Religious Intolerance in the Later Roman Empire - Bad request ...

In some ways this law is a retreat on the doctrinal certainty of Cun ctos populos
of just under a year before. That law had treated the three persons of the Trinity as of
“equal majesty” in a “single Deity.” This law said nothing of the specific nature of the
Holy Spirit, as it did about Christ and God, rather it restricted itself to decreeing that a
Nicene would not deny the Holy Spirit which “we hope for and receive from the
Supreme Author of all things.” At the same time it articulated more explicitly and
theologically the unity of substance between the three members of the Trinity,
through the phrase “undivided substance…[the] ousia [of the Trinity],” than had
Cun ctos populos. More interestingly, the law appears to bear a remarkable similarity to
the theology and thought of Gregory Nazianzus, the bishop of Constantinople.
Gregory had spoken of the “procession” of the Holy Spirit from the Father, which
this law echoes with its expectation of the Holy Spirit being received by the faithful
from God. The hesitancy of the law in fully stating the complete divinity of the Holy
Spirit is also typical of Gregory’s approach; although believing in the full divinity of
the Holy Spirit, a belief that is apparent in his works, Gregory had been reluctant to
fully articulate his beliefs and to push them to their logical conclusion in order not to
provoke further schisms. 174 Gregory had also written against those who reckoned,
either in thought or in worship, the Holy Spirit to be less than the other members of
the trinity, a theology which this law rejects by stating the “undivided substance of the
incorrupt Trinity.” 175
Anyone who did not agree to these doctrines would be reckoned not to be a
Nicene and should “cease to assume, with studied deceit the alien name of true
religion.” Upon “disclosure” of their crimes the heretics would be branded and
“completely barred from the threshold of all churches since we forbid all heretics to
174 Greg. Naz. Or. 31.8 explains his hesitancy in the form of a semi-dialogue: “if you will explain the
Father’s ‘ingeneracy,’ I will give you a scientific account of the ‘generation’ of the Son, and the
‘procession’ of the Spirit; and thus let us both go crazy through peering into the mysteries of God.”
Translation by Bettenson (1977) 114
175 For Gregory on those who deny the Holy Spirit either by reckoning Him to be in a third,
subordinate place to the other two, or by not bothering to assign Him any place at all, see his Or. 31.5;
for his explanation of the Holy Spirit “proceeding from the Father” see his Or. 31.8-11
215