The Arian Controversy

The Church suffered from various persecutions during the third century. At first, these enjoyed considerable popular support. The Decian (251) and Valerian (257, 260) persecutions took place at times of widespread trouble, when it was easy to persuade people that Christians were responsible for the Empire's loss of its traditional virtue and good favor with the gods. By the dawn of the fourth century, however, they were quite unpopular. Christians comprised perhaps 10% of the population of the Empire. The last persecution began under Diocletian, lasting from 303 to 311. Church buildings and documents were destroyed; some Christians were killed. But in 313 Constantine, who had become Emperor, proclaimed the Edict of Milan, granting everyone, including Christians, religious freedom.

The persecutions of the third century kept ideological divisions below the surface. Once persecution ceased, however, Christians were free to resume fighting each other. Various divisions stemmed more from personality conflicts than theological debates. In the early fourth century, however, the Church faced a serious division that struck at the heart of who Christ was and, therefore, what Christianity was. It threatened to split the church. A successor of the controversy did eventually split the church into Eastern and Western portions.

By the beginning of the fourth century, the Roman Empire itself was in serious danger of splitting apart, which it did in 364. Constantine saw Christianity as a way of uniting a fracturing Empire. He was dismayed, therefore, by divisions within the church, and set out to resolve them.

Already there were strong intellectual divisions between East and West. The Western half of the Empire spoke Latin; the Eastern half, Greek. The best schools were in the East, which had inherited the legacy of Greek philosophy. Also, because of greater interaction with other religions and cults, there was much livelier theological debate in the East. The West never had much interest in the Arian controversy. The East, however, continued to be torn apart by it for most of the fourth century, and even beyond.

Arius (250?-336) was a student of Lucian of Antioch, who had founded a school of theology in Antioch. Arius was presbyter and an esteemed preacher of the Baucalis church in Alexandria, the intellectual capital of the Roman Empire. Around 320 a dispute arose between Arius and his bishop, Alexander. Arius advanced a number of controversial theses, inspired by his reading of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke):

• God the Father is eternal, but Christ is not; He had a beginning.
• The Father and the Son are not the same in substance.
• The Father created the Son.
• In that act of creation, the Logos entered the human body of Jesus in place of a human mind.
• Christ is neither fully human nor fully divine.

This is obviously not orthodox doctrine. But it is not entirely implausible as a reading of the synoptic gospels. Arians either rejected the gospel of John or interpreted it, along with passages from Paul's letters, as referring to the divine mind as inhabiting the body of Jesus.

Moreover, it is a response to a very difficult theological problem. Imagine trying to explain Christianity to a group of people with very different backgrounds- some Jews, some devotees of Greek or Roman polytheism, some followers of local gods and goddesses, some attracted to Eastern sects postulating one good and one evil god. The first question you are likely to face: Are you saying that there is one God or three? Especially in the East, there was no well-worked out answer to that question. Christianity's trouble with it led to the rise and rapid spread of Islam in the seventh century, with its emphasis on the existence of one God.

Today, we might try to answer that question in various ways:

• There are three ways of looking at a single God.
• There are three forms of a single God.
• There are three roles played by one God.
• There are three relations in which God stands to humans.
• There are three manifestations of one God.
• There are three parts of one God.
• There are three aspects of one God.

In the second and third century, various solutions to the problem were proposed. Many held that Christ was a manifestation of God the Father. This tended to imply that Christ wasn't human. It took different forms in different thinkers.

• Gnostics tended to distinguish Christ, a divine being emanating from the Pleroma, from Jesus. Matter, they held, was wholly evil; God could not in any sense be material. So, either Jesus was not fully material, or He was not fully God. Some Gnostics took the first path, holding that Jesus was merely the appearance of Christ on earth; others held that Christ temporarily inhabited the man Jesus.
• Docetists held that Jesus did not really suffer: "If he suffered, he was not God; if he was God, he did not suffer."
• Monarchianists held that the Father himself descended to earthy and was crucified (a doctrine known as Patripassionism). Modalistic Monarchianists held that Christ was a temporary manifestation of God the Father; Dynamic Monarchianists, that He was an adopted Son of God.
• Sabellianists, still strong in Egypt in the fourth century, thought of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as the body, soul, and spirit of one substance, God.

Others held that Christ was fully human, but not equal to God the Father. The Ebionites, who traced to the original Jerusalem church and tried to reconcile Christianity and Judaism, held that Christ was a prophet, the Messiah, through which God had communicated a message of salvation. Arius did not go so far; for him, the mind of Christ was fully divine, and identical to the mind of God the Father. But Christ, as created by the Father, could not be considered the Father's equal.

Arius argued that his view made sense of the Christmas story, the ability of Jesus to know the Scriptures at a young age, God's intentions for Him, and how to complete the Scriptures in accordance with God's plan.

Athanasius (295-373), a deacon born in Alexandria, became Bishop Alexander's secretary and then his successor in 328. He was the chief critic of Arius. He found Arianism incompatible with an adequate account of salvation. "He was made man that we might be made divine." Only by a being who is fully divine coming into contact with something fully human could we be given immortality. Arius, in his view, provided no basis for a real salvation. Athanasius appeals to Origen's view that "what has not been assumed could not be redeemed."

Athanasius offers a different view. The Son is God's Wisdom; the Son dwelled in the bosom of the Father from eternity. The Son is proper to the Father's substance, but is nevertheless a distinct expression of it. He uses the image of the Sun and its radiance as an analogy for the relation of Father to Son. The Father's whole being and power are communicated to the Son, and through Him to us. The Son is thus wholly equal to the Father in being and power. Nevertheless, 'Father' and 'Son' are not interchangeable salva veritate; the Father is the ultimate source of being and power.

Arius rejects this position, for it makes the Son equal to the Father, and, he thinks, implies that the Father changes in imparting power to the Son.

The conflict between Arius and his followers and Alexander, Athanasius, and their followers threatened to split the church. Emperor Constantine, who had converted to Christianity not long before, decided he must prevent that from happening. So, he convened the Council of Nicaea in May, 325. Three hundred bishops attended, together with many lower officials. Only six were from the Western half of the Empire. Some bishops were Arians; some followed Alexander; most were unfamiliar with the issues dividing them. (The church historian Socrates described most of the attendees as "simpletons.") Constantine himself proposed inserting the crucial language of the Nicene creed, "consubstantial (or of one essence) with the Father." That marked a victory of Alexander over Arius. All but two bishops signed the creed. Those two, and Arius himself, were banished.

But that hardly ended the matter. Debate continued between the two sides, and Constantine's allegiance shifted. By 335, Constantine had decided to restore Arius; he banished Athanasius to Gaul. The night before Arius was to be formally restored to the church, however, he died unexpectedly. Constantine himself died the next year. The controversy he did so much to settle long outlived him.