Arianism

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Saint Jerome, looking back on the double council of Rimini and Seleucia in 359, claimed that the world "awoke with a groan to find itself Arian." Arianism is the doctrine named after Arius, a Christian presbyter who preached and studied in Alexandria, Egypt. It teaches that Jesus was created by God and is therefore distinct from God. Most mainstream branches of Christianity today regard it as heretical.

  Yet the argument it set off reached far beyond a lecture hall. Across the 4th century it pulled in simple believers, priests, monks, bishops, emperors and members of Rome's imperial family.

  Why did a question about the Son and the Father grip so many people? What did Arius actually say, and what was he afraid of? How did Germanic warlords come to follow his teaching? And why does his name still cling to churches that never called themselves Arian?

  30251621

• 2. What Arius Taught

  ›

  Arius is quoted as writing: "If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son was not." That one sentence carries the whole disagreement. In this view, the Son of God was begotten by the Father before time began. He did not exist forever alongside the Father. He began to exist, yet he did so outside of time.

  The argument rested on a simple premise. Only God is independent in his existence, so the Son, who depends on the Father, must be called a creature. Arians posed a pointed question to defend this: did God beget Jesus willingly or unwillingly? Either answer, they said, shows that Jesus exists only because God wants him to.

  For scripture, they leaned on a line from the Book of Proverbs: "The Lord created me at the beginning of his work." They read it as the creation of the Son. He became the very first and most perfect of God's creatures, called "God" only by the Father's permission and power. The Logos, an inner attribute of God associated with wisdom, served as the medium through which the world was made.

  Arius himself sounded gentler than his critics did. In a letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, he insisted that the Son was fully God, the only-Begotten, unchangeable, and subsisting in will and intention before the ages. Even so, little of his own writing survives except in quotations that his opponents selected for polemical purposes.

  A harsher version of the idea came later. Aëtius of Antioch and his disciple Eunomius of Cyzicus pushed it to the point of asserting a total dissimilarity between Son and Father, a position called anomoean, meaning "dissimilar."

  353253016

• 3. Arius's Fears

  ›

  Rowan Williams, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote in his book Arius: Heresy and Tradition that "Arius's primary motivation was not to 'demote' the Son, but to protect the absolute uniqueness and transcendence of the Father as the sole source of all things." Williams called him an arch-conservative, a lonely and somewhat pedantic figure clinging to a theological style that was fast becoming obsolete.

  The word that alarmed Arius most was homoousios, meaning "of the same substance." He rejected it because it seemed to imply that the Father's essence had been broken off like gold from a bar. The word also had a troubled past. Paul of Samosata had used it, and the Synod of Antioch, which met in the years 264-269, condemned him. In gnostic thought, the same word explained emanations, as though divine substance were a physical dough that could be pulled into pieces.

  For Arius, the term "God" properly applied to the Father alone, because only the Father was unbegotten. To call the Son "true God" in exactly the same sense meant introducing two first principles. That, he feared, was pagan polytheism. So he taught three hypostases, or distinct realities, as a way to protect the Father's unique status.

  The Nicene side heard something else. They saw his explanations as implying relations and begetting in a temporal manner, and Arius in turn saw their single hypostasis as a radical innovation.

  Some theologians of the 19th century judged the gap between Arius and his rivals, Alexander and Athanasius, to be very small. In their view, all three stood far from the doctrine of the Trinity that developed later.

  336412926

• 4. Before Arius

  ›

  Tertullian and Justin Martyr, both counted within later orthodoxy, denied that the Son was eternally generated. They viewed him as begotten in time, and Tertullian is considered a pre-Arian. Origen was accused of Arianism for calling the Son a "second God." Patriarch Dionysius of Alexandria was denounced at Rome for saying that the Son is a work and creature of God. Yet Origen's subordinationism is not identical to Arianism, and it is generally seen as closer to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan view.

  Arius had a direct teacher. He studied under Lucian of Antioch at Lucian's private academy in Antioch, and he inherited from him a modified form of the teachings of Paul of Samosata. The wider air of the Eastern Roman Empire mattered too. The influence of the One in Neoplatonism was widespread there, and it probably shaped Arius, though nobody can say with certainty which traditions formed his thought.

  That background helps explain how enormous the quarrel became. The historians Guido M. Berndt and Roland Steinacher state that Arius's beliefs were "not especially unusual" to a huge number of orthodox clergy. His theology drew widespread sympathy, so it could not be dismissed as the quirk of one individual.

