The long fight after Nicaea and the role of Athanasius

Program / Course 8: God, Trinity, and Creation / Lesson 4.3

What you will learn

• Outline the main phases of the controversy between 325 and 381.
• Describe the main parties: Nicene, Arian, Homoian and the Homoiousian middle.
• Explain Athanasius’s career, his exiles and his main arguments.
• Recognize how the political situation shaped the debate without determining its outcome.

The big idea

Nicaea did not end the Arian controversy. For about fifty years the church was divided, emperors took different sides, bishops were exiled and recalled, and many creeds were written. The strongest defender of the Nicene faith was Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who was exiled five times and held that the Son must be truly God for there to be a Savior. By the 360s a group of thinkers in between, who had been wary of homoousios, began to come closer to the Nicene side. The settlement came at Constantinople in 381.

Key terms

Athanasius

Bishop of Alexandria from 328 to 373, the leading defender of the Nicene faith.

Eusebian party

Followers of Eusebius of Nicomedia, who opposed the Nicene wording and sought to remove its main defenders.

Homoian

From Greek for like. A party that said the Son is like the Father and avoided speaking of substance.

Anomoian

From Greek for unlike. The extreme Arians, such as Aetius and Eunomius, who said the Son is unlike the Father in substance.

Homoiousian

From Greek for of like substance. A middle party, led for a time by Basil of Ancyra, who accepted that the Son is of the Father’s kind but disliked homoousios.

Pro-Nicene

A term used by scholars for those who defended Nicene faith in the later fourth century, including those who developed its language.

Exile

Removal from one’s see by imperial order. A common weapon in the controversy.

Council of Sardica

A council in 343 or so, called to settle the case of Athanasius, that divided the Eastern and Western bishops.

Background

Constantine did not hold firmly to the verdict of Nicaea. A few years after the council he recalled Arius from exile and was reconciled with the Eusebian party. In 335 a council at Tyre deposed Athanasius on charges including disorderly conduct, and Constantine sent him to Gaul. Arius died in Constantinople in 336 just before he was to be readmitted to communion, and ancient writers told dramatic stories of his death. When Constantine died in 337, his sons took different sides: Constantius in the East favored the opponents of Nicaea, and Constans in the West supported the Nicene party.

Between 340 and 360 a series of councils produced creeds that avoided the word homoousios. Some of these were more or less orthodox, and others were Arian in all but name. The Western church mostly held to Nicaea, and Rome and Alexandria stood together. The Eastern church was divided, and many bishops were against Athanasius because they saw him as a political troublemaker or as a Sabellian. The councils of Rimini and Seleucia in 359 produced a creed that said the Son is like the Father according to the Scriptures and forbade talk of substance. Jerome wrote that the world groaned and found itself Arian.

The turning point came after the death of Constantius in 361. The emperor Julian, who rejected Christianity, allowed exiled bishops to return, and the church had to deal with its own divisions without imperial pressure. A later emperor, Valens, favored the Arian side, but by this time a new generation was reshaping the debate, and Theodosius, who became emperor in 379, was committed to the Nicene faith.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The career of Athanasius

Athanasius was a young deacon at Nicaea and became bishop of Alexandria in 328. He held the see for forty-five years, but was in exile for roughly seventeen of them, including in Gaul, in Rome and among the monks of the Egyptian desert. His opponents often tried to remove him, with charges of violence and corruption which he denied. Historians differ on how far some charges had a basis. He had a forceful character, and he was both admired and disliked.

Athanasius wrote Against the Arians, On the Incarnation, a life of Anthony the hermit, and letters on the Holy Spirit. He was a stubborn defender of the Nicene wording, though early on he rarely used the word homoousios. He said that the Nicene Creed expressed the sense of Scripture, and that those who objected to non-biblical words were using words of their own that the Bible does not contain, such as ungenerated or out of nothing.

Step 2: The main argument

Athanasius’s core argument is about salvation. Only God can save humanity from sin and death, and only God can unite humanity to God. If the Son who became flesh is a creature, he cannot do this, and a creature united to creatures changes nothing. So the Son must be God in the same sense as the Father. The argument is found in Against the Arians II and in On the Incarnation 54, where he says that the Word became man that humans might become divine. The word divine here means sharing in God’s life by grace, and not becoming equal to God.

