Arianism

Arianism was a Christological view held by followers of Arius, a Christian priest who lived and taught in Alexandria, Egypt, in the early 4th century. Arius taught that God the Father and the Son were not co-eternal, seeing the pre-incarnate Jesus as a divine being but nonetheless created by (and consequently inferior to) the Father at some point, before which the Son did not exist. In English-language works, it is sometimes said that Arians believe that Jesus is or was a "creature;" in this context, the word is being used in its original sense of "created being."

With the exception of perhaps the Protestant Reformation, the various disagreements within the Christian Church have not held the same force and power of theological and political conflict as that which the Arian controversy exuded. The conflict between Arianism and the Trinitarian beliefs was the first major doctrinal confrontation in the Church after the legalization of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine I.

The controversy over Arianism began to rise in the late third century and extended over the greater part of the fourth century and involved most church members, simple believers, priests and monks as well as bishops, emperors and members of Rome's imperial family. Yet, such a deep controversy within the Church could not have materialized in the third and fourth centuries without some significant historical influences providing the basis for the Arian doctrines. Most orthodox or mainstream Christian historians define and minimize the Arian conflict as the exclusive construct of Arius and handful of rogue bishops engaging in "heresy." Of the roughly three hundred bishops in attendance at the Council of Nicea, only three bishops did not sign the Nicene Creed. Arianism's roots can be found in the beliefs and views of other heterodox Christian believers and sects which had emerged beginning in the first century. There is some irony in that the Roman Catholic Church Sainted Lucian of Antioch as a brilliant and talented early Christian leader and martyr, yet Lucian taught a very similar form of what would later be called Arianism. Arius was a student of Lucian's private academy in Antioch. The Ebionites, among other early Christian groups, also maintained similar doctrines that can be associated with formal Lucian and Arian Christology.

While Arianism continued to dominate for several decades even within the family of the Emperor, the Imperial nobility and higher ranking clergy, in the end it was Trinitarianism which prevailed theologically and politically at the end of the fourth century, and which has since been a virtually uncontested doctrine in all major branches of the Eastern and Western Church and within Protestantism. Arianism, which had been taught by the Arian missionary Ulfilas to the Germanic tribes, did linger for some centuries among several Germanic tribes in western Europe, especially Goths and Longobards but did not play any significant theological role afterwards.

Beliefs

Because most contemporary written material on Arianism was written by its opponents, the nature of Arius' teachings are difficult to define precisely today. The letter of Auxentius[1], a 4th century Arian bishop of Milan, regarding the missionary Ulfilas, gives the clearest picture of Arian beliefs on the nature of the Trinity: God the Father ("unbegotten"), always existing, was separate from the lesser Jesus Christ ("only-begotten"), born before time began and creator of the world. The Father, working through the Son, created the Holy Spirit, who was subservient to the Son as the Son was to the Father. The Father was seen as "the only true God." I Corinthians 8:5-6 was cited as proof text:

"Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth — as in fact there are many gods and many lords — yet for us there is one God (theos), the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord (kyrios), Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist." (NRSV)

The Council of Nicea and its aftermath

In 321, Arius was denounced by a synod at Alexandria for teaching a heterodox view of the relationship of Jesus to God the Father. Because Arius and his followers had great influence in the schools of Alexandria — counterparts to modern universities or seminaries — their theological views spread, especially in the eastern Mediterranean. By 325, the controversy had become significant enough that Emperor Constantine called an assembly of bishops, the First Council of Nicea, which condemned Arius' doctrine and formulated the Nicene Creed, which is still recited in Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and some Protestant services. The Nicene Creed's central term, used to describe the relationship between the Father and the Son, is homoousios, meaning "of the same substance" or "of one being". (The Athanasian Creed is less often used but is a more overtly anti-Arian statement on the Trinity.)

Constantine exiled those who refused to accept the Nicean creed — Arius himself, the deacon Euzoios, and the Libyan bishops Theonas of Ptolemais and Secundus of Mamarica — and also the bishops who signed the creed but refused to join in Arius' condemnation, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicea. The Emperor also ordered all copies of the Thalia, the book in which Arius had expressed his teachings, to be burned. This ended the open theological debate for a few years, though under the surface, opposition to the Nicean creed remained.

Though he was committed to maintaining what the church had defined at Nicea, Constantine was also bent on pacifying the situation and eventually became more lenient toward those condemned and exiled at the council. First he allowed Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was a protégé of his sister, and Theognis to return once they had signed an ambiguous statement of faith. The two, and other friends of Arius, worked for Arius' rehabilitation. At the synod of Tyre in 335 they brought accusations against Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, the primary opponent of Arius; after this, Constantine had Athanasius banished, since he considered him an impediment to reconciliation. In the same year, the synod of Jerusalem readmitted Arius to communion, and in 336, Constantine allowed Arius to return to his hometown. Arius, however, died on the day he was scheduled to depart from Constantinople. Eusebius and Theognis remained in the Emperor's favour, and when Constantine, who had been a catechumen much of his adult life, accepted baptism on his deathbed, it was from Eusebius of Nicomedia.

