Arianism

Arianism (Koine Greek: Ἀρειανισμός, romanized: Areianismós) is a Christological doctrine that rejects the traditional notion of the Trinity, teaching that Jesus was created by God and is therefore distinct from God. It is named after its proponent Arius (250 or 256 – 336 AD) and is regarded as heretical by most modern mainstream branches of Christianity. Arianism is held by a minority of modern denominations, although some of these groups espouse related doctrines such as Socinianism, and others avoid the term "Arian" because of its historically negative connotations. Modern denominations sometimes associated with the teaching include Jehovah's Witnesses and some churches within the Churches of Christ (among them the movement's founder, Barton W. Stone).

It is first attributed to Arius, a Christian presbyter who preached and studied in Alexandria, Egypt, though Arianism developed out of various preexisting strands of Christianity that differed from later Nicene Christianity in their Christologies. The term Arian is derived from the name Arius; it was not what the followers of Arius's teachings called themselves, but rather a term used by outsiders. Arian theology holds that Jesus is the Son of God, who was begotten by God the Father, with the difference that the Son of God did not always exist but was begotten/made before time by God the Father. Therefore, Jesus was not coeternal with God the Father, but nonetheless Jesus began to exist outside time.

Arius's trinitarian theology, later given an extreme form by Aëtius of Antioch and his disciple Eunomius of Cyzicus and called anomoean ('dissimilar'), asserts a total dissimilarity between the Son and the Father. Arianism holds that the Son is distinct from the Father and therefore subordinate to him. The nature of Arius's and his supporters' teachings were opposed to the theological doctrines held by Homoousian Christians regarding the nature of the Trinity and the nature of Christ. Homoousianism and Arianism were contending interpretations of Jesus's divinity, both based upon the trinitarian theological orthodoxy of the time.

Homoousianism was formally affirmed by the first two ecumenical councils; since then, Arianism has been condemned as "the heresy or sect of Arius". Trinitarian (Homoousian) doctrines were vigorously upheld by Patriarch Athanasius of Alexandria, who insisted that Jesus (God the Son) was "same in being" or "same in essence" with God the Father. Arius dissented: "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." The ecumenical First Council of Nicaea of 325 declared Arianism to be a heresy. According to Everett Ferguson, "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."

Arianism is also used to refer to other nontrinitarian theological systems of the 4th century, which regarded Jesus—the Son of God and the Logos—as either a begotten creature of a similar or different substance to that of the Father, but not identical (as Homoiousian and Anomoeanism) or as neither uncreated nor created in the sense other beings are created (as in semi-Arianism).

Origin

Athanasius presented Arius as the originator of Arianism. However, Rowan Williams’s 1987 study of Arius argues that recent scholarship has undermined the view that Arius and his supporters were radicals attacking an established tradition. Williams instead describes Arius as a conservative Alexandrian theologian.

Some early Christians whose beliefs would have fallen under 'orthodoxy' in the third and fourth centuries denied the eternal generation of the Son; they viewed the Son as having been begotten in time. These include Tertullian and Justin Martyr. Tertullian is considered a pre-Arian. Among the other church fathers, Origen was accused of Arianism for using terms like "second God", and Patriarch Dionysius of Alexandria was denounced at Rome for saying that the Son is a work and creature of God (i.e., a created being). However, the subordinationism of Origen is not identical to Arianism, and it has been generally viewed as closer to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan view of the Trinity.

R.P.C. Hanson, in his landmark contribution to Early Church history and Trinitarian theology, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God (1988), discusses “Arius’s Possible Predecessors” in chapter 3:

• He discussed and rejected Philo, Clement of Alexandria, Gnosticism, Novatian, Theognostus, and Pierius as possible predecessors.

• Arius probably inherited some terms and ideas from Origen, but he certainly did not adopt any large or significant part of Origen’s theology. He cannot seriously be called an Origenist.

• Many scholars have conjectured that Paul of Samosata’s views must have influenced Arius. However, from the fourth century onward, ancient writers regularly accused Paul of declaring Jesus to be no more than a mere man. This was precisely the sort of claim that Arians consistently rejected.
• However Dionysius may have refined his later theology, it is impossible to avoid seeing some influence from his work in the theology of Arius.
• We may be sure Arius drew on Lucian’s teaching, but we do not know what Lucian taught.
• Methodius of Olympia should be considered as a possible source for Arius’s views.

