It is a special honour for me to have been awarded the Young Theology Prize 2023. I would like to express my sincere thanks to all those responsible for this. At the same time, I am delighted that you have all come together with me to celebrate this festive occasion. Such a celebration is naturally characterised by solidarity, unity and harmony, and should be remembered fondly by all those involved.
This does not easily fit in with the text on which I wrote my dissertation: It has fuelled or even provoked controversy on several occasions, it has been used to distort history and at the same time has been completely forgotten for centuries. Allow me, therefore, to temporarily change the theme of this evening before we are invited to once again combine solidarity and conviviality in the best possible way with the opening of the buffet.
Introduction and introduction
As the laudator, whom I would like to thank most sincerely for his honourable words, has already made clear, my work deals with the writing of a synod that met in Antioch on the Orontes between autumn 324 and the end of winter 325. Antioch, appropriately emphasised on the Tabula Peutingeriana, was one of the most important cities in the empire - both politically and ecclesiastically. The history of Christianity in Antioch goes back to the time of its earliest expansion; according to Acts 11:26, it was here that the disciples of Jesus were first given the name "Christians". In the fourth century, when the synodal letter was written, the city had developed its key ecclesiastical position. The bishop of Antioch presided over the city, from which a vicarius administered the diocese of Oriens, i.e. an area stretching from what is now southern Turkey to Egypt. Accordingly, the Antiochian bishop - with the exception of Egypt - was able to exert ecclesiastical influence over these areas. Who was bishop here and what was decided here therefore affected a number of local churches, sometimes the Greek-speaking east of the Roman Empire as a whole.
However, in the historiographical treatment of the first phase of the so-called Arian controversy - up to the Synod of Nicaea in 325 - Antioch did not have any particular significance for a long time - neither in the relevant accounts of late antiquity nor in critical modern research from the 18th century onwards. In fact, the dispute was initially associated with the Egyptian city of Alexandria in the Nile Delta - its epicentre, so to speak. A theological conflict is known to have broken out there in 318. The presbyter Arius and the local bishop Alexander disagreed about the position of the Son of God in the relationship between God and the world: both regarded him as a mediator - in creation and redemption - but drew very different conclusions from this: While Alexander ascribed the same eternity to the Son as the divine Father has as the source of all reality, for Arius he stood on the side of the created - not as a creature like the other creatures, but ultimately a creature nonetheless.
It was not to remain a scholarly dispute: Alexander saw his authority called into question, while Arius in turn was able to mobilise a number of episcopal supporters - far beyond the sphere of influence of the Alexandrian bishop. And finally, the dispute itself was too important to all those involved for the issue to be postponed or immediately shelved. The excommunication and deposition of Arius therefore led to the dispute spreading to the entire east of the empire and resulted in considerable factionalisation among bishops.
The lasting local point of reference here was Alexandria, combined with the demand for the reinstatement of Arius to his office there. The next decisive act in the conventional account is the intervention of Constantine, who was politically confronted with the controversy after his victory over Licinius in September 324 and, after a futile attempt to convince the disputants of the irrelevance of their dispute, was able to enforce the excommunication of Arius with the Synod of Nicaea that he convened and contribute to an - at least short-term - pacification under a common confession that is still fundamental to almost all Christian denominations today.
The text that the Göttingen classical philologist Eduard Schwartz brought to light in 1905 was capable of changing this picture considerably. Schwartz had found the document in a Syrian canon law manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris and had published it in his studies. The history of Athanasius published.
He assigned the piece, which had been torn from its historical context by tradition, to the prehistory of the Synod of Nicaea and categorised it as a letter from an Antiochian synod that had addressed a bishop named Alexander - either from Thessalonica or Byzantium. The 56 bishops listed in the greeting lament the situation of the Antiochian Church, which is justified by the Arian turmoil, make a decidedly anti-Arian statement of faith and excommunicate three bishops from the Syro-Palestinian region, including a real celebrity, Eusebius of Caesarea, known as a church historian and theologian.
