Mystical Dimensions in Early Christianity, and Theological Controversies

June 2018
Mystical Dimensions in Early Christianity, and Theological Controversies

     The Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit loomed large over the early Christian centuries as devout churchmen debated antagonistic views regarding the doctrine of the nature of Jesus Christ, his relationship with God the Father. The 18th century historian, Edward Gibbon in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1911 edition, page 103) introduced Chapter 47 (Vol. 5) by the heading, ‘Theological History of the Doctrine of the Incarnation – The Human and Divine Nature of Christ.’ This doctrine imbued with an unfathomable mystery regarding Jesus’ nature, while he lived, that is, was never resolved.
To some early Christian leaders, like the Egyptian Bishops, Athanasius in the early 4th century and Cyril in the fifth, who considered themselves “orthodox,” Jesus was like the Father, a Divinity in his own right, though they believed he lived as a human like us. They proclaimed “the One-Nature of Christ.” To Syrian theologians, Jesus possessed two natures, part human and part divine, slightly distinct from each other (indeed, some even spoke of “two persons in Christ), and their doctrine became known as the “Two-Natures of Christ.” Almost all assented to the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as Paul said, deriving from “heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:19-23). In the Nicene Creed formulated at the Church Council at Nicaea in 325 under the auspices of Emperor Constantine, those in attendance were all Greek-cultured bishops.
Greek Christians, schooled in their Platonic philosophical traditions could relate to the Godhead of the Jewish-Christians, to them, similar to the Supreme Being of Plato, somewhat remote and undoubtedly mysterious. Whereas, as we shall see, the earliest Christians, all Old Testament readers whether Palestinian-Jews or Syriac-Christians, sought to express their religious inspirations in poetically-styled metaphors using the language of symbols.
What struck the author of the Fourth Gospel of John (Jn. 1), writing in Greek in the early 2nd century, was that, when the Godhead spoke “the Word,” he brought forth “the Son’ – Jesus, a person more than flesh and blood. And to the religious philosopher of that era, Justin Martyr (a gentile of Samaria), “the Word” in Hebrew could be conveyed by the Greek term, Logos, implying this had been the whole Plan of God from the beginning of the Creation – up to the moment when the Lord God fashioned a human, Jesus the Christ, as one who bore a similar Spirit of Divinity.
Towards the end of this paper, I shall focus upon what came later when two Dark Age religious philosophers tried to re-fashion the antithetical doctrines that had divided Christian churchmen during their ongoing council debates. Each raised the Godhead to a new, even more mysterious level, the Being of the Godhead regarded as unknowable because this Being resides beyond earthly Time and Space. They imparted a new mystical inspiration that captured the minds of the most devout – monks enclosed in their hidden sanctuaries, away from the world at large.

Re-Visiting Hegel on Christianity

     Bertrand Russell, a religious skeptic, in his chapter on Hegel (1945:730) introduces Hegel, saying of him that he was attracted to mysticism as a youth, and in his later writings may have intellectualized such “mystic insights”. According to Professor Friedrich of Harvard in his introduction to The Philosophy of History (Hegel’s Lectures presented 1830-31; 1956 edition, page 380) Hegel stated his belief in “the Christian God,” whose Being, most significantly to Hegel, became known through the enlightenment that once took place through in the consciousness of Jesus Christ.

“The nature of God of being pure spirit is revealed to man in the
Christian religion. And what is the spirit? He is the One, the infinite
consistent within Himself, the pure identity. It is part of the
appearance of the Christian God that is unique, it can happen only once.”

As Professor Friedrich says, “He believed in a personal God whose spirit, the Holy Ghost of Christian doctrine, was at work shaping the destiny of man.” In speaking of the world-historical importance of the Jewish people – “from whom Jesus sprang,” Hegel declared “… the spirit [Christ, that is,] arrived at absolute self-consciousness.” (1956:iii.). To me, what I think Hegel meant, was that Jesus realized a loving intimacy with the Godhead, especially through his baptism, at which time, the Holy Spirit descended upon him, completely transforming his being.
This great philosopher who explored the evolution of religious ideas in the past, proposed that “Piety” or religious feelings are universal, and have little to do with secular history. In the following passage, he also proposes his dialectical theory regarding how changes come about in religious thinking.

“Religious Feeling is extraneous to History, and has no History; for
History is rather the Empire of the Spirit recognizing itself in the
Subjective Freedom, as the economy of social morality in the State.
In the Middle Ages that embodying of the Divine in actual life was
wanting; the antithesis was not harmonized [my emphasis].
Social morality was represented as worthless …. The Church was
no longer a spiritual power, but an ecclesiastical one.”

Hegel suggested that in questioning the reigning evils in the world, the person feels the need to integrate ideas further into a broader synthesis, “a harmonization” – which occurs to us was what happened in Dark Age philosophical innovations.

“….. an antithesis must arise in man’s consciousness of the Holy
while this consciousness still remains primitive and immediate;
and the profounder the truth to which Spirit comes into implicit
relation …. So much the more alien is it to itself in this its
unknown form; but only as the result of this alienation does it
attain its true harmonization” (1956:383).

