Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (II)
In his Early
Christianity series, Nevin goes on to attack figures like Aerius, Jovinian
and Vigilantius – all 4th century dissenters treated by his
colleague Philip Schaff in vol. 3 of his History of the Christian Church.
Nevin argues these figures and groups were aberrations and
represented no serious opposition to the post-Constantinian changes – but we
cannot accept this verdict.
Aerius is accused by Epiphanius of being an Arian but given
that the label was pinned on many people to whom it did not belong, the charge
carries little weight. And it is safe to say that Epiphanius is known to be a
bit of a sensationalist and is not always trustworthy.
Aerius and his followers who were forced to live underground
having rejected the fasts, the celebration of Easter, prayers for the dead and
the clericalism that had come to dominate the Church in that 4th
century period. We don't know a lot about them and some use this fact to argue
for their irrelevance.
And yet this too is a flawed argument as we shall address
momentarily.
Jovinian was another 4th century figure that came
to oppose monasticism which was flourishing in the post-Constantinian milieu.
He also expressed concern regarding the undue emphasis being placed on celibacy
as necessary for piety. Like his contemporary Helvidius, he rejected the then
popular (and certainly extra-Scriptural) teaching regarding the perpetual
virginity of Mary – viewing the notion as wrong-headed and inaccurate.
This brings us to Vigilantius who lived in the Pyrenees
region during the 4th and 5th centuries. He
also criticised the elevation of celibacy and other monastic tendencies but he is
especially known for his attacks against the veneration of saints and their
relics – practices which seemingly had become more prominent or normalised in
his day.
He is attacked by Jerome and others and yet we do not possess
his actual writings. In fact it is through Jerome and figures like Epiphanius
that we know anything about these dissenters and thus since the testimony is
secondary, they are treated as irrelevant to the question of Church History and
the narrative of the Shift.
But it's not that easy. Why have their writings been lost to
us? We know from later testimonies that during periods of history the Catholic
and later Roman Catholic Church destroyed the writings of heretics and whole
libraries worth of their writings have been lost to us. While the common focus today is on the monks
that preserved ancient manuscripts and the memory of the Classical World,
there's another story and it's one of destruction – the destruction of unwanted
history and a manipulation and suppression of the historical record.
Some have certainly overplayed this fact and yet others have
deliberately chosen to ignore it. And in the latter camp not a few Protestant
historians are to be found. This is also true when it comes to questions of
textual criticism and some of the (now post-19th century)
controversial passages of the New Testament, such as the Comma Johanneum.
We know about these few dissenting figures because they're
mentioned by prominent authors whose works were preserved. Is it out of bounds
to suggest that there were others whose writings were destroyed as well –and
yet were not mentioned by Jerome, Faustus, or Epiphanius?
This argument is further strengthened by the fact that
Socrates the Church Historian of the same period mentions in passing that
Easter was not apostolic in origin but was a later creation – a point that
vindicates Aerius and other dissenters and suggests there may have been an
older testimony of resistance to these changes.
Additionally, in that same Pyrenees region we see several
centuries later the figure Claudius who later became associated with Turin in
the Italian Piedmont. When he arrived in Italy in the 800's, he was shocked by
the idolatrous use of images and relics and the practice of pilgrimages to Rome
and the like. He also was critical of the way the cross was employed which
(though it's hard to conceive of today) was not part of the ante-Constantinian
liturgy or common piety. He attacks the idea of pilgrimage resulting in
absolution and clearly does not support the idea of papal supremacy.
Scholars have argued that he was an ivory-tower figure, an
academic unfamiliar with common practice and so he's made into something of a
prig or snob.
But I would argue this is to misread him at several points.
We could talk extensively about the Biblical nature and character of his
thought but instead I would focus on the historical flow that many seem to
miss. The fact that he came from Southern France or Northern Spain and was
shocked by what he found in the Italian Piedmont indicates there was still no
real Catholicism at this time. By the 9th century there was still no
monolithic practice and I think the aggressive nature of Catholic reforms of
the10th and 11th century testifies to that fact.
