Adolf Harnack · 7 of 19

3. To the Councils of Constantinope 381. 383.

3. TO THE COUNCILS OF CONSTANTINOPLE 381. 383.

The three possible standpoints—the Athanasian, the Lucianist-Arian, and the Origenist, which in opposition to the Arian had gradually narrowed itself down to the Homoiousian—had been set aside by Constantius in the interest of the unity of the Church. But the Homœan formula, which had no firm theological behind it, meant the domination of a party which gravitated towards Arianism, i.e., which resolved faith in Jesus Christ into a dialectical discussion about unbegotten and begotten and into the conviction of the moral unity of Father and Son. It was for twenty years, with the exception of a brief interval, the dominant creed in the East. This fact finds its explanation only in the change, or narrowing, which came over what was at an earlier date the middle party. The Arianising Homœans were now conservative and in their way even conciliatory. They disposed of the ancient tradition of the East as the Eusebians had done before them; for their formula “of like nature according to Holy Scripture” contained that latitude which corresponded to the old traditional doctrine. With this we may compare the standpoint of Eusebius of Cæsarea. The old middle party had, however, in the ὁμοιούσιος made for themselves a fixed doctrinal formula. This was a change of the most decisive kind. We may still further say it was not the “Homousios” which finally triumphed, but on the contrary the Homoiousian doctrine, which fixed on the terms of agreement with tale “Homousios.” The doctrine which Hosius, Athanasius, Eustathius, and Marcellus had championed at Nicæa, was over-thrown. The new Origenism which was based on the “Homousios” succeeded in establishing itself. A form of doctrine triumphed which did not exclude scientific theology, a subject in which Athanasius and the Westerns of the older days never shewed any interest. But Athanasius himself contributed to the revolution thus accomplished, though it is very doubtful if he ever came to see the full extent of it.

