Peccatrix Ecclesia: Hilary of Poitiers's De Mysteriis As Biblical Ecclesiology

Peccatrix Ecclesia: Hilary of Poitiers's De Mysteriis as Biblical Ecclesiology Alex Fogleman Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 28, Number 1, Spring 2020, pp. 33-59 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2020.0001 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/750935 [ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] Peccatrix Ecclesia: Hilary of Poitiers’s De Mysteriis as Biblical Ecclesiology ALEX FOGLEMAN This article considers Hilary of Poitiers’s De mysteriis as an example of patristic reflection on the nature of the church. While it has often been recognized as an exegetical work, this treatise also provides a rare account of the biblical foundations of the church and its relation to Christ. Throughout the work, Hilary consistently relates how the Old Testament ought to be read as containing the mystery of Christ and the church. In particular, he highlights the church’s sinful-yet-graced relation to Christ. The church is a sinful church—what Hilary calls a peccatrix ecclesia—that becomes sanctified through the church’s bond with Christ the sinless bridegroom. This article furthermore situates Hilary’s treatise in the context of pro-Nicene responses to the councils of Ariminum and Seleucia in 359 and the decisions made at the council of Alexandria in 362. Hilary’s moderate position towards bishops who “lapsed” by subscribing to the Homoian creed at Ariminum—against the more rigorist position of someone like Lucifer of Cagliari—accords with the sober reflections on the sinful makeup of the church in the De mysteriis. INTRODUCTION: WRITING THE CHURCH IN THE PATRISTIC AGE To refer to ecclesiology in the early church is largely an exercise in anach- ronism. The church as a distinct subject of theological reflection was rare until much later—one could safely say not until the sixteenth century, when the notion of a so-called true church was thrown into sharp relief.1 Much I would like to thank Daniel H. Williams and the two reviewers at JECS for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. 1. Mark Edwards, “Early Ecclesiology in the West,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology, ed. Paul Avis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 164. M. A. Fahey, Journal of Early Christian Studies 28:1, 33–59 © 2020 Johns Hopkins University Press 34 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES more pressing for the majority of early Christians in the fourth century was the person of Christ, and specifically how the divine nature of the Son was to be related to the divinity of the Father. That is not to say that early Christians were unreflective or uninterested in the church, especially in North Africa.2 However, the kind of ecclesial reflection that occurred in early Christianity was occasional, typically emerging in response to the kinds of separatist or rigorist movements that sought a pure church in response to what was seen as moral failure. Cyprian’s writings against the Novationists come quickly to mind, as do Augustine’s writings against the Donatists. Hilary of Poitiers’s De mysteriis shows signs of having been forged in similar circumstances as other rigorist controversies, as I will demonstrate below, but it is also somewhat unique in its sustained, concise attempt to establish the biblical foundations of the church—a product of its catechetical rather than more strictly polemical intent.3 In this libellus,4 written in the early 360s as an exegetical handbook for Gallican catechesis, Hilary consistently relates how the Old Testament ought to be read as containing the mystery of Christ and the church. His allegorical readings of the select biblical passages are rarely novel, but the way in which he arranges this material into a thematic unity, developing an exegetical rule out of the Christ-church relationship, makes this work about as close as one could get to a treatise on the church. In particular, one of the key ecclesial motifs Hilary presents is the church’s graced relation to Christ. The church is a sinful church—what Hilary would be so bold as to call a peccatrix ecclesia—that is sanctified through the church’s bond with the sinless bridegroom.5 The church is the “younger brother,” as Jacob was “Augustine’s Ecclesiology Revisited,” in Augustine: From Rhetor to Theologian, ed. J. McWilliam (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992), 173, comments: for Augustine “as with other theologians up to Thomas Aquinas and beyond, separate theological treatises de natura ecclesiae sanctae were not envisaged.” 