But besides the theological differences, there was politics and the attempt to find a practical way to solve a problem without going into its theoretical depths. This is not only American pragmatism but also Roman eclecticism. This was Rome. Rome, following its eclectic tradition, gave the directive for a solution which avoided the depths of Greek thinking and tried to find a way out of this conf lict. There was a Pope, Dionysius, in Rome, who declared: “Two things must be preserved: the Divine trius and the holy message of monarchy.” These are the two main terms of the two wings, The holy message of the monarchy, which stood against the Logos Christology; the Divine trius, which expressed the Logos Christology. So what Pope Dionysius in Rome did was to take the main formulas of both groups and said that they must both be preserved. But he didn’t say how! This was practical Church politics. And this finally prevailed, as we shall see But it prevailed only after a tremendous fight of almost 80 years, a fight in which the whole situation of the Church changed, as we shall see, and in which finally something was decided which is valid for all periods of Christianity. The event of which I am speaking now is the so-called Arian controversy This controversy is a unique and classical struggle, and caused by many motives. In it is involved the politics of the emperors, who needed unity in the Church which in just these years had become the state religion of the Roman Empire, and now the Church itself threatened to split the whole Empire into pieces. There were involved personal feuds of bishops and theologians. There were in conf lict narrow traditionalism and unrestrained speculation. There was included an overemphasis on theoretical solution and popular monastic fanaticism.
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