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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 April 2011
In the last decade of the reign of Emperor Constantius (351–61), Christians in Antioch in Syria were still in a state of turmoil. This turmoil had ecclesiastical overtones, but was essentially doctrinal in origin. The doctrinal issues were of two kinds, one theological and the other Christological, the former centring around the relationship of the Son to the divine Father and the latter around the nature of Christ's humanity. Regarding the first there was a contest for supremacy between the theologies of the hard-line Nicene party, the successors of Bishop Eustathius, who supported the Nicene assertion of consubstantiality of Father and Son, the Meletians, who to all intents were Nicene, and the Arians under their bishop Eudoxius, who resisted the Nicene thinking. The Christological issue, a concern of Eustathius for some time, was given new impetus in Antioch by Eudoxius when he denied Christ's human soul. Meanwhile, in Laodicea, not far south of Antioch, Apollinarius was active. He was an orthodox Nicene trinitarian in his fight against the Arian theology of George of Laodicea.
1 E.g. Armstrong, C. B., ‘The Synod of Alexandria and the Schism at Antioch in AD 362’, JTS xxii (1921), 216.Google Scholar This thesis is asserted despite the interesting correspondence of the 360s between Apollinarius and Basil of Caesarea, which does not suggest that the former had then been condemned. For this correspondence see Prestige, G. L., St Basil the Gnat and Apoliinaris of Laodicea, ed. Chadwick, H., London 1956.Google Scholar
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71 Ibid. i. 26.
72 Epiphanius, , Ancor, xxxiii.Google Scholar Cf. Lucian's confession of faith apud Rufinus on Eusebius, , HE ix. 6Google Scholar, in Routh, , Rel. Sacr. 3. 286.Google Scholar
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