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

Torrance’s argument is presented with coherence and eloquence and gains
further strength from the personal faith that underpins it. Yet it leaves a serious
question. What has happened to the historical events of the fourth century? In the
340 pages of a book centred on the council of 381, there is not a single reference
to Theodosius, or even, in the discussions of Nicaea, to Constantine. Although
Torrance decries dualism, there is a sense that the revelation of God through
Jesus Christ hovers at a different level, above the actual nitty-gritty of the
imperial politics that pervaded the councils and the arguments of the Church
fathers. For the historian fortunate enough to have a great deal of evidence from
the period, it is hard to see how the Council of Constantinople can be seen as
providing a harmonious reassertion of the Nicene truth. Even its own leading
participants saw it as a shambles.
The case of Torrance highlights how an alternative theological tradition has
come to supplant the historical reality. Augustine, the founder of this tradition,
did not write about the Council of Constantinople because he simply did not
know about it. Nor does Augustine say much more about Theodosius. In his
accolade of the emperor in The City of God, he only describes Theodosius’
victory over Eugenius at the Battle of the River Frigidus and his penance after
the massacre at Thessalonika. By the time of Gregory the Great, 200 years later,
Theodosius has disappeared completely from the Catholic Church’s records.
Gregory had spent some years in Constantinople as a papal ambassador in the
580S, and he would certainly have known more than Augustine about the
council of 381. He included it at the core of the western theological tradition.
When he became pope, he proclaimed that ‘all the four holy synods of the holy
universal church [i.e. Nicaea, 325, Constantinople, 381, Ephesus, 431,
Chalcedon, 451] we receive as we do the four books of the holy Gospels’. 5 He
added to the authority of the councils his own as the successor of Peter. ‘Without
the authority and consent of the apostolic see [Rome] none of the matters
transacted [by a council] have any binding force.’ This imprinted in the western
Church the belief that the bishops meeting in the councils had themselves
resolved the doctrinal issues, although the papacy should have ultimate authority
over what was to be believed. In short, the emperors had had nothing to do with
the development of doctrine. With memories of imperial rule fading in the west,
there was no reason for any theologian or historian to challenge Gregory’s
version of events. Thus the ‘theological’ account of the fourth century became
ever more remote from the historical reality. It affects the presentation of the
subject in that histories of the Church still accord the Council of Constantinople