Der paradox Eine: Antignostischer Monarchianismus im zweiten Jahrhundert (review)

Reinhard M. Hübner. Der paradox Eine: Antignostischer Monarchianismus im zweiten Jahrhundert. Edited by Markus Vinzent. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 50. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Pp. xviii + 332.

This book deserves review because of the sweeping nature of its thesis and the complexity of the arguments which are proposed by the author in support of it. Hübner's section, which extends to p. 240, reprints a series of his articles which began in 1989 and was completed in 1997, along with complementary notes in dialogue with many other scholars who have challenged his positions over that span of time. The contribution by Vinzent, who was one of Hübner's students, has not appeared elsewhere; it proposes a use of the Kerygma Petri by Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Ephesians.

In brief, this is Hübner's thesis: the dominant theology of God in the Great Church (Rome, Africa, and Arabia as well as Asia) in the second half of the second century was a monarchianism first proposed about 160 by Noetus, Polycarp's successor as bishop of Smyrna, in an attempt to refute a Valentinian teacher who was active in Asia. Noetus was viewed as fully orthodox by other bishops, including Melito of Sardis, Irenaeus of Lyons and the bishops of Rome, by less clearly identified writers such as the authors of the Ignatian epistles and the pseudo-Cyprianic Adversus Iudaeos, and by the faithful. Serious opposition arose first from Tertullian and Hippolytus, then Origen, and was only victorious in the controversy around Marcellus of Ancyra in the late fourth century. The sweeping nature of Hübner's thesis is apparent: he challenges the conventional views of theology, the dating and authorship of texts, and the whole church history of the second century.

Hübner's argument begins with a study of Hippolytus' notices about Noetus in the Refutatio, books 9 and 10. He gives both chronological and textual priority to Refutatio 10.27, and dismisses the Contra Noetum as non-Hippolytan and valueless as evidence for Noetus' doctrine. He believes that one can abstract from Refutatio 10.27, with some help from Refutatio 9.10.10-12, the credal elements of a paschal homily by Noetus; the text is in Hippolytus' hands as he writes, perhaps slightly altered by the Roman school of Noetians (Epigonos, Cleomenes), but still essentially what Noetus had sent to his brother bishop Victor of Rome (72). Not only was this creed unchallenged, but Victor's suc-cessors Zephyrinus and Callistus embraced it, and it spread to Gaul via Irenaeus and to Africa as well, as Tertullian testifies. The monarchian doctrine first formulated by Noetus, if not his text, spread to Arabia and Libya as common doctrine (30; 236).

Since Hübner thinks that Hippolytus cites different excerpts from the slightly altered Noetus text in different places, and never comes close to citing the entire homily, no extended reconstruction is possible (156), but Hübner does offer us pieces of what he claims is authentic Noetus (16-17; 42; 45-46 [where the Greek is helpfully reprinted from Wendland's edition], 49-50, 54, 96-97). The credal character is manifested by the opening confession of one God the creator, the paschal homily framework by the evocation of the Passion at the end of Refutatio 9,9,12 and the vigorous antitheses so like those found in Melito and the pseudo-Hippolytus In sanctum Pascha. The three key antitheses are (66), which Hübner sees as corresponding perfectly though not literally to Valentinian or Ptolemaean descriptions of the ultimate God as reflected in Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 1.1.1 or 3.16.6. "Only at one time, in one place, against one opponent and in one brain can such [a refutation] have been produced" (127, Hübner's emphasis). It decisively rejected gnostic pluralism of spiritual beings and distancing of the high God from the suffering...