20
May 325 A.D. Council
of Nicea Convenes & Arius.
An heresiarch, born about A.D.รบ died 336. He is said to
have been a Libyan by descent. His father's name is given as Ammonius. In 306,
Arius, who had learnt his religious views from Lucian, the presbyter of
Antioch, and afterwards the martyr, took
sides with Meletius, an Egyptian schismatic,
against Peter, Bishop of Alexandria. But
a reconciliation followed, and Peter ordained Arius
deacon. Further disputes led the Bishop to excommunicate his
restless churchman, who, however, gained the friendship of Achillas, Peter's
successor, was made presbyter by him in 313, and had the charge of a
well-known district in Alexandria called Baucalis. This entitled Arius to
expound the Scriptures officially, and he exercised much influence when, in
318, his quarrel with Bishop Alexander broke out over the fundamental truth of Our Lord's
divine Sonship and substance. (See ARIANISM.)
While many Syrian prelates followed the innovator, he was condemned
at Alexandria in 321 by his diocesan in a
synod of nearly one hundred Egyptian and Libyan
bishops. Deprived and excommunicated, the
heresiarch fled to Palestine. He addressed a thoroughly unsound statement of
principles to Eusebius of Nicomedia, who yet became his lifelong
champion and who had won the esteem of Constantine by his worldly
accomplishments. In his house the proscribed man, always a ready writer, composed
in verse and prose a defence of his position which he termed
"Thalia". A few fragments of it survive. He is also said to have
published songs for sailors, millers, and travellers, in which his creed was
illustrated. Tall above the common, thin, ascetical, and severe, he has been
depicted in lively colours by Epiphanius (Heresies, 69, 3); but his moral
character was never impeached except doubtfully of ambition by
Theodoret. He must have been of great age when, after fruitless negotiations
and a visit to Egypt, he appeared in 325 at Nicaea, where the
confession of faith which he presented was torn in pieces.
With his writings and followers he underwent the anathemas
subscribed by more than 300 bishops. He
was banished into Illyricum. Two prelates
shared his fate, Tehonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais. His books were
burnt. The Arians, joined by their old Meletian friends,
created troubles in Alexandria. Eusebius
persuaded Constantine to recall the exile by indulgent letters in 328; and the
emperor not only permitted his return to Alexandria in 331, but ordered Athanasius to
reconcile him with the Church. On
the saint's refusal more disturbance ensued. The
packed and partisan Synod of Tyre
deposed Athanasius on a series of futile charges
in 335. Catholics were now persecuted;
Arius had an interview with Constantine and submitted a creed which the emperor
judged to be orthodox. By imperial rescript Arius required
Alexander of Constantinople to give him Communion; but the stroke of Providence
defeated an attempt which Catholics
looked upon as sacrilege. The heresiarch died suddenly, and was buried by his
own people. He had winning manners, an evasive style, and a disputatious
temper. But in the controversy which is called after his name, Arius counted
only at the beginning. He did not represent the tradition of Alexandria but
the topical subtleties of Antioch. Hence, his disappearance from the scene
neither stayed the combatants nor ended the quarrel which he had rashly
provoked. A party-theologian, he exhibited no features of genius; and he was
the product, not the founder, of a school.
20
May 325 A.D. Council
of Nicea Convenes, Arius, & Arianism (and many-a-good mainline liberal too).
A heresy which arose in the
fourth century, and denied the Divinity of Jesus Christ.
Doctrine
First among
the doctrinal disputes which
troubled Christians after Constantine had
recognized the Church in A.D. 313, and the
parent of many more during some three centuries, Arianism occupies a large
place in ecclesiastical
history.
It is not a modern form of unbelief, and therefore will appear strange in
modern eyes. But we shall better grasp its meaning if we term it an Eastern
attempt to rationalize the creed by stripping it of mystery so far as the
relation of Christ to God was concerned. In the New Testament and in Church teaching
Jesus
of Nazareth
appears as the Son of
God.
