Arius and Mani and Montanus, O My! Perceptions of Heresy within the Donatist Church (original) (raw)
Related papers
2005
There is a growing contingent of church historians and scholars who look to downplay or even condemn the basic tenets of the Christian faith. Orthodoxy is painted as the big, bad bully of the early church, and the church fathers as its hitmen. Deviant forms of Christianity, historically considered heretical, are portrayed as the poor, innocent victims of the orthodox political machine which is out to, and eventual does, crush them under its wheels of insatiable hunger for more power and control. For this paper I want to concentrate narrowly on one aspect of this overall picture, that being the events surrounding the Orthodox struggle against Arianism around the time of the Council of Nicaea (325) through the reign of Constantius (361). This paper will be addressing the main question: 'Was Arianism suppressed for solely political reasons?' I will endeavour to show that it was actually Arianism which had the upper hand politically and that, for many orthodox leaders, it was political suicide to support the orthodox position. 1 Apostolic Father Justine Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian Athanasius Augustine This is the strand through which the theory is built that Orthodoxy politically squeezed out all competing views of true Christianity. Athanasius, as the chief proponent of the orthodox position during the battle with Arianism, has been consistently attacked by the detractors of Orthodoxy as nothing more than a 'gangster' who 'organized an ecclesiastical mafia' (Barnes 1981:230). i Arianism has been argued to be a truer picture of the historical Jesus than the supernatural God-man of Orthodoxy. ii The conclusion would be that Arianism was right, but was suppressed for political reasons by Orthodoxy. Certainly, religion can become politically charged and motivated, and very clearly this has been the case in many instances in Christian history. But the popular premise that it must be politically motivated is an unfair assumption, as is the assumption, for example, that ecclesiastical historians must be lying or distorting the evidence, and so on. Sometimes they most certainly may have done that, but not always. My ecclesiastical motivation for such a study is to show that the traditional picture of the development of orthodox theology and its struggles with heresy, although certainly skewed in some minor ways, overall is still the correct one. 2 TERMINOLOGY, METHODOLOGY, ASSUMPTIONS AND SOURCES I will be using the terms 'orthodoxy' and 'heresy' (and derivations of these words) in the traditional sense of the terms. Putting it in a practical framework, 'orthodoxy' refers to the party which won the ecclesiastical battles and became the church proper, and 'heresy' refers to the party which lost and was declared anathema. 'Orthodoxy' refers to the system of beliefs that propounds Jesus as fully man and fully God, 'homoousios' with the Father, begotten and not made. 'Heresy' in this context would be any system or belief that contradicts or in any way detracts from the view just described as orthodox. 'Politics' refers to the use of power and influence to effect an outcome. In the context of this paper, then, someone seeking to promote a theological position through power and influence (as opposed to citation of Scripture, tradition, or truth) could be said to be operating politically. If the desired outcome is primarily to increase the power and influence of an individual, school, or party, then one could conclude a political motivation. The study of Arianism iii is a fertile breeding ground for the removal of the supernatural elements of the life of Jesus. The orthodox position that Jesus was 'very God of very God' actually become man is at powerful odds with Arianism and the 'non-supernaturalism' of so much Christian theology today. Coupled with Gnostic teachings concerning the person of Jesus, and bridged by the works of church fathers like Clement of Alexandria and Origen, Arianism can be portrayed as a natural outflowing of 'authentic, primitive' Christianity which was put down by Orthodoxy for political reasons. This paper does not profess to declare that there were never any political motivations at work in the solidification of Orthodoxy, as some on the 'far right' might state. But equally we oppose the picture of the 'far left' found in the works of Elaine Pagels and others where it seems the sole purpose of Orthodoxy in combating heresy was for political gain. Surely the answer is somewhere in between. We should also recognise the common assumption made by many liberal theologians that the church fathers are not to be trusted. Timothy Barnes
The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age [Dissertation Abstract]
