A. D. 381: Heretics, Pagans, and the Monotheistic State

This is same ground that Freeman covered in The Closing of the Western Mind and by MacCulloch in his history of Christianity, but Freeman really homes in on the politics of the empire and the state when the Nicene creed was made the official position of the Roman Empire. The Homoousian formula reached at Nicene presented probably insoluble difficulties for the church and empire and that "subordinationists" continued to have a wide following among believers. Freeman makes it clear that any debate about the nature of God and the Trinity came to a close with the Council at Constantinople, and very shortly thereafter, all debate and discussion about anything metaphysical ended. Speculative thought became anathema, and really, all logical discourse and debate was denigrated.

It was all political manuvering on the part of Theodosius and his successors that brought about the Councils at Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, which the Church conveniently "forgot" and accepted as dogmatic truth from the Church fathers and apostolic succession. Actually, Theodosius I comes off better in this book than in Closing of the Western Mind, but theologians Athanasius, Ambrose, and Jerome, among a host of others, really look unscrupulous.

Ambrose, in particular, with his manipulation of Theodosius' guilt, looks particularly sinister. When Theodosius tried to stop the destruction of Jewish temples and pagan shrines, Ambrose convinced him that paganism must be outlawed and that the Jews were traitors to God. Freeman implies that much of the hatred of Jews throughout Western culture can be traced to this decision. This was the same Ambrose that conveniently found the bones of long dead martyrs (albeit with miraculously fresh blood on them) to lay in the foundation of the Basilica Ambrosiana (where he himself was to be buried), the largest cathedral in Milan.

As to be expected, the political difficulties of the Roman empire, from Diocletian's assumption of power, Constantine's consolidation of power in his hands, the defeat of Valens at Adrianople, and the eventual "fall" of the western half of the empire provide the essential background and underpinnings of the story. Once the church became entangled with political power and consolidation, then the course really became set for the "closing of the western mind."

Author: Freeman, Charles

Date Published: 2009

Length: 9 hr 21 min

Narrator: Blumenfeld, Robert