Hopefully, I can illustrate, as summarily as possible, dialectical changes in early Christian thinking upon doctrinal matters, which did bring about historical changes in the way of the setting up of new kingdoms. After a defeated theological party opposed to prevailing orthodoxy split away from the imperial Church, they converted innumerable peoples elsewhere to their so-called heretical views.
At the beginning, in 325, a consensus was achieved at Nicaea in 325 of the Nicene Creed sponsored by Emperor Constantine, surprisingly, gaining a general acceptance by all the attending churchmen. In Hegelian terms, let us suggest that the Creed, with its history in the Christian homeland, Palestine; was authenticated to that extent, an attempt to reconcile Greek Christians with the Jewish ancestors of the faith.
Hegel, believing as he tells us, that the Spirit of Christ is the guiding wisdom, quoted Christ who said: “When I am no longer with you, the Spirit [the Holy Spirit of Pentecost] will guide you into all truth” (1956:315). In this light, he affirmed the value of the Nicene Creed, saying elsewhere that it “…. ultimately established a fixed confession of faith, to which we still adhere” (1956: 331).
In Hegel’s section on the Roman world in the Philosophy of History, he conveyed the essentials of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, over which there was such fierce debate in early Christian times (1956:333). To Hegel, it occurred at a sacred moment when Jesus himself realized a kind of identity with the Self-declared Father of his own being.

“…. through the Christian religion the Absolute Idea of God, in
its true conception, attained consciousness. Here Man too, finds
himself comprehended in his true nature, given in the specific
conception of “the Son.” Man, finite when regarded for himself, is
yet at the same time the Image of God and a fountain of infinity in himself .”

The Roman Emperor Constantine, 312 CE, a Christian Visionary
The Trinitarian language of the Creed put together at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, after strenuous arguments, received its essential Nicene version agreed to “in the interest of the common cause,” wrote Gibbon (1911:368). Ever after, Gibbon says, “The consubstantiality of the Father and the Son [similar in nature] was established by the council of Nice, and has been unanimously received as a fundamental article of the Christian faith, by the consent of the Greek, Latin, Oriental, and Protestant churches.” Constantine was born in Croatia. While campaigning in Britain with his father, Constantius, the western emperor, when Constantius died, Constantine was proclaimed at York as one of two western emperors. The other was Maxentius at Rome whom he defeated in 312, and later, he defeated the eastern emperor Licinius. Ultimately, having become the single emperor of the empire, Constantine called upon Christian bishops to meet at the town of Nicaea, not far from his yet to be built new city, Constantinople.
The emperor presided over the Church Council at Nicaea; Gibbon described the emperor’s sincere and humble interest in the churchmen’s discussions. He took a low stool in their midst, and in Gibbon’s words, “…. listened with patience and spoke with modesty …. professed that he was the minister, not the judge, of the successors of the apostles, who had been established as priests and gods upon earth” (1909:348, Ch. XX, Vol II).
The emperor had encountered the Spirit of Christ before his major battle with Maxentius at Rome in 312. There was a daytime vision seen by himself and others, and then, a personal dream during that night. (Gibbon (1909:323), clearly a skeptic regarding these visions, referred to the “Christian fable of Eusebius,” the venerable Bishop of Caesarea, Palestine, who composed Constantine’s biography.
The emperor told Eusebius that, while marching with his troops towards Rome, he and his army were astonished to see the image of a cross positioned above the sun in the mid-heaven – the whole vision inscribed with the words “By This Conquer.” That night, he had a personal visitation from Christ (perhaps a dream-vision), who showed him the same imagery, cross and sun, which he was to have imprinted on his soldiers’ shields and standards. He was directed to march against his imperial rival at Rome, Maxentius, and the actual battle gave Constantine the victory. Maxentius and his soldiers, wearing much heavy armor, drowned in the Tiber by the Milvian Bridge.
Gibbon (1909: 322) criticized Eusebius’ account of the solar apparition for relying only on the word of Constantine. Eusebius failed to obtain reports by living witnesses – spectators along with Constantine of the “stupendous miracle,” according to Gibbon, – the celestial sign of God up in the sky.

Eusebius’ Palestinian Creed, largely accepted at Nicaea, 325

     According to Canon Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (page 100 of the 1924 edition of his Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church delivered at Oxford in 1857), Eusebius (dates 264-340) introduced an ancient creed from his church in Caesarea to the 318 churchmen assembled by Constantine at Nicaea, telling the Nicene delegates that the emperor had already read this creed and approved it. He cautioned his listeners, however, in the words of Canon Stanley, “… Divine things cannot be precisely defined in language [because] … the Finite can never grasp the Infinite” (1924:158)
Here are the opening lines of the Creed which Eusebius said he learned in his childhood as a confessional creed in the church at Caesarea; Stanley quoted the original version put forward by Eusebius (1924:158):

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things,
both visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word
of God, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the only begotten
Son, the Firstborn of every Creature, begotten of the Father before
all worlds, by whom all things were made. Who for our salvation
was made flesh, and lived amongst men, and suffered, and rose
again on the third day, and ascended to the Father, and shall come
in glory to judge the quick and the dead. And we believe in One
Holy Ghost. Believing each of them to be and to have existed, the
Father, only the Father, and the Son, only the Son, and the Holy
Ghost, only the Holy Ghost …..”

