What Arius taught and why it spread

Program / Course 8: God, Trinity, and Creation / Lesson 4.1

What you will learn

• Summarize the central claims of Arius about the Son of God.
• Explain the biblical texts and philosophical concerns that made his view attractive.
• Describe the setting of the controversy in Alexandria and the early stages of its spread.
• Identify what Arius’s critics said was at stake.

The big idea

Arius, a presbyter in Alexandria early in the fourth century, taught that the Son of God is the first and greatest of God’s creatures, made before the world, but not eternal and not of the same being as the Father. His teaching was not a casual mistake. It rested on texts of Scripture, on a long habit of speaking of the Father as the one source, and on a concern to protect the unity and unchangeableness of God. It spread because it was clear and easy to teach. Its critics said it destroyed the basis of worship and salvation.

Key terms

Arianism

The teaching, named after Arius, that the Son is a created being, not eternal and not of one being with the Father.

Presbyter

A priest or elder in the early church, below a bishop.

Begotten

A word used of the Son in the creeds. Arius took it to mean brought into being by the Father’s will. Nicene writers took it to mean eternally coming from the Father’s own being.

Created

Brought into existence from nothing by God. Arius said the Son was created. Nicene writers said he was begotten, not made.

Ingenerate (agenetos)

A Greek word meaning without origin. Arius said only the Father is ingenerate.

Thalia

A work of Arius in verse and prose, known in part through quotations in Athanasius. It means banquet.

Lucianic school

The circle of Lucian of Antioch, a teacher and martyr, who taught several of Arius’s supporters.

Homoousios

A Greek word meaning of the same substance. The word the Council of Nicaea chose against Arius.

Background

Alexandria, in Egypt, was the second largest city in the Roman Empire and a center of Christian learning. Around 318 a dispute broke out between Alexander, the bishop, and Arius, an experienced presbyter who led the church at the district called Baucalis. Only a few writings of Arius himself survive, including letters to Alexander and to Eusebius of Nicomedia. Most of what is known of his views comes from his opponents, especially Athanasius, who may have shaped the presentation. Historians therefore treat the sources with care.

Arius was part of a wider tradition. Many Eastern writers before him had taught that the Father is the single source of the Godhead and that the Son comes from him and is in some way second. Origen, for example, had said that the Son is eternally begotten. Others stressed the second place of the Son. Arius took one strand of this and made it sharp. He was also heir to a respectable stream of theology from Antioch, through Lucian. The result was a teaching that looked to many like a natural reading of what they had always heard.

Alexander condemned Arius at a local council around 320 or 321, and Arius left Egypt. He found friends, among them Eusebius of Nicomedia, a bishop who stood close to the imperial court, and Eusebius of Caesarea, the church historian. The dispute spread across the Eastern churches. By 324 the emperor Constantine, who had just become master of the whole empire, found his church divided and called a council.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The claims

The letters and fragments allow a statement of what Arius taught. God, the Father, alone is without beginning. The Son was brought into being by the Father’s will before all times and ages, and before him he was not. The best known slogan, reported by Athanasius and others, is that there was when he was not. Arius said that the Son was not made from the Father’s own being but out of nothing, though he was a perfect creature unlike the others. He also said that the Son is changeable by nature, though he remains good by his own choice.

Arius also taught that the Son, because he is a creature, cannot fully know the Father, and that the Word through whom the world was made is the first and highest instrument of God. On his view the Son is called God by grace and not by nature. Arius believed he was honoring the Son as far as it was proper, and he used scriptural titles for him.

Step 2: Why it was attractive

Arius could point to texts. Proverbs 8:22 in the Greek version said that the Lord created me the beginning of his ways, and the early church had long read this as speaking of the Son as Wisdom. John 14:28 has Jesus say that the Father is greater than he. Colossians 1:15 calls him the firstborn of every creature. Mark 13:32 says that the Son does not know the day or hour. Jesus prays, grows, asks and suffers. These texts seemed to many to show a Son who is less than the Father.

Philosophical concern also played a part. Many Greek-speaking Christians thought that God is simple, unchangeable and unique. If the Son were fully God, they asked, would there be two Gods, or would God be divided? And if God cannot suffer or change, how could the Son, who did, be of the same nature? Arius answered by making the Son a lesser being. This protected the unique rank of the Father and explained the Son’s changeable life.

