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

reasoned defence of the Trinity and he made it an article of faith: ‘The truth that
God is three and one is altogether a matter of faith; and in no way can it be
demonstratively proved.’ He went on to argue that trying to prove the Trinity by
reason would actually detract from faith. First, faith had in itself a dignity that
required the mystery of the Trinity to be preserved as one of those ‘invisible
realities which were beyond the reach of human reason’. Secondly, Aquinas
admitted that rational arguments for doctrines such as the Trinity were bound to
be unconvincing and thus they made those who proposed them the laughing
stock of unbelievers. This did not mean that Aquinas did not search for analogies
to help our understanding of the concept, just as Augustine did, but he accepted
that ultimately the human mind was incapable of grasping the full truth. 11 One
has to admire Aquinas, not only for his extraordinary intellectual qualities but
for his integration of reason in theology without destroying Church authority. It
was a fine balancing act even if to groups such as the Averroists it would have
been seen as a capitulation.
Aquinas himself was always under pressure from conservatives. Some of his
writings are to be found in the propositions condemned in 1277, three years after
his death, and it is known that other campaigns were launched against him. It
took the determination of Pope John XXII to recognise his genius and proclaim
him a saint in 1323. His eventual integration into Catholic theology as the
greatest medieval scholar of them all confirmed the status of the Trinity as an
article of faith, a mystery beyond the power of reason to comprehend. As Dante
ascends into Paradise in his Divine Comedy, he experiences the Trinity
essentially in mystical terms. 12
The problem was that this attempt to close off discussion of the Trinity, and
other articles of faith, had to call on the support of the authority of the Church
and state to sustain it. This explains why Innocent III drew in the secular rulers
to support his fight against heresy. The common front of Church and state was
underpinned by the rediscovery of Roman law. A single sixth-century manuscript
of the Digest of Justinian’s law code had survived in the west and turned up in
Padua in about 1070. The code included Justinian’s and Theodosius’ laws
against paganism and in support of the Trinity, so those states that now absorbed
Roman law, including the Holy Roman Empire, also took on the defence of
Christian orthodoxy. Thus the Trinity, embedded at the core of Church doctrine,
was upheld in secular and ecclesiastical courts alike. The threat of prosecution
for denying the Trinity continued in legal systems for centuries. ‘It is striking to