The Church and the Barbarians | Page 8

Theotokos to the Blessed Virgin, and condemned the doctrines of Cyril. The Council had no hesitation in saying anathema.
Here its work was ended. It had safeguarded the faith by definitely exposing the logical consequences of statements which indirectly impugned the Divine and Human Natures of the Incarnate Son.
[Sidenote: The need for its decisions.]
So long as human progress is based upon intellectual principles as well as on material growth, a teaching body which professes to guard and interpret a Divine Revelation must speak {19} without hesitation when its "deposit" is attacked. The Church has clung, with an inspired sagacity, to the reality of the Incarnation: and thus it has preserved to humanity a real Saviour and a real Exemplar. The subtle brains which during these centuries searched for one joint in the Catholic armour wherein to insert a deadly dart, were foiled by a subtlety as acute, and by deductions and definitions that were logical, rational, and necessary. If the Councils had not defined the faith which had been once for all delivered to the saints, it would have been dissolved little by little by sentimental concessions and shallow inconsistencies of interpretation. It was the work of the Councils to develope and apply the principles furnished by the sacred Scriptures. New questions arose, and it was necessary to meet them: it was clear, then, that there was a real division between those who accepted Christianity in the full logical meaning of the Scriptures, in the full confidence of the Church, and those who doubted, hesitated, denied; and it is clear now that the whole future of Christendom depended upon the acceptance by the Christian nations of a single rational and logically tenable Creed. This involved the rejection of the Three Chapters, as it involved equally the condemnation of Monophysitism and Monothelitism. From the point of view of theology or philosophy the value of the work of the Church in this age is equally great. The heresies which were condemned in the sixth century (as in the seventh) were such as would have utterly destroyed the logical and rational conception of the Person of the Incarnate Son, as the Church had received it by divine inspiration. Some Christian historians may seem for a moment to yield a half {20} assent to the shallow opinions of those who would refuse to go beyond what is sometimes strangely called the "primitive simplicity of the Gospel." But it is impossible in this obscurantist fashion to check the free inquiry of the human intellect. The truths of the Gospel must be studied and pondered over, and set in their proper relation to each other. There must be logical inferences from them, and reasonable conclusions. It is this which explains that struggle for the Catholic Faith of which historians are sometimes impatient, and justifies a high estimate of the services which the Church of Constantinople rendered to the Church Universal.
It is in this light that the work of the Fifth General Council, to be truly estimated, must be regarded. It will be convenient here to summarise the steps by which the Fifth General Council won recognition in the Church.
In the first place, the emperor, according to custom, confirmed what the Council had decreed; and throughout the greater part of the East the decision of Church and State alike was accepted. In 553 there was a formal confirmation by a synod of bishops at Jerusalem; but for the most part there was no need of such pronouncement. African bishops and Syrian monks here and there refused obedience; but the Church as a whole was agreed.
[Sidenote: Pope Vigilius.]
Pope Vigilius, it would seem, was in exile for six months on an island in the Sea of Marmora. On December 8, 553, he formally anathematised the Three Chapters. On February 23, 554, in a Constitution, he announced to the Western bishops his adhesion to the decisions {21} of the General Council. Before the end of 557 he was succeeded, on his death, by Pelagius, well known in Constantinople. He, like Vigilius, had once refused but now accepted the Council.
When Rome and Constantinople were agreed, the adhesion of the rest of the Catholic world was only a question of time. But the time was long. In North Italy there was for long a practical schism, which was not healed till Justin II. issued an explanatory edict,[6] and the genius, spiritual and diplomatic, of Gregory the Great was devoted to the task of conciliation. Still it was not till the very beginning of the eighth century[7] that the last schismatics returned to union with the Church: thus a division in the see of Aquileia, by which for a time there were two rival patriarchates, was closed. Already the rest of Europe had come to peace.
[Sidenote: The Aphthartodocetes.]
The last years of Justinian were disturbed