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Unity and Diversity in the Church of the Fourth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Andrew Louth
Andrew Louth*
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths’ College, University of London
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Extract

To look back to the early Church as a theologian and historian, and ask questions about her unity, is to enter on a long tradition, which goes back at least to the Reformation, if not to the Great Schism of 1054 itself. Once the Church had split, the various separated Christians looked back to justify their position in that tragedy. They scoured the early sources for evidence for and against episcopacy, papacy, authority confided to tradition or to Scripture alone: they questioned the form in which these early sources have come down to us - the sixteenth century saw reserves of scholarly genius poured into the problem, for instance, of the genuineness of the Ignatian correspondence, and what fired all that, apart from scholarly curiosity, was the burning question of the authenticity of episcopal authority on which Ignatius speaks so decisively. Out of that the critical discipline of patristics emerged. It was, in fact, rather later that the fourth century became the focus of the debate about the unity, authority, and identity of the Church - Newman obviously springs to mind and his Arians of the Fourth Century (London, 1833) and his Essay on the Development of Doctrine (London, 1845). Later on, the fourth century attracted the attention of scholars such as Professor H. M. Gwatkin and his Studies in Arianism (Cambridge, 1882), and Professor S. L. Greenslade and his Schism in the Early Church (London, 1953), and in quite modern times Arianism, in particular, has remained a mirror in which scholars have seen reflected the problems of the modern Church (a good example is the third part of Rowan Williams’s Arius: Heresy and Tradition [London, 1987], though there are plenty of others). Continental scholars such as Adolf von Harnack also studied the past, informed by theological perspectives derived from the present; in a different and striking way Erik Peterson turned to the fourth century to find the roots of an ideology of unity that was fuelling the murderous policies of Nazism. In all these cases the fourth century seemed to be a test case ‒ for questions of modern ecclesiology: Rome defended by development in the case of Newman, the justification for the ecumenical movement in the case of Greenslade.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 32: Unity and Diversity in the Church , 1996 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1996

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References

1 Peterson, Erik, Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem, reprinted in Theologische Traktate (Munich, 1951), pp. 45–147 Google Scholar. See also Schindler, A., ed., Monotheismus als Politisches Problem? Erik Peterson und die Kritik der politischen Théologie (Gütersloh, 1978)Google Scholar.

2 Lyudmila Vorontsova and Sergei Filatov, ‘The changing pattern of religious belief: pereslwika and beyond’, Religion, Stale mid Society, 22.1 (1994), pp. 89-96, table on p. 92.

3 See Brown, P., Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity. Towards a Christian Empire (Wisconsin, 1992), pp. 3–34 Google Scholar.

4 See, for instance, summarizing much modern research, Cameron, Averil, The Later Roman Empire (London, 1993), pp. 113ff Google Scholar., and on Diocletian’s ‘Price Ediet’ (301), p. 38.

5 Shelley, P. B., ‘Adonais’, stanza 52 (ed. Hutchinson, T., 1904; 1952 edition, Oxford, p. 443)Google Scholar.

6 In his Jurisdiction in the Early Church (London, 1975). For a full, but concise, account of the role of the Christian bishop in late antiquity (mainly, of course, from the fourth century onwards), see H. Chadwick, ‘The role of the Christian bishop in ancient society’, in Center for Hermeneutical Studies, Protocol of the 35th Colloquy (February 1979), 35 (Berkeley, Cal., 1979), pp. 1-14 (reprinted in idem, Heresy and Orthodoxy in the Early Church [London, 1991], no. 3).

7 Cited in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, VI, xliii, 11 (ed. E. Schwartz, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schrifisteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, Eusebius Werke, 2 [3 parts, Berlin, 1903-9], p. 618).

8 Didache 10 (F. X. Funk and K. Bihlmeyer, eds, Die Apostolischen Väter, 3rd edn [Tubingen, 1970], p. 6).

9 Brightman, F. E., Liturgies Eastern and Western (Oxford, 1896), pp. 330f Google Scholar [my translation].

10 It was pointed out to me that my rhetoric has led me into exaggeration: in many parts of Europe, even by the nineteenth century, the Tridentine mass had only made slow progress in becoming accepted.

11 Translation taken from Lightfoot, J., The Apostolic Fathers, Part II, 1 (London, 1885), p. 480 Google Scholar. For his discussion of Abercius, whom he identifies with Eusebius’ Avircius Marcellus (see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, V, xvi; ed. Schwartz, pp. 458-68), see pp. 476-85. A substantial fragment of the inscription survives and was discovered by W. M. Ramsay in 1883.

12 Hernias, Pastor, Simil., 5.1.1 and 2 (ed. M. Whittaker, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schrifts teller áer ersten Jahrhunderte, Die Apostolischen Vâter, I. Der Hirt des Hermas [Berlin, 1967], p. 52).

13 On the Rotas-Sator square, see H. Last, ‘The Rotas-Sator Square: present position and future prospects’, JThS, ns 3 (1952), pp. 92-7.

14 See Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, XV, xvii, 7 (ed. J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library, 3 vols, 1964 edn, 1, p. 162) [synodus M appellant}; cf. XXI, xvi, 18 (Loeb Classical Library, 2, p. 184).

15 Cyprian, De unitate, 5 (Cyprian, De lapsis and De ecclesiae catholicae unitale, ed. and trans. M. Bevenot, SJ, Oxford Early Christian Texts [Oxford, 1971], p. 64).

16 Ecclesiastical History, VI, xlii-xliii (ed. Schwartz, pp. 610–24).

17 For the canons of Elvira, see Routh, M.J., Reliquiae Sacrae, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1846), 4, pp. 255—74 Google Scholar.

18 Ignatius, Ad Rom., prologue (Funk and Bihlmeyer, eds, p. 97).

19 See H. Chadwick, ‘The origin of the title “Oecumenical Council”, JThS, ns, 23 (1972), pp. 132-5, esp. p. 135 and note.

20 On canon 6 sec H. Chadwick, ‘Faith and order at the Council of Nicaea: a note on the background of the sixth canon’, HThR 53 (1960), pp. 171-95.

21 Following the text defended by Chadwick, ‘Faith and order’, pp. 180-1.

22 See B. Gaîn, L’Église de Cappadoce au ive siècle d’après la correspondance de Basile de Cesaree (330-379), Orientalia Christiana Analecta. 225 (Rome, 1985), pp. 306-9, with literature cited there.

23 See St Patrick, Ep. 2, and L. Bieler’s note in The Works of St Patrick, Ancient Christian Writers, 17 (London, 1953), pp. 90f.

24 For the texts of the canons, see DEC, 1, pp. 32, 99-100.

25 See Jones, A. H. M., The Later Roman Empire, 284-602, 3 vols (Oxford, 1964), 1, p. 480 Google Scholar and n.21 [3, p. 134].

26 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, XXVII, iii, 14 (ed. Rolfe, 3, p. 20). Trans. W. Hamilton in Ammianus Marcellinus, The hater Roman Empire, Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth, 1986), p. 336.

27 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, XXI, xvi, 18 (ed. Rolfe, 2, p. 184).

28 Life of St Daniel the Stylite, LXXXIII, trans. Ed. Dawes and N. H. Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints (London and Oxford, 1948), pp. 57-8.