PNEUMATOMACHI. - Trinitarian heretics who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit (ca. 360 onwards).
I. HISTORY
In the Symbol of the Council of Nicaea, regarding the Holy Spirit, it was simply stated: "We believe... and in the Holy Spirit" (Denz-U, 54). But in 359-60, St. Athanasius learned from his friend Serapion, bishop of Thmuis in Egypt, that some faithful, while rejecting Arianism, were in error regarding the Holy Spirit, whom they held to be "not only a creature, but one of the spirits that serve (God), and that it does not differ from the angels except in degree" (Ad Serap., I, 1; PG 26, 530 ff.). Athanasius called these heretics "tropici" (trope-users), because they interpreted as tropes (metaphors) the passages of Scripture contrary to their opinion. The Synod of Alexandria in 362 saw the first official reaction against this error (cf. Tomus ad Antiochenos, 3; PG 26, 800).In Constantinople and Asia Minor, the deniers of the divinity of the Holy Spirit were called P., and it seems that shortly after 366 a solid group of them was formed there under the name of "Macedonians" (v. 27). The ecclesiastical reaction against the P. intensified from about 373 (the Illyrian Synod is dated to 375 [Theodorus, Hist. eccl., IV, 8]; followed by St. Basil with De Spiritu Sancto [375; PG 32, 67 ff.]; the synodal letter of Amphilochius of Iconium [ca. 375; PG 39, 96]; St. Epiphanius, Panarion [before 377; Haer. 74, against the P.; PG 42, 473 ff.]; Pope Damasus with the Anathematisms of 375-80 [PL 13, 358 ff.]; and the Ep. Ea gratia [before 381, ibid. 351]). Around 380, the party of the P., already commonly called Macedonians, caused considerable confusion and even influenced some orthodox thinkers (cf. Gregory Nazianzen, Orat. theol., V, 5; PG 36, 137), so that the Nazianzen rose to defend the correct Trinitarian doctrine in Constantinople even against them. The Council of Constantinople in 381 (v.), which included thirty-six P. led by Eleusius of Cyzicus and Marcian of Lampsacus, did not overcome their opposition (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 8), and in its first canon the Council anathematized also the heresy "of the semi-Arians, that is, of the P." (Denz-U, 85); efforts to bring them to orthodoxy in 383 were likewise unsuccessful (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 10); Theodosius struck them, along with other heretics, in a series of civil laws in which they were listed under the name of "Macedonians" (Cod. XVI, 5, 11 ff.).
In practice, however, they enjoyed a certain freedom of worship even afterwards (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 20), and Didymus of Alexandria, in Book II of his De Trinitate (381-92; PG 39, 448 ff.), found it necessary to attack them again. Against them were also written the two dialogues Adversus macedonianos (among the works of St. Athanasius; PG 28, 1291 ff.) and the dialogues De Sancta Trinitate (ibid., 1113 ff., especially the third, ibid., 1201 ff.). Recently, all these dialogues have been claimed for Didymus (cf. A. Günther, Die 7 pseudoathanasianischen Dialoge, Rome 1941). Towards the close of the 4th century, the P. still showed some activity, as attested by a controversy they had at Anazarbus in 392 with Theodore of Mopsuestia (cf. Baradbesabba, Historia: PO 9, 506 ff.; Theodore Mops., Controversy with the Macedonians: ibid., 637 ff.). In the first decades of the 5th century, they still had a church in Constantinople, one in Cyzicus, and several others in Elephantis, where they were quite numerous. Nestorius (v.) obtained repressive measures against them ca. 428, which brought some of them back to orthodoxy (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., IV, 4; VII, 31). Subsequently, the P. disappeared from history.
II. DOCTRINE
Information on their doctrines comes from the orthodox Fathers who combated them, to whom must be added Cyril of Alexandria, especially in his De Sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate dialogi (PG 75, 657 ff.), written in 425, and also from several fragments of two properly Macedonian dialogues preserved by the same Fathers (cf. Fr. Loofs, Zeei..., cited in the bibliography). As regards the Word, not only the "tropici" mentioned by St. Athanasius, but also many of the later P. accepted the homoousia in an orthodox sense (cf. St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 31, 24; PG 36, 160; 41, 8; ibid., 440; Sermones arianorum, frag. 6; PL 13, 610 ff.; St. Epiphanius, Panarion, Haer. 74, 1; PG 42, 473. For the testimony of St. Cyril of Alex., cf. J. B. Wolf, op. cit. in bibl., pp. 44-49). There is insufficient evidence to support Loofs' claim that all the P. were Homoiousians; however, most of the P. were indeed so.The specific point of their heresy was their retention, with regard to the Holy Spirit, of the old subordinationism (v.), by which the Holy Spirit is believed to be of an inferior nature to the Father and the Son: many, along with the Arians properly so called, held that He was a true creature, created from nothing by the free will of God, though more noble than the other creatures, because He was the first creature of the Son. Others, not a few, followed Eustathius of Sebaste, more of an ascetic than a theologian and a seeker of middle ways in dogma (cf. St. Basil, Ep., 128, 2: PG 32, 556), who asserted: "I neither dare to call the Holy Spirit God, nor do I venture to say that He is a creature" (Socrates, Hist. eccl., II, 45). Many thus took refuge in the concept of an intermediate being, neither God nor creature.