Arianism (Encyclopedia
Brittanica): a
Christian heresy first proposed early in the 4th century by the Alexandrian
presbyter Arius. It affirmed that Christ
is not truly divine but a created being. Arius' basic premise was the
uniqueness of God, who is alone self-existent and immutable; the Son, who is
not self-existent, cannot be God.
The heresy propagated by Arius denying the Divinity of Jesus Christ.
Following views which Gnostics had popularized, he regarded the Son of God as
standing midway between God and creatures; not like God without a beginning,
but possessing all other Divine perfections, not of one essence, nature, substance
with the Father and therefore not like him in Divinity; an attribute of the
Divine nature, the Logos, or Word, Reason. The heresy for a time threatened to rend asunder the
Catholic Church, especially when favored by the emperors of the East. It was
the root source of many heresies. Its antagonist Athanasius (296-373) contended for half a century
for the term consubstantial (Greek: Homoousion, one and the same, as against Homoiousion,
like only) to express the identity of the Son in essence, nature, substance
with the Father, which was adopted at the Council of Nicaea, 325. This decision
established the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, and although it did not end
the struggle of the Arians for ascendancy, it defeated their efforts to
anticipate Mohammed and to introduce Unitarianism as Catholic belief.
This
article is about theological views like those of Arius. Aryan is an unrelated ethnic concept.
Arianism was a Christological view held by
followers of Arius, a Christian priest who
lived and taught in Alexandria,
Egypt, in the early 4th century.
Arius taught that God the Father
and the Son
were not co-eternal, seeing the pre-incarnate
Jesus as a divine being but
nonetheless created by (and consequently 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."
The
conflict between Arianism and the Trinitarian beliefs was the first
major doctrinal confrontation in the Church after the legalization of
Christianity by the Emperor Constantine
I. Controversy over Arianism extended over the greater part of the
fourth century and involved most church members, simple believers and monks as
well as bishops and emperors. While Arianism did dominate for several decades
in the family of the Emperor, the Imperial nobility and higher ranking clergy,
in the end it was Trinitarianism which prevailed theologically and politically
at the end of the fourth century, and which has since been a virtually
uncontested doctrine in all major branches of the Eastern and Western Church.
Arianism, which had been taught by the Arian missionary Ulfilas to the Germanic tribes,
did linger for some centuries among several Germanic tribes in western Europe,
especially Goths and Longobards but did not play any
significant theological role afterwards.
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Because
most contemporary written material on Arianism was written by its opponents,
the nature of Arius' teachings are difficult to define precisely today. The
letter of Auxentius[1], 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." I Corinthians 8:5-6 was cited as proof text:
"Indeed, even though there may be so-called
gods in heaven or on earth — as in fact there are many gods and many lords —
yet for us there is one God (theos), the Father, from whom are all
things and for whom we exist, and one Lord (kyrios), Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things and through whom we exist." (NRSV)
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 Emperor Constantine 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. The Nicene
Creed's central term, used to describe the relationship between the Father and
the Son, is 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
exiled those who refused to accept the Nicean creed — Arius himself, the deacon
Euzoios,
and the Libyan bishops Theonas of Ptolemais and Secundus of Mamarica — and also the bishops who
signed the creed but refused to join in Arius' condemnation, Eusebius
of Nicomedia and Theognis
of Nicea. The Emperor also ordered all copies of the Thalia,
the book in which Arius had expressed his teachings, to be burned. This ended the open
theological debate for a few years, though under the surface opposition to the
Nicean creed remained.
Though
he was committed to maintaining what the church had defined at Nicea,
Constantine was also bent on pacifying the situation and eventually became more
lenient towards 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 synod of Tyre in 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 readmitted Arius to communion, and in 336, Constantine 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 of Nicomedia.
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,
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 synods in
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 towards the western provinces,
frequently using force to push through his creed, even exiling Pope Liberius.
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 (homoi) the Father. A third group explicitly called
upon Arius and described the Son as unlike (anhomoi) 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 Serdica in 343, the council of Sirmium in 358 and the double council of Rimini and Selecia in 359, and no less than fourteen further creed
formulas between 340 and 360, and the pagan observer Ammianus Marcellinus
commented sarcastically: "The highways were covered with galloping
bishops." None of these attempts were 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.
After
Valens' death in the Battle
of Adrianople
in 378, the accession of Theodosius I, who adhered to the
Nicene creed, allowed for settling the dispute in 381: at the Second
Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, a group of mainly Eastern
bishops assembled and accepted the Nicene Creed, which was supplemented in
regard 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.
Two
days after Theodosius arrived in Constantinople, November 24, 380, he expelled the non-Nicene bishop, Demophilus
of Constantinople, and surrendered the churches of that city to Gregory Nazianzus, the leader of
the 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).
Although
much of the church hierarchy in the East had held non-Nicene positions in the
decades leading up to Theodosius' accession, he managed to impose Nicene
uniformity during his reign. Later Nicene writers took special glee in the
ignominious death of Valens, the Arians' protector, and indeed his defeat
probably damaged the standing of the Homoian faction.
