Learning the Greek Theology

Constantius II had exiled Hilary to Phrygia to silence him; instead the banishment placed the West’s foremost Latin theologian inside the living Greek Trinitarian controversy of the 350s. In the East Hilary encountered at first hand the three competing parties of the decade — the strict Nicene homoousios (“of the same substance”), the “homoiousian” homoiousios (“of like substance”), and the “Homoian” formula of likeness “according to the Scriptures” — read their creeds, recognized in the homoiousians potential allies against radical Arianism, and was present at the Council of Seleucia in 359. This file traces how the eastern debates, the “blasphemy of Sirmium” (357), and the double council of Rimini–Seleucia (359) educated and reshaped him.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; Church Father)

Exile as Theological Opportunity

Hilary himself turned his banishment into the frame for his greatest learning. By his own striking admission in De Synodis, he had been a bishop already exiled for the faith before he had so much as heard the Nicene Creed read out — “I never heard the Nicene creed until I was going into exile” — a confession that registers how isolated the Latin Church of Gaul had been from the precise terms of the eastern controversy (Hilary, De Synodis 91; trans. NPNF II/9; Hanson 1988, 461–462; Ayres 2004, 178). The exile to Phrygia corrected this isolation at a stroke. Removed into the Greek-speaking interior of Asia Minor, Hilary found himself surrounded by the documents and the debates that the West had only dimly perceived, and he set himself to study them and to report them home (Hilary, De Synodis 1–9; Ayres 2004, 178–179; Weedman 2007, 30–40).

What he produced from this study, the De Synodis (composed 358–359), is unique in the Latin patristic corpus: a careful, document-by-document survey of the eastern creeds — including the formulae of the councils held since Nicaea — written to inform the bishops of Gaul and Britain and to persuade them not to write off every non-Nicene easterner as an Arian without first weighing what each formula actually said (Hilary, De Synodis 8–65; trans. NPNF II/9; Hanson 1988, 471–473; Ayres 2004, 178–183). The work is at once a primary historical source for the creeds of the 350s and the record of Hilary’s own theological education (see Building Bridges, East and West).

The Three Parties of the 350s

To grasp what Hilary was learning it is necessary to see the field as it actually stood after the death of the older Arian and Nicene leaders. By the mid-350s the Greek-speaking Church was not divided simply between “Arians” and “Nicenes” but among at least three discernible theological tendencies, whose contest defined the decade (Hanson 1988, 348–357, 557–597; Ayres 2004, 133–166).

The Nicene homoousios (“of the same substance,” consubstantialis): the term defined at Nicaea in 325 and defended above all by Athanasius, affirming that the Son is of the very same substance as the Father. By the 350s the word was suspect to many easterners who feared it collapsed Father and Son into one and smacked of Sabellian modalism (Hanson 1988, 167–172, 557–558; Ayres 2004, 92–98, 140–144).
The “homoiousian” homoiousios (“of like substance”): the position of a group of eastern bishops — Basil of Ancyra and George of Laodicea foremost among them — who, against the radical Arians, insisted that the Son is “like in substance” (or “like according to substance,” homoios kat’ ousian) to the Father. They rejected homoousios as dangerous but were equally determined to affirm a real likeness of essence, and so stood much closer to Nicaea than their vocabulary suggested (Hanson 1988, 348–357, 557–559; Ayres 2004, 149–157; Beckwith 2008, 31–35).
The “Homoian” formula — likeness “according to the Scriptures”: the position that the Son is simply “like” (homoios) the Father, deliberately leaving the word ousia (“substance”) out of the confession altogether as unscriptural and divisive. Promoted by Ursacius, Valens, Acacius of Caesarea and others, and ultimately favoured by Constantius, this became the imperial settlement of 359–360 (Hanson 1988, 557–560, 591–597; Ayres 2004, 157–166).

Beyond and below these stood the radical “Anomoian” or “Heteroousian” Arianism of Aëtius and Eunomius, who held the Son to be “unlike” (anomoios) the Father and of a different substance altogether — the extreme that drove the homoiousians toward the Nicenes (Hanson 1988, 598–611; Ayres 2004, 144–149).

The “Blasphemy of Sirmium” (357)

The catalyst that clarified these alignments — and that Hilary watched unfold during his exile — was the so-called “blasphemy of Sirmium,” the creed (the “Second Creed of Sirmium”) issued in 357 by a small western council dominated by Ursacius, Valens, and Germinius, with Ossius of Cordova present (Hanson 1988, 343–347; Ayres 2004, 137–140; Hilary, De Synodis 10–11, quoting and refuting it). This formula did the one thing the homoiousians most feared: it forbade the use of both homoousios and homoiousios on the ground that ousia is not found in Scripture and is beyond human comprehension, and it asserted plainly that the Father is greater than the Son. Hilary regarded it as a manifesto of undisguised Arianism, and it is he who fixed on it the name by which it is remembered — the blasphemia, the “blasphemy of Sirmium” (Hilary, De Synodis 10–11; trans. NPNF II/9; Hanson 1988, 344–347; Ayres 2004, 137–138; Weedman 2007, 40–45).

