 (251,252). It is not clear which Person does what, but on the whole it is likely that MV means that the Spirit teaches but the'Son gives life. . 9SHymn III, lines 104-5 (298) and 151-4 (300); 242--7 (303). This new concept suggests that the hymns should be put later in MV's theological development than Hadot postulates. 96/n Candidum 31 (47). "Hymn III lines 42-45, 71-'4 (296, 297), 151-4 (300). "Adv. A,ium 111.4 (198).

55 2

'having substance and always simultaneously homoousioi, but p?s~essing their own subsistence [by which he means Person] with

dlvme love (affectione) according to their activity.'10o

In a carefully phrased passage he states that there is no existence which precedes the three: 'For the Father is the generator of his own substance and is the originating existence (fontana exsistentia) of the others according to his supreme position (secundum verticem) - and yet in spite of this fact ~either the existence nor the potentiality is divided in the very Being ~m eo 9uod est esse) of these three as far as majesty ... which generates Itself IS concerned - for the Father confers both very Being in a particular mode and very Being. 101

This is an attempt, though not a markedly successful one, to dIStIngUISh the Persons. And so is the very odd statement which follows soon after that the Son is he 'who is in the middle in the hinge (angulo) of the Trinity, he declares the super-existent Father and completes the Holy Spirit to perfection'. 102

. For Mariu.' Victorinus, says Mary Clark, if the One is in any way, It must have ItS Logos, but 'latent and hidden, so that to be Logos itself IS "to be", or rather the Logos itselfis nothing other than the very "to be"', and this 'to be' includes life and understanding. 103 This is one wa y of envisaging a philosophical Trinity which shall not be inconsistent with the Christian Trinity. And Simonetti can describe this writer's doctrine of the Trinity as 'the most organic and profound put forward during the controversy, rich in points which could have been fruitful'.'04 Both these statements are true, and yet 99Ibid. 5 (199, 200), visio, videre. discernere. looAdv. Arium 1.16 (7 8). IOIIbid. 55 (152, 153). IO'Ibid. 56 (154). 1030 p. cit. 157. l04Crisi 298.

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there is a serious flaw in Marius' Trinitarian doctrine. He cannot avoid giving an impression of near-Sabellianism in his theology, because he does not appear to have the resources to distinguish the Persons of the Trinity satisfactorily. We have seen that he describes God as Spirit in all his manifestations, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but he finds it difficult to distinguish the precise mode of proper existence of the Holy Spirit and he appears at times to identify Christ and the Holy Spirit. This was, of course, a widespread problem in the fourth century and no theologian can be said to have dealt with it quite adequately. When he wishes to distinguish his ideas from those of Basil of Ancyra and his school he comes close to saying that the Three enjoy a numerical identity of ousia with almost no saving clause to suggest that they are not just aspects of the one God. And to say that God is existence, life and understanding, with human vision as a model, is to ignore, what Augustine when sailing in the same waters did not ignore, that their application to a single subject strongly suggests Sabellianism if the model and the application of the model are not qualified. 'And so', he can write, 'the Son will be the same as the Father, or neither the Father nor the Son existed before the movement outwards (egressumforas) but there was a sole One'.'os This is Marius' idiosyncratic way of expressing the eternal generation of the Son if we assume (as we are entitled to) that he prefers the former alternative. But it leaves a decidedly Sabellian taste in the mouth. Even in those passages where he tries hardest to distinguish the Three, he scarcely succeeds in distinguishing more than three functions of the one God, origination, activity, recognition (or cogitation or ratiocination).'06 The Father is existentia and substantialitas, the Son the act or movement of that existence and supply of substance - and the Spirit? Well, his last word is probably to be found in the third Hymn: the Spirit is recognition (or idea or cognition - notio), but all recognition is recognition of form and all form is of substance. So we have (in reverse order) Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the blessed Trinity.,07 It only remains to be noted that Marius Victorinus is well aware of the difficulty of speaking in human terms of God. His apophatic theology is a sufficient guarantee of this. It is indeed, he says, a sin to

speak about God~ his existence and its mode and not adore but to wish to explain divinity in human speech. But because we have the Holy Spirit we have 'a partial knowledge' (partilem cognoscentiam) of God, but we also suffer from ignorance of God as well as knowledge. In faith, however, we have 'perfect knowledge' .'08 Presumably he means, perfect knowledge as far as it goes. Certainly Marius is no Gnostic. He is quite sure that knowledge of God is available to us, and is ready to explain how:

l05Adll. Arium IV.26 (266). Hadot notes this passage in Marius Victorinus 271. l06E.g. Ad". Arium III,I7. 18 (222-223). '·'Hymn II1.187"""!>I (lOI).

554

:For when the k~owledge is latent and within itself, not entering into Itself from outsIde, but according to its nature, immersed in that which is Being, is immanent, it is of such a form that it could be kno~able; when knowledge is aroused, as it were moving out,

look,?g all round itself, it has made itself knowledge, by knOWing Itself It becomes knowable, having been rendered knowable to itself' (cognoscibile suum Jacta).109

This is an intensely philosophical statement. Marius Victorinus cannot be otherwise. But it allows that man can know God by revelatIOn by God's self-communication. It is customary to point out that the work of Marius Victorinushad virtually no influence upon his contemporaries, and nobody could deny thIS fact. It IS also customary to deplore this lack of influence. We must certainly admire the competence, the erudition and the originality of this writer. He deliberately turns his back on Tertullian. He works out his own theology using his own resources, which are mdeed much greater than those of his contemporaries in the West. But, in the first place it is highly doubtful if any of his Latin-speaking contemporaries could have understood him, even had they read his works, and Jerome more than hints at this. And in the second place Manus V,ctonnus was completely unacquainted with the work of any contemporary Eastern theologian (except Basil of Ancyra), sk,lled m Greek though he undoubtedly was. His theology might have been rather better balanced if he had had this acquaintance, rather less rarefied, rather more aware of its weaknesses. One could of Course prefer the theory that Marius knew of the work of Athanasius but that he chose to ignore it. But it comes to much the same thing. It was for understandable reasolls that Marius Victorinus was not read. 1081n Candidum 32 (47. 48). 109 Adv.

Arium IV.24 (261, 262); cf. I1I.6 (200-2).

555

The Rival Answers Emerge He was, however, appreciated. Thirty years ~fter his death AU~d';,'t~: h heard the story of his conversion recounted m Mdan wl~:r . d may not have been understood. He was remembered an onoure, and his theological works were preserved.

18 Homoian Arianism I.

The Identification of Homoian Arianism

It is very easy to confuse Homoian Arianism with Neo-Arianism, but

they are in fact two distinct schools of Arianism. There are distinctive features in Neo-Arianism; by this term we mean, following Kopecek's useful label, the Arianism of Aetius and ofEunomius, the brand of Arianism favoured by Philostorgius and attacked by the Cappadocian theologians, and especially by Gregory of Nyssa. It is distinguished by a careful use of Greek philosophical terms, of Aristotelian logic and late Platonic philosophy, by a disinclination to allow that the Son was begotten rather than created, by a conviction that knowledge of God is easily open, not only to the Word, but to everybody, and by a frequent and indeed critical use of the concept and term 'ingenerateness' (agennesia), and it is virtually confmed to Greek-speaking theologians. Homoian Arianism is a much more diverse phenomenon, more widespread and in fact more longlasting; but it too has, within wider limits, certain recognizable features. It occurs both in Greek-speaking and in Latin-speaking writers. It is little interested in philosophy on the whole. The identification of Homoian Arianism is rendered all the more difficult because its two leading exponents tended at times to betray its principles or stray outside its limits. Akakius at one point apparently accepted the homoousion and Eudoxius on occasions patronised Neo-Arians until the later part of his career. Homoian Arianism is that theology which was most notably expressed in the Second Creed of Sirmium of 357 and in the creed of NiceConstantinople which was temporarily registered as ecumenical in 360. It was a development of the theology ofEusebius of Caesarea in a direction which can be thought of as distinctive ofArius' theology because it always sedulously avoided introducing the word ousia or its compounds into accounts of the relation of the Father to the Son. It 556

557

The Rival Answers Emerge usually preferred to describe the two as 'like' without further qualification. This was not, on the whole, because it wished to leave a wide margin for diverse interpretations of the word 'like'; if that were its raison d'2tre it could not have objected to homoousion. But it genuinely held that further qualification of the term 'like' was bound to introduce elements in the likeness which contradicted the account of the Father and the Son in the Bible. Homoians of course had no objection to the expression 'like according to the Scriptures', but they realised, as everybody else must have realised, that this left wide open the question of what the Scriptures said about this likeness. Though Homoian Arianism derived from the thought both of Eusebius of Cae sa rea and of Arius, we cannot with confidence detect it before the year 357, when it appears in the Second Sirmian Creed, and immediately precipitates a crystallisation of a number of different theological positions which had till that point been confused or no more than latent. In trying to give an account of it, therefore, we must be careful only to use those sources which we know to reflect Arianism at or after that date, and which are not merely giving us conventional ideas of what Arius himself or early Arians were supposed to have held. The views of people whom Athanasius in his works called 'the Arians', for instance, cannot be taken to represent Homoian Arianism, nor the ingenious but unrepresentative 'Candidus' of Marius Victorinus, nor Arianism as described by Lucifer of Calaris. The later Hilary, Phoebadius of Agen, and some sources within the Historia Akephala, on the other hand, will give us fairly trustworthy information about it. So will Epiphanius and Ambrose if we use them with care, for neither was a subtle critic of Arianism, and so will Philostorgius, if we remember his strong prejudice against any views which were not those of Aetius and Eunomius. And there is quite a large range of original Arian documents to help us in our examination. It is perhaps not widely realized that we can discover no less than twelve creeds or rules of faith which are Homoian or at least produced by authors who were at one time Homoian, some of which we have looked at already. They are as follows: 1.

2. 3.

The Second Sirmian Creed of 357 (see above, PP.344-5). The Creed of Nice (Constantinople) 360 (see above, p. 380). The Creed put forward by Akakius at Seleucia, 359 (see above, PP.373-4). 558

Homoian Arianism

4· 5·

6. 7·

8. 9· 10,

The Rule of Faith of Vlfilas (see above, p. 105). The Creed uttered by Vlfilas on his death-bed 383 (see above, pp. 105-6). . ' The creed attributed to Eudoxius, part of which is quoted above (p. 112). The Creed of Auxentius of Milan, 364 (see above, pp. 46~). The Creed which Germinius professed when corresponding With Valens and Vrsacius (see below, p. 594). Palladius' Rule of Faith (see above, p. 104 n 19), given by Gryson ScoUes Ariennes 234, (39). 1 I, 12. Three credal statements to be found in the fragments of Mai/Gryson and Turner, all of them drastically subordinating the Son to the Father. 1

As we examine the content of Homoian teaching we shall see the vanous articles of these creeds or rules of faith exemplified one by one. It is often alleged that the Arians tended, in distinction from others to aVOid allegorising. It is not true that they completely eschewed th~ practice. Almost no expounder of the Bible in the ancient world is free from some use of allegory.2 But they tend to take Scripture lIterally m the sense that they insist upon the actual meaning of metaphorical. or ~nalogical language used of God, scarcely recogmzmg I~S equivocal nature. They prided themselves on their appeal to SCripture. They were touching a raw spot with the proNlcenes when they pomted out that homoousios and ousia did not ?ccur in the Bible. 'We do not call the Holy Spirit God', says a writer m ~~ Mal/Gryson fragments, :because Scripture does not call him (so). Maxlmmus, debatmg With Augustine, declares 'We believe the S~riptures. and we respect those divine Scriptures; and we do not WIsh to pass over a single jot, because we fear the danger which is set out in the Scriptures themselves' (Deut 4:2).4

At every point of COurse the Arians produce their trump card, Prov IGryson Scripta A,riana Latina Fr. 14(250) and 22 (263-4) [Mai Script Vet N C;0Il.l.zID-II]; Fr."6(z37-8) [VIII 223-4]; C. H. Turner 'An Arian.Ser~on; p ~8 hnes 2-8. . 2Z eiIler observes, Origines 504. that the anonymous Arian Commentary on Job uses

allegory freely. lGryson Scripta Arriana 23 (265) [1I(212)]. 4Collatio Augustin; 13 (7~O).

559

The Rival Answers Emerge

H omoian Arianism

8:22; here quite plainly God had written that he created Wisdom (Le. the Logos) the beginning of his ways. They insisted that the Greek word 'created' (;;"ncr&v) meant exactly what it said. They pointed out that the word 'god' in the Bible was in several places applie~ to bemgs much inferior to God Almighty (and was therefore apphcable In a reduced sense to Christ), e.g. Exod 7: I, Ps 82(81):6. S Like everybody else involved in the controversy, they used Isa 53:8 ('His generation who shall declare?'), but in their case it was cited to preclude impertinent speculation about the Son's birch from the Fa~her's ousia. So certainly the composers of the Second Creed of SlrmlUm .of 357 had argued. 6 Hilary sets out a long list of texts used by Arrans to demonstrate the incomparability of the Father: he alone IS God (Deut 6:4, Mk 12:29. I Tim 2:5); he alone is wise (Rom 16:25-27); he alone is in generate and alone true (Isa 65:16;Jn 17:3); he alone is good (Mk 10:18); he alone is powerful (I Tim 6:15); he alone is unchangeable and immutable (Mal 3:6; James 1:17), and so on for another eight sets of texts. 7 From the same source we learn of the texts which they adduced to show the ignorance of the Logos - Mk 5:30, 9:32;Jn I I :34 and 14, 16:30.8 The anonymous Commentator on Job believes that the book ofJob must have been originally written in Arabia before the Exodus' Syriace', which may mean in Syriac, or in Aramaic, and was translated into Hebrew by Moses; such lofty affairs as the conversation of God with Satan in heaven could only have been revealed to someone as inspired as Moses, and he compares the interchange between the Father and the Son (as he takes it) at Gen I :26. He apparently took both conversations as having literally happened." But he does not carry his literalism to extremes. You must not be surprised, he says, to find the angels descrrbed as conung to stand before Job Gob 2:1): in the Psalms God can even be described as 'like a strong man with a hangover' (Ps 78(77):66(65))! Clearly neither is meant to be taken aU pied de la lettre.'o But he insists that Job must have spent three and a half months (not as some said, years, in

imitation of the length of our Lord's earthly ministry) on the dunghill because at Job 1'3 Job complains that he is 'allotted months [not years] of emptiness'." The strict word of Scripture must be adhered to. Gryson remarks the peculiar emphasis laid by Arians on the fact that their faith was Scriptural: 'What I read I believe', he quotes, and 'truth is discovered not from argument but is proved by reliable proof-texts'. '2 Epiphanius alleges that the Arians rejected the Epistle to the Hebrews as non-Pauline, and in this he is supported by 13 Theodoret. But as a little later Epiphanius, with characteristic inconsistency, says that the Arians take Heb 3:1 (,faithful to. him that made him') as a proof that the Son is a creature, we need not take this statement seriously, 14

5S 0 Hilary De Trin. VII.IO; cf. Phoebadius Con. Arianos 3(15). For Arian prooftexts see Meslin Les.Ariens 230-43. 6Cf. Simonetti Studi 17S n 79.

'De T,in. IV.S. '[X:66. 9PG 17:373. 374. But at 1(401-2) he modifies this; the devil could only have stood before God in thought and in intention. 1011 (449): the quotation runs tanquam potens crapulatus ,a vino.

560

. Gwatkin ~peaks of th~ 'spe~ious charity and colourless mdefimteness ~f the HomOlan Arrans.'s But this charge is quite unJustified. Their formul~e .of 357 and 359/60 were not designed to mclude a large range of opmlOns, but to state specifically what in their view could be said of the Son's relation to the Father within the limits of Scripture. The hostility which they manifested to Homoousians Homoiousians a?d ultimately to Eunomians when they gained control of Imperral pohcy does not suggest an irenic spirit ready to welcofi';e all comers. Gryson points out that they always maintained that theIrS was the true, tradmonal faith and were ready on occasion to. appeal to remoter prede~essors such as Cyprian and Theognis of Nlc~ea, and they always disavow the epithet 'Arian'.'. Palladius, arraigned by venomous and prejudiced judges at Aquileia, knows very well where he stands and can on occasion leave the officious Ambrose uncertain as to what to say. To hold wrong doctrine about God, says the Arian Vandal king Thrasamund, is to blaspheme him and wrong him. 17

"II (474) . .12ScoIies Arie.nnes I7S~. But Gryson is, ~istaken in thinking that Palladius (his chief s<:>urce of mformao<>.n here) was a disciple of Eunomius. He is manifestly an Homman, not an Eunomlan. 13E . h . pip amus Panarion 69.37.2(185). Theodoret Praef. Comm. on Hebrews (PG 82:673). 14Epiphanius ibid. 69.37.1, 3 (I8S). lsSA 168. 16Sco lies

Ariennes 178'"""9.

17Fu~gentius ofR~spe Obiectiones Regis Trasamundi (Fraipont) 69. On Arian rites

of baptIsm, see Meslm Les Ariens 382-'7.

Homoian Arianism

The Rival Answers Emerge Z.

The Theology of the Homoian Arians

From Epiphanius and Ambrose, neither of whom penetrated very far into the raison d' 2tre of Arianism, we can gam an outline of the stock arguments used by these Arians . They pointed to the ig~lOrance of Jesus as a sign of the limitations of the Logos, and to hIS apparent disavowal of goodness.'· They claim that the Son is a creature,'· that 20 he was chosen and called by grace and not produced by nature. They say that the Son was produced wholly from the will of the Father and that the word 'beget' when applied to him must be taken metaphorically (though references to his being created are literal).2.' They produce Christ's being raised from the dead as a proof of hiS inferiority to the Father.'2 The Agony in the Garden shows hIS infirmity.23 The reference by Christ to 'the only ~rue God' (In 17:~f!) indicates that he himselfis not true God,24 and hiS askmg something of the Father in prayer shows that he cannot be equal to the Father .2' Inevitably the Ariaus argue Christ's subordination from Paul's explicit statement of it at 1 Cor 15:28. Ambrose superficially summarizes Arianism in a brief account:

the Arians say that the Son is unlike the Father, that he began in time, that he is created, that he is not good [this is wholly untrue), that he IS not true God nor almighty for creation was made, not by him, but only through him, and that his divinity is not one with the Father's.26

18Epiphanius Ancoratus 17.2--6 (25. 26); 18.1,

.2

(26); Panarion 69.57.1 (204);

Ambrose De Fide V.I6.189-9a (a87, 288), 19Jtf (a89ft) , 198 (29 1). 19Epiphanius Ancoratus 46.1, 5 (56).

2·Ibid. 49.2 (58). 21 52.1-5 (60,61); 53.1-8 (6I-J).

22Panarion 69.59.1 (206,207); c( Liebart Deux Homelies 1.25.90 .

"Ibid. 69.60.1, 2 (208). 2469.27-1-'7 (176-'7), J.I (180). . 2569.29.1 (17 8). The Arian reproach to the pro-Nicenes that 'they are opposmg

the imperial commands and the inclination.ofthe Empero.r Vale~s' (69.34.1 (182» shows that Epiphanius is here dealing wlth ~e J:iomOlan Anans and not ~he Eunomians whom Valens did not favour. Meshn gIVes a good summary of A?an arguments 'us Ariem 303-23. except that he does not distinguish the Homolans from the Eunomians. . 26De Fide 1.$.34-42 (16-18). It is in this passag~ that Ambr?se p.r~duces hIS famous statement that 'it did not please God to save his people bydIaiectIc (40 (11.))' We do not wonder that a few years later Ambrose fou~d it difficult to cope wI.th Palladius' arguments. The reference to I Cor IS:28 IS to be found at De Fine

V.I2.148tf (269ft).

If we take Homoian doctrine detail by detail, we shall fmd that its main pillar is the incomparability of God the Father, but not specially, as with the Eunomians, his ingenerateness. Hilary says that the adjectives which the Ariaus apply to the Father are 'alone good, alone powerfnl, alone immortal', and they allege that he is of a nature which is 'unapproachable, invisible, inviolable, indescribable, infinite, provident, powerful, benevolent, active, penetrating and immanent within and without everything in everything'.27 The same note is struck in a fragment from Mai/Gryson. Here we are told that 'the Father is a unique simple spirit. alone good, alone possessing

immortality and dwelling in light unapproachable. The Son is unique in that proper nature which the Father has given him, for he cannot be compared to the Father. Nor can the Spirit be compared to the Son for he was made by the Son and according to the Scriptures comes in third

place. Nor can anything which received its being through God's providence be compared with him.'28

The Sermo Arianom", given us by Augustine in a series of brief propositions sets out the symmetrical subordination of the Son to the Father and of the Spirit to the Son. The Father is incomparably greater than the other Two, has no equal and no creditor, and is different from the Son in all sorts of respects - nature, order, rank, relation, dignity, power, activity.2. Palladius, in the fragments of his reply to Ambrose printed in Gryson's Scolies Ariennes, comes to deal with the pro-Nicene epithet applied to the Persons of the Trinity, 'similar' (indifferentes). He deals with it by producing a careful theological statement wholly repudiating it: 'When you say that the Three are also similar you do not realize that in

the titles of Father as much as of Son, and in generating and in being born, and in taking a body and not taking it, in dying also for us and not dying, the relation of one is placed above the other in his guaranteed rank, that is the Father is superior to the Son - further because the Father sends the Son, and the Son sends the Paraclete. the

Father delivers the Son to suffering, the Holy Spirit in the function of a servant everywhere proclaims the Son, and again the Son glorifies the.

27De Trin. X1.4.

2'19 (a58-9) [III (aIJ)J. 29Serm .

At. PL 42:13-31 (680--2).

The Rival Answers Emerge

Father and the Paraclete Spirit the Son, the Son bears witness to the

Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the witness to the Son with the apostles and through the apostles, the Son speaks what he hears from the Father, the Holy Spirit brings to the apostles what he has heard from the Son, the Sonissent in the name of the Father, the Holy Spirit in the name of the Son the Father redeems the Church by the suffering of the Son, the Hol~ Spirit gathers and teaches the church redeemed by Christ's blood by his superintendence, in fact he appoints bishops in it for the honour of his Lord and orders ministries and distributes grace - a clear and obvious dissimilarity (differentia) can be seen in the Persons and it is certainly not satisfactory to refer to the Three as similar .'30

Because Palladius' 'Trinitarian' doctrine consists of one High God, one demi-god and one superior angel, function alone will suffice to differentiate. He hardly needs distinctions of Persons (though he can use the term personae) because he already recognizes distinctions of ontological condition. Homoian Arianism does not maintain that the Son was created by the Father 'out of non-existence' (&~ OIl" l)VTOlV) though its opponents constantly accuse it of holding this view. We have seen that Palladius shows no disinclination to use the language of generation and birth of the Son. Hilary says that the Arians argue that nothing can be born of one, but only of ""0, and therefore the Son cannot really be generated by God: 'God who is unchangeable can give no birth to anyone born from him, because that which is not changed is not capable of accepting an

addition, and the nature of him who is solitary and single does not possess in itself a capacity to generate.'31

We cannot dogmatically state that the Homoians did not teach this, but the doctrine is more like that ofEunomius than that of Palladius. Maximinus in controversy with Augustine explicitly denies that he teaches that the Son was produced from non-existence: 'We do not teach, as you libellously allege, that just as the rest of the creation was made out of nothing, so he (the Son) was made from nothing like one of the creatures. [n fact just listen to the authoritative statement of a council, because in Ariminum our fathers, among other

3°318,320.136. I have found it necessary at one or two points to tidy up Palladius' somewhat breathless syntax. 31De Trin. VII.3.

Homoian Arianism statements, said this "If anyone says that the Son is from nothing, and not from God the Father, let him be anathema"" And Maximinus quotes IJn 5:1 which explicitly ascribes generation to Christ. 32

Thrasamund declares robustly that God created, generated and established the Son. 33 Fulgentius in his reply challenges Thrasamund to say whether, if the Son is not from the Father's substance, then from what is he, 'from nothing, or from some other source?' But he knows the answer that the king will make: 'the Son is born from the will of the Father'. 34 Thrasamund will not say 'from nothing'. This was in fact the stock teaching of Homoian Arianism on the origin of the Son. He was created from the Father's will, not his nature, and this could be called either creation, though it must be distinguished from the creation of everything else, or begetting. 35 Everything concerned with Christ's origin and mission was done at the will and command of the Father. 'The Father generated the Son unchangeably and impassibly by his will; the Son by his power alone without effort or weariness made the Spirit'.36 And the Father's will superintended the Son's creation of the world, his Incarnation and death. 37 The Father: 'With consciousness. power and will created, established. generated. made the Son before everything, according to what he, God the

Father almighty, wished, determined and ordered for the Son, so that through him all things created, established, made and born existed and are ruled by the command of the Father. '38

The Homoians were just as anxious as the pro-Nicenes to protect God the Father from suffering, perhaps even more so. But they were perfectly ready to say that God the Son suffered. Indeed, their Christology was specifically designed to do so. Here, whatever we 32Collatio 13 (730). 33Fulgentius Obiectiones 67. 34lbid. Responsa 81. 3SSee the very full exposition of this point in Gryson. Scolies Ariennes 185"""95. C£ also the statement attributed to Demophilus the Arian bishop of Constantinople by Philostorgius. above p. 101. Demophilus was certainly an Homoian, not an Eunomian. 36Sermo Ar. 687.26. "Ibid. 679.4, 680.8, 682.34. 38Gryson Scripta Ar. Frag. 5 (234). Cf. the Anonymous Commentary on Luke which insists peremptorily that the Father begot the Son (at a particular point, of course) Gryson Scripta Ar. 1.31-2 (204-5).

The Rival Answers Emerge

Homoian Arianism

may think of their Trinitarian theology, they were on stronger ground than the pro-Nicenes, whose Christology always seemed to push them towards the position which they always wanted to avoid of concluding that the full, authentic Godhead suffered. We have seen that the Western bishops after Serdica in 343 accused Valens and Ursacius of saying that the Spirit was crucified and died and was buried and rose again .. " Phoebadius accuses a contemporary Arian whom he does not name as holding that 'the Son of God himself assumed human nature (hominem) from Mary and through it suffered along with it.'40 The Mai/Gryson fragments witness not only to the Arian doctrine that the incarnate Word lacked a human mind or soul, but that the Homoians taught that 'God the Word, though he was impassible, suffered in the flesh and the incorruptible God endured corruption, so that he might transform us into incorruptibility'. But the same author goes on to insist that all that the Godhead actually experienced was 'insult' (iniuria); the Godhead did "not die. 41 The anonymous Commentary on Job has a rather different explanation. Christ at the Agony in the Garden showed sorrow and fear not because the Godhead was afraid, but because it was necessary to demonstrate that the flesh was genuinely human. 42 This author does not disclose whether he thought that Jesus Christ had a human soul, but it is most unlikely that he did. Even as late as the time of Fulgentius ofRuspe, the Vandal Arians were maintaining this denial, and they do this, says Fulgentius, in order that the Son's Godhead may be exposed to and feel the effect of human infirmity.43 Ambrose alleged that the Arians ran the risk of saying that the Father suffered. 44 He failed to see that this was precisely the risk which their whole system was designed to avoid. Athanasius is approaclting closer to the heart of the problem which faced both pro-Nicenes and Arians when he says that what made the Godhead tolerable to men was the human nature assumed by the Son, not a reduced divinity.4' It was certainly an item in the Homoian faith that a doctrine of

Incarnation meant a reduction of divinity. Its devotees produced texts to prove that Christ's acceptance ofIncamation showed that he was a God inferior to the Father-Jn 20:17; Phil2:9,Jn 17:3; Lk 18:9; Matt 24:36. 46 When the Son became incarnate there must have been a corruption or reduction of the Father's substance. 47 'How', they ask, 'did he come to (take) flesh if he is from (tIC) the Father? How could that illimitable nature put on flesh, ifhe was from the Father by nature?'4. A fragment from Mai/Gryson contrasts the Father and the Son in a number of respects, among them' one sends, the other is sent, one is visible and the other he whom no man saw nor can see, one is impassible and the other suffered for us ... the Son who said that he did not know the Day, and the Father who placed (it) in his power', all to exhibit the Son's inferiority.4> The same sign of inferiority, 'he does not know the End' (nescitjinem) occurs in another fragment. 5o Ambrose has also to meet the argument that Christ did not know the date of the Last Day. 51 Ever since the Second Sirmian Creed of 357, which was the first clear declaration ofHomo ian Arianism, a drastic subordination of the Son to the Father had been the keynote of this school of thought.' 2 'Why', says Palladius in his polemic against Ambrose, 'do you speak of the Father, whose relation to the Son you attack as not consisting in goodwill, whereas in fact he begat a Son rather subordinated (subiectum), as he chose, than equal, as you wish?'" The Sermo Arianorum maintains that the Son is eternally, constitutionally, subordinated to the Father, even after the necessity of doing anything to promote our salvation is past. 54 The author of Liebart's Two Arian

39See above, P.30I. 40Con. Arianos 19 (27); cf. Liebart Deux Homelies 1.24.88 olh&ycip lbc:mv 6 eeOC; bl

'to cnaupucov 7tap&ytv£t'o 1tu9o<;.

"20 (260) [XIII (228)]. 421II (SIS). 43Ad Trasarnundum 1.7.2 (103. 104). "De Fide 1II.2.13 (113).

450r. con. A,. 11.64.

566

46Phoebadius Con. Arianos 4 (15. 16). 47Gregory of Elvira De Orthodoxa Fide 69 (239). 48Epiphanius Panarion 69.15.5 (165). 49 17 (255) [IV 215»). But the Sermo Arianorum declares that Christ is omniscient (69?4); later Arianism may have shifted its viewpoint here. See above p. tI9. Cf. Mal/Gryson 22 (263). [I (211)] Hune non proficientem in posterum sed statim perfeetum ... quidem potuit totam virtutem et totam sapientiam in substitutione fiU eonsignans. Hilary may be travestying Arianism when he attributes to it the doctrine that the Son is not mature or advanced enough to know the Father's thoughts, De Trin. IX.68. 50Gryson 1.32 (205). "De Fide 11.11.93. 94 (91). 52S ee Gryson SeoUes Ariennes 191 n 2. 53Ibid. 272.85. 5.4682-3.34. In fact this author in this passage puts himself in the odd position of saying that the Son obeys because he has to! He regards him as speaking 'from the Father's foreknowledge', but (as we have seen) still thinks him omniscient. Logic was not this writer's forte.

The Rival Answers Emerge

Homoian Arianism

Homilies sees the whole of Christ's work, earthly and heavenly, as a consistent pattern of subordination to the Father. 55 The conviction that the union between the Father and the Son was one of will, or goodwill, and not of nature nor substance, was part of this regular subordination, as Hilary points out in Contra Auxentium. 56 One could cover pages with passages from Arian writers who construct elaborate contrasts between the superiority of the Father and the inferiority of the Son, did one not fear to tire the reader. 57 Some Arians maintained that God could have been called 'Father' even before the Word existed and we have seen Asterius adumbrating this view. 58 But others believed that he could not have held this title until the Son was created. After the death of Ullilas in Constantinople in 383 the Arians in that city split into two groups over this very point. Marinus, a Thracian bishop, held the former view and a Syrian called Theoctistus who was a pastry-cook (hence the sect was dubbed Psathyropolistae, 'Confectioners') the latter. Dorotheus, Arian bishop of Antioch, took the more drastic line. 59 The Homoian

he is of everything.'62 The Son worships the Father, but the Father worships nobody, and has no equal nor creditor', says the Sermo Arianorum. 63 The Homoians adduced Jn 4:22 for this doctrine, 'You do not know what you worship, we know what we worship', pointing out that Christ prayed to the Father. 64 Another way of putting this was to call Christ the High Priest of the Father, patTis sacerdos. 65 Hilary says that they appealed to Hebrews 3:1-2 'You know the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus Christ, who is faithful to him who made him.'"" They also had the habit of emphasizing, for some reason, that the Father did not judge, but put all judgment into the Son's hands. 6' This theology looked very like a doctrine of two gods, one higher, one lower. Several pro-Nicene writers perceived this. Athanasius had said at a relatively early stage that the Arians believe in two gods who differ both in their natures and their powers. 68 The Arian Trinity, said Hilary, of three diverse Persons is not a unity but a disruption (discidium).69 Gregory of Elvira had made the same remark,'o and much later Vigiliusof Thapse echoed the sentiment. 71 But the Homoians' basic assumptions drove them towards this conclusion, and they did not try to avoid it. Palladius agrees readily when questioned by Ambrose that Christ is the visible God (the Father being the invisible one) and that Christ is not the immortal God (for he is mortal, that is capable of in some sense encountering death, in contrast to the Father who is immortal).72 'One God is worshipped by us', says Maximinus in the Collatio, 'ingenerate, unmade, invisible, who does not lower himself to human contacts and to human flesh. But there is a Son according to the Apostle, not a small but a great

Arians, in contrast to the followers of Aetius and Eunomius, were not

particularly interested in philosophy. They do not therefore specially emphasize, as Arius and his early followers certainly did, the role of the Son as a convenient philosophical device whereby an unapproachable, remote God is connected with transience and human affairs. It is characteristic of this type of Arianism to teach that the Father is the God of the Son. The anathema in the Ancyran Document of Basil of Ancyra directed against this view is pointed at the Homoians, as Hilary saw. 60 The 'Creed ofEudoxius' describes the Father's nature as 'not such as to give worship because it is superior' and the Son as

'pious (EU
568

62 17 (256) [IV.216]. ~368I.24.

64Ambrose De Fide V.4.49. 50 (236). 65Anon. Commentary on Luke 5.14 (220). 66De Trin. V.II. So much for Epiphanius' claim that the Arians rejected the Epistle to the Hebrews! 67Mai/~rr~on 17 (~S5). [IV.2IS] ,qui, iudjcatu~us es!filius et qui neminem iudicat pater

sed omne JUdiCIUm dedit fillO. The dlgmty of a Just Judge is reserved for the Onlybegotten, Sermo Arianorum 680.9. 68 0,. con. AT. III.I6. 69Coll. Antiar. BII.II.4 (153). 7°De Fide O. 68 (238). first version. 7lDial. con. Arianos PL 62:1.4 (182-3). Gryson. ScoUes Ariennes 191-8, makes the same observation. 72Gryson ScoUes Ariennes 290, 292.106, 107.

The Rival Answers Emerge

Homoitm Arianism

Father. 7• The status of the Spirit in Homoian teaching is emphatically short of divine. In the Altereatio Heradiani Germinius argues that the Holy Spirit is created,79 and this certainly implies that, unlike the Son, he is not God.

God'.. And he makes it clear that though he calls the Son God, the one God is the Father." 'We confess one, and one God', says a Mai/Gryson fragment, 'not two gods, for we do not describe him as two ingenerates or two Fathers'.74 And the same fragment makes it clear that the Arians profess to believe in a Trinity only because the Scriptures supply them with the three Names of Father, Son and Spirit. Auxentius of Milan puts the matter a little more tidily:

'We declare' says a fragment from Mai/Gryson, 'that the Holy Spirit whom we traditionally say in our creed and our baptism is in the third place from the Father after the Son is not God the creator, because nothing is created by him or through him.'80

'I have however never taught two gods: for there are not two Fathers,

so that two gods should be named, nor two Sons: but one Son from

The Sermo Arianorum says that the Spirit not only is subordinated to the Father, but that he worships and gives honour to the Son as the Son does to the Father, and he intercedes with the Son as the Son intercedes with the Father.· ' This subordination seemea necessary to the Arians if they were not to conclude that the Holy Spirit is Christ's brother.· 2 A Mai/Gryson fragment puts the status of the Spirit concisely:

one Father, Sole from Sole, God from God ... consequently we

preach one Godhead.'75 Hilary alleges that the Arians argue, with almost mathematical precision, 'If there is One, whoever this Other may seem to be he will not be

(God). But if there is Another, then this will not be One, since the natural order does not permit that where there is Another, there there will be One, or where there is One, there there will be Another. '76

'He is the first and great work of the Father through the Son, created through the Son, holy in his nature and possessing a sanctifying power so as to directly sanctify believers ... this Holy Spirit is neither God nor Lord, neither creator nor maker, and not to be worshipped nor

An Arian Homily edited by C. H. Turner ends with a reference to the day

adored ... and this Holy Spirit is before all things and on behalf of all

'in which the Holy Spirit is sent so that the order of the Trinity should be recognised: first the Son is sent by the Father, and now the Holy Spirit is sent by the Son, and the third hour (Acts 2: 1 5) comes in order

things and above all things, and with all things he alone without a

mediator worships the Son by whom he was made before all things; just as the Son worships the Father before all things and above all

that he should manifest himself a third and as bearing a third Person

things, and gives thanks without a mediator alone suitably to him

and having a third substance.'77

who begot him before all things.'·3

One could call this a Trinity; but it consists of a high God who does not mingle with human affairs, a lesser God who does, and a third what? We have already seen part of the answer to that question: the Spirit was as rigorously subordinated to the Son as the Son to the Father. The cherubim and seraphim, says that author of Liebart's Homilies, cond uct on high a sincere and pure prayer to the Paraclete, the Paraclete to the Only-begotten, and the Only-begotten to the

On this view, we are removed from the Father by a double mediatorship, that of the Spirit and that of the Son. But Arian authors are ready to say more positive things about the Holy Spirit than this. A Mai/Gryson fragment describes him as 'an unique (singularis) sanctifying power', and says that though he is not God nor Lord 78 11.1.96. 79PG SUPP.1.34s-6; c£ SermoAr. 680.10; 681.6, the Spirit made through the Son; Mai/Gryson 7 (239) [VI (221)]. 8°5 (237) [LX (231)]. 81 680-1.13.21; c£ Turner 'An Ancient Homiliary I', II. 166, ergo est unus unigenitus aput ingenitum patrem, quem ipse Spiritus Sanetus veneralur. 8.250 Germinius Altercatio 349. Maximinus, Collatio IS (733) uses the same argument. 8321 (261) [XIV (22!r30)]; cf. Vigilius ofThapse Contra Arianos etc. 11.34 (220). Gryson, Scolies Ariennes 19S-6, gives a good account of the Arian doctrine of the Spirit.

"13 (718). 7.22 (264) [I (211)]. 75Hi1ary Con. Auxentium IS (618). 76De Trin. VIII.). 77C. H. Turner 'An Ancient Homiliary' I.VII (176). Notice that the three are apparently of different substances.

57 0

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because he is not a creator but only 'the minister of Christ the Son of God' in order to sanctify and illuminate everything created by Christ, still his functions are manifold, and it gives a list of them:

Father in other respects. Hilary is certainly travestying any Arian point of view when he attributes to the extreme Arians (whom he calls Anhomoians) the view that because the term substance cannot be applied to God and he cannot generate, therefore there is no Son nor any like to God. 89 Socrates has an account of a council held in Antioch. under Euzoius·as bishop of the city, in 361 (Socrates gives the consuls' names), evidently before the death of Constantius in the November of that year. Those who attended, Socrates says, were followers of Akakius who were beginning to regret the formula 'like according to the Scriptures' of Nice/Constantinople, and wanted to delete 'like' altogether, openly declaring that 'the Son is altogether unlike the Father, not only in ousia, but also in will' (Kata POUA.TJ(Jlv). And they argued that the Son was 'from non-existence' (e~ O\;K 5VtOlV). The followers of Aetius at that time agreed with this opinion. This is why, the historian says, the Pro-Nicenes called them Anhomoioi and Exucontians. But the ventilating of these views roused such opposition that the Council in the end did no more than re-affirm the Creed of Nice/Constantinople!O It is conceivable that the more extreme followers of Aetius might have held views like this, but Socrates hints that even Aetius withdrew later from this position. Certainly Eunomius would never have agreed to these doctrines. It is significant that they could not command support at the council. Arians of all complexions were sensitive to the charge of Anhomoianism, and perhaps the Eunomians (one of whose watchwords was heterousion, of a different ousia) most of all. Philostorgius says that Aetius was, on the prompting of Basil of Ancyra, accused by the Emperor Constantius of holding Anhomoian opinions, but he denied the charge stoutly, saying that, far from holding this position, he believed that the Son was 'unchangeably like' (u1tapaA.A,UKtOl, O~OlOV) the Father'" and indeed there is no reason (as we shall see) to doubt this. He would not of course have said 'unchangeably like in ousia'. But it is interesting to observe that in the same passage Philostorgius shows that he thinks that the expression 'like according to the Scriptures' is not adequate,

'he teaches and admonishes (us) to keep the command of Christ, and distributes grace to all believers; he assists- the weakness of our prayer

and intercedes for us with unutterable groans, and at the bidding of Christ he forgives the sins of the penitent and leads them to the true

and certain knowledge of Christ. He does not speak from himself but speaks whatever he hears, and he teaches and declares the future to believers. He confesses that Christ is his Lord and God. '84

The Sermo Arianorum can say that 'the Son is the living and true, proper and worthy image of the whole goodness, wisdom and power of the Father, and the Spirit is the manifestation of the whole wisdom and power of the Son' .85 Elsewhere an Arian writer can call the Spirit 'the Paraclete not a begetter nor begotten but the teacher and leader and light of our souls'. 86 3. Homoian Arian Polemic In defending their own theological position and attacking that of the pro-Nicenes the Homoian Arians were under the constant necessity of disavowing a position which their opponents as constantly ascribed to them - that of Anhomoianism. This was the doctrine that the Son was positively unlike the Father without further qualification. It is doubtful if anyone ever actually held this viewpoint, though the Eunomians could perhaps be thought to come nearer to it than the Homoians. Gwatkin is quite mistaken in saying that Aetius and Eudoxius gloried in the slogan anhomoios. 87 Arius had at one point apparently said that the Son is anhomoios as far as resemblance to the Father in ousia and la~tTJC; (peculiar nature) are concerned,88 but of·course he would have said that he was like the 8419 (2jg--60) [III (214)]. It is interesting to observe that the writer goes on to quote Psalms 110:1 and 45:6 to support the last statement. Were the Arians peculiar in interpreting some of the Psalms pneumatologically rather than Christologically? 85 681.22. 86C. H. Turner 'An Arian Sermon' 28; cf. C. H. Turner 'Maximus of Turin Contra Judafos' X.30S, where the Spirit is calJed 'Iight.giver' (lucifer). This sermon is not by Maximus and is clearly Arian, as Turner later acknowledged.

"AC 75. 88See above. pp. 14. 15·

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89Contra Constantium'12 (591). 90Socrates HE n.45; also Sozomenus HE IV .29.1-4. It has been suggested that the extreme Arian views listed by Epiphanius at Panarjon 72.21.3 (293-4) reflect the opinion of this radical group. But a careful reading of this passage will show that all polemic against likeness there is against likeness in ousia, and does not at all exclude likeness in will. 91Philostorgius HE 4:12.

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and prefers to it the watchword heterousion. He evidently considers it insulting that a believer in the heterousion should be credited with the title Anhomoian, for he relates elsewhere that Eunomius denied the anhomoion and accepted readily 'like according to the Scriptures'. 92 It is even more unjust, it need hardly be said, to brand the Homoian Arians with the stigma of Anhomoianism. Stead in an article written some time ago pointed out that, at least in the intellectual climate of the fourth century, it was quite logical to maintain that the Son was God or divine while not being fully equal to the Father, and that the assumption that there was no plausible halting-place between full divinity and ordinary creaturely status was by no means obvious. Alexander of Alexandria, he notes, had used the expression 'a mediating only-begotten nature', and Arius had declared that the Son's nature was, though created, as much above that of angels and thrones as theirs is to the nature of worms and beetles, and had once called the Son 'full God' (7tA.1\Pll<; OBO<;).93 Hilary says that at the Council of Seleucia in 359 he met an Arian who believed that the Son was like the Father, qua Father, because God can make anything like himself that he chooses, but not qua God, not in his substance. 94 Another way of putting the Homoian teaching on the likeness of the Son to the Father, found frequently in Arian writings, is to maintain that they were alike in energy or power or activity (tvtpYBla, virtus. potestas) but not in substance. This view was condemned in Basil's Ancyran Document, and this condemnation was approved by Hilary.95 Simonetti points out that these distinctions left room for a good deal of apparent agreement among Arians and those whom we cannot properly categorize as such, at least until events tested the precise nature of their belief.96 Asterius had of course been ready to say that the Son is the image of the ousia of the Father'" but Asterius can hardly be taken as a guide to the

opinions of Arians nearly thirty years later. Simonetti also maintains that the Arians who followed Akakius wanted a political solution above all, and therefore favoured 'like in all things', because this was a vague formula which could cover all points ofview. 98 It may be that at one point Akakius was prepared to accept this formula in order to bring about peace in the Church. But in fact we do not fmd this expression in any recognizably Homoian creeds or rules offaith. We know that the followers of Basil of Ancyra welcomed it as capable of including their favourite term, homoios kat' ousian, and that it was omitted from the Dated Creed, the Creed of Nice of 359 and the final Creed of Constantinople of 360. It is not a characteristically Homoian expression. And Homoian Arians showed little inclination to tolerate other points of view once they had obtained power under Constantius from 360 to 361 and under Valens from 364 onwards. The old idea that Homoian Arianism was a purely political creed does not correspond to the facts. In their attack on the Nicene doctrine, Homoian Arians take several different lines. One is to accuse their opponents of confusing three different divine realities. The author of Liebart's Two Homilies in testifying to his orthodoxy claims 'I keep realities (7tpaYl1ata) unconfused, I do not mingle the hypostases' .99 There is a faint echo here perhaps of the West's obstinate clinging to the formula of one hypostasis in the middle of the fourth century. Similarly, Maximinus, commenting generally on the behaviour of the pro-Nicenes at the Council of Aquileia, bursts into invective: Demanding the same divine status for the Son and the Holy Spirit, is 'a

horrible idea' (nefas cogitare). It means 'Three Unbeginning with common equality, Three Eternals, that is Three Ingenerates, Three without origin, just as their book treacherously witnesses, or else

Three lndistincts (inresolutos), which of course the falsehood of Sabellius maintains. '1 00

92Ibid. 6. I. 93Stead 'Rhetorical Method in Athanasius' 129-30; for the expression of Alexander, see above, pp. 141-2; Arius' term is to be found in Opitz Urk III. No. 1.4 (3). But when Stead goes on (134) to reproach Athanasius for not taking seriously the Arian argument that if the Son is wholly like the Father he in his turn should have a son, it seems to me that he is doing Athanasius an injustice. He was ready to examine the nature of language about God (see above. pp.435--6) whereas the Arians, at least those against whom Athanasius is writing, show little sign of having done so. 94Con. Constantium 14 (592-3). "Hilary De Synodi, 19 (495). 96Studi 175-8. 97See above, P·36.

The accusation that in maintaining the consubstantiality of the Three the pro-Nicenes are lapsing into Sabellianism is found elsewhere. Thrasamund says that to use the term homoousion is in effect to say that 98Crisi 266--]. 991.12·70.

100Gryson Scolies Ariennes 230, 232.36. The book referred to was some proNicene profession offaich referred to by Palladius in his book against Ambrose. See Gryson op.cit. 23 I n 4.

574

575

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The Rival Answers Emerge Father, Son and Holy Spirit areidenticaJ.1°1 And the Sermo Fastidiosi, an Arian tract included in Fulgentius' works, so that he can attack it, also says that the Homousianiin teaching that the Three are inseparable and equal identify them.,02 The same charge appears in an Arian sermon printed by C. H. Turner.,ol Later, in his Col/atio, Maximinus objected that if you argue that the Holy Spirit is of the same substance as the Son you are making him a Son of the Father also. Further, he says, this talk of 'substance' is corporeal, material. Souls do not generate souls substantially. But he still allows that 'generate' is a proper term to use, for it is used of God in Scripture (Isa 53:8). God effected this generation by power and by will.'04 Curiously, Homoian Arians also managed to accuse the pro-Nicenes oftritheism as well as of Sabellianism, though they could hardly have been guilty of both errors. Liebart's Homiliarist ranks along with the Sabellians 'the children of the heretics who vainly imagine a consubstantial triad ofgods'.'oS The Anonymous Commentary onJob suggests that the three bands of raiders ofJob 1:17 allegorically point to the Nicene party: 'the devil made three horns [which is his inaccurate translation of the word meaning companies] in the type and figure of that trionymous

sect, and of that heresy of three gods, which has filled the whole earth like darkness, which sometimes worships the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as if they were Three, and sometimes worships them as One, just as the Greek language records, Trinity (triada) or homusion'. And he complains of their persecution of his c~urch.l06

The strongest expression of this accusation of tritheism comes from the pen of Palladius writing against Ambrose not many years after the Council of Aquileia and reflecting with indignation on that council. In this particular passage he is, however, referring to a proNicene Council ofSirmium of378,1°7 and he retaliates upon the proNicene habit of referring to the Second Sirmian Creed of 357 as 'the 101 Fulgentius

Homoian Arianism

Blasphemy ofSirmium' by stigmatizing the utterance of this council of 378 as another (and this time authentic) 'Blasphemy ofSirmium': 'You thought it right to approve of this sort of biasphem y at Sirmium, which exhibited to the churches of God a crime of idolatry unheard of in all past ages. For, as the confession placed in your book proves, you

thought we should believe in three almighty gods, Three eternal, Three true, Three co-active, Three seated together, Three indistinct, Three confused, Three lacking nothing in irrationality'

(impossibilitatis).'o, And Palladius goes on to give a detailed refutation of every adjective applied to the Three by the pro-Nicenes. We can see how the Arians managed to believe the pro-Nicenes guilty of two apparently inconsistent heresies, though anger (not unjustified as far as the Council of Aquileia is concerned) may have blinded them to the contradiction.

Finally we must look at a curious document which is certainly Arian, but the question of which category of Arianism it falls into is difficult to decide. It is to be found in the Historia Akephala 4.6 (154, 15 6, 15 8), in indifferent Latin. The author has just (ch.5 (154)) mentioned Eudoxius as encouraging the heresy of Aetius and Patricius bishop ofNicaea, and Eudoxius also, we are told, accepted thiS creed when he communicated with Euzoius the Arian bishop of Antioch, and caused Macedonius and Hypatianus to be exiled because they would not accept 'unlike' and 'creature of the uncreated'. The author calls the creed 'the Profession (expositio) of Patricius and Aetius who communicated with Eunomius, Heliodorus and Stephen."o, It runs thus: 'T~ese are the attributes of God, he is not born, he has no beginning, he IS eternal, he cannot be commanded, he is unchangeable, he sees everything, he is infinite, incomparable. almighty, he knows the future without needing prevision. he has no ruler, and these are not

Obiectiones 68--g.

'02Ibid. Sermo Fastidiosi 2 (28r).

tOl'An Arian Sermon' 23. Mai/Gryson 7 (238--g) [VI.22D-rJ simply complains that the Pro-Nicenes teach the equality of the Three, falsely call themselves 'orthodox' and persecute the faithful; the writer consoles himself with the thought that the persecutors are destined for hell. Cf. ibid. 9 (242-3) [X (225-6)]. 104Collatio 14 (730-1). I05Il. II . I06. 106[ (4 2 8). I07See below, p. 595, n. 173.

I08Gryson Scolies Arienn_es 310, 312:128, 129. o9~his Patr~cius is otherwise unknown, and it is not easy to fit him into the successl0~ at Nlcaea ·as far a~ it is known. Heliodorus, bishop of a see in the Libyan Pentapohs and Stephen ofLlbyan Penta polis both were present at Seleucia in 359 as followers of Akakius and signed the creed which he presented there (Athanasius De Synodis 12 (256), Epiphanius Panarion 73.26.4, 7 (300, 301)), and were threatened with deposition by the Council of Constantinople of 360 because they would not agree to the condemnation of Aetius (Theodoret HE 1128.3; Philostorgius HE Vll.6). Cf. Martin Hi't. Akeph. n 105 p. 198. I

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The Rival Answers Emerge (the attributes) of the Son. For he is subject to command, is under

authority, comes from nothing (ex nihiQ, has an end (jinem), is not comparable to the Father (who) surpasses him as the origin of Christ,

Homoian Arianism in their actIvltIes. Just as the angels cannot comprehend nor understand the nature of archangels, nor archangels the nature of the cherubim, nor cherubim the nature of the Holy Spirit, nor the Holy

he exists llO in dependence upon the Father, he does not know the

Spirit the nature of the Only One (unici). nor the Only One the nature

future, he was not God but the Son of God, the God of those who are later than he, and in this he possesses exact likeness to the Father in that he sees everything that the Father sees, in that he is not changeable in goodness, but (has) not a Godhead nor nature like his. For ifwe say that he is born from Godhead, we are saying that his generation is like that of a serpent and it is an impious statement. l l l And just as a (bronze) statue produces rust from itself and is eaten away by that rust, so if the Son is created from the nature of the Father he will eat away the Father. But the Son is God by the action and initiative in action (of the Father) naturally and not from his nature but from another nature

of the ingenerate God.'

. like the Father's but not from himself. 112 For he was made the image

of Goct; and not from God. and by God. If everything derives from God then the Son (does so) by some means or other (ex alico negotio). Just as iron when it has rust is reduced. just as a body which produces worms is eaten away. just as wounds which give out a discharge are

consumed by it, so he who says that the Son is from the Father's nature. but denies that the Son is like the Father, let him be outside the church and let him be anathema. Ifwe say that the Son of God is God. we introduce two ultimate principles (duos ,ine initio). We say that (he is) the image of God. Anyone who says that he is from God. falls into Sabellianism, and if anyone says that he does not know the generation

of God. he falls into Manichaeism. And if anybody says that the substance of the Son is like the substance of the ingenerate Father, he is blaspheming. Just as white lead and snow as far as their whiteness goes are like but as far as their nature goes are not like, so also the substance of the Son is different from the substance of the Father, for snow has a different whiteness. But if you shut your eyes and retreat from what

the eye (sees) externally. you can say' 13 that the Son is like the Father It0Repperitur, literally 'is found', an odd term which may disguise a translation from Greek tupicncEtal, 'is gained, produced', 111 A serpent is taken as an example of one of the vilest of creatures, with whose birth the Son's birth would on this supposition have some resemblance. 112E/ non ex natura sed ex alia natura similiter ut Pater nee ex ipso is a very obscure statement which is not much elucidated by Annik Martin's translation 'et non partir

This is at first sight a clearly Eunomian document. It reproduces many ideas to be found in the work of Aetius and ofEunomius, and Annik Martin in her notes on it in the edition of the Hi,toria Akephala takes it as such without hesitation. In particular. the objection to saying that we do not know the generation of God is characteristic of Eunomius, though this may be simply a counter to the Homoiousian doctrine on the subject. But. in the first place. though in those notes she speaks of both Eunomians and Homoians. she does not attempt to distinguish them. And in the second place'there are certain features of this creed which do not agree very well with Eunomius' doctrine. It is doubtful ifEunomius could have said that the Son does not know the future. And it is quite against his principles to maintain that the Son cannot understand or comprehend the Father. Of course there are many points of resemblance here to Homoian doctrine also. It is odd to find 'from nothing' applied to the Son. because at least developed Homoianism and developed Eunomianism did not embrace this doctrine. And neither would have held that the Son has an end (though both would have ascribed a beginning to him). To say that he does not know the future but that he sees all that the Father sees is inconsistent. Again it is noteworthy that the polemic of this work is' not directed against the Homoousians. but against those who held that the Son was 'like in substance' to the Father. Further, though the writer produces one or two interesting analogies, not known elsewhere. to support his case. there is little or no appeal to philosophical principles. There is no reason to think that the author of the Historia Akephala is dating the creed incorrectly when he places it in the year 360. Perhaps we have here a witness to a phase of Arianism when the Homoian doctrine had not yet clearly distinguished itself from that of Aetius or of Eunomius.

a

de la nature du Pere rnais d'une autre nature J semblablement au Pere et non de Lui-m2me', nor by her n I 13 p. 200 on the words. If we read nee ex alia natura for sed ex alia natura, then this would be a hit at the Homoiousians, 'nor from another nature like that of the Father'. 113 vultis audire does not mean 'you can say'. though Martin translates 'on peut dire'. There may be a mistranslation of original Greek here.

4. Homoian People Akakius of Caesarea is usually regarded as the leader of the Homoian Arians par excellence. He succeeded Eusebius as bishop of that see in 579

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339 or 340, and remained there for at least twenty-five years. He was clearly a devoted disciple of his predecessor. ll4 Except for some extracts from a work against Marcellus written early in his career given us by Epiphanius, which we shall examine in due course, and his creed presented at Seleucia which we have already seen.''' no work which we can with confidence assign to him survives. His role seems to have been rather that of an eminence grise than of the head of a vanguard."· Akakius attended all the major Eastern creed-making councils during the reign of Constantius - Antioch 341, Serdica 343 (when he was among the Eastern bishops), but not apparently Sirmium 357. He was present at Eudoxius' Council of Antioch of 358 which approved of the controversial Second Creed of Sirmium (Sozomenus HE IV.12.5), but not at the Council ofSirmium of 359 which produced the 'Dated Creed'. He took a prominent, albeit ineffectual, part in the Council of Seleucia of 359, where he produced an entirely colourless creed.''' which did, however, commend the 'Dated' Creed. He attended the Council of Constantinople early in 360 and must have approved of the depositions there enacted of those who belonged to the party ofBasil of Ancyra. We have seen that he at one point earlier in his career had supported and advanced Cyril of Jerusalem, but that he had later fallen out with him, though probably not for doctrinal reasons. llS He was present at the debacle over the appointment, probation and rejection of Meletius of Antioch"· in 361. And he was also there when at a gathering in Antioch in 361 extreme Arian views were publicly canvassed. 120 But we have no

reason to assume that he agreed with these views. He is much more likely to have been among those who prevented the council formally endorsing them. He certainly was not a patron or supporter of the views of Aetius or ofEunomius. Philostorgius says that at the council of Constantinople of 360 Akakius was of the party of the Heterousians. 12l But as this historian allows the existence of only two parties there, Homoousians (among whom he includes Basil of Ancyra and Eustathius of Sebaste) and Heterousians, we need not press this categorization closely. The same writer tells us that Akakius at some point, probably late in the reign of Constantius, accused Eunomius (probably of unorthodoxy) but that when Eunomius was summoned by Constantius to Antioch to appear at a synod Akakius simply remained silent and failed to substantiate his accusation. '22 Finally, Socrates gives us an interesting account, which he specifically says was taken from Sabinus, the historian of fourth-century councils, of a council held in Antioch in the year 363 during the brief reign of the Emperor who succeeded Julian. Jovian was known to support the homoousian doctrine. It was a meeting of the followers of Meletius, who had returned from exile on Julian's accession, and those of Akakius (including of course Akakius himself). This council sent a letter to Jovian roundly endorsing the homoousion:

t 14Socrates

HE 11.4.

'To forestall our being numbered among those who misrepresent the true doctrine, we submit to Your Reverence that we accept and hold

to the creed of the holy Council ofNicaea which was assembled a long time ago. And when we mention the word in it which is agreed to by some,123 the homoousion. it has received a sound interpretation among

the Fathers, signifying that the Son was born from the ousia of the

115S ee above, pp. 373-4.

116For estimates of the role and significance of Akakius, see Gwatkin SA 2IO; Harnack History of Dogma IV.90; Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichtc' 166-8; Ritter Konzil von Constantinopei69-7o; Kopecek History 414-18; Simonetti Crisi 326-41. The theory propounded originally by Mai and entertained by Meslin (Les Ariem 243-4) that Akakius wrote the VIIIth book afthe Apostolic Constitutions has little to be said for it, if only because MesHn does not distinguish between Homoian and Eunomian Arianism. Jerome alleges (De Vir. Ill. XCVIII) that Akakius was responsible for placing Felix in the see of Rome when Liberius was banished. But in view of the fact that Felix was no follower of the kind of doctrine commended by Akakius, and the distance between the sees of Caesarea and Rome, this seems unlikely. We have no evidence that Akakius was among the 'not many' Eastern bishops who attended the Council of Milan in 355 (Socrates HE 11.36). 117See above, pp. 373-4. 118See above, PP.40o-l. 119See above, pp. 382-4. 120Sozomenus HE IV.29. 1-4.

5 80

Father and that he is like the Father in ousia; it does not mean that any process (pathos) occurred in the ineffable generation, nor was the word

ousia accepted by the Fathers in any Greek [i.e. pagan philosophical] sense, but to refute the "from non-existence" which Arius impiously

dared to apply to Christ, and which those "Anhomoians" who are around today shamelessly parade in an even more desperate and daring manner to the injury ·of the church's peace.'

Among the signatories of this document are not only people such as Meletius of Antioch and Eusebius of Samosata but Athanasius of 121HE IV.I2. 122Ibid. VI:4. 12lValesius wished to emend here to gain better sense 'which appears strange to some'.

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Ancyra (by deputies) and Akakius ofCaesarea. 12 ' It is not surprising that Socrates in the same passage says that the followers of Akakius 'were always inclined to join the party in power', and that they perceived that the Emperor at that time was in favour of N. The closing years of Akakius' career (which must have ended about the year 366) were spent under the Emperor in the East, Valens, who was a fanatical opponent of the pro-Nicenes, as also of the Eunomians, and a supporter of the Homoian creed. Akakius must have felt himself at home with this Emperor's point of view. Epiphanius found Akakius difficult to understand. He says that he confessed 'neither homoousion nor "a creature like one of the creatures" '; he was really an Arian, Epiphanius believes, but disguised his opinions because he was afraid of the Emperor. 12 • Earlier in the same work, however, he has quoted several extracts from a work which Akakius wrote early in his career against Marcellus, who in his turn, is quoting and attacking a work by Asterius. It is difficult in places to determine who precisely is being quoted. But clearly Akakius at this stage defended·with some spirit Asterius' statement that the Son was 'the exact image of the ousia and will and power and glory of the Father' .12' He is ready to go to any lengths, following Asterius, in extolling the Son, as long as the traditional subordination of the Son to the Father is preserved. 127 He can call the Son 'living image of the ousia of the Father', and, though possessing his own ousia (distinct from that of the Father), he is 'ousia as image of the ousia' of the Father, in respect of will, life and power. 12 • And Akakius goes on to define carefully what sort of an image the Son is:

delineation from another, and itself not being in motion in itself or through itself. And he is the exact image so that the exact resemblance does not present a Father,' but precisely a Son' (ulav

the image 'bears the characteristics of the original in itself and also provides a difference, a difference as a likeness . .. Therefore the Son is

an image of the Father, living (image) of the Living One in movement, in activity, in power and will and glory, not devoid of life (lhjlux0<;) nor of movement (dK1V1jtO<;), deriving its existence and 124S ocrates HE III.25.

12SPanarion 73.23.6 (296); which Emperor is not at all clear, presumably the short-livedJovianus. Athanasius (De Syn. 38.1-4) twits Akakius with inconsistency in admitting ousia in defining the Son's relation to the Father at the composition of the Creed of the 'Dedication' in Antioch in 341 but refusing it at Se1eucia in 359. "
(bt1]KP1PCll~VOV).129

The resemblance in these extracts to the theology of Akakius' master, Eusebius of Caesarea, here is unmistakable. Akakius is not, in fact, a great mystery. He is an Homoian Arian, deriving from the thought of Eusebius of Caesarea, as much theology which was not proNicene did between 330 and 350, who has no great objection to using the word ousia to define the Son's relation to the Father as long as his subordination is preserved. The vicissitudes of maintaining his see and his reputation in later life drove him to make concessions. He was not a theologian of the undaunted mettle of Palladius. He was bishop of a leading see, anxious to preserve on the one side the Emperor's goodwill, arid on the other the unity of the Church as far as possible. He could stomach the statements ofSirmium II 357, though they can hardly have represented his true position. At one point, in 363, again in order to retain the Emperor's goodwill, he was ready to accept N, when the intention ofits terms was carefnlly explained. He found the extreme rationalist Arianism ofEunonllus wholly distasteful. He was not, doctrinally, a pure weathercock. He was a disciple of Eusebius who tried, according to his lights, to keep the ship of the church afloat in difficult times. His leadership was political rather than doctrinal, but he was not indifferent to doctrine. The next most important name among the Homoian leaders is that ofEudoxius. But it is open to debate whether he should be called an Homoian or a follower of Eunomius in theology. He earlier supported, but later opposed, Aetius and Eunomius. Various gnomic utterances ascribed to him suggest alternately Eunomian and Homoian opinions. His creeds, both that printed by Caspari, and that attributed to Patricius and said to be accepted by Eudoxius, leave us in a similar uncertainty. And we know of no other written remains of Eudoxius. Hilary says that at the Council ofSeleucia in 359 he heard someone whom we can with confidence identify as Eudoxius make some significant remarks. 130 One was:

129 10 .2, 3 (264).

Auxentium 13 (591-2). In fact these may have been remarks made by Eudoxius when he was at Antioch, but reported to Hilary when he was at Se1eucia. 130CQntra

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'God (always) was what he is. He was not a Father because he did not have a Son; for ifhe had a Son, there must have been a woman, and conversation and chat (sermocinatio) and assent to matrimonial union 131 and kissing. and so to the natural process of generation'.

into the ruined Western Roman Empire. Theodoret says that at Constantinople at the end of 3 59 Eustathius of Sebaste vehemently accused Eudoxius of holding the ·opinions of Aetius, in the presence of the Emperor, namely:

This could be a peculiarly exasperating way (for Eudoxius had a penchant for saying things pour <pater les bourgeois) of setting out the Eunomian view that the title 'Father' is a mere 'aspect' (epinoia) of God, whereas 'ingenerate' is his essence. Socrates gives another example of the capacity of Eudoxius to shock people. He says that Eudoxius once while occupying the episcopal throne (presumably in Antioch) first uttered this disturbing sentiment: 'The Father is impious, the Son pious'. When people began to protest at this . outrageous remark, he said 'Don't worry about what I said, because the Father is impious since he does not worship anybody, but the Son is pious because he worships the Father'. This is a thoroughly Arian idea, but one that could be either Homoian or Eunomian. Both Epiphanius and Theodoret remark on Eudoxius' luxurious, careless and unascetic life-style. A certain frivolousness seems to have been part of his character. 132 Another remark quoted by Hilary in the same passage says: 'As far as the Son stretches himself to know the Father, so far does the

Father stretch himself further to prevent the Son knowing him'. This is not at all Eunomian, but directly contradicts Eunomian doctrine. On the other hand, Epiphanius alleges that Eudoxius and his party u·sed to maintain 'I know God so clearly and I know and am acquainted with· him so fully, that I do not know myself better that I know God'.''' And this clearly is a deliberately shocking way of stating one of Eunomius' favourite doctrines. Against this we must place the fact that Eudoxius welcomed and supported Ulfilas' mission among the Goths.' 34 Ulfilas, as we have seen from his creed and other profession, was a drastic Homoian, but no Eunomian, nor were his

Gothic converts nor their descendants who later brought Arianism 131 coniunctio coniugalis verbi, a very obscure expression; without the verbi it would mean 'mating in marriage'. 132Socrates He 11.43; Epiphanius Panarion 76.4.1-4 (344); Theodoret HE 11.27.9. 133Panarion 76+1. 2 (344). 134Theodoret HE IV.37.1-5 (273-4).

'things produced in a dissimilar way (avoJloiro~) are dissimilar in their

ousia; there is one God the Father from whom are all things and one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things; "from whom" is dissimilar to "through whom". Consequently the Son is dissimilar to

the God and Father.' Eudoxius, says Theodoret, denied that he was the author of these opinions and attributed them to Aetius, who, when similarly taxed with the accusation, proudly acknowledged himself as their author.'35 It is, however, doubtful ifTheodoret is here giving us a word-for-word account of what ha ppened on this occasion, because it is unlikely that either Eudoxius or Aetius (or, for that matter, Eunomius) would have used the explicit word 'dissimilar' (anhomoios). Eudoxius was bishop first ofGermanicia, in Armenia. There was at least one other Germanicia, in Cilicia, but we can assume that it was

the Armenian Germanicia where Eudoxius was bishop because on the only occasion when he was exiled by the Emperor he went to Armenia, and Theodoret explicitly places him in Armenian Germanicia.'36 No doubtit was his native country. As bishop of that see, he attended the Council of Antioch in 34'; he signed the Eastern bishops' manifesto after the debacle at Serdica in 343. 137 That he was one of those sent from the East to carry the Macrostich to the 135 HE 11.27.4-1 I (quotation at 67). In the whole of his account ofEudoxius in the presence of Constantius on this occasion Theodoret represents him as denying his agreement with the views ofAetius, which the Emperor manifestly disapproved, but only doing so reluctantly and after much interrogation. 136HE 11.25.3. For Eudoxius see Loofs, art. 'Eudoxius von Germanicia' in Realenkyklopiidie fur Protestantische theologie und Kirche V.577-80 (an exhaustive account); he places Germanicia in Commagene, provincia Euphratensis (a neighbouring province and one nearer to Antioch than Armenia). See also Schwartz, 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 153-5 (an account which suffers from Schwartz's obsession with 'Realpolitik'), Simonetti Crisi 341, 403. Kopecek History 418-25. We have already looked at his creed (above p. II2) and that ofrus friend Patricius. Philostorgius says that his birthplace was Arabissos in Lesser Armenia and that his father, Caesarius, had atoned for a habit of womanizing by becoming a martyr for the faith (HE IV.4). I37Hilary Coli. Antiar. A IV (J) (74-8).

of

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Emperor Constans'38 in either 344 or 345 marked his growing importance. One of his first acts must have been the convening of a council at Antioch to give a warm welcome to the highly controversial creed of the Third Sirmian Council of357.'39 In 353, on the death ofLeontius, he succeeded in having himself made bishop of Antioch, apparently without the approval of Constantius. In 356 and 357 he was required to take into custody the truculent Lucifer of Calaris. Shortly afterwards he incurred the positive disapproval of . that Emperor for a time while the influence of Basil of Ancyra prevailed, and he was exiled.140 He returned in time to be present at the Council ofSeleucia in 359, but, as he was still under a cloud as a result of his having displeased the Emperor, took no prominent part in that Council. He must have rehabilitated himself at Constantinople after the Council of Seleucia in the eyes of Constantius, though, if we are to trust Theodoret, he did so only with difficulty. But Theodoret may be exaggerating here, because during the general reshuffle of sees which took place early in 360, Macedonius was removed from Constantinople and Eudoxius took his place.'41 Philostorgius has much to say about Eudoxius, whom he regarded as a traitor to the cause of true doctrine. He says that he was originally a disciple of Aetius.'42 He had ordained Eunomius deacon, but, Philostorgius hastens to add, only when Eunomius was assured of his bishop's soundness in (Eunomian) doctrine.''' Once he had been enthroned bishop of Constantinople, and the new church in the city dedicated with splendid ceremonial, he made Eunomius bishop of Cyzicus, but he would not agree to the rehabilitation of Aetius.'44 While in Constantinople Eudoxius was prompted by some enemies of Eunomius to summon Eunomius before him on the charge of teaching that the Son is unlike (anhomoion) the Father. But

Eunomius defended himself so stoutly, maintaining that the Son was not like the Father in ousia (but could in other respects be described as like him), that the charge had to be dropped. But later Eunomius, finding that Eudoxius was doing none of the things which he had promised to do (i.e. disseminate Eunomian teaching) and, far from recalling Aetius, was pressing Eunomius to agree to Aetius' deposition and to sign the creed of Ariminum (i.e. Nice/Constantinople), Eunomius in disgust, after vain protests, left the see of CyzicUS.'45 Philostorgius also has the story of Akakius laying a charge of unorthodoxy against Eudoxius before Constantius, but failing to press it home.'46 It is possible that Theodoret's account of Eustathius accusing Eudoxius before the Emperor may be a confused version of this incident, which is likely to have occurred after the Council of Constantinople of 360, for it is not likely that one who had only just managed to clear himself ofa charge of favouring a doctrine repudiated by the Emperor should have almost immediately afterwards been made bishop of Constantinople. Somewhat inconsistently, Philostorgius says that Eudoxius tried unsuccessfully to persuade Euzoius, who had succeeded him at Antioch, to arrange the recall of Aetius.'47 In fact Philostorgius represents Eudoxius as one who had in the past apparently committed himself deeply to the cause of Aetius and Eunomius, but who, when he found himself in a responsible position began to realize how impractical and unpopular was their outlook, and began consequently to distance himself from them, while occasionally making gestures in their favour. At one point, says Philostorgius, Eudoxius remarked with a humorous candour which we may recognize as characteristic of his style, about Aetius and Eunomius, who by this time (the reign of Valens) were both in exile:

138Socrates HE II.I9: Athanaslus De Syn. 26. above, P.348. 140S ee above. p. 357. 141S ocrates HE 11.43. A confused statement in the Historia Akephala 1.4-6 (138. 140) may disguise a previous attempt ofEudoxius on this see, But I do not think this

'I do not call them impious, which they will be glad to hear because their banishment then appears to be unjustified, but I do call them nuisances'. 148

139S ee

Eudoxius after some hesitation must have joined Euzoius in a policy of definite hostility to the Neo-Arian school of Aetius and

likely.

142HE IV.4 and V.2 (2nd version). '43IV·S. I44VII (Anhang).31; V.3 (notice Neo-Arian disavowal of the title 'Anhomoian'). For Eudoxius' appointment to Constantinople and the dedication of the church, see Cliron. Pasch. PG 92:736-7.

586

145VLI-3. t46VI.4·

147VII .S~ at VIII-4--'7 he represents Eudoxius as giving his support to the enemies of Aetius in their efforts to discredit and damage his friends. 148IX.3·

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Eunomius."9 One of his last acts was to prevent a meeting between the Emperor Valens and Eunomius.'so Gregory of Nyssa said that Eudoxius was hostile to Basil of Cae sa rea once he had become bishop

parents, the descendants of some who had been captured by Goths in the mid-third-century. He was brought up among the transDanubian Goths (as distinct from the Crimean Goths, among whom the Arian bishop Theophilus laboured) and knew their language, as well as Greek. He was consecrated bishop, probably by Eusebius of Nicomedia, either when the latter was bishop ofNicomedia, or later when he was bishop of Constantinople, in 340 or 341, possibly at the Council of Antioch of the latter year.'ss He worked for seven years to establish a Christian mission among the Goths, but in 348 or 349 a persecution loosed upon the Christians by a (temporary) King of the Goths, during which some Christian Goths were martyred, drove him, with many of his disciples, southward into Roman territory. Constantius took an interest in him and permitted him to settle, with many Christian Goths, at the foot of Mount Haemus, near Nicopolis, in Moesia Inferior. Here he spent the rest of his career. He must have had considerable success in evangelizing his fellow-Goths. He translated most of the Bible into Gothic. He visited Constantinople more than once. He was present at the council held there in 360. It is wholly likely that we should follow the Letter of Auxentius in the Scholia on the Council of Aquileia rather than the commentary. of Maximinus in the same document and place the death of Vlfilas in 383, when he travelled to Constantinople to be present at a last attempt by Theodosius to bring about agreement between the warring factions in the church; no doubt he died there. Maximinus .must be incorrect in saying that Vlfilas accompanied Palladius to Constantinople in 381 in order to persuade the Emperor to hold a general council. What impressed Auxentius was not the opportunity for petitioning Theodosius (who in 381 was not in fact ruling the part of the Empire where Palladius was) but the wonderful coincidence

of that see, and this can cause us no surprise, because Basil's views

must by then have differed widely from those of Eudoxius.'s, Eudoxius was in fact as long as he lived a principal ecclesiastical adviser of the Emperor Valens, whose favoured creed, supported by imperial sanctions whenever he could apply them, was precisely Homoian Arianism. Eudoxius is credited by Theodoret with converting Valens to these opinions, aided by the Empress, and it was he who baptized Valens.,s2 Eudoxius died in the year 370, and was succeeded in the see of Constantinople by Demophilus from Beroea. 153

Eudoxius did indeed become, almost by accident, 'the Father of German Arianism' (Loofs). We must recall in trying to reach a true estimate of him that our accounts of him come from two different sources, each strongly prejudiced for different reasons against him. But when we have made all allowances we cannot fail to recognize in Eudoxius a man whose theological opinions were strongly influenced by political events. Deriving from that circle of early Neo-Arianism where the distinction between this creed and that of Homoian Arianism had not yet become clear, and never evincing a strong and clear head for theology, he allowed events to guide him. He had a great capacity for advancing his own interests, and he realized once he had reached a position of responsibility that Neo-Arianism as a creed capable of commending itself to the authorities who directed the destiny of his part of the Roman Empire was a non-starter. Accordingly he made the transition from Eunomian to Homoian Arianism. It cannot have been a traumatic change for him. If we are to determine who among the Homoian Arians was the most influential in the long run, we must choose Vlfilas, Apostle of the Goths.'s, This man must have been born about 3II of Christian '49IX.7·

150IX.8. 151Gregory of Nyssa Contra Eunomium 1.22 (288). 152HE IV,I2.4 and 13.1; cf.Jerome ehron. sub ann. 366. lSlPhilostorgius HE IX.S; Socrates He IV.q (giving the date). ,1S4For information about UJfilas, see Gwatkin AC 155--6; Zeiller Origines 431-73; Simonetti Crisi 442-3; Klein Constantius II 251-4; Gryson Scolies Ariennes 143-65; K. Schaferdiek 'Wulfila: von Bischof von Gotien zurn Gothenbischor; E. A. Thompson: The Visigoths in the time of Uljila xiii-xxiii. Gryson in a learned

588

note (Scolies Ariennes 143-4) makes it clear that there is nojustification for calling the Apostle of the Goths either Vulfila (though the name may originally be derived from *Wulfila = little wolf) nor Hulfila nor Gulfi1a. The proper form is Ulfila (Greek OUAcpiAa~ (occasionally OUpcplAW;». For Ulfilas see also Socrates HE IV.33; Sozomenus HE VI.37; Theodoret HE IV.37; lordanes Getica 51. as well as the texts in Gryson referred to above. 15sPhiiostorgius HE 11.5 says that he was consecrated during the reign of Constantine (i.e. before the summer of 337). but Auxentius (in Scholia on Cone. Aquileia) places this in the reign of Constantius. in Constantinople.

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that Vlfilas died at. a time and place where there were many Arian bishops present to celebrate his obsequies handsomely.'.56 . We have already examined the Creed and the ProfessIOn of Faith which Auxentius attributes to Vlfilas. '57 We have no reason to doubt Auxentius' good faith here. Vlfilas' doctrine eXhib.its a drastic subordination of the Son to the Father, a fierce emphaSIS upon the incomparability of the Father, enhanced bya succession ~hdjectives designed to establish his uniqueness, a demal of the dIvmIty of the Holy Spirit and a strong and explicit r~pudiati~n of the pr.o-NIcene doctrine. No doubt what we have here IS Vlfilas final posItIon. TIme and controversy had sharpened his ideas.158 But we have no reason to regard Vlfilas as a Eunomian. He is not likely to have met the teaching of Aetius and Eunomius in his remote Gothic colo?y and had hardly time to absorb it during his visits to Constantmople. Zeiller thinks that in Constantinople in 360 he must have agreed to the condemnation of Aetius.!S9 We can draw no evidence from Vlfilas' translation of the Bible relevant to his theological viewpoint, but if (as is quite possible) he was the author of the document known as Skeireins, an early Gothic MS which is the translation of a Greek original, commenting upon several chapters in St.John's Gospel, we can see him directing the reader along an HomOlan path. The commentary explicitly mentions Sabellius and Marcellus,. as identifying falsely the Persons of the Father and the Son, declares (m a characteristically Arian way), that the Father gives the Son 'the authority of judgment', and at John 5:23 remarks:

as you love Me". Through this he designates similar but not equal

'Now, at such a manifest declaration, we must all render honour to the

unborn [better tr. "ingenerate"j God and recognize the onlybegotten One, the Son of God, to be God. Believing, therefore, we should now render honor to Each according to merit, for the remark "that all may honor the Son, even 35 they honor the Father" teaches us to render similar but not equal honor. And the Saviour himself, praying for the disciples. said to the Father "that you love them, even

156For Theodosius' council of 383, see Socrates HE V. 10. For Ulfilas' presence in Constantinople, see Chronicon Paschale (PG 92:736£). 157S ee above, pp. 105-6. 158S 0 , rightly. Schaferdiek, 'Wulfila' 112-114· 1590rigines 45 J. Simonetti has insuffic~ent ~vid~nce :when h~ pronounc~s Ulfilas an Eunomian (Crisi 442-3. 460 n 5). Zedler IS wiser 10 refusmg to see him as an 'Anhomoian', Origines 463.

590

love.'160

Valens ofMursa and Vrsacius ofSingidunum are a pair ofleading Homoian Arians who almost always appear together in our sources, like Damon and Pythias (or Laurel and Hardy!). They were riot present at the Council of Antioch of 34', but were among the Eastern bishops (duly denounced by the Westerns) at Serdica in 343. We first find them at the Council of Tyre of 335, acting on the Mareotic Commission. Perhaps they were proteges ofEusebius ofNicomedia and Maris of Chalcedon. It has been conjectured (but the suggestion is no more than a conjecture) that they had been inspired to take the theological line which they usually favoured by meeting Arius during his exile in IIIyria. We must use the word 'usually' in the above sentence, because this pair tended more obviously than others to adapt their opinions to the wind ofimperial favour.!6! We have already seen that the two probably produced theological works which have not survived.!62 Valens at least was at the Council of Aries of 353. and both were present at Milan in 355. They were among the main architects of the Second Sirmian Creed of357, and we may confidently conclude that. in spite of variations occasioned by the vagaries of Constantius' religious opinions, Valens and Vrsacius were in their heart of hearts Homoian Arians, not only because they seem to have professed this doctrine more regularly than any other, and because Valens at least made himself a pliant tool of Constantius in that interest during the negotiations which took place at Ariminum in 359, but also because anything we know about their writings points in this direction, and, as we shall see, they expressed consternation when, none of them being subjected at the time to imperial pressure, their fellow-Homoian Germinius seemed to be about to desert this type of doctrine. They were condemned 160W. H. Bennett The Gothic Commentary on the Gospel of John text, IVb-Vc (66-69), Vc (69) and Vc-Vd (69-70). The mention of Marcellus (of Aneyra) does not preclude Ulfilas as the original author of this document (which has been to some extent re-worked by somebody who knew Latin, and which survives in a fragment of only 8 pages). What pro-Nicene writer apart from Athanasius (most unlikely) and Eust-athius of Antioch (barely possible) could Ulfilas hav.e met except Marcellus? Skeireins means 'interpretation' or 'explanation'. Bennett's conclusion (134-8) that the Skeireins is very like the Gothic Bible in vocabulary and forms supports the conjecture that the original writer of the work was Ulfilas. 161See above, P.313. 162See above, P.301.

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together and (on paper) deposed by a council held in Rome in 368 or 369 under Damasus (Athanasius Ad Afros 10), but continued to hold their sees undeterred until their deaths. Valens died in 371 (Athanasius Ep. ad Epictetum PG 26:1052), and Ursacius had been succeeded by Secundianus as bishops ofSingidunum some time before the Council of Aquileia of 381. The fact that no papal thunder could remove them from their sees suggests they were not unpopular with their flocks.'·' Germinius first appears on the stage of history when he is appointed bishop of Sirmium in 351 at the council in that city which finally succeeded in deposing Photinus.'·4 He apparently hailed from Cyzicus.'·5 He was probably present at the Third Council which produced the controversial Second Creed ofSirmium in 357. Liberius mentions him, along with Valens and Ursacius, as his friend in a letter written from exile.'·· He certainly had a hand in framing the 'Dated' Creed of 359. He was regarded by the pro-Nicenes as one of the standard-bearers of Arianism in the Balkan provinces. We have already seen him arguing the Arian case with Heraelianus, but refusing to allow his flock to lynch the defenders of Nicene doctrine.'·7 He died in 376 or 377; his successor, Anemius, was elected after the death of Valentinian in 375 and was in his see by the year 378 when a council of Sirmium took place (or may have taken place). See below, p. 595 n 173. But we have information about a shift of emphasis on the part of Germinius as far as doctrine is concerned. In Hilary's Collectio Antiariana there is a creed labelled 'the

Symbol ofGerminius ofSirmium', taken apparently from a letter of his, which runs thus:'·.

163For information on this pair, see Meslin Les Ariens 71-84. 266-8; Zeiller Origines 149-50, 216--17. Philostorgius IX.S says that Eunomius was (in the year 365) banished by the Emperor Valens on suspicion of being implicated in the rebellion of Procopius. He was, says Philostorgius. sent to Mauretania (el~ tiJv Muupol)(J{Su Yi'iv, and the Grosser Historische Weltatlas I duly marks the people called 'Maurusier' as living in Mauretania (map 43)). On the way, says Philostorgius, Eunomius spent the winter with Valens at Mursa in IIlyria and this bishop, along with Domninus bishop of Marcianopolis, secured the recall of Eunomius from exile. What Eunomius was doing in Mursa in Pannonia II near the Danube (or indeed how Domninus from near the shore of the Black Sea came in contact with him) in a journey which professed to be aiming for Mauretania in the western part of North Africa Philostorgius does not explain, and it is difficult to imagine any plausible explanation. 164See above. p. 325. For Germinius. see ZeiBer Origines 304--6, 309-10; Meslin Les Ariens 67-'71, 294-9; Simonetti Crisi 383-'7. 438-9; Gryson, ScoUes Ariennes 104-5·

165 Athanasius Hist. Ar. 74. 166See above, p. 359. 167Sce above, pp. 528-9.

'I bishop Germinius believe and confess that there is one true God the

Father, eternal, almighty; and Christ his only Son and our Lord God, the true Son of God from the true God the Father, born before all things, in deity, love, majesty, power,_ glory, love, wisdom, knowledge, like in all things to the Father, since he is born perfect

from the Perfect. His taking of manhood from the Virgin Mary, as the prophets predicted would happen, and as the texts of the gospels and apostles inform us to have been accomplished; his sufferings too and death and resurrection and ascension into heaven we accept, ,believe

and profess; and that at the end of the world he will descend from heaven to judge the living and the dead and to reward each according to his works. And in the Holy Spirit, that is the Paraelete who was given to us from God the Father through the Son. That is all' (explicit).

That this profession of faith caused alarm and despondency among other Homoian Arian bishops is made evident by a Letter of Valens, Ursacius, and a certain pair Gaius and Paulus, who had held a small council in the year 366 (the year when this letter of Germinius was written) at Singidunum. This letter is also given us elsewhere by Hilary.'·9 They are anxious to ensure that Germinius is not deviating from the

Catholic faith declared at Ariminum, and in particular that he adheres to the formula 'we say that the Son is like the Father according to the Scriptures'. and not to the expression he is like 'accordirig to substance' (substantiam) and 'in all respects'. To adopt such doctrines

would be to return to the false teaching. of Basil (of Ancyra) condemned at Ariminum. They ask Germinius to deny that he ever

said, or will say, that 'the Son is like the Father in all things, mgenerateness (innativitate) excepted', or that, as Iovianus the deacon a~d Martirius the subdeacon report that he said in the presence of

bIShops Valens and Paul, 'the Son is like the Father in all respects'. It is interesting to note that this letter is sent from Singidunum to Germinius at Sirmium 'by Secundianus a presbyter', very probably the man who was later to become bishop of Singidunum and to appear with Palladius at the Council of Aquileia in 38I.

Germinius did not answer these queries directly. Instead, he wrote 168A III (48) (in 'Migne Fr. viii (10:717). 169Coll. Antillr. B V.I, 2 (159-60).

592

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a letter, addressing it to 'the Lords my most pious brothers Rufianus, Palladius, Severinus, Nichas, Heliodorus, Romulus, Mucianus and Stercorius', setting out his views: 170

'Dedication' Creed of Antioch in 341. We do not know what occasioned this change of mind, carefully noted by Hilary. It cannot have been imperial pressure, because by 366 Valens the supporter of Homoian Arianism ruled in the East and Valentinian, the Western Emperor, was keeping as far as possible neutral in religious matters. The only other really significant Homoian Arian of whose thought we can form any clear conception is Palladius of Ratiaria. His doctrine we have already reviewed. '7I According to his own account he had been in 381 bishop for 35 years, having been priest for 11 years before that. He must therefore have been a contemporary of Valens and Ursacius. He succeeded a bishop Sylvester in the see of Ratiaria in 346. We must dismiss, as Meslin does, the wild accusation made at Aquileia by Valerian its bishop that Palladius had originally been a Photinian before he turned Arian. The readiness with which he argues and the coherence of his doctrine preclude our thinking that he was so ready to change his views as this. It is clear from the fragments of his refutation of the De Fide of Ambrose which we possess (or of parts of it) that he regarded himself as championing the true (Homoian) faith against the false doctrine of the pro-Nicenes. He can in his argument with Ambrose at Aquileia in 381 hold his own well and occasionally leave the officious Ambrose groping for an answer. He can refer contemptuously to 'that kind of "Blasphemy of Sirmium" which you thought it right to commend which offered to the church of God a sin of idolatry unheard ofin all past ages', because it preached three equal gods. l72 He was not present at the Council of Sirmium of 378, when Ambrose met the Emperor Gratian and perhaps on this occasion was instrumental in securing the election of the pro-Nicene Anemius to the see of that city. 173 Palladius wrote his

'We teach', he writes, 'Christ the Son of God our Lord like in all respects to the Father I ingeneratcness excepted. God from God, Light from Light. Power from Power, Whole from Whole, Perfect from Perfect, generated (genitum) before the ages and before absolutely everything which can be conceived or uttered, whose generation,

nobody knows except the father alone [quotation of Matt 11:27J, through whom all things were made, without whom nothing was

made' [quotations ofJn 5"7,19,21,22,26; 10:30; '4:1,9, and fmally Gn 1:26 ('Let us make man according to (our) image')]. Now, argues Germinius, this does not say my image or your image 'to preclude the suggestion of any unlikeness in the divinity of his Son'. It must imply that he is like in all respects. Next he quotes In I I: '4; 2 Cor 4:4; Col. 1:13-15 and Phi12:S-? and continues 'Who will not see that just as our flesh was genuine in Christ according to the form of a servant, so the divinity of the Father in the Son was genuine in the form of God?

