Macedonianism

Pneumatomachi: the battle-name

The word Pneumatomachian comes from the Greek pneumatomachoi: pneuma, "spirit, breath", and machè, "battle" — literally the "fighters against the Spirit"^[7]. The name states the crime as heresies were then named by their refusal: just as the Arians fought the Son, these fight the Holy Spirit by denying Him divinity.

It is St Epiphanius of Salamis who gives them their credentials in the literature against heresies: he devotes to them the 74th heresy of his Panarion — the "medicine chest" against all heresies — with a methodical refutation, after already expounding the faith in the Spirit in his Ancoratus (a work dated 374)^[8]. Epiphanius writes as a contemporary of the drama, and it is to him that the West will owe a systematic description of the party.

Macedonians, Marathonians: the names of men

The second name, Macedonians, comes from Macedonius of Constantinople, regarded as the father of the sect — even though, as will be seen, he probably formulated his rejection of the divinity of the Spirit only in the last years of his life, after his deposition^[9]. A few modern scholars have disputed the identification of the Macedonians with the Pneumatomachi, but on grounds judged insufficient, and against the authority of Socrates Scholasticus, a contemporary historian living in Constantinople itself^[10].

A third name circulated in the East: the Marathonians, after Marathonius, whom Macedonius had made bishop of Nicomedia and who gave the party such a local impetus that the sect was often called after him^[11]. The name was already used in Greek by Socrates Scholasticus^[12]; in Latin, by St Jerome, St Augustine, Pope St Damasus and Rufinus, "Macedonians" became the customary designation of all deniers of the divinity of the Holy Spirit^[13].

The Son true God, the Spirit a mere creature

To understand the Pneumatomachi, one must first grasp what they did not deny. Most of the sect claimed to be orthodox on the Son: these bishops came from the semi-Arian party and anathematized the true Arians^[14]. When the semi-Arian synod of Lampsacus sent a deputation to Pope Liberius to obtain his communion, the pope, after some hesitation, recognized the soundness of their faith on the Son: on the third Person, pope and bishops together settled for the brief formula "We believe in the Holy Spirit", which decided nothing yet^[15].

In other words: the Council of Nicaea, which had spent all its strength defending the consubstantial of the Son, had added on the Spirit only the words "We believe in the Holy Spirit", without any qualification^[16]. The Macedonians exploited this breach: since one could be Nicene without confessing the Spirit as God, they would remain so while declaring Him a creature. Their formula, constant: the Spirit is creature, minister and servant of God — holy, sent, active, but of another nature than the Father and the Son^[17].

Their arguments, fairly stated

The Pneumatomachi were neither ignoramuses nor declared impious men: they argued from Scripture, and their best arguments deserve to be heard before being refuted.

First argument: Scripture calls the Spirit a minister. The Epistle to the Hebrews says of the angels that they are spirits sent to serve^[18]:

"Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation?" — Epistle to the Hebrews, 1, 14^[19]

It is on this verse, reports St Athanasius through his friend Serapion of Thmuis, that the dissenters relied to declare the Holy Spirit "a mere creature and a ministering angel"^[20]. If the Spirit is sent to serve, they said, then He serves: yet God does not serve, He is served.

Second argument: neither unbegotten, nor begotten, therefore created. The Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten: the Spirit, for His part, is neither one nor the other. Eunomius, the Anomoean logician — a partisan of total dissimilarity between the Son and the Father — drove the wedge in: the Spirit is third in order, therefore third in nature, a work of the Son as the Son is a work of the Father^[21]. The argument has the rigour of a syllogism, and that is why it seduced minds trained in dialectic.

Third argument: the silence of the ancients. The Nicene creed says nothing more about the Spirit, and certain hesitant formulas of the early Fathers seemed to authorize reserve^[22]. Why confess more than Nicaea? Why impose a word — the divinity of the Spirit — which the first ecumenical council did not judge necessary to spell out?

