A reflection for St Nicholastide: Santa Claus, the punchy saint


The image of Santa in his jolly red costume, long white beard flowing, and twinkle in his eye, is a familiar Christmas one. Though the image we have in our mind's eye owes more to advertising geniuses of Coca Cola than it does to history. Sant Claus is of course a shortening of Bishop of Myra Saint Nicolaus whose Feast we celebrate today, and he was far from the jolly fat man of modern iconography. (Just take a moment to straighten out his hat, and it turns into a Bishop's mitre!)


St Nicholas is of course rightly remembered today for his generosity, but also for his defence of Orthodoxy at the Council of Nicaea, which met in part to deal with the heresy of Arius. The arch-heretic Arius and his followers viewed Christ as a created being, higher than the angels and humankind, but created and thus not God. The orthodox Christian party on the other-hand argued that Christ is indeed both divine and human, of one substance with God the Father and co-eternal with him. Something we affirm to this day in the creeds.


The nature of heresy

It's worth noting at this juncture that heresy is not normally a case of being radical, rather of not being radical enough! The heretics often want to protect the idea of monotheism at the expense of Christ. Thus in the mind of the heretic Christ might be an adopted human son of God, contain just a divine spirit but not a human one, or in the case of the Arians, be a created being, exalted yes but ever fully divine. On the other hand, the orthodox party saw that to properly comprehend the nature of the Incarnation, that is of God in Jesus becoming human, they were going to have to radically reimagine the how they understood the nature of God, who is an undivided whole, yet three distinct persons. 


As you can see, it was the heretics, not the orthodox party who were being too conservative in their thinking!


Disagreement in the Church

Disagreement in the early Church was different to what it is today, it was far more heated than it is today because the very soul of the faith was at stake. (That is not to say that today's disagreements are not important, but they tend to focus on points of church order, not on the very substance of faith itself, what we might describe as second order debates.) So heated became the debate between the Arians and the orthodox party that St Nicholas rose up, and punched Arius in the face.


St Nicholas punches the Arch-heretic Arius


The reaction of St Nicholas to Arius reminds me of just how heated debates in church can be. 


Prior to Ordination I worshipped at Southwark Cathedral on London's South Bank. During my time there the Dean was Colin Slee, and outspoken man, with a larger than life character. His patron Saint, as he was fond of telling us was St Nicholas. (At his funeral in December 2010 we each received a gingerbread St Nicholas as a reminder both of Colin, but also of Saint Nick.)



Colin Slee and Nelson Mandela. 

A larger than life character, Fr Colin loved the limelight, but also loved Christ


St Nicholas was indeed a good patron for Fr Colin. He was an outspoken liberal Catholic, friend of Jeffrey John (who at the time had had to stand down as Bishop-elect of Reading because of issues surrounding sexuality), and his sermons were often more politics than theology, more hell-fire against those he disagreed with than peace and good will. It was said of his that 'there's none so illiberal than a liberal', and how right they were. 


And yet at the end Fr Colin did not die* hating his enemies, but knowing that they were praying for him, and we were told this at his funeral. (They may not have been reconciled, but they were at least showing compassion to one another.) His had been a life well lived, and that meant dying as well as living well. I'm not sure the same can be said of St Nicholas: some things are more important than that, and Arius's belief had it been adopted by the Church would have led the Church into gross and unforgiveable error. I doubt that they could ever be reconciled this side of eternity.


The question remains with us of what are our red lines? Are any of them worth holding back our forgiveness, or refusing to be reconciled with those whom we disagree?


Fr Colin's tomb in the Retro-Choir of Southwark Cathedral


* He died of Pancreatic Cancer.

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