CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Arianism
A heresy which arose in the fourth century, and denied the Divinity of Jesus Christ.
First among the doctrinal disputes which troubled Christians after Constantine had
recognized the Church in A.D. 313, and the parent of many more during some three
centuries, Arianism occupies a large place in ecclesiastical history. It is not a modern
form of unbelief, and therefore will appear strange in modern eyes. But we shall better
grasp its meaning if we term it an Eastern attempt to rationalize the creed by stripping
it of mystery so far as the relation of Christ to God was concerned. In the New
Testament and in Church teaching Jesus of Nazareth appears as the Son of God. This
name He took to Himself (Matt., xi, 27; John, x, 36), while the Fourth Gospel declares
Him to be the Word (Logos), Who in the beginning was with God and was God, by
Whom all things were made. A similar doctrine is laid down by St. Paul, in his
undoubtedly genuine Epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians. It is
reiterated in the Letters of Ignatius, and accounts for Pliny's observation that Christians
in their assemblies chanted a hymn to Christ as God. But the question how the Son was
related to the Father (Himself acknowledged on all hands to be the one Supreme
Deity), gave rise, between the years A. D. 60 and 200, to number of Theosophic
systems, called generally Gnosticism, and having for their authors Basilides,
Valentinus, Tatian, and other Greek speculators. Though all of these visited Rome, they
had no following in the West, which remained free from controversies of an abstract
nature, and was faithful to the creed of its baptism. Intellectual centres were chiefly
Alexandria and Antioch, Egyptian or Syrian, and speculation was carried on in Greek.
The Roman Church held steadfastly by tradition. Under these circumstances, when
Gnostic schools had passed away with their "conjugations" of Divine powers, and
"emanations" from the Supreme unknowable God (the "Deep" and the "Silence") all
speculation was thrown into the form of an inquiry touching the "likeness" of the Son
to His Father and "sameness" of His Essence. Catholics had always maintained that
Christ was truly the Son, and truly God. They worshipped Him with divine honours;
they would never consent to separate Him, in idea or reality, from the Father, Whose
Word, Reason, Mind, He was, and in Whose Heart He abode from eternity. But the
technical terms of doctrine were not fully defined; and even in Greek words like
essence (<ousia>), substance (<hypostasis>), nature (<physis>), person (<hyposopon>)
bore a variety of meanings drawn from the pre-Christian sects of philosophers, which
could not but entail misunderstandings until they were cleared up. The adaptation of a
vocabulary employed by Plato and Aristotle to Christian truth was a matter of time; it
could not be done in a day; and when accomplished for the Greek it had to be
undertaken for the Latin, which did not lend itself readily to necessary yet subtle
distinctions. That disputes should spring up even among the orthodox who all held
one faith, was inevitable. And of these wranglings the rationalist would take advantage
in order to substitute for the ancient creed his own inventions. The drift of all he
advanced was this: to deny that in any true sense God could have a Son; as
Mohammed tersely said afterwards, "God neither begets, nor is He begotten" (Koran,
cxii). We have learned to call that denial Unitarianism. It was the ultimate scope of
Arian opposition to what Christians had always believed. But the Arian, though he did
not come straight down from the Gnostic, pursued a line of argument and taught a
view which the speculations of the Gnostic had made familiar. He described the Son as
a second, or inferior God, standing midway between the First Cause and creatures; as
Himself made out of nothing, yet as making all things else; as existing before the
worlds of the ages; and as arrayed in all divine perfections except the one which was
their stay and foundation. God alone was without beginning, unoriginate; the Son was
originated, and once had not existed. For all that has origin must begin to be.
Such is the genuine doctrine of Arius. Using Greek terms, it denies that the Son is of
one essence, nature, or substance with God; He is not consubstantial (<homoousios>)
with the Father, and therefore not like Him, or equal in dignity, or co-eternal, or within
the real sphere of Deity. The Logos which St. John exalts is an attribute, Reason,
belonging to the Divine nature, not a person distinct from another, and therefore is a
Son merely in figure of speech. These consequences follow upon the principle which
Arius maintains in his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, that the Son "is no part of the
Ingenerate." Hence the Arian sectaries who reasoned logically were styled Anomoeans:
they said that the Son was "unlike" the Father. And they defined God as simply the
Unoriginate. They are also termed the Exucontians (<ex ouk onton>), because they
held the creation of the Son to be out of nothing.