[quotation ofCoI2:8ff].lftherefore all the fulness of Godhead dwells in Christ, then they are not partly like and partly unlike'. The statement that Christ is something made or created refers to the Son's powers and activities only, as to many of his other titles in the Scriptures, and not to his divine birth, 'because everything was made

from nothing by the Son, but the Son is not from nothing but is generated from God the Father: Valens, he goes on, seems to have forgotten that on one occasion in the presence of the Emperor

Constantius, of George of Alexandria, Pancratius of Pelusium, Basil of Ancyra, of Valens and Ursacius themselves, and of Germinius

himself, after a long discussion which lasted into the night, Mark [of ArethusaJ, deputed by aU, drew up a formula to which all agreed, and that formula was 'the Son like the father in all respects as the holy Scriptures say and teach'. He concludes by saying that he is sending the letter by the officialis Cyriacus, but is unable to sign it owning to pain in his hands.

The occasion to which Germinius refers is the production of the 'Dated' Creed in Sirmium on May 22nd 359 (see above pp. 362-'71) seven years before this letter was written. Clearly Germinius had by now abandoned Homoian Arianism, to the dismay of his Arian colleagues, and had fallen back on a position very like that of the 17·lbid. B V.VI.1-4 (160-4).

594

~71See above, pp.102-3, 109-10,563-4. Gryson, Scolie5 Ariennes 173-200 and Meslin Les Ariens 85"""'92. 112Gryson ScoUes Arienne5 345V.128-129 (pp. 311-12, quotation from 311). 173The very existence of the Council of Sirmium of 378 has been disputed. The only evidence for it is in Theodoret HE IV .6-10, where he gives an imperial letter, a creed and an encyclical letter emanating from the bishops there assembled, but no signatories of it. The emperor who figures in the superscription to the imperial lener, Valentinian, with Valens and Gratian, is most unlikely to have written it,.for it wholeheartedly espouses the pro-Nicene cause. And the creed given by Theodoret as drawn up by the council is too carefully modelled on that of 381 to be authentic. But that a pro-Nicene Council met in Sirmium, not in 375, to which date some have referred it, assuming that Valentinian I called it, but in 378,just before the battIe of Adrianople. seems very likely. The three emperors would then be Gratian, Valentinian II (whose views would be taken for granted) and Valens (included out

595

The Rival Answers Emerge

Homoian Arianism

reply to Ambrose in the autumn of that year; he probably appealed to Gratian to call a general council in the spring of 381, andG~atIan agreed. It was because he expected the gathe~ing a~ AqUilela ':" the summer of381 to be such a council that PalladIus, wIth Secundianus, attended it. The best comment upon the proceedings of that conclave was made by Meslin:

view that 'he believed that Christ was true God and he confessed that he was of one substance and divinity with God the Father', and Hilary had made a note of this in the Emperor's presence. 17 • But it is difficult to take this claim seriously. Neither Constantius nor Julian nor Valentinian was in the least likely to insist upon Auxentius making a statement so much out of keeping with his true sentiments, and neither Jovian nor Valens can have had any influence over him. Anyway, Auxentius continued to retain the see of Milan undisturbed till his death in 374. To the other Arian Auxentius, him of Durostorum who, driven out by pagan Goths, came to Milan during Ambrose's tenure of the see to enjoy the protection of the Empress Justina, and who may have called himself Auxentius after Auxentius of Milan, we owe the account of Ulfilas' doctrines and career preserved in the scholia on the Acts of the Council of Aquileia.' 77 The career of Maximin us, who preserved so much Arian propaganda and doctrine in the margin of the account of the Council of Aquileia, and who figured as a prominent Homoian Arian in his debate with Augustine nearly fifty years after that council, lies outside the strict limits of this chapter. We know the names and a little of the careers of several other Homoean Ariaus: Leontius, Euzoius, Demophilus in the East,17' and in the West Saturninus, Epictetus, Fortunatianus, Potamius. But we know next to nothing of the details of their doctrine. We can only say that they represented a type of Arianism which was less technical, less involved with Greek philosophy,and less sophisticated than that of Aetius and Eunomius, to whom we next turn, but one that was more popular and more enduring than theirs could ever have been.

'Les debats firent ressortir rimplacable logique et la connaissance scripturaire de Palladius et de Secundianus, mais aussi la volon,tc systematique d' Ambroise de les condamner sur un texte dont ils . . n'etalent pas les auteurs, en I' occurrence, une 1ett Ie d'A· flUS.'174

It is unlikely that the two Homoian bishops were deprived of their sees immediately after the council, though, in view of Theodosius' recent legislation, they cannot have retained them very long. T~ey may have continued to function as bishops of. Homman congregations attached to their former sees for some tIme. How much later he wrote his defence of his conduct and that of Secundianus at Aquileia, fragments of which have been preserved (Gryson Scolies Ariennes 274-323), we do not know. It is quite probable that he wrote it at the gathering of Arians and others in Constantinople in 383 which witnessed the death of Ulfilas. We know something of the career of Auxentius of Milan but little of his theology. The creed and formulae produced by him and preserved for us in Hilary's attack on him 175 tell us little, because they probably represent traditional formulae presented by AuxentlUs as sufficient to meet the accusations levelled at him by Hilary but can scarcely have constituted characteristic Homoian doctrine. Hilary says that Auxentius had at some undefined period subscribed to the of protocol, little though he would have approved afthe c~uncil's concl~sions~. The encyclical letter, on these assumption, wou.ld be genum~. Th~ An~n bIshops condemned in it (who do not include Palladlus or Secundlanus III theIr number) would be those who had ventured to attend the council. Ambrose probably wrote De Fide Books I and II in the spring of 378. Palladius replied to them in autumn 378. Gratian had produced an Edict of general toleration late in 378, under the. pressure ?f the crisis produced by Valens' defeat and death. Ambrose wrote De FIde III-V m 380. By April 381 Theodosius had produced his edicts against an heresies and Gratian had revoked his edict of toleration. For the involved question of when the Council of Sirmium met, if it met at an, and other points arising from the subject. with many views both for and against, see Zeiller Origines 3 10-27. Meslin Les Ariens 86-91 and Gryson ScoUes Ariennes 107-21. I 74Les Ariens 90. 175S ee above. PP.466-7.

,

,

176Contra Auxentium 7 (PL 10:614). 177Gryson ScoUes Ariennes 236-263. His original name appears to have been Mercurius, though Ambrose calls him Mercurinus (Contra Auxentium 22; Epp. 759·22 (96)). 178Philostorgius HE VII.6 gives a useful list of such Arian bishops in the East.

597

The Neo-Arians

19

The Neo-Arians I.

Aetius: his Career

The name which is most serviceable for denoting the followers of Aetius and Eunomius, who form a distinct group within Arianism, is that which was given them by Kopecek in his History of NeoArianism. Exception has been taken to this name on the grounds that their brand of doctrine was not novel enough within the whole nexus ~f Arian ideas to warrant the title. But it will, we hope, be shown in this chapter that this type of docttine was in certain respects markedly different from Homoian Arian doctrine such as we have been considering in the previous chapter. Certainly the Homoian Arians themselves for the most part disliked bemg associated with the doctrines of either Aetius or Eunomius, and when they gained power showed no great tenderness towards trus radical left wing of Arianism. Other names which have been used to denote the NeoArians are unsatisfactory. 'Anhomoian' (which Simonetti, for instance, favours) is incorrect because the Neo-Arians on several occasions repudiated the view that the Son was, without qualification, 'unlike' (anhomoios) to the Father; this was an insulting label given them by their opponents. Gwatkin's statement (AC 134) that Eunomius positively flaunted the word anhomoios as a slogan is wholly wide of the mark. 'Eunomians' is not satisfactory either, because Aetius was the real founder of the group; he was the teacher ofEunomius, even though Eunomius lived longer than he and gained more notoriety than even Aetius did. Aetius came from Coele-Syria.' He had a varied career before he took to theology. Gregory of Nyssa dug up some facts about him which he thought discreditable, and about whose authenticity we tphilostorgius HE IILIS. Basil Adv. Eunom. I.I (PC 29:S00). At De Syn. 6 Athanasius caUs him 'the notorious Aetius who is nicknamed "the Atheist''',

must be doubtful. He began his career as a boiler-man (or just possibly bronzesmith - ICUl'lVtOnj<;). Philostorgius says that because his parents were reduced to destitution early in his life he had to work as a goldsmith.> He left that trade (having been detected in dishonesty, says Gregory, but this is probably mere slander) to become a poor man's doctor, and then a fully qualified physician, but finally turned to philosophy and theology. He attracted the attention of Paulinus during the short period when Paulinus had left Tyre to be bishop of Antioch, and Aetius later was patronized by Athanasius of Anazarbus in Cilicia and then by Antonius in Tarsus until Antonius was made bishop there. Athanasius had made him reader. After leaving Tarsus, when for some reason he had displeased Antonius, he returned to Antioch and there won the support ofLeontius, who was then only a presbyter. He left Antioch again, having created a bad impression by his eristic habits, and returned for a time to Cilicia, but then sought Alexandria. Here he practised medicine but also studied theology under the Arian bishop Gregory (ob. 345). He then returned once more to Antioch, where Leontius was now bishop. Leontius ordained rum deacon. This can hardly have happened earlier than 346. But he left Antioch again and went to Alexandria. His reasons for leaving Antioch at this point are obscure. His teaching always tended to shock and irritate. He incurred the enmity of two laymen of the sect of continuing Eustathians or pro-Nicenes in that city, Flavian and Diodore (and/or Paulinus). He may have been deposed from the diaconate by Leontius as a result of their protests, but it is more likely that rus promotion to the presbyterate was blocked. In Alexandria, where perhaps he hoped to make headway against the pro-Nicene Athanasius, he met Eunomius and secured him as his most faithful and effective disciple. 3 But he must have 2Gregory of Nyssa Contra Eunomium 1.37-46 (PG 45:260--1); Philostorgius HE III.IS· Gregory says that the source of his information is Athanasius of Ancyra

(Basil's successor) who was quoting a letter of George of Laodicea (ibid. 37 (4s:J 60)). 3This reconstruction and much of what follows is based on a critical use of Philostorgius HE IILIS-I7. 18-21,27; Theodoret HE 11.23-25. 27; Socrates HE 11.35.3 6 .4 1; SozomenusHE 1II.I5.7, 8; IV.I2.I, 2; 24.2; IV.25.7; AthanasiusDe Syn. 6·38. t7-lmost everybody agrees that Leontius ordained Aetius deacon. Only Gwatkm (SA 138) says presbyter (but this is probably a slip). Epiphanius says that George of Alexandria deaconed him (Pan. 76.1.1 (340» but Epiphanius is most unreliable on the subject of Aetius. Athanasius assigns the act to Leontius De Syn. 38. For accounts and discussions of Aetius, see G. Bardy Lucien 196, 'L'Heritage litteraire d'Aetius'; Zeitler Origines 288""'9; Simonetti erisi 288""'9.335,357/ 8,392 ;

599

The Rival Answers Ernerge

The Neo-Arians

returned to Antioch in or not long after 351, for there he won the favour of Gallus, who was Caesar from 351 to 354. At some point indeed during that period Gallus sent him to Ephesus in order to try to wean Gallus' half-brother Julian from his proclivity to paganism. On Gallus' fall he escaped because of his insignificance. 4 It was as a result of his contact with Gallus that he made the acquaintance of George of Tarbasthenus in Cappadocia, later Arian bishop of Alexandria. His particular doctrine must have become fairly widespread even before he wrote his main work (the Syntagrnation) at the end of 359, because the reaction against the Second Creed of Sirmium of 357 led by Basil of Ancyra was further fuelled by the alarm and despondency caused by Aetius' teaching. Aetius was included in the general denunciation of extreme doctrine issued by Constantius under the influence of Basil in the year 358,' and in consequence of thus incurring the Emperor's displeasure Aetius was in 358 banished to Pepuza in Phrygia; quite apart from his radical opinions, Aetius was suspect to Constantius because of his previous association with Gallus. 6 On the assembly of the double council of Seleucia and Ariminum in the autumn of 359, Aetius returned from exile and figured in a debate held in Constantinople at the very end of the year or early in 360. Four different writers give an account of this affair, all of them having different interestS to uphold, Epiphanius, Philostorgius, Theodoret and Sozomenus. 7 Theodoret represents him as openly espousing the anhornoion, Epiphanius as hinting that others (Eudoxius and Akakius) secretly believed what he was not ashamed to avow (though he does not here explicitly mention the anhornoion).

Sozomenus describes him vaguely as heretical (KaK6vou, ilJv 1t"pi tT)v 1tio'tlv, 4) but explains that his followers (i.e. the Homoian Akakius and Eudoxius) made him a scapegoat so as to escape unpleasant consequences themselves. Philostorgius, who was an admirer of Aetius and is likely to have better information than the others, said that Aetius was accused of teaching the anhornoion but he defended himself with spirit, declaring that so far from this being his doctrine he taught that the Son was 'unchangeably like' (d1tapa....4Ktm, OJlOlOV) the Father, and Constantius was so much shocked by this that he banished him to Mopsuestia in Cilicia, and, when he learnt that he was rather enjoying himself there in discussions with its bishop Auxentius, he transferred him to Amblada in the Taurus mountains. Philostorgius in the 'former passage represents Aetius as having had much the best of a public debate with Basil, then a deacon, later the pro-Nicene bishop of Cappadocian Caesarea; it seems likely that this is authentic, for Aetius' eristic talents were widely admired and feared. Philostorgius also maintains that Aetius' watchword was nOt anhomoios but heterousios, and this is certainly true. It is not improbable that he maintained that the Son was unchangeably like the Father in certain respects, though emphatically not in ousia, for though Aetius does not refer to this in his Syntagrnation his disciple EunomlUS was ready to defend this point of view. What shocked Constantius was probably not 'like', but 'unchangeably', because the Homoian viewpoint was that the Son must be changeable or he could not have become incarnate. But if we are not willing to credit Constantius with so much theological knowledge, it was no doubt sufficient for him that Aetius was flourishing the word heterousios, whereas the Arianism which he favoured had just made a point of doing a;-vay w.ith all reference to ousia or compounds of it in defming the Son s relatIOn to the Father, and even more that Aetius was tarred with the brush of having supported in an inferior capacity the treasonous behaviour of the late. Caesar Gallus. We have already seen reason to reject Theodoret's account of the strict interrogation to which Eudoxius was subjected, as a suspected ally of Aetius, and of postponing this incident to a later period. 8 The letter of a Council held early in 360 in Constantinople given us in Theodoret's account, however, seems authentic (HE II.28). It is addressed to George of Alexandria and announces that Aetius has been unfrocked for heresy

"Loafs 'Arianismus' 38; Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 154 n 31",157-8; Kopecek HislorY7S. 104. 106-1 14;J. de Ghellinck 'Quelques appreciations de la dialectique et d' Aristote'; R. Wickham 'Aetius and the Doctrine of divine Ingeneracy' and 'The Syntagmation of Aetius the Anhomoian'. If Leontius deposed Aetius, and we have no evidence of his being re-ordained (except Epiphanius' uncertain account). what

was he deposed from in 36o? Philostorgius hints that he did not exercize his diaconate, but simply taught or lectured. But if with Kopecek (History 72) we place Antonius' accession to the See of Tarsus in 330, we shall have to abandon Aetius'

connection with Paulinus. 4Gregory Nyssa Con. Eunomium 1.37, 38, 47, 48 (45:262); Sozomenus HE 111.15; Epiphanius Panarion 73.2; Philostorgius HE 111.6.27. 'See above, pp. 357-8, 586. 6See Historia Akephala 4.5 (154) and n 102 of Martin (197). 7Epiphanius Panarion 76.9. 10 (344); Philostorgius HE IV.I2 and V.I, 2; Theodoret HE 11.27; Sozomenus HE IV.23·3, 4.

600

8S ee above, pp.S86--7.

601

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Neo-Arians

(details not specified), and that four bishops, Stephen (ofPtolemais), Heliodorus (ofSozous), Serra (ofParaetonium) and Theophilus (the 'Indian') have been warned that; if they continue holding Aetius' views in spite of having heard long dissuasion from their fellowbishops, after six months they will suffer the same fate as Aetius and their sees will be filled by others. Most of these bishops could be regarded in one way or another as coming under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Alexandria. Here Homoian Arianism had for the first time declared war on Aetius. With Julian's accession to sole power in 361, Aetius returned from exile; he received a polite letter from the Emperor, who had a friendly feeling towards him as a former friend of his half-brother Gallus, welcoming him back. 9 It is probably best to place at this point the appointment of Aetius as a bishop, an incident which is usually accepted as a fact. We do not know to what see he was allotted, but we may guess that it was a Libyan one. Libya was the heartland of Arianism, most of the bishops mentioned in the Letter from the Council of Constantinople to George of Alexandria in 360 as unrepentant supporters of Aetius are from Libyan sees. Philostorgius says that at an earlier period Aetius was offered a see by Libyan bishops but refused because the bishops still communicated with the champions of homoousios.' o He relates that the people who made him bishop were Leontius from Tripoli and Theodulus from Chairatopae (the first a Libyan), along with the party of Serra and Theophilus and Heliodorus from both Libyas and anyone who had not consented to Aetius being unfrocked or to the Creed of Ariminum ('iii TOl'CJl 'EUl,"p(OlV), with the approval ofEudoxius. And he adds that Euzoius of Antioch saw to it that the ultimatum given to the Libyan bishops at Constantinople was not put into effect." He also has a muddled account of a council planned by Eudoxius to take place at Antioch with the intention of rehabilitating Aetius, but frustrated by Euzoius' delaying tactics. This may be an allusion to the council of 361 where extreme views were canvassed but no decision taken. 12 It seems

unlikely that Aetius ever resided in his see, or that he was ever formally re-installed in the clerical order by the church at Constantinople or at Antioch. When Eunomius broke formally with the great church (which was for him of course the church of Eudoxius and Euzoius in Constantinople and in Antioch, the church supported by the eastern Emperor, the church under Homoian Arian influence), Aetius joined him in setting up a separate Neo-Arian church with separate bishops, consecrated by these two. At its first fine careless rapture it had bishops in Constantinople (Eudoxius and/or Aetius), Lydia and Ionia (Candidus), Palestine (Chairatopae presumably presided over by Theodulus), Lesbos (Thallus), Pontus, Galatia and Cappadocia (Euphronius), Cilicia (Iulianus), Antioch (Theophilus the 'Indian') and Libya (Serra, Stephen and Heliodorus}.'3 Aetius had been given an estate in Lesbos by Gallus, and Julian had confirmed or restored this gift. To this estate Aetius retired in later Iife.' 4 Philostorgius says that Aetius was made governor of Lesbos by Procopius, the usurper who threatened the throne of the Emperor Valens early in his reign, but managed to escape evil consequences on Procopius' defeat, and died in Constantinople, where he was associating with Eunomius and another prominent Neo-Arian called Florentius. not long after the failure of Pro copius' attempt at power.' s Most authorities agree that this death took place in the year 367'6

,"IV

'Julian Epp. 46 [JI] 52 cf. Philostorgius HE V1.7; Sozomenus HE V.5.9. The reference to an eminent Christian leader whom Julian refuted in argument is probably not to Aetius (Against the Galilaeans 418 [234] 47B). In Epp. 79 Julian praised Aetius by name for saying that God could not have taken flesh in the womb

ofa woman.

IOHE 1lI,'9. "Ibid. VII.6. 12Ibid. VII.S; see above p. .s80.

2.

Aetius: Doctrine

The only work of Aetius which survives, preserved by Epiphanius, is his Syntagmation. Otherwise we have nothing but a few extracts and a few conjectures. Ps-Didymus tells us of an argument of Aetius to the effect that if God who is ingenerate is wholly generative (OAOC; ytW'lTlKOC;), then he has not generation substantively (oocruil50lC;) [presumably because an ingenerate cannot generate that which is generatel, and that if God's substance (ousia) was changed into an issue (ytvv'll'a). then the ousia of God is not beyond transformation 'JPhilostorgius, HE VIl.s. 6; VIII.2-?; IX.4; Socrates HE IV.13. 14Philostorgius, HE IX.4.

I5lbid. IX.6. 16But Simonetti (Crisi 391 n 35) places his death in 365. before the defeat of Procopius.

602

60 3

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Neo-Arians

(U!I&tUP1.l]tOC;).'7 This sounds very like the material which we find in the Syntagmation, and may be a paraphrase of it. Julian commended Aetius because he said that God could not have taken flesh in the womb of a woman.'· We have no utterances at all by Aetius apart from this one bearing on the Incarnation, and it is difficult to know why Aetius should have said this, ifhe said it. If we lay the emphasis on the word God, perhaps we can conjecture that Aetius was here uttering in a provocative form the universal Arian assumption that only an inferior God could have become incarnate. M. Richard thought that in Or. con. Arianos 111.26 Athanasius, reproducing a series of seventeen texts from the New Testament adduced by an Arian author to support Arian doctrine, was giving us material from the pen of Aetius, perhaps from the Syntagmation.' 9 But the Syntagmation as we know it does not discuss the Incarnation, and all these texts are employed to demonstrate the weakness, ignorance and subjection to passions of the incarnate Logos, based on the universal Arian supposition that the Logos took the place of the psyche in Jesus Christ. The fact that these texts emphasize, inter alia, the ignorance of the Logos does not make for their coming from a Neo-Arian source. We have no reason to believe that Athanasius was acquainted with Neo-Arian ideas at the period at which he wrote this work. A more likely source of Aetius' doctrine is the unknown writer or writers whom George of Lao dice a quoted in order to attack in his Letter of 359, written at a time when the teaching ofAetius first began to alarm the followers of Basil of Ancyra. 20 The extracts from his work attack the doctrine that 'like in respect of ousia' is a proper way of defining the relation of the Son to the Father. 21 This author maintains that

'Seeing that the Son is admitted to be infinite (uteAs6t1]to<;), not because he possesses life by his own nature, but from the authority of

the Unbeginning, and the unbeginning (uytv1]to<;) nature is infmitely greater than any authority: how can they avoid manifest impiety who

exchange the Heterousian gospel (to &t&p06cnov 1CljpUY!lU) of orthodoxy for "likeness of ousia"?,23

It was the heterousion which Aetius championed before Constantius. Another extract runs: 'So the name "Father" does not denote ousia, but authority which

produced (unoo-t1]o-cio-'l<;) the Son the God-Logos before the ages, and he possesses infinitely the ousia and authority which was given to him, and he possesses it continuously'. 24 Aetius of course would have maintained that the ousia given to the Son by the Father was different from the Father's own ousia. A fmal fragment runs: 'If they want "Father" to indicate ousia but not authority, they should

address the existence (un6o-tumv) of the Only-begotten by the name "Father"

There can be little doubt that these are the words of Aetius himself, written some time before he produced his Syntagmation. It is interesting to observe that the distinction between agennetos = ingenerate and agenetos = unbeginning (i.e. existing from eternity) is not recognised here. It is possible that the extreme Arian views which Hilary says that he heard canvassed at Seleucia in 359 2 • were those of the school of Aetius. And ifSozomenus is correct in his account of a council held in Antioch in 361 (apparently) which met to proclaim that the Son was unlike the Father but without achieving this,27 then it is likely that these were the doctrines of Aetius, who

'By reason of his birth the Son is less and is confessed (to be so). He does not consequently preserve likeness to the unbeginning (to

"Ibid. 4 (294). "Ibid. 5 (295). 25[bid. 6 (294).

uytV'ltov) in respect of ousia, but preserves the pure will of God, bearing it in his own existence (U7tOataOSt); so he preserves likeness, not according to ousia but according to the principle of truth. '22

26See above, P.464. Bardy in his article 'L'Heritage Iitteraire d' Aetius' did not consider these highly probable passages, and the text of the Synlagmation which he gives in this article may be said to have been superseded by Holl's version of it in his edition of Epiphanius· for the GCS series (the I1Ird volume of which had not appeared when Bardy wrote). Bardy prints not only the passage given us in Basil's De Spiritu Sancto (see next page) but also a few other short passages from the Doctrina Patrum. Their attribution, because of their use in later controversies, is not however clear enough, in my opinion, to make them worth printing here. More recently the Syntagmation has been edited with Introduction, English translation and notes by L. R. Wickham in 'The Syntagmation of Aetius'. He conjectures that what we have is not the whole original work. 27HE IV.29.1-4, see above p. 580. This is the passage where Sozomenus relates

This is, no doubt, the point which Aetius was attempting to make before Constantius in Constantinople in 359. He goes on; 17PS.~Didymu5

.'25

De Trinitate 10 (40).

"EpP·79. 19'5 aint Athanase et la Psychologie du Christ seIan Ies Ariens' 3-10. 20See above, PP.370. 21Epiphanius Panarion 73.21.2 (293).

"Ibid. 3 (293, 294). i

I

. c,

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was at the time in exile. Epiphanius remarks that what mattered supremely to Aetius was knowing God;John 17:3 'this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent' was his watchword; to this knowledge he sacrificed everything else in his system, morals, discipline and so on, and he imagined that this knowledge was readily available; Epiphanius quotes an isolated saying of Aetius:

propositions drawn up as an answer to the De Deeretis of Athanasius, and as an attempt to prOve by the methods of logical analysis available at the time that the Son could not possibly be like in ousia to the Father nor be identical in ousia with the Father. 31 It mentions neither the term anhomoios nor heterousios but rather prefers the. expression tv Ollcri~ dcr"YICPltOV (incomparable in ousia). It is on the whole likely that Epiphanius, who gives us the text, reproduced the whole work.3 2 ln his preface to the work Aetius stigmatizes the proNicenes as 'time-servers' (Chronitai people who subject God to time) because to describe the Father as begetting the Son is in effect to subject him to time. This version of the work is a republication of an earlier edition, which had been misunderstood and even published in an interpolated form. 33 Then follow the 37 propositions, all couched in the form of an aporia, i.e. a problem to which in his comment he tries to show there is no solution if the ousia of the Son is like to or identical with that of the Father. All the aporiae are concerned with the relation of the Son to the Father, none with the Incarnation. The first aporia begins in characteristic fashion:

'With such entire clarity do I know God and so fully do I know him and am acquainted with him, that I do not know myself better than I know God'.2' This is one of the chief points on which Aetius and Eunomius differed from Homoian Arianism. Epiphanius gives us one further isolated saying of Aetius: 'The ingenerate (agenneton) cannot be like the generate (t0Y6VV1\tcp); notice that the name is different: for one is ingenerate, the other generate',29

One more saying of Aetius has been preserved, by Basil of Caesarea,30 from one of Aetius' letters: 'Things which are dissimilar in nature are stated (1tPOlptP6crSUl) dissimilarly. and conversely things which are stated dissimilarly are

dissimilar in nature', and he took 1 Cor 8:6 as a proof of this ('One God and Father from whom are all things and one LordJesus Christ, through whom are all things). 'So just as the names are related to each other, so will the natures indicated by the words be related. Now the "through whom" is dissimilar to the "from whom". Therefore the Son is dissimilar to the Father'.

One is struck by the resemblance to the saying attributed to Eudoxius above (P.585) and by the characteristically Neo-Arian argument frol1l names to realities. The only point which makes one hesitate about ascribing this passage to Aetius is the open use of anhomoios (dissimilar). But on the subject of the divine natures he might well have permitted himself to use the term. The Syntagmation (Little Treatise) of Aetius consists of 37 that Aetius himself was known as 'the Atheist' and his followers branded by their opponents as 'Anhomoians' and 'Exucontians', 28Panarion 76.4.1, .2 (344).

"Ibid. 76.6.1 (J46). 30De Spiritu .Sando 11.4 (PG 32:73).

606

'Is it possible for the ingenerate God to make something generate ingenerate?'.34

We cannot within the scope of this book give the whole text of this very technical work, but only quote some typical examples of its argument. 35 If God. he says. is ingenerate in his ousia, then that which he begets is not begotten by a difference of ousia. but out of the ousia which gives it existence (61tocrrl'Jcra
If the ingenerate is generated. why should not the generate become ingenerate? But every nature tends towards what is proper (ob:eiov) to it and away from what is not proper (dvob:m.ov) [therefore neither ingenerate could become generate nor vice versa].J7 31S 0 Kopecek History 225-']; he gives a useful analysis of the work 227-97 including a history of the use of the terms agennetos and agenetos. 32To be found in Panarion ?6.II.I (351)-12.37 (360). "Ibid. 76.II.I-J (J51-2). 34 12: 1 (35 2). 3sWords in square brackets in this account of the aporiae are my explanation or comment. "5 (J 5J). 376 (J5]).

607

The Rival Answers Efflt'fge If God can really turn himself into a generating agency. what he generates cannot possibly possess his whole ousia because it is generated and no~ generator, and anyway this implies that ~s ousia is not beyond transformation (UJl£t"~"T]tO')' But if God IS beyond transformation and greater than cause, then 'talk of a Son' (to teUta. tOY ul6v) must be confessed to go no further than the name. 38 [Here NeoArianism appears in all its nakedness: God could not have a Son]. If ingenerateness does not constitute God's existence. but the name 'incomparable' is only the result of a human perception (t1tlvo(a,), then it is owing to our human perception that God knows that he is ingenerate [which of course is absurd].>·

Later Aetius moves on to a theme which is a stock one in NeoArianism - that names express realities and are not mere conventional symbols. The pro-Nicenes had, of course, claimed that 'ingenerate' was just one name or title among many applicable to God. The NeoArians believed that it expressed his essence. 'If being ingenerate in contrast to the generate contributes nothing towards superiority of ousia, then the Son will be superior [to us] only by appellation (1tpoaCjlop~) and he will know that those who pray are superior to him, and not Gust) the God and Father who is addressed in prayer,' [i.e. his divine status will virtually disappear].4o The ingenerate is his own ousia (autoouo{a), and is superior to the generate by nature and not just by choice [of name]. Consequently it cannot admit of any idea of birth41 (rEvsal,).

He next sets out a series of paradoxes which result from assuming that 'ingenerate' is a mere adjective of privation meaning 'privation of a condition' or 'a condition ofprivation'.42 It will mean, for instance, that the ingenerate, which is beyond passions (1tUO'l), and the generate, which must, as changeable, be subject to them, are equally immutable. 43 'If the ingenerate nature is the cause of the generate (nature), yet the ingenerate is nothing [but a merely human perception (epinoia)], then how can that which is nothing be the cause of something which exists?,44

The Nea-Adans If'ingenerate' is a mere name, and we exalt God's existence above all generate things absolutely, then man's appellation will be more important than God's existence. 45 If everything which has come into existence has done so because of another and the ingenerate existent (hypostasis) has come into existence by its own or any other agency, then it necessarily follows that the ingenerate indicates ousia [and not mere epinoia].46

Aetius ends his treatise by considering the disastrous consequences of teaching (as he believes the pro-Nicenes to teach) that there are two ingenerates (agenneta) or ultimate principles (archai). How can the ingenerate God, since he is free from all finiteness in contrast to everything else which is fmite, and since he cannot transcend his own source, observe at one time his second ousia in the issue (gennema) and at another time his first ousia in the ingenerate, preserving the order of first and second?47 If the ingenerate is independent of all cause and there are many ingenerate things, they will all have an immutable nature. It is impossible to imagine them having two natures, one creative, the other having experienced becoming. 48 If there are two ingenerate ousiai, one cann'ot dominate the other, one cannot be the agent and the other the subject of change, for the argument of the pro-Nicenes will not permit God to produce one ousia from non-existent ausia (eK JlIl 01tOKSlJlEVT], oua(a,) [as the NeoArians taught that God had done].4. There is danger in assuming that 'God' and 'the ingenerate' mean two different things. If they do it is logical to say that God begets God. But if nothing existed before God (as is the case), then 'God' and 'ingenerate' mean the same thing, and the generate cannot admit of ingenerateness. 50 [In short, to say that God is begotten is equivalent to saying that God is not God.]

The last aporia is not really a philosophical non possumus but a concluding benediction couched in Neo-Arian phraseology: 'May the existent self-generated God, and so the only true God who was (thus) addressed by Jesus Christ the Apostle (u1toataUvto,) who

38

8 (353, 354). 39 12 (354)· 4°17 (355). 41 1 8 (356). 42 20 (356). 4321 , 22 (356, 357). 4423 (357).

45 26 4'28 4731 48 33 40 34 5°36

608

(357). (358). (35 8). (358). (35 8). (35 8).

609

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The Neo-Arians

has existed truly before the ages and is a truly begotten existent

sense, to become acquainted with his being in an intellectual way; indeed according to Neo-Arianism he has made the knowledge very easily obtainable. But to know him in the Hebraic sense, in the sense of the Old Testament and the Fourth Gospel, to commit ourselves to him in faith, to share in his life (though not his nature) - this NepArianism virtually excludes. This is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to envisage Neo-Arianism having arisen out of surviving Jewish Christianity, in spite of some apparent evidence to this effect in the Apostolic Constitutions. It is also worth noting that though Aetius never says that the Son was created from non-existing things (e<; 00" 5VTOOV) he does hold that he was created 'from ousia which did not subsist' (e" lliJ 01tO"elll&Vll, oocria,). This seems to be a distinction without a difference. Rationalism is in fact Aetius' outstanding characteristic. He probably had ideas about the Incarnation and was willing to expound them but with one small exception they have not survived. This is a loss, but not a very great one, for clear! y Aetius' main interest was in the metaphysical relationship of the Son to the Father. His main purpose is to preserve the correct metaphysics. This is probably the reason why Neo-Arianism, unlike Homoian Arianism, never became a popular movement.

(hypostasis), preserve you, both men and women, in soundness from impiety.'Sl

It is obvious at once that Aetius here is not in the least concerned to appeal to the Bible, nor even to mention the name ofJesus Christ. His sole concern· is philosophical, to point out how illogical and impossible it is, in the light of the logic and philosophy of his day, to hold that the ousia of the Father and the Son can be either like each other or identical with each other. His opponents, the pro-Nicenes and the party of Basil of Ancyra, ·had appealed to philosophy when they insisted upon introducing the word ousia into their doctrine about the relation of the Son to the Father. They had not done so with any specially philosophical intention; they were trying in their own way to do justice to the Bible and the witness of tradition and of Christian experience. But they had made ousia a kind of touchstone, and Aetius meets them to this extent upon their own ground with acuteness, learning and a great display of basically Aristotelian logic. He was a famous debater, a famous analyser and exponent of the rationaL To people like Basil and Athanasius he must have seemed as Abailard seemed to St. Bernard, as a logical analyst would seem to an idealist theologian. We are not surprised when we learn that Basil of Caesarea as a deacon retreated before the formidable machine of Aetius' logic. Aetius presented the defenders of N with a severe challenge. We can sense also why people like Constantius, Akakius and Eudoxius disliked Aetius. A man who is ready to argue forcibly from first premises on every occasion may be an effective debater but will never be a popular success. But behind the metaphysics, the definitions, the aporiae, we can discern one basic assumption of Neo-Arianism: God cannot beget. And behind that assumption lies another: God cannot communicate himself. He may make it possible for us to know him in a formal 51 37 (359. 360). It is impossible 'to be sure about the exact date afthe production of the Synt4gmation. Kopecek wishes to place it in 359, Wickham in 360. In the preface Aetius complains of persecution, and this may refer either to his first exile (358) or to his second (360). Kopecek is sure that it is a reply to the De Decretis of Atha,nasius. but there is ~o reason why Aetius should have made an immediate reply to th1s work. It looks as If George of Lao dicea had an early version ofit in his hands in 359, and Aetius tells us in the preface that there was another version current. We cannot place its composition much after 360, because time must be allowed for Basil of Caesarea to have replied to it in his Adv. Eunomium, some time after its appearance, by about 363.

610

3. Eunomius: his Career We do not know the date of the birth of Eunomius, but we may conjecture that he was born about 330. The place of his birth was an obscure village called Corniaspa in Cappadocia. 52 He was the son of a poor, struggling farmer, and was educated by his father. He started life as a teacher of short-hand (1tpouvl"ou crorpia<;, called after Prunicus, its inventor, just like Pitman!), then supported himself as a tutor of the children of the man who had employed him as a writer, and next became a rhetor. Thence he graduated to becoming a theologian. 53 He may have been accepted in the church of 52Gregory Nyssa Con. Eunom. 1.105 (281); but Philostorgius and Sozomenuscall it.Dakorioenoi. see below PP.613. 616-17. Eunomius objected to Basil referring to him as a Galatlan and preferred to be called a Cappadocian. Much the fullest and most recent source on Eunomius is Kopecek, History of Neo-Arianism. But Harnack History IV.74 (very scanty), Loofs 'Arianismus' 31-2, 34. 38 (not altogether accurate), Zeiller Origines 306, 308 and Simonetti Crisi 254-9 can also be consulted. 53Gregory of Nyssa ibid. 1.49-54 (264-5).

6II

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Cappadocian Caesarea when the Homoian Arian Dianius was bishop, and George of Alexandria (himselfa Cappadocian) may have found him a civilian post in Constantinople. 54 Philostorgius however says that he came to Antioch from Cappadocia,55 and he certainly studied rhetoric and logic in Antioch. Thence he went to Alexandria, perhaps in the train of George its Arian bishop. In Alexandria (we may conjecture about 355 or 356) he met Aetius, whose secretary he virtually became and by whose t~ought he was deeply influenced. In 358 he came to Antioch again; accompanying George of Alexandria 56 and there met the recently-appointed bishop of Antioch, Eudoxius. Philostorgius says that Eudoxius made Eunomius deacon, 57 and this is the only point at which we can envisage his ordination by Eudoxius. Very shortly afterwards, however, both bishop and deacon were banished by the irate Constantius, exasperated partly because Eudoxius had ordained as extreme a theologian as Eunomius. 58 Eunomius was sent to Midiaeon in Phrygia. 5 • Eunomius returned with almost all other banished bishops for the General Council ofSeleucia-Ariminum. Philostorgius tells us that he was present at Constantinople and that he supported Aetius in the role that he played there in frightelling off the deacon Basil of Cappadocian Caesar;;a and refuting the charge of Anhomoianism. 60 But he does not say that Eunomius actually took part in any debate, though it is possible that he had just published his First Apology. We may conclude that it is most unlikely that Eunomius in fact engaged in any public discussion, for ifhe had it is wholly improbable that the Emperor would have allowed him to be made a bishop very shortly

afterwards. In the general reshuffle of sees which followed the Council of Constantinople early in 360, Eunomius by the influence of Eudoxius was made bishop of Cyzicus. 61 What happened next is surrounded by a mist ofuncertainty.62 Philostorgius says that while Eunomius was bishop ofCyzicus he was accused to Eudoxius (now in Constantinople) of teaching the anhornoion; he went to the capital, declared that he did not teach that the Son was anhornoion, but on the contrary that he was 'like according to the Scriptures', but not 'like in ousia', because to allow this would mean to subject the impassible High God to the experiencing of passions (pathe). Eunomius had a resounding success in Constantinople. 63 But later (how much later we do not know), failing to persuade Eudoxius to recall Aetius, Eunomius left Cyzicus and went to his home in Cappadocia. 64 On another occasion (we cannot tell when).Akakius accused Eunomius to Euzoius of Antioch of heresy but when Eunomius appeared to answer the charge Akakius remained silent and the case collapsed. 65 Constantius, he says, was intencling to call a general council to Nicaea to establish the heterousion as official orthodoxy when he was prevented by the rebellion of Julian and his own death. 66 We must take this last statement with a pinch of salt. Sozomenus says that while bishop of Cyzicus Eunomius was accused by his own clergy of heresy, and that he went to Constantinople and defended himself with apparent success. Eudoxius did not condemn him, but neither did he encourage him to return to Cyzicus; so Eunomius decided not to return because he was not trusted by some of his own clergy. 67 Later Sozomenus refers to Eunomius being exiled by the Emperor, but we do not know which, nor whither he was sent, and it is most improbable that he is referring to the year 360. All he knows of Eunomius thereafter is that not long after this he went to his own village ofDakora in Cappadocia and there died. 68 Theodoret relates

54S0 Kopecek History 145-150. ss HE III.lo. 21.

s6Theodoret HE 11.27.9. It is highly likely that he attended the council in Antioch held by the newly-elected Eudoxius which approved of the 2nd Sirmian Creed. See Sozomenus HE IV,I2.3-? and above pp.348, 586. 57HE IV.j.S. Philostorgius says that E. only allowed himself to be ordained after satisfying himself ofEudoxius' orthodoxy (according to Eunomius' standa·rds). But it is most unlikely that this deacon's examination in reverse took place; the story can be attributed to the historian's characteristically Neo-Arian concern for doctrinal accuracy and soundness. See Simonetti Crisi 237. 58See above. P.357. 59PhiJostorgius: HE IV.B. 6°lbid. IV.I2. Incidentally Philostorgius says quite clearly here that Basil was a deacon at this point (not just a reader). Simonetti, with others (Crisi 2S4). wishes to place the discussion about Anhomoianism early in 360.

61 Philostorgius_ HE V.3. As usual Philostorgius says that he only submitted to this elevation on the understanding that Eudoxius would have Aetius recalled. But this is most unlikely. Eunomius must at trus point have signed the creed of Nice/Constantinople. 62As Simonetti admits Crisi 341, n 72. 63HE VI.J. 64V1.3· 65V1.4· 66VI.S· 67HE IV.26.S. 6. 68VII.17. I.

612

61 3

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The Neo-Arians

that when Eunomius was bishop ofCyzicus his local enemies induced him (against the advice of Eudoxius) to show his hand doctrinally; they then delated him as a heretic to Constantius, who angrily ordered Eudoxius to look into Eunomius' case ifhe wished to retain his see. Eudoxius duly gathered a court of bishops who tried Eunomius and deposed him for heresy. But he took no notice of this action and began ordaining men to constitute his own sect. 69 We can conclude without difficulty that at this point Eunomius left the see of Cyzicus for doctrinal reasons, either after condemnation by a synod or of his own accord, and that the evidence that he was nOw banished is almost non-existent. 7o Philostorgius also tells US of two councils held at Antioch at the time at which Aetius was made bishop, and before the persecution of the Christians (which can only allude to the reign of Julian), organized the first by Eudoxius and Euzoius and the second by Euzoius alone, the first of which was intended to vindicate Aetius, though its intentions were frustrated by Euzoius' delaying tactics, but at the second Neo-Arian doctrines were approved and Aetius' condemnation reversed; and Philostorgius remarks that Euzoius did not implement the penalties with which the Libyan bishops were menaced six months after Aetius' banishment early in 360.71 That a Council met in Antioch in the second half of 361 attended by Constantius himself, Euzoius, newly made bishop of that city, George of Alexandria, George of Laodicea (who had now presumably deserted the party of Basil of Ancyra to join the Homoeans; thereby avoiding deposition in the great re-shuffle of early 360) and Eunomiusis clear from Athanasius De Synodis 30 and 31 and Socrates HE 11.45. But that it cleared Aetius and restored him to the clerical rank is inconceivable. Aetius was still in exile in 362, as Julian's Ep 79 recalling him reveals, and Eunomius left Cyzicus because nobody would make an effort to recall and reinstall Aetius in his rank; and we cannot possibly place Aetius being made bishop as

early as this. It is highly likely that this Council of 361 did in fact fail to pass extreme Neo-Arian measures owing to Euzoius' reluctance, and that we must here place the unsuccessful and half-hearted attempt of Akakius to charge Eunomius with heresy. 72 Perhaps Eunomius left Cyzicus not in 360, but in 361, disgusted at the failure of this council to vindicate Aetius. If there was a council of Antioch which rehabilitated Aetius, we must place it in 362, after the death of Constantius, and perhaps later. But it is doubtful if any such council took place. At the death of Constantius and accession ofJulian to sole power (361) all exiled clergy and bishops returned (though not necessarily to their original posts). This recall we know to have included Aetius, for we have Julian's letter welcoming him. Eunomius did not return because, as we have just seen, he was never exiled. But from this period onwards we must envisage the establishment and spread of a separate Neo-Arian church or sect. Aetius was apparently made a bishop by enthusiastic Neo-Arian Libyan bishops. Eunomius was a bishop already, though he had left his see of Cyzicus. 73 The next point at which we can with confidence declare that Eunomius waS exiled is about the year 365, and he was exiled, not for doctrinal but for political reasons. He had fallen under suspicion of supporting the revolt of Procopius. He had undertaken a mission to free from detention some supporters of Valens imprisoned in Cyzicus when Procopius was in control of Constantinople, and had of course for this purpose entered into relations of some sort with Procopius' government. Later he was wrongfully accused of having consciously

69HE 11.29. 7°Everybody seems to assume that Eunomius was banished at this point, but

though it is wholly fikely that he was unfrocked, there is simply no evidence of his banishment in 360. Simonetti (Crisi 391 03S) makes this assumption, and so does Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 158, saying that he was sent to Mitylene and citing as sources Philostorgius HE VII.I.?; VII.6; VlIl.z arid IX.4 and Sozomenus HE VI.26 and Theodoret HE 11,29. None of these sources says anything about Eunomius being banished at this point, though Philostorgius says that Aetius went to Mitylene.

"HE VU.l, 6.

614

72Seeabove, p. 61). Martin Hist. Akeph. 198 n 106 seems to me to be going too far when she concludes that this council of 361 adopted an Anhomoian (or even an heterousian) formula. Probably Euzoius did refrain from pressing the penalties on the Neo-Arian bishops after six months. 73Philostorgius HE VIII.2; IX.4; Socrates HE IV.I 3. It is possible that this move occurred a little later, in the short reign ofJovian (36)-4), as Gwatkin suggested (SA 230) and Wickham ('The Syntagmation of Aetius the Anomaeon' sso) places it in 36). Philostorgius HE IX.4 says that on leaving Cyzicus E performed thenceforward no liturgical functions but retired to his estate at Chalcedon and confined himself to acting as guide and encourager (with Aetius) to other NeoArians. But he could not also have organized a Neo-Arian church from Constantinople at the same time, so that we must place this retirement to Chalcedon to a later period. I think it desirable, because entia non sunt praeter necessitatem multiplicanda, to be sparing in accepting evidence of Eunomius' exiles. Theodoret HE 1l.29. I I implies that E began creating a Neo-Arian church immediately after leaving Cyzicus. But it is unlikely that he initiated this policy till he had the support of Aetius. returned from exile.

615

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sheltered Procopius in his private estate. 74 This was quite enough for

to retire to his native village of Dakoroenoi. He must have been permitted considerable liberty of movement, because Philostorgius said that when he, Philostorgius, was twenty years old he saw Eunomius in Constantinople. 79 We do not know when Eunomius died. Jerome in his De Viris Illustribus (CXX) says that Eunomius was still alive when he Gerome) was writing (?397 or 398). But this is not a very reliable statement. It only means that Jerome did not positively know that Eunomius was dead. There is no doubt that the doctrines ofNeo-Arianism were at one time quite influential. This is testified to not only by the fact that Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of N azianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, PseudoDidymlls, Epiphanius and several others chose to write against Eunomius, but we know that when Amphilochius was made bishop of !conium in 373, having had no theological training, he found himself beset by Neo-Arian propaganda in his see, and called in the aid of Basil of Caesarea, his friend, to assist him in the task of countering it. What that doctrine was, we must next enquire.

the intensely suspicious Emperor Valens; his association with Aetius,

who was certainly tarred with the Procopian brush, must have rendered him an object of suspicion anyway. He was banished, as we have seen (above, p. 592 n. 163) 'to the Mauretanian land' but on the way met at Mursa Valens, 'bishop' of that town. Valens the bishop interceded successfully with Valens the Emperor, and Eunomms was recalled. He spent some time in Constantinople ordering the NeoArian church and was able to close the eyes of Aetius on his deathbed.?' However, neither Eudoxius of Constantinople nor Euzoius of Antioch nor the successor ofEudoxius, Demophilus (whose accession to the capital see we must place in 367 or 368) liked Eunomius nor Neo-Arianism. Philostorgius tells us that at some point Demophilus secured from the Emperor Valens the banishment of Eunomius to Nao~(av
7sPhiiostorgius HE IX.6. 76Ibid.IX.II. 77Ibid. IX.I), 14. 78Ibid.IX.4; Philostorgius' chronological order (or that of his editor, Photius) is confused. In his Apologia Apologiae Eunomius complains of being condemned and meeting i1Iegaljudges and of being dragged across sea and land and suffering injury from the heat of the sun and from dust, Gregory Nyssa (Con. Eunom. 1.72 (45':27.2.)).

616

4. The Doctrine of Ellnomiu. Eunomius is known to have written at least three works which survive in whole or part. They are the Apology, or First Apology, which survives and on which we can gain more light from Basil's attack on it in his Adversus Eunomium; the Apology for an Apology (or Second Apology, portions of which survive because they are quoted by Gregory of Nyssa in his Contra Eunomium) , in answer to the Adversus Eunomium of Basil of Caesarea; and his Confession of Faith, which Gregory of Nyssa has preserved. so We can glean some further quotations or paraphrases of Eunomius from contemporary 79Ibid. X.6. ·Philostorgius was born in Borissus in Cappadocia Secunda about 368, son ofKarterios who was himself an Heterousian and Eulampius, a woman of Homoian views who was converted to her husband's point of view; she converted her brothers and her father (a presbyter called Anysius). See ibid. HE IX.9. Philostorgius was writing some time between 42-5 and 433 as a conscious continuator of Eusebius. 8°Henceforward the Apology will be called Apol., the Apology for the Apology will be shortened to Apol. Apol., and the Confession of Faith will be referred to as Conf The reader is reminded that 'apology' here is reproducing the origina] Greek apologia and means simply 'defence' with no thought of apologizing in our sense of the word.

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literature. Basil's Epistles and Gregory of Nazianzus' Theological Orations. and the De Trinitate ofPseudo-Didymus. It is not difficult to calculate approximately the date of Apol. Apol. Eunomius wrote it in two periods. The first two books were written in 378 or 379. on his return from exile at the death of Valens. The third was written a little later. in 382 or 383. He did not begin this work till eighteen years after Basil's attack on the first Apology. the Adversus Eunomium. had appeared. He later wrote two more books. but our fragments cover only the first three books. 81 His Conf was written expressly for the gathering of various parties in the church called by Theodosius in 383 as a last effort at achieving unity. But it is more difficult to date Eunomius' first work. the Apol. Till fairly recently it had been usual to place it after the Council of Constantinople of359/360. some time later in 360. But recent opinion has tended to conclude that it must have been produced late in 359. at Constantinople. 82 The subject is a complicated one; evidence is strong for neither conclusion; and the scope of this work does not permit us to enter into it here. 83 We have several summaries of his beliefs from the pen of Eunomius. In his Apol. he gave a short. wholly colourless and uninformative creed which he admitted to be in need of filling out

with further details. 84 But a much more useful kind of confession of faith was at some point tacked on to the end of the Apol .• in all likelihood by Eunomius himself. Though it is fluid and almost chatty its form is that of a Rule of Faith; it speaks of:

815ee Philostorgius HEVIIl. 12; Socrates HEIV.26;Jaeger Preface [0 Vol. II of his edition of Gregory of Nyssa, Opera, and Kopecek History 362-371 and 441-450. 82Wickham 'The Date of Eunomius' Apology'; Kopecek History 299-306. 83The chief argument in favour of the earlier date is that Eunomius says that he was awarded the see of Cyzicus as a reward for producing the Apar. (Gregory of Nyssa Con. Eunom.I.III (45:281); 114 (28S); 117 (28S. 288». But Eunomius was probably writing twenty years after his production of the work, and he could have been mistaken. Both Basil and Gregory strenuously deny that E delivered the Apol. at Constantinople in 359. The chief argument against the year 359 for the production of this work is that it would entail assuming that E had delivered himself of just the kind of views for which Aetius was at that very council deprived and exiled on a charge of heresy, but yet E was rewarded by being made bishop of Cyzicus. Philostorgius HE IV.12 does not suggest that Eunomius delivered a discourse on that occasion. The Apol. could have been the reply made to his accusers by E later in 360 when he was arraigned at the capital for teaching the anhomoion and successfully defended himself (see Apol. II (PG 30:848). [8 (853), 2[ (886-7) and 24 (860) all of which treat of likeness and unlikeness. Ancient speakers from the dock allowed themselves much more latitude in answering charges than we are used to). The passages in Con. Eunom. quoted from Eunomius' own references to his past life in Apol, Apol. can be interpreted in different ways, though his references to condemnation by unjust judges and being dragged to his injury through dust and heat (1.7 (27.2)) would be more impressive if they applied to an experience undergone more recently than his banishment in 358.

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'our Lord Jesus Christ. through whom all things have come into existence, the image and seal of (the Father's) own power and activity, comparable in respect of ousia neither to him who generated him nor

to the Holy Spirit who came into existence through him' [Biblical texts now adduced. Acts 2:36 and Prov 8:22 and for the created nature of the Spirit I Cor 8:6 and John 1:3]. The Son is "neither homoou$ios nor homoiousios, because the former implies an origin and a division of

(the Father's) ousia. and the latter an equality" (of ousia). The Son is entirely subordinated to the Father. and "uses the Paraclete as a minister for sanctification, for teaching, for the support of the faithful". And Eunomius ends this profession in a conventional way

"in these last days born of the holy Virgin. living holily (llo1.ltSU"Ul1svo<; 6"lro<;) according to human laws. crucified. dead. risen again the third of the days, ascended into heaven, coming to

judge the living and the dead according to a just payment of faith and of deeds, reigning for ever', Finally he quotes I Cor IS :28 as a text to justify his subordination of the Son',8s

Next. we can examine Eunomius' Conf in which he expressed concisely and uncompromisingly his doctrinal convictions for the benefit of the Emperor Theodosius in the year 383. It has been pieced together from the quotations of it in the Refutalio Confessionis Eunomii of Gregory of Nyssa: 8 • 'We believe in the one and only true God according to the teaching of the Lord himself, honouring him with no false voice (for he is without deceit) but he truly exists as one God in nature and in glory alone without beginning eternally, endlessly, not divided in the ousia in which he exists nor distributed into more, nor becoming something 84To be found in Apol. 5 (840), also in Basil's Ad". Eunomium 1.4 (PG 29:509, 512, 5 I 3)· The creed is reproduced in Hahn Symbole §190 pp. 260-1. Eunomius' comment on the creed is found in ApoI. 6 (841) and Adv. Eunom. 1.5 (517). 85Apol. 26, 27 (864. 865). For comment see Kopecek History 346 n I and 402. '6Ref. Conf Eunom. (ed. Jaeger) (PG 45:476t1) 20 (476). 33 (480), 39 (484). 50 (48 8""9),5 2 ,54 (489), 68 (496). 73 (500). [[4, [[5 (5[7). [[6 (520), [[9 (520), [3[ (5 25).132, [33 (528). 136 (529). [42 (532). [45 (533), [51 (536), 159 (540). [64 (541), [67 (54[), [69 (54[.544), [70 (544), [72 (545). [82 (549), [89. [90 (553). [98 (556), 202 (557), 208 (56[). 2[2 (~64). 2[8, 2[9 (565).22[ (565),223,224 (568). 227 (569), 230, 23 I (569). 232 (57z), The piecing together has been done by me. Kopecek discusses this ConI. History 517-27.

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else at another time, nor altering what he is from its existence, nor split from one ousia into a triple hypostasis, for in every way and wholly he is one, remaining sole in the same conditions and as always. He has no sharer of his Godhead. nor participator of his glory nor joint possessor

fire on the people of Sadam and the just punishment of the Egyptians. He gives law according to the command of the eternal God. He became man at the end of the days, but he did not assume a man

ofhis authority nor consort of the throne of his kingdom, for he is one and sole God almighty, God of gods, King of kings, Lord of lords, highest over all the earth, highest in the heavens, highest among the highest, above the· heavens. true in acts, true in words, loftier than all rule, subordination, authority and kingdom. In generating he has not divided his own ousia nor is the generator the same as the generated nor has he become both Father and Son; for he is beyond process (li
attributed) the liquidation of the human race by flood, and the rain of

composed of soul and body.89 After him we believe in the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, the teacher of orthodoxy, who came into existence·

by means of the sole God through the Only-begotten, wholly subordinated. He is not to be reckoned beside or along with the

Father, for he is one and sole Father, God over all, nor is he (the Spirit) to be put on an equality with the Son, for the Only-begotten is the Son who has nobody begotten along with him (6~oy.vfj). And yet (the Spirit) is not to be ranked along with anybody else, for he is superior to all the creatures produced by the Son in origin and nature and glory and knowledge as the first and most important and greatest and finest work of the Only-begotten. For he is one and first and sole and excels all the productions of the Son in ousia and in rank in the natural order, and he accomplishes all activity and doctrine, according to the Son's good pleasure. He is sent by him and he receives from him and passes on to those who are instructed, and he leads into truth. He sanctifies the saints; hierophant to those who approach the mystery,

distributing every gift, working along with the faithful so that they perceive and behold what is commanded, assisting those who pray, guiding them for their good, holding them in orthodoxy, enlightening souls with the light of knowledge. (It is the function of the Spirit also) to ward off the daemons, to tend the sick, to heal the enfeebled, to exhort those who are distressed, to raise up those who are sinking down, to revive those who are drooping, to exhort those who are engaged in conflict, to give courage to the fearful, to care for all and to exercise foresight and providence in everything, so that the

well disposed shall be welcomed and the faithful be protected.'90 This Con! is, of course, a carefully drawn up general survey of Eunomius' doctrine. But the basic belief of it, from which all else flows, is the ingenerateness (agennesia) , and with that the incomparability, of God, the Father. For him there is only one God, strictly speaking, who exists neither from himself nor from another. God must be before everything, for this follows from his ingenerateness. He is 'ingenerate substance' (oolcria ciylivv1JtoC;).91 He 89E means that he took human flesh, but not a human soul, an almost invariable feature of any Arian doctrine of the Incarnation. 9°It is likely that the ConJ. is broken off at this point, and the rest lost. "Apel.7 (841); cf. 28 (268) and Basil Adv. Eunom. 1.5 (51)-17); 1.16 (548). 621

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is ingenerate not merely in name nor 'in human apprehension' ("at' &1tiV01av) nor by deprivation ("ata O"tepllow) but really and essentially.92 To adapt a term ofCharIes Wesley, his nature and his name is ingenerateness. The consequence of this ingenerateness is that: 'He could never come into contact with generation. so as to communicate his own nature to something generated. and he must escape all comparison or association with tp.at which is generated: Any such experience could only be brought about by division or comparison. neither of which we can conceive of God. 93

Much ofEunomius' argument in the Apol. Apol. is directed towards establishing the proposition that if it is conceded that God is ingenerate, then he cannot beget that which is generate: agennetos cannot produce gennetos. He can create something which he calls a Son, but he cannot strictly speaking beget him. If God is to be called 'ingenerate' and if he is simple and not composite, then his nature simply is ingenerateness. 94 To say that God is ingenerate is not merely to refer to one aspect or attribute or human interpretation (epinoia) of his being, but to describe its essence. 95 And, as Gregory observes, for Eunomius 'coming into existence' or 'birth' (gennesis) is equivalent to dissolution and death 9• (because it entails both), and for him not to be ingenerate is the same as not existing before being born (or coming into existence)·7 The Scriptures, Eunomius maintains, declare the Son to be a progeny (gennema). By this they mean no more nor less than they say; he is 'that reality (hypostasis) which the name indicates'. Therefore the Son did not exist before he was produced before everything else and he was produced 'by the decision of God and the Father'. 98 Eunomius rarely or never indicates precisely where the Scriptures say that the Son is a gennema, but it is likely that ifhe had been taxed on the point he would have referred to Isa 53:8 ('his generation (genea) who shall declare?') and John 1:14, 18 (,only-begotten'):

The Neo-Arians 'We say that it was not by separation or division, because (God is) indissoluble, nor by the ous;a of God admitting generation (gennesis),

because (God is) ingenerate. nor by any other substance contributing to the production of the Son, but the Son was brought into existence, having not existed'. 99

But Eunomius in the same passage will not allow that the Son was born from non-existence (t" trov Ill] OVtcov), for 'that which does not exist is not ousia' - a typically rationalist conclusion: non-existence cannot produce existence. By the decision of the Father, he goes on to say. the Son was granted a superiority over all creatures such as the creator has over things which are made. for all things were made by him: 'He alone, generated and created by the· power of the Unbeginning (agenetos), became the most perfect agent for all the creative activity and decisions of the Father."oo He continues the argument by concluding that it is impossible to base the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son on the bare meaning of these two names, because if we take them literally it means that the Father has generated the Son out of some pre-existing substance (which is the error of the Greeks), and if we say that the Father generated the Son by his mere authority, then we must allow an alteration in God, so that he became a Father, not having been one previously. We must therefore rarefy the Father/Son image into the most remote and nominal of metaphors,just as we speak of God's eye when we mean his activity of succouring and protecting the righteous.' o, . Eunomius objects strongly, of course, to the view that the Son can be begotten from the Father's ousia. Of things which are begotten from the ousia of the begetter, among everything within human experience it is universally true that they are begotten 'by process' ("ata 1taOo,), and that their nature is involved in all sorts of processes.· This is a fatal objection to the view., o2 Gregory asks pertinently "Apol. IS (849. 8S2).

'2Apol. 8 (841, 845). "Ibid. 9 (845). 94Gregory Nyssa Con. Eunom. 11.23 (917). "Ibid. II.95, 96 (1012). '·Ibid. II.S99 (Il12). "Ibid. III (ix).4S. 46 (873). 98Apol. I2 (848). 622

100Eunomius makes no distinction at all between agennetos and agenetos. 101 1 6 (852). But Eunomius can use the old Arian expression of the Son 'product (gennema) but not "like one of the products', and apply the same language to 'creature' (ktisma) and to 'thing made' or 'artefact' (poiema), only on each occasion he insists that God is the Ingenerate, the Uncreate, the Unmade (ibid. 28 (868)). 102Gregory Nyssa Con. Ermom. (III (ii) 1 (617). Gregory notes a little later that E cannot conceive that God could be both genuinely a Father and without passions (pathi') (ibid. III (ii) 'S (623)).

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how, if you argue that the Son's generation from the Father disastrously compromises God with pathos, can you explain the Incarnation, where God certainly was deeply involved with pathos?I03 Unfortunately nothing from Eunomius' pen survives in which he may have answered this objection. But we have a careful statement of his about how exactly the Son was begotten:

doctrine: one God is proclaimed by the Law and the prophets. This one God is the God of the Only-begotten (Tn 20:I7). He alone is true God (Tn I7:3), alone is wise (Matt I9:r7 (so Migne ed., but Rom. I6:27 would be better)), he alone is good (Matt I9:r7), alone is powerful (I Tim 6:IS), alone has immortality (I Tim 6:IS). The Son's ousia is generated, 110 created and different from the ousia of the Father." 1

'Not by an extension being prolonged. not by a flux nor by a section of his continuity with the begetter being cut off, nor by the accomplishment of an increase, not by the transformation of an alteration, but (the ousia) obtained existence by the sheer will of him who generated him',104

Eunomius is quite ready to say that the Father is complete without the Son (which of course Gregory denies).'o, To say that the Son is a product (gennema) is to describe his ousia as well as his hypostasis.,o 6 'The ousia of the Son was produced, having not existed before his establishment (crucrtucr&COC;), but exists because produced before all things by the decision (yvOOI111) of the Father.',o7 Eunomius, it is scarcely necessary to say, rejects the doctrine that the Father and the Son share the same ousia, whether they are thought to be equal or not (though of course he repudiates their equality). Likeness in ousia must, anyway, imply equality, and this in its turn implies the unacceptable conclusion that there are two Ingenerates; surely anybody can see the plain sense of the (conllated) text 'the Father who sent me, he is greater than I'?'08 It is entirely consistent to call the Son a creature; in fact, if words correspond to any realities, we must do this. To speak of the likeness in respect of ousia of Father and Son is to attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable. lo , Eunomius realizes that the accusation is levelled at him when he advances these arguments that 'he is distorting the truth by his own concoctions and verbosity', so he adduces plenty of Scriptural texts to support his '"'III (ii) 26, 27 (628). 104 111 (ii) 28 (628). I05III (vi) 61 (824). We may find an echo of chis doctrine ofche Father's total independence ofche Son in an argument (certainly of extreme Arians) recorded by Hilary De Tr;n;t'te 111.8 (79). '06Basii Adv. Eunomium 2.6 (584). quoting Eunomius. As Wickham observes (,The Syntagmation of Aetius' 552) for Eunomius (as for Aetius) there is virtually no difference between ousia. hypostasis and physis. I07Ibid. 2.11 (592), Basil quoting Eunomius.

10·Apol. 10, II (845, 848). 10'lbid. 18 (8n).

'the generated ousia leaves no scope for sharing with any other, for it is only-begotten; nor can the activity of its Maker be conceived as common'.112

Eunomius certainly is what he prides himself. on being, an Heterousian. It is doubtful if he even would have approved of the strictures of the Second Sirmian Creed on those who introduce the word ousia into the Trinitarian debate. He wished to bring the word forward, in order to emphasize the difference of ousia in the Father and the Son. The most exalted language which Eunomius can use about the Son is to say 'he is generated Sole from the Sole by the power of the Ingenerate and has become, once created, the most perfect agent' (01toupy6C;),'13 and that though he is dissimilar in ousia from the Father, he is also dissimilar in ousia from all created things. He is 'the only essence that exists as an hypostasiS by means of the activity of the Father'.'!' He is, unlike everything else, direct, so to speak, from the Father's hand. But otherwise Eunomius is mainly concerned to play down the significance of the Son, by way of contrast to what he saw as the pro-Nicenes' outrageous exaggeration of it. Aetius had said in his Syntagmation that 'the generated [Le. in this case the SonI is negligible' (&lllcuta
III (ii) 43. 44 (6JJ), again quoting E.

112Ibid. III (li) U5 (664). quotation again. 113Basil Adv. Eunom. 2.20 (613). 114Gregory Nyssa Con. Eunom. 11.76 (644); see Kopecek History 474-5. 1tSEpiphanius Panarion 76.12.32 (388); see Kopecek History 291--7. 116S 0 Kopecek History 475--6.

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sense suffered in Christ, but only in its reduced form, in the created Son. God could have decided not to generate (i.e. create) the Son: 'Not only does the Son not share his essence, he does not even have a necessary claim on him' .'17 As God the Father is the source of all goodness, so the Son is necessarily less good than the Father, and by parity of reasoning as the Father is alone truly and fully real, so the Son is less real than he."· The Son is in constitution midway between the Father and angels, and can be called the angel of the High God, as he is the god of all lesser beings.'" The Son is subservient ((",>11<00<;) by nature.'20 He is a lower being possessing a purely functional character, can be called 'product' (gennema) 'artefact' (poiema) and 'creature' (ktisma) , sustained solely by the Father's power without sharing his nature.'21 The createdness of the Son is evidenced by St. Paul's words in Rom 1:20 'the invisible things from the creation of the world are perceived, being known by the things that are made' - i.e. the uncreated Father is known by the created Son.'aa 'Father' is the name either of God's essence (ousia) or of his power (energeia); ifof ousia, then we shall have to admit that the Son is of a different ousia (heterousion); if of energy, then the Fatherly activity obviously made the Son, and the maker and the thing made cannot be the same.'23 On the subject of the Son as image of the Father, one which was bound to crop up in theological debate, Eunomius and his followers held that, since the Father is incomparable and greater than the Son, the image of God is one thing and God is another, and to say that the Son is God's image is not an impressive claim because man himself is said to be the image and glory ofGod.'24 In short, for Eunomius generatedness and ousia are inseparable; because the Son is generated his ousia cannot but be different from the Father's.'2S Eunomius regards the attempt to unite God's power or activity (energeia) and his essence (ousia) as wrong; it is the practice of the

pagan philosophers, and it led them to the false conclusion that the world is eternal. On ,the contrary, God's activity is derived from his will; it is not eternal and does not derive from his essence. Hence Christians can hold that the world is not eternal and that the production of the Son relates to the will of God as Father, not to his essence which means in effect his ingenerateness. 126 Because the energeia of God is his will (JlO1JI.1]CJI<;) the only-begotten Son is constituted as the will of the Father and not by his ousia. This is how we can still speak of a 'likeness' between the Son and the Father, and keep within the scope of such biblical texts as COl1:15,16;]n 1:3. And this is how the Son is image of the Father and is Logos (though Eunomius does not much like using the word Logos of the Son).12' The Son is in fact like the Father in will and is the image of his will. It is ironic to observe this extreme Arian heretic welcoming the distinction between the ousia and the energeia of God, a distinction which the Cappadocian fathers warmly embraced and which was to become an integral part of Eastern orthodox theology. Eunomius welcomed it because he thought he could show that the ousia and the energeia were different and that we do not know God just by his energies but can directly observe his essence. The Cappadocians welcomed it because they were anxious to maintain that whereas the ousia, of God is unknowable, we can know him through his energies. The vulnerability of the distinction is merely shown up by the contrast. In Eunomius' scheme, of course, the energeia of the Father's ousia created the energeia of the Son's ousia, and the Son in his tum created the energeia of the Spirit's ousia.'2. We find almost no references to the Incarnation in such of Eunomius' works as have come down to us. This is not an accident. The Incarnation must have played a comparatively minor role in Eunomius' thought. In the creed called that of Patricius there is virtually no mention ofit. The usual reasons assigned for the necessity of God becoming incarnate are that he wished to reveal himself to

117See Kopecek History 477, 484 (quotation). 1I8Gregory Nyssa Con. Bunam. III (ix) I (1856). 119Ibid. III (ix) 27 (868), 32 (869). Ps.-Didymus has to encounter the same argument De Trinitate I.IS (99) (PG 39:328). t20Gregory Nyssa Refutatio Confessionis Eunomii 133 (528). 121Con. Eunom. III (ii) 73 (644). a quotation from E. . 122Ps._Didymus De Trinitate 1.26.41 (166).

men and that he came to overcome sin. In Eunomius' scheme, as in

123Gregory of Nazianzus. Theological Orations 1l1.I6. 124Ps._Didymus De Trin. I. No. I (332). 125Gregory Nyssa Con. Bunom. III (ii) 137 (668), a quotation.

the schemes of most rationalists, the problem of evil is virtually ignored, as Kopecek observes.'2' And (as we shall see) there is for him no problem of revelation either, because anybody can know 126S0 Kopecek History 338, 339. m Apol. 24 (860). 128Gregory Nyssa Con. Eunom. I.2oSff (313ft). 129History 489-91.

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God quite easily. The Incarnation of the supreme God is for Eunomius impossible; he explicitly denies this possibility;'30 only a reduced divinity such as the Son could accomplish this. And by the same argument there was no necessity for any further self-emptying at the taking of a human (or not quite human) body by the Son. The Son was in a sense all kenosis. Eunomius trenchantly criticizes Basil's doctrine that all the self-emptying was done by the human nature of Jesus. What room is there for sdf-emptying in that case?, he asks: 'How could anyone empty himselfinto that whieh he is?'13 I We can know almost nothing about the details ofEunomius' doctrine of the incarnation. The creed ofEudoxius, however, whieh may be taken as in this case representing Neo-Arian thought, throws some light on the subject:

Father and did not exist before he was generated. 135 He did not think it profitable to enquire further into the matter:

(the Son) became Besh but did not become a man, because he did not assume a human soul but he became flesh in order that through the flesh as through a veil God might associate with us; not two natures, since he was not a complete man, but God in flesh instead of a soul; the whole was one composite nature; he became subject to suffering for

the strategy (6,' obcovollIav), for he could not have saved the world by (simply) soul and body suffering. Let them explain how this passible and mortal being could be consubstantial (611006a,0<;) with God who is greater than these experiences, beyond suffering and death. '132

Similarly we have observed Eunomius' Confession of 383 declaring that 'he became man at the end of these days but did not assume a man composed of soul and body' .'33 It is in accordance with this doctrine that Philostorgius repudiates the idea that God at the Incarnation 'dwelt in a man' (tvollciiaal tv uv9poo",p), an idea which he attributes to Basil of Caesarea and Apollinaris of Laodieea. l34 While Eunomius does not directly endorse Arius' 'there was when he was not' he insists upon a doctrine which is equivalent to it, that there was a time, before all times, when the Son did not exist. Most of the sixth part of the third book of Gregory of Nyssa's Contra Eunomium is devoted to arguing about this point. In the nature of things, Eunomius said, it is necessary that the Son existed after the 130Gregory Nyssa Con. Eunom. 11.301, 303 (897.900); see Kopecek History 493· '''Con. Eunom. III (iii) [8 (688). Cf. Ibid. (iv) 36-38 (725.729). 132Hahn Symbole §19I, pp. 261-2; see above p. II2. 133See above. p.621. 134 HE VIII. 12; it is worth noting that Eunomius, according to Philostorgius (HE V1.2) denied the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

'it was right and proper to generate the Son at the very time at which

(God) willed, and wise people will make no further enquiry about why it was not earlier'.136

'God', he says elsewhere, 'existed without generating and has existed before anything being generated '" and he who has achieved existence by being generated did not exist before being generated.'[37 He can even make a rather paradoxical attempt to reconcile this with John 1:1, 2 and 18. '38 Socrates gives us a very radical statement about our capacity to know God which was attributed to Eunomius, though it does not occur in any of his works known to us: 'God does not know more about his own ousia than we do, and it is not known more to him and less to us. But whatever we may know about it, that he also certainly knows; and conversely whatever he

knows, that (knowledge) you will find exactly in

US.'13.

We might think this reported saying to be due to the venomous exaggeration of the enemies ofEunomius, but for the fact that we can find statements in his surviving works which do not fall far short, if at all, of this one in boldness. He confidently claims that we can know God's ousia; it is ingenerateness. '40 Our Lord, he claimed, would not have called himself Door and Way (John 10:9) ifit had not been easy to go through the Door and walk in the Way. The ousia of God is comprehensible (KataA.1]1ttlKljV).'41 He made even bolder claims than this; not only can we know Christ, we can achieve knowledge of God beyond Christ: 'The understanding of those who believe in the Lord leaps over all sensible and intelligible ousia and is capable of not even stopping at the Son's generation, it moves on beyond this, in its desire for etemallife it

135Con. Eunom. III (vi) 23 (777). "·Ibid. (vii) [5 (805). "'Ibid. (viii) 27 (837). "'Ibid. (viii) 34 (84[). t39HE IV.7. 140Gregory Nyssa Con. Eunom. 11.61 (929); cf. Gregory's much more technical statement tOlama ylipeO"'n Ka9oA.l1c&;ta SO'YJ.lCln~6JiEVa, tbr;t1ti 1tO:V'ta qip&a9al '[a.ir; 61tovoial<; Kai IlTJ6tv imel;alpeicr8a.l '[fir; 1ttptA.ll7ttlKfjC; circocpaoemc; (ibid 1.461 (393»). l4'lbid. III (viii) 5 (528,529).

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Neo-Arians

strives after the First One' (i.e. the Father}.142 For Eunomius,

point Gregory accuses him of plagiarizing Philo.146 'What does this arid learning have in common with the Christian message?' Gregory elsewhere exclaims.'47 One influence, though not the sole one, on Eunomius can be recoguized at once, and is admitted by everybodyAristotelian logic. Aetius' Syntagmation is redolent of it, and when Eunomius is accused of 'technology', this is in the forefront of the

knowledge is direct perception of the ousia of the thing known, whereas for Basil and the other Cappadocians we know things only by their qualities or activities impinging upon us, and this applies to God whose energeia we know. but not his ousia.

Eunomius' epistemology was bound up with his theory of names. For him, every name conveyed direct knowledge of the essence of the thing named, and names had originally been given to things not at random nor by convention but by the direct action of God who named them.'43 From this he argued that as each ousia is clearly denominated by its name (ltp0<J1lYopla), so the ousia of Father and Son must be different, because they have different names.'44 No doubt this theory is ultimately derived from Plato's Cratylus. In this dialogue Socrates (Le. Plato) concludes that names are imitations of the essence (ousia) of things named, °and names must originally have been given to each thing by some daemon Qr god and not allotted by chance or randomly. But it is likely that Eunomius did not simply lift the theory directly from Plato, but that it reached him through several intermediate sources. Certainly he relied for his idea of the divine origin of names on the story in Gen 2:19, 20. But Plato's Cratylus was certainly not the only philosophical influence which we can detect in the thought of Eunomius. He had indeed an unbounded faith in the power of Greek philosophy to explain all questions about God. Both Basil and Gregory complain about his tendency to immerse the argument in philosophical terms, what they sometimes call his 'technology' (t.xvoAoyia).'45 At one o

I42lbid. (viii) 14 (832). See Kopecek History 431-440.453. 54. Amphilochius enountered this theory in full spate when he took possession of his see of Iconium, and Basil wrote his Ep 233 in order to help him to cope with it. Eunomius had even said in his doctrinaire way that our knowledge of the Son's activity as creator of angels tells w more about the Son's ousia than our knowledge of him as our Saviour, because the higher the activity the more it tells us about the agent, and angels are higher than men. See Kopecek op. cit. 453. 143For Eunomius' theory of names, see DanieIou 'Eunome rArien et l'Exegese platonicienne du Cratyle'; Wickham 'The Syntagmation of Aetius the Anomean' 560; Simonetti Crisi 462-8; Kopecek History 266-77. 144Con. Ii.nom. IJI (v) 18 (745), 34 (752). 145S 0 :ijasil Adv. Eunom. 1.156-160 (297, 300) objecting to a fine-drawn distinction between ousiai by E (1.151-4 (297». Cf.. Gregory Nyssa Con. Eunom. 1.205-222 (313-317) protesting against a distinction between ousia and energeia and the various roles allotted to them; this does not make sense, says Gregory, either philosophically or logically but only serves to make the obscure obscurer. But it is

accusers' minds. 148 But Aristotle cannot account for all Eunomius'

thought. We cannot exclude some influence from the NeoPlatonism which was contemporary with Eunomius. Danielou in his article 'Eunome I' Arien et I'exegese platonicienne du Cratyle' made a strong case for concluding that Eunomius' theory of names, though of course ultimately stemming from the Cratylus, directly came from a tradition of Neo-Platonist thought represented in the Athens of Eunomius' time and indebted to lamblichus. Danielou thought that the greater part of Eunomius' system derived from Neo-Platonism, and Vandenbussche had earlier made the same suggestion.' 49 In particular, Eunomius' hierarchic view of ultimate reality, whereby the supreme God creates the lesser god and this god in his tum creates the Spirit, suggested to them a basically Neo-Platonic scheme of emanations in a descending scale. But Wickham justly protests against this. He points out '50 that Eunomius explicitly rejects emanationism, and indeed we have already seen one example of this rejection, which, as Wickham observes, is consistent with Eunomius' ~oll?w~d by a cOlI~plic~ted demonstration by E (quoted by Gregory) that the

hmltatIon and modIficatIon produced by the effects of the 'energies' on each other must result in some 'energies' being greater and some lesser than others. 14~Con. Eunom. III (vii) 8 (8?4); the words complained of are: 'This Supreme God of hIS controls whatever thmgs are generated peculiarly by his own power'. Gregory declares that all except the last few words are taken from Philo, and concludes that Eunomius' system is fundamentally Jewish. In fact it is difficult to identify this citation from Philo, and in any case a resemblance to Philo's thought would not necessarily imply recognizably Jewish influence. l4'Ibid. III (viii) 43 (848). 148See E. Vandenbussche 'La part de la dialectique dans la theologie d'Eunomius "Ie technologue'" (a most illuminating article); also Barnard 'The Philosophy of Anus' I.16 (~ list ?f ~ccusations of Aristotelian logic-chopping made against the Neo-A~lans In antIqUIty);]. de Ghellinck 'Quelques appreciations de la dialectique et d'Arlstote durant les conflits trinitaires du IVe siecle' (much useful material); Hadot Mar;us Victorinus 193-5; Kopecek History 497-8. 1490p. cit. 68....,0; So also Martin, Historia Akephala62; Kopecek, History 266-77, had opted for Middle Platonism as the main influence, and Boularand (improbably) the Phaedrus of Plato (L' Heresie d' Arius II4-18). lso'The Syntagmation of Aetius' 558 n I.

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Neo-Arians

pluralism.'51 Further, Eunomius' fierce rationalism is hardly compatible with the spirit ofNeo-Platonism. Mysticism of any sort is anathema to him. As Wickham says, Eunomius believes that there is no knowledge of God by way of mystical communion of essence.'S2 Eunomius could have adopted with ease the title of Toland's book, Christianity not Mysterious. It is the all-prevailing rationalism of Eunomius, indeed, which makes the strongest and last impression on those who read the remains of his work. He has a deep, and sometimes almost literalist respect for Scripture.'53 He can refer at times favourably to tradition,'s, which he believes to be on his side, but reason is his final court of appeal. And, as Vandenbussche pointed out, by reason he means the correct method of proceeding. in argument: either you look at the ousiai and argue with a clear judgment from them, or you examine the 'energies' of the ousiai and begin the argument from the products (OTJl'lOoPYTJl'ato>v) of these ousiai (Apol. 20 (856)). This is the "correct order for business' (t1\v OOl'Ijloij toit; "paYl'aol ta~lv (Apol. Apol. m Gregory of Nyssa Con. Eunom. 1.154 (297)). Neither Scripture nor tradition is mentioned.'ss This rationalism is enhanced by the Neo-Arian insistence on the importance, indeed the' primacy, of doctrinal purity:

concern evinced by the Neo-Arians for correctness of doctrine; on several occasions (as we have seen) Eunomius insisted (or is represented by Philostorgius as insisting) on establishing the doctrinal soundness (by his standards) of those with whom he was expected to co-operate before he would deal with them; and the split in the ranks of the Neo-Arians in the capital which resulted in the Party of the Pastrycook was over a relatively small point of doctrine. IS' We can therefore describe the doctrinal position of Eunomius most accurately by saying that he was an Heterousian. He directed a continual polemic against the pro-Nicene viewpoint, which was of course gathering increasing support in his day. He accuses the proNicenes of regarding the generation of the Son as a corporeal affair. ISS The expression 'Light from Light' and its analogy for the production of the Son, which Basil regarded as the 'strongholq' of the pro-Nicenes (Adv. Eunom. 2.25 (629)), Eunomius attacks on the ground that if it means a comparison of two diverse things then it means that God is compound, and what is compound cannot be ingenerate; but if it means that the same thing is derived from the same, then the difference between light and light is the same as the difference between the ingenerate and the generate- and this does not advance the argument an inch.'s, He particularly dislikes the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son: it must mean that if God never ceases to beget the Son his action is incomplete and must one day cease; it must therefore have one day begun. And the Neo-Arians contend that difference in nature does not preclude the Father and the Son both being called God, just as a dog and a fish can both be called animals, though they have quite different natures.'"O And we have seen already how shrewdly Eunomius criticized the pro-Nicene

'Persuaded by the holy and blessed men [i.e. Scripture and tradition] we declare that the mystery of orthodoxy is not established by fmesounding names nor by the detail of customs and mysterious signs

(I'O(Jt'KIDV

"UI'~6AOlV),

but by the accuracy of doctrine."'.

One cannot read Philostorgius without noticing the intense 151S ee above. P.624 (the quotation beginning 'not by an extension'). 152'The Syntagmation of Aetius' S66. 15JSee , e.g. Gregory Nyssa Con. Eunom. II.20S (977) where E has occasion to quote Gen 1:3ft'('Let there be light .. . let there be a firmament .. . let the waters be gathered'): he insists strictly that God actually said at that very time these very :w ord.s which wer~ recorded b'y Moses. Gregory laughs at this literalism and calls it makmg a degradmg assumptIOn and dragging the Divinity into low conjectures' (212 (98I)). For the texts favoured by the Neo-Arians see Simonetti Crisi 259 and Kopecek History 502-3. 154Cf. Basil Adv. Eunom. 2.18 (608, 609), a quotation from E which claims that he is ~aithful tOr~ 6xo troy ay{rov Kal yi}y E(jl' litJii>v, i.e. to tradition and the Modern MInd. 155Vandenbussche op. cit. 66-8. 156G~egory Ny~sa. Con. Eun?m. III (ix) 54 (877), quoting E. Kopecek remarks upon thIS char!lctenstlc ofE, sayIng that even baptism is for him only valuable for its doctrinal content, History 484--6.

632

157 At HE VIII.12 Philostorgius says that the truth of E's Apol. Apol. was so tremendous that it gave Basil a heart-attack of which he died! '58Basil Adv. Eunom. 2.1 (573). '59Ibid. 2.25 (629). ~60Gregory ofNazianz~s Theological Or~tion III. 13, 14. Kopecek (History, 482-3) pomts Ojlt that E also rejected the doctrine of necessary relations (the xp6; tl argu~ent rejected by Arius (see above p. 8» because if it is valid it must apply to creation as well as to the Son, and this is unacceptable; further the eternal generation limits God, making his will subservient to his nature; goodness is what he wills rather than what he is. And anyway in E's view generation to infinity is an absurd and irrational notion. It is to be noted that behind all this debate lies the Neo-Arian conviction that God cannot communicate himself.

633

The Rival Answers Emerge

The Neo-Arians

practice of attributing all compromising experiences of the incarnate Son to his human nature.'·' But it would be wrong to describe Eunomius by the insulting epithet which so many of his contemporaries, and not a few modern scholars, have applied to him, Anhomoian. ' • 2 The more responsible opponents of the Neo-Arians knew perfectly well that they did not teach that the Son was unlike in all respects, but only unlike in respect of ousia. ' • 3 But Philostorgius represents both Aetius and Eunomius as strictly denying that they teach that the Son is anhomoios,'·4 and we have no reason to doubt his accuracy. What they taught was that the Son is like in will to the Father but different in ousia. Had they taught that the Son is unlike in all respects to the Father they would of course have obliterated all his activity in revelation and mediation, and this they never intended to do.'·5 It must not be forgotten in the search for philosophical influences in Eunomius' thought that he took over a large part of the existing stock of Arian theology. He reproduced the drastic Arian

subordination of the Son, the conviction that the incarnate Son had no human psyche, the ascription of creatureliness to both Son and Spirit and the witholding of divinity from the latter. But Eunomius' doctrine represented a considerable difference which both Homoians and Heterousians recognized, but which has not been given sufficient prominence by modern students of the period.'·· PhiIostorgius is prepared to criticize both Arius and his Homoian successors as not wholly sound in doctrine, though he recognizes their kinship with his views in their rejection of the homoousion.'·7 In the accounts of the Council of AquiIeia of the year 381 Ambrose is represented (no doubt accurately) as saying that the Arians with whom he is dealing repudiate Aetius and Eunomius, though of course he regards the two groups as teaching a virtually identical doctrine.'·· The points in which the Eunomians differ from the Homoians are:

above, p.628. See also Kopecek History 478. 162What Gregory of Nyssa calls 'the contrivance of unlike' (T) lOU avo~otou xa,a(JKSU~) Con. Eunom.1.616 (414); 11.664 (1065); Ref Conf Eunom. 152 (536)) isso constantly referred to in the pro-Nicene writers that references are unnecessary; one may list immediately Basil, both the Gregories. Epiphanius. Ps.-Didymus, Socrates. Sozomenus and Theodoret. Athanasius had of course accused the earlier Arians of teaching the tlnhomoion, and when he became aware (at a fairly late stage) of the Neo-Arianshe transferred the obloquy to them, e.g. De Synodis 3I.I, 2. (259.260). He had accused the Arians (not the Neo-Adans) of teaching eu:po6cnov already in De Sent. Dio. 24.4.64. 163E.g. George of Laodicea (who, whatever his doctrinal vagaries was never a Neo-Arian) in Epiphanius Panarion 73.15.4 (288), 22. I, 2 (294), where heterousion is transformed simply into anhomoios kat ousian. At 14.7 (287) he seems to attribute the origin of the anhomoion to the Second Creed of Sirmium of 357. 164HE IV.I2 and VI.r; Eunomius in his Apol. taught neither eu:po60'1o~ nor 161S ee

QV6J.10l0~.

165 Ambrose of course accuses Palladius of teaching that the Son is dissimilar without qualification. Palladius denies this, replying 'Or perhaps you think that he is said to be unlike by us because we do not say that he is co-eternal with the Ingenerate and equaJly everlasting with this Father?' (Gryson Scolies Ariennes 264-266 (81, 82». But Ambrose was not a responsible writer and Palladius was not a Neo-Arian. More extreme is the Sermo Arianorum (682.3 r) where the Father is said to be different from the Son in natura, ordo,gradus, affictus, dignitas. virtus and operalio (voluntas however is not mentioned). Simonetti Crisi 59 n 47. 258 n 15, and Ritter, 'Arianismus' 713, note the injustice of calling the Neo-Arians Anhomoians. Loofs 'Arianismus' 32 says, quite incorrectly. that the differences between the Homoians and the NeoAriam were minimal, and, just as incorrectly, that the N eo-Arians taught the

anllOmoion.

