Naturally, no one was eager to incite a conflict over doctrine within the church at the very moment when it seemed the long-embattled people of God could finally enjoy peace.
Throughout most of the fourth century, therefore—during a time when people were coming into the church in massive numbers—there was almost no clear and solid consensus within the organized church on the question of what to do about Arianism. As a matter of fact, over the course of that century, those who steadfastly opposed Arian doctrine gradually became a distinct minority within the church. The few outspoken opponents of Arianism were often accused by less-discerning Christians of being harsh, overly meticulous, unduly critical, and maliciously divisive. Sound familiar? People seemed to wish the whole conflict could simply be set aside—as if it didn’t matter all that much whether Jesus is truly and fully God or just nearly so.
If you only glanced at a time line of key events during that era, you might assume the Arian controversy was settled once and for all in 325, when the Council of Nicea ruled decisively against Arius’s views. That famous council met at the behest of the emperor himself. Some three hundred bishops from all over the Roman Empire convened at Nicea, not far from the alternative capital the emperor was building for himself at Constantinople. Their agenda included a short list of important issues to be discussed and settled, but the list was headed by the conflict over Arius’s teaching.
The council dealt Arianism a severe blow. They handed down one of the most important and far-reaching decisions of any church council in history, unequivocally affirming the deity of Christ while anathematizing the central ideas of Arianism. Their rejection of Arianism has been echoed by the collective consensus of every major stream of Christianity since the fifth century.
ALTHOUGH HIS
EXCOMMUNICATION AND
THE RULING OF NICEA
AGAINST HIM WERE SERIOUS
EMBARRASSMENTS AND
MEANT THE LOSS OF
HIS OFFICIAL STATUS AS
A TEACHER WITHIN THE
CHURCH, IN THE LONG
RUN, ARIUS ACTUALLY
GAINED VISIBILITY,
SYMPATHY, AND INFLUENCE
WHEN HE WAS FORCED INTO
THE ROLE OF AN UNDERDOG.
But the Nicene Council’s decision against Arius actually came near the beginning of the long conflict over Arianism in the church. After the Nicene Council ruled against him, Arius, disappointed but undeterred, simply continued to teach his beliefs anyway. He had powerful friends, some who were bishops in important cities throughout the empire, who continued to give him a platform, moral support, and financial backing. Although his excommunication and the ruling of Nicea against him were serious embarrassments and meant the loss of his official status as a teacher within the church, in the long run, Arius actually gained visibility, sympathy, and influence when he was forced into the role of an underdog.
That is because the politics of the dispute were on Arius’s side. The emperor’s main goal in convening the council in the first place was only to settle a debate in the church. Constantine really didn’t seem to have strong personal convictions about the issue. He apparently did not really care one way or the other which side won the debate. He just wanted to end the conflict. Constantine himself was a novice who had not yet even received baptism. He apparently considered the whole argument a case of useless theological hairsplitting. He was weary of the conflict, and he even opened the council with an impassioned speech pleading for unity. He said he regarded discord in the church as more painful and more fearful than any war. He also expressed disappointment that while the Roman Empire was finally enjoying peace, the church was at war within itself. He urged delegates to put away the causes of strife.
The famous historian Eusebius was present at the council and wrote an account of the proceedings. His version is the most complete eyewitness report we have today. Eusebius’s account is certainly not slanted in favor of the winners, because the historian took a somewhat neutral position on the conflict. While the council was in session, Eusebius actually led a behind-the-scenes effort to achieve a compromise between Arius and his opponents.
According to Eusebius, a young deacon named Athanasius was also present, serving as secretary to the bishop of Alexandria. (Bear in mind, this bishop was the same one whom Arius originally accused of Sabellianism—and he was also the one who then excommunicated Arius.) A few years later, when the bishop of Alexandria died, Athanasius became his successor. Athanasius subsequently became Arius’s most devoted foe and the one man who did more than anyone else on earth to defend the deity of Christ against the original onslaught of Arian heresy. But during the Nicene Council, he was a young man of limited influence. He remained more or less a silent observer, watching and learning.
In the end, the conflict between the parties at Nicea turned on a single word—or more precisely, just one small letter. The orthodox bishops proposed a statement affirming that Christ and the Father are “of the same substance”—or homoousion in Greek. The Arians offered a compromise: they would affirm a statement declaring Christ and His Father homoiousion, or “of like substance.” The difference between the two words is so small as to be almost imperceptible. It boiled down to one iota (the Greek letter corresponding to an “i”) in the middle of the word. But the whole doctrine of Christ’s deity hinged on that letter.
During the discussion, some excerpts were read from Arius’s sermons and letters. His actual denials of Christ’s deity were not as carefully toned down as the expressions of Arianism that had previously been presented to the council. When the bishops finally heard in blunt terms what Arius was actually teaching, the council overwhelmingly affirmed the famous Nicene Creed.
