Alexander Schmemann

2. The Triumph Of Christianity (27 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 16

Once more the great Alexandrian exile Athanasius returned in triumph to his city. He was not there long, for when Julian learned that he had baptized several pagan women, he issued an edict for his expulsion, and the much-traveled bishop again went into hiding. His brief stay in Alexandria, however, was marked by one of the great, historically decisive acts of his life: the calling of the Alexandrian Council of 362. Rigor and intractability might have been expected of him, persecuted for so many years by the whole anti-Nicene East. Yet Athanasius, who had identified his entire life with the Nicene definition and had never once wavered, even when the whole Church seemed united in rejecting him, was the first to understand that the errors of the East were not pure heresy and was able to discern allies and brothers among them. He understood that real incomprehension lay back of their rejection, and he perceived in their inadequate words their complete return to the truth. For this alone he deserves his title “Great.” The work of the Council of 362 was a gesture of reconciliation. It solemnly affirmed the Nicene Creed, but with sufficiently lucid explanation to bring back, as to the only salvation, all who had sought the truth in shadows and rebellion and had not despaired of finding it.

The first to be restored was the West, which had been made to abandon the homoousion definition only by imperial force.
In 363 the legions put on the throne the elderly general Valentinian, who, when the bishops asked to be permitted to summon a council, answered: I am a layman and consider that it would be improper for me to intervene in this; let the hierarchs meet and decide as they wish. In this atmosphere of freedom the Western Church simply and completely returned to its original acceptance of the Nicene Creed.

The situation in the East was more complex; Valentinian had appointed as emperor there his brother Valens (364-78), who continued officially to protect the Homoian party. Outwardly the life of the Church continued disturbed, the years of divisions, mutual accusations, and excommunications taking their toll; yet beneath this sorry surface the mighty neo-Nicene flood was growing ever greater. A uniquely important role in this restoration was played by three bishops customarily called the Great Cappadocians. They are Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and Gregory of Nyssa, who with Athanasius are the greatest Fathers and teachers in the tradition of the Eastern Church. As the Council of Nicaea and the struggle to support it is forever connected with the name of Athanasius, so to these three, and especially to Basil the Great, the Church owes its final triumph.

Their main contribution was theological; they were rich in the experience of the post-Nicene disputes, which had revealed the difficulty of expressing the faith of the Church in words, and they were thinkers and philosophers of genius. They perfected the creation of a theological language, crystallized its concepts, and expressed all the profound significance of the orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity contained in Athanasius’ homoousion and in the Nicene Creed. They forced the whole Church to perceive its own truth.

The bright image of Basil the Great particularly illumines the epilogue of this long, troubled, often apparently hopeless struggle. A sick man who dreamed constantly of monastic solitude, of reflection and creative work, still he devoted his whole life to the reconciliation of Christians, and his tact, patience, and persistence knew no limits. How often there appeared to be no way out of the blind alley of division that now seemed part of the very flesh of the Church! Despite insults, misunderstandings, and slander, the great Cappadocian archbishop never slackened his efforts. His service was blessed and recognized before his death by the elderly Athanasius, who was able to spend the last years of his life peacefully among his people.
Basil completed this work. He died in 379, just before the last triumph of Nicaea, the Second Ecumenical Council — like Moses, leading his people to the Promised Land but no entering it himself.

 

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