Canon Stanley, focusing his lectures on the Churches of the East, asserted that “… throughout the Eastern Church the Nicene Creed is still the one bond of faith. It is recited in its original tongue in Greece; and at Moscow, “the great bell of the Kremlin tower sounds during the whole time that its words are chanted (Stanley 1924:100)
In the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer (currently the 1962 edition of the Anglican Church of Canada), it includes phrasing inserted at Nicaea, “…. the one Lord Jesus Christ …. Being of one substance with the Father through whom all things were made ….” Also, it says the Son ascended to heaven, and there he “sitteth on the right and of the Father.”
Canon Stanley (1924:100-101) said of the Nicene Creed, “… it is a perpetual memorial of the distant East.” Of the 318 churchmen in attendance, bishops from Egypt and Syria, only eight came from the West. He remarked that other doctrines set down by Eastern councils are rarely recited by western churchmen. Here he mentioned doctrinal disagreements at Ephesus in the late 4th century when the incarnation doctrine was rejected by the Chaldean Christians of Mesopotamia.”
The language of the Trinitarian doctrine in the Nicene Creed endured, but theological disputes regarding the “Incarnation,” the relationship of the Son with the Father, were never resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Poetic Language and Symbolic Imagery in the Gospels – Jesus’ Baptism
Jesus was inclined to speak in poetic language, quotations by him incorporated into the gospels. Pilate questioned him: “Did he see himself as king of the Jews?” Jesus replied, no doubt contemplating his imminent crucifixion, “My kingdom is not of this world,” for he had begun to think of the lighted world of his heavenly Father.
The Nicene Creed conceived of the Godhead – as “Light of Light,” the lightness of being of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and especially of the “Son” in his human form, we think of Jesus having already “purified” himself of earthly negativity that weighs down the human spirit and soul. As the gospels relate (Mt. 3:13-17; Lk. 3:21-22, and Jn. 1:29-36), at the moment of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, the Love of God overwhelmed him and the Holy Spirit uplifted his consciousness. The Godhead as “Light” dwelled with him ever after, through his ministry, crucifixion, resurrection – until his ascension back up to heaven.
At the moment that Jesus’ arose out of the waters of the Jordan River, the dove, taking on the symbolism of the Holy Spirit, descended upon him. And when Jesus went to sojourn in the wilderness (“led by the Holy Spirit,” Mt. 4:1), his physical needs were not so very important, though hunger evoked the thought of maybe turning stones into bread. This became an inspiration to desert-dwelling monks in centuries to come, who would deny their basic physical needs.
To Jesus, the exalting effects of the Holy Spirit would have been akin, metaphorically, to the flight of the winged dove- as though Jesus’ spirit, his self-consciousness, flew up into the air, later pulled down towards earthly gravity again when he dwelled in the wilderness,” as mentioned, “led there by the Spirit” (Mt. 4:1). His immersion in the waters of the river might have induced a fear of drowning, but, as anyone can tell you, the physical experience of floating in water is of its buoyancy; the body feels lighter than when walking upon the ground.
As for the words of the Nicene Creed, that “Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father,” here is what one can say regarding its poeticized memory. In religious traditions, the Hand of God symbolized a beneficent meaning – a blessing upon the person, hardly signifying “the wrath of God.” In the Old Testament, there were associations of the dark clouds of the Lord with storms, winds, thunder and lightning. However, the prophet Elijah learned differently during his sojourn in the desert, that an awareness of God was not in those cosmic forces. Rather, the spiritual generosity of the Hand of God the Father is like the parent bestowing a blessing on the head of a beloved child. Since Christians envisioned Jesus “seated at God’s right hand,” this meant that the Spirit of Christ confers heavenly blessings during the communion rite that remembers his Last Supper on earth.

Ancient Syriac-Christians: “putting on the Robe of Light”

     Modern 20th century studies of ancient Syriac-Christian manuscripts reveal their celebration in songs and poetry as they exulted in what they termed “putting on of the garment of glory/light.” Sebastian Brock in ‘A Piece of Wisdom Literature in Syriac,’ (Studies in Syriac-Christianity, 1992:212-232) sees that this idea had its roots in Syriac-Christians reading of the Hebrew Scriptures, especially the story of the Garden of Eden. Brock describes a popular theme with early Syriac poets, Ephrem, Jacob of Serugh, Narai and others, who rhapsodized about the ‘robe of glory’ or the ‘robe of light.’ To them:

“…. this robe served as the original raiment of Adam and Eve in the
garden of Eden before the Fall; at the Fall they were stripped of
this robe, but it is regarded as having been put on again by
Christians at their baptism …”

Brock quotes from Jacob of Serugh a line of verse told to the Christian at baptism:
“The robe of glory that was stolen away among the trees have you put on in the baptismal water…” For more understanding, Brock refers to his own article, The Holy Spirit in Syrian Baptismal Tradition, 1979, Syrian Church Series)
Diarmaid MacCulloch (Christianity, The First Three Thousand Years, 2011: 182-183) says Syrian Christianity pioneered church music, hymns and chants, e.g. hymns in the Odes of Solomon, late 2nd century. He also says that Syrian Christians thought of the Holy Spirit as female, ruha in Syriac meaning “spirit.”

