A History Of God Part 2

When Paul explained the faith that had been handed on to him, he said that Jesus had suffered and died 'for our sins', {19} showing that at a very early stage, Jesus's disciples, shocked by the scandal of his death, had explained it by saying that it had somehow been for our benefit. In Chapter Nine, we shall see that during the seventeenth century other Jews would find a similar explanation for the scandalous end of yet another Messiah. The early Christians felt that Jesus was in some mysterious way still alive and that the 'powers' that he had possessed were now embodied in them, as he had promised. We know from Paul's epistles that the first Christians had all kinds of unusual experiences that could have indicated the advent of a new type of humanity: some had become faith healers, some spoke in heavenly languages, others delivered what they believed were inspired oracles from G.o.d. Church services were noisy, charismatic affairs, quite different from a tasteful evensong today at the parish church. It seemed that Jesus's death had indeed been beneficial in some way: it had released a 'new kind of life' and a 'new creation' - a constant theme in Paul's letters. {20} There were, however, no detailed theories about the crucifixion as an atonement for some 'original sin' of Adam: we shall see that this theology did not emerge until the fourth century and was only important in the West. Paul and the other New Testament writers never attempted a precise, definitive explanation of the salvation they had experienced. Yet the notion of Christ's sacrificial death was similar to the ideal of the bodhisattva, which was developing at this time in India. Like the bodhisattva, Christ had, in effect, become a mediator between humanity and the Absolute, the difference being that Christ was the only mediator and the salvation he effected was not an unrealised aspiration for the future, like that of the bodhisattva, but a fait accompli. Paul insisted that Jesus's sacrifice had been unique. Although he believed that his own sufferings on behalf of others were beneficial, Paul was quite clear that Jesus's suffering and death were in quite a different league. {21} There is a potential danger here. The innumerable Buddhas and the elusive, paradoxical avatars all reminded the faithful that ultimate reality could not be adequately expressed in any one form. The single incarnation of Christianity, suggesting that the whole of the inexhaustible reality of G.o.d had been manifest in just one human being, could lead to an immature type of idolatry.

Jesus had insisted that the duanis (powers) of G.o.d were not for him alone. Paul developed this insight by arguing that Jesus had been the first example of a new type of humanity. Not only had he done everything that the old Israel had failed to achieve, but he had become the new adam, the new humanity into which all human beings, goyim included, must somehow partic.i.p.ate. {22} Again, this is not dissimilar to the Buddhist belief that, since all Buddhas had become one with the Absolute, the human ideal was to partic.i.p.ate in Buddhahood.

In his letter to the Church at Philippi, Paul quotes what is generally considered to be a very early Christian hymn which raises some important issues. He tells his converts that they must have the same self-sacrificing att.i.tude as Jesus, Who subsisting in the form of G.o.d did not cling to his equality with G.o.d but emptied himself, to a.s.sume the condition of a slave, and became as men are; and being as men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.

But G.o.d raised him high and gave him the name which is above all names so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord (kyrios) to the glory of G.o.d the Father. {23} {23} The hymn seems to reflect a belief among the first Christians that Jesus had enjoyed some kind of prior existence 'with G.o.d' before becoming a man in the act of 'self-emptying' (kenosis) by which, like a bodhisattva, he had decided to share the suffering of the human condition. Paul was too Jewish to accept the idea of Christ existing as a second divine being beside YHWH from all eternity. The hymn shows that after his exaltation he is still distinct from and inferior to G.o.d, who raises him and confers the tide kyrios upon him. He cannot a.s.sume it himself but is given this t.i.tle only 'to the glory of G.o.d the Father'.

Some forty years later, the author of St John's Gospel (written c.1oo) made a similar suggestion. In his prologue, he described the Word (logos) which had been 'with G.o.d from the beginning' and had been the agent of creation: 'Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him.' {24} The author was not using the Greek word logos in the same way as Philo: he appears to have been more in tune with Palestinian than h.e.l.lenised Judaism. In the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew scriptures known as the targums, which were being composed at this time, the term Memra (word) is used to describe G.o.d's activity in the world. It performs the same function as other technical terms like 'glory', 'Holy Spirit' and 'Shekinah' which emphasised the distinction between G.o.d's presence in the world and the incomprehensible reality of G.o.d itself. Like the divine Wisdom, the 'Word' symbolised G.o.d's original plan for creation. When Paul and John speak about Jesus as though he had some kind of pre-existent life, they were not suggesting that he was a second divine 'person' in the later Trinitarian sense. They were indicating that Jesus had transcended temporal and individual modes of existence. Because the 'power' and 'wisdom' that he re-presented were activities that derived from G.o.d, he had in some way expressed 'what was there from the beginning'. {25} These ideas were comprehensible in a strictly Jewish context, though later Christians with a Greek background would interpret them differently. In the Acts of the Apostles, written as late as 100 CE, we can see that the first Christians still had an entirely Jewish conception of G.o.d. On the feast of Pentecost, when hundreds of Jews had congregated in Jerusalem from all over the diaspora to celebrate the gift of the Torah on Sinai, the Holy Spirit had descended upon Jesus's companions. They heard 'what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven ... and something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire'. {26} The Holy Spirit had manifested itself to these first Jewish Christians as it had to their contemporaries, the tannaim. Immediately the disciples rushed outside and began preaching to the crowds of Jews and G.o.dfearers from 'Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya around Cyrene'. {27} To their amazement, everybody heard the disciples preaching in his own language.

When Peter rose to address the crowd, he presented this phenomenon as the apogee of Judaism. The prophets had foretold the day when G.o.d would pour out his Spirit upon mankind so that even women and slaves would have visions and dream dreams. {28} This day would inaugurate the Messianic Kingdom, when G.o.d would live on earth with his people. Peter did not claim that Jesus of Nazareth was G.o.d. He 'was a man, commended to you by G.o.d by the miracles and portents and signs that G.o.d worked through him when he was among you'. After his cruel death, G.o.d had raised him to life and had exalted him to a specially high status 'by G.o.d's right hand'. The prophets and Psalmists had all foretold these events; thus the 'whole House of Israel' could be certain that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. {29} This speech appears to have been the message (kerygma) of the earliest Christians.

