Homoousion, Homoiousion or Houyhnhnms

7/29/2019 Homoousion, Homoiousion or Houyhnhnms

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Homoousion, Homoiousion or

Houyhnhnms?by michael sympson

Even now people are startled at the Dispensationof the Three in One. They keep constantly throw-ing out against us that we are preachers of three

gods.Tertullian, Against Praxeas

7/29/2009 Gondola Press Ltd., 13,750 words, all rights reserved


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The Presbyter Arius (249 336 AD) was born in Libya in the year be-

fore Emperor Decius (249 251 AD) issued his decree that every citi-zen was obliged, on pain of death, to perform a compulsory

sacrifice to the gods, which had to be certified in a writtendocument. Times were bad: sedition, galloping inflation, too

many daggers surrounding the man at the helm the regimehad issues and scrambled for a haven of cohesion and loyalty.Emperor Decius persecution of ideological enemies was thefirst of the two empire-wide persecutions entirely orchestratedfrom the capital there had been local pogroms before yet

the theologian Origen (185 254 AD) was there, and he made it apoint that only some individuals, on special occasions, individuals

who can easily be numbered, have endured death for the sake ofChristianity (Origen, Adversus Celsum, book III, chapter 8). Nevertheless the

Catholic Church likes us to believe that in those days the Chris-tians had been suffering martyrdom by the hundreds and thou-sands, even millions, that the church was wading in her ownblood, yet Origens testimony is supported by another witness

of the period, Bishop Dionysius, who reckoned for a metropolislike Alexandria not only a capital city of two hundred fifty-

thousand denizens, but at the time the leading patriarchy ofChristianity could produce only a total of seventeen martyrs

in Decius persecution, of which at least one person was a

known criminal (Eusebius, Ecclesiastic History I, 6:41; Hippolyte Delehaye, SJ). Toreceive recognition as a martyr of the faith not always asone would expect posthumously was for a Christian the Pourle Merit, the Victoria Cross and the Medal of Congressrolled in one. Yet in the real world this amounted to barelymore than the accidental exhumation of skeletons on some or

other ancient building site to which the local prelate then at-tached a name and a legend. The Acts of the Martyrs are en-


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tirely a work of fiction. And we do know why the death toll was

so comparably insignificant.For instance in the diocese of Rome herself, the eloquent

deacon Novatian (251 258 AD) opposed the election of PopeCornelius, calling him the bishop of the the fair-weather-Christians, those who after one or several lapses ask you to be received

again in the fold (Optatus, II: 3). Such retractions of renunciations toavoid martyrdom happened more frequent than tradition likesus to believe; in fact it was the rule, giving cause to grudges be-tween entrenched factions and leading to schisms, even if there

was no real disagreement in terms of doctrine.Of course the ideologues would beg to differ.

Sabellianism or Monarchianism was probably the first une-quivocal enunciation of consubstantiality between the Christ

and the Father. But there was a dilemma. If the two were ofidentical substance then God the father must have suffered atthe crucifixion just as badly as his son. A Godhead who suffers?This was unacceptable. The Synod of Antioch in 268 AD hurried

to anathematize the heresy of consubstantiality.For people who had nothing better to do with their time

but get into arguments over some or other arcane wrinkle oftheology, a sort of dispensation was needed; a way to ex-

tract the Father from the calamities of the Son. The geeky

Origen came up with what he considered a good idea: like theSabellianists he attributed to Christ eternal pre-existence anddivinity. Yet he also insisted on distinctions in the Godhead,teaching with equal emphasis a separate essence and the sub-ordination of the Son to the Father, calling him a secondaryGod, with the Holy Spirit the Logos, the word in the begin-

ning as the begotten mediator between eternal divinity andeverything created. He taught that from eternity the Father


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had intended to generate the Son, but represented the act as

the creation of a secondary substance.Needless to say this opened just another can of worms if

the Son is subordinate to the Father, how can he be theLord?

The Adoptionists and Ebionites and other People who stillhad a life or at least a proper job, could only shake theirheads. It seemed to them Christianity was still in the process ofreinventing her origins.

The epistolary section in that sorry appendix to the Bible

which Christians have the temerity to call the New Testa-ment, predates the gospels by about half a century and neverdraws a reference or recites from the story of Jesus the objectof worship was apparently a purely spiritual redeemer and had

been worshipped in these circles long before Jesus entered thepicture. The Letter of Clement from 95 AD is still blissfully un-aware of any of the canonical gospels and even of the Paulina.This is a situation to which oral tradition, the cover it all band-

aid of the modern scholar, simply doesnt answer. Instead thegospels began to be circulated during the upheavals of 117 AD

when the genuinely poor seemed to rebel against the estab-lished churches of the literate freedmen and middle-class

burghers who fought their way up the social ladder with hard

graft and thrift, living by the principle that who doesnt workshall not eat (2 Thess. 3:10). These protesters introduced to Chris-tian mythology an angry character who for most of his timeseemed pissed off with anybody who had one coat more towear than himself and instead praised the lilies in the fieldwhen he didnt swear on family-values and promised to bring

the sword. Of the two hours worth of sayings put in Jesusmouth, one hour is devoted to blackmailing the men of means:


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It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, he said,

than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God (Mk. 10: 25), andJesus really meant the eye of a needle. He asked to consider the

ravens, they neither sow nor reap, and neither have a storehousenor a barn, but God feeds them anyway (Lk. 12: 24), but poetic as the

lilies in the field may seem, in the end blessing the poor is justa backhanded way of telling off the rich (Mk. 8: 15, 11: 15-19).

Who was this Jesus? We dont really know. Our sourcedoesnt make any bones of the fact that there were peoplestanding right next to the event who saw nothing out of the

ordinary: no sudden darkness, no corpses walking out of theirgraves, no earthquake, no eclipse, no Jesus, only the squealingand whooping of a group of Galileans and this guy with handsas large as coal shovels, saying: These are not drunk, as ye sup-

pose (Acts 2: 15).God had raised up Jesus of Nazareth on the third day, Peter

continued, and showed him openly, and now listen to this: Notto all the people, but unto chosen witnesses (Acts 10: 41), which has all

the hallmarks of a blatant con.One can criticize the gospels as cryptic and contradictory,

but underneath the obvious propaganda there emerges a com-pelling story: Jesus followers must have been an argumenta-

tive lot, we are told of disagreements and even indignation at

their leader who seemed in no hurry to deliver on his promise:I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father has appointed unto me,that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on

thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Lk. 22: 28-30;Jn. 14: 1-3).Crucifixion was the ultimate ignominy, since everybody

was cursed who hangs on a post (Gal. 3: 13; Deut. 21: 22-23;Joshua 8: 29, 10: 26-27). As a form of execution it was in practice long before theRomans. In 93 BC a delegation of Pharisees to the royal court of


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Syria lodged an appeal against their own king, because King

Jannaeus had nailed eight hundred of their compatriots to thecross (Josephus, Antiquities XIII, 13,5). So it didnt make any difference

whether the convicted was executed by the Roman Governor orunder Jewish law. In either case, even if he were a king ofkings (Sanhedrin 9: 8d), those slain by a court of law are not to be bur-ied in their fathers sepulchers, but in a grave by them-

selves (Numbers 23: 13) and thats exactly the story we are told, withsome embellishments of course, to add luster and mystery tothe bare bone facts.

Only after a suitable period of penance in the penal bone-yard, when the flesh has rotted, the family was permitted tocollect the bones and bury them at home in their appropriateplace (Sanhedrin 6: 6a; 9: 8c, etc.), and thats where we should look for

Jesus bones after his disappearance from the records: in thegraveyard of his hometown Capernaum. It should be his finalresting place even if the story of the trial and crucifixion turnsout to be a red herring.

His gig was the end of the world or rather the coming of anew era (Mk. 6: 7-8; Lk. 22: 28-30;Jn. 14: 1-3). He promised it to be immi-

nent (Mk. 9: 1; Mt. 16: 28). Under the walls of Caesarea the seat ofthe Roman governor he instigated a first uprising, yet the

people of Galilee refuse to be roused (Mk. 6: 7-8, 11: 21; Lk. 10: 13). The

author ofJohn has Jesus begin his public appearance with theincident in the temple turning him into a fugitive from the law.The synoptic Gospels put the scene at the end of his career leading straight to the trials. Jesus could no longer show hisface in public. Gone were the carefree days of water turned towine. In a cat and mouse game with the authorities he kept

away from Jerusalem with a lame excuse you go ahead: I willnot, for my time is not yet come and only after somebody gave


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him the all clear he made the travel, yet not openly, but as itwere in secret (Jn. 7: 8-10).