The “blasphemy” had a galvanizing effect that served the Nicene cause. Its naked subordinationism so alarmed the homoiousian bishops that Basil of Ancyra convened a council at Ancyra in early 358 to answer it, reaffirming the likeness of the Son to the Father “according to substance”; and it is precisely this homoiousian reaction that Hilary seized upon as the ground of a possible alliance (Hanson 1988, 348–357; Ayres 2004, 149–157; Beckwith 2008, 31–38).

Reading the Homoiousians: Hilary’s Irenic Wager

The intellectual heart of Hilary’s eastern education was his judgment about the homoiousians. Where Latin partisans were inclined to lump all who refused homoousios together as Arians, Hilary — having actually read their documents — argued that men like Basil of Ancyra meant by homoiousios substantially what the Nicenes meant by homoousios, and that the quarrel between the two words was in large part a quarrel over the danger each was guarding against rather than over the underlying faith (Hilary, De Synodis 76–91; trans. NPNF II/9; Ayres 2004, 178–183; Hanson 1988, 471–473). In De Synodis he undertakes the delicate task of defending homoousios to suspicious easterners while defending the good faith of homoiousios to suspicious westerners, urging each side to see that, rightly understood, the like-in-substance of the homoiousians and the same-in-substance of Nicaea both confess a Son truly God of the Father’s own essence (Hilary, De Synodis 67–91; Weedman 2007, 40–60; Beckwith 2008, 31–45).

This irenic reading was bold to the point of risk, and not every ally welcomed it. The hard-line Nicene Lucifer of Cagliari and others suspected any concession to homoiousios as compromise, and Hilary’s later Apologetica ad reprehensores libri de synodis responsa — surviving fragments in which he answers those who attacked De Synodis — shows that his bridge-building drew fire from his own side (Hilary, Apologetica responsa / fragments; Hanson 1988, 471–473; Weedman 2007, 55–60; Ayres 2004, 182–183). The wager nevertheless proved historically sound: the rapprochement Hilary anticipated between Nicenes and the better homoiousians is, in substance, the alignment that the Cappadocians would later consolidate and that the Council of Constantinople (381) would vindicate (Ayres 2004, 182–183, 236–240; Hanson 1988, 471–473) (on the dogma at stake, see The Holy Trinity; The Nicene Creed).

The Double Council of Rimini–Seleucia (359) and Seleucia

The decade’s debates came to a head in the great double council of 359, summoned by Constantius to settle the faith of the whole empire: the western bishops were to meet at Rimini (Ariminum) in Italy and the eastern bishops at Seleucia in Isauria, each to ratify a creed drafted under imperial direction — the so-called “Dated Creed” of 22 May 359, which confessed the Son “like the Father according to the Scriptures” and banned ousia-language (Hanson 1988, 362–371, 371–380; Ayres 2004, 157–166). It is from this council that Jerome drew his famous lament that “the whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian” (Jerome, Dialogus contra Luciferianos 19). The eastern half, the Council of Seleucia (September 359), split between a homoiousian majority led by the followers of Basil of Ancyra and George of Laodicea and a Homoian/Acacian party led by Acacius of Caesarea, with the radical Anomoians on the fringe — a three-cornered struggle that ended without genuine resolution and was overtaken by the imperial settlement worked out afterward at Constantinople in 360 (Hanson 1988, 371–380; Ayres 2004, 157–166).

Hilary, still in exile in the East, was present at Seleucia, and his presence there is one of the few moments in the period where the Latin exile stands inside an eastern council. The exact character of his role, however, is not securely recoverable: [Disputed: the extent of Hilary's participation at Seleucia — Hilary states in *Contra Constantium* 12 that he was at Seleucia and was admitted to communion by the assembled bishops, and most scholars accept that he attended and was received, probably in the company of (and in sympathy with) the homoiousian majority against the Acacians (so Hanson 1988, 380, 461, who notes Hilary was "present" and treats his account as basically reliable while cautioning that Hilary is our chief witness to his own role). How active or influential that role was is disputed: some treatments present Hilary as an engaged participant who spoke and was consulted, whereas Ayres (2004, 178–179) and Williams (1995, ch. 2) emphasize that the evidence is thin and largely self-reported, so that the most that can be affirmed is his presence and his reception into communion, not any decisive intervention. Beckwith (2008, 26–30) and Weedman (2007, 30–35) likewise treat his attendance as certain but his concrete activity at the council as poorly documented. The sources thus warrant only that Hilary was at Seleucia and was admitted to communion; claims of a leading or pivotal part rest on inference beyond what the texts establish.]