By the end of the fourth century, Christianity had become strong in precisely the places listed above by the author of Acts: it took root among Jewish synagogues in the diaspora which had attracted a large number of 'G.o.dfearers' or proselytes. Paul's reformed Judaism appeared to address many of their dilemmas. They also 'spoke in many tongues', lacking a united voice and a coherent position. Many diaspora Jews had come to regard the Temple in Jerusalem, drenched as it was in the blood of animals, as a primitive and barbarous inst.i.tution. The Acts of the Apostles preserves this viewpoint in the story of Stephen, a h.e.l.lenistic Jew who had converted to the Jesus sect and was stoned to death by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish governing council, for blasphemy. In his last impa.s.sioned speech, Stephen had claimed that the Temple was an insult to the nature of G.o.d: 'The Most High does not live in a home that human hands have built.' {30} Some Diaspora Jews adopted the Talmudic Judaism developed by the Rabbis after the destruction of the Temple; others found that Christianity answered some of their other queries about the status of the Torah and the universality of Judaism. It was, of course, especially attractive to the G.o.dfearers, who could become full members of the New Israel without the burden of all 613 mitzvot.

During the first century, Christians continued to think about G.o.d and pray to him like Jews; they argued like Rabbis and their churches were similar to the synagogues. There were some acrimonious disputes in the eighties with the Jews when Christians were formally ejected from the synagogues because they refused to observe the Torah. We have seen that Judaism had attracted many converts in the early decades of the first century but after 70, when Jews were in trouble with the Roman empire, their position declined. The defection of the G.o.dfearers to Christianity made Jews suspicious of converts and they were no longer anxious to proselytise. Pagans who would formerly have been attracted to Judaism now turned to Christianity but these tended to be slaves and members of the lower cla.s.ses. It was not until the end of the second century that highly-educated pagans became Christians and were able to explain the new religion to a suspicious pagan world.

In the Roman empire, Christianity was first seen as a branch of Judaism but when Christians made it clear that they were no longer members of the synagogue, they were regarded with contempt as a religion of fanatics who had committed the cardinal sin of impiety by breaking with the parent faith. The Roman ethos was strictly conservative: it valued the authority of the paterfamilias and ancestral custom. 'Progress' was seen as a return to a Golden Age not as a fearless march forward into the future. A deliberate break with the past was not seen as potentially creative, as in our own society which has inst.i.tutionalised change. Innovation was regarded as dangerous and subversive. Romans were highly suspicious of ma.s.s-movements that threw off the restraints of tradition and on their guard to protect their citizens from religious 'quackery'. There was a spirit of restlessness and anxiety in the empire, however.

The experience of living in a huge international empire had made the old G.o.ds seem petty and inadequate; people had become aware of cultures that were alien and disturbing. They were looking for new spiritual solutions. Oriental cults were imported into Europe: deities like Isis and Semele were wors.h.i.+pped alongside the traditional G.o.ds of Rome, the guardians of the state. During the first century CE, the new mystery religions offered their initiates salvation and what purported to be inside knowledge of the next world. But none of these new religious enthusiasms threatened the old order. The Eastern deities did not demand a radical conversion and a rejection of the familiar rites but were like new saints, providing a fresh and novel outlook and a sense of a wider world. You could join as many different mystery cults as you liked: provided that they did not attempt to jeopardise the old G.o.ds and kept a reasonably low profile, the mystery religions were tolerated and absorbed into the established order.

n.o.body expected religion to be a challenge or to provide an answer to the meaning of life. People turned to philosophy for that kind of enlightenment. In the Roman empire of late antiquity, people wors.h.i.+pped the G.o.ds to ask for help during a crisis, to secure a divine blessing for the state and to experience a healing sense of continuity with the past. Religion was a matter of cult and ritual rather than ideas; it was based on emotion not on ideology or consciously adopted theory. This is not an unfamiliar att.i.tude today: many of the people who attend religious services in our own society are not interested in theology, want nothing too exotic and dislike the idea of change. They find that the traditional rituals provide them with a link with tradition and give them a sense of security. They do not expect brilliant ideas from the sermon and are disturbed by changes in the liturgy. In rather the same way, many of the pagans of late antiquity loved to wors.h.i.+p the ancestral G.o.ds, as generations had done before them.

The old rituals gave them a sense of ident.i.ty, celebrated local traditions and seemed an a.s.surance that things would continue as they were. Civilisation seemed a fragile achievement and should not be threatened by wantonly disregarding the patronal G.o.ds, who would ensure its survival. They would feel obscurely threatened if a new cult set out to abolish the faith of their fathers. Christianity, therefore, had the worst of both worlds. It lacked the venerable antiquity of Judaism and had none of the attractive rituals of paganism, which everybody could see and appreciate. It was also a potential threat, since Christians insisted that theirs was the only G.o.d and that all the other deities were delusions. Christianity seemed an irrational and eccentric movement to the Roman biographer Gaius Suetonius (70-160), a superst.i.tio nova et prava, which was 'depraved' precisely because it was 'new'. {31} Educated pagans looked to philosophy not religion for enlightenment. Their saints and luminaries were such philosophers of antiquity as Plato, Pythagoras or Epictetus. They even saw them as 'sons of G.o.d': Plato, for example, was held to have been the son of Apollo. The philosophers had maintained a cool respect for religion but saw it as essentially different from what they were doing. They were not dried-up academics in ivory towers but men with a mission, anxious to save the souls of their contemporaries by attracting them to the disciplines of their particular school. Both Socrates and Plato had been 'religious' about their philosophy, finding that their scientific and metaphysical studies had inspired them with a vision of the glory of the universe. By the first century CE, therefore, intelligent and thoughtful people turned to them for an explanation of the meaning of life, for an inspiring ideology and for ethical motivation. Christianity seemed a barbaric creed. The Christian G.o.d seemed a ferocious, primitive deity, who kept intervening irrationally in human affairs: he had nothing in common with the remote, changeless G.o.d of a philosopher like Aristotle. It was one thing to suggest that men of the calibre of Plato or Alexander the Great had been sons of a G.o.d, but a Jew who had died a disgraceful death in an obscure corner of the Roman empire was quite another matter.

Platonism was one of the most popular philosophies of late antiquity. The new Platonists of the first and second century were not attracted to Plato the ethical and political thinker but to Plato the mystic. His teachings would help the philosopher to realise his true self, by liberating his soul from the prison of the body and enabling him to ascend to the divine world. It was a n.o.ble system, which used cosmology as an image of continuity and harmony. The One existed in serene contemplation of itself beyond the ravages of time and change at the pinnacle of the great chain of being. All existence derived from the One as a necessary consequence of its pure being: the eternal forms had emanated from the One and had in their turn animated the sun, stars and the moon, each in their respective sphere. Finally the G.o.ds, who were now seen as the angelic ministers of the One, transmitted the divine influence to the sublunary world of men. The Platonist needed no barbaric tales of a deity who suddenly decided to create the world or who ignored the established hierarchy to communicate directly with a small group of human beings. He needed no grotesque salvation by means of a crucified Messiah. Since he was akin to the G.o.d who had given life to all things, a philosopher could ascend to the divine world by means of his own efforts in a rational, ordered way.