This name He took to Himself (Matthew 11:27; John 10:36), while the Fourth Gospel declares Him to be the
Word (Logos), Who in the beginning was with God and was God, by Whom all things
were made. A similar doctrine is laid down by St. Paul, in his undoubtedly
genuine Epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians. It is
reiterated in the Letters of Ignatius, and accounts for
Pliny's observation that Christians in their assemblies
chanted a hymn to Christ as God. But the question how
the Son was related to the Father (Himself acknowledged on all hands to be the
one Supreme
Deity),
gave rise, between the years A.D. 60 and 200, to a number of Theosophic systems, called
generally Gnosticism, and having for their
authors Basilides, Valentinus, Tatian, and other Greek
speculators. Though all of these visited Rome, they had no following
in the West, which remained free from controversies of an abstract nature, and
was faithful to the creed of its baptism. Intellectual centres
were chiefly Alexandria and Antioch, Egyptian or Syrian, and
speculation was carried on in Greek. The Roman Church held steadfastly by
tradition. Under these circumstances, when Gnostic schools had passed away with
their "conjugations" of Divine powers, and "emanations"
from the Supreme unknowable God (the "Deep"
and the "Silence") all speculation was thrown into the form of an
inquiry touching the "likeness" of the Son to His Father and
"sameness" of His Essence. Catholics had always maintained
that Christ was truly the Son, and
truly God. They worshipped Him
with divine honours; they would never consent to separate Him, in idea or reality, from the
Father, Whose Word, Reason, Mind, He was, and in Whose Heart He abode from eternity. But the technical
terms of doctrine were not fully
defined; and even in Greek words like essence (ousia), substance (hypostasis), nature (physis), person (hyposopon) bore a variety of
meanings drawn from the pre-Christian sects of philosophers, which could not but
entail misunderstandings until they were cleared up. The adaptation of a
vocabulary employed by Plato and Aristotle to Christian truth was a matter of time;
it could not be done in a day; and when accomplished for the Greek it had to be
undertaken for the Latin, which did not lend itself readily to necessary yet subtle
distinctions. That disputes should spring up even among the orthodox who all held one faith, was inevitable. And
of these wranglings the rationalist would take advantage
in order to substitute for the ancient creed his own inventions. The drift of
all he advanced was this: to deny that in any true sense God could have a Son; as Mohammed tersely said
afterwards, "God neither begets, nor is
He begotten" (Koran, 112). We have learned
to call that denial Unitarianism. It was the ultimate
scope of Arian opposition to what Christians had always believed.
But the Arian, though he did not come straight down from the Gnostic, pursued a line of
argument and taught a view which the speculations of the Gnostic had made familiar. He
described the Son as a second, or inferior God, standing midway
between the First Cause and creatures; as Himself made out of nothing, yet as
making all things else; as existing before the worlds of the ages; and as
arrayed in all divine perfections except the one which was their stay and
foundation. God alone was without
beginning, unoriginate; the Son was originated, and once had not existed. For
all that has origin must begin to be.
Such is the
genuine doctrine of Arius. Using Greek
terms, it denies that the Son is of one essence, nature, or substance with God; He is not
consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father, and
therefore not like Him, or equal in dignity, or co-eternal, or within the real
sphere of Deity. The Logos which St. John exalts is an attribute, Reason,
belonging to the Divine nature, not a person distinct from another,
and therefore is a Son merely in figure of speech. These consequences follow
upon the principle which Arius maintains in his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, that the Son "is
no part of the Ingenerate." Hence the Arian sectaries who reasoned logically were styled Anomoeans: they said that the
Son was "unlike" the Father. And they defined God as simply the
Unoriginate. They are also termed the Exucontians (ex ouk onton), because they held
the creation of the Son to be out of nothing.