His own relatives didnt think much of him (Mt. 13: 55-58) the

parents, four brothers and two sisters (Mk. 6: 3), his cousin Johnthe Baptist and an aunt, his mothers sister (Mk. 3: 31-35, 6: 4; Mt. 13: 55-

58; Jn. 2: 4). There may have been a wife. Our source has Jesus readfrom the Torah in the synagogue (Lk. 4: 19), which, I am told, inthose days was permitted only to married men. The usual ex-tended family one should think all the more remarkable thatthese people disappear from the radar the very moment Jesus

himself has disappeared from the records. That should be un-usual. Normally a member of the family and not this Peter, Je-sus enforcer, should have step up to the helm and lead thecongregation if there ever had existed a Jewish Jesus move-

ment, which I doubt. There is no evidence for any of this.With his reputation at stake the synoptic evangelists make

Jesus issue instructions to acquire arms and prepare for an-other uprising (Mt.10: 34; Lk. 12: 49, 22: 38, 21: 24, 22: 38; Mk. 11: 15-19). In the

scenario ofJohn the incident at Caesarea would have been thelast desperate throw of the dice yet John doesnt even men-

tion it.After a carefully choreographed entry into Jerusalem (Mk. 11:

1-11) the motley band started a riot on the temple precinct. If Je-

sus really had said, is it not written, my house shall be called ahouse of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of rob-

bers (Mk. 11: 15-19), it would have been true to his agenda. Thetrade of sacrificial animals was of course part of the religiousobservance itself. (Even Buddhists did the same thing al-though they didnt slaughter the animals but set them free to

accrue good karma.) Yet Jesus was more concerned with thebooths of the moneychangers sitting under the bleached out


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marquee at the wall that later should become the Waling Wall.

In the Roman domain every major shrine, including and espe-cially the great temple in Jerusalem, acted as the ancient

equivalent of our high-street banks, offering loans, keeping in-dividual safe deposits and facilitating the transfer of large sums

on letters of credit, services that contributed to the welfare notjust of the rich. For the man praising the lilies in the field thismeant nothing, less than nothing. So, not surprising, the peoplein Jerusalem refused to rise, as the Galileans had refused at the time

when the disciples were sent out to rouse them. The Council prepared

for vigorous action (Reimarus, Fragments by an Anonymous Writer). WhetherJesus ever said something like this or not, the state-ment does make sense as the war cry of the disenfranchisedand genuinely poor living as refugees after the events in 114

117 AD when Emperor Trajan had invaded Iraq.In the end Jesus is made to realize that god is not the kind

of ally you should put your trust in (Mk. 15: 34). All that soundsabout right. No inconsistency here, except that neither to the

trials nor at the crucifixion we hear of any witness who couldhave given us the details.

It all is made up and tied in with the usual mythology. Aslate as in the fourth century AD, the intrigued Saint Jerome vis-

ited the still flourishing shrine of the Phrygian Tammuz, a de-

ity of death and rebirth, located in Bethlehem, the allegedbirthplace of Jesus. Barely a coincidence! To maintain this sub-liminal association with the time honored myth of resurrectionfrom the netherworld the narrator went so far as alleging aRoman census under Augustus (at a time when the Romans stilldidnt hold this kind of jurisdiction over Judea) making Joseph

drag his poor pregnant wife from their home in Capernaum allthe way to Bethlehem. In the real world of course the census


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taker didnt ask you to travel from your current residence to

your place of birth. Besides, Joseph had other things on hismind. Word in the streets had it that Mary carried the child of

Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, a Roman soldier, garrisoned onlyfour leisurely walking hours away from Capernaum. Later, in 9

AD, Panteras unit was transferred to Germany as replacementfor Varus lost Legions. His tombstone can still be seen in themuseum at Kreuznach (Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, XIII, 7514 and Dessau,Inscriptiones selectae, 2571).

Subsequently, the mainstream Christian from the first and

second century thought of Jesus as a man like everybody else,who became the chosen Son under the sign of the dove only af-ter his baptism, because he had been walking honorably in holi-ness and chastity (Hermas, The Shepherd, HarnackDogmengeschichte; Bart D. Ehr-man, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture). If we go by the most ancientfragments of the Gospel according to Luke it is obvious enough.John the Baptist, holding the head of Jesus under water an-nounces in the name of God: You are my Son, today(sic!) I have

begotten thee (Lk. 3: 22); possibly the exact words spoken everytime the Baptist was dunking somebody into the River Jordan.

In our current editions today is edited out of Luke; a divinitybestowed on Jesus only as a bonus later in life would make the

savior merely the most potent saint in the calendar.

At the end of the second century the retelling of old storiessignificantly blurred the dividing line between divinity andhuman form of the savior; yet the custodians of traditionclaimed perhaps even really believed that they only re-stored the teachings of their forefathers according to the wordin the beginning.

The problem was, they couldnt agree which word that wassupposed to be. For the Gentile Churches of the Good Shepherd


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the resurrection was a purely spiritual event anyway, the car-

nal aspect was carried into the fold much later.To resolve the dilemma the Docetists embraced a compro-

mise, a duality in the nature of the Christ, the idea that hismortal persona was merely a mask for the indestructible divin-

ity of his true nature. The man dying on the cross was just aneffigy; the kiss of Judas was the token that divinity withdrewfrom its mortal frame, while the real Jesus looked on from adistance, laughing at the spectacle: Never have I suffered in anyway, nor have I been distressed. And this people has done me no

harm (First Apocalypse of James, 19; Second Treatise of the Great Seth;Apocalypse ofPeter, VII, 3: 81; Koran 4: 157-158).

In 186 AD a Bishop of Rome saw an opportunity to stir upmore trouble and gain brownie points with his parishioners. He

allegedly excommunicated the Adoptionist Theodotus of Byz-antium in 186 AD. An early example for alternative history.Not only had a bishop in Rome no jurisdiction over Theodotusor anybody outside of his see, but at the time there were actu-

ally two churches and two bishops in Rome, again not as theconsequence of a schism or differences in their faiths, but rep-

resenting two different ethnic groups: the earliest founders of achurch in Rome, the expatriates from Greece and Syria with

Greek as their language of liturgy, and the churches these im-

migrants had planted among the indigenous Romans who lis-tened to sermons in Latin. Gradually the animosities betweenimmigrants and natives assumed the form of a theologicalsquabble over guess what the true nature of Christ. Thenews spread to the bishops in distant Gaul who felt compelledto intervene in the affairs of the Roman see in 178 AD (Eusebius, Ec-clesiastic History, V: 3), reprimanding the newly elected Pope Victor Ifor his divisive attitude. Allegedly the squabbling factions


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called on Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna for arbitration (Eusebius, Eccle-

siastic History, V: 23ff). This never happened.Polycarp was already dead for fifteen years; his corre-

spondence with Pope Victor I is a forgery a pseudo-epigraph in the highfalutin terminology of theology; normal

people call it lying the two had lived a generation apart.Victor is the first Roman bishop on record who styled him-

self the successor of the Apostle Peter, claiming primacy evenover the mother church of the immigrants. The bishops of thegreat patriarchies in the East and in Carthage had a good laugh!

Twenty years later, a visitor from Africa, Bishop Hegesippus ofCarthage drafted for his own uses a list of bishops in the city ofRome (Eusebius, Ecclesiastic History, V: 3). He knows nothing of Peter, nei-ther that he ever came to Rome nor gave up his apostolate to

become the bishop over perfect strangers.As for Theodotus, we only know for sure that somebody in

the Eastern hemisphere of the Roman Empire did indeedanathematize his writings as heretical.

This was the situation into which the young Arius wasraised before he received his higher education in Antioch. He

became a tall and handsome man, with a downcast brow andwinning manners, leaving quite an impression on the ladies. Yet

despite of all the animosity from the hands of his Catholic or-

thodox biographers, there is not a single voice accusing him ofinappropriate conduct. His teacher was the Presbyter Lucian,who also instructed Eusebius of Nicomedia. Lucian made a pro-found impression on the young Arius; the church histo-rian Harnack has called him the Arius before Arius. It was theperiod when the tetrarchs ruled the empire.

I once assisted to an archaeological dig in former Yugosla-via, not very far away from the ancient residence of the Roman


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emperor Diocletian. In his days Emperor Diocletian (244 311

AD) had the reputation of a real life sorcerer, a character thatcould have stepped out of J. K. Rowlings novel.

Diocletian was the son of slaves laboring on a farm in mod-ern Croatia. The estate belonged to the Roman senator Anu-

linus. For whatever reason, the master took a shine to the boyand set him free. Diocletian enlisted in the Roman army andsteadily rose through the ranks. He became an initiate in thecult of Mithras, the ancient equivalent of the Free Masons, andendured savage beatings before been left for dead in the snow

as part of the ritual, awaiting the reunion with his animal-spiritand the return from the netherworld to the living. The cultpervaded all senior and many of the subaltern positions in thearmy. In 274 AD the young flag officer was transferred to Gaul

and associated with a mysterious woman Victoriana themother of the camps. She used to tour the armies stationed inGaul, her son was the usurper Victorian 269 271 AD. The sol-diery venerated her as a kind of female Merlin. When Dio-

cletian met her, the old woman (actually we dont knowwhether she was an old woman) prophesied that he would as-

sume the purple after he killed the boar. His moment camewhen during a campaign in the Balkans a thunderbolt struck

the incumbent emperor.

