Homoousion, Homoiousion, or Houyhnhnms? Arius and Nicene

 

to Dawn

The Presbyter Arius (249 – 336 AD) was born one year before the Emperor Decius (249 – 251 AD) decreed a "universal compulsory sacrifice to the gods on pain of death," which had to be certified in a written document. Times were bad, cohesion was the issue and the regime went for drastic measures. The theologian Origen (185 – 254 AD), however, has made it a point that “only some individuals, on special occasions, individuals who can be easily numbered,” have endured death for the sake of Christianity (Origen, Adversus Celsum, book III, chapter 8). The Catholic Church likes us to believe that in those days the Christians had been “wading in their own blood” and hundreds of thousands, even “millions,” suffered martyrdom, but Origen’s testimony is supported by Bishop Dionysius, who reckoned for a metropolis like Alexandria, that a total of seventeen martyrs had died in Decius’ persecution, of which at least one person was a known criminal (Eusebius, Ecclesiastic History I, 6:41; Hippolyte Delehaye, SJ). Another of Origen’s contentions was more controversial.

Origen attributed to Christ eternal pre-existence and divinity. Yet he also insisted on distinctions in the Godhead, teaching with equal emphasis a separate essence and the subordination of the Son to the Father, calling him "a secondary God," with the Holy Spirit – the Logos, the “word in the beginning” – as the begotten mediator between eternal divinity and everything created. He taught that from eternity the Father had intended to generate the Son, but represented the act as the creation of a secondary substance. The reason for this divine arithmetic was the need to find an answer to the Sabellian heresy.

Sabellianism or Monarchianism was probably the first unequivocal enunciation of consubstantiality of the Christ and the Father. But there was a dilemma. If the two were of identical substance then God the father must have suffered at the crucifixion just as badly as his son. A Godhead who suffers? This was unacceptable. The Synod of Antioch in 268 AD hurried to anathematize the heresy of consubstantiality.

Some kind of “dispensation” was needed; a way to extract the Father from the calamities of the Son, even if this would put the Son in a subordinate position. That’s where Origen was showing off his theological creativity. Simpler minds, like the Adoptionists and Ebionites, could only shake their heads. Since the time of Jesus himself, virtually every Christian had known that Jesus was born as a man, like everybody else, and became the chosen Son – acknowledged in the sign of the dove – only at his baptism, because he had been "walking honorably in holiness and chastity" (Hermas, The Shepherd, Harnack Dogmengeschichte; Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture). If we go by the most ancient manuscripts of Luke, it seems obvious. When John the Baptist held the head of Jesus under water he announced: “You are my Son, today I have begotten thee”(Lk. 3: 22), possibly the exact words spoken every time John was dunking somebody. Divinity was a gift, bestowed on Jesus only after the events of Easter.

This was the popular belief and the tradition for which, as legend has it, Victor I, the Bishop of Rome, excommunicated the “Adoptionist”Theodotus of Byzantium in 186 AD. An example of “alternative history.” The bishop of Rome had no jurisdiction over Theodotus. But somebody did indeed excommunicate and anathematize. The tide was turning.

The young Arius came from Libya and was raised in Antioch to become a tall and handsome man, with a “downcast brow and winning manners,” leaving quite an impression on the ladies. Yet despite of all the animosity leveled at his person, there is not a single voice accusing him of inappropriate conduct. His teacher was the Presbyter Lucian, who also instructed Eusebius of Nicomedia. Lucian made a profound impression on the young Arius; Harnack has called him "the Arius before Arius." The next step in his career did lead Arius to Egypt and to the position of a presbyter. In 318 AD, during an informal brief, Arius’ employer, Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, dropped an unguarded remark about the eternity of the Son. Arius asked Alexander to clarify. According to his own understanding, he said, "if the Father begat the Son, he must be older than the Son, and hence there was a time when the Son was not.” In other words, since God had created everything ex nihilo, the Son as well must have “his subsistence from nothing" (Sozomen, Church History VII: 4). What had started as an apropos remark soon snowballed into a metaphysical argument, and in 321 AD Bishop Alexander convened a synod, which duly excommunicated Arius and his following. Yet Arius was not without support. Ideological heavyweights like Eusebius of Nicomedia, Eusebius of Caesarea, Paulinus of Tyre, Gregory of Berytus, Aetius of Lydda, were only the most prominent of many Bishops taking up his colors. Forced to leave the country, Arius went into exile at the imperial court in Nicomedia (modern Izmit on the Sea of Marmara). He used his time of leisure to publish a book, modeled on Plato’s Symposium, in which he accused Bishop Alexander of Sabellianism and heresy (Athanasius, Contra Arianos). Before a synod in Palestine, Arius appealed to be reinstated in his former position. The assembly concurred. The decision turned the streets and marts in Egypt and Syria into a metaphysical battleground with fishmongers and mechanics coming to blows over the most arcane arguments.