But a view so
unlike tradition found little favour; it required softening or palliation, even
at the cost of logic; and the school which supplanted
Arianism from an early date affirmed the likeness,
either without adjunct, or in all things, or in substance, of the Son to the
Father, while denying His co-equal dignity and co-eternal existence. These men
of the Via Media were named Semi-Arians. They approached, in
strict argument, to the heretical extreme; but many of
them held the orthodox faith, however
inconsistently; their difficulties turned upon language or local prejudice, and
no small number submitted at length to Catholic teaching. The Semi-Arians attempted for years to
invent a compromise between irreconcilable views, and their shifting creeds,
tumultuous councils, and worldly devices tell us how mixed and motley a crowd
was collected under their banner. The point to be kept in remembrance is that,
while they affirmed the Word of God to be everlasting,
they imagined Him as having become the Son to create the worlds and redeem mankind. Among the ante-Nicene
writers, a certain ambiguity of expression may be detected, outside the school of Alexandria, touching this last
head of doctrine. While Catholic teachers held the
Monarchia, viz. that there was only one God; and the Trinity, that
this Absolute One existed in three distinct subsistences; and the
Circumincession, that Father, Word, and Spirit could not be separated, in fact
or in thought, from one another; yet an opening was left for discussion as
regarded the term "Son," and the period of His "generation"
(gennesis). Five ante-Nicene
Fathers are especially quoted: Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, Hippolytus, and Novatian, whose language
appears to involve a peculiar notion of Sonship, as though It did not come into
being or were not perfect until the dawn of creation. To these may be added Tertullian and Methodius. Cardinal Newman held that their view,
which is found clearly in Tertullian, of the Son existing
after the Word, is connected as an antecedent with Arianism. Petavius construed the same
expressions in a reprehensible sense; but the Anglican Bishop Bull defended them as orthodox, not without
difficulty. Even if metaphorical, such language might give shelter to unfair
disputants; but we are not answerable for the slips of teachers who failed to
perceive all the consequences of doctrinal truths really held by them.
From these doubtful theorizings Rome and Alexandria kept
aloof. Origen himself, whose
unadvised speculations were charged with the guilt of Arianism, and who
employed terms like "the second God," concerning the
Logos, which were never adopted by the Church — this very Origen taught the eternal
Sonship of the Word, and was not a Semi-Arian. To him the Logos, the
Son, and Jesus
of Nazareth
were one ever-subsisting Divine Person, begotten of the Father, and, in this
way, "subordinate" to the source of His being. He comes forth from God as the creative Word,
and so is a ministering Agent, or, from a different point of view, is the
First-born of creation. Dionysius of Alexandria (260) was even
denounced at Rome for calling the Son a
work or creature of God; but he explained
himself to the pope on orthodox principles, and
confessed the Homoousian Creed.
History
Paul of Samosata, who was contemporary
with Dionysius, and Bishop of Antioch, may be judged the true ancestor of those heresies which relegated Christ beyond the Divine
sphere, whatever epithets of deity they allowed Him. The man Jesus, said Paul, was
distinct from the Logos, and, in Milton's later language, by merit was made the
Son of
God.
The Supreme is one in Person as in Essence. Three councils held at Antioch
(264-268, or 269) condemned and excommunicated the Samosatene. But these Fathers
would not accept the Homoousian formula, dreading lest
it be taken to signify one material or abstract substance, according to the
usage of the heathen philosophies. Associated with Paul,
and for years cut off from the Catholic communion, we find the
well-known Lucian, who edited the Septuagint and became at last a martyr. From this learned man
the school of Antioch drew its
inspiration. Eusebius
the historian,
Eusebius
of Nicomedia,
and Arius himself, all came under Lucian's influence. Not, therefore, to Egypt and its mystical
teaching, but to Syria, where Aristotle flourished with his logic and its tendency to Rationalism, should we look for
the home of an aberration which had it finally triumphed, would have
anticipated Islam, reducing the Eternal Son to the rank of a prophet, and thus undoing the Christian revelation.
Arius, a
Libyan by descent, brought up at Antioch and a school-fellow of Eusebius, afterwards Bishop of Nicomedia, took part (306) in
the obscure Meletian schism, was made presbyter of the church called
"Baucalis," at Alexandria, and opposed the
Sabellians, themselves committed to a view of the Trinity which denied all real
distinctions in the Supreme. Epiphanius describes the heresiarch as tall,
grave, and winning; no aspersion on his moral character has been sustained; but
there is some possibility of personal differences having led to his quarrel
with the patriarch Alexander whom, in public synod, he accused of teaching that
the Son was identical with the Father (319). The actual circumstances of this
dispute are obscure; but Alexander condemned Arius in a great assembly, and the
latter found a refuge with Eusebius, the Church historian, at
Caesarea. Political or party motives embittered the strife. Many bishops of Asia Minor and Syria took up the defence of
their "fellow-Lucianist," as Arius did not hesitate to call himself.