But a view so unlike tradition found little favour; it required softening or palliation,
even at the cost of logic; and the school which supplanted Arianism form an early date
affirmed the likeness, either without adjunct, or in all things, or in substance, of the
Son to the Father, while denying His co-equal dignity and co-eternal existence. These
men of the Via Media were named Semi-Arians. They approached, in strict argument,
to the heretical extreme; but many of them held the orthodox faith, however
inconsistently; their difficulties turned upon language or local prejudice, and no small
number submitted at length to Catholic teaching. The Semi-Arians attempted for years
to invent a compromise between irreconcilable views, and their shifting creeds,
tumultuous councils, and worldly devices tell us how mixed and motley a crowd was
collected under their banner. The point to be kept in remembrance is that, while they
affirmed the Word of God to be everlasting, they imagined Him as having become the
Son to create the worlds and redeem mankind. Among the ante-Nicene writers, a
certain ambiguity of expression may be detected, outside the school of Alexandria,
touching this last head of doctrine. While Catholic teachers held the Monarchia, viz.
that there was only one God; and the Trinity, that this Absolute One existed in three
distinct subsistences; and the Circuminession, that Father, Word, and Spirit could not
be separated, in fact or in thought, from one another; yet an opening was left for
discussion as regarded the term "Son," and the period of His "generation"
(<gennesis>). Five ante-Nicene Fathers are especially quoted: Athenagoras, Tatian,
Theophilus of Antioch, Hippolytus, and Novatian, whose language appears to involve
a peculiar notion of Sonship, as though It did not come into being or were not perfect
until the dawn of creation. To these may be added Tertullian and Methodius. Cardinal
Newman held that their view, which is found clearly in Tertullian, of the Son existing
after the Word, is connected as an antecedent with Arianism. Petavius construed the
same expressions in a reprehensible sense; but the Anglican Bishop Bull defended
them as orthodox, not without difficulty. Even if metaphorical, such language might
give shelter to unfair disputants; but we are not answerable for the slips of teachers
who failed to perceive all the consequences of doctrinal truths really held by them.
>From these doubtful theorizings Rome and Alexandria kept aloof. Origen himself,
whose unadvised speculations were charged with the guilt of Arianism, and who
employed terms like "the second God," concerning the Logos, which were never
adopted by the Church - this very Origen taught the eternal Sonship of the Word, and
was not a Semi-Arian. To him the Logos, the Son, and Jesus of Nazareth were one ever-
subsisting Divine Person, begotten of the Father, and, in this way, "subordinate" to the
source of His being. He comes forth from God as the creative Word, and so is a
ministering Agent, or, from a different point of view, is the First-born of creation.
Dionysius of Alexandria (260) was even denounced at Rome for calling the Son a work
or creature of God; but he explained himself to the pope on orthodox principles, and
confessed the Homoousian Creed.
HISTORY
Paul of Samosata, who was contemporary with Dionysius, and Bishop of Antioch, may
be judged the true ancestor of those heresies which relegated Christ beyond the Divine
sphere, whatever epithets of deity they allowed Him. The man Jesus, said Paul, was
distinct from the Logos, and, in Milton's later language, by merit was made the Son of
God. The Supreme is one in Person as in Essence. Three councils held at Antioch (264-
268, or 269) condemned and excommunicated the Samosatene. But these Fathers would
not accept the Homoousian formula, dreading lest it be taken to signify one material or
abstract substance, according to the usage of the heathen philosophies. Associated with
Paul, and for years cut off from the Catholic communion, we find the well-known
Lucian, who edited the Septuagint and became at last a martyr. From this learned man
the school of Antioch drew its inspiration. Eusebius the historian, Eusebius of
Nicomedia, and Arius himself, all came under Lucian's influence. Not, therefore, to
Egypt and its mystical teaching, but to Syria, where Aristotle flourished with his logic
and its tendency to Rationalism, should we look for the home of an aberration which
had it finally triumphed, would have anticipated Islam, reducing the Eternal Son to the
rank of a prophet, and thus undoing the Christian revelation.