The unrest spread to Anatolia and Greece and caught the attention of the authorities. Contrary to common perception, Emperor Constantine (272 – 337 AD) was neither the first Christian emperor, nor was he the first emperor to issue an edict of toleration.

The first Christian to wear the purple, according to St Jerome, was Phillip the Arab (244 – 249 AD), who had been a Christian since birth. It was in 260 AD, when Emperor Galienus (253 – 268 AD) issued the first edict of universal toleration, recalling from exile the Christian deportees of Decius’ persecution. Fifty years later, the edict of Emperor Galerius ended the persecution of Diocletian in the East, to be followed in 313 AD by Constantine, decreeing the same for the provinces in the West. In 324 AD Constantine became sole ruler of the Empire. He had big plans for a new capital on the Bosporus. Riots in the streets were not part of his program. So to end this battle of words and fisticuffs over incomprehensible things, the emperor sent letters to Bishop Alexander and to Arius, advising the two to settle their differences; and since neither was willing to listen, the emperor sent a personal emissary, Bishop Hosius of Cordoba, to mediate a compromise. It was to no avail and Constantine was advised to call together a synod.

In 325 AD the emperor presided in person over the Council of Nicene, an assembly of handpicked yes-men, expected, as one of the participants noted, to merely make a show of “grave deportment on account of their grey hair” (Bishop Sabinus of Heraclea). Nevertheless it came to the usual accusations and recriminations, ending in a “violent controversy” (Eusebius, Vita Constantine, III: 13). It took all the diplomatic skills of Constantine to establish in this cage of screaming monkeys a “unity of sentiment by assisting the argument of each party in turn, so as to gradually dispose even the most vehement disputants to reconciliation” (Eusebius, Vita). He was assisted in his efforts by the champion of the Holy Trinity, Athanasius of Alexandria (293 – 373 AD), himself an absentee at Nicene. From the monasteries in the Theban desert Athanasius dispatched armed thugs to the council, which threatened to muscle dissenters into submission. He reaped his reward in 328 AD, when he rose to the vacant chair of Alexandria.

We know what Emperor Constantine himself was thinking: “Even if by chance somebody should get it right, there is no way to have everybody else seeing the truth in it” (Socrates Scholasticus, I: 7). After the conclave the sheer number of openly disagreeing bishops did not fail to make an impression on Constantine and the emperor made conciliatory gestures. The Synod of Tyre in 335 AD deposed the emperor’s former helper Athanasius of his chair in Alexandria, while the emperor’s sister, Constantia, arranged an audience for the ageing Presbyter Arius with her brother. Hardly a coincidence!

The orthodox Patriarch Alexander in Constantinople perceived this as an affront; in all but word, the emperor seemed to repudiate the creed of Nicene. In his outrage he slipped Arius a poisoned wafer when for one last time the old man begged him to be admitted to communion. The next morning, Arius was found lying dead in the street. Shortly after the emperor himself felt death approaching and asked for an Arian bishop to administer him the baptism.