Judeo-Christian Beginnings, “the Three Baptisms” by Fr. Bagatti

     In the Church of the Flagellation, the Old City, Jerusalem, there is a museum of the Judeo-Christian period open to the public where I visited on one occasion. I recall seeing their extensive collection of little pottery lamps, rounded with spouts shaped for pouring oil during sacraments. Father Bellarmino Bagatti, the Franciscan archaeologist who was devoted to recovering 1st century Judeo-Christian artifacts presumably collected many of these oil-lamps. In his text, Church of the Circumcision: History and Archaeology of the Judaeo-Christians (2004 edition, 255-262), he describes the little oil-lamps as Herodian-styled, thus 1st century CE. The Jewish-Christian priests made use of the lamps for healing the sick and near-dying, as recommended by St. James, brother of Jesus and head of the Jerusalem church. The oil-sacrament was also used for the remission of sins, purifications and exorcisms obtained by invoking the names of great angels such as Michael and Emmanuel (Bagatti 2004:261). Bagatti refers to Mark 6:13.
The holy oil would have been used in the ceremonial anointing of new Christians during the third stage of their three baptisms – that of the Holy Spirit, which they believed was attended by great angels. Fr. Bagatti tells us that the anointing with oil, termed chrism, “symbolized the Holy Spirit, who had consecrated Jesus” (2004:241).
Bagatti says that, for instance, Pope Damasus objected to the Judeo-Christian idea that during the second baptism of descent into the water, the names spoken were those of “Christ, Michael and Gabriel,” in effect, giving to the angels “personified powers of Divinity,” says Bagatti (2004:240). As Bagatti explains, the second baptism re-enacted Jesus’ immersion in the waters of the Jordan. For the new Christian, imaginatively and poetically, it symbolized “the mystical descent into Sheol …. recalled the snares of the Dragon of the Great Ocean [Isaiah 27: 1]…. purifying their conscience so as not to be deceived by him” (2004:240). And by descending into the waters, the baptized would thereby receive Gifts of the Holy Spirit from the great angels.
The first baptism, “of fire and light,” recalled the words of John the Baptist (Mt. 3:11) “I baptize you with water … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Bagatti refers here to the Gospel of the Ebionites which recorded that at the very moment of Jesus’ baptism, “…. the skies opened and there appeared a great light like a great fire” (2002:239). This first rite was believed to have been attended by the archangel Michael who re-clothed the newly baptized with heavenly light.

Metaphysical Speculations, Questioning Early Christian Ideas

     Fr. Bagatti (2004: 86-87), an authority on the survival of the Judeo-Christians in different places in the Roman Empire, declares that “no Judaeo-Christian bishop attended the council” held at Nicaea in 325. Of the 318 bishops, 18 were Palestinian representatives; all were Greek with no Jewish names. He suggests that the main target, the Arian doctrine regarding the largely human conception of Jesus the man, was taken from the earlier Jewish Ebionites. As for the latter, that Judeo-Christian sect took its name from the word Ebion in Hebrew, meaning “poor.” (2004:32-33) Bagatti says: “…. They are called Ebionites because of their faith in Christ.” Bagatti quotes from Irenaeas of Lyons (late 2nd century), who said of the Jewish Ebionites that they teach the world was made by God , but regarding the Lord [Jesus Christ] they believe as Cerinthus does, the latter who was declared a heretic by the Greek Christian bishops.
What of Cerinthus, an influential early 2nd century thinker whose questioning of orthodoxy is still worth considering? Unfortunately, he is known only from what his critics reported. According to Edward Gibbon (1924:110, Ch. 47, Vol 5), “Cerinthus of Asia” tried to reconcile the Gnostic with the Ebionite, “… by confessing in the same Messiah the supernatural union of a man and a God.” Gibbon had already commented upon the Ebionites (1924:104) as having lacked knowledge of:

“…. the “pure and proper divinity of Chris …. Educated in the
school of Jewish prophecy and prejudice [Gibbon betrays here his
own prejudicial view of Jews] they had never been taught to
elevate their hopes above an human and temporal Messiah.”

As for Cerinthus’ teachings, Gibbon said Cerinthus viewed Jesus as a mere mortal (as did the Ebionites), the natural son of Joseph and Mary. On his baptism in the Jordan, Gibbon phrased Ceinthus’ ideas as follows. “….the Christ, the Son of God himself, descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, to inhabit his mind and direct his actions during the allotted period of his ministry.”
Cerinthus asserted that it was actually the Christ Spirit that was the divine agent performing the acts of miracle and healings attributed to the man Jesus. Also, Cerinthus supposed that the Spirit of Christ abandoned Jesus at his crucifixion (See Mt. 27:46).
Other Gnostic-minded religionists, the Docetes of the late-2nd century went much further than Cerinthus. Gibbon (1911:107-108, Ch. 47), the Docetes, “a numerous and learned sect of Asiatics,” preached that Jesus was merely a phantom, who appeared at the Jordan “…in the form of perfect manhood” in spiritual and not corporeal form.
Diarmaid MacCulloch (2011: 122) places Cerinthus among the Gnostics. Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons, end of 2nd century, grouped certain heretical individuals and groups as gnostikos (Gnostics – those who claimed knowledge of the truth). MacCulloch says of the Gnostics, they were dualists, perhaps acquainted with Zoroastrianism in seeing the world in terms of good and evil, darkness and light. Some questioned the Jewish account that God’s creation was good. Regarding Docetism, mentioned above, MacCulloch (2011:124) says that, to the Docetes, the passion and resurrection were only “heavenly play-acting,” seeming to have happened.
As for Jesus, the flesh and blood man, to Syrian theologians, Christ’s redemptive physical suffering led them to emphasize his human nature. Gibbon (1911:118) referred to the Syrian theologian, Nestorius as a native of Germanicia, who spent years in a monastery at Antioch in Syria and was known for

“the eloquence of his sermons… In the Syrian school, he was taught to abhor the confusion of the two natures, and to discriminate the humanity of his master
Christ from the divinity of the Lord Jesus” (1911:119).

