‘Christianity is and was a religion of law’ (p 196). Christopher Stephens’ contention here might raise an eyebrow when much of Western Christendom has been commemorating Martin Luther's message of justification by grace through faith in place of salvation by observing the works of the law. But Stephens points out that Christianity ‘developed out of a belief system [that of Judaism] with highly developed ideas about law, law-making and legalism’ (p 196). Readers of this Journal are likely to agree about the central place of law in the life of the Church. The dictum quoted above is one of many examples of arresting and thought-provoking assertions made in this book. Its arguments repay attention in several areas of scholarship regarding the Church in the fourth century: the origins of canon law, the history of early councils, the relations of Church and State in the Roman Empire and the political dimension of episcopal authority. I say ‘arguments’ because this is a highly revisionary, though not extensively original, work whose claims will need to be scrutinised by specialists in the various fields that it covers. It builds on the standard work in English on its theme: H Hess, The Early Development of Canon Law and the Council of Serdica.Footnote ¹² Stephens’ treatment assumes a basic knowledge of early church history and of early Christian doctrine; it does not provide the basics. The book's structure is spiral, ringing the changes on its central assertions in relation to various areas of discussion, not without considerable repetition. It aims to turn our received understanding of early church history on its head in several respects.

First, and preliminary to the main argument, Stephens (with Hess) dates the Canons of Antioch to immediately after the death of the Emperor Constantine in ad 337, when Athanasius, the champion of the homoousion of the Council of Nicaea (325), and other turbulent bishops were being rehabilitated after exile by the ‘western’ joint emperor, Constans. This dating involves re-describing the ‘Dedication Council’ of Antioch as involving a series of minor synods, spread over a period of time, and ascribing the relevant canons to one of these. (Most councils at this time were rather ad hoc, not particularly representative gatherings involving smallish numbers of bishops and others.) The eastern bishops who met at Antioch under the patronage of the ‘eastern’ joint emperor, Constantius, were opposed to the return of the pardoned exiled bishops as an infringement of received protocols. The Council of Serdica (or Sardica, 343) was convoked by the two emperors in a doomed attempt to bring peace to the Church. Serdica is aptly described as ‘notorious’ and ‘a fiasco’ because it split into western and eastern episcopal factions (though the two groups are rather blurred at the edges) when the western bishops, who had arrived first, welcomed Athanasius into communion, so prejudging the outcome of the council. While the eastern bishops condemned the returning exiles and those who received them, excommunicating among others Pope Julius, before departing, the ‘western’ Council promulgated canons antithetical to those of Antioch, supporting the return of the exiled bishops and according unprecedented appellate authority to the Bishop of Rome.

Second, although the Council of Antioch that promulged the canons was hostile to Athanasius and his claim to the (occupied) Patriarchal See of Alexandria, Stephens argues that Antioch was not overtly opposed to the Council of Nicaea and its theology. Antioch was not anti-Nicene, but non-Nicene in its Christology. It found other language, favouring in particular ‘image’ Christology which, unlike the homoousion, employed biblical language. Antioch had other christological errors – those of Marcellus of Ancyra, subsequently acquitted of the charge of heresy by Serdica – in its sights. Stephens believes that the four creeds produced by Antioch did not transgress Nicene theology. Furthermore, Antioch was emphatically pro-Nicene in another way – in its commitment to the canonical discipline laid down by the council (as well as to Nicaea's ruling on the date of Easter). Stephens emphasises that doctrine was not the main issue at Antioch; it was discipline, order and the restraint of bishops that was at stake. Crucially, bishops were not to intrude themselves into other bishops’ dioceses (Antioch, Canons XII and XIII). The crisis in the Church was not over theology but over power. Serdica (West) used the label ‘Arian’ tendentiously to besmirch Antioch. Although Athanasius’ De Synodis attacked Antioch as the enemy of Nicene orthodoxy, the witness of Hilary of Poitiers – champion of Athanasius – and of the historian Sozomen shows that the Council of Antioch was not regarded as heretical for some time afterwards. Its canons were read out at the Council of Chalcedon (451) and were incorporated into Gratian's Decretum.