Julian granted liberty to all the bishops to return, and in so doing did away with the artificial state of things created by Constantius. The Nicæans were once more a power, and Athanasius who returned to Alexandria in February 362, at once re-assumed the leadership of the party. A Synod was held at Alexandria in summer, and this prepared the way for the triumph of orthodoxy in the year 381. It was here resolved that the Nicene Creed was to be accepted sans phrase. i.e., that those were to be recognised as Christian brethren who now acknowledge the ὁμοούσιος, and condemn the Arian heresy together with its chief supporters, irrespective of any former departure on their part from the faith. But still further, the question as to whether it was necessary to believe in one hypostasis or in three was left an open one. (At Alexandria the Holy Spirit had already been the subject of discussion as well as the Son.) Both statements were disapproved of since the ὁμοούσιος was considered to be sufficient, but it was explained that both might be understood in a pious sense. These resolutions were not passed without strong opposition. Not only did some bishops demand that those who had subscribed the Fourth Sirmian Formula should be denied the communion of the Church, but, what was of much greater importance, there was a party which insisted on the interpretation of the Nicene Creed which had been settled by some of the Western bishops at Sardica, and which as a matter of fact was the original one. But they did not press their views, and they seem to have acquiesced in the decision of the Synod. This marked a complete change. If up till now orthodox faith had meant the recognition of a mysterious plurality in the substantial unity of the Godhead, it was now made permissible to turn the unity into a mystery, i.e., to reduce it to equality and to make the threefoldness the starting-point; but this simply means that that Homoiousianism was recognised which resolved to accept the word ὁμοούσιος. And to this theology, which changed the substantial unity of substance expressed in the ὁμοούσιος into a mere likeness or equality of substance, so that there was no longer a threefold unity, but a , the future belonged, in the East, though not to the same extent in the West. The theologians who had studied Origen regarded it with favour. The Cappadocians started from the ὁμοούσιος, though this is certainly true of Gregory of Nyssa only indirectly. They acknowledged the ὁμοούσιος and accordingly set up a system of doctrine which neither disavowed the theology of Origen, that is, science in general, nor yet remained in the terminologically helpless condition of Athanasius. But they succeeded in attaining terminological clearness—they could not improve on the matter of the doctrine—only because they modified the original thought of Athanasius and developed the theology which Basil of Ancyra had first propounded in his tractate. Οὐσία now got a meaning which was half way between the abstract “substance” and the concrete “individual substance”, still it inclined very strongly in the direction of the former. Ὑπόστασις got a meaning half way between “Person” and “Attribute”, (Accident, Modality), still the conception of Person entered more largely into it. Πρόσωπον was avoided because it had a Sabellian sound, but it was not rejected. The unity of the Godhead, as the Cappadocians conceived of it, was not the same as the unity which Athanasius had in his mind. Basil the Great was never tired of emphasising the new distinction implied in οὐσία, and ὑπόστασις. For the central doctrine of the of God they required a conception of God of boundless fulness. Μία οὐσία (μία θεότης) ἐν τρισὶν ὑποστάσεσιν, (one divine substance (one divine nature) in three subjects,) was the formula. In order to give clear expression to the actual distinction of the Persons within the Godhead, Gregory of Nyssa attached to them τρόποι ὑπάρξεως, (modes of existence,) ἰδιότητες χαρακτηρίζουσαι, ἐξαίρετα ἰδιώματα, (characteristic peculiarities, special characters). To the Father he attributed ἀγεννησία, the quality of being unbegotten, and in consequence of this the word which had formerly been forbidden by the Niceans was once more restored to a place of honour, no longer, however, as referring to substance, but as expressing a mode of being (σχέσις) of God the Father. To the Son he attributed γεννησία, the quality of being begotten, and even the older Homoiousians shewed more reserve on this point than Gregory did. To the Spirit he attributed ἐκπόρευσις—procession. But what is more, the entire Origenistic speculation regarding the Trinity, with which Athanasius would have nothing to do, that is, of which he knew nothing, was rehabilitated. The moment or element of finitude within the Trinitarian evolution was no doubt struck out, still the Absolute has nevertheless not only modi in itself, but also in some degree, stages. The (eternal) generation or begetting, in the sense of a Godhead extending itself to the limits of the creaturely, was again put in the foreground. In this way the subordination-conception, which was an irreducible remainder in Athanasius’ whole way of looking at the question, again acquired a peculiar significance. The idea that the Father in Himself is to be identified with the entire Godhead again became one of the ground-principles of speculation. He is the starting-point of the Trinity, just as He is the Creator of the world. The idea that He is source, beginning, cause of the Godhead (πηγή, αρχή, αἰτία τῆς θεότητος), the cause (τὸ αἴτιον) and consequently God in the proper sense (κυρίως Θεός), while the other Hypostases again are effects (αἰτιατά), meant something different to the Cappadocians from what it did to Athanasius. For the Logos-conception, which Athanasius had discarded as theistic-cosmical, again came to the front, and in their view Logos and Cosmos are more closely related than in that of Athanasius. The unity of the Godhead does not rest here on the Homousia, but in the last resort, as with Arius, on the “monarchy” of God the Father; and the Spiritual on earth is, in fine, not a mere creature of God, but—at any rate with Gregory of Nyssa—as in the view of Origen, is a being with a nature akin to His. “Science” concluded an alliance with the Nicene Creed; that was a condition of the triumph of orthodoxy. If at the beginning of the controversy the scientific thinkers—including those amongst the —had sympathised with Arianism, men were now to be found as the defenders of the Nicene Creed to whom even a Libanius yielded the palm. These men took their stand on the general theory of the universe which was accepted by the science of the time; they were Platonists, and they once more naïvely appealed to Plato in support even of their doctrine of the Trinity. Those who were on the side of Plato, Origen, and Libanius—Basil indeed had recommended the latter to his pupils as one who could help them in advanced culture,—those who were on a footing of equality with the scholars, the statesmen, and highest officials, could not fail to get sympathy. The literary triumphs of the Cappadocians who knew how to unite devotion to the Faith and to the practical ideals of the Church with their scientific interests, the victories over Eunomius and his following were at the same time the triumphs of Neo-platonism over an Aristotelianism which had become thoroughly arid and formal. Orthodoxy in alliance with science had a spring which lasted from two to three decades, a short spring which was not followed by any summer, but by destructive storms. Spite of all the persecutions, the years between 370 and 394 were very happy ones for the orthodox Church of the East. It was engaged on a great task, and this was to restore the true faith to the Churches of the East, and to introduce into them the asceticism which was closely allied with science. It was in the midst of a struggle which was more honourable than the struggles of the last decades had been. Men dreamt the dream of an eternal league between Faith and Science. Athanasius did not share this dream, but neither did he disturb it. He did not go in for the new theology, and there is much to shew that it did not quite satisfy him. But he saw the aim of his life, the recognition of the complete Godhead of Christ, brought nearer accomplishment, and he continued to be the patriarch and the recognised head of orthodoxy, as the letters of Basil in particular shew. When, however, orthodoxy had attained its victory, there arose after a few years within its own camp an opponent more dangerous to its scientific representatives than Eunomius and Valens—the traditionalism which condemned all science.