He added arguments from worship and from the Bible. The church prays to the Son and baptizes in his name, which would be idolatry if he were a creature. The texts of John and Hebrews that call the Son the radiance of God’s glory and the image of his person suggest an intimate relation of nature. And the passages that speak of the Son’s weakness are about the flesh he took. Later writers refined these arguments but kept their shape.

Step 3: The parties in the middle

Not everyone fell on one side or the other. The Anomoians, under Aetius and Eunomius, were the extreme, saying the Son is unlike the Father and that human reason can know the divine essence. Their position alarmed many moderates. The Homoians avoided questions about substance altogether and held to the Scriptures as they read them. And the Homoiousians, around Basil of Ancyra, said that the Son is of like substance to the Father, which they thought preserved the distinction between Father and Son.

In the 360s some Homoiousians came to see that they and the Nicene party were not so far apart. Athanasius, in the Council of Alexandria of 362, was willing to accept that the formula of three hypostases could be orthodox if it was not used to make three Gods. This opened the way to the Cappadocian solution, discussed in module 5. It also showed that some of the division had been about words.

Step 4: Politics and truth

The role of the emperors is easy to exaggerate in either direction. They did shape events by calling councils, exiling bishops and changing the winning side. But the debate also continued among the bishops themselves, by letters and sermons, and drew on arguments. The emperors changed their policies frequently. The Nicene faith survived emperors who opposed it and prevailed under one who supported it. Some modern scholars argue that this shows that it was convincing, and others argue that it shows the importance of political support. Probably both contributed.

The result also depended on people who were not famous. Monks and local churches in Egypt and elsewhere supported Athanasius in the face of imperial pressure. Hilary of Poitiers, exiled to the East, taught the Western church about the Eastern debate and wrote a major work On the Trinity. Without such support the Nicene side might have lost.

1. Why might a bishop stay loyal to a creed when it costs him his post?
2. How can I tell when a dispute is about words and when it is about substance?
3. Why is salvation central in Athanasius’s argument?
4. What is gained and lost when emperors take sides in a doctrinal dispute?
5. How should I weigh the charges against Athanasius?
6. What can the middle parties teach about patience in disputes?

Examples

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic histories honor Athanasius, Hilary and Pope Julius, who defended him. They note that the Western bishops were more consistently Nicene. The Catholic tradition counts Athanasius as a Doctor of the Church.

Orthodox

Orthodox tradition calls Athanasius the Great and the Pillar of the Church. His feast is celebrated on January 18. Orthodox hymns celebrate his courage against the Arians, and his teaching that God became man so that humans may become gods by grace is central to the Orthodox understanding of salvation.

Protestant

Protestants admire Athanasius as a defender of the faith against heresy. His On the Incarnation is widely read in evangelical and Reformed circles. Some Protestants worry about how councils and emperors shaped the outcome, but accept that the doctrine matched Scripture.

Critical scholarship

R. P. C. Hanson, in a major study, argued that the controversy was far messier than traditional accounts, and that the Nicene side won in part through changed meanings of its key words. Lewis Ayres and others reply that Hanson overstated the confusion and that a coherent pro-Nicene theology emerged. Some historians also hold that Athanasius was an effective political actor as well as a theologian.

Why it matters

The story shows how doctrine is formed. It is not produced in a single decision but through long argument, suffering, failure and revision. A student who knows only the creed may think it came from calm reflection. The history shows that its words were costly. It also shows that the church can be wrong for decades, and that careful theology can correct it over time.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. What would it take for you to hold a position when the majority of church leaders and the state were against it?
2. Is there something to learn from the moderates, who disliked both extremes?
3. How does the length of the struggle affect how you view a creed’s authority?

Independent assignment

A timeline

In your own notebook, write about 400 words and make a timeline from 318 to 381. Mark at least ten events or dates, including the start of the dispute, Nicaea, Athanasius’s first exile, Constantine’s death, Rimini and Seleucia, Julian, and Constantinople. Under the timeline, write a paragraph on what the pattern suggests about how long doctrinal settlements take. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study

• Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Word Read chapters 1 to 10 and chapter 54.
• Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of St. Anthony Read for Athanasius’s portrait of the desert monk, written during an exile.
• J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines Read the chapters on the fourth-century controversy.
• Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., The Seven Ecumenical Councils (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, vol. 14) Look at the later creeds and the documents of Constantinople.
• Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity A narrative account of the period.
• Hebrews 1:3 The brightness of his glory and the express image of his person.
• 2 Peter 1:4 Partakers of the divine nature.
• John 17:21 That they all may be one.