The armies called for elections, put up poll booths and can-vassed their candidates. During the proceedings, Diocletian no-ticed the Praetorian Prefect Aper (the name means theBoar). The man was patiently waiting for his turn at the dais,to defend himself against charges of murder and sodomy. Instunted silence the assembled soldiery watched Diocletian grab

a hunters javelin and kill the man on the spot. Diocletian wasduly acclaimed emperor and set out to change the world.


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Reserving for himself the senior position, he established a

junta of four co-rulers, the tetrarchs. To cut to size the politi-cal weight of the army chiefs, Diocletian halved the personnel

numbers of the legions while doubling the total of all these bri-gades. The empire was carved up into four prefectures,

with twelve dioceses and one hundred and two provinces be-tween them. The vicious cycle of fifty years of assassinationsand mutinies had come to an end, yet this increase in securitycame for a price. The bureaucratic fragmentation between fourimperial courts instead of one and the doubling of positions for

flag officers somehow had to be paid for. The currency deval-ued even further; the governments attempt to counter infla-tion by freezing prices on consumer goods created a blackmarket economy.

By now Diocletian held the highest office the papacy inthe cult of Mithras. His power was absolute. Diocletians cha-risma inspired an almost religious awe. A junior colleaguefailed to perform and the angered Diocletian made him run be-

side his chariot for more than two miles in full regalia, whilethe troops stood to attention and watched.

We are asked to believe that the culprit took the dressingdown without resentment.

Diocletian married a Christian woman, the sister of Pope

Caius (283 296 AD) of Rome. The two had a daughter together. Shefigures in the Greek Orthodox calendar as a martyr and saint.

The emperor himself never became a Christian; neverthe-less he was a man of strong religious feelings. The preamble tohis marital laws from 295 AD is a long sermon on the hallowedsacrament of marriage; the legislation against the Manicheans,

from 296 AD, breathes the spirit of a pagan zealot. The Chris-tian churches, by now already displaying a provocative opu-


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lence in basilicas of incrusted marble and gold plated roofing,

lived in high hopes surely the big change announced in theprophecies and the arrival of the millennium was imminent.

What came was exactly the opposite.In 303 AD, his chief of security informed Diocletian of a plot

among his Christian courtiers. The emperor unleashed the lastand most severe of all anti-Christian persecutions, noticeablenot so much for the number of actual deaths mostly courtiersserving at Diocletians residence but for uncounted deporta-tions and the systematic collection and destruction of Christian

literature. In order to confiscate whatever Christian booksthere were, the bailiffs of Munatius Felix, the flamen (priest),and curator of the colony of Cirta in Numidia (Algeria) knockedon the door of the local bishop, a man decked in silver-

embroidered robes with a numerous staff of priests, deacons,sub-deacons and undertakers. When questioned, the bishopsaid all his books had been handed out to the lectors (publicreaders) in the more distant districts of the diocese; indeed the

bookcase of the parish was found empty. Instead, perhaps in anattempt to get the bloodhounds off-track, the sub-Deacon Sil-

vanus volunteered to provide an inventory of all the accoutre-ments in the church.

It was impressive.

There were two golden chalices, six of silver, six silver cru-ets, a silver bowl, seven silver lamps, two candlesticks, sevenlamp-stands of bronze, eleven bronze lamps with chains,eighty-two embroidered tunics for women, ditto sixteen formen, twenty-eight veils, thirteen pairs of men's boots, forty-seven pairs of boots for women, nineteen smocks to be worn in

the country. Mind you, this was supposed to be a minor see insome remote province. Silvanus especially directed the bailiffs


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attention to a silver box and another lamp of solid silver, which

was somewhat hidden behind an oil jug, yet it failed to makethe hoped for impression. Neither did the bishops opulent din-

ing room in this house of worship for the poor.At last, another sub-deacon produced what the bailiffs were

looking for all along a heavy codex. After burning the book inpublic on the doorsteps to the church, they proceeded withoutdelay to the premises of the lectors.

They knew their names and whereabouts from the bishopsregistrar. Without resisting a certain Eugenius gave up four

books, Felix, the mosaic worker, produced five, Victorinuseight, Projectus seven five larger and two smaller volumes and the grammarian Victor not only parted with two codicesbut handed over unfinished quires and loose leaves which were

still with the copyist to form another volume.Some, however, refused to cooperate. Euticius, an immigrant

from Caesarea, declared that he had no books and a cursory surge of

his home produced no results, but the intimidated wife of his associate

Coddeo surrendered the six volumes Euticius had left in her husbands

safekeeping (Optatus of Milevis, 370 AD). So in the end, the bishop and

his clergy had been more than willing to part with all the booksin their possession. What surprises most in this account is the

opulence of Christian churches before Nicene even in remote

corners of the empire. The Christians were no longer lowlifeshiding in the catacombs if that isnt just another clich ofCatholic propaganda. The successor of a lowly fisherman fromGalilee dressed in princely regalia and with the haughty airs ofa man sitting on a mountain, where the voices from lower downcant reach (Ambrose of Milan) he allowed himself to be carried

about in a golden chair. As a symbol of status, the popes re-tainer held the reins of a pair of sleek horses pulling an empty


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chariot. The papal residence was a marvel of late Roman archi-

tecture; the holy books on the altar dyed in purple, with gold onit molten into lettering and jewels decking the book cover, could

have bought a farm a piece, while Christ lies at the door nakedand dying (Jerome). The Roman Chief of Police, Praetextatus

wasnt kidding when he said: Make me bishop of Rome, and I willbe a Christian tomorrow.

The systematic destruction of Christian literature duringEmperor Diocletians persecution also created a bottleneck inthe tradition of scripture, setting in motion a feverish cottage

industry of forgeries to fill the gaps although this was a tradeChristians didnt need to learn.

As a matter of fact the entire New Testament is a book ofpseudo-epigraphs cover to cover. The critic Karlheinz Deschner

refers to the fact as part the criminal History of Christianity and Ipersonally see no reason to share the sanguinity of somebodywho considers himself and his work as an example for radicalcriticism but thinks it inappropriate to condemn Christian

pseudo-epigraphy for what it is a lie. Not fiction, a lie.Whatever Mr. Detering may think about the quality of

the writings included under false names in that sorry appendixto the Bible, which if published under their true name would have

remained literary ephemera so the quality isnt that great af-

ter all? it takes a theologian to find it OK to falsify history andcreate incidents and people that never existed. Lets rememberthat for centuries, the inquisition was going after you withthumbscrews and worse, if you didnt swallow the bate hookline and sinker. How little must have changed since Martin Lu-ther pretended to wonder what harm it would do, if a man told a

good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church ...a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie. Such lies, the re-


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former concluded, would not be against God, he would acceptthem. Well, I cant speak for God but I can speak for the victimsof this tyranny of lies, as well as for their wives and children,

whose bones had been broken on the wheel, the bodies burnedto cinder and the cinder thrown away for six sous a piece to the

hangman. And why? Because you had the temerity of thinkingfor yourself, or accidentally forgot to kneel to the wafer carriedby the priest in a procession. Thoughts to which you nevergave utterance, but on inquiry were too honest to deny, wouldmake all the difference between having a life before death or

suffer prolonged agony and an untimely exit in the name ofsome fantastic notion of afterlife.

What good could possibly come from that? What good didcome from that?

A cavalier dismissal of this terror over the minds as an-cient history would not only be an insult to the victims, itwould sweep under the rug the fact that these practices didntend because the churches and their theologians came finally to

their senses but because the arm of secular law had intervenedand put the pulpits in their proper place.

In Africa Diocletians persecution gave cause to the Donatistschism. Again a bitter conflict divided those willing to suffer

martyrdom and the large crowd of turncoats and fair weather

Christians well thats not my terminology, why should any-body die for an idea and risk to have the idea die with him: re-treat, regroup and fight another day but not without reflectingagain whether it is worthwhile. Use your brains.

Donatism became the most persistent and long lastingschism before the arrival of Protestantism and refused to be re-

solved until the Arabs invaded North Africa. The issue again was martyrdom. To become a martyr was still the shortcut to


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heaven, even after Christianity had become the religion of the

state. The entrenched animosity drew blood on both sides theCircumcellions called themselves agonistici (warriors of

Christ) and continued to stage suicide missions against the fewremaining shrines of the pagan peasantry and after there was

nothing left to vandalize, they attacked the cathedrals of theCatholics to provoke martyrdom and death from the hands ofalready Christian authorities. The ancientsicarii and recent sui-cide bombings come to mind.