Emperor Theodosius chose Nestorius to be patriarch of Constantinople in the early 5th century. MacCulloch (2011: 225) relates that Nestorius antagonized the orthodox-minded at Constantinople when he criticized the worship of Mary as Theotokos, meaning “Bearer of God” (to the Orthodox a way of guarding Christ’s divinity against Arianism). Nestorius said Mary should be called Anthropotokus, “the Bearer of a Human, “declaring, “The Word of God is the creator of time; he is not created with time.” Here was a metaphysical conception of the eternal Godhead, long pre-existing before earthly time!
Let us go back again to the 2nd century, when Greek gentiles were becoming acquainted with Christianity. MacCulloch (2009: 141-143) summarizes the influential religious philosophy of Justin Martyr, born in Samaria, Palestine. Justin thought of God the Father, known to the Jews and the Christians, as much like Plato’s Supreme Being. He was against the Gnostics, in that, to Justin, God had created the material world, and the Logos was the mediator. Justin’s Greek philosophical idea rested on the Logos, which he thought had been glimpsed by the Hebrew prophets and Plato, then finally completed in Jesus Christ, a being other than the Father – derived from him like a flame which lights one torch from another. MacCulloch writes: “… torchlight from torchlight, in a phrase which was embedded in the fourth century in the doctrinal statement which is now called the Nicene Creed.”

Major Theological Disputes in the 4th-5th centuries, and aftermath

     At Nicaea in 325, the Alexandrian priest, Arius, according to MacCulloch in ‘Arius and the One God’ (2011:306-325), raised the Platonic question of the nature of God – a place to begin his thinking. Arius came up with a slogan: “There was when he was not.” By this slogan, he meant that, though Jesus Christ had originated in eternal time, there was a time, before all worlds began, when Jesus Christ did not pre-exist.
MacCulloch discusses Arius’ motivation (2011:213) for saying the Son was subordinate to the Father, as follows. Christ was part of the created order, “not simply an image of God, because Arius wanted to show that the Savior was like one of us, someone who had to struggle towards virtue. The Arians were defeated at the Council of Constantinople in 381, and their views outlawed, says MacCulloch (2011:219).
At the council in 381, Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea (Lebanon), was condemned even though he tried to affirm Christ’s divinity as Athanasius had done. Apollinaris (MacCulloch 2011:220) said Jesus Christ had lived in a human body and soul, but, rather than possessing a human mind, the Divine Logos assumed flesh. Gibbon (1911:112, Ch.47) said of Apollinaris, he was the first to proclaim the “one incarnate nature of Christ,” to which Syrian theologians objected, favoring the “two natures of Christ.” Gibbon said, this seemed to agree with Cerinthus’ double nature. Apollinaris taught that the Godhead mingled with the body of a man, and the Logos, eternal wisdom, supplied in the flesh the place of a human soul, the Logos performing his intellectual functions.
Arianism still appealed in the Eastern Mediterranean (MacCulloch 2011:221).In 380, Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia (near Constantinople), sponsored Ulfila to go north among the Gothic tribes, whom he converted to Arian Christianity. Gibbon (1911:87, Ch. 37) wrote Ulfila taught the Goths that “the Son was not equal or consubstantial to the father.” With a decided flourish Gibbon wrote: “Arianism was adopted as the national faith of the warlike converts who were seated on the ruins of the Western empire.”
On entering the lands of the Western Roman Empire, the Arian Goths and Vandals set up Arian Christian kingdoms. Theodoric in the early 6th century was as an Arian ruler who tolerated other Christians such as the Orthodox churchmen at Rome. Orthodox churchmen survived at Rome until Carolingian kings of Gaul arrived to restore lands to the Roman papacy. Gibbon goes into great detail of the horrors of the Arian Vandals persecutions of the Orthodox priests. Eventually Emperor Justinian’s army arrived in the 6th century to vanquish the Vandals.
The Nestorian Church (legacy of the heretical Nestorius), as well as Syrian Jacobites, established their brands of Christianity throughout Asia, first in Persian realms, then up into Central Asia and along the Silk Road into China, and down into India. After the Council of Chalcedon in 451, to which they did not assent, the Eastern Christian churches became known as the “non-Chalcedonian churches.” By 500 CE, according to Gibbon in Chapter 47 (1911:157) the Oriental churches became masters of Persia.

“To this standard of religious freedom resorted fugitives from all the
provinces of the Eastern empire; the narrow bigotry of Justinian was
punished by the emigration of his most industrious subjects; they
transported into Persia the arts both of peace and war …” .

The Oriental churches survived throughout Asia until the 13th-14th centuries, but their numbers greatly declined with the onslaughts of Turks and Mongols, environmental disasters, and the accompanying Black Plague.

Athanasius, Upholder of Orthodoxy, and Promoter of
of Monasticism – a New Social-Political Antithesis?