The text was initially explosive because it established Antioch as a second epicentre of the theological and ecclesiastical-political disputes of the time. The excommunication of Eusebius was also completely unknown until then; it had not been mentioned anywhere else in the extensive literature of the fourth and fifth centuries. The theological-historical explosiveness of the text, on the other hand, was only recognised later: The Synod does not simply adopt Alexander of Alexandria's theological position in the Creed, but rather sharpens it under anti-origenist auspices: The Son is no longer understood - as was still the case with Arius and Alexander - in terms of his mediating position between God and the world, but rather a fundamental diastasis is set up between "begotten" - the Son - and "created and become" - the cosmos.
For Schwartz, however, the discovery of the text was above all a methodological triumph. The classical philologist had set himself the goal of going back behind the depiction of the Arian controversy in late antique church histories, such as Socrates of Constantinople, Sozomenos and Theodoret of Kyrrhos. To this end, he wanted to extract documents that had been handed down there from the narrative and also draw on collections of documents from late antiquity that had rarely been considered up to that point. According to Schwartz, it was particularly important to take into account the tradition of canon law, including oriental traditions. It could hardly have been better imagined that this method would bring to light a new - and spectacular - source.
Schwartz was not only interested in the broadest possible source base: The documents still reveal unfiltered what later historiographical accounts would have dressed up theologically: In the ecclesiastical disputes from the fourth century onwards, i.e. in the constituting imperial church, it was rarely about the content itself, but primarily about authority and the exercise of power. Schwartzen's document-focussed method - this remark may be permitted here - has long since become a research consensus and has lost its theological-critical edge - at least if one is prepared to understand church history not simply as the history of the unity of the church, but as the history of the - sometimes quite relentless - struggle for its unity.
My work makes this text, first presented by Eduard Schwartz, fundamentally accessible once again: I offer a new edition of the text and reconstruct its transmission from the events in Antioch in 324/25 to the copies made from the 8th century onwards in what is now south-east Turkey, to which we owe our knowledge of it in the first place. In a double commentary, I draw conclusions from the Syriac translation back to the Greek text, which is no longer extant, and place the text in its historical and theological-historical context. In connection with the considerations on the history of tradition, I thus confirm the authenticity of the text against old and new enquiries, which have already been mentioned.
Results in four highlights
I would now like to share the main results of my work with you in the remaining parts of my presentation - in four highlights, which I hope will stimulate conversation at the reception and make you want to pick up the work itself, which will be published next year in "Texte(n) und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur". I have summarised these four deliberately hypothetical highlights with
- Germany and Europe 1905-2023: Scholarly disputes
- Edessa 687: More than 60 names!
- Antioch around 450: Distorted history
- and likewise Antioch - 324/25: With a rough wedge and a precise scalpel
titled. What I would like to undertake with you is a journey back to the origins of the text across various stages. At the same time, it should become clear that the text in its original form and context can only be opened up philologically and understood appropriately historically by going through these stages.
1 Germany and Europe 1905-2023: Scholarly disputes
Schwartz's discovery was not initially well received. This changed abruptly in 1907 when the Berlin church historian Adolf Harnack, who had long been one of the leading intellectual figures of the Wilhelmine Empire, took up the pen against Schwartz. According to Harnack, he initially remained silent in the hope that a colleague would expose Schwartz's supposed discovery for what it was: "a crude forgery without any historical value". Harnack wants to attribute the letter to a forger from the fifth century at the earliest, if not later, and by referring to a fraus syriaca even suggests that he does not consider a Greek original for the text to be compelling. It is only thanks to the joy of new discoveries that Schwartz was taken in by this forgery, as - according to Harnack - it does not fit in at all with what we know from reliable sources about the early phase of the Arian controversy.