Nothing more than an outline can here be given of the development of events in particular instances. The Synod of Alexandria was not able by means of its resolution to unite the parties which had separated at Antioch: the party of the orthodox who clung to the old faith and that of the Homoiousians who under the leadership of Meletius acknowledged the Homousios. This Antiochian split remained an open wound, and the history of the attempts to get it healed makes it abundantly evident that different doctrines were really in question, that Alexandria and the East had not lost their feeling of distrust of Meletius, and that the Cappadocians who were at the head of the new orthodoxy in the East were not able to suppress the suspicion of Sabellianism in the light of the old orthodoxy.

Jovian, who was inclined to orthodoxy, once more recalled Athanasius who had been banished for the last time by Julian. Athanasius somewhat prematurely announced the triumph of the true faith in the East. Under the new ruler, Acacius, at a Synod held in Antioch in 363, found himself obliged to agree with Meletius and to join with him in declaring his adherence to the ὁμοούσιος, explaining at the same time that it expressed as much as the ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας (of the substance) and the ὁμοιούσιος together (see Athan., de Synod.) But the accession of Valens in the following year changed everything. An attempt on the part of the semi-Arians at the Synod at Lampsacus in 364 to get the upper hand, miscarried. Eudoxius of Constantinople and the adroit Acacius who again made a change of front, became masters of the situation, and Valens resolved to adopt once more the policy of Constantius, to maintain the Arian Homœism in its old position, and to make all bishops who thought differently suffer. Orthodox and Homoiousians had again to go into banishment. From this time onwards many Homoiousians turned to the West, having made up their minds to accept the ὁμοούσιος in order to get support. The West after the brief episode of the period of oppression (353-360) was once more Nicene. There were but few Arians, although they were influential. After various Councils had met, the Homoiousians sent deputies from Pontus, Cappadocia, and Asia to Liberius to get the doctrinal union brought about. Liberius, whose sentiments were the same as those of Hilary, did not refuse their request. The announcement of this happy event was made at Tyana in 367; but at a Carian Council a Homoiousian minority persisted in rejecting the ὁμοούσιος. From this time Basil, who became bishop in 370, took an active part in affairs and he was soon after followed by the other Cappadocians, and they threw not only the weight of science, but also that of asceticism, into the scale in favour of orthodoxy. The new bishop of Rome, Damasus, took a decided stand against Arianism at the Roman Synods held in 369 (370) and 377, then against the Pneumatomachians (see below) and the Apollinarian heresy, while Marcellus and Photinus were also condemned. The rigid standpoint of the bishops Julius and Athanasius again became the dominant one in the West, and it was only after some hesitation that the Western bishops resolved to offer the hand of friendship to the new-fashioned orthodoxy of the East. The representatives of the latter did not indeed settle the Antiochian schism at the well-attended Council at Antioch in September 379, but they subscribed the Roman pronouncements of the last years, and thus placed themselves at the standpoint of Damasus.

