Theodoret's People: Social Networks and Religious Conflict in Late Roman Syria (review)

It is common knowledge that the Christological controversies surrounding the Third and Fourth Ecumenical Councils (in 431 and 451, respectively) involved far more than just theological debates, and a great deal of scholarship has focused on the complex politics of these discussions. Adam Schor's work, Theodoret's People, significantly advances this scholarship by providing a carefully researched, nuanced portrayal of the social networks among bishops and prominent lay civil leaders, networks that Theodoret spent his life fostering and that he utilized in his efforts to forge Christological consensus in a confusing, fractured environment. Schor's analysis of the interaction between clerical networks in Syria and his elucidation of the various approaches that different bishops took to the leadership of these networks is outstanding. His portrayal of the link between clerical networks and the performance of patronage is also excellent, and his work thus makes a major contribution to our understanding of late-antique Roman society.

Given Schor's focus on social history, it is not surprising that he largely stays away from doctrinal issues, but in his final chapter—certainly the most tantalizing of the book—he argues persuasively that the Syrian ("Antiochene") picture of Christ mirrored the networking, interactive way Syrian bishops functioned (in contrast to the Cyrillian picture of Christ that mirrored the top-down way the Alexandrian bishop acted in Egyptian society). This assertion gives doctrinal historians much to chew on. At the same time, it is worth pointing out that when Schor does range into the realm of theology, his categories for describing the Christological controversies are a bit stale compared with the freshness of the rest of his work. He depicts the theological portion of the controversies as primarily a clash between miaphysite and dyophysite understandings of Christ and writes glowingly of Theodoret's defense of the "two natures" formula on the grounds that Christ had to be a single person with two identities to be our mediator. True enough, but virtually any bishop in the fifth century would have agreed with this assertion. The fundamental theological questions were more specific than Schor alleges.

Ironically, in spite of the understandably oversimplified way in which Schor's work handles the theological issues, it seems to this reviewer that his book has more theological significance than he probably realizes. Many scholars have argued that the actual theological differences between Antiochenes and Alexandrians were not that significant. Others of us have claimed that Theodoret and most of the other Antiochenes were not actually "Antiochene." In either of these scenarios, most (or even all) of the fifth-century bishops were trying to say the same thing, and thus one of the most perplexing historical questions is why so few of them realized this. Schor's analysis of constantly shifting social networks provides a means of explaining the fact (if it is a fact) that so many bishops opposed each other so rancorously when they actually shared a common faith. In providing a very plausible explanation for this phenomenon, Schor has done historians of all stripes—doctrinal as well as social—a great service. Not only can we more accurately understand the way social networks functioned but also, with Schor's help, we can see that the battle lines in the controversy often did not line up with the actual lines of theological agreement and disagreement. Armed with this recognition, we are in a better position to probe where the theological lines actually lay and whether or not there was a consensus beneath the shifting sands of doctrinal expression and clerical networking.