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Arianism
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Arianism is the theological teaching of Arius (ca. AD 250–336), a Christian priest, who was first ruled a heretic at the First Council of Nicea, later exonerated and then pronounced a heretic again after his death.
Arius lived and taught in Alexandria, Egypt. The most controversial of his teachings dealt with the relationship between God the Father and the person of Jesus, saying that Jesus was not of one substance with the Father and that there had been a time before he existed.
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319 Arius travels to Nicomedia at the invitation of Eusebius, after having been accused of heresy and condemned by Alexander, the Patriarch of Alexandria. This gave rise to the Arian Controversy.
321 A synod in Alexandria condemns Arianism.
346 The Visigoths are converted to Arianism by Wulfila.
347 Council of Sardica is held. This council attempted to resolve the Arian controversy, and laid down ground rules for Bishops.
359 The Council of Rimini is held. Its purpose was to, once again, try to resolve the Arian controvery. Given Saint Jerome's comment that, "The whole world groaned in astonishment to find itself Arian", it appears to have failed.
364 Valens (an Arian) begins the first antipagan persecutions.
373 Valens is converted to Arianism and orders the persecution of orthodox Christians.
375 Gratian, advised by Ambrose, begins a systematic persecution of the pagans. He confiscates the fortunes of the temples and adds the money to the Imperial Treasury, and removes the Altar of Victory from the Senate. He proscribes Arianism and Donatism.
380 Roman Emperors Theodosius I and Gratianus declare that the patriarchs of Rome and Alexandria hold primacy (above especially the one of Constantinople), implicitly rejecting Arianism in favor of orthodox Christianity.
381 Council of Aquileia: under the guidance of Ambrose, the chief Arianist bishops Palladius and Secundadius are deposed.
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Encyclopedia
Arianism is the theological teaching of Arius (ca. AD 250–336), a Christian priest, who was first ruled a heretic at the First Council of Nicea, later exonerated and then pronounced a heretic again after his death.
Arius lived and taught in Alexandria, Egypt. The most controversial of his teachings dealt with the relationship between God the Father and the person of Jesus, saying that Jesus was not of one substance with the Father and that there had been a time before he existed. This teaching of Arius conflicted with other christological positions held by Church theologians (and subsequently maintained by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches and most Protestant Churches).
The term "Arianism" is also used to refer to other nontrinitarian theological systems of the 4th century, which regarded the Son of God, the Logos, as a created being (as in Arianism proper and Anomoeanism) or as neither uncreated nor created in the sense other beings are created (as in "Semi-Arianism").
Origin
Arius posed the question, "Is Jesus unbegotten?" In other words, he taught that God the Father and the Son did not exist together eternally. Further, Arius taught that the pre-incarnate Jesus was a divine being created by (and possibly 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." That doctrine that Arius wrote was based on Scriptures such as John 14:28 where Jesus says that the father is "greater than I" to John 17:20-26 where Jesus asks that the Apostles become "one as we are one" so that all of them including Jesus and God become one. This is interpreted as indicating that the oneness refers to thought and will, and not a unity in a Trinity.
Of all the various disagreements within the Christian Church, the Arian controversy has held the greatest force and power of theological and political conflict, with the possible exception of the Protestant Reformation. The conflict between Arianism and Trinitarian beliefs was the first major doctrinal confrontation in the Church after the legalization of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine I.
The controversy over Arianism began to rise in the late 3rd century and extended over the greater part of the 4th 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 3rd and 4th 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 a 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. However to minimize the extent of Arianism ignores the fact that extremely prominent Emperors such as Constantius II, the first Christian Emperor, and Valens were Arians, as well as prominent Gothic, Vandal and Lombard warlords both before and after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and that none of these groups were out of the mainstream of the Roman Empire in the 4th century.
After the dispute over Arius politicized the debate and a catholic or general solution to the debate was sought, with a great majority holding to the Trinitarian position, the Arian position was declared officially to be heterodox. There is some irony in that the Roman Catholic Church canonized Lucian of Antioch as a brilliant and talented early Christian leader and martyr, although 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 may have 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 politically and thus theologically in the Roman Empire at the end of the 4th century. Arianism, which had been taught by the Arian missionary Ulfilas to the Germanic tribes, was dominant for some centuries among several Germanic tribes in western Europe, especially Goths and Lombards (and significantly for the late Empire, the Vandals), but ceased to be the mainstream belief by the 8th century. Trinitarianism remained the dominant doctrine in all major branches of the Eastern and Western Church and within Protestantism, although there have been several anti-Trinitarian movements, some of which acknowledge various similarities to classical Arianism.