Controversy over Arianism arose in the late 3rd century and persisted throughout most of the 4th century. It involved most church members—from simple believers, priests, and monks to bishops, emperors, and members of Rome's imperial family. Two Roman emperors, Constantius II and Valens, became Arians or semi-Arians, as did prominent Gothic, Vandal, and Lombard warlords both before and after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The antipopes Felix II and Ursinus were Arian, and Pope Liberius was forced to sign the Arian Creed of Sirmium of 357—though the letter says he willingly agreed with Arianism. Such a deep controversy within the early Church during this period could not have materialized without significant historical influences providing a basis for the Arian doctrines.

Arius had been a pupil of Lucian of Antioch at Lucian's private academy in Antioch.

Alexander and Athanasius, Arius's direct opponents, associated Arius's doctrine with Paul of Samosata, the third-century bishop of Antioch who described Jesus Christ as a mere man with no personal preexistence. Many scholars, over the centuries, held that the views of Paul of Samosata must have influenced Arius. However, more recently, Simonetti, Williams, and Hanson put Arius in the group that would have most strongly opposed Paul.

Arius taught that God the Father and the Son of God did not always exist together eternally.

Beliefs

Little of Arius's own work survives except in quotations selected for polemical purposes by his opponents, and there is no certainty about what theological and philosophical traditions formed his thought. The influence from the One of Neoplatonism was widespread throughout the Eastern Roman Empire, and this influenced Arius.

Arius's basic premise is that only God is independent of existing. Since the Son is dependent, he must, therefore, be called a creature. Arians put forward a question for their belief: "Has God birthed Jesus willingly or unwillingly?" This question was used to argue that Jesus is dependent for his existence since Jesus exists only because God wants him to be.

Arianism taught that the Logos was a divine being created by God the Father before the world's creation, serving as the medium for creation, and that the Son of God is subordinate to the Father. The concept of the Logos refers to an inner attribute of God associated with wisdom. Jesus is identified as the Logos due to a supposed resemblance to this inner aspect of God's nature.

According to Arianism, a verse from the Book of Proverbs spoke of the creation of the Son by God: "The Lord created me at the beginning of his work." Therefore, they posited, the Son was rather the very first and the most perfect of God's creatures, and he was called "God" only by the Father's permission and power. The term "Son" is ambiguous, as Arians use adoptionist theology to support the belief that Jesus was created ex nihilo by the Father.

Arians do not believe in the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. The letter of the Arian bishop Auxentius of Durostorum regarding the Arian missionary Ulfilas (c. 311–383) gives an overview of Arian beliefs. Ulfilas, ordained by Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, became a missionary to the Goths and believed that God the Father, the "unbegotten" Almighty, is the only true God. According to Auxentius, Ulfilas believed the Son of God, Jesus, the "only-begotten god", was begotten before time began. The Holy Spirit, he wrote, is the illuminating and sanctifying power of God. Using 1 Corinthians 8:5–6 as a 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/masters—yet for us there is one God (Gk. theos – θεός), the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord/Master (kyrios – κύριος), Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

— 1 Corinthians 8:5–6

The creed of Ulfilas, which concludes the letter mentioned above, distinguishes God the Father ("unbegotten"), who is the only true God, from the Son of God ("only-begotten") and the Holy Spirit, the illuminating and sanctifying power, which is neither God the Father nor the God the Son:

I, Ulfila, bishop and confessor, have always so believed, and in this, the one true faith, I make the journey to my Lord; I believe in only one God the Father, the unbegotten and invisible, and in his only-begotten Son, our Lord/Master and God, the designer and maker of all creation, having none other like him. Therefore, there is one God of all, who is also God of our God; and in one Holy Spirit, the illuminating and sanctifying power, as Christ said after his resurrection to his apostles: "And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be clothed with power from on high" and again "But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you"; Neither God nor Lord, but the faithful minister of Christ; not equal, but subject and obedient in all things to the Son. And I believe the Son to be subject and obedient in all things to God the Father.

— Heather & Matthews 1991, p. 143

Within the letter from Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia, Arius qualifies his beliefs about the Son:

We are not able to listen to these kinds of impieties, even if the heretics threaten us with ten thousand deaths. But what do we say and think and what have we previously taught and do we presently teach?—that the Son is not unbegotten, nor a part of an unbegotten entity in any way, nor from anything in existence, but that he is subsisting in will and intention before time and before the ages, fully God, the only-Begotten, unchangeable.

