Arianism

From Academic Kids

This article is about theological views like those of Arius.

For the ethnic concept with misleadingly similar spelling, see Aryan.

Arianism was a Christological view held by followers of Arius in the early Christian Church, claiming that Jesus Christ and God the Father were not always contemporary, seeing the Son as a divine being, created by the Father (and consequently inferior to Him) at some point in time, before which he did not exist. The First Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) condemned Arianism, after much controversy, and declared it heretical; similar views, and in some cases revival of the name, have recurred.

Contents

1 Origins

2 The Council of Nicea and its aftermath

3 The dispute resumes

4 Arianism in the early medieval Germanic kingdoms

5 Reformation, Enlightenment and Unitarianism

6 Modern parallels

7 See also

8 External links

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Origins

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 conflict between Arianism and the Trinitarianism that has since become dominant was the first important doctrinal difficulty in the Church after the legalization of Christianity by Emperor Constantine I. At one point in the conflict, Arianism held sway in the family of the Emperor and the Imperial nobility, and, because Ulfilas was the apostle to the Goths, the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths, they arrived in western Europe already Christians, but also Arians.

Arius was a Christian priest in Alexandria, Egypt. In 321 he was denounced by a synod at Alexandria for teaching a heterodox view of the relationship of Jesus to God the Father. Arius and his followers agreed that Jesus was the son of God, but inferior or subordinate to God the Father. A specific summary statement that came to be at issue was that "there was a stage when Jesus Christ was not"; this statement implied Jesus to be a created being, rather than one coeternal with the Father, and thereby denied the doctrine of the Trinity as it is generally understood today.

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The Council of Nicea and its aftermath

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 Emperor Constantine I called an assembly of bishops, the First Council of Nicaea (modern Iznik, Turkey), which condemned Arius' doctrine and formulated the Nicene Creed, which is still recited in Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant services, and whose central term being homoousios, 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.

Constantine also ordered all copies of the Thalia, the book in which Arius had described his teachings in verses, to be burned and sent Arius and the two bishops that refused to join in his condemnation, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicea, into exile.

Though unwavering in his adherence to the Nicean creed, Constantine tried to pacify the situation and became more lenient towards the Arians. First he allowed Eusebius and Theognis to return once they had signed an ambigious statement of faith. On their behalf, Constantine had Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, the main opponent of Arius, banished in 335 and in 336 allowed Arius to return to his hometown. Arius however died on the day he was scheduled to depart from Constantinople. 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.

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The dispute resumes

The Council of Nicea had not ended the controversy, as many bishops of the Eastern provinces disputed the homoousios, the central term of the Nicene creed, and 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, the head of the Arian party after Arius' death, 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 towards the western provinces, frequently using force to push through his creed, even exiling Pope Liberius.

In the disputes about a new formula, three camps evolved among the opponents of the Nicene creed: The first group opposed mainly 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. Despite and because of this centrist position they were called "Semi-Arians" by their opponents. The second group 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 (homoi) the Father. A third group explicitely called upon Arius and described the Son as unlike (ahomoi) the Father. Constantius wavered in his support between the first and the second party, while harshily persecuting the third. Various synods assembled to draw up a new creed: the council of Sardica in 343, the council of Sirmium in 358 and the double council of Rimini and Selecia in 359, which settled with a homoian creed. About these procedings Saint Jerome remarked that the world "awoke with a groan to find itself Arian."

After Constantius' death in 361, his successor Julian Apostata returned to Rome's pagan gods and allowed all exiled bishops to return, with 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.

After Valens's death in the battle of Adrianople in 378, the firm Nicene Theodosius I succeeded and settled the dispute in 381: at the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople mainly Eastern bishops assembled and accepted the Nicene Creed, which was supplemented in regards to the Holy Spirit. This is generally considered the end of the dispute about the Trinity and the end of Arianism among the Roman, non-germanic peoples.

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Arianism in the early medieval Germanic kingdoms

However, during the time of Arianism's flowering in Constantinople, the Goth convert Ulfilas (later the subject of the letter of Auxentius cited above) was sent as a missionary to the Gothic barbarians across the Danube. His 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, 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 kingdoms these Arian Germans 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. Many scholars see the persistence of the Germans' Arian religion as a strategy to differentiate the Germanic elite from the local inhabitants and maintain their group identity against the local culture.

For more information on these Arian kingdoms, see the articles on the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Burgundians, and Lombards. (The Franks were unique among the Germanic peoples in that they entered the empire as pagans and converted to Nicene Christianity directly.) 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).

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Reformation, Enlightenment and Unitarianism

The name Arians was widely (and erroneously) applied to Unitarian Christian sects, initially in Poland to the Polish brethren (Frater Polonorum). They invented radical social theories and were precursors of the Enlightenment.

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Modern parallels

"Arianism" has been commonly and erroneously applied since, to several modern nontrinitarian groups. Despite the frequency with which this name is used, groups so labelled typically do not follow Arian beliefs, and reject the name for their self-description, although they all deny the trinitarian formulations.

For example, the modern Jehovah's Witnesses have some similar beliefs. However, Arius viewed the Holy Spirit as a person, whereas Jehovah's Witnesses do not attribute personality to the spirit. Jehovah's Witnesses also, unlike Arians, deny belief in a disembodied soul after death, eternal punishment of the unrepentantly wicked, and episcopacy: doctrines to which the Arians did not obviously object. In some respects, there is a closer analogy to Socinianism, than to Arianism, in Jehovah's Witness theology (Socinians similarly were called "Arians" by their detractors; see also Unitarianism). Jehovah's Witnesses, unlike Arians, do not direct prayers to Jesus.

The doctrine of the Godhead, according to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ("LDS Church"; see also Mormon), is similar to Arianism. The LDS doctrine of the unity of the Godhead is reminiscent of the Arian explanation of the unity of the Son with the Father: Jesus is seen as subordinate to God the Father, in that Jesus acts only according to his Father's will. They are "one" in the sense that there is no possibility of a disagreement between them, and they are both perfected and sinless. The LDS also believe, similar to the Arians, that Christ is a separate being, but "co-eternal" with God the Father, and yet that there is only one (capital "G") God. However, the LDS are unique in believing that there are many exalted beings, or gods; and in their belief that three distinct beings comprise the Godhead. This agreement and close intimacy of three distinct beings according to LDS doctrine, is properly labelled tritheism compared to Trinitarian definitions of monotheism, which the LDS disputes. LDS themselves do not object to their Godhead being referred to as a kind of Trinity, but assert that it's merely a very different idea of the Trinity as compared to most of the rest of the Christian world.

Archbishop Dmitri of the Orthodox Church in America has identified Islam as 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 the Christ. Islam sees itself as a continuation of the Jewish and Christian traditions and reveres many of the same prophets.

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