The theological debates reopen

The Council of Nicea had not ended the controversy, as many bishops of the Eastern provinces disputed the homoousios, the central term of the Nicene creed, as it had been used by Paul of Samosata, who had advocated a monarchianist Christology. Both the man and his teaching, including the term homoousios, had been condemned by synods in Antioch in 269.

Hence, after Constantine's death in 337, open dispute resumed again. Constantine's son Constantius II, who had become Emperor of the eastern part of the Empire, actually encouraged the Arians and set out to reverse the Nicene creed. His advisor in these affairs was Eusebius of Nicomedia, who had already at the Council of Nicea been the head of the Arian party, who also was made bishop of Constantinople.

Constantius used his power to exile bishops adhering to the Nicene creed, especially Athanasius of Alexandria, who fled to Rome. In 355 Constantius became the sole Emperor and extended his pro-Arian policy toward the western provinces, frequently using force to push through his creed, even exiling Pope Liberius.

As debates raged in an attempt to come up with a new formula, three camps evolved among the opponents of the Nicene creed. The first group mainly opposed the Nicene terminology and preferred the term homoiousios (alike in substance) to the Nicene homoousios, while they rejected Arius and his teaching and accepted the equality and coeternality of the persons of the Trinity. Because of this centrist position, and despite their rejection of Arius, they were called "semi-Arians" by their opponents. The second group also avoided invoking the name of Arius, but in large part followed Arius' teachings and, in another attempted compromise wording, described the Son as being like (homoios) the Father. A third group explicitly called upon Arius and described the Son as unlike (anhomoios) the Father. Constantius wavered in his support between the first and the second party, while harshly persecuting the third.

The debates between these groups resulted in numerous synods among them Serdica in 343, the council of Sirmium in 358 and the double council of Rimini and Selecia in 359, and no less than fourteen further creed formulas between 340 and 360, and the pagan observer Ammianus Marcellinus commented sarcastically: "The highways were covered with galloping bishops." None of these attempts were acceptable to the defenders of Nicene orthodoxy: writing about the latter councils, Saint Jerome remarked that the world "awoke with a groan to find itself Arian."

After Constantius' death in 361, his successor Julian, a devotee of Rome's pagan gods, declared that he would no longer attempt to favor one church faction over another, and allowed all exiled bishops to return; this had the objective of further increasing dissension among Christians. The Emperor Valens, however, revived Constantius' policy and supported the "Homoian" party, exiling bishops and often using force. During this persecution many bishops were exiled to the other ends of the Empire, (e.g., Hilarius of Poitiers to the Eastern provinces). These contacts and the common plight subsequently led to a rapprochement between the Western supporters of the Nicene creed and the homoousios and the Eastern semi-Arians.

Theodosius and the Council of Constantinople

Valens died in the Battle of Adrianople in 378 and was succeeded by Theodosius I, who adhered to the Nicene creed. This allowed for settling the dispute

Two days after Theodosius arrived in Constantinople, November 24, 380, he expelled the Homoian bishop, Demophilus of Constantinople, and surrendered the churches of that city to Gregory Nazianzus, the leader of the rather small Nicene community there, an act which provoked rioting. Theodosius had just been baptized, by bishop Acholius of Thessalonica, during a severe illness, as was common in the early Christian world. In February he and Gratian published an edict that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith).

Although much of the church hierarchy in the East had opposed the Nicene creed in the decades leading up to Theodosius' accession, he managed to achieve unity on the basis of the Nicene creed. In 381, at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, a group of mainly Eastern bishops assembled and accepted the Nicene Creed, which was supplemented in regard to the Holy Spirit. This is generally considered the end of the dispute about the Trinity and the end of Arianism among the Roman, non-Germanic peoples.

Arianism in the early medieval Germanic kingdoms

However, during the time of Arianism's flowering in Constantinople, the Goth convert Ulfilas (later the subject of the letter of Auxentius cited above) was sent as a missionary to the Gothic barbarians across the Danube, a mission favored for political reasons by emperor Constantius II. Ulfilas' initial success in converting this Germanic people to an Arian form of Christianity was strengthened by later events. When the Germanic peoples entered the Roman Empire and founded successor-kingdoms in the western part, most had been Arian Christians for more than a century.

