Search Results

This chapter assesses Athanasius’ presentation of the ‘Eusebians’ as ‘Arian’. After a brief introduction to Athanasius’ highly polarized heresiological polemic, it traces Athanasius’ construction of the ‘Arianism’ which he imposes upon his opponents. A comparison between this ‘Athanasian Arianism’, the doctrines of Arius himself, and the known doctrines of Eusebius of Nicomedia and Asterius ‘the Sophist’ reveals that these two alleged ‘Eusebians’ differ theologically both from Arius’ and from Athanasius’ definition of ‘Arianism’. Indeed, Eusebius and Asterius appear to have been representative of a widespread theological position held by a significant number of eastern bishops in the first half of the 4th century, a theology expressed above all by the ‘Dedication Creed’ of the Council of Antioch in 341. The chapter then turns to the methodology through which Athanasius created his distorted polarized construct of the ‘Arian Controversy’, and concludes with a brief assessment of how this construct influences Athanasius’ interpretation of the Council of Nicaea and the Nicene Creed.

This chapter traces the origins of Athanasius’ polemic against the ‘Eusebians’. The ‘Eusebian party’ first appears in the Encyclical Letter of Athanasius’ predecessor Alexander, and the analysis of this text requires a reassessment of the entire chronology of the ‘Arian Controversy’ from its beginnings to the Council of Nicaea. It then traces Athanasius’ presentation of the events leading up to his own exile at the Council of Tyre in 335 in the Apologia Contra Arianos, and contrasts this presentation to the evidence provided by Athanasius’ earlier writings, particularly his Festal Letters. In the later Apologia Contra Arianos narrative, Athanasius attributes his exile to a ‘Eusebian’ conspiracy, yet there is no mention of the ‘Eusebians’ in any of Athanasius’ writings before 335. In these writings, he is concerned solely with the Melitian schismatics who oppose him within Egypt. The ‘Eusebian party’ as a polemical construct and the true source of Athanasius’ suffering appears in his writings for the first time at the Council of Tyre itself, in the letters circulated to the eastern bishops at that Council by Athanasius’ Egyptian supporters.

This chapter analyses Eusebius of Caesarea's understanding of the radical transcendence of God the Father, which influenced his view of the Word as an intervening mediator between the Father and the created world. It argues that his concept of mediation is necessarily a ‘deictic’ one, i.e., one in which the mediator — while similar to that which it images — is not to be identified with it in any fundamental way. This is particularly evident in his presentation of ‘image’ theology. He favoured the illustration of image for the Father/Son relationship because he felt it pictured their similarity and non-identity, as well as described the eternal soteriological function of the Son in mediating knowledge of the Father. His comprehension of the Incarnation was that it reflected, at a new but not qualitatively different level, the ongoing mediating function of the Word.

This introductory chapter explores the perplexity of scholarly approaches to the early Arian controversy. It identifies recent approaches to the period that are inadequate due to erroneous presuppositions or the imposition of later concepts. The term ‘Arianism’, for example, is often used without thought of any clear theological content from the 4th-century movement. Much of the confusion in approach to the post-Nicene debate also stems from a predilection on the part of many to treat theological terminology wihtout considering their original context. Terms and phrases such as ‘essence’, ‘hypostasis’, ‘consubstantial’, and ‘godhead’ can only be fruitfully understood within their theological situ. Related to this is a third problem of the inadequate categorization of the various groups of the early controversy. Classifications built upon the mere occurrence of terms, based on geographical distinctions, or imposed by later decisions of orthodoxy conceal more than they reveal.

This chapter examines the history of the cultivation of monastic support and the theological controversies in the Egyptian Church during the period from 312 to 451 ad. It focuses on three theological conflicts: the Arian Controversy, the Origenist Controversy, and the Nestorian or Christological Controversy. It suggests that during these conflicts, the Alexandrian patriarchs positioned themselves as staunch defenders of theological orthodoxy and their importance was not limited simply to their literary output or to the role they played in defining and defending the faith of the Egyptian Church. They also had an important social and political role to play, one that was inextricably intertwined with their advocacy of specific theological doctrines.

Nicaea failed to produce theological consensus, but in the politically charged climate after the council, theological disagreement became even more threatening to church leaders, who understood that their leadership had come to depend on their ability to convince as many people as possible of the orthodoxy of their views and legitimacy of their positions. Focusing on the particularly well-documented early career of Athanasius, this chapter looks at the consolidation of the new style of church leadership that had emerged in the early years of the Arian controversy. As the dispute rekindled, prelates responded to its challenges not by seeking consensus and compromise, but by asserting their authority, suppressing opposition, and promoting their views on a much wider field.