Arius would teach that the Son had a beginning in the Father, and rejected the idea of homoousios because it would imply the essence of the Father was materially broken off like gold from a bar. He would emphasize that the Father is true God (per se) and the Son and the Holy Spirit were derivative. This was a radical and strict theological interpretation of the already prevalent subordinationist and monarchical language used by the early Church Fathers. Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in his work Arius: Heresy and Tradition, wrote, "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... He was an arch-conservative, a lonely and somewhat pedantic figure, clinging to a theological style that was rapidly becoming obsolete."

In Arius's mind, to be 'begotten' was logically the same as being 'created' in the sense that both imply a dependence on the Father’s will. By calling the Son a 'perfect creature', he was actually exalting him as the supreme being through whom all else was made.

Arius would be noted as wanting to preserve the monarchy of the Father from modalism (homoousios used for modalism in Paul of Samosata, condemned in the Synod of Antioch (264–269)), from gnostic partialism (homoousios was used to explain the emanations). In the gnostic sense, it implied that the divine substance was like a physical dough that could be pulled apart into different pieces. Arius affirmed Jesus was God, yet God begotten or derived from the Father (who is autotheos), and the Holy Spirit was created or proceeded from the Son (as the first of his works). This was due to his synthesis of trinitarianism and middle platonism which posited the transcendent (the One), and its Logos (visible Mediator).

For Arius, the Son was eternal, fully God, yet subordinate to the Father; being God in every sense except being unbegotten (agennetos), but being begotten (gennetos). For Arius, the Son is eternally begotten and the eternal birth of the Son is within the bosom of the Father. Yet, the Father has no birth or beginning in another. Thus, they are not co-eternal in the same sense, but one is beginningless eternally, fully God the only Unbegotten; the other is eternally beginning, fully God the only Begotten. This would be noted by scholars have been important in the logical order used to explain the relations of origin of the persons of the Trinity. However, during the proceedings of the First Council of Nicaea, Arius saw the homoiousian party, which promulgated one hypostasis, as a radical theological innovation.

Therefore, he taught three hypostases, to safeguard the unbegotten esse of the Father in his own eyes, preserving monarchia through hypostatic distinctions. The Nicene party would see his explanations as implying relations and begetting in a temporal manner. The monohypostatic language to unify the persons can be found in the anathema concomitant to the Nicene Creed. “But those who say, 'There was when he was not,' and 'Before being begotten he was not,' and that he came to be from things that are not, or who say that the Son of God is from a different hypostasis or ousia, or created, or changeable, or alterable – these the catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes."

Thus, a radical departure began with the Arian party strictly defining God the Father as true God and the Son not co-eternal in that same respect; the Nicene party unifying the persons of the Trinity through homoiousian logic as theologian Lewis Ayres would explain in his work Nicaea and Its Legacy. For Arius, the term 'God' properly applies to the Father alone because He is the only one who is unbegotten (agennetos). To say the Son is 'true God' in the same sense as the Father was, for Arius, to introduce two first principles and thus to fall into pagan polytheism.

So in essence, Arius taught that the Son was fully God eternally as the divine Logos, wishing to stress the monarchical language used at the time to defend the Monarchia of the Father. However, due to his own pride and overscrupulousness, such a sentiment was not understood by opponents.

Principally, the dispute between Trinitarianism and Arianism was about two questions:

• has the Son always existed eternally with the Father, or was the Son begotten at a certain time in the past?
• is the Son equal to the Father or subordinate to the Father?

For Constantine, these were minor theological points that stood in the way of uniting the Empire, but for the theologians, it was of huge importance; for them, it was a matter of salvation.

For the theologians of the 19th century, it was already obvious that, in fact, Arius and Alexander/Athanasius did not have much to quarrel about; the difference between their views was very small, and the end of the fight was by no means clear during their quarrel, both Arius and Athanasius suffering a great deal for their own views. Arius was the father of homoiousianism, and Alexander was the father of homoousianism, which Athanasius championed. For those theologians, it was clear that Arius, Alexander, and Athanasius were far from a true doctrine of the Trinity, which developed later, historically speaking.