634

(i) the comprehensibility of God (see Basil Epp 234); in spite of their beliefin the incomparability of the Father they believed that not only could the Son know him fully, but that any believer could, because 'knowing God' meant understanding true doctrine about God; the Homoian Arians believed in the incomprehensibility of God and most

of them held that the Son could not fully know him; (ii) the immutability of the Son, which the Neo-Arians maintained and the Homoian Arians mostly denied; the Neo-Arians taught that

the Father had given the Son an immutability by his will, by grace not by nature; (iii) the formula for the Son's likeness to the Father among the Homoian Arians was 'like according tv the Scriptures', among the Neo-Arians, 'like according to will.. different according to ousia';169 166We have seen how far waS Loofs from realizing this; Meslin appears to class PaJladius and his school among the Eunomians; see Les Ariens 30, 31, 300-05. Gryson is quite mistaken in similarly equating Palladius' doctrine with that of Eunomius. Scolies Ariennes 173-5. 167 HE X.2-4. 168Gryson Scolies Ariennes 83 (266,268); cf. the Tomus Damas;: anathematjzamus

Arrium adque Eunomium qui pari impietate licet sermone dissimili Filium et Spiritum Sanctum adserunt creaturas (Turner EOMIA I p. 285 col I). 169Thus when Palladius (Gryson Scolies Ariennes 47 (238, 240) says that the Son is 'like his Father not according to the deceptive wickedness and stubbornness of the [i.e. like in substance] against the Scriptures, but like according to the SCriptures and tradition', he is declaring himself an Homoian and not an Eunomian (though Gryson does not realize this). And when Maximinus in Contra Iudaeos invokes Isa 53:8 to justify his refusal to explain how the Father begets the Son (see Meslin Les Ariens 372) he is taking the same stance (though Meslin does not realise this). Ritter. on the other hand ('Arianismus' 712) recognizes the distinction

Ma~edonians

The Rival Answers Emerge

(iv) the Neo-Arians constantly employCd the vocabulary of Greek philosophy, whereas this is far from prominent in the writings of the Homoians, and least of all in the Latin-speaking Homoians. 170

Finally we must classify Eunomius as an individualist, philosophically eclectic theologian, as many theologians of his day were philosophically eclectic. He was indeed enough·of a child of his day to be soaked in Neo-Platonic thought. But his spirit and many of his doctrines were far from Neo-Platonic. He used Aristotelian logic to deploy his peculiar brand of rationalist Unitarianism. He took some of the ideas of what might be called mainstream Arianism and developed them in. an eccentric and untypical direction. He is interesting for his own sake, but not because he was representative of the thought of the church of his day. It was no doubt the apparently strict logic of his arguments and the high-minded consistency of his conduct which attracted those who accepted his doctrine.

between. the two sets of doctrine. Kopecek History 183-97 has some useful observations on the Neo-Arian conceptions of 'like' and 'unlike', This is not to say that Eunomius could not on occasion use the expression 'like according to the Scriptures'. but it was not in any sense his watch-word; for him it was too vague. 170 1 have not here had scope to discuss Neo-Arian baptismal ceremonies or formulae. The main sources for our knowledge of these are Epiphanius Panarion 76.54.32-34 (413. 414); Sozomenus HE VI.26.I. 7-10; Philostorgius HE X.4; Ps.Didymus De Trinitate II. IS (PG 39:729). Further references can be found in Meslin Les Ariens 386-90; Simonetti Crisi S03 n I2I. Kopecek discusses the subject in his History 160, 171 and in his more recent essay in Arianism (ed. Gregg), 'Neo-Arian Religion; che Evidence of the Apostolic Constitutions' where he makes a strong case for concluding that the author ofche Ap. Constitutions was a Neo-Arian. The use of early Jewish vocabulary and ideas in this author, however, should not lead us to conclude that Neo-Arianism had any serious kinship with early Jewish Christianity. Some Eunomians found such v'ocabulary and ideas convenient for their own purposes but the spirit and aim of their doctrine, and above all their concept of knowing God, were quite alien to Judaism, Jewish or Christian.

PART IV The Controversy Resoh'ed

20

Athanasius and His Heirs I.

The Council of Alexandria of 362 and its Resnlts

We last left Athanasius hiding in the hinterland of his diocese while the stirring events were taking place in Alexandria which resulted in the lynching of George of Alexandria by a mob. It will be useful to make a list of the events which took place in that city between December 361 and October 362:' 361

Dec.

I I

Dec. 24 Feb. 9 Feb. 21 May July 2 Oct. 23

Julian makes a triumphal entry into Constantinople

George and his fellow-prisoner lynched Julian's edict recalling all bishops Athanasius returns to Alexandria Julian leaves the capital and travels to Antioch

Julian reaches Antioch Athanasius compelled to leave Alexandria again by imperial order

The most important event concerned with Athanasius' return to his see was his calling of a Council there. This Council must have taken place at some point between March and October 362. The letter which it circulated, and which we must regard as having been written under the influence (if not by the actual pen) of Athanasius, survives, and is most informative concerning the important doctrinal decisions which were taken there. We must examine it. 2 IThe best sources here 3rc the Historia Akephala 3.1-4.4 and the Festal Letters of Athanasius, summarized conveniently in the useful article ofC. B. Armstrong 'The Synod of Alexandria and the Schism at Antioch of 362', 2PG 26:795-810. For the Council and its immediate consequences see Gwatkin AC Ill. SA 224-5; C.B. Armstrong op. cit.; Schwartz, 'Zur Kirchengeschichte', 163-6; Harnack History IV.II4; Richard'S. Athanase et l'ime du Christ' SO-53; Kelly Early Christian Creeds 241 (who gives the erroneous impression that the Council of Alexandria cleared up the whole semantic confusion); Simonetti Crisi 3Sg-Ql; Martin Histoire Akephale 64-67. The original sources, besides the Tomus ad Ant. are Historia Akephala 2.7 (muddled and prejudiced); Rufinus HE 1.27-29;

The Controversy Resolved

Athanasius and His Heirs

The heading is addressed to five people, Eusebius, Lucifer, Asterius, Kumatius and Anatolius, and the Letter is sent from Athanasius and a list of bishops then in Alexandria·who come, it is claimed, from Ital~1 Arabia, Egypt and Libya. Eusebius is certainly Eusebius of Vercelli, who in fact was present at the Council of Alexandria, Lucifer is of COUrse Lucifer of Calaris. Asterius is the bishop of Petrae in Arabia returning from exile. But the writers associate Eusebius and Asterius with them. They were the people delegated to bring the letter to the Church of Antioch, to whom it is addressed. The letter is addressed to 'those who gather in the Old' (Church), and this certainly means the followers in Antioch of Meletius, who had returned by now from exile. The only demands for restoring communion with these Christians of Antioch which the Letter makes are: (i) to condemn the Arian heresy (ii) to accept N (iii) to condemn those who say that the Holy Spirit is a creature and separated from the ousia of Christ. (iv) to condemn the heresies of Sa belli us and Paul of Sarnosata and Valentinus and Basilides and that of the Manichaeans. 3 The Letter mentions 'the followers of Paulin us' as ready to agree to these conditions. 4 He was the current head of the continuing Eustathians in Antioch: we shall discuss his status presently. Next, the Letter makes an important statement about the utterance of the Western bishops at Serdica, nineteen years before. It says that the 'pamphlet' (mtt'''''ov) about the faith alleged to have been drawn up by the Council at Serdica has no authority, because the Council did not make any such doctrinal statement. No one is to circulate it because it only causes dissension. s The statement about the Council ofSerdica is a direct untruth, and Athanasius must have known that it was untrue. 6 But it was, in view of what comes next in this Letter, an embarrassing utterance because it had roup.dly declared that there is only one hypostasis in the Godhead. For the Letter next plunges into a careful definition of terms. The council, it said, had asked some people present whom others had accused of using allegedly un Scriptural and suspect terms, 'three hypostases, whether they meant by hypostases

three separate independent Beings of different ousia ~o each, other (ti1.1.0tPIOU"(OU<;), each being an isolated hypostasis, ord,d they mtend Beings who were different ousiai, or three ultl,mate pnncIple~ or three gods by using the term hypostases?' They rephed that they rejected all

Socrates HE 1l1.6--9; Sozomenus HE IV.I2.I-I3.6; Theodoret HE 111.4.2-5.4 (only the vaguest reference to the Council at IV.4.2, 3); the account in the Oratio XXI.3S (PG 35:1124-5) of Gregory of Nazianzus is highly inaccurate. '3 (797, 800). 44 (800). 55 (800-1). ' 6See above, PP,244-5.

these interpretations: they believed in Father, Son and Spint ~a,ch

subsisting (im'(Jtiiita) distinctly, but they recognized 'a holy Tnmty indeed, but a single Godhead and a single ultimate principle and a Son consubstantial (61100""'OV) with the Father ... and the Holy Spirit, neither a creature nor an alien, but belonging to (tOlOV) and inseparable from the ousia of the Son and of the Father'.' . Next the Council asked those who were accused of saymg one hypostasis' whether by this they intended in a Sabellian sense to destroy the distinct real (otn(: avu1totrto:toUC;) eXIstences of the Persons [though the document does not use any term here to express this concept,

neither prosopon nor hypostasis]. They replied that they did not, but that they meant hypostasis to be equivalent to ousia; those who were accused of saying 'three hypostases' agreed with these views, and together they anathematized Arius and a list of other heretics and undertook in future only to use the terms sanctioned by N.8

[Fortunately they did not follow this disastrous course]. The Council now turned to the doctrines held by some people about the Incarnation, Those present duly admitted that: 'the Saviour did not

have a body which lacked either a soul (apsychon) or a capacity for feeling (tiva("aT]tOv) or a mind (tiv6T]tov). For it was not possible that when the Lord became man for our sakes his body could have lacked a mind (tiv6T]tov), nor did salvation of the body only take place in him who is the Logos but also of the soul' (1jIUXii<;)·9 And they rejected the view that the Son who had existed before Abraham, and had appeared from the time of Abraham onward and had fmally become incarnate was not the same in each phase: but 'it was the same who asked as a

man (tivapOlltivOl<;) where Lazarus was lying dead, and as God (a."cro<;) raised him up; it was the same who as a man spat but as God, as the Son

of God, opened the eyes of him who was blind from birth."o The signatories of this Letter describe themselves as 'those who are ~eft in Alexandria, along with our fellow-ministers Asterius and EuseblUs. For the greater part of us have gone back to their sees' ,11 Atha~asius signs first, then 'those who have been sent [presumably from Ant1o~h] from Lucifer the bishop of Sardinia, two deacons representmg 75 (801).

'6 (801, 804). (804). "7 (80S). "9 (80S)·

97

Athanasius and His Heirs

The Controversy Resolved Paulinus, and there were also present some monks

(J.LOVa.~OVtEC;)

purposely sent by Apollinarius 12 the bishop'. A list of those to whom the Letter is sent is next subjoined: Eusebius of Vercelli. Lucifer of Calaris, Asterius of Petrae, Kumatius of Paltus in Coele Syria.

Anatolius of Euboea. This is followed by a Jist of the senders. headed by Athanasius, including Eusebius and Asterius and fourteen Egyptian bishops. Eusebius adds a note to say that he had translated the Letter into Latin and that he condemned the 'pamphlet ofSerdica'.13

There is finally added to this document a declaration by Paulinus obscurely expressed but apparently signifying that in 363. on meeting Athanasius in Antioch. he had been persuaded by him of the truth of the Letter. He believes in the distinct existence of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as well as their consubstantiality and he accepts the doctrine of the Incarnation set out in the Letter and that the Son did not in becoming incarnate 'suffer change' ()lBtapoJ.:r)v nEnov6tvat). with other acceptances of the doctrine of the Letter ,14

This Letter. usually referred to as the Tomus ad Antiochenos. tells us much. but also raises some questions. Who. for instance. were the fIrSt group interrogated. who held by the doctrine of three hypostases? They could not have been representatives of Meletius, or the document would certainly have said so. It is possible that they were represented by Asterius of Petrae. and were either a group whose views derived originally from the moderate Eusebiaos, perhaps even from Akakius at that period. who had seen the dangers inherent in Arianism as declared in the Second Creed ofSirmium and in the Neo-Arian doctrines, had observed the fate of the followers of Basil of Ancyra. and were now ready to accept the homoousios and N on the grounds that only thus could the erroneous doctrines which threatened be avoided. Or. alternatively and perhaps more probably. they were the Meletians. appealed to over the head of Meletius. whose name is purposely omitted. It is interesting to note that by now apparently a school of thought has emerged which accepts the doctrine of N as far as the Son is concerned. but which refuses to believe in the divinity of the Holy Spirit (see iii p. 640 above). The second question raised by the Tomus ad Antiochenos is the identity of the group whose views are here rejected when it is declared that the incarnate Logos was not without a human soul (psyche). organ of perception or feeling (aesthesis) and mind (nous). It has been hitherto "9 (808). "10 (808). " I I (809).

universally assumed that these were Apollinarians. followers of Apollinaris of Laodicea who was a firm adherent of N but who taught that the incarnate Logos did not possess a human nous (mind). But we have seen that representatives of Apollinaris were present at Alexandria and that they apparently raised no objection to words which can only be thought to be a rejection of the teaching of their master. This is a grave difficulty which has not hitherto been seriously faced. It is much more likely that these words in the Tomus were designed to condemn Arianism. As has been abundantly shown in this work, the stock Arian doctrine of the Incarnation was that the Logos in becoming incarnate had possessed no human psyche or mind. so that the Logos. a second-rate, reduced divinity. created for this very purpose. should be exposed directly to the compromising experiences of human existence. The words of the Tomus fit this doctrine quite as well as Apollinarianism in any form does. and the statement of Paulinus appended to the Tomus. which includes a denial of the proposition that the Logos on becoming incarnate suffered any change. refers to the doctrines of Arianism rather than those of Apollinaris. Another question raised by the Tomus is why Paulinus. who was only a presbyter, and who manifestly was not present at Alexandria. could have been represented. One would normally expect only' a bishop to send representatives to a council. C. B. Armstrong. in the article already cited. suggested that Paulinus had in fact already been consecrated a bishop. and that is why he was able to send representatives to Alexandria. but it is difficult to believe that the Tomus would not have described him as a bishop ifhe was one. He was. however. the acknowledged leader of the group in Antioch whom we have called the continuing Eustathians. those who had held to the Council of Nicaea through thick and thin. recognizing no bishop since Eustathius as orthodox. and rejecting alike Eusebians. Homoians, Homoiousians. Neo-Arians and Meletians. Their slogan hitherto had been 'one hypostasis in the Godhead'. but the Council of Alexandria had begun the process of persuading them that the formula of three hypostases might be patient of an orthodox interpretation.

Lucifer of Calaris was certainly not present at the Council of Alexandria. Everyone of the three Greek church historians says that he went direct from the Thebaid where the pro-Nicene exiles about to be freed had held a consultation before some of them went on to Alexandria. The historians (at least Socrates and Sozomenus) give the

The Controversy Resolved

Athanasius and His Heirs

impression that it had been agreed between Eusebius ofVercelli and Lucifer that the latter should go first to Antioch and prepare the ground for a rapprochement between the followers of Paulinus, the Meletians and the party of Athanasius, between whom the doctrinal differences appeared now to be very small, and that nobody should be consecrated bishop of Antioch until some agreement had been reached between all these parties; indeed if all went well Meletius might have been recognised as bishop of Antioch without further consecration. Lucifer, however, we are told, exceeded these instructions and proceeded without further delay or consultation, on reaching Antioch, to consecrate Paulinus bishop of that city, thereby wrecking the chances of harmonious agreement with Meletius and his party. Such an action would be characteristic of Lucifer's hotheaded temperament, but we cannot be sure that this is an account of the true state of affairs. The Tomus ad Antiochenos gives no explicit indication that it is aiming at agreement with Meletius, whose name seems to be deliberately avoided; the views ofMeletius would fit well with the doctrine professed by the first group interrogated at the Council of Alexandria, the upholders of three hypostases. But, as we have seen, Meletius was not directly represented at Alexandria. On the other hand, the Tomus does not speak of Paulinus dthe.r as a bishop or as a prospective bishop. We are faced with alternative theories: the church historians put all the blame on Lucifer for what was in fact an intransigence manifested by Athanasius towards Meletius, or Lucifer byhis headstrong action in consecrating Paulinus ruined an attempt by Athanasius to bring about reconciliation with Meletius. We cannot discern with any certainty what exactly happened. It is possible that Athanasius hoped to persuade the followers of Meletius to desert him and accept the leadership of Paulinus. Eusebius of Vercelli, as the Tomus indicates, went from Alexandria to Antioch. If he made efforts there to bring about reconciliation between the estranged Homoousians. he was unsuccessful. He returned to his Italian see. Athanasius, however, had in this Tomus ad Antiochenos made important concessions. He had signalized to his followers that ousia and hypostasis could be used in different senses, that it was possible to speak of three hypostases in an orthodox sense, that a proper distinction made between ousia and hypostasis was a step towards agreement on orthodoxy. This did not mean, as some modern writers assume, that henceforward all semantic confusion was at an end and that all pro-

Nicene writers now will carefully use ousia to mean substance common to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and all hypostasis for that which God is as Three in distinction from what he is as One. As we shall see, variety ofusage still continues in some places, and indeed the Tomus expects that it shall. But at least the confusion had been identified, and the way was open for a younger generation of theologians to establish a clear distinction in the use of these terms. A much more difficult problem arises when we ask how serious was Athanasius in declaring in the Tomus ad Antiochenos that the Logos in becoming incarnate had taken to himself a human soul or mind as well as a human body. And bound up with this subject is the question of whether or not Athanasius is the author of the two treatises attributed to him, usually under the title of Athanasius contra Apollinarem (Athanasius against Apollinaris).15 The subject has already been discussed in an earlier chapter,'6 but it must be re-opened here because of the recent appearance of a compendious study by G. D. Dragas. 17 In by far the most exhaustive investigation of the authorship of the Contra Apollinarem ever undertaken, this scholar not only explores the testimony to the work in the ancient church, and provides a Word-Index to it by way of comparison with Athanasius' vocabulary, but also gives a history of scholarly opinion on the subject, a history of the treatment in modern scholarship of Athanasius' doctrine both of the death of Christ and of his Christology, and his own account of both, as well as a minute examination and analysis of the Contra Apollinarem. His constant aim in this work of 600 pages is to show that there are no solid reasons for denying the authorship of the Contra Apollinarem to Athanasius. By this gigantic exercise Dragas has, in my opinion, established certain facts. The two books of the Contra Apollinarem are by the same author. The work can be shown to have been recognized as Athanasian towards the end of the fifth century (but not with any certainty earlier). Athanasius in all probability did not formally renounce the view that the incarnate Logos had a human psyche. He did not represent an 'Alexandrian' tradition of a Logos-sarx model for the Incarnation in distinction from an Antiochene model of a Logos-

I

ISDe Incarnatione Domini Nostri Iesu Christi contra Apollinarem PG 26:1093-1 r66. 16See above. PP.4.51-5. 17 Athanasius contra Apollinarem (1985). The work is prefaced by an exaggerated eulogy upon it by T. F. Torrance making claims for it so enonnous that it would have been in the author's best interest to omit the preface.

The Controversy Resolved

Athanasius and Hjs Heirs

anthropos model. In fact, my own book has, as the reader must have realized, consistently resisted the tendency evident in several scholars since the xixth century to read a schema of Alexandrian or Antiochene 'schools' into the first half of the ivth century. Bur

But we cannot doubt that this Arian doctrine was current and widespread during that period. The works of Asterius which we have seen, the mention of this doctrine in the Macrostich and the accusation made against Valens and Ursacius at Serdica make this clear.!. But what happened to cause Athanasius in the Tomus ad Antiochenos, written in 362, to change his doctrine and admit that the incarnate Logos was not lacking in a human psyche, aesthesis and nous? It is clear that by now Athanasius had encountered, not the doctrines of Apollinaris, whose work by that time cannot have made a great stir nor become prominent, but the Arian doctrine that at the Incarnation the Logos took flesh directly so as to encounter directly human experiences without the filter of a human soul or mind between. Once he had realised that such a doctrine was designed to display the inferiority of the Logos to the Father in the Arian view, Athanasius took fright and realised that there was some point in recognizing a human psyche inJesus. Hence the Tomus ad Antiochenos. Hence too the remarks in the Letter to Epictetus, which we have already noticed,20 reiterating his conviction that Jesus Christ had a human soul, though here he was combating a different error to that of the Arians. 2! And yet, when all is said and done, Athanasius never seriously integrated this realization of the necessity of recognizing a human soul inJesus Christ, far less a human mind, into his doctrine of the Incarnation. Had he done so, he would have had to change that doctrine drastically, and this he certainly never did. When we look at the Contra Apollinarem in some detail, we find several facts in it very difficult to reconcile with Athanasian authorship. The document has indeed considerable affinity with the authentic works of Athanasius in both vocabulary and doctrine. But in the first place, it is clear that the people against whom it is written are not only Apollinarian in their doctrine, but also that they have been attacking the doctrine of the author.22 It is not easy to envisage either Apollinaris or his followers, who were all devoutly pro-

Dragas has not, in my opinion, overcome some of the most serious

obstacles to accepting the Contra Apollinarem as Athanasian. His efforts to explain away the extraordinary silence of Athanasius in his works written before 362 about the existence of a human psyche in Jesus Christ are far from convincing. In his early Contra Gentes Athanasius may have acknowledged that man is composed of body and soul, but this does not mean that every time thereafter till 362 when he speaks of the 'body' (soma) or 'flesh' (sarx) of the incarnate Logos he implies that the psyche was there as well. The case is not that Athanasius joined the Arians in directly denying a human soul to Jesus Christ. In spite of Richard's efforts to prove the contrary, it is evident that Athanasius had before 362 never encountered this Arian doctrine. The facts suggest that Athanasius before the year 362 never saw the point of acknowledging a human psyche in Jesus. He never grasped the significance of such an idea. Consequently, he expounded his doctrine of the Incarnation virtually without acknowledging such a feature inJesus Christ, and when he was compelled, in dealing with the Agony in the Garden and the Passion, to cope with the subject of Christ's human soul, he found himself in an embarrassing situation from which he could only extricate himself by a series of implausible contradictions (not 'paradoxes' as Dragas calls them):Jesus Christ was ignorant and omniscient; he suffered and did not suffer: he showed cowardice and did not show cowardice. The human soul only appears in order to be immediately cancelled (not 'balanced' in Dragas' term, the word usually employed by Athanasius is (ul'avi~CIl) by the divine Logos. He made no human moral decisions; he could not exercize faith nor experience temptation, the example which he gave was one of divine. not human, behaviour, or, to be quite exact, not of a man but of a divine Being acting in the 'space-suit' of human flesh.!· It is perhaps remarkable that until 362 Athanasius had never' encountered the Arian doctrine that the incarnate Logos was directly exposed to human experiences without the interposition of a human psyche, but not very surprising. Athanasius' knowledge of Arianism during the period when he was constantly liable to pressure or attack from the imperial government (c339-361) was manifestly defective. 18S

ee ,above, pp.447-8.

190ne of the defects of Dragas' book is that he refuses to believe the large body of evidence that Arianism had a significant soteriology (dismissing the idea in a curt footnote on p.260 of his book), and believes that the Con. Apollinarem is the first evidence ofche Arian doctrine ofChrist's soma apsychon. S. G. Hall, in a contribution to Arianism (ed. Gregg, 37-58) has suggested that Athanasius' knowledge of the actual doctrines of Arianism when he wrote the Orations was much restricted. 20See above, P.452. 21Probably, but by no means certainly, ApoUinarian. 22COII. Apoll.1.22 'You [i.e. the people attacked in the Con. Apoll.] deceitfully say that we speak of two Sons, and you call us worshippers of a human being'.

The Controversy Resolved

Athanasius and His Heirs

Nicene, openly attacking Athanasius, even as late as 373, rhe year of his death. Epiphanius said that Apollinaris was 'always dear to us and to the blessed Pope Athanasius'. 2' And Apollinaris himself writing in 373 or 374 wrote to the persecuted pro-Nicenes in Diocaesarea that he had received 'complimentary letters' (ypu~~ata tl~iis) from Athanasius, and clearly regarded himself as having always been in good standing with the archbishop. But it is perfectly possible that somebody writing in the Athanasian tradition at some point, perhaps in the middle of the fifth century, should have been the object of attack from the defenders of Apollinaris. Again the Contra Apollinarem uses some expressions which are difficult to reconcile with Athanasian authorship. For instance, we find in it the statement 6~00u(nos yap 1\ tpias ('For the Trinity is consubstantial')}4 If we are to judge by Muller's Lexicon Athanasianum nowhere does Athanasius apply homoousios to the Trinity, though he does of course apply the epiphet to the Son and the Spirit. In fact, as we have seen,25 for Athanasius there is a derivative sense in the word homoousios which would make it most unsuitable for application to the whole Trinity. A little later we encounter the expression: 'For that which is consubstantial and beyond passion «blaeeS) and incapable of death cannot in relation to the consubstantial experience an hypostatic union (evC1lcnv KaO' u1l6c:n:acnv) but only a union of nature' (Kata q>ucnV)}6 This is not at all the language of Athanasius, who up to 362 disliked and avoided using the word hypostasis in Trinitarian or Christological contexts and even in the Tomus ad Antiochenos only allowed that others could use it, not that he must or should do so. The term evC1lcns KaO' u1l6utacnv ('hypostatic union') suggests someone writing in the tradition of Athanasius but at a later period than his, perhaps after the Council of Chalcedon of 45 I. The author also uses the expressions to denote Christ's human body til> 1l&PltXOVtl ux1\~atl til> 6pyavlKil> and tii 6pyavIKU KataUtUU&1 ('the instrumental form which enveloped him' and 'the instrumenal condition'),27 terms which express Athanasius' doctrine of the Incarnation well enough but which are· never found in his authentic works, though he uses the word

'instrument' (opyavov) frequently. Or again the expression 'the form of a servant which is not lacking a reality visibly manifest' is a combination of words not found in Athanasius to express Christ's humanity}8 The author also uses the expression 'the inner man' (6 .UC1l0&V livOpC1l1lOS) for Christ's soul, which Athanasius never uses,2' and he speaks of the Incarnation as accomplished 'not by division of the roles (or persons), but in the reality (U1lUPS&I) of Godhead and humanity'.3 o Now the word translated 'roles' here is 1lPOUOJ1lC1lV (prosopon), a word which Athanasius never used in a theological sense before writing his comparatively late De Synodis (4 times) and absohitely never in a Christological context like this one; but the word would have become quite familiar in theological circles after the Council of Chalcedon held nearly eighty years after Athanasius' death. Again, though Athanasius used the adjective homoousios many times, he never used the abstract noun corresponding to it (6~00ucn6tTJS) but that noun occurs in the Contra ApoUinarem. 31 The strongest argument against the Athanasian authorship of this work, however, is the full and developed state ofits Christology. The author is in no doubt about the necessity of positing a human mind in Christ and expresses himself confidently on the subject. The soul of Jesus being grieved and troubled and terrified, he says, is the sign of his humanity, not of his divinity," and no mention is made of the divine cancelling the behaviour of the human soul. The spiritual man is dominated by the Spirit, the 'psychic' man by the psyche, but the body of either is the same. 33 These are not the terms familiar to Athanasius' anthropology; and neither is the expression 'the whole man, reasonable ().,oYIKiis) soul and body'.34 Later he says:

23Panarion 77.2 (416). written in 376 or a little later. 2

4

Con. Apoll. 1.9.

25See above, pp. 441, 443. 26Con. Apoll. 1.12. 27lbid. I.IS; 11.1.

Just as he redeemed us by the blood of his flesh so by the iutellectual activity (voitcr£1.) of his soul he manifests his victory on our behalf. 35

This passage lays an emphasis upon the mind ofJesus (noesis, which I have translated as 'intellectual activity') which is wholly absent from 28tllV 'tOU SOUAOU Ilopqniv, oli A.611t0Jl&VllV u1Iap~£ror;: tile; tv tmSd~£t cpavspovJ,LtVllt;. 11·3; cf. 1.2 tv t1tlaei~tl 61tclP~&~ which is equally unAthanasian. 29

11.3.

30

11.9.

31 11.12.

321.5· 331.8. 341.15. 351. 16.

The Controversy Resolved

Athanasius and His Heirs

the Christology of Athanasius. In fact the word noesis Occurs only once in his authentic works, and that'not in a Christological context. And again the author of Contra Apollinarem can say:

he lived after 451. We need not brand him as a forger. It is perfectly possible that some later scribe attributed his two treatises to Athanasius. On returning to his see in February 362 Athanasius had seen to it that the Arians in Alexandria were turned out of the churches, which were repossessed by his party. On George's death, however, the Arians in Alexandria had been able to consecrate a bishop, called Lucius, to succeed him. 39 Julian as Emperor had allowed Athanasius to return to Alexandria, but was not satisfied to leave him there. He was a prominent leader of the Christians, whom Julian hated, and anyway no Emperor found it congenial to tolerate so over-mighty a subject in Egypt as Athanasius had become. After several hints and shots across his bows, Julian finally chased Athanasius out of Alexandria into the hinterland, where he could easily escape pursuit and detection (October 362).40 This was Athanasius' fourth exile. It did not last long. Julian died in the middle of his abortive Persian campaign on June 26th 363. His successor, Jovian, hastily elected Emperor by the army, extricated the Roman army from its impasse by a humiliating peace-treaty, and came to Edessa. Here he was met by a delegation of churchmen of various parties asking for his support, but he refused to make any immediate decision.41 Athanasius had returned to his see on hearing of Julian's death. He unostentatiously left his see and joined the entourage ofJovian. The Emperor willingly accepted from him a document affirming the validity ofN and rebuffed approaches from Arians. Athanasius then set out for Antioch. 42 Meanwhile a council of between 20 and 30 bishops had been assembled in Antioch by Meletius. This council had decided to accept N. They sent a letter to Jovian informing him of

'He does not manifest distress and grief without his soul being grieved and bewildered; nor is he terrified and prays without his mind (noesis) being terrified and praying'.36

And on the textJn 6:40 ('I lay down my life ('!'uxi]v) for my sheep'), where Athanasius had emphasised the meaning 'life', this author insists that it includes the spirit (pneuma) and that on the cross the separation of spirit from body took place. 37 In fact in the Christology of Athanasius, whatever formal concessions he may have made in face of Arianism in Tomus ad Antiochenos and of Apollinarianism in the Letter to Epictetus, there is virtually no place for the human mind of Jesus to play any significant part. It is an embarrassing phenomenon, to be reduced to an unimportant role, ifit plays any role at all. In his careful exposition of the Christology of Athanasius, Dragas brings out again and again that Athanasius would not allow that the Logos on becoming incarnate took a human individual or person who could be the subject of the experiences of the incarnate Lord; the Logos himself was the subject,38 It is extremely difficult to see how a human mind can fit into this scheme, and I do not think that Athanasius ever seriously faced this difficulty. But the author of the Contra Apollinarem has no hesitation in referring to a human minq in Jesus. It seems to me therefore to accord better with the evidence to assume that this work was written by somebody writing later than Athanasius, though one who knew his works well, and could reproduce his vocabulary and at times even his very words. Perhaps 36Il. I ): noesis, meaning 'perception', 'conscious experience', occurs again II.3. 37

11.17. 38E.g. op. cit. 270. 305. 316. 319. The last reference contains the statement 'What is absolutely cruciaJ is that the pe~son of Christ is the person of the divine Logos, and the soul, the human soul which was assumed with the flesh at the Incarnation'; if 'soul' here includes 'mind' one is baffled by the thought either of a mind without a person or a Person with two minds, one divine and one human. But Athanasius never considered this problem. Cf. Grillmeier CCT 311: 'where the original [the Logos] appears with all its power, the copy [the human psyche], with its secondary and derived power, must at least surrender its function. even ifit does not give place altogether.' Very recently H. Chadwick, in his 'Les deux Traites contre Apollinaire attribues aAthanasc' (Alexandrina. Melanges offerts aClaude Montdesert, 247--60) has come to the same conclusion as this work about the improbability of Athanasian authorship and has placed the two treatises more accurately about the year 400.

39Historia Akephala 4.7; Socrates HE II1.14; Sozomenus HE V.7. 4°Julian Letters IIO[24] 163, 164; 1 II [46] 169-173; 112[46] 173, 174. The last ends with the peremptory words applied to Athanasius tOV J.uap6v, or; tt6A.JlTlO'EV 'EUitvlSar; tx' eJlou yuvaiKar; trov emcriu.l.O)v j}axt1O'at . .duod:crElro. Pagans in Alexandria had complained to Julian about Athanasius. See Socrates HE III. 13, 14; Sozomenus HE V.IS: Theodoret HE 111.9; Rufinus HE 1.33,34. 41Socrates HE 1II.2S; Sozomenus HE V1.4; Philostorgius HE VIII.6. 7. 42Hist. Akeph. 4.7: and p. 265 (Index to Festal Letters XXV); Socrates HE 111.24: Theodoret HE IV.2. The Letter toJovian is found in Theodoret HEIV.3. A letter to Athanasius from Jovian permitting his return from exile can be found in PG 26:8 I 3ff. Theodoret's account of a council taking place in Egypt is contradicted by Hist. Akeph. and the Index to the Festal Letters (This point lowe to a paper given to the Tenth International Conference on Patristic Studic;s (August 1987) by L. W. Barnard).

The Controversy Resolved Athanasius and His Heirs their decision and sending him yet another copy of the creed. Among those who signed this letter were Akakius of Caesarea and Eusebius of Samosata, as well, of course, as Meletius himself. The reasons which they give for adopting N are that it ensured that the Son should be acknowledged as begotten from the ousia of the Father and 'like in respect of ousia' (6~oto<; KaT' oucriav) to the Father; and they observed that ousia had not been originally adopted in some Greek philosophical ('EA.A.1]VtcrTtKTtV) sense, nor to signify that any process (pathos) was involved in the divine generation, but to overthrow the 'out of non,existence' doctrine, which Arius impiously had taught and which was being taught by contemporary Neo-Arians {'Anhomoians').43 It is clear from this letter that former followers of Basil of Ancyra were among those who reached this agreement, for the letter equates homoousios with homoios kat' ousian (like in respect of ousia), which last was the slogan of Basil's followers. For what happened when Athanasius reached Antioch we have only indirect evidence. Later historians could not understand why a reconciliation between Athanasius and Meletius did not take place. Certainly Meletius did not meet Athanasius; perhaps he refused to meet him. It is generally thought that Meletius was indignant because Paulinus had been consecrated bishop of Antioch instead of the continuing Eustathians, led by Paulinus, recognizing Meletius as bishop of Antioch. The Meletians suspected Paulinus (whose party had hitherto embraced the slogan of'one hypostasis') as Marcellan or Sabellian in doctrine and the Paulinians (as we may now call them) disliked the Homoian Arian past of Meletius." But another interpretation can be put on the facts.' s On this view the Tomus ad Antiochenos is not a peace feeler put out towards Meletius but is intended to support the followers of Paulinus, and Athanasius never intended to achieve agreement with Meletius, but only to detach the Meletians from Meletius. However, it is clear that Athanasius left Antioch having recognized Paulinus as bishop of that city and 43Socrates HE IV.25 and Sozomenus HE IV .4. 7-11, where the text of the letter is given. 44The letters of Basil of Caesarea, who as long as Athanasius was alive made several discreet ~tforts to reconcile him to Meletius (whom Basil would never desert or disparage), are the best evidence for this obscure situation, Epp. 63; 89.2; 214.2; 25'8.'3. See Schwartz 'Zue Kirchengeschichte' 166-8; Simonetti Crisi 374. 45 And has been byJ.-M. Leroux in Kannengiesser PTAA 151-6. A letter in PG 28:8stffalsely attributed to Athanasius is in fact a contemporary Paulinian pamphlet misrepresenting and attacking the party of Meletians. See above, p. 802.

without having achieved any understanding with Meletius. Petitions for reinstatement by the Arians from Egypt made to Jovian during his short reign were all rejected.'. Jovian died as a result of an accident on February 20th 364. An army general, Valentinian, was elected to succeed him, and he at the end of March appointed his brother Valens to rule as Emperor in the East while he governed the Western Roman Empire. Valens was, as we have already seen, a convinced believer in the creed of Homoian Arianism and, wherever hehad the power, tried to advance and support it. Early in 365 Valens produced an edict declaring that all bIShops who had returned on Jovian's accession to sole power were to be banished again. This sent Meletius, among others, into exile again, but for some time Athanasius resisted, arguing that he did not fall into this category. However, Valens insisted and in 365 Athanasius had to leave Alexandria, in retreat in the hinterland, to endure his fifth and last exile .. It only lasted four or five months. Valens deliberately allowed hIm to return. Where there was a non-Arian bishop whom he personally admired (as in the case of Basil of Caesarea), or where a banishment would create more disturbance than letting sleeping dogs he, Valens was ready to sacrifice his principles. The Arian Lucius could only return under the protection of imperial spears. Athanasius hved out the rest of his days in peace. The focus of interest as far as the development of doctrine is concerned had shifted from Alexandria several years before his death.' 7 Athanasius died on May 2nd 373 .• 8

2.

Didymus and Pseudo-Didymus

Both Rufinus and Jerome give us some information about an Alexandrian monk called Didymus who was an author of theological works. In hIS De Viris Illustribus Jerome tells us that he himself had known and indeed was a friend of this monk. He was blind but in spite of this infirmity was of immense erudition and had written several books. Jerome himself had persuaded him to write a book On the Holy Spirit and it only survives in Jerome's own Latin translation of it. Jerome mentions a Commentary on Zechariah and two books 46For these petitions see the documents appended to Athanasius' Letter to Jovian PG 26:820-4. 47See Leroux in PTAA I45-56. 48Hist. Akeph. 5.1-14; Sozomenus HE VI.7. IO .

653

The Controversy Resolved

Athanasius and His Heirs

Against the Arians. 'He is still alive today' ,Jerome says 'and has passed

V) included in Basil's Adversus Eunomium, which are certainly not by Basil. In recent years. however, it has been seriously questioned whether the De Trinitate can have been written by the blind monk Didymus. 54 Doutreleau has in a useful article listed several reasons for entertaining doubt on this subject. One of the references in the De Trinitate to a previous work On the Holy Spirit occurs in an exposition of 1 Tim 5:6, but no exposition of this passage is to be found in the work ofDidymus on the Holy Spirit translated by Jerome. 55 The De Trinitate speaks of the Macedonians, but Didymus On the Holy Spirit refers to them only as Pneumatomachians (a derogatory epithet meaning 'fighters against the Holy Spirit'). Jerome in his account of Didymus does not mention a work on the Trinity by him, though the De Trinitate must have been written fairly soon after 381 and Jerome visited Didymus in 386. De Trinitate enumerates Zechariah as the last of the Minor Prophets, whereas Didymus Comm. on Zechariah counts him as the eleventh (before Malachi). The explanation of the candelabra in Zech 3:8-4:10 is utterly different in every detail in De Trinitate and Comm. on Zechariah, and the latter does not refer to the treatment of the passage in the De Trinitate. As far as style and vocabulary are concerned, there are some striking resemblances between the De Trinitate and the works of Didymus, but there are also some striking differences. The resemblances can be accounted for by the use of a common source by both authors, but the differences are difficult to explain away. In his Trinitarian doctrine, as far as it can be deduced from works, none of which are directly on the subject of the Trinity, Didymus uses almost no technical terms at all, neither hypostasis, nor prosopon nor ousia in a Trinitarian context, nor does he use !cronllia (of equal honour) for the Holy Spirit, nor tK7t6pEUcrl<; (procession). He applies homoousios twice to the Son but never to the Spirit, whom he nevertheless regards as uncreated and fully divine. In his view the incarnate Logos had a soul ('!'ux1\). body and mind (vou<;). He never uses the word 'nature' (physis) in the context of the Incarnation, and never applies theotokos to the Blessed Virgin Mary,

the eighty-third year of his age.'49 Rufinus also tells us ofDidymus, confirming that he was blind; Rufinus himself had heard. him discoursing in Egypt. People had taken down at his dictation and published 'some remarks or public discussions or anSwers to questions proposed to him by this man'.50 Palladius (Lausiac History 4) also gives us some information about him. which enables L. Doutreleau to date his life 313-398. Socrates informs us that he lost his sight when he was very young, having only just leanit to read, that he wrote three books On the Trinity and translated [into what he does not say, but the word could just mean 'commented on'] the Peri Archon of Origen, incurring some obloquy thereby, and that on one occasion the holy monk Anthony visited him and consoled him for the loss of his sight. 51 There was recently discovered in the fmd of papyri at Toura in Egypt three works of this man, his Commentary on Zechariah, his Commentary on Job (or parts of it), his Commentary on Ecclesiastes and his Commentary on Genesis. The first has been edited by Doutreleau, the second by A. Heinricks, Ursula Hagedorn, D. Hagedorn and L. Koenen, the third by G. Bindler and L. Liesenborghs. The Commentary on Genesis has not yet been published. A short work On the Holy Spirit and another Against the Manichaeans attributed to Didymus are also extant. 52 Another work known as De Trinitate, in three books on the controverted Trinitarian themes, in Greek, was discovered in 1759 by Mingarelli in an ixth-century manuscript. He attributed his work to Didymus the Blind, and this attribution has till recently been generally accepted. The author of this work tells us that he has written a book about the Holy Spirit. 53 Mingarelli's reasons for assigning the work to Didymus were its author's statement that he had written a book On the. Holy Spirit, Socrates' information that Didymus wrote a book De Trinitate, and resemblances of style and vocabulary which Mingarelli thought he could detect in the works of both authors. Some scholars have also attributed to the author of the De Trinitate the last two books (IV and 490p. cit. CIX. SOHE XI.7. "HE lV.2S. 52PG 39:1033-1085 and 108S-IIIO; both only in Latin versions and the latter

Trinitate est-ill'oeuvre de Didyme J'Aveugle?'; the same author's introduction to his edition ofDidymus Comm. on Zechariah, and the Introduction byJ. Honscheid to

incomplete. 53lJl:3 I (PC 39) 949, 9S I. All these books are to be found in PC 39. but Book I has

his edition of Book I of the De Trinitate. 55This reference in the De T,initate occurs in III. 16 (872): the other is too vague to

recently heen edited by J. Honscheid and Book II, caps

1-']

by Ingrid Seiler.

54For a-discussion of this subject see Grillmeier CeT 361 n 2; Doutre1eau 'Le De

allow any argument to be drawn from it.

655

Athanasius and His Heirs The Controversy Resolved and never quotes Prov 8:22, and never alIudes to or quotes a pagan poet; he is fond of arithmology, i.e. playing around wIth the significance of numbers. Though no wholesale Ongemst, such as Evagrius Ponticus, his debt to Origen is, to one who knows t~e works of Origen, everywhere evident. In his theology ~e m~y be said to belong to the school of Athanasius as far as an Ongemst coul~, without being a devoted folIower of him. His .book On the Holy .SPlnt (which is not controversial) will be dealt wIth later. Other":,,e he does not offer enough material for our purposes m his works to Justlfy our paying further attention to him. . On the other hand, the De Trinitate deploys a fuII techmcal vocabulary in dealing with Trinitarian themes, using hypostasis, isotimos, idiotes and several other terms which suggest that the work comes late in the Arian controversy, is ready to apply theotokos to the Virgin, frequently quotes Homer and the classic Greek poets, and has only two brief excursions into arithmology. Its theology shows no influence from Origen. The author appears to Identlfy Mar~lOmtes and Manichaeans,56 whereas Didymus in his Against the Mamchaeans does not. There are one or two significant pieces of further internal evidence which teII against identifying the author of the De Trinitate with Didymus the Blind. At one point the writer of the De Trinitate expresses the hope that what he is about to write will earn him grace: 'I go forward to the next task, trusting that even before 1 speak 1 shall receive grace along with the children whom (God) has gIven to me and the children of those children, through whom as long as we bve

we labour,57 and indeed' also all whom (God) knows'.58 These 'children' could refer to the writer's disciples, but to call disciples of a later generation or disciples of one's discip~es 'grandchildren' would be odd. And if Didyrr,'us ~et A,:,th~ny wh~le he (Didymus) was already a monk, and yet dIed m 398 m his elghtles it is not easy to imagine him marrying and begetting children before he took to the ascetic life. 59 Again at one point the author of the De Trinitate says «AAU Kai 'IOJuvv'1<; llijM<; tml, KaSu <pam, Kai "tu
whose sake ... we labour'. In either case it could be apphed to disClples who elCher took down or circulated his words (MU..1\O'w). or children of his body. "lll.l (7 84). hi' 'd . 59S ocrates whose chronology is by no means impeccable, places t s lOCI ent 10 the reign of Valens. but this is completely impossible.

65 6

(,ButJohn too is obvious, as they say, even to a blind man'),60 which, though not completely improbable .. is not a likely expression for a blind man to employ. The same author urges his readers or disciples to 'live among books' (~ijv tv BI/3Aiol<;),61 which again is not a likely piece of advice for a blind man to give. And at one point, quoting Aquila's version, the author transliterates the Hebrew word into Greek letters· 2 We have to ask ourselves whether a blind man is likely to have learnt even the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The strong weight of evidence, then, is against the identification of the author of Mingarelli's De Trinitate with Didymus the Blind. This means that this work falls outside the period covered by this book, and will only be referred to incidentally. The authorship of the last two books of the work Adv. Eunomium attributed to Basil of Caesarea (IV and V) is a difficult matter to decide positively. Negatively we can say with confidence that they are not by Basil. They are not a considered reply to Eunomius' Apology, as are the first three books, but a series of largely disconnected passages arguing generalIy against Eunomius' doctrine. The author's doctrine of the Holy Spirit appears to go further than Basil ventured to go (he uses cruvllo~u~OJ of the Spirit, the term used by C, more than once, and calls him 8E6<;).63 His style (except in the very last passage (V.768-'73) which is not found in all MSS and may be by a diJferent hand) is dry and dense and his points closely argued. In this he is reminiscent neither of Basil nor of the De Trinitate nor of Didymus. He is well aquainted with formal theological vocabulary; he has no difficulty in referring to the 'divine nature' ("tij<; SEia<;
The Controversy Resolved debate, knows something of the Cappadocian theologians, and stands in the tradition of Athanasius, though he is writing several years after the archbishop's death. He has, however, neither the fire and brilliance of Athanasius nor the ability of the CappadoCJans. He IS essentially a second-rate theologian.

3. Epiphanius In Epiphanius we meet another second-rate theologian standing in the tradition of Athanasius. He was born in Palestine in the second decade of the fourth century and there served as deacon and presbyter until in the year 367 he was elected by the bishops of Cyprus to their primatial see of Salamis. He is well-informed about Palestme, and from Salamis continued to take a hvely mterest m the Anan controversy, from the point of view of a firm disciple of Athanasius, whom he knew personally,66 intervening (or perhaps one should say interfering) whenever he could. He wrote two major works, both of which survive in the original Greek, the Ancoratus, a survey of Christian doctrine, and the Panarion (medicine-chest) or a Cure for all the Heresies. This last is of immeasurable value because it preserves for us so much material which would otherwise have been lost, even though it is presented by a writer who is narrow-minded at best and very silly at worst. The Panarion must have been fimshed by about 67 377, but was being written during the two previous yea r s. He wrote two other minor works on non-theological subjects which need not concern us here. Epiphanius was a steadfast supporter of Paulinus in the dispute about who should be regarded as the proNicene bishop of Antioch, and also interested himself particularly in the Apollinarian Controversy. He gives an interesting account m hiS Panarion of a visit which he paid to Antioch in connection with both these concerns, towards the end of 376. 68 Apollinaris had by now consecrated Vitalis, his own bishop of Antioch representing his own views, thereby adding a fourth candidate (with Paulinus, Euzoius and Meletius) for the position of orthodox bishop of that city. Vltahs had already journeyed to Rome and gained recognition from Pope Damasus. But, warned by Peter of Alexandria, Damasus had charged 66S ee

above, p. 220.

67S0 Dossetti Simbolo 38, following Quasten.

68From Panarion 77.20-33 (434-6).

Athanasius and His Heirs Paulinus (whom he recognised as the sole orthodox bishop of Antioch) to enquire into the orthodoxy of Vitalis by submitting to Vltalis the creed N and a dogmatic addition which Damasus made to his letter to Paulinus (the letter known as Per jilium meum). This was the point at which Epiphanius arrived. Paulinus accused Vitalis of Apollinarianism and Vitalis accused Paulinus of Sabellianism. Epiphanius began by refusing to communicate with either Paulinus or Vitalis. Then he interrogated Paulinus about his orthodoxy, and was satisfied when he produced the subscription which he had made to the Tomus ad Antiochenos,6' a profession which Epiphanius reproduces. Next Epiphanius turned to Vitalis and submitted him to a similar interrogation. Vitalis answered all the questions satisfactorily until thelast, which was 'Did he allow that Christ took a real human body (soma)? Yes, said Vitalis. Did Christ also assume a human soul (psyche) ? Yes, Vitalis replied. Did he assume a human mind (nous)? No, was Vitalis' reply. Thereupon Epiphanius pronounced Paulinus and not Vitalis the orthodox bishop of Antioch. 70 This is a peculiarly interesting incident because it shows how far people of Apollinarian views could go in agreement with the pro-Nicenes, but it makes it all the easier to believe that an Apollinarian representative at Alexandria in 362 could have thought that the Tomus of that council was not aimed against him, but against the Arian doctrine of the Incarnation. By psyche the Apollinarians meant a kind of combination of what we would call the subconscious mind with what. we would call the nervous system; by nous they meant the conscIOus mmd. The Apollinarian at Alexandria could have thought that he was asked to admit the former inJesus but not the latter. Arians, who did not make this distinction between psyche and nous, denied both. Epiphanius' later life was not without incident. Regarding himself as an Important. guardian of orthodoxy, he joined Jerome in campalgnmg agamst Origenism, fell out with John, bishop of Jerusalem, was temporarily inveigled by the wily Theophilus of Alexandria to ally himself with the movement to dethrone John Chrysostom from Constantinople, andjust had time to realize that he had made a fool of himself before he died on his way back to his see from the capital city in 403. But his later career does not concern us here. 69S ee 70S ee

above, p.642. Dossetti Simbolo 62-4.

Athanasius and His Heirs

The Controversy Resolved It is characteristic of Epiphanius that he coined the name 'SemiArians' for the followers of Basil of Ancyra and the subscribers to the statement issued by the Council of Ancyra of358. The opprobrious epithet has been taken up by many authors, ancient and modern, since.71

In his earlier work, the Ancoratus, Epiphanius gives us two creeds. As regards the first 72 at this point the text depends only on one not very accurate manuscript. What it gives us is a creed almost exactly like that later produced at the Council of Constantinople in 381. 73 It is wholly likely that this creed is a later interpolation, a substitute for what Epiphanius originally transcribed, namely N. The creed ends with a statement that this formula was produced or confirmed (the text is uncertain) 'in church in the holy city by all the holy bishops together who were there, more than three hundred and ten in number'.74 'The holy city' cannot refer to Nicaea and by Epiphanius' time the number of those who attended the Council ofNicaea of 325 had become stereotyped by legend to 318. The reference must be to Constantinople. We cannot 'believe that Epiphanius' Ancoratus was written after 381, the date of the Council which drew up C. The creed here must be a later interpolation. 75 A little later, however, in the same book Epipha';;us gives us another creed, which is more or less his personal affirmation of faith. 76 It is in effect N with later additions necessitated by the course of the controversy. It exhibits the following points of interest: It has a very elaborate gloss on 'was made flesh' (aupKroeeVtu): 'that is,

begotten perfectly from the holy Mary, ever virgin, through the Holy Spirit, and was made man, that is taking a whole man, soul ('I'UXt\v) and body and mind (vou,) and all that there is of man without sin; (begotten) not from the seed of man nor in man, but fashioning for himself a body into a single holy unity; nor, as in the case of the prophets, did he inspire nor spoke nor operated (in it), but he became wholly a man, "for the Word became flesh", without experiencing 71 Perhaps by Ambrose at De Fide V.S. 101 (253); but the reading is not clear here; see Faller's apparatus criticus in lac. Loafs, 'Arianismus' 32, rightly protests against this derogatory labeI.. 72Ancoratus II8.9-14 (146--7). 73Now that we are, so to speak. in sight of that Council we shall in future regularly refer to this creed as C. "Ibid. II8.14 (147). 75See Kelly Early Christian Creeds 305-12. 76Ancoratus 119.3-12 (148,149).

660

change or transforming his own Godhead into humanity, but uniting his own ... [text corrupt] into one holy perfection and Godhead, for there is one Lord Jesus Christ and not two, the same God, the same Lord, the same King'.

The article on the Holy Spirit mentions his function in giving the Law, inspiring the prophets, being present at Christ's baptism, and his activity in the apostles and in the sanctified. But a long gloss on the Spirit is added, describing him as not only perfect and uncreated (homoousion is not included) but 'proceeding from the Father and receiving from the Son' . In the anathemas he adds condemnation of propositions about the Holy Spirit to the condemned propositions concerning the Son, and appends a special anathema against those who deny the resurrection of the dead (veKpiiiv).it is interesting to see in this creed concern to exclude specifically Arian doctrines fading and the necessity appearing of dealing in detail with doctrine about the Incarnation and the Holy Spirit. We should date this creed to the year 374. 77 Epiphanius, who is almost fanatically pro-Nicene, does not neglect to distinguish his position from that of the Arians in the course of describing various types of Arianism in his PanaTion. We orthodox, he says, believe that the Son is the image (eIKIDv) of the Father, not simply as a picture is an image of the original, but the Son is an image 'because of his inbred consubstantiality (ttl<; YEVVltUCtl<; 6J..l0oUO'L6tlltOC;). as the Son reproduces in his character the breed (xupuKtl]pi~ovtoc; t6 yevoc;) in relation to the Father, seeing that the likeness (cbleIKoviaflUtoc;) is brought out (through the) identity and consubstantiality and corresponding likeness' (&KtUllIDflUtO,).78

Earlier he has described the Son in a carefully constructed statement thus: 'And the Son is always perfect, always subsistent (tvu1t6c:rtato<;), begotten in reality from the Father unoriginatedly, timelessly, indescribably; he is not a brother to the Father; he never began to exist

77Epiphanius' doctrine of the Holy Spirit is discussed more fully below, pp. 753-5· The reference to people who disbelieve in the resurrection of the dead is probably a dig at the Origenists, see Anc. 87.1, 2 (107-8). Epiphanius could hardly have followed Origen's carefully nuanced and sophisticated doctrine on this subject. 78Panarion 76.3.1, 2 (343). Elena Cavalc;anti has interesting information upon this tendency to emphasize eikon as implying a common ousia in her article' "Excerpta" e Temi' 1019-21.

661

The Controversy Resolved

Athanasius and His Heirs

nor will ever cease, but is eternally the genuine Son co-existing with

rise again. God cannot suffer; the flesh suffered without the divinity being altered or changed. 84 Later in ·the same work he discusses the human mind of Christ. In taking flesh, he firmly asserts, Christ assumed a human psyche and nous, but this human mind was wholly dominated by the divine mind:

the Father, begotten timelessly from' the Father, equal ... .'79 In a kind of doctrinal manifesto :it the beginning of the Pan arion he describes the Son as 'begotten timelessly and without beginning from the Father's inner being (tl< I<61,.lt",v ltu
Earlier he had described Jesus Christ as 'suffering impassibly (ltuOmV cbtuOi]<;) while remaining the Logos',81 an expression taken from Athanasius but by no means contributing to theological lucidity. The suffering, he says elsewhere, was attributed (s1,.oy;,,01]) to the .Godhead, even though the Godhead was beyond suffering. 82 In a carefully framed statement in the same book he describes the incarnate Logos as a sinless, impassible genuinely human being, incapable of altering his mind from that which is good, one Christ (he does not say one hypostasis nor prosopon) uniting two natures, and he says explicitly that the (spiritualized) human nature survived the Ascension. 83 His attempts to do justice to the human mind and soul of the incarnate Word certainly derive from Athanasius. In his Ancoratus he reflects the disinclination of Athanasius to give this feature a serious role. The Incarnation, he says, was like a king who wishes to bring to a decisive and open battle an adversary who will flee away ifhe sees the king· himself advancing, and so disguises himself and pretends to flee from his enemy, but when the enemy pursues him turns and fights. So Christ pretended fear at the Agony in the Garden in order to induce the devil, deceived by the request that this cup should pass from him, to show his hand openly so that he might be completely defeated. Christ of course could not have desired that the cup should pass from him, for he foreknew that he would be crucified and would "Ibid. 62.).7 (392). ··Ibid. 1.2, 3 (227, 228). 8tAncortUuS 67.7 (80). 82Ibid. 93.4 (I 14): shortly afterwards (5 •.6 (I 14» he takes the example ofa stain on a garment being attributed to the wearer of the garment. 8'lbid. 8.1-8 (99.101).

662

'He did not then permit it (the mind), like a human being, to vary, but he himself became the commander. director and improver of the

mind. Just as when he took flesh he was not defeated by the flesh, so when he took a mind he was not defeated by the mind'. 85 And he adds a vigorous argument for allowing that Christ took a human mind: our own minds needed healing by his assuming a human mind; and the actions of understanding and growing in wisdom attributed to him in the Bible could only be done by a human, not a divine, mind. 8 • He had a perfectly genuine human mind which never gave way to evil desires nor inclinations but did give way to 'the proper and suitable bodily needs'. 87 Epiphanius however is more ingenious than Athanasius in attempting to explain the apparent ignorance of Jesus Christ. He says that there are two sorts of knowledge, one achieved by knowing and the other by experience (svepYBlu or ltpa~l<;), and for the second he instances those places in the Bible where 'to know' means 'to have sexual intercourse with', and also the expression 'the Lord knows his own' (Num 16:5 and 2 Tim 2:19), and 'you only have I known of all the nations of the earth' (Amos 3:2) and 'Depart from me ... I never knew you' (Lk 13:27).88 He then applies this to the Son apparently not knowing the Day: the Father knows the Day both by knowledge and by experience (llpa~I<;), but the Son knows only when the Day will be but,living in a temporal succession from which the Father is exempt, does not yet (presumably as a human being) know it by experience because he has not yet brought it about. 89 In the Panarion Epiphanius among the other heresies which he lists elects to tackle Apollinarianism. He is sorry to do this because he admires Apollinaris as an unusually learned man who had even endured exile "Ibid. 34·5""9 (43, 44)· "76.1-3 (95). "76-78 (95""98). "79.1-5 (98""9), quotation 3.99. 8820.1-10 (28, 29). 8921 . 1- 5 (29. 30).

The Controversy Resolved Athanasius and His Heirs views. 90

(presumably at the hands of Valens) for his anti-Arian He encounters this heresy in the form in which it was championed by Vitalis, with whom in the Panarion he has a long discussion about the psyche and the nous of the humanJesus, neither of which, according to Epiphanius, Vitalis will allow, though at his interrogation by Epiphanius in Antioch he had agreed that there was a human psyche there. 91 Vitalis and his party agreed that the nous is the hypostasis (that which gives it individual existence) in a man, and were willing to accept the conclusion that the humanity in Christ must have been devoid of this (avull6<Jtutoc;)!Z Epiphanius contends thatJesus Christ must have had a human mind, because he increased in wisdom and knowledge (Lk 2:52), and a mind is necessary for increase in these. But, say the Apollinarians, in our view desire and striving are part of the mind; can we attribute these to Christ? Yes, says Epiphanius, we must and can; Christ experienced hunger, thirst, weariness, sleep, journeying, grief, weeping and anger. The mind does indeed desire, but it can desire good as well as evil. 93 Epiphanius even tries to throw some faint light on the subject of Christ's knowledge here: 'Intelligence-itself (aI)to<Juv.<J'C;) does not need intelligence (crov.cr.roc;), nor does Wisdom-itself (autocroq>la) need wisdom, but the text "he shall understand" is applied to (Christ's) human mind'. 94 Later he argues that the nous is not the hypostasis of a man, but is a certain energy given us by God, and maintains that though the incarnate Logos had a human mind, he was not imprisoned by it!' It is clear that though on this subject Epiphanius did not make any great advance on Athanasius he was compelled by the emergence of Apollinarianism to pay much more attention to it and to work out a fuller and rather more coherent picture of the functioning of the human mind of Jesus!· 90Panarion 77.24.1--9 (437). 91See above, p.659. "Panarion 77-23·1-<1 (436); 24-1-9 (437).

"Ibid.

77-26.1-,]; 27.1 (438,439).

9477.30.2 (442). For 'he shall understand' (oUVJ1oel) the GCS ed., Holl, gives as a reference Isa 42,1, but the verb does not occur there nor in any other relevant passage in RahlCs LXX, unless we are to accept 1tveuJ,lu (J'ol.ptac; Kat c:ruVEO'EroC; at !sa II.2.

95 77 . 34 . 5 and 35·1-2 (446, 447). 96It is hardly necessary to say that, following his master Athanasius, Epiphanius wholly rejects any possibility of Christ exhibiting weakness, either in the Agony in

On the older and more conventional themes of the Arian Controversy Epiphanius has learnt from the past and knows where he stands with an almost excessive meticulousness. The dilemma was posed by the Ariaus that if God the Father and God the Son are both 'He who Is' (6Ibv), and if we allow that 'He who is' was 'with' 'He who Is' (In I: I), then the question arises, was 'He who Is' generated or was that which did not exist generated, and ifhe existed before, how was he generated, and ifhe was generated, how did he exist before? Epiphanius replies that you must not push to extremes the analogy of existence and generation. We come from nothing and yet we can beget others. But in the case of God the Father begets and the Son is begotten but both also exist eternally!' This is simply his version of Athanasius' 'God is not as man'. The Arians next object to the introduction into theological discourse of ousia and homoousios, terms to be found neither in the Old nor the New Testaments. Epiphanius replies that ousia is to be found in the Bible, because ousia and hypostasis are synonymous, and the latter term is Biblical. But sensing rightly that this is a weak argument he hits back at the Arians in a traditional manner by pointing to the non-Scriptural terms which they use. 98 He defines carefully the difference between homoousios and homooiousios: two things of quite different sorts of character can be li)ce each other in ousia, as gold is like bronze and silver like tin. But homoousios expresses essential likeness without identity. The term implies two distinct things which are like in nature, it does not imply a merging (<JtJvaAolq>l']). Ifwe simply say 'like', then we could easily envisage something that was like but of a quite different nature, such as an image out of any material. Homoousion alone Can express likeness arising from generation. 99 Epiphanius was suspicious of the th~ Garden or on the cross, and eliminates firmly the scandal of the cross, Pan. 69.62.1-9 (210, 21I); 63.1-8 (21I-213; 64-1-5 (21 3). 97Panarion 69.71.1-10 (218-220). 98Ibid. 69.72.I~8, 73·1-2 (220, 221). In most of his uses of hypostasis Epiphanius is conte?t to regard It, as here, as equivalent to ousia , e.g. in a long explanation of the meanmg of homoousios ()~ov yap 6J.loovo"lOV JuiiC; 61toO'taO'f:wc; to'tlSTjA.rotl1(6v, Anc. 6.4.(12), cf. 7·3 (I~). But m the same work, 31.1-9 (101-3), he clearly distinguishes o~sla an~ hYP0s.!aslS, meaning by the latter 'individual existence'; cf. Pan. 69.80 (228),

t~v tplWV o{)croov nuiwv 01tocrtaaewv, j..uii~ 3t 8e6tll'toC;. This evidence alone should dispose of th: theory that th~ Council of Alexandria of 362 cleared up the confusion between ousla and hypostasIs once and for all. Epiphanius never applies the term homoousios to the Holy Spirit. 99lbid. 73.36.1-9 (3 10,3 I I); cf. 7·8, 9 (348) where he insists that by homoousion he does not mean taUtOVO'lOV but ta13tov tij 8&6tlltl Kai ooai~ Kat 311vaj.l&1.

665

The Controversy Resolved

Athanasius and His Heirs

exponents of 'likeness in respect of ousia' and branded them (as we have noted) 'Semi-Arian', and never accepted the claim ofMeletius to be orthodox either. This point about homoousios is not Athanasian, but is a refinement of his doctrine which he no doubt would have accepted. With the other pro-Nicenes Epiphanius argued against Aetius that ingenerateness characterizes God's being but does not

4. Ambrose

constitute

it.100

He has several formulae to describe the Trinity: the Father truly subsisting individually (tvult6cn:atoc;), and the Son truly existing individually and the Holy Spirit truly existing individually, three which are one Godhead, one substance (ousia), one object of worship (lloi;oA.oyia), one God. 'OI Later, an ambiguous statement from the Ancoratus: 'Three existing as one harmony

(Ju~!p(J)v{a),

one Godhead, of the

same substance (ousia), of the same Godhead, of the same hypostasis . ..

he shows to us three Persons (ltp6(J(J)"a) of a holy worship from a threefold hypostasis' ,102 At that stage Epiphanius certainly had much to learn about clarifying his terms. In the Ancoratus too it is someone whom he calIs 'the heretic' (he does not identify him) who produces the expression 'three hypostases in- one ousia', Epiphanius seems to think it Sabellian. ,o3 It is in fact precisely the formula which the Cappadocians adopted and publicised: 'the heretic' might be Meletius. And in the Panarion, as we have seen, he actually adopts three hypostases and one ousia.'o4 Epiphanius was regarded by some of his contemporaries as a marvel of theological skill. He undoubtedly took the trouble to be well informed; he understood pretty well the theology of Athanasius and was capable of developing it usefulIy in some directions. But he was no great intelIect. His atteinpts, for instance, to answer the arguments oCAetius, backed by forceful contemporary logic, are not impressive. We may however forgive much to one who resolved to record for posterity so much ofother people's doctrines and opinions, and did so in so compendious a manner.

If we are to detect an heir of Athanasius in the West, it will rather be Ambrose than Hilary, much though Hilary respected Athanasius. From at least 375 till at earliest 381, Ambrose was involved in the Arian Controversy, though it may not have occupied all his attention. He mentions Athanasius twice in his writings,105 and according to his editor in the CSEL series, Faller, he had read Orationes con. Arianos III, the Letters to Serapion, the De Decretis, the De Synodis, and the De Marte Ar;;.'o. His main anti-Arian work is of course his De Fide, written at the express request of the young Emperor Gratian, Books I and II between September 378 and January 379, and Books III, IV and V towards the end of381. But we also know his attitude to Arianism through the acts of the Council of Aquileia and the comments on his behaviour at that Council made by an independent but by nO means unprejudiced witness, Palladius of Ratiaria. Ambrose had declared his hand on the subject of Arianism when in 375 he had attended the election of a successor to Germinius at Sirmium and unconstitutionally (for Sirmium was outside any sphere of jurisdiction which he could claim from Milan) insisted . upon the choice of the pro-Nicene candidate, Anemius.'o7 We are accustomed to take Ambrose at the estimate of Augustine, who admired him greatly when he found himself in Milan in the late eighties of the fourth century,. and who paid him some handsome compliments in his Confessions. But an impartial judgment must conclude that Ambrose does not come creditably out of his involvement in the Arian Controversy. His behavi<;:mr at the Council of Aquileia was characterised by injustice and bullying. And if in defence it is pleaded that this is the way alI ecclesiastics usually behaved and were expected to behave in such circumstances, we must observe that his disgraceful conduct was noted and resented by his Arian opponents, Palladius and Maximinus. Though the bishop of Aquileia was supposed to be presiding, Ambrose appears to have taken the conduct of affairs into his own hands at an early stage. He continuously attempted to make Palladius either agree to or repudiate a letter of Arius, in the face of Palladius' continual protests

IOOIbid. 76.45.1--"7 (399). IOIAncorGtus 10.5 (18).

IO'Ibid. 67.4.7 (82). IOJIbid. 81.4 (101). I04S ee above, n 98.

lOSEpp. 13 and 14; see G. Madec in PTAA 356-66. 106lncro duction 4*-12.*.

He also knew the Letter to Epictetus; see below n II7. l07Gryson Seolies Ariennes 107 points out the illegality of chis act.

666

Athanasius and His Heirs

The Controversy Resolved at the absence of Oriental representatives to give the Council a faint colour at least of being a general one;and in the face of his accusation that Ambrose had tricked the Emperor, Gratian, into confining the membership to those who were the opponents of Palladius and Secundianus.,08 Palladius refused to make any statement about Arius' letter, saying that he had never seen him and did not know who he was, whereupon Ambrose took this as an agreement with Arius' views.,09 Later, he accused Palladius, as he had accused him from the beginning, of denying the Son's eternity and read out a list of epithets from Arius' letter applying to the Father, all with 'alone' before them, thereby implying that they did not apply to the Son, but carefully omitted 'alone ingenerate', which might have supported Palladius' case. "O After a long wrangle with Palladius and Secundianus, mainly on the subject of procedure, which was purely unofficial and could not constitute the acts of a council, Ambrose suddenly revealed that he had placed shorthand writers behind the backs of the two Arian bishops, taking down what they said, a move which angered both of them because it was equivalent to taping a conversation without permission in our day. The two attempted at that point to leave the room, but Ambrose and others prevented them doing so by threats and force." 1 The bitterness created by this sort of behaviour manifests itself in the ugly case which Palladius, writing about the Council of Aquileia afterwards, was able to make against Ambrose. He called Ambrose a rebel, hinting no doubt that his allegiance to the legitimate but Arian Emperor Valentinian II was doubtful, a disturber of the peace, a litigious scoundrel, a catechumen (referring to the indecent haste with which, in his view, Ambrose was transformed from an unbaptised civil servant into a Christian bishop)."2 He suggested that Ambrose's youth had been stained with sexual vice. l13 He had had little scruple in deposing others from

their episcopal status because his own had been so lightly and questionably come by."" And even while enjoying all the advantages of a strong claque to shout approval of his arguments and a large majority facing in a council a minority of two fighting on unprepared and unexpected ground, Ambrose did not always succeed in winning the argument. We have seen earlier that Palladius trapped him on the subject of the title 'Christ'. 115 And in answer to Palladius' demand, which he pressed again and again, that Eastern bishops should be present, Ambrose can only give the evasive reply that the custom is to have one Council in the East and one in the West [with thirty-two bishops, and the Italians excused attendance!), and that the Eastern bishops could have come if they liked."· When we tum from Ambrose's behaviour at Aquileia to his actual defence of the pro-Nicene doctrine in his De Fide we gain the unavoidable impression that Ambrose has not, like Athanasius and Hilary and Marius Victorinus, struggled with the problem of Arianism and thought it through for himself, but rather has learnt the conventional arguments because these are the stuff which the official, successful church hands out. Almost all his ratiocination proceeds upon the method (which is, admittedly, a weapon not unknown in Athanasius' armoury) of assuming as true what he is supposed to be proving, and too often his arguments are, as rational discussion, beneath contempt. 117 His account of the doctrines of Arianism 118 is hasty and superficial, and includes the statement that the Son is dissimilar to the Father and that he is not good, both of them gross travesties of Arian doctrine. They rely, he says, on 'clever argumentations' (versutis disputationibus).119 Ambrose appears, like virtually all the Western theologians, to know nothing of the doctrines of Aetius and Eunomius, though he occasionally names them; all he can manage here is the vulgar taunt that Eunomius claims 114302, 304 (120).

Gryson. ScoUes Ariennes 222,224 (21, 24). IO'Ibid. 226, 228 (27, 28). "oIbid. 232, 234 (38, 39). 111 282, 284 (97). 112298 (114). 113 300 (IlS). He had hastily and on no good grounds deposed blameless bishops whose tenure of their sees was longer 'than your years spent in lewdness and filth' (/ascivos sordidosque tuos excederet annas). I do not think that Palladius knew of any specific examples of misconduct on the part of the youthful Ambrose. but he assumed that a young pagan man would be sexually promiscuous in the natural course of events. 108S ee

668

llSSee above, pp. 1Og-IO. The place is ibid. 290, 292 (107). '''334 (7). 117Cf. the remarks of Madec in PTAA 376 about Ambrose's attitude to Apollinarianism: 's'iI se servait copieusement de la Lettre Epictele dans Ie De Incarnationis dominicae sacramento [written CJ8S] c'etait moins pour combattre l'apoUinarisme, que parce qu'Athanase lui otfrait un arsenal commode contre les diverses erreurs christologiques'. '''De Fide 1.5.34-42 (.6-.8). 119Ibid. 1.5.40 (17); it is here that Ambrose had his famous statement 'it did not please God to save his people by dialectic'.

a

The Controversy Resolved

Athanasius and His Heirs

to know God better than Paul knew him.'20 And the same tendency which is visible at the Council of Aquileia to substitute sheer malice for argument is visible here too:-

identity with itself. That is why we correctly call the Son homoousion with the Father, because by this word both the distinction of Persons and the unity of nature are denoted' .127

'Whom arc we to believe? John who reclined on Christ's breast or Arius who wallowed in his own bowels as they spilled out, so that we can recognize the same treachery in Arius as that of the traitor Judas, since the same punishment condemned him?'121

Ambrose uses natura (nature) normally to indicate what the Three have in common and substantia to indicate what they are; e.g. commenting on Isa 45: 14, in te igitur est deus per unitatem naturae, et non est deus praeter te per proprietatem substantiae, repulsam differentiae.'2. The Son is 'the image of the Father's substance"2. But Ambrose's vocabulary has one interesting peculiarity as far as terms for discussing Trinitarian or Christological subjects in De Fide are concerned. He uses the word persona in these contexts hardly at all, only twice, to be exact. l3O He sometimes prefers the word proprietas (individuality), and here joins the list of Western theologians who either eschewed or were wary of using persona. He also uses proprietas in a rather confusing way, for the possession of their divine nature by the Three.l3' He can use nomen (name) for the same meaning, '32 but has no consistent usage. This is not to say that he confuses the Persons:

He can contend that if the Arians say that the Son 'is devoid of goodness', then they are saying that he is 'the author of evil'. '22 And he can declare that it is not surprising that the Goths prevailed (against the Emperor Valens, though Ambrose does not mention this fact, because Valens was Gratian's uncle) when the Arians were persecuting the orthodox in the very area where the disaster (of Adrianople in 378) took place.'23 And he suggests that when the Arians adduce the text 'Whosoever believes in me does not believe in me but in him who sent me' Un 12:44) they are actually discouraging belief in Christ.'2' . Ambrose uses the usual arguments for the Nicene view of the divinity of Christ. He believes in and defends the doctrine of the Son's eternal generation: 'If therefore his generation is not involved with time, it is possible to

infer that nothing took place before the Son since he is not involved with time' (ex tempore}.125

He alleges quite incorrectly that the Fathers of Nicaea placed homoousion in N in order to counter the Arian use of heterousion (a word which had not yet been introduced into the controversy!).'2' The word does not entail Sabellianism in Ambrose's opinion, as its opponents allege it does. 'HomODusion (means) something different from something else, not >2°V.[9.237 (307). 1211.19.123 (52). 122U Prologue 13 (62). 23 t 11. 16. 136-8 (104-6). Maximmus adverts to this silly argument, Gryson Scolies Ariennes 214 (13). 124De Fide V. 10. I 19 (261); in fact of course they were emphasizing that Christ was sent and was not acting as an independent agent. 12sIV.9.99 ([92). 126 111.15. 124 (151). It is here that Ambrose quotes the fragment of a letter of Eusebius of Nicomedia which he says was read out at the council, and caused the bishops to insert homoousion into N. See above PP.3I, 161.

'For the Father is not he who is the Son, but between the Father and the Son there is a distinction of generation visible, so that God (comes) from God, Eternal from Eternal, Perfect from Perfect ... one Godhead, not confused, because it is one. nor plural because it is

uniform' (indijferens). And he can compare, with proper safeguards, the one substance of 127 111.15.126 (152); this is one of the very rare examples of Ambrose using perSO'Ja in this work, see below n 130. 128 1.3.27 (14): 'in thee therefore is God as regards unity of nature and there is no God besides thee as regards possession of substance exclusive of diversity'. 1291I1.14.I08 (146,147). Ambrose never seems to have felt it necessary, as did Gregory of Elvira, to substitute 'essence' (essentia) for substance. l3°0ne we have seen above (see n 127); the other is V.3.46 (234). Ambrose is arguing that Christ never speaks of pluralitas in defining his relation to the Father:

evidens est igitur quia, quod unius est substantiae separari non potest, etiamsi non sit singularitatis, sed unitatis. Singularitatem dieo, quae Graeee monotes dicitur. Singularitas ad personam pertinet, unitas ad naturam. He can of course use persona in other contexts, e.g. V.8.II4 (259) ex persona hominis, and again at 10.12.4 (262). 131Examples of the former use (on Acts 17:28) ideo in illis tribus proprietasfili ... declaratur II Prologue 7 (60), and (on Ps I 10 (109):3) utique ideo dixit, non ut eorporalem alvum dec1araret, sed ut proprietatem verae generationis ostenderet IV.8.88 (187); examples of the latter use 1.3.27 (14), see above n 128, and aliud forum aeternitatem, aliud proprietatem substantiae ind!fferentis signifieat I. 1 1.69 (30), adeo generatio in paterna proprietate, non in iure est potestatis IV.8.90 (188), ad proprietatem naturae (of Christ's divine nature) V.8.I03 (253). 132 11 Prolog~e 3 (49)·

The Controversy Resolved Athanasius and His Heirs humanity in all men with the one substance of God.'33 And elsewhere: 'There is a certain undifferentiated substance of the distinct,

incomprehensible and indescribable Trinity. For we allow a distinction of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. not a confusion, a distinction. not a division, a distinction. not a plurality.'134

But Ambrose canalso use 'substance' (substantia) of the two different elements in Jesus Christ, divine and human.13s And when he quotes his Latin version of the notoriously ambiguous anathema in N he gives it as ex aUa substantia vel ousia, where substantia translates hypostasis.'3. Ambrose cannot therefore be said to have contributed much towards clearing up the semantic confusion which so persistently dogged the fourth-century search for the Christian doctrine of God. In the course of his argument Ambrose can on occasion fall into extraordinary hermeneutical perversity. The Arians adduced the text 'No man is good but only one, God' (Mk 10:17) to show that the goodness of the Son was less than that of the Father. Ambrose claims that it means 'No man is good save God, but I am God!'.'37 And when he attempts to show that Ps 139(138):15 exhibits the words 'substance' by following an eccentric Latin rendering 'and my substance in the depths of the earth' instead of' and my bone (LXX to 60'
'34[V.8.90 (188). "'[[1.10.65 (132). 1361.18.120 (51).

137 11.1.19 (63): 'That is "It is not enough that you should call him good whom you will not believe to be God. I do not seek disciples who believe me to be rather in human terms a good master than in divine terms a good God' ...

in fact represent little more than fantastic nonsense woven into a purely delusive harmony. On the subject of the Incarnation, Ambrose follows Athanasius with some fidelity, but, like Epiphanius, has been compelled to develop an acknowledgment of the existence of a human soul or mind in Jesus a good deal further, and he does not reproduce Athanasius' idea that the Logos cancelled the functioning of the human psyche. This is of course one of the repercussions of the Apollinarian Controversy, which did not in fact otherwise impinge much on Ambrose's consciousness."O On the text 'let this cup pass from me' (Matt 26:39 and pars.) Ambrose is at least more logical than Athanasius: it is the man, the weakness of the human nature, which says this: 'As a man he does not know the power of death; but as God in a body he expresses the weakness of the flesh'.14' But when Christ mourns or weeps he is not mourning for himself, for he has nothing to mourn for, but for us, our griefs, pains and sins."2 But still Ambrose very plainly recognizes a human soul (anima) in Jesus Christ: 'He is not distressed as the Power (of God), his Godhead is not distressed, but his soul is distressed, he is distressed as regards his acceptance of human weakness. And therefore because he assumed a soul he also assumed the passions of the soul'. 143

The Lord hungered and endured other human experiences in order to show that his body as well as ours endured human weakness, and in order to share our weakness.'" But there is a limit to this admission: the human weakness had no effect whatever on the divine power: 'You must not be so irreverent as to think that it is weakness when you see the wounds. Those were indeed the wounds of the body, but there was no weakness of that wound in the source from whence the Life of all was ftowing'.145

For Ambrose, as for Athanasius, Paul's expression 'the weakness of God' (I Cor I :25) had no meaning. If there was any weakriess, it was a

138 111.14.110 (147).

139IIl. I4 . IIS (148); he shows himself a little uncertain about this triumph of misinterpretation at 117 (149). In his Epp 72.24 (1304) he perhaps achieves a greater height offolly by presuming to correct Aquila's version ofGn 17.9-14 by the light of a bad Latin translation of an indifferent Greek translation (LXX) of the original Hebrew which, of course, Ambrose did not know.

140As Madec has observed. See above, n 117. 41 • 1I.5.4I (70-72). quotation 44 (71). •• 2[1.7·52-57 (74, 75). '·'7·56 (75)·

144III.J.6 (110) .

•• S[V.5.54 (175. 176).

Athanasius and His Heirs

The Controversy Resolved

weakness precisely not of God but of man. Arian Christology could at least do better than this. Nor did Ambrose leave any room for 'the foolishness of God' (I Cor 1:25). The apparent ignorance ofJesus caused Ambrose, as it caused Athanasius, considerable trouble. He establishes an exact division between what Christ says as man and what he says as God."o Ignorance was assumed, indeed even pretended, for our benefit: 'for me he is ignorant of the Day ofJudgment, for me "he does not know the Day or the hour" (Matt 24:36). For how could he who made the days and the times not know the Day?'·47 ' "But it is written that he asked a question." Learn the distinction: he asks as Son of Man, he gives commands as Son ofGod'."8 Facing later the same embarrassing text, Matt 24:36, he first says that some MSS omit the words 'neither the Son' ('of that day and hour no one knows, nO even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but only the Father') and hints darkly that the Arians deliberately interpolated the words, but finally faces the difficulty: of course the Son of God could not be ignorant."9 It is not good for human beings to know everything, expecially to know the Day ofJudgment (and so Christ wasjustified in denying knowledge of it). 150 But why, Ambrose asks, did Jesus refuse to tell his aposdes, not in a manner which suggested that he knew but would not tell, but as if he genuinely did not know?'51 There are, he goes on, several places in the Bible where God appears to be ignorant, even though God in fact knows everything: Gen 18:21; 11:5; Ps 53(52):3; Lk 20:13 (and pars.). The solution to this problem is this:

not to know as man, citing Lk

2:52.153

Ambrose admits this as a

possible argument, but prefers to opt for the other view: 'It is much better, I think (to assume) that the Son who when he "was conversant with men" (Baruch 3:37 (38)) acted as a man and assumed flesh and took on OUf condition, so that he said that he did not know as a result of our ignorance, not that he was ignorant of anything'.154·

Though Ambrose has recognised the existence of a human mind in Jesus Christ much more fully and with less embarrassment than Athanasius, he in effect confines its operation to what we might call the subconscious mind or even the nervous system, what the Greeks

called psyche, and did not permit it to function as a mind. The intellectual heritage of Athanasius was to be influential in later years for a long time, in the Christology of Cyril, for instance. But his immediate heirs in the work of finding a viable Christian doctrine of God did little to modify or develop his doctrine in fruitful directions. In fact initiative and creative activity in this task had even before Athanasius' death passed to another group of theologians living in quite a different part of the Roman Empire, those three men who are known as the Cappadocian fathers.

'This fact is that there is a divine custom in Scripture ... that God pretends not to know what he knows'.

This principle the Son followed in imitation of the Father.'52 The presence of the human mind in Jesus is ignored at this point. A little later, however, Ambrose reverts to this very point. Some argue, he says, that as Christ assumed our weak body, so he could be thought 146II.9·77.78 (84, 85); the Chalcedonian Formula was later to quote it . 47 • 11.[1.93.94 (9[). >4'111.4.32 ([[9). '''V.[6.[93ff (28911). 15°17.209-11 (295--6). 1St 17.214 (297).

"'[7.214-9 (297-300),

quotation 2[9 (299-300); cf. [8.220 (300). 674

"'18.222 (301). These people could not be Arians, because they allowed a human mind in the incarnate Word. 15418.222 (~OI).

675

The Cappadocian Theologians

21

The Cappadocian Theologians I.

Introduction

By the term 'the Cappadocian theologians' only three are usually meant, all of whom were born and brought up in Cappadocia and spent ~ost of their lives there. These are Basil of Caesarea. Gregory ofNazla~zus. and Gregory of Nyssa who was one of Basil's younger brothers. BasI! hved from about 330 to 379; Gregory of Nazianzus froni 329 to 389; and Gregory of Nyssa from about 335 to about 395. These three writers, though each differs clearly from the others in some respects, all have certain features in common, apart from the fact that they were bound together by blood relationship or by close fnendshlp. They were together decisively influential in bringing about. the final fO.rm of the doctr~ne of the Trinity and thereby resolvmg the conflict about the Chnstlan doctrine of God which had vexed the Church for fifty years before their day. They all lived in different Circumstances and faced different problems from those which Athanasius had experienced. By their time the theological issues had in some ways narrowed themselves as far as the status of the Son ,:"as concerned. But in another sense they were facing larger questIOns. because their chief concern was the whole Trinitarian doctrine, including the place and status of the Holy Spirit, the mtegral, developed Christian doctrine of God, and not mainly, as it I Strictl~ speaking,. Eusebius of Samosata and AmphiIochius of Iconium were Cappadoclan, theologians (as of course Eunornius, Aerius and Gregory and George

of AI~xan~na we~e also!). But nothing written by Eusebius survives and Amphlloc~lus. whIle he virtuaUy owed his theology to the three great Cappadoclans (and especiaUy to Basil), contributed nothing whatever to their tho,ught, and anyway his remains, such as they are, seem to have been written ma~nly ~fcer 38 I. See the admirable hook by K. Hall Amphilochius von Ikonium which. IS, ,as welJ as a compilation of almost' all our information about AmphdochlUs, a useful account of the theology of the three eminent Cappadocians.

676

. had been with Athanasius, the doctrine of the Son. At the same time it must be realized that though they were successful as no writers before them had been in finding a satisfactory and clearly defmed vocabulary for working with their subject, they were none of them ~ and Basil least of all ~ wedded to a formula nor determined to impose a set form of words which should subsequently be a compulsory text for deciding what was and what was not orthodoxy. There never has been a single formula adopted by the majority of Christians designed to express the doctrine ofthe Trinity, and the Cappadocians never imagined that. there c.ould be one! The Cappadocians all relied on the aid of contemporary philosophy more than had either of the great theologians of the doctrine of the Trinity who had preceded them, Athanasius and Hilary. The subject will be taken up again later in this book. At the moment it is enough to say that though the Cappadocians deride pagan philosophy at times in a manner which was by their time conventional and almost expected among Christians. they are manifestly more Platonist than were Athanasius or Hilary, and their Platonism is rather more than that involved in a general popular Platonic outlook. and even than the Platonism of the Middle Platonists, though they are obviously indebted to that tradition. They had. in fact. inherited a definite tradition of Platonic Christianity from Gregory Theodorus and beyond him from Origen. The conviction that: 'there is nothing created nor subservient in the Trinity nor externally contributed. nor is the Son less than the Father nor the Spirit than the Son'3

was for them almost a native, ancestral tradition. But in addition to this they are indebted at times to Plotinus, either through Porphyry or in some other way. Basil is aware that Plotinus had propounded a doctrine of 'three ultimate realities' (tpliiiv apXlIciiiv U1tOcrtUcrEOlV).4

2The Creed of Constantinople of 381 (C) does not of course set out this doctrine in set terms, and the . Athanasian' Creed, which does, has never been officially adopted by the Eastern Church (and till the Filioque clause is removed from it, never

will bel). 3The quotation is from the Symbolum of Gregory Theodorus (Thaumaturgus), Hahn Symbo/e §I, 253-5, as given by Gregory of Nyssa in his Vita Gregorii 71laumaturgi. Dehnhard calls attention to it, Das Problem 32-3)'. 4See below, p.691.

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

Basil by no means takes over this doctrine unmodified: he would· certainly have refused to accept the term 'ultimate' (apXl1cii'>v) because he believed that there was only one Ultimate Principle (apxlj) in the Godhead. But that a reputable and much respected pagan philosopher had propounded a doctrine of three hypostases was of considerable advantage to theologians who were trying to commend a doctrine of God as three hypostases in one ousia. Though Basil wrote several letters to Athanasius in Alexandria showing the greatest respect for him and Gregory of Nazianzus delivered a eulogy on him after his death, none of the Cappadocian theologians derived their theological tradition directly from him. Their intellectual pedigree stemmed from the school of Basil of Ancyra.1t was with the bishop of Ancyra that Basil of Caesarea paid a visit to the Council of Constantinople at the very end of the year 359 - not greatly to his credit nor profit. The doctrine of'like in respect of ousia' was one which they could accept, or at least take as a startingpoint, and which caused them no uneasiness. They were all ready on occasion to defend the epithet homoousios as applied to the Son, and the two Gregories were ready to apply it to the Spirit, but it was not for them the kind of indispensable slogan which it was, for instance, to Lucifer of Calaris, who did not understand it, or eventually to Athanasius, who did. It was important for the Cappadocians only in as far as it was part of the creed N, and this creed they were always anxious to champion and commend. Again, they were facing different opponents from the theologians whom Athanasius had opposed. They are aware of the arguments of Homoian Arianism, of course, and quite. often set themselves to rebut them. But the Arianism which they regarded as their most dangerous enemy was Neo-Arianism and in particular the teaching ofEunomius. This was partly because Eunomius' influence happened to extend to the parts of the Eastern Church with which the Cappadocians were most in touch, but also because during their lifetime Neo-Arianism wa~ at its most vigorous and presented itself to many acdve minds as the logical, philosophically best-equipped version of the Christian faith.· Athanasius was never required to cope seriously with this particula.r obstacle. Neo-Arianism was in fact a transient phenomenon, but the Cappadocians encountered it in its hey-day. They also had to come to terms with Macedonianism, a refusal to accept the full divinity of the Holy Spirit. This particular idea occupied much of the attention of the Cappadocians and compelled them to explore and develo·p the

doctrine of the Holy Spirit as it had not been investigated before, even by Athanasius. 5 The Cappadocians, however, certainly learnt from Athanasius. They learnt the necessity of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. They learnt to reject even the slightest approach to a subordination of the Son. And they learnt what Athanasius had learnt only by hard experience, the problem oflanguage, the ambiguity of language used about God. They recognize fully and without consternation the analogous nature oflanguage. 6 They were indeed a splendid trio of theologians, bu," part of this splendour derived from the fact that they were standing on the shoulders of their predecessors.

678

679

2.

Basil of Caesarea

It is possible to reconstruct the career of Basil in considerable detail, because we possess not only an account of his life in the form of a eulogy by his friend Gregory ofNazianzus 7 and accounts of parts of his career by his brother Gregory of Nyssa, 8 but more than three hundred and fifty letters of Basil himselfhave been preserved, which throw a flood of light on his intentions and activities. In addition we have some material from the church historians and some from other sources, such as the Letters of Pope Damasus. It is beyond the scope of this work to enter into all the details of Basil's career and into debates among scholars about the precise dates of some of its incidents. 9 5The doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Cappadocians and e1sewhere is treated in the next chapter, 22. 6S ee Hanson Studies in Christian Antiquity cap. 13.

'Ora,io XLIII (37:50411). sCon. Eunom. 1.120--5 (288-9); 127-14.2 (293-6). 9The most recent succinct account is that ofW. D. Hauschild in the article Basilius deT Grosse in the TRE (Bd. 5. 301-13) which contains an extensive bibliography.

