Building Bridges, East and West: De Synodis

Written from exile in 358–359, Hilary of Poitiers’ De Synodis (also called De fide Orientalium) set out to explain the bewildering succession of Eastern creeds to the Gallic bishops of the West and to argue that the homoiousian party gathered around Basil of Ancyra — those who confessed the Son “like in substance” to the Father — were potential allies against the radical Arians, not enemies of the faith. Its generous reading of homoiousios drew fire from stricter Nicenes in the West, to which Hilary replied in the Apologetica responsa appended to the work. The book is at once the most irenic and the most contested act of Hilary’s career, and modern scholars remain divided over how far he endorsed the homoiousian formula and how far he merely tolerated it.

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

The Occasion of the Book

By 358 Hilary had spent some three years in exile in Phrygia, banished after the synod of Béziers (356) for his resistance to the imperial-Arian policy of Constantius II (on the exile, see Condemnation and Exile to Phrygia). The exile, however, had become an education: removed from the Latin West and set down in the heart of the Greek-speaking Church, Hilary had learned the language, the personalities, and above all the theological vocabulary of the Eastern controversy at first hand (see Learning the Greek Theology). De Synodis is the fruit of that immersion, and it is unique among Hilary’s works in being addressed not to an Eastern but to a Western audience: he writes “to the most beloved and blessed brothers, the bishops of the province of Germania Prima and Germania Secunda, Belgica Prima and Belgica Secunda, Lugdunensis Prima and the province of Aquitania,” and to the bishops of Britain (Hilary, De Synodis 1–2; trans. Watson, NPNF II/9).

The Gallic bishops had reason to be confused. In the few years around 357–359 the Eastern Church had produced a bewildering thicket of formulae: the so-called “Blasphemy” of Sirmium (357), which forbade the use of ousia (“substance”) language altogether and asserted the Father’s superiority; the homoiousian reaction at the Council of Ancyra (358), led by Basil of Ancyra and George of Laodicea, which confessed the Son homoios kat’ ousian, “like according to substance”; and the gathering preparations for the twin councils of Ariminum (Rimini) in the West and Seleucia in the East that would meet in 359 (Hanson 1988, pp. 348–380; Ayres 2004, pp. 133–149). Hilary undertook to lay this material before his Latin colleagues, translating and expounding the creeds one by one, so that they might judge the Eastern situation with knowledge rather than rumor (De Synodis 8–11, 27–65; Watson, NPNF II/9).

What De Synodis Does

The structure of the treatise is that of a documentary dossier with running commentary. Hilary sets out the successive Eastern creeds — the Dedication Creed of Antioch (341), the formulae of Sirmium, the Ancyran statement of 358 — gives each in Latin, and then comments on how far each may be read in a sense compatible with the catholic faith (De Synodis 29–65; Watson, NPNF II/9; Beckwith 2008, pp. 181–195). His method is consistently to look for the orthodox sense a formula will bear rather than to seize on the construction that condemns it. Of the anathemas attached to the first Sirmian creed, for instance, he labors to show that several, rightly understood, defend rather than deny the true relation of the Son to the Father (De Synodis 38–61; Watson, NPNF II/9; Weedman 2007, pp. 153–171).

The decisive section is Hilary’s treatment of homoousios (“of the same substance,” the Nicene term) and homoiousios (“of like substance,” the homoiousian term). Here he performs an extraordinary act of mediation. He defends homoousios against the Eastern suspicion that it imports Sabellianism — the collapse of Father and Son into one undifferentiated substance — by insisting that the word, correctly taken, secures the Son’s full divinity without confusing the Persons (De Synodis 67–71; Watson, NPNF II/9). But he equally defends homoiousios against the Western suspicion that “likeness” must mean inferiority, arguing that perfect likeness in the case of God is no diminution: a Son perfectly like the Father in substance is not less than the Father but possesses the whole of what the Father is (De Synodis 72–76; Watson, NPNF II/9). In a celebrated passage he tells the two parties that they are quarreling over words while meaning the same thing: “Holy brethren, we understand by homoousios nothing other than… and you who oppose it ought also to hold the very thing we mean” — and he urges that the dispute, on the level of intention, may be more verbal than real (De Synodis 88–91; Watson, NPNF II/9; Ayres 2004, p. 179).

The most quoted lines of the book are its closing appeal, where Hilary addresses both sides directly and asks each to recognize the orthodoxy of the other’s intention: he begs the homoiousians not to reject homoousios, and the Nicenes not to condemn homoiousios out of hand, since “the meaning given to homoousios is the very thing rightly held under homoiousios” when each is purged of its heretical misreading (De Synodis 88; Watson, NPNF II/9). It is this irenic program — the claim that the difference between the Nicene and homoiousian parties was largely one of terminology masking a shared faith against the genuine Arians — that defines De Synodis and that has made it controversial ever since.

