186 | CHAPTER 6
nonbishop to be hailed a “Father,” by Augustine;^106 and he came to symbolize
the patristic endeavor for posterity, laboring at his writing desk amid massive
codices, a skull reposing nearby, his friendly lion asleep at his feet.
It is absurd to end the exegetical or patristic phase in 451 as eminent stu-
dents of the subject have done.^107 The Council of Chalcedon held in that year
gave the starting signal for a new round, not just of the polyvocality that had
characterized Christian debate in the fourth century, but of intense odium
theologicum that cannot be said to have ended until the monothelete dis-
pute, about whether Christ had one or two wills, was settled at the Council
of Constantinople in 680–81. Many Christian intellectuals, it is true, aban-
doned the earlier free debate in favor of definitions and summaries and in
general the scholasticism we already noted at the School of Nisibis.^108 Justin-
ian was as determined to put down theological as legal dissent, condemning
not only Origen but also the three “Nestorian” theologians Theodore of
Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa (the “Three Chap-
ters”). But the Greek theological tradition was not formally summed up until
John of Damascus compiled his Fount of knowledge, in conscious response to
the new Qurʾanic doctrine and its strictures on Christianity.^109 Even then,
there was still to come the last of the seven “ecumenical” councils recognized
by the Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches, that of Nicaea in 787, at which
the use of icons was fully argued for and accepted. The deliberations of this
council allow us a fascinating glimpse of a world of ambitious, frequently
irate bishops and slanted scholarship based on the corruption or forgery of
proof texts, in other words patristics in full cry, powered as much by testos-
terone as testimonia. But this too was necessary for the consolidation of the
Church and the digestion of its doctrine. The acts and dogmatic definitions
issued by the councils were the outcome of debate about scriptural exegesis
no less than were the works of the fathers, on which the councils also drew
extensively.
Among the fathers who contributed to the debate on icons and were in-
voked at Nicaea was again John of Damascus, from the safe distance of
Umayyad Syria. But his successors in the Chalcedonian Church under Arab
rule saw no point in writing Greek when their flock and their whole social
and intellectual environment spoke Arabic. By the lifetime of the next major
Chalcedonian thinker on this side of the frontier, Theodore Abū Qurra (d. c.
830) already encountered in chapter 5, part of that intellectual environment
was a vigorous theological debate among Muslim scholars who had built on
106 J. Flamant and F. Monfrin, “Une culture “si ancienne et si nouvelle,”” in Mayeur and others
(eds), Histoire du Christianisme [6:95] 633.
107 E.g., J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian doctrines (London 1977^5 ); F. M. young, From Nicaea to
Chalcedon (London 2010^2 ); cf. Bruns, in Bruns (ed.), Von Athen nach Baghdad [6:66] 29–30.
108 Above, pp. 138, 177; cf. Lim, Public disputation [5:47] 227–29.
109 Griffith, Church in the shadow of the Mosque [5:119] 40–42.