With the growing reverence for the Nicene Council, the habit of calling and honoring its participants Fathers also emerged. Earlier theologians and participants in other councils were occasionally also referred to by this honorific title, and the earliest debate about the role of Fathers in theology was not related to the bishops of Nicaea at all. It took almost a century, and some intense if sporadic debate, before an argument from the Fathers, quoting their texts in support of one’s position, was deemed acceptable and eventually even praiseworthy. The persuasiveness of such an argument relied heavily on the collective veneration of the eminent figures of recent church history and an accepted image of that history. Appealing to them was much more, and yet much less, than a vote of confidence in their theological reasoning. Read in the light of contemporary debates, the exact position advocated in their texts was often less important to those who quoted them than the general demonstration of continuity with the past, both in terms of doctrinal expression and, often more subtly and indirectly, in terms of a communal bond of a shared history and identity.
As early as the ad 350s and 360s, it had become customary in pro-Nicene groups to speak of Nicene Fathers. In this context, appealing to the Fathers was virtually synonymous with appealing to tradition in general, and the Nicene Fathers were increasingly considered by those groups to be the privileged exponents of that tradition. There remained, however, an uneasy tension between the appeal to the Fathers collectively and efforts to make use of individual authors and texts as doctrinal authorities. Once again, it was precisely the controversy over the Nicene Creed that brought this particular matter, as well as related wider questions of theological norms and authorities, ever more strongly to the fore.
As might be expected, all sides claimed to be repeating the biblical message and professed that Scripture was the source and yardstick of orthodoxy. With this provision in mind, Athanasius, writing some thirty years after the events, tells us how the orthodox at the Council of Nicaea tried to express their teaching in biblical terms and metaphors, but had to face the fact that those terms and metaphors remained vulnerable to divergent interpretation. Hence they resorted to technical, philosophical language (Athanasius, Decret.). His account answers critics of the creed, who attacked it as nonscriptural. With the same purpose in view, several of the formulae drafted by successive synods in the ad 340s and 350s tried to adhere scrupulously to biblical imagery and phrasing. Anti-Nicene groups eventually, with the political support of Constantius II, forbade any use of controversial nonbiblical terms such as ousia and hypostasis and their derivatives (Athanasius, De synodis, 8, 28, 30). In the eyes of Athanasius and other pro-Nicene theologians, this pious biblicism was but a disguise for heretical ideas. Resorting to exegesis alone proved in any case to be inconclusive, as Athanasius’ report of the proceedings at Nicaea had already indicated. Both sides compiled in support of their respective views proof texts that could not simply be weighed against one another. Attempts to understand the biblical teaching about God and Christ in a more comprehensive and conceptual way, on the other hand, remained unconvincing, unless the governing theological principles were shared from the outset.
In this interpretive circle of dogmatic biblical exposition and proof-texting, it was not uncommon to seek support in the testimony of tradition. Again, that was an old strategy. In the second century, Irenaeus had claimed to follow genuine apostolic tradition, whereas his heretical opponents lacked it. Heresy could always be identified by its novelty, or traced back to roots outside the apostolic tradition (Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, 3. 1-5; Le Boulluec 1985). Not surprisingly, both Arius in a personal creed and his main opponent, Bishop Alexander, presented their respective teachings as entirely traditional (Arius, Opitz 1934: Urkunden 30. 5, and see 6. 2; Alexander, Ep. ad Alexandrum, Urkunden 14. 55). Athanasius subsequently took great pains to demonstrate that the Nicene Council expressed traditional doctrine and employed traditional phrasing precisely when it used terminology not found in Scripture. What was pronounced here had been handed down ‘‘from Fathers to Fathers’’ (Athanasius, Decret. 27. 4). Building on such reasoning, the council’s teaching itself gradually became the quintessential expression of tradition in the eyes of its supporters.
