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

sixteen bishops are known for the whole of Gaul for 314, there were perhaps
seven or eight hundred in the eastern empire. Furthermore, it was a culture that
buzzed with speculation on theological issues. At first, like many Roman leaders
before him, Constantine could not grasp the importance of debate to the Greek
mind and how seriously doctrinal issues were taken. With the Donatists there
had been a separate group of bishops who were alienated from their fellows by a
distinctive policy over the admittance of those who had given in during the
persecutions. However difficult it was to resolve, it was a relatively cut-anddried
issue. In the Greek world there was, as there had been for centuries, a mass
of different interpretations of Christianity. Did it matter? At one level for
Constantine it did not, simply because he could not see how anyone could take
seriously all the hours spent nit-picking over words. He seems to have envisaged
God as the heavenly equivalent of a Roman emperor who like him had to
manage different power groups and interests in the higher cause of unity. To his
annoyance, however, he soon discovered that some disputes were getting so
fierce and so entangled in issues of authority and personality that they actually
threatened the peace of the territories he had just won.
The greatest turbulence centred on a confrontation between Alexander, the
Bishop of Alexandria, the richest and most prestigious city of the Greek east and
the setting of some of the finest achievements of the Greek mind in science and
mathematics, and one of his priests by the name of Arius. 15 There were a
number of undercurrents to the dispute - how far did a priest, however learned,
have the right to develop ideas different from those of his bishop, for instance -
but the particular debate focused on defining the relationship between God the
Father and Jesus the Son. This had become one of the most challenging issues in
Christian theology. If Jesus was divine, how could that divinity relate to that of
God? Had Jesus always been in existence alongside God in some way, or had he
been a later creation? The debates took on an extraordinary emotional intensity,
as most of the participants believed that their salvation depended on finding the
correct answer. Alexander and Arius took opposing positions along this fault
line; Alexander arguing for the eternal co-existence of Father and Son, Arius for
Jesus as a separate creation, albeit at the beginning of time.
This debate and those on the nature of Christ that followed in the eastern
Church in the next two hundred years were bound to be intractable. Inevitably
the scriptures, both the Old and New Testament, would be combed for support
by both sides. Yet the Bible as it was being formed in these years (there was still
debate in different parts of the empire over which texts should or should not be