     As for Orthodox leadership, we must go back to the 4th century at the Council of Nicaea where the founding figure of orthodoxy was the fore-mentioned Athanasius of Alexandria, who struggled mightily against his fellow Egyptian delegate, Arius. While still the youthful deacon to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, he emerged Athanasius the most vocal exponent of the “Unity of God, the Father and the Son.” For him, the equality of Father and Son was, quoting Athanasius, “like the sight of two eyes.” MacCulloch quotes Athanasius further; he went so far as to declare that the Son “has made us sons of the Father, and deified men by becoming man himself.” (2011:216)
Canon Stanley’s fore-mentioned lectures (1924 edition) devoted a chapter to Athanasius, so great of figure in the history of the Church of Egypt after he became Bishop of Alexandria, still highly regarded by the Coptic Church of Egypt with which Athanasius had a close association because of his sponsorship of Egyptian monasticism, “an offshoot of the Coptic Church,” says Stanley (1924: 232). He had been a hermit in his youth, and became a close friend with Antony of the desert, whose biography was written by the Bishop. When Athanasius traveled to Rome he was accompanied by the monk Ammon, who hastened to throw himself before the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul (1924:233). Regarding the Athanasian church, native Egyptian and Coptic-speaking, to this great national party, Stanley says, there belonged “the great body of the hermits and the monks.” (1924:233).
Gibbon (1911: 65-6, Ch. 37) says that Athansius introduced the monastic life to Rome where the disciples of Antony opened a school. Gibbon says,” The strange and savage appearance of these Egyptians excited, at first, horror and contempt, and at length applause and zealous imitation.” Senators, especially the matrons, began to transform their palaces into religious houses. Gibbon (1911:69, Ch.37) looked down upon the widespread institution of monastic communities as follows: Romans retired from the oppression of the imperial government; youth preferred the privations of the monastic life to the dangers of military engagement; people fleeing the barbarians sought refuge with monks. Gibbon wrote further:  “…. whole legions were buried in these religious sanctuaries; and the same cause, which relieved the distress of individuals, impaired the
strength and fortitude of the empire.” Thus Gibbon blamed monasticism, in part, for the decline of the Roman Empire.

Religious Battles at the Councils of Ephesus, 431 and 449

     Gibbon (1911: 126, Ch. 47, Vol. 5) narrated the theological battles in the early 5th century between Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, still upholding Athanasius’ doctrines, and Nestorius, the fore-mentioned Syrian theologian acting as Patriarch at Constantinople. At one stage during the tumult of the council at Ephesus, 431, the monks of Constantinople left their sanctuaries to add their protest against Nestorius, favoring “the cause of Cyril, the worship of Mary and the unity of Christ.” Gibbon says (1911:126, Ch. 47). A long line of monks and hermits held a procession bearing torches and chanting to the Mother of God as they approached the emperor’s palace. The monks asserted that no one could attain salvation unless they embraced the Creed of Cyril, the successor of Athanasius. The Council of Ephesus in 431 recognized Cyril’s writings as conforming to the Nicene Creed and condemned Nestorius a heretic. Theodosius released an edict against Nestorius and followers, “condemned his writings to the flames,” said Gibbon (1911:128, Ch.47).
At the next Church Council at Ephesus in 449, sponsored by Emperor Theodosius, the heresy of the two natures (Syrian doctrine) was condemned. When violence broke out within the church, trembling bishops hid behind the altar at the threatening entrance of monks and soldiers. As Gibbon said, “This second synod has been justly branded as a gang of robbers and assassins” (1911:130-1, Ch. 47). Yet, the faith of Egypt in the one nature of Christ did prevail. It is to be noted that at that Ephesus council, Pope Leo’s writing on the mystery of the incarnation was disregarded, an insult to be remedied later at the next council at Chalcedon in 451.

Disputed Terms of the Chalecdon Creed, 451 CE

     In The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church by Vladimir Lossky (first published in 1944 in Paris, 1973 translated edition) he takes the enduring doctrines of the Greek Orthodox Church back to the early centuries of ongoing theological disputes, through which orthodoxy prevailed against heretics. Constantly, he quotes from the writings of the Church Fathers, whose elevated, mystical thought was entirely “theological,” he asserts, “not philosophical” (except for Origen).
Lossky (1973:143) reproduces the Chalcedon Creed of 451 in full, at which time they were trying to frame acceptable language regarding “the Incarnation,” – the nature of Christ, human and divine. According to the Syrian theological doctrine, they interpreted “the Two-Natures of Christ” as distinct levels of being in the person of Jesus Christ – and not “commingled” as “the One-Nature” Orthodox party put forward. The Chalcedon Creed, borrowing from the language of Pope Leo at Rome, pronounced a compromise, as mentioned, a statement of belief that was not accepted by the Eastern churches, Syria and beyond.

“…. we proclaim that we should confess one and the same Son, our
Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in deity and perfect in humanity, true God
and true man, composed of a reasonable soul and body, being
consubstantial with the Father through the Divinity and consubstantial
with us through the humanity, alike to us in all, save sin, born of the
Father before all worlds in his deity, born in these last times of Mary
the Virgin, Mother of God ….. who was made known in two
natures without being mingled, without change, indivisibility,
inseparability …… the properties of each nature remain firm
united in one person .… not divided into two persons”