Arius, a Libyan by descent, brought up at Antioch and a school-fellow of Eusebius,
afterwards Bishop of Nicomedia, took part (306) in the obscure Meletian schism, was
made presbyter of the church called "Baucalis," at Alexandria, and opposed the
Sabellians, themselves committed to a view of the Trinity which denied all real
distinctions in the Supreme. Epiphanius describes the heresiarch as tall, grave, and
winning; no aspersion on his moral character has been sustained; but there is some
possibility of personal differences having led to his quarrel with the patriarch
Alexander whom, in public synod, he accused of teaching that the Son was identical
with the Father (319). The actual circumstances of this dispute are obscure; but
Alexander condemned Arius in a great assembly, and the latter found a refuge with
Eusebius, the Church historian, at Caesarea. Political or party motives embittered the
strife. Many bishops of Asia Minor and Syria took up the defence of their "fellow-
Lucianist," as Arius did not hesitate to call himself. Synods in Palestine and Bithynia
were opposed to synods in Egypt. During several years the argument raged; but when,
by his defeat of Licinius (324), Constantine became master of the Roman world, he
determined on restoring ecclesiastical order in the East, as already in the West he had
undertaken to put down the Donatists at the Council of Arles. Arius, in a letter to the
Nicomedian prelate, had boldly rejected the Catholic faith. But Constantine, tutored by
this worldly-minded man, sent from Nicomedia to Alexander a famous letter, in which
he treated the controversy as an idle dispute about words and enlarged on the
blessings of peace. The emperor, we should call to mind, was only a catechumen,
imperfectly acquainted with Greek, much more incompetent in theology, and yet
ambitious to exercise over the Catholic Church a dominion resembling that which, as
Pontifex Maximus, he wielded over the pagan worship. From this Byzantine
conception (labelled in modern terms Erastianism) we must derive the calamities
which during many hundreds of years set their mark on the development of Christian
dogma. Alexander could not give way in a matter so vitally important. Arius and his
supporters would not yield. A council was, therefore, assembled in Nicaea, in
Bithynia, which has ever been counted the first ecumenical, and which held its sittings
from the middle of June, 325. (See FIRST COUNCIL OF NICAEA). It is commonly
said that Hosius of Cordova presided. The Pope, St. Silvester, was represented by his
legates, and 318 Fathers attended, almost all from the East. Unfortunately, the acts of
the Council are not preserved. The emperor, who was present, paid religious
deference to a gathering which displayed the authority of Christian teaching in a
manner so remarkable. From the first it was evident that Arius could not reckon upon
a large number of patrons among the bishops. Alexander was accompanied by his
youthful deacon, the ever-memorable Athanasius who engaged in discussion with the
heresiarch himself, and from that moment became the leader of the Catholics during
well-nigh fifty years. The Fathers appealed to tradition against the innovators, and
were passionately orthodox; while a letter was received from Eusebius of Nicomedia,
declaring openly that he would never allow Christ to be of one substance with God.
This avowal suggested a means of discriminating between true believers and all those
who, under that pretext, did not hold the Faith handed down. A creed was drawn up
on behalf of the Arian party by Eusebius of Caesarea in which every term of honour
and dignity, except the oneness of substance, was attributed to Our Lord. Clearly, then,
no other test save the Homoousion would prove a match for the subtle ambiguities of
language that, then as always, were eagerly adopted by dissidents from the mind of
the Church. A formula had been discovered which would serve as a test, though not
simply to be found in Scripture, yet summing up the doctrine of St. John, St. Paul, and
Christ Himself, "I and the Father are one". Heresy, as St. Ambrose remarks, had
furnished from its own scabbard a weapon to cut off its head. The "consubstantial" was
accepted, only thirteen bishops dissenting, and these were speedily reduced to seven.
Hosius drew out the conciliar statements, to which anathemas were subjoined against
those who should affirm that the Son once did not exist, or that before He was begotten
He was not, or that He was made out of nothing, or that He was of a different
substance or essence from the Father, or was created or changeable. Every bishop
made this declaration except six, of whom four at length gave way. Eusebius of
Nicomedia withdrew his opposition to the Nicene term, but would not sign the
condemnation of Arius. By the emperor, who considered heresy as rebellion, the
alternative proposed was subscription or banishment; and, on political grounds, the
Bishop of Nicomedia was exiled not long after the council, involving Arius in his ruin.
The heresiarch and his followers underwent their sentence in Illyria.
But these incidents, which might seem to close the chapter, proved a beginning of
strife, and led on to the most complicated proceedings of which we read in the fourth
century. While the plain Arian creed was defended by few, those political prelates who
sided with Eusebius carried on a double warfare against the term "consubstantial", and
its champion, Athanasius. This greatest of the Eastern Fathers had succeeded
Alexander in the Egyptian patriarchate (326). He was not more than thirty years of age;
but his published writings, antecedent to the Council, display, in thought and
precision, a mastery of the issues involved which no Catholic teacher could surpass.