How could the Christians explain their faith to the pagan world? It seemed to fall between two stools, appearing neither a religion, in the Roman sense, nor a philosophy. Moreover, Christians would have found it hard to list their 'beliefs' and may not have been conscious of evolving a distinctive system of thought. In this they resembled their pagan neighbours. Their religion had no coherent 'theology' but could more accurately be described as a carefully cultivated att.i.tude of commitment. When they recited their 'creeds', they were not a.s.senting to a set of propositions. The word credere, for example, seems to have derived from cor dare: to give one's heart. When they said ' credo? (orpisteno in Greek), this implied an emotional rather than an intellectual position. Thus Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia from 392-428, explained to his converts: When you say 'I engage myself (pisteno) before G.o.d, you show that you will remain steadfastly with him, that you will never separate yourself from him and that you will think it higher than anything else to be and to live with him and to conduct yourself in a way that is in harmony with his commandments. {32} {32} Later Christians would need to give a more theoretical account of their faith and would develop a pa.s.sion for theological debate that is unique in the history of world religion. We have seen, for example, that there was no official orthodoxy in Judaism but that ideas about G.o.d were essentially private matters. The early Christians would have shared this att.i.tude.

During the second century, however, some pagan converts to Christianity tried to reach out to their unbelieving neighbours in order to show that their religion was not a destructive breach with tradition. One of the first of these apologists was Justin of Caesarea (100-165), who died a martyr for the faith. In his restless search for meaning, we can sense the spiritual anxiety of the period. Justin was neither a profound nor a brilliant thinker. Before turning to Christianity, he had sat at the feet of a Stoic, a peripatetic philosopher and a Pythagorean but had clearly failed to understand what was involved in their systems. He lacked the temperament and intelligence for philosophy but seemed to need more than the wors.h.i.+p of cult and ritual and found his solution in Christianity. In his two apologiae (0.150 and 155), he argued that Christians were simply following Plato, who had also maintained that there was only one G.o.d. Both the Greek philosophers and the Jewish prophets had foretold the coming of Christ - an argument which would have impressed the pagans of his day, since there was a fresh enthusiasm for oracles. He also argued that Jesus was the incarnation of the logos or divine reason, which the Stoics had seen in the order of the cosmos, the logos had been active in the world throughout history, inspiring Greeks and Hebrews alike. He did not, however, explain the implications of this somewhat novel idea: how could a human being incarnate the logos'? was the logos the same as such biblical images as Word or Wisdom? What was its relation to the One G.o.d?

Other Christians were developing far more radical theologies, not out of love of speculation for its own sake but to a.s.suage a profound anxiety. In particular, the gnostikoi, the Knowing Ones, turned from philosophy to mythology to explain their acute sense of separation from the divine world. Their myths confronted their ignorance about G.o.d and the divine, which they clearly experienced as a source of grief and shame. Basilides, who taught in Alexandria between 130 and 160, and his contemporary Valentinus, who left Egypt to teach in Rome, both acquired a huge following and showed that many of the people who converted to Christianity felt lost, adrift and radically displaced.

The Gnostics all began with an utterly incomprehensible reality which they called the G.o.dhead, since it was the source of the lesser being that we call 'G.o.d'. There was nothing at all that we could say about it, since it entirely eludes the grasp of our limited minds. As Valentinus explained, the G.o.dhead was perfect and pre-existent ... dwelling in invisible and unnamable heights: this is the pre-beginning and forefather and depth. It is uncontainable and invisible, eternal and un-generated, is Quiet and deep Solitude for infinite aeons. With It was thought, which is also called Grace and Silence. {33} {33} Men have always speculated about this Absolute but none of their explanations have been adequate. It is impossible to describe the G.o.dhead, which is neither 'good' nor 'evil' and cannot even be said to 'exist'. Basilides taught that in the beginning, there had been not G.o.d but only the G.o.dhead, which, strictly speaking, was Nothing because it did not exist in any sense that we can understand. {34} But this Nothingness had wished to make itself known and was not content to remain alone in Depth and Silence. There was an inner revolution in the depths of its unfathomable being which resulted in a series of emanations similar to those described in the ancient pagan mythologies. The first of these emanations was the 'G.o.d', which we know and pray to. Yet even 'G.o.d' was inaccessible to us and needed further elucidation. Consequently new emanations proceeded from G.o.d in pairs, each of which expressed one of his divine attributes. 'G.o.d' lay beyond gender but, as in the Enuma Elish, each pair of emanations consisted of a male and female - a scheme which attempted to neutralise the masculine tenor of more conventional monotheism. Each pair of emanations grew weaker and more attenuated, since they were getting ever further from their divine Source. Finally, when thirty such emanations (or aeons) had emerged, the process stopped and the divine world, the Pleroma, was complete. The Gnostics were not proposing an entirely outrageous cosmology, since everybody believed that the cosmos was teeming with such aeons, demons and spiritual powers. St Paul had referred to Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties and Powers, while the philosophers had believed that these invisible powers were the ancient G.o.ds and had made them intermediaries between man and the One.

There had been a catastrophe, a primal fall, which the Gnostics described in various ways. Some said that Sophia (Wisdom), the last of the emanations, fell from grace because she aspired to a forbidden knowledge of the inaccessible G.o.dhead. Because of her overweening presumption, she had fallen from the Pleroma and her grief and distress had formed the world of matter. Exiled and lost, Sophia had wandered through the cosmos, yearning to return to her divine Source. This amalgam of oriental and pagan ideas expressed the Gnostics' profound sense that our world was in some sense a perversion of the celestial, born of ignorance and dislocation. Other Gnostics taught that 'G.o.d' had not created the material world, since he could have had nothing to do with base matter. This had been the work of one of the aeons, which they called the demiourgos or Creator. He had become envious of 'G.o.d' and aspired to be the centre of the Pleroma. Consequently he fell and had created the world in a fit of defiance. As Valentinus explained, he had 'made heaven without knowledge; he formed man in ignorance of man; he brought earth to light without understanding earth'. {35} But the Logos, another of the aeons, had come to the rescue and descended to earth, a.s.suming the physical appearance of Jesus in order to teach men and women the way back to G.o.d. Eventually this type of Christianity would be suppressed but we shall see that centuries later Jews, Christians and Muslims would return to this type of mythology, finding that it expressed their religious experience of 'G.o.d' more accurately than orthodox theology. These myths were never intended as literal accounts of creation and salvation; they were symbolic expressions of an inner truth. 'G.o.d' and the Pleroma were not external realities 'out there' but were to be found within: Abandon the search for G.o.d and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you makes everything his own and says, My G.o.d, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body. Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate. Learn how it happens that one watches without willing, loves without willing. If you carefully investigate these matters, you will find him in yourself. {36} {36} The Pleroma represented a map of the soul. The divine light could be discerned even in this dark world, if the Gnostic knew where to look: during the Primal Fall - of either Sophia or the Demiurge -some divine sparks had also fallen from the Pleroma and been trapped in matter. The Gnostic could find a divine spark in his own soul, could become aware of a divine element within himself which would help him to find his way home.

