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Fate, Fortune, Free Will and Nature in Eusebius of Caesarea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Glenn F. Chesnut Jr
Glenn F. Chesnut Jr
Affiliation:
assistant professor of ancient history in Indiana University at South Bend, Indiana
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Abstract

In working out his own understanding of historical causation, Eusebius had to deal with the great issues of the pagan Graeco-Roman historiographical tradition. He had to reject, alter or adapt the classical understanding of Fate, Fortune, Nature and human free will in order to work out a coherent Christian understanding of history and the forces that shaped it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 1973 , pp. 165 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1973

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References

1. The texts of Eusebius' works used for this study were as follows (in quotations in English in this article I have frequently used or adapted existing translations, which I also therefore mention in this list): H. E.= The Ecclesiastical History, 2 vols., Greek text with trans. by Oulton, Kirsopp L., Loeb Classical Library (London, 1926-1932)Google Scholar. V. C.=Vita Constantini, ed. by I. A. Heikel in Vol. I of the Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller edition of Eusebius' works (Leipzig, 1902)Google Scholar. De laud. = De laudibus Constantini, ed. by I. A. Heikel in Vol. I of the Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller edition of Eusebius' works (Leipzig, 1902), pp. 193–259Google Scholar. Trans. as The Oration of kusebius Pamphilus in Praise of the Emperor Constantine Pronounced on the Thirtieth Anniversary of His Reign, by Richardson, E. C., in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. I (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1961), pp. 581–610Google Scholar. P. E. = Praeparatio Evangelica, ed. by Karl Mras, Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller (Berlin, 1954-1956)Google Scholar. For trans. see Praeparatio Evangelica, Greek text ed. and trans. into English by E. H. Gifford (Oxford, 1903)Google Scholar. D.E. = Demaonstratio Evangelica, ed. by I. A. Heikel, Griechischen christlichen Sehriftsteller (Leipzig, 1913)Google Scholar. Trans. as The Proof of the Gospel, by W. J. Ferrar, 2 vols. (London, 1920). Contra Hier.= The Treatise of Eusebius, the Son of Pamphilus, against the Life of Apollonius of Tyana Written by Philostratus, Greek text and Eng. trans. of Eusebis' Contra Hieroclem in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, trans. by F. C. Conybeare (New York, 1912), Vol. II, pp. 485–605Google Scholar. Theoph. = On the Theophania or Divine Manifestation of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, trans. into English from the Syriac by Samuel Lee (Cambridge, 1843). Armen. Chron. = Die Chronik: aus dem armenischen übersetst, ed. and trans. Josef Karst, Die griechischen christlichen Sehriftsteller (Leipzig, 1911).

2. See, for example, Books IV and V of the Praeparatio Evangelica.

3. Eus. P. E. vi. pref. 1–3 (236bc), vi. 1. 6–7 (237d-238a). But for a different interpretation see P.E. iv. 2. 12–14 (136ad).Google Scholar

4. Eus. P. E. vi. 6. 5 (242d)Google Scholar. See Riedinger, Utto, Die Heilige Schrift im Kampf der Griechischen Kirche gegen die Astrologie: Von Origeneg bis Johannes von Damaskos (Innsbruck, 1956)Google Scholar. He discusses references to astrology in the writings of thirty of the church fathers and also describes the position taken by these Christians on such things as the problem of free will, the stars viewed as signs, and so on.

5. Eus. P. E. iv. 2. 12–14 (136ad).Google Scholar

6. Eus. P.E. vi. 3. 5 (240c)Google Scholar; Theoph. ii. 87.Google Scholar

7. Eus. P.E. 1. vi. 6–7Google Scholar (237d-238a), 6.5 (242d), 6. 13–14 (243d-244a); Contra Hier. 41.

8. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 20–21 (245ac).Google Scholar

9. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 8–12 (243ad).Google Scholar

10. Eus. Contra Hier. 41; P.E. vi. 6. 20–21 (245ac).Google Scholar

11. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 8–12 (243ad).Google Scholar

12. Eus. Contra Hier. 39.

13. Eus. P. E. vi. 6. 5 (242d), 6. 8–12 (243ad)Google Scholar; Contra Hier. 41.

14. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 22 (245c).Google Scholar

15. In ancient Christian thought in general, the normal opposite of pronoia was conceived to be a universe displaying only Epicurean chance and accident. The standard Christian argument defending the doctrine of pronoia was then a list of examples showing the marvelous intricacy with which each part of the world was perfectly adapted to the other parts, with the idea of showing that the entire universe was one completely harmonious whole, in its basic design at any rate. This was conceived to be a benevolent order, because it was what made human life possible, and therefore it was called pronoia, the divine “provision” for creaturely existence within the world.