As a dissident Christian tradition that still endured sporadic Imperial persecution, the Donatist church occupied a unique niche within the wider apocalyptic milieu of late antiquity. This was an era characterized by intense eschatological speculation, spurred on by the recent political ascendency of Christianity within the Empire, the rise of rival theological communions in its wake, and mounting anxiety over the increasing tenuousness of Roman rule in the western provinces. Despite its often-overstated estrangement from the transmarine Christian communities of late antiquity, Donatism was no stranger to this phenomenon. In this dissertation, I wish to contextualize extant Donatist interaction with apocalyptic exegesis in order to see where it remained in continuity with the wider western apocalyptic tradition and where it diverged. This is a topic which will require some nuance. The dominant tendency within early and mid-twentieth century academic discussions of Donatist apocalypticism – when it is mentioned at all – have been to portray it as evidence of an anachronistic inclination within Donatist theology or as a symptom of simmering national or economic dissatisfaction, a religious warrant for social unrest. Reacting to such interpretations, more recent discussions of Donatism which emphasize its theological viability have tended to avoid the topic altogether. In this project, in contrast, I portray Donatist apocalyptic exegesis as an essentially dynamic, adaptive theological phenomenon. As befits an ecclesiastical communion which once formed the majority church in North Africa, Donatist interaction with apocalypticism was neither monolithic nor static. Rather, it evolved significantly throughout the roughly sesquicentennial years of the movement’s literary existence, capable of producing such diverse expressions of eschatological thought as the strident denunciations of the emperor Constans as “Antichrist” encountered in Macarian-era Donatist martyrological acta, the gematric calculations of the Liber genealogus – or the spectacular apocalyptic vision of Tyconius, as sophisticated as it is unique. In the various apocalyptic narratives still traceable within extant Donatist writings, I submit, we are given an invaluable window into the inner life of the North African communion.
“Donatus... deceived nearly all Africa with his persuasiveness, asserting that the Son was less than the Father, and the Holy Spirit less than the Son.” -Isidore of Seville, Etymologies 8.51 “For Arius agrees with the Donatists and they with him.” -Epiphanius, Panarion, 13.8 For Isidore of Seville and Epiphanius of Salamis, ancient Christian writers separated both temporally and by the width of the Mediterranean, the Donatist communion was defined principally as a hazy subset of the “Arian” menace. Such a presupposition was not idiosyncratic: many heresiological texts originating beyond North African shores will condemn the dissident communion more for its alleged trinitarian heterodoxy than for its steadfast refusal to reunite with the hated “Caecilianists.” In North Africa itself, however, such a view was virtually unknown. Augustine will twit his Donatist opponents for their alleged association with the “wrong side” at the 343 Council of Serdica, but he does so under the assumption that such a link would prove deeply embarrassing. Donatist polemicists such as Cresconius and Vincent of Cartenna will serenely denounce Arius and his followers, apparently unaware of their own alleged association with the condemned heretic. Donatism as an “Arian” phenomenon is thus an outside imposition almost unknown among its principal combatants. Where then did this alternate heresiological tradition come from? In this paper, I will examine this question by carefully assessing portraits of Donatism we find in heresiological texts originating outside the confines of North Africa in order to determine both the genesis and subsequent evolution of such a polemical trope.
Studies in Church History, 2021
This article examines the reception and application of arguments developed during the Donatist controversy in later debates over clerical celibacy, marriage and continence in the medieval and early modern church. It explores the collision of inspiration and institution in this context, arguing that the debates over sacerdotal celibacy in the medieval Latin church and Reformation controversy over clerical marriage and continence both appropriated and polemicized the history of Donatism. The way in which the spectre and lexicon of Donatism permeated the law and practice of the medieval and early modern church, particularly when it came to the discipline of clerical celibacy, is a prime example of the process of imbrication by which the history of heresy and the history of the church were constructed. As such, it exemplifies the ways in which forms of religious inspiration that manifested as dissent, such as Donatism, became embedded in the histories and self-fashioning of the institut...
