Arianism

Controversy over Arianism arose in the late 3rd century and persisted throughout most of the 4th century. It involved most church members—from simple believers, priests, and monks to bishops, emperors, and members of Rome's imperial family. Two Roman emperors, Constantius II and Valens, became Arians or Semi-Arians, as did prominent Gothic, Vandal, and Lombard warlords both before and after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Such a deep controversy within the early Church during this period of its development could not have materialized without significant historical influences providing a basis for the Arian doctrines.[13]

Imagined portrait of Arius; detail of a Cretan School icon, c. 1591, depicting the First Council of Nicaea.

Arius had been a pupil of Lucian of Antioch at Lucian's private academy in Antioch and inherited from him a modified form of the teachings of Paul of Samosata.[14] Arius taught that God the Father and the Son of God did not always exist together eternally.[15]

Emperor Constantine the Great summoned the First Council of Nicaea, which defined the dogmatic fundaments of Christianity; these definitions served to rebut the questions posed by Arians.[16] All the bishops who were there were in agreement with the major theological points of the proto-orthodoxy,[17] since at that time all other forms of Christianity "had by this time already been displaced, suppressed, reformed, or destroyed".[17][18] Although the proto-orthodox won the previous disputes, due to the more accurate defining of orthodoxy, they were vanquished with their own weapons, ultimately being declared heretics, not because they would have fought against ideas regarded as theologically correct, but because their positions lacked the accuracy and refinement needed by the fusion of several contradictory theses accepted at the same time by later orthodox theologians.[19] According to Bart Ehrman that is why the Trinity is a "paradoxical affirmation".[20][21]

Of the roughly 300 bishops in attendance at the Council of Nicaea, two bishops did not sign the Nicene Creed that condemned Arianism.[22] Constantine the Great also ordered a penalty of death for those who refused to surrender the Arian writings:

In addition, if any writing composed by Arius should be found, it should be handed over to the flames, so that not only will the wickedness of his teaching be obliterated, but nothing will be left even to remind anyone of him. And I hereby make a public order, that if someone should be discovered to have hidden a writing composed by Arius, and not to have immediately brought it forward and destroyed it by fire, his penalty shall be death. As soon as he is discovered in this offence, he shall be submitted for capital punishment. ...

— Edict by Emperor Constantine against the Arians[23]

Ten years after the Council of Nicaea, Constantine the Great, who was himself later baptized by the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia in 337 AD,[24][25] convened another gathering of church leaders at the regional First Synod of Tyre in 335 (attended by 310 bishops), to address various charges mounted against Athanasius by his detractors, such as "murder, illegal taxation, sorcery, and treason", following his refusal to readmit Arius into fellowship.[9] Athanasius was exiled to Trier (in modern Germany) following his conviction at Tyre of conspiracy, and Arius was, effectively, exonerated.[26] Athanasius eventually returned to Alexandria in 346, after the deaths of both Arius and Constantine. Though Arianism had spread, Athanasius and other Nicene Christian church leaders crusaded against Arian theology, and Arius was anathemised and condemned as a heretic once more at the ecumenical First Council of Constantinople of 381 (attended by 150 bishops).[27][9] The Roman Emperors Constantius II (337–361) and Valens (364–378) were Arians or Semi-Arians, as was the first King of Italy, Odoacer (433?–493), and the Lombards were also Arians or Semi-Arians until the 7th century. The ruling elite of Visigothic Spain was Arian until 589. Many Goths adopted Arian beliefs upon their conversion to Christianity. The Vandals actively spread Arianism in North Africa.

Little of Arius's own work survives except in quotations selected for polemical purposes by his opponents, and there is no certainty about what theological and philosophical traditions formed his thought.[28]

Arianism taught that the Logos was a divine being begotten by God the Father before the creation of the world, made him a medium through whom everything else was created, and that the Son of God is subordinate to God the Father.[29] A verse from Proverbs was also used: "The Lord created me at the beginning of his work."^{[Proverbs 8:22–25]}[30] Therefore, the Son was rather the very first and the most perfect of God's creatures, and he was made "God" only by the Father's permission and power.[31][32]

Arians do not believe in the traditional doctrine of the Trinity.[33][34] The letter of the Arian bishop Auxentius of Durostorum[35] regarding the Arian missionary Ulfilas gives a picture of Arian beliefs. The Arian Ulfilas, who was ordained a bishop by the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia and returned to his people to work as a missionary, believed: God, the Father, ("unbegotten" God; Almighty God) always existing and who is the only true God.^{[John 17:3]} The Son of God, Jesus Christ, ("only-begotten God"^{[John 1:18]}), Mighty God;^{[Isaiah 9:6]} begotten before time began^{[Proverbs 8:22–29]}, ^{[Revelation 3:14]}, ^{[Colossians 1:15]} and who is Lord/Master.^{[1 Corinthians 8:6]} The Holy Spirit (the illuminating and sanctifying power, who is neither God the Father nor Lord/Master). 1 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/masters—yet for us there is one God (Gk. theos – θεός), the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord/Master (kyrios – κύριος), Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