16. For a similar definition from Eusebius' own century, see Nemesius, of Emesa, De natura hominis xxxix (Migne P.G., XL, cols. 761b–764a)Google Scholar - Note the way both aspects of Fortune are brought out: “For fortune is defined as the coincidence and concurrence (symptōsinkai syndromēn) of two actions each of which arises from some particular purpose, to produce something quite different from what was intended by either, as when a man digs a ditch and finds a buried treasure. For one man buried the treasure, but not that the other man might find it. Nor did the other man dig for the purpose of finding treasure. The first intended, in his own time, to dig the treasure up again, while the second intended to dig a ditch. What fell out was something different from what either had intended.” (Trans. by W. Telfer, Library of Christian Classics).

17. Polybius ii. 4. 5, Loeb Classical Library edition, with translation by W. B. Paton (London, 1922–27).

18. For example, Herodotus i. 32; Aeschylus, , Agamemmon 928–929Google Scholar; Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics i. 10 (1100a–1101a).Google Scholar

19. Eus. D.E. v. introd. 21–22 (207bd).

20. See Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.

21. Sailust, Cat. i–ii.Google Scholar

22. Sallust, , Jug. i–iiGoogle Scholar, espee. i. 3 and ii. 3.

23. Eus. D.E. ii. 3. 141 (80b)—Isa. 65:11–12.Google Scholar

24. Aristotle, , Physics ii. 5Google Scholar. 197a—hē tychē aitia kata synbēbekos, “Fortune is an accidental cause.”

25. In Vol. VII of the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Moralia (where Plutarch's authorship of the piece is however questioned, p. 303), trans. P. H. De Lacy and B. Einarson (London, 1959), pp. 303–359. We also find here succinct descriptions of both aspects of Fortune. For Fortune as the unexpected we get the classic Stoic definition of it as “a cause unforeseen and not evident to human calculation” (572a). For Fortune as historical conjuncture we have a Platonic example in which we are told that “the outcome resulted from a concourse of causes (ek syndromēs tinos aitiōn), each of them having a different end” (572c).

26. For example, compare Herodotus' description of the physis of the crocodile (ii. 68—ton de krokodeilōn physis esti toiēde …) with the set of rhetorical questions about the physis of the ant drawn up by one of the Cappadocian fathers in the fourth century A.D., a generation after Eusebius—Basil, Letter XVI (Loeb Classical Library edition, text with trans. by Roy J. Deferrari, London, 1926–34), also occurring as a portion of Gregory, of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium x (Migne, P.G. XLV, 828).Google Scholar

27. Eus. Contra Hier. 6. The use of the words telē and telesiourgeitai shows that Eusebius was thinking of processes.

28. Eus. P. E. vii. 10. 1–3 (314bd)Google Scholar; De laud. 12. 5, cf. 11. 17.

29. Eus. P. E. vii. 10. 1–3 (314bd)Google Scholar

30. Eus. Contra Hier. 6. See De laud. 12. 5, duplicated in Theoph. i. 23.

31. See Plutarch, , “On Fate,” 568cd and 569d–570a.Google Scholar

32. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 29–30 (246d–247a)Google Scholar. See the use of “nature” and “accident” as technical terms in one section of Aristotle's On the Soul (i. 3. 406ab) where he is looking at other philosophers' ideas on the nature of the soul, before laying out his own position.

33. Eus. P. E. vi. 6. 39–40 (248bd)Google Scholar. See also P. E. vi. 6. 22Google Scholar (245c)—we must recognize that the “things happening to us (symbainonta hēmin)” have a nature, and therefore are taking place in accordance with the Logos-structure of the cosmos.

34. Eus. P. E. vi. 6. 22 (245c).Google Scholar

35. Eus. P. E. vi. 6. 39–40 (248bd).Google Scholar

36. Eus. P. E. vi. 6. 27–28 (246bd).Google Scholar

37. There were other varieties of providential intervention in history of course. Miracle was quite distinct in Eusebius' system from either the natural or the accidental In miraculous intervention God could be seen at work, “changing many even of the events which take place according to nature (tōn kata physin)” (Eus. P. E. vi. 6. 45 [249cd])Google Scholar. An example would be the story of the miracle which Bishop Narcissus is said to have performed when oil for the lamps ran out during the all-night Easter vigil. He sent for water and by his miraculous power “its nature (tēn physin) was changed in quality from water into oil” (H. E. vi. 9. 1–3)Google Scholar. In fact there are very few miracles in Eusebius' historical writings. Miracles were viewed very suspiciously by Eusebius' contemporaries as possible sorcery (goēteia). Even Jesus had to be defended by Eusebius against the charge of sorcery (D. E. iii. 5. 110 [125b])Google Scholar. The miraculous was of questionable intellectual respectability in the pagan historiographical tradition which Eusebius looked to in many fundamental ways as his guide. Some of the most famous classical historians (for example, Thucydides) rejected the concept of miracle completely, and even those who included miracle stories in their histories often betrayed a certain scepticism about them. But even more important, it seems that it did not appear to be credible even in that day and age to make major, consequential events of history turn on a miracle. Even pagan Graeco-Roman historians who told large numbers of miracle stories would not normally claim that a miracle had altered the basic course of history at any point in their narratives. Consequently, when the first Christian historians appeared, they could defend the possibility of miracles on the grounds of Christian piety, as Eusebius did, but it hardly helped them any in solving the basic problem, that of giving God real, omnicompetent control over the fundamental course of human history. Appeal to the miraculous has never been a good theological device for getting a continuous divine presence in human history. God is absent more often than he is present that way. Furthermore the concept of miracles in the simple sense (men walking on water, and so forth) does not get a church historian very far in an analysis, say, of the course of the controversy with the gnostics in the second century. So the appeal to miracles—one tempting way of trying to introduce God's hand into the naturalistic course of history—did not turn out to be fruitful as a main line of attack on the problem of God and history. Eusebius spends little time talking about the philosophical foundations of miracle, and we shall speak no more of it in this article.

38. Eus. P. E. vi. 6. 22 (245c).Google Scholar

39. Eus. P. E. vi. 6. 45 (249cd)Google Scholar—we see the pronoia (providence) of God “assigning their proper place (tēn … taxin) to external circumstances (tois ektos … symbainousi).”

40. The Logos is the archē or metaphysical first principle of the universe (Eus. P. E. vii. 12. 1–2 [320c]Google Scholar) because “it carries in itself … the invisible and incorporeal ideals (tas … ideas) of visible things” (D. E. v. 5. 10 [230c]Google Scholar). With Philo, Eusebius says that the Logos is the noetic world (ton noēton kosmon) which contains the archetypal Idea of the ideas (archetypos idea tōn ideōn). (P. E. xi. 24. 1–3 [546d–547a], cf. xi. 23. 3–6 [545bd]Google Scholar) Had it not been for the Logos, the universe would have remained as unorganized matter, without form or structure (amorphos te kai aneiđos). (De laud. 11. 12–13, see also 12. 8.Google Scholar) The Father's will then serves as a sort of matter and substance (hylē and ousia) out of which the universe is constituted (D.E. iv. 1. 7 [145c]).Google Scholar

41. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 45 (249cd).Google Scholar

42. Eus. V.C. i. 18.Google Scholar

43. Eus. V.C. 1. 23.Google Scholar

44. Eus. H.E. ii. 5. 6 and 6. 3.Google Scholar

45. Eus. H.E. iii. 5. 7.

46. Eus. H.E. v. pref. 1 and v. 2. 1.

47. Eus. H.E. v. pref. 1.

48. Sall. Cat. 8.

49. We must remember again the sharp distinction in Eusebius' system between miracle and accident.

50. Dodds, B. B., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

51. Eusebius held to the Origenist doctrine of pre-existence of souls: Armen. Chron. p. 38; P.E. vii. 18. 7–10 (332cd).Google Scholar

52. There is a good summary account of Plato's idea of the soul in Copleston, Frederick, A History of Phiosophy, Vol I. Greece and Rome. 2nd edition (Westminster, Maryland, 1959), ch. 21, §§1–3.Google Scholar

53. Eus. P.E. xiii. 16. 18 (700b).Google Scholar

54. Eus. P.E. xiii. 16. 1–2 (696bc)Google Scholar; Plato, , Timaeus 34c.Google Scholar

55. Eus. P.E. xiii. 16. 1 (696b)Google Scholar; see P.E. vii. 18. 6 (332bc).Google Scholar

56. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 31–38 (247b–248a).Google Scholar

