[gothic-l] Digest Number 779

[Ingemar Nordgren]

Hi Maximos,
You wrote:

> The Orthodox would claim exactly the contrary as a matter of fact.
> The introduction of the filioque into the Western versions of the
> Creed was to combat Arianism in the West( it began at Toledo in
> Spain) Arianism had already been discredited in the East by this
> time.

I do not follow you here. I agree Orthodoxy is opposed to Arianism, of
course. Still the filioque-amendment was not made in Toledo but in
Constantinople in 381-2. The reason was that the Eastern, not Western,
Arian bishops would  never had agreed to accept the proposal that Christ
"proceedeth from the Father, before all Ages" which was exactly the way
both Athanasius and all his Western allies had argued in favour of.
Without filioque there had never been a catholic (with small c)church.
This one in it's eastern half indeed was after 1054 called Ortodox but
the creed starts from 381-2, but the  western delegates after having
returned from Constantinople in 382 refused to accept the filioque
already then. The easterners however saw it as essential. In 1992 I had
a conversation with the patriarch in Constantinople, a very friendly and
open-minded man, in this subject and we seemed to agree.

  It was the filioque which ultimately sundered the Eastern and
> Western Church from each other in the 11th century.  For those of you
> unfamiliar with the " filioque" controversy, it was the addition of
> the word " and the son" ( in Latin filioque) into the Creed after the
> statement that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father ( which is
> from the Gospel of John). The Orthodox East rejected this on two
> points. One, we claim it is theologically wrong, and Two, that the
> West did not have the authority to unilaterally alter the Creed (
> which was the product of two Ecumenical Councils)
As I wrote I do differ from your opinion slightly, and I think the
following excerpt from an article I wrote on the subject may explain
better what I mean.