The Gnostics showed that many of the new converts to Christianity were not satisfied with the traditional idea of G.o.d which they had inherited from Judaism. They did not experience the world as 'good', the work of a benevolent deity. A similar dualism and dislocation marked the doctrine of Marcion (100-165) who founded his own rival church in Rome and attracted a huge following. Jesus had said that a sound tree produced good fruit: {37} how could the world have been created by a good G.o.d when it was manifestly full of evil and pain? Marcion was also appalled by the Jewish scriptures, which seemed to describe a harsh, cruel G.o.d who exterminated whole populations in his pa.s.sion for justice. He decided that it was this Jewish G.o.d, who was 'l.u.s.tful for war, inconstant in his att.i.tudes and self-contradictory', {38} who had created the world. But Jesus had revealed that another G.o.d existed, who had never been mentioned by the Jewish scriptures.

This second G.o.d was 'placid, mild and simply good and excellent'. {39} He was entirely different from the cruel 'juridical' Creator of the world. We should, therefore, turn away from the world which, since it was not his doing, could tell us nothing about this benevolent deity and should also reject the 'Old' Testament, concentrating simply upon those New Testament books which had preserved the spirit of Jesus. The popularity of Marcion's teachings showed that he had voiced a common anxiety. At one time it seemed as though he were about to found a separate Church. He had put his finger on something important in the Christian experience; generations of Christians have found it difficult to relate positively to the material world and there are still a significant number who do not know what to make of the Hebrew G.o.d.

The North African theologian Tertullian (160-220), however, pointed out that Marcion's 'good' G.o.d had more in common with the G.o.d of Greek philosophy than the G.o.d of the Bible. This serene deity, who had nothing to do with this flawed world, was far closer to the Unmoved Mover described by Aristotle than the Jewish G.o.d of Jesus Christ. Indeed, many people in the Greco-Roman world found the biblical G.o.d a blundering, ferocious deity who was unworthy of wors.h.i.+p. In about 178 the pagan philosopher Celsus accused the Christians of adopting a narrow, provincial view of G.o.d. He found it appalling that the Christians should claim a special revelation of their own: G.o.d was available to all human beings, yet the Christians huddled together in a sordid little group, a.s.serting: 'G.o.d has even deserted the whole world and the motions of the heavens and disregarded the vast earth to give attention to us alone.' {40} When Christians were persecuted by the Roman authorities, they were accused of 'atheism' because their conception of divinity gravely offended the Roman ethos. By failing to give the traditional G.o.ds their due, people feared that the Christians would endanger the state and overturn the fragile order. Christianity seemed a barbarous creed, that ignored the achievements of civilisation.

By the end of the second century, however, some truly cultivated pagans began to be converted to Christianity and were able to adapt the Semitic G.o.d of the Bible to the Greco-Roman ideal. The first of these was Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) who may have studied philosophy in Athens before his conversion. Clement had no doubt that Yahweh and the G.o.d of the Greek philosophers was one and the same: he called Plato the Attic Moses. Yet both Jesus and St Paul would have been surprised by his theology. Like the G.o.d of Plato and Aristotle, Clement's G.o.d was characterised by his apatheia: he was utterly impa.s.sible, unable to suffer or change. Christians could partic.i.p.ate in this divine life by imitating the calmness and imperturbability of G.o.d himself. Clement devised a rule of life that was remarkably similar to the detailed rules of conduct prescribed by the Rabbis except that it had more in common with the Stoic ideal. A Christian should imitate the serenity of G.o.d in every detail of his life: he must sit correctly, speak quietly, refrain from violent, convulsive laughter and even burp gently. By this diligent exercise of studied calm, Christians would become aware of a vast Quietness within, which was the image of G.o.d inscribed in their own being. There was no gulf between G.o.d and humanity. Once Christians had conformed to the divine ideal, they would find that they had a Divine Companion 'sharing our house with us, sitting at table, sharing in the whole moral effort of our life'. {41} Yet Clement also believed that Jesus was G.o.d, 'the living G.o.d that suffered and is wors.h.i.+pped'. {42} He who had 'washed their feet, girded with a towel', had been 'the prideless G.o.d and Lord of the Universe'. {43} If Christians imitated Christ, they too would become deified: divine, incorruptible and impa.s.sible. Indeed, Christ had been the divine logos who had become man 'so that you might learn from a man how to become G.o.d'. {44} In the West, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (130-200), had taught a similar doctrine. Jesus had been the incarnate Logos, the divine reason. When he had become man, he had sanctified each stage of human development and become a model for Christians. They should imitate him in rather the same way as an actor was believed to become one with the character he was portraying and would thus fulfil their human potential. {45} Clement and Irenaeus were both adapting the Jewish G.o.d to notions that were characteristic of their own time and culture. Even though it had little in common with the G.o.d of the prophets, who was chiefly characterised by his pathos and vulnerability, Clement's doctrine of apatheia would become fundamental to the Christian conception of G.o.d. In the Greek world, people longed to rise above the mess of emotion and mutability and achieve a superhuman calm. This ideal prevailed, despite its inherent paradox.

Clement's theology left crucial questions unanswered. How could a mere man have been the Logos or divine reason? What exactly did it mean to say that Jesus had been divine? Was the Logos the same as the 'Son of G.o.d' and what did this Jewish tide mean in the h.e.l.lenic world? How could an impa.s.sible G.o.d have suffered in Jesus? How could Christians believe that he had been a divine being and yet, at the same time, insist that there was only one G.o.d? Christians were becoming increasingly aware of these problems during the third century. In the early years of the century in Rome, one Sabellius, a rather shadowy figure, had suggested that the biblical terms 'Father', 'Son' and 'Spirit' could be compared to the masks (personae) worn by actors to a.s.sume a dramatic role and to make their voices audible to the audience. The One G.o.d had thus donned different personae when dealing with the world. Sabellius attracted some disciples but most Christians were distressed by his theory: it suggested that the impa.s.sible G.o.d had in some sense suffered when playing the role of the Son, an idea that they found quite unacceptable. Yet when Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch from 260 to 272, had suggested that Jesus had simply been a man, in whom the Word and Wisdom of G.o.d had dwelt as in a temple, this was considered equally unorthodox. Paul's theology was condemned at a synod at Antioch in 264, though he managed to hold on to his see with the support of Queen Zen.o.bia of Palmyra. It was clearly going to be very difficult to find a way of accommodating the Christian conviction that Jesus had been divine with the equally strong belief that G.o.d was One.