The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt has charged Constantine with nurturing quarrels for the sake of quarreling. It kept the clergy busy. What really mattered for the emperor was not the formula of Nicene or any other formulation of the creed, but to bring together all these controversies under one roof. Nicene instituted the prototype of the ecumenical synod, and as far as Constantine was concerned, he may never have intended the council to become a theological debating ground. What he wanted was administrative unity, one church over one realm under one emperor. That was the trinity he had in mind. For him the crucial issue was not a new creed, but who is pushing the buttons and how to set up an order of appeal in all questions of church policy. Before and after Nicene, Alexandria held top position in the league table of patriarchal seats, followed by Carthage, while Antioch, due to inner dissent, was rapidly losing prestige. The absence of a Roman representative at Nicene was an indication for Rome’s lowly status. So, for no better reason, than that the Metropolitan in Alexandria had decreed it, Emperor Constantine blackballed the assembly into accepting a theological formula of Jesus being “the son, consubstantial and existing as the word of the father from eternity before he was made to incarnate in the flesh.” Most of the participants didn’t understand this nor believed it (Socrates Scholasticus, II: 2, 5, 16), yet the creed flattered the imperial ego! To appreciate the peculiar flavor of “consubstantiality” one should remember that the man presiding over Nicene was still a heathen and initiate of Mithras. His coins proclaimed Constantine as the son of the highest god, the “Deus Sol Invictus.”

After Constantine had passed away, his sons, the orthodox Constantine II, and the two Arian brothers Constans I, and Constantius II were slugging it out over the succession to the purple. Nearly half the Roman army, the flower of the troops, lost their lives: 52,000 men. Constantius II (337 – 361 AD) came out of the melee as the last man standing, but the borders of the empire had become an open invitation.

Under his rule no less than nine synods continued to anathematize Nicene’s formula. Its originator, Bishop Athanasius, was expelled from Alexandria for the second time in 339 AD and reinstated by orders of a kangaroo synod in Rome in 340 AD, which provoked a harsh response from the Synod of Antioch in 341 AD, condemning the “presumption of the Roman see” (Sozomen, III: 6-10; SocratesScholasticus, II: 8, 15; Athanasius, Apologia contra Arianos). The Synod of Serdica (modern Sofia) in 342 AD was meant to engineer some kind of reconciliation between the factions. It not only failed spectacularly, it cemented the divisions, “in millo conscientiam tuam debo praeter ire” (Socrates Scholasticus, II: 29; Hilary, Theodoret, II: 15, 9). Disillusioned, a mere handful of Italian bishops gathered in Milan, in 346 AD, to make a last stand for the creed of Nicene. They achieved exactly the opposite. The next bishop of Milan, Auxentius (355 – 374 AD) was to be a militant Arian. The four councils held at Sirmium (now Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia) between 347 and 359 AD asserted the orthodoxy of the Arian faith, preparing the ground for the ecumenical Synod of Rimini in 359 AD.

At last Emperor Constantius II seemed to score his homerun. After seven months of arm-twisting and browbeating, the emperor achieved universal acceptance of Presbyter Arius’ doctrine that “the Son has a beginning and was made of things not yet existing and therefore we were not made for Him, but He for us, when it was the pleasure of God. Therefore the Father was as invisible to the Son and known as imperfectly by the Son, as God is to us” (Arius, Letters). The dream of one state, one religion and one ruler seemed to be at his fingertips. He issued decrees against remaining dissenters to surrender their churches and hold their gatherings only outside of the city walls (Socrates Scholasticus, I, 2: 27, 38; Sozomen, I, iv, 21). In his youth the emperor Julian the Apostate (331 – 363 AD) had been brought up as an Arian Christian himself, even had held an ecclesiastic office as a lector. In his letters he describes the effects of Constantius’ decrees: “Many were imprisoned, persecuted and driven into exile. By the droves so called “heretics” were massacred, particularly at Cyzicus and Samosata. Everywhere in Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Galatia you could see entire towns and villages laid waste” (Julian, Letters LII). Unwilling to put his name to the condemnation of Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, the Roman Bishop Liberius (352 – 366 AD) suffered arrest and deportation (Ammianus, XV: 7; SocratesScholasticus, II: 37, IV: 29; Sozomen, IV: 11, VI: 23). It is said, a whole gaggle of rich Roman matrons voluntarily followed him into his exile in Bulgaria. As his replacement, Emperor Constantius appointed Bishop Felix II (355 – 365 AD). After three years the browbeaten Liberius condemned Athanasius after all and was allowed to return. Now it was the turn of Felix to leave Rome, which he did, yet without surrendering his office. Felix still figures in the Catholic calendar as a legitimate pope.

