Page:Introduction to the Assyrian church.djvu/139

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
PATRIARCHATE OF DAD-ISHU
133

did not intend to agree with the Greeks; in fact, they wanted to differ from them. On the other hand, the Greeks did not want to agree with them, but to subdue them. Rancour against Greek theologians, however, though it may be a wrong thing, is not necessarily rancour against truth; even though the Greek may think that it is, and though what he shouts as a battle-cry may be sound theology. Neither side in the battle made any attempt to "get behind words," and to see whether they could not, and did not, fully accept the principle embodied in the objectionable form of words that was the other's standard in the theological war. Again and again one is disposed to cry, as one studies the weary warfare, "Oh for one hour of St. Athanasius!"

Another question remains, and one which is of growing importance in our own day. Supposing, for argument's sake, that the "heretics" did hold at the beginning of each of the various schisms all that the "orthodox" imputed to them (a large supposition—a test of the size of which is the extraordinary character of the views which the "heretics" imputed to the "orthodox"), do those views still exist to-day? It is of the nature of "heresy" to disappear, and of imperfect and inadequate conceptions to melt silently away when they are not maintained by opposition. The writer can affirm this much of his own personal knowledge: that where "heretics," of various complexions, state the beliefs they hold in non-technical language, so that they do not use the terms to which they cling as a sacred heritage (and which often have very different meanings as used by different Churches), they usually make a statement of faith indistinguishable from orthodoxy.

A formidable complication, which one does not see how to disentangle, still further increases the