When Clement had left Alexandria in 202 to become a priest in the service of the Bishop of Jerusalem, his place at the catechetical school was taken by his brilliant young pupil Origen, who was about twenty years old at the time. As a youth Origen had been pa.s.sionately convinced that martyrdom was the way to heaven. His father Leonides had died in the arena four years earlier and Origen had tried to join him. His mother, however, saved him by hiding his clothes. Origen had started by believing that the Christian life meant turning against the world but he later abjured this position and developed a form of Christian Platonism. Instead of seeing an impa.s.sible gulf between G.o.d and the world, which could only be bridged by the radical dislocation of martyrdom, Origen developed a theology that stressed the continuity of G.o.d with the world. His was a spirituality of light, optimism and joy. Step by step, a Christian could ascend the chain of being until he reached G.o.d, his natural element and home.

As a Platonist, Origen was convinced of the kins.h.i.+p between G.o.d and the soul: the knowledge of the divine was natural to humanity. It could be 'recollected' and awakened by special disciplines. To adapt his Platonic philosophy to the Semitic scriptures, Origen developed a symbolic method of reading the Bible. Thus the virgin birth of Christ in the womb of Mary was not primarily to be understood as a literal event but as the birth of the divine wisdom in the soul. He also adopted some of the ideas of the Gnostics. Originally, all the beings in the spiritual world had contemplated the ineffable G.o.d who had revealed himself to them in the Logos, the divine Word and Wisdom. But they had grown tired of this perfect contemplation and fallen from the divine world into bodies, which had arrested their fall. All was not lost, however. The soul could ascend to G.o.d in a long, steady journey that would continue after death. Gradually it would cast aside the fetter of the body and rise above gender to become pure spirit. By means of contemplation (theoria), the soul would advance in the knowledge (gnosis) of G.o.d which would transform it until, as Plato himself had taught, it would itself become divine. G.o.d was deeply mysterious and none of our human words or concepts could adequately express him but the soul had the capacity to know G.o.d, since it shared his divine nature. Contemplation of the Logos was natural to us, since all spiritual beings (logikof) had originally been equal to one another. When they had fallen, only the future mind of the man Jesus Christ had been content to remain in the divine world contemplating G.o.d's Word and our own souls were equal to his. Belief in the divinity of Jesus the man was only a phase; it would help us on our way, but would eventually be transcended when we would see G.o.d face to face.

In the ninth century, the Church would condemn some of Origen's ideas as heretical. Neither Origen nor Clement believed that G.o.d had created the world out of nothing (ex nihilo), which would later become orthodox Christian doctrine. Origen's view of the divinity of Jesus and the salvation of humanity certainly did not conform to later official Christian teaching: he did not believe that we had been 'saved' by the death of Christ but that we ascended to G.o.d under our own steam. The point is that when Origen and Clement were writing and teaching their Christian Platonism there was no official doctrine. n.o.body knew for certain if G.o.d had created the world or how a human being had been divine. The turbulent events of the fourth and fifth centuries would lead to a definition of orthodox belief only after an agonising struggle.

Origen is, perhaps, best known for his self-castration. In the Gospels, Jesus said that some people had made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven and Origen took him at his word.

Castration was quite a common operation in late antiquity; Origen did not rush at himself with a knife nor was his decision inspired by the kind of neurotic loathing of s.e.xuality that would characterise some Western theologians, such as St Jerome (342-420). The British scholar Peter Brown suggests that it may have been an attempt to demonstrate his doctrine of the indeterminacy of the human condition which the soul must soon transcend. Apparently immutable factors such as gender would be left behind in the long process of divinisation, since in G.o.d there was neither male nor female. In an age where the philosopher was characterised by his long beard (a sign of wisdom), Origen's smooth cheeks and high voice would have been a startling sight.

Plotinus (205-270) had studied in Alexandria under Origen's old teacher Ammonius Saccus and had later joined the Roman army, hoping that it would take him to India, where he was anxious to study. Unfortunately the expedition came to grief and Plotinus fled to Antioch. Later he founded a prestigious school of philosophy in Rome. We know little else about him, since he was an extremely reticent man, who never spoke about himself and did not even celebrate his own birthday. Like Celsus, Plotinus found Christianity a thoroughly objectionable creed, yet he influenced generations of future monotheists in all three of the G.o.d-religions. It is important, therefore, to give some detailed consideration to his vision of G.o.d. Plotinus has been described as a watershed: he had absorbed the main currents of some 800 years of Greek speculation and transmitted it in a form which has continued to influence such crucial figures in our own century as T. S. Eliot and Henri Bergson. Drawing on Plato's ideas, Plotinus evolved a system designed to achieve an understanding of the self. Again, he was not at all interested in finding a scientific explanation of the universe nor attempting to explain the physical origins of life; instead of looking outside the world for an objective explanation, Plotinus urged his disciples to withdraw into themselves and begin their exploration in the depths of the psyche.

Human beings are aware that something is wrong with their condition; they feel at odds with themselves and others, out of touch with their inner nature and disoriented. Conflict and a lack of simplicity seem to characterise our existence. Yet we are constantly seeking to unite the multiplicity of phenomena and reduce them to some ordered whole. When we glance at a person, we do not see a leg, an arm, another arm and a head but automatically organise these elements into an integrated human being. This drive for unity is fundamental to the way our minds work and must, Plotinus believed, also reflect the essence of things in general. To find the underlying truth of reality, the soul must re-fas.h.i.+on itself, undergo a period of purification (katharsis) and engage in contemplation (theoria), as Plato had advised. It will have to look beyond the cosmos, beyond the sensible world and even beyond the limitations of the intellect to see into the heart of reality. This will not be an ascent to a reality outside ourselves, however, but a descent into the deepest recesses of the mind. It is, so to speak, a climb inwards.

The ultimate reality was a primal unity, which Plotinus called the One. All things owe their existence to this potent reality. Because the One is simplicity itself, there was nothing to say about it: it had no qualities distinct from its essence that would make ordinary description possible. It just was. Consequently, the One is nameless: 'If we are to think positively of the One,' Plotinus explained, 'there would be more truth in Silence.' {46} We cannot even say that it exists, since as Being itself, it is 'not a thing but is distinct from all things'. {47} Indeed, Plotinus explained, it 'is Everything and Nothing; it can be none of the existing things, and yet it is all'. {48} We shall see that this perception will be a constant theme in the history of G.o.d.