After twenty years of rule Diocletian abdicated, the first

and only Roman emperor to do so. The dominus et pater noster,laid down his ceremonial garb: the white turban with the glit-tering crest of Sun and Moon and the flowing silk robe embroi-dered with the symbols of the Zodiac and the four elements.

The son of a slave had come a long way. In his correspondenceDiocletian said that he now was finding true happiness insprinkling his cabbages.

The cabbage patch he was talking about was located on the

exact spot where his parents had worked the land for theirmaster and it was enclosed by the most magnificent palace of

the period, today a UNESCO heritage site.Every day the imperial pensioner studied the livers of sacri-

ficed sheep and chickens; the villagers in the neighborhood

whispered of human sacrifices. In 308 AD, Diocletian steppedout of his palace for the first time after retirement. The con-cord of the tetrarchs was crumbling; his successors began field-ing armies against one another. Diocletian ordered them to at-tend a conference at Carnuntum (Bad Altenburg in Austria).Protected by nothing but his name and his position in the hier-

archy of Mithras Bad Altenburg is the place of the mostelaborate chapel of Mithras ever excavated Diocletian de-


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moted none less than Constantine not yet the Great from

an augustus (supreme commander) to a caesar (deputy).Weighing the balance of power between him and the co-

emperors, Constantine swallowed his pride and followed or-ders, for now at least, perhaps this was his real reason why he

later favored the Christians.Diocletian returned to his clairvoyant chickens; it seems, he

knew the exact time of his death in advance. In 311 AD he wentto bed to die, leaving wife and daughter to the mercy of hissuccessors. The tetrarch in the East, Galerius issued the first

amnesty for Christian deportees followed by Constantines de-cree two years later.

He was already in his sixties when Arius reemerged fromdecades of obscurity.

He applied for an opening as a presbyter in Egypt. Yet in318 AD, during an informal brief, Arius employer, BishopAlexander of Alexandria, dropped an unguarded remark aboutthe eternity of the Son.

Arius asked Alexander to clarify. According to his own un-derstanding, Arius said, if the Father begat the Son, he must beolder than the Son, and hence there was a time when the Son was

not. In other words, since God had created everything ex ni-

hilo, the Son as well must have his subsistence from noth-

ing (Sozomen, Church History VII: 4). To everybody else that should becommon sense but Bishop Alexander disagreed.

What started as an apropos remark soon snowballed to ametaphysical dispute. A substantial faction of the clergy likedto agree with Arius. Bishop Alexander felt compelled to sum-mon a conclave in 321 AD, which duly excommunicated Arius

for heresy. Yet ideological heavyweights like the bishops Euse-bius of Nicomedia, Paulinus of Tyre, Gregory of Bery-


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tus, Aetius of Lydda, and Eusebius of Caesarea (the church his-

torian) offered Arius their support. Forced to leave Egypt, Ariussought refuge at the imperial court in Nicome-

dia (modern Izmit on the Sea of Marmara), still ruled by a pa-gan coleague of Constantine. Putting his enforced sabbatical to

good use Arius publish a book modeled on Platos Symposium,turning the accusation of heresy against his former employer.He called the Patriarch of Alexandria a Sabellianist (Athanasius,Contra Arianos). Before a synod in Palestine, Arius appealed to be re-instated in his former position.

The assembly concurred. In the streets, however, commonpeople, often barely literate, came to blows over the most ar-cane theological arguments. The unrest spread to Anatolia andGreece and caught the attention of the authorities.

In 324 AD Constantine finally became what in his opinionhe should have been all the time: the sole ruler of the Empire.He had big plans for a new capital on the Bosporus, a secondRome, meant, as a kind of lifeboat, to keep his dynasty afloat

should the rest of the empire go under. A vision of foresight,yet for now the plan created the ultimate white elephant, an

opportunity to spoil the provinces and feed their marrow to thegaping jaws of the creatures surrounding the emperor (Ammianus). Yet

the Christian mob rioting in the streets of Antioch and in the

cities of Greece put the project on hold.To end this battle of words and fisticuffs over incompre-

hensible things, the emperor sent letters to Bishop Alexanderand to Arius, advising the two to settle their differences. Asshould have been expected, neither was willing to listen, so theemperor sent a personal emissary, Bishop Hosius of Cordoba, to

mediate a compromise.It was to no avail and Bishop Hosius advised Constantine to


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convoke a synod of all Christian bishops in the empire, the first

ecumenical council, which he did.Contrary to common perception, Emperor Constantine (272

337 AD) was neither the first Christian emperor, in fact at thetime he wasnt a Christian at all, nor was he the first emperor

to issue an amnesty. The first Christian wearing the purple wasPhillip the Arab (244 249 AD), who had been a Christian sincebirth. The first amnesty was issued in 260 AD, when Em-peror Galienus (253 268 AD) put an end to Decius persecution. In313 AD Constantines decree followed as the last after the am-

nesties issued by his pagan colleagues in the East.In 325 AD the emperor presided in person over the Council

of Nicene. An assembly of handpicked yes-men, mainly fromthe churches of the East, was expected, as one of the partici-

pants noted, to merely make a show of grave deportment on ac-count of their grey hair (Bishop Sabinus of Heraclea). Nevertheless itcame to the usual accusations and recriminations, ending in aviolent controversy (Eusebius, Vita Constantine, III: 13). It took all the dip-

lomatic skills of Constantine to establish in this cage of scream-ing mandrills a unity of sentiment by assisting the argument ofeach party in turn, (sic!)so as to gradually dispose even the most ve-hement disputants to reconciliation (Eusebius, Vita). The emperor was

assisted in his efforts by his advisor Bishop Hosius a key fig-

ure at the council and by the champion of consubstantiality,Athanasius of Alexandria (293 373 AD), himself an absentee at Ni-cene. He helped from the distance. To muscle dissenters intosubmission Athanasius dispatched from the monasteries inEgypt unwashed bands of hooded thugs, armed with baseballbats. In 328 AD Athanasius was rewarded for his services with

the most prestigious of the patriarchies after it had become va-cant, the papal chair of Alexandria.


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We know what Emperor Constantine himself was thinking:

Even if by chance somebody should get it right, there is no way any-body else could possibly see the truth in it, he said (Socrates Scholasticus,

I: 7). After the conclave the sheer number of openly disagreeingbishops did not fail to make an impression on Constantine and

the emperor made conciliatory gestures to dissenting clerics;the Synod of Tyre in 335 AD even deposed the emperors en-forcer at Nicene, Bishop Athanasius, of his chair in Alexandria,while the emperors sister, Constantia, arranged for the agedPresbyter Arius he was in his eighties by then an audience

with her brother. Hardly a coincidence!The Patriarch in Constantinople perceived this as an af-

front; in all but word, the emperor seemed to repudiate what isgenerally presented as his own concoction, the creed of Nicene.

So when after his return from the audience with the emperor,Arius stopped by in the Hagia Sophia and begged to be admit-ted to communion, the Greek cleric in his outrage slipped theold man a poisoned wafer. The next morning, Arius was found

lying dead in the street.Soon after, Constantines doctor informed his patient that

he, too, were only days away from meeting his maker.Constantine called for an Arian bishop to administer the bap-

tism.

The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt has chargedConstantine with nurturing quarrels for the sake of quarreling.It kept the clergy occupied and away from interfering in poli-tics. What really mattered for the emperor at Nicene was not somuch the formula of the creed but bringing together all thesecontroversies under one roof. As far as Constantine was con-

cerned, he wanted administrative unity, one church over onerealm under one emperor. That was the trinity he had in mind.


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The crucial issue for Constantine was reform: in every town

and city the residing bishop was to be held answerable to themetropolitan in the capital.

Before and after Nicene, Alexandria held top position in theleague table of patriarchal chairs, closely followed by Constan-

tinople and Carthage, while the see where we hear the termChristian for the first time, the once predominant church ofAntioch, due to inner dissent, was rapidly losing prestige. Theabsence of the Roman bishop at Nicene is an indication for thelowly status the Roman See still held. So, for no better reason

than that the most prestigious among the ecclesiastic patriar-chates supported unmitigated consubstantiality, EmperorConstantine blackballed the assembly into accepting the theo-logical formula of Jesus being the son, consubstantial and existing

as the word of the father from eternity before he was made to incar-

nate in the flesh. Most bishops at the council didnt understandthis, or paid lip service without believing it (Socrates Scholasticus, II: 2,5, 16), yet for Constantine the formula of Nicene was not only a

matter of administrative convenience: it flattered the imperialego! To appreciate the peculiar flavor of consubstantiality

one should remember that it was a heathen who presided overthe conclave at Nicene, a man who as a young officer of the

guard had participated in Diocletians persecution of the Chris-

tians and who owed his rank and rise to power to his initiationin the cult of Mithras. His coins proclaim Constantine as theson of the highest god, the Deus Sol Invictus. Consubstantialitywould elevate Constantine himself to the rank of a god. AfterConstantine had passed away, his sons, the defender of NiceneConstantine II, and the two proponents of Arius creed Con-

stants I, and Constantius II were left to slug it out who shouldsucceed to the purple.