His unblemished life, considerate temper, and loyalty to his friends made him by no
means easy to attack. But the wiles of Eusebius, who in 328 recovered Constantine's
favour, were seconded by Asiatic intrigues, and a period of Arian reaction set in.
Eustathius of Antioch was deposed on a charge of Sabellianism (331), and the Emperor
sent his command that Athanasius should receive Arius back into communion. The
saint firmly declined. In 325 the heresiarch was absolved by two councils, at Tyre and
Jerusalem, the former of which deposed Athanasius on false and shameful grounds of
personal misconduct. He was banished to Trier, and his sojourn of eighteen months in
those parts cemented Alexandria more closely to Rome and the Catholic West.
Meanwhile, Constantia, the Emperor's sister, had recommended Arius, whom she
thought an injured man, to Constantine's leniency. Her dying words affected him, and
he recalled the Lybian, extracted from him a solemn adhesion to the Nicene faith, and
ordered Alexander, Bishop of the Imperial City, to give him Communion in his own
church (336). Arius openly triumphed; but as he went about in parade, the evening
before this event was to take place, he expired from a sudden disorder, which
Catholics could not help regarding as a judgment of heaven, due to the bishop's
prayers. His death, however, did not stay the plague. Constantine now favoured none
but Arians; he was baptized in his last moments by the shifty prelate of Nicomedia;
and he bequeathed to his three sons (337) an empire torn by dissensions which his
ignorance and weakness had aggravated.
Constantius, who nominally governed the East, was himself the puppet of his empress
and the palace-ministers. He obeyed the Eusebian faction; his spiritual director,
Valens, Bishop of Mursa, did what in him lay to infect Italy and the West with Arian
dogmas. The term "like in substance", <Homoiousion>, which had been employed
merely to get rid of the Nicene formula, became a watchword. But as many as fourteen
councils, held between 341 and 360, in which every shade of heretical subterfuge found
expression, bore decisive witness to the need and efficacy of the Catholic touchstone
which they all rejected. About 340, an Alexandrian gathering had defended its
archbishop in an epistle to Pope Julius. On the death of Constantine, and by the
influence of that emperor's son and namesake, he had been restored to his people. But
the young prince passed away, and in 341 the celebrated Antiochene Council of the
Dedication a second time degraded Athanasius, who now took refuge in Rome. There
he spent three years. Gibbon quotes and adopts "a judicious observation" of Wetstein
which deserves to be kept always in mind. From the fourth century onwards, remarks
the German scholar, when the Eastern Churches were almost equally divided in
eloquence and ability between contending sections, that party which sought to
overcome made its appearance in the Vatican, cultivated the Papal majesty, conquered
and established the orthodox creed by the help of the Latin bishops. Therefore it was
that Athanasius repaired to Rome. A stranger, Gregory, usurped his place. The Roman
Council proclaimed his innocence. In 343, Constans, who ruled over the West from
Illyria to Britain, summoned the bishops to meet at Sardica in Pannonia. Ninety-four
Latin, seventy Greek or Eastern, prelates began the debates; but they could not come to
terms, and the Asiatics withdrew, holding a separate and hostile session at
Philippopolis in Thrace. It has been justly said that the Council of Sardica reveals the
first symptoms of discord which, later on, produced the unhappy schism of East and
West. But to the Latins this meeting, which allowed of appeals to Pope Julius, or the
Roman Church, seemed an epilogue which completed the Nicene legislation, and to
this effect it was quoted by Innocent I in his correspondence with the bishops of Africa.
Having won over Constans, who warmly took up his cause, the invincible Athanasius
received from his Oriental and Semi-Arian sovereign three letters commanding, and at
length entreating his return to Alexandria (349). The factious bishops, Ursacius and
Valens, retracted their charges against him in the hands of Pope Julius; and as he
travelled home, by way of Thrace, Asia Minor, and Syria, the crowd of court-prelates
did him abject homage. These men veered with every wind. Some, like Eusebius of
Caesarea, held a Platonizing doctrine which they would not give up, though they
declined the Arian blasphemies. But many were time-servers, indifferent to dogma.
