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

circumstances, Themistius’ panegyrics were little more than rhetoric. Theodosius
was beginning, however, to learn the importance of distancing himself from the
disastrous legacy of Valens’ defeat and establishing his own distinct image. One
issue he could use was the controversy, to be explored in detail in the chapters to
come, over the relationship between God the Father and Jesus the Son. While
Theodosius supported the Nicene formula, that God the Father and Jesus were of
equal majesty, even of one substance (see p. 54), Valens supported the alternative
‘Arian’ view that Jesus was in some way subordinate to the Father. Theodosius
now claimed that Valens had been defeated because he had forfeited divine
approval as a result of his ‘heretical’ views. The Christian historian Theodoret,
writing two generations later, recorded one of the stories that was put about.
Valens had charged one of his defeated generals with cowardice. ‘I have not
been beaten, sir,’ was the retort. ‘It is thou who had abandoned the victory by
fighting against God, and transferring His support to the barbarians.’ 14 When
Theodosius cleverly equated his Nicene beliefs with the promise of divine
approval, he was not alone. At very much the same time, in the western empire,
the Bishop of Milan, the formidable Ambrose, claimed that those areas of the
empire where the Nicene faith was strong were stable while those where
Arianism prevailed, notably along the Danube, were the most unsettled. He was
building on the tradition that God expressed his support of the ruling emperor
through bringing him victory.
Early in his reign, Gratian had followed in the footsteps of his father
Valentinian in upholding toleration. The first signs that change was in the air
came in August 379, when Theodosius and Gratian issued a joint edict
proclaiming the Nicene faith. The edict is normally interpreted as the result of
pressure placed by Bishop Ambrose on the young Gratian, and there is no
evidence that Arian bishops were subsequently expelled from their sees. So the
next edict, issued from Thessalonika in January 380 by Theodosius to the people
of Constantinople, was rather startling:
It is Our will that all peoples ruled by the administration of Our Clemency shall
practise that religion which the divine Peter the Apostle transmitted to the
Romans ... this is the religion followed by bishop Damasus of Rome and by
Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic sanctity: that is, according to the
apostolic discipline of the evangelical doctrine, we shall believe in the single
deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost under the concept of equal
majesty and of the Holy Trinity.