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Nearly half the Roman army, the flower of the troops, lost

their lives in this civil war: fifty-two thousand men. Con-stantius II (337 361 AD) came out of the melee as the last man

standing, but the borders of the empire, denuded of defenders,had become an open invitation to every invader.

Under Constantius rule no less than nine synods continuedto anathematize the formula of Nicene. The reinstated BishopAthanasius was expelled from Alexandria for a second time in339 AD. A kangaroo synod in Rome in 340 AD repealed the deci-sion only to provoke the synod of Antioch in 341 AD to hand

down a stern condemnation of the presumptions of the Romansee (Sozomen, III: 6-10; Socrates Scholasticus, II: 8, 15; Athanasius, Apologia contra Arianos).The Synod of Serdica (modern Sofia) in 342 AD was meant toengineer some kind of reconciliation between the factions. It

not only failed spectacularly, it cemented the divisions, inmillo conscientiam tuam debo praeter ire (Socrates Scholasticus, II:

29; Hilary, Theodoret, II: 15, 9). Disillusioned, a mere handful of Italianbishops gathered in Milan, the administrative center of the

West, in 346 AD, to make a last stand for the creed of Nicene.They achieved exactly the opposite; the next bishop ordained

on the chair of Milan was Auxentius (355 374 AD), a militant Arian.The four councils held at Sirmium (now Sremska Mitrovica in

Serbia) between 347 and 359 AD asserted the orthodoxy of the

Arian faith, preparing the ground for the ecumenical Synod ofRimini in 359 AD.

At last Emperor Constantius II seemed to score his home-run. After seven months of arm-twisting and browbeating, theemperor achieved universal acceptance of Presbyter Arius doc-trine that the Son has a beginning and was made of things not yet

existing and therefore we were not made for Him, but He for us, when

it was the pleasure of God. Therefore the Father was as invisible to the


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to the Son and known as imperfectly by the Son, as God is to us (Arius,

Letters). The dream of one state, one religion and one rulerseemed to be at Constantius fingertips. He issued decrees to

the dissenters to surrender their churches and hold their gath-erings only outside of the city walls (Socrates Scholasticus, I, 2: 27,

38; Sozomen, I, iv, 21). Constantius nephew, the emperor Julian theApostate (331 363 AD), before he turned his back on Christianity,was brought up as an Arian Christian himself, he even held ec-clesiastic office as a lector. In his letters Julian describes the ef-fects of his uncles decrees: Many were imprisoned, persecuted

and driven into exile. By the droves so called heretics were massa-cred, particularly at Cyzicus and Samosata. Everywhere in Paphlago-

nia, Bithynia, Galatia, you could see entire towns and villages laid

waste (Emperor Julian, Letters LII). Unwilling to put his name to the

condemnation of Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, the RomanBishop Liberius (352 366 AD) suffered arrest and deporta-tion (Ammianus, XV: 7; Socrates Scholasticus, II: 37, IV: 29; Sozomen, IV: 11, VI: 23). It issaid, a whole gaggle of rich Roman matrons voluntarily fol-

lowed him into exile in Bulgaria. As his replacement, EmperorConstantius appointed Bishop Felix II (355 365 AD).

After three years the browbeaten Liberius condemnedAthanasius after all and was allowed to return and resume his

office. By imperial decree both contenders were supposed to

jointly hold the chair.Consubstantiality, however, still found some support

among clerics with Latin as their first language. In 360 ADBishop Hillary of Poitier returned from a period of exile inPhrygia where he had learned of the creed of Nicene as some-thing entirely new to him (Hilary, de synodis 91; Haller, The Papacy I).

Fired up in his zeal, he went to debate the concept with theArian Bishop of Milan. Polite but firm, two sentinels accompa-


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nied Hilary to the gates of the city and sent him on his way

back to France. He came to the melancholic realization thatevery year, nay every month we make new creeds to describe invisi-

ble mysteries. We report what we have done, we defend those who re-

pent; we anathematize those whom we defended. We condemn either

the doctrine of others among ourselves, or our own among others; and

tearing one another to pieces, we have been the cause of each other's

ruin. It was not entirely his fault.The language of theology in the East was, and still is Greek,

yet in Italy, France and Africa the knowledge of Greek was in

rapid decline. Niceties about the divine substance got lost intranslation. Basil the Great (330 379) made the blunt remark thatyou Romans just lack in sufficient instruction and therefore are eas-ily duped in theological matters. When St. Basil belabored in

eight long paragraphs the difference between substance andhypostasis (Basil, Letters XV: 4), the Latin translation managed withtwo short paragraphs on essentia and subsistentia. Subtledistinctions between consubstantiality identical with the Fa-

ther (homoousion) and substantiality similar but differ-ent from the Father (homoiousion) only managed to cause an-

other shipwreck of pious peace (Ambrose of Milan, Letters LVI). Againthere was blood in the streets.

In Antioch no less than three bishops vied for the crown of

orthodoxy by decrying the most miniscule differences in theinterpretations of their antagonists. Some five thousand peopleperished when Emperor Valentinian I sent in his troops to re-store order. On another occasion more than three thousandpeople were left dead in Thessalonica. In 380 AD, the Patriarchof Constantinople, Gregory of Nazianzen (330 389 AD), observed

with a sigh that the capital was full of mechanics and slaves whoare all profound theologians and preach in the shops and in the


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streets. If you desire a man to change a piece of silver, Gregory said,

he informs you wherein the Son differs from the Father; if you askthe price of a loaf, you are told, by way of reply, that the Son is infe-

rior to the Father; and if you inquire whether the bath is ready, the

answer is, that the Son was made out of nothing. Apparently all

these mechanics and slaves were zealous Arians; the creed ofconsubstantial trinity was about to go extinct.

Then the indomitable Ambrose of Milan (340 397 AD) came tothe rescue. He was the son of the praetorian prefect of Gaul andhad received an excellent education before he studied the law

(J.R. Palanque, Saint Ambroise et lEmpire Romaine, 1933). At a young age alreadythe governor of Northern Italy, Ambrose was in the vicinitywhen the Arian bishop Auxentius of Milan passed away. Somediehard adherents to Nicene overheard the anti-Semitic Am-

brose calling the deceased Auxentius worse than a Jew andlobbied for his election. In 374 AD Ambrose was rushed within aweek through baptism, taking holy orders and the ordinationas Bishop of Milan.

During the next five years, steering in the teeth of the waves,Saint Ambrose confronted the Arian faith first in his own dio-

cese and then gradually extended his influence to Spain, Gaul,the North of Italy and the territories on the Danube. Ambrose

convoked synods, ordained new bishops, and when seeing fit

overruled decisions from the Episcopate in Rome. If he was tomake headway with his plans for an empire-wide unity underthe creed of Nicene, he needed a power base from which hecould impress the prestigious patriarchates in the East.

Sometimes this created confusion. Traditionally the Patri-archate of Carthage kept good relations with the see in Rome.

In the controversy over the Spanish heretic Priscillian a pro-ponent of stern asceticism who found a devoted following in


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Spain and France two parallel synods, one in Rome and one in

Milan invited the same delegation from Carthage to do thesame thing on both assemblies. Priscillian was duly condemned

and both councils issued decrees, apparently from the samestencil.

Contemporary sources, without so much as mentioning thepope of Rome, referred to Ambrose as the first of the bishops in

Italy. Not really a surprise, the Roman pope Damasus (366 384 AD)was too much of an embarrassment to be mentionable and hissee in constant disarray. According to the deacon Ursinus, Pope

Damasus trusted not so much in brotherly love, but in thebrawn of retired gladiators, mule drivers and undertakers. Onehundred and thirty-seven people had lost their lives in his elec-tion (Ammianus, XXVII, 3: 11-13). His way with women earned Damasus

the nickname auriscalpius matronarum, the ladies ear-tickler.Twice he was arraigned to answer charges of misconduct: in374 AD before a tribunal of his Episcopal peers, and in 378 ADbefore the court of Emperor Gratian (359 383). In the synod of

Rome from the same year that is in his own diocese thepope made himself conspicuous with his absence. A bishop

from Sicily had more standing with the conclaves in the Eastthan this Successor of Peter, a notion, still not fully assimilated

yet. The anonymous chronicler in the Codex Ambrosianus gives

a brief on the history of the church in Rome without ever men-tioning Peters name.

There was little unity in the Roman see and the factionswent through an unending cycle of anger, indictments, dis-agreements, separations, violence, war, dissolution, reunion and pre-

carious peace (Pope Damasus). The entrenched followers

of Novatian, the pure, carried on the ancient conflict, andwelcomed with open arms Donatist refugees from Africa.