Beliefs
Because most extant written material on Arianism was written by its opponents, the nature of Arian teachings is difficult to define precisely today. The letter of Auxentius, 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." 1 Corinthians 8:5-6 was cited as proof text:
A letter from Arius to the Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia succinctly states the core beliefs of the Arians:
The First Council of Nicaea 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 the Emperor Constantine called an assembly of bishops, the First Council of Nicaea, which condemned Arius' doctrine and formulated the Original Nicene Creed, forms of which are 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, 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 divinity of Christ (see Paul of Samosata and the Synods of Antioch). Arius taught that Jesus Christ was divine and was sent to earth for the salvation of mankind but that Jesus Christ was not equal to the Father (infinite, primordial origin) and to the Holy Spirit (giver of life). 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). 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 created being, of a distinct, though similar, essence or substance to 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 a distinct being of God in existence or reality (hypostasis), which the Latin fathers translated as persona. Jesus was God in essence, being and or nature (ousia), which the Latin fathers translated as substantia.
Constantine is believed to have exiled those who refused to accept the Nicean creed—Arius himself, the deacon Euzoios, and the Libyan bishops Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais—and also 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 was exiled, who was an Arian Christian.
Although he was committed to maintaining what the 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' rehabilitation. At the First Synod of Tyre in AD 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 under Constantine's direction readmitted Arius to communion in AD 336. Arius, however, died on the way to this event in Constantinople. This was the same day Arius' own bishop prayed that if his heresy was to be propagated, the Lord take him in death that night- or better, Arius. Some scholars also suggest that Arius may have been poisoned by his opponents. 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 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 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 and installing Antipope Felix II.
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 the Council of Sardica in 343, the Council of Sirmium in 358 and the double Council of Rimini and Seleucia in 359, and no less than fourteen further creed formulas between 340 and 360, leading 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' 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
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. Theodosius' wife St Flacilla was instrumental in his campaign to end Arianism. 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), 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' 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 between Creed of 325 and Creed of 381. This is generally considered the end of the dispute about the Trinity and the end of Arianism among the Roman, non-Germanic peoples.
Remnants of Arianism in the West
However, much of southeastern Europe and central Europe, including many of the Goths and Vandals respectively, had embraced Arianism (the Visigoths converted to Arian Christianity in 376), 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 finally suppressed in the 6th and 7th centuries. Later, during the Protestant reformation, a religious sect in Poland known as the Polish Brethren were commonly referred to as Arians due to their rejection of the Trinity.
Arianism in the early medieval Germanic kingdoms
However, during the time of Arianism's flowering in Constantinople, the Gothic 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 Arian German kingdoms 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 were Arians, and the majority population Nicene. Many scholars see the persistence of the Germanic Arianism as a strategy to differentiate the Germanic elite from the local inhabitants and culture and to maintain their group identity.
Most Germanic tribes were generally tolerant of the Nicene beliefs of their subjects. However, the Vandals tried for several decades to force their Arian belief on their North African Nicene subjects, exiling Nicene clergy, dissolving monasteries, and exercising heavy pressure on non-conforming Christians.
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).
The Franks were unique among the Germanic peoples in that they entered the empire as pagans and converted to Nicene Christianity directly, guided by their king Clovis.
"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 Nicene 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.
Archbishop Dmitri of the Orthodox Church in America said Islam is the largest descendant of Arianism today. There is some superficial similarity in Islam's teaching that Jesus was a great prophet, but very distinct from God, although Islam sees Jesus as a human messenger of God without the divine properties that Arianism attributes to Christ. Islam sees itself as a continuation of the Jewish and Christian traditions and reveres many of the same prophets, though Islam denies the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and historical Arians confessed it.
Thus, over the past 1,500 years, some Christians have used the term Arian to refer to those groups that see themselves as worshiping Jesus Christ or respecting his teachings, but do not hold to the Nicene creed. 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.
There have been religious movements holding beliefs that either they, or their opponents, have considered Arian. To quote the Encyclopaedia Britannicas 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." However, their doctrines cannot be considered representative of traditional Arian doctrines or vice-versa.
Another religious movement with a strong Arian belief are the Jehovah's Witnesses. Jesus Christ is considered divine but not equal to the one God.
Sources
History of the Arians Lewis Ayres, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). Mark Belletini, Arius in the Mirror: The Alexandrian Dissent And How It Is Reflected in Modern Unitarian Universalist Practice and Discourse http://firstuucolumbus.org/sermons/ariuspaper.htm Ivor J. Davidson, A Public Faith, Volume 2 of Baker History of the Church, 2005, ISBN 0-8010-1275-9 R.P.C. Hanson, (T&T Clark, 1988). J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 1978, ISBN 0-06-064334-X Sarah Parvis, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). William C. Rusch, The Trinitarian Controversy, (Sources of Early Christian Thought), 1980, ISBN 0-8006-1410-0 John Henry Newman, , 1833 Schaff, Philip , History of the Christian Church, Vol III, Ch. IX Williams, Rowan, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, rev. edn. 2001, ISBN 0-8028-4969-5 (2007, German and original languages only, Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter, 2007)
See also
External links
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