Lossky (1973:10) says, down through the centuries, the Greek Orthodox Church waged “dogmatic battles” which were necessary to preserve the purely spiritual end – “attaining the fullness of mystical union.” Lossky narrates that the church struggled against the Gnostics because, quoting Athanasius, “God became man that men might become gods.” The church affirmed the consubstantial Trinity against the Arians and condemned the Nestorians who would have separated the person of Christ from God. Also the Church had to battle against Apollinarians because he said: “… since the fullness of human nature has been assumed by the Word… our humanity must enter into union with God.” As for the Holy Spirit, Lossky calls this “the dogmatic question of our own time,” affirming its centrality in the whole history of Christian dogma which “… unfolds itself about this mystical center…”
When I read Lossky’s chapter ‘The Divine Darkness’ (1973: 23-43), I saw radically new ideas presented by this obscure writer, Dionysius is known for his work in Greek, Concerning Mystical Theology. For a long time he was believed to have been Dionysius the Areopagite mentioned in Acts 17:34, converted during Paul’s visit to Athens. Current scholars call the author of these writings, the pseudo-Dionysius, dating him to around 500 CE; Lossky dates him between the third to the sixth centuries.
Bertrand Russell (1945:404-5) says of Dionysius that he tried to reconcile neoplatonism with Christianity, and dates him after Plotinus. Russell thinks Dionysius was right in asserting no name can be given to God, logically so, since symbolic descriptions of affirmative theology have opposite predicates, and Russell points out, “God has no opposite.”
Dionysius’ philosophical importance is that he ventured into “The Divine Darkness,” the title of Lossky’s chapter. Lossky writes: “The God of Dionysius, incomprehensible by nature, the God of the Psalms: ‘who made darkness his secret place …is not the primordial God-Unity of the neo-platonists” (!973:31). Dionysius wrote of two different paths to obtaining a mystical union with God. On the one hand, he saw positive-theology expressing in glowing language praise and glorification of the Godhead. But Dionysius declared, the negative-theology represents the better path. It was a very great, empowering idea in his time. He seized upon the idea of “the incomprehensible nature of the Godhead.”
One could say that Dionysius proposed a new Antithesis, which opened the way towards the still unknown Reality of the Greater Being of the Godhead – beyond all worlds known by our calculations of “Time,” beyond the reasoned speculations of humans. His was a kind of answer to the doctrinal squabbles of the preceding centuries!
Hesychasm, Greek Monastic Mysticism in Medieval Times. Hesychasm from the Greek verb, hesychaso, “to keep stillness,” according to Lossky, is a spiritual discipline of interior prayer practiced by monks in the Eastern Church. Often they repeat the well-known “Jesus-Prayer” with every breath through the day. Lossky refers to Bishop Theophanes who wrote in the 19th century on the Jesus-Prayer, quoting him, “When the spark of God Himself – grace – appears in the heart, it is the prayer of Jesus which quickens it and fans it into flame…” (1973:2-9-211).

Hesychasm As Mystical Union With The God Head  

   Diarmaid MacCulloch (2011: 487-491) addresses the 14th century ‘Hesychast Controversy’ during the period of the flourishing of monasticism, especially at Mount Athos, even as nearby Constantinople was decaying, soon to be conquered by the Muslim Turks. Hesychasist practice was linked, says MacCulloch, with the “mystical idea of Light as a vehicle for knowing God – a metaphor for the knowledge of God.”
An interesting theological dispute arose between two leading monks, Gregory Palamas at Mount Athos, and Barlaam, an Orthodox monk of Calabria. Palamas asserted that with Hesychasist practice, it is possible to reach a vision of divine light which reveals God’s uncreated energy – the elementary, pure Light of the invisible Godhead.. Barlaam, to the contrary, said it was foolish to think that a human could perceive part of God’s essence – the Holy Spirit itself. He asserted, in MacCulloch’s words, “… this confuses the creator and the creation.” Barlaam, reading Dionysius, said it is permissible to speak of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. Ultimately Barlaam was condemned as a heretic and Hesychasm became triumphant, says MacCulloch.
Lossky’s quote from Dionysius (1973:220) describes rays of divinity, (in Lossky’s words) “the creative powers which penetrate throughout the universe, and make themselves known , not through any created being, as the unapproachable light wherein the Holy Trinity dwells…” Here, Lossky quotes from St. Gregory Palamas who said “God is called Light, not with reference to His essence, but to His energy…… by analogy with physical light God is called Light …. It is given in mystical experience.”

John Scotus Eriugena, Metaphysical Unity of the Creation

     Bertrand Russell (1945:400-1) speaks of “John the Scot … as the most astonishing person of the ninth century… who set reason above faith.” He argued that reason and revelation are both sources of truth, in Russell’s words, “… true religion is true philosophy.” Russell observes that his Trinity resembles that of Plotinus, the Neoplatonist. His second division of nature expounded Plato’s “ideas,” ideas which Eriugena saw subsisting in God. And, his fourth division of nature was influenced by the fore-mentioned Dionysius, whose Greek writings he translated into Latin.
In Frederick Copleston’s A History of Philosophy, Mediaeval Philosophy (Vol 2, 1962:129-153), he explains the ideas of John Scotus Eriugena, of interest because he anticipated Hegelian rationalism. His last name, meaning “belonging to the people of Erin,” indicates his birth in Ireland ca 810 CE. He was educated in an Irish monastery, repositories of Greek learning in the West. Sometime in the 840’s he traveled to the court of Charles the Bald in France to give scholarly leadership in the Palatine School which Charlemagne had instituted. To please the king, Eriugena began translating Greek manuscripts into Latin, particularly the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius.
In Eriugena’s De Divisione Naturae (862-866), he used the term “Nature” for all its divisions, heavenly and earthly, which form a universitus or totality. Eriugena placed the Godhead at the highest level of his Four Divisions of Nature. Seemingly the Godhead dwells above the angelic orders, which carry out “the Word of God,” play a part in the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. (See the angelic cult of Judeo-Christians).
Eriugena’s four divisions were worked out as follows (1962:141-143):