But this Silence cannot be the whole truth Plotinus argued, since we are able to arrive at some knowledge of the divine. This would be impossible if the One had remained shrouded in its impenetrable obscurity. The One must have transcended itself, gone beyond its Simplicity in order to make itself apprehensible to imperfect beings like ourselves. This divine transcendence could be described as 'ecstasy' properly so called, since it is a 'going out of the self in pure generosity: 'Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and, in metaphor, has overflowed, and its exuberance has produced the new.' {49} There was nothing personal in all this; Plotinus saw the One as beyond all human categories, including that of personality. He returned to the ancient myth of emanation to explain the radiation of all that exists from this utterly simple Source, using a number of a.n.a.logies to describe this process: it was like a light s.h.i.+ning from the sun or the heat that radiates from a fire and becomes warmer as you drew nearer to its blazing core. One of Plotinus's favourite similes was the comparison of the One to the point at the centre of a circle, which contained the possibility of all the future circles that could derive from it. It was similar to the ripple effect achieved by dropping a stone into a pool. Unlike the emanations in a myth such as the Enuma Elish, where each pair of G.o.ds that evolved from one another became more perfect and effective, the opposite was the case in Plotinus's scheme. As in the Gnostic myths, the further a being got from its source in the One, the weaker it became.

Plotinus regarded the first two emanations to radiate from the One as divine since they enabled us to know and to partic.i.p.ate in the life of G.o.d. Together with the One, they formed a Triad of divinity which was in some ways close to the final Christian solution of the Trinity. Mind (nous), the first emanation, corresponded in Plotinus's scheme to Plato's realm of ideas: it made the simplicity of the One intelligible but knowledge here was intuitive and immediate. It was not laboriously acquired through research and reasoning processes but was absorbed in rather the same way as our senses drink in the objects they perceive. Soul (psyche), which emanates from Mind in the same way as Mind emanates from the One, is a little further from perfection and in this realm knowledge can only be acquired discursively so that it lacks absolute simplicity and coherence. Soul corresponds to reality as we know it: all the rest of physical and spiritual existence emanates from Soul, which gives to our world whatever unity and coherence it possesses. Again, it must be emphasised that Plotinus did not envisage this trinity of One, Mind and Soul as a G.o.d 'out there'. The divine comprised the whole of existence. G.o.d was all in all and lesser beings only existed in so far as they partic.i.p.ated in the absolute being of the One. {50} The outward flow of emanation was arrested by a corresponding movement of return to the One. As we know from the workings of our own minds and our dissatisfaction with conflict and multiplicity, all beings yearn for unity; they long to return to the One. Again, this is not an ascent to an external reality but an interior descent into the depths of the mind. The soul must recollect the simplicity it has forgotten and return to its true self. Since all souls were animated by the same Reality, humanity could be compared to a chorus standing round a conductor. If any one individual were distracted, there would be dissonance and disharmony but if all turned towards the conductor and concentrated on him, the whole community would benefit, since 'they would sing as they ought, and really be with him'. {51} The One is strictly impersonal; it has no gender and is entirely oblivious of us. Similarly Mind (nous) is grammatically masculine and Soul (psyche) feminine, which could show a desire on Plotinus's part to preserve the old pagan vision of s.e.xual balance and harmony. Unlike the biblical G.o.d, it does not come out to meet us and guide us home. It does not yearn towards us, or love us or reveal itself to us. It has no knowledge of anything beyond itself. {52} Nevertheless, the human soul was occasionally rapt in ecstatic apprehension of the One. Plotinus's philosophy was not a logical process but a spiritual quest: We here, for our part, must put aside all else and be set on This alone, become This alone, stripping off all our enc.u.mbrances; we must make haste to escape from here, impatient of our earthly bonds, to embrace G.o.d with all our being, that there may be no part of us that does not cling to G.o.d. There we may see G.o.d and ourself as by law revealed: ourself in splendour, filled with the light of Intellect, or rather, light itself, pure, buoyant, aerial, become - in truth, being - a G.o.d. {53} {53} This G.o.d was not an alien object but our best self. It comes 'neither by knowing, nor by Intellection that discovers the Intellectual beings [in the Mind or nous] but by a presence (parousia) over pa.s.sing all knowledge'. {54} Christianity was coming into its own in a world where Platonic ideas predominated. In future when Christian thinkers tried to explain their own religious experience, they turned naturally to the Neoplatonic vision of Plotinus and his later pagan disciples. The notion of an enlightenment that was impersonal, beyond human categories and natural to humanity was also close to the Hindu and Buddhist ideal in India, where Plotinus had been so keen to study. Thus despite the more superficial differences, there were profound similarities between the monotheistic and other visions of reality. It seems that when human beings contemplate the absolute, they have very similar ideas and experiences. The sense of presence, ecstasy and dread in the presence of a reality - called nirvana, the One, Brahman or G.o.d -seems to be a state of mind and a perception that is natural and endlessly sought by human beings.

Some Christians were determined to make friends with the Greek world. Others wanted nothing whatever to do with it. During an outbreak of persecution in the 1708, a new prophet called Monta.n.u.s arose in Phrygia in modern Turkey, who claimed to be a divine avatar. 'I am the Lord G.o.d Almighty, who descended to a man,' he used to cry; 'I am Father, son and Paraclete.' His companions Priscilla and Maximilla made similar claims. {55} Montanism was a fierce apocalyptic creed which painted a fearsome portrait of G.o.d. Not only were its adherents obliged to turn their backs upon the world and lead celibate lives but they were told that martyrdom was the only sure path to G.o.d. Their agonising death for the faith would hasten the coming of Christ: the martyrs were soldiers of G.o.d engaged in a battle with the forces of evil. This terrible creed appealed to a latent extremism in the Christian spirit: Montanism spread like wildfire in Phrygia, Thrace, Syria and Gaul. It was particularly strong in North Africa, where the people were used to G.o.ds who demanded human sacrifice. Their cult of Baal which had entailed the sacrifice of the first-born had only been suppressed by the emperor during the second century. Soon the heresy had attracted no less a person than Tertullian, the leading theologian of the Latin Church. In the East, Clement and Origen preached a peaceful, joyous return to G.o.d but in the Western church a more frightening G.o.d demanded hideous death as a condition of salvation. At this stage, Christianity was a struggling religion in Western Europe and North Africa and from the start there was a tendency towards extremism and rigour.

Yet in the East Christianity was making great strides and by 235 it had become one of the most important religions of the Roman empire. Christians now spoke of a Great Church with a single rule of faith that shunned extremity and eccentricity. These orthodox theologians had outlawed the pessimistic visions of the Gnostics, Marcionites and Montanists and had settled for the middle road. Christianity was becoming an urbane creed that eschewed the complexities of the mystery cults and an inflexible asceticism. It was beginning to appeal to highly intelligent men who were able to develop the faith along lines that the Greco-Roman world could understand. The new religion also appealed to women: its scriptures taught that in Christ there was neither male nor female and insisted that men cherished their wives as Christ cherished his church. Christianity had all the advantages that had once made Judaism such an attractive faith without the disadvantages of circ.u.mcision and an alien Law. Pagans were particularly impressed by the welfare system that the churches had established and by the compa.s.sionate behaviour of Christians towards one another. During its long struggle to survive persecution from without and dissension from within, the Church had also evolved an efficient organisation that made it almost a microcosm of the empire itself: it was multi-racial, catholic, international, ec.u.menical and administered by efficient bureaucrats.

As such it had become a force for stability and appealed to the emperor Constantine, who became a Christian himself after the battle of Milivian Bridge in 312 and legalised Christianity the following year. Christians were now able to own property, wors.h.i.+p freely and make a distinctive contribution to public life. Even though paganism flourished for another two centuries, Christianity became the state religion of the empire and began to attract new converts who made their way into the Church for material advancement. Soon the Church, which had begun life as a persecuted sect pleading for toleration, would demand conformity to its own laws and creeds. The reasons for the triumph of Christianity are obscure; it certainly would not have succeeded without the support of the Roman empire, though this inevitably brought its own problems. Supremely a religion of adversity, it has never been at its best in prosperity. One of the first problems that had to be solved was the doctrine of G.o.d: no sooner had Constantine brought peace to the Church, than a new danger arose from within which split Christians into bitterly warring camps.

4 - Trinity: The Christian G.o.d.

In about 320 a fierce theological pa.s.sion had seized the churches of Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor. Sailors and travellers were singing versions of popular ditties that proclaimed that the Father alone was true G.o.d, inaccessible and unique, but that the Son was neither coeternal nor uncreated, since he received life and being from the Father. We hear of a bath-attendant who harangued the bathers, insisting that the Son came from nothingness, of a money-changer who, when asked for the exchange rate, prefaced his reply with a long disquisition on the distinction between the created order and the uncreated G.o.d and of a baker who informed his customer that the Father was greater than the Son. People were discussing these abstruse questions with the same enthusiasm as they discuss football today. {1} The controversy had been kindled by Arius, a charismatic and handsome presbyter of Alexandria, who had a soft, impressive voice and a strikingly melancholy face. He had issued a challenge which his Bishop Alexander found impossible to ignore but even more difficult to rebut: how could Jesus Christ have been G.o.d in the same way as G.o.d the Father? Arius was not denying the divinity of Christ; indeed, he called Jesus 'strong G.o.d' and 'full G.o.d' {2} but he argued that it was blasphemous to think that he was divine by nature: Jesus had specifically said that the Father was greater than he. Alexander and his brilliant young a.s.sistant Athanasius immediately realised that this was no mere theological nicety. Arius was asking vital questions about the nature of G.o.d. In the meantime, Arius, a skilful propagandist, had set his ideas to music and soon the laity were debating the issue as pa.s.sionately as their bishops.

The controversy became so heated that the emperor Constantine himself intervened and summoned a synod to Nicaea in modern Turkey to settle the issue. Today Arius's name is a byword for heresy but when the conflict broke out there was no officially orthodox position and it was by no means certain why or even whether Arius was wrong. There was nothing new about his claim: Origen, whom both sides held in high esteem, had taught a similar doctrine. Yet the intellectual climate in Alexandria had changed since Origen's day and people were no longer convinced that the G.o.d of Plato could be successfully wedded with the G.o.d of the Bible. Arius, Alexander and Athanasius, for example, had come to believe a doctrine that would have startled any Platonist: they considered that G.o.d had created the world out of nothing (ex nihilo), basing their opinion on scripture. In fact, Genesis had not made this claim. The Priestly author had implied that G.o.d had created the world out of the primordial chaos and the notion that G.o.d had summoned the whole universe from an absolute vacuum was entirely new. It was alien to Greek thought and had not been taught by such theologians as Clement and Origen, who had held to the Platonic scheme of emanation. But by the fourth century, Christians shared the Gnostic view of the world as inherently fragile and imperfect, separated from G.o.d by a vast chasm. The new doctrine of creation ex nihilo emphasised this view of the cosmos as quintessentially frail and utterly dependent upon G.o.d for being and life. G.o.d and humanity were no longer akin, as in Greek thought. G.o.d had summoned every single being from an abysmal nothingness and at any moment he could withdraw his sustaining hand. There was no longer a great chain of being emanating eternally from G.o.d; there was no longer an intermediate world of spiritual beings who transmitted the divine mana to the world. Men and women could no longer ascend the chain of being to G.o.d by their own efforts. Only the G.o.d who had drawn them from nothingness in the first place and kept them perpetually in being could a.s.sure their eternal salvation.

Christians knew that Jesus Christ had saved them by his death and resurrection; they had been redeemed from extinction and would one day share the existence of G.o.d, who was Being and Life itself. Somehow Christ had enabled them to cross the gulf that separated G.o.d from humanity. The question was how had he done it? On which side of the Great Divide was he? There was now no longer a Pleroma, a Place of Fullness of intermediaries and aeons. Either Christ, the Word, belonged to the divine realm (which was now the domain of G.o.d alone) or he belonged to the fragile created order. Arius and Athanasius put him on opposite sides of the gulf: Athanasius in the divine world and Arius in the created order.

Arius wanted to emphasise the essential difference between the unique G.o.d and all his creatures. As he wrote to Bishop Alexander, G.o.d was 'the only unbegotten, the only eternal, the only one without beginning, the only true, the only one who has immortality, the only wise, the only good, the only potentate'. {3} Arius knew the scriptures well and he produced an armoury of texts to support his claim that Christ the Word could only be a creature like ourselves. A key pa.s.sage was the description of the divine Wisdom in Proverbs, which stated explicitly that G.o.d had created Wisdom at the very beginning. {4} This text also stated that Wisdom had been the agent of creation, an idea repeated in the Prologue of St John's Gospel. The Word had been with G.o.d in the beginning: Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. {5} {5} The Logos had been the instrument used by G.o.d to call other creatures into existence. It was, therefore, entirely different from all other beings and of exceptionally high status but because it had been created by G.o.d, the Logos was essentially different and distinct from G.o.d himself.