-r:he account o~~. Travers Smith in his St. Basil the Great was a useful and, worthy piece ~fwork ~n ItS own day hut is now superseded. The account of Margaret Fox The Life and T,mes oJBasil the Great as Revealed in his Works is stil1 useful. E. Amand de ~endie~a 'Ba~ile de Cesaree et Damase de Rome' is worth consulting. For more d~taded ~IScusslons see Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 169-77, 179-195; Sm~onettl Crisi 405-34; P.]. Fedwick The Church and the Charisma of Leadership in BaSIl oJCaesarea (and especially his Appendix A), and Y. Courtonne Un Temoin du IVe oriental: Saint. Basile et son temps d'apres sa co"espondance. 45-280. G. May proposes rather different dates for some of the events of Basil's career in 'Die Grossen Kappadokier und die staatliche Kirchenpolitik von Valens his Theodosius'

The Cappadocian Theologians The Controversy Resolved

Basil was born in Cappadocian Caesarea of a wealthy land-owning family, one among a large number of children. His family had long been Christians; his grandmother, Macrina, who was largely responsible for his religious education, stood in the tradition of Gregory Theodorus, the great Christian figure of third-century Cappadocia. Basil may have learnt some of his education as a rhetor from his father, who himself had' taught rhetoric before his early death. It was in Caesarea that Basil met Gregory, son of a bishop of Nazianzus in Cappadocia, and became one of his closest friends. He studied rhetoric in Constantinople for a time, and in 350 or 351 he and Gregory went to Athens for further study, where, among others, they made the acquaintance ofJulian, later to be Emperor. About 355 Basil returned to Caesarea and spent a short time teaching rhetoric in his native town. But his thoughts were turning from a secular career to more serious things. In 356 he was baptized by Dianius bishop of Caesarea, and he began to evince a special interest in asceticism. In 356 and 357 he made a tour of monastic sites in Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt, perhaps in the company of his friend Eustathius, later to be bishop ofSebaste. He returned to Caesarea, but in a short time he had left it to start a regime of ascetic life on a family estate at Annesi in Pontus, encouraged by his mother Emilia and his sister Macrina (357--9). In 359 in the train of Basil bishop of Ancyra he went to Constantinople for the council gathering there, and took part, probably with little success, in a debate or debates with Neo-Arians, and then returned to Annesi. He was alienated from Dianius because the latter had signed the Creed of Constantinople in 360. In 36!Gregory joined Basil from N azianzus at Annesi, where together they followed an ascetic mode of life and occupied themselves in compiling an anthology culled from the works of Origen, the Philocalia, which fortunately survives. In 362 Dianius died after being reconciled to Basil and acknowledging his acceptance of a proNicene faith. Basil had returned home a little before this, but returned to Annesi very soon. Eusebius, a lay official unlearned in

theology, was chosen and consecrated bishop of Caesarea. In 364 Basil came back to Caesarea and was ordained presbyter by Eusebius. In the same year, a coolness sprang up between the two and Basil went off to Annesi again. Next year, however, in view of the forthcoming visit of the pro-Arian newly-created Emperor Valens to Caesarea, Eusebius asked Basil to return, and Basil obeyed his summons. Thenceforward until the death ofEusebius in 370 or 371 10 Basil was in Caesarea playing a large part in the administration of the see. On the death of Eusebius, Basil was elected bishop, not without strenuous efforts on his belralfby the bishop of Nazianzus, Gregory's father, and by Basil himself. He thereby became theleader of the proNicene party in the (secular) diocese of Oriens. The rest of his career until his death in 379 was occupied in a strenuous struggle to maintain the pro-Nicene cause, against the violently pro-Arian policy of the Eastern Emperor Valens: the apparently incurable disunity of the Eastern Church, the SUspIcion and apathy of the Western bishops led by Damasus of Rome and fed by the intrigues of Peter, successor of Athanasius from 373 onwards who had early in his reign as archbishop been chased out of Alexandria by Valens and taken refuge with Damasus. Basil was also hampered by his own frequent ill-health. He died before he was fifty. Two events in particular marked the beginning of his episcopate. In 371 or 37211 the Emperor Valens visited Caesarea again. Basil may have expected exile, for Valens' Arian proclivities drove him to take brisk action againstpro-Nicene bishops', Gregory of Nyssa was to be driven out of his see and Eusebius also from his see ofSamosata. The confrontation between the two is described by the two Gregories in dramatic terms with dialogue which would not be out of place in envisaging an encounter between Henry II of England and Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury. In fact the meeting was probably less sensational than this. Basil made no doctrinal concessions and Valens left him in possession of his see. He probably talked to him about a project in which he required Basil's aid. He expected hostilities with the Parthians beyond the Eastern frontier; he suspected that the

322-6, and so does R. Van Dam in 'Emperor, Bishops and Friends in Late Antique Cappadocia·. a paper which is helpful in supplying some of the political background to Basil's career. D. H. Dehnhard Das Problem des Abhiingigkeit des Basi/ius von Plotin

lOThe usually accepted date is 370, but May and Van Dam argue strongly for 371. The evidence that Basil had earlier attended the Council of Lampsacus (364) does not exist; in Ep 22.3-5 (829) he says that Eustathius consulted him before setting out

is an excellent monograph, although it has not the last word on the subject. The

for that Council, but not that B. accompanied him. Eustathius of Sebaste attended the Council ofTyana in 366, but we have no evidence that he took B. with him. I 1 Here again May and Van Dam prefer the later date.

accounts of Basil in the ancient church historians are to be found in Philostorgius HE VIII.II-I3; Socrates HE IV.II and 26; Sozomenus HE VI.IS-I7. 21.1, 2, 26.10; Theodore, HE IV: 19; Jerome De Vir. III. CXVI.

680

681

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Parthian king was intriguing with the king, or the nobles, of the kingdom of Armenia, which lay between the two empires; and he wanted Basil to establish and fill episcopal sees in Armenia, in order to strengthen the influence of the Roman Empire there. The other event was probably not connected with Valens' visit to Caesarea, and may even have taken place before it. This was the division of the province of Cappadocia into two. This affected Basil, as metropolitan of the whole of Cappa do cia, seriously. It would diminish his influence, and consequently perhaps the whole pro-Nicene cause in the area. The bishop of the. most important town in the new province, Tyana, whose name was Anthimus, instantly claimed that he was metropolitan of the new province, and not Basil. Hierarchical amour propre was involved as well as doctrinal considerations. It is as difficult to persuade a bishop to surrender part of his see to another as it is to persuade a dog to part with a bone. Basil, highly indignant at finding his native town and his see reduced in importance by half, responded by establishing as many new sees in the new and in the old provinces as he could in the short time available and staffing them with men who would be loyal to him. He made the town of Nyssa (in Cappadocia prima) an episcopal seat and persuaded his brother Gregory to become bishop of it. He made a new see at Doara (in Cappadocia secunda) and appointed his man (Eulalius) to it. And he even raised a small unimportant place called Sasima to the dignity of a see, and persuaded or bullied his friend Gregory of Nazianzus, against his judgment and will, to become bishop ofit. In his autobiographical poem Gregory later gives a vivid picture of the shortcomings of Sasima. It was a mere post-town, full of flies, dust, government officials and criminals being transported somewhere else, a fluid and unprofitable population. 12 It is wholly unlikely that Valens divided the province simply to spite Basil; he thought the move would be administratively useful. In the summer of 372 Basil set out for Armenia to perform the task which Valens had asked him to undertake there. On this occasion he also met Meletius, who was in exile on his estate in Getasa in Armenia. Meletius was an old friend of Basil's and throughout his career as a bishop Basil was steadfastly loyal to him. He fust spent two days.at Sebaste with his friend Eustathius who was bishop of the place, but was unable to arrange about appointing bishops because of

the opposition of the bishop ofNicopolis, Theodotus. Theodotus, a pro-Nicene, suspected Eustathius' orthodoxy and not long afterwards refused to associate with Basil because of his friendship with Eustathius, even though Basil had in his meeting with Eustathius extracted from him a statement agreeing with the doctrine ofN.!3 Between 372 and 377 Basil engaged in a series of attempts to bring about a move by Western bishops to restore unity and orthodoxy to the East, all without success. Next year, in 373, a scheme for reconciliation between Basil, Eustathius and Theodotus engineered by Meletius fell through. Eustathius had repudiated his agreement of the year before, and Basil distrusted the sincerity of Theodotus. The same year saw Amphilochius, a protege of Basil, installed as bishop of !conium. In 374 Eusebius of Samosata was driven into exile by the agents of Valens, and in the year following the same fate befell Gregory of Nyssa. Most of Basil's plans and policy now began to disintegrate. In 374 Eustathius unexpectedly turned against Basil and all he stood for. Eustathius was indeed an extraordinary person. In his youth he had been notorious for his advocacy of extreme asceticism, almost to the point of Gnosticism. He disapproved, for instance, of Christians marrying. According to Basil he had begun as an Arian. He was ordained presbyter by Hermogenes bishop of Caesarea about 340 and was regarded as belonging to the party ofEusebius of Nicomedia/Constantinople in the capital city. Later he left Constantinople and with it Arianism and became an adherent of the views of Basil of Ancyra. By 358 he had

"De Vita Sua 439-46 (74).

682

13Eustathius' career is summarized by Basil in Epp 244 and 263. and his subsequent behaviour described and deplored. But we must remember that this is a one-sided account, given by a former friend now alienated and embittered. Loefs in his EustatMus von Sebaste strives earnestly to redress the balance. Dorrie, in his De Spiritu Sancto 29-43. has carefully reconstructed the story of the relations between Basil and Eustathius during these years. In 372 he met Eustathius at Sebaste and after two days' discussion had drawn from him his subscription to a document which established his pro-Nicene position on the Son and on the Holy Spirit. Both then set off to Nicopolis to meet Theodotus. but halted and then parted when the news reached them that Theodotus would not welcome them. A little later B. met Meletius on his estate at Getasa in Armenia, and Theodotus was there too. T. was still suspicious ofB. because of his association with E., but informed B. that E. had now repudiated the agreement reached with him at Sebaste. Next year B. contemplated accepting M.·s invitation to COl11e to Nicopolis to take part in a reconciliation between T., B. and E. Because Eusebius of Samosata would not accompany him. because he Was ill. and because he did not trust the sincerity of the parties concerned, B. did not go. Thus collapsed also the plan for appointing Armenian bishops.

68 3

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

become bishop of Sebaste in Armenia and in that capacity attended the council of Ancyra." In the same year he was formally deposed (by Homoian Arians) in favour of Meletius, who was thought to be more inclined to Homoian opinions. But the people of Sebaste had conceived a strong attachment for him; they drove out Meletius (who retired to his original see of Beroea in Syria). But Eustathius suffered deposition again in the general drive against the disciples of Basil of Ancyra eariy in 360. He then went to Rome, the delegate, along with Silvanus of Tarsus and Theophilus ofCastabala, of what might be called the •continuing Homoiousians', where he was welcomed by Pope Liberius and agreed to a pro-Nicene formula submitted to him by the Pope. Armed with this he returned to the East, where a council held at Tyana endorsed the renunciation of the creed of Nice/Constantinople and the acceptance ofN. The council's plans for a larger eirenic council to be held at Tarsus were vetoed by Valens, but Eustathius succeeded at this point in regaining his see of Sebaste. Basil was therefore apparently quite justified in regarding him as on the side of the angels, and, as we have seen, Eustathius had under his influence already signed two satisfactorily pro-Nicene statements. Basil planned in 374 or 375 a gathering of bishops in Cappadocia at which Theodotus ofNicopolis would be reconciled to Eustathius in the presence of bishops of Cappadocia and Armenia. But Eustathius unexpectedly upset all his plans by refusing to attend the proposed meeting and joining his friend Theophilus in his see of Castabala in Cilicia, alleging that Basil was heretical because of his association with Apollinaris of Laodicea." By 375 Eustathius had become the moving spirit of a campaign of slander against Basil, and . had joined the party of the Macedonians, dubbed Pneumatomachi by their opponents, who repudiated the divinity of the Holy Spirit (Basil alleged that Eustathius had returned to his original Arianism). In the same year Theodotus died and Valens' prefect Modestus, who was already conducting a campaign of deposition and exile against the pro-Nicenes, was able to refuse the candidate for the see supported by Basil and instal one put forward by Eustathius (who was now by formal imperial recognition what he had long been in fact, bishop of

Sebaste). The long friendship between the two friends, Basil and Eustathius, foundered in mutual reproaches and the exchange of

14For this council, see above pp. 349-57 . .15For some account of the relations ofBasil and Apollinaris. see below, pp. 695-6.

The negotiations between Basil and Damasus and with him the Western bishops are dealt with in a later chapter. 23. See also n 13 above. For Amphilochius' Council see PG 39:96.

acrimonious correspondence. In 376 Basil had the satisfaction of hearing that a council in

Iconium presided over by Amphilochius had produced a statement supporting N and reflecting Basil's doctrine of the Holy Spirit. In August 378 everything was changed by the disastrous defeat of the Roman army by the Goths at Adrianople with the result that the Emperor Valens disappeared and never was heard of again. Valens had just before his death planned to recall exiled bishops, as he had previously when faced with a crisis. But after Adrianople all exiled bishops returned anyway, including Meletius, Eusebius of Samosata and Gregory of Nyssa. On January 1St 379 Basil died. This bare sketch cannot do justice to Basil's many-sided activity as bishop of Caesarea. He founded hospitals in his see for the sick and for travellers. He encouraged the institution of a type of coenobitic monasticism which is the classic model of Eastern Orthodox monasticism to this day. Some of his letters constitute the basis of the canon law of the Eastern Church. He corresponded with a host of officials, clergy, religious and friends in high and low places. He is now justly recognized as a Doctor of the Church by the Roman Catholic Church and is the bright particular star of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was a man of unusual ability and great selfdiscipline and could often exhibit remarkable tolerance and patience. But he was also a man of imperious temper who did not like being contradicted or thwarted and who tended to use his friends as tools for gaining the ends which his policy demanded rather than people to be valued as friends for their own sake. One of these was, of course, his younger brother Gregory whom he conscripted into becoming bishop of Nyssa in order to support his older brother's plans to retain ecclesiastical power. Basil always underestimated Gregory's worth, though Gregory always looked up to him and respected him.'6 He similarly used his friend Gregory of Nazianzus for his own ends in making him bishop of Sasima. Unlike Basil's brother, Gregory fiercely resented this. He never actually visited his formal see of Sasima, though;t remained as an embarrassment to him for the rest of his life; in his autobiographical poem written after Basil's death he 165ee Basil Epp 100, 190 and 215. and May 'Einige Bemerkungen tiber das Verhaltnis Gregors von Nyssa zu Basilios dem Grossen' in EPEKTASIS, 509-15.

685

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

could still deplore his friend's ruthlessness in personal relations." Basil did not refrain from personal canvass and intrigue to secure his own election as bishop.'. Prestige could speak of Basil's 'usual disregard of other people's views' ,'9 and Emmanuel Amand de Mendieta likened the epistolary confrontation of the equally imperious Damasus and Basil to a battle between two goats, forehead to forehead and horns to homs?O In addition to his Letters21 Basil's surviving work consists of a Commentary on the Hexaemeron,22 his Adversus Eunomium Books 1III,23 his classic treatise De Spiritu Saneto (On the Holy Spirit),2' several Homilies, a little work called De Fid! (On Faith), commentaries on Isaiah and the Psalms which contain little relevant to the subject of this work, and moral and ascetical treatises which are equally remote from our theme,25 and finally a small but valuable discourse called "po,
should be placed relatively early in Basil's episcopal career, and the Commentary on the Hexaemeron late, perhaps even in the last year ofhis life. The DSS was composed in part during 374, and in 375 finished and sent to Amphilochius to whom it is dedicated. It seems wholly likely that a considerable part of it represents the gist of the discussion which took place between Basil and Eustathius in 374. 29 Much print has been expended upon the question whether a small work in homiletic form· to be found at the end of Book V of Adversus Eunomium 30 and headed De Spiritu is from Basil's hand. It is written in a noticeably' more elegant and flowing style than the rest of Book V; the interesting point is that it is full of echoes of passages in Plotinus' Enneads.31 There does not seem to me to be anything in the wo~k positively precluding Basil's authorship. There is one passage in whIch the author may have called the Holy Spirit 'God' (ge6,) but the reading 'divine' (geio,) is possible too. The author speaks of the Spirit 'made like to ~od who sends him forth'32 which is perhaps not quite Basillan. But ItS treatment of the Holy Spirit as uncreated and endowed with every exalted epithet except homoousion and theos is eminently reminiscent ofBasil. We may perhaps regard it tentatively as an early work of his, a trial run for DSS. Near the end of his life, when he was writing a commentary on the openmg words of Genesis, Basil described God thus:

17De Vita Sua 460-3 (76). where he accuses B. of qn.).apxia Qove of power). and 476-85 (76) and Epp 48; see Van Dam 'Emperor, Bishop and Friends' 68-'72. 18As Fedwick reluctantly admits The Church and the Charisma of Leadership 48. 19St. Basil the Great and Apollinaris of Laodjeea, 2. 20'Basil de Cesaree et Damase de Rome' 135-6. 21Edited (with ET) in full by E. I. Deferrariin the Loeb series, and up to Ep 218 by Y. Courtonne (with Fr T) (Bilde ser) much more satisfactorily. "Edited by S. Giet (with Fr T). SC ser. 23PG 29:497--670. Books IV and V are now (with one exception to be mentioned later) almost universally acknowledged to be by a later hand. A good modern edition of this work is long overdue. I have consistently referred to this work as Adversus Eunomium in distinction from Gregory of Nyssa's Contra Eunomium; it would be helpful if others would do the same. 24Ed. B. Pruche (with Fr T) (SC serlo The second edition of 1968 is much the better. It will henceforth be referred to as DSS. 2SThey are all to be found in PG 29-32. 26Ed. F. Boulenger (Bude ser), with Fr T. 27The editors do their best to date them, and Fedwick in Appendix A to his Church and Charisma tries to date as many as possible. 28See also above, p. 618 (and n 83). Kopecek gives a careful analysis of this work. History 362-87.

share reason, deeply-desired beauty, the origin of all existing things, the fountain of life, intellectual light (voepov <pro,) unapproachable

'Blessed nature, unstinting goodness, the object of love for all who

686

WIsdom, he it was who "In the beginning made heaven and earth .. '.33

Father, Son and Holy Spirit are 'uncreated nature, sovereign in rank, 29 ~ su?gesrion origi~ally put forn:ard by Dorrie, and adopted with some modlficatl~n by Pruche In hiS Introductt0I?- to the DSS and more cautiously still by Dehnhard In Das Problem 65-6. The subject of the composition of DSS will be discussed in a later chapter (22). 30PG 29:768-7J. . 31 Or rather from Plotinus as we know him in the Enneads, but whether it reached the ~uthor of De Spiritu from Porphyry's edition of Plotin us, called the Enneads or ?Ot .IS a moot point. Rist in 'Basil's "Neo-Platonism"; its Background and Natu~e'

hIS Platonism and its Christian Heritage, wishes to minimize Basil's debt to Plotinus' denies the work to Basil (191-211) an~ ;wants to giv~ it to Gregory of Nyssa: De~nhard, who has no qualms about BaSil s debt to Plotmus, attributes the work to BaSIl (Das Problem 32-<16). 32De Spiritu 2 (772), tip tK7tf:J.11tOVn abto eetp 6J.10l0UJ.1SVOV. "In Hexaemeron 1.2 (9) [29:96].

10

687

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

constituted as goodness' (it
the Persons of the Trinity is uncreated and incomprehensible (dKat
'because he is sharer of his nature; not created by a fiat, but shining out continuously from his ousia'.

The Holy Spirit is always associated with the Father and the Son, 'possessing everything himself co-substantially in his nature,

goodness, rightness, holiness, life'. 34 In reply to the argument of Eunomius that we are led inevitably to the conciusioIithat God's ousia, being ingenerate, can have nothing to do with generation or that which is generated, Basil replies shortly and sharply that if that were so, then God is not a Father and the Scriptures are false. But if we takeJn 14:19 and 12:45 seriously we can be sure that: 'The character of the prototype is seen in the impression and the knowledge of the archetype comes from the image. '35

God does reveal and communicate himself. He rejects the contention of Eunomius that God's ingenerateness constitutes his ousia. Ingenerateness in God is what Basil calls an epinoia, using it in the sense in which Origen had employed it, meaning 'aspect'. There is no more reason to regard ingenerateness as that which constitutes God as God (expressing, as Eunomius said, his 'being what he is') than to regard other aspects as constitutive, such as his creative activity, his providence, his foreknowledge; in short 'I would myself say that God's ousia is ingenerate. but never that ingenerateness is his ousia'. 36

Basil believes tliat he is teaching in the tradition of Gregory Theodorus of Cappadocia when he says, of the Three Persons of the Trinity' 'their nature is the same and their Godhead one'. 37 Each of 34Homilies

XV.2. 3 (29:465, 468, 469). 'Co-substantially' translates it is a deliberate avoidance of the word homoousios or its cognates. "Ad•. Eunom. l.I7 (SS2).

O'l)vouO'tc.o~&vroc;;

'·Ibid. 1.5 (517-21), 8 (528), II (537). 37~p 210.3. 4. Some heterodox Christians in Neocaesarea had alleged in a letter to Anthlmus ofTyana that Gregory Theodorus had said in his Eahesis Pisteos that the Father and the Son are two in epinoia but one in hypostasis. As this was rank Sabellianism to Basil it caused him great embarrassment. He could only say that Gregory had made this statement 'not while teaching officially (aOYf.la'tuc:ro~) ... but while engaged in controversy' (6:YO>Vlc:rtl1ciO~). ibid. j. In fact it is unlikely that this

688

'From the Father is the Son through whom are all things, along with whom the Spirit is always inseparably conceived (auV81tlVOeitUl) for it is not possible to attain to a concept of the Son unless one is first

enlightened by the Spirit' .39 The Son makes known the Spirit through himself and with himself, and his distinguishing characteristic is thus described: 'He shines as sole only-begotten (1'6vo<; I'0voy&v
And it is the Father's characteristic 'to be Father and to exist as derived from no cause'. But in all other respects the Persons (ltp60"colta) of the Trinity are inseparably united and no object can intrude nor space exist between them. 40 Basil. however, admits that there is a certain order (taS'';) arising out of their possession of the same ousia; the Spirit is third in order and even rank (dSicol'a).41 For the generation of the Son he allows the analogy of light being produced from light, a very old model used first, as far as we know, by Tertullian. The Father is 'ingenerate light', and the Son 'generate light' .42 Earlier in the same work he had suggested the analogy of an art (ttXV1]) being imparted from one mind to another. The giver does not lose but the receiver gains. Yet even here the lapse of time in the process of giving and receiving renders the analogy imperfect. 43 In strong contrast to Eunomius, who has no difficulty in concluding that everybody can very easily know virtually all about God, Basil insists throughout his works that we cannot know God's essence (ousia). We can learn from what he calls Ko'Vi] ~vvo,a (general principles or formula was that of Gregory Theodorus; see Hubner 'Gregor von Nyssa als Verfasser' 468.

"Ibid. 39

)8.).

4.

4°4· Th~ r~ader must note that Basil's doctrine of the Holy Spirit wiU be treated in more detaIl In the next chapter (22).
The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

universally accepted opinion, in this instance} that God exists, but we cannot know what he is. We know God indeed by his effect on us (and of course Basil allows that we know him through the Scriptures and in religious experience). We know his activities (tvepyeiu,) and his works (ltou'l"Utu), and hence we know his character or qualmes (e.g. his goodness). But his ousia is only known to the Son and the Spirit. The divine writers in the Bible only speak of his ousia in metaphors and allegories, describing him as amber (Ezekiel) or fire (Moses and Daniel), in images which taken literally are often contradictory .. To say that he is ingenerate does not tell what he is, but ('if I may use an expression forcing the language') how he is, the mode or modes of his existence. 44 And when Basil has to approach that crux interpretum which sounds like a minute-bell through the whole Arian Controversy, Proverbs 8:22 ('the Lord created me the beginning of his ways'), he goes very cautiously. His arguments are three:

ousia or 'nature' (physis) or 'substratum' ("ltoKel"evov}.49 The reason why Basil in the doxology of the eucharist deliberately used the formula 'Glory to the Father with ("eta + gen.) the Son and with the Holy Spirit' as well as 'Glory to the Father through (lila) the Son in (tv) the Holy Spirit' was, he explains, because

(i) This is the only place in the Bible where the particular expression occurs.

(ii) Proverbs is a book notoriously full of riddles and dark sayings. (iii) Some interpreters say that the Hebrew would be better translated 'possessed me' (tKt1\"ut6 "e) than 'created me' (gKn"" "e)45 Basil's most distinguished contribution towards the resolving of the dispute about the Christian doctrine of God was in his clarification of the vocabulary that had hitherto been used. He can on occasion use hypostasis as an equivalent to ousia, to mean substance. 46 But usually he distinguishes their use in Trinitarian contexts with care. He defmes hypostasis as 'that which presents and circumscribes that which is general and uncircumscribed within any object by means of the peculiarities which are manifested'.47It is necessary to distinguish the hypostases within the Godhead. 48 But much more often Basil uses hypostasis to mean 'Person of the Trinity' as distinguished from 'substance' which is usually expressed as either 44[bid. l.12 (540). 14 (544-5) and 15 (545). 'S[bid. [l.20 (616-7). Cf. Simonetti, Studi 68-9. 46Adv. Eunoni. 1.20 (556) where he takes hyposttJsis'in Heb. 1:3 to mean ousia and again in DSS XX[V.4 (608), DSS 16.38.136 (380), of the substance of all creatures. 47Ep 38.3. ~ to K01V6v te Kat aJrepiypamoy tv tcp ttVl 1tpa.YJ1un atU trov exUPQ1V0JJ6VroV lC)u:o,w,trov 1tUplCJ'tcooa Kat 1ttplypacpoucru. • 8DSS 5.7.80 (272).

it established 'the peculiarity of the hypostases'. and also 'it preserves a special witness of the eternal community (1Co1.Vrovia~) and endless union' (cruva'PEia~).50

But he also explains in what sense he does not use the term hypostasis, a little earlier in the same work: 'Observe, please, in the process of creating (higher powers) the originating cause of all existent things, the Father; the creative (cause)

the Son; the teleological (cause) the Spirit: ... and let no one think that I am saying that there are "three ultimate principles" (tpei, IipXlKIl, 61(0"t';"",, (hypostases», nor that the Son's activiry is imperfect. For there is one ultimate principle (lipx1\) of all existent things, creating through the Son and perfecting in the Spirit'.51 The 'three ultimate principles' form the title of one of the treatises of Plotinus (Enneads V.I), and it is impossible to be blind to the fact that Basil is here directly quoting the Neo-Platonic philosopher, but of course he does so only to differ from him. He also has in mind the Arian claim that the Son compared with the Father is imperfect. It is not surprising that Basil fmds himself embarrassed when he comes to remarking on the anathema of N which forbade anyone to say that the Son is of a different hypostasis or ousia than the Father,52 and it is to his credit that he perceives that this identification of the two is embarrassing. His explanation is unconvincing, but at least he realized that explanation was necessary here. 53 He also has to explain that he does not intend to say (as certain Arians allege) that the Son is 'homoousios in respect of his hypostasis' (as of course was the logical conclusion to be drawn from- N). He may have given this false

49E.g. Hom. XVI.4 (480) 6n:OKttJreVOV. In Ep 159.1 Basil directly says that ousia and physis are synonyms. Cf. Pruche Inttod. to DSS 163 n 5. And for much useful information and comment on B's use of Trinitarian vocabulary see ibid. 177-196. 50DSS 25.59.177 (460): 'peculiarity' translates t&t6tllta.

"Ibid. 16·38.136 (376, 378). 52S ee

above, pp. 163. 167-8 . 5JEp I25.I.

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

impression, he says, by trying to accommodate an explanation of doctrine to simpler souls. 54 The true facts are that:

in the important area of vocabulary Basil's fairly consistent usage dissipated much confusion and pointed the way for understanding and consensus in the future as Athanasius had never quite succeeded in doing. Basil resiles from the idea of speaking as Justin Martyr, Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea had spoken, of 'a second God' (aeUtEpOe; 9EOe;), far less a third! God, he says, cannot be numbered; we cannot treat the distinct hypostases as first, second and third. There are not three gods.· 1 A little later in the same work he declares that we must not imitate the heretics in numbering God, but we can speak of an order among the Persons, first, second and third, without thereby depreciating or subordinating any.·2 He expresses the ·same thought differently in one of his Homilies, where he is perhaps trying to teach popular theology to a relatively unsophisticated audience: he is not, he says

'that relation which the general has to the particular. such a relation has the ousia to the hypostasis'. 55

Here we have encountered an important and controverted point in Basil'stheology. This is not .an isolated instance of his comparing the relation of ,substance' to 'Persons' in the Trinity with the relation of the general to the particular. We have seen it entailed in his defmition of hypostasis quoted above (p.690). Elsewhere he can compare the relation of ousia to hypostasis to that of 'living being' (~roov) to a particular man (tOV aEiva /iv9pcoltov) and apply this distinction directly to the three Persons of the Trinity.5. This apparently 'generic' treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity, suggesting that the three are each particular examples of a 'generic' Godhead, will come up for consideration later. 57 Basil can on occasion use the word prosopon as an alternative to hypostasis: 'For the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son, since as the former is so is the latter and as the latter is so is the former; and in this

(consists) the unity (to fv). According therefore to the peculiarity of the Persons (prosopOn), there is one here and one there; but according

to the community (toIC0Iv6v) of the nature, they both are One' (fV).58 But he can readily use prosopon in the traditional exegetical sense of 'character' or 'part' (almost as in a play) which God or Christ or others were supposed to have assumed and in that part to have spoken in various places in the Bible. 59 This weakened or looser sense of the noun probably led Basil to use it less often than he might have done in spite of the fact that as a substitute for hypostasis it had the advantage of never having been open to confusion with ousia. Basil can also use instead of hypostasis the expression 6ltap~le; ('subsistence') or tpOltOe; Olt6.p~Ecoe; ('mode of subsistence') which was quite clear and much used by his successors.· o We Can therefore see without difficulty that 54lbid. 214.3. 55Ibid. 4. 56Ibid. 236.6. Cf. Ad", Eunom. II.4 (577) which comes dose to the same concept but does not quite reach it. "See below, pp.696-9, 734-'7· "DSS 18.45 (149) [406). "E.g. Hom. in Hexaemeron lX.6 (204-5) [514-(8). ··E.g. Adv. Eun. 2.17 (608); Ep 235-2; DSS 18.46 (408) [(52).

692

'giving two names to one thing indicating the individual aspect (!aiav evvotav) by the title of each ... even if they are two in number yet they are not disjoined in nature; and anyone who says "two" does not introduce separation'. And he goes on to say again that there are not three gods but two prosopa and one phySis (nature). and in fact one

ousia for both (Father and Son) .• 3 But he insists at the same time that the Father is the sole origin (arche) or source (pege) or root (pi~a)64 Basil emerged from a background, not of the strongly pro-Nicene theology of Athanasius, but of the school of Basil of Ancyra and beyond him, as we have seen, of Gregory Theodorus and of Origen. It is not therefore surprising to find that he does not treat homoousios as an indispensable watchword. He does not make it a prominent part of his defence of N against Eunomius. Even as late as in the DSS he can say of the Son: 'If he remains unalterable in respect of ousia, he will also remain unchangeable in respect of power'. 65 without applying homoousios, as 61DSS 18·44. 4S (148, 149) [402--6]; part of this has already been quoted; see above n 58. 62lbid. 18.47 (153) [414]. According to Pruche, in [DC, the reference to 'heretics' is a covert hit at Plotinus. But it could simply signify pagan polytheism. 63 Hom. XXIV.3 (604, 605). "DSS 16.38 (136) [378) (arehe) 3S quoted above, p.691, Hom. XXlV.4 [60S) (areloe) [609) (rhiza and pege). 65DSS 8.19 (104) [J(6).

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

the situation might be thought to call for. In one of his letters he says that in his own view 'like in respect of ousia' (OJ.lotO~ Kat' ooaiav the slogan of the party of Basil of Ancyra) was an acceptable formula, provided that the word 'unalterably' (ci"apa~M"tro<;) was added to it, for then it would be equivalent to homoousios 'according to the proper interpretation of homoousios·. but that if 'unalterably' is omitted. then the phrase becomes suspect and susceptible of an unorthodox interpretation. Basil himself prefers homoousios. 66 Basil has moved away from but has not completely repudiated his origins. What he means by 'a proper interpretation of homoousios' is explained when in another letter he says that it is arrogant to refuse to assent to the decision of the fathers (i.e. to N) and object to homoousion, but that it is not blameworthy to hesitate over a term which has been 'attacked by other (orthodox) people. Here he is referring to the Council of Antioch of 268, and incidentally betraying the fact that that Council did repudiate the word homoousios. 67 Those who met at Antioch. says Basil, I

'attacked the word as not satisfactory, for they said that the word homoousios produced an impression of a (generic) substance (ousja) and things deriving from it, so that substance once divided supplied the epithet "consubstantial" for the parrs into which it had been divided'. But this cannot apply to God, for no substance can be perceived prior

to the Father and the Son nor underlying them. 6 ' Basil goes on to defend the application ofhomoousios to the Son (as we shall see, he never applies this term to the Holy Spirit): 'things which are on the same level (cio&A.<pa) with each other are not called consubstantial (6~006(),la) as some people have thought, but when the cause and that which has its subsistence (G"ap~lV) from the cause are by origin consubstantial. '69

of the same nature they are called

And he goes on to introduce another argument in favour of

homoousios: 'this expression (homoousios) also corrects the fault of Sabellius for it excludes identity of Person (hypostasis) and introduces the concept of

66Ep 9.3. This is the letter in which B. criticizes the theology of Dionysius of Alexandria. See above, PP.77-8, 191-3. 67S ee above, PP.70-'12. 68Ep 52.1. 69 2 .

the Persons (prosopon) intact, for nothing is consubstantial with itself. '70

It will be perceived that Basil has grasped and reproduced the 'derivative' sense which Athanasius tended to attach to the word homoousios as applied to the Son.71 Considerable light is thrown on Basil's ideas about the relation of the ousia of the Son to that of the Father if we glance for a moment upon his correspondence with Apollinaris. 72 This consists of Letters 361 and 363 (Basil to Apollinaris), 362 and 364 (Apollinaris to Basil). Doubt has in the past been cast upon the authenticity of this exchange ofletters, pardy because it was thought hurtful of Basil's reputation that he should have corresponded in a friendly manner with and even asked for advice on theological matters from someone who later was branded as a heretic. But the work of G. L. Prestige and of H. de Riedmatten has made-it almost impossible to regard these letters as a forgery, so exactly do they fit the historical situation between 360 and 7°3· 71See above, pp. 441, 443, 648. 72ft is of course available in the Epp edited by Deferrari, but is (as de Riedmatten observed) badly edited there, and is better read as edited by de Riedmatten in the article referred to below. Essential reading on the subject is G. L. Prestige St. Basil the Great and Apollinaris of Laodicea (ed. H. Chadwick), H. de Riedmatten 'La Correspondance entre Basile de Cesan~e et Apollinaire de Laodicee', and K. Woolcombe's review of Prestige's work in the Journal of Theological Studies (see bibliography). When Eustathius finally broke with Basil in 375 he reproached him with his previous association with ApoUinaris and in a document called 'The Letter to Aziza' circulated a statement purporting to come from Apollinaris of what Eustathius regarded as a Sabellian character. He never directly said that this document was composed or accepted by Basil. He never went further than alleging, in the manner ofall witch-hunters, guilt by association. The allegedly incriminating document. however, is extant; Prestige, who edited it in his posthumous work, called it 'The Eustachian document'. It is not Sabellian, though at points it comes fairly close to Sabellianism, and it remarkably resembles the doctrine conveyed in A's second letter to Basil (Ep 364). It is also very like a document quoted by Basil in his Ep 129 and by him attributed to Eustathius who was apparently circulating it as app~oved by Apollinaris, Basil's friend. The only serious difficulty in accepting this correspondence as genuine is that Basil in defending himself against Eustathius' smear campaign admitted (though reluctantly and deviously) that he had corresponded with A, but said that this had taken place twenty years before (i.e. before 375) and when they were both laymen. The extant correspondence could not possibly have been as early as that. We may conjecture that Basil is referring to an earlier lost exchange of letters (which still if the extant correspondence is genuine makes out B. to be at the very least disingenuous) or that his strong desire to disavow the connection caused his memory to fail him badly, or, more simply, that he was misrepresenting the true state of affairs.

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

364. The significance of the acceptance of the authenticity of these documents lies in the fact that they show us that on two occaSIOns (probably early in 360 and late in 363) Basil consulted Apollinaris about the wisdom of accepting the homoousios as applIed to the Son, and received from him two letters (probably soon after the respective dates of Basil's two letters) firmly advocating an acceptance of homoousios in a sense which clearly is very little different from that of Athanasius, certainly not at all in a sense which would fit well with the concept of 'like according to ousia' (OI'OlO, Kat:ou"iav) nor homoiousios. IUs a very likely conclusion to draw that It was 10 fact Apollinaris who effected Basil's transition from being a follower of Basil of Ancyra, who taught 'like in respect of ousia' and repudiated homoousios, to being a whole-hearted champion ofN and acceptmg homoousios. But in what sense did Basil accept homoousios? Harnack in his History of Dogma argued that Basil and all the Cappadocians interpreted homoousios only in a 'generic' sense, that is to say that It

in being greater or less is not identical (because each remains within

was a disguised form ofHomoiousianism, that unity of substance was

turned into equality of substance. Ousia, he said, came to mean something half-way between 'Person' and 'attribute'. This was not the sort of unity in the Godhead which Athanasius had envisaged and though he tolerated it he never completely accepted it, and the West was for long suspicious ofit. Harnack defines Basil's solution as 'one divine substance in three subjects'. The Father becomes the source (pege), ultimate principle (arehe) and cause of the Godhead, so that the unity rests in him and not in the consubstantiality of the Three. 73 In his first letter to Apollinaris (361) Basil, after dismissing the usual hostile Arian interpretations of homoousios as not accepted by him, gives his own interpretation of it: 'We have assumed that whatever ousia is hypothetically taken to be the Father's, that certainly must also be taken to be the Son's. Therefore if anyone were to say that the Father's ousia is intellectual

light, eternal, ingenerate, he will say that the ousia of the Onlybegotten is intellectual light. eternal, generate. 74 It seems to me that

for such a concept the expression 'unalterably like' (.htapa1.AclKtOl, 61'0100) fits better than homoousion. For light which has nO difference

of Dogma IV.8o--89. quotation from 85-6· 74Reading.ytVVllt6v from de Riedmatten's text (op. cit. 205) for Deferrari's &'y6vVlltOV. 7JHistory

the peculiar limits (1tEplypaqni) of its ousia), but could, I think, rightly be described as "like unalterably-according to ousia".'75 Manifestly at this stage Basil did not think that the Father and the Son had the same ousia. Later, when he had accepted homoousios as a proper term to apply to the Son, he still argued that it was preferable because it actually excluded identity of hypostases.'· This, with the instances which we have already seen in which Basil compared the relation of hypostasis to ousia in the Godhead to tha~ of particular to general, or of a man to 'living beings', forms the strongest argument for Harnack's hypothesis, as far as Basil is concerned." Counter-arguments have been advanced by severai scholars, the most elaborate of 'which have perhaps been those of BethuneBaker'· and Ritter.'· Bethune-Baker's account of the antecedents of the homoousion of N was not altogether satisfactory,·o but he made some good points in his monograph, the most important of which is that Basil and the other Cappadocians used 'nature' (Physis) to mean 'sum of characteristics or attributes', which could be shared in a 'generic' sense, but that ousia for them meant real substantive being, which could not be repeated .• I But as Basil quite often uses physis asa 75We have already seen Basil comparing this term to homoousios in his Ep 9, above, pp.693-4. Bethune-Baker translated what I (following Deferrari) have rendered as 'hypothetically' (lCa9' \m69tO'lv) as 'fundamentally' (The Meaning oj

Homoousios 41). 76See above, pp.694-5. 77The appeal to Tertullian's una substantia Ires personae to support this argument is far-fetched. There is no evidence that any of the Cappadocians had read TertuUian nor anyone reproducing his thought. The chief supporters ofHamack's theory are Loofs and Gwatkin. according to Bethune-Baker (The Meaning oj Homoousios 4), but Kopecek (History 381) accepts it. Ritter (Das Konzil27o-2) traces it to Zahn's book on Marcellus of Ancyra. The other chief argument upon which the favourers of this theory relied was that thetK'tii~ouO'ia~ ofN was removed in C, presumably to accommodate this 'generic' view. But there are other explanations of this omission, and anyway all the evidence seems to show that C was regarded at the time of its composition not as a cancellation of N but a supplement to it. All proNicenes would consequently regard themselves as committed to the expression tK tij<; ooO'i~, whether C mentioned it or not.

78Tlle Meaning oj Homoousios. 79Das Konzil 27<>-93. See also F. Lebon 'Le sort du "consubstantiel" Niceen', who makes it dear that in most of his writings B. envisaged only one ousia in the Godhead, but who does not refer to the Apollinarian correspondence. 80S ee above, pp. 190-202 . . SlOp. cit. 49-57.

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadacian Theolagians

synonym for ousia (and Bethune-Baker admits this) his argument is weakened. One of Ritter's most important points is that the formula adopted by Basil 'one ousia, three hypostases' was not derived from the school ofBasil of Ancyra. It was not a formula designed to make a 'Homoiousian' account of the Trinity acceptable to Athanasian proNicenes, because the Homoiousians did not coin it nor use it. Its nearest ancestor (but even ,then not a direct one) is the Tomus ad Antiachenas. In his twenty-fourth Hamily, which is an example of his attempting to explain difficult theological points to a popular audience, Bas\! says quite explicitly that though there are different Persons (prasapa) there is only one ausia for both Father and Son (and one physis, for that matter).82 And in the DSS he disruisses the idea that the distinction between the Godhead and the Persons is that between an abstract essence, such as humanity, and its concrete manifestations, such as man, so that the Holy Spirit could be regarded as a sub-class within the Godhead. 83 Pruche believes that Basil here explicitly rejected the idea of God's ausia as Aristotle's second ausia, i.e. a general existent, capable of being divided into concrete subjects, and by ausia meant 'I'essence concrete de Dieu, telle qu'elle existe et telle qU'elle ne souffre pas aucune disparite entre Ie Pere et Ie Fils'. That ausia had so many meanings troubled Basil, and this is why he so often used physis instead of ausia. 84 Two final points should be considered in this difficult question. Basil reproduced the 'derivative' meauing which Athanasius had attached to hamaausias, and Basil showed himself reluctant to apply hamaausias to the Holy Spirit. This reluctance may not have been a purely diplomatic one. Hamaausias was a' word which applied particularly to the relation of the Son to the Father (though, as we shall see, Athanasius could apply it occasionally to the Spirit). It is a priori unlikely that holding these views Basil would have been ready to indulge in a wholly 'generic' view of the Trinity. Harnack cannot be said to have proved his far-reaching theory. But Bethune-Baker cannot be said to have disproved it either. Basil did not consistently follow out the view which he sketched in Ep 261 nor his unfortunate analogy of general and particular for the relation of the hypastases to

the ausia. But neither did he reach the idea of God attributed to him by Prestige: 'Regarded externally as possessing distinctive features and mutual relations, God is three objects. Regarded internally as expressing a

single unique reality, God is one object'." We need not be surprised ifhe was not entirely consistent. He was in a sense a pioneer in theology. Though he came from what might be called an 'Homoiousian' background, he had never been an Arian;86 his intellectual roots lay in Gregory Theodorus and in a modified version ofOrigen's theology. Faced with the task of coping with the doctrine ofEunomius at a period when few could effectively answer him, and later with the unexpected phenomenon of a party which apparently renounced Arianism but refused to take the logical step of extending divinity from the Son to the Holy Spirit, Basil produced a doctrine of God as a single ausia with three distinct sets of recognizable proprieties or peculiarities (yvOlp,,,,"cai lIh6'TJ'"<; (Adv. Eunam. Ii.28 (637)), each set forming an authentically existing hypastasis, the whole bound together inseparably in a common ausia or nature, no hypastasis being subordinate to or less than the others, but the Second and Third deriving from the First as their source or ultimate principle. It was well designed to bring about theological consensus. It was open to modification and refmement by the other two of the Cappodocian trio. In Basil's lifetime no such consensus appeared, but shortly after his untimely death the fruits of his work were gathered.

3. Gregory of Nazianzus Our sources for the life of Gregory of Nazianzus are his own works, especially his long autobiographical poem known as De Vita Sua,87 85Basil ofCaesarea and Apollinaris ofLaodicea 54 n 4 to the ET. For Basil's hesitation in applying Izomoousios to the Spirit, cr. W. Moner, 'Macedonius, Macedonianer' lIS·

"Hom. XXIV.3 (605). 8J DSS

17

and especially 41-43

84Ibid. Introd.

181-2,

quotation

86He reminds Eustathius reproachfully of this Ep 223.4.5 (828-9). 87Edited, with German tr., by C.Jungck (1974), but also to be found in PG 37. The lines are the same in Migne and Jungck. I give the page ofJungck's edition in round brackets. Most ofGregory's works, and some pseudo--Gregoriana are to be

(394-8). lSI.

Lebon also believes that the Cappadocians

gave a Platonic and not an Aristotelian sense to ousia. For a further discussion of the meaning of ousia in Basil, see below Pp.734--'7.

found in PG 35-38.

J

'

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

his Orations,.· and his Letters,·9 the letters of Basil his friend, the ecclesiastical historians, and Jerome in his De Viris IlIustribus.Jerome had been a pupil or hearer of Gregory in Constantinople from 379 to 380 till the end of Gregory's stay in that city. Though he intensely disliked Meletius, the friend and ally of Basil and to a lesser degree of Gregory, he warmly approved of Gregory and described him as 'my teacher, and one from whom I learnt as he expounded Scripture'."o Philostorgius, whose theological views differed entirely from Gregory's, described him and Basil as able champions of the homoousion, widely learned men, and outstandingly good writers."' Rufinus (whose translation into Latin of some of Gregory's Orations survives) described Basil and Gregory thus: .

(when he left the capital city for ever). His Letters were written at all periods of his career, perhaps a third of them after 381. His poetry dates mainly from his later life. The important De Vita Sua was written in 382. Gregory was born in the year 329 or 330 at Arianzus, an estate belonging to his father, who was at the time bishop of Nazianzus, 94 and who was also called Gregory. His mother's name was Nonna. His younger brother was Caesarius, a man of brilliant promise and ability, particularly in medicine, whose promising career in the imperial civil. service was cut short by an early death. Gregory received his elementary education in Nazianzlls, his secondary education in Cappadocian Caesarea; he started the third stage of his education by studying oratory under the rhetor Thespasius in Palestinian Caesarea (when Akakius was bishop and Euzoius one of his fellow-pupils), and then spent a short time in Alexandria, and next (c. 350) went to Athens where he spent nearly ten years studying mainly rhetoric but also some philosophy under the pagan Himerius and the Christian Prohaeresius (Socrates HE IV.26). Here he met Basil, if he had not met him already, and became his close friend. Whether he underwent any Neo-Platonic influences in Athen.s is much debated. The question will be discussed later. 95 When Basil left to begin his monastic regime about 356, Gregory did not accompany him, but in 358 or 359 he returned to Cappadocia with Caesarius. He did a little teaching of rhetoric (for which he was admirably qualified) in Nazianzus, but, as in the case of Basil, his thoughts soon turned to a more spiritual vocation. He was baptised, and between 359 and 362 he made some visits to Basil's monastic establishment at Annesi, but his attempts to join his friend in the ascetic life never lasted long. He found the life too strenuous and rigorous. In 361 his

'Both on leaving the university were in demand for the profession of

ThetoT. And Basil spent his time splendidly fulfilling this task, but Gregory his in more splendidly spurning it'. 92

In fact Gregory's Orations and his Letters and his poetry constitute all that has come down to us of his works. If he wrote any commentaries, they have not survived. 93 His Orations are distributed in date between at latest 361 (probable date of his priesting) and 381 S8A,J. Mason edited the 'Five Theological Orations' (27-31 in Migne) in 1899;). Bernardi edited nos. 1-3 and 4-5 between 1978.and 1953;J. Massay nos. 20-26 in 1980/81 and P. Gallay nos. 27-31 in 1978; these last three editions published in the SC series. 89Edited by P. GaUay in 1964 (Bude ser). 90De Vir. Ill. CXVIJ (praeceptor meus et quo Scrip/uras explorante didici) see also CXXVIII. He caned Meletius 'the spawn of the Arians' (proles Arianorum, Ep. 15.2, 3). Paulinus had priested Jerome. 91 HE VIII. II and IIa. 92HE XI.9 ambo de auditoriis digress; ad profitendam rhetoricam rogabantur, quod opus magnifice quidem implebat Basilius, Gregorius vero magnificentius contemnebat. This is a fine epigram, but not altogether accurate. Gregory had a deservedly wider reputation as an orator than Basil, and practised the art more deliberately. 93The determination of the manuscripts of Gregory's work and of the authenticity of the works ascribed to him constitutes so difficult a task that no major modenl series has yet produced an his work. He has not been edited for GCS. bformation about manuscripts, editions and works can be had in F. Lefherz Studien zur Gregor von Nazianz (which curiously does not appear in Mossay's article in TRE), in F. TrisogJio's Grigorio v6n Nazianzo (cap VII 'Attribuzioni e Autentica'), and in the article 'Gregor von Nazianz' by J. Mossay in TRE Bd 14, I64-'7j. The complicated state of MSS and works does not mean that it is impossible to reconstruct either Gregory's life or his work. It is the marginal works only which are affected; aU agree in recognizing as authentic the main bulk of the literature attributed to him.

700

94Scholars in the past have been painfully anxious to place Gregory's birth earlier than this to avoid the (to them) embarrassing necessity of admitting that Gregory senior as a bishop was not only married but exercised his conjugal rights while a bishop: Benoit argues phrenetically (16 n 1 and 765-'71) for an early date. Gwatkin (Ae 153) opts for 325; Mossay (164-5) is curiously attracted by Suidas' date of 300 (which entails concluding that G. did all his best work at the age of about 8o!), but finaIJy decides for 329/30. Rosemary Ruether's Gregory of Nazianzus (1969) is the best recent account of G. 's career. A. Benoit Saint Gregoire de Nazianze (1876, repr. 1973) is fulsome, one-sided and uncritical, but has the merit offollowing G.'s career almost from year to year. J. Mossay art. 'Gregor von Nazianz' in TRE Bd. 14, 164-'73, is succinct and useful. See also Trisoglio Grigorio de Nazianzo 7-10 (Biografia). 9SSee below, pp.867-8.

701

The Cappodocian Theologians

The Controversy Resolved

father ordained him presbyter suddenly, without prep~tation, and rather against his will. He would have preferred a life of qUiet contemplation and study to that of active ministry. 'I was hurt by this arbitrary act', he says.9. In the year 371 (or 370, accordmg to how we date Basil's career) he was involved in the great campaign to have Basil elected bishop of Caesarea. Basil, he says, enticed himto come to Caesarea on the pretext that he was ill and near death, but m fact all . th e campaign. . 97 G regory soon he wanted was Gregory's support m returned home, disgruntled; though he wrote letters to. vanous people in suppprt of Basil, he refused to be pres.ent at the election itself and it was not till the end of the year that the nft between friends was healed. In 372 Basil by exerting great moral pressure persuaded Gregory, against his will and judgment, to allow himself to be c?nsecrated bishop of Sasima. The ceremony was performed m Nazlanzus and thereafter Gregory never visited Sasima. The town was n~ doubt as unattractive as Gregory painted it, but it occupied a strategic position between the old province of Cappa do cia and the new, commanding a pass through the mountains which mule-trains, tax-collectors and other officials had to thread, and it was liable to be raided from the mountains too. Gregory refused to be dragged into the dispute between Basil and Anthimus. He rejected overtureS from Anthlmus and tried to mediate between him and Basil. Finally in characteristic fashion he ran away to some eremetical retreat in mountain country and was only with difficulty persuaded (probably in the year 373) to return home in order to assist his aged father With hiS episcopal duties.98 In 374 Gregory senior died and his death was followed shortly by that of his wife Nonna. Gregory now felt h!mselffree.of episcopal obligations. He tried to persuade the authontles to appomt another bishop of Nazianzus. They failed to do so, and the people of Nazianzus pressed him to stay as their bishop. But he refused, and left the place altogether for the monastery of St. Thecla in Seleucia in 96De Vita Sua line 345 (70) fji.:YT]O'Q"tij wpavvllh. He places his priesting in the reign of a persecutor (De V.S. 338-50 (70) Ep 8); this is more likely to indicate Valens than Julian.

Cilicia, and there remained for four years (374-S).99 Gregory's career varied between a readiness to undertake onerous public office and a nervous refusal of it. One might almost describe him in the words which Winston Churchill applied to T. E. Lawrence as 'backing into the limelight'. Early in 379, by which time the reign of Valens was over and prospects were much brighter for the pro-Nicenes, he responded to a call to come to Constantinople and preach the pro-Nicene faith in a private house (the Arians having possession of all the churches in that city) which was later made into a little church and called the Anastasia (De V.S. 583-606 (82». Here he developed and expanded his full oratorial powers on behalf of the cause which he championed. Here he delivered the -famous Five Theological Orations. He had several vicissitudes. At one point he was attacked by a furious hostile mob. loo -For a period he was taken in by a remarkable ecclesiastical confidence man called Maximus, a plausible fraud who first gained Gregory's warm friendship and finally, backed by the agents of the eternally intriguing Peter of Alexandria, attempted to have himself consecrated bishop of Constantinople in competition with Gregory.IOI The eloquence of one of the great masters of rhetoric of the age and the lucid and cogent arguments which he advanced won for Gregory not only a great reputation but also a continually increasing number of adherents to the Nicene Creed. Meanwhile events affecting the government of the Roman Empire had moved fast. 102 Theodosius, on acceding to the imperial throne of the East, has soon declared himseIfunequivocaJly in favour of the pro-Nicene cause. Meletius had returned to Antioch and had been recognized by the great majority of both former Homoiousians 99De Vita Sua 518-44 (78-80); 545-{;0 (80). '''Epp 77 and 28; De V.S. 1053-'73 (104. 106). 10IDe V.S. 745-1055 (90--104); Orat. XXV (a fulsome eulogy of Maxirnus); XXVI (a searing denuQ.ciation orhim). Maximus first tried to win Theodosius to his support in Thessalonica. but in vain. He then returned to his puppet-master in Alexandria, but when Peter saw that Maximus' credentials and claims would not be generally accepted he dropped him. He next tried Damasus in Rome, but Damasus

Sasima and had there met resistance from the armed retainers of Anthimus and had been involved in a scuffle: Basil Ep 47; Gregory De V.S. 447-501 (76, 78). Nazianzus itself was in the new province. Cappadocia Secunda.

was too wary to be taken in by him. Ambrose, however, for some considerable time regarded him as the Catholic bishop of Constantinople. Maximus ended in discredited obscurity in Italy, an ecclesiastical Perkin Warbeck. See Ritter Konzil von Constantinople SO-52; Benoit op. cit. 477-8. I02For a more detailed account of the results of the accession of Theodosius and the course of the Council of Constantinople of 38 It see cap. 23.

702

70 3

97Gregory 98A

Ep

40.

. .

little before this series of incidents Basil and Gregory had together

VISIted

The Controversy Resolved The Cappadocian Theologians

and original pro-Nicenes as the legitimate bishop of that see and had moved into the official residence of the bishop. Soon afterwards Theodosius deprived the Ariaos· of every place of worship in the city,'03 and summoned a .council to the capital city, which was primarily to include the Eastern churches, without the Egyptians, but was later to comprise the bishop of Alexandria (now Timothy, Peter having died), his suffragans, and the bishop of Thessalonica (Acholius), who regarded himself as the representative of the bishop of Rome. One of the first acts of the council was to denounce Maximus and. declare Gregory Catholic bishop of Constantinople. The fact that he had been de iure bishop of Sasima and de Jacto bishop of Nazianz us was ignored. After all, the first president of the council, Meletius, had a varied history of translations from see to see (Beroea, Sebaste, Antioch) behind him. The subject of what precisely was the order of events at the council will be considered later. Enough to say that when Meletius died suddenly Gregory, bishop of the city where the council was taking place, became president of the council; that he disagreed strongly with the decision of the bishops present to choose Flavian, a faithful pro-Nicene layman and later presbyter of the continuing Eustathian or Paulinian group, as bishop of Antioch, and not Paulinus, and that when, at Theodosius' invitation, the Egyptian bishops and Acholius of Thessalonica arrived they at once began questioning everything that the council had already done and impugning the right of Gregory to be bishop of Constantinople on the grounds that his appointment broke canon 15 of the Council of Nicaea against bishops moving from one see to another. Finally Gregory became so much exasperated with the difficulty of controlling the council and the personal opposition which he was encountering at it that he persuaded the Emperor to agree to his resigning the see of the capital city, delivered a tremendous valedictory oration in the church of the Apostles, and in the summer of 381 retired to Nazianzus, never again to return to l03Gregory gives a vivid description, De V.S. 1074-1112 (106,108). ofa great crowd attending his enthroning on a late summer evening. Theodosius cannot have been present because he did not enter Constantinople till November 380, and by the late summer of 38 I Gregory had left the capital for good. In his will (pG 37:289-96), which gives every sign of being authentic and which he made on May 31st 381, he twice describes himself as 'bishop of the Catholic Church in the city of ~onstantinople·. He had now ceased to regard himself as an unofficial, stop-gap

bIShop.

Constantinople. 100 His resignation was accepted by the council with an unseemly promptness, as he complains. 105 Gregory reckoned that he had aroused dislike because of his uncompromising refusal to play the part of a wordly, rich prelate, rejoicing in the pomp and circumstance attached to his see and happy to engage in ecclesiastical intrigue. There may well be some truth in this, but it is also likely that the fathers of the council found him a most unsuitable chairman who lacked any diplomatic skill, differed bitterly from the majority on some lmportant pOlOts, and was rather a liability than an asset. He had left the city a\ the end of June. He spent the rest of his life in or near Nazianzus. The see of N azianzus had ~ot been filled, and for a year he acted· as its bishop. Durmg that perIOd, while he was away attending a spa for his health, a group of Apollinarians occupied his· church and consecrated a bishop for the see. Gregory did not hesitate to call upon the secular authodty to use soldiers in order to eject them. 100 But after a year of this kmd of work he declared that it was too much for his health and nerves, and insisted upon retiring (383). On this occasion he persuaded the bishop ofTyana, his metropolitan, to take steps to fill the see and his cousin Eulalius, not the bishop of Doara but one who was already a chorepiscopus under the bishop of Nazianzus succeeded hi~ ..'07 He spent the rest of his life in retirement, mainly;t Arianzus, ~nung poems and letters, acting as spiritual counsellor and assisting hlsfnends and relations in various ways. He died in either 389 or 390 . Gregor? of Nazianzus was a man whose personality was complex and volaule. He behaved for part of his career like one conscious of great powers and of a great vocation, one who was a fitting compamon of the other two great Cappadocians. But he had an extraordinary incapacity to face crises when they occurred in his career, as they occur in all careers. During the crisis caused by the audacIOus attempt of Maximu, to supplant him as bishop of 104Socrates HE V.); Sozomenus HE VII. 7; Theodoret HE V. 7; Gregory De V.S. 1546--1855 (128-44); Orat. XLII. l05De V.S. O).1(l)t; 160' 010« 1t'AEiov ii KaAOOt; txei lilpvro t£'tillllJ.1' £1J1C6lro O1}Valv60'£1 1868--9 (144). . , 106G regory EPP 13 1- 1)2, 135. 136, 138, 139; also 152, 153. 182. It is in Ep 125 that

he ~sks.the prefect Olympius for aid against the Apol1inarians; c£ Epp 202. Earlier, whJle In Constantinople, he had asked the government to outlaw Arianism. Tolerance, w,as excellent when the pro-Nicenes were not in power, but only then. See May DIe Grosser Kappadokier' 332. 107Epp 157 and 182.

705

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

Constantinople, Gregory tells us that at first he thought of flight. lOS He was iII (it is wholly likely that the illness was induced by nervous tension). But his friends persuaded him that it was enough to retire to a place near the city and return after a few days. But on almost every other critical occasion he ran away. When he found that Basil expected him to canvass vigorously for his election as bishop of Caesarea; when his aged father had to face a schism in his see of those who disapproved of his views as being too Homoiousian, his reaction was to run away. 100 When he had been consecrated bishop of Sasima; when. the people of Nazianzus wanted him to be bishop of their town on his father's death; and finally when he was faced with the double demand of acting both as bishop of Constantinople and president olthe council meeting in that city, he took refuge in flight. Those who were anxious to see an effective and distinguished bishop of the capital city (which his successor in that office certainly was not) might well have flung at him the taunt which Dante flung at Pope Celestine V:

as a 'dignified popularizer'. 110 Danielou once suggested that 'He has something like a contempt for the dull technical uniform of the Biblical commentators and polemical theologians' .111 And indeed we cannot possibly admire him in one or two of his rhetorical enterprises, as when in a eulogy on Cyprian of Carthage he confuses him with another and largely legendary Cyprian, or when, in retreat from the schism at Nazianzus which he has left his father to face, he composes two bitter and grossly unjust invectives on the recently dead Emperor Julian, in one of them (IV.3) lauding with adulatory commendatio!, the Christian Emperor Constantius, a figure whom in a later Oration (XXV) he was to criticize freely. 112 But in justice to Gregory of Nazianus it must he allowed that he was more than just a competent theologian. He had his own kind of brilliance, oflucidity and offorce, though he was not as original and as much of a pioneer, perhaps, as were Basil and his brother. And it is quite incorrect to imagine that he was not sincere in his theological views. Trisoglio in a long essayl13 has shown how entirely Gregory was dedicated to the task of teaching and propagating the full doctrine of the Trinity as he understood it. 'In Gregorio', he says, 'Ia theologia risplende' .114 The lapse of time shows no variation in his attachment to the Trinity; only vicissitudes bring a more melancholy emotion to his language in championing the doctrine." 5 It is no doubt significant that though he gave no more orations, theological or other, once he had turned his back on Constantinople for ever, he continued to pursue theological themes in much of the poetry whose composition occupied his leisure for the remaining period of his life. 116 Gregory devotes most of his Second Theological Oration (Orat. XXVIII) to the incomprehensibility of God. We cannot know 'his

'che feee per viltade il gran rifiuto·.

In short as a defender of a great theological cause he suffered from the defect of not being completely reliable. Even though he gave himself the advantage which was very rare in the ancient world of leaving behind him an autobiography, we cannot acquit him of pusillanimity. He was undoubtedly a great exponent of that art which was in his day admired almost above any other, rhetoric. He abandoned early the conventional themes of ancient rhetoric, but he never sacrificed his skill, no matter what religious or ecclesiastical subject he was pursuing, any more than Augustine did in the next generation. His prose is rich, glittering, full of colour and interest and variety. He has at his fingers' ends every resource which a contemporary writer could command; the prose of Basil and of Basil's brother Gregory seems tame beside his. This fact has sometimes been made a kind of reproach to Gregory ofN azianzus, as if Basil and his brother ofN yssa were the real theologians of the trio while Gregory was a mere propagandist or even a Great Communicator, but not a distinguished theologian in his own right. Prestige condescendingly described him 10·Oral. XXVI.7 (1239). 1090 rat.

XVIII.I8; Socrates HE IV.2j.

706

110GPT 234. Ill'Patristic Literature', P.99 in The Pelican Guide to Modern Theology Vol. 2. 112See Moreschini 'L'Opera e la personiJit:l dell' Imperatore GuiIano' passim and especially 429-30. Lucifer ofCalaris had at least the courage to attack the Emperor

while he was still alive. 113'La poesia della Trinita neIl'opera di San Gregorio di Nazianzo' passim. 114Ibid. 7zl, 115 739 . 116We can only regret that verse (or at least Gregory's verse) is not the best ~edium for conveying accurate and detailed theological ideas, any more than it was m Gregory's case for conveying autobiographical and historical fact. Hence our difficulty in r~constructing the course of the Council of Constantinople from his references to It, even though he was closely associated with its transactions.

•

The Controversy Resolved

primal and pure nature in itself, that, I mean, which is perceived in the Trinity'. All that we can know is his greatness manifest in 'the creatures and these things which are established and governed by him'.'17 God's nature is inconceivable (1i1.1]7tTO,) and incomprehensible (ti7ttpil.1]7tTO,). We can indeed know that he exists (6<1 EcrU
which is idolatry. Or the soul can take another course, the right one: 'to recognize God through the beauty and order of things that are seen, and to use our vision as a guide to that what is above vision, but not to be deprived of God because of the magnificence of what is seen'.121

Nobody has ever found, nor ever will, what God is by nature and ousia.'22 Any knowledge of truth and of purpose (logos) and of 'the intellectual things' (Ta V01]Ta) is very difficult, because we can only obtain it with our sense-organs (TroV alcrOi]crtOlV) by which we are confined and misled. Knowledge of God, as the highest object, is all the more difficult, has greater obstructions and its achievement is more toilsome. 123

This apophatic, agnostic theology, however, does not prevent Gregory from accepting and even extending the vocabulary already employed by Basil to expound his doctrine of the Trinity. Like Basil too, Gregory, though he knows of the arguments of Homoian Arianism, is more concerned to meet the trenchant, rationalist

arguments of Eunomius (who, of course, would have wholly

The Cappadocian Theologians dissented from Gregory's views on the incomprehensibility of God). Gregory uses the terms ousia, hypostasis, idiotes, prosopon and physis very much as Basil does. He tends to identify loosely the hypostases and the peculiarities which distinguish them (idioteteis). He can speak of 'one nature in three peculiarities ... subsisting distinctly' (1
the Godhead"2' And sometimes Gregory can use Trinitarian language without having recourse to any of these terms: 'God ... exists in these three Highest, Cause and Creator and

Perfecter, I mean the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit who are neither so much divided from each other as to be separated in natlire '. nor so much constricted as to be limited to one Person' (prosopon).126

And his vocabulary is sometimes confusingly volatile: do not inquisitively investigate, he says 'the nature (Physis) of the Father, the subsistence (OUcriOlcrIV) of the Son, the glory and power of the Spirit, the single Godhead and splendour in the Three, the undivided nature (Physis) and confession and glory' .127 He can also describe the Son as the 'image' (eikon) of the Father, and has indeed a whole 'iconic' theology in which man is the image of Christ the image, and has as his duty to 'respect the prototype' image. 12 • But he recognizes the value <240

1I70rai. XXVIII.3 (29). I quote the Theological Orations from the edition of

Mason, with occasional references to that of Gallay and the other SC editors, the other Orations from Migne. 0I8Ibid. 5 (J2). 119 6 (32, 33). Gregory does not seem to distinguish clearly between what we call revealed and natural knowledge of God. 12° 10, 13 (30,43-4).

12'13 (44). <2217 (48). <23 21 (53)·

ra t. XXXIIl.I6 (236).

125Ibid. XXXIX. 11 (345). See K. Holl Amphilochius von lkonium 171. A little later (177) Holl says that the concept of hypostasis in Gregory is weak; it approximates to a mere point or moment in the Godhead. He prefers prosopon. Cf. E. P. Meijering 'The Doctrine of the Will and of the Trinity in the Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus' 231-2. 1260rat. XXXIV.8 (249). It should be noted that Gregory's doctrine of the Incarnation is dealt with later in this chapter and his doctrine of the Spirit will be considered in the next chapter.

mOrat. XXXII.31 (197). ma(~ci>j!Sea t6 apxttunov Orat. XXXVII." (308). In XXXVIII. I 3 (325) he calls

708

Christ 'the unalterable image' (o:napaUalC'to<; dlCci>v). See also below P.713.

709

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

of the distinction between ousia and hypostasis and observes it faithfully. The Council of Alexandria (of 362) had, he said, established this distinction. The Italians (i.e. the Westerners) intended to make this distinction but the poverty of their language (a language in fact unknown to Gregory!) was unable to express this distinction, and so they spoke of three prosopa in order to avoid identifying ousia and hypostasis.!2. He carefully defines on several occasions the unity and the distinction of the Godhead, repeating in more lucid and lapidary language what Basil had already taught. There is, he says, an Origin (arche) of Godhead 'timeless, undivided, unlimited', and he honours the Origin equally with the Beings derived from the Origin:

Theological Oration he defines what the Persons of the Trinity have in common: 'equal dignity of nature, agreement of will (yvrolll], (JI'II1tVOla), identity of action (lClvlj(JBro,), convergence towards unity (t6 tv) of those who derive from it'. And he goes on to use language which might suggest Sabellianism, were it not quite obvious that Gregory is not a Sabellian:

'(they are) separated neither by time nor by nature nor by worship; they are one with distinctions and distinct with unity. even if it is

paradoxical to say so; to be worshipped not less because of their relation to each other than because each is perceived and accepted in

his own right (lCaO' taotoii); a perfect Trinity consisting of Three perfect, and we must abandon (the concept of) a Monad for the sake of plenitude, and go beyond a Dyad (for God is beyond the duality of matter and form which constitute corporeal things), and we must define (God as) a Trinity for the sake of completeness . . . so that the Godhead does not remain constricted nor expand infinitely. because

the former is illiberal and the latter disorderly; the former is wholly Jewish, and the latter pagan (t).).l]v'lC6v) and polytheist'130 Gregory is not willing to number the Trinity.''' It is necessary 'to know one and the same nature of the Godhead, recognized by unoriginatedness (dvapxCfl) and generation and procession. comparable to our own mind and reason and spirit' (with a disclaimer against putting much trust in earthly analogies).

One can envisage each as God only in theory as the mind separates the inseparable. 'The Three are God mutually (IIBt' u).)"lj)"rov) known by the identity of movement (lCIVlj(JBro,) and· of nature'.'32 In his Third

'So the original Monad, moving into a Dyad, finishes in a Trinity.'

He is ready to describe the Son as a 'progeny' (ytVVl]II'l) or 'issue' (1tp6~)"l]lIa), but modifies this statement by the words 'or I do not know how one is to describe these matters once all visible analogies are abandoned'.''' Gregory allows that the concept of Godhead shared by the gods according to Greek philosophy is no more than a notional community, and he implies that the same applies to our common humanity.I3' But he has nO hesitation in adopting Basil's comparison of the relation of the generic to the particular to the relation of the ousia to the hypostases, inasfar as he sees the fallacy of the Eunomian doctrine of the superiority of the Father by reason of his being the origin of the Son as lying in the attribution to the underlying essence of what is predicated of the particular possessor of that essence. He says that it is like arguing that because so-and-so is a dead man then mankind is dead.' 35 He stoutly defends the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son; the generation is not to be thought of as taking place in time. I36 To the Eunomians' point that the Son must have been begotten either against the Father's will- which is absurd - or by his will, in which case the will becomes a kind of mother of deity, he answers that the will is not something separate from the person, but is the person himself'37 Meijering points out that Gregory here differs from

number but not in ousia. 132 11 (I r61. 1164); c( Orat. XXVI. 19 (1252) 'the ingenerat~. the generated and the proceeding (npo'i6v). one nature, three peculiarities' (Uh6tT)t&<;), and XXVII.I8 (304) 'the One is to be worshipped, rightly perceived, and the Three, rightly distingu~shed as long as the distinction is of Persons (prosopon) but not of divinity':

1330ral. XXIX.2 (76). Moreschini 'n platonismo cristiano di Gregorio Nazianzeno' 1390-1 discusses this passage and decides that it is 'un Plotinus rielaborato'. Ruether refers to the passage also op. cit. 131. 1340ral. XXI.I5 (1097); c( XXIX.I4 (92). This means that Gregory should not have approved of Basil's analogy of three men for the Trinity. But see the next example. 1350ral. XXIX.15 (93), in Mason's interpretation of Gregory's meaning. For Gregory's Trinitarian theology, see Holl op. cit. I s8-96. 1360ral. XXIX.S (80); he argues from the often noted fluidity of tenses in the Old Testament. 13'lbid. 6 (80, 8.).

7 10

7II

1290ral. XXI.35 (1124-5); see Lebon 'Le sort du "consubstantiel'" 637-8. l3OO,at. XXII!.7 (1160). . 131Ibid. 10 (1161); but at Oral. XXIX.2 (76) he says that the Three differ in

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

Athanasius. God was not (as Athanasius' exaltation of nature above will implies) compelled to generate. Freewill for Gregory is what is lasting and enduring, and God generates out of pure freewill. But he adds, in the same passage, that God may in generating transcend his will; we do not, anyway, know how God generates. Further, in God will and action coincide.13' On the much-disputed text Prov 8:22 Gregory takes the same line as Athanasius: the speaker here is Christ himself referring to his human nature.'39 But for him the really crucial text in this chapter occurs in verse 25 (,He begets me before all the hills' LXX). The Eunomians argued that if God never ceases to beget, then his action is incomplete and must one day cease, consequently it must one day have begun. Gregory simply replies that this does not follow for there are things which have begun and yet are eternal, like angels and souls. But his real case is that the nature of God is God and belongs to that class which must be God, though varied in aspects (epinoiai) and names."· He follows the usual Cappadocian line of objecting to the selection by Eunomius of ingenerateness as the sole, crucial, characteristic ofGod. ' " When he

Son (though a timeless cause), and tries to make this view consistent with traditional pro-Nicene doctrine by stating that this causality does not apply to the ousia of the Father:

comes to answer another Eunomian argument, Gregory takes a new

line of argument. 'Father', say the Eunomians, denotes .either a substance (ousia) or an activity (energeia); if a substance, then the Father is of a different ousia (heterousios) from the Son; if an activity, then the Fatherly activity makes the Son, and the thing made cannot be of the same ousia as the maker. Gregory answers that the name 'Father' denotes neither essence nor activity but relationship (OXE"',), though he 'suggests that somehow (he does not explain how) this relationship includes both being and activity."2 It is noteworthy that Gregory on several occasions insists that the Father is the cause of the

'the superiority (to

ll&i~ov)

does not apply to the nature, but to the

cause. No consubstantial things are greater or less in ousia.'143

Gregory of course maintains consistently against Arian depreciation of the divine status of Christ that all the texts suggesting his inferiority to the Father refer to his human nature and not to his divinity.'4' He would like to treat In 6:38 ('I came down from heaven not that I should do my own will but to do the will of my Father') similarly, but cannot because manifestly Christ's human nature did not come down from heaven. So he contents himself with saying that the Son has no will apart from that of the Father.'" He argues in the same way about Christ as the image of God: '(he is) image because he is homoousios, and because this (his consubstantiality) derives from the Father and not the Father from it ... consequently he is the living (image) of the Living One, and has

greater immutability than Seth (deriving) from Adam and any generated thing from that which generated it'. And Gregory continues, 'this is the nature of simple (i.e. not composite) things, not to

be like in one respect and unlike in another. but the whole

to

be a

copy of the whole, and this is more than mere likeness' (acp olloioollU).'·6

It is not surprising, therefore, that Gregory should have rejected the

idea that the Son was, to put the matter succinctly, a convenient

Trinity' 231-4) concludes that Gregory's position here is strictly speaking illogical. But Trisoglio (,La Poesia della Trinita' 722) notes this identification of Person with relation-with apparent satisfaction. It is a curious anticipation of Augustine's view.

1430ral. XL.43 (420). Cf. XXX·7 (112) t~".mi~ov J,ltv tan ti'jr; alt{a<;, to 08 iaov ti'j<;
712

7 13

138Meijering 'Will and Trinity in Gregory of Nazianz us· 226-7; see as well as the passage in Orat. XXIX just cited 8 (84}.and XX.9 ,(1076). For the relation of God's will to his nature in the thought of Gregory of Nyssa. see S. Gonzalez 'La Formula ).lia oucr{a, 'tpet~ {)1tOO"t'tlOE1C; en San Gregorio di Nisa', 65-'70. 1390rat. XXX.2 (lOS). But Simonetti (Studi 70) observes that before taking this

line here G. first suggests, very reasonably, that the reference is to the general immanent wisdom of God rather than to Christ.

,.°lbid. XXIX.l] (91.92). 141 Ibid.

Io-U

(88, 89).

'''Oral. XXIX.I7 (95, 96); XXXI.7 (140). 9 (133-4). Meijeririg ('Will and

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

philosophical device, a means whereby God can communicate with the world without which he would be incommunicado, or, in other words, that the Son (or the Spirit) waS created or produced in order in his turn to produce creation. Gregory denounces this suggestion in a complicated passage:

4. Gregory of Nyssa

[fwe teach that the Son or Spirit is without origin (/ivapxa) or has his origin elsewhere than in God. we run the risk of dishonouring God.

But if however much you exalt the Son and the Spirit you do not place ~hem above the Father, nor divorce them from his causality (altla) but derive the excellent generation (ytvVllJ.
that you derive from him [i.e. a created Son and Spirit] than (the origin) of, not these beings. but those who are similar in natur:. of equal rank (6J,1ocS6;(Ov). and such as OUf argument wants to envIsage them? ... Is there anything greater for God than to be Father of the

Son, which is an addition of glory not a reduction, and similarly (to be) Sender of the Spirit?' Gregory goes on to say that to make the Son and the Spirit mere instruments of creation, as if he needed to create such tools and could not create by a mere act of will, is to dishonour God.'47 [n this doctrine Gregory was joining Athanasius and Basil in demolishing a tradition of thought which could certainly be called time-honoured and might well have been regarded by many before the middle of the fourth century as Catholic. In his Trinitarian doctrine, then, as far as we have examined it, Gregory can be said to display no great originality. He differs in some points from Basil, but in none of great importance. His articulation of Trinitarian doctrine is clearer, rather more forceful and expressive than that of his friend, as becomes a great stylist, but that is all. But Gregory as we shall see in the next chapter, was capable on occasion of striking theological originality when he came to set out his doctrine of the Holy Spirit."s

1470rat. XXIII.6 (1157. 1160).

t48He has his own ideas on sin, though not altogether satisfactory ideas. See]. M. Szymusiak 'Gregoire de Nazianze et Ie peche' and B. Otis 'Cappadocian Thought as a Coherent System' 10g-II8 (much the better of the two papers.)

The date of the birth of Gregory of Nyssa is quite uncertain. He was certainly born after BaslI and probably some considerable time after him, because he looked up to Basil with great respect as to a much older brother.149 All we can say is that he was born at some point between 331 and 340, and probably in the second rather than the first half of that period. When Basil was teaching rhetoric in Caesarea between 355 and 357 Gregory was his pupil. He began his career as a teacher of rhetoric and he must at some time have acquired a good education and some knowledge of contemporary philosophy. He was married, and remained in that state till his wife died about 387 (by which time he had been a bishop for fifteen years). They had a son. It is all the odder that in his earliest work, 'On Virginity' (De Virg.), he should treat marriage as a regrettable pisaller instituted by God simply as a result of the Fall. He was consecrated bishop of Nyssa in 372, complying with his elder brother's ecclesiastical policy. Basil to the end of his life appears to have regarded Gregory with affection but also with a certain contempt. He was appalled when in 371 he discovered that Gregory had forged a letter purporting to come from their uncle with the worthy but imprudent intention of reconciling the two men.'so And in a letter written in 375 Basil said that the only possible bearer of a proposed missive to the West was his brother Gregory, but that he could not trust Gregory's good sense as far as to send him on this mission. 'Sl Basil also disapproved of an attempt which Gregory made shortly after being consecrated bishop to bring about a reconciliation with a group of disciples of Marcellus in Ancyra.'52 In 375 the anti-Nicene policy of the Emperor Valens which had spared Basil struck down his brother. Gregory was accused at a council dominated by Homoian Arians meeting at 149Most of those who have written on Gregory of Nyssa have made observations and conjectures about the dates of his career and works. One of the most recent and careful studies, whose conclusions have been largely accepted in this work, is that by Gerhard May 'Die Chronologie des Lebens und der Werk des Gregor von Nyssa'. See also,]aeger Gregor von Nyssa's Lehre vom Heiligen Geist 79-109, and Balas' art. 'Gregor von Nyssa' in TRE XIV 173-81. 150Basil Ep 58. See Courtonne Saint Basile et son temps 37-38. 151 Ep 2 I 5. See Courtonne, op. cit. 269-'70, and May 'Einige Bemerkung tiber das Verhaltnis Gregors von Nyssa zur Basilios clem Grossen' 510. 152Basil Ep 100. See R. Hubner 'Gregor von Nyssa und Markell von Ankyra' 201-4·

715

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

Ancyra of maladministration of church funds and some irregularity in his election as bishop. He was (probably in the next year) summoned before the court of the vicarius Demosthenes. As he was being brought there under escort he managed to escape. He was formally exiled, probably by Valens himself, and in 376 a council at Nyssa deposed him. We do not know where he spent his exile, except that it was not with his sister Macrina and brother Peter at Annesi in Pontus. 153 In 378 on the death of V alens Gregory returned to his see of Nyssa. He was present at the death of his brother Basil on January 1St 379. In the autumn of that year he attended Meletius' council at Antioch, and on his return journey to Nyssa he visited Annesi and was present at the death-bed of his sister Macrina. Some time after this (exactly how long is difficult to determine) he wrote an account of his sister's life and death (Vita Macrinae). It is a fairly simple and moving tribute from a brother who greatly admired her, devoid ofrhetoric. In Nyssa he encountered difficulties with Arians; imperial policy against Arians of all descriptions had not yet manifested itself. Soon after he had established himself securely in his see he was called to travel to Ibora in Pontus (perhaps in the early months of 380) to help to choose a bishop for that see. While he was there the pro-Nicenes in Eustathius' see of Sebaste asked him to assist in placing a pro-Nicene bishop there, for Eustathius had recently died. While he was in Sebaste he was offered the see, but after some consideration refused it and returned to Nyssa. He had already by this time produced several of his written works. De Virginitate is usually reckoned to be his earliest; it must have been composed between the years 370 and 378. His work on Christian perfection (De Perfectione) seems to assume that he has a long time ahead of him to approximate to perfection, and should be placed in this early period. His Commentary on Ecclesiastes (In Ecclesiasten) refers to Arianism as still in power, and must be therefore dated before 381. His works on the creation of man (DeOpificio) and on the Hexaemeron (the six days of creation) were intended to defend and complete his brother Basil's work. They can be placed in 379; they reveal the fact not only that Basil is dead but that his brother Peter has

been made bishop of Sebaste (Eustathius' see). It might be best to place his little treatise 'On the difference between ousia and hypostasis' (Ep 38 in the collection ofBasi!,s letters) during this period. It was also in order to defend the memory of Basil that about this time Gregory began his major anti-Arian book, Contra Eunomium; the first two books were written between summer 380 and spring 381. The dialogue On the Soul and Resurrection, in which Macrina is one of the speakers, was written after her death, in 380 at earliest. His short works full of discussion of Trinitarian theology, Ad Eustathium de Trinitate, Ad Ablabium quod non sint tres dU, Ad Simplicium de fide, imd Ad Graeeos or Ex communionibus notionibus, could well be placed at this period in Gregory's career when he was particularly preoccupied with contending against the views of both Arians and Macedonians, 1 54 Gregory took a part, perhaps an active part, in the Council of Constantinople in the summer of 38 I. To this period we may refer his funeral oration on Meletius (In Meletium, a very different affair from his tribute to Macrina, full of artificial rhetoric), and his De Spiritu Sancto, adversus Macedonianos, which deals with the very topical subject of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. It is on the whole most satisfactory to envisage the work known as In Suam Ordinationem and also as De Deitate adversus Evagrium as composed during the Council rather than at one of the later councils which took place between 381 and 383 in the capital city. This must be one of the most misnamed works of antiquity, because it was not delivered on the occasion of Gregory's (or anybody else's) ordination, nor was it an attack on anybody called Evagrius; it deplores the absence from the council of the Pneumatomachi and rebuts their arguments (i.e. the Macedonians).'55 If Theodoret is correct in his statement that the Council of Constantinople reconvened in 382, Gregory must have attended it (HE V.8.IO). Another council was certainly summoned by Theodosius to the capital city in 383, as a final attempt to bring

153S ee Benoit, SaintCregoirede Nazianze 375-6 and Courtonne, op. cit. 117-18, as well as May's article 'Die Chronologie'. The evidence all comes from Basil's letters, especially Ep 136.1.

716

154Gregory's authorship of Adversus Arium et Sabellium has been so strongly contested that we cannot use it to illustrate his doctrine; in spite ofJaeger's defence of it (Gregor von Nyssa's Lehre 27-50). 155Gregory's part in the Council of Constantinople of 38 I will be considered again in cap. 23. A discussion of his doctrine of the Holy Spirit is reserved for the next chapter (22). For the date of In Suam Ordinationem see May 'Die Datierung der Rede "In Suam Ordinationem" der Gregor von Nyssa und die Verhandlungen mit den Pneumatomachen auf dem Konzil von Constantinopel 38 I'.

7 17

The Controversy Resolved

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about unity in the church.' s • To this council Eunomius presented his Confession; it is therefore reasonable to date Gregory's answer to this, Refutatio Confessionis Eunomii to this year. The long third book of his Contra Eunomium was written between 381 and 383. At some point during these years also he was sent by a council of Constantinople on a journey to Arabia and Jerusalem for some purpose, no doubt connected with the establishment of pro-Nicene bishops in Arabia (he visited Jerusalem as a sightseer). But it is probably going too far to think of Gregory as one of the major figures managing ecclesiastical politics during the last decade of the fourth century. He had neither the political influence nor perhaps the diplomatic flair required for this task. It is possible that it was for the council of 383 that he wrote his work De Deitate Filii et Spiritus. In 385 he was again in Constantinople to deliver funerary or commemorative orations on the lately deceased princess Pulcheria and Empress FlacilIa. At some point in this period we should also place his Contra Fatum, an argument against the determinists of his age. His Cateehetieal Oration, a general apology for Christianity, was written some time after 381, as it refers to works of his on the Trinity as already completed. It is not a work for catechumens, but is directed to a pagan public. After about 385 Gregory turned his attention away from Trinitarian theology towards asceticism and the mystical system of doctrine which particularly appealed to him. His short antiApoIIinarian treatise Ad Theophilum cannot however be placed earlier than 385 when Theophilus succeeded Timothy as archbishop of Alexandria and his longer work on the same subject, Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarem (refuting ApoIlinaris' On the Divine Incarnation, which appeared in 387) cannot be placed earlier than 387. His Life of Moses (Vita Moyses) and his commentary on the Song of Songs (In Cantieum Cantieorum) are the works of his old age. The latter was written for the rich young widow Olympias, whom the Emperor Theodosius was so anxious to marry off again to somebody who would forward his political plans that for a period he forbade her to associate with any office-bearers in the church. She resisted his plans for her and by 391 he had abandonee! his attempts to control her career. We might place the In Cantieum Cant. in that year or after it. Throughout his life Gregory was in touch with monks and nuns,

though he never seems to have spent any long time in the actual practice of a monastic regime. Fifteen sermons of Gregory (one or two of which have been mentioned already) and thirty letters are extant.'57 In 394 he took part in the Council of Constantinople held in that year. We do not know the exact date ofhis death. It must have taken place at some time between 394 and 400. Gregory of Nyssa is to be sharply distinguished from the other two Cappadocian theologians in that he devised a doctrinal, indeed a philosophical, system more coherent and more elaborate than any the other two ever produced.' ss There can be no doubt about his debt to Platonic philosophy, and especially to the form or forms which it had taken by the second half of the fourth century A.D., and among these not least the thought of Plotinus. He taught a doctrine whereby human beings are called by God to e.ver greater participation in being, as far as their limitations can permit this. He made a sharp division between created and uncreated reality. Created reality or

156S ee

below, P.589.

1571 have omitted from the list of Gregory's works the document called De Instituto Christiano. W. Jaeger thought that he could show that it was by Gregory when he found and edited some complete MSS of it. Ti1l then it was thought to be a

version of the 'Great Letter' of a certain Macarius, whose date and background are obscure. But more recent scholarship has tended. to reverse the relationship and regard De Inst: Christ. as an incomplete re-working of Macarius' original. unconnected With Gregory. Most of Gregory's work has been edited in tlie m~gnifice~t series of texts initiated by Jaeger and carried on by others, published by Br~ll ofLelclen. I have quoted from this series where possible without naming the editors"and elsewhere from the Migne text of Gregory, which occupies,PG vols. 44-46, except that for the Catechetical Oration I have used the text of J. Meridier (Paris 1908, with Fr T). For the Contra Eunomium, the most important work of Gregory for those who are examining his Trinitarian theology, I have given the Migne references (which are all in Vol. 45) as well as those of the Leiden series (which, incidentally, is referred to in diverse ways by different scholars as 'GN' or as 'GNO' or as 'Jaeger'). . • 158It is not within the scope of this work to give more than the merest sketch of this system. Much can be learned about it from two works by}. Danielou Platonisme

Theologie mystique: doctrine spirituelle de Saint Gregoire de Nysse and L't're et Ie temps chez Gregoire de Nysse (which is a republication of seven essays published between

,et

1953 and 1967 in a revised and enlarged form); D. L. Balas METOYl:IA 9EOY

Man's Participation in God's Perfections according to Saint Gregory oJNyssa; and Eternity and Time in Gregory oj Nyssa's Contra Eunomium; P. Sheldon-Williams jGreek Christian Platonist Tradition'; E. Muhlenberg 'Philosophische Bildung Gregors v~n Nyssa'; Hon'sA.mphiloc~ius von Ikonium; H. Dorrie 'Gregor's TheoJogie auf der Htntergrund der neuplatonlker Metaphysik'; B. Otis 'Cappadocian Thought as a Coherent System', as well as several other articles to be mentioned later. For Gregory's doctrine of sin (which is not dealt with here) see Danielou Platonisme et theologie 61-4, L'£tre et ie temps 102-3, 133-53. 180-204; Balas Metousia theou I18-19·

718

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The Controversy Resolved

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being was itself divided into sensible things and intelligible things, and among the latter he classed all angels and celestial or superhuman beings, for he transformed Plato's ideas or noeta into angels or personal spiritual powers. Human beings stand on the frontier between the sensible and the intelligible, partaking in both worlds as both corporeal and intelligent. In place of Platonic philosophy's highest good or truest reality (t6 oVtOlC; ov) he substituted God the Father of Christian tradition. In the words of Balas, his philosophy, instead of expressing, as in Plato, the relation of the sensible to the world of ideas, expresses the relation of the 'created intelligible world' (angels and human souls) to God. Instead of serving to construct the descending hierarchy within the divine world, as in later Platonism, it serves to exclude any intermediary nature between the uncreated and created beings. 159 Gregory, like Plotinus, summons those who would advance towards ever greater participation in being (or reality) to look into their own souls. But he does so with this difference, that Gregory sees perfection and goodness and truth given originally to the human soul by God's own indwelling when he made man in the image of God, and does not regard the soul as divine. The most striking feature in his thought, however, is that he teaches that God is infinite and that it is the destiny of redeemed souls ultimately to spend eternity exploring God's inexhaustible infinity, so that salvation is not so much an eternal rest as an eternal movement. With this conviction of God's infinity goes an even stronger asseveration than that of the other two Cappadocians of God's incomprehensibility. The phenomena of the sensible and also of the intelligible world (the noetoi etc.) can be examined and known by the use of the human reason and the witness of the Bible; and Gregory, like his namesake of Nazianzus, makes no serious distinction between revealed and natural knowledge of God. But beyond this knowledge of the created worlds stands God who cannot be known. He is infinite and human knowledge cannot compass the infinite. It is a timeless infinity in which God knows and

For Gregory, there are two ways of knowing God. We can discern his attributes, such as goodness, wisdom, power, by looking at his activity in the universe. Pagan philosophy can help here because it can discover the nothingness of that which appeals to our senses and only appears to exist, though it cannot identify true reality; only grace can do that. Our nature which can respond to sensible things is not our true nature, but is (though not in itself evil) given to us only as the result of the Fall. The first way of knowing is one which proceeds by analogy from the creatures. Scripture is of course essential here. The second way of knowing God is the mystical way, and it leads us to the knowledge of what really exists (ta ovta, ta vOllta or 01 VOlltoi). For this the soul must look into itself, strip itself of anything bodily, of anything which the sense can affect, even refusing discursive reason (any opinion, doxa, which can be reached by induction (propiep"is)), and enter a 'night of the senses'; and aballdonment of all concepts and a plunging into divine darkness (yv6cpoC;) where it knows only by or in faith. The rejection by Gregory, along with the other Cappadocians, of the concept of the pre-existent Christ or Logos as the subordinate mediator of our knowledge of God has led him to the formulation of this doctrine. 161 But even at its highest the redeemed soul when it shall have embarked on its endless reaching forward or exploration (epektasis is Gregory's word) of God can never know God's ousia, his actual being. 162 This doctrine is however in his view compatible with the conviction which, as we shall see, Gregory holds firmly along with his brother Basil and his namesake of Nazianzus, that we can know and must believe that God is one ousia and three hypostases (see below, p. 725 and n 182). He said that this knowledge tells us what God is like, how he is constituted (",iiC; I;attv) but not what he is (ti I;attv). Though in fact Gregory has fused

experiences everything as a single instant, not an endless succession.

Time is the product of creation, but God's being (ousia) is above creation and divested of all measurement, space or temporal sequence. To him everything is present as if it were now. '60 I S9 Metousia Theou 16 4. 160'11 ya trois ordres de realite. Dieu qui est u'tP&1ttoc,; [unchanging], l'esprit qui est

720

anime du mouvement historique, la matiere qui est animee du rnouvement cyclique. L'esprit est present dans la matiere mais illui est ineductible. L'esprit cree est done inte:,mediaire entre l' atpElt'toc,; clivin et Ie tpoml [movement] cyclique' DanieIou, L'Etre et Ie temps 94. ' 1611n place of God's ingenerateness Gregory presented God's infinity. which is his master-thought. The conviction that the being of Christ is the same as that of God demanded a re-thinking of the traditional concept of God; unoriginatedness cannot ~imp~y be i~generatednes~. Gregory found the answer in the concept of God's Infimty whIch Greek phtlosophy had tended to avoid. So Miihlenberg 'Die philosophische Bildung' 235-5. 162For this account of Gregory's doctrine of the soul's knowledge of God, see DanieJou Platonisme et theologie 99-160.

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many contemporary ·philosophical ideas into his doctrinal system,'63 he is wary about acknowledging his debt to pagan philosophy and prefers to delude himself (as almost all his predecessors and contemporaries did) into believing that the philosophers had been anticipated in their ideas by Moses and the prophets.'6' On more than one occasion he exclaims at Eunomius' passion for formal philosophical terms:

adopts philosophical opinions at second-hand without CrltIClsmg them. '72 However, his Trinitarian doctrine is not greatly affected by his philosophical ideas, and the fact that those who have written about these latter have tended to a large extent to ignore the former supports this view.' 73 To these ideas we must now turn. If we allow that Letter 38 among the collection of Basil's letters is not by Basil but by his younger brother Gregory, we have here a full and careful account of his concept of the meaning of and distinction between ousia and hypostasis. We can do so with all the more confidence because the writer of this letter constantly states that God's ousia, which he dearly equates with his nature (Physis) , is infinite and beyond our comprehension. '7. Gregory begins with an unqualified account-of the relation between hypostasis and ousia as the same as that between the particular, and the universal or generic. The infmite incomprehensible ousia is contrasted with the circumscribed and recognizable hypostasis.' 75 He goes on to say, not that we experience Father, Son and Holy Spirit separately or distinctly, but that the authority of the Scriptures demands that we shall recognize these distinctions, and emphasizes as strongly as he can the inseparable unity and equality of the Three in spite of the distinction:

'Enough of this logical demonstration by which his argument syllogistically moves towards its conclusion!'.165

And at the particularly jargon-filled statement of his opponent he says 'What connection has this absurd piece of scholarship with Christian doctrine?' To say that each ousia has its own energy, and the Father's 'energy' creates the Son and the Son's the Spirit is not Biblical doctrine but technical philosophical jargon.'66 Most writers upon the subject of Gregory's thought have admired it. DanieIou describes him as an original thinker in his own right: 'This theologian and mystic can be considered as one of the great philosophers of his time' .'67 And Muhlenberg claims that Gregory's philosophical system ('Bildung') consists of a new concept of God and a new doctrine of being, bound up with it.'68 Stead, on the other hand, regards Gregory as a very incompetent thinker, not particularly original, and as far as his 'technical apparatus' goes 'one receives the converse impression of total incoherence'.169 He is imprecise, unnecessarily verbose,' 70 self-contradictory,' 71 and I6'See below,

'For· it is impossible to perceive separation or division of any sort. so

that the Son should be thought of without the Spirit or the Spirit disjoined from the Son, but there is perceived among them somehow

the ineffable and inconceivable unity and distinction; the difference of the hypostases does not dissolve the continuity of their nature nor does

the community of their nature dissipate the particularity of their

pp.867'""9.

164Cf. Danielau 'Gregoire de Nysse et la philosophie' 16-17· lti5Contra Eunomium 11.306 (45:1015). But Gregory can also, with equal justice. laugh at Eunomius'literalism in imagining that when the Bible describes Adam ~s

naming the animals in the garden of Eden this literally ,happened (~n .2:19-20); a1l1t means is that God gave man the power to deVise names. (lbl~. 11.39?-409 (45:1044-48». Later in a fine passage he explains anthropomorphisms III the Bible as God accommodating himself to our understanding, like a mother talking babylanguage to her children (419 (1049». The influence of Origen is obvious (cf. R. P. C. Hanson Allegory and Event 210-232). On the argument about the nature of names, see Simonetti Crisi 462-8; Balas Metousia Theou II3; Muhlenberg, 'Phil. Bildung' 241-2. ~ .. . 166d~ yap KOlVIDvia 't'iP XPlatltlVQ) lOyQ) 1tPO~ n)v IlIDpav9EIO'av O'oq>lav; IbId. III (viii) S4 (4S:849). Cf. i.ISS-I60 (4S.297, 300) 188'""9 (3 08). .167'Gregoire de Nysse et la philosophie' 16-17, quotation from 17. 168'Philosophische Bildung' 244. 169'O n tology and Terminology in Gregory of Nyssa' 108. 17oIbid. 112, 113. 171 Il 6.

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172 11 6. When Professor Stead first delivered this paper. at an international conference several scholars in the later discussion (as the report which follows St~ad's paper shows) objected that he was judging Gregory by the standards of XXth·century linguistic analysis. And indeed he gives the impression of deploying too rigorously what the ancients would have called Platonic subtilitas. 173Rist actually says (though discussing Basil, not Gregory) 'there is not a trace of the influence of Neoplatonic speculation in that area of Trinitarian theology from which the Council [of Nicaea] had excluded Platonism forever', Platonism and its Christian Heritage XII.2oo. For Gregory's doctrine of the truth see Gonzalez op. cit.,

passim. 174Neither qf the recent editors ofBasH's letters Courtonne and Deferrari. accepts the attribution of this one to Gregory, but scholars writing even more recently upon Gregory seem to be agreed upon his authorship of it, and certainly the arguments in favour are strong. See R. Hubner. 'Gregor von Nyssa als Verfasser der sag. Ep. 38 des Basilios' in Epektasis 403--go.

t75Ep 38. 1-3.

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The Controversy Resolved

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characteristics (to 18{a~ov trov yvmpurIlUtmv). Do not be amazed if we declare that the same thing is united and distinct and conceive, as in a

God because they share this ousia. ' " We can ouly know the ousia of anything by observing its characteristic ({oimlla), as we know a man's choleric or sanguine nature by observing its characteristics. If we call Peter and Paul and Barnabas three persons (prosopa) but still see that they have one ousia (humanity), how much less should we call God , three ousiai because he has three prosopa. , 2 And he goes on to speak at some length on the limitations and inaccuracy involved in using this analogy of three men,l83 and later deals with an objection based upon the different uses of the two words ousia and hypostasis as he employs them. He manifestly was aware of some of the defects of the analogies and the vocabulary which he used. In his refutation ofEunomius' Confession of 383 Gregory goes into rather greater detail on this subject. He gives a summary definition of the Trinity:

riddle, of a new and paradoxical unity in distinction and distinctness in union',176

Gregory then adduces the analogy of the rainbow, in which the colours can be observed distinctly but can also be seen to be inseparable from each other. 177 Stead criticizes the unsuitability and inadequacy of the analogy of universal and particular for the relation of ousia and hypostasis, and he observes truly that Gregory on many occasions uses hypostasis and ousia in a variety of meanings which do not at all correspond to the meanings which they are supposed to convey when used in a Trinitarian context. 17. Certainly the analogy of universal to particular is a very unsatisfactory analogy when we are speaking of the relation of Substance to Person. But we have no reason to suppose that either Basil or his brother Gregory ever imagined that this was the only analogy applicable to this subject, and in this letter we have a proof that Gregory could produce another. In fact it is likely that he thought that the best way of describing this mysterious relationship was by a series of analogies modifying each other, and that he recognized that hypostasis is a word which can be used in many senses is shown by his attempting to explain, immediately after his production of the analogy of the rainbow, how it is that Hebrews uses the word hypostasis (1:3, stamp of his nature, xapalCt1)p tlj, ultoGtuaem,) in a quite different meaning from that which he has been attaching to it. l79 He expands this account of the relation of the Persons in his little work Ad Graecos, when he uses prospon rather than hypostasis. We do not say 'three gods', he explains because God is not God because he is the prosopon, but because he is the ousia (of the Godhead). God is not God because he is Father nor the Son because he is the Son, but because both possess the ousia of Godhead. Each Person (prosopon) is 'substantive' (tVOUGlO,) and called

,.0

1764 .

177

the quotation from the very end.

5.

178'OntO}ogy and Terminology' 117-119. That Gregory's concept of ousia was quite different from Basil's has been shown by Hubner. op. cit. n 174 above. Gregory's was ultimately Aristotelian, Basil's Stoic rather than Platonic.

17')Ep 38.7. 8. cr. p. 671 above whcrc- Basil is embarrassed by the identification of ousja and hypostasis in N. t 80 Ad G;aecos (in the Leiden ed.) p. 19 (PG 45(76). Ad Graecos has a subtitle 'based on accepted ideas' (dtto 'troY KOlVroY tvvOtrov, ex communihus notionibus).

,.4

'On the score of ousia he is One; that is why the Lord gave instructions in the Law to observe one Name. But in the recognizable characteristics (YVroP1U'tucotC; iOll:oJlacnv) of the hypostases he is

distributed into the faith of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, inseparably distinguished and unconfusedly united' .185

And, a little later: 'the peculiarity (!816TI]<;) of the hypostases renders the distinction of the Persons (prosopon) dear. and unconfused and one Name of the

statement offaith presented (llpOl,.ill8vov) (to us) indicates plainly the singleness of the ousia of the Persons in our -belief, I mean of the Father

and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' .18. He adds that'these distinctions do not imply a difference of nature, 181 20 , 21 (176). 182Ad Graecos p.22 (177). Cf. Can. Eunom.1.498 (404), 'We have learnt of the Father and the Son from the truth and have been taught the unity of nature in the two Persons ({),1t"OKelJ.t1:vol~) while the natural relationship of each to the other is signified by the names and by the very utterance of the Lord also.' But he still insists that the name of God is irrelevant, for he is only known by his activity or effects, ibid. 11.149 (960); Ad Ahlabium Pp.42-43 (120-1). We do not know what the Godhead is, only its 'energies' which we experience; we can recognize the Persons because we can perceive cause and effect, e.g. that the Son is from the Father and that the Spirit is also from the Father (and not vice versa), that is, their relations 'to 1t~ elval, Ad Ablabium pp. 55-;; (133, 136). 183Ad Graecos PP.23-27 (180-1); cf. Gonzalez, op. cit. 38-52. 184 pp. 28-33 (181, 184-5). 185Ref. Can. Eunom. 6 (469). 186Ibid. 12 (472); the one Name is of course God.

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The Controversy Resolved

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but only 'the recognizable characteristics of the hypostases'. We do not mix up the Persons with each other but we can know

188 14-16 (473) cf. Con. Bunom. III (i) 108 (604). For an analysis of Gregory's use of ousia and of several other technical terms see Grillmeier CeT 372-4. At Con. Bunom. 11.298, 299 (1012) Gregory defines epinoia in these terms 'since the Lord foresaw each type of activity of his human existence in varied forms, he is

Gregory of Course agrees that Christ is a mediator, but holds that his only mediatorial role was in the Incarnation.'" Here he joins Athanasius and his fellow-Cappadocians in making the great step forward in theological thought which marked a departure from almost all those who had gone before them. In accordance with this conviction he interprets the key-text of Prov 8:22 by referring the words to Christ's humanity, not to the pre-existent Logos.'92 In the third book of the Con. Eunomium he devotes more space to this crux interpretum. He first tries to show that this passage (with most in Proverbs),is not meant to be taken literally; the words 'wisdom has built herselfa house' (8:1) give us the hint; 8:22 is meant to be taken of the humanity of Christ. In 8:28 the writer is speaking of God's power and activity before the ages; 8:22 could not refer to the Son's generation because neither wisdom nor any attribute to God can exist after God (chronologically or ontologically) or can be created.' 93 He claims that the Son is in a sense 'unbeginning' (anarchos) because though he is not without cause, he is without temporal beginning."o The intention of the Contra Eunomium, says Balas, was to show 'the inconsistency of the intermediate position of the Son conceived by Eunomius as being (in perfection) above and (temporarily) prior to all (other) creatures, but inferior to and posterior to the Father'. He must, Gregory argues, be either a creature basically as others or coequal and co-eternal with the Father."s One result of this is, as in the case of the other Gregory, an unwillingness on the part of Gregory of Nyssa to use models for the relation of Father and Son which had in the past been employed confidently by orthodox writers. Only under suitable safeguards he will use 'reflection of glory' (a7ta6yuO"l1u M~'lC;) 'scent of myrrh', 'breath of God' and Logos and mind (voiiC;), but, once again, to illustrate not subordinate derivation but the

recognized successively through each of these names as his overseeing providence and energy changes into the type (corresponding to) the name. Now a name like this is stated by w to be called epinoia'; later explanation reveals that under this heading he includes any figurative, metaphorical description of God or of Christ in the Bible which illustrates some aspect ofms character or activity. This concept is taken directly from Origen. This is, of course, not the only meaning attached to the word epinoia by Gregory. For the interesting question, raised by Holl. whether Gregory was influenced by the views of Marcellus of Ancyra and made special efforts to reconcile his surviving disciples to the pro-Nicene church. see R. Hubner 'Gregor von Nyssa und Markell von Ankyra'. 189Kannengiesser 'Logique et idees motrices dans Ie recours biblique selon Gregoire de Nyssa' 99-101. Gregory mmselftells us that he was obliged to write Con. Eunom. in a hurry, see Ep. 29 (87). "oCon. Eunom. III (x) 42 (904); cf. ibid. III (ii) 73 (644) and 12<>-22 (661).

191Ref Con! Eunom. 143, 144 (532, 533). Balis Metousia Theou 30-33 gives several more examples from Gregory's works. 192Ad Simplicium de Fide (Leiden ed.) 62-63. It is interesting to observe that in the treatise Adversus Arium et Sabellium (Leiden ed.) 75. whose authenticity has been seriously doubted, a rather different interpretation of this text is taken. 193Con. Eunom. III (i) 21-65 (573-88). The same passage is dealt with more briefly at Con. Eunom. 1.296-300 (341, 344). Cf. M.J. Van Parys 'Exegese et theologie dans Ies Bvres Contre Eunome de Gregoire de Nysse' 183-5. 194Con. Eunom.1.468--g (396). See Balas 'Eternity and Time' 13S; the same article has a useful account of Gregory's ideas about time, 133-4, and on the eternity of the Son see ibid. 144. 195'Eternity and Time' 130-1, quotation 130.

726

727

'each in the peculiar characteristic ~f the hypostasis in infinite

perfection both observed separately' and not divided from the union',187

And he goes on to suggest that the reason why God in the Bible refrains from disclosing his name is that it was a sign that his essence is incomprehensible, though we can know God sufficiently to achieve salvation."8 Kannengiesser has shown that the first book of Gregory's Contra Eunomium (though it has been observed to betray some signs of hasty composition) follows a logical method. He first treats ofthe fundamentalideas which Eunomius in his Second Apology brings to the fore, then refutes them according to the conventions of philosophical dialectic,and then brings on arguments and texts from Scripture, treating the work section by section.'8' Gregory understands very well that Eunomius' doctrine of a reduced Son effectually prevents God communicaring himself, and perhaps is designed to do so: 'He says that the ingenerate and unapproachable Light cannot reach the point of experiencing suffering (nuB'll1utrov) and allots such an arrangement to the generated One because such a thing is appropriate and natural to him. '190 18713

(472). Cf. Danielou Plalonisme et theologie 38 and Balas Metousja Theou

s6--?; for the incomprehensibility C?f God see Danielou op. cit. 99·

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

simultaneous necessary existence of source and what is derived from it. The only point which the word 'Son' conveys in common parlance in defining the relation to the Father is 'nature' (physis).'9. The three differ neither in time nor place nor will nor behaviour (Sltlt1'1oEUflU) nor energy nor experience (pathos).'97 At one point in the third book of his Contra Eunomium'98 Gregory defines four different methods of generation, thus: (i) Artefacts are produced 'from matter and by skill'. (ii) Living beings are produced by a natural process 'from matter and nature' (physis). (iii) Some beings are generated 'by a material issue' (s~ ""IKfj<; ultoppolu<;). (iv) Language is generated from an immaterial cause (the mind) acting through material organs. The generation of the Son is to be thought of as analogous to (ii), but modified by (iii), and the various references to it in the Bible make this clear (especially ofcourse the 'effiuence' (LXX ult6ppolu) ofWisd 7:25 and the 'effulgence' (Ultuuyucrflu) of Heb 1:3). The whole is summed up inJn I where the Son is described as (i) 'in the beginning' and (ii) 'with God' and (iii) God (,only-begotten God'). Elsewhere he says that when we call God 'Father' of the Only-begotten we abandon all the undesirable attributes of the word 'father', and accept everything in it which is agreeable to 'a concept worthy of God which emphasises only the genuineness of the relation to his God and Father."99 Not only must corporeal associations be purged away, but also anything suggesting a difference of interval between Father and Son?OO Analogies for the 'pre-eonian existence (OltUpi;lV) of the only-begotten God' cannot be drawn from either the production of lifeless things nor from corporeal generation?O' It is quite as wrong

to call the Son 'ingenerate' as it would be to call the Father 'generate'. The Son can best be described as 'sent out in a generate manner from the ingenerate Light' .202 The Son is of course regarded as the Father's image by Gregory; sometimes he is called 'the image of the archetype' ,203 He is the image of the archetypal goodness by nature, not just by participation, 'he is good by nature, or rather the only-begotten God is beyond all good'.'o, And this is a proof of the eternal generation of the Son, for as beautiful by nature and the fulness of all goodness the Son must always have been in the Father.'o, And the awkward Marean text, 'why callest thou me good?' (Mk 10:18) is dealt with in the conventional pro-Nicene manner by regarding it as a disavowal of the goodness (in the ultimate sense) of Jesus' human nature, but an assertion of the goodness of his Godhead. 20 • Gregory will not allow difference of rank nor status among the Persons of the Trinity, but, like his fellow-Cappadocians, he allows that there is a certain order whiclr does not affect their equality:

196Ad Simplicium De Fide 63-64; Con. Eunom. III (vi) 35-39 (781, 784); Ref. Co~. Eunom. 91""'96 (508-509). The history of analogies such as these in the IVth century IS traced in Hanson Studies in Christian Antiquity cap. I I. 197Ad Graecos p.2S (180). 198IU (vi) 2?-28 (780); cf. Marguerite Harl 'A proposd'un passage du CONTRE EUNOME de Gregoire de Nysse' 218-21, and the whole article is to be consulted for Gregory's ideas about the Son's generation. She points out (225) tha~ Gregory is teaching that Scripture describes what is in fact beyond huma,n .descrlptio~ by a series of analogies modifying each other. and felicitously calls thIS une constItution du langage theologique par retouches successifs.' See above PP.724-S·

"'Con. Eonom. I1I.(i) 77 (593). '0'78 (593). 2O'lbid. I1I.(vii) 26-30 (812, 8'3).

'The same principle applies to the Holy Spirit affecting only a difference in order (taxis). for as the Son is attached to the Father and the fact that he derives his being from him does not diminish his status . (Oltap~I<;) so the Holy Spirit holds to the Son who can be regarded as prior (ltpoO&ropOUJl&vov) to the hypostasis of the Spirit in theory (epinoia)

on the score of origin' (ahia~). Extents of time have no application to the prN'onian life. 'So if the matter of origin is removed, the Holy Trinity is in no way unsymmetrical (dcruJJ.fprovcoC;) with itself.207

The only distinction we can find in the Trinity, he explains in one of his letters, is 'the order of the Persons (prosopon) and our confession of the hypostases': ,'The order is given to us in the Gospel according to which our creed

begins from the father, (and passing) through the Son in the middle off at the Holy Spirit.'

~eaves

But the difference of Persons which is manifested in the order of the 20'44, 47 (817).

'03Con. Eonom. L531 (416),636 (448). '04Ibid. I1I.(vi) 18 (776). 2OsIlI.(i) 49 (581). 206III.(ix) 11-16 (860. 864). For this association of eternal generation and goodness see Balas Metousia Theou 7C>-7I. 2071. 6 90 .69 1 (464); cf. 191-204 (309. 3 12). order does not affect the status of ousia.

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

hypostases provides no reason for confusing them.20 • In short, Gregory of Nyssa in his Trinitarian theology follows very much in the footsteps of Basil and of Gregory of Narianzus. He elaborates their account of the Godhead rather more than they. He has no gene in describing the Holy Spirit as fully God. He uses a technical vocabulary rather more than they. Perhaps for him prosopon meant the Person as he was discernible in the Scriptures and to reason, whereas hypostasis rather described what his distinct existence was. He had no difficulty in fitting his Trinitarian doctrine into his larger philosophical ideas which were not shared by his fellowCappadocians. But he did not allow doctrine to be swamped by philosophy, nor the witness of the Bible to be obscured by either. Holl finely says of him that for him God was a life-imparting power existing in three forms. 209

divine Son. They refused to allow that ingenerateness constituted God's essence, rather than merely qualifying it. They had no serious trouble with the problem of determining whether God's nature or his will produces the Son; against Eunomius, they insisted that the Son was not the production of a sheer fiat of the divine will; unlike Athanasius, they did not attempt to exalt nature above will, but saw the two acting inseparably together. 210 They maintained steadily that God's essence (ousia) could not be known but were confident that we can know him from his activity towards us sufficiently to be saved. They elaborated a new vocabulary for expressing a Trinitarian doctrine of God and insisted that this was the only sound way, in their circumstances and within the limits of their culture, of expressing the ultimate burden of the witness of the Bible to his nature and character. They were well aware of the limitations of human language and showed no inclination at all to impose particular formulae as the immutable test of orthodoxy. 211 They used contemporary pagan philosophy with much greater confidence and freedom than any Christian writer before them, though it is tendentious to imagine that they surrendered to an Hellenization of Biblical truth oicontributed to a process which wrapped the original simple gospel in clouds of obscure metaphysical terms. 212 Two points must, however, be dealt with very briefly before this chapter closes. The first is the doctrine of the Incarnation in the Cappadocian theologians. As a group they are less concerned about the doctrine of the Incarnation than were earlier writers such as Athanasius and Hilary, partly because their attention was necessarily

s. Conclusion The three Cappadocian theologians may be said to have shifted the emphasis and to some extent the ground in the great debate which resulted in the formulation of the classic doctrine of the Trinity. This was probably because to a larger extent than before agreement about the nature of the Son had been achieved, partly because the question of the status of the Holy Spirit came to the fore in their time as it had not before, and partly because of the emergence of new opponents who had not been in evidence till the last three decades of the fourth century, Eunomians, Macedonians and, to a lesser extent, Apollinarians. The three theologians were responsible, building on the foundation which Athanasius had laid, for establishing finally that the Son (and ultimately the Holy Spirit too) must not be in any sense subordinated to the Father. They thereby extinguished a long tradition of theological thought. The pre-existent Christ or Logos could no longer be used as a convenient means of envisaging how the metaphysically remote high god or supreme good could come into contact with this transient, corruptible, passible world in which we live. It was as incarnate that the Son was a mediator, but not as the 208Ep 24 (Leiden ed.) 7.77; similar statements in Adv. Macedonianos (Leiden text) 92-4, 100. 209

Amphilochius von

l~onium

209.

730

210S ee above, pp. 71 1-12, and the reference there to Meijering's article. See also Gregory of Nyssa Con. Eunom. IlI.(vi) 16 (773). 211 On this subject see cap. 13 ('Dogma and Formula in the Fathers') in Hanson

Studies in Christian Antiquity. 212See Harnack. History IV 106-7: 'The victory of the Nicene Creed was the victory of priests over the faith of the Christian people'. God becomes an incomprehensible mystery to be adored silently; and the reverse side of this is 'indifference and subjection to mystagogues'; hence the growth ofa cult of the saints and relics and icons, and the Mass regarded as magic, etc. Even Simonetti's much milder suggestion (Crisi 459""""61) that the period of the Cappadocians was one when originality and creativeness in theology had declined seems to me to be going too far. Nobody who has read Basil's DSS. Gregory of Nazianzus' Five Theological Orations and Gregory of Nyssa's Contra Eunomium or Catechetical Oration could doubt that these men were great writers in full command of their subject. For a fuller treatment of the influence of philosophy on the Cappadocians. see below cap. 24. pp. 8S6-
731

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

distributed over a wider area, and partly because Homoian Arianism was not so much their target as Neo-Arianism, and Neo-Arianism was not deeply interested in the Incarnation. Apollinarianism, though it certainly placed the Incarnation in the centre ofits thought, was never as widespread nor as influential as Arianism. 213 All the Cappadocians maintained that in becoming man the Son of God betrayed no inferiority in divine status nor compromised his divinity,214 and that the Incarnation was an act of sheer grace and love on the part of the Father (not a necessary device in order to enable him to communicate with the world}.215 They do not encounter quite the difficulties in which Athanasius enmeshed himself when trying to fit the Synoptic accounts of Jesus with a conviction of his divine nature. One reason for this is of course that they do not enter into the question as finely as he. But another is that they were compelled by the appearance of the doctrine of Apollinaris, put forward with brilliance and conviction by one who had accepted the doctrine of N ex animo and was a warm admirer of Athanasius, to recognise that the incarnate Logos certainly had a human mind. Basil during his controversy with Eustathius was impelled to deny Apollinaris' doctrine of the Incarnation. Gregory of Nazianzus2 !6 put the matter in a single iambic line:

seriously of the three; he wrote a weighty work against Apollinaris' book On the Divine Incarnation, calling his the Antirrheticus or Against Apollinaris. 219 The consistent complaint of the Cappadocians against Apollinaris is that while he allows a soul (psyche, something between the nervous system and the subconscious mind) to Christ, he denies. him a human mind (pneuma or nous). All three tend to solve the problem of an immutable, impassible God in a mutable passible body by attributing all the pathe, the human experiences, to the humanity or human nature of Christ while insisting that the divinity remained unaffected and uncom promised by them, and even among the pathe they want to say that the ouly experiences suffered by the human body were innocent ones, such as sleep or hunger, and not what we call emotions. And they think that they can accomplish this the more easily by attributing a human mind to. him 220 What had been represented by the Arians as weaknesses in the divine Son they either attribute to his humanity or explain away. Our Lord, says Gregory of Nazianzus, retreated into the desert at the Temptation in order to teach us to value such retreats, not because he needed to pray.22! Christ's being apparently abandoned by God or being made a sin or curse are mentioned only because we are so, not he; he did not really suffer nor dread suffering.>22 Only the man, not the God, was ignorant}23 Gregory of Nyssa does however counter the statement of Apollinaris that Christ voluntarily submitted to hunger and thirst, not by necessity, but by the process (akolouthia) of his nature when he points out that there is no difference between necessity and process in

lIS'i'\v < to > 1tap!66v, tOUtO Kai 1tpo")."\jf\~OV (,the sinoing element, that was what had to be assumed'},217

And it is he who coined the famous phrase 'what was not assumed was not healed'}!· Gregory of Nyssa took Apollinarianism most

this case. 224

The two Gregories certainly have adopted a doctrine of two

213For the Cappadocians' thought on the Incarnation, see Hauschild, 'Basilius von Caesarea' 309 (for Basil), Hall Amphilochius von Ikonium 178-95 (for Gr~gory of Nazianzus) and 226-35 (for Gregory of Nyssa) and Grillmeier CeT 367-'77. Holl acknowledges (op. cit. p. 153) tltat the doctrine of the Incarnation did not occupy a central position in Basil's attention: I do not here discuss how far Gregory of Nazianzus rejected and Gregory of Nyssa accepted the idea that the devil was deceived by the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ. H. E. W. Turner The Patristic Doctrine of the Redemption can also be consulted on this point. 214Basil Hom. XV.2 (468); Gregory of Nazianzus Drat. XLV.26 (657. 660). "'Gregory of Nyssa Cat. Or. V. J; Con. Eunom. III (i) 91-92 (597); Ref. Conf. Eunom. 142-4 (532-3). See Bath Metousia 52. 216Epp. 261.2 and 263. 217De Vita Sua 625 (S4); the necessary element was of course the human mind (nous). 218Ep 101, PG 37: lSI to yap U1tp6GAll1ttOV a.gepU1ttUfoV. The whole of this letter is devoted to refuting Apollinaris. Gallay does not include it in his edition of the letters, regarding it as a separate treatise, and Lampe's Patristic Lexicon gives the

wrong page in Migne. C£ Drat. XXII.13 (1145). Gregory wrote a poem against Apollinaris too, X (PG J6); see especially StM;1 (469). 219Edited in the Leiden series. Gregory also attacked Apollinaris in his third Epistle (Leiden text p. 24). 22°Basil Epp 261, 262; DSS VIIl.18 (99) (J06, J08); Gregory of Nyss. Cat. Orat. XIII·s; XVI.I-3; Epp. 3; Antirrheticus 13S, 160. Gregory of Nazianz us is less anxious to press this point, but see Drat. XXIX. 19: he remained what he was; he assumed what he was not. 2210rat. XXVI:7 (1239); cf. Drat. XXIX:IS, where all human limitations are referred to the humanity alone. 2220ra t. XXX.S (108). 223Ibid. IS. 16 (121, 125). 224.Antirrhetieus (Leiden text) p. 23 I (PG 1265); but at De Dei/ate Filii et Spiritus Sanel! PG 46:564 he channels all weakness and ignorance into the humanity ofjesus Christ.

732

733

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

natures. 225 Whether Basil did,so is Iess clear. At Adv. Eunom. i.I8 (553) he speaks of two 'substances' (ousiai) in the incarnate Logos. But later he writes of 'the characteristics of his nature' of the incarnate Christ, as if he had only one nature,226 and he confirms this impression a little further on in the same work, when he interprets various sayings of Jesus indicative of his obedience to the Father as showing, not that he is lacking in freewill nor deprived of initiative nor is ,awaiting a pre-concerted signal, but is demonstrating hIS own will (yvciJll'l) which yet clings in unswerving union to the Father. Basil does not allot these words and sentiments to the human

compreheasion (""....1]\jII<;) of the equal and equally honoured, for the word [Trinity1unites what is united by nature and does not allow It to be dissipated by a numbering which would dissolve things which are

nature. 227

The second point is one which we have already encountered in connection with Basil. Did the Cappadocians' account of the Trinity ,assume a 'generic' interpretation of the divine substance? We have seen that in the case of Basil the evidence is uncertain. One or two texts in Gregory of Nazianzus could be given a 'generic' interpretation. At one point in his third theological Oration he says that the fallacy of the Arian argument about the relation of the Son to the Father lies in assuming that what is predicated of a particular possessor of a substance must also be true of the substance itself; it is like arguing that because so and so is a dead man, therefore men everywhere or mankind is dead. 22 • If this analogy were rigorously applied to the relation of the first two Persons of the Trinity it would imply a 'generic' idea of their substance. Elsewhere Gregory uses these words: 'a Trinity, not an aggregate (cl1tapi91'1],n<;) of unequal objects .. , but a 22'E.g. Greg. Naz. Orat. XXXVII 2 (2B4, 2Bs); XXX.B (113); two different functions operating.

XXIX.IB (97),

226DSS VIILI7 (96) (304). Pruche labours to show that Basil was not

not dissoluble.'229

And this could also be regarded as making for a 'generic' view of the Trinity. Gregory of Nyssa's contrast between the infinite ousia of God and the 'circumscribed' (perigraptos) or 'delimited' hypostasis of each of the Persons is not really the same as a contrast between the generic and the particular; all he means is that whereas God's illimitable essence is wholly beyond our grasp he becomes perceptible in hi,S hypostases. We have already seen that he can use the analogy of a rainbow to illustrate the relations of the Persons in the Trinity. All the Cappadocians at some point use the analogy of the relation of the particular to the general in order to illustrate the relation of the hypostases to the ousia in the Godhead, and this is probably the strongest, argument on the side of those who favour the 'generic' theory. But it must be remembered that this is not the only analogy which they use to illustrate the internal constitution of the Trinity. One of the favourite illustrations with Gregory of Nyssa is that of three men who are all members of the human race while remaining individual human beings. At first sight this looks like a strong evidence of his holding the 'generic' theory. But he is well aware of the weakness of this illustration, and soon qualifies it.23o Elsewhere he is ready to use the illustration of two lamps being lit by a third to describe the relation of the Persons.231 And in the third book of the Contra Eunomium he rejects all images for the relation of the Persons to each other - ray, scent, and breath, even though they are Scriptural- and will allow only Logos and mind (nous).232 Gregory of Nazianzus at one point uses the illustration

Monophysite here.

2271bid. VIII.2o (104) (316). The two Gregories have, of course, their own peculiarities in their doctrines of the Incarnation. Gregory of Nazianzus, for instance, has an account of how the two natures in Christ interlock with each other (periciloresis) and interchange their characteristics (antidosis idiomatum). Orat. XXVII. XXVIII, XXIX. Gregory of Nyssa adopts from Origen the idea that after the Resurrection and Ascension the human body ofJesu;s was so wholly spiritualized as to be virtually absorbed in the divine: Ad Theophilum (Leid. text) us, 126; Atlfirr/leticus 201, 228-230. And several scholars have remarked how skilfully he dovetails his doctrine of the Incarnation into his general philosophical. and theological scheme, c.g. Sheldon-Williams 'Greek Christian Platonist Tradition' 447, 45 6 . 22KOrat. XXIX. r 5, quot(.'d already above, p. 71 J.

734

2290rot. XXIII.IO (1I61). An important article on this subject is one which we have already noticed. that of Lebon 'Le sort du "consubstantiel"Nic~en II'. But Lebon is too much inclined to assume that when he has shown that a wnter uses the expression 'one ousia' his point is proved, whereas it is possible that the meaning in any case is 'one (generic) ousja'. Even where (as on pp.652-3) he produces an example of 'identity' (tutk6tll«;) of ousia he has not necessarily proved his point. Gonzalez's essay (op. cit.) is a good guide upon this subject. 230 Ad Graecos p. 22, where it iJ!ustrates the relation of prosopon to ousja; also pp. 28-33 and 40-42. It is clear that he is not satisfied with it. 231Adv. Macedonianos P.9I. 2321II (vi) 35-40 (7B1, 7B4); at Ref. Conf Eunom. 91-<)6 (soB, 509) he opts again for logos and nous.

735

The Controversy Resolved

The Cappadocian Theologians

'to know one and the same nature of Godhead recognized in

unless the user of it has the good sense to hold onto one point only in the analogy and throwaway all the others. 2' o One conclusion can be drawn from this evidence. It is dangerous to argue confidently from analogies to the Trinity adduced from time to time by the Cappadocians. They did not put much trust in them themselves. And in the end the 'generic' thesis about their ide. of God's substance depends upon taking their analogies strictly and seriously. We should conclude that while none of the three held a doctrine of identity of substance as strict as that of Athanasius none of them believed in a thinly disguised form of the homoiousios. Far less should we assume that they (or any other theologian in the ancient world) held the too popular modem theory that God is three persons in our modern sense, i.e. three centres of consciousness. We can best end this chapter with a comment by Prestige on the work of Basil and the two Gregories: 2"

unoriginatedness and the Generation and the Procession, as with us in the mind and the reason and the spirit\

and he adds a disclaimer of putting much trust in earthly analogies. 233 At another point he produces the example of Adam, created of clay, Eve, cut out of Adam's side, and Seth, born by natural procreation of Adam and Eve, yet they are all consubstantial (homoousios). He specifically says that this analogy, like all analogies, is unsatisfactory. What he wants it to illustrate is simply that objects which originate in different ways can be consubstantial, as the Father, Son and Spirit, all of whom have different origins (or in the case of the Father, none) are consubstantial. 23 ' He is ready to adopt the analogy of light when he succinctly describes the Trinity as (we perceive) 'the Son as light from the Father light in the Spirit light'.'"

'Each of the three Persons is as entirely one with those with whom he

'There is no longer any suggestion that God is one simply by reason of the fact that the second and third Persons may in the last resort be resolved back into the first Person, since they derive their origin from him. The fact that now comes to be emphasized is that the Father is

is connected as he is with himself, because of the identity of the essence

manifested in the Son and in the Holy Spirit wholly and without any

(tQi taOtQi tij, oOa\a,) and of the power.'23.

detraction. The three Persons no longer lead back to a unity that is primarily found in one Person; they are in a real sense one in themselves'.

But another statement in the same work is not easily reconcilable with the 'generic' theory; he says

Towards the end of this treatise he finally rejects first the analogy of source/stream/river because it might suggest that the Godhead is a process or flux 237 and then the analogy of the sun-ray-point oflight, because it suggests a composite nature and because it does not afford a proper illustration of the distinct reality of the Persons. 238 He next tentatively suggests a more complicated analogy (which he says is not his own) of water under sunshine producing a moving and dancing reflection on the wall. 239 But he finally rejects even this and concludes that no analogy or image for the Trinity is satisfactory 2330rat. XXIII. II (n6I, II64). quoted above. P.7IO. 2340rol. XXXI.II (145). We have seen above (p. 735) that Gregory of Nyssa can introduce the analogy of three men too. 235Jbid. 4 (137). In the same place he allows the analogy afthe stream coming from the source. Cf. Gregory of Nyssa's 'Only-begotten Light shining from the true Light' (though he adds that these Lights do not vary in distance or nature). Contra Eonom. 1.378 (369). 236 16 (152). 237 31 (169). 23'32 (169). 239 32 ( 169).

24°33 (172). 241GPT 233.

737

The Doctrine of the Spirit

22

The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit I.

Introduction

The scope of this work excludes a treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as it developed before the fourth century.' The strongly eschatological nature of the Spirit in the New Testament had been m the course of the history of doctrine dimmed and flattened. The early second-century concept of the Incarnation as the taking of a human body by the Holy Spirit had given way to a recognition of the separate existence of the Holy Spirit from the Son in the Apologists and even more clearly in Irenaeus and Tertullian, though the belief that God is spirit continued to trouble theologians in their efforts to create a consistent pneumatology. A strong tendency to subordinate the Spirit drastically to the Son evident among some third-century authors led some scholars in the past to postulate a phase of 'Binitarianism' when the Spirit was simply not recognised by the theologians; but this theory cannot be sustained.> Even Origen's sophisticated and carefully contrived doctrine of the Spirit as the third in a hierarchically structured divine Trinity, each hypostasis or ousia distinct from the other Two without losing a basic unity, did I For the history of chis doctrine see H. B. Swete The Early History ofthe Doctrine of tile Holy Spirit, The History of the Doctrine cif the Procession of the Holy Spirit and T~e Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church; Harnack. History of Dogma IV, 108-19; Gwatktn

Studies in Arianism 26, 210; Simonetti C,;s; 64.362-'7; Stead Divine Substance 175-80 ; Ritter Das Konzil von Konstantinopel 293-5 (n I); A.1. C. Heron The Holy Spi,it 1-86; V. Lai Nov;ziano: la Trinita lntro 22, 23· 2Novatian. who was supposed to be one of its exemplars, certainly recognised a separate and divine. though radically subordinated, Holy Spirit: see his De Yrinitate 16.90 (II2, 114) (Loi). And the evidence from Victorinus of Pettau, who was another writer appealed to in support of the theory, was misunderstood, partly as the result of a wrong reading of the MSS by the CSEL editor, J. Haussleiter. See Studies in Christian Antiquity cap. 14. esp. pp. 323-4. and Grillmeier CeT 19 8- 20 1.

not alter the subordinate status of the Spirit within the Godhead. 3 The doctrine of the Holy Spirit emerged into the fourth century as a minor concern of the church's theologians. The surprising thing is, not that more attention was not paid to the Spirit, but that the theologians continued to include the Spirit in the framework of their theology. Contemporary, Middle Platonist philosophy (with the doubtful exception ofNumenius), did not require acknowledgement of the existence of three ultimate realities. The worship and religious experience of the Church and the continually practised custom of baptising into the Triple Name prevented the intellectuals from omitting the Holy Spirit altogether from their calculations. Alexander of Alexandria in his letter to Alexander ofThessalonica refers in conventional fashion in his loosely-recounted Rule of Faith to one Holy Spirit who inspired the 'divine instructors' of the Scriptures' but otherwise does not give us any useful clues to his pneumatology. We do not know whether he would have extended to the Spirit his conviction that the Father and the Son represented distinct hypostases (see above p. 141). None of the surviving fragments of Eustathius of Antioch throws any light on his doctrine of the Holy Spirit .. He certainly would have repudiated the idea of the Spirit as a distinct hypostasis in the Godhead, and quite possibly identified him with the pre-existent Logos. Marcellus of Ancyra would have agreed with him in rejecting the doctrine of the Spirit (as he did that of the Son) as a separate hypostasis in the Godhead. We have already looked at one tell-tale passage in which Marcellus apparently maintained that: 'If we were to examine the Spirit alone, it would be reasonable to think that the Logos was one and the same thing with God. But if we were to examine the additional fact of the Incarnation in the case of the Saviour, the Godhead would appear to be extended simply by activity, so that in all likelihood the Monad is geriuinely indivisible'.6

It seems likely that for Marcellus the Holy Spirit simply was God in his temporary function as Logos before the Incarnation, resting on the 3 Apparently Theognostus at the very end of the third or beginning of the fourth century followed Origen closely in this subordinating of the Spirit. See Harnack Yheognostus, Fragments oj the Hypotyposes (TV 24.11) 75, 76. ·Opitz Urk III No. 14. 53 (z8). sSee above. pp. 214-16. 6Eusebius of Caesarea, Eccles. Theol. 111.4.157 (frag. 60); see above, p. 226 and the whole treatment pp. 226-28.

739

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

man Jesus during the Incarnation, and when, in Marcellus' view, the Incarnation was over, returning to his original function as Logos. The conviction that God is spirit (pneuma) was dominant in Marcellus' thought. The ideas on the Holy Spirit ofEusebius of Caesarea, who objected so strongly to the doctrine of Marcellus and was probably responsible for his being ejected from his see, were themselves radical, if not positively eccentric. He certainly accepted the subsistence of Father, Son and Spirit as three hypostases, but in his case we cannot say, as we can of Origen's doctrine, 'within the Godhead'. In his earlier work, Praeparatio Evangelica, he can say:

Earlier in the same work Eusebius had said that there were three entities believed in by the Church: the incarnate Son's human nature: the Son of God inhabiting this having come forth [from the Father, ltpolovta] and exisring substantially, and God the Father of this Son. l l There is no mention of the Spirit. This pneumatology of Eusebius.is indeed extraordinary with no exact antecedent, but it is faithfully reproduced in every form of Arian doctrine thereafter. Perhaps the recent definition of the Son as consubstantial had, as it were, raised the magnitude of the word 'God' which previously had held a much more indefinite range of meaning,'2 and Eusebius did not think that the Holy Spirit deserved that intensity of significance. His admiring disciple Eusebius of Emesa was Arian enough to take the same line; we are to worship the Father and the Son, but not the Spirit.' 3 When we examine the creeds and confessions of faith which were so plentifully produced between the years 325 and 360, we gain the overwhelming impression that no school of thought during that period was particularly interested in the Holy Spirit. The statement of the Council of Antioch of 325 made only the slightest mention of the Spirit, and N, composed a few months later, dismissed the subject in six words Kal sl<; to ltv.ulla t6liytov (and in the Holy Spirit). Of the four creeds drawn up at Antioch in 341, the first simply reproduces the words of the last article of N, the third and fourth give a brief account of the function of the Holy Spirit but say nothing about his status. The second (the 'Dedication' Creed) pays more attention to pneumatology. It runs:

'Now third, after the second Existent (ousia) established in the place of the moon (i.e. to the Son as sun) is the Holy Spirit, whom they [the Christians] also number in the primal and royal rank and honour of the sovereignty of the universe. to control all that comes into existence

after these [i.e. the Son and the Spirit who have been labelled geneta, "emergents" by Eusebius already], I mean the subordinated beings and those who need assistance from them [i.e. the Son and the Spirit]; and the Spirit himself is subordinated to the Creator of the universe'

[i.e. the Son].' The Holy Spirit holds the third place (taxis) and ministers to the powers that are subordinate to him. He assists the Logos in his work, and both are supported by the overflowing fount of being (physis) from the Father. The Logos alone, as the primal emergent (gennema) can mediate the ineffable and incomprehensible abundance of the Father's benefits (ta aya8a). He administers and mediates them to the Spirit, who conveys them to the spiritual beings below him. 8 As far as this goes, the Spirit might still be described as God, but in his later Ecclesiastical Theology Eusebius excludes this possibility. After passages emphasizing the entire subordination of the Spirit to the Son, 9 he writes: 'But the Spirit the Paraclete is neither God nor Son. since he has not

received his origin (genesis) from the Father in the same way as the Son has, and is one of the things which have come into existence through the Son',10

'Proep. Ev. VlI.I5.6. 'Ibid. 7, 8, 9; cf. P.E. X.20.I, and see above pp. 55-56. 'Eee. Theal. IIl.j.Ij!rI63; 6.164. IOIbid.6. 164.

740

'And in the Holy Spirit. who is given to those who believe for comfort and sanctification and perfection . . . obviously (in the name) of the Father who is really Father and the Son who is really Son and the Holy Spirit who is really Holy Spirit. because the names are not

given lightly nor idly but signify exactly the particular hypostasis and order and glory of each of those who are named. so that they are three in hypostasis but one in agreement.'14

This creed does not of course say whether the Spirit is God or not. 111.6.64. 65.

12He may have meam here that the Spirit is not God the Father but if so he did not say so. Compare the remark ofW.Jaeger that for the Greeks the word theos always had a predicate. and never indicated an individual Person, as in Hebrew usage (Gregor "Oti Nyssa's Lellre IIOti heiligen Geist 17.... 18). 13Sec above, pp. 395--6. 14See above. p. 286.

741

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

The highly polemical doctrinal statement of the Western bishops at Serdica in 343 is concerned about the confusion caused by the fact that as well as being the Holy Spirit God is spirit. It says that the Son without the Father would be logos without pneuma (spirit) and that in the Incarnation the Spirit did not suffer, but only the human body, and is very anxious to deny a purely moral unity between the Father and the Son; the apostles, it says, had the Holy Spirit, but this does not mean that they were the Holy Spirit." The later doctrine of the Spirit as the bond of union (nexus amoris) between the Father and the Son is faintly foreshadowed here, but the matter of the Spirit's status is not decided. The statement of the Eastern bishops at Serdica simply repeated the fourth Antiochene Creed of 341, with a warning (directed against the doctrine of Marcellus) that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not the same.'· The Macrostich, produced in 343 or 344 and presented later, vainly, to Constans, asserts that Father, Son and Spirit are three really existing things (tpia ItpaYliata) and Persons (ltp6orolta), that they are not identical and not three gods (anathema IV), and that its compilers believe in:

support, teach and sanctify the apostles and all believers'. The Dated CrC"Cd of 359 and the formula suggested by Akakius at Seleucia in the same year have a rather longer pneumatological article, but one that adds nothing theologically to what previous creeds have said'>" The Creeds of Nice in 359 and of Constantinople in 360 have the barest mention of the Spirit. The set of anathemas of Basil of Ancyra's Council at Ancyra in 358 did not mention the Holy Spirit. But during this period there are two interesting exceptions to the otherwise universal relegation of the Holy Spirit to the category of a matter of minor interest. The first is the doctrine of Cyril of Jerusalem. He devotes considerable attention to the Holy Spirit, and while he does not directly apply to him the word 'God' he defines his status as virtual equality with God. He is 'honoured with the same dignity of status as the Father and the Son'. As well as describing the Spirit's function, Cyril says that the Spirit is 'honoured with the Father and the Son and at the time of the holy baptism is included in the Holy Trinity', a significant remark. He deprecates unnecessary prying into the question as to the Spirit's nature (Physis) and hypostasis. He subsists distinctly along with the other two Persons and takes part with them in the same saving strategy towards us. 2 ' The other exception is the 'Letter of George of Laodicea' which was circulated, probably in 359, among the party of Basil of Ancyra who favoured the formula 'like according to ousia'. Not only is the author very firm on the distinct existence of the three Persons, but he clearly includes the Holy Spirit in the Godhead:

'the wholly perfect and most holy Trinity, that is in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, calling the Father God and the Son God, but these not two gods, but we confess one rank of Godhead and close harmony of sovereignty' ,17

The omission of the title 'God' in the case of the Spirit is probably no accident. The next creed, the First Sirmian Creed of 35 I, reproduces the Macrostich and adds a few more anathemas: it condemns the propositions that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one Person (ltp6oroltov), that the Holy Spirit is 'the ingenerate God', .that the Spirit is not distinct from the Son, that the Holy Spirit is part of the Father, and that Father, Son and Spirit are three gods." Everywhere the concern is not for the status of the Holy Spirit himself, but (against Marcellus and Photinus) for his distinct existence and at no point do these formulae commit themselves to saying that he is God. The notorious Second Creed of Sirmium of 357 simply says of thO" Holy Spirit, 'And the Comforter the Spirit is through the Son, who was sent and came according to the promise, so that he might above, p. 302. 16See above, p. 398.

15S ee

"Hahn Symbole §159, p. 195. "Ibid. §160, pp. 198--9. See above, pp. 327-8.

742

I.

'The Easterners confess that there is one Godhead embracing everything through the Son in the Spirit, and they confess one Godhead and one sovereignty and one rule, but still they recognize the Persons in the properties of their hypostases, perceiv'ing the Father subsisting in the paternal authority and the Son . .. and they confess the Holy Spirit also, whom the Scripture names the Paraclete, recognizing him as subsisting from the Father through the Son'.22

And later he labours to show that though both Father and Son are spirit (pneuma), they are nevertheless distinct." When we later come to discuss the origins of the so-called 'Assailants of the Spirit' 19See above. p. 345. 2°Hahn op. cit. §163. 204 and Epiphanius Panarion 73.25.9 (299). 21See above, pp. 407-8. 22Epiphanius Panarion 73.14.3, 4 (288, 289). 23Ibid. 17. 18 (290. 291).

743

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

(Pneumatomachi, i.e. Macedonians) we must keep in mind that tliis Homoiousian writer is one of the first to recognize the divinity of the Holy Spirit. We have no means of determining and very little even of speculating about Arius'own doctrine of the Holy Spirit. There is a wholly colourless reference to the Spirit in a creed carefully divested of controversial points, an enigmatic remark to the effect that 'the Spirit of eternity was in the superior Word!' and two allegations of Athanasius to the effect that Arius taught that the ousia of the Spirit was wholly unlike that of the Father,>' and that the Spirit was made out of non-existence. 26 From such scanty evidence no firm conclusions can be drawn. We may guess that Arius regarded the Spirit as the creature of the Son, that it is most unlikely that he would have used the word 'God' for him, and that he thought of him a; existing as a distinct hypostasis from those of the Father and the Son, but that is all. 27 Asterius in one fragment declares his beliefin God the Father, his Son the only-begotten God and in the Holy Spirit, and that the Father must truly be Father and the Son truly Son and the Holy Spirit similarly!" and in another fragment that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. 2 • And Narcissus of Neronias made the famous (and to Ossius shocking) statement that he believed in three ousiai (by which he no doubt meant hypostases = Persons).30 The Homoian Arians, once their theology and· party had gained maturity and cohesion, taught a doctrine in which the Spirit was as neatly dovetailed into subordination to the Son as the Son was to the Father. We have enough of the fragments of Palladius' reply to Ambrose to be sure of this. The Holy Spirit is the obedient servant of the Son, carrying out the tasks appointed to him. It would be absurd to regard the Holy Spirit as similar or equal in ousia to the Son or to the Father. None of the Three is similar to each other in that respect. 31 Though these theologians are ready to ascribe a large range of activities and privileges to the Spirit they maintain that he is not

God and is not to be worshipped. On the contrary, he himself worships the Son (who in his turn worships the Father), and intercedes with the Son as the Son does with the Father. They would probably not have objected to saying that the Spirit is the image of the Son who is the image of the Father, nor that he is not begotten but proceeding. Bunhey were sure that he is not God.32 Germinius of Sirmium, whatever views he may later have held, was being true to type when in his argument with Heraclianus he declared:

24See above, p. 9. 25See above, p. 14. 260r. con. Ar. IIl.IS (169). 27See above, p. 23. 28Frag. XXX (65). see above, p. 35; the omission of the title 'God' to the Holy

Spirit is probably deliberate. 29Fragment XXXI (67). see above, p.' 36. JOSee above, pp. 45. ISO-I. . liSee' above, PP 563-4.

744

" state that the Holy Spirit is the chiefof the angels and archangels. For just as the Son is not like the Father in everything, so neither is the

Holy Spirit to the Son'. 33 Ulfilas' Rule of Faith as given us by Auxentius says of the Spirit: 'The Holy Spirit is neither Father nor Son but was made by the Father through the Son; he is not first nor second, but placed by the Second in the third rank; he is not ingenerate nor generate but created by the lngenerate through the Only-begotten ... One God exists and one only-begotten God the Lord subsists, and the Holy Spirit the advocate cannot be called either God or Lord, but he received his existence from God through the Lord; he is not originator nor creator, but the Illuminator, but the Sanctifier, Teacher and Leader, Helper and Intercessor . . . and Confirmer. the servant of Christ, the distributor of graces, the pledge of our inheritance in whom we have been sealed for

the day of redemption, without whom nobody can say "Jesus is

Lord ... ·34

Eunomius' doctrine of the Holy Spirit differed very little from this. The Spirit is the creature (ltoi1l1lu) of the Son who in his turn is the creature of the Father, and he is third in rank. 3' He lacks • 32Se~ .ab~ve. ,pp. 57?,:2. Meslin (Les Ariens 323) hazards the guess that this doveta~lmg der:ves o~lgmal1y from Neo-Platonic ph~Josophy, 'pour JaqueUe toute p~oces~lon ~st. necess~lreme~t Une degradation de l'Etre. une chute temoignante dune mfenonte et dune dissemblance fonciere.' 33~lt~rca!io ~eracl.iani cum Germinio, PG Supp. 347. The Creed attributed to Ger~lnlUs In HJlary s Coll. Anliar. A III (47) simply ends 'and in the Holy Spirit, t~at IS ~araclete, :,h? was, given to us from God the Father through the Son'. SimOnetti,.
th:

745

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

'Godhead and creative power'. 36 In his (First) Apology Eunomius described the Holy Spirit as third in nature as well as rank, not to be worshipped, but he in whom worship is offered, coming into existence by the Father's command through the Son, lacking in Godhead and creative power, but complete in sanctifying and instructing power. 37 In his carefully-phrased Confession which he produced for the Council of Constantinople held in 383 he repeats all these points. The Spirit is not comparable with the Father and the Son, but he is the special, unique and pre-eminent product of the Son 'the first work and the most important, the greatest and the fairest',38 and he gives a long list of the Spirit's activities in the Church.'· The doctrine of the Spirit in Hilary of Poitiers had already been examined. 40 He starts from the premises which he inherited from Tertullian. The Spirit is a distinct manifestation of the nature of the Godhead, in fact of its substance, which of course is spirit.41 He receives from the Son and proceeds from the Father, but what he receives from the Son he also receives from the Father. One of his distinguishing features is that he is gift: he is received. He is neither generated nor created. He has a function and rank belonging to his own Person. Hilary makes no distinction between the Spirit in the economy of salvation and the Spirit in his relations within the Godhead. Though several scholars have attempted to do so, it is not possible to fmd a doctrine in Hilary of the mutual indwelling (circuminsessio) of the Persons of the Trinity. The role assigned to the Holy Spirit in his famous pithy saying sums up the particular importance to him of the Spirit infinitas in aetemo species in imagine, 'usus in munere (,Infinity in the Eternal, revelation in the Image, experience in the

Gift').42 But we must credit Hilary with the first bold and successful attempt to incorporate the Holy Spirit into the structure of an eternal, and not merely economical Trinity. Lucifer of Calaris offers almost no material for the seeker after pneumatological doctrine. He can declare that Father, Son and Holy SPIrIt ellJoy a smgle eternIty and that they are 'a perfect Trinity and a single Godhead', but that is all. 43 In a crude and abbreviated way he has transposed the legacy ofTertuliian into the terms of the theology of the fourth century .. Phoebadius of Agen is a more discerning theologIan who stands m much the same tradition as that of Lucifer. He. is faithful to Tertullian in describing the Holy Spirit whose dlvmlty he does not doubt, as the 'body' of the Word, invisible and incomprehensible spirit, but still a body.44 These two were pursuing a theologIcal traIl qUIte dIfferent from that of either anti-Nicenes or pro-Nicenes in the East, and one which brought with it its own difficulties. Gregory of Elvira, a better-informed writer than either of the othert~o, is one of the earliest to state the consubstantiality of the Holy SPIrIt, and he ends his Rule of Faith with the words 'three Persons of one substance' (tres personae unius substantiae). He is here of course reading into the creed of Nicea the theology of Tertullian suitably adjusted for his times; the 'corporeal' concept of substance ha; not been exorcized: 45 This applies even more strongly to the arguments of Herachanus against Germinius. 46 The Council of Paris which was held in the year 360, whose Acts have not survived' insisted that the test of orthodoxy should be the acceptance ofN bu; said nothing about the divinity of the Holy Spirit. 47 That this tenet was becoming a crucial one in the search for the Christian doctrine of God, and that the words ofN alone did not guarantee its acceptance, was therefore perhaps becoming plain to several minds in the East by the year 360, but this point was not yet appreciated in the West. One striking exception to this generalization is Marius Victorinus, as he is an exception in several other respects. He has no difficulty in recogmzmg the full dlvmity and the consubstantiality of the Holy

1

"Ibid. 3.5 (665)· 37 Apologeticus 2$ (861). 38Gregory of Nyssa ConJ. Rif. Eunom. 202 (557); 208 (561) (quotation from this). "Ibid. 212 (564), 218 (565), 221 (565),223 (568),224 (568), 227 (569), 230 (569), 231 ~S69). 232 (572); see above, p. ~2I. Eunomius'little creed submitted by him in 36015 wholly colourless on the subject of the Holy Spirit, as on all other points. See Hahn Symbole §190, pp. 260-1. 40See above, pp. 502-5. . 41 See his early statement in the Commentary on Matthew 12.17 (284) 'What is more mexcusable than to deny to Christ his being God and deprive him of the substance (substantiam) of the Father's spirit in him, seeing that he perfects aU his work in the Spirit of God?' So also ibid. 12.18 (286), it is to blaspheme against the Spirit if you deny the Son's sharing in the Father's substance.

42De Trinitate II.I (50-I). 43S ce above. p. 513. 44SCC above. p. 518. 4SSee above, p. 526. For Zeno of Verona, see above, pp. 529-30. 46See the Altercatio Heracliani cum Germinio, and ahove, pp. 528--9. The Latin Commentary Otl tire !"jce~e c.reed printed in Turner EOMIA I 330-47 (and PL Supp. I 22~2IO) has. nothmg slgmfi~ant to say about the Holy Spirit (see above, p. 528).

AthanaslU' Ep. ad Rufinlonum (PG 26:II80-1); Hilary Coll. Antiar. Al (43).

747

The Controversy Resolved

Spirit. He goes farther, indeed, than Basil of Caesarea ever went, more than a decade before Basil wrote his great work on the Holy Spirit. Characteristically he fails to make a satisfactory distinction between the Son and the Spirit and characteristically he has some original ideas on the subject, such as the Spirit as 'the voice of a voice', perhaps anticipating the Cappadocian's concept of the Spirit as 'the image of an image'. He comes closer than perhaps any other fourthcentury writer to conceiving of the Holy Spirit as, so to speak, the return movement of God to himselfin response to his movement out from himselfin the Son. 48 But the work of Marius Victorinus had no immediate impact upon the debate concerning the doctrine of God. Few in the West were capable of understanding it,and as far as..we know it was never translated into Greek. Even had it been available to Eastern theologians it is doubtful if they would have troubled to read a treatise by a Western writer, so steadily had the Eastern theologians made the running for more than a century past.

2.

The Holy Spirit in the thought of Athanasius and his Followers

It was Athanasius of Alexandria who first faced squarely the subject of the Holy Spirit, first, not merely among those who were involved in the great debate about the Christian doctrine of God which preoccupied the minds of the men of the fourth century, but first in the history of Christianity. And he apparently did so, not because he saw this subject as the next essential item on the agenda of those who were developing the doctrine of God or endeavouring to cope with the intellectual problems which it raised, but because one of his close friends and suffragans, bishop Serapion ofThmuis situated on one of the branches of the river in the Nile delta, wrote to him asking his advice about how to counter the arguments of a group of Christians with whom he had come in contact, who were satisfied as to the divinity of the Son but denied that of the Holy Spirit. 49 Athanasius wrote in reply several letters on the subject of the Holy Spirit50 The 48See above, 'pp. 550-2. .4~The identity of thi$ group is discussed below. 50Epistulae ad Serapion; PC 26: 52g--676. They have been translated into English

by C. R. B. Shapland Leiters of Saint Athanas;us concerning the Holy Spirit (London 1951), with an intr
\

I

The Doctrine of the.Spirit

date of these Letters is to be placed certainly between 356 and 362,5' and the area of uncertainty can with some probability be reduced to 359 or 360,52 while the archbishop was enduring his third exile in the hinterland of his see. Athanasius begins his argument for the divinity of the Holy Spirit from the point which was peculiarly his own, the existence of God as Trinity. The word 'Trinity' (tPIII.) had long been in use (first by Theophilus of Antioch in the second half of the second century) and had been used to cover a multitude of conceptions. Even Palladius' scheme of a high God, a lesser god and a created spirit could be called a Trinity. But Athanasius refuses such an idea: the concept of the group against which he is writing is 'not a Trinity but a Dyad.and then a creature'. 53 Now, as Athanasius has abandoned the desire to see any mediating element within the. Godhead nor any mediating supernatural instrument used to come between God and men, except the human nature ofJesus Christ, he cannot allow the createdness of the Holy Spirit. He has early in the work to tackle the two proof texts upon which his opponents relied to establish their case. The first is one which would strike all modem students of the Bible as grotesquely irrelevant, Amos 4:13. In the RSV it runs: 'For 10, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and

declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness and treads on the heights of the earth, the Lord, the God of hosts is his name',

In the Septuagint version, however, the passage began: 6.6tt 160" tyro ""cperov ~pOvt1)v Kul KtI~roV ltveu~u KUt UltUyyEA.A.roV cl<; uv9proltou<; TOV XPlcrTOV ulhou

which can be rendered in English: 'Therefore. behold, I am establishing the thunder and creating Spirit and announcing to men his Christ'.

In fact under the magical wand of mistranslation it became a ~etter, and 4.8-23. ~houg? probably by Athanasius, is a quite separate fragment not mtegrally connected WIth the letters. Letter 3 is in fact little 'more than an abridgement of Letter I . :~So Swete Tile Early History of the Doctrine of~he Holy Spirit 47. . So, Quasten Patrology I1I.S?-9; Shapland (op. CIt. 16-18) suggests between the

begmnmg of 358 and before the end of 360. 53Epp. ad Serap. 1:2.

749

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

Trinitarian formula which ineluded a created Holy Spirit. Had Athanasius been capable of appealing to the original Hebrew, he could have blown this proof sky-high in a sentence. But as he has not the resources to do this, he has to go a more roundabout way; he claims that pneuma here means 'wind' and not 'Spirit' (this is why he calls his opponents Tropici because they insist on taking literal passages such as this metaphorically, using allegories or 'tropes'); or the reference to Christ means the Incarnation and the pneuma meant the spirit of man renewed by the Incarnation. 54 The other proof text used by these tropic; is I Tim 5:21, 'In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I charge you to keep these rules without favour'. The holy angels here are apparently equivalent to the Holy Spirit. Athanasius labours to show from various texts in the Bible that the Holy Spirit cannot possibly be on a level with angels. 55 He appeals characteristically to the mutual indwelling of the three Persons:

the Spirit's relationship within the Trinity as correlation and unity.6. He means, as he goes on to explain, that what the Son is to the Father so the Spirit is to the Son;just as the Son abides in the Spirit in his ow~ image, so the Father abides in the Son in his own image. The Spirit is indeed an image of an image.

'For the holy and blessed Trinity is inseparable and united in itself, and when the Father is mentioned his Logos is there too and the Holy Spirit who is in the Son and if the Son is named, the Father is in the Son and the Holy Spirit is not parted from the Logos. For there is one grace

completed from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit'. s.

Ne~t he has to meet the argument of the Tropic; that if the Spirit proceeds from the Father the Father has two Sons, and ifhe proceeds from the Father and the Son then he is the Father's grandson. Here, far from being too allegorical they are too literal, and A thanasius protests against pressing the analogy of Fatherhood too far. 57 'It is enough to know that the Spirit is not a creature and is not listed along with created things, for nothing alien is associated with the Trinity, but it is inseparable and consistent in itself. This doctrine is enough for the believers. Beyond that the cherubim cover with their wings',58

He now turns to a description of the function of the Holy Spirit as witnessed in the New Testament,59 and in the course of this defines 54Ibid. 1.3-10; Gregory of Nyssa was later to take the same line. 551.10-14.

'Since the Son is one as the living Logos, then must his perfect and full

sanctifying and illuminating living activity (energeia) and gift be one and it is said to proceed from the Father because it shines and is sen;

and is given from (napa) the Son who confessedly is from (tIC) the Father'. The Son is sent from the Father, the Son sends the Spirit, the Son glorifies the Father and the Spirit glorifies the Son; the Son deelar.es what he has heard from the Father and the Spirit receives from the Son; the Son came in the name of the Father, and sends the Spirit in his own name. 61 Athanasius, in spite of some appearances, is not here speaking of the position of the Spirit within the Trinity. He never tries to determine this. He is speaking of what in formal theological language is called the Spirit's mission, not his procession; he never uses the noun 'procession' (ekporeusis) of the Spirit. 62 The final objection of the tropic; mentioned in this work is a repetition of an earlier one; if the Spirit is 'from God', why is he not called a Son? Athanasius cannot answer this, because he has almost no concept of the Spirit's function except to be a kind of understudy of the Son. All he can do is to adduce texts to show that as the Son is W!sdom and Truth and Power so the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of WISdom, Truth, Power and Sonship.63 At various points in these Letters Athanasiu~ describes the characteristic activities of the Spirit. They . are saTo'ctlficatIOn, perfecting, illuminating, quickening, anomtmg,.'ealmg64 and finally conferring apotheosis, or divinizing, human bemgs who have reached their glorious destiny.65 But we miss in Athanasius' account any serious understanding of the distinct 6~Patristic. L,exico~ (~ith a wrong reference; it should be 1.20 not 1.10) 'coor~lnate ~en~s (~hlCh IS nonsense)); Shapland, 'co-ordination', which introduces Wlt~ou~ Justification the concept of the nexus amoris. The Migne ed's Latin tr. is comuncllO. . 611.20.

561.14.

62Shapland points this out. op. cit. 117, 18 3.

571.15-18. 581.1 I.

631.25.

591.19.20.

651.24. 25; 2.4.

64 1.9 , 19. 20,23.29: 2.7.

750

75 1

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

function of the Holy Spirit in salvation. This is partly because Athanasius, like all Christian writers from the third century onwards at least, has lost the eschatological note which the New Testament witness to the Spirit contains, so that it never occurs to him to relate the Holy Spirit to time, and partly because his christology has to some extent absorbed his soteriology 66 A few more points must be noted about Athanasius' pneumatology. He invokes the practice of baptism and the traditional faith of the Church more than once m argulllg for the divinity of the Spirit.67 Curiously, he declares that 'we must receive knowledge about the Spirit from the Son',6. whereas one would have expected him to say 'about the Son from the Spirit'; this suggests again that there is something lacking in his conception of the Spirit's function. This is partly at least because he does not want to give the slightest foothold for anyone to place the Son m a subordinate position in relation to the other Persons of the Godhead. At Or. con. Or. 1II.24 he says openly that the Son does not share in the Spirit in such a way that this sharing ensures his abiding in the Father, nor does he receive the Spirit but rather supplies him to everybody; and the Son does not unite the Logos to the Father, but rather he receives the Spirit from the Father. There is certainly no doctrine of nexusamoris (bond oflove) here!6. In two places Athanasius is ready to apply the term 'homoousi.on' to the Spirit.70 He never directly calls the Holy Spirit 'God' but contends strongly for his uncreatedness and

condemned who say that the Holy Spirit is a creature and separated from the ousia of Christ. 72 And Athanasius' Letter to Jovian, sent in 36 3 mentioned heretics who regard the Holy Spirit as 'a creature and an artefact (7t61'lflU) deriving from the Son','3 and defmed the orthodox doctrine of the Spirit in these terms:

eternity.71

The Tomus ad Antiochenos of 362 insisted that those people must be 66See above, pp. 450-1. 67 1.28,29.30, 33; 3.6; 4.5. He was not the first to use this argument in theological debate; Eusebius of Caesa rea had preceded him, Adv. Marcellum I.I.8 (PG 24:728) and Origen before him Peri Archon PC 1.146.3.2. In De Syn. 3 (363) Athanasius appealed to the practice of baptism as an argument for the divinity of the Son, and

he had used it thus earlier in Or. con. Ar. 11.41. The same appeal is made by George of Laodicea (Epiphanius Panarion 73.16.6 (289», by Epiphanius himself ibid. 76.50.7 (4 0 5), by the anonymous Ps.-Athanasius Or. con. Ar. IV.2I. The Arians appealed to baptism to prove the inferiority of ch
752

(the compilers ofN) 'did not divorce the Holy Spirit from the father and the Son, but rather glorified him along with the father and the Son in the single faith of the Holy Trinity, because the Godhead in the

Holy Trinity is one'.74

The disingenuous statement that the fathers of Nicaea had endorsed the d~ctrine of the Spirit's deity is repeated in the Letter to the Bishops of AfrICa (3 69). When they wrote the words 'and in the Holy Spirit' the. Nlcene Fathers, he says, were refuting those who blaspheme agamst the Holy Spirit, 'in order that when they should confess perfect and full faith in the Holy Trinity they should make known thereby the nature of faith in Christ and the teaching of the Catholic Church'.75 Owing to the work of Athanasius, then, the Eastern Church had been notified by at the latest 360 that the pro-Nicene cause involved defending not only the divinity of the Son, but also that of the Holy Splm, and AthanaslUs had laId a foundation for a new theology of the SPirit whIch others were to contmue and. amplify.'6 We have already had a glimpse of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit of Eplphamus of Salamis. 77 The creed of Ancoratus II 8 cannot be original, but that of 1 19 is. The Spirit is here described as uncreated and as proceeding from the Father and receiving from the Son. Thi; Idea of the Spirit receiving from the Son occurs again and again in both the Ancoratus and the Panarion.'· It is often combined with the statement that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, 72See above, p. 640 . 73Theodoret HE IV.3.7. 74Ibid. 14.

75Ep. ad Afros Episcopos I I (PG 26:1048). Theodoret HE quotes this letter in two

fragm~nts. one at 1.8·7-16 and the other at 2.23.1""'9, neither of which includes this quotatIOn. 76Ha~ack (History IV, 114) remarks that Athanasius' Letters to Serapion mark th first takIn!? o~a pOsition o.n the.subject of the Holy Spirit by the ·orthodox'. On: would be inclined to modIfy thIS by reference to Hilary and to Marius Victorinus. 77See above, p. 661. 78Ancoratus 11.3 (19); 73.1, 2 (91); Panarion 62.4.12 (392); 69.18.4 ( 167).

753

The Controversy Resolved the famous (or notorious) Filioque Clause. 79 At one point Epiphanius attacks a number of negative epithets to the Spirit, in this concise formula 'not second brother, not uncle. not grandfather nor progeny, but the

Holy Spirit from the same ousia of the Father and the Son'. 8. The sentence is of course rejecting the malicious suggestions of the Macedonian criticism of the pro-Nicene doctrine of the Spirit. Epiphanius does not directly apply the term homoousion to the Spirit in the Ancoratus, but he can here call him 'incomprehensible' (aKa
from the Godhead nor a separate Godhead from the ousia, but the same Godhead and the Son and the Holy Spirit from the same Godhead.''' And in the later Panarion he directly applies the term homoousion to the Spirit. 82 His vocabulary has by no means set into the conventional meanings suggested by the Tomus ad Antiochenos and later stereotyped by the Cappadocians. He can say of the Trinity 'there are three, one harmony and one Godhead of the same ousia, of the same Godhead, of the same hypostases', 83 and (the Lord) 'manifesting to us three Persons «pia ltp6(J"'lta) of the holy worship from a threefold hypostasis', where hypostasis could mean 'Person' but in this context may mean 'substance'. 8. He can assemble a vast list of proof texts to show the divinity of the Holy Spirit,85 but does not attempt to explain how or where the Bible witnesses to his existence as a distinct hypostasis. At one point in the Ancoratus Epiphanius produces an interesting account of gradual revelation, echoes of which we shall encounter later. One Godhead, he says, is announced in Moses (i.e. the Pentateuch), a Dyad is strongly preached in the prophetic books, and

The Doctrine of the Spirit a Trinity (i.e. the Holy Spirit here joining the Father of the Law and the Father and Son of the prophets) is manifested in the Gospels.80 And at one point he calls the Holy Spirit 'the bond (mivOt(Jl1o<;) of the Trinity'.87 In some ways Epiphanius is the most Western of the Eastern. theologians, or perhaps one should say the theologian least influenced by the Cappadocians. He can appeal to the Triple Name of Matt 28:20,88 but he does not produce the argument from the practice of baptism. The treatise on the Holy Spirit which we have· in Jerome's translation and which we can with confidence ascribe to Didymus the Blind (as distinct from the anonymous author of the De Trinitate sometimes attributed to Didymus) is not a full-blooded polemical work, but rather a considered. treatise, in spite of meeting some of the arguments of the Macedonians. 89 The author has no doubt that the Holy Spirit is divine. He is not merely 'activity' (operatio) but 'substance' (substantia),90 and he exhibits both 'a share in the nature' of the Godhead, and also 'the peculiar property belonging respectively to the Persons'.91 He is uncreated and consubstantial.92 The Spirit comes from God the Father, but both Father and Son send the Spirit (an interesting and significant distinction).93 The author recognizes that all our language about God is spoken analogically or eqUl)focally.9' He deals more successfully with the proof texts of the Macedonians than Athanasius, partly because he can apparently appeal to the Hebrew. 95 Finally he deals summarily with the 8·Anc. 7).j. 6 (92). 87Panarion 64.4.2 (392). "Ibid. 69.j6.1 (20)). 89P,G 39:1033-85. See above, pp. 655-6. There is no reason to think that Jerome misrepresented the original, as has been suggested by some who find the work's mc.onsi:tencies with t.h~ ~e T~initate of P~eudo-Didymus puzzling. See A. I. C. Heron The Holy Spmt tn Qngen and Dldymus the Blind' 299-300.

?3S

9°23 (1053). 91 12 (1044)

79S ee

below, pp. 787"""'90 for an account of the Filioque in the fourth century. 80 An" 7.8 (14). ou auva.&).CPOy au 1ta'tpaSsMpov, ou npo1tatopOv OUK Ihcyovov. tU).' &K tij~ amt;<; oOO"i«<; xatpo<; Kat lilaC RVeU!!" aY10V. 81 6.10 (13).

82Panarion 74.1 1.2 (33 J). In the Anc. 64.2 (77) he calls the Trinity 'correlative and co"nsubstantial' (OIl6
754

92

14 (1046).

932 6

naturae consortium and personarum proprietas. Ij

(1047).

(1056, 1057).

94~8 (1066) Jerome gives the Greek and then translates, lCa'faxpllcrt"lKro~ id est abustve. He translates h),postasis by substantia and ousia by essenna. . "14, 15 (1046, (047) where he realizes that rhe LXX is wrong in its renderingTOV Xp.u:n6v at AmOS4:12. 12. See also 30 (1060) where the Macedonians are revealed as us~g a conflated text ofJn IS:2~and I~:26 (,But when the Paraclete the Holy Spirit wI.ll co~e ,,:,hon: th~ Father wll~ send ~n my name, ?e will teach you everything') eVidenCing In their view the servlle and mferlor function ofthe Spirit's nature: 1 Cor 2:1 I was also one of these texts, see 54, 55 (1079, 1080), and Zechariah 12:1, which

755

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

Macedonian argument which sarcastically suggested the various relations. brother. uncle. grandson. implied. in their view. by the pro-Nicene doctrine of the Spirit's divinity. Names. he says. are only names of human beings and inadequate expressions necessitated by human weakness. The Trinity transcends all this nomenclature; names do not express the nature of the things named:

Damasus bishop of Rome was not a great writer. All that survives of anything that he may have written himself are some letters and some verses carved over the traditional resting-places of saints in Rome which can be compared to Queen Victoria's Leaves from a Journal of our Life in the Highlands in that their fame derives from the position of the author rather than from their intrinsic literary merit. But he presided over and left his impression upon at least two councils which made important pronouncements about the Holy Spirit, and made some significant doctrinal statements in his letters. Part of a Decree made by a. Roman council presided over by Damasus in 371 or 372 survives.!OO The Council was part of a campaign led by Damasus to drive Arianism out of the Western Church. It was only partly successful. because though this council could condemn Auxentius of Milan it was powerless to depose him. The Letter of Damas us which contains what we know of this council was carried first to Athanasius by the Milanese deacon, Sabinus, and then despatched to Basil of Caesarea by Athanasius. The letter is addressed, not as Theodoret and Sozomenus say, to the Illyrian bishops but to the bishops of the Eastern Church generally. The Decree is full oflaudatory references to the authority of the bishop of Rome, which cannot have been to the liking of many Eastern bishops, but it defines the correct doctrine as

'Since therefore the holy Scripture does not say more about the

Trinity. except that God is the Father of the Saviour and that the Son is begotten by the Father, we should believe no more than what is written',96

This was one way of avoiding the difficulty which faced everybody who wrote at any length about the Holy Spirit in the second half of the fourth century. that of determining the place of the Spirit within the Trinity. It is not necessary here to enter in detail into Ambrose's work De Spiri/u Sancto completed during the opening months of 381 and finished before Easter in that year. 97 It was written at the request of the Emperor Gratian and as a reward for his measures against the Arians. It is little more than a re-hash of Athanasius' Epp. ad Serap., Basil's DSS and Adv. Eunomium III and of Didymus' De Spiritu Sanclo. Jerome when he translated this last work made a very disparaging remark about Ambrose's treatise. 98 Ambrose endorses the doctrine of the Pilioque;99 he makes no strong appeal to the practice of baptism nor the tradition of the church; he is not aware of the deficiency of Scripture in its witness to the Spirit in any way. He does not use the word persona in a Trinitarian context. The book might justly be described as a pot-boiler. they thought, like Amos 4:13. to witness to the Spirit's createdness (58, S9 (1081, 1082». Once more, one is puzzled at the phenomenon of someone who was blind from about five years old learning Hebrew. 9662 (1084. 108S. quotation from 108S). 97S0 O. FaUer, who edited it for CSEL, calculated.

98NihU ibi dialect;eum, nihil virile atque distinctuffl, quod lectorem vel ingratis in . adsensum tTailet, sed toJumjlaccidum, molle, nitidum atqueformosum et exquisitis huc inde odoribus pigmentatum (op. cit. 39:1032-34); in other words, no originality, no distinction, no meat hut much rhetorical waffle: beta minus. This was an unpleasant but not unjust verdict. Jerome may have renounced the world and the flesh, but he certainly had not done with the devil. L. Doutre1eau (Le Prologue deJerome au De Spiritu Sanclo de Didyme' in Alexandrina 297-3 12) has recently produced a properly edited text of this Preface to Jerome's translation, with comments upon it. 99See below, p. 789.

756

'the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit of one Godhead, of one power, and of one manner of existence. of one substance.'101 Another, later. letter of Damasus to Basil of Caesarea contains a careful Trinitarian statement which runs thus:!02 lOOThere are at least two different editions of this. The first, and worse, is in PG 13:347-349. included in a Letter of Damas us entitled Confidimus quidem; the other is to be found in Schwa'rtz 'Ober die Sammlung des Cod. Veronensis LX', 19, 20, taken from the Collection at Verona ofTheodosius the Deacon. In the preface to the text Schwartz, building on the work ofC. H. Turner, unravels the tangled history of this Collection. A Greek version of this Letter is to be found in Sozomenus HE V1.236-15 and Theodoret HE 11.22.1-12. Schwartz's text is used here. 1011.24, 25 (19). unius deitatis unius virtutis unius figurae. unius substantiae . 102Schwartz op. cit. 2.1-14 (20, 21); the Letter's tide is Ea gratia. Damasus in a letter sent a little later to Basil of Caesa rea (known as Non nobis quidquam) refers to 'the Holy S_pirit ... perfect in everything, power, honour, majesty, Godhead' (Schwartz 'Ober die Sammlung' 4.1-3 (22, 23»). For a careful discussion of the fragments of Damasus' letter, see Bardy 'Ie Concile d'Antioche' (379). We must conclude that the letter Ea gratia represents the result of a council held in Rome in 37 6 .

757

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

'we all unanimously say that there is a Trinity of one .power, of one

changes, and becomes a list of propositions beginning 'If anyone will not have said' (si quis non dixerit) ' ... they are to be condemned'. These propositions comprise the eternal existence of the Three, their consubstantiality, the existence of the Son in heaven while he was incarnate on earth, the susceptibility of his flesh to pain but not of his Godhead, his session at the right hand of the Father and his future return, the consubstantiality, omniscience and omnipresence of the Holy Spirit.'07

majesty, of one divinity, of one usia, so that·we confess that there is an indivisible power (potestatem) but three Persons (personas) and they do not telescope into themselves, nor are they reduced, as some (hold), but always remain and there are no grades of sovereignty of any sort nor differing times nor is the Word (merely) put forth so that we should deprive him of generation nor imperfect so that his Person or the Father's nature or the fullness of Godhead should be lacking to rum, and the Son is not diverse in activity nor diverse in power nor dissimilar in any way at all nor is his existence derived from any other source, but he is born from God nor is false but true God generated from true God, true Light from true Light. so that he is not to be thought reduced or diverse.'

Finally we must notice the document which is known as the 'Tome of Damasus' (Tomus Damasi).1t is a list of canons drawn up at a council held in Rome no later than the year 378, for Peter of Alexandria (who returned to his see in that year) was still an exile in 'Rome when it took place. The canons as we have them in the Collection of Theodosius the Deacon were included in a letter of Damasus to Paulinus whom he recognised as legitimate bishop of Antioch. '03 These canons appear in a Greek version in Theodoret'o, (described (wrongly) as sent to a Paulinus of Thessalonica), and, without context, in some· Greek collections of canons. After a Latin version ofN, this document goes on to set out a list of anathemas, or condemnation of various false opinions, beginning with the idea that the Holy Spirit was made through the Son, and then damning Sabellius, Arius and Eunomius ('who in different words bnt equal blasphemy hold that the Son and Holy Spirit are creatures'), and the Macedonians ('who derive from Arius' line and have changed their name but not their treason').'05 and then the Apollinarians and followers of Marcellus of Ancyra (without naming either of these two heresiarchs) .'06 The form of the work now I03For the circumstances in which these canons were made and were later sent to Antioch; see Schwartz Gesamm. Schrift. 111.2 (SO-51). The text of the Tomus Damasi can be found in Turner EOMIA 1.283-93 and PG 16:357--61 as Epistola IV of Damasus. I have followed Turner's text. OUf present text of the Tomus probably represents two versions or recensions of it. For a thorough discussion of the date of the Tomus, finally placing it in 377-8, see Dossetti. 11 Simbolo 102-11; see also P. Galtier 'Le· "Tome de Damasus", date et origine' and Simonetti; Crisi 432-3· I04HE V.ILI-IS. I05Turner ,op. cit. 284, 285. 106 206, 207·

75 8

Next, a short reversion to the affirmative form, 'If anybody says' .,. (he is a heretic), 108 rejecting the propositions that the Holy Spirit is an artefact (facturam) or was made through the Son, and a statement that all things were made through the Spirit by the Son. Next, a reversion to the negative form of anathema asserts the view that 'there is one

Godhead, power, majesty, sovereignty (potentiam), one glory, rule, one reign and one will and truth of Father, Son and Holy Spirit; that the three Persons (personas) of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three, equal, ever-living, including all things visible and invisible, exercising

control over all things, judging all things'.109 Last of all, some general propositions are enunciated: the Holy Spirit is to be adored by every creature. Orthodoxy about the Father and the Son is established, but

heterodoxy about the Holy Spirit is equally heresy, like that ofJews and pagans. The three Persons are only one God, not three gods, ! because we are baptized into their Names, not into the names of archangels or angels, as the Jews and heretics believe. 110

This repetitive but emphatic statement does not derive from the theology of the Cappadocians. It exillbits no subtlety, no awareness of any difficulty in enunciating doctrine so profound; it has as much delicacy and intellectual refinement as an auctioneer's catalogue. We do not hear in it of how the Holy Spirit subsists nor of his relation to the other Two. Its material has been supplied by Tertullian, by Novatian, by Hilary, probably at secondhand by Athanasius. It is the product of a legalist mind and a despotic disposition. It is conceived wholly in the Latin rather than the Greek tradition. But in its own downright way it has come to much the same conclusions as had the Eastern pro-Nicene theologians in their subtler, more percipient, 107Ibid. 288-290. 108 Si quis dixerit ... hereticus est, 290. 109290,291. Perhaps Palladiusat Aquileia had some of these propositions in mind when he condemned pro-Nicene doctrines. 110 2 91-3.

759

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

more sophisticated manner. They had been educated in philosophy and rhetoric and could see the difficulties. Damasus knew. no philosophy, and like a modem Fundamentalist interpreting the BIble could not appreciate the difficulties. But undoubtedly a doctrInal consensus of East and West had been achieved. Incidentally, thIS IS probably the first mention of Macedonians as a distinct school of thought. To them we must now turn.

But at some point several years after 360 Macedonius was credited with being the originator of a doctrine which accepted the full divinity of the Son yet refused to make the further step by ascribing divinity to the Holy Spirit. When precisely he was first saddled with this role it is not easy to say. It may be that the Historia Akephala" 6 is our earliest known source for this identification, or perhaps the Tomus Damasi.' 17 But neither Epiphanius nor the Cappadocians, who are well aware of this type of heterodoxy, associate it with Macedonius nor did Amphilochius' Council oficonium in 376. The canons of Constantinople 381 do not describe the adherents of this doctrine as Macedonians; though a decree of Theodosius condemning them issued in 383 or 384 does." s Thereafter almost all the sources call the holders of this doctrine about the Spirit 'Macedonians', The earliest sources, however, refer to them as Pneumatomachians a derogatory word meaning 'Assailants of the Spirit': it occurs first in Athanasius' letters to Serapion." 9 This is how Epiphanius and the Cappadocians (who are not responsible for the titles or sub-titles given to their works by others) describe them. Both Socrates· 20 and Sozomenus· 2• say that some people allege that the heresy was started not by Macedonius but by Marathonius, a rich ex~ soldier turned priest who founded at least one monastery in the capital city, and who is probably the Marathonius who was made bishop of Nicomedia by Macedonius.'22 It is interesting to observe

3. The Macedonians'" We have already seen something of the career of Macedonius, as deacon and then bishop of Constantinople.' 12 Though he had been made bishop by the intellectual heirs of Eusebius of Nicomedia/Constantinople and of Eusebius of Caesarea, by the year 35 8, alarmed no doubt, as others were, by the Second Sirmian Creed of 357 and the emergence of the school of thought led by Aetius, he had joined the party of Basil of Ancyra who favoured the formula homoios kat'ousian ('like in respect of substance'). A,:,"ong ~he many uncertainties which surround the name of Macedomus, thiS much IS certain."3 He arrived a little late at the Council of Seieucia, along with Basil of Ancyra, alleging illness as his excuse."· He was deposed in 360 at the Council of Constantinople, sharing the fate of Basil of Ancyra and such of his followers as had not renounced theIr 'Homoiousian' doctrine. There is no evidence whatever that he ever

attempted to regain his see ofConstantin?ple. Sozome~us informs us that after his deposition he went to live m a place m B.thyma call~d lIspi lI6Aa<; and soon cJied .."' This is all that we can say for certam about Macedonius' career after 35 8. III As will be become evident below 'Macedonians' is a complete misnomer for this sect. The were known to their opponents as Pneumatomachi (Assailants of the

Spirit). But this was an invidious name, like, Se":li-'Arian' or :Exucontian' and invidious names have been used toO long by historians of the Anan controversy: I

will therefore continue to call them 'Macedonians'. incorrect though the name IS. 112See above, pp. 280--3. 373. 381. . . . 113S ocra tes HE Il.38 (he placed Eleusius in the see ofCyzlcus and Marathonlus m that of Nicomedia): Sozomenus HE IV.22, 8-11. 114Sozomenus HE IV.22.8-II, 24.3; Socrates HE 11.45· t15IV.26.1. Swete, Early History of the Doctrine of the Holy. Spir~t 53., quotes Nicephorus Callistus, (Historia X.46) a thirte~nth-century ~yzantmehlstoflan, who says that M went to live at Pylae, but survived a long time to found the heresy. Swctc is inclincd to accept this, but it is far more likely to represent an attempt by

Nicephorus to reconcile the report of So zornen us with the fact that the heresy was called after M. The information which Theodoret givcs us about Macedonius and the Macedonians is of the barest description, except for his reproduction of the Tome of Damasus (HE II.6.I, 2; V.40' 8; 9.19 and 11.3). Philostorgius consistently associates M with Basil of Ancyra and regards him as a supporter of the homoousion (HE IV .5. 9~ VIII.17), but to Philostorgius a 'homoousian' and a 'homoiousian' were pretty much the same. 116 1 .6 (140); 4.5 (154); the attribution of the heresy to M in the first reference is a complete non-sequitur. 117Tumer EOMIA p. 285 col. I, the preface to this set of anathemas mentions 'some who dared with sacrilegiOUS mouth to say that the Holy Spirit was made through the Son', (p. 284. col. I), and it seems to regard Macedonians as a separate sub-variety of Arians. Probably Damasus was not well-informed on the subject of an heresy which had not appeared in the West. Jerome (Chronicle sub. ann. 342 and 342 and 359) so designates them. 118Cod. Theod. XVI.5,- 11,12,13. 119Ep. Serap. 1.32 7tV€UllatOJluxoGVt€<;. '2°HE 11.45. 121HE IV.27. 122Schwartz ('Zur Kirchengeschichte' 156 n 36 and Ober die Sammlung' 7)

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

if, as is virtually certain, we assume that Macedonius was associated

thought is in the Letters of Athanasius to Serapion in 359 and 360; and this type of thought was fostered by some (but by no means all) of those who, alarmed by the radicalism of the Second Sirmian Creed in 357, were gathering round Basil of Ancyra in order to m~ke a protest and produce an alternative. In the hurly-burly of the years 359 and 360 their peculiar doctrines about the Holy Spirit were noted only by the watchful eyes of the Egyptian theologians. But later they became more widely evident. We can to some extent reconstruct the history and to some extent reach fuller understanding of the opinion of these Macedonians.'27 Some time after the death of Constantius in November 361, when the bishops deposed and exiled by the late Emperor had had time to return to their sees, establish themselves and renew contacts with their friends, a council of those who had supported the views of Basil of Ancyra (Basil himself presumably being dead or incapacitated) took place at Lampsacus.'28 This council decided to send a deputation to Valentinian, the Western Emperor, and to Liberius bishop of Rome intimating their acceptance of N. The deputation consisted of three bishops, Eustathius of Sebaste, Silvanus of Tarsus

with the party ofBasil of Ancyra, that though the statement of Basil's Council of Ancyra of 358 has only the most conventional reference to the Holy Spirit, the Letter of George of Laodicea, which certainly emanated from the same theological circle, stated that his party recognize the Holy Spirit as existing from the Father through the Son in 'one Godhead embracing all things through the Son in the Holy Spirit' .123 We are not therefore entitled to assume that everybody whose thought stemmed from this tradition necessarily decried the status of the Spirit. It is best to assume, with Loofs and Bardy and several recent scholars, that the connection of Macedonius with the 'Assailants of the Spirit' is not proved, even though we may for convenience sak,e call them 'Macedonians' .124

Once we have freed ourselves of the need to associate the Macedonians with Macedonius, we. can recognize that the people against whom Athanasius wrote his letters to Serapion were no different from the later Macedonians. He calls them Pneumatomachountes; at least two of the proof-texts used by them (Amos 4:12, 13 and I Tim 5:21) occur again and again in later Macedonian literature; they use the same argument as the later Macedonians about the danger of in effect regarding the Spirit as a second Son of the-Father.'25 Further, Serapion had informed Athanasius that these heterodox people 'had left the Arians because of blasphemy against the Son'.'2. These coincidences cannot be explained away. The earliest appearance of the Macedonian school of is prepared to believe that Macedonius may have taken some steps to spread . Macedonianism' before he died. The only piece of evidence that might make one opt for this view, against the" absence of early testimony to M's authorship of the heresy, is two references to him, as if the author was addressing him directly, in Pseudo-Didymus De Trinitate PG 39;613 (De Trjn. 11.8.1) and 633 (11.10); he is reproached for having begun as an orthodox deacon and then become an Arian bishop, and in the second reference Marathonius is associated with him. But this testimony, written probably after 381, can scarcely outweigh the earlier silence. . 123S ee above, p. 368. 124The accuracy of Sozomenus in identifying the Pneumatomachi as Macedonian can be gauged when he describes Cyril ofJerusalem as arriving at the Council of Constantinople of 381 'having then changed his mind about his former Macedonian views'. Cyril is the last person to have decried the Holy Spirit: this is one more sign that Homoiousians (among whom Cyril was certainly at one time numbered) were not necessarily Pneumatomachians. 125See above, pp. 7S0, 7SI. 126Epp. ad Serap. 1.2, Swete (Early History 47) calls attention to this. He is convinced that Athanasius' opponents were Macedonians.

I

127The chief sources of our knowledge of Macedonianism are the works of Epiphanius, the Cappadocians and Pseudo-Didymus De Trinitate, the church historians (who are useful for history but tell us little about doctrine), and two Dialogues concerned to oppose the Macedonians' doctrine to be found in PG 2~ (Ps.-Athanasius) I2.91-1337 (which Loafs dated to the penultimate or ultimate decade of the IVth century) and 1202-12S0 (dated by Loofs sometime between 400 and 428). For literature on the Macedonians see the three books of Swete already listed above p. 738 n. r; H. Dorrie De Spiritu Sancto 8ff;Jaeger Gregor von Nyssa's Lehre vom dem Heiligen Geist 20-21; Moller 'Macedonius. Macedonianer'; Bardy 'Macedonius, Macedoniens' and Ritter Das Konzil von Konstantinopel68 n sand 69, 73--'78; Simonetti Crisi 366-7, 470-1, 480-86. 128Considerable diversity exists among scholars as to the date of that Council. It cannot be later than 366 (death ofLiberius) nor earlier than the accession of Val ens (364). Loofs 'Arianismus' 40 and Eustathius von Sebaste 77-8 and May ('Zur Datierung' 49-S0) opt for 364, Schwartz ('Zur Kirchengeschichte' IS6) for 36S. and Ritter (Das Konzil70) agrees with this. The evidence for it comes from Socrates HE IV.I2, and Sozomenus HE XI. 10.3-1 I.4· Socrates is here relying on the fourthcentury historian of councils, Sabinus of Heraclea. Incidentally both Socrates (HE II.I S and IV.22) and Sozomenus (HE II.3.3 ot MUKelioviou£n:uive'tul = Sabin us) call Sabinus a Macedonian, by which they apparently mean an Homoiousian. Socrates HE IlI.25 gives an account of a council of'Macedonians' meeting (he does not say where) on the accession ofJovian and sending a petition to the Emperor that the Anhomoians should be thrown out of their sees and their own party introduced, and this petition is signed by Basil of Ancyra and Silvanus of Tarsus. So Basil must have been alive in 363.

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

and Theophilus of Castabala. They failed to gain access to Valentinian, but they were welcomed by Liberius. He accepted their letter professing allegiance to N gladly and in return armed them with a letter accepting their group into communion and encouraging them to spread their doctrine. Some scholars have expressed surprise and incredulity that Liberius should have so readily welcomed bishops who either then or later (in the case ofEustathius and Silvanus at least) were unsound on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and who represented a considerable number of other bishops who were equally unsound. But we must remember that in the first place not all 'Homoiousians' refused divinity to the Spirit, and in the second that the subject of pneumatology had not yet gained prominence in the West. There was no reason why Liberius should have made scrutiny into the views on the Holy Spirit of these bishops. N had said almost nothing on the subject, and anything we know ofLiberius does not lead us to think that he was likely to attach great importance to the niceties of doctrine. The three bishops went on to Sicily where at a council they expressed their adherence to N and were welcomed, and then returned to the East. A meeting at Tyana planned a much larger council, to meet in Tarsus, designed to bring most of the Eastern Church into agreement with N, but Eudoxius, now of Constantinople, persuaded the Emperor Valens to veto this council. Sozomenus, who gives an account of these proceedings, in an earlier passage l2 • says the party of Macedonius, Eleusius, Eustathius and Sophronius (of Pompeiopolis), emboldened by the death of Constantius, called together those who at Seleucia had agreed with them and held several councils. These condemned the (Homoian Arian) doctrines of Akakius and the Creed of Nice and affirmed that of Antioch which had been endorsed by their party at Seleucia, i.e. the 'Dedication' Creed, the second of the Council of Antioch of341, and by the mouth of Sophronius committed themselves to this

This is an odd report, because it is difficult to imagine that Eustathius at least could have altered his doctrine within a year or so to accept, as far as the theology of the Son went, a full Nicene position; and 'Homoiousians' believed that the Son was like the Father in ousia, not in hypostasis. Theological vocabulary was still then fairly fluid, however; and it is possible that Sozomenus has wrongly moved this utterance, with its interesting appeal to Antioch 34', Creed II, from a later period to an earlier. This story could be the doublet of a later council held according to Sozomenus '30 at Antioch in Caria, and dated by Ritter to 376, l3J attended by 304 bishops from the diocese of Asia, drawn from those who had earlier planned to attend the council of Tarsus. This gathering rejected the homoousion and chose instead 'the creed of Lucian the martyr', i.e. the second (,Dedication') creed of the Council of Antioch of341. It is hard to believe that the group which gathered at Tyana to hear the message from Liberius brought by Eustathius and the other two should have held together for so long, and, having formerly accepted the homoousion, should now renounce it. But that there was a persistent strain of thought among the Eastern bishops which hankered after abandoning the controversial mazes of homoousios and homoiousios and heterousios and, without making concessions to open Arianism, returning to the 'Dedication' Creed whose association with Lucian the martyr might give it as much kudos as N had by now acquired, there can be no doubt. After all, this 'Dedication' creed was virtually 'Homoiousian', for it declared that the Son was the 'image of the ousia of the Father', and it made no disturbing advance in what it said about the Holy Spirit. Sozomenus tells us that in 378, relying on the Edict of Toleration which Gratian, now sole Emperor, had. issued in the crisis brought about by the battle of Hadriano pie and the death of Valens, several Macedonian bishops, restored to their sees, met at Antioch in Caria and opted for the homoiousion rather than the homoousion.'32 And we know from a letter of Basil that a council met in Cyzicus in 376 which was silent about the homoousion but adopted the formula 'like in respect of ousia' for the Son and 'put their signatures to blasphemies about the Holy Spirit, in the company of Eunomius','33 i.e. they refused, like

statement: 'The Westerners glorified the homoousion. and Aetius in the East the

anhomoion, and both were off the rails; the former confusedly amalgamated the distinct hypostases of the Father and Son under the

heading of homoousios, while the latter violently split the affinity (ObC£l6't1]tu) of the Son's nature to the Father'. But they (Sophronius

and his party) believed that it was orthodox to say that the Son is like the Father in respect of hypostasis. 129V.I4.

IJOVI.I2.4. 131

Das Konzil7I.

132HE VII.2.2-3. Ps.-Didymus classifies the Macedonians as 'Homoiousians' De Trin. 1.35 (PC 39:233). 133Epp. 244.9. This letter also gives us information about Eustathius' activity at

The Controversy Resolved

Eunomius to recognize the divinity of the Holy Spirit. These I~st were clearly Macedonians, and by now the chief Macedonian figure was Eustathius ofSebaste, permanently alienated from Basil because Basil had accepted, and he refused, the necessIty of elaborating the theology of the Holy Spirit. To Eustathius, Basil's teaching looked like Sabellianism, and to Basil Eustathius eventual! y appeared to hold a thinly-disgnised form of :"ri~nism.I34 But it would be a mistake to imagine that Macedomamsm ever was a neatly defmed doctrinal system, nor even that at any point it could be determined who was Macedonian and who not. It was more hke a diverse series of protests by people who did not know what was happening in the field of developing doctrine, w~o. had no mtegrated position to maintain but had a confused SUsp,cIon that the proNicenes were going beyond Scripture. Sozomenus says that at the time of the Second Council at Antioch in Caria (378 or 379) many of the Macedonians were not greatly divided from the 'Homoousians' and when some among their number fell back at this council on the 'Dedication' Creed some of the others joined the pro-Nlcene party.135 This was, too, a period when many Homoiousians

untouched by Macedonianism, such as Cyril of Jerusalem and Theophilus of Castabala, were joining the pro-Nicenes. Gregory of Nazianzus, preaching his Fifth Theological Oration at just this period, on the eve of the Council of Constantinople of381, sald, of those who regarded the Holy Spirit as inferior: 'Some assume that he is a power (energeia), some a creature, some that he is God, some cannot decide which of these (is true), out of respect for the Bible, as they allege. since it reveals clearly none of those positions .. , I have heard of other wiseacres who measure out

Godhead and admit that there are Three perceived by us, but that they so differ from each other that they postulate One infinite in ousja and power. Another infinite in power but not ousia, and a Third finite in Rome and at Tyana. Loafs, Eustathius von Sebaste 77-8 placed the Council of Cyzicus in 375. May, 'Datierung der Rede' 51, following Schwartz ('Zur Kirchengeschichte' 157. n 39) places it in 376. . . 1341n Ep. 244 Basil attacked Eustathius' doctrinal inconsistency; but BaSil may have appeared just as inconsistent to'Eusta~hius. See Loofs ~ustathius von Sebaste 69-76 and 96-7. Athanasius classed Eustathius among the Anans (HA 4 (186) and Ep. ad Eg. Epp. 7 (112)), though his testimony may not be worth much ..See a~so Pruche Introd. to DSS P.73 and Dorrie De Spiritu Sancto 101-20. Eplphamus Panarion 73.23 and 27 places him among the 'Semi-Arians',

'''HI! VII.2.2-4.

The Doctrine of the Spirit both'. Still others give them the titles 'Creator', 'Fellow-worker'

(crUVEPYO,) and 'Ministrant' (A.e1
The Macedonians certainly played a part in the Council of Constantinople of 381.'37 And for some decades after that event defenders of the newly-established orthodoxy found it necessary to write against Macedonian doctrine, and the church historians occasionally refer to Macedonian church buildings and bishops, presbyters and monks, and even a deaconess. But Sozomenus describes one group at least as, at the time of the death of the Emperor Arcadius (May ISt 408), almost extinct,I38 and by the time he was writing (some time after 425) he says that though the sect was at one time widespread in parts of the East it is now qnite insignificant; it is not, he says, completely extinguished in the capital. 13 • They never amalgamated with the Arians, who regarded them as their enemies. "o It is probably significant that Theodoret, the latest of the four pre-eminent fifth-century church historians (with Socrates, Sozomenus and Philostorgius) pays almost no attention to the Macedonians. Sozomenus summarizes Macedonian doctrine by saying that they agreed to 'like in respect of ousia' but subordinated the Holy Spirit so drastically as to reduce him to being little more than an angel. '" As a very general statement this is well enough, but we can learn a good deal more about Macedonian doctrine than that. All Macedonians, in different ways, agree that the Holy Spirit is not God. He does not share the divine nature, Or he is neither God nor homoousion, or he is not theos (God) but theion (divine), or he is eternal (aeonian), but not God, or he is lord (Kyrios) but not God.'42 He is in various ways 1360,at. XXXl.s·s (137). 137This subject is considered in the next chapter, no. 23. pp. 807. 809. 817-18 below. 138Sozomenus HE IX.2; this is where the deaconess is mentioned. 139HE IV.27. 140IV.27 also, His expressions ot MmCE()Oviou exaivetm (Vii.73 by which he probably means Sabinus _the historian) and ro~ AtYOUGlV o{ 'to. MaKE50v{ou fPPOVOUVtE~ (VII.2I.6) do not necessarily imply that the sources of his information were stin alive when he wrote. It is interesting to find a hostile reference to the Macedonians in an Arian document Mai/Gryson Frag. VII.241 (VI.222). 141HE IV.27, A much more competent short summary can be found in Gregory of Nyssa Adv. Macedonianos (Leiden) 90. 142Basil Epp. 225.3; Gregory of Nazianzus Drat. XXXI. I I (145); Gregory of

The Controversy Resolved inferior to the other Two. The 'spirit' which God is must be distinguished from the (lesser) Holy Spirit; he speaks in the Bible not as God but as an angel or even an inspired prophet: the fact that he was sent or instructed by the Father or the Son shows him to ~e inferior the Gift is not on an equality with the Giver; we worship God in' the Spirit but not the Spirit with God; he is not of equal honour (!cr6tl)10<;); he is a ministrant (ultl1petl1<;) not a fellow-worker (crov£pYO<;).'43 Eustathius in ~iscussion with ~asil had .probably argued that the Spirit must be classified below (ultapI9)l&tcr9at) the Father .144 The Macedonians insist that the Spmt IS not to be worshipped, and if glorified not glorified as the Father and the. Son are.14S Sometimes they say that the Holy Spmt occupies a middle position between God and angels. 14• They dislike the statement that the Spirit is 'of the substance' (tl< tii<; OIlcrla<;) of the Father .'47 They believe in three hypostases and two Godheads (9£6tl1t£<;).I48 They vary on the subject of whether the Holy Spirit is or is not created. '49 There are certain things which the Spirit cannot do: he cannot participate in creation, he does not sit or reign with the Father and the Son, he is not omnipresent, he can convert but not raIse ~ro~ the dead. 150 They counter their opponents' appeal to the practice of Nyssa Adv. Macedon. 9Q-91 (Leiden); 1St Ma~e~onian Dialogue 15 (P~ 28:13 16): ,cf. 2nd Mac, Dial. 19 (1232); Ps.-Didymus De Trlnltate 116·4 (PG 39.I18).1~t Mac. Dial. 3 (1293). The evidence from Ps.-Did. De Trin. is sometimes .o~ partlcula~ value because it is probably quoting a contemporary document conSiStmg of a dialogue between an Orthodox and a Macedonian. 143Gregory of Nyssa Adv. Maced. 90 (Leiden) (cf. 1St Mac, Dial. 2 (1292-3», Ps,,Didymus De Trin.ll.2 (24); 8 (608--<); I I (657,660); 1II.J8 (972, 97J, 977, 980); BasIl DSS 24.57,58 (I7J) [452]; cf. 27.65 (185) [478]; lSt Mac.D.al. 7 (IJOO); 17 (IJI6, 1320). In' Ps.-Didymus De Trin. 11.41 (52) the M~cedon1ans say that the SpIne IS 'good' and 'holy', but not in the sense that God IS; cr. 6 (160, 162 and 168).

144Basil DSS 17 passim. . ' I45Gregory of Nazianz us Drat. XXXI. 12 (145); Ps.-Dtdymus De Tnn. n.lo (640, 644); Basil DSS cap.I9 passim; 1St Mac. Dial. 4 (1293. 129 6). '46Ps.-Didymus De Trin. 11.6 (166), 7 (214), 8 (617). It is. probably the same thought which lies behind the statement that the Sptne (Basil DSS 20 passIm) IS neither slave nor master, but free. 147 2n d Mac. Dial. 4 (1208); 16 (1228); for the significance of this, see below pp.

81'r-IS . . . . "'2nd Mac. Dial. 5 (1209),7,8 (1212-IJ), 8 (1216). 149Ps._Didymus De Trin. Il.2 (.28) - he is create~ through the Son; he IS e~ther created or begotten (1St Mac. Dial. 20 (1325); he IS not created (lSt Mac. DIal. 8 (IJOO) 20 (IJ28), 2nd Mac. Dial. 1l.4 (1208--<). 150Gregory of Nyssa Adv, Maced, 97-98 (Leiden), 2nd !"fac, Dial. 17 and 18 ( 122 9), Ps .• Didymus De Trin. II.8 (605); 12 (685), 1st Mac. D.al. I I (IJ05, IJ08) (cf. 12 (1308-9», he is a mere 'escort', Mll'Yll'ttK6v); 2nd Mac, DIal, 20 ( 12 33),

768

The Dodrine of the Spirit baptism in the Triple Name by pointing out that people were baptised into Moses (I Cor 10:2) without his being thought divine. I 5I They more than once ask to be told the difference between generation (of the Son) and procession (of the Spirit), and always receive the answer from their opponents that they do not know, and nobody can know. "2 In the same area of debate Macedonians constantly argued that if the Holy Spirit is divine he must be either another Son of the Father, a brother of the Son, or a grandson, a line of reasoning which they justly regarded as a reductio ad absurdum. ,s3 This is probably their most frequently presented argument. The Macedonians constantly appeal to Scripture and demand from their opponents Scriptural support for their doctrine of the Holy Spirit: 'They never end chattering left and right about lack of evidence and "not in Scripture" and that sort of argument' , says Basil

of them.'S4 There is no Scriptural warrant for worshipping the Spirit, ISS and the command to worship God alone (Dt 6:13) shows this.,s6 The two Macedonian Dialogues ring with the demand of the Macedonian speaker, 'Where does Scripture say that the Holy Spirit is God'.'57 And, in spite of Athanasius' nickname for his opponents in the Letters to Serapion (Tropici, 'Metaphoricals') they do not like allegory: 'things which are spoken allegorically or as personification (ltpocrlJyopIKiii<;) or metaphorically or as synonyms should not be used for serious doctrine' (el<; MY)1ato<; al0 livapxa, or y£.vVllt6v. and then .. ~); Basil Hom. XXIV.6 (612); 1St Mac. Dial. 14 (1313); 2nd Mac. Dial. II.S (1209); Ps.-Didymus De Trin. 11.5 (74) (where the Macedonians also deny that the Spirit is from the hypostasis (= substance) of the Father,s (78». ·S4DSS 27.68 (I9J. 196) [490]. tSS 1St Mac. Dial. 4 (1293, 1296). "·Ibid. IS (IJIJ. IJI6). .57E.g. IS (IJIJ, IJI6), 18 (1]20), and 2nd Mac. Dial. II.J (1208), 5 (1209), 9 (1216), IJ (1221). IS8Ps._Didymus De Trin. ILIO (645). 159See above, pp. 749, 750, also Ps.-Didymus De Trin. IIl·31 (949.951) (Amos) and 11.6 (168) (I Tim.), and Basil DSS 13 passim (see Dorrie De Spiritu Sancto 8Itf. also I Tim.). . 152 JS

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

is omitted from knowledge and from vision), 160 John 1:3 (the Spirit included in what was brought into existence by the Son),'6' 3:5 (the Spirit regarded as equal in glory and power with water!), 162 7 : 39 (he is not yet given).'63 14:26 and 15:26 (the Spirit's essentially servile and inferior function).'6' Beyond the Gospels they cite Acts 10:22 (the angel appearing to Cornelius identified with the Holy Spirit), 165 1 Cor 2:10 (the Spirit searches the deep things of God- but he has to search, he does not understand immediately), 166 Gal 4:6 (the Spirit is sent), 167 and finally Zech 4:1-5 (the angel who spoke to the prophet was the Holy Spirit).168 The Macedonians also display an interesting tendency to accept (or possibly on occasion to manufacture) variant readings in the text of the Bible which favour their cause. At Phil 3:2, 3 they want to read o! llVeUJ.lUn get\> 1..utpeuovte<; ('who serve God in the Spirit') instead of ot llVeUJ.lUn geou 1..utpeuovte<; ('who serve in the Spirit of God'), and at Rom B:I1 lila to tVOIKOUV UOtou llveUJ.lU tv uJ.liv ('because of his Spirit dwelling in you') instead of ola tou tVOIKOUVto<; UOtoii llVeUJ.lUto<; ('by means of his indwelling Spirit'), in order to remove creative or revivifying activity from the Spirit, and at Amos 4: 13 they want to remove the pronoun 'I' so that the Spirit shall not appear to be speaking through the prophet (and claiming to create).'6' Macedonians of the earlier period were content to appeal to N. Epiphanius represents them as saying 'We too believe in the creed put forth at Nicaea: but demonstrate to us from it that the Holy Spirit is classified (cruvupI9J.1eitUl) within the Godhead'. Epiphanius, unlike Damasus, has the honesty to admit that at that period doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit was not called for.170 But later

Macedonians showed a decided tendency to reject N (and, presumably, even more decisively, C) in favour of the 'Dedication' Creed, the Second Creed of the Council of Antioch of 341, a preference for which we have already noticed manifesting itself among some Homoiousians in the years between 360 and 381. '71 At the beginning of the 2nd Macedonian Dialogue the following interchange takes place:

160PS._Didymus De T,in. m.3? (968, 969). A similar argument about the omission of mention of the SpiIjt is to be found in 111.36 (965).

161Epiphanius AncoTl:uus 75.1 (94). 162Ps._Didymus De Trin. 11.13 (688,689). '''Ibid. 1ll.34 (960). 164Didymus De Spiritu Sancto 30 (PG 39:1060). 165Ps._Didymus De Trin. II.? (224). 166Epiphanius Ancoratus 15.1 (23). "7Ps.-Didymus 1ll·39 (977, 980). "'Ibid. U.8 (628). 169Ibid. II. I I (664.666). There is quite a lot of MS support for the alternatives in both the N.T. examples. Exacdy the same three texts are suggested by the Macedonian in 2nd Mac. Dial. 20 (1233) and 26 (1244). The alteration at Rom 8:11 turns on the two different meanings of dia with the acc. and with the gen. case. 170Panarion 74. 14·4,5 (332). The question ofwhether the creed C was a deliberate

770

Macedonian: 'We believe as the blessed Lucian did', and he asks Orthodox "Do you then subscribe to the creed of Lucian?'

Orthodox replies that he pins his faith to N, and when Macedonian presses him he says that he objects to Macedonian adding to

N (i.e.

adding Lucian's creed to it). Macedonian: 'Have you not added to N?' Orthodox: 'Yes, but nothing which contradicts it.'

And they continue to argue about creeds; Macedonian defends the statement of the 'Dedication' Creed that the Son is 'the exact image of the ousia and will and power and glory of the Father', and continues to maintain this position stoutly, championing homoiousion against homoousion. Orthodox is careful not to disparage the 'Dedication' Creed, but tries to show that it is consistent with N.'72 The Macedonian party in the 1st Macedonian Dialogue also defends the statement about the Son taken from the 'Dedication' Creed!73 He echoes this creed when he later agrees that between the Father and the Son there is 'one agreement' (J.liu cruJ.lCjlOlviu), but refuses to add 'one nature'!74 There is in the Migne text appended to the First concession to or rejection of the Macedonians is discussed in the next chapter, see below pp. 817-8. For a similar argument to that ofEpiphanius here, see Basil Epp. 125·3· 171See above, p. 765. 1722n d Mac. Dial. 1.2 (204, 205). It is surely significant that Orthodox admits (almost certainly weJl before 451) that his party has added to N, thereby showing that he is aware of the existence ofC. Later in this dialogue Macedonian returns to the defence of 'Lucian's' Creed, 13 (1225) and 16 (1228). 1731$t Mac. Dial. 9 (1304), 10, II (1304), 12 (1309). Some have thought that the Macedonians interpolated this clause into Lucian's original creed (ifit was Lucian's). See Bardy 'Macedonius, Macedoniens' 1476. But the expression occurs in the fragments of Asterius (though Bardy does not observe this); see above, p. 36. 1741$t Mac. Dial. 18 (1320); see above, p. 286. The Macedonian in the 2nd Mac. Dial. refers to this 'one agreement' while rejecting 'one ousia' or 'one Godhead' (6(12.12»; he also (8(1213» accuses the pro-Nicenes of teaching that the Godhead is 'begotten-un begotten' (yeVVll"tUyt:VVTl'roC;). echoing Arius' travesty of the teaching of Alexander. ayevVllToyeV1j (see Opitz Urk. III No. 1.2 (2)). .

771

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

Macedonian Dialogue another short dialogue '75 which does not discuss ·the doctrine of the Holy Spirit at all but is entirely devoted to the theology of the Son. The participants (called, as before Orthodox and Macedonian) wrangle about whether the incarnate Son has a human psyche, Macedonian denying that he has, and then about whether homoousios can be applied to him, the Macedonian maintaining that the proper term is homoiousios. The 'Dedication' Creed is not mentioned, nor is Lucian, but the denial of a human soul to Jesus Christ was the one doctrine which we have already identified as certainly emanating from Lucian. '7 • It looks as if some of the Macedonians at least, rebuffed at the Council of Constantinople of 381, no longer felt obliged to maintain the full pro-Nicene position on the subject of the divinity of the Son and fell back on that Creed of the 'Dedication' which was legendarily associated with Lucian and at the same time, in order to be consistent, adopted the doctrine which was known to be his, even if there is no hint of it in the so-called 'Lucianic' creed, and proceeded to deny a human soul to the incarnate Word.

. he did not express himself fully. But if we are to accept his own statement that when he celebrated the eucharist his custom was to add to the traditional formnla 'Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit' his own version 'Glory to the Father with (l1&ta) the Son with (cruv) the Holy Spirit' he must have had high concepts of the Spirit at least since he was consecrated bishop.'7. He bases his doctrine on the Bible, on what he calls 'general concepts' (KOtval gWOtUl), which include a contribution from Greek philosophy! 79 and secret tradition not to be found in Scripture but preserved continuously in the church.180 Early in DSS he gives a magnificent account of his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which runs thUS: ' • '

4. The Holy Spirit in the Cappadocian Theologians We have already seen that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit became a major subject for debate in the lifetime of Basil of Caesarea and the two Gregories, as it had not been in that of Athanasius or Hilary. The rupture of Basil's long friendship with Eustathius of Sebaste was brought about by their difference on the subject of the Spirit, and from this resulted what is perhaps Basil's most important work, his De Spiritu Sancto. '77 Basil reached his final position only gradually; his Adversus Eunomium, and the brief De Spiritu found at the end of Adv. Eunomium V, represent stages in his understanding during which 17SPG 28:13 29-37; Migne ed. calls it Contra Macedonianos Dialogus II. 176S ee above, pp. 80, 83. Macedonian in this little dialogue is aware that-he shares this doctrine with Arians, but he stilJ maintains it, without committing himself to

the whole Arian position. 177 00 Basil's pneumatology, see Gwatk~n AC 125. Prestige CPT 80--86, Holl Ampl!ilochius von lkonium 129-30, 137-42. Le traile sur Ie Saint~Esprjt de Saint Basile ed. L. Vischer, Dehnhard Das Problem des Abhiingigkeit des Basilius von Plotin and Simonetti Crisi 490-4. For the history of Basil's rupture with Eustathius, see Loofs Eustathius von Sebaste 6--7s and Dorrie De Spiritu Sancto; the last two are also very informative about the development of Basil's thought on the Holy Spirit.

77 2

'When we speak of the Holy Spirit it is not possible to conceive in one's mind of a fmite nature nor one subject to changes nor alterations nor in any way.like the creation; but rather, ascending to the highest point in one's thoughts, one must imagine an intelligent substance (vo8pav ouo-iav) infinite in power, unbounded in greatness, not to be measured by times nor ages, prodigal in the benefits which it commands. To this everything in need of sanctification inclines. This everything which lives in accordance with virtue desires, so as to be refreshed by its breath and assisted towards the destiny which is proper to it and in accordance with its nature. It confers fulfilment on others but in itself needs nothing at all. Its life needs no adventitious support. but it is a supplier of life. It is not increased by additions but is automatically full. abiding in itself and yet omnipresent. Source of sanctification, intellectual light, it assists every rational power towards the discovery of truth in the form of self-manifestation. 182 178DSS 1.3.72 (68) [256-81 where the fact that B. has been criticized for this practice forms the starting-point for the whole book, and 25 passim. 179See Dehnhard Das ProMem des Abhiingigkeit 85-6, and DSS 9.22 [108'"'9] [J22-6J and Epp 2)6.1. 180The word which Basil usually applies to this tradition is a:ypacpo~. Amand de Mendieta has made it quite dear that this does not mean 'unwritten', 'oral', but 'not found in Scripture'; this does not imply that it is 'non-Scriptural' far less antiScriptural (Pruche DSS 479 'non ecrites', wrongly). On the contrary, B thinks that it is consonant with Scripture. For the subject of Basil's appeal to this tradition see Hanson Tradition in the Early Church 181-6, to be modified by Amand de Mendieta 'The "Unwritten" and "Secret" Apostolic Traditions in the theological thought of St. Basil of Caesa rea', Hanson 'Basil's Doctrine ofTradition in Relation to the Holy Spirit' (Fr. tr. in Le TraUe sur Ie Saini-Esprit de Saint Basile 56--71) and Pruche DSS Introd. 136-54. '" DSS 9.22 (108-9) [)22-6J. t 82016v tt va KatacpaV&tav at eulltou; Pruche's 'il foumit par lui-meme comme une sorte de c1arte' will not do for in that case Basil must have written either tlVO~ Katacpav£ia~ or n~ KUtacpaV&lu.

773

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

Inaccessible by nature it can be reached through (its own) goodness; it fills everything by its power, but can be shared only by those who are worthy ofit, not participated in uniformly, but distributing his po~er according to the proportion offaith. Simple in its being (ousia) , vaned

his pneumatology produced to vindicate himself in his quarrel with Eustathius he writes: 187

in its energies, present wholly to everybody and present whole everywhere. It is distributed without process (a1tu900,) and shared as

with the Father and the Son; for our mind when it is lit by the Spirit

(still) whole, according to the model of the sun's rays whose benefit is present to him who feels it as to him alone and yet illuminates the earth and the sea and mingles with the air. So the Spirit is present to each of those who receive him as to him alone, but produces sufficiently to everyone unimpaired grace, and its recipients enjoy it as far as their nature allows. but not as far as its power extends'.

This remarkable fusion of biblical doctrine, Origen and Plotinus certainly does not confme the activity of the Holy Spirit to the elect, nor does it do full justice to the eschatological nature of the Spirit in the New Testament, but it makes it plain that the Spirit cannot be less than God without ever directly saying so. Later in the DSS he describes the Holy Spirit as 'One uniquely', in contrast to 'one of the mass' (§v ~ovuoIKOO" §v tmv 1to)"A,mv), as the Father and Son are each also 'One' in this sense and the Spirit is united with them.'83 His community of nature with the Father is shown by the fact that he 'proceeds from the Father, not in a generated way (YEVV'1tIKm,) like the Son, but as the breath (pneuma) of his mouth'. (not to be taken corporeally) ... 'and the Spirit is a living substance (ousia), Lord of sanctification; his affinity (oIKEI6t% [i.e. affinity to the Father]) is showu in this way, but the manner of his subsistence (~p01tO, tii, "mIPSEco,) is preserved in ineffability' (apPtltoll <jIIlAaaao~tvoll).184 This apophatic attitude to the method of subsistence ofthe.Spirit is repeated again and again. We can have some idea of, can form some analogies for, the way the Father subsists as Father and the Son as Son, but as to how the Spirit subsists as Spirit we are wholly in the dark. 185 The Spirit is of course the Spirit of Christ and the glory which he accords is neither external nor that of a slave given to his master, but 'ifI may put it this way, it is expressed from the Spirit as domestic'· (oIKEluKt;, Pruche 'familiale'); and he himself derives glory from his association with the Father and the Son.'86 In a precise statement of "'18.45 (408) [I49-I52J. 184 18.46 (408) [I5 2J. 185S ee Adv. Eunom. 111.6 (668), Hom. XXIV. 6 (612). 186DSS 18.46 (410) [I53J.

774

'Therefore we never divorce the Paraclete from his unity (cruva.:peiat;) looks up to the Son and in him as in an image beholds the Father'.

He prefers the doxology which uses 'with' (auv) for the Spirit because it preserves both the propriety of the Persons (tTJV ~&v ,,1tOcrtUcrEcov 10101'1ta) and the inseparable unity of the Trinit y188 But the most that he can say about this 'propriety' is' that he is recognized after the Son and with him and that he ·derives his existence from the Father.'189 The Three are SO closely united that it is as if when you pull one end of a chain you are bound to puJl the other. 190 The functions of the Holy Spirit, as distinct from his being, Basil can describe abundantly: separation of the soul from the passions which have grown by accretion through its intimacy with the flesh, assistance in its assimilation to God, so that it achieves its highest desire, to become God (9EOV YEvtcr9ul).'91 fulfilment or completion (1EAEicoCJI,) and sanctifying; 192 ilIumination of our minds so that we can recognize God's activity in Christ, having purged them of earthly thoughts by contemplation (9Ecopia).'93 granting human beings sonship and immortality.'94 In his earlier work De Fide he defmed the work of the Holy Spirit as distributing to each the gifts given by God for their welfare and teaching and bringing to mind whatever he hears from the Son - an account much less influenced by philosophy.'95 He can also express this function in terms of strengthening or making solid (atEpEm, atEpEcoal" 'affirmi' Pruche), accomplishing a santification which is firm and unshakeable,196 and 187Epp. 226.3.

'88DSS 25.59 (460) [I77J. ""Epp. 38.4 (Bud< 85). I 90 Ibid. (Bude 86). For the order (taxis) of the Spirit in the Trinity see above, p.693· I9'DSS 9.23 (]26-8) [109J. "'Ibid. 16.39 (384, 386) [I40J. 19322.53 (440,442) [168]. Pruche in loco points out how subtly here Basil has fused Christian with Plotinian ideas. 194Epp. 105 (Bude 7). 195De Fide 4 (pC 31:685). Here too (688) he says 'the Father sends the Son and the Son sends the Holy Spirit'. '96DSS 16.38 (380) [I36J.

775

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

leading to an understanding of God by imparting goodness and holiness. 197 But in spite of his unmistakably placing the Holy Spirit within the Godhead, Basil carefully refrains from ever directly calling him God (8&6<;) or directly applying to him the epithet homoousion. In the Rule of Faith which he gives to a group of deaconesses, he calls the Father and the Son 'God', but not the Spirit.' 9 • He is neither begotten nor unbegotten but 'from God uncreatedly'.' 99 is 'not alien from the

equal honour' (!cr6nJlo<; with its cognate IcronJlia)?·7 In his fiftye.ghth Letter Gregory of Nazianzus tried to meet the criticism of somebody who could not see why Basil should exercise this restraint and blamed him for it. Gregory, who himself never felt so constrained and may in fact have regretted Basil's caution on the subject, defends him by pointing out that had Basil expressed himself more openly he might have risked being deposed from his see and thereby losing the influence which he could exert in favour of the orthodox doctrine, declaring that Basil had often in private expressed his Own opinion to Gregory that the Spirit was both God and consubstantial and showing that Basil had in his writings expressed the equivalent doctrine in different words; it is the meaning that matters, not the syllables, said Gregory?o. One of Basil's best accounts of the Spirit is when he says, in DSS:209

divine nature',200 He must not be called a creature. 201 We can speak

of both general and particular, he says, when we say 'I believe in God the Father and God the Son and the divine (8&lov) Holy Spirit';202 the difference is significant. But he can say in De Fide that 'we are baptized into the consubstantial (homoousion) Trinity?03 and can approve the statement that Father, Son ancl Holy Spirit are 'one in the essence' (l:v tiP ,;ltOK&'JltVQl) where he appears to be deliberately avoiding the word 'substance?o, and, a little later in the same passage he says 'that the principle of the homoousios may be preserved in the unity of the Godhead and the recognition of the worship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be proclaimed in the perfect and intact Person of each of Those who have been named.'2.s Here he seems to be walking round the application of ' consubstantial' to the Spirit without ever reaching it. He can say that the Holy Spirit is 'sharer of (the Father's) nature, not created by his command but continuously radiating from the substance' (ousia).206 The word which he prefers to use to express the status of the Holy Spirit is 'of "'Ibid. 18.47 (412)[153]. 198Ep. 105. t

9 9Ep.

125.)·

2ooEp. 159. 2. 201 Ad". EunQm. 111.2 (660); proof-texts for his possession of the divine nature are Pss 33:6, 139:7;]ob 33:4; lsa 48:16; Mtt 23:10; John 10:27. 14:26; Acts I:II; Rom 8:1 I. I S; I Cor 2:10 and 1 Tim 6: 13 (ibid. 4 (661-5». For his uncreatedness see also DSS cap. 22 passim, and Ep. 231.3; Hom XV.3 (469). 202Ep. 236.6.

(688) - unless 'consubstantial is a later interpolation (but see the next references), 204Ep. 214 232 (Deferrari, who completely mistranslates the sentence by illegitimately introducing the word 'confusing', cf. above- p. ·688 n 34). 205lbid. 234 (Deferrari); see Courtonne Saint Basile et son temps 161. For Basil's restraint in applying terms to the Spirit see Pruche's Introd. to DSS 80-1 I2 and Simonetti Crisi 1141-2. 206Hom. XV.2 (468).

'the process of knowledge of God is from one Spirit through one Son to one Father: And conversely essential goodness and essential

sanctification and regal dignity travel from the Father through the Only-begotten to the Spirit'. B~sil is, h0:-vever, troubled by his realization that it is impossible to find m the Btble fuJI and wholly adequate support for the doctrine that the Holy Spirit is a separate hypostasis within the Godhead comparable to the hypostasis of the Son. The Cappadocians had enough understanding of the Bible to realize that even the very loose and subJect.ve methods of interpretation employed by almost everybody in the fourth century could not derive any and every doctrme from the pages of Scripture. Origen was by now almost everywhere thought to have gone too far in the use of allegory, to have used this tool till it was blunt. They recognised, not that the Bible witnessed to a created and inferior Holy Spirit, but that taken alone its evidence was not sufficient to support what they realised was the logical outcome of acknowledging the full divinity of the Spirit as a distinct reality within the being of God - that is the full divinity of

203 4

776

207S ee DSS caps. 6 and 8, and Pruche Introd. 104-110. ~08I?p. 58.9. 10, II. See Hanson Studies 314-5. For a repetition of Gregory's behtt~mg words. as compared with the meaning which they convey see his valedictory OratIOn at Constantinople (XLII. 16 (477»: 'and the Three in the hypostases or prosopa, or what you will, for the hair-splitters should not make fools of themselves over this, as if orthodoxy consisted of words and not of realities'. 209 18.47 (412) [153].

777

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

the Spirit as a third hypostasis. 21 0 One means of meeting this difficulty was to appeal to the church's practice of baptism, and this Basil frequently uses. He attached great importance to the use of the correct formula in baptism.""

not c~nfine this claim to practices and ceremonies. It certainly covers

'He who redeemed our life from corruption', he says, 'granted to us

the power of renewal which has an indescribable origin hid in mystery but one which conveys the great salvation to our souls, so that to add or subtract anything is manifesdy a falling away from etemallife'. 212

Now, worship and sacramental practice must always be in accordance with belief, and vice versa: 'We must be baptised as we have received, and believe as we have been

baptized, and worship as we have believed, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit'. 213 Baptism is the seal of our faith and faith is the recognition of Godhead, therefore all three Names into which we are baptised must be divine. 214 This is not only how he countered Eunomius' arguments which lowered the status of the Holy Spirit, but how he met Eustathius' Macedonianism. 215

This was a sound argument, which Athanasius had als6 used in his day."'· But in the DSS, and in this work alone, Basil took a further and more perilous step along this line of argument. In chapters 27 to 30 he exerts all his reasoning powers in an attempt to demonstrate that certain doctrines and practices have been preserved in the church ever since the time of the apostles even though they do not appear in Scripture. He instances several practices such as that of crossing oneself, turning to the East for prayer and the words of the prayer of consecration (t1tiJel.llcrt<;) at the eucharist. In these he includes his particular doxology, which uses 'with the Son' and 'with the Holy Spirit' instead of ' through the Son in the Holy Spirit'. And he does 210ln Adv. Eunom. III.7 (669) he is reduced to saying that it is the mark of an orthodox mind to interpret the silences of Scripture as acclaiming the Holy Spirit and that we shall learn more about the Spirit in the next life. "'See DSS 10.26 (336, 338) (113). "'Ibid. 12.28 (346) (117). 21JEp. 125.3; repeated Ep. 159.1. 214Adv. Eunom. I1l.S (665); cf. DSS 7.16 (3000) [93], caps. 10 and II passim. 215Ep. 159.1,251.2, the old formula (see n211); cf. Epp. 105; De Fide 4 (688). 216See above, p. 752, also Simonetti Crisi 487 n 79. The formula is echoed by Amphilochius' Council oflconium in 376 (PC 39.96) and by Gregory of Nyssa (see below, p. 787 n 261).

778

doctrme, because he makes a distinction between kerygma which is the public and common teaching of the church especially in the hturgy and dogma which is the more esoteric doctrine of the church involving deeper truths. This startling claim of Basil has attracted the attention of scholars, naturally, some hailing it with pleasure as a licence to claim that secret doctrine not to be found in the Bible has always existed in the church, others frowning on it as a transgression of the rule sola Scriptura. It is beyond the scope of this work to enlarge upon thi~ subje.ct.~17 .It .is enough to say that Basil is mingling together 10 one mdlscnmmate mass the obvious fact that the church has been teaching the faith from the very beginning, well before the New Testament was written, the disciplina arcani whereby the church (especially in the fourth century) tried to veil or conceal some of its rites and practices from an increasingly curious pagan world anxious to join it now that it had imperial Support, the habit of reserve in communicating the more advanced doctrines of Christianity to the unmstructed masses advocated by Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and the undoubted fact that Christian worship and prayer ~nd the religious experie~ce of the church in general necessarily mfluenced ChrISttan doctnne. Here the relevance of this claim made byBasii in DSS is that it demonstrated that the doctrine of the Holy SPlrlt put forward by Basil and his friends as orthodox necessarily depended upon an appeal to the practice and experience of the church. It IS mterestmg to note that in a letter to the bishops in the West Basil referred to the Nicene Creed as 'kerygma of the Fath ers,' · h amus . of Salamis he says that he an d·10 anoth er E to pIp does not want to add anything at all to N,

2,.

'except the doxology addressed to the Holy Spirit because this point shpped the memory of our fathers since the debate on this subject had not yet been stirred'.219 217See the authorities cited in n 179 above for a discussion of the matter. He

m~k.es much the same app~al in Epp. 54. On the question of the hypostasis of the ~pmt gene~ally, se~ Gw~~km SA 20~IO, Shapland op. cit. 142-3, Crillmeier CCT

198-201, SimonettI C~fSI 309 (on HIlary), May 'Einige Bermerkungen' 5 1 3- 14. When Swete Early HIstory 29 says that Christians in the early centuries 'were accu~tomed to regard the Holy Ghost as hypostatically distinct from the Father' he is makmg a .Iarg~ unproved assertion, and the same unfounded assumption runs through hIS HIstory oj the Doctrine of the Procession. 218Ep.90.2. ~19Ep. 258.2.

779

The Controversy Resolved A little more than two years after Basil's death the Council of Constantinople met Basil's wish, and in a form of which he would have heartily approved. The Fifth Theological Oration of Gregory of Nazianzus was delivered at Constantinople when the debate about the status of the Holy Spirit was at its height and is the finest and fullest account of his views on the subject. Early in this work he gives what he calls 'a concise and bare account of the Trinity', which consists of the following formula: we gain, he says 'the Son as light from the Father who is light io the Holy Spirit who is light'.220

If the Father and the Son are eternal the Spirit must be also, or else the Godhead is deficient. If the Spirit is on a level with me (a human being), how does he attach me to the Godhead?221 If the Holy Spirit is a creature, how can we believe in him or be perfected by him?222 To the Macedonian objection that the Spirit must be either generate or ingenerate, Gregory replies: 'Because the Son is a Son by some higher relationship (than our relationship of sonship), even though we cannot demonstrate his

being from God and his consubstantiality by any other method (than by analogy from our sonship), we must not therefore thiok it necessary to transfer to the Deity all lower names connected with our

human kinship'.223 The proper definition of the Holy Spirit's relationship to the Godhead has been defined by the Saviour himself: 'the Holy Spirit who proceeds (tK1l0PEUEtat) from the Father' On 15:26). This procession means that he is not a creature. and, as not begotten, not a

Son; inasmuch as he is between begottenness and unbegottenness, he is God. What is procession? Nobody can say. We simply must acknowledge the depth of God's mystery?2' That the Spirit is not the Son nor the Son the Father does not affect the ousia of any of the Persons, but these words express the eternal relationships of each Person to the others, and they exclude confusion of the hypostases?25 2200,al. XXX!.3 ([36). 221lbid. 4 (137). 2226 223 7 224 8 2259

([40). (140). (141). ([4[. [44).

The Doctrine of the Spirit 'Very well, then is the Spirit God? Certainly. Well, is he consubst~ntial? Yes: ifhe is God'?2. To worship God in the Spirit is

to worshIp the SPirit, and anyway worship addressed to One Person in the Trinity is worship addressed to all. It is no use saying that if all thmgs were made through the Son then the Spirit was so made because on this argument the Father must have been made through the Son. 227 To charge Gregory with tritheism is to revive a longdead controversy, activated by obsolete Arians and recent Macedonians. 228 And in the next chapter he gives a concise statement of umty and distinction in the Trinity:22' 'So when we look towards the Godhead and the first cause and the to us, but when towards those in which the Godhead subsists and which derive timelessly and with equal honour monarchy One appears

from the first cause~ there 3re Three

to be worshipped',

It is perfectly clear from this account of the Holy Spirit that Gregory had no objection to calling the Spirit either 'God' or 'consubstantial'. He is as incapable as was Basil of defining how the Spmt subSISts as Spirit and as open in admitting this. In another Theological Or~tion he says that the names of God are: 'the property of the. Unon~mate, Father; of Him who is begotten without begmmng (avapxcoc; YEVVll9tv:oC;), Son; of Him who proceeds or comes forth WIthout generatIOn (tOO 0& aYEvv1jtCOc; npoEA.96vtoc; ii 1lpoiovtOc;), the Holy Spirit' .2 30 In another place he defines the propnety of the Spirit as that 'of procession (1lp6000C;) and not sonshlp', and of ,mission' (EKnEII""c;).23' The incarnate Son promised that the Spirit woul~ consist of 'One other, so that you should conceIve of an equahty of honour, other than 1'.232 There is 'one Spirit who has his existence from God, who yields to the Father as far as ingenerateness is concerned, and to the Son in generation, but in 226 1°,(144): in II (145) Gregory argues against those who deny that the Spirit is

homoouslOn. 22712 (145. 148). 2281 3 (14 8). 229 14 ([49). 2300,al. XXX.I9 (128). 231~rat. XXV,I6 (1221), And he manages to say nothing about the Spirit in a profeSSIOnal style when he declares (Drat. XXXIX. 12 (348» of the Spirit 'he comes forth ~rom . the Father, n,?t ~o.n:vise (u.h::~r;;) nor generately ("(£VVT(t"c'iX;) but proces~lonwise (~ICn:OP£Utu,rot;;), If It IS permissible to coin nomenclature for the sake of clanty,' (Clanty?). 2320ral. XLI. J2 (444. 445).

The Controversy Resolved

other respects is of the same nature, shares the same throne,. and enjoys the same glory and honour'. 233 Gregory, then, has established a distinct vocabulary for the peculiar property or propnety of the Holy Spirit (though he does not use only one word to express It): proceeding or going forth.234 But he is as much in the d~rk as BasI! when he asks himself what this means, how precISely ~t. IS distinguished, except in purely negative ter~s, from the proprIeties of the other Two. His conception of the SpIrIt s functIOn IS, of course, much the same as that of Basil. . In one interesting respect, however, he differs from BaSIl. He acknowledges, as Basil did, the necessity of supplementmg the orthodox doctrine of the Holy Spirit from some othe.r source than that of Scripture. He can on occasion appeal to the practIce of baptism into the Triple Name.235 But he makes the further step, which BasI! made in the form of claiming the existence of a secret tr~dlt1on not found in Scripture, in a much more satisfactory form. It IS m hIS FIfth Theological Oration that he does this.236 I:Ie argues that we are bound by the logical consequences of ScrIptural do~trme, even though they are not stated in Scripture: ifhis opponent SaId tWIce five or twice seven Gregory would be justified in concludmg that he meant ten or fourteen; these would be virtually the man's words though he had not uttered them. 23 ' From this base Gre~ory laun~hes into a fine expression of the gradualness of God s revelatIOn, borrowed largely from Origen, but here put to use to explam our gradual understanding of the Holy Spirit. The reason for ~hlS gradual unfolding was because, according to one of Gregory s favounte principles, God would coerce nobody. He sketches an impreSSlve scheme whereby God under the old dispensation gradually WIthdrew the supports upon which the Jews leaned in order to understand hIm, the Law and circumcision, and then under the new such as sacrifIces. , . ' If: 238 dispensation he gradually added new revelatIOns of hlmse . 2330rat. XXXII.s (180); cr. XXXIV. I I (2j2), homotiniia of the ~piri~: In the first passage referred to here the words 'having his existence from G,od ~re 10 Gree~ SIC

9&06 tTJv i51tap~lV fxov. Hen is inaccurate when he says (AmphllochJUs von IkOn/urn

242) that Gregory never uses {)rtU,x;l<; in a Trinitarian context. 234e1C1to ptu&a6al (middle voice), 1tPOltvUl and cognates at?-d 1tp6ooor;. Some information about Gregory's doctrine of the Spirit can be gleaned from Harnack History IV 1I6 note and 117. and Holl Amphilochius von lkonium 161-4·

23'E.g. Orat. XXXI.28 (165); Orat. XXXIV.!1, 12 (25 2). 23'Ora t. XXXI.24-25 (161)-165). 237

24

(r60).

23825 (160, 161).

782

\

The Doctrine of the Spirit

'The Old (Testament) openly proclaimed the Father, but the Son mistily (ullu8p6tBpov). The New manifested the Son, but sketched (ont8Bl~B) the Godhead of the Spirit. The Spirit is now resident and active among us [Mason's admirable translation of tJ.UtOA1.t6uC:'t"alj supplYing a clearer manifestation of himself. For it was not safe to announce the Son openly as long as the Father's Godhead was not yet

acknowledged, nor when the Son's Godhead was not yet accepted that we should be - if! may speak a little wildly - burdened with the Holy Spirit'. So, even in the New. Testament, the Holy Spirit reveals himself only gradually.23' 'You perceive', Gregory says, 'periods of illumination gradually enlightening us and an order of revelation (OBo1..oyia,) which it is better for us to preserve, neither appearing in a single burst (dOparo,) nor maintaining secrecy to the very end'. And he suggests that the divinity of the Holy Spirit was perhaps one of those things which the disciples could not bear 'now' Oohu 16:12), but which were to be revealed later. 240 This Oration had begun with a quotation of the troubled words of Gregory's interrogators, 'Where are you leading us, towards a new unbegotten God who is not in Scripture?'241 Gregory by the end of the Oration had given them a serious and honest answer, much more in accordance with the historical facts than Basil's attempt to answer the same question: for the divinity of the Holy Spirit the witness of Scripture must be supplemented by, or interpreted in the context of, the religious experience of the church and of the Christian individual. One can see how Jerome could say that he had learnt to expound the Bible from Gregory of Nazianzus, even though as far as we know Gregory never wrote a biblical commentary. In a large exposition of his pneumatology written probably at the period when debate about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was most 239 2 6 (161). 24°27 (164).

2411 (133). MoHer, 'Macedonius, Macedonier' lIS. notes this. Gregory of Nazianzus can also of course give Scriptural proofs for his pneumatology, and especially for the distinct existence of the Spirit's hypostasis, e.g.:]n 14:18 (the Spirit distinct from the Son);]n 14:23 (the hypostasis of the Son and of the Spirit distinct); Mtt 28:19 (three distinct proprieties); Acts S:ltf(Ananias and Sapphira); 10:44 and 19:2 (Cornelius and Paw's converts at Corinth);]n 3:8 (the Spirit blows where it wm)~ and the fact that Paul mentions the Persons of the Trinity in indiscriminate order (Orat. XXXIV. 13-1 5 (253, 256), cf. Orat. XL!.12 (444, 445)). He virtually repeats his argument about the dHiiculty of finding doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit in verse from Poemata Dogmatjea 1.1 lines 10--24. 2S-36 (37:409).

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spirit

rife, Gregory of Nyssa tries to show that the Spirit must be treated in exactly the same way as are the Father and the Son m such respects as holiness, eternity, wisdom, sovereignty (1'iVt~oVL"6v) and power:

mentioned third, is in Gregory's view equal in nature. Ifhe is divine (theion, not theos in this passage), all the other attributes-fonow. 24 • He is like to and equal with the other two persons, except that

'All the names and concepts which are appropriate to God have the same relation of equal honour to each other by reason of their not

'we say that he is reckoned third in order after the Father and the Son, and third in the order of reception'. 249

differing at all in the significance of their substance (tOU \m01cEt)JtvOU).

As well as expressing the Holy Spirit's union with the Son in terms of anointing, Gregory can use the image of kingship for this idea: the Son is the king, the Spirit is the kingdom,

Even the word theos (God) Gregory remarks, can be applied to things very far inferior to God himself, and he gives as examples from Scripture]er 1O:I1; Pss 95 (96):5; I Sam 2S·.13; Num 22·.?if. It would 242 therefore be illogical to deny the name 'God' to the Holy Spirit. His opponents (Macedonians) argue that the word theos can only refer to the nature (Physis) of anything bearing that name. Gregory argues that we cannot directly know the nature of God. 'We make guesses by analogy based on the evidence of things which escape our understanding.' We are compelled to infer the nature fro~ the effects (energeia), and indeed in an our experience effects are a reliable gwde to the nature (of the thing effecting), fire, for instance, is not cold nor ice hot. But the effect (energeia) of the Spirit we know to be the identical effect of both the Father and the Son; an together sanctify, quicken, exhort, and so on. We must therefore conclude tha: the nature of all three is identica!.243 Even if we take name to mdIcate rank(a~iu), then the Holy Spirit must be regarded as God, because the Spirit is the royal chrism with which Christ the Kmg ~s anointed.244 Elsewhere he argues that the Hoi y Spirit is uncreated; It is he who confers goodness, freedom, wisdom, incorruption, blessedness etc. on creatures, and does not receive them with or from creatures, and in short the Spirit has every attribute possessed by the Father and the Son except those which apply to the distinction of the hypostases.245 He meets the Macedonians' proof text Amos 4: 1 3 by saying that pneuma here does not mean the Holy Spirit, but refers to the fact that when people become Christians they cease to be flesh and become spirit an 3:6, 1 Cor 12:3), and he allegorizes the whole passage.z46 As we have already seen,z47 the Holy Spirit, though 242Ad Eustatl,ium, de Sancta Trinitate 75-77 (']'-10 Leiden).

243Ibid. 77

(10, II Leiden), 80 (13 Leiden). 24481_2 (14- 16 Leiden). For a recapitulation of this argument. see Gregory's discourse De Deitate Filii et Spiritus Sancti. PG 46:573. 576 . 245 Ad Simplicium de Fide 65. 66 (Leiden): Gregory writes 'as the Scripture says'. but gives only one reference. I Cor 12:11. 24667. 247See above, p. 729.

'the Spirit is a living and substantial (00",,;'8'1<;) and distinctly subsisting (EvU1'Omuto<;) kingdom with which the only-begotten Christ is anointed and is king of all that is.'250

The two are as closely united as a body and the oil with which it is anointed, 'so that anyone who intends to be joined to him (Christ) must first encounter him through the touch of the chrism' (tOU ~UpOU).z51 In the same work he says that the Father is the source of power, the Son is the power of the Father and the Holy Spirit is the spirit (pneuma) of the power. 252 And in Vita Gregorii Thamaturgi Gregory quotes with approval a Creed attributed to Gregory Theodorus or the Wonderworker, the Cappadocian bishop who lived in the second half ofthe third century. Its third article runs thus: 'And one Holy Spirit possessing his existence (fi"UP~L<;) from God, and manifested through the Son, that is to men, perfect image of the perfect Son, Life as cause of those who have life, holy Source, minister

of the holiness of sanctity; in whom is manifested God the Father who is above all and in all: and God the Son who is through all; perfect Trinity in glory and eternity and sovereignty neither divided nor differentiated' .253

The advanced theological vocabulary of this creed makes it very difficult for us to suppose that it really did emanate from Gregory 248Adv. Macedonianos 92--94 (Leiden). . 249Ibid. 100; 'third in order of reception' (1tapa~6(J"EroC;), however, is an odd term; It certainly cannot imply that we first receive the Father and then the Son and then th~ Spirit. It could be translated 'tradition', meaning either that tradition places him thIrd or that he is mentioned or dealt with third in the Scriptures. 250 Ibid. J02. 251 103 . It is not likely that Gregory is here claiming that the ceremonial of anointing with chrism at baptism is a necessary part of the rite. 252 100: cf. Holl Amphilochius 210. 253PG 46:9 12--913.

The Doctrine oj the Spirit

The Controversy Resolved

Theodorus, but it is significant that Gregory of Nyssa should have endorsed it. May's remark 2s4 that Gregory rarely apphes the word theos to the Holy Spirit can just be accepted, and perhaps we may agree with Jaeger that it was logically inherent in G:regory's thought that the homoousion should be extended to the Splnt, but Gregory seldom if ever actually so applied it.>55 We have already seen something of the functions which Gregory ascribes to the Holy Spirit. In a passage in which he describes the Spirit as analogous to the breath which comes from us whe~ we utter a word (though we must not conceive ofit anthropomorphlc~lly), h.e says that the Spirit 'witnesses along with ~heWord, and mamfests ~s activity', and then Gregory emphasises his dlStmct subSIstence wlt~m the Godhead. 2'. In a letter he describes the Spirit as a 'perfectmg (t&A.&IOUlll;vljv) power', a term which when it occur~ in the Cappadocian theologians is their flattened and reduced verSIon of the eschatological nature of the Spirit to which the ~ew Testame~t witnesses.>57 And Jaeger points out that Gregory gIves to the Spmt the task of ordering and distributing and directing the affairs of the world.>s. But when he tries to tell in what the peculiar subsistence of Spirit within the Trinity consists he is as helplessly negative as the other Cappadocians. He can attribute ingenerateness to the Father and gener.teness to the Son, but this is his account of the Spmt: 'His peculiar identification and mark is to be neither of those (proprieties) which reason has observed in respectively the Father and 254'Datierung' 56. . 25SGregor von Nyssa's Lehre 22~ but how Jaeger C3? ~o on to say that the CouncIl of Constantinople did apply homoousion to the Spirit, I cannot understand. ~he council most pointedly refrained from doing so. In fact Gregory ~ever apphed homoousion to the Spirit, and rarely to anything else. Gonzalez (op. Clt. 16 n 73 ~nd 17) collected all Gregory's uses of the epithet: there are only four pas~ages. two ~stng it in a reductio ad absurdum (Con. Eunom. 1.539 (PG 1092, ~84 Lelden),.111 (11).69

Vol. II 75 Leiden (644»; one describes how the imperial offi,?al urged BaSil to reject simply the word homoousion (Con. Eunom. 1.136 (293, 68 Lelden», and one us~s th~ fact that N had declared the Son homoousios, a doctrine accepted by both Apollmans and Gregory, to reduce a christological statement of Apol1inaris to absurdity (Adv. Apoll. p. Ij7 Leiden (1161)). . • . 2560r. Cat. 1l.1-3. quotation from. 3; 'witnesses together With IS ouJ.L1tapa lJ.ClptUpouv a word for which Lampe Patr!stic Lexicon gives. Theodore Studita (VIIIth-IXth cent.); but here is a much earlier occurrence of It.

257Ep. 24.lj (79 Leiden).

258Cregor von Nyssa's Lehre 23-24, the terms are 61ata'Yil. o\ob:'l1o"l'i and l)lata~l'i

and are (significantly) Stoic.

the Son. For he exists neither ingenerately nor as only-begotten (JlOVOYEVro<;) but simply to exist represents his propriety compared

with the other (proprieties) which have been mentioned. 2s • .Gregory does not attempt to exalt 'procession' into an account of the distinct subsistence of the Spirit, as Gregory of Nazianzus does. Holl pleasingly and usefully gives a schematic account of the doctrine of the Cappadocian theologians on this subject: 2 • o Basil: Fatherhood, Sonship, - (i.e. nothing much). Gregory of Nazianzus: Ingenerateness. Generateness,' Procession

Gregory of Nyssa: Ingenerateness, Only-begotten, 'through the Son'. On the subject of Scriptural support for the existence of the Holy Spirit within the Godhead as a distinct hypostasis, Gregory of Nyssa neither takes refuge in a doctrine of secret tradition as Basil does nor faces the question and solves it honestly as does Gregory of Nazianzus. He has one brief reference to gradual revelation in the style of his namesake of Nazianzus, but though Dani610u and Balas make much of it, the passage does not have great significance'>·! On several occasions he appeals to the practice of baptism into the Triple Name to support his doctrine of the Holy Spirit.>·2 In one or two passages he argues in favour of custom in the church as convincing.>·3 But passages can also be found where he rejects custom and prefers Scripture.>·4 On this point we must pronounce him to have been less percipient than either of the other two Cappadocian theologians. Finally the subject ofthe Pilioque, that is to say the doctrine that the 259Con. Eunom. 1.279'-80 (336). Holl remarks on this negative conclusion Amphilochius 212, and gives one or two other examples. For further light on Gregory's technical vocabulary, see HoIl op. cit. 239'-43. 2600p. cit. 216. 2610ral. de Spiritu Sancto sive in Pentecosten PG 46:697. See Danielou L''ttre et Ie temps 187 and Balas Metousia 86' n 82. But there is a longer and better acknowledgement of the same principle in Ref. Can. Eunom. 2. 3. (4.68). though it extends no further than seeing the teaching of the O.T. as dim and sketchy compared with that of the N.T. . 262Con. Eunom. 1.288-9 (340)~ Adv. Maced. 103. 105-'7 (Leiden); Ep. 24.8 (Leiden) - as we are baptised. so we believe etc. See May 'Datierung 55--6' and 'Einige Bemerkungen' 514-5. 26JCon. Eunom. III (ix) 55--60 (880,881) - especially use of the Triple Name in baptism; Adv. Maced. 107-115 (Leiden) - usage in prayer. 264BasiJ Epp. 139.3 (usually attributed to his brother Gregory); De Deitate Filii et

Sp. Si. PG 46.6j.

The Controversy Resolved

The Doctrine of the Spiril

Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, not just from the Father nor any other way, must, as far as it concerns the writers of the fourth century, be treated as briefly as possible. This later became and still remains a highly controversial topic, but we must recall as we consider it that nobody in the period under review regarded it as a particularly important point. Until the Cappadocian theologians (and not always even in this case) nobody distinguished between the procession and the mission of the Spirit, that is to say his position in the inner life of the Godhead as distinct from his activity among believers or in the world, and nobody in the fourth century would have thought of contrasting the two in any way. H. B. Swete's dassic work2.' will give the student all the information he needs for the development of thought on this subject up to the time of Athanasius' Letters to Serapion, as long as he allows for Swete's tendency to read into earlier periods nuances and emphases which only appeared at a later time. All that we need note is that a fragment of Asterius speaks of the Holy Spirit as proceeding 'from the Father' without further modification;2 •• that Germinius later says 'the Paradete has been given to us from God the Father through the Son';2.' and that Basil of Ancyra speaks of the Spirit as 'given to the faithful from the Father through the Son', and as 'the Holy Spirit whom the divine Scripture calls a Paradete subsisting from the Father through the Son'.2.' Athanasius throws less light on the subject than we might expect. He says of the Spirit 'who proceeds from (napa) the Father?· and 'he is said to proceed from the Father since he shines and is sent and is given from (napa) the Logos, from (tIC) the Father confessedly' .2'0 And elsewhere we hear from him a doctrine which is often repeated later in the century, viz that the Spirit receives from the Father all that he has. 271 Epiphanius has several statements on the subject and if any ancient writer can be thought to support the Pilioque it is he. The Spirit, he says, 'is believed (to be) from Christ or from both' (Father and Son)2'2 and he speaks of'the Holy Spirit from both, out of spirit

(i.e. what God is),2'3 and of 'the Son from whom he (the Spirit) receives, and the Father for whom he proceeds ... (the Spirit) who is from (napa) the Father, who is from (tIC) the Son?" and of the Spirit 'proceeding from the Father and the Son ... from Father and Son, with (Guv) Father and Son' .2" Even so it will be observed that this is not a completely uniform acceptance of the Pilioque. There is, however, in Ambrose's De Spirilu Sancia one passage where there can be no ambiguity:

265 History oj the Doctrine oj the Procession of the Holy Spirit: see also Prestige CPT 249-54· '''Frag. XXXI (67), Bardy, Lucien 352. 267Hilary Coli. Antiar. AlII (48). 268Epiphanius Panarion 73.16. 269Epp. ad Serap. 1.2; Shapland is wrong (op. cit. 64-5) in seeing this as necessarily a reference to the inter-Trinitarian position of the Spirit. 270 Ibid. 1.20. 2710r. (on. Ar. I1I.24 (93). 272Ancoratus 67.1 (8).

'And when he (the Son) comes out from the Father he does not move from a place nor is he as ifhe were a body separating from a body. nor when he is in the Father is he as ifhe were a body contained in a body. The Holy Spirit too, when he proceeds from the Father and from the Son is not separated. He is not separated from the Father, he is not separated from the Son' .2'. Basil of Caesarea can be interpreted as favouring the Pilioque, but the case is an uncertain one. In Adversus Eunomium at one point277 his

words could be taken to mean that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but in another place in the same worP" he speaks of the Spirit as 'sent by the Father, ministered by the Son'. There is another passage in DSS where one could read the doctrine into his remarks, but Pruche in loco is cautious. 2'. And May2'O calls attention to a passage in the same chapter of DSS where Basil describes how knowledge of God is sent from the Father through the Son to the Spirit, and then a counter-movement takes place from the Spirit through the Son to the Father.28l Gregory of Nazianzus, who has a firm doctrine of the Spirit's procession, is quite clear on this point. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, and he never describes him as proceeding through the Son. 2'2 The nearest he '73lbid. 70.7 (88), and again 71.1 (88). 274Ibid. 73.1.2 (91). 27SPanarion 62.4.1, 2 (392). 276De

Spiritu Sancto

1.11.120

(67).

27711.34 (652). 278II1.6 (668). "9DSS [8.46 (410) 1152]. 280'Einige Bemerkungen' 513-14. 281 47 (4 12 ) [153]. May thinks that Gregory of Nyssa was influenced by this passage. 28'See Oral. XXXI.8 (141); XXXIX.I2 ()48); XXV.I5 (1220) and 17 (1221, 122 4).

The Controversy Resolved reaches to the Pilioque is to say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and has 'affinity' (o!Ket6ni';) with the Son}·3 But this is not an acceptance of the Pilioque. Gregory of Nyssa is almost as consistent, but in a different way. He usually teaches that the Holy SPlrlt proceeds from the Father through the Son, though he can occasionall y speak of the Spirit as proceeding from the Father and receiving from the Son.2.' Holl sums up his doctrine by saying that the Spirit is caused by the Father and expressed and ministered by the Son,2.5 and Gonzalez, more cautiously and accurately 'the Son also plays some part in the procession of the Holy Spirit'.2.6 It is a sterile exercise to attempt to trace in an early period the lineaments of a doctrine which only came to be developed in a much later one. The Cappadocian Fathers made great and crucial contributions to the development of the full doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and in the process impressed upon the whole church the necessity of accepting an integrated and properly considered doctrine of God as the Holy Trinity. Their conviction that the Father was the fount and cause of the other two co-equal Persons would not have a priori inclined them to formulate a concept agreeable to the Pilioque. Whatever the merits of this doctrine (and this work does not pretend to assess them),2.7 no firm nor clear support for it can be found in the three great Cappadocian theologians. 28JHom. XXIV.6 (6[2. 6[3). 284E.g. Adv. Maced. 97. [08 (Leiden); Epp. XXIV·4 (76). Swete (History of Doctrine oJProcession 102-05) notes one doubtful passage. Gonzalez, op. CIt. 129-30 lists a1l the statements of Gregory affecting the procession of the Holy Spirit. There is not one passage where the Son is not mentioned along with the Father, though the formula is not always 'from the Father through the Son'; he never says simply 'from the Father', and never simply 'from the Father and the Son'. 28SAmphiiochius 214-15.

2860p. cit. 130. 287 1 have attempted to do so in Studies in Christian Antiquity cap.

12.

23 The Council of Constantinople of 3 81 I.

Imperial Policy before the Council

The attitude towards Christianity and its divisions of the Emperors both in the East and the West between the reigns of Valentinian (364-375) and Valens (364-378) and that of Theodosius (379-395) varied considerably. Valens, as we have already seen, was a convinced Homoian Arian, and when he thought it feasible he used his power to promote his favourite doctrine and suppress others. He did not dislodge Basil in Caesarea nor Athanasius in Alexandria. But he banished Gregory from Nyssa and Eusebius from Samosata and when Athanasius died in 373 Valens made sure that the Arian Lucius was installed as archbishop of Alexandria and Peter, Athanasius' proNicene successor, chased out of that city and compelled to take refuge in Rome. At the same time he sent a number of pro-Nicene clergy and monks of the see of Alexandria to work in the mines at Phaeno in Palestine and Proconnessus, an island in the Propontis, and also in Diocaesarea in Palestine.' As soon as Eudoxius died the pro-Nicenes in Constantinople in 369 elected a successor, Evagrius, but Valens immediately exiled him and welcomed the Arian choice, Demophilus, for that see. A delegation of clergy from the capit,al of the 'Homoousian' or 'Homoiousian' persuasion sent to Valens at Nicomedia was rebuffed by the Emperor, and he is alleged to have put them on board a ship to transport them across the strait. The ship caught fire and they all perished. Whether the fire was accidental or deliberate we cannot telJ.2 He was single-minded in promoting his chosen brand of doctrine, for he banished Eunomius as well; and his chosen ecclesiastical advisers, Demophilus, and later Dorotheus when t Historia Akaphela S. 14 (168); Basil Ep. 139; Theodoret HE IV.2 I ,22; Socrates HE IV.2I,22; Sozomenus HE VI.I9· 2Socrates HE IV.J4-I6, Sozomenus VI.I3,14; Theodoret HE IV.24.

790

791

The Controversy Resolved

The Council of Constantinople

he succeeded Euzoius at Antioch, were no friends to Neo-Arianism. 3 One of Valens' favourite devices for discouraging" clergy whose views he disliked was to enrol them among the curiales, thus making them liable to considerable expenses from which clergy of the favoured persuasion were exempt. 4 But his efforts at persecution were sporadic and unpredictable, and when he was facing especial danger, such as during the rebellion of Pro cop ius (365-6) and before the battle of Adrianople (378), he would issue orders to recall those whom he had banished, suggesting that all should now rally to support the Emperor irrespective of theological allegiance. 5 A particular target of Valens' harassment was Meletius, that Benedict Arnold of the Homoian party. Gregory of Nyssa in his Funeral Oration on Meletius tells us that he was exiled three times. 6 The first exile was of course in 360 when he disappointed his Homoian sponsors by dissenting from their views about the status of the Son.7 He returned, no doubt, on the death of Constantius. But in the spring of365 Valens decided that all those bishops who had been driven out of their sees by Constantius should again leave them, and return to exile, and this included Meletius (but, by a legal quibble, not Athanasius).8 Meletius returned from exile at some point thereafter, whether legally (as a result of mild measures induced by the panic caused by Procopius' usurpation, perhaps) or illicitly. 9 Then in 370 or 371, under pressure from .. renewed policy of enforcing theological uniformity on the part of Valens, Meletius again retired from Antioch to his estate in Armenia, where we have met him already conferring with Basil and Theodotus.'o As if the enmity of Valens was not enough, Meletius had incurred that of Eustathius, whom Meletius, under the protection of the Arian emperor and church, had attempted unsuccessfully to extrude from Sebaste in 358, and whose rancour against Basil was no doubt sharpened by Basil's friendship

with Meletius. Meletius also was regarded with suspicion by Peter of Alexandria, who inherited this from his predecessor Athanasius and cbmmunicated it to his protector Damasus." Meletius returned from his last exile in 378, either just before the miserable end of Valens, or just after. Peter had arrived in his see of Alexandria armed with commendatory letters from Damasus, and Lucius had been summarily ejected, just before the disaster of Adrianople.' 2 This suggests that Valens, faced with imminent danger to the Empire from the Goths, had relaxed his pressure against theological nonconformists in the interest of imperial solidarity. Valentinian, the brother and co-emperor of Valens, tried not to involve himself either in disputes between Christians (though he was a sincere Christian) and pagans, nor in quarrels among the Christians themselves. We have already seen him refusing to give in to an attempt by Hilary to attack Auxentius of Milan on doctrinal grounds.' 3 He offered no opposition to the choice of Ambrosius as· bishop of Milan in 374. 14 But if we are to trust Theodoret, Valentinian committed himself strenuously to the pro-Nicene cause when he presided over a church council somewhere in IIIyricum (perhaps in Sirmium) which produced a resoundingly proHomoousian statement and sent it to the bishops of the diocese of Asia" (comprising, among others, the provinces of Phrygia, Karophrygia and Pacatiana).15 But can we trust Theodoret in this case? There are many difficulties and obscurities in the account.' 6 It

3Philostorgius HE IX.8.IO,I4. 'Basil Epp 2J5,2)7,247,248.

5This is hinted at in Socrates HE IV.3: 'this news threw the emperor into a great

panic. which arrested his action for a short time against the objects of his persecution',

.

60 ra tio Funebris in Meletium Episcopum 450 (Leiden (857 PG)). 7See above, PP.382-4. 8Socra tes'HE VI.I2.j. 950 Schwartz, 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 171, who places his third exile in 371 (Courtonne St. Basile JOO n I, puts it in 370). IOSee above, pp.682-3.

792

t 1 For

the antagonism between Eustathius and Meletius, see Loafs Eustathius von

Sebaste 66--7. t 2S ocra tes VJ.39. I; Socrates said that Valens would have resented this had he been given time, but this may be a mere guess; at IV.32,3S he had said explicitly that Valens called offhis persecution before Adrianople; Socrates echoes this HE V1.37. I cr, Rufinus HE 11.13 and Jerome Chronicle sub ann. 378. t3See above, pp. 466---]. 14Theodoret HE IV.7, whose account seems a little too good to be true; the attitude of Ambrose to the CUrrent debate was then unknown and was only publicly declared when he supported Anemius for the see of Sirmium (375). 15Theodoret HE IV.B,9. 16The imperial message is sent in the names of Valentinian, Gratian and Valens which should place it between 367 and 375, and it makes no mention of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which suggests that it cannot be very late. But it would have been quit~ out of character for Valentinian to support so enthusiastically a distinctly parnsan document~ the imperial letter is in an unimperial style, with several references to the Bible. And there is in the message attributed to the Emperor a careful distinction between ousia and hypostasis which is consonant neither with Valentinian's predilections nor with contemporary Western theology. The names

793

The Council of Constantinople

The Controversy Resolved

seems preferable either to assume that we are here dealing with a council which took place in 378 or 379, after Valentinian's death, or dismiss the whole passage as wholly untrustworthy.17 Gratian was formally made Augustus when he was eight years old, in 367, but he only exercised power from 375 onwards, on the death of his father Valentinian, when he was sixteen. Gratian was murdered by the agents of the usurper Magnus M~ximus in 383: U?til 379 he followed the policy of non-intervention In ecclesIastIcal affaIrs practised by his father. In 378 he met Ambrose of Milan for the first time in Sirmium. When the news of the disaster of Adrianople reached him in the same year, Gratian (perhaps following Valens' example), issued an Edict declaring toleration for all the diverse views of Christian parties except Manichees, Photiuians and Eunomians. '8 In the same year a council, already referred to, took place in Rome which not only produced some strongly pro-Nicene opinions, but also enacted some legislation granting ecclesiastical authority to the bishop of Rome: if he summoned a bishop to him that bishop should be compelled to attend; if he or his council condemned a bishop the Emperor must exile him; and the Pope himsdf should be immune from the judgment of any tribunal save the Emperor's court. Gratian replied by issuing a decree Ordinariorum sententias allowing the Pope's authority over bishops within his jurisdiction but refusing him immunity from ecclesiastical law .19 In the autumn of the same year an influx of people professing the Arian faith arrived in Milan, refugees from Gothic invasion, and Gratian forcibly took over a Catholic church building and gave it to the Arians to use for of the bishops sending it are unknown; no other authority mentions this council. If we take the 'Valentinian' as being Valentinian I's small son, then a mere infant, we have to ask ourselves whether his strong~y Arian mother ,Justina, would ever have allowed such an anti-Arian document to be sent out in her son's name. 17S we te (Early History 57-9). ZeiIler (Origines chret;ennes, 3 10-27) and Simonetti (Crisi 435--6. 438-9) try to make sense of it. Meslin (Les Ariens 86--9) gives it up. It has been suggested that Palladius' reference to the (pro-Nicene) 'Blasphemy of Sirmium' refers to this council. Its doctrinal statement is well consistent with this. lliThe Edict is not extant, but it is evidenced in Socrates HEV.2 and Sozomenus HE VII.J.3. The Manichees were always suspect to Emperors, partly no doubt because they originated in the Persian Empire; Photinians and Eunomians represented two comparatively insignificant extremes. For Gratian's actions and policy see Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 196-8. '9Collectio Avellana 54ff; EOMIA 1.28df. See King The Emperor Theodosius 23· See above PP.758-60.

794

their worship. He was clearly anxious to accommodate the views of Justina, widow of Valentini an I, and her son (she was a second wife) the boy-Emperor Valentinian II, who were Arians and were at the time residing in Aquileia. But next year at the beginning of summer when Gratian was travelling from the Balkans to the Rhine front to cope with invading Allemanni and Franks he returned this building to the Catholics; he was perhaps influenced by the series of sermons which Ambrose was at the time delivering against those who deny the divinity of the Holy Spirit (a number which certainly included Justina and her entourage). Later, at the very end of July, he met Ambrose at Aquileia and spent some days with him there. By now Gratian had come to regard Ambrose as his guide, philosopher and friend. It is usually alleged that at this point Gratian withdrew his Edict of Toleration of the year before, but this is by no means certain. On the whole it is more likely that, despite his admiration for Ambrose, he continued broadly his policy of tolerating within wide limits differences within Christianity at this period. 20 Later, when Justina and Valentinian II moved from Aquileia to live in Milan, the tension between Arians and Catholics took another turn, but these events lie outside the scope of our narrative. 21 If Gratian had been free to attend to ecclesiastical affairs undistracted by the necessity of dealing with barbarian disturbances in the Gallic provinces, or had he survived the murderous usurpation of Magnus Maximus, it seems very unlikely that he could have withstood the persuasion of those two strong-minded individuals, Ambrose and Damasus, and proved himself an apostle of toleration.

2.

Abortive Attempts at Agreement

Liberius, bishop of Rome, on returning to his see after his humiliating, experiences in exile. remained quiescent. as far as we know, until Constantius was dead and the Homoian Arian party no longer securely in control of ecclesiastical affairs, before he made any 2°The Edict of August 379 (Cod. Theod. XVI.5.5) certainly cancelled an earlier Rescript, but it is doubtful whether the 'Edict of Toleration' (whose text we do not possess) was the measure meant. See A. Birley 'Magnus 'Maximus and the Persecution of Heresy' 16 and n 19; K.-L. Noetlichs Die Gesetzgeberischen MassIJaiJmen des ciJrist/icher Kaisar 104-08 and G. 'Gottlieb Ambrosius von Mailand und Kaisar Gratian 71-80. 21Sec Mcslin, Les Ariens 44-48; also 33 n 26.

795

The Controversy Resolved

The Council of Constantinople

important move. He did nothing either to further, to prevent or to protest against the proceedings of the Council of Ariminum until the year 362 or 363, when he issued a Letter to the Bishops of Italy (Imperitiae culpam) excusing those who had recendy fallen into error on the ground of their ignorance and inviting them to return to the true faith and accept N. It regarded the Council of Ariminum as a disastrous lapse into heresy, but (naturally enough) said nothing about Liberius' own recent deviation in that direction. 22 A Letter of the Bishops of Italy to the Bishops of Illyricum issued a litde later (363), no doubt also inspired by Liberius (it is entided Divini muneris), exhorted its recipients to accept the Nicene faith and to renounce the creed promulgated at Ariminum.23 It describes Ursacius and Valens as 'instigators of the heresy of Arius or Aecius' (i.e. Aetius). We have already seen24 how Liberius welcomed the delegation sent from the Council of Lamp sacus and sent them back with letters favouring the cause of doctrinal unity, and how this move towards reconciliation between the Eastern and the Western church was unsuccessful. Liberius died in 366. He was succeeded by Damasus, an adherent of the party of Felix, not ofLiberius, and he only succeeded after fierce fighting between the two factions. He reached the see of Rome by walking over the corpses of the faction-fighters. 25 Damasus, as we have already had occasion to see, was a convin'ced, indeed an aggressive, supporter ofNicene doctrine. He quickly began to devote his energies to suppressing Arianism and promoting the cause of the proponents of N. Sozomenus and Theodoret describe 2 • a council held in Rome under Damasus whose encyclical letter is devoted to stating the pro-Nicene doctrine of the Son in uncompromising terms and to condemning Auxentius of Milan for heresy. Its date is uncertain. Some (e.g. Bardy, Courtonne and Zeiller) place it as early as 368, others (e.g. Cavallera, Lietzmann, Schwartz, Piganiol and Amand de Mendieta) as late as 372.27 If this council is that referred to

by Athanasius in Ad Afros2 8 as held recendy by Damasus and condemning Auxentius, Ursacius and Valens then we must opt for the earlier date, or follow the conjecture, originally made by Duchesne, that Damasus held two councils in Rome condemning these three bishops. However many councils he held, however, Damasus never succeeded in deposing these three bishops who continued to hold their sees serenely until their deaths. We have already glanced at the efforts, in the end doomed to failure, made by the Macedonians and/or 'Homoiousians', led ultimately by Eustathius, to achieve a stable doctrinal formula. 2 ' Determined, but sadly ineffectual efforts were made by Basil of Caesarea to bring about reconciliation and consensus in the East and between the East and the West between the years 37 I and 377. They can be reconstructed from the correspondence of Basil and of Damasus. Basil had early in his career as bishop made strenuous efforts to influence the imperial court on behalf of the pro-Nicene party. When these failed, mainly owing to the intransigence of the Emperor Valens, he turned to the West. 30 The negotiations with the West can be divided (as Amand de Mendieta divides them) into four stages. First, Basil writes lettersto Athanasius asking him to approach Damasus and assist Basil's overtures. 3I None of them was answered and nothing came of them. Basil would not desert Meletius and Athanasius would not recognize him as bishop of Antioch; further, Basil was never sure in his own mind that Athanasius had abandoned Marcellus of Ancyra and his followers. The second stage began when a letter from a Roman council headed by Damasus, entitled Confidimus quidem, was brought to Alexandria by a deacon from Milan (not of the persuasion of Auxentius) called Sabinus. This council Amand de Mendieta dates to

22Hilary Coli. Anliar. IV.I (156-7). "Ibid. BIV.2 (158, 159). 24See above, PP.763-4. Reconciliation was temporarily in the air just then; see the account of the council held at Antioch in 363 where apparently Meletius and Akakius signed together. above pp. 581-2. 25The piece in the Collection Avellana «I) 1-14 (1-4» called Quae Gesta Sum Inter Liberium el FeUcem episcopos gives a vivid description of this faction-fighting. The

Swetc (Early History 56--7) opted for 37I. It also appears in the Verona Codex and was edited by Schwartz in ZNW 1935, 179, and 1936, 19. 28 10 ( 1045). 29See above, PP.762--6. 30See May 'Die Grossen Kappadokier' 328. Many scholars have described the course of negotiations between Basil and Damasus. See Harnack History IV.90, 92 n I and 93; Courtonnc, St. Basile 255-80; Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 166-95; MesIin us Ariens 41-44; Simonetti Crisi 418-20, 427-34; May 'Die Grossen Kappadokier' 327""9; Fedwick, Church and Charisma 107-13. I here follow E. Arnand de Mendieta 'Basile de Cesaree et Damase de Rome'. 31Epp. 61, 66, 67. 69, 80 and 82. The date is 371 to 372.

authors are strongly anti-Damasus and regard him as nothing less than a murderer. 26Sozomenus HE VI.23.S-rS; Theodoret HE 11.22. 27See Meslin, Les Ariens 41-44; Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 79-80."It is the encyclical referred to in Damasus' Letter Confidimus quidem. See above, PP.757-8 .

796

797

The Controversy Resolved

The Council of Constantinople

372.'2 Sabinus was sent on, with a copy of the letter, to Basil. Basil, in concert with Meletius (now in exile in Armenia) sent a letter to the bishops of Italy and Gaul (not directly to Damasus) lamenting the state of the Eastern church and asking for the despatch of a large Western delegation to the East in order to bring about agreement on N. Basil approved of the terms of Conjidimus quidem. 33 At Easter 373 Sabinus returned with Basil's letters. In May 373 Athanasius died, Peter his successor was driven out, fled to Rome, and proceeded to poison the mind of Damasus against Basil and Meletius. In the same year a presbyter of Antioch, Evagrius, arrived at Caesarea from Rome with a message from Damasus. The message was that Basil's letters addressed to the West were returned as unacceptable and no official reply was to be given to them. But Evagrius brought a confession of faith from Damasus which Basil was to sign without altering a single word, and it was then to be brought to Rome by a large delegation of Eastern bishops. Basil replied to this demand in a polite but biting letter,34 putting an end to this phase of the negOtiatIOn. Evagrius, moving on to Antioch, refused to communicate with Dorotheus, a confidential friend of Basil and deacon of Meletius. The third stage of negotiations began when Basil, stung into action by the arrest and banishment ofEusebius of Sam os ata in 374, wrote a letter to the bishops of Gaul and Italy describing the distress of the churches of the East and asking them to approach Valentinian I with a request that he should intervene, and failing that to send representatives to Antioch capable of handling the situation." Dorotheus, now a presbyter, brought this letter to Damasus. Damasus sent a very cool reply (of which the fragment Ea gratia is a part)36 making little reference to the demand for aid but conveying a considerable theological statement on the "usia and the personae which deliberately avoided making any statement about the three "YPMtas".'. It was the adhesion of Basil, Meletius and their followers to this doctrine of the" ypc,sta.'es which caused Damasus, ignorant alike of the thought of Athanasius and of Basil, to suspect them of heresy.

The fourth and fmal stage of this mournful interchange began when in 375 Vitalis, formerly a continuing Eustathian, but now Apollinarian bishop of Antioch, paid a visit to Rome and returned to the East furnished with a letter of approval from Damasus. The Pope, however, quickly realised how dangerously he had compromised himself in backing this rank heretic and he wrote a letter to Paulinus warning him about the views of Vitalis on the Incarnation (Per jilium)." Thislastletter was sent in 376 and constituted also an official recognition of Paulinus, not Meletius, as bishop of Antioch. This act roused Basil's wrath, and drastic action followed. Dorotheus went to Rome, against Basil's advice, as an emissary from Eusebius of Samosata in exile in Danubian territory. Dorotheus was accompanied by a deacon, Sanctissimus, who had on occasion served as one of Basil's messengers. A fierce discussion took place in Rome between Dorotheus, Peter and Damasus during which Dorotheus let loose some far from complimentary remarks about Peter. 38 Peter had treated Eusebius of Samosata as an Arian along with Meletius. Dorotheus and Sanctissimus eventually returned to Basil carrying a letter from Damasus which Basil affected to regard as encouraging; we have only a fragment of it (Illud sane miramur),9 which contains a disparaging remark about the Eastern churches' toleration of Apollinarianism. The year was by now 377, and in the summer of that year Basil sent a synodailetter40 to the Western bishops (in effect to Damasus) which was no longer conciliatory but defiant. He asked these bishops, if they could not come in person, to send a letter in which they would list by name the disturbers of the peace of the Eastern Church: he meant not only the Arians but Eustathius of Sebaste (Macedonian), Apollinaris (Apollinarian) and Paulinus (Marcellan/Sabellian). The letter contained some shafts directed at Damasus because of his toleration of Eustathius and the Marcellans. The fragment Non nobis quidquam from Damasus is probably part of the reply of the bishop of Rome to this. He could, he said, in effect do nothing. Amand de Mendieta4l thinks that the Tomus Damas;42 was sent with this letter to Basil, emanating from a council of Rome

,I2S CC

J7See above, pp.658-g. 38Basil Ep. 266 .

'5Ep. 243. J6Sl'C above, Pp.757-8.

391n fact there was very little encouragement in it for Eastern pro-Nicenes. 4°Ep. 263. 410p. cit. 140-1. 42See above, PP.758-60.

n 27 above. .lJ Epp. 92 and 90. ~4Ep. 156, addressed to Evagrius, not to Damasus.

799

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which Dossetti dates to 377 or 378, with some plausibility.43 Its doctrine certainly is entirely compatible with that of Basil and though it names plenty of heretics it does not acc~~e ofheres.y :u>yone the disparagement of whom would offend Basil s SUSCeptIblhtles. So ended this apparently fruitless interchange between these two eminent men. We have already had occasion to remark upon at once 44 the resemblance and the incompatibility of their temperaments. Basil only addressed one letter directly to Damasus, early in the affair, and it probably never reached him.45 Basil certai~ly found Dam~sus exasperating. In one letter, written in 375, he apphes a couple ofhnes of Homer to him:

before, and commanding the allegiance of a certain number (though certainly not the majority) of non-Arian Christians in the city. We have already seen49 how he came to be consecrated bishop in 362 by the hasty Lucifer, how he acknowledged that a doctrine of three hypostases was compatible with orthodoxy, and how he was. recognized as legitimate bishop of Antioch by Athanasius. Later, Athanasius' successor Peter extended the same recognition to him and persuaded Damasus to do the same. There was no love lost between Paulinus and Meletius, and we have interpreted the evidence to suggest that in his actions in 362 and 363 Athanasius was attempting, unsuccessfully, to appeal to the followers of Meletius over his head. The ecclesiastical historians retail a story that the followers of these two rivals (and Socrates explicitly includes among the supporters of Paulinus Flavian who had long been a prominent Eustathian layman and then cleric) induced them to agree that whichever of the two should die first should be succeeded by the other. Modem historians almost unanimously dismiss this account as a pious fable. 51 Basil was always an opponent of Paulin us not only because Paulinus was a rival of Basil's friend and ally Meletius, but because Basil suspected that Paulinus was at heart a Sabellian,. believing in only one Person (hypostasis) in the Godhead. 52 Paulin us' association with the remaining followers of Marcellus and his continuing to favour the expression 'one hypostasis' (for he had only promised to recognise that 'three hypostases' need not be heretical, but he had not undertaken to use the expression) rendered him suspect. 53 We have already had occasion to note that about the year 371 adherents of Marcellus approached· Athanasius, presenting to him a statement offaith or Bethesis, and that he accepted it and gave them a document expressing his agreement with their doctrine; and we have looked favourably on the suggestion ofTetz that about this time the Marcellans had more or less coalesced with the continuing

'I wish you had never besought him, because he is a haughty man'. 46

Simonetti says of Damasus, 'Authoritarian and superficial, he was convinced that he knew the affairs of the East well and that he had the authority to bring about their solution.'47 It no doubt irked hi~ that neither Basil nor Eusebius seemed aware of the necesSIty of recognizing his apostolic authority.48 But it would not be correct to conclude that the correspondence between Basil and Damasus was wholly without good result. The Tomus Damasi which the Pope eventually sent to Basil (among others) must have convmced many pro-Nicenes that the Western church was, whatever the unacceptable claims and arrogant attitude of Damasus mig.ht be, sound on the essential points of doctrine. And though Basil dIed without any apparent success in obtaining agreement on doctrine, the Eastern Church was about to achieve a lasting consensus expressed very much in the words which Basil had taught it to regard as orthodox. One obstacle to the achievement of reconciliation and unity at this period was, of course, the presence of Paulinus of A~tioch, clai~ing to be the rightful, Catholic, bishop of that see, derlvmg hIS tradItion in continuity from Eustathius who had been bishop about forty years 43S ee

above. P.758 n 103. 445ee above. p.686. . ' 45$0 Arnand de Mendieta, op. cit. 154. The letter IS no. 70, sent m 371. 46Ep. 239: Diomedes is speaking about Achilles to Agamemnon (Iliad IX.69 8-9) IlTjO' OI.pEM:<; A.io0'80'8ul 6.,.UJIlOVa "T1A.&irova

!lupiu owpa OISOUe; . 6 o'u:yTtVWP terti Kai li).).roC;. Basil's letter is addressed to Eusehius of Samosata. 4'Cris; 430. Ambrose. he adds (097), suffered from the same delusion. 48 50 Arnand de Mendieta 159-160.

49S ce above, pp.639-44. 651-3. 50S ocrates HE V.S; Sozomenus HE VII.3.1-4; Theodoret HE V.3.IS. S 1 E.g. C~urtonne St. Basile 79 and Ritter Das Konzil6 I. The fact that Gregory of

Nazianzus argued strongly both during the Council of Constantinople and after it that Paulinus should succeed on the death ofMeletius (De Vita Sua 159! (130) - 1679 (136» docs not necessarily imply that a pact to that effect had been made. 52See Basil Ep. 263. and Homily XXIV (601) where he is probably hitting at the

doctrine of Paulinus, 53Paulinus certainly c,ommunicated with Marcellans. See Courtonne St. Basile 306.

800

801

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Eustathians in Antioch and were producing propaganda to forward their cause. 54 And we have observed one example of this activity in the malicious little piece called Refutatio Hypocrisis Meletii et Busehii Samosatemis 55 which was probably designed by this group to counter the efforts of those who had formerly belonged to the school of Basil of Ancyra to come to terms with the homoousion, about the year 364. These MarceIlans when Valens had incarcerated or put to forced labour several Egyptian pro-Nicene clergy in Diocaesarea about the year 371 wrote a letter of sympathy to them conveying to them the statement of faith, informing them of Athanasius' approval ofit, and expecting to be accepted by them as orthodox. 56 Their expectation was fulfiIled. The presence of these disciples of MarceIlus whose watch-word had always been 'only one hypostasis in the Godhead' inevitably added to Basil's suspicions. In a letter written to Athanasius he complains that the Westerners have never brought any accusation against MarceIlus 57 and in others taxed the pro-Nicene leaders in Egypt with supporting those who continue to maintain the doctrines of Mar ceIlus. 5. But by 377 he was taking a milder line and suggesting to the Westerners that an attempt at reconciliation with the MarceIlans should be made. 59 And he finaIly accepted them as orthodox, his suspicion apparently laid at rest. 60

doctrine in fact was far from uncongenial to the minds of pro-Nicene bishops in the East. It seems likely, as we have seen, that the council which Meletius convened at Antioch in 379, as soon as he had returned from his final exile, had been rid of the threat of a persecuting Emperor, and had established himself in his see, adopted explicitly some doctrinal statement of Damasus, though not in any shape which recognized Paulinus as legitimate bishop of Antioch. 63 Our sources for this council, which must have been of great significance, are curiously meagre. None of the ecclesiastical historians mentions it, unless we are to take Theodoret's story of a council in IIlyria 64 as a very much garbled version of it. But it certainly took place. Gregory of Nyssa teIls us that just before he attended the death-bed of his sister Macrina, he had attended a council in Antioch,65 and a council which assembled in Constantinople in 382 mentioned 'the statement produced by the synod which met there [Le. Antioch] and that put out recently, in Constantinople, by the ecumenical synod' (ltapa 'iis OiKouJ.1Evl1
3. The Beginning of a Consensus Damasus had held several councils in Rome in the decade 370-380, one in 371 or 372, and one in 376, and finaIly that which produced the Tomus Damasi in 377 or 378.61 Though he never lost an opportunity in his official utterances to make a hit at Meletius,62 Damasus'

54See above, pp. 222-3. The Ecthesis, edited by Tetz, in ZNW 64 (1973) 76-84· sSPG 28:85-90; See above, p. 652 n 45. 56Epiphanius Panarion 72.11.1--6 (265. 266), 1.2.1-12 (266). See Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 187-8; Gericke Marcell von Ancyra 22-23. 57Ep. 69 (written in 371).

58Epp. 165. 166; he refers to Marcellus also in Epp. 125 and 207. 59Ep. 263.

6°Ep. 266. See Courtonne St. Basile 16sr74. 61S ee Courtonnc St. Basile 272--6 and King The Emperor rIJeodosius 23. 62

Ea .,!ratia contains onc such shaft. and the T omus Damasi. though it refrains from

branding Meletius as an heretic, made a pointed reference to him (though not by name) when it came to deal with translations of bishops. 63The document in the Verona Codex LX edited by Schwartz in 'Ober die Sammlung' 19-23 has as its final part a collection of signatures of bishops, under a short statement saying that this 'Letter' came from a Roman synod under Damasus and was sent to the East and that a synod held in Antioch accepted it unanimously. Six bishops sign, representing apparently the rest, beginning with Meletius of Antioch and Eusebius ofSamosata. The synod of Antioch under Meletius attended by Eusebius of Sam osat a cannot be other than the council held in the autumn of 379, but it is impossible that the whole of this document came to Antioch in this year, because the first part was the result of a council dealing with Auxentius during his lifetime, and he died in 374. Further, another part of this document comes from a letter of Damasus to Basil (ob 379,Jan. 1St). The document is certainly composite. We cannot tell precisely what utterance of Damasus the bishops at Antioch welcomed in 379. It might even have been a version of the Tomus Damasi, if with Dossetti we place it in 377, though the version of the Tomus D. in EOMIA does not have these bishops' signatures at the end of it. 64HE IV.8""'9; see above, PP.793-4. But this seems most unlikely. 65 Vita Macrinae 386 (Leiden) (973). 66Theodoret HE V.9.13. 67See above, n 63. Bardy 'Le Concile d'Antioche' is much the fullest discussion of this council, but see also Harnack History IV.91""93, Schwartz 'Zur

The Controversy Resolved

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statement this council promulgated, but it must have been one favouring the cause of the Council of Nicaea and indicating that the Western bishops were in agreement with this policy. It certainly was intended to indicate to the newly-created Eastern Emperor Theodosius the way in which many influential people in the East hoped that he would move if he wished to bring unity to the Church and- the Empire. And the council could hardly have taken place without his permisison. When this council of Antioch took place Theodosius had not yet openly declared his hand. His father, also called Theodosius, had been a general in the imperial army who had given distinguished service in suppressing rebellions and restoring order in Britain and in Africa, but who had been executed by the order of Valentini an I for reasons that are unknown. Theodosius himselfhad been born and brought up in Spain and was living there on his estates in retirement when, during the acute crisis which followed the disaster of Adrianople, Gratian called him to share the burden of imperial rule with him. He was declared Emperor and Augustus (i.e. equal with, not subordinate to, Gratian) on January 19th 379. He spent all that year and most of the next in Thessalonica, which was his base for dealing with the large numbers of marauding Goths who were infesting the Balkan provinces, and during the course of his operations he won a decided victory against them and persuaded many either to return over the Danube or to settle peacefully (or relatively so) within the borders of the Empire. In February 380, when he was residing in Thessalonica, he issued an edict known as Cunetos Populos which declared the proNicene doctrine of the Trinity to be the official doctrine of the Roman Empire, and named Damasus of Rome and Peter of Alexandria as the two episcopal norms of doctrine. 68 His subjects were ordered to believe 'the single divinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit within (sub) an equal majesty and an orthodox (pia) Trinity'. Heretics would be punished. Soon after this Theodosius fell dangerously ill, and during this illness was baptised by Acholius bishop of Thessalonica. 69 On November 24th 380 he entered Constantinople and instantly faced the Arian bishop of that city with the choice of

either accepting the Nicene faith or being ejected from his see. Demophilus chose exile rather than recantation and was driven out of the city. At about the same time the Arian Lucius was chased out of Alexandria. 70 In January 381 Meletius, leaving his see of Antioch, entered Constantinople. It seems likely that he had already concerted a plan with Theodosius to hold a council in order to settle the ecclesiastical affairs of the Eastern Church. On January 10th Theodosius issued an edict addressed to the Praetorian Prefect of the diocese ofOriens, known as Nullis haereticis.71 No church was to be occupied for worship by any heretics, no heretics were to gather together for worship within the walls of any town. Eunomians, Photinians and Adans were mentioned by name (but not Macedonians or Pneumatomachians). The correct Nicene faith was described (we can hardly call it defined) as:

Kirchcngcschichte' 198-200, Ritter Das Konzil 31-32 and King The Emperor Theodosius 25; 68Cod. TlieQd. XVLI-2. The Latin text of the decree is reproduced by King Theodosius the Great 28 n I and Ritter Dos Konzil 29 n I. 69S ocratcs HE V.6; Sozomenus HE VII.4·2. 3.

'He who professes the Nicene faith is to be thought of as the genuine worshipper in the Catholic religion, who confesses God Almighty and Christ his Son in one Name, God from God, Light from Light, who does not blaspheme the Holy Spirit, whom we hope for and accept from the highest Author (parente) of the world (rerum) by denying him, in whose bosom the undivided substance (which -is . called by those who believe rightly by the use of the Greek word ousia) of the pure Trinity flourishes in the apprehension of an undeftled creed',

Perhaps the most remarkable point about this statement is that it does not require, at least on the surface, an acceptance of a belief in the divinity of the Holy Spirit. A Macedonian would not have been troubled by it. The Emperor next summoned a council of the Eastern Church (not including Egypt) to meet in May in Constantinople. 72

4. The Council of Constantinople

The Council of Constantinople met during May, June and July 381. 73 No acts nor ordered accounts of its proceedings survive. The 70Sozomcnus HE VII.S; Socrates HE V.7; Philostorgius HE"IX.I.9. 7leod. Theod. XVI.S.6, Latin text in King Theodosius the Great 34 n I. 72Socrates HE V.8. Opposite p. 98 of King's book is a useful map showing the comparatively restricted area from which bishops summoned to the Council came. 73Sourccs for the Council are Socrates HE V.8, 9; Sozomenus HE VII.7-1I;

805

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The Council of Constantinople

ecclesiastical historians seem to be aware of its importance but are not well informed about what precisely happened there. Only about 1 So bishops attended and they appear to have been carefnlly chosen from areas which would be friendly to Meletius, who was its president, that is areas under the influence of the see of Antioch. One might describe the Council of Antioch two years before as a dressrehearsal for this one. Theodosius welcomed the participants in his magnificent throne-room in the Imperial palace, but the Council did not meet there, but in various churches in the city, not confining itself apparently to anyone building. After receiving the bishops Theodosius did not appear at any session of the Council, but remained in the wings, as it were, holding a watching brief.74 According to Gregory of Nyssa, the city was buzzing with illinformed theological gossip; everybody was talking theology, even in the outfitters, the bankers and the food stores:

Four canons were drawn up. Negotiations with the Macedonians, led by Eleusius ofCyzicus and Marcian of Lampsacus, were undertaken but no agreement could be reached and the Macedonian bishops, about 30 in number, left the council. At some point a large contingent of Egyptian bishops arrived, led by Timothy who had only very recently succeeded his deceased brother Peter, accompanied by Acholius of Thessalonica and a few other bishops who were the only tenuous contact which the council might have been thought to have with the see of Rome. During the council Meletius suddenly died, and Gregory of Constantinople was chosen to succeed him as president of the councip8 Gregory wanted the council to elect Paulinus in place of Meletius as bishop of Antioch, but it preferred to choose Flavian, who was consecrated after the council was ended. Exasperated by this, and by the attacks made on him by the Egyptians, and by the behaviour of the council generally, Gregory resigned both as president of the council and as bishop of Constantinople. In his place the bishops of the council chose an unbaptised catechumen, an imperial civil servant, N ectarius, who then became president of the council. The council re-affirmed N but also produced the creed C and a doctrinal statement «01'0<;) which has not survived. All this lasted three months from May to July 381. The canons were four in number, for it has been conclusively proven that canons V and VI which have been handed down as belonging to this council do not belong there, but belong to the council which met in the capital next year; canon VII is of even later date. The first canon re-affirms N and denounces Eunomius (or Anomoians), Arians (or Eudoxians), 'Semiarians' (or Pneumatomachi), Sabellians, Marcellans, Photinians arid Apollinarians. It is quite clear that whatever negotiations had been undertaken with the Macedonians were now over and all hope of reconciling this group had been abandoned when this canon was drawn up. The second canon purports to regulate the bounds within which each bishop can operate, vaguely forbidding translations of bishops, according to the precept ofNicaea, and vaguely stating that the bishops of Alexandria, Antioch and the sees of the dioceses of Oriens were to remain as they were traditionally fixed, and similarly for sees beyond the limits of the Roman Empire. The third canon is much more specific and terse:

'If you ask for change, the man launches into a theological discussion

about begotten and unbegotten; if you enquire about the price of bread, the answer is given that the Father is greater and the Son subordinate; if you remark that the bath is nice the man pronounces that the Son is from non-existence.'75

We know that the first act of the Council was to affirm that Gregory of Nazianzus was the Catholic and legitimate bishop of Constantinople,76 and that the last was to compose an •Address' (logos prosphiinikos) to the Emperor. We know of many of the events which occurred during the Council, but we have to conjecture their order. Maximus was denounced as an impostor and no true bishop. 77 Theodoret V.6.3-8.9; Rulinus HEII.I9; some of the letters of Ambrose and one of Damasus may throw a litde light on the Council, and also Jerome' De Vir. Ill. CXXVII, CXXVIII and CXXXIII. Remarks made by Gregory ofNazianzus and

Gregory ofN yssa in their works throw fitful gleams on the subject. Lauchert op. cit. can be consulted for the canons. For modern author"s Simonetti Crisi 527-41, Ritter Das Konzil von Konstantinopel and W. D. Hauschild 'Das tril).itarische Dogma von 3 81 als Ergebnis verbindlicher Konsensusbi1dung' are the most informative (for' sources for the canons see Hauschild p. 15). The statement of Gregory of Nazianz us DVS '509 (1)6) that 'all the East apart from Egypt' (6<>ov rap ~v troov Aly6mou ofxa) appears to be a poetical exaggeration. 74See Ritter Das Konzil 41-44. 75 De Deitate Filii el Spiritus Sanet; (PG 46:557). 76See above, P.704. 77Canon IV ofthe Council states this emphatically. The Address is given in Mansi Concilia UI.SS7, but the Greek text can also be found in Ritter Das Konzilp. Ii4 n 2.

806

78Grcgory of Nazianzus DVS 1739. 1744. 1766-68; Hom. XLII.20.

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'The bishop of Constantinople is to enjoy precedence in honour next after the bishop of Rome because it is the New Rome'.

have been content to attend a council with Meletius at the head of it either. Indeed, it seems likely that Meletius planned the council as a gathering of bishops sympathetic to his outlook, and that when he died unexpectedly Theodosius took the opportunity of inviting representatives from Egypt and from Illyricum. 8o It is difficult to. decide when the negotiations with the Macedonians took place, and when the creed C was drawn up. Some think that the negotiations took place before the council began, but this does not seem likely. It is probable that Theodosius was the main instigator of the attempt to comprehend the Macedonians because,like all Emperors, he wanted unity as far as was compatible with the main outlines of his policy. A decision on this point will depend largely on whether, with Ritter, we think that C was deliberately composed to conciliate the Macedonians, or not. 81 Certainly neither the Egyptians nor the representatives of more westerly dioceses were particularly troubled by Macedonian views; this was a deviation mostly appearing in the prefecture ofOriens. Canon I, as we have seen, distinguishes carefully between 'Semi-arians, i.e. Pneumatomachi' and other heresies. The sole fault of these 'Semi-arians' was refusal to accept the divinity of the Holy Spirit, they were not accused of unsoundness on the subject. of the Son. The evidence inclines towards concluding that the Macedonians were dealt with early in the proceedings, while Meletius was president, or soon after his death, before the arrival of Timothy and Acholius and their followers. Gregory's tenure of the presidency of the council cannot have endured long, though it was enough to render him disgusted with such assemblies for the rest of his life. This is how he describes the response of the council to his arguments on behalf of appointing Paulinus:

It is very likely that this was intended to reduce the pretensions of the archbishop of Alexandria; there is no particular reason to think that it was aimed at Damasus, though he certainly resented it. One part of the second canon, forbidding an undetached bishop from invading another bishop's see and carrying out ordinations there, may have been aimed at Paulinus who had been consecrated by that wandering star Lucifer of Calaris. The fourth canon denounces Maximus the pretender to the see of Constantinople and declares null and void his ordination and any ordinations or acts done by him. On the whole it is wise to regard the canons as one of the latest productions of the Council, even though this means assuming that the newlyconsecrated Timothy found it necessary to tolerate what he must have regarded as an insult to his see. That the archbishops of Alexandria were riled by this third canon is shown by the conduct of every holder of the see thereafter right up to Dioscuros in the middle of the fifth century. The very vagueness of the second canon's prohibition of translations shows how ineffective the canon ofNicaea forbidding them had been, and how little effective the ban was likely to be in the future. This canon could hardly have been passed while Meletius (who had been translated from Beroea to Sebaste and from Sebaste to Antioch, if we are to take things au pi~d de la lettrel) was president of the council, nor while Gregory (who, if formality was the rule, could be said to have been translated from Sasima to Nazianzus and from Nazianzus to Constantinople!) was in charge. It looks hke a sop thrown to the exasperated Egyptians. It .certainly became a dead letter almost as soon as it was promulgated.'9 On: point seems to have escaped most investigators of the subject, but It IS one of whIch we can be fairly sure. It is wholly improbable that the bishop of Alexandria would have attended the council as long as Meletius was presiding over .it, and if the bishop of Thessalomca regarded hImself as in any sense representing the bishop of Rome (and he may have done so), it is not likely that he would 79Grc~ory rcgardc.d the Nicene Canon as obsolete, as no doubt did almost all the Eas~crn bishops, se~ hiS DVS 1810 'twisting rules which were long dead, by most of

whIch we were qUite clearly unaffected', and, as Ritter points out (Konzil 104 nl), Rufin~s .H~ XI.~ seem~ to. echo this judgment in his words obniti quidam et praesc,nptlmllbus mm~s.s~nls utI (oepere ('some people objected and tried to ap'peal to unsatisfactory prOhibitIons'). .

808

'I finished my speech; but they squawked in every direction, a flock of jackdaws combining together, a rabble of adolescents, a gang of youths, a whirlwind raising dust under the pressure of air currents, people to whom nobody who was mature either in the fear of God or in years would pay any attention, they splutter confused stuff or like wasps rush directly at what is in front of their faces' .82 sO.Gratian had t.e~p~ra~i1y handed the dioceses of Macedonia and Dacia (but not JIIyncu~) to thcJunsdJctlon of Theodosius when he was appointed Emperor, but Thc?doSlUS had returned them to Gratian by 381. 81S ee below, pp.8I7-I8. fl2DVS 1680-87_

The Council

The Controversy Resolved

Even this is not one of his most ferocious utterances about councils. He was certainly president for part of the time during which the Egyptians were attending, because they occupied some time in questioning his right to be bishop of Constantinople. In fact it looks as if as soon as they arrived they tried to open up all the past agenda of the council over again. This kind of behaviour and its consequences may account for the peculiar bitterness which Gregory displays in his autobiographical poems about both councils and bishops. It also makes it likely that a resolution about Maximus was ajait accompli when the Egyptians arrived and that the Eastern bishops resisted any attempt to reopen that business. The choice of a bishop of Antioch to replace the deceased Meletius also certainly came upon the agenda when Gregory was president, because he was greatly exasperated at the Council's choice ofFlavian rather than Paulinus. 83 The choice of a bishop of Antioch had nothing to do with the Egyptians, and we have no direct evidence that they took part in the election, though with Gregory as president, neurasthenic, frequently absent through sickness and himself personally affected by some of the agenda, they were quite capable of interfering in the business. We are not certain that Flavian was elected instead of Paulinus by the gathering at Constantinople, but Ritter's theory" that some of the bishops went off to Antioch to elect there seems unlikely. It is possible that he was elected by the relevant bishops connected with the see while they were at Constantinople and consecrated shortly after the council ended. It is usual among church historians to sympathize with Gregory's anger at the choice of Flavian, but the choice was not necessarily an unjust nor unwise one. We do not know either the age, the state of health nor the character, temperament and abilities of the two candidates, but those who elected Flavian did (certainly Flavian outlived Paulinus by several years). Paulinus had been for years steadily supported by Damasus and Peter against Meletius, the leader of the party of the Easterners at the council. Considerable antagonism between him and the followers of Meletius must have been aroused. On the other hand, Flavian, a prominent presbyter of the party of Paulinus, was prepared to accept the leadership of the party of Meletius, and in fact the next few years showed that many (probably a majority) of Paulinus' party were ready to abandon resentments and join the main body of Catholic Christians under Flavian. "DVS 1591 (130)-1679 (136). 840p. cit. 102-3.

if Constantinople

Having permitted Gregory to depart with polite but suspicious alacrity,85 the Council found itselfin a quandary over the choice of a new bishop of the capital city. They could not, on their own highprincipled but impractical views publicly stated against translation, promote any of the several able bishops present at the council. There was apparently no obvious candidate among the presbyters of the city (many of whom anyway may have only just ceased to profess a . nominal Arianism). They finally picked, as we have seen, an unbaptised layman, N ectarius, who had been praetor urbanus in Constantinople. It was as if today the cardinals had chosen as Pope, in default of any other, the mayor of Rome. The Egyptians and Westerners could not object because they had acquiesced seven years ago at the choice for the important see of Milan of an unbaptised officer in the imperial service, Ambrose. Nectarius was, as Sozomenus tells US,86 the protege ofDiodore a former companion of Flavian both as layman and as presbyter in supporting the Eustathian cause in Antioch, but now bishop of Tarsus. The bishop-elect was hastily baptised and ordained (whether he went through the intermediate stage of being priested or was consecrated per saltum we do not know) and placed in the president's chair at the council. Till Warren Harding was elected President of the United States in 1920, few people can have been less qualified for greatness suddenly thrust upon them. We do not know when C was compiled, but it seems likely that it was composed after the departure of Gregory, because (as we shall see) he probably disapproved of it. A letter expressing in the most flowery and polite terms a firm refusal of what the recipients wanted was sent in the next year, 382, from a council of Constantinople to Damasus, Ambrose, Acholius, Anemius (of Sirmium) and several other bishops in the West who after a council held in Rome in that year had invited the Easterners to attend a council, which would be ecumenical, in Rome. 87 And this letter from Constantinople not only sets out the doctrine of the Trinity in the most uncompromising terms, including the Spirit explicitly in theGodhead,88 but also refers to: 8SS ee above P.705 n 10j.

"HE VII.S. 87Theodoret HE V.9.

88Ibid.9.1I.

810

8II

The Controversy Resolved 'the treatise which was produced in Antioch by the synod which took place there ... and the treatise put forth recently in Constantinople by the ecumenical synod'.89

The council held in Antioch can only be that of 379, the treatise set forth recently in Constantinople must be something produced by the council of 381. The word treatise (tomos) is not a usual word to employ to describe. creed (even if we grant that the council would have allowed that a creed had been produced). This is why most of . those who have studied the subject believe that some expression of doctrine long enough to be called a tomos was produced by the Constantinople council of 3 81, even though it has not come down to us. The Address to Theodosius made at the end of the council cannot be this tomos because it does not correspond to the description given in the council's letter of 382. It claims that 'we have uttered brief definitions and we have confirmed the faith of the Fathers of Nicaea and have denounced the heresies which have grown up against it ... in addition to these we have laid down some specific rules (canons) for the good ordering of the churches'. 90

5. The Creed of Constantinople The first question to decide about C is whether or not it was produced by the council which met in the capital city of the Roman Empire in 38 I. No church historian mentions the production of a creed at this council nor gives a text of it. No surviving document reproduces C until it is produced by the archdeacon of Constantinople and read out at the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451, seventy years after the date at which it was supposed to have been composed. Almost no authors during those seventy years make any allusion to it nor quote a line from it. 91 So entire is the absence of 899 . I 3 tip tv' AV'tlo,;(eig.1tupa 'tijt; tKei O'vVEA.806crT)t; O'Uv600l) 'Y6¥EVTJj.l.tVCP ... Kai t@ dpuG\ tv KrovO'tavnvDux6:M:l obcou,u:vl1cijt; tK'te8tvtl cruv68ou. They add that in these documents they have set out the faith more elaborately and made a written

denunciation of heresies. There are no anathemas attached to C. 90Ritter op. -cit. p. 124 n 2. (translation of Greek text). Ritter argues well (op. cit.

1l6. 127 n I) that 6poC; means a doctrinal decision and lCUVc.OV means a rule about discipline. , 91The magisterial authority on the creed of Constantinople is). N. D. Kelly Early Christian Creeds, caps X and XI (296-367), but there are useful discussions in Ritter

The Council of Const~ntinople

reference to this creed until it was produced at the Council of Chalcedon (rather to the surprise of many of the participants) that a theory was widely believed that it was not produced at the council of 3 8 1 but originated in some other way, perhaps as the baptismal creed of the capital city, or of some famous city like Jerusalem, and came to be regarded by the clergy of Constantinople as that which the council of 38 I had put forth. 92 In fact, till Kelly produced his Early Christian Creeds, this was almost the accepted solution. It did indeed explain wh y the creed was apparently so little known in the period between the two councils. It raised two serious difficulties, however, which caused more recent scholarship to look round for another solution. The first was that one would expect the archdeacon of Constantinople, who was presumably relying for his text on the archives of his see, to know what had happened at the council held in his own city seventy years before. 93 The other difficulty was that th:re is some evidence, tenuous but not easy to explain away, that the exIStence of C was known before the year 451. The first piece we have already seen;94 it comes from what we have called the Second Macedonian Dialogue. The Macedonian is arguing with the Orthodox: 'Macedonian: "Have you not added to the creed of Nicaea?" Orthodox: "Yes, but nothing that contradicts it." Macedonian: "Still, you have added" (to it),. 9, It is wholly unlikely that this Dialogue was written after 451, it is much m?re probable that it pre-dates Chalcedon by several years. It 15 very dIfficult to see this as anything but a reference to C. The other piece of evidence comes, curiously enough, from Ireland. In his Das Konzil 132-47 and Hauschild 'Die trinitarianische Dogma', and Dossetti 11 Simbolo di Nicaea e di Constantinopoli, especially pp. 226-84. See also Simonetti Crisi 53 8-4 2 , May 'Datierung' 53-'7, Gwatkin AC 159-6 and SA 270 n l King The Emperor Theodosius 97.80, Harnack History IV.94-IOI, 118. ' 92Hort, Harnack, Seeberg and Gwatkin are among those who embraced this theory, but there were several others. . _ 93The acts o.f th~ Council of Chalcedon give two rather different texts of C, the second of which IS considered by Dossetti to be the more authentic; but the variations are not significant. 94Above, P.771. 952 8.1 (1204): - VJ.I-E:r~ yap 00 7tpoas9iJlcu't£ 'tU tv NIKU{~;

- cH.A' 001( Svavnu uv'tij. - OAc:o~ npoas9tlKu't£.

812

8 13

The Controversy Resolved

The Council of Constantinople

Confession, chapter 4, Patrick has occasion to recount his Rule of

faith which brought together into one the venerable nature of the Trinity, whose seminar 100 Nicaea was once. this I was witnessing being wretchedly muddied by the brackish tribl,ltaries of waverers 101 whose opinions are those which Authority favours.'

Faith, which is certainly given in the words of his native British Church and is not his own invention. 96 It has a triple form, declaring belief in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The last article runs thus: 'And he poured upon us richly the Holy Spirit, gift and pledge of

'Authority' here clearly means the Emperor Theodosius. Later in the same poem he returns to the same subject:, 02

immortality, who makes those who believe and obey to be sons of God and co-heirs of Christ, whom we confess and adore one God in

reluctantly, but still they came together, any who still had some

the Trinity of holy name.'97 'Whom we confess and adore one God' is distinctly like an echo of 'who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified', more like this indeed than any expression which we might glean from the Tomus Damasi, which is the only other source to which we might attribute this phrase. A Rule of Faith is likely to be more loosely worded than a formal creed. The suggestion that Patrick is here reproducing or echoing a Latin translation of some of the words of the pneumatological article of C is an attractive one. The likelihood that Patrick received his Rule of Faith (which would be learnt by him long before he wrote his Confession in Ireland at the end of his life) after the year 451, or rather after the later point at which the Chalcedonian Formula must have made its way to Ireland, is very small indeed. 98 Another piece of evidence that the Council of 381 drew up C comes from the words of Gregory of Nazianzus about the council. These words are taken from his autobiographical poem De Vita Sua, and are therefore expressed in vague, obscure and largely figurative language, but this witness cannot be dismissed easily:99 'And what a situation was that! The sweet and clean stream of the old 96Sec R. P. C. Hanson 'Witness from St. Patrick to the Creed of 381' Analecta Bollandiana 101 (1983) 297-9. 97 Et ejJudil in nobis habunde Spiritum Sanctum donum et pignus immortalitatis qui Jadl credentes. et ohoedientes ut sint filii Dei et coheredes Christi quem confitemur et adoramus unuttl Deum in trinitate sa,,; nominis. 98The rest of his Rule ofFaich shows no sign ofinfluence from the Chalcedonian Formula. Even if we place Patrick's arrival in Ireland much later than somewhere between 425 and 435 (which I .think to be a most implausible conjecture) it is unlikely' that he can have learnt his Rule of Faith later than 4S1 or (or 451 + x). It looks as if communication between Ireland (and Britain too) and the Continent became much more difficult after about 457. The fact that the Irish were unaware of computations to decide an Easter cycle which were made from about 450 onward suggests this. See R. P. C. Hanson St. Patrick: his Origins and Career 66-69. 99DVS (Jungck) '70)-8 ('0)).

'Whoever they were, they came together. under coercion and tincture of free speech left,103 those whose ignorance was their assistant in doing wrong, trapped by the ambiguity l04 of the

doctrines. The mediating (tv !1EO"rp) doctrine was indeed orthodox, but was an offspring quite different from its parents. As for the great

rabble of those who were selling Christ, I would put up with it only when futh can be mixed with the sweet smell of pure myrrh.' Gregory is here being deliberately obscure, but we can reasonably decipher his poetic puzzle enough to conclude that he is complaining that the majority of the council, motivated by a mixture of ignorance, cupidity and fear of imperial displeasure, added to the creed N words which were not unorthodox but were inadequate and inappropriate. And we can easily see why Gregory thought them inadequate and inappropriate when we look at the words of C itself. It is interesting to note incidentally that in the immediately subsequent lines Gregory describes the arrival of the deputation from Egypt. This suggests that much, if not all, of C was put together and accepted while Gregory was president of the Council, though it was done against his will, and before the arrival of the newcomers from Egypt and Macedonia, and that the wording of the pneumatological article owed something to indirect pressure from Theodosius who saw that a larger number of bishops would accept C if it were expressed in a cautious way.

But it is time that we looked at the actual words of C, if, as seems almost certain, C was indeed composed by the council of 381..05 I oOcppoVnatitplov

= 'think-tank',

'school of thought'.

101dJ.lq)\S6~CIlV.

102'750-58 (.)8'-'40). lOlorr;: 't'l P.&Tijv n:appTJoiar;:. l04S 11tA61J; the word cannot refer to a pair or a couple of doctrines. 1 05 What is given here is my own translation of the Greek text printed by Dossetti op. cit. 244-5 I. For the Greek text see Appendix 2. Dossetti gives the earliest Latin text as well as the Greek. ~or the text of N, see above, p. 163, and Appendix I.

81 5

The Council

The Controversy Resolved 'We believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Only-begotten, begotten by his Father before all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father,

through whom all things came into existence, who for us men and for our salvation came down from the heavens and became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became a man, and was

crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures and

ascended into the heavens and is seated at the right hand of the Father

and will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and there will be no end to his kingdom; And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, who spoke by the prophets; And in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church; We confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins~ We wait for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the coming age. Amen.'

There are several differences between C and N; they are these: (i) (maker) of heaven and earth is added in C (ii) 'only-begotten' is added after 'Son of God' in C instead of after 'from the Father' as in N (Iii) 'that is, from the substance of the Father' ofN is omitted in C (iv) 'the things in heaven and the things on earth' after 'through whom all things are made' which stands in N is omitted in C (v) 'by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary' is added in C after 'became incarnate'

(vi) 'was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate' is added in C (vii) 'and was buried' is added in C (viii) 'according to the Scriptures' and 'is seated at the right hand of the Father' is added in C (ix) 'in glory' is added in C to 'will come again' (x) 'and there will be no end to his kingdom' is added in C (xi) Everything in C after 'and in the Holy Spirit' is added (xii) C omits the anathemas of N Most of these twelve differences have no significance at all. Nobody in 381 was inclined to deny that God the Father was the maker of 816

<1 Constantinople

heaven and earth (i), nor that all things in heaven and earth were made through the Son (ii), nor that Jesus Christ was crucified under Pontius Pilate (vi), nor that he was buried (vii), nor that he rose according to the Scriptures (viii), nor that when he comes again he will come in glory (ix). These meaningless variations make it quite clear that C is not an amended form of N, but that its original was a quite different creed. loo Again, it cannot seriously be argued that to add 'by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary' (v) was an insertion designed to eliminate Apollinarianism, because what Apollinaris denied was that the incarnate Son possessed a human soul or mind. If he could swallow the original 'and was made man' (ICal £vaV9pC01t1icravTa) of N, there was nothing in C to offend him. The alterations which may be significant are the omission by C of 'that is, of the substance (ousia) of the Father' (iii), originally in N; the new clause in C 'and there will be no end of his kingdom' (x); the considerable addition to the article on the Holy Spirit (xi); and the omission ofN's anathemas. The inclusion in C of the reference to the church, baptism and resurrection can only be due to the fact that these items happened to be in the original creed taken by the council of 381 to express its doctrine. We can be sure that they also figured in all other creeds of the time whether Arian, Macedonian or ApoIIinarian. It is easy to account for item x). This was certainly inserted as a precaution against the doctrine of Marcellus. The fact that Marcellus himself had recanted this particular doctrine and his followers in 381 disowned it did not deter the Fathers of the Council inserting this clause, any more than it has deterred millions of Christians repeating the clause for century after century in spite of the complete dISappearance of Marcellianism from the face of the earth. The omission of'that is from the ousia of the Father' (iii) has caused much heart-searching among scholars. Harnack and those who supported his view that the Cappadocians and the compilers of C intended a 'generic' interpretation of the homoousion hailed it as a sign that supported their view. On the other hand, as we have seen, some 106Thc question of the origin of the original version of C is not discussed here. it has been genera.IIy agreed that. the version of C which appears in EplphanlUs, Ancoralu5 118.9-0 (146, 147) is an interpolation substituted for Epiphanius' original version orN, the question has become entirely open and is yet N~w th~t

unsolved: Perhaps it is worth noting that at An,. 19. I en) Epiphanius reproduces the exact antl-MarcelJan clause ofC (x), and that at 119.3-12 (148, 149) he gives us his own creed which is not an anticipation ofC and has both anti-Marcellan and antiApollinarian clauses.

817

The Controversy Resolved Macedonians objected to the doctrine that the Spirit was from the ousia of the Father,'07 and this has caused some modems to claim that C was a formula especially designed to accommodate th~ view~ of Macedonians, and they point out too that the pneumatolog,cal article never directly calls the Holy Spirit God nor applies to him the epithet homoo.usion.,oB But the difficulty which this theory encounters is that what C omits is the claim declaring that the Son is from the ousia of the Father which some Macedonians at least would not wish to deny, and says n~thing about the relation of the Spirit to the Father's ousia. Further, the clause in C 'who with (cruv) the Father and the Son 15 worshipped and glorified' (not 'after', J.U'Tt\. + acc., nor 'below') was precisely the doctrine which the Macedonians denied, was calculated to exclude them and must be regarded as intentionally antiMacedonian. The view that C was originally devised to conciliate the Macedonians and was later forgotten and laid aside because in fact it did not conciliate them cannot he sustained. '00 That the bishops in 38 1 should have omitted 'that is from the ousia of the Father' deliberately assumes that they were prepared to use a creed as a carefully-designed formula to assert a complicated theological doctrine and is a proposition which is open to question and will be discussed a little later. To the mind of modem accurate scholarship it may be difficult to believe that the Fathers of381 omitted this clause which had stood in N out of indifference or carelessness, but then they were not modem accurate scholars. We can however with confidence recognize one important point connected with C's article on the Holy Spirit. It summarizes very nicely the doctrine of Basil of Caesarea; it does not directly call the Holy Spirit God and it does not apply the word homoousion. to him, but it does clearly declare that he is an object of equal (not mfenor) worship with the other two Persons. This is certaiuly the doctrine which Basil publicly professed, and it may very well be, in spite of assurances to the contrary by Gregory of Nazianzus, the doctrine which he actually believed, no more and no less. It is a doctrine with which his brother Gregory of Nyssa sympathized. There must have been many who were not Macedonians, who did not follow the views ofEustathius ofSebaste, yet who believed that the Holy Spirit above, p.768. lOBE.g. May 'Datierung' 53-4 and Ritter Das Konzil 132-47· I09Hauschild 'Die trinitarianische Dogma von 381' 20-22, gives further cogent

. IP7S ee

reasons for rejecting this theory.

818

The Council of Constantinople was uncreated and was of equal honour with tlIe Father and the Son, but who did not wish to take the further step which gave Gregory of Nazianzus no difficulty, of directly calling him God (rather than divine,theion) and consubstantial. It is to this group (which may have numbered very many among the bishops of the council of 381) that the pneumatological article appealed. And this is why Gregory of Nazianzus objected so strongly to C.: it declared a 'half-way' (tv IfficrCfl) doctrine which was not unorthodox but which did not go as far as Gregory wanted it to go. Better, he thought, to leave the bare statement of N and permit orthodox theologians to read the full doctrine into it, as Athanasius and Damasus had done."o There is no difficulty in accounting for the omission in C of the anathemas ofN, for owing to the change in the meaning of hypostasis and ousia one of them had become an embarrassment rather than an asset. They were not repudiated, but they were not emphasised. We can fmd plenty of passages in pro-Nicene writers in the second half of the fourth century expressing weariness with creeds and a desire to be satisfied with N.'" Basil in one of his letters says: 'Let that admirable docttine of the Fathers be repeated among you, which overturns t:p.e ill-omened heresy of Arius, which edifies the·

church by the wholesome teaching in which the Son is confessed as consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit is along with him ranked ilnd worshipped with equal honour' .112

This sounds as ifhe is joining Athanasius and Damasus in reading into the six words of N about the Spirit the full pneumatology of fifty years later. But in the next letter he says: 'May the good teaching of our fathers who assembled .at Nicaea shine out again so that the ascription of glory to the blessed Trinity may be .completed in a manner harmonious with the saving baptism' .113 t IOHauschild op. cit. 25-38 argues for very much this point of view. Whether we can reconstruct with any confidence lomoi. doctrinal utterances of the council of Antioch of 379 as well as that of Constantinople of 38 I, as H. thinks we can, seems to me very doubtful. I11The most striking is Hilary's remarks at Uber II ad Constantium 4.5 (200--20I), cf. Con. Constant. 24, 25 (600, I), De Syn. 63 (522-3). There are several passages in Gregory of Nyssa expressing satisfaction with N, e.g. Anti"heticus 142 (Leiden) and 157; and of course there is the Latin commentary on N, probably written before 38 I (Turner EOMIA I 330-47). I 12Ep. 110.2. Grillmeier CCT 346 gives similar passages in Basil. Epp. 258.2; 244.3; 263·4. and he adds Athanasius De Deeret. 32; Tom. ad Ant. 5.9 (but this is scarcely necessary). 113Ep. 91.

The Controversy Resolved

This suggests that he would have liked to see an enlargement of the third article of N to do justice to the Holy Spirit. We can, I believe, conclude with fair confidence that those who drew up C and those who knew of its existence and probably taught and used it for the next fifty years did not think of it as anew, separate, creed, as, for instance, the 'Dedication' Creed of 341 was a separate creed from N, but simply as a reaffirmation ofN, an endorsement of what it really meant by meanS of a little further explanation. We must remind ourselves once again that the Fathers of the ancient church were not concerned about the exact wording of formulae, even of official formulae, so much as with their content. If they were assured that the content of one statement was virtually or in effect the same as that of another, they did not mind if the original structure of shape or origin of one of them was different from that of the other. 'To the ancients', Prestige said, 'creeds might be compared to accurate sign-posts rather than to exhaustive charts.'''4 Both Socrates (HE V .8) and Sozomenus (HE VII.9) writing before the year 451 tell us that the Council of Constantinople of381 confirmed the Creed ofNicaea. It is altogether probable that what they mean is that the council not only endorsed N in a canon but also produced an affirmation ofN in the form ofC. This was before the days of creeds being recited in the eucharist. C was not likely to gain much publicity if it was virtually equated with N and only slowly and reluctantly accepted in Egypt and in the West. If we take this view we can also rid ourselves of the illusion that the compilers ofC 'omitted' the clause 'from the ousia of the Father'. In their view, and in the view of their contemporaries, this clause was not 'omitted' because it was still in N, of which C was are-affirmation. C did not in their eyes cancel N, but rather enhanced . it.

The Council of Constantinople 'We now order that all churches are to be handed over to the bishops

who profess Father, Son and Holy Spirit of a single majesty, of the same glory, of one splendour, who establish no difference by sacrilegious separation. hut the order of the Trinity by recognizing the Persons and uniting the Godhead. It will he clear that these are united in communion with Nectarius bishop of the Church of' Constantinople. and also Timothy bishop of the city of Alexandria in

Egypt. It would be clear that they will communicate also in the regions of Oriens with Pelagius bishop of Laodicea and Diodore bishop of Tarsus; in both pro-consular Asia and the diocese of Asia

with Amphilochius bishop of Iconium and Optimus bishop of [Pisidian1Antioch; in the diocese of Pontus with Helladius bishop of Caesarea and Gregorybishop of Nyssa, Terennius bishop of Scythia, Marmarius bishop of Marcianopolis.'

Immediately after the council ended, at the very end of July 381, Theodosius issued an Edict confirming its conclusions. This Edict is known as Episeopis tradi."' The first words are:

Anyone who refused to communicate with these is declared to be an heretic and is to be refused office in the church. By this Edict Theodosiusfinally and decisively rendered the pro-Nicene version of the Christian faith the official religion of the Roman Empire. It is to be noted that his norms of doctrine have changed a little since he issued Cunetos populos more than a year before. The bishop of Rome is not mentioned, though there is no reason to think that Theodosius no longer regarded Damasus as a norm of doctrine. The Emperor is not here setting up new patriarchates; Nyssa, for instance, could not possibly be the seat of a patriarch. He is merely mentioning individuals spread over as wide an area as possible who had attended the council and who could be depended upon to expound its views. Theodosius had now adopted the Eastern rather than the Latin point of view. We have already looked at the Council of Aquileia. It took place, probably later than that of Constantinople in the autumn of 38 lo"· Palladius and Secundianus came expecting it to be an ecumenical council at which representatives of the Eastern churches, some of whom might be sympathetic to their point of view, would be present, and found it was instead a comparatively small and local affair. The proceedings were well rigged beforehand. Ambrose, who had no right to be there if the council was not a general one, and Valerianus carried matters with a high hand. If we are to believe

114GPT 237. "SLatin text in King 4S n I. It is to be found in Cod Theod. XVI.I.3. C( Swete, Early HiJtory 94. King 44-6, Loofs 'Arianismus' 45. Ritter 'Arianismus' 714.

116S0 Ritter 'Arianismus' 716. For this council see above, pp. 109-10, 124-5. 576--7,667--9 and Zeiller Origines 328-37. Meslin Les Ariens 89-91,333-'7,670--'73; Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 204-6; Simonetti Crisi 542-8.

6. The Immediate Sequel of the Council

820

821

The Controversy Resolved

The Council of Constantinople

Palladius, Gratian had been tricked into permitting the council to meet under these circumstances. We do not know by what precise means Palladius and Secundianus were deprived of their sees of Ratiaria and Singidunum, perhaps by disturbances contrived in those towns. A letter survives among those attributed to Ambrose written on behalf of the council. '17 It protests against the recent holding of a council in Constantinople, seeing that the Easterners had recently declined to come to a proposed general council in the West; it protests against Paulinus not being chosen bishop of Antioch, against Maximus not being recognised as bishop of Constantinople and Gregory being placed in that see, against the Roman church not being consulted in these matters, and against N ectarius being elected in Gregory's place. A council met in Rome in the year 382 which was largely concerned with the same points. I I . Three delegates sent from Constantinople were present at it, and, as well as Damasus, Ambrose, Anemius, Acholius and Epiphanius of Salamis (as an unrepentant upholder of Paulinus) were there. Apollinarianism was condemned, Paulinus once more recognised as bishop of Antioch and the two bishops who consecrated Nectarius, Diodore of Tarsus and Acacius of Be roea, declared to be deposed. It was probably at this point that Damasus issued an aggressive statement which was in effect a reply to the third canon of Consta'!tinople. It claimed a precedence of the see of Rome over all others based both on the words of the Lord in Matt 16: 18-20 (,Thou art Peter ... ') and also on the fact that Peter and Paul were martyred and buried in Rome. It named the next two sees in order of precedence, Alexandria because it had been founded by Peter's disciple Mark, who had been martyred there, and Antioch because Peter had lived there before going to Rome. Concerning the see of Constantinople the letter preserves a resounding silence."9 Constantinople steadily refused to grant any of these requests from the West or to undo the work of its council of 381. As we have already seen.'2. a council met in the capital city in 382, largely concerned with replying to the complaints of the Council of

Aquileia. The representatives from the East present in Rome who have just been referred to were sent from this council. It is highly lIkely that canons V and VI traditionally attributed to Constantinople 38 1 really were passed by Constantinople 382. Canon V runs thus: 'Concerning the treatise (Iomos) of the Westerners. we have accepted' the people in Antioch because they confess the Godhead of Father, Son and HolySpirit'.

Canon VI was long and concerned with regulating the trials, the courts and the appeals to be held when bishops are accused. It makes no mention whatever of the bishop of Rome. The 'tornos or the Westerners' of Canon V probably refers to the letter of complaint from the council of Aquileia. The council uncompromisingly asserted the consubstanti2!ity of each Person of the Trinity, condemned the doctrine of ApolIinaris, declared that Nectarius was bishop of Constantinople, Flavian ofAntioch and Cyril ofJerusalem. The quarrel between East and West rumbled on a little 10nger.'21 but In the end the West conceded all the Easterners' points, except that they d.d not concede the Easterners' distinctly moderate view of the claims of the see of Rome. The bishops of the Eastern Church had reached a consensus about the Christian doctrine of God. The bishops of the Western Church could find no compelling reason to disagree.

121For the details see Schwartz 'Zur Kirchengeschichte' 206- 13.

117 Ambrose Epp. Extra Col/ectio"em ed. Michaela Zelzer (CSEL 82 ('982) PL .6) 9 (13). The letter is from Ambrosius et ceter; episcopi Italiae.

118Sozomenus HEVII,II; Theodoret HEV.9;JeromeEpp. 108.6 (pL 22.881); see Chadwick'The Council ofNicaea' 84; Zeiller Origines 339; Swete Early History 80; Simonetti Crisi 448-51; King Tile Emperor Theodosius 48. 119Damasus Epp. PL 13:374-376. It is reproduced in the text of the Decretum Gelasianum. ed. D. von DobschiitzTU 38.1-357 (fasc.lV). text Section III. pp. 7-<). 120S ee above, p. 8 I I.

822

823

The Development of Doctrine

The Development of Doctrine I.

The Influence of Scripture

The reader of this long work may have been struck as he has been making his way through it with the refusal of its author on most (though not on all) occasions to take sides. Indeed the reader may have found this attitude exasperating. There is little denunciation or derision, little approval or dissent. The chief reason for this is that in the author's opinion the subject of the Arian controversy has suffered from a great deal too much partisanship at the hands of those who have written about it. Travers Smith, a conventionallate-nineteenthcentury Anglican, can describe some bishops as 'deeply tainted with Semi-Arianism', I an expression which should provoke laughter rather than assent from the modern scholar. Swete, also an Anglican a little later in period that Travers-Smith and much more learned than he, can say, 'Seven years after Lucian's martyrdom, the hint which he dropped was suddenly expanded by Arius into a full-blown heresy', 2 almost as ifhe wanted to explain the controv~rsy by the principle of spontaneous combustion. Gwatkin, a learned Anglican of a period rather later than Swete, was capable of suggesting that the Ariaus were morally deficient because most of their extant literature is purely polemical' - a remark whose silliness needs no comment. From a quite different point of view, Schwartz, an immensely learned and very pugnacious Lutheran, was able to persuade himself that the Arian controversy was one aspect of the struggle of the bishop to reduce the ancient privileges of the presbyter, and that the pro-Nicene cause was a crusade against education and intelligence, 4 151. Basil the Great 22. of the Procession of the Holy Spirit 79.

2 History

JSA 27 n4.

4Gesammt. Schrift. III, 178, 179.

thus demonstrating that emancipation from any desire to defend traditional orthodoxy is no guarantee of impartiality nor even of common sense. And anyone who has read L' Heresie II' Arius et la Poi de Nieee ~ill realize that a Roman Catholic scholar standing in the splendid French tradition of patristic scholarship, Boularand, could even as late as 1972 give a completely conventional account of the contro,:,ersy which consequently does little to throw light upon the real spnngs and causes of the thoughts and actions of those who took part in it . . This chapter therefore, which of necessity must sum up in a brief dls~usslOn what has gone before, will concern itself with attempting to IdentIfy the forces play~g upon the actors in this sixty-year-Iong drama, the influences whIch were most powerful in shaping their thought and action; and in doing so will draw some conclusions about what was one of the most remarkable instances of the deVelopment of doctrine in the history of Christianity. The first influence to examine is that of the Bible. s All parties to the controversy shared very much the same exegetical assumptions." They all expected to find direct prophecies of Christ in all parts of the Old Testament. The key-text, Prov 8:22, for instance, was allowed by everybody to refer to Christ, whereas we to-day would hesitate to regard it as more than, on the most liberal interpretation, a possible famt foreshadowin~ of him. Addressing the Arians, Hilary can refer to thIs text and say WISdom, whom you admit to be Christ'.' Had it occurred to Athanasius when he was writing the Second Book of his Orations against the Arians, most of which is devoted to this single text, to dISmIss the whole debate as a storm in a teacup because the text does not ~efer to Christ, he would have been appalled, but the ~hought did not occur to him. All parties regarded the Bible as merrant as far as it was possible to do so; that is to say, they recognised S~imonetti devoted a long paper in Stud; to the interpretation of Proverbs 8.22 durmg the controversy (II-8?). Pollard has published several studies relevant to this subject,' Johannine Christology and the Early Church. 'The Exegesis of Scripture and ,the Anan C:::0ntroversy' and 'The Exegesis of John X.30 in the early Trinitarian

Controversies', See also J, van Parys 'Exegese et theologie dans les Livres contre Eunome de ~r~goire de Nyss;' and C, Kannengeiser 'Logique etidees motrices dans le'recours blbhque seIon Gregoire de Nyssa', ~MesIin remarks that the norm of faith for the Arians is precisely similar to that of their opponents: 'c'est la meme conception d'une Ecriture domaine exclusif de l'autorite ~l~ricale et considert:e comme critere de segregati~n', (Les Ariens 229),

'De Tnmtate IV,2I.

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

that it contained apparent errors and contradictions but they laboured to explain them away, very often but not invariably by allegorising. For instance, Hilary notices that none of the blessings promised to Jacob in Gn 27:28, 29 actually happened to him, so 'because Scripture is not endangered by falsehood', the blessing must apply to his descendants, not to himself." All sides lack almost completely (with a little exception allowed in the case of Gregory of Nazianzus) a sense of historical perspective. This is as clear in the statement of Hilary that all the apostles taught the eternity of the Son,. as in Damasus' fantastic reconstruction of the early history of the church in Alexandria.'o Consequently all parties tend to read the ideas and doctrine of their own day into the earliest period of Christianity. Gericke remarks that Marcellus was not a Biblicist in the strict sense. Rather he has a ready-made theological scheme and reads it into the Bible." There were very few, if any, Biblicists in the strict sense among the writers of the fourth century. The result is, inevitably, much perverse and some positively grotesque interpretation. We have seen some examples in Ambrose,'2 but this practice is not confined to Ambrose. Cyril can manage to interpret Job 14:17ff. 'For there is hope for a tree, ifit be cut down, that it will sprout again', etc., where Job's point is precisely that man does not live again after death, into an argument for resurrection after death." And we have seen several examples of similar exegetical contortions in the work of Athanasius and Hilary when they are dealing with the human limitations of Jesus Christ. It used to be thought that the Arians were so much interested in metaphysics and the relation of the Father to the Son that they ignored soteriology, whereas the pro-Nicenes because of their concern to prove the divinity of Christ paid more attention to the doctrine of salvation. Simonetti .has rightly rejected this theory'!· The Arians were concerned with soteriology, and their ideas about the relation of the Son to the Father show this. They made a serious effort to meet the evidence of the Bible that God suffers, whereas the

general impression which the writings of the pro-Nicenes produces is that this is the last admission which they wish to make. It has also been asserted in the past that the Arians clung blindly and woodenly to Scripture whereas the pro-Nicenes were ready to accept Scripture within the context of tradition and a broad philosophical outlook. There is some truth in this assertion, but it must be modified by several exceptions. The pro-Nicenes often remark on the invariable demand of the Arians for Scriptural proof, and how they accuse the champions of Nicaea of introducing the non-Scriptural term homoousios into the creed.!' But the pro-Nicene writers are equally insistent upon the unique position of Scripture as a norm of faith. Epiphanius remarks upon the absence of any appeal to Scripture in Aetius' Syntagmation,16 and Basil at least twice warns against the danger of either adding to or subtracting from Scripture. '7 The insistence of the Arians upon pressing the analogy or metaphor of Father and Son too far drove the pro-Nicenes to examine the nature oflanguage about God and to become markedly more sophisticated than their opponents about using it. They warn against too great rationalism in exegesis.'" They can even protest against a too wooden and factual acceptance of the words of Scripture, especially when dealing with the first chapters of Genesis: God did not literally walk nor literally speak, and so on.' 9 Almost everybody had learnt from Origen the doctrine of 'accommodation', that is the idea that God accommodates his language and ideas when communicating with people to the limitations of their understanding and even of their culture. 2o And the pro-Nicenes are quite often ready to appeal

8 Tractatus Mysteriorum ed. A. Feder (CSEL, Part IV) I, 23 (19. 20). 'Call. Arion II B 5 (25) (148). ]OSee above. p.822. II Marcellus '70. IlSCC above pp.672-J.

IJCatecheses XVIII. I 5 (314). 14Crisi 565-6.

I

sTo give a few examples out ofmany, Athanasius De Synodis 36, Basil DSS X 25

(112). Gregory of Nazianzus Oral. XXXI. 18. 21; and we have seen above

pp. 769-70 how constantly the Macedonians demanded Scriptural proof The proNiccncs could of course hit back by accusing the Arians afthe same fault, with their talk of agellnesia,gennetos and agennetos, e.g. Athanasius Or. con. Ar. 1.30, Gregory of Nyssa COli. Eunom. 11.13 (1016). 16Panarion 76.54.13 (411). 17Adv. Eunom. II.8 (585) and De Fide J (680). l8E.g. Basil Adv. Eunom. II.24 (628). 19Marcellus of Ancyra, Fragment S2 in Eusebius Eee. Theol.III.3 (LS7); Gregory of Nyssa Cat. Orat. V.71 and Ambrose Exaemeron 1.9.33. De Paradiso 14.69; Epiphanius Ancoratus :54-:58, Gregory of Nyssa Con. Eunom. II 20S (977), 212 (981), ~1g--2.20 (984), ~26 (984), 39:5-409 (1?44-8). The protest is not so much against hteraiism as agalOst a wooden and naive way of using the text. 2°Perhaps the most striking example of this occurs in the obscure and not properly investigated Dialogue of Adamantius or On the Right Faith in God (ed. GCS W. H. van de Sande Bakhuyzen PG X) 18,20 (810). where the author cheerfuUy

827

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

behind the words of Scripture to their intention or drift (skOpOS).21 The pro-Nicenes did indeed appeal to 'the tradition of the Fathers', very often meaning the creed N, but sometimes reaching behind it to earlier times. 22 The appeal of Gregory of Nazianzus to the experience of the church, which we have already examined, is a kind of appeal to tradition, and so is the appeal to the church's practice, especially in administering baptism, which, as we have seen, is quite common. Basil's attempt to appeal to secret tradition in the church is an extension of the same device, but an unusual, indeed unique one, which neither of the other Cappadocian theologians imitated. 23 It must, however, be remembered that the Arians also appealed to tradition. Palladius is appalled by the Nicene faith not only because in his eyes it is un Scriptural but because it is a novelty. Gryson reminds tis that the Arians could and did appeal to great names in the past, Cyprian, Eusebius of Caesarea, his namesake of Nicomedia and Constantinople, and Theognis of Nicaea (but not Arius!).24 We cannot even contrast in any clear-cut way the pro-Nicenes as users of allegory and the Arians as rejecters of it.25 Almost everybody, with the exception of Didymus the Blind and Ambrose (heirs ofOrigen and of Philo) rejected the excessive lengths to which Origen had brought the art of allegorizing, and some, e.g. Eustathius of Antioch and Epiphanius, explicitly dissociate themselves from him on this point. 26 'Origen will not stand along with us on the day of judgment' is the fierce comment of Epiphanius. 27 But nobody

rejected allegorization altogether. Both Athanasius of Anazarbus and Asterius used allegory.2. The Opus Imperieetum in Matthaeum can allegorize the details ofJohn the Baptist's dress and diet. 29 The Latin Arian Commentary on Job can allegorize the commands of the Lord to put out a little from the shore and to launch out into the deep.30 The Greek Arian commentator, Julius, on the same book cannot resist allegorizing the Leviathan as the devil and the throne of God as the sky, and knows of no other way of dealing with the otherwise either incomprehensible or indecent Song of Solomon.31 Eusebius of Emesa in one of his discourses has quite a long passage about allegorizing. He allows that it cannot altogether be rejected but he is very cautious about its use. It tends to read meanings into the text which are good in themselves but are simply not present in the text. It can be an illegitimate short cut. A man who is bound or who is in prison is anxious to be free by any means, but not all means are right. 32 Had all ancient interpreters of the Bible followed this advice, subsequent generations would have been saved the necessity of reading a great deal of nonsense. Conversely, a number of passages from pro-Nicene writers can be produced which make them seem as devout observers of the text of the Bible as any Arian. At one point Hilary gives a creed representing his own belief which is composed wholly of biblical texts." 'Do not believe me', says Cyril of Jerusalem to the people whom he is catechizing, 'believe the Scriptures'." Earnest but futile attempts are made to prove that the Bible really does use the word ousia or subslaniia. Potamius of Lisbon in his pro-Nicene phase does so clumsily,35 Marius Victorinus in a more sophisticated but no more convincing manner. 36

admits that there are contradictory commands in Scripture. There are of course many examples of the writers of the fourth century contrasting the obscurity and

enigmatic messages of the OT with the clear words of the NT e.g. Eusebius Eee, Theal. I, 20.96 and Gregory of Nyssa Ref. Con. Eunom. 2, 3 (468). 2tE.g. Athanasius De Synodis4I, Basil DSS VII, 16 [93J, Or. con. Ar.III.3S; Hilary Uher ad Constanlium (Feder) 9 (204). and see examples in Gregory of Nyssa cited by van Parys op. cit. 22E.g. Athanasius De Synodis 41, Basil DSS VII, 16 [93] where, however, he guards himself by declaring that the Fathers are consistent with the Scriptures. "!·'Thc.:y also. towards the end of the century, realised that to interpret Scripture simply using Scriptural words is not enough; see Gregory of Nyssa Con Eunom. II )~j-409 (1044-1048) 412 (1048) 419 (1049).

24Scolies Ariennes 178-9. 2sAs, e.g., Lonergan wishes to do, The Way to Njcaea 71. 26For Eustathius, see above pp. 21 1-12, 214-15. But Sellers is unwise (Eustathius d AlltioclJ 68) to take a rejection of allegorizing as an invariable criterion of Eustathius' authorship, for Eustathius can on occasion allegorize. For Epiphanius see AI/((lratus 62-63. "'An,oratus 63·1 (75).

28For Athanasius see above pp. 42-43 and also Bardy Lucien 204-5 and Simonetti Srudi lOT. For Asterius see Bardy op. cit. 356-59. "Op. Imp. III PG 56, 648, 649, 650. 30Gryson 5, 2, 4 (214, 215. 216), Mai 201, 202. 31 6 3 .9-13; 157·13. ,14; 283.1-5; 232.17-19· But in every respect this is an outstanding commentary for its learning. its good sense, its careful attention to the te~t and its refusal to. iridulg~ in fantastic speculation. It contrasts very favourably WIth the commentanes of Dldymus and of Gregory the Great ooJob. It has a fair claim to be regarded as the best ancient commentary on the book. 32XI De Arbore Fici (4-'7), 258-260. 33Uber ad Constantium II II (204, 205). Zahn (Marcellus von Ancyra 52-56) is only one among several to note how emphatically he appealed to the Bible. 34Catechesis IV.17 (J08). 35PL 8:1418. 36Ad"ersus Arium 1.30 (108, 109), 59 (160, 11.3 (175), 8 (181-3); De Homoousio Redpiendio 2 (279-80).

829

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

But when all is said and done, it must be conceded that the Arians are less inclined to use allegory than the pro-Nicenes. This is not because their respective theologies drove them in that direction, but because the Ariaus were, with some exceptions such as Palladius and the author of the Opus Imperjectum, less intellectual and less sophisticated than the pro-Nicenes. We have seen this already in the case of the Macedonians requiring Scriptural proo£·7 Prestige is near the mark when he says that the Arians had fallen into the pitfall of 'mistaking anthropomorphic or physical metaphors for more than what they purported to be."· The Ariaus maintain, says Epiphanius, that their opponents ought to give notice when they are about to treat the language of the Bible figuratively, and that 'if it is written about (Christ) that he is a creature, then he must be acknowledged to be a creature'?' The Lucianists claimed that becauseJn 1:14 said 'The Word became flesh' and not 'flesh and soul', therefore the incarnate Logos had no human soul. 40 'They take refuge again and again in the literal sense of the Holy Scriptures' says Athanasius, 'but they fail, in their usual way, to understand even that.'4! 'We do not call the Holy Spirit God' says an Arian writer, 'because the Bible does not say so, but subservient to God the Father and obedient in all things to the commands of the Son as the Son is to the Father'42 God must have left Job on his dung-heap for three and a half months (not three and a half years in imitation of our Lord's ministry of three and a half years), says the Latin Arian commentator onJob, because atJob 7:3Job says 'I have endured months (not years) of emptiness'. 43 Asterius, a much

in contrast to the pro-Nicenes who added to it or distorted it. Maximinius in controversy with Augustine, says:

more sophisticated writer than this one, can on occasion44 allegorise

mildly in a way different from Origen's raging subjectivism, but on the whole he prefers in his Homilies to moralize. Yet the Arians did certainly tend to regard themselves as the party who kept to the Bible .l7I do not think that Pollard is correct in seeing in the Arians a greater 'Biblical realism' than the pro-Nicenes displayed (,Origins of Arianism' 104--06). Meslin

(Ariens 343-52) discusses this difference usefully. Nor do I think that Barnard (' Antecedents of Arius' 176) is justified in seeing Arius as reacting against Origen's

of allegory. J8GPT '79. J9 Ancoratus 45-4 (58), 46.1 (56). ··Ibid 35.1-6 (44. 4S). 41 0, con. Ar. I, 52. 42Mai/Gryson fragments 11.265 (11.212). 43 11.474; the Latin is sustinui menses supervacuos. "Homilies Xl.5 (77). Xlll.lo (96), 17 (99); XV.3 (109; XXX·5 ('4C>-1) frag.7 ('5 8).

liSl,.'

830

'We believe the Scriptures. and we reverence those divine Scriptures; and we do not desire to pass over a single iota (apicem), for we dread the punishment which is to be found in the Scriptures themselves' (Dt 4: 2 ).45 Later he is more explicit: 'the divine Scripture does not fare badly in our teaching so that it has to receive improvement (emendationem) from US.'46

At one point in his De Synodis Hilary gives a list of places in the Bible which present special difficulty to the expounder. The passages in the Old Testament are Gn 1:2 (darkness appears to be co-aeval with God); Gn 5:26 taken with I Peter 3:20 (Methuselah appears to have lived beyond the days ofthe Flood, yet he is not among the eight people in the ark, the only souls who were saved); Gn 18:21 (God appears to be ignorant of the exact extent of the sin of Sodom and comes down to investigate it); Dt 34:6 (nobody knows where Moses is buried, and yet those who buried him must have known). And in the New Testament the problems are that the Lord who was to send the Holy Spirit on the disciples is himself said to be born of the Spirit; that the Lord who condemned those who- use the sword himself ordered a sword to be brought to him (Matt 26:52); that he who descended into hell is apparently in Paradise with the thief(Lk 22:3 6); -and that the apostles are commanded to baptize in the triple Name (Matt 28:19), yet they baptized only in the name of Jesus (Acts 10:48).47 These are all passages which presumably would have given trouble to any commentator. We can compile a list of passages which were specially controverted and interpreted in different ways by different sides. 4• One of these was Gn 19:24 'The Lord rained down ... from the Lord': who were these two Lords? The 17th anathema of the First Creed of Sirmium (35 I) specially damns people who misinterpret this (and the target of the anathema is clearly Photinus), either to say that this refers to the Father only and not to the Son, or to Interpret it as meaning that there are two gods. 4' The Arians used Isa 1:2 ('I 45Collatio Augustini cum Maximinio 13 (730). 4620,

21 (736).

·'De Syn. 85 (537,538). 48Simonetti Crisi 475-80 gives a long and interesting list of such passages; see also 62-3, 269 and Studi 170, 171. 49S 0 Simonetti points out Studi 149-50. See above pp. 326-8 and Hahn Symbok P·19 8 .

The Controversy Resolved have nourished and brought up children'), Mal 2:10 ('Have we not one Father?'), and Job 38:28 ('Has the rain a father?') to reduce the significance ofJohn 1:14 ('glory as of the only Son from the Father'). In his Letter to Paulinus of Tyre Eusebius ofNicomedia used Job 38:28 and Isa 1:2, and fv1aL 2:10, and Athanasius in Or. Con. Ar. 1159 uses the Job, the Isaiah alid the Malachi passages in a counter direction.'o The First Sirmian Creed also insists that at Gn. 1:26 God is talking to himself and not to his Son.51 The pro-Nicenes, Hilary tells us, adduced as proof-texts for the Son's origin from the Father Jn 10:30 and 14:7,9, 10, II, 12. The Arians explained them all as referring to the moral and voluntary solidarity of the Father and the Son, not to a supposed unity of nature, and counter-adduced to support their case Acts 4:32; 1 Cor 3:8; Jn 17:20 and 21. 52 These passages, and others like them, were the outer fortifications round which each side skirmished. But there were other texts which were more crucial than these, the key-points or inner citadels of the battle. We shall look briefly at these:

Proverbs 8:22 and some of the following verses. 53 Did this passage declare plainly that the Son was created, or did the original of the word 'created' only mean 'appointed', or did it refer not to the preexistent Son but to the human element in the incarnate Son or the faithful who become his Body, or even to some innate power within the Godhead and not to the Son? Amos 4:12,13 We have already seen how sedulously the Macedonians used this text. 54 Does it mean that the Holy Spirit actually is Studi 170:-1 and 171 n 53. references in n 49. 52Hilarv De Trinitate VIII, 3. s. 5.11 am not here giving an Auslegungsgeschichte; for this text see Simonetti Stud; ,1\ld Rieken 'Nikaia als Crisis' 33 1-3. The reader can consult the Index of Biblical p;~ssa~cs at the end of chis ~ork. I merely mention the following (not exhaustive) list ot wrI,tcrs and works which d,eal with this passage: Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, EllscblUS of Caesa rea, EustathlUs, Marcellus, Athanasius, the 'Macrostich', Basil of '!-ncyra: George ~f ~aodicea, Epiphanius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, SCCl1ndlanUs of Smgldunu?I' HIlary, the Latin Commentary on N, Eunomius, Am,brose, ~he Ps.~Athanaslan Expositio Fidei, Phoebadius of Agen, Gregory of ~lvlra, and m the Sixth century Thrasamund and Fulgentius are still disputing about 50S0 Simonetti 5 t See

It.

5413ut it had been employed before them. Eusebius of Caesarea Dem. Ev. 1.v:I~.3,o--34 used it earlier i~ a quite uncontroversial way referring to the Holy Spmt; It neve: occurred ~o him that the Spirit was not created. Against the Arian .11ld Macedoman use of It we _can list Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea. Didymus,

The Development of Doctrine created? Or does it simply refer to the wind as created or to men who have become spirit or who have been renewed by the Spirit, or to the spirit of the Jews; and is 'declaring to men their Christ' a mistranslation of 'declaring to men their discourse' (so Didymus who can appeal to the Hebrew)? . Isaiah 53:8 The great text for speaking about the generation of the Son ('His generation who shall declare?'). 55 The early anti-Arians or pro-Nicenes use it to decry Arian attempts to define how the Son was generated. The Arians use it to deplore attempts to define the Son's generation in terms of ousia and cognates. The later proNicenes use it to prove that the Son's generation has had no beginning. The Arians can appeal to it to prove that the Son's generation was later than the Father's being, and accuse the proNicenes of saying that the Son is virtually unknowable; the proNicenes reply, 'incomprehensible but not unknowable'. PsMaximus in Contra Iudaeos, in reply to the pro-Nicene use of the text, maintains that the Holy Spirit can inform us about the Son's generation. Eunomius of course avoids using the text because it makes against his conviction that it is perfectly possible to know about the origin of the Son. Ps 45 (44):7 (7, 8) ('You love righteousness and hate wickedness, therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows') The Arians seized on this passage as a proof that God the Father was the God of God the Son: this was one of their favourite doctrines. They pointed to the inferiority of Christ in that he was anointed by God the Father, and exalted in this way because of his righteousness and good life. Their opponents found this hard to answer. They adduced texts from the Fourth Gospel apparently contradicting this view or they said that Christ went no further than acknowledging the Father's paternal authority, or they argued that it was only his human nature that was anointed and it was only as man that he called God the Father his God. 56 Epiphanius and. Pseudo-Didymus. Shapland, op. cit. 66--7, gives a list of authors who treat of this text. • 55Simo?et~! ref~~~ again a~d ,~~ain to ~~ use of this text, Studi 128-32. 175 n 79; OsservaZlom sull AltercazlO 56; CrJSl 62, 231-2. The authors who treat of this text are Alexand~r of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, the Second Sirmian Creed, th~ Ps.-Ath~nasl~n E~positjo ~idej, Eusebius of Emesa (in a non-Arian sense!) , HIl~ry, Manus Vl~tonnus. Cynl ofJerusalem, Ps.-Didymus, Ps.-Maximus of Turin (Arlan). Phoebadius, Ambrose, Thrasamund and Fulgentius. 560pponents quoted by Athanasius, Alexander and Hilary use this text, and they

832 833

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

110 (109):1 and 3 gave material for speculative interpretation because v. 1 ran 'The Lord said to my Lord', and thereby provided a chance of showing that the Father and the Son were two distinct hypostases. Both pro-Nicenes and Ariaus used it for this purpose. But v.3 was even more employed because though the modem English translation of the Hebrew (RSV) runs 'From the womb of the morning like dew your youth will come to you', the LXX here plunged into a wild. but prolific mistranslation, 'from the belly before the morning star I have begotten thee'. 57 The Arians unanimously applied the sentence to the production of the preexistent Son, because it seemed to hint at a beginning with some relation to time for the Son. The pro-Nicenes usually applied it to the incarnation (but not Hilary). Eusebius of Caesarea (Comm. on Psalms) refers it to the generation of the pre-existent Son, even though he knows and quotes other versions of the Hebrew which produce a quite different sense from the LXX version. One Arian writer (Mai/Gryson frags.) sees v. I as the Holy Spirit acknowledging the Lordship of the Son. The Gospel According to St.John was the major battlefield in the New Testament during the Arian controversy. It was the chief resource of the pro-Nicenes but was by no means free of difficulties and pitfalls even for them. It is generally true that the Ariaus scored heavily in using the Synoptic gospels. We have seen into what exegetical mazes Athanasius and Hilary were led to dealing with those texts which indicate Jesus Christ as weak or fearful or ignorant. 5 • On the whole they recouped themselves in St.John's Gospel, but not without the necessity of exercising at times extreme ingenuity. Only a very few of the most controverted texts can be dealt with here.

John 1: 1 is naturally the great resort of the pro-Nicenes, but it is used by Eusebius of Caesarea to express his doctrine of the Logos before the outbreak of the dispute, and Marcellus and even Photinus (who held that here the evangelist was simply calling God the Logos, there being no Son before the Incarnation) can use it for their own purposes. Arians known to Epiphanius argued ingeniously that the Logos could not represent ultimate metaph ysical reality ('He who

Ps

try to reply: the Mai/Gryson fragments also use it in their cause. Ps. 4S (44) was a much discussed one because its first verse ('my heart overflows with (literally "has belched out" LXX tl;l1pevyato) a goodly theme') brought up the manner of the

generation of the Son, and the description of the queen standing at the King's right hand in v. 9 (10) provided a opportunity for the Arians to point out that though the church (aUegorization of the queen) stands at Christ's right hand nobody would conclude from this that it was equal to Christ. yet the pro-Nicenes inconsistently claim that the Son. who stands at God's right hand. is equal to him. S7tK' yacr'tp6<; 1tp6 srocrcp6pou t~t"(tYYT]cra crt. Eusebius of Caesarea. Asterius, Marcellus, Hilary. Ps.-Maximus of Turin. Thrasamund. Fulgentius and Viglius of Thapsc dealt with this psalm. 5!1S(.'C above PP.44?-50, 496-501.

is') because 'He who is' cannot be 'with' Him who is; they cannot

both represent ultimate reality. Epiphanius simply protests agaillst pushing human analogies too far. 59 . John 10:30 ('I and the Father are One'), at fmt sight this looks like a straight-forward pro-Nicene text, but closer investigation shows a rather different picture. Alexander used it before Nicaea to show that Christ here 'is neither calling himself the Father nor indicating that natures which are two in hypostoses were one'. 60 Asterius and the Second ('Dedication') Creed of 34', which may have been influenced by Asterius, interpret the text as indicating a purely moral unity of consent and will. Marcellus contested this strongly and applied it to the ontological unity, indeed identity, of the Father and his Logos (the Son not appearing till the Incarnation), and to deny the existence of two hypostases. The statement of the Western bishops after Serdica in 343 enthusiastically supports this view; the text is there 'because of the unity of the hypostasis which is one, both of the Father and of the Son'.61 Hilary can show uneasiness at this text, insisting that the Two being One does not preclude their being distinct, but usually he interprets it in what might be called the conventional pro-Nicene way as indicating their ontological unity, and this is how Athanasius takes it again and again. John 14:9, 10 ('He who has seen me has seen the Father' and 'I am in the Father and the Father in me'). Those two texts were crucial and capital to Athanasius because behind the ontological unity of the Father and the Son he saw the unity of revelation, and they tended 59Alexander, Athanasius and Hilary appeal to this text as well as the others. Simonetti Stud; 146 deals with it. 6°Opitz Urk III no. 14 38 (25); probably Alexander means. one in hypostaSis not one in nature, though the Greek is so worded that we cannot be quite sure. For comment on this passage see Simonetti Studi 127 n 2S (who points out that Origen, the source of the doctrine of the moral unity of Father and Son, never uses this text to prove their unity of nature nor ousia) and Kopecek History 30-31, 55-57. 61See Hahn Symbole 189.

835

The Controversy Resolved not to figure in Ari,m discussions because this was where Arian theology was weakest. It could envisage that God suffered but could not allow that the God who suffered was the full revelation of the higher God. It is significant that the Latin Commentary on the Nicene Creed preserved in EOMIA quotes In 14:9. John '4:28 ('The Father is greater than 1'). This was an easy text for the Arians to use in their interest. Alexander before Nicaea already has to deal with it; he does so by explaining that though the Father is greater as the ingenerate is greater than the generate, still as the image of the Father the Son is still in the same incomparable class or rank with the Father. Simonetti says that the text was only used by the Arians rather late in the controversy,·2 but in fact Eusebius of Caesarea uses it (conflated withJn 6:44) in his Letter to Euphration of Balanea.· 3 This curiously conflated text ('My Father who sent me is greater than 1') is also found in Eunomius, and at the Council of Aquileia Palladius used the text in this form and when Ambrose specially stressed 'who sent me' made no objection.·' Marcellus was apparently the first pro-Nicene to apply In 14:28 to the incarnate rather than the pre-existent Logos. Athanasius and Hilary follow his example, but they also suggest that there is a certain superiority in the Father because he is the Father, but not one that affects the identity of nature of Father and Son. Gregory of Nyssa, dealing with the text, says that the Father is greater as cause of the Son, but equal in nature. Epiphanius suggests that Christ uttered these words only out offilial respect, not making a statement about the ontological status of either. Arians of course use the text to show the inferiority of the Son. It is used for this purpose in the Second Sirmian Creed. Basil, answering In 10:45 with Phil 2:6, refers the verse to the incarnate Word. John '7:3 ('This is eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent'). This is one of the texts most strongly exploited by the Arians. The Logos was 62Simonetti comments on this verse Stud; 128 and C,isi 52, 232 "43, 259, and 478. Set' also Gryson Scolies Ariennes 193. Kopecek History 14 and Tetz 'Zur Theologie

d1..'s Markell von Ancyra I'. 270. 6JOpitz Urk. NO.3. 2(5) MesHn notes the use of this conftated text in Les Ariens 396-9: Potamius of Lisbon also uses it in a Latin form, see Moreira Potamius de Lisbonne 222. 64Gryson ScoUes A,iennes JI8(294). An orthodox interpolation in the Opus lmperfectum abo uses this contlation (xliv.33 (PC 56:882)). Marius Victorinus takes the conventional pro-Nicene line here.

The Development of Doctrine certainly God (theos) but not true God. Arius had used this concept again and again in his surviving work.· 5 Eusebius of Cae sarea had used it for just this purpose in his Letter to Euphration:·· the Son IS 'the image of the true God' and 'God' (theos) but not true God. Palladius uses the text twice and Maximinius cites it also. Aetius took it as a proofofhis doctrine that we can kno,,:, G?d perfectl?,"', which is a quite different use from the normal Anan mterpretatlOn. Against this Athanasius and Hilary and Epiphanius produce an array of texts showing that in other places and in other ways the Bible witnesses to Christ being true God (e.g. 'I am the way the truth and the life' Gn 14:6) and 'this is the true God and life eternal' (I John 5:20». Hilary asks how we can be saved by him who is not true God; Gregory of Nyssa points to all the places in the New Testament in which (as he thinks) Christ is called God (Rom 16:27; I Tim 1:17 and 6:16), and declares that to accept the Arian view of In 17:3 would be to deprive these texts of meaning. John 20:17 ('I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God'). The Second Sirmian creed, which includes several texts which the Arians thought capital, cites this also. God the Father is the God of the Son; this was a constantly-repeated doctrine of the Arians, though not perhaps in the early stages of their history, for Athanasius does not pay much attention to it. Hilary, Epiphanius, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory ofNyssa all reply in the same way to this argument. God the Father was the Father and the God ofJesus Christ as man; but of Jesus Christ as God he was Father in a different and pre-eminent way, by divine generation. 1 Cor 15:28 (,When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to everyone'). This is a text which appears to provide good ground for Arian· doctrine. Simonetti observes. s that Hilary and the Ps-Athanasian Sermo Maior de Fide interpret it of the human nature of Christ, which will of course be 65S e e Stead 'The "Thalia" of Arius' 36-:-38; he points out that Origen had made this distinction, Comm. on John Il.2.16. See also Kopecek History 296--7 who observes that this text In 17:3 occurs in both the Euchologion of Serapion and the Apostolic Constitutions; and Gryson ScoUes Ariennes 179-84. "Opitz U,k. III NO.3.3(5). 67S CC above, p.606. 68Cris; 480.

The Development oj Doctrine

The Controversy Resolved

subordinated to the Father, and that Gregory of Nyssa borrows from Origen an ingenious explanation which refers the text to Christ as the church, for of course in the end the church will be subjected to God. Ambrose follows Hilary in the conventional line of applying the verse to Christ as Son of Man. Marius Victorinus characteristically plunges into an esoteric philosophical explanation. 69 Epiphanius refuses to admit that this subjection affects equality or unity with the Father or honour, the Son's inferiority simply consisting in the fact that he is only-begotten Son and the Father is his Father. The pro-Nicenes were on particularly delicate ground here because on the one side they must avoid appearing to favour the idea of Marcellus that the Son's humanity would disappear at the rendering up of the Kingdom and the Logos,revert to original unity in the Father, and on the other side they must not give in to Arian insistence, based on this· very promising text, that the Son is permanently and by constitution inferior to the Father. It is no wonder that their interpretations here are sometimes far-fetched. A characteristic exegetical ploy of the Arians was to invoke texts in the interests of what might be called 'reductionism', that is to say they would try to reduce the value of the titles given (or thought to be given) to Christ in the Bible by showing that they were also applied in the Bible to quite ordinary people or things. Asterius played this game extensively in a well-known passage: . "Like H (tn.e Son to the Father): well, it is written about us that "man is the image and is the glory of God" (I Cor 11:7): as for (the Son existing) "always", it is written "while we live we are always ... "

(2 Cor 4:1 I): as for (the Son being) "in him", (it is written) that "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28): as for (the Son being) "unchanging", it is written "nothing shall separate us

from the love of Christ" (Rom 8:35). On the subject of (the Son being) the power (of God), (it is written) that the caterpillar and the locust are called the "power" even the "great power" of God Goel

2:25 LXX), and the same is often said about the people, for instance, "all the power of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt" (Ex. 12:44 LXX), and there are other heavenly powers forit says "the Lord 69'When everything else has been cleared out, active potency rests, and in it God will exist according to what it is to exist and what it is to be at rest, but in all other things spirituaIJy according to both his potency and substance', Adv. Arium 1.39 (I~. .