Synods in Palestine and Bithynia were opposed to synods in Egypt. During several years
the argument raged; but when, by his defeat of Licinius (324), Constantine
became master of the Roman world, he determined on restoring ecclesiastical order in the East, as
already in the West he had undertaken to put down the Donatists at the Council of Arles. Arius, in a letter to
the Nicomedian prelate, had boldly rejected
the Catholic faith. But Constantine, tutored
by this worldly-minded man, sent from Nicomedia to Alexander a famous
letter, in which he treated the controversy as an idle dispute about words and
enlarged on the blessings of peace. The emperor,
we should call to mind, was only a catechumen, imperfectly
acquainted with Greek, much more incompetent in theology, and yet ambitious to
exercise over the Catholic Church a dominion resembling
that which, as Pontifex Maximus, he wielded over the pagan worship. From this
Byzantine conception (labelled in modern terms Erastianism) we must derive the
calamities which during many hundreds of years set their mark on the
development of Christian
dogma.
Alexander could not give way in a matter so vitally important. Arius and his
supporters would not yield. A council was, therefore, assembled in Nicaea, in Bithynia, which
has ever been counted the first ecumenical, and which held its sittings from
the middle of June, 325. (See FIRST COUNCIL OF NICAEA). It is commonly said
that Hosius
of Cordova
presided. The Pope, St. Silvester, was represented by his legates, and 318 Fathers
attended, almost all from the East. Unfortunately, the acts of the Council are
not preserved. The emperor, who was present, paid religious deference to a
gathering which displayed the authority of Christian teaching in a manner so
remarkable. From the first it was evident that Arius could not reckon upon a
large number of patrons among the bishops. Alexander was
accompanied by his youthful deacon, the ever-memorable Athanasius who engaged in
discussion with the heresiarch himself, and from that moment became the leader
of the Catholics during well-nigh fifty
years. The Fathers appealed to tradition against the innovators, and were
passionately orthodox; while a letter was
received from Eusebius
of Nicomedia,
declaring openly that he would never allow Christ to be of one substance
with God. This avowal suggested
a means of discriminating between true believers and all
those who, under that pretext, did not hold the Faith handed down. A creed was
drawn up on behalf of the Arian party by Eusebius of Caesarea in which every term of
honour and dignity, except
the oneness of substance, was attributed to Our Lord. Clearly, then, no
other test save the Homoousion would prove a match
for the subtle ambiguities of language that, then as always, were eagerly
adopted by dissidents from the mind of the Church. A formula had been
discovered which would serve as a test, though not simply to be found in
Scripture, yet summing up the doctrine of St. John, St. Paul, and Christ Himself, "I and
the Father are one". Heresy, as St. Ambrose remarks, had furnished
from its own scabbard a weapon to cut off its head. The "consubstantial" was accepted, only
thirteen bishops dissenting, and these
were speedily reduced to seven. Hosius drew out the conciliar statements, to which anathemas were subjoined against
those who should affirm that the Son once did not exist, or that before He was
begotten He was not, or that He was made out of nothing, or that He was of a
different substance or essence from the Father, or was created or changeable.
Every bishop made this declaration
except six, of whom four at length gave way. Eusebius of Nicomedia withdrew his
opposition to the Nicene term, but would not sign the condemnation of Arius. By
the emperor, who considered heresy as rebellion, the
alternative proposed was subscription or banishment; and, on political grounds,
the Bishop of Nicomedia was exiled not long
after the council, involving Arius in his ruin. The heresiarch and his
followers underwent their sentence in Illyria. But these incidents,
which might seem to close the chapter, proved a beginning of strife,
and led on to the most complicated proceedings of which we read in the fourth
century. While the plain Arian creed was defended by few, those political prelates who sided with Eusebius carried on a double warfare against the term "consubstantial", and its champion, Athanasius. This greatest of the
Eastern Fathers had succeeded Alexander in the Egyptian patriarchate (326). He was not more
than thirty years of age; but his published writings, antecedent to the
Council, display, in thought and precision, a mastery of the issues involved
which no Catholic teacher could surpass.
