CHAPTER V.

THE THEOLOGY OF THE SIXTH CENTURY.

THERE are two ways in which the theological history of a period in the life of the Church may be studied. The process of definition may be traced in the action of authorized Church assemblies, in Church laws, and in accepted writings; or one prominent person may be selected in whom the theology of the time appears to be adequately represented, and a close study of his writings will produce an intimate acquaintance with the leading ideas of the age.

The first method has been adopted in the previous lecture. Of the value of the second, as supplementing in detail such a general

summary as is obtained from a mere record of events, it is scarcely necessary to speak. The writings of S. Athanasius, S. Cyril, S. Augustine, sum up in different ways the predominant theological influences of their times. In the sixth century we do not go to a great ecclesiastic for a similar illustration. The age is by no means deficient in theological writers. A glance, for instance, at the eleventh volume of Remy Ceillier's Histoire générale des auteurs sacrés et ecclesiastiques will surprise those who are not very intimately acquainted with the literature of the century. There is certainly no lack of Church histories and of dogmatic or moral treatises. But it is not easy to find a churchman whose writings afford a complete and, as judged from the standpoint of trained students of theology, an unbiassed exposition of the theological attitude of the Church in the sixth century. No

ecclesiastic, in fact, covers anything like the whole field. There is only one writer whose works can afford an adequate illustration, and he is the great legist and restorer of the imperial power, the Emperor Justinian.

He who gave Arianism its death blow and overcame the Monophysite strife, who united Church and State together as no emperor before him had done, and while honouring the Roman primacy, yet allowed to it no encroachment on the liberty of the Church, achieved these great victories not by the coercion which it was in the power of emperors to employ, but because he was himself a close and unwearied student of the controversies which it was the Church's aim in his day to set at rest. No one so carefully and completely examined the pressing questions of the hour in the light of Holy Scripture and the ancient authors. That the conciliar decisions of the Church