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Themselves unmolested, the grandchildren of Novatians pa-

rishioners took pride in their steadfast forebears and continueddrawing a line between them and the lesser Christians in the

Roman church. The controversy over the creed of Arius didnthelp. Altogether four bishops called themselves Pope of

Rome at the same time.The man calling the shots could only be the Vicar of Christ

at the imperial court in Milan, a man of more consequence forthe course of history than Jesus Christ himself.

Milan was the residence of Emperor Gratian and his teen-

age son and co-emperor Valentinian II, both with a vested in-terest in holding their own against the otherwise undisputedprimacy of Constantinople. Unlike most of their subjects thetwo adhered to the creed of Nicene. Bishop Ambrose could

count on their support. The mother of Valentinian II, on theother hand, remained faithful to the Arian creed. She couldntstand the sight and smell of the unshaven Ambrose.

Ambrose saw the time come to approach the emperor in

Constantinople, for we(sic!)are grieved that the fellowship of HolyCommunion between the East and West is interrupted (Ambrose of Mi-

lan, Letters XIV).The approachable Emperor Theodosius I was not insensi-

tive to the pleasures of the table and the eunuchs on his staff

repeatedly caused a scandal. Theodosius seemed a man of fewambitions; it was difficult to seize him up. Remembered as anable general, the Spaniard had been recalled from retirementto rescue the empire. Theodosius could think on his feet whenthings became critical; but in between it was difficult to rousehim from his apathy. Nevertheless, in the larger scheme of

things, he was the kingpin. Ambrose pulled him over by dan-gling the carrot that his reign might have the additional glory of


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having restored unity to the Churches (Ambrose of Milan, Letters XIV). Un-

der the constant prodding and coaxing of the Bishop in Milan,Theodosius slowly developed to a Catholic hardliner and even

an anti-Semite.So after test-running their proposition on the synod of

Antioch in 379 AD, the delegation of prelates from Milan tookpassage to Constantinople and paid their respects to the em-peror. As expected, Theodosius had an open ear for their peti-tion his correspondent in Milan had prepared him well.

On February 27, 380 AD, according to the apostolic teaching

and the doctrine of the Gospel, Emperor Theodosius wrote it intosecular law that every Christian was to believe in the one deity of

the father, Son and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity.

We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic

Christians (Codex Theodosianus XVI.1.2). Christians who had the temer-ity of begging to differ were branded with the ignominious nameof heretics, and shall not presume to give their gatherings the name of

churches, since they are foolish madmen.

February 27 is the official birthday of Catholicism.The Catholics entered the scene with a minority coup, a bid

for power in an already Christian state, comparable to the Bol-sheviks October revolution in Russia, which, as we remember,

was not a revolution against the Tsar, in fact not a revolution at

all, but merely a coup overthrowing the socialist governmentof Alexander Kerensky. Even in their outer appearance theLenin of 380 AD and the man from 1917 show remarkable simi-larities, if the mosaic in Ravenna is anything to go by.

For the people affected, the Jews, the dissenters, the educa-tors, the scientists and the artists, the consequences were

about the same in both instances: persecution, reeducation,torture, deportation and even death. Under the new law of Feb-


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ruary 27, the legislator threatened that the heretic will sufferthe punishment which authority, in accordance with the will of

heaven, shall decide to inflict (Codex Theodosianus XVI.1.2).

Nobody thought of it yet, but the Inquisition was alreadylooming on the horizon. The criminalization of homosexuals,

the denial of a franchise for women and the intrusive surveil-lance of the marital bedroom, not to mention the unrelentingcampaign against proper hygiene even brushing your teethwas considered offensive are Catholic specials thrown in tomake Catholicism even more special.

In the churches of the East and two thirds of the empirespopulace resided in the East the new law caused an outcry.

In Antioch the Christians overturned the statues of the em-peror and fought his soldiers in the streets. It took the young

Bishop Chrysostom all the powers of his exceptional eloquenceto prevent a massacre. Another native of Antioch, the Gentilepublicist Libanius (314 394 AD), although himself not a Christian,took issue with this evil law by a sacrilegious legislator (Libanius,Autobiography). For Christian and Pagan alike, the last remnants ofchoice in your beliefs had been taken away. Accosted by rioting

mobs, often with prominent figures of the eastern Episcopateleading from the front, Emperor Theodosius bore the brunt of

the riots. He began to feel as if he had been had, as if he was

made to rubber-stamp something that was really not worth thetrouble. Theodosius and his advisors in Constantinople soughtfor ways to appease the Episcopate in the East.

On January 10, 381 AD, the second ecumenical synod afterNicene gathered, first in Constantinople and then a few monthslater in Antioch. On the agenda were a few tweaks to the creed

of Nicene, barely more than relabeling it the conclave was al-lowed to make an omelet but not to break the egg. Despite the


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hotheads in his council Emperor Theodosius kept his cool, he

would not allow wrecking the work of ecclesiastic unity,which he and not this presumptuous Italian prelate already

had written into law. His only concession to the assembly wasnot to invite even a single Bishop from the territories west of

the Aegean Sea. This was stretching the semantics of ecu-menical, but nobody cared to notice.

Except for Ambrose, that is.The bishop of Milan took this as a personal affront; and he

was right. But what could he do? Should he do anything? After

all there was nothing in the decrees of Constantinople thatwould change in substance the laws of 380 AD. The Catholicswere here to stay.

Apparently that was not good enough for this arrogant

prelate. This was the Vicar of Christ speaking; even an emperorbetter did as he was told and when he was told. Ambrose sum-moned his bishops to Aquileia in 383 AD. In the presence ofEmperor Gratian an assembly of little more than thirty bishops

dutifully declared nil and void whatever had been decided byten times that many of their colleagues in Constantinople.

Against the advice of his wife Gratian allowed himself to getsuckered in and invited Emperor Theodosius to visit a synod in

Rome next year. The date collided with the schedule of Em-

peror Theodosius for another conclave in Constantinople. In-stead of him or any of the bishops from the East, three emissar-ies delivered a piece of mail. In this letter Theodosius rejectedthe invitation as unbecoming and then continued to lecturethe brethren from the West that all the decisions made in Con-stantinople were legal and inviolate and the presence of any

cleric from the West at the proceedings simply had been un-necessary. And that was that. Emperor Gratian was left with an


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uncomfortable choice. The thing he could not afford was an

open break with Constantinople. Least of all over an issue eve-rybody seemed to agree upon. So he left it to Saint Ambrose to

control the damage.It didnt amount to much, something like the epistolary

equivalent of Bart Lancasters grin in the film Vera Cruz, be-fore he would shoot somebody. If anything, Bishop Ambrosewas a past master of the art of getting even. No longer in a huffhe was again his icy self, the way people knew him when theyentered the zone of submissive hush in his study.

Seated in front of an open Bible, the prelate seemed to scanthe pages without saying a word, without even moving his lips.Ambrose is the first man on record who read, or pretended toread, in silence. The people around him shuffled their feet with

respectful little coughs. Ambroses eyes kept running over thepage, noted Saint Augustine always the keen psychologist,and after waiting for a long time in silence we used to go away. We

supposed that in the hubbub of other peoples troubles, he would not

want to be invited to consider more problems. We wondered if he read

silently perhaps to protect himself (sic! Augustine, Confessions Book VI).

So Ambrose waited. He waited for almost ten years. Hewaited until 390 AD.

Then, in Thessalonica, a popular race driver got himself ar-

rested on charges of raping the wife of a soldier. The mob inthe arena demanded the charioteers release, killed the injuredsoldier and dragged his body through the streets. EmperorTheodosius called in the army, things got out of hand, and6,000 civilians were massacred. The news traveled through theempire and created general consternation, exactly what Am-

brose had been waiting for all this while.By penalty of excommunication he summoned (sic!) the em-


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peror to Milan. Theodosius the Great had a choice: he cer-

tainly could find some or other bishop, in fact a whole gaggle ofbishops, if need be, who in case of an excommunication would

gladly have taken his side, but this could only create anotherschism, and this after the emperor himself had put his name to

the laws decreeing unity of church and empire. Ambrose knewthis. In full public view of all the people in the cathedral hemade Theodosius kneel in sackcloth before him to receive hispenance. Dressed beneath his status, with stubbles on his chin,the emperor was made to wait for the gesture of reconciliation.

Ambrose was on the summit of his powers. Yet the emperorshould have seen it coming.

In 385 AD, the local bishop of Callinicum (modern Raqqa) inSyria was seen to take the lead in an act of vandalism against

the local synagogue. Emperor Theodosius despite his flaws agood-natured person, was outraged and demanded an inquest.Yet Ambrose of Milan sent him a memo.

