Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution (review)

Building on his earlier edition of the extant works of Eunomius, Richard Vaggione has now provided us with a detailed study of the notorious "Arian" thinker in the context of political, theological, and geographical factors that shaped his life and thought. Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution is more than a biography of a fourth-century "heretic." It challenges common notions of much that we associate with the religious history of this period: trinitarian theology, the Arian controversy, the Council and Creed of Nicaea, and the very nature of "heresy."

In an effort "to read the losers as thinkers in their own right, and not just as foils for their opponents" (vi), the book is structured around Eunomius's life with each chapter featuring a particular phase of his career. After describing his upbringing and education in the doctrinally ambiguous milieux of Cappadocia and Constantinople in the 330s and 340s, Vaggione traces his shift from philosophy to rhetoric in Antioch and his simultaneous movement toward "Arianism." For Eunomius this represented the tradition of the orthodox "Great Church" while the Nicenes were deviants. "Ariomaniac," a chapter that follows Eunomius to Alexandria, reveals the ways in which the different parties viewed both themselves and each other. Nicenes became accustomed to speak of their opponents as "Arians rather than Christians" and considered support for any aspect of Arius's teaching as a thorough rejection of the Christian tradition. Meanwhile, so-called Arians were a theologically diverse lot, largely ambivalent about the teaching of Arius himself. Like their Nicene counterparts these non-Nicenes viewed themselves as part of an apostolic past and, in the case of Aetius and Eunomius, as continuators of a theological tradition that emphasized doctrinal precision and faithfulness to an unerring biblical record.

While following Eunomius's career, the book is equally concerned with the parallel progress of Arianism and Nicene Christianity. The chapter entitled "Logic Chopper" examines the distinctive hermeneutical frameworks of the two parties. Vaggione shows how the meaning of Scripture was crucial for both, yet how their different exegesis of certain biblical passages led to diverse portraits of Jesus and ways of imagining the Christian Gospel. While both Nicenes and non-Nicenes started with the same hierarchy of Father, Son, and Spirit, they placed the "break" between contingent and non-contingent at different points, and the consequences of this ontological distinction were determinative. Vaggione also explains why this seemingly abstract theological debate became a mass movement overnight and why its protagonists were almost completely unable to communicate across traditions.

In the aftermath of the Theodosian ecclesiastical settlement, Eunomius was definitively relegated to the heretical camp while "popular Nicenism" emerged. This shift, Vaggione contends, marked a revolution. Although precise doctrinal propositions and formularies had been the subject of intense controversy for more than five decades, and Eunomius himself continued to insist on akribeia (precision), it was ultimately the relaxation of precisionist terminology and a narrowing gap between expert and ordinary language that enabled increasing numbers of people to accept the Nicene framework as expressing a faith which could, in Newman's terms, "inflame the imagination" and "pierce the heart." Thus, the Nicene Creed, originally "a document for episcopal professionals" (59), became the "ancestral faith" of people in the pews (365).

There is much to be applauded in this study: Vaggione's careful reading of texts, his emphasis on both propositions and their interpretative frameworks in the history of doctrine, the centrality of biblical exegesis in his analysis (including an appendix of theologically significant passages used by non-Nicenes), and the astute interweaving of political and doctrinal history. Vaggione's sensitivity to language, such as his helpful discussion of how the two sides understood the word "creature" differently (124-27), brings fresh insights to the study of the Arian controversy. Finally, his attention to such diverse factors as imperial policy, liturgical...