A Pneumatomachian tract, unattributed — the Macedonian party, no longer extant
The Macedonian (Pneumatomachian) party
The controversy that made the Nicene Creed grow a third paragraph, at Constantinople in 381.
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Low. Nothing under Macedonius’ own name survives. His party’s position is known only from the two men who wrote whole books answering it.
Nothing of Macedonius’s own writing survives; the Pneumatomachian position is reconstructed from Basil, On the Holy Spirit, and Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 31 (NPNF2 vols. 8 and 7, public domain).
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Merely a Breath | Theology Proper | Argument | 50 | 100% | 15 |
| 1 | Silence | Christology | Type shift | — | — | 10 |
| 10 | Red Herring | Lie | Status | — | 50% | 15 |
How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.
Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.
“He gave him no answer, not even one word, so that the governor marveled greatly.”
Matthew 27:14 (WEB); cf. Isaiah 53:7.
In the gameSay nothing. Convinces no one — but the next argument lands harder. Raises the user’s Contend, after the pattern of Christ’s silence before his accusers.
The specific move or chapter of Scripture that cuts through this one, and why. The number is how much harder it hits than usual — ×4 is four times the normal force.
Nicaea said almost nothing about the Holy Spirit: “And in the Holy Spirit.” Fifty-six years later the Pneumatomachi, the Spirit-fighters, said the Spirit was a creature. So a hundred and fifty bishops met in Constantinople and finished the sentence: the Spirit is the Lord and Giver of life, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified. You do not worship a creature.
The First Council of Constantinople, 381, in the Church of Hagia Irene; the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, art. 3 (see Percival, NPNF² 14).
Basil answered this exact line, in these words, at the council that settled it.
The Spirit-fighters said of the Holy Spirit: “He is not a slave, it is said; not a master, but free.” Basil answered with one distinction. Among people, some are masters and some are servants by circumstance, not by nature. But everything in creation serves something. So there are only two places to stand: with creation, serving, or above it, ruling. The Spirit is not a creature, so he rules with the Father and the Son.
See Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 20.51 (trans. Blomfield Jackson, NPNF² 8, public domain).