The Homoiousians as Near-Allies: The Sympathetic Reading

A substantial body of modern scholarship reads Hilary’s overture to the homoiousians as theologically perceptive and historically vindicated. On this account Basil of Ancyra’s party were not “semi-Arians” in any pejorative sense but the conservative center of the Eastern Church, men who rejected the radical subordinationism of Aëtius and Eunomius (the “Anomoeans,” who held the Son unlike the Father) and who confessed a Son genuinely like the Father in His very being. Their formula homoios kat’ ousian was, on this reading, a real safeguard of the Son’s divinity that the West, fixated on the single word homoousios, had failed to recognize as an ally (Ayres 2004, pp. 149–166; Hanson 1988, pp. 348–357).

Lewis Ayres treats Hilary’s De Synodis as one of the most intelligent attempts in the whole controversy to see past slogans to the theological substance beneath them, crediting Hilary with grasping that the homoiousian concern to preserve the distinction of Persons and the Nicene concern to preserve the unity of substance were complementary rather than contradictory (Ayres 2004, pp. 177–181). R. P. C. Hanson likewise regards Hilary’s analysis as substantially correct: the eventual pro-Nicene settlement of 381, Hanson argues, was reached precisely by the kind of synthesis Hilary was groping toward — a homoousios read so as to honor the threeness the homoiousians defended (Hanson 1988, pp. 557–559, 870–875). And Daniel H. Williams, who has written extensively on Hilary’s role in the Western conflict, presents De Synodis as a deliberate and far-sighted piece of ecclesial diplomacy: Hilary was building a coalition, attempting to draw the Eastern conservatives and the Western Nicenes together against the common enemy of imperial Arianism, and his generosity to homoiousios was strategy in the service of orthodoxy, not a softening of it (Williams 1995, pp. 32–37; Williams, “The Anti-Arian Campaigns of Hilary of Poitiers,” 1991).

Carl Beckwith and Mark Weedman, in their detailed studies of Hilary’s theological development, situate De Synodis within a coherent trinitarian vision rather than treating it as an isolated act of appeasement. On their reading Hilary had already worked out, in the early books of De Trinitate, a doctrine of the Son’s perfect generation from the Father’s substance that made him genuinely sympathetic to the homoiousian instinct without compromising the Nicene confession; the treatise is the application of a settled theology, not a wobble in it (Beckwith 2008, pp. 181–200; Weedman 2007, pp. 147–172; on the larger trinitarian project, see The Twelve Books on the Trinity).

“Too Soft on the Arians”: The Critical Reading

Against this sympathetic line stands a current of criticism that runs from Hilary’s own day to the present. The stricter Nicenes were uneasy. To confess the Son merely like the Father in substance was, to a rigorous reader of Nicaea, to leave open precisely the door the Council had meant to shut: “likeness” admits of degrees in a way that “sameness” does not, and a Son who is only like God might be construed as less than God. The party that would harden into the Luciferians — the uncompromising followers of Lucifer of Cagliari, who refused any communion with bishops who had once subscribed Arianizing formulae — represented the temper that found Hilary’s generosity dangerous, and intransigent Western Nicenes regarded any concession on homoiousios as a betrayal of the word for which Athanasius had suffered (Hanson 1988, pp. 506–507; Williams 1995, pp. 69–71).

The barb most often cited is Jerome’s. In a later polemic Jerome wrote that “the whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian” (Jerome, Dialogus adversus Luciferianos 19), and in the same context he treated the homoiousian formulae as a snare in which even good men were caught; the homoiousios-mongering of the period he regarded as so much “poison” dressed up in a single Greek letter — the famous quip that the controversy turned on the single iota that distinguishes homoousios from homoiousios (cf. Jerome, Dialogus adversus Luciferianos; Hanson 1988, p. 558). Jerome elsewhere praised Hilary unreservedly as a “most eloquent man” and “the trumpet of the Latins against the Arians” (Jerome, De Viris Illustribus 100), so his unease is not personal hostility; it reflects the broader Western worry that the homoiousian middle was a place where orthodoxy went to be compromised.

The harshest modern judgments echo this. Some historians have read De Synodis as evidence that Hilary, isolated in the East and impressed by the conservatism of his hosts, conceded too much — that his willingness to find an orthodox sense in formulae the Council of Nicaea had been framed to exclude blurred the very distinction that mattered, and that his confidence in the homoiousians’ good faith was, at least in part, misplaced, since many of that party would not in the end accept homoousios even when offered Hilary’s irenic gloss (Hanson 1988, pp. 459–462, 557–559, treating the limits of the convergence). On this view the bridge Hilary tried to build carried traffic in both directions, and not all of it was orthodox.

The Apologetica responsa: Hilary Answers His Critics

That Hilary’s generosity provoked immediate alarm in the West is proved by the document he was obliged to append to the treatise: the Apologetica responsa ad reprehensiones in libro De Synodis suspicionum — “an apologetic answer to the criticisms of the suspicions” raised against De Synodis (Hilary, Apologetica responsa, appended to De Synodis; trans. Watson, NPNF II/9, printed as a postscript to the work). The very existence of this appendix is the clearest contemporary evidence that Western readers — very likely the circle around Lucifer of Cagliari and other rigorist exiles — had accused Hilary of being too soft on homoiousios and too quick to excuse the Eastern creeds.