The conflict in the 4th century had seen Arian and Nicene factions struggling for control of the Church; in contrast, in the kingdoms these Arian Germans established on the wreckage of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, there were entirely separate Arian and Nicene Churches with parallel hierarchies, each serving different sets of believers, the Germanic elites being Arians, and the majority population being trinitarian. Many scholars see the persistence of the Germans' Arian religion as a strategy to differentiate the Germanic elite from the local inhabitants and maintain their group identity against the local culture.

While most Germanic tribes in general were tolerant regarding the trinitarian beliefs of their subjects, the Vandals tried for several decades to force their Arian belief on their North African trinitarian subjects, exiling trinitarian clergy, dissolving monasteries, and exercising heavy pressure on non-conforming Christians.

For more information on these Arian kingdoms, see the articles on the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Burgundians, and Lombards. (The Franks were unique among the Germanic peoples in that they entered the empire as pagans and converted to Nicene Christianity directly.) By the beginning of the 8th century, these kingdoms had either been conquered by Nicene neighbors (Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians) or their rulers had accepted Nicene Christianity (Visigoths, Lombards).

"Arian" as a polemical epithet

In many ways, the conflict around Arian beliefs in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries helped firmly define the centrality of the Trinity in mainstream Christian theology. As the first major intra-Christian conflict after Christianity's legalization, the struggle between Nicenes and Arians left a deep impression on the institutional memory of Nicene churches. Thus, over the past 1,500 years, some Christians have used the term Arian to refer to those groups that see themselves as worshipping Jesus Christ or respecting his teachings, but do not hold to the Nicene creed.

In 1553, the Spanish scholar and Protestant reformer Michael Servetus, who is viewed by many Unitarians as a founding figure, was sentenced to death and burned at the stake by his fellow reformers, including John Calvin, for the heresy of Antitrinitarianism, a Christology that is similar in many ways to Arianism.

Like the Arians, many groups have embraced the belief that Jesus is not the one God, but a separate being subordinate to the Father, and that Jesus at one time did not exist. Some of these profess, as the Arians did, that God made all things through the pre-existent Christ. Some profess that Jesus became divine, through exaltation, just as the Arians believed. Drawing a parallel between these groups and Arians can be useful for distinguishing a type of unbelief in the Trinity. But, despite the frequency with which this name is used as a polemical label, there has been no historically continuous survival of Arianism into the modern era. The groups so labelled do not hold beliefs identical to Arianism. For this reason, they do not use the name as a self-description, even if they acknowledge that their beliefs are at points in agreement with, or in broad terms similar to, Arianism.

Those whose religious beliefs have been compared to or falsely labeled as Arianism include:

• Unitarians, who believe that God is one as opposed to a Trinity, and many of whom believe in the moral authority, but not the deity, of Jesus.
• Jehovah's Witnesses, who do have some similar beliefs to Arius, namely, that Jesus had a pre-human existence as the Logos. However, Arius viewed the Holy Spirit as a person, whereas Jehovah's Witnesses do not attribute personality to the spirit. Jehovah's Witnesses also, unlike Arians, deny belief in a disembodied soul after death, eternal punishment of the unrepentantly wicked, and episcopacy: doctrines to which the Arians did not obviously object.

• Christadelphians, who believe that Jesus' pre-natal existence was a conceptual Logos, rather than a literal Logos.
• Followers of the various churches of the Latter Day Saint movement, who believe in the unity in purpose of the Godhead but that Jesus is a divine being separate from God the Father.
• Muslims, who believe that Jesus (generally called Isa), was a prophet of the one God, but not himself divine.
• Isaac Newton, who was a closet Arianist, somewhat ironic since he was a fellow of Trinity College at Cambridge.

For more on the theology of these groups, see their respective articles.

See also

• Arius (Presbyter of Alexandria (256 - 336 C.E.))
• Arian Catholicism
• Germanic Christianity
• Protestantism
• Semi-Arianism
• Anomoean, extreme sect of pure Arians
• Christology

Bibliography

• Athanasius of Alexandria, History of the Arians Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII
• Ivor J. Davidson, A Public Faith, Volume 2 of Baker History of the Church, 2005, ISBN 0801012759
• J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 1978, ISBN 006064334X
• William C. Rusch, The Trinitarian Controversy, (Sources of Early Christian Thought), 1980, ISBN 0800614100
• John Henry Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century, 1871
• Schaff, Philip Theological Controversies and the Development of Orthodoxy, History of the Christian Church, Vol III, Ch. IX
• Williams, Rowan, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, rev. edn. 2001, ISBN 0802849695

External links

• CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Arianism
• Holy Arian Catholic and Apostolic Church (Arian Catholic viewpoint)
• Believe: Arianism
• Jewish Encyclopedia: Arianism

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