Ecumenical Councils

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Ecumenical Councils

• Crisis Response Model
• Example Nicaea, 325
• The Logic of Conciliar Christology
• Five Interpretations of Arianism
• Seminar

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Central Issue Who do you say that I am?

• What is Jesus relationship to God the Father?
• What is Jesus relationship to human beings?

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Councils Crisis and Response model

1. Crisis.
2. Preliminary discussion.
3. Council.
4. Reception.

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Council of Nicaea

1. Crisis Arius goes public with his teaching in
   318.
2. Preliminary discussion exchange of letters
   between the protagonists (e.g. Arius, Alexander
   of Alexandria, Eusebii).
3. Council Summoned by Constantine I, produces a
   creed.
4. Reception the controversy goes on for the next
   50 years.

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What makes a council ecumenical?

• No synod should be cited in the Catholic
  Church save only that which was held at Nicaea,
  which was a monument of victory over all heresy.
• --Athanasius, Ad Epictetum, 1.

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What factors make a council ecumenical?

• Reductionist view Historical luck Power-hungry
  bishops.
• Non-reductionist view
• Broad representation.
• Importance of issues.
• Later approval by the mind of the Church.

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Ziggurat Conciliar Christology
?
7 UNITY IN ICONOGRAPHY
6 DISTINCTION OF WILLS
5 UNITY-IN-DISTINCTION
4 DISTINCTION OF DIVINITY HUMANITY
3 UNITY OF DIVINITY AND HUMANITY
2 FULL HUMANITY
1 FULL DIVINITY
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Gavrilyuk (gently) deconstructing Gavrilyuk

• What about the theological losers?
• Hegel redivivus?
• What about pre-Nicene christologies?
• Enter your objections here

Pablo Picasso, The Poet (1911)
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Five interpretations of Arianism

1. Eclectic Platonist subordinationism.
2. Strict monotheism. (J. H. Newman Thomas
   Kopecek).
3. Literalist biblicism (Maurice Wiles).
4. Exemplarist soteriology (Robert Gregg and Denis
   Groh).
5. The passibility of the Logos (Maurice Wiles and
   Richard Hanson).

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Five interpretations of Arianism

1. Eclectic Platonist subordinationism.
2. Strict monotheism. (J. H. Newman Thomas
   Kopecek).
3. Literalist biblicism (Maurice Wiles).
4. Exemplarist soteriology (Robert Gregg and Denis
   Groh).
5. The passibility of the Logos (Maurice Wiles and
   Richard Hanson).

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Thomas Kopecek on Arianism

• Arianism emerged from and was nourished by a
  conservative eucharistic liturgical tradition
  which was pronouncedly Jewish-Christian in
  character.
• Kopecek, Neo-Arian Religion the Evidence of the
  Apostolic Constitutions, Arianism Historical
  and Theological Reassessments (1985), 155

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Five interpretations of Arianism

1. Eclectic Platonist subordinationism.
2. Strict monotheism. (J. H. Newman Thomas
   Kopecek).
3. Literalist biblicism (Maurice Wiles).
4. Exemplarist soteriology (Robert Gregg and Denis
   Groh).
5. The passibility of the Logos (Maurice Wiles and
   Richard Hanson).

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Select NT texts
The Father is greater than I. Jn 14 28. Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. Mk 1018. Of that day or that hour no one knows, nor the Son, but only the Father. Mk 13 32. Then the Son himself will also be subjected to Him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to everyone. 1Cor 15 24. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus 1Tim 2 5. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. Jn 1 1-2. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Fathers heart, who has made him known. Jn 118. The words of unbelieving Thomas My Lord and my God. Jn 20 28. In him (Christ) the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. Col 2 9.
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The range of arguments deployed in the Arian
controversy

• Theories of analogy, meaning, reference and the
  limitations of religious language.
• --example what is meant by begotten?
• Interpretation of the Bible titles of Jesus
  consideration of individual passages the overall
  purpose of scripture.
• The logic and meaning of the local baptismal
  creeds.
• The appeal to the precedents of conciliar
  agreements (after Nicaea).
• Large scale metaphysical presuppositions
  fittingness arguments.
• The implicit theologies of the sacraments of
  baptism and Eucharist.
• The implications of worshipping Christ and
  addressing prayers to him.
• The ascetic experience of liberation from the
  power of evil by means of the invocation of the
  name of Jesus.
• The logic of salvation (i.e., what kind of Savior
  is needed to accomplish reunion between God and
  humanity).
• Reductio ad heresim, ad hominem arguments, mutual
  accusations of immorality, political pressure.

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Five Interpretations of Arianism

1. Eclectic Platonist subordinationism.
2. Strict monotheism. (J. H. Newman Thomas
   Kopecek).
3. Literalist biblicism (Maurice Wiles).
4. Exemplarist soteriology (Robert Gregg and Denis
   Groh).
5. The suffering of the divine Logos (Maurice Wiles
   and Richard Hanson).

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Hanson-Wiles interpretation

• Richard Hanson at the heart of the Arian
  Gospel was a God who suffered.
• Maurice Wiles The mainspring and primary
  motivation of the Arian movement should be seen
  in its determination to safeguard the
  presentation of Christs passion and crucifixion
  as unequivocally the passion and crucifixion of
  God.

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Gregory of Nyssa against later Arians

• Both sides believe in the economy of the
  passion. We the Orthodox hold that the God who
  was manifested by the cross should be honored in
  the same way in which the Father is honored. For
  them the Eunomians the passion is a hindrance
  to glorifying the only-begotten God equally with
  the Father who begot him For it is clear that
  the reason why he Eunomius sets the Father
  above the Son, and exalts him with supreme honor
  is that in the Father is not seen the shame of
  the Cross. He insists that the nature of the Son
  is inferior because the reproach of the Cross is
  referred to the Son alone, and does not touch the
  Father.
• Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 3. 3. 691-696
  (J ii. 118-120).