  Everett Ferguson adds a sobering note about ordinary believers: "The great majority of Christians had no clear views about the nature of the Trinity and they did not understand what was at stake in the issues that surrounded it."

  The first formal sign that this sympathy had limits came in 321, when a synod at Alexandria denounced Arius for a heterodox view of Jesus and God the Father.

  14292632

• 5. Council at Nicaea

  ›

  For the Emperor Constantine, the points in dispute were minor theological matters standing between him and a united Empire. For the theologians, the same points were a matter of salvation. In 325 he summoned the First Council of Nicaea, attended by roughly 300 bishops. Arius was not a bishop, so he could not sit among them. Eusebius of Nicomedia spoke for him and for the position he represented.

  The council condemned Arius's doctrine and produced the original Nicene Creed. Its key term was homoousios, declaring Jesus Christ true God, co-eternal and consubstantial with God the Father. Only two of the bishops present refused to sign.

  Punishment followed. Constantine is believed to have exiled Arius, the deacon Euzoios, and the Libyan bishops Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais. Two more bishops, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea, signed the creed but would not join in condemning Arius, and they were exiled as well. The emperor also ordered every copy of the Thalia, the book where Arius set out his teachings, to be burned. One decree warned that anyone found hiding a writing by Arius and failing to destroy it immediately would face the penalty of death.

  Constantine soon softened. Eusebius of Nicomedia was a protégé of the emperor's sister, and he and Theognis were allowed to return once they signed an ambiguous statement of faith. Together with other friends of Arius, they worked for his rehabilitation.

  At the First Synod of Tyre in 335, attended by 310 bishops, they turned on Athanasius, who was now bishop of Alexandria. The charges against him included murder, illegal taxation, sorcery and treason. Constantine banished him, since he saw Athanasius as an obstacle to reconciliation, and Athanasius was exiled to Trier, in modern Germany.

  The Synod of Jerusalem, acting under Constantine's direction, readmitted Arius to communion in 336. Arius died on the way to the event in Constantinople, and some scholars suggest that his opponents poisoned him. Constantine, who had been a catechumen for much of his adult life, accepted baptism on his deathbed from Eusebius of Nicomedia. Athanasius did not return to Alexandria until 346.

  403264951

• 6. Emperors and Creeds

  ›

  Constantine's son Constantius II took the eastern half of the empire after 337, and he actively encouraged the Arians. His adviser was Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was made bishop of Constantinople. In 355, Constantius became sole Roman emperor and extended his pro-Arian policy to the western provinces, often using force. He exiled Pope Liberius and installed Antipope Felix II. Athanasius fled to Rome.

  The Third Council of Sirmium in 357 marked the high point of Arianism. Its Second Sirmium Confession declared both homoousios and homoiousios, meaning "of similar substance," to be unbiblical, and it held that the Father is greater than the Son. Later generations called it the Blasphemy of Sirmium. Liberius was forced to sign the Arian Creed of Sirmium of 357, although the accompanying letter says he agreed willingly.

  Opponents of the Nicene Creed soon split into three camps. The first preferred homoiousios, rejected Arius, and accepted the equality of the persons of the Trinity. Because of this middle position, their enemies called them "Semi-Arians." Epiphanius of Salamis applied the label to the party of Basil of Ancyra in 358, though the scholar Kelly considers that unfair.

  The second group avoided naming Arius but largely followed him, describing the Son as like (homoios) the Father. The third group openly invoked Arius and called the Son unlike (anhomoios) the Father. Constantius wavered between the first two and persecuted the third harshly.

  The search for a formula produced synods at Serdica in 343, Sirmium in 358, and Rimini and Seleucia in 359, plus no fewer than fourteen creed formulas between 340 and 360. The pagan observer Ammianus Marcellinus remarked sarcastically: "The highways were covered with galloping bishops."

  Constantius died in 361, and his successor Julian, a devotee of Rome's pagan gods, announced that he would favor no church faction and let all exiled bishops come home. The emperor Valens later revived the pro-Homoian policy, exiling bishops and often using force. Saint Hilary of Poitiers was among those sent to the eastern provinces, and shared hardship drew western Nicene supporters and eastern Semi-Arians closer together.

  55195325

• 7. The Eastern Defeat

  ›

  Valens died at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, and Theodosius I, who adhered to the Nicene Creed, succeeded him. Theodosius's wife, Saint Flacilla, was instrumental in his campaign to end Arianism. He had just been baptized by bishop Acholius of Thessalonica during a severe illness, as was common in the early Christian world.

