Arianism

Arianism neither started nor ended with Arius. When he preached in the 320s, he, like so many of his contemporary Alexandrians, only followed Origen in subordinating the Son to the Father. In Alexandria, there was a strong emphasis on the absolute transcendence and perfection of God, and therefore the difference between that and the Jesus who was born, was tempted, suffered and died. Arius was unremarkable in that respect. He was only remarkable in drawing the logical conclusion: since God is indivisible, ingenerate, immutable, eternal and impassible, but the Son of God was begotten, born of a woman, was tempted, suffered and died, it follows that the Son of God is not fully God. The image of the Father, sure, but not sharing in his Godhead: that wouldn’t do justice to the Father’s Godhead.

The movement later characterised as ‘Arianism’ did not share all his teaching. In particular, the idea that the Son was begotten in time — that ‘there was when he was not’ — was a slur, and respectable Arians accepted that the Son is eternal. Some historians deny that there was any coherent movement worth calling ‘Arianism’, however, I think the creeds and councils of the fourth century show that there was a theological movement, self-consciously and unashamedly associated with Arius, which privileged God’s transcendence over the Godhead of the Son. So, although the name ‘Arianism’ is certainly intended to be derogatory, and there was surely no conspiracy to follow Arius as such, I think the term ‘Arianism’ is meaningful and has a referent.

Whether or not individual bishops completely agreed with Arius theology, very many were sympathetic to his pro-transcendence leaning. So, when he applied his considerable arts of persuasion to influential likeminded bishops like Eusebius of Nicomedia, he succeeded in establishing a considerable alliance behind him. What had already been a theological strain was forced by the heat of controversy to coalesce into a faction.

Arius and his supporters were set back temporarily by the Council of Nicaea in 325, when the emperor Constantine personally backed the homoousion under the impression this would resolve the dispute. But Nicaea lost influence very quickly, and the Eusebian faction gained ground. By 328, Arius himself had been reconciled into the church by Constantine. And through the 330s, Eusebius of Caesarea, another Arian sympathiser, repeatedly engineered the exile of key supporters of Nicaea, including Eustathius, Marcellus and Athanasius.

In this period, it may be fair to characterise Athanasius as standing more or less alone in fighting against Arianism. This changed somewhat in the 340s, when he gathered the support of the bishop of Rome and many other western bishops in his cause. He remained anathema in the East.

He still had a great deal of sympathy back in Egypt, however. The imperial administration had installed Gregory of Cappadocia, a stalwart Arian, in place of Athanasius as bishop of Alexandria from 339 until 346. Yet when Athanasius returned to reclaim his see in 346, he was greeted with, according to Gregory of Nazanius, ‘universal cheers …, nightlong festivities, the whole city gleaming with light, and both public and private feasting’. And when Arius was exiled again, and another Arian, George of Cappadocia, again installed in his place in 356, the results were riots. When George attempted to carry out one of his key roles as bishop — distributing money to widows — many widows had to be beaten to accept money from his hands. After five years, George was lynched in 361. The people of Alexandria were roundly behind their local hero, and did not take kindly to Rome imposing their agenda on them by force.

While Egypt held strong for Athanasius, the Arian party became ever more triumphant in the rest of the Empire. In 358 and 359, a series of fraught councils in East and West produced conflicting resolutions, and the emperor Constantius resolved in 360 to get the situation under control. He called a council to Constantinople and ensured an even result. These were the homoean creeds, asserting that while the Son is like the Father, we cannot and must not say anything about their ousia.

These creeds have subsequently been called the ‘Arian’ creeds. The reason for describing the homoean party as ‘Arian’ is, first, that they explicitly rejected Nicaea and the homoousion, and second, they failed to affirm the full Godhead of the Son, saying only that the Son is ‘like the Father’ and that he is ‘God from God’, pointedly omitting the Nicaean elaboration, ‘true God from true God’.

The councils of 358-360 were chaotic. Councils overrode councils. The emperor rejected creeds and forced his own ones through. Swathes of bishops were banished or deposed. Amidst all the chaos, Athanasius found himself making unexpected friends: the Cappadocian Fathers, including Basil ‘the Great’, while preferring ‘homoiousion’ or ‘like essence’ to his Nicene ‘homoousion’ or ‘same essence’, ended up on his side against the triumphant homoeans. The violence of those councils bred hostility, and with a common grudge, a coalition had suddenly formed against the homoeans and around Nicaea.