Guido M. Berndt and Roland Steinacher state clearly that the beliefs of Arius were acceptable ("not especially unusual") to a huge number of orthodox clergy; this is the reason why such a major conflict was able to develop inside the Church since Arius's theology received widespread sympathy (or at least was not considered to be overly controversial) and could not be dismissed outright as individual heresy.

Homoian Arianism

Arianism had several different variants, including Eunomianism and Homoian Arianism. Homoian Arianism is associated with Acacius and Eudoxius. Homoian Arianism avoided the use of the word ousia to describe the relation of Father to Son, and described these as "like" each other. Hanson lists twelve creeds that reflect the Homoian faith:

1. The Second Sirmian Creed of 357
2. The Creed of Nice (Constantinople) 360
3. The creed put forward by Acacius at Seleucia, 359
4. The Rule of Faith of Ulfilas
5. The creed uttered by Ulfilas on his deathbed, 383
6. The creed attributed to Eudoxius
7. The Creed of Auxentius of Milan, 364
8. The Creed of Germinius professed in correspondence with Ursacius of Singidunum and Valens of Mursa
9. Palladius's rule of faith
10. Three credal statements found in fragments, subordinating the Son to the Father

Struggles with orthodoxy

First Council of Nicaea

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 the Emperor Constantine called an assembly of bishops, the First Council of Nicaea, which condemned Arius's doctrine and formulated the original Nicene Creed of 325. The Nicene Creed's central term, used to describe the relationship between the Father and the Son, is Homoousios (Ancient Greek: ὁμοούσιος), or Consubstantiality, 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.

The focus of the Council of Nicaea was the nature of the Son of God and his precise relationship to God the Father. (See Paul of Samosata and the Synods of Antioch.) Arius taught that Jesus Christ was divine or holy and was sent to Earth for the salvation of mankind, but that Jesus Christ was not equal to God the Father (infinite, primordial origin) in rank, and that God the Father and the Son of God were not equal to the Holy Spirit. Under Arianism, Christ was instead not consubstantial with God the Father since both the Father and the Son under Arius were made of "like" essence or being (see homoiousia) but not of the same essence or being (see homoousia).

In the Arian view, God the Father is a deity and is divine; the Son of God is not a deity, but is still divine. God the Father sent Jesus to earth for salvation of mankind. Ousia is essence or being, in Eastern Christianity, and is the aspect of God that is completely incomprehensible to mankind and human perception. It is all that subsists by itself and which has not its being in another, God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit all being uncreated.

According to the teaching of Arius, the preexistent Logos and thus the incarnate Jesus Christ was a begotten being; only the Son was directly begotten by God the Father, before ages, but was of a distinct, though similar, essence or substance from the Creator. His opponents argued that this would make Jesus less than God and that this was heretical. Much of the distinction between the differing factions was over the phrasing that Christ expressed in the New Testament to express submission to God the Father. The theological term for this submission is kenosis. This ecumenical council declared that Jesus Christ was true God, co-eternal and consubstantial (i.e., of the same substance) with God the Father.

Constantine is believed to have exiled those who refused to accept the Nicaean Creed—Arius himself, the deacon Euzoios, and the Libyan bishops Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais, along with the bishops who signed the creed but refused to join in condemnation of Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea. The emperor also ordered all copies of the Thalia, the book in which Arius had expressed his teachings, to be burned. However, there is no evidence that his son and ultimate successor, Constantius II, a Semi-Arian Christian, was exiled.

Although he was committed to maintaining what the Great Church had defined at Nicaea, 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's rehabilitation.

At the First Synod of Tyre in AD 335, they brought accusations against Athanasius, now 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 under Constantine's direction readmitted Arius to communion in 336. Arius died on the way to this event in Constantinople. Some scholars suggest that Arius may have been poisoned by his opponents. Eusebius and Theognis remained in the Emperor's favor; when Constantine—who had been a catechumen much of his adult life—accepted baptism on his deathbed, it was from Eusebius of Nicomedia.

Condemnation by the Council of Nicaea

Emperor Constantine the Great summoned the First Council of Nicaea, which defined the dogmatic fundaments of Christianity; these definitions served to rebut the questions posed by Arians. Since Arius was not a bishop, he was not allowed to sit on the council, and it was Eusebius of Nicomedia who spoke for him and the position he represented. All the bishops who were there were in agreement with the major theological points of the proto-orthodoxy, since at that time all other forms of Christianity "had by this time already been displaced, suppressed, reformed, or destroyed".