Best
Ingemar

Excerpt:
"The modern definition of this faith says shortly that the Son, the
pre-existent Christ, is not of the same divine character as the Father
but the first created entity. This is however a  rude simplification of
the complete story. Arius himself claimed the Son had both a human and a
divine nature. He was born human and raised to divinity through a
righteous life, like a boddisathva or deva being given a divine status.
This implies that even other humans could have the chance being
devinated in this way. Regarding the above mentioned Sabellianism you
could even interpret Arius saying Jesus was a human but the reincarnated
Christ was an incarnation of God, but in the visual shape of Jesus. In
this way both Sabellius and Arius succeed to give a picture of a
monoteistic God in opposition to the later in Nicea created trinity God,
which was understood as three different  Gods by the Arians. A great
majority of the Eastern bishops sympatized with Arius and the leading
were the two Eusebius’ in Caesarea and Nicomedia-the Eastern residential
city of the emperor.  They had however a formidable opposer in
Alexander, pontiff of Alexandria and later this position was taken by
his deacon Athanasius, one of the most ruthless clergymen ever known in
history and fully comparable with e.g. Al Capone using the same criminal
methods to control the Alexandrian economy and the church. He was
several times abolished by the joint bishops, both Nicaenan and Arian,
because of his methods. Nota bene that all bishops used rough methods
but this was too much to take even for them. Athanasius and his, mostly
Western, followers claimed that the Father and the Son were of the same
nature, and hence they were regarded as polyteistic from Arian wiew. The
traditional Eastern wiew includes a God who is an abstract entity and a
single God. This goes as well for the Mosaic religion.
  In 325 the famous meeting in Nicea was held. Emperor Constantine had
engaged the old bishop Hosius of Spain who sided with Athanasius and the
Westerners but because of the strong opposition there was a compromise.
The Arian bishops agreed  that Father and Son were of the same nature
but interpreted it as being of a similar nature,  not same. The  Father
was in command of the Son and the Son was created. This resulted in
almost total victory for the Arians for a considerable time. In spite of
the compromise they fundamentally claimed there was but one real God.
Arianism dominates until the death of emperor Valens and the Visigoths
accept the Arian faith in his time, and the Goths also send missionaries
converting all the other Germanic continental tribes of major importance
to Arianism except the Franks. The famous find in Pietroassa contained
also a collar with  Byzantine reliefs picturing the motiv of the heart,
which is found on so many of the Tree of Life slabs in Västergötland.
This is tied to Mary. This opens for the possibility Arian Christians
lived in Scandinavia already around 500 AD because, according to my
research of the Goths, it seems that the continental Goths all the time
kept the contacts  with their kin in the North, and this is also
supported by archaeological indications in Scandinavia but of course not
proven
( I. Nordgren 2000).
Theodosius then calls a meeting in Constantinople in 381 forcing the
assembly to accept a dictate saying that the Father, the Son and the
Holy Ghost are of the same essence and that the  Son existed together
with the Father before all ages. To get the Arian bishops to sign that
decision an amendment was issued, saying that the Father worked through
the Son and the Spirit and so  stressing the unicum of the Father. As
soon as the Western delegates had returned home they rejected this
amendment. Soon after this Teodosius issued an edict banning Arianism by
law, and so it ceased in the empire but flourished in the Germanic
states. The united church was still in reality divided and now the
divison focused on the amendment which finally resulted in the split
1054 because of the Filioque-question.
Within the Eastern half of the pro-forma united church the old Arian
fight continued but now disguised as the Theotokos-debate. There were
two centrals, Antioc arguing the Arian wiew and Alexandria the Nicaenan.
The question was wether God could be born by a human woman. The
Antiocenes meant Jesus was both human and divine and hence could be
borne by a woman, but this was rejected by the Alexandrians claiming
Jesus Christ was wholly divine. In the long run this gives Mary a
similar position of type Boddisathva as Arius had given Jesus and she
is, as the first ever, made a saint. Her saintly background is of course
also closely connected with Isis and Harpokrates in the Late Antique
cult of Serapion and further back to the different Mother-goddesses.
Here we touch also a connection to the Tree of Life. The council of
Efesos in 431 aknowledged the position of Mary as Theotokos. Jean
Damascène writes in the 7th c. that Mary was the tabernacle in which
logos was incarnated into Jesus, finally  making him Christ. Also in
James’s protevangelium 4:1 and in Photius is stressed, that Marys
mother, Anna, had a vision that her daughter should be the instrument
delivering human blood to Christ, to be let out for the salvation of the
world. There is accordingly no doubt that Jesus is described as born
with human blood. After death Theotokos raised to heaven, now residing
with the Father and the Son. This is illustrated in the grave-chapel of
  Chora church, where Mary wears the imperial purple mantle.
Here we are, accordingly, the old Orientalic trinity  with father,
mother and son. Adding  also the Gnostics we have a unification of male
and female-spirit and matter- both leading to the single allmighty God,
the result of both the forces like O and H becoming OH2. The female
power is connected to the  Earth and the growing things and the male is
the spiritual force. Hence, also in Christian context Mary is connected
with plants and fertility. Very early the Tree of Life is connected with
her and so is the heart-palmette. The Tree of Life, in combination with
the hearts, indicates indeed Mary and her son, the Tree, growing out of
the soil but on a divine foundation of a zikkurate, and thereby
stressing that Jesus is born human, by a human mother, and is indeed the
Son, not the Father. Arianism has succeded to survive even in
Västergötland  year 2000 AD. There is no doubt whatsoever of the
Byzantine origin of the motive and with all probability this style was
originally connected with the iconoclasm...

...

...Before 1054 however even Adalberth had plans to establish himself as
Patriarch over the North. Hamburg-Bremen was affiliated  with the
emperor in the investiture fight and also the Ottonian empire, specially
Otto III, can have influenced as his church in Gernrode from 963 might
have  influenced the one in Husaby. England, however, is the least
probable origin as it seems. Their function is most likely as
votive-stones and even standing altar-stones, presumably  originally
placed inside or along the wall of the early  wooden churches and  maybe
also continously used for a while, when early stone churches started to
be constructed."





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