Table Of ContentVoting About God
in Early Church Councils
R A M S AY MA C M U L L E N
Voting About God
in Early Church Councils
Yale University Press
New Haven &
London
Published with assistance from the Kingsley Trust Association Publication Fund
established by the Scroll and Key Society of Yale College.
Copyright ∫ 2006 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
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Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
MacMullen, Ramsay, 1928–
Voting about God in early church councils / by Ramsay MacMullen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-300-11596-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-300-11596-2
1. Councils and synods. 2. Church history—Primitive and early church, ca.
30–600. 3. God—History of doctrines—Early church, ca. 30–600. I. Title.
bv710.m28 2006
262%.514—dc22 2005034666
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on
Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Figures vi
Preface vii
1 Introduction 1
2 The democratic element 12
3 The cognitive element 24
4 The ‘‘supernaturalist’’ element 41
5 The violent element 56
6 Preliminaries 67
7 Councils in action 78
1. The stage 78
2. Dioscorus 84
3. Management 95
4. Exact words 105
Summary 113
Notes 119
Bibliography 155
Index 167
Figures
Fig. 1. The western empire’s council sites 5
Fig. 2. The eastern empire’s council sites 6
Fig. 3. The Council of Constantinople AD 381 43
Fig. 4. A. H. M. Jones (1904–1970) 46
Fig. 5. Santa Croce, Rome 80
Fig. 6. A Hall for Ephesus I and II 80
Preface
How did Christians agree on their definition of the Supreme Being,
Triune? It was the work of the bishops assembled at Nicaea in AD 325, made
formal and given weight by majority vote and supported after much struggle
by later assemblies, notably at Chalcedon (451)—likewise by majority vote.
Such was the determining process. Thus agreement was arrived at, and be-
came dogma widely accepted down to our own day.∞
The process has been often described: studied to death, one may almost say.
But the level I choose to focus on is not quite the usual one. I have nothing to
add about the intricacies of doctrinal debate, high up, nor the shaping of the
most important participants’ views in their own minds and writings, nor their
gaining and applying of influence in the lead-up to council meetings and at the
most crucial sessions. Such matters I leave to others, who are many.
I leave to others also the view that the shaping personalities were in some
sense superhuman: Saint Ambrose, Saint Dioscorus, Saint Constantine, or
Saint Cyril. Revered by members of this or that party to theological dispute
and by reverence raised to a plane above history itself, along with the events in
1. Time has brought change, witness the words of the present pope, ‘‘truth is not
determined by a majority vote,’’ quoted in P. J. Boyer, ‘‘A hard faith,’’ New Yorker
Magazine, May 16, 2005, p. 59.
vii
viii Preface
which they were involved—surely their elevation must provoke a historian’s
protest, though the protestant deprives himself of all sorts of familiar lines of
explanation, all sorts of certainties and dramatic touches.
Rather, I focus on those persons who made up the great mass of any council,
by no means superhuman. Many were not in the least prominent. They remain
for us nothing but names, as, in the past, some were no doubt hardly more
than names even among their fellows. All participants together, however, were
necessary to the outcome. Without a majority of them duly subscribed and
tallied, no view could claim defining authority.
In the making of any event such as emerged from Nicaea or Chalcedon,
figures great and small, high and low, had all to contribute. Of course. There
can be no leaders without followers, no followers without leaders. It is for
readers of history then to decide who counted the most, or perhaps whom they
find most interesting. But writers like readers may have a choice, too. My own
preference has always been some level not too different from my own. To look
up at the past never suited me, any more than looking down on it.
Which means, not biography. A thin narrative line, following not the com-
munity that makes an event but rather some single actor’s progress, doesn’t
suit my sort of curiosity. It is the whole contributing mass that I like to under-
stand—how people, lots of people, really behaved. I might plead Fashion. As
Orlando Figes put it, a few years ago, ‘‘History has long ceased to be the record
of the achievements of extraordinary men: we are all social historians now.’’≤
Accordingly, I have done what I could to understand what might be in the
mind of less-than-eminent persons participating in church council decisions.
Granted, information about them is available only in tiny disconnected bits;
and these have to be aligned with and interpreted in the light of other tiny bits.
The result can only be pointillist; but a pointillist portrait of a composite figure
engaged in composite events may be as fairly representative of the truth as
attempts at the biography of some one historical figure like Cicero or Augus-
tine. What is required is enough dots, connected. Let this excuse or explain my
multiplication of instances of this or that sort of behavior. I aim only to satisfy
the sceptic.
In contrast, statements about large groups or characteristics of some histor-
ical period, supported airily by no more than an anecdote or two, aren’t worth
much.
Looking into the mind of those council participants who are my subject, I
find four shaping elements: a democratic, a cognitive, a ‘‘supernaturalist’’, and
2. A People’s Tragedy. A History of the Russian Revolution, New York 1997, 455f.
(speaking, no doubt, of historians of periods closer to the present than mine).
Preface ix
a violent. Explanation of each of these four terms makes up my earlier chap-
ters; and in each of the four there is something of major historical significance
to be discovered, as I try to make clear. Thereafter, I turn to scenes from
various particular councils to show the four elements at work.
The logic governing the general flow of the book is Summarized in its last
few pages.