Although the proto-orthodox won the previous disputes, due to the more precise defining of orthodoxy, they were vanquished with their own weapons, ultimately being declared heretics, not because they would have fought against ideas regarded as theologically correct, but because their positions lacked the precision and refinement needed by the fusion of several contradictory theses accepted at the same time by later orthodox theologians.

Of the roughly 300 bishops in attendance at the Council of Nicaea, two bishops did not sign the Nicene Creed that condemned Arianism. Constantine the Great also ordered a penalty of death for those who refused to surrender the Arian writings:

In addition, if any writing composed by Arius should be found, it should be handed over to the flames, so that not only will the wickedness of his teaching be obliterated, but nothing will be left even to remind anyone of him. And I hereby make a public order, that if someone should be discovered to have hidden a writing composed by Arius, and not to have immediately brought it forward and destroyed it by fire, his penalty shall be death. As soon as he is discovered in this offence, he shall be submitted for capital punishment....

— Edict by Emperor Constantine against the Arians

Ten years after the Council of Nicaea, Constantine the Great, who was himself later baptized by the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia in 337 AD, convened another gathering of church leaders at the regional First Synod of Tyre in 335, attended by 310 bishops, to address various charges mounted against Athanasius by his detractors, such as "murder, illegal taxation, sorcery, and treason", following his refusal to readmit Arius into fellowship. Athanasius was exiled to Trier (in modern Germany) following his conviction at Tyre of conspiracy, and Arius was, effectively, exonerated.

Athanasius eventually returned to Alexandria in 346, after the deaths of both Arius and Constantine. Though Arianism had spread, Athanasius and other Nicene Christian church leaders crusaded against Arian theology, and Arius was anathemised and condemned as a heretic once more at the ecumenical First Council of Constantinople of 381, attended by 150 bishops. The Roman Emperors Constantius II (337–361) and Valens (364–378) were Arians or Semi-Arians, as was the first King of Italy, Odoacer (433?–493), and the Lombards were also Arians or Semi-Arians until the 7th century. The ruling elite of Visigothic Spain was Arian until 589. Many Goths adopted Arian beliefs upon their conversion to Christianity. The Vandals actively spread Arianism in North Africa.

Aftermath of Nicaea

The First Council of Nicaea did not end 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 the Synods of 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 Roman 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 Nicaea been the head of the Arian party, and was made the bishop of Constantinople.

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

The Third Council of Sirmium in 357 was the high point of Arianism. The Seventh Arian Confession (Second Sirmium Confession) held that both homoousios (of one substance) and homoiousios (of similar substance) were unbiblical and that the Father is greater than the Son. This confession was later known as the Blasphemy of Sirmium.

But since many persons are disturbed by questions concerning what is called in Latin substantia, but in Greek ousia, that is, to make it understood more exactly, as to 'coessential,' or what is called, 'like-in-essence,' there ought to be no mention of any of these at all, nor exposition of them in the Church, for this reason and for this consideration, that in divine Scripture nothing is written about them, and that they are above men's knowledge and above men's understanding;

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 co-eternality 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's 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.

Epiphanius of Salamis labeled the party of Basil of Ancyra in 358 "Semi-Arianism". This is considered unfair by Kelly who states that some members of the group were virtually orthodox from the start but disliked the adjective homoousios while others had moved in that direction after the out-and-out Arians had come into the open.

The debates among these groups resulted in numerous synods, among them the Council of Serdica in 343, the Fourth Council of Sirmium in 358 and the double Council of Rimini and Seleucia in 359, and no fewer than fourteen further creed formulas between 340 and 360. This led the pagan observer Ammianus Marcellinus to comment sarcastically: "The highways were covered with galloping bishops." None of these attempts was 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's 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 increased dissension among Nicene Christians. The emperor Valens, however, revived Constantius's 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 Roman Empire, e.g., Saint Hilary of Poitiers to the eastern provinces. These contacts and their common plight led to a rapprochement between the western supporters of the Nicene Creed and the homoousios and the eastern Semi-Arians.

Council of Constantinople

It was not until the co-reigns of Gratian and Theodosius that Arianism was effectively wiped out among the ruling class and elite of the Eastern Empire. 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. Theodosius's wife St Flacilla was instrumental in his campaign to end Arianism.