And a new party had arisen, the strict and pious Homoiousians, not friends of
Athanasius, nor willing to subscribe to the Nicene terms, yet slowly drawing nearer to
the true creed and finally accepting it. In the councils which now follow these good
men play their part. However, when Constans died (350), and his Semi-Arian brother
was left supreme, the persecution of Athanasius redoubled in violence. By a series of
intrigues the Western bishops were persuaded to cast him off at Arles, Milan,
Ariminum. It was concerning this last council (359) that St. Jerome wrote, "the whole
world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian". For the Latin bishops were driven
by threats and chicanery to sign concessions which at no time represented their
genuine views. Councils were so frequent that their dates are still matter of
controversy. Personal issues disguised the dogmatic importance of a struggle which
had gone on for thirty years. The Pope of the day, Liberius, brave at first, undoubtedly
orthodox, but torn from his see and banished to the dreary solitude of Thrace, signed a
creed, in tone Semi-Arian (compiled chiefly from one of Sirmium), renounced
Athanasius, but made a stand against the so-called "Homoean" formulae of Ariminum.
This new party was led by Acacius of Caesarea, an aspiring churchman who
maintained that he, and not St. Cyril of Jerusalem, was metropolitan over Palestine.
The Homoeans, a sort of Protestants, would have no terms employed which were not
found in Scripture, and thus evaded signing the "Consubstantial". A more extreme set,
the "Anomoeans", followed Aetius, were directed by Eunomius, held meetings at
Antioch and Sirmium, declared the Son to be "unlike" the Father, and made themselves
powerful in the last years of Constantius within the palace. George of Cappadocia
persecuted the Alexandrian Catholics. Athanasius retired into the desert among the
solitaries. Hosius had been compelled by torture to subscribe a fashionable creed.
When the vacillating Emperor died (361), Julian, known as the Apostate, suffered all
alike to return home who had been exiled on account of religion. A momentous
gathering, over which Athanasius presided, in 362, at Alexandria, united the orthodox
Semi-Arians with himself and the West. Four years afterwards fifty-nine Macedonian,
i.e., hitherto anti-Nicene, prelates gave in their submission to Pope Liberius. But the
Emperor Valens, a fierce heretic, still laid the Church waste.
However, the long battle was now turning decidedly in favour of Catholic tradition.
Western bishops, like Hilary of Poitiers and Eusebius of Vercellae banished to Asia for
holding the Nicene faith, were acting in unison with St. Basil, the two St. Gregories,
and the reconciled Semi-Arians. As an intellectual movement the heresy had spent its
force. Theodosius, a Spaniard and a Catholic, governed the whole Empire. Athanasius
died in 373; but his cause triumphed at Constantinople, long an Arian city, first by the
preaching of St. Gregory Nazianzen, then in the Second General Council (381), at the
opening of which Meletius of Antioch presided. This saintly man had been estranged
from the Nicene champions during a long schism; but he made peace with Athanasius,
and now, in company of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, represented a moderate influence
which won the day. No deputies appeared from the West. Meletius died almost
immediately. St. Gregory Nazianzen (q. v.), who took his place, very soon resigned. A
creed embodying the Nicene was drawn up by St. Gregory of Nyssa, but it is not the
one that is chanted at Mass, the latter being due, it is said, to St. Epiphanius and the
Church of Jerusalem. The Council became ecumenical by acceptance of the Pope and
the ever-orthodox Westerns. From this moment Arianism in all its forms lost its place
within the Empire. Its developments among the barbarians were political rather than
doctrinal. Ulphilas (311-388), who translated the Scriptures into Maeso-Gothic, taught
the Goths across the Danube an Homoean theology; Arian kingdoms arose in Spain,
Africa, Italy. The Gepidae, Heruli, Vandals, Alans, and Lombards received a system
which they were as little capable of understanding as they were of defending, and the
Catholic bishops, the monks, the sword of Clovis, the action of the Papacy, made an
end of it before the eighth century. In the form which it took under Arius, Eusebius of
Caesarea, and Eunomius, it has never been revived. Individuals, among them are
Milton and Sir Isasc Newton, were perhaps tainted with it. But the Socinian tendency
out of which Unitarian doctrines have grown owes nothing to the school of Antioch or
the councils which opposed Nicaea. Neither has any Arian leader stood forth in history
with a character of heroic proportions. In the whole story there is but one single hero -
the undaunted Athanasius - whose mind was equal to the problems, as his great spirit
to the vicissitudes, a question on which the future of Christianity depended.
WILLIAM BARRY
Transcribed by Anthony A. Killeen
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an effort aimed at placing the
entire Catholic Encyclopedia on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
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