138 | CHAPTER 5
supporters and opponents of Chalcedon mired themselves in Aristotelian
logic and syllogistic and churned out collections of theological definitions,
or Christological problems and their solutions, to rehearse their debates.^51 A
rhetorical coup might more easily clinch a non-scholarly disputation than
resort to logical subtlety. But the Organon became an accepted weapon in the
polemicist’s armory during the sixth century, even in the Syriac world.^52
While the Platonizing theolog y of Ps.- Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 500) had
only gradual impact, even a Platonist like Maximus the Confessor (d. 662)
resorted to Aristotle when he wanted to discuss Christolog y.^53 When Anas-
tasius of Sinai (d. after 701) equates each of the ten horns of the Beast in
Revelation with a noted anti- Chalcedonian heresiarch who derived his error
from one of Aristotle’s ten categories,^54 one notes not only the pot calling the
kettle black, but also the ambiguity of Aristotle, so tempting to blame but
also to mine.
Among the great questions the historian must pose is whether these con-
flicts of ideas undermined the social fabric and had political repercussions. A
recent student of public disputation in late Antiquity concluded,
Writings such as the Categories were considered dangerous because
they furnished a precise, respected philosophical vocabulary for con-
structing propositions about the divine, which, in situations of open
disputation, threatened to upset established patterns of social author-
ity when appropriated by self- taught men [the likes of Aetius and Eu-
nomius] who had not been socialized into an ethos subordinating indi-
vidual advantage to “the common good.”^55What was at issue was once more the interaction of ideas and social or politi-
cal history—“new conceptualizations” giving rise to “new forms of institu-
tions and practices,” as Wittrock puts it. And as the new institution and new
practice par excellence, namely the Church, spread through the nations, it
desired to preach its Gospel and its doctrines in their own languages. Now as
never before, the philosophical vocabulary in which Christian teaching was
articulated had to be rendered and adapted for those who thought and com-
municated in Latin, Armenian, or Syriac as well as or—increasingly—instead
of Greek.^56 It was to a polyglot but also intellectually riven world that the
51 Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus [4:72] 2/1.94–100.
52 D. King, The earliest Syriac translation of Aristotle’s Categories (Leiden 2010) 5–8, id., “Why
were the Syrians interested in Greek philosophy?”, in P. Wood (ed.), History and identity in the late an-
tique Near East (New york 2013) 61–81.
53 D. Krausmüller, “Aristotelianism and the disintegration of the late antique theological dis-
course,” IBALA 151–64.
54 Anastasius of Sinai, Guide [ed. K.- H. Uthemann (Turnhout 1981)] 6.2, 100.
55 Lim, Public disputation [5:47] 232.
56 Coptic sources have so far yielded little philosophy and no Aristotle. The more philosophically
inclined Greek Church Fathers are scantily represented in Coptic translation. If there was some interest