His unblemished life, considerate temper, and loyalty to his friends made him
by no means easy to attack. But the wiles of Eusebius, who in 328 recovered
Constantine's favour, were seconded by Asiatic intrigues, and a
period of Arian reaction set in. Eustathius of Antioch was deposed on a charge
of Sabellianism (331), and the Emperor
sent his command that Athanasius should receive Arius
back into communion. The saint firmly declined. In 325 the heresiarch was
absolved by two councils, at Tyre and Jerusalem, the former of which
deposed Athanasius on false and shameful grounds
of personal misconduct. He was banished to Trier, and his sojourn of
eighteen months in those parts cemented Alexandria more closely to Rome and the Catholic West. Meanwhile, Constantia, the Emperor's sister,
had recommended Arius, whom she thought an injured man, to Constantine's
leniency. Her dying words affected him, and he recalled the Lybian, extracted
from him a solemn adhesion to the Nicene faith, and ordered
Alexander, Bishop of the Imperial City,
to give him Communion in his own church (336). Arius openly triumphed; but as
he went about in parade, the evening before this event was to take place, he
expired from a sudden disorder, which Catholics could not help
regarding as a judgment of heaven, due to the bishop's prayers. His death, however,
did not stay the plague. Constantine now favoured none but Arians; he was baptized in his last moments by
the shifty prelate of Nicomedia; and he bequeathed to
his three sons (337) an empire torn by dissensions which his ignorance and weakness had
aggravated.
Constantius, who nominally
governed the East, was himself the puppet of his empress and the
palace-ministers. He obeyed the Eusebian faction; his spiritual director, Valens, Bishop of Mursa, did what in
him lay to infect Italy and the West with
Arian dogmas. The term "like
in substance", Homoiousion, which had been
employed merely to get rid of the Nicene formula, became a watchword. But as
many as fourteen councils, held between 341 and 360, in which every shade of heretical subterfuge found
expression, bore decisive witness to the need and efficacy of the Catholic touchstone which they
all rejected. About 340, an Alexandrian gathering had defended its archbishop in an epistle to Pope
Julius. On the death of Constantine, and by the influence of that emperor's son
and namesake, he had been restored to his people. But the young prince passed
away, and in 341 the celebrated Antiochene Council of the Dedication a second
time degraded Athanasius, who now took refuge
in Rome. There he spent three
years. Gibbon quotes and adopts "a judicious observation" of Wetstein
which deserves to be kept always in mind. From the fourth century onwards,
remarks the German scholar, when the Eastern Churches were almost equally divided
in eloquence and ability between contending sections, that party which sought
to overcome made its appearance in the Vatican, cultivated the Papal majesty,
conquered and established the orthodox creed by the help of
the Latin bishops. Therefore it was that
Athanasius repaired to Rome. A stranger, Gregory,
usurped his place. The Roman Council proclaimed his innocence. In 343,
Constans, who ruled over the West from Illyria to Britain, summoned
the bishops to meet at Sardica in Pannonia.
Ninety-four Latin, seventy Greek or Eastern, prelates began the debates; but
they could not come to terms, and the Asiatics withdrew, holding a separate and
hostile session at Philippopolis in Thrace. It has been justly said that the Council of Sardica reveals the first
symptoms of discord which, later on, produced the unhappy schism of East and West. But
to the Latins this meeting, which allowed of appeals to Pope Julius, or the Roman Church, seemed an epilogue
which completed the Nicene legislation, and to this effect it was quoted by Innocent I in his correspondence
with the bishops of Africa.
Having won
over Constans, who warmly took up his cause, the invincible Athanasius received from his
Oriental and Semi-Arian sovereign three
letters commanding, and at length entreating his return to Alexandria (349).
The factious bishops, Ursacius and Valens, retracted their
charges against him in the hands of Pope Julius; and as he travelled home, by
way of Thrace, Asia
Minor,
and Syria, the crowd of
court-prelates did him abject homage. These men veered with every wind. Some,
like Eusebius
of Caesarea,
held a Platonizing doctrine which they would not
give up, though they declined the Arian blasphemies. But many were
time-servers, indifferent to dogma. And a new party had
arisen, the strict and pious Homoiousians, not
friends of Athanasius, nor willing to
subscribe to the Nicene terms, yet slowly drawing nearer to the true creed and finally
accepting it. In the councils which now follow these good men play their part.
