Pneumatomachi

PNEUMATOMACHI. - Trinitarian heretics who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit (c. 360-5th century).

I. HISTORY

In the Creed of the Council of Nicaea, as regards the Holy Spirit, it was simply said: "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 certain of the faithful, while rejecting Arianism, erred concerning the Holy Spirit, which they held to be: "not only a creature, but one of the spirits that serve (God), and that it differs from the angels only in degree" (Ad Serap., 1, 1: PG 26, 530 ff.). Athanasius called these heretics "tropicists," because they interpreted as tropes (metaphors) the passages of Scripture contrary to their opinion. At the Synod of Alexandria of 362 there was the first official reaction against this error (cf. Tomus ad Antiochenos, 3: PG 26, 800).

At Constantinople and in Asia Minor the deniers of the divinity of the Holy Spirit were called Pneumatomachi, and it seems that shortly after 366 a strong group of them was formed there among the Homoiousians, adherents of the deposed patriarch Macedonius (v.) and called for this reason "Macedonians." In 373 Eustathius of Sebaste (v.) figured as "head of the heresy of the Pneumatomachi" (St. Basil, Ep. 263, 3: PG 32, 980). Eleusius of Cyzicus and Marcian of Lampsacus were its spokesmen at the time of the Council of 381 (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 8). The historians who wrote on the matter after 380 attributed particular importance also to Marathonius of Nicomedia because the "Macedonians" were also called "Marathonians." But, as with Macedonius himself, there is no proof that Marathonius was properly a Pneumatomachian. When, moreover, the Macedonians or Marathonians largely accepted the Pneumatomachian doctrines, the monastic asceticism of the group helped to win many recruits to the new heresy (cf. Sozomen, Hist. eccl., IV, 27). The ecclesiastical reaction against the Pneumatomachi became intense from about 373 (the Illyrian Synod dates from 373 [Theodoret, Hist. eccl., IV, 8]; there follow: St. Basil with the 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 Pneumatomachi: 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 Pneumatomachi, already commonly called Macedonian, stirred up no little confusion and uncertainty of ideas even among the orthodox themselves (cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. theol., V, 5: PG 36, 137), so that Nazianzen rose up with his Orationes theologicae to defend at Constantinople the right Trinitarian doctrine also against them. The Council of Constantinople of 381 (v.), in which thirty-six Pneumatomachi took part headed by Eleusius of Cyzicus and Marcian of Lampsacus, did not overcome their opposition (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 8), and in the first canon the Council anathematized also the heresy "of the Semi-Arians, that is, the Pneumatomachi" (Denz-U, 85); vain too were the efforts to lead them to orthodoxy in 383 (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 10); Theodosius struck them, together with other heretics, in a series of civil laws in which they appear under the name of "Macedonians" (Cod. XVI, 5, 11 ff.).

But in practice they enjoyed, even afterward, a relative freedom of worship (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., V, 20) and Didymus of Alexandria in book II of his De Trinitate (381-92: PG 39, 448 ff.) deemed it necessary to combat them again. Against them too came 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 reclaimed for Didymus (cf. A. Günthör, Die 7 pseudathanasianischen Dialoge, Rome 1941). Toward the decline of the 4th century the Pneumatomachi still displayed a certain activity, as attests a controversy they had at Anazarbus in 392 with Theodore of Mopsuestia (cf. Baradbesabba, Storia: PG 9, 506 ff.; Theodore of Mopsuestia, Controversia con i macedoniani: ibid., 637 ff.). In the first decades of the 5th century they still had a church at Constantinople, one at Cyzicus and several others in the Hellespont, where they were quite numerous. Nestorius (v.) obtained against them, ca. 428, repressive measures, which brought some of them back to orthodoxy (cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl., IV, 4: VII, 31). Afterward the Pneumatomachi disappeared from history.

II. DOCTRINE

Their doctrines are known 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 further from several fragments of two properly Macedonian dialogues preserved by those same Fathers (cf. Fr. Loofs, Zesei..., cited in the bibliography). As regards the Word, not only the "tropici" of whom St. Athanasius speaks, but also several among the later Pneumatomachi accepted the homoousion in the orthodox sense (cf. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 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 Alexandria, cf. J. B. Wolf, op. cit. in the bibliography, pp. 44-49). There is not sufficient evidence to maintain with Loofs that the Pneumatomachi were all Homoiousians; however, the majority of the Pneumatomachi really were.

The specific point of the heresy was having preserved with regard to the Holy Spirit, in relation to the Father and the Son, the old subordinationism (v.), whereby the Holy Spirit is believed to be of a nature inferior to the Father and the Son: many, together with the Arians properly so called, held him to be a truly and properly created being, created from nothing by the free divine will, although more mobile than the other creatures, because he was the first creature of the Son. Others, not a few, followed Eustathius of Sebaste, more an ascetic than a theologian and a seeker of middle ways in dogmatics (cf. St. Basil, Dp., 128, 2: PG 32, 556), who asserted: "I neither dare to call the Holy Spirit God, nor do I presume to call him a creature" (Socrates, Hist. eccl., II, 45). Many thus took refuge in the concept of an intermediate being, neither God nor creature.

Cipriano Vagaggini