“Nature which creates and is not created” is God Himself, the cause of all things, but without cause. Of course, God is conceived of as beyond “Time” (see the thinking of earlier heretics like Nestorius). God appears or manifests Himself in creatures, each a theophany or an actualization of God.
Nature which is created and creates, this division spoke of primordial causes as praedestinations. These are divine ideas, prototypes of all created essences. This level is conceived of as the ultimate, pre-destined goal of human souls.
Nature which is created and does not create, applies to all earthly creatures: humans, plants and animals. All participate in the above primordial causes, multiple effects deriving from higher essences. Man shares with animals the physical necessities of nutrition and sensation, etc, but has the faculty of reason. Man has a human soul made in the image of God, in which sense man is the microcosm of creation summing up material and spiritual worlds.
Nature which neither creates nor is created, applies to the termination of all created things. Copleston says, “Finally, at the term of the natural order, God draws all things back into Himself, into the Divine Nature from which they proceeded” (1962:14)”

A few more questions to consider regarding Trinitarian Themes

     As earthly creatures, we humans of Eriugena’s Third Division of Nature seemingly are linked with other species, just as modern science is discovering. While earthly creatures live and draw breath, they are alive, but where does the spirit or soul (even of a non-human creature) go after death? We humans, mindful of ourselves as “mortals;” know that all earthly creatures return to the Creator Godhead, to disappear into unknown realms, the Fourth Division of Eriugena. Dionysius’ Divine Darkness seems like a place to start, while living on earth, to know something of possibly more wonderful realms existing beyond this world. This calls upon us to seek enlightenment, wherever we can find it, even in our darkness.
In my view, Eriugena’s Four Divisions of Nature are overly formalized and rationalized, essentially Arian in conception in making the distinction between the First and Second Divisions, his logical supposition. On the other hand, Dionysius’ writings, which had a great impact on western as well as eastern Christians well into medieval times, awakened very profound mystical aspirations.
Among the Greek Orthodox Hesychast monks at Mount Athos, in medieval times, one of their favorite themes was “the Transfiguration of Christ” on the mountain (Mt. 17:1-6; Lk. 9:28-35).
The disciples waiting further down the slopes saw Jesus at the top of the mountain sitting with the two ancient Hebrew prophets: Moses and Elijah. What theme was being shown here? When Moses encountered holiness in the Sinai desert, Exodus 3, at first he was aware of “the angel of the Lord appearing in a flame of fire out of a bush,” yet unconsumed. Then God called to him, identifying Himself as the god of his ancestors, and saying of Himself – “I am that I am,” Yahweh in the Hebrew Scriptures. When Elijah in the 8th century BCE fled from political adversities in Israel, he went to the mountain, Horeb, in the desert. When a great wind storm blew up, he became aware the Lord was not in the wind, nor in an earthquake or a fire – but in the sound of sheer silence, the Voice of the Lord came to him (1 Kings 19) – the innermost awareness of the “Holy” (not just confined to humans, for, we read that Balaam’s donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the roadway).
As for Jesus, at the moment of his baptism in the Jordan River, the Love of God poured down upon him – “Salvation by Divine Grace” from on high – a Blessing forever upon all the rest of humankind!
At Jesus’ baptism, the Lord God spoke once again, just as when He had brought forth the Creation in Genesis 1, when the Lord God pronounced that the earthly Creation was “Good.” Just so, the Lord God loved the man Jesus, as a Father loves his Son, and Jesus would wear the “robe of glory (the Syriac-Christians’ baptismal idea of the Holy Spirit) throughout his time of ministry on the earth.
If we go back to Justin Martyr, we learn how he came to appreciate the new Christian religion. He tells of an autobiographical incident; he met an aged man by the seashore at Ephesus who told him that the Hebrew prophets had knowledge of God long before the Greek philosophers. Let us take Justin Martyr’s idea of the Logos, the Plan of God from the beginning of the Creation. The Hebrew Scriptures highlighted Moses’ encounter with the Lord God, then, the importance of Elijah’s realization that God was not simply in the cosmos. But Jesus Christ, in the depths of his awareness, realized his closeness with the Godhead, which was utterly self-transforming. We still are moving towards Jesus’ great discovery of his Father in Heaven, a realization, in the words of Hegel, of the Godhead as Light of Light – a sacred moment of great enlightenment.

Bibliographic Sources

1 Edward Gibbon, The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, in seven volumes first
published 1776-1788, 1911 Edition published at London, Methuen and Co. Ltd.
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Friedrich, Harvard University, New York: Dover Publications, 1956 English edition.
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York: E.P Dutton and Co, 1924 edition
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6 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity, The First Three Thousand Years, Penguin Books, 2011
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Christians, English Translation by Fr. Eugene Hoade, Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 2004 Edition.
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9 Frederick Copleston, A History Of Philosophy, Volume 2, Mediaeval Philosophy, Augustine to
Bonaventure. Garden City New York: Image Books of Doubleday and Co. Ltd, 1962 edition.