Angelus News | May 17, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 18

often in preposterous ways.
Take Marcion — please. A Roman
shipping magnate born about 80 years
after Christ, Marcion was a generous
Church member and contributor —
until the Church asked him to leave.
In a nutshell (key word: nut), Marcion
believed that creation, including
the human body, was evil; that an
unknown “stranger” God existed — a
good God — who was mightier than
the creator God; that Jesus Christ
didn’t have a real body but rather
an illusory “magic mist”; and that
our bodies would not be resurrected,
because, well, they were evil.
Marcion’s most famous work,
“Antitheses,” attempted to prove
that the God of the Jews could
not possibly have been the God of
Jesus. The errors of his ways were
not funny to Marcion’s critics, but
he stood by his crazy convictions
and, astonishingly, was siphoning
a troubling number of converts
from the Church.
The Church Fathers objected.
And today, we have Marcion to
thank for a necessary and immense
contribution to Catholic
doctrine. In order to argue against
him, the Fathers had to take a
deep breath and decide exactly
how the Old Testament was related
to the New: how the God of
Abraham was the God of Jesus.
Or consider Arius, after whom
the Arian heresy is named. He
taught that the Son was subordinate
to the Father, created by the
Father, and thus not eternal as the
Father is.
“What was so shocking about
Arius’ teachings,” writes Aquilina,
“was that they went against the
traditional practice of the Church —
never mind the doctrine. Christians
worship Christ as God. They baptize
in the name of the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit.” Arius’ interpretation
“denies and defies” all that — and
yet he, too, was enticing people away
from the Church.
Both the Church and the political
arena were in chaos at the time.
“The Eastern emperor, Licinius, was
becoming increasingly intolerant of
Christians, and the Western emperor,
Constantine [a Christian], was
becoming increasingly intolerant of
Licinius,” writes Aquilina.
“Eventually, open war broke out
between them — a war that Constantine
easily won. Now there was just
one emperor for the whole Roman
Empire, and that emperor was a
Christian.”
But as Constantine quickly learned,
all was not well. The miasma of
Arianism was spreading rapidly. He
took decisive action and, in A.D. 325,
“Portret van Nestorius,” by Romeyn de Hooghe, 1688.
called all the bishops of the world —
about 250 of them — to a meeting at
Nicaea.
From that momentous gathering
issued the Nicene Creed, and 1,800
years later, all around the world, 2 billion
Christians still repeat the words:
“God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God, begotten,
not made, consubstantial with the
Father.” Thank you, Arius.
And finally, consider Nestorius,
archbishop of Constantinople. On his
very first day in office, he offended the
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
emperor’s sister, who had consecrated
her virginity to Christ and the Blessed
Virgin Mary and “was the one who
really ran things in Constantinople.”
Next, Nestorius ordered the demolishing
of Constantinople’s lone —
and semi-officially tolerated — Arian
chapel. To thwart Nestorius, the Arian
congregation burned down their
chapel before it could be torn down.
The fire spread. Nestorius had been in
office for five days.
He went after monks, who were
too independent. He went after
women, who were too visible. And
finally, he did himself in by insisting
that technically the proper
name for Mary was not “Mother of
God” but “Mother of the Christ.”
Aquilina writes: “The problem
with most people, Nestorius
seemed to believe, was that they
didn’t choose their terms carefully
enough. … The problem with
Nestorius, thought practically
everybody else in Constantinople,
was that he had just said Mary
wasn’t the Mother of God.
“The people of the city instantly
latched onto that little word ‘technically’
as representing everything
they hated about Nestorius.
‘If Mary is not technically the
Mother of God,’ they said, ‘then
her Son is not technically God.’ ”
Everyone but the new archbishop
knew that was wrong.
Rome and Alexandria eventually
got into the fight. Nestorius
doubled down. Finally, the emperor
(or possibly his virgin sister)
called a council at a place named
Ephesus. What happened there
was like a long bingefest of “The
Three Stooges” with some “Game
of Thrones” thrown in.
Ultimately, of course, Mary was even
more firmly enthroned as the Mother
of God. And Nestorius, who deserves
our gratitude for precipitating that
doctrinal decision, was exiled to the
Great Oasis of Egypt.
Error — and even evil: they just can’t
win against the one, holy, catholic and
apostolic Church.
Jane Greer edited and published
“Plains Poetry Journal” and is author
of “Bathsheba on the Third Day.”
May 17, 2019 • ANGELUS • 23