But meanwhile very great changes had taken place in the State. In November 375 Valentinian died. He had not taken any part in Church politics, and had in fact protected the Arian bishops as he did the orthodox bishops, and had never had any difference with his brother regarding their religious policy. His successor, the youthful Gratian, yielded himself wholly to the guidance of the masterful Ambrose. He firmly established the State Church as against the heterodox parties, by passing some severe laws, and in doing this he followed Ambrose “whom the Lord had taken from amongst the judges of the earth and placed in the Apostolic chair.” (Basil ep. 197, 1.) In August 378 Valens fell at the battle of Adrianople, fighting with the Goths; and on the 19th of January, 379, the Western Theodosius was made Emperor of the East by Gratian. The death of Valens was quite as much a determining cause of the final triumph of orthodoxy as its alliance with science; for the inner force of a religious idea can never secure for it the dominion of the world. Theodosius was a convinced Western Christian who took up the policy of Gratian, but carried it out in a perfectly independent fashion. He was determined to rule the Church as Constantius had done, but to rule it in the spirit of rigid orthodoxy. He had himself been baptised in the year 380, and immediately after appeared the famous edict which enjoined the orthodox faith on all nations. It is, however, in the highest degree characteristic of his whole policy that this faith is more definitely described as the Roman and Alexandrian faith, i.e., the new doctrinal orthodoxy of Cappadocia and Asia is passed over in silence. After his entry into Constantinople Theodosius took all their churches from the Arians and handed them over to the orthodox. In the year 381 he issued a regulation in which he prohibited all heretics from holding divine service in the towns. In the same year, however, the Emperor summoned a large Eastern Council to meet at Constantinople, and its resolutions were afterwards regarded as ecumenical and strictly binding, though not till the middle of the fifth century, and in the West not till a still later date. This Council denotes a complete change in the policy of Theodosius. His stay in the East had taught him that it was necessary for him to recognise as orthodox all who acknowledged the Nicene Creed however they might interpret it, and at the same time to make an attempt to gain over the Macedonians. He had come to see that in the East he must rely upon the Eastern form of orthodoxy, the new orthodoxy, that he would have to suppress the aspirations of the Alexandrian bishops, and that he must do nothing which would have the appearance of anything like tutelage of the East by the West. This reversal of his policy is shewn most strikingly by the fact that Meletius of Antioch was called upon to preside at the Council, the very man who was specially suspected by the orthodox of the West. He died shortly after the Council met, and first Gregory of Nazianzus, and then Nectarius of Constantinople presided over its deliberations. The opposition at the Council between the old orthodox party, orthodox in the Alexandrian and Western sense, who were few in numbers, and the new orthodox party composed of Antiochians, Cappadocians and Asiatics, was of the most pronounced character, though we are only partially acquainted with it. The confusion was so great that Gregory of Nazianzus resigned and left the Council with the most bitter feelings. Still union was finally secured, although the attempt to win over the Macedonians failed. The “150 bishops” unitedly avowed their adherence to the Nicene faith, and, as we are told, accepted in addition to this a special explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity in which the complete Homousia of the Spirit also was expressed. In the first canon containing the decisions, after the ratification of the Nicene Creed, Eunomians (Anomeans) Arians (Eudoxians) Semi-Arians (Pneumatomachians) Sabellians, Marcellians, Photinians and Apollinarians were expressly anathematised. The Nicene Creed thus gained an unqualified victory so far as its actual terms were concerned, but understood according to the interpretation of Meletius, the Cappadocians, and Cyril of Jerusalem. The community of substance in the sense of equality or likeness of substance, not in that of unity of substance, was from this time the orthodox doctrine in the East. But the Creed which since the middle of the fifth century in the East, and since about 530 in the West, has passed for the ecumenical-Constantinopolitan Creed, is neither ecumenical nor Constantinopolitan; for the Council was not an ecumenical one, but an Eastern one, and it did not in fact set up any new Creed. This Creed, on the contrary, is the Baptismal Creed of the Jerusalem Church which was issued in a revised form soon after 362 and furnished with some Nicene formulæ and with a regula fidei in reference to the Holy Spirit, and which was perhaps brought forward at the Council of 381 and approved of, but which cannot pass for its creed. How it subsequently came to rank as a decision of the Council is a matter regarding which we are completely in the dark. This much, however, is clear, that if this Creed had any connection at all with the Council of 381, the neo-orthodox character of the latter is thereby brought out in a specially striking way; for the so-called Creed of Constantinople can in fact be taken simply as a formula of union between orthodox, Semi-Arians, and Pneumatomachians. The most contested phrase of the Nicene Creed “ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός” is wanting in it, and it presents the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in a form which could not have appeared wholly unacceptable even to the Pneumatomachians.