Why the Church sees a disguised Arianism

None of these reasons stood up to examination, and the Fathers answered them point by point. To the first argument, they opposed that the Son Himself is sent by the Father and made Himself a servant without ceasing to be true God: being sent and serving does not make a creature^[23]; and the verse of Hebrews speaks of the angels, not of the Spirit, whom Scripture never calls an angel^[24]. To the second, that the order of the Persons is not a hierarchy of nature: being unbegotten, begotten or proceeding holds, writes Gregory of Nazianzus, "neither of deficiency nor of subjection of essence"^[25] — their treatises will be read below. But the doctrinal judgment was delivered as early as 362 by the Council of Alexandria, assembled on Athanasius' return from exile: the first formal condemnation of the Pneumatomachi, with a synodal letter addressed to the people of Antioch requiring of every convert from Arianism the condemnation of "those who say that the Holy Spirit is a creature, separate from the essence of Christ"^[26]. The sentence has remained famous:

The sentence has remained famous: those who, while claiming the faith confessed at Nicaea, dare to blaspheme the Holy Spirit reject the Arian heresy in words only, while keeping it in thought^[27].

The reasoning is simple and unanswerable. One does not baptize in the name of a creature: yet Christ commands baptism "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"^[28]. One does not worship a creature: yet the Church has worshipped the Spirit with the Father and the Son from the origins, in her doxologies as in her liturgy. And a creature does not sanctify: yet it is of the Spirit Himself that creatures partake — the angels partake of Him, and can fall, while the Spirit, ever the same, is partaken of without partaking: if He were but a creature, He would communicate only His created nature^[29].

Installed by the Arians, enthroned by the emperor

Macedonius was not first a theologian: he was a man of power. In 342, the Arians introduce him to the see of Constantinople, and Emperor Constantius II enthrones him there after expelling Paul, the Catholic bishop, for the second time^[30]. Macedonius' reign thus begins with a usurpation, and continues with persecution: it is against the Novatians — rigorist Christians separated from the Church since the 3rd century — and the Catholics, who held the consubstantiality of the Son, that he turns persecution and has the recalcitrant expelled, imprisoned, dragged before tribunals, uses torture to force communion, imposes baptism on unbaptized women and children and has churches destroyed^[31].

Bloodshed, then disgrace

Two dramas sealed his fate. His cruelty provoked the rebellion of the Novatians at Mantinium, in Paphlagonia: four imperial cohorts were defeated there and almost entirely massacred^[32]. Then his exhumation of the body of Constantine — regarded as an outrage to the protector of the Council of Nicaea — triggered between Arians and anti-Arians a clash that filled the church and the whole district with carnage, and that without the emperor's authorization^[33]. Macedonius fell into disgrace: Constantius had him deposed by the Acacian party — the bishops rallied to Acacius of Caesarea — and replaced by Eudoxius in 360 — not for doctrinal reasons, but because he had shed too much blood and admitted to communion a deacon guilty of fornication^[34].

The late formulator of a refusal

Deposed, Macedonius continued for some time to stir the neighbourhood of Constantinople, in the intimacy of Eleusius of Cyzicus, and died around 364^[35]. It was very likely during these last years that he formulated his rejection of the divinity of the Holy Spirit and founded his sect — the intimacy with Eleusius makes the hypothesis probable^[36]. Of him, no writing survives: of Macedonian doctrinal pieces we know only the "Brief Expositions" mentioned by Didymus the Blind in his work on the Trinity of 379, which he says he had in his hands^[37].

Eustathius of Sebaste, the ascetic turned leader

The dominant figure of the party was Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste in Armenia: a former semi-Arian turned to the denial of the Spirit, whom St Basil designates as the leader of the heresy of the Pneumatomachi^[38]. According to Arendzen, the sect is said to have afterwards repudiated Eustathius, with Sabinus and Eleusius of Cyzicus — in the conditional, for Basil speaks of no repudiation, and Eleusius was still leading the Macedonians at Constantinople in 381^[39]. Error, even shared, does not make unity.

At Nicomedia, Marathonius, installed by Macedonius, took such a head of the local movement that the whole sect was often nicknamed after him^[40]. The party thus took root in the lands bordering the Hellespont, where it flourished throughout the second half of the 4th century^[41].

