Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (23 page)

CONCLUSION

It is an overstatement to say that Constantine treated the bishops as "imperial commissions" or "state functionaries," addressed them as if they were no more than "minor bureaucrats," and asserted his rights as an "arbiter of worship."43
Constantine tried to limit himself to facilitating the bishops' work by calling councils and providing venues and transport. Even his legal recognition of the conciliar decisions was unavoidable. After all, if he granted exemptions to Christian churches and clergy, he needed to know whom he was exempting.

With the Donatists, further, he faced an intractable challenge. Memories of the persecution were still sharp, and readily invoked. Donatists cried persecution when Constantine turned on them, as later Athanasius would consider himself a latter-day martyr. A Christian emperor could not pacify unruly Christian groups without being branded a persecutor or making martyrs, yet some of the Christian groups were deadly. Throughout the fourth century, Circumcellions in North Africa terrorized with their clubs, called "Israels," and "around 406 they began blinding Catholic clergy by forcing a mixture of powdered lime and vinegar ... into their eyes.'4
Somebody had to stop them, and the emperor happened to be that somebody. But then he risked being labeled another Diocletian. Given these dynamics, it is not so surprising that Augustine, after many peaceful overtures to the Donatists, finally determined that they should be compelled to reenter the church, nor that Constantine went beyond his initial minimalism by calling new councils and using coercion in his effort to heal a schism.

Constantine could have, and ultimately did, stand back and stand down, but the murderous factionalism of the church had tempted him to dangerous precedents. Filled with both passion for Catholic unity and ambition for the empire, he did not always have the resources to resist those temptations when they appeared. They would appear again.

I know that the plentitude of the Father's and the Son's pre-eminent and all pervading power is one substance.

CONSTANTINE, LETTER TOARIUS

The controversy between Arius and Alexander erupted in Alexandria around 318 and eventually engulfed the Eastern Church.'
It was, however, preceded by the much less known but important Meletian controversy, a replay of the Donatist controversy now in the eastern part of Africa. During the Diocletian persecution, Bishop Peter of Alexandria fled from the city. In fact, he fled more than once. During one of his absences, Meletius found the city bereft of pastoral care and promptly ordained some men to fill the vacuum. Peter returned and wondered what had happened to his bishopric.

In part, the Meletian schism was another war concerning the proper response to persecution and whether to encourage or discourage the zeal of voluntary martyrs. Peter, like Mensurius in Carthage, urged moderation and was mild toward those who lapsed; Meletius was of a Donatist disposition. The division was so acute that, according to legend, Peter and Meletius were not even able to cooperate when they were, ironically, forced to share a prison cell. Peter hung a curtain down the middle of the cell and urged his supporters to remain on his side of the curtain.2
The Meletian schism reminds us that there were multiple layers of conflict in the Alexandrian church and that it is misleading to describe it all on an "Arian versus orthodox" model. Athanasius had at least as much trouble from Meletians as from Arians, though he had the rhetorical shrewdness and bravura to brand all his opponents as "Arians."

Peter, despite his prudent escapes, died a martyr in 311. Achillas briefly followed him, but he too died, and Alexander was installed in 313. Sometime around 318, he and a local priest, Arius, came into conflict over Christology. A charismatic preacher, Arius was tall, stooped and curvedas one ancient historian put it-like a snake, wore the garb of an ascetic and a philosopher, and oversaw a large number of devoted virgins within the Alexandrian church. Possibly a student of Lucian of Antioch (as Arius's ally Eusebius of Nicomedia was), he followed one strain of the Origenist tradition of theology that had been bubbling in the church of Alexandria for decades. In various writings, Origen had expressed a subordinationist Christology that considered Christ to be ontologically secondary and inferior to the Father. Arius pushed the point further, complaining in a letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia that he was being persecuted for teaching that the Logos exists "by will and counsel," that "before he was begotten, or created, or determined or established, he did not exist,"
and that he "derives from non-existence" (ex ouk onton estin).3
To be sure, the Logos is not a creature as other creatures are, but neither is he unbegotten, since there can be only one Unbegotten, the Father.'

A document preserved by Athanasius in his treatise On the Synods provides a fuller explanation of the Arian viewpoint:

For when giving to him [the Son] the inheritance of all things [Heb 1:2], the Father did not deprive himself of what he has without beginning in himself; for he is the source of all things. Thus there are three subsisting realities [hypostaseis]. And God, being the cause of all that happens, is absolutely alone without beginning; but the Son, begotten apart from time by the Father, and created [ktistheis] and founded before the ages, was not in existence before his generation, but was begotten apart from time before all things, and he alone came into existence [hypeste] from the Father. For he is neither eternal nor co-eternal nor co-unbegotten with the Father, nor does he have his being together with the Father, as some speak of relations, introducing two unbegotten beginnings. But God is before all things as monad and beginning of all. Therefore he is also before the Son, as we have learned also from your public preaching in the church.'

Alarmed not only at Arius's teaching but also at his popularity, Alexander summoned a synod of one hundred Egyptian bishops, who roundly condemned Arius. Banished from the city, he journeyed to Nicomedia, where he knew he would gain a sympathetic hearing from the powerful bishop Eusebius, intimate of Constantia, the wife of Licinius and sister of Constantine. Arius had chosen a good ally. Eusebius summoned a council in Bithynia, which reversed the decision of the Egyptian council by finding Arius orthodox.6
Another council was held at Caesarea, the other Eusebius presumably at the head, and this too found Arius innocent of heresy, though it recommended that he return to Alexandria to attempt a reconciliation with his bishop. Reconciliation did not happen, and instead Arius's presence in Alexandria only provoked further quarreling. Meanwhile, a council in 324 held in Antioch condemned and excommunicated Eusebius of Caesarea.7

Resolution of the controversy was made difficult by Licinius's prohibition of Christian assemblies in 322 (which may have been a response to the controversy), and so it was not until Constantine took over the East that the bishops felt they could resolve the question. When Constantine first learned of the dispute, his first instinct, as usual, was to urge concord. "Do ye both exhibit an equal degree of forbearance," he wrote to Arius and Alexander, "and receive the advice which your fellow-servant righteously gives." For himself, the emperor considered it "wrong in the first instance to propose such questions as these, or to reply to them when propounded," since "those points of discussion which are enjoined by the authority of no law, but rather suggested by the contentious spirit which is fostered by misused leisure, even though they may be intended merely as an intellectual exercise, ought certainly to be confined to the region of our own thoughts, and not hastily produced in the popular assemblies, nor unadvisedly entrusted to the general ear." It is a rare thinker who is able accurately to "comprehend, or adequately to explain subjects so sublime and abstruse in their nature," and even those competent few will find it difficult to convince others. "Who," he demanded, "in dealing with questions of such subtle nicety as these, can secure himself against a dangerous declension from the truth?" When faced with such mysteries, "it is incumbent therefore on us in these cases to be sparing of our words, lest, in case we ourselves are unable, through the feebleness of our natural faculties, to give a clear explanation of the subject before us, or, on the other hand, in case the slowness of our hearers' understandings disables them from arriving at an accurate apprehension of what we say, from one or other of these causes the people be reduced to the alternative either of blasphemy or schism." Both the one who asked "unguarded questions" and the one who offered an "inconsiderate answer" should seek "mutual forgiveness." After all, "the cause of your difference has not been any of the leading doctrines or precepts of the Divine law, nor has any new heresy respecting the worship of God arisen among you. You are in truth of one and the same judgment: you may therefore well join in communion and fellowship."'
Voltaire did not care for Constantine, but he approved this letter, particularly Constantine's characterization of the Arian con troversy as a quarrel over "small and very insignificant questions."

It is not clear whether we should take this at face value.'
After the council, and after several feints and shifts in his jousting with Arius, Constantine's views hardened considerably. After Nicaea, he commended the "three hundred bishops" who unanimously affirmed "one and the same faith, which according to the truth and legitimate construction of the law of God can only be the faith," and argued that only Arius himself remained "beguiled by the subtlety of the devil."10
In another letter to the churches in 325, he threatened death to anyone who possessed a copy of Arius's writings and failed to burn it."

At the beginning, though, his inclination was to settle the dispute by negotiation. Constantine dispatched his advisor Ossius to Alexandria, armed with the imperial letter, to resolve things, but Ossius found the situation far worse than he had expected. Soon after his mission failed, Constantine summoned the bishops of East and West, and even, as we saw, from outside the empire, first to Ancyra and then to Nicaea to put the issue to rest once and for all.

EMPEROR IN COUNCIL

Despite the mythology that has grown up around Constantine's "dominance" and "control" of the council of Nicaea, his approach to the Arian controversy was consistent with his initial approach to the Donatist dispute. He had, however, learned some lessons from that earlier encounter. In dealing with the Donatists, he had finally resorted to persecution; apart from the instrument of exile, he would not do the same with the Arian controversy. Doubtless, too, he entered the Arian dispute disabused of any naive expectation that the bishops were going to be easy to work with. They would not be. Arius was a strong personality, and persistent; Eusebius of Caesarea was a widely respected scholar and writer, a force to be reckoned with; Athanasius, who attended the council as a diaconal assistant to Alexander, would prove to be the strongest of all, willing to rebuke an emperor to his face.

Ossius of Cordoba ran the council.12
Though he knew Greek, Constantine gave the opening address in the imperial language, Latin, and his speech was translated to the largely Greek-speaking council. He stressed, as he had in his initial letter to Arius and Alexander, his desire to see the church united in brotherhood. According to Eusebius, he dramatically burned copies of complaints that the bishops had brought to him against one another. Throughout the council he was present, though probably sitting apart from the bishops. He participated in the discussion, often urging the bishops to practice moderation and puruse peace.13
Eusebius thought this all to his credit, but Eustathius later complained that the pleas for peace had the effect of shutting down debate and silencing the most effective speakers.

The actual course of debate is impossible to reconstruct with assurance. Socrates later described the council as a battle carried on in the dark, everyone striking out at indistinct but threatening shadows.14
Apparently contradictory accounts come from Eustathius and Eusebius. The latter claimed that he offered a creed himself, which was accepted with enthusiasm by the emperor and approved, with some amendments, by the council. Eustathius recorded that the initial creed was shouted down and torn up. Perhaps these are simply two accounts of the same event: Eusebius exaggerated the enthusiasm for his own creed, and Eustathius exaggerated the opposition. Or perhaps the two offerings came from different Eusebii. It may be that Eusebius of Caesarea offered a local creed that met with approval, while Eusebius of Nicomedia offered an Arian creed that was rejected outright.'5
Our ignorance of the basic structure of the debate should
make us very cautious about deciding what role Constantine played in the process.16