This chapter examines the fundamental Nicene response to their opponents’ claim to Christian orthodoxy: they made them into Arians. It shows the intellectual effort this (deceptively difficult) move required. Nicene controversialists drew on the history and heresiology of both the Arian Controversy and the Donatist Schism to portray contemporary Homoians as heretics. To establish the link between their opponents and the Arians of the past, Nicene authors imaginatively rewrote fourth-century ecclesiastical history, reworking what they saw as an authoritative past to match the needs of the present. In so doing, they made the contemporary controversy into a reenactment of earlier conflicts—one from which they, as the heirs of Athanasius and Augustine, would inevitably emerge triumphant. Of course, Homoian clerics were exploiting the same histories of the church to support their own ecclesiological claims. For both sides, this controversy was not new, but rather an extension of fourth-century Trinitarian debates.

Chapter 8 argues that the dispute encouraged bishops to devise new strategies of asserting their authority in city and empire, sometimes in sheer opposition to the emperor and even questioning his legitimacy. The chapter deals with the period from the death of Constantine to Julian's reign, as the faaçade of Nicene unity finally crumbled, and rival groups of bishops brought the dispute out into the open, scrambling to have their own definition of faith prevail. The author stresses in particular the role that violence, practiced on a new and unprecedented scale, played in this process.

This chapter focuses on the social dimensions of the theological controversy in Alexandria, following closely the efforts of rival churchmen to make ordinary Christians their partners in the dispute. It is here, as churchmen interacted with one another and with their congregations, that we begin to see the rise of a new type of church leader—brash, enterprising, and combative.

Chapter 5 follows the dispute as it migrated outside of Egypt and engaged church leaders elsewhere in the East. It argues that the same processes at work in Alexandria fueled the expansion of the conflict in other communities: the same devotion to precise theologies of the Son and the same urgency to instruct the people. And as church leaders discovered that popular support helped them validate their claims of orthodoxy, the escalation of the conflict became inevitable and compromise even harder to attain.

The introduction describes the genesis of this study in light of the author's interests in religious violence associated with the so-called Arian controversy in the fourth century AD. After briefly surveying the historiography, it explains how this study, with its focus on the impact of the theological controversy on patterns of church authority, hopes to make an original contribution. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the habitus, the study postulates a connection between engagement in controversy and the rise of new style of church leadership that came to define the episcopal office in the fourth century AD. The introduction also lays out the chapter structure of the book and provides a justification for the geographical and chronological limits of the study.

Chapter 6 deals with the impact on the controversy of Constantine's intervention and the “criminalization” of doctrinal dissent following the proclamation of Nicene orthodoxy. Thereafter, theological positions became politically charged and dissent from orthodoxy, however that was defined, posed even more serious threats to prelates' claims to leadership.

This chapter demonstrates how, in the early Arian controversy in Alexandria, there was a subtle but fundamental change in the nature of church leaders' response to theological disagreement. Challenged by their rivals and driven by a new certainty that they possessed the truth, church leaders embarked on a disruptive quest to prove their orthodoxy and discredit their opponents. Persistent confrontation, combined with a determination to undermine fellow churchmen, replaced the former attempts to find consensus. The chapter argues that this change resulted from the need to achieve greater precision in defining the truth about God, which altered one's relationship with one's belief and encouraged a deeper sense of devotion to rival conceptions of the deity. These developments hindered efforts to reach compromise.

This chapter investigates certain aspects of the complicated relationship between church and state in the fourth century, focusing mainly on the doctrinal and factional conflicts commonly known as the “Arian controversy”. Also the chapter discusses pagan-Christian conflict under Julian. It also explores how discourses of martyrdom and persecution came to be invoked as ideological weapons in conflicts within the Christian community. The religious conflicts of the fourth century were driven partly by theological controversy, partly by personal ambition and rivalry, but also by serious concerns over how to regulate an episcopal power that had expanded so dramatically into the secular sphere. Julian was well aware of the power inherent in Christian martyrial discourse. The discourse of martyrdom could be used to justify a stance of defiance toward power, to carve out a space in which religion could be used to articulate legitimate resistance to the emperor's will.

This chapter focuses on the late fourth-century Spanish bishop Gregory of Elvira, whose Tractatus de epithalamio is the earliest extant commentary on the Song composed in Latin. It is argued that the Tractatus is the product of the mid fourth century and therefore does not make use of Jerome’s translation of Origen’s Homilies on the Song. Instead, it preserves earlier Latin interpretations. The now-lost commentaries of Victorinus of Poetovio and Reticius of Autun are reconstructed as far as possible. It is shown that Gregory’s Tractatus contains a historical narrative to the Song, and that he strongly relies on notions of female purity and defilement in his discussion of heresy, which anticipates a transition to the ascetic interpretation of the Song.