An Introduction to the Orations of St Gregory the Theologian

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17 Pages

Page 12

In addition to these religious disputes came also political struggles, namely, the hard-fought wars of the Roman Empire with the Goths; so that the Empire at large presented the picture of a sea, tossed by violent storms. But the unhappy schisms which at this time were severing Christians everywhere, shewed themselves in a particularly discouraging form in the Capital. Under the late reigns several parties had been favoured; but especially those which, though again divided among themselves by differences of opinion, yet agreed in this that they all rejected the Nicene system of doctrine. Constantius had bestowed his favour on the Arians; Julian during his short reign on all parties, at least in appearance,—to crush them all. After Jovian's early death Valens succeeded to power in the East, and with him, even more than with Constantius, Arianism, which he not only protected, but also sought to make predominant by horrible atrocities against the friends of the Nicene Decrees. These had now been forbidden the use of all Churches and Church property, and the Arians had been put in possession of them. But Constantinople still remained the scene of ecclesiastical strifes and partizanships. Here where with a little good so much evil flowed from all three parts of the world, all opinions had their adherents; but the following parties in particular shewed themselves:—The Eunomians, professing an intellectual theology, which claimed to be able completely to explore the Being of God by logical definitions, and maintained in strict Arian fashion the Unlikeness of the Son to the Father, were very numerous in Constantinople (as is shewn by the fact that most of Gregory's polemical utterances were directed against them), and injured earnest religious thought principally by this, that they used the doctrines of the faith exclusively as subjects for an argumentative dialectic. The Macedonians, addicted to the Semi-Arian dogma of the Like Substance, and thereby somewhat more nearly approaching the Orthodox, and distinguished besides by an estimable earnestness of demeanour, and a monk-like strictness of manner, were indeed themselves excluded by the pure Arians from the property of the Church, but were ever being abundantly multiplied, partly in Constantinople itself, partly in the neighbouring regions of the Hellespont, Thrace, Bithynia, and Phrygia. The Novatians, who even overstepped the Macedonians in the strictness of their practical principles, had somewhat earlier been on the point of uniting themselves with the Orthodox, from whom they did not differ on the chief doctrine in dispute, and with whom they found themselves under like oppression from the Arians; but the malevolent disposition of a few of the party leaders had stood in the way, and so they remained separate, and swelled the number of the opponents of Orthodoxy. Lastly the Apollinarians too began to establish themselves there. Their teaching was opposed to the acknowledgment of true and perfect Manhood in Jesus (for true Manhood lies in the reason especially); and there was at that time, as Gregory informs us, a report that an assembly of Apollinarian bishops was to be held at Constantinople, with a view of raising their teaching as to Christ into general notice, and forcing it upon the Churches.

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