2. J. Patout Burns Jr. and Robin M. Jensen, Christianity in Roman Africa: The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), xlvi–xlviii, argue that Latin-speaking African theology constitutes an alternative school to Alex- andrian theology following Origen: “Whereas those Greeks focused their concern with salvation on the nature of the Godhead and its manifestation in Christ, these Latins worried about the adequacy of human organization and ministers to mediate the divine life . African theology focused on the role of the church as the medium of Christ’s salvific work and therefore on the church’s holiness and the efficacy of its rituals.” 3. For references to this text, I have used Traité des mystères, ed. Jean-Paul Brisson, SC 19 bis. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967). 4. Myst. 1.1 (SC 19:72). 5. Myst. 2.9 (SC 19:154). FOGLEMAN / PECCATRIX ECCLESIA 35 to Esau, who has in a dramatic reversal been granted the older brother’s birthright.6 Through the church’s union with Christ and generation of faithful believers, its confession of faith in the incarnate Word, and its election and Spirit-indwelled sacramental life, the church comes to realize its derivative and dependent holiness. The themes of the church’s holiness and sinfulness would have been par- ticularly germane given the context in which Hilary was writing in the 360s. In particular, the aftermath of the councils of Ariminum and Seleucia in 359 and the decisions made at the council of Alexandria in response (362) constituted something of a rigorist controversy in the early 360s among pro-Nicene bishops, which would have warranted the kind of reflection on the nature of the church found in Hilary’s De mysteriis. If Hilary is seen to take a more moderate position towards pro-Nicene bishops who “lapsed” by signing off on the Homoian Dated Creed at Ariminum—against the more rigorist position of someone like Lucifer of Cagliari—then we have a likely context to account for Hilary’s sober account of the sinful makeup of the church. I do not claim that the rigorist controversy—if it indeed can be called a controversy—was the immediate or even primary reason for the writing of this text. Its more direct context seems to be the simple exposition of the biblical narrative in catechetical preaching. Nonethe- less, the ecclesial themes developed in the De mysteriis are surprisingly apt given these tumultuous circumstances. The relationship between this treatise and the pro-Nicene controversies thus warrants further reflection. Studies of Hilary’s ecclesiology are not lacking. Yet most have sought to glean Hilary’s thoughts about the church from across the spectrum of his writings, and so to establish a more abstract account of Hilary’s doctrine of the church.7 My aim here is much less ambitious, but hopefully equally instructive. Attending to the De mysteriis as a stand-alone text will enable a better view of how Hilary would have narrated an ecclesial identity for a more general, catechetical audience in 360s Gaul. This was certainly 6. Myst. 1.20–26 (SC 19:110–20). 7. See, for example, Albert Charlier, “L’Eglise corpus du Christ chez saint Hilaire de Poitiers,” ETL 41 (1965): 451–77; Richard Foley, “The Ecclesiology of Hilary of Poitiers” (PhD Diss., Harvard University, 1968); Michael Figura, Das Kirchenverständ nis des Hilarius von Poitiers (Freiberg: Herder, 1984); Guillermo Bruno Colautti, Las figuras eclesiológicas en San Hilario de Poitiers (Rome: Pontificia Universita Gregori- ana, 2005). Foley’s dissertation does prima facie seem to expound Hilary’s De mys teriis as an ecclesiological text, but methodologically he is more concerned to find parallel emphases in Hilary’s other writings, such as the De Trinitate, Tractatus super Psalmos, and In Matthaeum, rather than expound the De mysteriis itself. 36 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES not everything he had to say about the nature and identity of the church, or even the church’s relationship to Christ, but it does give us important insight into his emphases for this particular time, place, and purpose. REBUILDING A FRAGMENTED CHURCH: 360S GAUL AND THE CONTEXT OF THE DE MYSTERIIS Most scholars agree that the De mysteriis was written sometime in the early to mid-360s, after Hilary returned from his exile in Phrygia from roughly 356 to 360.8 We know relatively little about Hilary’s activity during the post-exilic phase, which is surprising given that this was precisely when Hilary’s anti-Arian campaign, along with Eusebius of Vercelli, did so much to dismantle Homoian strongholds in the West.9 Western knowledge of the Nicene controversies was mostly negligent throughout the first half of the fourth century, but had become much stronger by the late 350s leading up to the councils of Ariminum (in the West) and Seleucia (in the East) in 359. It was the aftermath of these councils that would send the churches in Italy, Gaul, and Spain into shock for the next several years, and would eventually serve as the impetus for a more cohesive pro-Nicene position.

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