— 1 Corinthians 8:5–6

The creed of Arian Ulfilas (c. 311–383), which concludes the above-mentioned letter by Auxentius,[35] distinguishes God the Father ("unbegotten"), who is the only true God, from Son of God ("only-begotten"), who is Lord/Master; and the Holy Spirit, the illuminating and sanctifying power, who is neither God the Father nor Lord/Master:

I, Ulfila, bishop and confessor, have always so believed, and in this, the one true faith, I make the journey to my Lord; I believe in only one God the Father, the unbegotten and invisible, and in his only-begotten Son, our Lord/Master and God, the designer and maker of all creation, having none other like him. Therefore, there is one God of all, who is also God of our God; and in one Holy Spirit, the illuminating and sanctifying power, as Christ said after his resurrection to his apostles: "And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be clothed with power from on high"^{[Luke 24:49]} and again "But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you";^{[Acts 1:8]} Neither God nor Lord/Master, but the faithful minister of Christ; not equal, but subject and obedient in all things to the Son. And I believe the Son to be subject and obedient in all things to God the Father.

— Heather & Matthews 1991, p. 143

A letter from Arius (c. 250–336) to the Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia (died 341) states the core beliefs of the Arians:

Some of them say that the Son is an eructation, others that he is a production, others that he is also unbegotten. These are impieties to which we cannot listen, even though the heretics threaten us with a thousand deaths. But we say and believe and have taught, and do teach, that the Son is not unbegotten, nor in any way part of the unbegotten; and that he does not derive his subsistence from any matter; but that by his own will and counsel he has subsisted before time and before ages as perfect as God, only begotten and unchangeable, and that before he was begotten, or created, or purposed, or established, he was not. For he was not unbegotten. We are persecuted because we say that the Son has a beginning but that God is without beginning.

— Theodoret: Arius's Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, translated in Peters' Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, p. 41

Principally, the dispute between Trinitarianism and Arianism was about:

• has the Son always existed eternally with the Father or was the Son begotten at a certain time in the past?
• is the Son equal to the Father or subordinated to the Father?

For Constantine, these were minor theological points that stood in the way of uniting the Empire, but for the theologians, it was of huge importance; for them, it was a matter of salvation.[9]

For the theologians of the 19th century it was already obvious that in fact Arius and Alexander/Athanasius did not have much to quarrel about, the difference between their views was very small, and that the end of the fight was by no means clear during their quarrel, both Arius and Athanasius suffering a great deal for their own views. Arius was the father of Homoiousianism and Alexander the father of Homoousianism, which was championed by Athanasius. For those theologians it was clear that Arius, Alexander and Athanasius were far from a true doctrine of Trinity, which developed later, historically speaking.[36]

Guido M. Berndt and Roland Steinacher state clearly that the beliefs of Arius were acceptable ("not especially unusual") to a huge number of orthodox clergy; this is the reason why such a major conflict was able to develop inside the Church, since Arius's theology received widespread sympathy (or at least was not considered to be overly controversial) and could not be dismissed outright as individual heresy.[2]

Arianism had several different variants, including Eunomianism and Homoian Arianism. Homoian Arianism is associated with Acacius and Eudoxius. Homoian Arianism avoided the use of the word ousia to describe the relation of Father to Son, and described these as "like" each other.[37] Hanson lists twelve creeds that reflect the Homoian faith:[38]

1. The Second Sirmian Creed of 357
2. The Creed of Nice (Constantinople) 360
3. The creed put forward by Acacius at Seleucia, 359
4. The Rule of Faith of Ulfilas
5. The creed uttered by Ulfilas on his deathbed, 383
6. The creed attributed to Eudoxius
7. The Creed of Auxentius of Milan, 364
8. The Creed of Germinius professed in correspondence with Ursacius of Singidunum and Valens of Mursa
9. Palladius's rule of faith
10. Three credal statements found in fragments, subordinating the Son to the Father

The ceiling mosaic of the Arian Baptistery, built in Ravenna by the Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great.

During the time of Arianism's flowering in Constantinople, the Gothic convert and Arian bishop Ulfilas (later the subject of the letter of Auxentius cited above) was sent as a missionary to the Gothic tribes across the Danube, a mission favored for political reasons by the Emperor Constantius II. The Homoians in the Danubian provinces played a major role in the conversion of the Goths to Arianism.[70] Ulfilas's translation of the Bible into Gothic language and his initial success in converting the Goths to Arianism was strengthened by later events; the conversion of Goths led to a widespread diffusion of Arianism among other Germanic tribes as well (Vandals, Langobards, Svevi, and Burgundians).[3] When the Germanic peoples entered the provinces of the Western Roman Empire and began founding their own kingdoms there, most of them were Arian Christians.[3]

Page from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century illuminated manuscript of the Gothic Bible

The conflict in the 4th century had seen Arian and Nicene factions struggling for control of Western Europe. In contrast, among the Arian German kingdoms established in the collapsing Western Empire in the 5th century were entirely separate Arian and Nicene Churches with parallel hierarchies, each serving different sets of believers. The Germanic elites were Arians, and the Romance majority population was Nicene.[71]

The Arian Germanic tribes were generally tolerant towards Nicene Christians and other religious minorities, including the Jews.[3] However, the Vandals tried for several decades to force their Arian beliefs on their North African Nicene subjects, exiling Nicene clergy, dissolving monasteries, and exercising heavy pressure on non-conforming Nicene Christians.

