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Theodosius' Horse: Reflections on the Predicament of the Church Historian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Albert C. Outler
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Extract

The second general council of Ephesus was convened on August 8, 449, and adjourned some fourteen days later by the legates of Theodosius II, who promptly confirmed the council's canons and decrees. It had been as regular, or irregular, as Nicea I or Ephesus I had been, and far more general than the Constantinopolitan synod of 381. Its chief importance lay in registering another splendid victory for the Alexandrines. The “school” of Antioch was shattered beyond repair; Pope Leo and the Westerners were walled off and weakened; the bare notion of “two natures” was branded as Nestorian; every principal see in the East was manned by a henchman of Dioscoros. Moreover, the emperor and his grand chamberlain (the eunuch Chrysaphius, godson to Eutyches) were prepared to support Alexandrine policy with police power.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 57 , supplment S1 , March 1988 , pp. 9 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1932

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References

1. The sources for Ephesus II are largely confined to the ruthlessly partisan minutes of Chalcedon and the equally biased “Syriac Acts.” These are most readily checked in Schwartz, E. (ed.) Concilium Universale Chalcedonense (cf. indices in VI, 115)Google Scholar and in Perry, S. G., The Second Synod of Ephesus…(Dartford, 1881).Google Scholar The most useful secondary source is Hefele-Leclercq, , Histoire des Conciles (Paris, 1908), II, 1, 555–621.Google Scholar

2. The Ecclesiastical History, VII, 21, 42.

3. The Ecclesiastical History, I, 11, 17–19, 22.

4. Cf. Gibbon, Edward, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Bury, J. B. (London, 1897), III, xxxiv, 444f.Google Scholar

5. The widely accepted notion that the Chalcedonian definition was a greek adaptation of Leo's Tome is in error. Every significant phrase in the definition may be traced to one or another Eastern text that antedates the Tome.

6. Cf. Pascal, Blaise, Pensées, 162, 176.Google Scholar

7. Cf. Barziní, Luigi, The Italians (London, 1964), 276ff.Google Scholar

8. Cf. Zinsser, Hans, Rats, Lice and History (Boston, 1943), chaps. 6–8, a neglected study of an under-estimated historical vector.Google Scholar

9. Ernest, Nagel and Newman, James R., Gödel's Proof (New York, 1958).Google Scholar

10. Cf. Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (New York, 1958).Google Scholar

11. Sullivan, H. S., The Psychiatric Interview (New York, 1954).Google ScholarPubMed

12. Cf. Confessions, XI.

13. Cf., Craig'sRules of Historical Evidence in Beiheft 4 of History and Theory (‘S-Gravenhage, 1964), Prop. iii–xv.Google Scholar

14. Cf. “Narrative Sentences” in History and Theory, II, 2 (1962), 146–79.Google Scholar

15. Op. cit., V, xlviii, 123.

16. Quoted by Gallie, W. B. in “The Historical Understanding” in History and Theory, III, 2, 188Google Scholar. This entire article is one of the most remarkable in the literature of the philosophy of history.

17. Cf. The Social Science Research Council Bulletin, 54, Theory and Practice in Historical Study (1946), especially ch. V, “Propositions,” pp. 134–40, and the comments on religion on pp. 28–29, 63–64; see also ch. VI, “Methods: Theory and Practice,” in Bulletin 64, The Social Sciences in Historical Study (1954), pp. 128–55. In the fourteen volumes and Beiheften of History and Theory thus far, it is as if there never had been such a problem—and yet this is our liveliest contemporary forum of historiography, with no apparent bias against metahistorical notions.

18. Op. cit., I, pref.; cf. also Palladius' phrase about history as “a helpful medicine against forgetfulness” in his Lausiac History, Prologue, 3.

19. Cf. Nigg, Walter, Die Kirchergeschzchtsschrezbung; Grundzüge zhrerhzstorischen Entwcklung (München, 1934), 245–57.Google Scholar

20. “The Predicament of the Christian Historian” in Religion and Culture; Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, ed. Walter, Liebrecht (New York 1959), 166.Google Scholar

21. Rom.8:39.