However, when Constans died (350), and his Semi-Arian brother was left
supreme, the persecution of Athanasius redoubled in violence. By a series of
intrigues the Western bishops were persuaded to cast
him off at Arles, Milan, Ariminum. It was concerning
this last council (359) that St. Jerome wrote, "the whole
world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian". For the Latin bishops were driven by threats
and chicanery to sign concessions which at no time represented their genuine
views. Councils were so frequent that their dates are still matter of
controversy. Personal issues disguised the dogmatic importance of a struggle
which had gone on for thirty years. The Pope of the day, Liberius, brave at first, undoubtedly orthodox, but torn from his see and banished to the
dreary solitude of Thrace, signed a creed, in tone Semi-Arian (compiled chiefly from
one of Sirmium), renounced Athanasius, but made a stand
against the so-called "Homoean" formulae of Ariminum. This new party was
led by Acacius
of Caesarea,
an aspiring churchman who maintained that he, and not St. Cyril of Jerusalem, was metropolitan over Palestine. The Homoeans, a sort of Protestants, would have no terms
employed which were not found in Scripture, and thus evaded signing the "Consubstantial". A more extreme set,
the "Anomoeans", followed Aรซtius, were directed by Eunomius, held meetings at
Antioch and Sirmium, declared the Son to
be "unlike" the Father, and made themselves powerful in the last
years of Constantius within the palace. George
of Cappadocia persecuted the Alexandrian Catholics. Athanasius retired into the desert among the solitaries. Hosius had been compelled by
torture to subscribe a fashionable creed. When the vacillating Emperor died
(361), Julian, known as the
Apostate, suffered all alike to return home who had been exiled on account of
religion. A momentous gathering, over which Athanasius presided, in 362, at Alexandria, united the orthodox Semi-Arians with himself and the
West. Four years afterwards fifty-nine Macedonian, i.e., hitherto anti-Nicene, prelates gave in their
submission to Pope
Liberius.
But the Emperor
Valens,
a fierce heretic, still laid the Church waste.
However, the
long battle was now turning decidedly in favour of Catholic tradition. Western bishops, like Hilary of Poitiers and Eusebius of Vercellae banished to Asia for holding the Nicene
faith, were acting in unison
with St.
Basil,
the two St. Gregories of Nyssa
and Nazianzus
--Ed., and the reconciled Semi-Arians. As an intellectual movement the heresy had spent its force. Theodosius, a Spaniards and a Catholic, governed the whole
Empire. Athanasius died in 373; but his
cause triumphed at Constantinople, long an Arian city, first by the preaching
of St.
Gregory Nazianzen,
then in the Second General Council (381), at the opening of which Meletius of Antioch presided. This saintly
man had been estranged from the Nicene champions during a long schism; but he made peace
with Athanasius, and now, in company
of St.
Cyril of Jerusalem,
represented a moderate influence which won the day. No deputies appeared from
the West. Meletius died almost immediately. St. Gregory Nazianzen, who took his place,
very soon resigned. A creed embodying the Nicene was drawn up by St. Gregory of Nyssa, but it is not the one
that is chanted at Mass, the latter being due, it is said, to St. Epiphanius and the Church of Jerusalem. The Council became
ecumenical by acceptance of the Pope and the ever-orthodox Westerns. From this
moment Arianism in all its forms lost its place within the Empire. Its
developments among the barbarians were political rather than doctrinal. Ulphilas (311-388), who
translated the Scriptures into Maeso-Gothic, taught the Goths across the Danube an Homoean theology; Arian kingdoms arose
in Spain, Africa, Italy. The Gepidae, Heruli, Vandals, Alans, and Lombards
received a system which they were as little capable of understanding as they
were of defending, and the Catholic bishops, the monks, the sword of Clovis, the action of the
Papacy, made an end of it before the eighth century. In the form which it took
under Arius, Eusebius
of Caesarea,
and Eunomius, it has never been
revived. Individuals, among them are Milton and Sir Isasc Newton, were perhaps
tainted with it. But the Socinian tendency out of which Unitarian doctrines have grown
owes nothing to the school of Antioch or the
councils which opposed Nicaea. Neither has any Arian leader stood forth in
history with a character of heroic proportions. In the whole story there is but
one single hero — the undaunted Athanasius — whose mind was equal
to the problems, as his great spirit to the vicissitudes, a question on which
the future of Christianity depended.