Arian and Chalcedonian kingdoms in 495

The apparent resurgence of Arianism after Nicaea was more an anti-Nicene reaction exploited by Arian sympathizers than a pro-Arian development.[72] By the end of the 4th century it had surrendered its remaining ground to Trinitarianism. In Western Europe, Arianism, which had been taught by Ulfilas, the Arian missionary to the Germanic tribes, was dominant among the Goths, Langobards and Vandals.[73] By the 8th century, it had ceased to be the tribes' mainstream belief as the tribal rulers gradually came to adopt Nicene orthodoxy. This trend began in 496 with Clovis I of the Franks, then Reccared I of the Visigoths in 587 and Aripert I of the Lombards in 653.[74][75]

The Franks and the Anglo-Saxons were unlike the other Germanic peoples in that they entered the Western Roman Empire as Pagans and were converted to Chalcedonian Christianity, led by their kings, Clovis I of the Franks, and Æthelberht of Kent and others in Britain (see also Christianity in Gaul and Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England).[76] The remaining tribes – the Vandals and the Ostrogoths – did not convert as a people nor did they maintain territorial cohesion. Having been militarily defeated by the armies of Emperor Justinian I, the remnants were dispersed to the fringes of the empire and became lost to history. The Vandalic War of 533–534 dispersed the defeated Vandals.[77] Following their final defeat at the Battle of Mons Lactarius in 553, the Ostrogoths went back north and (re)settled in south Austria.

Much of south-eastern Europe and central Europe, including many of the Goths and Vandals respectively, had embraced Arianism (the Visigoths converted to Arian Christianity in 376 through their bishop Wulfila), which led to Arianism being a religious factor in various wars in the Roman Empire.[lower-alpha 6] In the west, organized Arianism survived in North Africa, in Hispania, and parts of Italy until it was finally suppressed in the 6th and 7th centuries. Visigothic Spain converted to Nicene Christianity through their king Reccared I at the Third Council of Toledo in 589.[79] Grimoald, King of the Lombards (662–671), and his young son and successor Garibald (671), were the last Arian kings in Europe.[80][81]

Following the Protestant Reformation from 1517, it did not take long for Arian and other nontrinitarian views to resurface. The first recorded English antitrinitarian was John Assheton, who was forced to recant before Thomas Cranmer in 1548. At the Anabaptist Council of Venice 1550, the early Italian instigators of the Radical Reformation committed to the views of Michael Servetus, who was burned alive by the orders of John Calvin in 1553, and these were promulgated by Giorgio Biandrata and others into Poland and Transylvania.[82]

The antitrinitarian wing of the Polish Reformation separated from the Calvinist ecclesia maior to form the ecclesia minor or Polish Brethren. These were commonly referred to as "Arians" due to their rejection of the Trinity, though in fact the Socinians, as they were later known, went further than Arius to the position of Photinus. The epithet "Arian" was also applied to the early Unitarians such as John Biddle, though in denial of the pre-existence of Christ they were again largely Socinians, not Arians.[83]

In 1683, when Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, lay dying in Amsterdam – driven into exile by his outspoken opposition to King Charles II – he spoke to the minister Robert Ferguson, and professed himself an Arian.[84]

In the 18th century the "dominant trend" in Britain, particularly in Latitudinarianism, was towards Arianism, with which the names of Samuel Clarke, Benjamin Hoadly, William Whiston and Isaac Newton are associated.[85] To quote the Encyclopædia Britannica's article on Arianism: "In modern times some Unitarians are virtually Arians in that they are unwilling either to reduce Christ to a mere human being or to attribute to him a divine nature identical with that of the Father."[86]

A similar view was held by the ancient anti-Nicene Pneumatomachi (Greek: Πνευματομάχοι, "breath" or "spirit" and "fighters", combining as "fighters against the spirit"), so called because they opposed the deifying of the Nicene Holy Ghost. Although the Pneumatomachi's beliefs were somewhat reminiscent of Arianism,[87] they were a distinct group.[87]

The teachings of the first two ecumenical councils – which entirely reject Arianism – are held by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East and most churches founded during the Reformation in the 16th century or influenced by it (Lutheran, Reformed/Presbyterian, and Anglican). Also, nearly all Protestant groups (such as Methodists, Baptists, Evangelicals and most Pentecostals) entirely reject the teachings associated with Arianism. Modern groups which currently appear to embrace some of the principles of Arianism include Unitarians and Jehovah's Witnesses. Although the origins of their beliefs are not necessarily attributed to the teachings of Arius, many of the core beliefs of Unitarians and Jehovah's Witnesses are very similar to them.[88][89][90]