57. See Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 27–28 (246bd).Google Scholar

58. Eus. P.E. vii. 18. 6 (332bc).Google Scholar

59. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 34–38 (247c–248a)Google Scholar. Unlike later Christianity which regarded suicide as an unforgivable sin, Eusebius held to the classical Roman view that suicide was the honorable course when trapped in a position that led to irreparable shame and disgrace. See Eus. V.C. i. 34.Google Scholar

60. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 31–33 (247bc).Google Scholar

61. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 43 (249ab).Google Scholar

62. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 41–42 (248d–249a).Google Scholar

63. Sallust interpreted his own youth in these terms (Cat. iii 3–5Google Scholar). He portrayed Catiline as an archetypal example of the corrupt man pulling others down into his own corruption (Cat. xiv. 4–5 and xvi. 1–2Google Scholar). Jugurtha started out as an outstandingly virtuous man but turned off down the roed to moral degeneration with help supplied by the influence of corrupt elements within Roman society (Jug. viii. 1—Romae omnia venalia esse, xiii. 5–8, xx. 1)Google Scholar. Marius also began as an exceptionally virtuous man but fell into vice in a slightly different way. Nevertheless the influence of a corrupt society was still at work, because it was the superbia of the nobility, as represented especially in Metellus, which broke Marius' virtuous self-restraint; (Jug. lxiv. 1–6).Google Scholar

64. See for example Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 26 (246a).Google Scholar

65. Eus. De laud. 12. 3–4Google Scholar. See also H.E. x. 4. 21–22Google Scholar, the metaphor in which the inmost recesses of the human soul are compared to the Holy of Holies, the innermost shrine of the Temple, whose mysteries were penetrated only by the High Priest of the Universe (and perhaps, partially, by a worthy Christian bishop, who might be given the right to look into another man's soul as part of his pastoral duties).

66. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 29–30 (246d–247a)Google Scholar—ho … tön eph' hēmin …dēmiourgos.

67. Originally this was a Stoic term, but it had become part of the general philosophical coinage by the fourth century.

68. Eus. Contra Hier. 42.

69. Eus. Contra Hier. 42; see P.E. vi. 6. 47–56 (249d–251d).Google Scholar

70. Eus. D.E. iv. 6. 6–10 (155c–156a).Google Scholar

71. See Frederick Copleston, Vol I, ch. 30, sect. 9 (p. 328 a).

72. Eus. Contra Hier. 41.

73. Compare Whitehead 's philosophy in our own century.

74. We have already seen earlier in this study three other ways that God's directing providence could enter the realm of history. Eusebius believed that God's providence controlled the course of history principally through the Logos (which laid down the general laws of nature and universal categories Within which all events had to take place) and by manipulation of the symbebēkota (the accidents of history). We noted parenthetically in a footnote that miracles represented a third way that God could act in history but that Eusebius made little use of the miraculous as an explanatory device in church history per se (in spite of his pious defense of the biblical miracles). Synergism is now a fourth way that the divine purpose can enter into and shape the course of human history, and it is a quite important mode to Eusebius.

75. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 45 (249cd).Google Scholar

76. The “Philippists”, associated With the name of Philip Melanchthon.

77. For a statement of the role the concept of synergism played in Clement, Origen and the Cappadocians, see Jaeger, Werner, Two Rediscovered Works of Ancient Christian Literature: Gregory of Nyssa and Macarius (Leiden, 1954), pp. 85–109.Google Scholar

78. Eus. H.E. iii. 24. 3, 37. 2–3Google Scholar; vi. 3. 6–7. D.E. iii. 7. 22–29 (138c–139d)Google Scholar. V.C. ii, 4Google Scholar; see also iii. 12.

79. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 45 (249cd).Google Scholar

80. Eus. P.E. vi. 6. 46 (249d).Google Scholar

81. For a typical Greek thinker, “will” meant deliberative decision-making by conscious weighing of options (as in the speeches in Thucydides). For Augustine, “will” pointed more to the spontaneous welling up of deep emotions in the heart, such as his own childhood love of Latin and hatred of Greek. This was why Augustine (unlike most Greek Christians) did not believe in much freedom for the will.

82. These historians—Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret of Cyrus, Evagrius Scholasticus—all wrote history in basically Eusebian, rather than Augustian fashion.