New Blackfriars, 1989
One of the things which must count as Catholic doctrine is the affirmation that it is possible to get it seriously wrong. In this article I hope to offer some remarks on the function of heresy in the articulation of the Church's faith. I would like to begin with a question, the possible answers to which have implications: how much do heretics sleep? By 1843, John Henry Newman had come to believe that heretics were by nature sluggish creatures. In his fourteenth University Sermon, on 'The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine', Newman spoke of the 'ordinary torpor' of heretics from which they 'never wake up ... but to exchange courtesies and meditate coalitions". That was in its own way a radical answer, a radical break with the age-old view that heretics were ever-active, ever-vigilant. This view had, in particular, been the answer of virtually the whole of that patristic tradition in which Newman's thought had been so largely formed. For Irenaeus, for example, heresies were by nature fissiparous, and heretics were ever shifting their ground.. .. Many shoots of many heresies arose, since many, indeed all, of them want to be doctors. . .; framing one doctrine from others and one opinion from another, they press on with their novel teaching, proclaiming themselves the discoverers of whatever opinion they have cobbled together. They wallow in every error, ... holding different views at different times on the same questions and never possessing stable knowledge. . .'. The other side of this patristic coin is, of course, the assumption that the Church's faith must be ever one and the same. If heresy is fissiparous, right belief must be monolithic; if heretics are fickle, the orthodox must never change. For Irenaeus. .. though there are in the world diverse tongues, yet the force of the tradition is one and the same. And neither do the churches established in Germany believe otherwise or teach otherwise, nor those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those established at the heart of the world. But, as the sun which God made is one and the same in the whole world, thus also the proclamation of the truth shines everywhere and illumines 96
The Politics of Heresy: The Modernist Crisis in Roman Catholicism.
American Journal of Sociology, 1987
Heresy and orthodoxy, it is argued here, are two aspects of the social process within which belief systems are defined and articulated. A number of characteristics of heresy are outlined: it is both near and remote at the same time, and the heretic is a deviant insider. Heresy has social origins but in turn influences social arrangements. The heresy hunt, in which heresy is labeled and heretics are suppressed, serves as an anxiety-relieving ritual for institutional elites and facili- tates their dominance within the institution. A case study of heresy, the "modernist controversy" in Roman Catholicism, is examined as one of the most important events in early modern culture and an im- portant aspect of the conflict between science and religion.
Church History, 2011
The subtitle of this book might well be "some of my best friends are heretics." Reviewing the theological debates from Irenaeus to Chalcedon, Edwards argues for a position that current scholarship would largely endorse: that tenets of the established orthodoxy of the early church had their origins among groups originally attacked as heretics. As a corollary, he asserts a thesis somewhat more problematic: that there was, if not an "orthodoxy," at least a "catholicity" that provided a foundation for the assimilation of such tenets and tendencies into a post-Nicene orthodoxy. He commences his argument with "The Beginnings of Orthodoxy" (chapter 1). He finds the foundations for central elements of subsequent orthodoxy in the speculative theology of the second century-apophatic theology in the Apocryphon of John; humanity as the divine image in the teachings of Valentinus; the eternal sonship of the savior in Basilides; and beginnings of theological anthropology in Marcion, raising the question of which of the "creeds" of Irenaeus or Valentinus and the Gnostics would most approximate the later "catholic" norm. Focusing next on Christology, and noting the intersections of the thought of Clement, Origen, and Tertullian in the third century with that of Valentinus, Basilides, and Theodotus, he finds a "tincture" of Valentinian thought (67) in the Alexandrians, and concludes that in the third century, as in the second, theological ideas flowed both ways between the "catholics" and the Gnostics. However, "[Valentinianism] was a stream to be panned, though only a fool or a heretic would bathe there" (77). Edwards continues his argument with Origen and Origenism, Nicaea and the homoousious debates, and the Christological debates culminating in the symbol of Chalcedon. In each case, he finds views that are attacked as heresy in their own day appearing as pillars of orthodoxy in subsequent debates. For the Origenist controversy, he focuses on Pamphilus' Apology for Origen. Pamphilus records that Origen is accused for using homoousios to refer to Christ's relationship with the Father (rightly so, according to Edwards), an BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES