In 313, the Edict of Toleration ushered in a new era for Christians. Apologetical writings were less necessary. Writers could aim their works at the Christianization of the world and the presentation and explanation of the Church’s teachings. The Greek world of the East had talented Christians who were well-tutored in Greek culture; the Latin authors of the West were nourished on many of the same sources of Greek learning in translation. The works of both the Greek and Latin Christian writers took on diverse forms: exegetical, doctrinal, polemical, moral, and ascetical. Many of the doctrinal and polemical works were attempts to bring understanding to the basic truths of the Christian faith. Others were to correct heretical presentations of Christian truths or to clarify distorted representations of Christian life and beliefs.
The first ecumenical or general Council of the Church was held at Nicea in 325. One of its charges was to present the teaching of the Church in regard to the triune character of the one God. In a sense, the council was asked to rescue Christians from the ambiguity bequeathed by Ori-gen. Origen had, in effect, used the correct Greek term homoousios (of the same substance) to indicate that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were of the same substance. Still, as mentioned above, he portrayed the Father as selfexistent and the Son as in some way subordinate. The Word and the Spirit, for Origen and many of his followers, are in some way distinct from the Father by an essential inferiority. The Council of Nicea had to confront this puzzling Origenist portrait of the Trinity that had festered for more than a century and that was most forcefully represented just prior to Nicea by the subordinationist theology of Arius. The Council of Nicea understood homoousios (of the same substance) to mean that the Son possessed the entire Godhead or divine essence as the Father. Still, the declaration of the council did not settle matters for everyone: some of the strongest opponents of the Arians opposed the non-Biblical term homoousios, despite its use to defend an undeniable Biblical truth. Athanasius came to the council’s defense in his well-known three Orationes contra Arianos (Against the Arians), written between 335 and 356. He defended Nicea’s teaching on the unity of substance of the Son with the Father and his eternal generation. His Epistola de decretis
Nicaenae synodis (Letter on the Decrees of the Council of Nicea), written in 351, explains and defends more broadly the Trinitarian terminology of Nicea. Though his doctrinal contributions are his most notable, Athanasius supplied spiritual riches of another sort with his Life of Anthony, translated into Latin by Evagrius of Antioch (d. c. 392). It is considered one of the most able ascetical treatises of the Patristic era.
Athanasius was one of the principal writers preparing the way for the First Council of Constantinople (381), which extended the homoousios doctrine of Nicea to the Holy Spirit. This second ecumenical council established what would stand thereafter as the Trinitarian dogma: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are consubstantial, sharing one substance, but in three hypostases or persons. That this is the case was established by the two councils (Nicea and Constantinople). Three of the great Greek Church Fathers, Sts. Basil, his brother, Gregory of Nyssa, and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus, jointly called the Cappadocians, in many of their writings tried to go beyond the declarations of these truths and attempted to bring further understanding of them by attempting to explain how the three persons, who shared a common nature, were distinct. Basil, in his Contra Eunomium (Against Eunomius), taught that the distinctive element connected with each person was not that which made him to be God, but rather was the property that made the Father to be the Father and the Son to be the Son and the Holy Spirit to be the Holy Spirit. These properties, according to Gregory of Nyssa, were matters of generation or procession. In his four treatises on the Trinity, Ad Eustathium de Trinitate (To Eustathius Concerning the Trinity), Ad Abladium (To Abladius), Ad Simplicianum (To Simplicianus), and his Adversus paganos (Against the Pagans), Gregory explains that what made the Father to be the Father was his ungenerated character (not, however, in the sense of Origen’s ‘‘self-existence’’), and what made the Son to be the Son was his generated character. The latter property explained the unique way in which the undiminished or unsubordinated divine substance was communicated from the Father to the Son. Gregory went on to explain that the Holy Spirit likewise proceeded from the Father through the Son, and this particular explanation stayed with the Eastern Church. (In the West, the procession of the Holy Spirit was rather portrayed with the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. This varying explanation formed what is called the Filioque debate.) Although less interested in dogmatic matters, Gregory of Nazianzus, has left a solid defense of the Nicea-Constantinople teachings on the Trinity, especially in his Orations (#27-31). His De vita sua (On His Life),
A long poem, is heralded as a worthy competitor to Augustine’s Confessions. Among the many other Greek Fathers of this period, certainly the most noteworthy is John Chrysostom, the ‘‘golden-mouthed’’ orator. His strong efforts in Constantinople to correct clerical abuses, reform monastic life, and uproot the vices of the rich met strong resistance and banishment, though the emperor, Theodosius II, later asked publicly for God’s forgiveness for the ill-treatment suffered by Chrysostom. John Chrysostom, however, is best known for his literary output. He was a superb exegete, well-trained in the Antiochian method of clear exposition and practical application. He has left homilies on Genesis, the Psalms, and Isaiah, but his best work was saved for the exegesis of the New Testament, especially the Epistles of St. Paul. His most popular treatises are his De sacerdotio (On the Priesthood) and his defenses of the monastic life, which are found in three works: On the Enemies of Monasticism, On Compunction, and Exhortation to the Fallen Theodore (which inspired Theodore of Mopsuestia to re-embrace monastic life).
Among the many Latin writers of the West, in the Golden Age of the Fathers, the ones who stand out most prominently are Sts. Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. Hilary of Poitiers must be ranked with Athanasius as one of the great defenders of the Nicean teaching on the Trinity. He opposed Arianism and effectively silenced it in the West. In fact, his De Trinitate (On the Trinity) was originally called Defide contra Arianos (On the Faith against the Arians). Ambrose of Milan is most noteworthy as the bishop who converted Augustine. He was well-trained in the works of the Greek Fathers. Like Hilary, he also opposed Arianism, which had a firm supporter in Empress Justina. His writings against them included his De fide ad Gratianum (On the Faith to <Emperor> Gratian) and his De Spiritu Sancto (On the Holy Spirit). He wrote a number of treatises on the sacraments and also three guidebooks for catechumens. In his exegetical writings he followed the Alexandrian exegetes, Philo and Origen, with some help from St. Basil, especially on his exegesis of the Hexaemeron. His moral treatises show the influence of Cicero, especially in his De officiis (On Duties), which takes its title from Cicero’s work of the same name. Ambrose is also known as ‘‘the Father of Ecclesiastical Chant.’’ Jerome mastered both Greek and Hebrew and was commissioned by Pope Damasus to rework the Latin Bible; the result was the Vulgate. He was without doubt the greatest Scripture scholar of his era, vastly improving on the Vetus Latina (Old Latin) text. He revised the Psalter on the basis of the Septuagint text and then reworked the whole Old Testament in view of the Septuagint of Origen’s Hexapla and the original Hebrew text. His exegesis of so many Scriptural works, found in his ‘‘Prefaces’’ and homilies on various books of the Bible, demonstrates his concern with both the literal and allegorical understandings of the Biblical texts.
Augustine of Hippo is the most talented and respected Western Father of the Church. His Confessions treats many events of his life but places them in a larger Christian context that makes this work more an odyssey of a soul searching for God and meaning within a divine framework than the biography of an individual’s self-reflective experiences. He shows true gratitude to Cicero for his Hortensius and its invitation to search for truth and praises the Platonists for their high spirituality. Still, in many of his works, especially The City of God, he criticizes the philosophers and shows their tendencies to place themselves at the top of the hierarchy of reality. Peace, man’s goal in life is the tranquility of the soul that the Stoics sought, but it is a tranquility brought about by the pursuit of the right order of things, with God at the top. Augustine fought powerfully and untiringly against the Pelagians and Manicheans. Many of his doctrinal treatises, both philosophical and theological, are considered classics and his De Trinitate (On the Trinity) is not only his greatest dogmatic work, but at least for the Latins the most important treatise on the Trinity written in the Patristic era. His Retractationes (Re-Treatments) provides an impressive picture of his later reflections on the aims and main ideas of the 93 works he had previously written. His De doctrina Christiana (On Christian Teaching) provides the model followed by later Christian writers for theological education. His sermons and letters are often simple in style, exemplifying the truth of his perception, that it is not necessary to use a gold key to open doors that can more readily be opened by a wooden key (De doctrina Christiana IV, 9,11: PL 34,100). His philosophical insights and theological vision markedly set the framework of Christian understanding in the Middle Ages, and even in the modern world.
World History