In a reply published the following year, Schwartz interpreted Harnack's objection as a fundamental attack - on his academic reputation as well as on the method he had emphasised, with which a serious historiography of the fourth century stands or falls. He slyly picked up on a philological error on Harnack's part and adopted the accusation common in scholarly circles of the time that Harnack was a respectable theologian but did not know Greek.
The dispute was therefore heated and did not make the already difficult relationship between the philologist and the theologian any easier. Even though both crossed the boundaries of academic objectivity with their energetic style, they were also prepared to learn from each other: Schwartz integrated the historical synthesis called for by Harnack in later publications, Harnack in turn revised his mistrust of the exclusively Syriac tradition and even had a Berlin licentiate thesis, which sided with Schwartz, awarded a prize.
Parallel to this internal German debate, in which other church historians of both denominations and ancient historians participated with brief statements, the debate on the eve of the First World War engulfed academic Europe from Paris to St Petersburg. However, important Russian publications from the war years were never received in the West, which is one of the reasons why the debate came to a standstill. For the time being, Schwartzen's view had prevailed, even if isolated doubts remained. These reappeared again and again, for example in the 1960s and 70s, but without leading to another debate conducted with similar vigour.
This changed with the publication in 1999 of the habilitation thesis by the Protestant church historian Holger Strutwolf. Strutwolf analyses the theology of the Trinity and Christology of Eusebius of Caesarea. Although the authenticity of the synodal letter is of little significance for his meticulous reconstruction of the Eusebian system, it is certainly important for its classification and assessment in terms of dogma history: Is the theologian presented here an intellectual great recognised by the majority of his contemporaries - or a heretic excommunicated at least temporarily - namely until the Synod of Nicaea?
Even if Holger Strutwolf cannot conceal his appreciation of Eusebius, his argumentation is not apologetic: rather, he astutely proposes to distinguish pre-Nicene parts of the text - such as the list of senders at the beginning of the letter - from later interpolations, including the confession and excommunication of Eusebius. An interested forger in the middle of the fourth century had turned a pre-Nicean synodal letter dealing purely with questions of canon law into a weapon for controversies after Nicea directed against the supposed "Arian" Eusebius and his comrades-in-arms.
Strutwolf's argument was narrowly rejected by Hanns Christof Brennecke and Uta Heil eight years later, when they had to comment on it when publishing documents on the Arian controversy. The Erlangen patristics scholars decided that Strutwolf had essentially adopted Harnack's ideas. Strutwolf, on the other hand, felt that his position had been distorted and that he had been accused of intellectual plagiarism, thus damaging his academic reputation. He wrote a correspondingly vigorous rebuttal, which Brennecke and Heil replied to - in a much more differentiated manner. Since then, little has been published on the authenticity of the letter, with supporters and opponents roughly in balance.
The contributions by Strutwolf and Brennecke/Heil have not only taken the authenticity debate to a new level in terms of argumentation, but have also systematised three essential problem areas for the authenticity of writing for the first time:
- the literary unity of the text,
- the ecclesiastical-historical plausibility of the events described, in particular the excommunications imposed on Eusebius and two other bishops,
- the theological-historical positioning of the confession, which seems to anticipate the theological culminations of later decades.
This systematisation has its good and its less good points: it draws attention to essential, if not all, questions relevant to authenticity, but has led to an argumentative stalemate. The repeated authenticity debates have also focussed on certain facets of the document, while others have been lost from view. It was therefore an important step for me to go beyond such focussing and look at the text as a whole - including its form, for example - and to try to make a pre-Nicaean date of origin plausible not only by proving the literary unity of the text, but also by contextualising it as comprehensively as possible.
2nd Edessa 687: More than 60 names
The text is available to us in four independent Syriac manuscripts, mostly from the early Middle Ages, which can be further divided into two groups. The older group in terms of textual history is represented by two manuscripts from Mardin in southern Turkey. However, only manuscripts from the younger group in terms of textual history have reached the West, some of which owe their existence to considerable editorial interventions. The discussion to date has therefore been based on this revised text, even if individual readings of the older group have already been communicated by Hubert Kaufhold, whom I am very pleased to see here this evening. The edition I have presented is intended to remedy this situation.
