Canon Law and Episcopal Authority: The Canons of Antioch and Serdica by Christopher W. B. Stephens (review)

The post-Nicene church, until at least the 350s, was much less occupied by purely doctrinal controversies than the traditional narrative allows; the canons of Serdica should be seen as a direct response to the canons of Antioch; and the rise of Constantine provided an entirely new, universal model of leadership that would be taken up in different ways by both East and West, foreshadowing much future conflict. These are the central theses of Stephens’s Canon Law and Episcopal Authority, a work that has the unusual distinction of being of interest to historians, theologians, and canonists alike.

The starting point for Stephens’s analysis is the venerable problem of the dating of the canons of the “Council of Antioch.” The traditional connection of the canons with the Dedication Council in Antioch in 341 has long been questioned. Following the research of Eduard Schwartz in the early twentieth century, scholarly opinion today tends to fix the canons ca. 330, or even a little earlier—while Constantine was still alive and in the context of the deposition of Eustathius of Antioch.

Stephens re-opens this debate in the first two chapters of his study through a careful re-examination of the historical accounts of the council, the subscription lists, and the canons themselves. He argues that if we understand the “Dedication Council” as a later conflation of a series of local Antiochian councils from 337 to 342—a kind of collective council—then the most likely date for the canons is 338. This would place them immediately following the death of Constantine, when the Eastern church was struggling with the return of the Nicene exiles. This context, Stephens contends, fits the content of the Antiochian canons exceptionally well.

If we accept that the Antiochian canons were composed in 338, then the situation of the church immediately following the death of Constantine (337) suddenly comes into new focus. This is the subject of the third and fourth chapters. For Stephens, the Antiochian canons represent a manifesto of eastern conciliarism: ultimate authority rests with provincial and supra-provincial councils. The Serdican canons, much more securely connected with the status of the exiled Nicene bishops and issued only four years after Antioch (in 342), represent a western rejoinder: ultimate authority rests with the bishop of Rome.

Traditionally, both councils have been read as primarily concerned with doctrinal matters, but Stephens contends that this is a later and partisan reading. Joining the chorus of scholars who are attempting to free themselves from traditional Athanasian accounts, Stephens notes that Antiochian gatherings did not in fact see themselves as anti-Nicene in any way, and that the Serdican councils were only minimally concerned with theology. If the creeds and accounts associated with either set of councils are examined closely, we discover that doctrine was simply not a high priority for either.

Instead, Stephens contends, the real issue in the years following Constantine’s death was authority. Constantine, in his very person, had introduced to the church the possibility of a universal authority. Nicaea (but not Nicene theology) symbolized this universalism, and this was the real reason for the council’s enduring appeal at the mid-century. With Constantine’s death, however, and the empire divided, the church was faced with an institutional dilemma: how could this new universal authority continue to be exercised? Antioch and Serdica provided two very different answers as bishops, east and west, experimented with the new medium of ecclesiastical law.

In the final two chapters, Stephens places Antioch and Serdica into the broader context of the development of law and authority in the fourth century. Here Stephens draws on much recent legal-historical literature as he struggles with the perennial issue of late antique law’s apparent ineffectiveness. Stephens is keenly aware of how the modern expectation for law as a universally enforced and binding system is constantly frustrated in the sources. He looks to...