What is clear is the use Hilary made of the experience. After Seleucia he travelled to Constantinople and, when the Homoian settlement was being imposed there in 359–360, petitioned the emperor for a public disputation against Saturninus and the Arianizers — a request Constantius refused, and which Hilary then turned into the searing In Constantium (Contra Constantium) once he was safely returned to Gaul (Hilary, Contra Constantium 1–2, 11–12; Liber ad Constantium; Hanson 1988, 461, 472; Williams 1995, ch. 2; Beckwith 2008, 27–30). The eastern bishops, by the report of Sulpicius Severus, were glad to send so disruptive a Latin home — and so the man Constantius had exiled to silence returned to Gaul about 360, carrying with him a firsthand mastery of the Greek controversy that no other Latin of his generation possessed (Sulpicius Severus, Chronica 2.45; Hanson 1988, 472; Ayres 2004, 178–179).

What Hilary Carried Home

The fruit of the eastern years was a theology, and a body of writing, that decisively shaped the Latin reception of Nicaea. Hilary returned to Gaul as the West’s interpreter of the Greek debate: through De Synodis he had made the eastern creeds and the homoiousian position intelligible in Latin; through the twelve books of De Trinitate, largely conceived and composed in exile, he gave the Latin Church a full-scale Nicene Trinitarian theology informed by the Greek Fathers (Hilary, De Trinitate, books I–XII; Jerome, De viris illustribus 100; Beckwith 2008, 1–10; Weedman 2007, 1–15). The bridge he built between the strict Nicenes and the homoiousians — controversial in his own day — anticipated the settlement that would carry the Church to the Council of Constantinople in 381, and earned him his enduring title as “the Athanasius of the West” (Ayres 2004, 182–183; Hanson 1988, 471–473) (see The Twelve Books On the Trinity; on the Fathers as a body, The Church Fathers).

References

Hilary of Poitiers. De Synodis (On the Councils, or the Faith of the Easterns). Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 9 (NPNF II/9), ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (The survey of eastern creeds: §8–65 on the formulae; §10–11 quoting and refuting the “blasphemy of Sirmium” of 357; §67–91 the defense of homoousios and of the homoiousians; §91 “I never heard the Nicene creed until I was going into exile.”)
Hilary of Poitiers. Contra Constantium (Against Constantius). Trans. in NPNF II/9. (§11–12 on Seleucia, Hilary’s presence and reception into communion, and the refused disputation at Constantinople.)
Hilary of Poitiers. De Trinitate, books I–XII. (The full Nicene Trinitarian work conceived in exile.) See also the Apologetica ad reprehensores libri de synodis responsa (Apologetic Answers to Critics of De Synodis), surviving in fragments, in which Hilary defends his irenic reading.
Hilary of Poitiers. Ad Constantium and the historical fragments (Collectanea Antiariana Parisina / Fragmenta historica), ed. A. Feder, CSEL 65 (Vienna, 1916). (Documents of the councils of 357–360.)
Jerome. Dialogus contra Luciferianos 19. (“The whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian,” on the aftermath of Rimini.) And De viris illustribus 100 (Hilary’s works and exile).
Sulpicius Severus. Chronica 2.45. (Hilary at Seleucia and his return to Gaul.)
Hanson, R. P. C. The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988. (The definitive narrative: pp. 343–347 on the “blasphemy of Sirmium”; pp. 348–357, 557–559 on the homoiousians and Basil of Ancyra; pp. 362–380 on Rimini and Seleucia; pp. 461, 471–473 on Hilary in the East and De Synodis.)
Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. (pp. 133–166 on the parties of the 350s, Sirmium, and the Homoian settlement; pp. 149–157 on the homoiousians; pp. 178–183 on Hilary’s De Synodis and his reading of the homoiousians; pp. 182–183, 236–240 on the longer trajectory to 381.)
Beckwith, Carl L. Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity: From “De Fide” to “De Trinitate.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. (pp. 1–10, 26–45 on the exile, Hilary’s encounter with eastern theology, and the homoiousian question.)
Weedman, Mark. The Trinitarian Theology of Hilary of Poitiers. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 89. Leiden: Brill, 2007. (pp. 1–15, 30–60 on the exile, De Synodis, and Hilary’s mediating theology.)
Williams, Daniel H. Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene-Arian Conflicts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. (ch. 2 on Hilary’s exile, the thinness of the evidence for his role at Seleucia, and his return.)