ABuddhist wrote: ↑Sat Apr 16, 2022 6:26 pm
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sat Apr 16, 2022 5:42 pm
(2) Why does Philip of Side depict the Nicene Council as a confrontation between the philosophers and the bishops with Arius classed - not with the bishops - but with the philosophers?
Maybe this was an anti-Arian polemical strategy which you have taken literally.
There's no doubt that
this stuff was anti-Arian polemic written by the orthodoxy. In this case in the 5th century if this was written by Philip of Side. Without exception the orthodox were pumping out anti-Arian polemic from c.325 CE. Constantine wanted to kill Arius, and anyone preserving the books Arius had written. Constantine pronounced "
damnatio memoriae" on Arius. That's heavy. Athanasius calls Arius the "harbinger of the anti-Christ".
The question here is that the source is not following the Eusebian account of the Nicene Council.
Fr. 5.6
[Supporters of Arius at the Council of Nicaea]
Anonymous Ecclesiastical History 2.12.8-10 [p. 47, lines 5-19 Hansen][160]
(8) When these things were expressed by them—or rather, through them, by the Holy Spirit—those who endorsed Arius' impiety were wearing themselves out with murmuring (these were the circles of Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea, whom I have already pointed out earlier), and yet they were looking with favor on the "hirelings" of Arius, certain philosophers who were indeed very good with words; Arius had hired them as supporters of his own wickedness, and arrived with them at that holy and ecumenical council. (9) For there were present very many philosophers; and having put their hopes in them, as I have said just now, the enemies of the truth were reasonably caught, along with the one who actually taught them their blasphemy. The Holy Scripture was fulfilled in him and in them, which says, "Cursed is everyone who has his hope in a mortal man, and whose heart has departed from the Lord."[161] (10) For truly, the blasphemous heart of the fighter against God, Arius, and of those who shared in his impiety, departed from the Lord—they dared to say that the Son of God, the creator of the universe and the craftsman of both visible and invisible created natures, is something created and something made.
According to the translation provided above, Arius attended the council of Nicaea in the company of a large number of non Christian philosophers, who basically argued his case for him. The importance of these new facts cannot be underestimated. Arnaldo Momigliano mentions this:
"Eusebius' History of the Church ideally reflected the moment in which the Church had emerged victorious under Constantine - a separate body within the Roman Empire. With all his gifts Eusebius could not shape his historiography in such a way as to envisage situations in which it would be impossible to separate what belonged to Caesar from what belonged to Christ." ......... There was a very real duality in Eusebius' notion of eccesiastical history: "on the one hand ecclesiastical history was the history of the Christian nation now emerging as the ruling class of the Roman Empire. On the other hand it was the history of a divine institution not contaminated by political problems." ......... "How to deal with this divine institution's very earthly relations with other institutions in terms of power, violence and even territorial claims? ......... "How would the continuators of Eusebius deal with the politics of the emperors, the plotical intrigues of the bishops?" ......... "If we had the Christian History which the priest Philip of Side wrote about 430, we would know more about the significance of the predominance of the Eusebian model. It is evident that Philip of Side tried to go his own way and to avoid imitating Eusebius..."
(p.141/142) The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, Arnaldo Momigliano, (1961-62)
The Eusebian model presents to the public at large a Nicene Council that may be described as a "Tea Party with gifts for the Christian Bishops" and "Constantine's Long Service Party" rolled into one. It declares that, although they had to walk through a wall of drawn swords into the recesses of the council, all these Christian Bishops (but a few) signed their harmonious acceptance of an oath to their leader Constantine. The Eusebian model does not admit into it an Arius of Alexandria who surrounded himself with
"very many" philosophers ... some of which "were indeed very good with words"..
I mean, people say various crazy and false things about modern religious leaders - such as claims by radical traditionalist Catholics that the Catholic pope is not a Roman Catholic.
Arius was a heretic. His memory in the world was to be blotted out. And behold, it was.
"Arianism has often been regarded as the archetypal Christian deviation, something aimed at the very heart of the Christian confession…. Arius himself came more and more to be regarded as a kind of Antichrist among heretics, a man whose superficial austerity and spirituality cloaked a diabolical malice, a desperate enmity to revealed faith. The portrait is already taking place in Epiphanius’ work, well before the end of the fourth century. By the early medieval period, we find him represented alongside Judas in ecclesiastical art. (The account of this death in fourth and fifth century writers is already clearly modeled on that of Judas in the Acts of the Apostles.) No other heretic has been through so thoroughgoing a process of ‘demonization’".
Rowan Williams, "Arius: Heresy & Tradition"