Perhaps Constantius might have been able to force his way, but he died in only 361. His replacement was Julian. While Julian’s reign was short, he brought about a sharp change in direction.

Julian, ‘the Apostate’, had converted from Christianity to paganism, and during his reign, the alliance between Church and Empire was briefly severed. In a deliberate attempt to sow chaos, he refused to mediate on behalf of the Church and allowed all banished bishops to return from exile. At one time, there were five competing bishops all in Antioch.

One result of this severance was that bishops were free to form their own alliances and make their own case. As a result, the Nicene alliance emerged from Julian’s brief reign decisively stronger.

The Nicene alliance would have to wait until 379 for a sympathetic emperor. But once Theodosius acceded, the Nicene victory was absolute and irreversible. He decreed that all clergy had to agree to the Nicene Creed, and called a council to amend and affirm the Creed.

This did not mean that Arianism died out. Eusebius of Nicomedia had sponsored a mission to the Goths, and, being outside of the emperor’s grasp, they held strong to their Arian convictions for centuries after. Indeed, when the Goths later took possession of large parts of the Western Empire, Arians may well have significantly outnumbered Nicenes in the West, long after the matter was settled within the Empire. And certain theologies today, which seek to reduce Jesus to a mere emanation from or pointer towards a transcendent God, or a religious genius or a spiritual guru, rather than the real presence of God, are Arian in so far as they seek to protect the transcendence of God at the cost of his choice to dwell with us in Jesus Christ.

So it’s worth considering what’s lost in the difference between the Nicene faith which is now indisputably Christian orthodoxy, and Arianism in all its forms. If a preacher today elides away Jesus’ full Godhead, what does it matter?

Three problems arise in consequence. One is that, if Jesus is not true God, then his miracles are meaningless. This is particularly problematic for those who want to read the Gospels as mere myth without affirming the truth of any of its particular historical content. If Jesus is not true God, then the miracles lose their mythic function. If Jesus is not true God, then a story about him healing someone far away has nothing to do with me. But if Jesus is true God, if he is Emmanuel, then his healings have the power to function as a mythic sign, pointing to something about God’s plans to redeem the world. For his miracles to work as myth, whether or not they are true history, Jesus must be true God.

Secondly, if Jesus is not true God, then what kind of salvation can he offer? If a mere man can save us from our sin, what does that mean about sin? If we can be saved by a religious genius, a guru, someone specially in-touch with the spiritual reality, then salvation is no more than fixing up the material world. How’s that going, two thousand years on? Has the Church made any progress in translating Jesus’ teaching into universal peace? No doubt the Church has done some good — but it doesn’t seem credible that the Church is about to fix the world’s problems by following Jesus’ self-help agenda. In contrast, if Jesus is God, we can affirm the biblical notion that sin is a crime against God, which separates us from him. Since it is a crime against God, only God can bring about reconciliation. And since God has proven that he is bringing about that reconciliation in Jesus Christ, we can hold strong to our trust in his promise not simply to fix the world according to its own rules — for that would be impossible — but to change the rules in a second creation.

Finally, if Jesus is not true God, then we have no way of knowing anything at all about his relationship to God. If he is not true God, then all we can see in Jesus is a man. We can guess at some super-spiritual connection if we like, seeing his words, deeds and miracles as evidence of some semi-divine status. But that would be pure guesswork, in other words, wishful thinking, in other words, fantasy. Athanasius called it ‘mania’: pulling wild theological claims out of your own head with no substantial basis in reality. But if Jesus is true God, and God gives humans the gift of the Holy Spirit to recognise that Godhead, then we can know that Jesus is true God by seeing him for what he is. This is not fantasising without a grounding in reality, this is the most basic form of knowing: seeing and believing. If Jesus is not God, then Christian faith is fantasy, but if Jesus is true God, then Christian faith can stand firm.

With Arius, we have a religion that reduces the Gospels to fairy stories with no relevance for you or me, a religion that reduces the Church to a struggling self-help movement, and a religion that rests on fantasy. But if we stick to Nicene orthodoxy, instead, we have a religion that reads the Gospels as true myth, real history profused with life-changing theology; a religion that can have hope for the world as still needing God’s work of reconciliation to be perfected, yet containing within it anticipations of that future, including in the Church; and a religion that rests on true faith, certain knowledge derived not from wishful thinking but encountering the very essence of God in Jesus Christ.