Two days after Theodosius arrived in Constantinople, 24 November 380, he expelled the Arian bishop, Demophilus of Constantinople, and surrendered the churches of that city to Gregory of Nazianzus, the Homoousian 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 had published an edict that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith), or be handed over for punishment for not doing so.

Although much of the church hierarchy in the East had opposed the Nicene Creed in the decades leading up to Theodosius's 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 of 381, which was supplemented in regard to the Holy Spirit, as well as some other changes: see Comparison of Nicene Creeds of 325 and 381. This is generally considered the end of the dispute about the Trinity and the end of Arianism among the Roman, non-Germanic peoples.

Among late antiquity Germanic tribes

During the time of Arianism's flowering in Constantinople, the Gothic convert and Arian bishop Ulfilas (later the subject of the letter of Auxentius cited above) was sent as a missionary to the Gothic tribes across the Danube, a mission favored for political reasons by the Emperor Constantius II. The Homoians in the Danubian provinces played a major role in the conversion of the Goths to Arianism.

Ulfilas's translation of the Bible into Gothic language and his initial success in converting the Goths to Arianism was strengthened by later events. The conversion of Goths led to a widespread diffusion of Arianism among other Germanic tribes as well, the Vandals, Langobards, Svevi, and Burgundians. When the Germanic peoples entered the provinces of the Western Roman Empire and began founding their own kingdoms there, most of them were Arian Christians.

The conflict in the 4th century had seen Arian and Nicene factions struggling for control of Western Europe. In contrast, among the Arian German kingdoms established in the collapsing Western Empire in the 5th century, there existed entirely separate Arian and Nicene Churches with parallel hierarchies, each serving different sets of believers. The Germanic elites were Arians, and the Romance-majority population was Nicene.

The Arian Germanic tribes were generally tolerant towards Nicene Christians and other religious minorities, including the Jews.

The apparent resurgence of Arianism after Nicaea was more an anti-Nicene reaction exploited by Arian sympathizers than a pro-Arian development. By the end of the 4th century, it had surrendered its remaining ground to Trinitarianism. In Western Europe, Arianism, which had been taught by Ulfilas, the Arian missionary to the Germanic tribes, was dominant among the Goths, Langobards and Vandals. By the 8th century, it had ceased to be the tribes' mainstream belief as the tribal rulers gradually came to adopt Nicene orthodoxy. This trend began in 496 with Clovis I of the Franks, then Reccared I of the Visigoths in 587 and Aripert I of the Lombards in 653.

The Franks and the Anglo-Saxons were unlike the other Germanic peoples in that they entered the Western Roman Empire as Pagans and were converted to Chalcedonian Christianity, led by their kings, Clovis I of the Franks, and Æthelberht of Kent and others in Britain.

The remaining tribes – the Vandals and the Ostrogoths – did not convert as a people nor did they maintain territorial cohesion. Having been militarily defeated by the armies of Emperor Justinian I, the remnants were dispersed to the fringes of the empire and became lost to history. The Vandalic War of 533–534 dispersed the defeated Vandals. Following their final defeat at the Battle of Mons Lactarius in 553, the Ostrogoths went back north and re-settled in south Austria.

From the 5th to the 7th century

Much of south-eastern Europe and central Europe, including many of the Goths and Vandals respectively, had embraced Arianism (the Visigoths converted to Arian Christianity in 376 through their bishop Wulfila), which led to Arianism being a religious factor in various wars in the Roman Empire.

In the west, organized Arianism survived in North Africa, in Hispania, and parts of Italy until it was suppressed in the 6th and 7th centuries. Visigothic Spain converted to Nicene Christianity through their king Reccared I at the Third Council of Toledo in 589. Grimoald, King of the Lombards (662–671), and his young son and successor Garibald (671), were the last Arian kings in Europe.

From the 16th to the 19th century

Following the Protestant Reformation from 1517, it did not take long for Arian and other nontrinitarian views to resurface. The first recorded English antitrinitarian was John Assheton, who was forced to recant before Thomas Cranmer in 1548. At the Anabaptist Council of Venice 1550, the early Italian instigators of the Radical Reformation committed to the views of Michael Servetus—who was burned alive by the orders of John Calvin in 1553—were promulgated by Giorgio Biandrata and others into Poland and Transylvania.