All of the manuscripts are copies of a West Syriac, i.e. mono-, or rather: miaphysite, collection of canon law from the late seventh century, whose author Kaufhold has made the scholarly Jacob of Edessa probable with good reason. Jacob was a central figure in the West Syrian church, who was concerned with mediating between Syrian and Greek Christianity. To this end, he not only taught Greek, but also produced a number of translations.
In this case, he improved older translations of Greek canon law texts into Syriac on the basis of a Greek original. Fortunately, he had come across a collection of Greek canon law that not only contained the standard texts that had already been translated into Syriac - legal provisions from fourth-century synods - but also a number of other documents, including the synodal letter presented here. He translated these documents himself and also integrated them into his collection.
The fact that he also included the synodal letter was probably not only due to his meticulousness. Jacob had a particular interest in Greek names, which he noted next to the Syriac translation - and the Antiochian Synodal Letter offered enough names, namely more than 60! This philological interest has been preserved in the manuscript Mardin, Church of the 40 Martyrs, Orth. 309, where the Greek forms of the names are noted in the margin.
Over the following decades, a copy of Jacob's collection travelled a good 200 kilometres east to a mountainous region in what is now south-eastern Turkey, where it was copied several times. The entire manuscript tradition of the text depends on this. It is therefore thanks to Jacob's scholarly interest and the scribes in Tur Abdin that we still know the original Greek synodal letter today in Syriac translation. Conversely, however, this also means that recourse to the original form of the text is only approximately possible.
3 Antioch around 450: distorted history
Jacob thus found the synodal letter in a Greek collection of canon law. As I can show in my work, this collection had a certain distribution: it was analysed in the sixth century in Antioch by John Scholastikos for a systematic collection of law and also reached Egypt, where it was translated into Coptic. However, due to selective interest and probable loss of transmission, the Antioch synodal letter only came to us via Jacob's collection.
In this legal collection, the letter was in a place where we would not expect to find it. It is important to realise that this type of legal collection contains at its core canons, i.e. canonical provisions, from synods of the fourth century, arranged by synod. Because of their importance, the canons of Nicaea are at the beginning, followed by the older canons of Ankyra - today's Ankara - and Neocaesarea, then an Antiochian synod of 341, synods of Gangra and Laodicea and finally the canons of the Synod of Constantinople in 381. Some collections also contain canons from the Synods of Ephesus in 431 and Chalcedon in 451. There is also non-canonical material on individual synods, such as the Confessions of Nicaea and Constantinople or Emperor Constantine's letter of invitation to Nicaea.
In terms of its historical location, our letter would be expected in the block of Nicaea, but it is actually assigned to the Synod of Antioch in 341. One might now think that two Antiochian synods, that of 324/25 and that of 341, were erroneously summarised here. Eduard Schwartz also thought so. However, as I show in my work on the context of tradition, this is not tenable; there are good reasons for the interpolation of the synodal letter into the pieces of the synod of 341. In my opinion, we see here a - probably somewhat idiosyncratic - forger from Antioch at work who had a fundamental problem: from the beginning of the fifth century, the canons of the Synod of Antioch 341 were considered to have been written by heretics, in the parlance of the time: Arians. This was particularly embarrassing in Antioch.
The forger attempted to conceal this flaw by combining the incriminated canons of 341 with the obviously anti-arian synodal letter of 324/25 and, in a supposedly historical note appended to the synodal letter, developed a narrative that can be interpreted in detail as a counter-narrative to the contemporary church history of Socrates of Constantinople. He did not succeed with this attempt at obvious historical distortion. Contrary to previous research, however, this also means that the note following the synodal letter contributes nothing to the historical understanding of the Synod of 324/25.
Wait a minute, some people will have thought: If the note under the letter and the supposed Western canons are forged, why not the synodal letter itself? I show that this is not just a fifth-century invention by looking at the language and theology of the letter: in my work, I can establish a provenance from the archive of an Antiochian special congregation for the other documents handed down in the original of Jacob. The forger probably also found the letter of 324/25 there in order to use it for his own purposes.
4 Antioch 324/25: With a rough wedge and a precise scalpel
The Antiochian special church, which we can find in the sources from the 360s onwards, placed itself in the tradition of Eustathius. In any case, he became bishop of Antioch between January 324 and June 325, having previously held this office in Beroea, today's Aleppo. Until now, most scholars have assumed that the synod, to which the synodal letter presented here goes back, transferred Eustathius from Beroea to Antioch in the first place. This had taken place under the presidency of Ossius of Cordoba, who was considered by many to be a confidant or even "court bishop" of Emperor Constantine.
Based on chronological considerations and a reinterpretation of the synodal letter, however, I argue in my work that Eustathius, who had already moved to Antioch, was the initiator of the synod, the main author of the synodal letter and at least the spiritus rector of the synodal confession and the excommunications imposed on Eusebius of Caesarea, among others.
Revaluations
These theses have led to a series of re-evaluations, which I would like to present in conclusion.
1 Eustathius convenes the synod soon after his move to Antioch; he benefits from Constantine's victory over Licinius, which made such synods possible again. Eustathius' aim was to consolidate his disputed claims to the Antiochian bishopric by supporting neighbouring bishops. At the same time, he silenced prominent opponents through excommunications.
2 Previous reconstructions of the last months before the Council of Nicaea place the aforementioned mediation initiative of Constantine at the beginning, the Synod of Antioch later. Based on the papyrological and numismatic evidence and Constantine's itinerary, however, I date the synod before the intervention of the emperor, who thus reacted to the initiative of Eustathius. Constantine's relocation of a planned synod from Ankyra to Nicaea and his adoption of this synod in general thus becomes easier to understand.
3 In my opinion, Constantine also had something to do with the fact that the Synod of 324/25 was soon forgotten. In Nicaea, the emperor cancelled the Antiochian excommunications, in particular that of Eusebius. He also enforced the drafting of a new confession. This meant that the Antiochian synodal letter had lost its relevance in every respect. What is now regarded as a "great moment" in church history and the first ecumenical council was accordingly a sour pill for Eustathius: In a post-Nicene sermon fragment that has been preserved by Theodoret, he laments the failure of the Nicene Synod; he probably regarded the emperor - not inaccurately - as an accomplice to his theological opponents.
4 What remains? As I have already indicated, Eustathius inculcated a diastasis between God and the world in Antioch that is not recognised in the Origenist tradition. He also prepares the distinction between "begetting" and "becoming" and rejects the willful procreation of the Son. What has often been regarded as an indication of a post-Nicene origin of the confession is, in my opinion, explained by Eustathius' theological opponent: this is not Arius, but Asterius, who rarely appears in the sources as a layman and because of a sacrifice in the Diocletianic persecution, but who has rightly been identified by recent research as the "mastermind" of the early Arian movement. From Eustathius' debate with Asterius, the diastasis in particular was incorporated into the newly compiled Nicene Creed. So it was not with the crude wedge of excommunications, but with the precise scalpel of his thinking that Eustathius prevailed - even today - when we confess the eternal Son in the Creed as "begotten, not created".
Honoured guests! What is in store for ecumenical Christianity over the next two years is a double anniversary: we are not only celebrating 1700 years of the Council of Nicea and Alexander against Arius, but also 1700 years of the Synod of Antioch and Eustathius against Asterius. The fact that I was able to make a small academic contribution to this is, of course, less due to my sense of possible marketing success - with a view to the book to be published - than to my doctoral supervisor Gregor Wurst. He not only provided the impetus for this work, but also accompanied me over the years with a great deal of attention, gave me and created the necessary freedom and - despite difficult circumstances - showed great personal commitment, especially in the final phase of the work. This is not the only reason I regret that he cannot be with us today.