Unqualified consubstantiality, however, had not completely lost all support, especially not among clerics with Latin as their first language. Bishop Hillary of Poitier must have been familiar with the “dispensation,” the way Tertullian had introduced it, and yet only after returning from exile in Phrygia, in 360 AD, he had learned of the creed of Nicene as something “entirely new to him” (Hilary, de synodis 91; Haller, The Papacy I).

Fired up in his zeal, he went to debate the Holy Trinity with the Arian Bishop of Milan. In 364 AD, polite but firm, two sentinels accompanied Hilary to the gates of the city and sent him on his way back to France. He came to the melancholy realization that “every year, nay every month we make new creeds to describe invisible mysteries. We report what we have done, we defend those who repent; we anathematize those whom we defended. We condemn either the doctrine of others among ourselves, or our own among others; and tearing one another to pieces, we have been the cause of each other's ruin.”

It was not entirely Hilary’s fault. The language of theology in the East was Greek. In Italy, France and Africa, the knowledge of Greek was on a rapid decline. Niceties about the divine substance got lost in translation. Basil the Great (330 – 379 AD) made the blunt remark that “you Romans just lack in sufficient instruction and therefore are easily duped in theological matters.” When St Basil belabored in eight long paragraphs the difference between substance and hypostasis (Basil, Letters XV: 4), the Latin translation managed with two short paragraphs about “essentia” and subsistentia.” Subtle distinctions between consubstantiality identical with the Father (“Homoousion”) and substantiality similar but different from the Father (“Homoiousion”) only managed to cause another “shipwreck of pious peace”(Ambrose of Milan, Letters LVI). Again there was blood in the streets.

In Antioch three bishops vied about the crown of orthodoxy and some 5,000 people perished when Emperor Valentinian I sent in his troops to restore order. On another occasion 3,150 people were left dead in the streets of Thessalonica. In 380 AD, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregory of Nazianzen (330 – 389 AD), observed with a sigh that the capital was “full of mechanics and slaves who are all profound theologians and preach in the shops and in the streets. If you desire a man to change a piece of silver,” Gregory said, “he informs you wherein the Son differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf, you are told, by way of reply, that the Son is inferior to the Father; and if you inquire whether the bath is ready, the answer is, that the Son was made out of nothing.” Apparently all these “mechanics and slaves” were firm Arians; the slightest hint of a disagreement and you had a riot at your hands. The Trinitarians were losing.

Then the mighty Ambrose of Milan (340 – 397 AD) came to their rescue. He was the son of the praetorian prefect of Gaul, received an excellent education and studied the law (J.R. Palanque, Saint Ambroise et l’Empire Romaine, 1933). He became the administrator of Northern Italy and was present when the Arian bishop Auxentius of Milan passed away. A lobby of Trinitarian diehards overheard Ambrose calling the deceased Auxentius “worse than a Jew” and pushed for his election as the new bishop. In 374 AD, Ambrose was rushed within a week through baptism, taking holy orders and the ordination as bishop of Milan.

During the next five years, “steering in the teeth of the waves,” St. Ambrose confronted the Arian faith first in his own diocese, then gradually extended his influence to the imperial courts “for we are grieved that the fellowship of Holy Communion between the East and West is interrupted” (Ambrose of Milan, Letters XIV). He became a man of more consequence for the course of history than Jesus Christ himself. Under his coaching Emperor Theodosius I developed into a Catholic hardliner, making sure that his “reign might have the additional glory of having restored unity to the Churches” (Ambrose of Milan, Letters XIV). On February 27, 380 AD, “according to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel,” Emperor Theodosius decreed to “believe in the one deity of the father, Son and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians.” Christians who had the temerity of disagreeing were branded “with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give their gatherings the name of churches, since they are foolish madmen” (Codex Theodosianus XVI.1.2).

February 27 is the birthday of Catholicism. It entered the scene with a minority coup, a bid for power in an already Christian state, comparable to the Bolshevik’s October revolution in Russia, which, as we remember, was not a revolution against the Tsar, but overthrowing the socialist government of Alexander Kerensky. For the people affected – the Jews, the dissenters, the educators, the scientists and the artists – the consequences were about the same on both occasions, except for the persecution of homosexuals and the intrusive surveillance of the marital bedroom that Catholicism has thrown in for good measure.