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance [homoousios] with the Father. By whom all things were made, both which is in heaven and in earth. Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven. And he shall come again to judge both the living and the dead. And we believe in the Holy Spirit.
The following anathema was added to the creed, targeting some of the very expressions Arius had been using:
But those who say: “There was a time when he was not”; and “He was not before he was made”; and “He was made out of nothing”; or “He is of another substance” or “essence”; or “The Son of God is created” or “changeable” or “alterable”—they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.4
THE RISE OF ARIANISM
AFTER ITS INITIAL DEFEAT
The fact that the council finally passed such a strong resolution against Arius was remarkable. Several of the bishops at Nicea apparently remained sympathetic to Arius’s views. Many others (led by Eusebius) continued trying to hammer out a compromise that would accommodate both parties and restore Arius to his teaching position. Constantine, who had had no doctrinal agenda in the first place, revealed through his subsequent behavior that his concerns remained almost completely pragmatic.
Nonetheless, Arius’s adversaries clearly understood the real magnitude of the issues, and they were determined. It was wise of them to let Arius’s own words, taken mostly from his published works, provide the strongest evidence against his view. The council’s decision, though sudden, surprising, and in the view of some observers, premature, was the right decision, secured by God’s providence for the preservation of Christ’s true church. Both the clear teaching of Scripture and the practically unanimous affirmation of every subsequent generation of believers gives testimony to that fact.
Arius was a wily false teacher. Although the council’s condemnation of his views did not persuade him to change his mind, it did seem to motivate him to redouble his efforts. Wit
h behind-the scenes support of several influential church leaders, Arius staged an unrelenting campaign to plead for formal reinstatement to his ecclesiastical office. More important, the unfavorable ruling of the council provoked Arius to alter his strategy in a significant way. Without actually modifying his views, he worked hard to refine his language to make himself sound as orthodox as possible. He insisted that he had been misunderstood and misrepresented. He continued to profess his adherence to all the major creeds and apostolic doctrinal formulae. He even occasionally claimed that he had no major disagreement with the Nicene Council’s position. The actual difference between them was very slight, he insisted.
Of course, the Arian heresy was no insignificant matter at all. The difference between Christ as God and a false christ who is merely a created being has enormous significance in every aspect of theology. But Arius continued to defend his view, protest his excommunication, and fan the flames of controversy. Over the course of time, he won much sympathy while managing to portray his adversaries as uncharitable obstructionists. He succeeded in turning the politics of the dispute in his favor.
For one thing, the emperor himself grew wearier than ever of the argument and subsequently tried to use his power to persuade Arius’s critics to find a way to compromise and reinstate the heretic. Within two years after Nicea, Constantine apparently concluded that the hard-line position taken by the council was a mistake because it had not really settled the issue. He declared amnesty for the Arian leaders and employed his enormous political clout against faithful bishops to try to enforce the amnesty. He became frustrated when Athanasius refused to compromise with the Arians, and at one point he forced Athanasius into exile. Gradually, Constantine grew increasingly contemptuous of Arian-ism’s adversaries. When the emperor was finally baptized, it was an Arian bishop who performed the ritual.
As Arius grew more aggressive, what little opposition remained against his teaching gradually fell silent. Within a decade after Nicea, popular opinion had clearly shifted toward sympathy for Arius, if not for his doctrine. Over time, the campaign to receive him back into the church gained overwhelming popular support. Meanwhile, public opinion against Arius’s adversaries became extremely severe.
MANY WHO NEVER
FORMALLY AFFIRMED
THE HERESY WERE
NONETHELESS PERFECTLY
WILLING TO MAKE PEACE
WITH THOSE WHO DID.
JEROME, WHO LIVED AND
MINISTERED WHEN
ARIANISM WAS AT THE
PEAK OF ITS POPULARITY,
RECOUNTED AFTERWARD,
SAID THAT THE WHOLE
WORLD AWOKE WITH A
GROAN, “ASTONISHED TO
FIND ITSELF ARIAN.”
Even when Arius died suddenly, eleven years after Nicea, popular sympathy for his doctrine continued to spread like leaven for several decades after that. At one point it seemed the whole church might become Arian. In fact, much of the visible church in the fourth century (including a large number of bishops) did ultimately fall prey to Arianism in one way or another. (Even the bishop of Rome signed an Arian creed.) Many who never formally affirmed the heresy were nonetheless perfectly willing to make peace with those who did. Jerome, who lived and ministered when Arianism was at the peak of its popularity, recounted afterward that the whole world awoke with a groan, “astonished to find itself Arian.”5 The voice in the church who continued to oppose Arianism most loudly was Athanasius. He steadfastly refused, against intense political and ecclesiastical pressure, to settle the dispute by compromise. He would not consent to the reinstatement of Arius. He continued to write and preach about the deity of Christ.
When someone suggested to Athanasius that the whole world was against his unyielding, uncompromising stance in the controversy, he replied, “Then I am against the world.” To this day, the slogan “Athanasius contra mundum” (“Athanasius against the world”) is the epitaph usually associated with his name. He patiently and thoroughly refuted the Arian heresy point by point with Scripture. He remained firm no matter what the cost to him personally. In fact, over the course of his life, Athanasius was ultimately forced into exile no less than five times by a succession of emperors with strong Arian sympathies. He died before seeing the full fruits of his labors, but he is remembered today as one of the most courageous truth warriors the church has ever produced.
ARIANISM’S FINAL DEMISE
Even the sudden death of Arius did not instantly resolve the Arian crisis. But perhaps it did mark the beginning of the end. Arianism simply could not withstand biblical scrutiny in the long run. Without Arius’s personal charisma, ability to shade word meanings, and skill at cleverly obscuring the seriousness of the error, Arianism’s real character became all too obvious. The influence of this heresy soon began to decline and finally all but disappeared from mainstream Christianity. The persistence and biblical commitment of Athanasius and a handful of others finally paid off.
A letter from Athanasius to a fellow bishop records how Arius met his end in Constantinople in 336. Arius had appealed directly to Constantine for formal reinstatement to the church. By then, Constantine’s eagerness to see Arius reinstated was well-known, and he agreed to a personal meeting with the heretic. Constantine listened to Arius swear that his faith was orthodox. The emperor then gave Arius a somewhat equivocal blessing: “If your faith is orthodox, you have sworn well. But if your faith is impious and yet you have sworn, let God from heaven judge you.”6
Although Constantine’s authority was civil and not ecclesiastical, the relationship between church and state under a Christian ruler was not an issue the church had dealt with before Constantine’s time. Whether the emperor should have any kind of authority in church issues or not was a point that had not yet been adequately considered by most in the church. Because of the emperor’s political clout, however, most bishops automatically deferred to his wishes as a matter of policy. His words of blessing upon Arius may have been regarded by most bishops as a binding order to reinstate the heretic.
Arius certainly took it that way. He left his meeting with the emperor and went straight to the church to attempt to partake of Communion. There he was refused permission by the godly bishop of Constantinople.
Some of Arius’s friends who were still members in good standing in the church immediately wrote a strong protest to the bishop. As far as they were concerned, the emperor’s pronouncement was a formal and legal sanction that the bishop was obliged to honor. They announced that a large group of them intended to accompany Arius to the church on the following day to receive Communion together.
Athanasius records that the bishop of Constantinople prayed, “If Arius is to be joined to the Church tomorrow, let me depart, and do not destroy the pious with the impious. But if you will take pity and spare the church . . . remove Arius, so that heresy may not come in with him, and impiety not be regarded as piety.”
According to Athanasius, Arius evidently emboldened by his audience with the emperor and his friends’ subsequent support, spent the afternoon making speeches and boasting of his impending triumph, until “compelled by a call of nature,” he quickly excused himself. Stricken by a sudden and violent attack of cholera, Arius died that very day.
Again, Arianism did not instantly die with him. The error continued to trouble the church for at least a generation after that. But finally, owing to the convincing biblical defense made by Athanasius, the poisonous effects of Arian doctrine itself, and the rise of younger, more faithful men like Jerome to positions of influence in the church, the tide began to turn. Within a hundred years, Arianism had all but died out.
Although Arianism persists even today in quasi-Christian groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism, and a few lesser cults,7 the demise of Arianism as a dominant force in church history is a testimony to the power of one man’s faithful diligence in the Truth War.8 God uses faithful warriors for the truth as His instruments to preserve the gospel for each succeeding generatio
n. Only the unfaithful have no interest in being useful to the Lord in that way.
My salvation and yours depends on a true understanding of Christ and who He is. A false christ is a damning deception (1 John 4:15; 5:1, 5, 10–12, 20; 2 John 7–11). The doctrine of Christ is no mere academic or secondary truth. This whole episode is a prime lesson about how much is at stake in the Truth War. It is also a classic example of how false teachers use subtlety to advance their cause.
WHY WE MUST KEEP OUR GUARD UP
The Arian conflict also exemplifies what kind of spiritual chaos false teachers can cause when the church becomes weary of conflict and decides to cease fighting for a season.
One of the main lessons of Jude’s epistle is that Christians must never cease fighting. We cannot pretend error is no longer worth battling in our generation. We should not imagine that the enemy has finally shifted into retreat mode. The war against the truth goes on continuously, unrelentingly, on multiple fronts—and it always has.
Jude’s epistle has a very broad sweep. That fact stands out starkly because the epistle is so short. Jude takes a condensed, fish-eye view of all history, starting from the beginning of time. He shows that the Truth War has been a perpetual reality ever since sin first entered the universe. The long struggle between truth and falsehood is one of the central themes of all history. It has been a long, protracted, uninterrupted state of siege—and we are still in the thick of the battle.
The Truth War Page 13