For this very reason it is certainly out of the question to regard the Creed as the Creed of the Council of 381. It did indeed assert the complete Homousia of the divine Persons. But the legendary process in the Church which attached this Creed to that Council performed a remarkable act of justice; for in tracing back to this Council “an enlarged Nicene Creed” without the “ἐκ τής οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός”, “of the substance of the Father”, without the Nicene anathemas, and without the avowal of the Homousia of the Spirit, and in attesting it as orthodox, it, without wishing to do so, preserved the recollection of the fact that the Eastern orthodoxy of 381 had really been a neo-orthodoxy, which in its use of the word Ὁμοούσιος did not represent the dogmatic conviction of Athanasius. In the quid pro quo involved in this substitution of one Creed for another, we have a judicial sentence which could not conceivably have been more discriminating; but it involves still more than that—namely, the most cruel satire. From the fact that in the Church the Creed of Constantinople gradually came to be accepted as a perfect expression of orthodoxy, and was spoken of as the Nicene Creed while the latter was forgotten, it follows that the great difference which existed between the old Faith and the Cappadocian neo-orthodoxy was no longer understood, and that under cover of the Ὁμοούσιος a sort of Homoiousianism had in general been reached, the view which has really been the orthodox one in all Churches until this day. The father of the official doctrine of the Trinity in the form in which the Churches have held to it, was not Athanasius, nor Basil of Cæsarea, but Basil of Ancyra.

All the same, the thought of the great Athanasius, though in a considerably altered form, had triumphed. Science and the revolution which took place in the political world had paved the way for its victory; suppressed, it certainly never could have been.

The Westerns were anything but pleased in the first instance with the course things had taken in the East. At Councils held at the same time in Rome and Milan, in the latter place under the presidency of Ambrose, they had made representations to Theodosius and had even threatened him with a withdrawal of Church privileges. But Theodosius answered them in a very ungracious manner, whereupon they sought to their attitude. The Emperor was prudent enough not to fall in with the proposal of the Westerns that an ecumenical Council should be summoned to meet at Rome. He followed the policy of Constantius also in keeping the Churches of the two halves of the Empire separate, as his choice of Rimini and Seleucia proves. And by his masterly conduct of affairs he actually succeeded in introducing a modus vivendi in the year 382, spite of the attempts made to thwart him by his colleague Gratian who was led by Ambrose. Gratian summoned a General Council to meet at Rome, to which the Eastern bishops were also invited. But Theodosius had already got them together in Constantinople. They accordingly replied in a letter in which they declined the invitation, and its tone which was as praise-worthy as it was prudent, helped in all probability to lessen the tension between the East and the West. They appealed, besides, not only to the decisions of the Council of 381, but also to their resolution of 378 in which they had made advances to the West, and they explained finally that they had adopted a recent detailed dogmatic declaration of the Western bishops, of Damasus that is, and were ready to recognise the Paulinists in Antioch as orthodox, which meant that they no longer suspected them of Marcellianism. The despatch of three envoys to Rome where, besides Jerome, the distinguished Epiphanius happened to be just at this time, could not but help towards the conclusion of a treaty of peace. The opposition to Nectarius of Constantinople and Cyril of Jerusalem was now allowed to drop in Rome; but the Western bishops could not yet bring themselves to acknowledge Flavian in Antioch, and, moreover, Paulinus, his opponent, was himself present at the Council in Rome. There was once more a strong reaction against Apollinarianism.