  Two days after arriving in Constantinople on the 24th of November 380, Theodosius expelled the Arian bishop Demophilus. He handed the city's churches to Gregory of Nazianzus, leader of the rather small Nicene community there. The move provoked rioting. An edict from Theodosius and Gratian ordered all their subjects to profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria, or be handed over for punishment.

  In 381, at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, a group of mainly Eastern bishops accepted a revised Nicene Creed. It was supplemented in regard to the Holy Spirit and altered in other places. Arius was condemned once more at this gathering of 150 bishops, even though much of the Eastern hierarchy had opposed the Nicene Creed in the decades before.

  This is generally seen as the end of the Trinitarian dispute and of Arianism among the Roman, non-Germanic peoples. The Goths, however, were another matter.

  5952636260

• 8. Germanic Kingdoms

  ›

  Ulfilas, who lived from about 311 to 383, was ordained by the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia and sent as a missionary to the Gothic tribes. Constantius II favored the mission for political reasons. Ulfilas translated the Bible into the Gothic language, and the Visigoths converted to Arian Christianity in 376 through his work.

  His beliefs are known from a letter by Auxentius of Durostorum, which closes with Ulfilas's own creed. It names the Father, the "unbegotten" Almighty, as the only true God, and calls the Son the "only-begotten god." The Holy Spirit is the illuminating and sanctifying power of God, and it is subject and obedient to the Son.

  The Goths passed the faith to the Vandals, Langobards, Svevi and Burgundians. When these peoples entered the western provinces and founded kingdoms, most were Arian Christians. The Vandals actively spread Arianism in North Africa. Odoacer, the first King of Italy, was counted among the Arians as well.

  The fifth-century kingdoms differed from the fourth-century struggles. Arian and Nicene churches existed side by side with parallel hierarchies, each serving different believers. The Germanic elites were Arian, while the Romance-majority population was Nicene. The Arian tribes were generally tolerant toward Nicene Christians and other religious minorities, including the Jews.

  The turn away from Arianism came king by king. Clovis I of the Franks led the way in 496. Reccared I of the Visigoths followed, and Visigothic Spain formally converted at the Third Council of Toledo in 589. Aripert I of the Lombards joined in 653. The Franks, the Anglo-Saxons and Æthelberht of Kent are a separate case, since they entered the Western Roman Empire as pagans.

  The Vandals and Ostrogoths never converted as peoples. Emperor Justinian I's armies dispersed the Vandals in the war of 533-534. After their defeat at the Battle of Mons Lactarius in 553, the Ostrogoths went north and resettled in south Austria. Grimoald, King of the Lombards from 662 to 671, and his young son Garibald, who ruled in 671, were the last Arian kings in Europe.

  John Assheton, the first recorded English antitrinitarian, was forced to recant before Thomas Cranmer in 1548. The Protestant Reformation, which began in 1517, had quickly revived such questions. At the Anabaptist Council of Venice in 1550, Italian reformers committed to the views of Michael Servetus. John Calvin ordered Servetus burned alive in 1553. Giorgio Biandrata and others carried his ideas into Poland and Transylvania.

  In Poland, the antitrinitarian wing broke from the Calvinist majority and formed the Polish Brethren, commonly called "Arians." The name was inaccurate. These Socinians went further than Arius, to the position of Photinus. Early Unitarians such as John Biddle also received the label, though they denied that Christ pre-existed and were largely Socinians too.

  In 1683, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, lay dying in Amsterdam after being driven into exile by his opposition to King Charles II. He told the minister Robert Ferguson that he was an Arian. In 18th-century Britain, the dominant trend, particularly in Latitudinarianism, leaned toward Arianism. Samuel Clarke, Benjamin Hoadly, William Whiston and Isaac Newton are all associated with it.

  Jehovah's Witnesses are often called modern-day Arians, usually by their opponents, and they deny the claim. They do share the identification of the Father as the only true God and of Jesus as God's first creation. They also deny the personhood of the Holy Spirit. Iglesia ni Cristo and groups such as the Christadelphians are better described as Socinian, because they deny Christ's preexistence.

  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been compared with Arianism since 1846. The differences are large. Latter-day Saint theology teaches that God has a tangible body and that humans can become gods, and Arianism denies both.

  One claim the source rejects is that Islam grew out of Arianism. It traces to John of Damascus, who claimed that Muhammad had met an Arian monk. The two faiths differ in core ways, and Arianism had no clear influence on Islam.

  The Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East and almost all historic Protestant churches continue to reject Arian teaching.

  6434677266