There was also a practical appeal. Arius was a good preacher and, it was said, had simple verses set to popular tunes, so that dockworkers and travelers learned them. The teaching was clear and logical in a way that the alternatives were not. A creator and a creature, a first and a second, made sense to a mind that thought in simple categories.

Step 3: What the critics said was at stake

Alexander and Athanasius argued that the teaching undid the Christian faith in three ways. First, it made worship idolatrous: if the Son is a creature, then praying to him and worshiping him is giving to a creature what belongs to God. Second, it undermined salvation: only God can save and only God can unite humanity to God, and so a Savior who is only a creature cannot do this. Third, it distorted the Father: if the Son was brought into being at a point, then God was not always Father, and God was not always the God he is.

Athanasius also pointed out that Arius made the Trinity a changing thing, since a Trinity that began later would have grown. He said that Arius had turned a Father who is eternal into a solitary one who later made a companion. The critics said this was not a small adjustment but a different religion.

Step 4: What Arius could say in reply

Arius and his friends saw themselves as defenders of the tradition. They said that Alexander was falling toward Sabellius, who had collapsed the Son into the Father. They said that if the Son is of the same being as the Father, then the Father is divided, and that the word homoousios, which Nicaea would use, had been condemned at a council at Antioch in the previous century in connection with Paul of Samosata. Scholars note that the facts about that earlier council are uncertain.

This is why the dispute was hard. Both sides feared an error and both appealed to Scripture. The solution would need new language. The next lesson shows what Nicaea chose and why.

1. Which of Arius’s texts seem to me the strongest, and how else might they be read?
2. What did Arius want to protect, and is that worthy?
3. How would worship change if the Son were a creature?
4. Why might a clear and simple teaching spread faster than a more careful one?
5. How should I treat a teaching known mostly from opponents?
6. What does the idea that there was when he was not mean for how I pray?

Examples

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching names Arianism as a heresy condemned at Nicaea and holds that the Son is eternally begotten and one in being with the Father. Catholic histories also stress the faithfulness of Alexander and Athanasius. Catholic scholars of today admit the complexity of the sources.

Orthodox

Orthodox tradition honors Nicaea as the first ecumenical council and Athanasius as a great saint. Arianism is regarded as a basic denial of the Incarnation and of salvation. Orthodox liturgy repeats the Nicene teaching on the eternal Son in many of its hymns.

Protestant

The Reformation churches accept Nicaea as a faithful statement of Scripture. Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican confessions repeat the Nicene faith. Protestants appeal to the same texts as Arius, but argue that the fuller Scriptural witness supports the Nicene reading.

Critical scholarship

Modern historians such as Rowan Williams, Richard Hanson and Lewis Ayres have rewritten the picture of the controversy. They have shown that Arius’s views were part of a wider stream of theology, that the sources are slanted, and that the sides were less clearly split than later accounts suggest. Williams’s book Arius is a major study.

Modern non-Trinitarians

Jehovah’s Witnesses and some others hold a view similar to that of Arius, that the Son is a created being. They appeal to the texts that Arius used. The historic churches reply that the same texts are read differently and that the rest of Scripture requires the Nicene reading.

Why it matters

The Arian controversy is the proving ground for the doctrine of the Trinity. Without it the Nicene Creed’s language can seem like needless hairsplitting. With it, the reader sees that the question is whether the one worshiped in the church is truly God, and whether the God who saves and the God who creates is the same. The case also teaches how a plausible reading of Scripture can lead a community astray.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. What do you find attractive about an easy and clear explanation of Christ, and what does it cost?
2. How do you decide when a reading of a text is plausible but wrong?
3. Do you think a council can fairly settle a question like this? Why or why not?

Independent assignment

Arius’s letter

In your own notebook, write about 450 words. Look at the summary of Arius’s views given in this lesson, and write a statement of his position as he might have written it, using his texts. Then write the answer that Alexander or Athanasius would have given, point by point. End with a short note on what you found the strongest in each. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study

• Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Word Read for the argument that only the Word who is God could save.
• Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., The Seven Ecumenical Councils (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, vol. 14) Read the documents of Nicaea.
• J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines Read the chapter on the Arian controversy.
• Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity Read the section on Constantine and Nicaea for a general narrative.
• Proverbs 8:22 The text Arius read of the Son.
• John 14:28 My Father is greater than I.
• Colossians 1:15 The firstborn of every creature.
• John 1:1 The Word was with God and was God.