The anti-Trinitarian wing of the Polish Reformation separated from the Calvinist ecclesia maior to form the ecclesia minor or Polish Brethren. These were commonly referred to as "Arians" due to their rejection of the Trinity, though in fact the Socinians, as they were later known, went further than Arius to the position of Photinus. The epithet "Arian" was also applied to the early Unitarians such as John Biddle; though in denial of the pre-existence of Christ they were again largely Socinians, not Arians.

In 1683, when Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, lay dying in Amsterdam—driven into exile by his outspoken opposition to King Charles II—he spoke to the minister Robert Ferguson, and professed himself an Arian.

In the 18th century the "dominant trend" in Britain, particularly in Latitudinarianism, was toward Arianism, with which Samuel Clarke, Benjamin Hoadly, William Whiston and Isaac Newton are associated. To quote the Encyclopædia Britannica’s article on Arianism: "In modern times some Unitarians are virtually Arians in that they are unwilling either to reduce Christ to a mere human being or to attribute to him a divine nature identical with that of the Father."

Alleged connection to Islam

The belief that Islam is connected or originates out of Arianism, held by some critics of Islam like Robert Spencer, stems from the Christian monk John of Damascus. In his work Concerning Heresies he claims that Muhammad "came into contact with the Old and New Testaments" and was "supposedly acquainted with an Arian monk" after which he formed "heresy" of Islam. While both Arianism and Islam are Abrahamic religions that reject the trinity of god they differ in many core aspects of their faith. While, according to Arius, Jesus was a divine being and the son of god, Islam rejects this and claims he was simply a prophet. Islam originated from a religiously polytheistic environment and it does not stem from a distinct lineage and Arianism had no clear influence on it.

Today

Many notable religious groups affirm the conciliar teachings that rejected Arianism, including the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and almost all historic Protestant churches including Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, Continental Reformed, Congregationalist, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, and Free Evangelical; all entirely reject the teachings associated with Arianism.

Modern groups that currently appear to embrace some of the principles of Arianism include Unitarians and Jehovah's Witnesses. Although the origins of their beliefs are not necessarily attributed to the teachings of Arius, many of the core beliefs of Unitarians and Jehovah's Witnesses are very similar to them.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses are often referred to as "modern-day Arians", usually by their opponents, although Jehovah's Witnesses themselves have denied these claims. Significant similarities in doctrine include the identification of the Father as the only true God and of Jesus Christ as the first creation of God and the intermediate agent in the creation of all other things. They also deny the personhood of the Holy Spirit, which some Arians historically affirmed. Jehovah's Witnesses exclusively worship and pray to God the Father, or Jehovah, only through Jesus (the Son) as a mediator.

Iglesia ni Cristo

Iglesia ni Cristo's Christology has parallels with Arianism in that it affirms that the Father is the only true God, but it denies the preexistence of Christ. Thus, Iglesia ni Cristo is Socinian rather than Arian in its Christology.

Other Socinian groups

Other Biblical Unitarians such as the Christadelphians and Church of God General Conference are also typically Socinian rather than Arian in their Christology.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) teaches a nontrinitarian theology concerning the nature of the Godhead. Similarities between LDS doctrines and Arianism were alleged as early as 1846. There are a number of key differences between Arianism and Latter-day Saint theology. Whereas Arianism is a unitarian Christian form of classical theism, Latter-day Saint theology is a non-trinitarian (but not unitarian) form of Christianity outside of classical theism. Arianism also teaches that God is eternal, was never a man, and could not incarnate as a man; in contrast, the LDS Church teaches that "God Himself is an exalted man, perfected, enthroned, and supreme."

Whereas Arianism denies that humans can become gods, the LDS Church affirms that humans can become gods through exaltation. Whereas Arianism teaches that the Son was created, the LDS Church also teaches that the Son was procreated as a literal spirit child of the Heavenly Father and the Heavenly Mother and denies any form of creation ex nihilo; the creation of Christ ex nihilo is, in contrast, a fundamental premise of Arianism.

The LDS church, in contrast to the Arian teaching that God is incorporeal, also teaches that God has a tangible body: "The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us." Arianism traditionally taught that God is incomprehensible even to the Son. In contrast, the LDS Church rejects the doctrine that God is incomprehensible. Though Arianism teaches that Christ is ontologically inferior and subordinate to the Father, the LDS Church teaches that Christ is equal in power and glory with the Father.