83 8

of the powers is with us, the God ofJacob is our champion'" (Ps 46 (45):8).7. Greg and Groh give a list of texts used by Arians to reduce the significance of the Son's partaking in God." Kopecek gives a similar list of texts employed by the Neo-Arians to reduce the significance of the title 'Son'. 72 Eusebius of Nicomedia in his Letter to Paulinus of Tyre remarks that if the Son is to be described as 'from the ousia'of the Father (which Eusebius dislikes) because he is begotten, then he can produce several instances in Scripture where things are said to be begotten which yet have no connection with the nature of him who begat them; he instances Isa 1:2 ('I have begotten and exalted sons' LXX), Dt 32:18 ('you were unmindful of the Rock that begot you') and Job 38:28 (,Who has begotten the drops of dew?' i.e. God has).73 Another 'reductive' move was to argue that where God is named along with Christ and the word 'through' is applied to Christ, as at I Cor 8:6 and 2 Cor 15:18, the Person to whom 'through' is applied must be inferior. Another was to reduce the significance of the Son being 'in the Father' by making it equivalent to the same relationship as all Christians have when they are 'in' Christ, e.g. In 4:30; 14:30; 17: 11. 74

Arian exegesis also emphasised strongly the uniqueness and incomparability of God the Father by way of contrast to the status of God the Son. Meslin notes the use of Baruch 3:35 (36), 'This is our God, and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison of him'," by Germinius the Altercatio. Hilary at one point gives a long list of passages used thus to establish the uniqueness of the Father: Rom 16:25, Isa65:I6,Jn 17:3, Ex 3:14, and manyothers,76 and later a shorter list thought to manifest the inferior condition of the Son', divinity: 77 In 17:3, '14:28 and Mk 13:32. There were also lists of texts

m

70Fragment XVI, Bardy Lucien 347, from Athanasius De Decret. 20. A very similar argument is attributed to the Arians in Ep. ad Afros .5. Athanasius can play the same game against the Arians when they call the Son 'like' the Father, Or. con. Ar. m.lo. 71Early Arianism 107-8. 72History 171-2. At .502-3 he gives a list of proof-texts used by the Neo-Arians for the Son's subordination to the Father. "Opitz Urk.m No.8, 6, 7 (17). 74 50 Athanasius Or. con. AT. III.I7 quoting his opponents. 75Les Ariens 294-9. The Baruch text wrongly attributed to Jeremiah is used elsewhere by Arian writers for tbe same purpose. Meslin gives an interesting list of Arian proof texts, Us Ariens 230--5. 76De Trinitate IV.S. 77Ibid.IX.2.

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

witnessing to the creatureliness of the Son. We have seen Prov 8:22 brought up again and again, along with Acts 2:36 ('God has made him both Lord and Christ'); most of Gregory of Nyssa's Contra Eunomium Book III is devoted to refuting the argument based on this text from Proverbs. Another curious piece of exegesis was made to serve this end also, a fantastic interpretation of Jn 8:25, which the Revised Standard Version translates: 'They said to him: "Who are you?" Jesus said to them "Even what I have told you from the beginning'" (alternative translation in footnote 'Why do I talk to you at am'). The words 'in the beginning' which can also be translated 'at aU' were seized on by the Arian exegetes and they rendered the last sentence 'I am the Beginning who am talking to you' and concluded that the Son certainly'had a beginning.7s Gross misunderstanding of the text was not the exclusive perquisite of the pro-Nicenes. A favourite text for proving that the Holy Spirit was not divine and was a creature was 1 Cor 8:6, where he is not mentioned (the significance lying in his absence, like the bark of Sherlock Holmes' dog), and another was Jn 1:3 (he was made with every\hing else). By the time of Vigilius of Thapse in the sixth century this list had been enlarged by Jn 16:14, 15:26, 14:26, and Ezek 37:5. 79 One of the oddest proof texts adduced for the creatuteliness of the Son was Ezek 37" ('The hand of the Lord was upon me'); the Latin, or a Latin, version of this ran facta est super me manus Domini which could by a far-fetched renderin'g be made to mean 'and the hand of the Lord was made above me', the hand of the Lord being taken as the Word of God. so We have already had plenty of opportunity of seeing the Arians dealing with the Synoptic Gospels so as to bring out the imperfections and limitations of the incarnate Logos, which they attributed to his divine nature, a nature fitted, as they saw it, for becoming incarnate by its very limitations. One of the capital texts

here was Mk 10:18 (,There is none good save God') and another Mk 13:32 where Jesus says that the Son does not know the hour when heaven and earth are to pass away, and another Matt 20:23 where Jesus confesses his inability to determine who are to occupy' the positions of honour near him when his Kingdom comes. Ambrose, who has to face this difficulty, can only suppose that Jesus dissimulated out of a kindly feeling towards the mother of the sons of Zebedee, for he must in fact have possessed this power. 81 Greg and Groh 82 make the interesting co11iecture that the Arians were responsible for the origin in the ancient and mediaeval church of the cult of Job as a kind of pre-Christian martyr. Certainly it is remarkable that no fewer than two Arian commentaries on that book should have come into our hands. They also observe s3 the strong Penchant which Arian writers and disputants had for the Epistle to the Hebrews. This is understandable, because this book represents Jesus as in a sense working out his own salvation and learning obedience through suffering (5:8), and this was peculiarly congenial to the Arian concept of the character and mission of Christ. In spite of their insistence upon confming evidence for doctrine to the Scriptures, Arian writers do not eschew appealing to writings outside the canon of Scripture on occasion. They had a particular likingfot the Ascension of Isaiah. Potamius of Lisbon is probably dependent on it in his sensational account of Isaiah's end,84 and some very fragmentary sentences preserved by Mai from an Arian document appear to be indebted to this book also. 85 Meslin, noting this penchant for the book, said that the Ascension of Isaiah appealed to Arians because it presented a subordinate Christ and a Holy Spirit who was not divine, and this suited their doctrine admirably.8. Another favourite was the pseudo-Clementine literature. Maximinius, says Meslin,87 cites the Clementine Recognitions five times. Rufinus, who translated this work, says (Prologue) that he found in it some heretical interpolations 'about the ingenerate and

78'tiJv apxi)v 6 'tl Kat AaM» ilf.l.tv, Latin Prindpium quod et loquor vobis which, to be sure, allows no alternative but mistranslation. See Maximinus' exegesis (Gryson ScoUes Ariennes 19 (220, 222)), connecting it with Gn 1:1 andJn I:I. The text crops up again in Ambrose De Fide 111.7.49 (125). My brother (see Preface) suggests that this interpretation was actually intended by the author of the Fourth Gospel, and therefore that the ancients were not perverse in following it. But no English version of the N.T., whether AV, RV, RSV. NEB, orJr. Bible, even hints at this rendering either in text or margin. 79Vigilius of Thapse Contra Arianos etc. 11.32 (PL 62:218). 80S 0 the opponents cited in the Latin Commentary on the Creed oJNicaea, Turner EOIMA I, Jl6(2). .

840

81Ambrose De Fide V.S, 64 (241). 82Early Arianism 394-8. "Ibid. 160--8. 84S0 Moreira Potamius 281-91; whether this was Potamius in his pro-Nicene or his Arian phase we cannot tell. 85Mai Script vet. Nova Coll. IIlJrags XX (238) and XXI (238. 239). 86Les Adem '243. 1170r rather Meslin's attribution to Maximinus, whom he is inclined to see everywhere, but the author is certainly Arian (Les Ariens 244-5).

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

generated God' (de ingenito deo genitoque), which he omitted. They may have been Arian interpolations, or the whole may have been reworked by an Arian hand. It is interesting to note that the author of the Apostolic Constitutions, whose Arian proclivities are notOrIOUS, counts among the books of the New Testament the two Epistles of Clement and the Clementine 'Ordinances' (olatayal), whatever exact document he meant by that. ss Athanasius reproaches his Arian opponents for using an appropriate sentiment from Hermas' Shepherd, which runs thus:

out another list designed to show that the Bible says that Christ is worthy of worship: Ps 2:7 (eked out by Mtt 3:17 and 4:1I), 96(97):7; Heb 1:6; Isa 45:14;Jn 13:13, 20:28 and Ps 24: 10. 94 Pollard in an article dealing with the hermeneutical principles of Athanasius singles out five: sufficiency of Scripture, scope (i.e. ultimate intention) of Scripture, custom of Scripture, style of Scripture and context of Scripture'" We may grant all this, and allow that Athanasius had a firm grasp of the ultimate drive or burden of the New Testament at least. But we cannot but observe the great gulf which divides him, and virtually all his contemporaries of whatever ecclesiastical complexion, from the moderns in his methods of handling and presuppositions in approaching the text of the Bible. Marcellus of Ancyra solved the difficulties presented to his generation by Prov 8:22 and 1 Cor 15:28 by applying the first to the incarnate Word and the second by his peculiar doctrine of the reabsorption after the rendering up of the kingdom of the Logos into God and the disappearance of the Son (i.e. of the human nature of the Logos when incarnate). In the first he was paid the flattery of imitation by almost all the pro-Nicenes thereafter, for the second he was execrated and deposed by the anti-Nicenes and finally condemned, though with reluctance, by those who had been his friends. He perceived as virtually nobody else did how very unsatisfactory was the universal habit of reading into the Old Testament the presence of the pre-existent Son and tried to remedy it. He declared that at Gn 1:26 ('Let us make man') God was as it were exhorting himself, like a sculptor before beginning a piece of statuary"· The pro-Nicenes of course interpreted it as God addressing his Son, and the Jews alleged that he was talking to angels. Marcellus' favourite texts, after 1 Cor 15:24-28, wereJn 10:30 and 38, 16:r5 and Col 1:15, 16'" Hilary can produce cogent and effective exegesis. Combatting the Ebionite doctrine that the pre-existence of the Word was only as a word (sonus) not as the distinctly existing Logos, he explains that John wrote that the Word was with (aputT) God, not simply in God, and that 'the Word was God'. This means that 'the Word is proclaimed to be not in somebody else but alongside (cum) somebody else ... 'Let

'First of all, believe that there is one God who created and ordered everything and brought everything out of non-existence (tIC tau Il~ OVtO~)

into existence.'

The Arians, he says, accuse the pro-Nicenes of using 'non-Scriptural expressions' (uypa<pol M~SI<;), but they are themselves using a nonScriptural book.s9 Pseudo-Maximus of Turin can appeal to Hermes Trismegistus and to the Sibylline Oracles. 90 It is not easy to epitomise the exegetical practice of the praNicenes, though readers of this book will perforce have seen something of it already. We shall glance at some examples taken from the works of a few great names. Athanasius produces as proof text for the divinity of the Son Romans 9:5, where to modern readers it is uncertain whether the expression 'God who is over all' refers to Christ or not, and as proofs for the eternal pre-existence of the Logos In 1:1, Rev 1:8, Rom9:5 again and 1:20, with 1 Cor 1:24 and he adds Isa 40:28 and Ps 90 (89):17, 36 (35):10 and 145 (144):13. 91 Elsewhere he produces a list of testimonies to Christ's Gedhead culled from the Old Testament, Gn 19:24 (two Lords in heaven), Ps 1I0 (109):r; 45 (44):6, and again 145 (144):13. 92 In the New Testament for the same doctrine he appeals toJn 6:15,17:10,1:1, Rev 1:8 and againJn 8:12, 1:3, 5:r9, Rom I:20,Jn I:r, 9, I Cor 8:6 (compared with Amos 3:13), Heb 1:6, Mk 4:II, Mtt 24:31, In 5:23, Phil 2:6. 93 A little later he sets 88Apostolic Constitutions (Funk) VIII, xlvii.8S (592). 89De Decretis 18.3-5 (IS). The passage quoted is Mandates I.E of Helmas' Shepherd. 90Tumer 'Maximus of Turin against the Pagans' p. 331 lines 319-2) and p. 332 lines 352--g. 91 0,. con. AT. I la, II; at'12 he adds)n 1:3, Col 1:17. In 14:9, Heb 1;2, Daniel (LXX) Il:42 (Susanna 42) and Baruch 4:20, 22.

92lbid.II.ll. "De

Sr". 49:1-5 (273. 274).

940r. (011. AT. 11.23. 95'Exegesis of Scripture' 419-29. 96Sec above p.225. 97S0 the Commentator on the Nicene Creed EOMIA 337(2). and for Marcellus' favourite texts see Gericke Marcell von Ancyra 178.

•

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

the sound of a vocable and talk about a thought cease. This Word is fact (res), not a sound, nature, not speech, God not vacuity'. 9S The proof texts which he throws at Sabellianism (refusal to acknowledge the distinct existence of the Persons) are Mtt I7:s,Jn 14:28, 12, 11:41, 17:5, Mtt 16:16. 99 To prove that the distinct existence of the Son is known in the Old Testament he musters Ps 45 (44):7 (8), Isa 43:10, Hosea 1:6,7, Ps 2:8, Isa 4S:rrff(this last a trump card, to which much exposition is devoted) and Baruch 3:36f.'00 The proof texts for the Son's birth from the Father areJn 10:30 and 14:7-12.'0' Elsewhere he uses the traditional very unconvincing proofs of the existence of more than one Person in God: God apparently addresses a command to another at creation (Gn 1:6,7); 'Let us make man' (Gn I :26) implies more than one Person ('he removed the assumption of his solitariness by declaring that he has a partner'). His final statement is a fine one: 'And for us too neither a solitary nor a diverse God is to be confessed', but his proofs for this sentiment from the Old Testament are fragile in the extreme. '02 He reproduces also all the traditional epiphanies of Christ under the old dispensation: the figure with whom Jacob wrestled, the figure who stood at the top ofJacob's ladder, he whom Moses saw in the Burning Bush, he who gave Moses the law on Mount Sinai,,03 and then ranges through the prophets on the same principle. ;04 The Arians would of course have accepted all this fallacious evidence as valid, but would simply have applied it to witness to their reduced and inferior Son. The reader gains the impression that as long as the two opposed parties are on the ground of Scripture they seldom come seriously to grips with the real issue. Basil, facing an opponent who is at once more specific and more sophisticated than those against whom Athanasius and Hilary were

wrItmg, though he accepts and where necessary deploys the traditional proof texts, is compelled to be more careful and more cogent in his appeal to Scripture. For the consubstantiality of the Son he producesJn 6:27,1:15, Phi12:6, 7,Jn 14:19, 17:10, S:26,Heb 1:3. In particular he says of the text from Philippians: 'I say that. the text "to be in the form of God " is equivalent to being in the ousia of God. For just as the text "to assume the form of a slave" means-that our Lord came into' existence in the ousia of humanity, so also to be "in the form of God" suggests certainly the particular nature

(1516t'1ta) of the divine ousia.' 'os

Again, he can say 'He was and he was begotten. But "I have begotten" (Ps 110 (109):) denotes the cause from which he has .the beginning of his existence;

"was" an 1:1) denotes the timeless and primaeval

Later he produces a shower ofproof-texts designed to display at once the function and the divinity of the Holy Spirit: Ps 33:6;Job 33:4; Isa 4 8: 16; Ps I39:7;Jn 1:12; Rom 8:15; Mtt 23:Io;Jn 14:26, I Cor 12:4-6, II; Acts 21:II; 1 Cor 2:10, II; 1 Tim 6:13;Jn 10:27; Rom 8.:II .. 107 But even after all this documentation he is honest enough to realize that it is not wholly convincing, and that on this point he must round off or complement Scripture with the experience of the Church.'os In his third theological Oration Gregory of Nazianzus gives a succinct list of passages from the Bible calculated to supply a proNicene controversialist with a handy arsenal of prefabricated arguments, thus: That the Son is Cod: In I:r; Ps

98De Trinitate II.II. 99Ibid. 11.23 (59). Notice that no ancient exegete ever troubles to give texts in order as they occur in a particular chapter or passage: it is their 'atomic' attitude to the Bible that is responsible for this, the assumption that almost any passage can be pulled clean out of its context and directly applied to the subject in hand. loolbid. IV .45-3 I. But in the Tractatus de Mysteriis 11.14 (37) he refers to Gn 19:24 (the Lord sending down rain from the Lord) to God giving orders apparendy to the Son (,Let us make man'), to God creating (through the Son),and to God (one God) making man in his own image. The passage is rhetorical and obscure. IOlVIII.4. I02IV. 16, 17. 18: the Latin for the quoted words is nobis quoque nee solitarius tantum nee diversus est eonfitendus. 103Y.I!r23 (169-'75). I04Y.2S (l77t1).

(lIpOUUOVIOV)

existence'. 106

lIO

(109):2 (3) (,With thee is

government' is Gregory's version (he does not appeal to 'this day have

I begotten thee'»; Isa 4"4 {'he who calls him Beginning from the generations' is his version)

That he is the only begotten Son:Jn I:r8 (where he reads 'only-begotten Son' not 'only begotten God'). That he is the Way, the Life and the Truth: In 14:6; 18:12 and various other passages conferring titles, 1 Cor 1:24; Heb 1:3; Wisd 7:26; In 6:27· Eunomium 1. 18 (55 2 -3). '06Ibid. H.17 (608).

105 Adv.

1017HI.4 (661-665). IOKSI..'t'

above PP.777-9.

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

That He is Lord, King and He Who Is: Gn 19:24; p, 45 (44):7; Rev 1:4,

in my hypostasis' LXX), which had no remote connection with the Christian doctrine of God as understood in the fourth century, but whIch undoubtedly provided in the Greek mistranslation the word hypostasis. The best that can be said for this kind ofjuggling is that it showed the almost desperate desire of the theologians to base their doctrine on Scripture. Ambrose similarly gives the impression that hIS proof texts for pro-Nicene doctrine were learnt by rote. 113 And he falls mto the trap, though he. certainly knew Greek, of translating In 8:25 as 'th~ Begin~ing which I am who speak to you'. 11. SImonetti m an Illuminating discussion of the handling of SCrIpture by the pro-Nicene writers l15 remarks that these authors when they took over the traditional interpretations of the epiphanies of God in the Old Testament as appearances of the Son were embarrassed to find the Arian writers seizing on these and using them as examples of inferiority of the Son to the Father, and that the proNlce~es before the appearance of the Cappadocian theologians, at !east m the .west, could not exclude something of the notion that mcamatlon Imphes mferiority. 116 Gryson goes further, and declares that the pro-N~cenes were always a little apprehensive of entering the ground of SCrIpture m encounter with the -Arians:

8; 4:8; n:I7; 16:5. 109

On the difficulty presented by the fact that the New Testament appears to witness undeniably to the subordination of the Son to the Father, Gregory is both ingenious and honest. Christ is subordinated, he says, or is yet to be subordinated, in us who are subordinate or to be subordinate, as he is said to be a curse and sin (GaI3:!3; 2 Cor 5:21), because we are so; and the cry of dereliction on the Cross (Mtt 27:46) means that we are abandoned for our sins and that Christ is thus far abandoned in us. But he is not really abandoned and does not really dread suffering. llo And, as we have seen, Gregory, like Basil, also admitted that the witness of Scripture to the Godhead of the Holy Spirit needed supplementing. I I I Among all the biblical expositors of the fourth century Gregory brings to bear on the text the greatest force of ordinary common sense. The pro-Nicenes are at their worst, their most grotesque, when they try to show that the new terms borrowed from the pagan philosophy of the day were really to be found in Scripture. The Greek speakers cannot pretend that ousia appears in either Septuagint or New Testament, but they rack the Bible to find examples of hypostasis, and when they find it do their best to make the context appear relevant. With one doubtful exception, Heb 1:3 where it means 'substance', whereas they want to make it mean 'person', this is an impossible task; but the impossibility does not deter them. (The Latin speakers were a little better off because all that they had to do was to find substantia somewhere, though it was embarrassing that the word could mean both 'substance' and 'Person'). The favourite text wasJer 23:22"2 'If they had stood in my council' ('if they had stood 1090 ra l. 1 I 00ra,.

XXIX,I? XXX.5.

IIISc.'C above PP.782-3. 112Athanasius, Marius Victorinus. Phoebadius and Gregory of Elvira use it. Potamius of Lisbon (in his pro-Nicene mood) found four examples of substantia in Scripture (not three, as Moreira (Potamius 235) who has failed to recognise one not italicised in the Migne text) in his work De Substantia:Jer 23:22 read si stetissent in substantia mea in Potamius' Bible Gerome's Vulgate corrected this to in consilio meo). and 9: 10 non audierunt "oeem substantiae, which is a Latin translation of the LXX (9:9) OUK i'jKOuaUV cpoovi!v 61tap~to:x;. The original (believe it or not!) means 'they did not hear the Jowing of cattle' (V ulg voeem possidentis). But clearly Potamius, a man by all appearances of no great learning nor sophistication, was merely reproducing an earlier source.

:because the sacred ~ut.hors were not acquainted with the philosophic

Idea of consubstantlality, and their language tended to support the archaising theology of the Arian,'. The. pro-~~cenes. were in consequence much readier to appeal to tradItIon. It IS mdeed noticeable that the texts adduced by Athanasms to support the homoousion in his De Synodis come very largely from the Fourth Gospel and the Psalms; a few are from the prophets; not many come from Paul, and almost none from the Synoptic Gospels. We have already had occasion to remark on many occaSIOns how confident and embarrassing is the Arian exegesis of the first three Gospels and how uncertain and strained that of the proNicenes. '''E.g. De Fide I ).2) (12); 27(14). 14Ibid. 111.7.49 (125); principium quod 10quor vobis see above n 78 Even Jerome trans1atcd principiuin quia loquar vobis. ' . 115Cris; 505-510. 116 8 He Instances . ! . 0 p. ' CIt. 50?-. particularly Phoebadius, Gregory of Elvira and .I

Hdary. "'sco /.les A'rtennes. 178 n 2;. but Gryson goes on to point out that the Arians could appeal to the Council of ~nminum as tradition also.

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

The reason for this is clear. The defenders of the creed of Nicaea were in fact fighting on behalf of tradition, not in the sense that they were defending what had been already determined to be the doctrine of the church, but in the sense that they were themselves engaged in forming dogma, in working out a form of one of the most capital and crucial doctrines not only of the Bible but of the very spirit and genius of Christianity itself. They only came gradually to realize this. It was in fact only the Cappadocian fathers who faced fully the fact that they were contributing to the formation of dogma, and they did so only reluctantly. It was only very slowly, for instance, that any pro-Nicenes recognized that in forming their doctrine of God they could not possibly confine themselves to the words of Scripture, because the debate was about the meaning of the Bible, and any attempt to answer this problem in purely Scriptural terms inevitably leaves still unanswered the question 'But what does the Bible mean?' Hence the frantic attempts to find the words ousia and hypostasis in Scripture. The Arians and the Macedonians never realized this truth. This ultimately explains their failure to establish themselves permanently. The last word on the appeal to the Bible during this crucial period in the history of Christian doctrine, however, must be of the impression made on a student of the period that the expounders of the text of the Bible are incompetent and ill-prepared to expound it. This applies as much to the wooden and unimaginative approach of the Arians as it does to the fixed determination of their opponents to read their doctrine into the Bible by hook or by crook. This impression emerges strongly in the fact that time and time again both sides produce diametrically different meanings from the same text, sometimes neither of them convincing. We must make allowance, of course, that nobody, except perhaps Didymus, knew the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, and indeed nobody gave it a thought. We must realize that the Latin speakers were labouring under a double disadvantage in that their Bible came to them in the form of a not particularly good translation of the Greek which itself as far as concerns the Old Testament Was a very uneven translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic. But it is not so much the errors arising out of mistranslation that impeded a full understanding of the Bible by the theologians of the fourth century. It was much more the presuppositions with which they approached the Biblical text that clouded their perceptions, the tendency to treat the Bible in an

'atomic' way as if each verse ?r set of verses was capable of giving direct mformatIOn about ChrIStian doctrine apart from its context the 'oracular' concept of the nature of the Bible, the incapacity with ~ few exceptions to take serious account of the background and circumstances and period of the writers. The very reverence with which they honoured the Bible as a sacred book stood in the way of their un~erstanding it. In this matter they were of course only rep.roducmg the presuppOsltlons of all Christians before them, of the wnters. of the New Testament itself, of the tradition of Jewish rabbmlc .piety and scholars.hlp. If the long and involved dispute resulted m leadlI~g figures hke Athanasius to some extent standing back from the Bible and askmg what was its intention, its drift (or ~kopos). mstead of plunging into a discussion of its details based on an Imperfect understanding of them, this was a gain and not an unworthy attempt to evade the strict meaning of Scripture.

84 8

2.

The Influence of the Emperor

If we ask the question, what was considered to constitute the ultimate authonty m doctrine during the period reviewed in these pages there can be only one answer. The will of the Emperor was th~ final authorIty. When Constantius is represented by Athanasius as saying brusquely to the pro-Nicenes at Milan who alleged that he was transgressing ecclesiastical law, 'But what I wish, that must be reg~rde~ a~ the canon'118 he summarizes in a sentence the situation which did m fact prevail over most of this time. Simonetti remarks that the Emperor was in fact the head of the church.'" Epipha . tells us that the Arians of his day not only argued against the ;:~~ N,cenes o~ theological grounds, but also objected: 'You are opposing the Impenal orders and the attitude of the Emperor Valens.'.2o It is clear that at the Council of AquiIeia neither side wished to blame Gratlan .directly for the misunderstanding about the intention and cOmpOSitIOn of the council, though at one point Palladius comes close to domg SO.121 Everybody recognised the right of an Emperor o

/ hiS Hist~rja Ariano.rum 33; on t!lls point, see Zeiller Les Origines 586-7 (the attitude t e Anans), Klem ConstantlUs II 271-96 and Brennecke Hilarius von Pail'

368-'71.·

t19Crisi 21 3. 120Panarion 69.31.1 (r80). 121Gryson Seo/ies Ariennes 84 (270).

lers

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

to call a council, or even to veto or quash its being called ..'22 In fact the policy of individual Emperors towards
encouraged anti-Christian propaganda. But he took no severe measures. When the people of Alexandria murdered bishop George he rebuked them, though his rebuke was a mild one. Jovian had not time to reveal his sentiments fully, though it seems likely that he would have oppressed the Arians had he been given a chance.'27 Valentinian succeeded fairly well in preserving a policy of neutrality in ecclesiastical affairs, but Valens revived the policy ofCoQstantius in the interests of the same school of thought. Gratian began at least by attempting to continue his father's policy. Theodosius was more partisan than any of his predecessors. While he had the same aim as Constantine and Constantius, the unity of the church, he went further than any of them in ruthless suppression of dissent. It is worth while asking the question, why did he succeed in enforcing a much larger measure of consent and a longer period of agreement in the church than any of the other Emperors before him? We can at once dismiss the romantic suggestion, which has sometimes been made, that it was the ordinary Christian people, the mass of the faithful who so seldom had an opportunity of expressing their views publicly, who held out against heretical Emperors, cherishing the true faith in good times and bad. The chief, indeed the only, means of self-expression possessed by the people in the la,te ROqJ.an Empire was the practice of rioting, as is the case even to-day under despotic governments, and during the period which we have surveyed popular riots occurred frequently, but for a variety of different causes and in defence of a variety of different people. The fact that a bishop was heretical did not necessarily reduce his popular support. The pro-Nicene mob did indeed on several occasions support Athanasius tumultuously, but it was a pagan, not a Christian crowd which lynched George in Alexandria in December 361, because he had followed a policy of attacking pagan shrines. Photinus proved very difficult to remove from his see, in spite of ecclesiastical opposition from both East and. West, because he had the support of the populace. The Arian Germinius manifestly has the support of the mob in his dispute with the pro-Nicene Heraelian, and Germinius has to prevent them taking the law into their own hands. Eustathius of Sebaste cannot be dislodged by Meletius, in spite of Meletlus' imperial backing, because he is popular (perhaps as a leader of

'For a decision about which our edicts declare that force and scope are denied it can have no validity',123

Theodosius did not imitate Constantine because he refrained from personally attending the Council of Constantinople of 381, but he watched it carefully and made sure that it did not move 10 any direction of which he disapproved. It was probably he who ensured that an attempt was made to conciliate the Macedonians and who invited the Egyptians and Thessalonicans to attend aft~r the death of Meletius. Constantine in other respects behaved despotically towards the church when he thought it necessary. He writes to the churches after Nicaea like a mediaeval Pope.'2. He despatches a brief, brutal messag,e to Theodotus of Laodicea that if he do,:s not a7cept t~e decisions of Nicaea he will suffer the fate of Eusebms of Nlcomedla and Theognis of Nicaea - deposition and exile.'25 We have seen reason to conclude that though Constantius regarded himself as the ruler of the church he displayed more toleration than he has usually been credited with.'26 Julian opposed and obstructed the church; 'persecution' is too strong a word for his policy. He: ~eprived the clergy and the faithful of financial and economiC prIvIleges whIch had been extended to them by his predecessors; he stopped the pohcy of using the materials of disused temples for ~uilding Christian churches and edifices. When he saw an opportunity to do so legally he punished Christians severely. He was attempting to exelude them from the educational system of the Empire when he died. He 122 50

Ritter Das Konzil 237· . 123Hilary CpU. Antiar. A viii. 1-2 (93. 94). Lucifer Moriundum XIII (293) claImed

that Constantius styled or regarded himself as bishop of bishops, but we must take this statement with a pinch of salt. 124See Opitz

Urk. III No. 25.

127See the Appendix to Athanasius' Letter to Jovian PG 26:820-824. where he is represented as dealing very brusquely with Arian complaints and petitions.

'''Ibid. No. 28 (6J). Il6S(.'C above Pp.318-25.

85 0

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

asceticism); Eusebius of Erne sa finds it difficult to reside in his see, not because he is Arian, but because he is learned and perhaps suspected of magic. Valens of Mursa, Auxentius of Milan and Ursacius of Singidunum were denounced again and again as heretics by the highest ecclesiastical authorities, but none of them was ever deposed, because they plainly had popular support. It is noteworthy that all the expressions of vulgar theological opinion which Gregory of Nyssa complains of hearing as he goes about the ordinary business oflivmg in Constantinople are Arian. '2 • The ecclesiastical historians tell us that the expulsion of bishops of unorthodox views which followed the decisions of the Council of Constantinople of 3 8I provoked nots in manyparts of the Empire.'2' One can of course produce ev.idence for popular support of pro-Nicene bishops, as m the case of L1berlUs (if he can really be called Nicene) and Basil of Caesarea. But it is obvious that popular opinion was influenced by a variety of circumstances, by the personality of individual bishops, perhaps by local patriotism, and no generalisation can be made about it. The crude theory that the Western Church upheld the rights and freedom of the Christian religion against the Emperor's encroachments whereas the Eastern Church (and especially the Arians) tamely submitted to the whims of successive Emperors is rightly rejected by Klein.'3. But certainly the West offered more resistance as far as surviving utterances are concerned than the East. It is true indeed that Athanasius consistently opposed and disobeyed those imperial orders which he did not like, and in the course of his writings uttered several noble sentiments about the freedom and rights of the church.'31 But he had himself used soldiers early in his career as bishop in harrying the Melitians, and when Jovian succeeded Julian Athanasius was quick to enlist his support for the pro-Nicene cause. On the Western side we can note that the 'Canons ofSerdica',

rules probably drawn up by the Western bishops at Serdica in 343, seem at least partly framed in order to limit the possibility of ecclesiastics appealing to the Imperial Court. 132 We must observe the outspoken letter of Ossius to Constantius telling him to keep his hands off the church's affairs,''' and the opposition which Liberius put up to the Emperor before he was exiled. 134 Hilary too protests on more than one occasion that the Emperor should leave the church freedom to order its own affairs, and he rebukes Constantius mildly when Hilary is within his jurisdiction, and with ferocious vituperation when he is under the rule of Julian, for illegitimate intervention of this sort. '35 In their letter to Constantius after the debacle at Serdica, the Western bishops pleaded that each local community should be allowed to choose its own bishop (without, it is implied, interference from the Emperor). 136 We have already seen the relish with which Lucifer ofCalaris attacked Constantius. '37 It is the duty of princes to obey bishops, he declares, and not vice versa. 13. Constantius should have kept 'within the hounds of his authority', and even should thank Lucifer for rebuking him.'39 Against this we can only set from the Eastern Church (apart from the protests of Athanasius) complaints of persecution by Valens from Basil, violent attacks on Constantius and Julian when they were safely dead by Gregory of Nazianzus, and from the latter also some doubt about Theodosius' policy of establishing orthodoxy by coercion. '4 • But Gregory called in state troops to protect him against the encroachments of the Apollinarians, and this faint cheep is the only tiny protest amid the complacent silence with which the other pro-Nicenes accepted the exercise of the Emperor's power in their

128S ce

above p. 806. HE V. 10; Sozomenus HE VII. I 2. Swete remarks on this, Early

129S ocrates

History 96.

'JOKonstantius II 13-15. 131Apol. Secunda 8.1-5 (94), Council of Tyre impugned for permitting military intervention; 144(98) prefect of Egypt overawes the Mareotic Commission with

soldiers; HA 34. I

(202)

the bishops warn Constantius not to break ecclesiastical1aw

nor to cause imperial authority to interfere with the church's rules; 36.1-5 (203); eloquent though probably fictitious protest ascribed to Liberius on behalf of traditional freedom of the church against threats and bribery of the eunuch Eusebius. It is worth noting that Athanasius on the whole tried to exempt the Emperor Constantine from blame; see HA 1.2 (183) and contrast 50.2 (212).

132S ec C. H. Turner 'Genuineness of Sardican Canons'. 13JSCC above Pp.334-5. cf Simonetti Cds; 225. I :4Even if we discount Athanasius' imaginative narrative, there are Liberius' earhest letters, and Sozomenus HE IV.4, Theodoret HE 11.16; see Declercq Ossius 440-1. . "'Col/. Anlior.Appendix [[.1(6) (185); BI Praef. 5 (WI); De Srn. 78 (53 I) (mild); Lib. «Ill. Constantmm 24-27 (600-602) (violent denunciation mingled with decent protcst).N. B. like Athanasius, Hilary is careful to excuse Constantine. l.l6Liher 1 ad Constantium (Appendix in Coll. Antiar.) 1.1-4 (181-8 3). 137Above PP.33 2-3. !JaDe Athanasio VII (12, 13). 1391bid. XXIX (49). It is noteworthy that Lucifer does not hesitate to include Constantine as well as Constantius in his invective, see De Reg. Ap. VI (147), De Non Conv. IX (179), De Non Porco XIII (219). '4°De Vita Sua 1273-1305 (116).

The Controversy Resolved

cause. Neither East nor West formulated any coherent theory during the period under review of the relation of church and state. 141 When the state brought pressure to bear on them bishops of every theological hue complained. When it used its power to coerce their opponents, they approved. The truth is that in the Christian church of the fourth century there was no alternative authority comparable to that of the Emperor. The century did indeed see an increase in the power of the bishop of Rome, but he still could not be regarded as a figure even remotely as powerful as that of the Emperor. Though Sylvester sent representatives to Nicaea in 325 we have no reason to think that he was consulted about its convoking or procedure, far Jess that his representatives presided at it. Julius used the dispute which sent prominent bishops as refugees to his see in order to enhance his own claims to authority, and the Western bishops at Serdica to some extent supported him in the canons which they passed there. But the Eastern Church (with the notable exception of Athanasius) resented, and righdy resented, his attempt to overrule the Council ofTyre and to act as a court of appeal from its decisions. The Pope succeeded in the end only in adding unnecessary fuel to the·. flame of controversy.'42 Liberius began by asserting the independence of his see and of his church, but \lis subsequent abject surrender to the will of the Emperor and his acceptance of the Emperor's doctrine undid all this earlier constancy and served to emphasize the weakness of his position. Damasus had the good fortune to live under Emperors who were either neutral to his cause or favourable to it (for the influence of Valentinus II and his mother can hardly have affected him). His policy of forceful self-aggtandisement succeeded for the most part in the West, but made no impression at all on the East. He was never in communion with the outstanding defender and former of orthodoxy in the Eastern Church, Basil of Caesarea, and at various times he supported figures of doubtful orthodoxy, Paulinus and Vitalis. He was never powerful enough to depose the standard-bearers of Arianism in the West, Auxentius, Germinius, Valens and Ursacius. The crucial Council of Constantinople of 381 took place without his being consulted, indeed against his will. His suggestion that a general council should take place in Rome in 382 was politely rebuffed. 141Borchardt observes this in the case of Hilary, Hilary's Role 172. 142See Simonetti C,;si 149-152.

854

The Development of Doctrine

And if the Pope could provide no authority to rival that of the Emperor, far less could any council. The history of the period shows time and time again that local councils could be overawed or manipulated by the Emperor or his agents. The general council was the very invention and creation of the Emperor. General councils, or councils aspiring to be general, were the children of imperial policy and the Emperor was expected to dominate and control them. '43 Even Damasus would have admitted that he could not call a general . council on his own authority. But the Emperor's authority was not unlimited. He could not indefinitely coerce the consciences of the great majority of his subjects. Even Constantine, Constantine who had unexpectedly almost miraculously, turned imperial displeasure towards Christianity into imperial approval, whom Eusebius of Caesarea treated almost as a god, was unable to impose the creed N on his subject for more than a short time. His son Constantius made strenuous and apparently successful efforts to bring about doctrinal unity by coercion, but his achievements lasted no longer than his lifetime. There were always men and women who preferred whatever penalties the government might inflict to professing to believe in doctrine which they thought false, and this applies equally to the pro-N,cenes and the anti-Nicenes. Imperial opposition, discouragement and persecution were exasperating and debilitating, but they usually dId not achieve their aim of stamping out the dISsenters and heretICs. The Manichees - the most suspected, disliked and execrated of all sects - continued to exist in spite of all the Emperors could ~o. We must therefore conclude that the reason why the rehglOus pohcy ofTheodosius on the whole succeeded, whereas that of Constantine, Constantius and Valens had failed, was because it was supported by a genuine widespread consensus of opinion in the church. Sheer coercion would not have achieved this. And the consensus was present bec
issue between Arius and Alexander had first been raised the fundamental questions had been explored, identified and fully 143S ee ~imonet~ Crisi ,170. 388: According to the Roman Catholic theory, the Pope has SInce acquIred thiS authonty. But the Orthodox have so far not recognised an~. Council ,which was not caned by a Roman Emperor. The last took place, on theIr t?eory. m 787. The~e few facts show how frail and how futile is the suggestion,

sOI?etlmes found even 10 Anglican quarters, that some outstanding issue should walt to be solved until a General Council should be called to decide it. This is to postpone a decision till the Greek Kalends.

855

I The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

debated, and a solution of them had been reached which appealed to the great majority of thoughtful people and corresponded also to the spiritual needs, aspiration and understanding of the mass of the faithful.

The scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had almost all been brought up on the works of Plato and of Aristotle, with which they were thoroughly at home. But by the fourth century seven hundred years had passed since the days of those two great philosophers, and Greek tho\lght had not stood still during that time. A quite new and most influential philosophy - Stoicism - had sprung to life, flourished and begun to decline between the day of Aristotle and the day of Athanasius. Platonism had undergone more than one drastic change, and a new and brilliantly conceived form of Platonism, the philosophy of Plotinus, had emerged as the last great flowering of ancient Greek Philosophy. Mathematics, medicine and physics had all made advances during this period. Above all, the spirit of Greek philosophy had altered. Eclectism, by which a single thinker could borrow and put together several different elements from different systems of philosophy, had become the prevailing and popular method; the works of Plutarch and of Philo are only two instances of this. A general assumption in favour of religion, of an integration of theistic belief, often monotheistic belief, in one form or another now characterised Greek philosophy. Sheer rationalism was at a discount. Neo-Platonism, austerely philosophic though it was in its origins, had by the fourth century begun to ally itself with theu.rgy, with an interest in the occult on one,ide and with mysticism on the other. The works of Aristotle were still read, or at least parts of them were, and his thought was still influential at least in the realm of logic and of cosmology; but Aristotelianism as such scarcely existed. The third and fourth centuries were the age of epitomisers, doxographers, of selections and manuals. Even the most intellectual theologians, with the possible exception of Marius Victorinus, are most unlikely to have read right through Plato, though all of them would probably have read the Timaeus and the Symposium at least. This'radically altered climate of philosophy, which can only have been dimly glimpsed by scholars such as Newman and of which even Gwatkin shows little awareness, must be borne in mind when we try to estimate, however briefly, the influence of philosophy on the minds of those who took part in the great debate about the Christian doctrine of God in the fourth century.

3. The IntIuence of Philosophy

Until quite recently the influence of Greek philosophy upon the thought of the theologians of the fourth century was not regarded as an important question. With the work of such scholars as the Englishman Hatch and the German von Harnack, however, this became one of the burning issues in any discussion of the subject. Strong opinions on both sides were expressed, i.e. that Greek philosophy had virtually no influence on the fathers, or that their thought was so much soaked in Greek philosophy that their doctrine corrupted and distorted original genuine Christianity. Some, such as Wolfson, thought that the influence of Philo and of Gnosticism combined accounted for the development in doctrine which the fourth century witnessed. Prestige, curiously, found it possible virtually to ignore the qnestion. Two fairly recent developments in scholarship have thrown 'much light upon the subject and have enabled ns to make a more accurate and more realistic estimate of the subject. In the first place, Gnosticism has been much more fully investigated than before, especially by the help of such newly discovered documents as the Nag Hammadi find. It has become clear that though Christianity in the second and third centuries was not uninfluenced by Gnosticism, either by reaction or by absorption of some of its features, by the fourth century the Gnostic threat to the Christian faith was over and none of the many diverse forms of thought or belief which that term covers figured seriously as an influence on Christian thinking. The other new factor in the situation was the much greater attention paid to the history of ancient Greek philosophy during the third, fourth and fifth centuries A.D., an attention signalized by the publication of the Cambridge History of Late Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy in 1970 and the appearance of numerous books on Middle Platonism and Neo-Platonism. '44 of

I 44For a su~cinct and informative account of change in studying the philosophy me Fathers, see A. M. Meijering God Being History 'Zehn Jahre Forschung zum

Thema Platonismus und Kirchenvater', 1-18. This is a book which deserves much more attention than its ridiculous title suggests.

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

Several passages can be produced in which fourth century writers disparage or reject .philosophy, and usually the rejection is the more confident the less sophisticated is the writer. The unorthodox speaker in the Dialogue oj Adamantius, as they begin to debate the subject of the resurrection of the body, asks the other speaker to 'leave aside philosophical arguments and rely on the Scriptures only' .'45 In his De Incarnatione Athanasius states that no Christian needs philosophy because he has the proof of the truth of his belief before his eyes; all that the Greek philosophers could do was to convert a few people, and they only locals. But he allows that philosophy attained to the truth concerning immortality and a virtuous life. 14• Hilary at the beginning of his De Trinitate speaks disparagingly of 'the argument based on universal opinions' because it is 'incapable of reaching heavenly knowledge' and 'thinks only that to be really existent (in natura rerum esse) which either it observes within itself or can by its own capacity prove to exist"47 and with this appeal to universal opinion he later couples 'the futile enquiries of philosophy' .'48 Epiphanius, who was no great intellectual, can produce no more than the wretchedest parodies when he tries to give an account of the philosophies of Plato and of Aristotle. '49 His descriptions of numerous other Greek philosophers are mere glib vulgarizations. Ambrose is capable of referring to Plato's Symposium in these terms:

a greater or lesser degree indebted to Greek philosophy. The ancients did not distinguish sharply between .theology, philosophy, psychology, physics, mathematics and medicine as we do today, but took them all in one embrace. If any wnter had had a hIgher education (that is any stage beyond the grammar school) he would perforce had imbibed some philosophy and would have sucked m certain fundamental assumptions in the process. Dorrie at one point attempted to make clear-cut distinctions between what were the critical assumptions of Platonic thought and what were the baSIC doctrines of Christianity accepted by all theologians which contradicted or clashed with them, but Meijering had little difficulty in showing that the true state of affairs was much more confused than that.'52 One can draw up a rough list of the general presuppositions derived from contemporary philosophy which were likely to occupy the mind of any Christian theologian in the fourth century: reality meant ontological permanence so that God, the highest form of reality, is most immutable of all; and he cannot in any way involve himself with pathos (process, change or flux or human experience) - a conviction which held obvious difficulties for the Bible account of the history of salvation;'53 the soul has existed from eternity, is distinct from the body and is immortal and indestructible; ideas about psychology and ethics derived from Stoic, Platonic and sometimes Cynic philosophies as well as those provided by the Bible.'54 These did not necessarily cancel nor obscure Biblical ideas and assumptions in the minds of those who held them, but they certainly coloured and shaped their general outlook. Origen had in the third century given a brilliant example of how to synthesize Christian doctrine and contemporary philosophy (Middle Platonism in its last stage combined with some Stoic ideas). His performance had, however. stunned rather than fired his contemporaries and successors. There were no Origens in the fourth century and references to him were usually polite and wary rather than enthusiastic, except for those few who attacked him like

'Plato summoned souls to this drinking-party, but he could not satisfy them because he was providing the cup, not offaith but of non-faith' (perjidiae) 150 And any pro-Nicene who read the work of Aetius or Eunomius was loud in his condemnation of their reliance on the techuique derived from Aristotelian logic. '51 But in fact all Greek-speaking writers in the fourth century were to 145Dialogue of Adamantius 859 (202). The interlocutors here are often at crosspurposes with each other because they cannot discern what the Bible does not teach (e.g. the immortality and indestructible nature of the soul) from what it does. 146 47 . 1 - 5 . 1471.12 (12),

14'1.13 (13). Fide 9.12 (s07) and 9.3S (s08). 150De Fuga Saeculi 8.51. Ambrose believed that Plato was imitating Prov 9:5. l"E.g. Epiphanius Panarion 76.IS.I. 23-4(371), 26.S(273). 28.2(377) (Aetius; Epiphanius knows Hute about Eunomiush Gregory of Nyssa Con. Eunom. l.ISS (297), IS6-I60 (297, 300), 1.188-9 (308). iI 306 (lOIS). SIO (1081). III (viii) 43 (844-S): Ps.-Didymus De Trini'a'e iI. 3. 30 (S8). 149De

85 8

152See 'Wie Platonisierten Christen?', 133-146 in God Being History. ii10UV a
1531'6 yt atp&1tTOV,

ecrttv. 'that which is immutable. or rather incorruptible, is simply without beginning, without end and beyond time', Ps-Didymus De !rin. 11.6.3.7(114)" 154It is fascinating to observe in the Canonical Letters of BasIl of Caesa rea how In order to regulate the morals ofhis flock he mingles without gene ideas, customs and rules from the Pentateuch, from the Wisdom Literature of the QT, from the NT,

from Stoic ethics and even sometimes perhaps from Roman law.

The Controversy Resolved

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Methodius, Eustathius of Antioch, and Epiphanius, and at the very end of the century,Jerome (that burnt child who dreaded the fire). Until we reach the Cappadocians, acceptance of philosophy by the theologians is eclectic and opportunist. There is no better illustration of this than the writings ofEusebius of Caesarea who, for better or for worse, was one of the most influential authors of the fourth century. In his Praeparatio Evangelica he quotes a long list of pagan authors, but he relied considerably on other people's epitomes or doxographies, and as far as Aristotle was concerned he did not know him at first hand. A large part of book XV of that work (23.1--{)2.6) is occupied with what might be called 'A Brief Outline of Philosophy' culled from the work of Plutarch, listing under various headings a large variety of natural philosophers. He quotes Aristotle on the four types of causes from Alexander of Aphrodisias.!" He quotes Plato frequently, and clearly has read some of his original works as well as several commentators on him, but in a miscellaneous, opportunist manner, taking pieces indiscriminately out of his works to support the widely-held but quite unrealistic theory that the worthies of the Old Testament had anticipated all Plato's most important ideas and that Plato on a visit to Egypt had picked them up there. For instance, the first part of the XIIth book is taken up with a comparison of the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis with the account in Plato's Symposium of the origin of mankind and of separate sexes. A quotation from Plato's Laws to the effect that it is sometimes necessary for the Lawgiver to lie in order to persuade people rather ,han coerce them is paralleled by the anthropomorphic descriptions in the Bible of God being jealous or asleep or angry."· Every little coincidence or similarity, every image common to Plato and a biblical author, every law in the Pentateuch that bears the least resemblance to anything in Plato's Laws is pressed into the service of this theory. Eusebius admires Plato more than any of the other philosophers.!'7 But he criticizes him too. He dislikes his arguments

for the existence of a plurality of gods.!'· He dislikes his doctrine of the soul, not because it represents the soul as eternal, but because Plato thought that the souls of men might migrate to become the souls of animals.!'· He dislikes Plato's theory that the world and the celestial bodies might be gods.!.o He objects to several details in Plato's legislation such as his suggestion that women should take part in gymnastic exercises and in war, and his ideas about a community of wives.'·! He conducts a severe critique of Aristotle's thought, quoting only from other authors', such as Plutarch, Aristocles, Atticus, Plorinus and Porphyry, attacking several disconnected features such as his doctrine of happiness, of providence, of the eternity of the world and thenon-eternity of the soul, without giving any sign of grasping Aristotle's thought as a whole.'·2 In his De Incarnatione Athanasius can parallel the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation with the doctrine of 'the Greeks' that the Logos inhabits the whole world.'·3 Is he referring to the Stoic doctrine of the divine Logos immanent in the world, or to the Middle Platonist concept of the Logos controlling the world as an emanation from the supreme Being? We do not know, and perhaps neither did Athanasius; he may indeed have intended both. Certainly no Middle Platonist scheme of hypostases could have acted as a genuinely effective model for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, not even that of Albinus nor that of Numenius. Meijering points out that Athanasius in his De Incarnatione quotes from Plato's Timaeus (29E) 'For God is good ... and a good person would not be jealous of anything'!·4 but that does not make him a Platonist. A NeoPlatonist would apply this sentiment to the second, not to the first, of the ultimate hypostases. Even if Athanasius uses the term of God 'beyond being' (t1ttK&lVU 'iic; oOO"iuC;) this does not make him a Platonist. Other Christian theologians had used it before him. Irenaeus, for instance, had used it to show that Plato knew more about God than did the Gnostics (Adv. Haereses III.41). All this quotation of philosophical tags means is that Christians were capable

155,Praep. Ev. VI.9.I. IS6XII.3I. I .2.

157XIU,I7 Similarly Ambrose can say (De Abrahamo 11.10, 69. 70) that the sentiments expressed in Lk I8:29ff. had been magniloquently expressed earlier by Aristotle, the' Peripatetics and the Pythagoreans, but they in their turn had been

158XIII.I5. I -IO. 159XIlI.I6.I-I8. 160XIII.18.1-16. 161XIII.I~2I.

anticipated by Abraham's vision recounted at Gn 15:18 (allegorically interpreted, of course). In De Isaac vel Anima 7.68 he quotes without acknowledgement Plato's

162XIV.2.Z; 16.8; XV.I-I3.

metaphor of the passions as horses in a chariot to be controlled. Presumably it was

'''De Inc. 3: 6 9EO, yap aya96,t"tl ... aya9<j>6t XEpi o068vo, /ivytVOl
by then a cliche.

1634 1.[-'7.

•

quoted without acknowledgement.

860

I

861

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

of using Platonist terms without necessarily being Platonists.'·' Plotinus had indeed named one of his treatises upi tOiv tptOiv ciPXtKOiv ,,"oatciaemv 'On the three ultimate hypostases' .' •• We have already seen Basil of Caesarea quoting this title without approving of it. ' • 7 Eusebius of Caesa rea had quoted it earlier;'·· and Pseudo-Didymus was later to cite his 'high and good God, the second Creator and third the World-soul','·· both happy to think of this schema as a reasonably accurate model for the Trinity. In fact it is not (and Basil no doubt knew this well). The Plotinian One could not be an hypostasis because it is beyond existence; the three are conceived of as being in a descending order, the second and third derived from the one before it and incapable of being attracted by the one after it. Only that which is what Plotinus calls autohypostaton (a word which does not occur in the fourth-century theologians), i.e. which manifests itself in pure being without any connection with the material, can have ontological significance. l7O Before the advent of the Cappadocian theologians there are two clear examples only of Christian theologians being deeply influenced by Greek philosophy. One is provided by Marius Victorinus whose theology is a synthesis ofNeo-Platonism and Christianity, confident and brilliant. One can understand how before he was baptised he could say to his Christian friends that he was in reality one of them. He paid a price for this achievement, of course; among other points, he quite failed to avoid at least the appearance of Sa belli anism. But, as has been observed before, Marius Victorinus had no influence that can be ascertained on his contemporaries in the West. Few, if any, could have understood him, certainly not Ambrose nor Damasus, and Hilary would have been alarmed at his ready use of philosophical terms. The other example is the Neo-Arian theologians Aetius and Eunomius. The first could write a treatise on the Christian doctrine of

God without apparently at any point appealing to the Bible. The second was so deeply enamoured of his analysis of the Godhead conducted by an eclectic use of contemporary philosophy that he believed that there were no obstacles at all to his comprehension of the Deity. They represented a relatively small current of thought repudiated by almost all other Christian parties, pro-Nicene or antiNicene. The Cappadocians, however, present us with a rather different picture. They had all probably had an intenser education in philosophy than other theologians of the fourth century. They were all in a sense Christian Platonists because their intellectual tradition stemmed from Origen and from Gregory Theodorus. But they were all in different ways eclectic theologians, not uncritical devotees of any single system. Sheldon-Williams in his contribution to the Cambridge History of Late Greek and Early Mediaeval Philosophy sums up certain principles which they rejected in any philosophical tradition which they came across; they are:

165Meijering God Being History 14-15 (from the essay 'ZehnJahre Forschung'). 166But Dorrie suggests that it is perfectly possible that this title was bestowed by some editor of his works after Plotinus (Hypostasis 74). 167S l'C above, p. 691. 16SPraep. Ev. XI.I6.4. Eusebius gives further quotations from Plotinus in Xl. 17 and XV.:Z2. 169De Trin. 1l.27 (760). 17°D6rrie Hypostasis 7Q--74. But his statement later in this otherwise valuable essay (79-80) that Athanasius was responsible for bringing the word hypostasis into regular use by the orthodox, and that he declared emphatically the unity of being and hypostasis (quoting to support this view Or. can. Ar. IV.I and the Expositio Fidei, neither of which are likely to be works of Athanasius), is very wide of the mark.

862

'the eternity of the cosmos

the divinity of the individual human soul the belief that the soul is a substance distinct from the body from which it can and should escape as from something evil'.171

And he similarly summarizes what in his view the Christians shared with the Platonists: 'the conception of universal nature as a rest-inmotion or motion-in-res.t consisting of three aspects: the eternally abiding First Principle; a procession therefrom through the Forms into their effects; and a return of the effects through the Forms to their First Principle' .'72 For the sake of accuracy we must transpose these highly abstract and impersonal concepts into the personal and rather more anthropopathic terms and images of traditional Christian doctrine if we are to taste the full flavour of Cappadocian theology 173 and we must remind ourselves that the basis of all the thought of these three men was the human person as constituted by his freedom and his capacity to respond to the advances which God makes to him.'74 In this sense they were Christian humanists. The debt of Basil of Cae sa rea to philosophy is undeniable but is not 1710p. cit. 426. 172Ibid. 430. 173See B. Salmone 11 filosofare ne; Luminari di Cappadocia 28. 174This is the main argument of Salmone's book.

The Controversy Resolved

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easy to determine precisely because all are agreed that his philosophical choice was miscellaneous. Giet's edition of the text of his Commentary on the Hexaemeron brings out how freely he borrowed from Aristotelian and Stoic sources for his cosmology and psychology. The books over which the question of the philosophical influences which he underwent have roused most interest are the little De Spiritu at the end of Book V of his Adversus Eunomium and the larger, later book vindicating himself against Eustathius and elaborating his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, usually called De Spiritu Sanclo (DSS). The little book is full of Neo-Platonic vocabulary; if Basil wrote it, then he certainly had some acquaintance with the work of Plotinus. DSS shows us Basil using a good deal of Stoic vocabulary .• 75 His introduction of the word cruvuP.OflSicrOat ('classify as equal with') and 01lUpIOlieicrOuI (,sub-classify') in cap XVII comes from Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics Book A caps 7 and 8.'76 He often in this book, as elsewhere, uses arguments drawn from several different philosophical traditions to assist the progress of his theme, along with arguments drawn from Scripture and tradition .• 77 Hubner has made a strong and attractive case for concluding that Basil's use of ousia is not the Aristotelian prote ousia (first ousia) and deutera ousia (second ousia) - the particular and then the general. Neither is it that 'Platonic realism' (an eternal reality perceptible to our sense only in material or transitory things which imperfectly participate in it), as some (e.g. Lebon) have thought. It is the Stoic, or late-Stoic, concept of ousia as the category which underlies all existence of any sort, an ousia of which the whole world is ultimately composed (though of course Basil excepts the divine Logos from this category).'7. Hubner allows that this does not prevent Basil from borrowing philosophical ideas from several other sources.' 79 The question of Basil's relation to the thought of Plotinus in the DSS, which is perhaps his greatest work, must be pursued a little further. Rist has attempted to discount such Plotinian influence

almost wholly; in a radically minimizing essay he has suggested that Basil knew almost nothing of the thought ofPlotinus, that, with the exception (which he has to admit) of Marius Victorinus, there are no clear signs of acquaintance with the thought of Plotinus until the middle of the fourth century. Basil's use of Plotinus is minimal and could have derived from his knowledge ofEusebius of Caesa rea who in his tum knew little more than a few passages edited by somebody other than Porphyry. He doubts whether Basil is the author of the short De Spiritu.'· o But Rist's case is not convincing; as each piece of evidence has to be explained away by a different argument the thesis dies the death of a thousand qualifications. In particular his rejection ofWaszink's late dating ofCalcidius' Latin Timaeus and his attempt to show that the Ossius to whom the work is dedicated was Ossius of Cordova, and his relegation of Athanasius' Contra Gentes et De Incarnatione to the year 318 are fatally weak spots in his argument. Dorrie in a more balanced survey'·' concludes that while cap IX at least of DSS has plenty of Nee-Platonic and even Plotinian vocabulary, Basil never takes over Neo-Platonic ideas wholesale but rather picks on individual concepts and works them into a quite different sequence of thought from their original context. For instance, the Holy Spirit in Basil's account is like the 'soul' (psyche) in Plotinus' system, but he is more immanent (without losing transcendence) and personal. Plotinus can say that the destiny of the soul is 'to become God, or rather it is God' (Oe6v yevtcr9ul, 1l1i1..1..ov l\'ovtU Enneads VI 6.9); but this could never have been Basil's idea of the soul's ultimate apotheosis .. And Dorrie, here in accordance with Rise's view, allows that the Cappadocians need not have actually read the Enneads as edited by Porphyry.··2 Pruche, in his Introduction to the DSS points out that in cap XVIII Basil uses the Plotinian distinction of the One and plurality; that cap XVIII apparently quotes from the Enneads,'·3 and in his note on the text of cap IX.23 (109)[326; 328], which actually contains the words 'become God' (Oe6v ytvecrOuI) he remarks that the thought may derive from Origen,

175S 0

Pruche lotrod. to DSS 169-78.

176Pruche, lotrod. 159.

.7'Ibid. Introd. 154--68. 178R. Hiibner 'Gregor von Nyssa als Verfasser des sog. Ep. 38 des Basilius' in Epektasis 468-82. Hfibner argues that Ep. 38 is not by Basil but by Gregory of Nyssa. It is in this letter that the relation of hypostasis to ousia is set forth as that of Aristotle's first ousia to his second ousia. Pruche has a note on Basil's use of ousia Introd. to DSS 181-2. 1790p. dt. 482-3.

18°Basil's 'Neoplatonism' in Platonism and its Christian Heritage XII: 138-220. 181De Spiritu SanCIa 55-6 n I. 182Cf. -Hauschild's conclusion that Basil extended the Middle Platonist dual model of reality into a Neo-Platonist triple model 'with the help of Plotinus' rBasileus von Caesarea' 310), which goes further than Dorrie (and, "in my view, the evidence) allows. Hauschild summarizes Basil's work as everywhere 'making bridges between opposites through mediation' (op. cit. 3 II). 183 154-6.

86 5

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but the vocabulary is borrowed from Plotinus. It seems impossible to deny that Basil knew something of the work of Plotinus and consciously employed both his ideas and his vocabulary when he thought them applicable. The most striking example ofthis is the passage in cap XVI when Basil directly refers to the 'three ultimate hypostases', a clear reference to the title of Enneads V.I. But with that very reference Basil shows that he dissents from Plotinus here. 'Do not let anyone imagine', he says, 'that I am saying that there are three ultimate hypostases, nor that the power of the Son is incomplete"84 and in the rest of the chapter he goes on to emphasize the perfection and completeness of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It seems perverse to deny that Basil is here referring deliberately and directly to a passage from Plotinus known to him and is explicitly dissociating his doctrine from it. In cap XVIII he certainly contrasts the One and the mass very mum in the style of Plotinus. (fv 1'0vaBucQic; in contrast to ~v tQiv ltO"A.ciiV).185 But later in the chapter he refuses to number the three as the heretics do, 186 and it is reasonable to take this, with Prume, as a reference to Plotinus. Basil never forgot that he was a Christian bishop, as well as an intellectual, and was bound to safeguard the essential truths of Christianity. In a passage in cap VIII of DSS he makes the point that God's self-giving in the Incarnation is the highest sign we could have of Christ's glory and pre-eminence. It is not so much the superb ordering of the world that commends his superior might:

Gregory of Nazianzus is capable, like all the Cappadocians, of belittling philosophy.''' but he certainly was deeply influenced by Platonism, and not least by Neo-Platonism, 18. though like the other Cappadocians and the theologians of his day in general he used ideas from other systems ofphilosphy, Stoic, Aristotelian and even Cynic, as well. Trisoglio in his summary of the study of Gregory set out in the seventeenth chapter of his book brings out how almost everybody agrees that Gregory used philosophy of every current complexion as an aid, albeit a second-best approach to truth compared with Christianity."o Much the best study ofGregory's philosophical predilection is that of Moreschini in 'n Platonismo Cristiano di Gregorio Nazianzeno'. It is easy to see a debt to Plato in his thought and in relation to Plotinus he certainly has absorbed some of his ideas, but Gregory's thinking tends rather to run parallel to than simply to appropriate his, and sometimes he seems to be deliberately dissenting from him. '" In Trinitarian contexts Gregory parallels Plotinus' nous (mind) to the Father, and the Logos to the Son, "2 and his thought of God as simple as 'first ousia', 'first nature' (Physis), the 'first cause', and his concept of the summum bonum, the object of all aspiration and desire, all resemble doctrines of Plotinus. "3 A well-known passage in the Third Theological Oration contains an unmistakeable reference to Plotinus and at the same time a deliberate modification or rejection of his ideas. He directly dissents from the concept of the three ultimate principles (he calls them 'causes' altta,), referring to 'one of the pagan philosophers'.'94 The

'as that God the infmite should be involved without damage (cinaBiiic;) by the flesh with death, so that he should graciously give us freedom from suffering by his own suffering',lS? Coming as this does in a treatise in which Basil uses the material supplied by Neo-Platonism more freely than in any other of his works (unless we count the De Spiritu), it is an eloquent witness to his refusal to surrender Christian doctrine to any dangerous seduction that might present itself in late Platonism. I84DSS XVI.3(13S) [376, 378J. 185XVIII.4S (149-152) [408]; Proche, note in loco observes this. "6 47 .(I5)}[4 14J. 187DSS VIII.IS (99) [306-308. quotation 30S} Basil of course subscribes to the

traditional 'theft' theory of how the ancient philosophers acquired their wisdom. See Hom. XVI.I (472). In his Address to Young Men he gives cautious approval to pagan literary culture.

866

18'Orat. XXVII.8 (19). 189The opinion of Rose may Ruether that his philosophy was doxographical and anecdotal and that he did not know anything about Neo-Platonism (Gregory of Nazianzus 26-27) cannot be sustained. 190Grigorio di Nazianzo 277-99. 1910p. cit. 1362-82. 192Ibid. I3 82. 193 13 83-87. 1940rat. XXIX.2 (76). The manner in which the Trinity exists is first described thus: 'Therefore the Monad "from the beginning" an I: I) moving into a Dyad ends in a Triad' ... And we shall not dare to speak of an overflow of goodness (6Jt6PXl>OW a:ya96tTtto~)

which one of the Greek philosophers ventured to speak of, like some wine-cup spilling over, when he wrote clearly in this vein while theorizing about the first cause and the second.' Even Rist (,Basil's Neoplatonism' 2IS) cannot deny that this is a direct: reference to Plotinus. Moreschini deals with the passage 'Platonismo di'Gregorio Nazianzeno' 1388-90. He calls Gregory's account of the Monad moving through the Dyad to the Triad 'un Plocino rielaborato' (1391), and concludes (1392) that Gregory had probably read Tractates V.I and V.2 ofPlatious.

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

generation of the Son is not the spontaneous overflowing of goodness in which a first and a second cause is posited, nor is generation against the will (which in fact Plotinus never taught). God produces the Son by his own nature, not by unwilled spontaneity like an overflowing fountain and not by a sheer act of will. And what he produces by the sheer overflow of goodness is the created world, not as in the Plotinian parallel, the world of ideas (kosmos noetos). But when he comes to deal with how God created, Gregory places the Son within the creating Godhead. In Orat. XXXVIII 10 (34) it is thus that the kosmos noetos is created.'" Sheldon Williams prefers to seethe strongest Neo-Platonic influence on Gregory in his basic scheme of God as rest (mone), going forth (proodos) and return (epistrophe) which was, he thinks, the basis of the later theology of pseudoDionysius. 196 In any event we cannot believe either that Gregory completely ignored late Greek philosophy nor that he was entirely dominated by it; in particular we cannot attribute a decisive influence upon his Trinitarian theology to this source. In dealing with the Trinitarian theology of Gregory of Nyssa l97 we have perforce said almost all that needs to be said here about his use of philosophy. He was a disciple of Origen much more consistently than either of the other two Cappadocians '98 and, perhaps as a consequence, he was more concerned than they to build a consistent philosophical account of Christianity. He had therefore much more need of philosophy than they. Even so, like all his contemporaries he did not confine himself, Platonist though he was, to Platonism. He borrowed freely from many sources. His theory of knowledge, for instance, was Aristotelian, in opposition to the Platonic belief in 'innate ideas' of Eunomius.' 99 It is impossible to deny that he was influenced by the work of Plotinus, though opinions may differ as to precisely how he came by it.200 This is particularly evident in his doctrine concerning the soul and how the

Christian can purify his own.201 A. Meredith, in a study devoted to the influence ofPlotinus on Gregory, finds it impossible to deny that Plotinus influenced him but difficult to pin Gregory down to actual quotations,202 but he allows that the most obvious field of influence is Gregory's doctrine of the soul. Yet Gregory did not identify the soul with God, as did Plotinus. Plotinus taught that the soul is divine, Gregory that it becomes a pure mirror of God or at the most that it becomes divine but does not become God. 'We are in the presence of an entire transformation of Platonism' says DanieJou, and he compares Gregory's mystical reconstruction of Christianity by the aid of Platonic materials to the reconstruction effected by the Mediaevals centuries later, with the aid of Aristotelianism. 203 In accepting the reality of the Incarnation and in his refusal to see the Trinity as a graded hierarchy of beings, Gregory made no concessions to Platonism. Muhlenberg goes so far as to say that Gregory of Nyssa's philosophy is ultimately a rejection ofNeo-Platonism, at least in its idea of the structure of being, and is rather an emendation of Origen's work by his own independent thought in order to accommodate the Nicene faith. It is not that he ignored Plotinus; he altered him. 204 Meijering concludes that the Fathers did not directly contradict Platonism in their enterprise of interpreting the Credo, or, to be more exact: they believed that Christianity

cr. Meijering 'The Doctrine of the Will and of the Trinity in the Orations of Gregory of Nazianz us· 225-'7; he cannot avoid the conclusion that this passage is an echo of Enn. V.2.I.7-fJ. 1955ee Moreschini 'Platonismo' 1390.

Cambridge History ofLater Greek Thought442, 446-7. oo above pp. 723f.

196 1975

I 9SS

ee Han Amphilochiu5 von lconium 198 for the places where Gregory mentions

Origen. 1995 0 Danielou L'£tre et Ie Temps 5-8. 200Even Rise allows that in the De Virginitate he refers to the Enneads (,Basil's "Neo-Platonism'" 217).

868

'did not seriously contradict their Platonism, and not, that it did not seriously contradict Platonism' .205

4. The Development of Doctrine

After this long survey of the process whereby the traditional and Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity was finally formed and 2(IlSCC Danie}ou Platonisme et theologie mystique 42,43. lt12'Grcgory of Nyssa and Plotinus, passim. 20JPlatonisme et theologie mystique 215-217. quotation 216. 204'Philosophische Bildung Gregors von Nyssa' 243-4. See also the summary of Sheldon-Williams Cambridge History of Late Greek Philosophy 455-6 and the statement of Ritter 'Arianismus' 714 to the effect that the doctrine of the Trinity is in entire contradiction to the Neo-Platonist three hypostases because the Three in the doctrine of the Trinity are co-ordinated. not subordinated. 205God Being History 145-6, quotation from 145 from the essay 'Wie Platonisierten Christen?'

869

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

established, it is appropriate to ask, what was the process whereby this development took place? We can begin by ruling out some wrong answers to that question which have been given in the past. It is not a story of embattled and persecuted orthodoxy maintaining a long and finally successful struggle against insidious heresy. It should be perfectly clear that at the outset nobody had a single clear answer to the question raised, an answer which had always been known in the church and always recognised as true, one which was consistently maintained by one party throughout the whole controversy. Orthodoxy on the subject of the Christian doctrine of God did not exist at first. The story is the story of how orthodoxy was reached, found, not of how it was maintained. Alexander of Alexandria retained a concept of the subordination of the Son which would have been thought heretical by the Cappadocians. Athanasius had no word for what God is as Three in distinction from what God is as one, and acquiesced in a formulation of God as a single hypostasis at Serdica which by the standards of Cappadocian orthodoxy was heretical. And he had at the beginning no inclination to recognise the existence of a human mind in Jesus Christ. Ossius evidently believed that God is a single hypostasis and was responsible for the Westerners at Serdica saying so. And conversely, the Photinians knew very well that the incarnate Word must have had a human mind, a doctrine for which Hilary condemned them?o. Hilary himself, for all his judicious handling of the doctrine of the Trinity, plunged heedlessly into Docetism when he came to consider the passion ofJesus. The Arians understood' very well the necessity of allowing that in some sense God suffered in the course of saving mankind; the pro-Nicenes consistently tried to avoid this conclusion. The very formula which has always been regarded as the palladium oforthodoxy, the creed N, included in one of its anathemas a statement which could by no ingenuity be regarded as consistent with orthodoxy as the Cappadocians understood it. It was only' very slowly, as a result of debate and consideration and the re-thinking of earlier ideas that the doctrine which was later to be promulgated as orthodoxy arose. . It is equally incorrect to see this process as one of an Hellenization

of an originally simple Christian gospel. The theologians of the fourth century were compelled by the very necessity of doing theology at all to use the terminology of Greek philosophy. We have seen that the truth gradually dawned upon the most intelligent of them (though it was never accepted by the Homoian Arians) that it is impossible to interpret the Bible simply in the words of the Bible. This being so, no alternative vocabulary was open. to them than that of late Greek philosophy. They used this vocabulary with a fme disregard for consistency and an eclectic method which ensured that they were wholly absorbed or captured by no single system but used the materials provided by all. Even the Cappadocian Christian .Platonists at the end were conscious of the necessity of preserving the essential Christian truths without compromise with Platonism, useful though they found that Platonism in certain respects. Only if we define Christianity in such simplistic terms as those to which Harnack thought it should be reduced can we see the process as one of Hellenization. Christianity in order to achieve an understanding of itselfhas always been compelled to borrow, where and as it could, the materials of contemporary philosophy. Again, the process of developing the doctrine of the Trinity was not a deliberate articulation of an impressive structure of dogma undertaken in a spirit of free speculation by theologians who were happy to create a doctrinal system upon the basis of the Bible. A few writers in the earlier period were dimly aware that they were contributing to a development of doctrine. Athanasius recognises that critical moments demand doctrinal decisions when he points out that no such crisis existed at the time of the Council of Ariminum in 359, whereas it did exist at the time of Nicaea in 325.207 And he is making the same point when he speaks of the necessity of grasping the intention (dianoia) and the drift or burden (skopos) of Scripture. Hilary betrays the same awareness when he replies to the objection of the Arians that homoousion is not in Scripture by saying that new developments demand new words and points out that nowhere does the Bible say that the Son is ingenerate (innascibilis) nor even that he is like the Father (the favourite terms of the Arians).2o, Later the Cappadocians acknowledged that they were engaged in a process of developing doctrine when they appealed to the practice and

206S ee Simonetti Stud; 142-44. IS6--? Compare the'conviction of Apollinaris that the human body of Christ is in heaven and will remain there till the end of the age with the idea of Gregory of Nyssa (borrowed from Origen) ,that the humanity was dissolved into the divinity at the Ascension (Gregory of Nyssa Antirrhelicus 232 (Lcidcn»). The heretic is the more orthodox here.

207 De

Synodis 2, 4. 208Liber con. Constantium 16 (593. 594).

The Development of Doctrine

The Controversy Resolved

experience of the church as a support for their doctrine of the Holy Spirit and prepared for some sort of clarification ofN in the field of pneumatology. And all sides, Arians as well as pro-Nicenes, appealed to the tradition of the Fathers, and recognised that they must as far as possible teach doctrine in the light of contemporary requirements but also in consistency with what had been taught in the past. But with these exceptions all theologians show the greatest reluctance to build a dogmatic system or to depart in any way at all from the actual words of the Bible. Their very strenuous attempts to show that the technical terms which they were introducing into the debate were to be found in Scripture manifest this. Further, we must observe that the doctrine of the Trinity as taught by Athanasius and the Cappadocians and as finally accepted by the Church actually put an abrupt stop to one train of development in doctrine and acted as a pruning rather than a developing force. The traditional, centuries-old, much-used, one can almost say Catholic, concept of the pre-existent Christ as the link between an impassible Father and a transitory world, that which made of him a convenient philosophical device, the Logos-doctrine dear to the heart of many orthodox theologians in the past, was abandoned. This was rather a return to Scripture than a development of dogma. There is no doubt, however, that the pro-Nicene theologians throughout the controversy were engaged in a process of developing doctrine and consequently introducing what must be called a change in doctrine. In the middle of the third century Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria; produced in a tre·atise an account of the Son as created which evoked a rebuke from the bishop of Rome but no more. At the end of the fourth century such a sentiment would have·cost him his see. The Apologists of the second century, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hippolytus all believed and taught that, though the Son or Logos was eternally within the being of the Father, he only became distinct or proIa ted or borne forth at a particular point for the purposes of creation, revelation and redemption. The result of the great controversy of the fourth century was to reject this doctrine as heretical. 'For whatever is prior to God, whether time or will, is in my view a dividing of the Godhead' sings Gregory of Nazianzus at the end of his career?o, The break with the past which the evolution of the doctrine of the Trinity made, however, went further than this.

87 2 .

It meant that God is wholly independent of the world, that there is no scale of being at whose summit he shall be placed, no 'continuity of being between the temporal and the eternal' which had been one of the assumptions of ancient philosophical thought. 21 0 I do not say that this was a change for the worse nor a betrayal of either Christian tradition or the witness of the Bible. On the contrary, I believe that it was necessary and right and marked the emergence of a genuinely Christian doctrine of God. But that it was a change can hardly be denied. If we are to find a proper expression whereby to describe the process itself, no better words can be found than to say that it was a process of trial-and-error. After all, human thought in every other field of study or endeavour has always proceeded by a process of trialand-error, and even though this was a process of considering the consequences and corollaries of revelation, it was still a process of human thought. And in such a process it is inconceivable that all the trial should be on one side and all the error on the other. Mistakes, confusion, the re-formulation and re-thinking of previous ideas, were confined to neither side in this long controversy. Indeed it could be argued that the Arians failed just because they were so inflexible, too conservative, not ready enough to look at new ideas. I do not . think that it is particularly helpful to call this process a 'dialectical' one, as Lonergan does,>" though it may not be an incorrect description. It is not enough to say the orthodox learnt from the mistakes of the heretics nor even that the heretics had hold of some truths which the orthodox only gradually came to appreciate. It was only by making errors and correcting them that those whose views finally prevailed were able to see as far as they did and carry out what was a bold and creative new formulation of the truth. In ·order to perceive the full genius and drive of the Christian faith it was necessary for them to some extent to emancipate themselves from the tradition, even from the orthodoxy, of the past. In order to understand what happened to the Christian doctrine of God in the fourth century, we must appreciate what in the end the 210The quotation is from P.24 of the thesis of M. M. Thomas on 'The Christology of St. Hilary of Poi tiers' • in whose early pages this point is well brought out. 211 The Way 'to Nicaea 40-42. This account of the process has some useful things to say but is marred by the fact that the author does not possess a proper knowledge of the texts involved.

The Controversy Resolved

The Development of Doctrine

various participants in the debate were trying to do. This was not a debate about a single iota as Gibbon would have liked to suggest, but did not quite dare to do. It was not a quarrel of Greek metaphysicians imperfectly understood by simple Latin-speaking Westerners. It concerned the basic elements of Christianity itself. Though conducted largely in terms of Greek ontology, it was about the Christian doctrine of God. How can an unyielding monotheism accommodate the worship of Jesus Christ as divine? This was the question which had been with the church since the second century or perhaps earlier and which came to a head in the fourth. Why did Athanasius produce the decisive doctrine which the Cappadocians later elaborated? Why did he write:

more true of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It even seemed to many (witness the protest of the Macedonians) that this was a development made in the teeth of the witness of Scripture. We can see that to refuse divinity to the Spirit would have been to leave Jesus Christ as an isolated, inexplicable historical enigma, or else to see him, as the ancients never were tempted to do but as too much modem theology tends to accept, as a deified man. 'We have to maintain the view', sa ys Meijering, 'that any talk about a divine being which is not truly and essentially divine is mythology .... There must be an inner movement in God which implies both identity and distinction'2!' The theologians who contributed to form the doctrine of the Trinity were carrying out, whether they knew it or not, a kind of theological revolution, and one that left to the next century the task of squaring this new understanding of God with a beliefin the Incarnation, a task which they were not very well equipped to perform. But the proNicene theologians were responding properly and honestly, as properly and honestly asthe circumstances of their age would allow, to a genuine compulsion. In spite of an inadequate equipment for understanding the Bible, in spite of much semantic confusion which required protracted and elaborate clearing up, in spite of being compelled to work with philosophical terms and concepts widely different from those of the Bible, they found a satisfactory answer to the great question which had fired the search for the Christian doctrine of God, and one which won not only imperial support but a wide consensus throughout the church. Development meant discovery.

'For the Spirit is not outside the Logos but is in the Logos and is in God through him '?212

For Athanasius the Incarnation was an indispensable necessity if the goodness and healing activity of God, and not just his justice and truth were to be manifested and communicated to men and women and thus remedy the absurd situation whereby human beings created for a good purpose by God wholly miss that purpose and fall into nothingness and decay.>" He perceived that the alternative offered by the heirs ofEusebius of Caesarea, the picture of a lesser god created and sent by the inaccessible higher god to suffer in order to bring about this healing and restoration, was a completely unsatisfactory one in spite of having some superficial attractions such as an appearance of being more faithful to the witness of the Synoptic Gospels. It could only be called monotheism by courtesy and it always was in peril of making God unknowable as weJl as inaccessible. Nothing could perhaps show more clearly that the proNicenes were following the inner drive and genius of the Christian religion than the development at the end of the process of the doctrine of the divinity of the Spirit. No philosophical necessity pressed here. The·Neo-Platonic three hypostases perhaps eased the situation a little but they had comparatively little effect on the thought of the Cappadocians here. The acknowledgement of the full divinity of the Son was certainly assisted by and partly promoted in response to the religious experience of the faithful. This was even 212Ep. ad Serap. I1l.s. Shapland op. cit. p. 42 remarks on the significance of this sentence. 213 50, finely, Kannengiesser PTAA 212.

214God Being Hislory r61-2, from his essay on 'Athanasius on the Father and the Son', But he goes on to add (102) that what we cannot accept is that Jesus of Nazareth is identical with the Eternal Son and knew himself to be so.

Appendix

Appendix

I

The Creed of the Council of Constantinople of 381

The Creed of the Council of Nicaea of 32 5 (see G. L. Dossetti

n Simbolo di Nicea e di Constantinopoli

(see G. L. Dossetti

22611) ",cr"UOlltV &lr; ijva OtOV "attpa "aVt01CpcltOpa "clVtroV opatiiiv tt Kai aopatrov "OlTJtTJV. Kai &1<; Eva KUPlOV 'ITJcrouv XPlcrtOV tOV ulov tOU OtoU ytVvTJOtvta tK tOU "atpo<; 1I0voyevfj toutecrtlv tK tiir; oucria<; tOU "atpo<;, Otov tK Oeou, <poor; tK <prot6r;, O&l>vaA.TJOIVov tK Otou aA.TJOIVoU, ytvvTJOtvta ou 1tolTJOtvta, 61100U
2

n Simbolo

di Nicea e di Costantinopoli 24411)

£i.e; Eva aeov 1tutepa 1tUv't01cpa:tOpa, 1tOlTJti]V oupavou Kat Yii<;, 6patOOv tt 1tavtrov Kai aopatrov. Kai tI<; Eva KUPIOV 'ITJcrouv XPlcrtOV

1ItO''t&UOJ.l.&V

'tov ut6v 'tou OEOU 'tov J.10voyevij, 'tov tIC 'tou nu'tpoc; yEvv119tv"CQ 1tpO

1tavtrov tOOv aIrovrov,
Bibliography. - Epistulae. Pseudo-Ambrose: De Interpellatione lob et David (Schenk CSEL). - Apologia David Altera (Schenk CSEL).

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Vol. I. The abbreviations used are those to be found in Siegfried Schwertner's International Glossary of Abbreviations. See also the list of Abbrev~ations in the front of this book. Numbers in brackets at the end of references In the text or notes usually refer to the page of the relevant edition; :rhere t~ere afe .t~o sets of numbers in brackets the second set refers to the pages In the Mlgne edItIOn of the text.

A. Original Texts Acta et symbola Conciliorum quae saeculo quarto habita sunl, ed. E.]. Jonkers, 1954· Adamantius, Dialogue of; ed. W. H. van de Sande Bakhuyzen (GCS ser.): ~90(, Alexander of Alexandria: De Anima et corpore deque Passlone DominI PG 18:585-608 (Mai Bibliatheca Nova Patrum 11,529) and]. B. Pitra Analeeta Saera IV, 196-200 (Syriac) and 432-3 (Latin) Fra~ments,). B. Pitr~ Anal. Saera IV, 430-5 1883, repro 1966. See also in OpitZ Urkunde III (ArIan . Literature'). Altercatio Heracliani Laici cum Germinio Episcopo Sirmjensi: PL Supplementum I, 345-50, 1958. Ambrose: Opera ed. C. Schenk (CSEL ser.). 1897· - Exaemeron Libri VI. - De Paradiso. - De Cain et Abel. - De Noe. - De Abraham. - De Bono Mortis. - De Iacob et Vita Beata. - De Ioseph. - De Patriarchis. - De Fuga Saeculi. - De Apologia Prophetae David. - De Helia et Ieiunio. - De Nabuthae. - De Tobia. - Opera ed. O. Faller (CSEL), 1962. De Fide. -- De Spiritu Sancto.

Asterius Fragments in Bardy. G., Lucien d'Antioche. - Homilies ed. M. Richard (50.5 XVI). 1956. Athanasius of Anazarbus Fragments ed. D. de Bruyne ZNW 27, 1928. 100-110. Ps.-Athanasius Homily on the Devil ed. R. P. Casey jThS 36 ((OS))an. 1935) 1-10. Auxentius, see ScoUes Ariennes. (Augustinus) Collatio Augustini cum Maximino Arianorum Episcopo PL 42:7°9-742. -...:.... Sermo Arianorum PL 42:677-84. Commentary on Luke, Anonymous, Latin, Mai Script. Vet. Nova Collectio III. 191-207· Turner, C. H., ed: 'An Arian Sermon from a MS in the Chapter Library of Verona' jThS 13 (OS), 1912, 19-28. - 'An Ancient Homiliary I' jThS 16 (OS), 1915, 161--'76. - 'An Ancient Homiliary II' jThS 15, 16 (OS), 1915, 314-22. - 'An Ancient HomiIiary III' jThS 17 (OS), 1916,225-35 . - 'Maximus of Turin against the Pagans' jThS 17 (S), 1916 (JIy.), )21-37. Liebaert, ed. Deux Homelies Anomeennes pour l'Octave de paques (SC), 1969. Gryson, R. Scolies Ariennes sur Ie Condie d' Aquilee SC, 1980. - Scripta A"iana Latina (CChr. SL), 1982 (also to be found in Mai, Seript. Vet. Nova Colleetio III, 1828, 208-239.) Commentary on Job. Anonymous, Latin PG 17:371-522. Commentary on Job. by JuHanus, Greek, ed. D. Hagedorn, 1973. Opitz, H. G. Urkunden JUr Geschichte der arianischen Streites III, 1934. Palladius, see Scolies Ariennes. Theognis of Nicaea, see Athanasius of Anazarbus. Opus Imperfictum in Matthaeum PG 56:6I2ff.

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Ulfilas (Skeireins). W. H. Bennett The Gothic Commentary on the Gospel of john, 1960. See also Potamius of Lisbon below. Athanasius of Alexandria: Contra Gentes et de Incamatione ed. R. W. Thomson 1971. Orationes contra Arianos I-III, ed. W. Bright (after the Benedictine text) 1873. Epistola Encyclica, ed. W. Bright (Ben~dictine text) 1881.

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Epistuia ad Epictetum PG 26:1050-"71. Epistula ad Ade1phium PG 26:1071-84. Epistula ad Maximum Philosophum PG 26:1085--90. Epistula ad Potamium Episcopum (fragment) PL:IOI:113(1l4). Festal Epistles afSain! Athanasius tr. from the Syriac by H. G. Williams, 1854. (Saint Athanase: Lettres Pastorales et Festales en Caple ed. L. Th. Lefort (CSCO, Scriptores Coptici 19), 1955 (with French tr.). (PG 26:1351-1432)).

(Der zehnte Osteifestbrief des Athanasius von Alexand,ien R. Lorentz, 1986). For Index to Festal Letters see Hislaria Akephala below. Life of Anthony (Latin version) ed. H. Hoppenbrewers (LCP) 1960. Pseudo-Athanasius: Orationes contra Arianos IV Bright 1873.

-

In Illud Omnia etc. PG 25:207-220. De [ncarnatjone, Contra Apollinarem, PG 26:1093-1166. For Exposi/io Fidei, Epistula ad Liberium, Sermo maior de Fide, De Incarnatione et contra Arianas and ReJutatio Melitii et Eusebjj Samosatensis see Marcellus and Marcellans. For Contra Macedonianos (Dialogues I-III), see Macedonius.

Basil of CaeS3rea: Epistles ed. Y. Courtonne (Bude seT.) 1-218,2 vals. 1957. 1961- ed. R.J. Deferrari (Loeb ser.) 1-368, 4 vols. 1950, 1953, 196!. Ad Adolescentes ed. F. Boulenger (Bude ser.) 196$. Adversus Eunomium PG 29:497-'774 (Books I-V). De Fide PG 31:676-j)2. Homilies on Hexaemeron ed. S. Giet (SC) 1968 2 , De Spiritu Saneto ed. B. Pruche (SC) 1968 2 . Homilies PG 31:163-618, 1429-1514. Correspondence with Apollinaris; H. de Riedmatten 'La Correspondance entre Basile de Cesaree et Apollinaire de Laodicee' jThS (NS) 7 (1956) [I] 199-210 (text 202-5 [ID, and 8 (1957) [II] 53-'70.

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Cyril of Jerusalem: Cyrilli Hierosolymorum Archiepiscopi Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia ed. Vol. I W. C. ReischI, Vol. II,]. Rupp 19672. St. Cyril ofJerusalem, Lectures on the Christian Sacraments ed. F. L. Cross 19782. (Catecheses, Mystagogical catacheses, Homily on the Paralytic, Epistle to Emperor Constantius, Fragments. Reischl and Rupp). Dam.sus: Epistulae PL IJ:J47-'76 (see also in EOMIA below). Decretum Gelasianum: see under von Dobschutz. D. in Modem Authors below. Didaskalia Apostolorum see under Arian Literature abov~. Didymus the Blind: Commentary on Job ed. A. Heinrichs, Vols.I-II. Vol. III ed. Ursula Hagedorn. D. Hagedorn and L. Koenen 1968. Commentary on Ecclesiastes ed. G. Binder and L. Liesenborghs (PTA) 1969 Commentary on Zechariah ed. L Doutreleau (Tom. I-II) 19 62 . De Spiritu Sancto Gerome's Latin tr.) PG 39:1033-85. Pseudo-Didymus Contra. Manichaeos PG 39: 1085-1 I 10. - De Trinitate PG 39:269-992. Book led. J. Honscheid 1975. Book II caps. 1-7 ed. Ingrid Seiler 1975. Dionysius of Alexandria: The Letters and Other Remains of Dionysius of Alexandria ed. C. L. Feltoe 1904.

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Aneoratus and Panarion ed. K. Holl (GCS) 1915 (also De Fide). Epistulae Imperatorum, Pontificum, Aliorum: see Collectio Avellana above. Eunomius Apologeticus: PG 30:835-68, Eusebius bishop of Caesarea: Vita ConstatUini and Laudes Constantini ed. I. A. Heikel. (GCS) 1902.

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