A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

XII
AUGUSTINE SETS THE SEAL
ON the death of Theodosius in 395, the empire was divided between his two
sons, Honorius and Arcadius. As we have seen in Chapter Eleven, in the eastern
empire the precedent set by Theodosius, under which Christian doctrine was
enforced by the state with the support of the Church, culminated in the theocratic
state of Justinian. In the west, in contrast, political authority was crumbling fast
and no emperor was in a position to impose orthodoxy as Justinian had done in
the east. The intellectual climate was also very different. The Romans had never
been great philosophers. Even Cicero, one of their most original minds, had
largely absorbed his ideas from Greek sources. In the Christian era, the gap
between the east and west grew ever wider, largely because the number of
Romans who could read Greek fell dramatically. It is often forgotten just how
isolated the western Church was from its much more sophisticated sister in the
east. In vain did Augustine write to Jerome for more translations of Greek
theological works; many of the greatest never reached the west. Even the gospels
were known only through inadequate translations and no Latin speaker seemed
to have been able to read the letters of the apostle Paul in the original Greek until
the late fifteenth century. 1 No Bishop of Rome and virtually no westerners had
attended any of the major Church councils, and the Latin translations of their
proceedings that reached Rome were incomplete; Augustine was unaware of the
Council of Constantinople of 381, which had taken place only a few years before
his conversion.
The combined efforts of Theodosius, his successors and Ambrose had been to
ensure that Nicene orthodoxy was imposed in the west. All this might have been
lost in the ensuing breakdown of order if a rationale for an authoritarian Church
wedded to the doctrine of the Nicene Trinity had not been articulated by
Augustine. Augustine provided the theological façade that allowed the Church to
consolidate the status and authority it would never have achieved without
Theodosius’ initiatives.
Augustine cannot be understood outside his own exploitation of the theology