In his correspondence with the emperors, Ambrose com-

bined threats and blackmail with allegations, innuendo and so-licitous interpretations, giving us a master-class in how to

blackball even the high and mighty into submission. The prel-ate of Milan knew full well that his memo was about to set a le-

gal precedent: it set in motion the wheels of European anti-

Semitism for millennia to come.Ambrose begins with a thinly veiled threat:I have never been in such anxiety as at present, since I see that I

must entreat you to listen with patience, for, if I am unworthy to be

heard by you, I am unworthy to offer the Eucharist to you (sic!), aswell. You are now involved in the risk of my silence (sic!), but silence

and dissimulation on my part would not set you free. I am obeying the

commands of God, speaking out of love for you. As the holy Apostle


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Paul says, whos teaching you cannot controvert(sic!): Whether askedor unasked for, be prompt to reprove, entreat, and rebuke with all pa-

tience and doctrine. In the cause of God whom will you listen to, if not

to the priest, at whose greater peril sin is committed?

A report was made by the commander of the armies in the Eastthat a synagogue had been burnt, and that this was done at the insti-

gation of the local Bishop. You gave command that the accessories to

the incident should be punished, and the synagogue be rebuilt by the

Bishop himself. Are you not afraid this prelate might oppose you with

a refusal? You will then be obliged to make him either an apostate or

a martyr, either of them equivalent to persecution.I think you can see where this is going. Suppose the said Bishop

had indeed kindled the fire and gathered the crowd, in order not to

lose an opportunity for martyrdom: would he not say why not do

what will not find a reward in heaven if it remains unpunished? Sup-pose he declared that he set fire so not to leave a place where Christ is

denied. If you think the Bishop to be firm, dont make a martyr of a

firm man; if you think him vacillating, avoid causing his fall, for he

who causes the weak to fall carries a heavy responsibility.

But let it be granted that no one will bring the Bishop to book, for

I have asked this of Your Grace, and although I have not yet read that

this edict is revoked, let us notwithstanding assume that it is revoked

(sic!). What if there are some timid officials who already offered to re-

store the synagogue at their own costs; or if the commander of theEast already has ordered it to be rebuilt from the funds of Christians?

Then Your Majesty will have an apostate general, and to whom will

you then entrust your victorious standards (sic!)? Shall, then, a place ofunbelief be made out of the spoils of the Church? Shall the patrimony,

which by the favor of Christ had been gained for Christians, be trans-

ferred to the treasuries of unbelievers? We read that in the old days

the spoils from defeated enemies were used to build temples and idols.


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Shall the Jews write this inscription on the front of their synagogue:

The temple of impiety, erected from the plunder of Christians? But,perhaps, it is the cause of law and order moving you. Which, then, is

of greater importance, law and order or the cause of religion?There is, then, no adequate cause for punishing the burning of a

building, much less since it is a synagogue, a home of unbelief, a house

of impiety, a den of thieves braying like donkeys when they pray, con-

demned by God Himself. For this is what we read, when the Lord our

God speaks by the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah: And I will do tothis house which is called by My Name as I have done to Shiloh, and I

will cast you forth from My sight, as I cast forth your brethren, thewhole seed of Ephraim. And do not pray for that people, do not ask

mercy for them, for I will not hear you. So God himself forbids inter-cession on behalf of the Jews. Shall I remind you how many churches

the Jews had burnt in the time of the Emperor Julian? The two at Da-

mascus, one now scarcely repaired at the costs of the Church not of

the Synagogue the other still in ruins? Churches burnt at Gaza, As-

calon, Berytus, and no one has demanded punishment. What of the

basilica in Alexandria, burnt by heathen and Jews? It was never

prosecuted; shall the Synagogue not enjoy this privilege as well?

The judge was ordered not to merely report the deed, but punish it,

and to demand the return of the money chests carried away. This is a

town with barely anything, what great possessions could possibly be

carried away from a Synagogue there? What could these schemingJews possibly have lost by the fire? These are dissimulations by the

Jews, and how can they not refrain from calumny, having calumni-

ated Christ himself? Will you allow the Jews to triumph over the

Church of God? Allow the Synagogue to rejoice in this sorrow to the

Church? If so, the Jews will add to their solemnities the memory of

their triumph over the people of Christ. And what will Christ say to

you afterwards? I have chosen you, the youngest of your brothers, to


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rise from a private man to become emperor, I conferred victory on

you, and this is how you pay me back?Now the legal clincher:

Jews reject that they themselves are bound by Roman law andyet they seek redress by invoking this law? Where were those laws

when they were the ones to set fire to our churches? If Emperor Julian

did not permit restitution for the injury done to the Church because

he was an apostate, will Your Majesty permit redress for the injury

done to the Synagogue, because you are a Christian? Since the Church

shut out the Synagogue, why is it that again the Synagogue should ex-

clude the servant of Christ from the bosom of faith? The gods(sic!)shallavenge the injury done to them on their own. So, who is to avenge the

Synagogue? Christ, whom they slew, whom they denied? Will God the

Father avenge those who do not receive Him since they do not receive

the Son?At this point Ambrose is done with the subtleties and bran-

dishes his ultimate weapon:Should I fail to enjoy Your Majestys trust, by all means call to-

gether those bishops whom you think fit, and let it be discussed, but

what am I supposed to say, if it is discovered that your authorities en-

dorsed Christians to be slain? How am I supposed to explain it? How

shall I excuse it to those bishops? I, have done what could be done

consistently with honor to you, that you might rather listen to me in

the palace, lest (sic!), if it were necessary, you should listen to me inChurch (Ambrose of Milan, Letters XL).

For Ambrose it was a homerun Emperor Theodosius de-cided not to test the saints resolve and complied with all hisdemands.

Immediately the Christian ayatollahs closed ranks with

Ambrose. In 404 AD St. Chrysostom (347 407 AD) in his eight anti-Jewish homilies Adversus Judaeos, lashed out against everything


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Jewish, bitching that many people hold a high regard for the Jewsand consider their way of life worthy of respect. This is why I am hur-

rying to pull up this fatal notion by the roots. To him the syna-

gogue was a place where a whore stands on display. Yet the syna-gogue is not only a whorehouse it is a den of thieves and a haunt of

wild animals. This is why Christ said ask for my enemies, who did not

want me to reign over them, bring them and slay them before me

(Orationes VIII, Adversus Judaeos, Sermons 1 and 2 in reference to Lk. 19.27). In Africa,St. Augustine, as usual, could barely hold his water when itcame to endorsing an atrocity: Judas is the image of the Jewish

people. They bear the guilt for the death of the savior, for throughtheir fathers they have killed the Christ. Does the reader have anyidea how many Jews have lost their lives over this kind ofrhetoric even before Hitler?

So when in 415 AD another doctor of the church, thebishop and saint Cyril of Alexandria, after quite literally wash-ing his hands in the blood of the Gentile philosopher Hypathia(350 415 AD), thought how swell it would be to be remembered as

the one who kicked the door shut after the last Jew leaving Al-exandria, he called in the army to raided the Jewish quarters.

The soldiers raped the women and looted homes and syna-gogues. The capital of Egypt once had housed the largest Jewish

community in the empire and at the time some forty thousand

Jews were still living there.West and East began to drift apart. In 617 AD, the Byzantine

Emperor Heraclius ordered all Jews under the jurisdiction ofthe Byzantine Empire to be forcibly converted. Many went intopermanent exile. Some expatriated to Spain others to the Ger-man Rhineland. Little did they know!

In the meantime there were changes in the city of Rome!The patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople began loosing


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ground in the struggle for prestige and authority. In Alexandria

the Christian rule increasingly assumed the appearance of a to-talitarian police state. Pope Dioscorus I of Alexandria (444 454

AD) has received the appellative the Great and is still vener-ated as a saint in the Coptic Church. In real life this former sec-

retary of Cyril of Alexandria, was a merciless dictator who fol-lowing the example of the Apostle Peter in Acts (Acts 5: 1-11) sur-rounded himself with a guard of religious brown-shirts, brow-beating into submission every opposition in his see. His mis-conduct became too much even for the Catholic Church. The

synod of Chalcedon deposed Dioscorus of his chair in 451 AD.He died in exile on some godforsaken island where the mail ar-rives only once a year.

Meanwhile in Rome a new pope was elected, Pope Siri-

cius (384 399 AD), the good personal friend and protge of Am-brose. The skeptics expected the man in Milan to completelyabsorb the Roman thunder.

To everybodys surprise this didnt happen.

The missives of the new pope were full of we decree andit is our will. A Spanish delegation merely asked for his opin-

ion and Siricius answered with regulations and laws (ordina-tio, constitutum) and even referred to the ordinance of the ap-

ostolic see (decreta, statuta sedis apostolicae). For Siricius the

haughty airs came naturally. Condescending to the request asthe head speaking to his limbs, he put papal decrees on an equalfooting with the canons of the ecclesia, something, he ex-plained, every bishop from now on was required to observe.Pope Siricius and later another admirer of Ambrose, Pope In-nocent (402 417 AD) got the Roman papacy on a new footing and

launched the Roman catholic project on its long march toworld dominion. Employing every trick in the book, the Roman


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prelates resorted even to barefaced counterfeit: the so-

called Constantinian Donation. We may not know the forgersidentity, but we know who commissioned the scriptorium in St.

