fights over the Trinity

On the one hand, we can obviously all join Gibbon in lamenting the harsh treatment dished out to “heretics” on the question of the Trinity. But I also think there are at least two problems with how Gibbon handles the problem.

First, he mixes together two complaints that are really distinct and ought to be treated as such: (1) his complaint about the lack of toleration, (2) his understated and insinuated complaint that the Trinity is too frivolous a topic to be worthy of such a disputes.

Whether you agree with (2) or not, you can probably at least think of intellectual dispute that you regard as not frivolous. Let’s imagine that there were persecutions in the year 2009 over the proper interpretation of quantum theory, or if anti-correlationists, instead of merely being excluded from this or that intellectual circle, were in fact burned at the stake or thrown into dungeons and tortured. I think we could certainly bemoan the lack of tolerance in those cases, without dismissing the disputes as frivolous.

But this leads me to another problem with Gibbon’s account… As unfortunate as it may be to read of Christian vs. Christian persecutions over such issues as the exact status of the Son, and as much as I would hate to live under the threat of persecution for my philosophical opinions, isn’t there also something enviable about a period that took its ideas that seriously?