In the Apologetica responsa Hilary defends both his acceptance of homoousios and his charitable handling of homoiousios, parrying objections term by term. He insists that in commending homoiousios he never denied or diminished homoousios, and that to find an orthodox meaning in a word is not to license every meaning the word might bear (Apologetica responsa, in Watson, NPNF II/9; Beckwith 2008, pp. 195–200). The tone is at once unbending on the substance of the faith and patient with the misunderstanding of his critics — he will not retract his outreach, but he labors to show that it was orthodox. The appendix thus stands as Hilary’s own testimony that the bridge-building of De Synodis was deliberate and that he was prepared to be held accountable for it.

How Far Did Hilary Endorse Homoiousios?

The central interpretive question — whether Hilary genuinely endorsed the homoiousian formula as a legitimate confession of the faith, or whether he merely tolerated it as a defensible halfway house on the road to Nicaea — is one on which the sources permit, and the scholars adopt, more than one answer.

[Disputed: the degree to which Hilary endorsed *homoiousios* versus merely tolerated it is read differently across the scholarship. Ayres (2004, pp. 177–181) and Williams (1995, pp. 32–37) read *De Synodis* as a substantive theological rapprochement in which Hilary saw the homoiousian formula, rightly understood, as genuinely orthodox and the homoiousians as true allies; Weedman (2007, pp. 147–172) and Beckwith (2008, pp. 181–200) ground that reading in Hilary's settled trinitarian theology. Hanson (1988, pp. 459–462, 557–559), while crediting Hilary's diagnosis, stresses the limits of the convergence and treats Hilary's confidence in the homoiousians as partly strategic and partly over-optimistic — a toleration aimed at conversion to *homoousios* rather than an endorsement of *homoiousios* as a permanent equivalent. Hilary's own *Apologetica responsa* (Watson, NPNF II/9) insists he never set *homoiousios* above or against *homoousios*, which supports the "toleration toward conversion" reading; but the irenic language of *De Synodis* 88–91 supports the stronger "rapprochement" reading. The texts under-determine a single answer.]

What is not in dispute is that Hilary held homoousios to be the true and necessary confession and that he never abandoned it. His project was to bring the homoiousians to the Nicene word by showing them that it meant what they meant, not to dissolve the Nicene word into theirs (De Synodis 67–91; Apologetica responsa; Ayres 2004, pp. 179–181). Whether that makes him a far-sighted architect of the eventual settlement or a man who came perilously close to the edge of orthodoxy is the judgment each reading of De Synodis must finally make — and it is a judgment the Church has, on the whole, rendered in Hilary’s favor, numbering him among the Fathers and Doctors precisely as a defender of the consubstantial Son (on his standing among the Fathers, see The Church Fathers; on the dogmatic stakes, The Nicene Creed).

References

Hilary of Poitiers. De Synodis (also titled De fide Orientalium; On the Councils, or the Faith of the Easterners). Trans. E. W. Watson et al., in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 9 (NPNF II/9). (Cited by section: the address to the Gallic and British bishops at 1–2; the exposition of the Eastern creeds at 8–11, 27–65; the defense of the Sirmian anathemas at 38–61; homoousios and homoiousios at 67–76; the irenic appeal to both parties at 88–91.)
Hilary of Poitiers. Apologetica responsa ad reprehensiones in libro De Synodis suspicionum (the apologetic appendix to De Synodis answering Western critics). Trans. in NPNF II/9 as a postscript to De Synodis.
Jerome. De Viris Illustribus 100 (Hilary as “the trumpet of the Latins against the Arians”); Dialogus adversus Luciferianos 19 (the world “groaning to find itself Arian”; the homoiousian controversy and the single iota).
Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. (The homoiousian party and Hilary’s De Synodis as theological rapprochement, pp. 133–166, 177–181.)
Hanson, R. P. C. The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988. (The Sirmian and Ancyran creeds and Hilary’s reading of them, pp. 348–380; the limits of the homoiousian convergence, pp. 459–462, 557–559; Jerome and the Luciferians, pp. 506–507, 558.)
Williams, Daniel H. Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene-Arian Conflicts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. (Hilary’s coalition-building and the Western rigorist reaction, pp. 32–37, 69–71.)
Williams, Daniel H. “The Anti-Arian Campaigns of Hilary of Poitiers and the ‘Liber Contra Auxentium’.” Church History 61 (1992): 7–22; and related articles on Hilary’s Western strategy.
Beckwith, Carl L. Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity: From De Fide to De Trinitate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. (The composition and theology of De Synodis and the Apologetica responsa, pp. 181–200.)
Weedman, Mark. The Trinitarian Theology of Hilary of Poitiers. Leiden: Brill, 2007. (The trinitarian logic underlying Hilary’s handling of the Eastern creeds, pp. 147–172.)