Obviously practices were widespread and differed and indeed
there's other evidence to suggest this. From the controversies in Northern
Italy with regard to liturgy and the authority of the pope, to the disputes and
conflict in the British Isles, to the fact that during this period there not
only dissenting Donatists in North Africa and Southern Spain, there were also
Novatianists scattered throughout the empire, Montanists and others that are
often treated in Church histories and then forgotten. But it should be
remembered these groups were still around into the 5th and in some
cases the 6th and 7th centuries. They were persecuted and
eventually destroyed but it's always amazing to me that some of them were able
to survive for centuries. And yet in many histories they're treated at the time
of their origin and then ignored. And yet we forget they were still around for
hundreds of years – lingering in the background as alternative polities and
testimonies. I'm not saying these groups were all Biblical in nature. By no
means. But I do mean to suggest that the idea of a monolithic universal or
catholic Church (in terms of outward organisation) simply did not exist at this
time – let alone a Roman Catholic Church which finds its anchor and central
principle in the institution of the papacy.
There were certain commonalities within Greater Catholicism
but it would not be unified and forced into standardized liturgical conformity
until the Gregorian Reforms of the 11th century – at which point
many dissident groups appear in the record. And as I've argued before these
groups may very well have already been in existence but did not appear on the
radar until the politically empowered episcopate began to enforce uniform
liturgical practices. Suddenly there was a problem – there were groups turning
up in various locations that were demonstrably hostile to Rome and some of the
general currents of Catholicism.
The common narrative is that these groups appeared or were generated in the 12th
century as a form of protest and that may be the case – again Rome has
destroyed and suppressed so much of the history that we cannot be sure, but
that doesn't mean that we accept Rome's narrative and disregard the clues left
behind – clues which suggest a long and widespread testimony of dissent which
in many cases was rooted in Biblically based arguments that charged the
Catholic Church with a departure from the teaching of the apostles – and
sometimes of functional apostasy.
The 4th century dissident record is paltry and yet
it points to a larger reality and this is confirmed by the testimony of the
Carolingian Age in which the same Pyrenees region is producing dissent and
while the many forms of dissent across Eurasia do not represent an underground
Protestant Church as Nevin's 'Puritan View' would have it – we grant him this
point – and yet the Nevin/pro-Roman Catholic view also does not stand.
Even within the Catholic tradition we can point to figures
like Cyprian (d.258) and other metropolitan bishops who rejected the claims of
the then nascent papacy. The unity or notion of consensus was a myth and so to
argue that what emerged was somehow in keeping with the old and ancient
testimony (the consensus patrum)
isn't true.
Nevin may grant this to a point but will still argue that all
the dissidents were still something other than Protestant. For Nevin,
Protestantism in this case represents the austerity and minimalism of
Puritanism, the elevation of the rational over the spiritual and the rejection
of supernatural virtue in baptism and the real presence in the Supper – in
other words the Baptistic theological quality and temperament that all but
dominates the conservative Protestant world in the post-Enlightenment epoch –
and certainly dominated in Nevin's day.
It may true that these groups were not simply
Magisterial-Confessional Protestants before Protestantism or akin to
post-Enlightenment Baptists but at the same time that doesn't mean they didn't
represent a kind or type of Protestantism and a rejection of Catholic claims.
Nevin and Schaff like to get very narrow in their definition
of Protestantism when the discussion enters this realm. Unless a group
specifically taught Justification by
Faith Alone and explicitly argued for Scripture as the sole authority (Sola
Fide and Sola Scriptura) – they aren't reckoned as proto-Protestant but as mere
Catholic dissidents.
And yet when delineating his Puritan view and contrasting it
with pre-Reformation Catholicism he includes many elements of 19th
century Protestantism and all but projects them onto the earlier Puritans and
Reformers. Did the Puritans really hold to the Bible as the only rule? In
theory, but in actuality this could be challenged. Did they hold to clergy of
one order? In theory. Did they believe Christianity was wed to the values of liberal
democracy, rights and freedoms and common sense philosophy? By the 19th century many
Protestants embraced these ideas born of
the Enlightenment and Age of Reason and viewed them as essential to Biblical
Christianity but the 16th and 17th century Puritans were
not advocates of these positions. It seems as if Nevin's parameters and
definitions are rather strict when it suits him – requiring the narrowest of
definitions for pre-Reformation groups to acquire the label 'Protestant' but
when it comes to defining Puritanism and Protestantism in the 19th
century he paints with a very broad brush indeed.
Likewise when engaging whole blocks of history his parameters
change. At one point he notes the 3rd century began to see many
changes in the Church and indeed the period between the Decian and Diocletian
(c.250-303) persecutions has been noted by other historians as a period of
creep, an epoch in which some of the impulses which would strongly emerge post-Constantine
were already rumbling beneath the surface.
And yet Nevin demands proof of massive change in the AD70-200
time frame and without clear voices of dissent he dismisses the idea that there
was some kind of Shift taking place.