If Arianism, or Homceism, from the time when it ceased to enjoy the imperial favour tended rapidly to disappear in the Empire, if too it had no fanatic as Donatism had, it was nevertheless still a power in the East in 383; large provinces had still Arian tendencies, the common people in them above all; while in the West it had supporters in the Empress Justinia and her son. Theodosius was more concerned to win over the Arians than to drive them out of the Church. In the first years of his reign while shewing a firm determination to establish orthodoxy, he had at the same time followed a sort of conciliatory policy which, however, to the honour of the Arians be it said, did not succeed. lust as in 381 he invited the Macedonians to the Council, so in the year 383 he made a further attempt to unite all the opposing parties at a Constantinopolitan Council and if possible to bring about concord. The attempt was sincere—even Eunomius was present—but it failed; but it is very memorable for two reasons: (1) the orthodox bishop of Constantinople made common cause on this occasion with the Novatian bishop, a proof of how insecure the position of orthodoxy in the capital itself still was; (2) an attempt was made at the Council to transfer the whole question in dispute between orthodox and Arians into the region of tradition. The Holy Scriptures were to be dispensed with, and the proof of the truth of orthodoxy was to be furnished solely by the testimony of the ante-Nicene Fathers to whose authority the opposite party must as good Catholics bow. This undertaking was a prophecy of the ominous future which was before the Church, and proved at the same time that the actual interest in the controversy in the East had already once more taken a secondary place compared with the conservative interest. Nothing grows faster than tradition, and nothing is more convenient when the truth of a proposition has to be defended than to fall back on the contention that it has always been so.

After this Council Theodosius discontinued his efforts in favour of union and from this time sought to suppress Arianism. Ambrose seconded his plans in Upper Italy. The orthodox State-Church, which was, however, on the other hand, a Church-State, was established. Severe laws were now passed against all heretics with the exception of the Novatians. The State had at last secured that unity of the Church which Constantine had already striven after. But it was a two-edged sword. It injured the State and dealt it a most dangerous wound. Amongst the Greeks Arianism died out more quickly than Hellenism. Violent schisms amongst the Arians themselves seem to have accelerated its downfall, but the different stages are unknown to us. The history of its fortunes amongst the German peoples until the seventh century does not fall within the scope of this work. The educated laity, however, in the East regarded the orthodox formula rather as a necessary evil and as an unexplainable mystery than as an expression of their Faith. The victory of the Nicene Creed was a victory of the priests over the faith of the Christian people. The Logos-doctrine had already become unintelligible to those who were not theologians. The setting up of the Nicene-Cappadocian formula as the fundamental Confession of the Church made it perfectly impossible for the Catholic laity to get an inner comprehension of the Christian Faith taking as their guide the form in which it was presented in the doctrine of the Church. The thought that Christianity is the revelation of something incomprehensible became more and more a familiar one to men’s minds. This thought has for its obverse side the adoration of the mystery, and for its reverse side indifference and subjection to mystagogues. The priests and theologians could certainly not give the people more than they possessed themselves; but it is alarming to note in the ecclesiastical literature of the Fourth Century and the period following how little attention is given to the Christian people. The theologians had always the clergy. the officials, good society in their minds. The people must simply believe the Faith; they accordingly did not live in this Faith, but in that Christianity of the second rank which is represented in the legends of the , in apocalypses, in image-worship, in the veneration of angels and martyrs, in crosses and amulets, in the Mass regarded as magical worship, and in observances of all sorts. Christ as the ὁμοούσιος became a dogmatic form of words; and in place of this the bones of the martyrs became living saints, and the shades of the old dethroned gods together with their worship, revived once more.