Lampsacus, Liberius and Rome's outstretched hand

The Roman episode deserves telling, for it shows how far the Macedonians then passed for quasi-Catholics. The semi-Arian synod of Lampsacus deputized to Rome to obtain the communion of Pope Liberius: after some hesitation, the pope recognized the soundness of their faith — on the Son — and, on the Spirit, settled like them for the brief formula "We believe in the Holy Spirit", which decided nothing yet^[42]. (On all this semi-Arian background, see semi-Arianism.)

Meanwhile, the error advanced almost unopposed: the synod of Antioch (363), assembled around Meletius, settled for confessing the faith of Nicaea on the Son — with no profession of its own on the Spirit — and rallied Macedonians and Acacians together^[43].

Before the council decided, four great voices — and a whole choir of bishops — had already demolished the error. The overall picture:

Athanasius in the desert: the Letters to Serapion

Hidden in the desert during his third exile, Athanasius learns through his friend Serapion, bishop of Thmuis, that a sect yet attached to Nicaea declares the Holy Spirit "a mere creature and a ministering angel", on the authority of Hebrews 1, 14^[63]. He answers at once with his Letters to Serapion — a treatise in defence of the true doctrine — then, returned from exile in 362, has the error condemned by the Council of Alexandria^[64]. His master argument, taken up by all after him: the Spirit sanctifies and divinizes; yet a creature does not communicate the divine nature — only God makes gods by participation^[65].

Basil and the doxology that betrays the faith

The decisive blow came from Caesarea. In 374, Amphilochius of Iconium, metropolitan of Lycaonia, begs his friend Basil to write a treatise on the true doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Basil complies, and his Treatise on the Holy Spirit becomes the classic work on the subject^[66]. His demonstration starts from the prayer of the Church: one must say "with the Son, with the Spirit" — and not only "through the Son, in the Spirit" — for liturgical grammar manifests dogmatic grammar: equality of honour supposes equality of nature^[67]. His brother Gregory of Nyssa seconds the offensive with his treatise Against Eunomius, which dismantles the syllogism of the "third in nature"^[68]. And Amphilochius, with his bishops, confirms by a synodal letter to the bishops of Lycia, in 377, a finished exposition of the true doctrine^[69].

Gregory of Nazianzus: neither unbegotten, nor begotten, but proceeding

At Constantinople, in 379-380, Gregory of Nazianzus delivers his brilliant theological oration on the subject — the fifth of his Theological Discourses (Discourse 31)^[70]. His formula, of definitive precision: the Spirit is neither unbegotten like the Father, nor begotten like the Son, but proceeding — and this procession, mysterious, is neither an inferiority nor a creation, but the proper mode of the third Person^[71]. To it he adds the argument of baptism, which the Church has never ceased to take up again:

"Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." — Gospel according to St Matthew, 28, 19^[72]

To place a creature on the same rank as the Father and the Son in the formula that makes Christians would be blasphemy: Christ's command therefore supposes the divinity of the Spirit. The article reads here a light on the silence of Nicaea: Gregory attributes this brevity to divine pedagogy — the Old Testament revealed the Father, the New Testament manifested the Son, and it belongs to the time of the Church to confess the Spirit fully — revelation progresses, truth does not change^[73].

In echo, the formula "Lord, giver of life, who proceeds from the Father" is already read in the brief form of the Ancoratus of Epiphanius — apparently drawn from the creed of Jerusalem —, a passage whose authenticity is discussed (possible late interpolation)^[74]. And the West held the same faith: a synod assembled in Illyria, mentioned by Theodoret, and Pope Damasus in his letter to Paulinus of Antioch defended the truth against the error^[75].

Cunctos populos: the Empire lines up behind Nicaea

From February 380, at Thessalonica, the edict Cunctos populos imposes on the whole Empire the faith of Nicaea, as followed by Pope Damasus and Peter of Alexandria^[76]. The following year, Theodosius convokes at Constantinople the Eastern bishops to stabilize the capital, reaffirm Nicaea — and, expressly, attempt to win over the Macedonians: Socrates reports that the emperor also invites the leaders of the party, hoping to gain them to the Nicene faith^[77].

The thirty-six who said no

They came thirty-six, led by Eleusius of Cyzicus and Marcian of Lampsacus, facing the one hundred and fifty Nicene bishops assembled from May to July 381^[78]. Communion was offered them on condition of confessing the common faith — consubstantial of the Son included —; they refused it and left the assembly. This refusal brought clarity: the council promulgated the creed still sung today, which takes up Nicaea while amplifying it — against the Arians, it hammers the eternity of the Son; against the Pneumatomachi, it confesses the divinity of the Spirit^[79]:

"I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets." — Creed of Constantinople (381), here in its liturgical form ("I believe"; the conciliar text says "We believe")^[80]

And canon 1 drew in one sentence the balance sheet of fifty-six years of crisis, anathematizing each family by name: "the Eunomians or Anomaeans, the Arians or Eudoxians, and the Semi-Arians or Pneumatomachi, the Sabellians, the Marcellians, the Photinians and the Apollinarians"^[81]. It was the official condemnation of Macedonianism — and the reason why Constantinople I is counted as the second ecumenical council: its faith, that of Nicaea amplified, has become that of the whole Church, gradually received by the West^[82].

History could have stopped at canon 1; Theodosius wanted a reconciliation. In June 383, he convoked a conference to bring the Arian factions to submit: Eleusius handed in his creed there in the name of the Macedonians — he who had already represented them at Constantinople with Marcian of Lampsacus^[83]. The attempt remained vain: after this ultimate effort, the Macedonians incurred with the other heretics all the rigours of the Theodosian Code^[84].

The error, for the rest, was dying of itself. Internal divisions were eating it away: a certain Eutropius, a Macedonian priest, held his own conventicles while others followed Bishop Carterius, and the sect is said to have repudiated even its former leaders^[85]. In the course of the 5th century, the Pneumatomachi disappeared from history: Socrates still attests their churches at Cyzicus and in many other places of the Hellespont under Nestorius, in 428^[86]. Of them there remained only the name, become in the West the very type of the denier of the Spirit, and the lesson: a truth defined by an ecumenical council is no longer discussed, it is received.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums up the faith sealed in 381: the Spirit is God Himself, third Person of the Trinity — not a mere force nor a superior angel, as the Pneumatomachi said^[87]:

"The One whom the Father has sent into our hearts, the Spirit of his Son, is truly God. Consubstantial with the Father and the Son, he is inseparable from them, in both the inner life of the Trinity and his gift of love for the world." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, 689^[88]

Every baptized person therefore professes, every Sunday, the exact contrary of Macedonius: the Spirit is Lord, He gives life, He proceeds from the Father, He receives the same worship and the same glory — and it is in His name, with the Father and the Son, that every Christian is baptized^[89][90]. (On the living faith in the Spirit today, see the Holy Spirit and his charisms.)

Macedonianism thus leaves the Church a double lesson. First, one never defends a truth well by sacrificing another: by dint of protecting the transcendence of the Father against any confusion of the Persons — the opposite, Sabellian danger, of confounding what must be distinguished —, the Pneumatomachi failed the one God by making the Spirit a creature: proof that an orthodoxy amputated of one divine Person is no longer orthodoxy. Second, words keep the faith: the "with" of the doxologies, the "Lord" of the Creed, the "proceeding" of Gregory carry by themselves the whole dogma, and the Church that sings them can no longer lose them^[91].

• Arianism
• Semi-Arianism
• Constantinople I (381)
• The Holy Spirit and his charisms
• Sabellianism
• Modalism
• Saint Basil the Great
• The heresies of the early centuries

To dig deeper: J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, London, Longman, 3rd ed. 1972 — on the 4th-century creeds and the article of 381; R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1988 — the modern reference study on the whole Arian crisis; H. Denzinger - P. Hünermann, Symboles et définitions de la foi catholique (Enchiridion Symbolorum), 38th ed., Paris, Cerf, 2001, nos. 150-151 — the magisterial text of the Council of 381.