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

doctrine of the human and divine nature of Christ. Here the emperor Marcian’s
officials were instrumental in devising a formula that could then be imposed by
the emperor independently of the corrosive debate of the bishops. When, in the
west, some 150 years later, Pope Gregory claimed that the bishops themselves
had achieved consensus at these councils, he was ignoring the historical record
and the well-documented role of the emperors. This was understandable in view
of his desperate need to assert his own papal authority at a time of social and
economic breakdown, but his initiative allowed the essentially political aspects
of the matter and the historical context to be submerged.
The fact that the emperors provided the framework within which a solution
could be enforced did not mean that the theological debates of the fourth century
were not highly sophisticated. One of the aims of this book is to show that
theological thought operated at as high an intellectual level as other fields of
enquiry for which Greek philosophy was famous. The problem - and here I
would part company with many theologians - is that these issues did not seem
capable of philosophical resolution (and those philosophers outside the tradition
of Platonism would certainly have recognised this). The finding of certainty
depends on incontrovertible axioms or empirical evidence from which an
argument can begin. When the historian Socrates said that the Nicene debates
were ‘like a battle fought at night, for neither party appeared to understand
distinctly the grounds on which they calumniated one another’, he was
describing a debate that lacked any agreed foundations. Although there were
defined areas of conflict - over the interpretation of specific verses from the
scriptures, for instance - the ground was always shifting as scripture and
philosophy were used to achieve different ends. There was never a moment
when the antagonists sat down and tried to set out the assumptions they shared
and their ultimate objectives. Personal and political antagonisms intruded all too
easily. Inevitably there were some, such as Athanasius and Ambrose, who used
bullying tactics, which included the denigration of their opponents. The bitter
nature of the debate overshadows the intellectual qualities of many of the
participants, such as the Cappadocian Fathers and the Eunomians. In short, the
consensus over the Trinity assumed by most Church historians to have been
achieved would have been impossible.
The elimination of the different perspectives, above all those of the
subordinationists, from the Christian tradition is a major loss. For centuries they
were subject to routine denigrations by orthodox theologians. ‘On the one side
their doctrine was a mass of presumptuous theorising supported by alternate