The LDS Church teaches that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separate beings united in purpose: "the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost) [...] are three physically separate beings, but fully one in love, purpose and will", as illustrated in Jesus' Farewell Prayer, his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist, his transfiguration, and the martyrdom of Stephen. Thus, the church's first Article of Faith states: "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost."

Latter-day Saints believe that the three are collectively "one eternal God" but reject the Nicene definition of the Trinity, that the three are consubstantial. In some respects, Latter-day Saint theology is more similar to social trinitarianism than to Arianism.

Spiritism

According to the reincarnationist religion of Spiritism started by French educator Allan Kardec in the 19th century, Jesus is the highest-order of spirit that has ever incarnated on Earth and is distinct from God, by whom he was created. Jesus is not considered God or part of God as in Nicene Christianity, but is nonetheless the ultimate model of human love, intelligence, and forgiveness, often cited as the governor of Earth.

See also

• Adoptionism
• Arian controversy
• Arian creeds
• First Council of Nicaea
• Germanic Christianity
• Gothic Bible
• God-man (Christianity)
• History of Unitarianism
• Jehovah's Witnesses
• Monarchianism
• Nontrinitarianism
• Sabellianism
• Socinianism
• Subordinationism

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Arianism — 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 () 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 form 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 Circuminession, 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 Aetius, 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 Spaniard 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.

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• Chapman, Henry Palmer (1909). "Eusebius of Nicomedia". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 5. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Chapman, Henry Palmer (1910). "Pope Liberius". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Chapman, Henry Palmer (1911). "Paul of Samosata". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Chapman, Henry Palmer (1912). "Semiarians and Semiarianism". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Clarke, Peter B. (2006). "Iglesia ni Cristo". Encyclopedia of new religious movements. London: Routledge. pp. 292–293. ISBN 0-203-48433-9. OCLC 63792403.
• Ehrman, Bart D. (2003). Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-972712-4.
• Ehrman, Bart D. (2009). Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them). HarperOne. ISBN 978-0-06-186328-8.
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• Freeman, Charles (2003). The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason. Knopf.
• Gibbon, Edward (1836) [1782]. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. New York: Harper & Brothers – via Project Gutenberg.
• Gross, Terry (7 April 2014). "If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One?". NPR.org. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
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• Schaff, Philip. Theological Controversies and the Development of Orthodoxy: The history of the Christian church. volumes III and IX.
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Further reading

• Ayres, Lewis (2004). Nicaea and its Legacy: An approach to fourth-century trinitarian theology. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Belletini, Mark. "Arius in the Mirror: The Alexandrian dissent and how it is reflected in modern Unitarian Universalist practice and discourse". Sermons. Columbus, OH: First Unitarian Universalist Church. Archived from the original on 16 February 2007. Retrieved 18 September 2006.
• Brennecke, Hanns Christof (1999). "Arianism". In Fahlbusch, Erwin (ed.). Encyclopedia of Christianity. Vol. 1. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. pp. 121–122. ISBN 0-8028-2413-7.
• Davidson, Ivor J. (2005). "A Public Faith". Baker History of the Church. Vol. 2. ISBN 0-8010-1275-9.
• Newman, John Henry (1833). "Arians of the Fourth Century". newmanreader.org.
• Parvis, Sarah (2006). Marcellus of Ancyra and the Lost Years of the Arian Controversy 325–345. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199280131.
• Rodriguez, Eliseo (29 July 2014). The Doctrine of the Trinity is Dead: The original gospel. Lost Fundamental Doctrines. Vol. 1. ISBN 978-1490922164.
• Rusch, William C. (1980). The Trinitarian Controversy. Sources of Early Christian Thought. ISBN 0-8006-1410-0.

External links

• Documents of the Early Arian Controversy Chronological survey of the sources
• English translations of all extant letters relating to early Arianism
• A map of early sympathizers with Arius
• Barry, William (1913). "Arianism". Catholic Encyclopedia.
• Jewish Encyclopedia: Arianism
• Concordia Cyclopedia: Arianism (page 1) (page 2) (page 3)
• "Arianism". The American Cyclopædia. 1879.
• The Arians of the fourth century by John Henry "Cardinal" Newman in "btm" format
• Concise Summary of the Arian Controversy
• Arianism Today Archived 1 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine