Arian Tenets and Reasonings

 The idea of Sonship includes in it two main relations viewed as regards paternity, non-priority of existence and community of nature. As used in theology, it is an analogous and indirect illustration (vid. Illustrations ) of the Divine Truth which is the cardinal doctrine of Revelation, and what has to be determined is the special aspect under which we are intended to view it. For instance, it may be argued that, a son being junior in age to his father, and having a beginning, our Lord is not eternal, but a creature; or on the contrary, as the Catholic Church, as following Scripture, has ever taught, that, as the Son belongs to God's very essence and being, therefore, if God is from eternity uncreate, so is He.

 As God created the world out of nothing by an external, so He gave birth to the Son out of Himself by an internal; and if this divine generation be, as it is, incomprehensible, so also confessedly is the divine creation.

 The Arians refused to our Lord the name of God, except in the sense in which they called Him Word and Wisdom, not as denoting His nature and essence, but as epithets really belonging to the Supreme Being alone or to His attributes, though from grace or by privilege transferred by Him in an improper sense to the creature. In this sense the Son could claim to be called God, but in no other.

 The main argument of the Arians was that our Lord was a Son, and therefore was not eternal, but of a substance which had a beginning. With this Arius started in his dispute with Alexander. "Arius, a man not without dialectic skill, thinking that the Bishop was introducing the doctrine of Sabellius the Libyan, out of contention fell off into the opinion diametrically opposite, and and he says, ' If the Father begot the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence; and from this it is plain that once the Son was not; and it follows of necessity that He had His subsistence out of nothing.'" Socr. i. 5. Accordingly, Athanasius says (in substance) early in his Decr., "Having argued with them as to the meaning of their own selected term, 'Son,' let us go on to others, which on their very face make for us, such as Word, Wisdom, etc."

 In what sense then was "Son" to be predicated of the Divine Nature? The Catholics said that the true meaning of the word was consubstantiality (co-essentiality) with the Father, whereas the point of posteriority to the Father depended on a condition, time, which could not exist in the instance of God.

 But the Arians persisted, maintaining that a son has his origin of existence from his father; what has an origin has a beginning; what has a beginning is not from eternity; what is not from eternity is not God; forgetting, first, that origination and beginning are not convertible terms, and that the idea of a beginning is not bound up with the idea of an origin; and secondly, that a son not only has his origin of existence from his father, but also his nature, and all that is proper to his nature.

 The Arians went on to maintain that to suppose a true Son, was to think of God irreverently, as implying division, change, composition, etc. The Catholics replied that the notion of materiality was quite as foreign from the Divine Essence as time, and as a Divine Sonship could be eternal, in like manner it implied neither composition nor development, [ sumbebekos ], [ peribole ] or [ probole ].

 The Arians, moreover, argued in behalf of their characteristic tenet from the inferiority necessarily involved in the very idea of a Son. But since He was distinct from His Father, and inferior, He was not God; and, if not God, then He was created, even though a Son. Sonship was a mere quality or characteristic bestowed upon a creature. The Catholics, in answer, denied that a son was in his nature inferior to his father; just the reverse; and the question here simply was about our Lord's nature, whether it was divine, whether He was of one, of the same, nature with the Father.

 Though the Arians would not allow to Catholics that our Lord was Son by nature, and maintained that the word implied a beginning of existence, they were unwilling to say that He was Son merely in the sense in which we are sons, though, as Athan. contends, they necessarily tended to this conclusion, as soon as they receded from the Catholic view. Thus Arius said that He was a creature, "but not as one of the creatures." Orat. ii. § 19. Valens at Ariminum said the same. Jerom. adv. Lucifer. 18. Hilary says, that, not daring directly to deny that He was God, the Arians merely asked "whether He was a Son." De Trin. viii. 3.

 If once they could be allowed to deny our Lord's proper divinity, they cared not what high titles they heaped upon Him in order to cloak over their heresy, and to calm the indignation and alarm which it roused; nay, in the case of many of the Semi-Arians, in order to hide the logical consequences of their misbelief from themselves. They did not like to call our Lord barely a creature; certainly the political party did not, who had to carry the Emperor with them, and, if possible, the laity. Anyhow, in their preaching He was the first of creatures; more than a creature, because a son, though they could not say what was meant by a son, as distinct from a creature: and so far they did in fact confess a mystery; that is, the Semi-Arians, such as Eusebius, as shown in a passage quoted in art. Son ; though Arius and Arians proper, and the AnomSans, who spoke out, and had no fear of the Imperial Court, avowed their belief that our Lord, like other creatures, was capable of falling. However, as represented by their Councils and Creeds, they readily called Him "a creature not as other creatures, an offspring not as other offsprings," the primeval and sole work of God, the Creator, and created in order to create, the one Mediator, the one Priest, God of the world, Image of the Most Perfect, the Mystical Word and Wisdom of the Highest, and, as expressive of all this, the Only begotten.

 "What use is it," says Athan., "to pretend that He is a creature and not a creature? for though ye shall say, Not as 'one of the creatures,' I will prove this sophism of yours to be a poor one. For still ye pronounce Him to be one of the creatures; and whatever a man might say of the other creatures, such ye hold concerning the Son. For is any one of the creatures just what another is, that ye should predicate this of the Son as some prerogative?" Orat. ii. § 19. And so S. Ambrose, "Quæ enim creatura non sicut alia creatura non est? Homo non ut Angelus, terra non ut cSlum." De Fid. i. n. 130; and a similar passage in Nyss. contr. Eun. iii. p. 132, 3.

 The question between Catholics and Arians was whether our Lord was a true Son, or only called Son. "Since they whisper something about Word and Wisdom as only names of the Son," etc. [ onomata monon ], Decr. § 16. "The title of Image too is not a token of a similar substance, but His name only," Orat. i. § 21; and so ii. § 38, where [ tois onomasi ] is synonymous with [ kat epinoian ], as Sent. D. 22, vid. also ibid. § 39; Orat. iii. § 11, 18; "not named Son, but ever Son," iv. § 24, fin.; Ep. Æg. 16. "We call Him so, and mean truly what we say; they say it, but do not confess it." Chrysost. in Act. Hom. 33, 4. Vid. also [ nothois hosper onomasi ], Cyril. de Trin. ii. p. 418. "Non hæc nuda nomina," Ambros. de Fid. i. 17. Yet, though the Arians denied the reality of the Sonship, so it was that since Sabellianism went beyond them, as denying the divine Sonship in any sense, Orat. iv. 2, they were able to profess that they believed that our Lord was "true Son." E.g., this is professed by Arius, Syn. § 16; by Euseb. in Marc. pp. 19, 35, 161; by Asterius, Orat. ii. § 37; by Palladius and Secundianus in the Council of Aquileia ap. Ambros. Opp. t. 2, p. 791 (ed. Bened.); by Maximinus ap. August. contr. Max. i. 6. As to their sense of "real," it was no more than the sense in which Athan. uses the word of us, when he says [ huiopoioumetha alethos ].

 When the Nicene controversialists maintained, on the contrary, that He was "true God," because He was "of true God," as the Creed speaks (vid. art. Son ); of one nature with God as the offspring of man is of one nature with man, and of one essence as well as of one nature, because God is numerically one, the Arians in answer denied that, by reason of His being true Son therefore He was true God. They said that in order to be a true Son it was sufficient to partake of the Father's nature, that is, to have a certain portion of divinity, [ metousia ]; this all holy beings had, and without it they could not be holy; of this S. Peter speaks; but as this participation of the divine nature does not make holy beings who possess it God, neither is the Son God, though He be Son [ kurios kai alethos ]. And it must be granted that the words [ kurios ] and [ alethos ] are applied by the Fathers themselves to the sonship conveyed in the gifts of regeneration and sanctification. (Arts. Father and Grace .)

 The Catholics would reply that it was not a question of the use of terms: anyhow, to have a [ metousia ] of divinity, as creatures have, is not to have the divine [ ousia ], as our Lord has. No [ metousia ] is a proper [ gennesis ]. "When God is wholly partaken, this," says Athanasius, and we may add, this only, "is equivalent to saying He begets." In this sense Augustine says, "'As the Father has life in Himself, so hath He given also to the Son to have life in Himself,' not by participating, but in Himself. For we men have not life in ourselves, but in our God. But that Father, who has life in Himself, begat a Son such, as to have life in Himself, not to become partaker of life, but to be Himself life ; and of that life to make us partakers ." Serm. 127, de Verb. Evang. 9. It was plain, then, that, though the Arians professed to accept the word "Son" in its first and true sense, they did not understand it in its literal fulness, but in only a portion or aspect of its true sense, that is, figuratively.

 Hence it stands in the Nicene Creed, "from the Father, that is, from the substance of the Father." Vid. Eusebius's Letter (Decr. App.). According to the received doctrine of the Church, all rational beings, and in one sense all beings whatever, are "from God," over and above the fact of their creation; and of this truth the Eusebians made use to deny our Lord's proper divinity. Athan. lays down elsewhere that nothing continues in consistence and life, except from a participation of the Word, which is to be considered a gift from Him, additional to that of creation, and separable in idea from it. Vid. art. Grace . Thus he says that "the all-powerful and all-perfect, Holy Word of the Father, pervading all things, and developing everywhere His power, and illuminating all things visible and invisible, gathers them within Himself and knits them in one, leaving nothing destitute of His power, but quickening and preserving all things and through all, and each by itself, and the whole altogether." Contr. Gent. 42. Again, "God not only made us of nothing, but also vouchsafed to us a life according to God, by the grace of the Word . But men, turning from things eternal to the things of corruption at the devil's counsel, have brought on themselves the corruption of death, who were, as I said, by nature corrupted, but by the grace of the participation ([ metousias ]) of the Word, would have escaped their natural state, had they remained good." Incarn. 5. Man thus considered is, in his first estate, a son of God and born of God, or, to use the term which occurs so frequently in the Arian controversy, in the number, not only of the creatures, but of things generate, [ geneta ]. This was the sense in which the Arians said that our Lord was Son of God; whereas, as Athan. says, "things generate, being works ([ demiourgemata ],) cannot be called generate, except so far as, after their making, they partake of the begotten Son, and are therefore said to have been generated also; not at all in their own nature, but because of their participation of the Son in the Spirit." Orat. i. 56. The question then was, as to the distinction of the Son's divine generation over that of holy men; and the Catholics answered that He was [ ex ousias ], from the substance of God; not by participation of grace, not by resemblance, not in any limited sense, but really and simply from Him, and therefore by an internal divine act. Vid. Decr. § 22.

 The Arians availed themselves of certain texts as objections, argued keenly and plausibly from them, and would not be driven from them. Orat. ii. § 18; Epiph. Hær. 69, 15. Or rather they took some words of Scripture, and made their own deductions from them; viz., "Son," "made," "exalted," etc. "Making their private impiety as if a rule, they misinterpret all the divine oracles by it." Orat. i. § 52. Vid. also Epiph. Hær. 76. 5, fin. Hence we hear so much of their [ thrulletai phonai, lexeis, ete, rheta ], sayings in general circulation, which were commonly founded on some particular text; e.g., Orat. i. § 22, "amply providing themselves with words of craft, they used to go about, etc." [ perierchonto ]. Vid. vol. i. p. 29, note. Also [ ano kai kato peripherontes ], De Decr. § 13; [ toi rhetoi tethrullekasi ta pantachou ], Orat. ii. § 18; [ to poluthrulleton sophisma ], Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 14; [ ten poluthrulleton  dialektiken ], Nyssen contr. Eun. iii. p. 125; [ ten thrulloumenen aporrhoen ], Cyril. Dial. iv. p. 505; [ ten poluthrulleton phonen ], Socr. ii. 43.

 Eusebius's letter to Euphration, mentioned Syn. § 17, illustrates their sharp and shallow logic "If they co-exist, how shall the Father be Father and the Son Son; or how the One first, the Other second? and the One ingenerate and the Other generate?" Acta Conc. 7, p. 1015, Ed. Ven. 1729. Hence Arius, in his Letter to Eusebius Nic., complains that Alexander says, [ aei ho theos, aei ho huios; hama pater, hama huios ]. Theod. Hist. i. 4. "Then their profaneness goes farther," says Athan.; Orat. i. § 14. "'If it never was, that the Son was not,' say they, 'but He is eternal, and co-exists with the Father, call Him no more the Father's Son, but brother.'" As the Arians here object that the First and Second Persons of the Holy Trinity are [ adelphoi ], so did they say the same in the course of the controversy of the Second and Third. Vid. Athan. Serap. i. 15; iv. 2.

 "They contend that the Son and the Father are not in such wise One or Like as the Church preaches, but ... they say, since what the Father wills, the Son wills also, in all respects concordant, ... therefore it is that He and the Father are one." Orat. iii. § 10.

 "The Arians reply, 'So are the Son and the Father One, and so is the Father in the Son, and the Son in the Father, as we too may become one in Him.'" Orat. iii. § 17.

 In the Arian Creed of Potamius, Bishop of Lisbon, our Lord is said "hominem suscepisse per quem compassus est," which seems to imply that He had no soul distinct from His Divinity. "Non passibilis Deus Spiritus," answers PhSbadius, "licet in homine suo passus." The Sardican confession also seems to impute this heresy to the Arians. Vid. supr. vol. i. note, p. 116, and infr. art. Eusebius, fin.

 They did not admit into their theology the notion of mystery. In vain might Catholics urge the ne sutor ultra crepidam . It was useless to urge upon them that they were reasoning about matters upon which they had no experimental knowledge; that we had no means of determining whether or how a spiritual being, really trine, could be numerically one, and therefore can only reason by means of our conceptions, and as if nothing were a fact which was inconceivable. It is a matter of faith that Father and Son are one, and reason does not therefore contradict it, because experience does not show us how to conceive of it. To us, poor creatures of a day, who are but just now born out of nothing, and have everything to learn even as regards human knowledge, that such truths are incomprehensible to us, is no wonder.

 The AnomSan Arians, who arose latest and went farthest, had no scruple in answering this consideration by denying that God was incomprehensible. Arius indeed says in his Thalia that the Son cannot know the Father by comprehension, [ kata katalepsin ]: "to that which has origin, to conceive how the Unoriginate is, is impossible." Syn. § 15; but on the other hand the doctrine of the AnomSans, who in most points agreed with Arius, was, that all men could know God as He knows Himself; according to Socrates, who says, "Not to seem to be slandering, listen to Eunomius himself, what words he dares to use in sophistry concerning God; they run thus: 'God knows not of His own substance more than we do; nor is it known to Him more, to us less; but whatsoever we may know of it, that He too knows; and what again He, that you will find without any difference in us.'" Hist. iv. 7.

 [ Katalepsis ] was originally a Stoical word, and even when the act was perfect, it was considered attributable only to an imperfect being. For it is used in contrast to the Platonic doctrine of [ ideai ], to express the hold of things obtained by the mind through the senses; it being a Stoical maxim, "nihil esse in intellectu quod non fuerit prius in sensu." In this sense it is also used by the Fathers, to mean real and certain knowledge after inquiry, though it is also ascribed to Almighty God. As to the position of Arius, since we are told in Scripture that none "knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him," if [ katalepsis ] be an exact and complete knowledge of the object of contemplation, to deny that the Son comprehended the Father, was to deny that He was in the Father, that is, to deny the doctrine of the [ perichoresis ], vid. in the Thalia, Syn. § 15, the word [ anepimiktoi ]; or to maintain that He was a distinct, and therefore a created, being. On the other hand, Scripture asserts that, as the Holy Spirit which is in God, "searcheth all things, yea, the deep things," of God, so the Son, as being, "in the bosom of the Father," alone "hath declared Him." Vid. Clement. Strom. v. 12. And thus Athan., speaking of Mark xiii. 32, "If the Son is in the Father, and the Father in the Son, and the Father knows the day and the hour, it is plain that the Son too, being in the Father, and knowing the things in the Father, Himself also knows the day and the hour." Orat. iii. 44, vid. also Matt. xi. 27. 4. Historical Course of Arianism

 There seems to have been a remarkable anticipation of this heresy in the century before its rise; and it is notable as showing in consequence the early date of a formal development of Catholic theology, which we are apt to assign to the fourth and fifth centuries. Vid. note p. 47 in the present work, ed. Oxf. The controversy which called for this development arose in the middle of the third century, and incurred the vigilant protest of the Pope of the day as being the issue of a dangerous opinion, founded apparently on the Stoic distinction between the [ logos endiathetos ] and [ prophorikos ], and looked on with favour in some Catholic quarters, vid. Tracts Theol., etc., art. iii. p. 137. And. thus we are brought to Arianism.

 When this conclusion was reached by a number of men sufficient in position and influence to constitute a party, the first Ecumenical Council was held in A.D. 325 at Nicæa for its condemnation.

 The Nicene Fathers, in the first place, defined the proper divinity of the Son of God, introducing into their creed the formulas [ ex ousias ] and [ homoousios ], as tests of orthodoxy, and next they anathematised the heretical propositions: and this with the ready adhesion of Constantine. He died in 337.

 During his later years he had softened towards the Arians, and on his death they gained his son Constantius, who tyrannised over Christendom, persecuting the orthodox Bishops, and especially Athanasius, till his immature death in 361.

 The Arians regained political power on the accession of Valens, in 364, who renewed the persecutions of Constantius.

 They came to an end, as far as regards any influence on the State, upon the accession of Theodosius and the Second Ecumenical Council, 381.

 In the controversies and troubles they occasioned, while the orthodox formulas were, as has been said, the [ ex ousias ] and the [ homoousios ], (viz., that our Lord was from and in the Divine Essence,) the Semi-Arians maintained the [ homoiousion ], or that He was like the Divine Essence, the political and worldly party of Eusebius, Acacius, and Eudoxius, professed vaguely the [ homoion kata panta ], or that our Lord was like God in all things, and the fanatical AnomSans gained their name because they denied any likeness in Him to God at all.