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

scraps of obsolete traditionalism and uncritical textmongering, on the other it
was a lifeless system of unspiritual pride and hard unlovingness’ runs one tirade
against the ‘Arians’ from a work regarded as the authoritative English study of
the issue for fifty years. 6 It is time that such narrow and prejudiced assessments
of the debates of the fourth century were rejected and the intellectual
achievements of the subordinationists accorded greater respect. It is only then
that the theological sophistication of the debate can be appreciated.
Perhaps the most extraordinary legacy of AD 381 lies in the definition of God
it bequeathed to European thought, a definition that has had an enormous impact
on the way in which the philosophy of religion is approached even today. On my
desk as I write is a well-received volume, Metaphysics: A Guide and
Anthology. 7 Part One is simply entitled ‘God’. Why not ‘The Possibility of the
Supernatural’? It is quite acceptable to conceive, as the Greeks did, of other
ways of conceptualising an immaterial world that does not include a supreme
creator who maintains a continuing interest in one species in one tiny part of the
universe. The primary question in the philosophy of religion should be, one
might argue, that of how to define the supernatural and develop methods to
discover whether such a dimension exists at all. Instead, after AD 381, all the
preliminary problems were ignored and the issue was discussed solely in terms
of the existence or non-existence of a much more narrowly defined entity, ‘God’.
As Richard Hanson recognised (see p. 102), AD 381, followed by the
suppression of pagan alternatives, was a decisive moment that led to the
narrowing of perspectives on the supernatural.
Another result of the closing of the debate was the creation of the
confrontation between science and Christianity. There is no attempt here to argue
that science and religion (which covers an enormous variety of ‘spiritual’
activities) are necessarily in conflict. The problem only arises when religions
begin proclaiming certainties. The Greeks had no trouble in differentiating
between logos - a reasoned account, such as one might find in mathematics, the
sciences or even history - and mythos, an imagined narrative as in a religious
myth or a work of art. Any healthy mind needed mythoi: we cannot live without
imagination and speculation, not least because speculation often provides the
inspiration for reasoned thought. It was accepted that the truth of a myth could
not be proved; its power operated at a different level and one could never assume
any kind of certainty in its content. When the Church acquiesced in Theodosius’
legislative programme, it replaced sophisticated speculation about the ways in