For
the first part of his rule, Theodosius seems to have ignored the semi-official
standing of the Christian bishops; in fact he had voiced his support for the
preservation of temples or pagan statues as useful public buildings. Then, in a
series of decrees called the Theodosian decrees he progressively
declared that those pagan feasts that had not yet been rendered Christian ones
were now to be workdays (in 389). In 391, he outlawed blood sacrifice and decreed
"no one is to go to the sanctuaries, walk through the temples, or raise
his eyes to statues created by the labor of man". The temples that were
thus closed could be declared "abandoned" as Bishop Theophilus
of Alexandria immediately noted in applying for permission to
demolish a site and cover it with a Christian church, an act that must have
received general sanction, for mithraea
forming crypts of churches and temples forming the foundations of 5th century
churches appear throughout the former Roman Empire. Theodosius participated in
actions by Christians against major cult sites: the destruction of the gigantic
Serapeum of Alexandria and its
library by a mob in around 392, authorized
by Theodosius (extirpium malum) and described in exultant detail by Christian
propagandists, was only the most spectacular such occasion (Peter Brown, The
Rise of Western Christendom, 2003, p. 73-74). The destruction of the
greatest temple in Alexandria gave encouragement to Christian vigilantism and
mob action in other centers, often spurred on by the local bishops, as early
hagiographies proudly relate.
By
decree in 391, Theodosius ended the subsidies that had still trickled to some
remnants of Greco-Roman civic paganism too. The eternal
fire in the Temple of Vesta
in the Roman Forum was extinguished, and
the Vestal Virgins were disbanded.
Taking the auspices and practicing witchcraft were to be punished. Pagan
members of the Senate
in Rome appealed to him to restore the Altar of Victory in the Senate
House; he refused. After the last Olympic
Games in 393, Theodosius cancelled the
much-diminished games, and the reckoning of dates by Olympiads soon came to an end.
Now
Theodosius portrayed himself on his coins holding the labarum.
The
apparent change of policy that resulted in the "Theodosian decrees"
has often been credited to the increased influence of Ambrose, bishop
of Milan. The personal piety of Theodosius cannot be assessed. It is
worth noting that in 390 Ambrose had excommunicated Theodosius, who had
recently ordered the massacre of several thousand inhabitants of Thessalonica, in response to the
assassination of his military governor stationed in the city and that
Theodosius performed several months of public penance. The specifics of the
decrees were superficially limited in scope, specific measures in response to
various petitions and accusations from the increasingly militant Christians
throughout his administration. In 391 or 392 he officially sanctioned the
destruction of the most famous of the temples in the East, the Serapeum at Alexandria. Bands of
monks and Christian officials had long been accustomed to take the law into
their own hands and destroy various centers of pagan worship, but the
destruction of the Serapeum seemed to confirm that such actions enjoyed the
emperor's tacit approval at least, and served to encourage such action in the
future. Theodosius had been effectively manipulated into sanctioning the
destruction of the Serapeum by local officials who had essentially engineered
the crisis there for this very purpose.
Ambrose
preached a panegyric at Theodosius' funeral.
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,
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 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, the Germanic elites
being Arians and the majority population being trinitarian. 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.
While
most Germanic tribes in general were tolerant regarding the trinitarian beliefs
of their subjects, the Vandals tried for several decades to force their Arian
belief on their North African trinitarian subjects, exiling trinitarian clergy,
dissolving monasteries and exercising heavy pressure on non-conforming
Christians.
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).
In
many ways, the conflict around Arian beliefs in the fourth, fifth, and sixth
centuries helped firmly define the centrality of the Trinity in mainstream
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. Thus, over the
past 1,500 years, some Christians have used the term Arian to refer to
those groups that see themselves as worshipping Jesus Christ or respecting his
teachings, but do not hold to the Nicene creed.
Like
the Arians, many groups have embraced the belief that Jesus is not the one God,
but a separate being subordinate to the Father, and that Jesus at one time did
not exist. Some of these profess, as the Arians did, that God made all things
through the pre-existent Christ. Some profess that Jesus became divine, through
exaltation, just as the Arians believed. Drawing a parallel between these
groups and Arians can be useful for distinguishing a type of unbelief in the
Trinity. But, 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. The groups so labelled do not hold beliefs identical to Arianism.
For this reason, they do not use the name as a self-description, even if they
acknowledge that their beliefs are at points in agreement with, or in broad
terms similar to, Arianism.
Those
whose religious beliefs have been compared to or falsely labeled as Arianism
include:
(âr´e
niz´´m) , Christian heresy founded by Arius
in the 4th cent. It was one of the most widespread and divisive heresies in the
history of Christianity. As a priest in Alexandria, Arius taught (c.318) that
God created, before all things, a Son who was the first creature, but who was
neither equal to nor coeternal with the Father. According to Arius, Jesus was a
supernatural creature not quite human and not quite divine. In these ideas
Arius followed the
Rise of
Arianism
Because of
his heretical teachings, Arius was condemned and deprived of his office. He
fled to
Eusebius of
Nicomedia used this fear of Sabellianism to persuade
Athanasius'
exile in
Divisions
within Arianism
The
Anomoeans [Gr.,=unlike], followers of Eunomius
and Aetius,
were pure Arians and held that the Son bore no resemblance to the Father. The
semi-Arian court party were called Homoeans [Gr.,=similar], from their teaching
that the Son was simply like the Father as defined by Scripture. A third party
called Homoiousians [Gr.,=like in substance] were largely prevented from
joining the orthodox (Homoousian) party through a misunderstanding of terms.
The Arians debated their differences at Sirmium (351—59). The final formula was
an ambiguous Homoean declaration that Constantius imposed (359) on the church
in two councils, Rimini (for the West) and
Arianism
Defeated
The voices
of orthodoxy, however, were not silent. In the West St. Hilary of
However, Ulfilas
had carried (c.340) Homoean Arianism to the Goths living in what is now
Bibliography