Nevertheless, throughout the dispute, it remained imperative to demonstrate the biblical grounding of any teaching. Athanasius’ defense of the Nicene Creed with reference to earlier Christian writers only supplemented his main argument that it summed up the meaning, if not the words, of biblical teaching. That was why he presented a version of the proceedings markedly different from the (equally partisan) report of Eusebius mentioned earlier. He underlines the orthodox efforts to bring forward biblical proof and criticizes the exegetical evasiveness of opponents. He saw no contradiction between the need to argue from Scripture, as from the principle norm of theology, and the supplementary recourse to tradition. He fought with his opponents on the common ground of an appreciation of past ecclesiastical writers. This line of thought, however, opened up a new front in the controversy, as we shall see.
By contrast, one of his earliest allies, Marcellus of Ancyra, drew the front line more sharply and insisted that scriptural exposition was the only acceptable theological method, denouncing any appeal to Fathers as heretical. He mounted a fierce attack on the Eusebians for the specific way in which they laid claim to tradition. He was careful not to criticize tradition in principle - a line of thought that his adversaries would not have accepted. Instead, he found his enemies guilty of a crucial hermeneutic error, over and above their exegetical flaws and logical mistakes. They valued the legacy and even specific passages of past authors to an extent that, for him, eclipsed scriptural authority (Marcellus, fr. 19, ed. Markus Vinzent, Fragmente). To expose these grave errors, he quoted from a number of his opponents’ writings dating back to well before the Council of Nicaea: Asterius, one of their foremost thinkers, had claimed in a letter the supporting witness of the ‘‘wisest Fathers’’ (Asterius, fr. 5, ed. Vinzent, Theologische Fragmente). Paulinus, bishop of Tyre and another figurehead of the group, had elsewhere concluded his reasoning with quotations from Origen, thus suggesting that he had found in that author a definitive answer to the question in hand (Paulinus, in Opitz 1934: Urkunden 9; Marcellus, fr. 19). To Marcellus, this method of appealing to individual ecclesiastical writers as to potential authorities defined the group as a school similar to philosophical schools - haireseis. While the method as such was flawed, it also allowed tracing a genealogy of error, which led Marcellus to find in Origen and his usage of philosophical ideas the root of their misconceptions. His argument harks back to antiheretical stereotypes used since the second century: false teaching goes back to an individual originator and firmly places the group following his ideas outside the Church. Hence, quite apart from the specific propositions advanced, claiming individually named Fathers and quoting them as authorities is to Marcellus in itself a possible sign of heresy - that is, of teaching by the methods of the schools and of placing one’s confidence in human resourcefulness rather than in the divine authority represented in Scripture (Marcellus, fr. 17-19).
In a furious counter-attack against Marcellus’ allegations, Eusebius of Caesarea coined the term ‘‘Church Fathers’’ (pateres ekklesiastikoi: Eusebius, Contra Marcel-lum, 1. 4. 3). He applied it indiscriminately to all those censured by Marcellus, and did not feel the need to define the term. His defense includes theologians living as well as dead, those holding ecclesiastical and in particular episcopal office, as well as those who, like Asterius, had lapsed during persecution and were disqualified from office for life. It is safe to infer from this heterogeneous grouping that Eusebius was not looking for a specific sociological profile in identifying Fathers - a profile that would qualify someone to hold authority and to guard right teaching in the Church. Nor was he primarily interested in the voices of the past. Rather, his emphasis rests firmly on the adjective ‘‘ecclesiastical’’: by using the phrase ‘‘Church Father,’’ he explicitly made the point that those concerned were primarily characterized and distinguished by their place in the Church. Being a Church Father was being a member of an in-group, and thus representing the true Church, whether past or present. According to this argument, therefore, the idea of Church Fathers was not primarily concerned with the doctrinal authority of individuals of the past, but served foremost as a litmus test for belonging to the true Church at present. Associating oneself with its leading representatives by extolling and claiming them as Fathers expressed a self-awareness grounded in a view of the history of the Church and articulated through genealogical language (Graumann 2002: 46-66, 85-7). What, to Marcellus, was indicative of narrowly defined, school-type allegiances and of an inappropriate theological method that went with it, was to Eusebius a means of avoiding the potential errors of any one individual’s reasoning, and it assured and expressed the cohesion of the Church’s social and intellectual life.
World History
