[gothic-l] Re: Arianism

[Ingemar Nordgren]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, greg scaff <g_scaff at y...> wrote:
> Hails,
> Thanks again to  all.
> To add to some of this, I have since read in Lives of the Visigothic
Fathers by A.T. Fear, in a footnote on p xii, ( which refers to
Gregory of Tours  GC 24 and John of Biclarum Chron. 58,  ) that
Goths-I assume Visigoths- referred to their church as the "Catholic"
church,  (whatever "catholic=universal  was in Gothic), and the
Orthodox as the "Roman" church. Christians of whatever stripe in that
time , as Dirk said, were concerned to be the 'one true universal holy
church",  that concept was a pervasive value,  so Goths were
apparently in step with everyone else, as has been said.


Hi Greg,

I am not sure those references are universally adaptable. The
Visigoths were Arian till the conversion of Reccared in 586 only, and
then they turned Roman Catholic. When Gregory refers to the Catholic
Church you must  consider he became bishop of Tours in the Frankish
realm 573 and not all Visigoths were Arian even before 586, not even
all bishops, specially not one who became a Frankish bishop. He was a
power-keeper closely related to the Merovingian kings who were
Catholic. Hence  his statement does not inform of what the confessing
Arians  called their church because he most surely refers to the
church that he and the Catholics regarded as theirs. The so called
Catholic church of Teodosius was but a joke and in reality it was
divided in a Greek/Eastern part and a Western more loyal to the pope
and supported by the Franks. The final break when you get an Ortodox
and  a Roman Catholic church is not until 1054 through the
filioque-question, that already after the council in Constantinople in
386 was rejected by the pope and his followers, but cheerished in the
Eastern church as the most important part of the decision of the
council. Besides in the Eastern half there was a fight between the
followers of Nicea centered in Alexandria and  the disguised,
forbidden Arians in Antiocia. The fight was disguised as concerning
the Teotokos - the God Mother. Hence the Arians could only appear
openly in the Germanic states but many Eastern/Romans in the eastern
part of the so called Catholic church in reality stayed Arians quite
long.The differences may be small to Dirk but they indeed were
impressively great for the confesssors and even now there is a great
difference between claiming that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost were
all equal/of the same matter and gods, Jesus was supposed to have been
the first created entity having  existed all the time in the decision
of 386. This all was by the Arians understood as polyteism. The Arian
original wiew was that Jesus was born human and through a holy life
was accepted in heaven and hence became Christ but later  compromises
did water it out quite much but in the end they claimed that
Christ/Jesus was the son and not the father, who was the only real god
commanding over the son and the son over the spirit.Nota bene that the
son still was born human and had become divine (exactly as the
Antiocens claimed) before the last compromise in 386 which  Wulfila
never accepted. It means monoteism. I am accordingly quite convinced
they did not use the term Catholic in the Arian church since this was
the forced and divided construction of Teodosius.Maybe I am wrong and
so I am convinced I will be told so with good references which is
allways a way of learning something new.

Best regards
Ingemar



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