At last the conference was over and I could go out into the courtyard of the Theology Department for a breath of air and to stretch my legs. Behind me, I could hear Martin fussing with the slaves to get everything back to the copyists.
Turning a corner, I nearly bumped into Sergius, the man who had so mysteriously and in so sinister a fashion warned me off the students back when all had been so new in the City.
‘Hello,’ he said, in a manner as close to friendly as I’d ever seen in these people. We had, you see, struck up an odd sort of friendship during the regular conferences in the previous month. It didn’t run to things like dinner and sharing of confidences. It was more an implicit agreement on the stupidity of every other party in our discussions.
‘I thought you’d be straight out of here – back to the sinful books of the ancients.’
That had been my intention. But you don’t snub people like Sergius. I still hadn’t been able to work out his position. He didn’t sit in on every conference. When he did, he’d sit quiet beside the Professor. If he did have advice or questions, he’d whisper them to the professors. No one presumed ever to whisper back.
We walked together down the long colonnade, keeping to the inner wall to avoid the sun, still powerful when full in the sky. We spoke in a desultory way about the difficulty of finding exact Latin equivalents for some of the terms of Greek theology. As I found myself defending Pater Omnipotens as the translation of ‘Father the Ruler of All’ I noticed his attention was wandering just as mine had earlier.
I waited for what I suspected was coming.
‘I feel I should apologise,’ he said, ‘for a certain coldness you may have noted in some of my colleagues. But you are beginning to raise questions that many do not at present find welcome.’
‘If I am taking up your time,’ I answered, trying for an apologetic tone, ‘with repetitions of what you find obvious-’
‘But they are not obvious at all, Alaric,’ he broke in. ‘And they do open issues the practical implications of which you Westerners might not fully understand.’
‘How so?’ I asked. I’d managed to hit the note I wanted of respectful ignorance.
He looked at me. ‘You will understand’, came a reply of sorts, ‘that I am speaking entirely for myself here. If you want authoritative statements for sending back to Rome, the Illustrious Professor must be consulted. But I meet so few persons of ability from the West that I cannot resist the temptation to exchange a few random thoughts with you – always, of course, in a spirit of brotherly love.’
‘I suppose the withdrawal of His Excellency the Permanent Legate’, I replied, smiling, ‘has been a great loss to you.’
‘Not such a loss as we at first thought,’ came the reply. Sergius looked up at the coffered plaster of the ceiling. ‘Tell me what is meant by the Trinity,’ he suddenly asked.
That was easy. I opened my mouth and recited:
‘“And the Catholick Faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance… The Father is made of none: neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone: not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father: neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding… And in this Trinity none is afore, or after another: none is greater or less than another; but the whole three Persons are co-eternal together: and co-equal…”’
‘Good,’ said Sergius, ‘and you will agree that nothing could be more obvious or more simply expressed.’
I nodded. Of course, it all makes sense. You only have to believe that there is a God, and that He has a sick sense of humour, and that He has chosen to make understanding this mass of nonsense one of the requirements for not burning in Hell. Believe all that, and one is three and three is one. Equally, the seventh inch on a ruler is followed by the fourth, and lustful thoughts are wrong.
But I kept this to myself, and followed the nodding with what I hoped was a look of devoutness.
Sergius continued: ‘This follows by necessary implication from the words of Saint John. Moreover, the True Faith is impossible without it. If, as Arius claimed, Christ were just a Creature of God – no matter how superior to other created beings – where does that leave the Faith? What difference would remain with the Platonists who tried to sustain the Old Faith? Christ becomes indistinguishable from the pagan gods, which are said also to be emanations of the One True God. What then would it matter if we directed our prayers to Christ or to Apollo? The difference between our Faith and any other cult might be of no more consequence than the difference between one house painted white and another painted blue.
‘We must, therefore, assert that Christ was God. At the same time, though, we cannot agree, with Eutyches and the Monophysites, that He has but a single Nature, which is God. Christ could not be a mere projection of God, as He suffered in ways that are inconsistent with the notion of Godhood.
‘Therefore, again, Christ must be both God and man. The notion that His Human Nature is subsumed in His Divine Nature, as a drop of honey is dissolved in the sea, is a most damnable heresy, and was rightly declared such at the Council of Chalcedon.’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, breaking in. I had no wish for a basic lecture on matters I’d been studying for the better part of three months. But Sergius was coming to the point.
‘We have been discussing’, he said, with a downward glance, ‘your proposal made in writing that the Creed might usefully be clarified by adding the words “and of the Son” to the phrase “the Holy Ghost is of the Father”.’
I looked closely at Sergius. We’d stopped on our round of the colonnade and were standing by a large plaque on the wall that recorded a gift in the old days from a Roman benefactress. Still avoiding my eye, he continued:
‘This is unacceptable. The words may do no more than clarify. But the Creed cannot be altered except by a General Council of the Churches. And we do not think, bearing in mind their continued slide into the Monophysite heresy, that the Churches of Alexandria and Antioch would accept any wording that might imply more than One Nature.
‘We continue to hope for a settlement of differences between all the Churches in the East. We cannot risk this by helping you to proceed against a heresy that has been dead everywhere but in the West for hundreds of years.’
Oh, I thought – just like in Rome, it was politics. The Syrians and Egyptians had to be kept happy. Because of that, we could look to ourselves.
‘This being said’ – Sergius was walking again: I kept pace with him – ‘This being said, we might think more favourably of certain incidental changes that did not require a General Council.
‘For some while now, the various Churches of the Empire have taken what we regard as an unsatisfactory approach to the use of language. The Gospels, the Letters of Saint Paul, and all the Fathers of any note, are in Greek. It is obvious that Greek is the language most acceptable to God. However, claims have been made by His Holiness in Rome for Latin to be regarded as a co-ordinate language. For historical reasons, these claims could not until recently be challenged. At the same time, Coptic and Syriac liturgies have been tolerated in Egypt and Syria. With the decay of Greek in those regions during the past hundred years, the vulgar languages have risen in importance.
‘We might be willing to consider a regularisation of linguistic use. Greek would be regarded as the one authoritative language of the Church – as the language in which God has most recently spoken to man. All would look to Constantinople for final authority on any matter of doctrine. Other languages, though, would be formally accepted for those unfortunate peoples unable to receive the Word of God in its original. Such languages might be Coptic, Syriac and Latin. These would all be equal in status, below Greek.