St John made it clear that Jesus was the Logos; he also said that the Logos was G.o.d. {6} Yet he was not G.o.d by nature, Arius insisted, but had been promoted by G.o.d to divine status. He was different from the rest of us, because G.o.d had created him directly but all other things through him. G.o.d had foreseen that when the Logos became man he would obey him perfectly and had, so to speak, conferred divinity upon Jesus in advance. But Jesus's divinity was not natural to him: it was only a reward or gift. Again, Arius could produce many texts that seemed to support his view. The very fact that Jesus had called G.o.d his 'Father' implied a distinction; paternity by its very nature involves prior existence and a certain superiority over the son. Arius also emphasised the biblical pa.s.sages that stressed the humility and vulnerability of Christ. Arius had no intention of denigrating Jesus, as his enemies claimed. He had a lofty notion of Christ's virtue and obedience unto death, which had a.s.sured our salvation. Arius's G.o.d was close to the G.o.d of the Greek philosophers, remote and utterly transcending the world; so too he adhered to a Greek concept of salvation. The Stoics, for example, had always taught that it was possible for a virtuous human being to become divine; this had also been essential to the Platonic view. Arius pa.s.sionately believed that Christians had been saved and made divine, sharers in the nature of G.o.d. This was only possible because Jesus had blazed a trail for us. He had lived a perfect human life; he had obeyed G.o.d even unto the death of the Cross; as St Paul said, it was because of this obedience unto death that G.o.d had raised him up to a specially exalted status and given him the divine tide of Lord (kyrios). {1} If Jesus had not been a human being, there would be no hope for us. There would have been nothing meritorious in his life if he had been G.o.d by nature, nothing for us to imitate. It was by contemplating Christ's life of perfectly obedient sons.h.i.+p that Christians would become divine themselves. By imitating Christ, the perfect creature, they too would become 'unalterable and unchangeable, perfect creature[s] of G.o.d'. {8} But Athanasius had a less optimistic view of man's capacity for G.o.d. He saw humanity as inherently fragile: we had come from nothing and had fallen back into nothingness when we had sinned. When he contemplated his creation, therefore, G.o.d saw that all created nature, if left to its own principles, was in flux and subject to dissolution. To prevent this and to keep the universe from disintegrating back into nonbeing, he made all things by his very own eternal Logos and endowed the creation with being. {9} {9} It was only by partic.i.p.ating in G.o.d, through his Logos, that man could avoid annihilation because G.o.d alone was perfect Being. If the Logos himself were a vulnerable creature, he would not be able to save mankind from extinction. The Logos had been made flesh to give us life. He had descended into the mortal world of death and corruption in order to give us a share of G.o.d's impa.s.sibility and immortality. But this salvation would have been impossible if the Logos himself had been a frail creature, who could himself lapse back into nothingness. Only he who had created the world could save it and that meant that Christ, the Logos made flesh, must be of the same nature as the Father. As Athanasius said, the Word became man in order that we could become divine. {10} When the bishops gathered at Nicaea on 20 May 325 to resolve the crisis, very few would have shared Athanasius's view of Christ. Most held a position midway between Athanasius and Arius. Nevertheless, Athanasius managed to impose his theology on the delegates and, with the Emperor breathing down their necks, only Arius and two of his brave companions refused to sign his Creed. This made creation ex nihilo an official Christian doctrine for the first time, insisting that Christ was no mere creature or aeon. The Creator and Redeemer were one.

We believe in one G.o.d, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible, and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of G.o.d, the only-begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance (ousia) of the Father, G.o.d from G.o.d, light from light, true G.o.d from true G.o.d, begotten not made, of one substance (h.o.m.oousion) with the Father, through whom all things were made, those things that are in heaven and those things that are on earth, who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made man, suffered, rose again on the third day, ascended into the heavens and will come to judge the living and the dead.

And we believe in the Holy Spirit. {11} {11} The show of agreement pleased Constantine, who had no understanding of the theological issues, but in fact there was no unanimity at Nicaea. After the council, the bishops went on teaching as they had before and the Arian crisis continued for another sixty years. Arius and his followers fought back and managed to regain imperial favour. Athanasius was exiled no less than five times. It was very difficult to make his creed stick. In particular the term h.o.m.oousion (literally, made of the same stuff) was highly controversial because it was unscriptural and had materialistic a.s.sociation. Thus two copper coins could be said to be h.o.m.oousion, because both derived from the same substance.

Further, Athanasius's creed begged many important questions. It stated that Jesus was divine but did not explain how the Logos could be 'of the same stuff as the Father without being a second G.o.d. In 339 Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra - a loyal friend and colleague of Athanasius, who had even gone into exile with him on one occasion -argued that the Logos could not possibly be an eternal divine being. He was only a quality or potential inherent within G.o.d: as it stood, the Nicene formula could be accused of tritheism, the belief that there were three G.o.ds: Father, Son and Spirit. Instead of the controversial h.o.m.oousion, Marcellus proposed the compromise term h.o.m.oousion, of like or similar nature. The tortuous nature of this debate has often excited ridicule, notably by Gibbon who found it absurd that Christian unity should have been threatened by a mere diphthong. What is remarkable, however, is the tenacity with which Christians held on to their sense that the divinity of Christ was essential, even though it was so difficult to formulate in conceptual terms. Like Marcellus, many Christians were troubled by the threat to the divine unity. Marcellus seems to have believed that the Logos was only a pa.s.sing phase: it had emerged from G.o.d at the creation, had become incarnate in Jesus and, when the redemption was complete, would melt back into the divine nature, so that the One G.o.d would be all in all.

Eventually Athanasius was able to convince Marcellus and his disciples that they should join forces, because they had more in common with one another than with the Arians. Those who said that the Logos was of the same nature as the Father and those who believed that he was similar in nature to the Father were 'brethren, who mean what we mean and are disputing only about terminology'. {12} The priority must be to oppose Arius, who declared that the Son was entirely distinct from G.o.d and of a fundamentally different nature. To an outsider, these theological arguments inevitably seem a waste of time: n.o.body could possibly prove anything definitively, one way or the other, and the dispute proved to be simply divisive. But for the partic.i.p.ants, this was no arid debate but concerned the nature of the Christian experience.

Arius, Athanasius and Marcellus were all convinced that something new had come into the world with Jesus and they were struggling to articulate this experience in conceptual symbols to explain it to themselves and to others. The words could only be symbolic, because the realities to which they pointed were ineffable. Unfortunately, however, a dogmatic intolerance was creeping into Christianity, whi