Under the new law, the legislator threatened that the heretic “will suffer the punishment which authority, in accordance with the will of heaven, shall decide to inflict.” Nobody thought of it yet, but the Inquisition was already looming on the horizon.

The coup caused an almost universal outcry.

In Antioch the Christians overturned the statues of Emperor Theodosius and fought his soldiers in the streets. It took Bishop Chrysostom all the powers of his exceptional eloquence to prevent a massacre. Another native of Antioch, the Gentile publicist Libanius (314 – 394 AD), defamed the decree as an “evil law by a sacrilegious legislator” (Libanius, Autobiography). Yet the protesters could overturn the statues, they could not bend the will of Ambrose. Bishop Ambrose, if anybody, deserves the appellative “Rock of the Church.”

Initially Arianism seemed to survive the blow. It remained the religion of the Germanic occupants in central Europe, Spain, Africa and the North of Italy. They closed down the Catholic churches and deported the priests. Only after a long period of temporizing King Clovis made up his mind and had his people converted to Catholicism in 496 AD. This shifted the balance. In 589 AD the Gothic king Reccared I (586 – 601) ordered the mass-conversion to Catholicism for his Spanish Subjects and convoked the 3rd Synod of Toledo, making it clear that Catholicism was here to stay. The assembly passed harsh new laws against homosexuals and drafted a program for the forced conversion of the Spanish Jews. So far the Jews in Spain had done well for themselves and their prosperity became an object of envy for the royal exchequer. Perhaps this was the morsel thrown to the nobility that made them and the Arian clergy comply, but there were uprisings.

The leader of the opposition, the bishop Athaloc, earned himself the reputation of being a second Arius. King Reccared's army routed the insurgents, but Bishop Sunna of Mérida, picked up the Arian colors for a second rebellion. He was defeated and exiled to Mauretania. Undeterred Bishop Uldila and the queen dowager went for a rematch.

The dissent lingered on, unresolved. For the Arab marshal Tariq ibn Ziyad, this opened his window of opportunity. In April 711 AD, many Jews and the Arian diehards welcomed Tariq’s invasion as an act of liberation. Under the Aegis of the Arabs, the offshoots of Arianism enjoyed a second lease of life. Archbishop Elipandus of Toledo found it difficult to draw a line to the teachings of a certain Migetius who preached that the second person of the Trinity did not exist before the Incarnation – pure Arianism all but in name. In 782 AD Elipandus found an ally in the theologically savvy Bishop Felix of Urgel († 818 AD). Asserting a double aspect in the Son – one by generation and nature, and the other by adoption and grace – the bishop quoted innumerable texts from scripture and drew his terminology  – adoptio, homo adoptivus, ouios, thetos, – from the patristic literature and the Mozarabic Liturgy. He argued, that the epithet "Natural Son of God" could not be predicated to "the Man Jesus", who was begotten by temporal generation, inferior to the Father.Despite the erudition of Felix, Pope Hadrian charged his Christology with blasphemy. The case was brought before the Synod of Frankfurt. The council condemned Elipandus and Felix. Bishop Felix retracted and spent the rest of his life under house arrest in Lyon.

This seemed to conclude the “Haeresis Feliciana. Placed under surveillance,” says the chronicler, “Felix showed all the signs of a sincere conversion. His final hour would have passed as genuine penitence, had his confessor not found among his papers a definite retraction of all former retractions.” The heresiarch Elipandus “died in his error.”

Nowadays non-Trinitarian Christians have become a rare breed. One should think that since the so-called “Reformation” dogmatic differences should no longer matter. But in 1553 the “reformer” Calvin condemned a fellow refugee from the Inquisition, the Spaniard Michael Servetus (1509 – 1553), to burn at the stake. An infamy for which Calvin shall be remembered forever. Servetus was a physician, the first European to describe the pulmonary circulation. He also published a treatise, rejecting prevalent Christian doctrine: original sin, infant baptism and the Holy Trinity. Knowing that this meant in a Catholic country a slow roasting at the stake, he fled to Geneva as a “safe haven.” The ayatollahs of Protestantism, Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli and Huss, hurtled head over heal to express their support, yet not for him, the victim, but for Calvin.

© – 7/29/2009 – by michael sympson, 4,000 words, all rights reserved