Third, alongside the developments in doctrine that are the usual focus of attention in the study of early councils, the canons witness to important developments in the institutional life of the Church, especially concerning structures of governance, conciliarity, rules and protocols, authority, hierarchy and the exercise of power. These developments were necessitated by potent bishops flexing their jurisdictional muscles in maverick ways. Conciliar action and the drawing up of canons were attempts to retrain them. Stephens offers a corrective to the traditional narrow focus on the history of doctrine and to the hagiography that has often obscured the machinations and motives of some Church Fathers. He argues that the three areas of theology, institutions and major figures should be studied together and in their interaction. The study of the early canons has been neglected, but it can shed fresh light on doctrinal and institutional conflicts.

Fourth, the early attempts at setting forth what is rather anachronistically termed here ‘canon law’ were beset not so much by illegality (which would also be an anachronistic way of looking at the matter) but by a state of affairs bordering on anarchy. Stephens stresses that the canons of the two councils had a polemical function and included barely coded attacks on certain bishops. The canons were bids for allegiance, appeals for obedience, essays in disciplinary action. These two regional councils went beyond precedent and exceeded their existing powers in attempting to legislate for the whole Church, when no real concept of a universal church in the institutional sense yet existed. Their rival struggles helped to form the idea of catholicity, though it took Constantine and his son Constantius (who became sole emperor only in 350) to realise the possibility of the Church acting as one church (p 225). Bishops obeyed the canons only if it suited their interests to do so. The very bishops who had devised the canons would flout them if it served their aims. Nevertheless, conciliar canons were regarded as important: the various protagonists wanted the canons on their side as weapons in their armoury. At this stage church law was loose, flexible and fragile. Incompatible sets of canons existed side by side. Codification came later, though even the early attempts at collating and ordering the canons did not exclude incompatible laws. Canons did not carry the weight of authority that they later acquired and enjoy today (though there is illegality enough in most churches). Canons in themselves are of course impotent: in the fourth century there was no ‘stable regulatory infrastructure’ (p 192) and only the emperor could enforce them. The Church needed the State to give force to its rules.

Fifth, the break up of the Council of Serdica into western and eastern factions was a token of the steady mutual alienation of eastern and western branches of the Church that came to a head in 1054 with excommunication and anathemas on both sides. There were, of course, several causes of the Great Schism, but at this stage in the long process of divergence differences over the location and exercise of authority predominated. The East was suspicious of the concentration of power, in councils and in the papacy, that the West was promoting; it held to a more dispersed form of authority that recognised local autonomy and the authority of metropolitans. For the East, one council could not contradict another, in the way that Serdica refuted Antioch. The breach of communion between East and West at Serdica was ominous.

Sixth, one momentous consequence of the divergence between East and West over the locus of authority was the rise of the papacy and its growing universalistic claims. Serdica had awarded Rome the final say in appeals:

Finally, this study brings out the profound yet ambiguous influence of imperial Roman civilisation on the emerging institutions of the Church. It does this in five respects: (a) the assumption that comprehensive legal regulation was necessary for the governance of a community, and that in this area the Church should emulate the State; (b) the direct influence of Roman civil law as a model for ecclesiastical law and of the register of Roman legal language – its ‘forensic rhetoric’ (p 205) – on ecclesiastical discourse; (c) increasing reliance on the authority of the emperor to enforce the canons and to bring order and relative harmony to a fractious church (Constantine's single-minded drive for unity was a heaven-sent intervention in chaotic church affairs); (d) the melding of civil, political and ecclesiastical structures as Constantine and his immediate successors bound the bishops and the Church generally to the institutions of state governance with its associated bureaucracy; (e) the example that Constantine and his successors provided of a supreme, central, personal authority, aspiring to a universal reach. Not for the last time, the Church looked to prevailing secular models for its ideas of leadership.