Denis to produce the counterfeit; it was Pope Stephen II (715 757). He needed the document to inveigle the Carolingian king to

share territories he had conquered from the Lombards as aquid pro quo for the pope bestowing on Charlemagne thebrand-new title of Roman Emperor of the German nation.

This was only a foretaste for things to come: In 1204 thefifth horseman of the Apocalypse, Pope Innocent III and the

Doge of Venice conspired in the final solution for Constantin-ople, by then still the largest and most cosmopolitan metropo-lis outside of China and Iraq. In the night before the final as-sault, the Christian mob inside of the walls, burned, looted, and

smashed to smithereens the last vestiges of Hellenistic art andlearning. The monumental statue of Athena the last compos-ite statue of its kind was overturned and hacked to pieces be-cause she seemed to beckon over the wall to the besiegers. The

next day, on Friday, April 13, 1204, the Christian mob from out-side the walls breached the defenses and proceeded to rape

twenty thousand Christian women. Thus the great schism be-tween East and West seemed resolved.

One must admit it was not exactly what the Pope had in

mind. Innocent III did not order murder for personal gain orout of human wickedness, but what always is worse, in thename of principle and ideals. He ordered atrocities with the se-rene conscience of a man who believes to know that he is doingthe right thing, that killing is actually the merciful option.

For sixty years Latin Kings held on to what was by now

only the empty shell of a once great city, before Constantinoplereturned to her rightful owners and the status quo ante on the


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ideological front was restored.

As it turned out, the Arian Lombards and the Prophet Mo-hammed, of all people, would lend a helping hand to the ascen-

dancy of the Roman popes.When the Lombards conquered Milan in 569 AD, making it

again a citadel of Arianism, the Catholics of the period musthave perceived this as a setback, but in actual fact the patriar-chate at Milan never recovered from this loss of clout. It endedall rivalry between the patriarchs in Rome and Milan. Andwhen in 641 AD the camel corps of the Muslim general Amr bin

Al-Aas paraded through the streets of Alexandria and finallySultan Mehmet II annexed Constantinople to the Ottoman Em-pire in 1453 Rome became the head of Catholicism by default.

Nothing of this could have been achieved by the efforts of

the Roman prelate alone. In fact most of the time these clericswere preoccupied with more pressing matters.

When the Dark Ages were at their darkest the Roman pa-pacy changed hands as the ultimate prize in the feuds between

Romes noble houses. Long before the dawn of the Renais-sance, incestuous prelates passed on Peters chair as their pri-

vate estate to first cousins and to the sons they had sired withtheir own daughters. They were leading armies into battle and

hired foreign mercenaries with no regard for their faiths to

fight their private wars. Every war foreign powers have fought onItalian soil, said Machiavelli (1469 1527), had been instigated by thepopes and these foreign hordes have done everything to keep Italy

lowly and divided.In 955 AD the worst of the lot even by the standards of a

Renaissance pope, the sixteen-year-old Pope John XII started

his reign of gambling, hunting and philandering in the name ofJupiter. Yes you heard the man Jupiter. How between all


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this carousing, chasing of game in the forests and of skirts in

the brothels the successor of a fisherman from Galilee foundthe time to expand the Vaticans territories is everybodys

guess. But he did and he was rewarded for it. On October 963AD the German king Otto I paid Rome a visit at the head of his

army and endorsed in a still existing document all papal ac-quisitions.

Or so we are told. Ottos grandson, Emperor Otto III, laterwas adamant to denounce the document as a forgery, neitherthe first nor the only of its kind. For the moment the papal leg-

ate duly conferred on Otto I the crown of Roman Emperor ofthe German Nation, while Pope John XII himself recuperatedhis sacred person in the amenities of the red light district inTivoli. This was a bit too rich, even for the Dark Ages.

In absentia the pope was charged with incest, infidelity (sic!to his wife!), blasphemy and pagan apostasy. Each and everycharge had substance. Soon after John XII died a sudden deathwith his cock in the mouth of a lady of loose morals.

So we shouldnt be surprised to see Arianism appearing toabsorb the initial blow of the Catholic coup. It remained the

faith of the Germanic nations in central Europe, Spain, North-ern Italy and even Africa; the Arian monarchs closed down the

Catholic churches and deported the priests. Only after a long

period of temporizing King Clovis (466 511 AD) made up his mindand ordered his people to convert wholesale to Catholicism.This slowly shifted the balance. Almost a hundred years later,in 589 AD, the Gothic king Reccared I (586 601 AD) ordered themass-conversion of his Spanish subjects and convoked the 3rdSynod of Toledo.

The assembled bishops passed harsh new laws against ho-mosexuals and drafted a program for the forced conversion of


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the Spanish Jews. Up until then the Jews in Spain had done well

for themselves and their prosperity made them an object ofenvy. The prospect was grim: the synod decreed the confisca-

tion of Jewish property and the enslavement of the owners.Yet the Gothic nobility remained divided; there were upris-

ings. The leader of the opposition, the bishop Athaloc, earnedhimself the reputation of being a second Arius.

King Reccareds army routed the insurgents, but thebishop Sunna of Mrida, picked up the Arian colors for a sec-ond rebellion. He, too, was defeated and sought exile in the Is-

lamic (sic!) Mauretania. Undeterred Bishop Uldila and the queendowager went for a rematch. The dissent lingered on, unre-solved. For the Arab marshal Tariq ibn Ziyad, this state of theaffairs in Spain opened his window of opportunity.

In April 711 AD the Arab general landed on the Spanishshores with a small reconnaissance force. Many Jews and theArian diehards welcomed Tariq as a liberator. Under the Aegisof the Arabs, Arianism enjoyed a second lease of life.

Bishop Migetius preached that the second person of the Trinitydid not exist before the Incarnation pure Arianism all but in

name. In 782 AD the war of harsh words between Arians andCatholics caused Archbishop Elipandus of Toledo to ally himself

with the theologically savvy Bishop Felix of Urgel ( 818 AD). As-

serting a double aspect in the Son one by generation and na-ture, and the other by adoption and grace the two bishopssought to find a compromise, quoting innumerable texts fromscripture. They drew their terminology adoptio,homo adoptivus, ouios, thetos, from patristic literature andthe Mozarabic liturgy. Bishop Felix argued, that the epithet

Natural Son of God could not be predicated to the Man Jesus,who was begotten by temporal generation, inferior to the Fa-


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ther. Consequently Pope Hadrian charged Elipandus and Felix

with blasphemy and referred their case to the Synod of Frank-furt. The council duly condemned the two.

Bishop Felix retracted and spent the rest of his life underhouse arrest in Lyon. This seemed to conclude the Haeresis Fe-liciana.

While placed under surveillance, says the chronicler, Felix

showed all the signs of a sincere conversion. His final hour would have

passed as genuine penitence, had his confessor not found among his

papers a definite retraction of all former retractions. The here-

siarch Elipandus, too, died in his error.Nowadays the formula of Nicene has become the common

denominator across the creeds. In 1553 the reformer andprotestant ayatollah Calvin condemned a fellow refugee from

the Inquisition, the Spaniard Michael Servetus (1509 1553), toburn at the stake. An infamy for which Calvin shall be remem-bered forever! Servetus was a physician, the first European todescribe the pulmonary circulation. If only he would have re-

sisted publishing a theological treatise in which he rejected theprevalent Christian doctrines: original sin, infant baptism and

consubstantiality. In a Catholic country this could mean onlyone thing, a slow roasting at the stake. So Servetus fled to Ge-

neva as a safe haven. All the ayatollahs of Protestantism Lu-

ther, Melanchthon, Zwingli and Huss hurtled head over healto express their support, yet not for the victim, but for Calvin.

And the story doesnt end here: Richard Wright (1764 1836)was a Unitarian minister and the itinerant missionary of theUnitarian Fund, a missionary society he established in 1806.

It took an act of parliament to assert his right to think dif-

ferently from the ecclesiastic establishment. Again it has beenwritten into the law (secular law) what one is allowed to think.


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The Doctrine of the Trinity Act from 1813 (sometimes called the

Trinitarian Act) is meant to amend the Blasphemy Actfrom 1697in respect of its Trinitarian provisions. The act passed in July

1821 and was also variously known as the Unitarian Relief Actgranting toleration for Unitarian worship, as previously the Actof Toleration from 1689 had only granted toleration to thoseProtestant dissenters who accepted the Trinity.

Today, biblical Unitarianism identifies the Christian beliefthat the Bible teaches God as a singular person the Father and that Jesus is a distinct being.

Homoousion, Homoiousion or Houyhnhnms

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Transcript of Homoousion, Homoiousion or Houyhnhnms