This is obtuse argumentation as no advocate of the Shift
argues that the Shift began in the 2nd and 3rd centuries
and yet Nevin assumes without proof that the post-Constantinian practices
(later associated with Catholicism) were already underway – and yet were they?
Even his colleague Philip Schaff isn't as bold as that. Schaff acknowledges but
accepts and endorses that many if not most of the changes (or deviations from
Scriptural and Early Church practice) took place in the 4th century,
after the edict of toleration and after Constantine extended political favour
to the Christian Church.
It's almost as if Nevin is playing a game, dancing around and
avoiding the 4th century – the salient and critical century of
change. Yes, there was a gradual departure (or decline) from New Testament
Christianity taking place over the course of the 3rd century. This
cannot be doubted and yet 313 marked a tremendous shift – or catastrophe as it
is reckoned by some.
Where's the proof? Where's the dissent Nevin asks – an
argument picked up by Peter Leithart in his 2010 Defending Constantine.
One, there is proof in pointing to the dissident voices of
the 4th century which we argue are but the tip of a larger iceberg.
I will not pretend the dissent was widespread or anything approaching parity
with the embrace of the Shift. It wasn't and yet I would argue the very fact
that we know there are missing and destroyed manuscripts and the fact that
there is a persistent and widespread counter-testimony in certain regions –
points to a larger reality Nevin and those like him don't want to entertain. In
addition we must consider the nature of the period – the transitional era
between Late Antiquity and the Dark Ages of the 5th-10th
centuries – the age of the collapse of the Western Empire. It was an age of
invasions, massive upheaval and large-scale destruction. The stability that
emerged during the Carolingian epoch was short lived and hardly widespread. It
appears as a 'bright' moment only in the midst of such darkness – hence the
semi-legendary aspect of Charlemagne's reign that would emerge in later
centuries. So much was lost during the larger period and later knowledge was
suppressed and crafted to fit a narrative.
Secondly, the Constantinian Shift is also referred to as The Great Apostasy and this is precisely
the point. It was a widespread apostasy, a tragedy in terms of the Church.
Persecuted for generations, the Church faced temptation in the wilderness as it
were. They were offered power as was Adam and they like Adam took the forbidden
fruit and destroyed their testimony and standing.
At this point we're into theology and as Christians studying
Church History the paradigms of the academy are reckoned insufficient. We can
use the tools of the secular historian and weigh the facts but our historiography
is necessarily different – or else we're not being faithful Christians. And if
we merely want to understand Church History as a secular historian then we're
wasting our time and stripping it of its message and spiritual meaning.
There is a theology at work and we must employ it when
considering epochal shifts such as what took place with Constantine.
Christ also faced this wilderness temptation when the god of
this world, the master of the thrones appeared to Christ and offered Him the
Kingdoms of this world. The modern dominionist side-steps this by arguing that
Satan's offer was false as he did not have the authority to make such an offer
but the Biblical testimony rejects this framing. Satan is the god of this world
(as Paul affirms) and Christ did not reject his claim or rebuke the assertion.
Instead he rejected the offer.
The offer came again to the Church in 313 and the tired, worn
and weary Church took it, embraced it and was forever changed. They changed the
very nature of Christianity in order to gain the kingdoms of the world. The
sword and coin were embraced and the world, its values, its aesthetics and
style and even its very instincts came into the Church and were theologised and
eventually baptised in the form of theological syncretism – a project completed
by the late medieval Scholastics.
In terms of theology and hermeneutics we're into deep waters
here and it's beyond the scope of this essay but I believe these events are
anticipated in the visions of Revelation and even in didactic passages such as those
found in 2 Thessalonians chapters 1 and 2. The poignant imagery of Constantine
at Nicaea and the claims of the papacy are hard to miss and yet all too often
the popular eschatological models of our day (both Futurist Dispensational Premillennialism
and both A- and Post-millennial Dominionist Preterism) fail to fully appreciate
the thematic development that takes place in the Apocalypse – and these camps
also fail to appreciate the universality of such passages in terms of the
Church Age.
The testimony of protest with regard to the Great Apostasy is less than abundant as the sad truth is – most of the Church embraced the change and the transformation was so rapid that few had time to reflect on it. Such shifts are still taking place in our own day. Many Church leaders became drunk on power and frankly it's impossible to even imagine the likes of Cyril of Alexandria or even the lauded Athanasius with all their violence and scheming – apart from the Constantinian Shift. These were not men the Church of the 1st and 2nd or even the 3rd century would have revered. They were creations of the Constantinian epoch.