Arianism
M. C. STEENBERG
“Arianism” refers to the theological doctrines emerging out of the dispute between the presbyter Arius of Alexandria (ca. 250–336) and his bishop, Alexander of Alexandria (d. 326). Their clash centered on the person of the Son and his relationship to the Father; namely, whether the Son and the Father are divine in the same manner and degree. Arius’ famous claims that “before he [the Son] was begotten, or created, or purposed, or established, he was not” (Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia) and “[the Son is] a perfect creature of God, but not as one of the either in a conflated godhead, or a duality of Gods. Arius’ assertion, then, was that the Son’s existence is categorically distinct from that of the Father: the one Creator, the other creature. And yet, the creatureliness of the Son (Arius used the Greek ktisma for “creature,” assigned to the divine wisdom in the Scriptures – Prov. 8.1, 22) was not meant by him as a denigration, nor a denial of divinity. Arius expressly asserted that the Son is divine (Letter to Eusebius: “he has subsisted for all time ... as perfect God”), but in a manner distinct from the divinity of the Father. It was precisely this concept of “created divinity” that allowed the Son, in Arius’ understanding, to be both Creator and Savior of all else in creation, while at the same time not being a “second god” coordinate to the Father.
Despite his intention to defend older scriptural confessions, and indeed his great influence upon numerous theologians and ecclesiastical figures of the day (many of whom felt his expression better reflected the straightforward meaning of the Scriptures than Alexander’s elevated Logos theology of the eternal birth), the church’s ultimate determination was that a “divinity” to the Son such as Arius described was inauthentic to Christian confession and failed to articulate a truly co-equal divinity of Father and Son. The core concept of “created divinity” was rejected as contradictory. This response came first in the context of Nicea’s creedal statement, in which the Son is described as “begotten not made” (refuting Arius’ assertion that the Son’s being “begotten” equated to his “being a creature”) and “homoousios with the Father” – that is, of the same ousia or divine essence as the Father. While the introduction of the latter term would spark intense debate even among Nicea’s supporters (on the grounds that it was new to Christian theological discussion, was not a term found in the
Scriptures, and to many was unclear in its positive meaning), the combination of these two phrases at Nicea effectively ruled out Arius’ mode of expression; and the anathema found at the end of the creed made the refutation of Arius’ own phrasing yet more explicit. Nonetheless, confusion over the terminology of Nicea, as well as the abiding propensity towards adopting a logical position similar to Arius’ own, meant that the disputes did not end with the First Ecumenical Council.
The thought of Arius grew into a broader movement in the decades following Nicea, and particularly from the 350s (some fifteen years after Arius’ death), when St. Athanasius the Great and others began to argue for a centralization of the Nicene conciliar expressions in the face of mounting “Arian” activity. It is then that we begin to see descriptions of the movement as “Arianism” (though Athanasius’ preferred term for his opponents is “Ariomaniacs” – a pun with the sense of “foolish war-mongers”), and the decades leading to the Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople, 381) would involve some of the most significant figures of the early church in reacting to various “Arian” groups: St. Basil of Caesarea, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and many others.
Today, “Arianism” is often used in a general sense to indicate any theological system in which the divinity of the Son is downplayed or denied, or in which the Son is considered temporal or creaturely, rather than eternal and uncreated. In this it in part reflects the teachings once put forward by Arius, but also incorporates aspects of the theological disputes that did not emerge until well after his time. The legacy of Arius and earliest Arianism was ultimately to spur on the precise terms of the articulation of the Holy Trinity by the church’s theologians and councils, both in the denunciation of his teaching specifically, but also through the realization, occasioned by the broader Arian disputes, of just how much variation in trinitarian expression existed in the various 4th-century church communities.
SEE ALSO: Cappadocian Fathers; Christ; Council of Constantinople I (381); Council of Nicea I (325); Council of Nicea II (787); Deification; Ecumenical Councils; Fatherhood of God; Heresy; Holy Trinity; St. Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 293–373)
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Ayres, L. (2006) Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Behr, J. (2001) The Way to Nicaea. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Steenberg, M. C. (2009) Of God and Man: Theology as Anthropology from Irenaeus to Athanasius. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.