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In the traditional account, the Controversy began with the dispute in 318 between Arius and his bishop Alexander of Alexandria, two Christian theologians from Alexandria, Egypt. In this view, the Controversy was caused by Arius, who developed a novel heresy, claiming that the Son is a created being.
- Overview
- The Arian controversy
- From Nicaea to Chalcedon
The lingering disagreements about which Christological model was to be considered normative burst into the open in the early 4th century in what became known as the Arian controversy, possibly the most-intense and most-consequential theological dispute in early Christianity. The two protagonists, Arius (c. 250–336) and Athanasius (c. 293–373), differed over matters of theology but were quite similar in temperament and personality—learned, self-confident, and unyielding. Both were from Alexandria, Arius a distinguished churchman and scholar and Athanasius a brilliant theologian.
Arius’s Christology was a mixture of adoptionism and logos theology. His basic notion was that the Son came into being through the will of the Father; the Son, therefore, had a beginning. Although the Son was before all eternity, he was not eternal, and Father and Son were not of the same essence. In Jesus, who suffered pain and wept, the logos became human.
One strength of Arius’s position was that it appeared to safeguard a strict monotheism while offering an interpretation of the language of the New Testament—notably, the word Son—that conformed to general usage and meaning. The weakness of his view was that, precisely because Jesus was capable of suffering as a human, it was difficult to understand how he could be fully divine and thus effect the redemption of humankind.
According to Athanasius, God had to become human so that humans could become divine. Thus, at the heart of Athanasius’s Christology was a religious rather than a speculative concern. That led him to conclude that the divine nature in Jesus was identical to that of the Father and that Father and Son have the same substance. He insisted on the need for the Nicene homoousios to express the Son’s unity with the Father.
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The lingering disagreements about which Christological model was to be considered normative burst into the open in the early 4th century in what became known as the Arian controversy, possibly the most-intense and most-consequential theological dispute in early Christianity. The two protagonists, Arius (c. 250–336) and Athanasius (c. 293–373), differed over matters of theology but were quite similar in temperament and personality—learned, self-confident, and unyielding. Both were from Alexandria, Arius a distinguished churchman and scholar and Athanasius a brilliant theologian.
Arius’s Christology was a mixture of adoptionism and logos theology. His basic notion was that the Son came into being through the will of the Father; the Son, therefore, had a beginning. Although the Son was before all eternity, he was not eternal, and Father and Son were not of the same essence. In Jesus, who suffered pain and wept, the logos became human.
One strength of Arius’s position was that it appeared to safeguard a strict monotheism while offering an interpretation of the language of the New Testament—notably, the word Son—that conformed to general usage and meaning. The weakness of his view was that, precisely because Jesus was capable of suffering as a human, it was difficult to understand how he could be fully divine and thus effect the redemption of humankind.
According to Athanasius, God had to become human so that humans could become divine. Thus, at the heart of Athanasius’s Christology was a religious rather than a speculative concern. That led him to conclude that the divine nature in Jesus was identical to that of the Father and that Father and Son have the same substance. He insisted on the need for the Nicene homoousios to express the Son’s unity with the Father.
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The decision in favour of the Athanasian view at Nicaea did not immediately end the controversy. For more than a century the church wavered; the Council of Ariminum (359) all but reversed Nicaea, and the emperor in Constantinople turned the Athanasian majority into a minority. Constantine himself leaned toward Arianism later in his reign, and his eventual successor, his son Constantius, was openly Arian. Several theologians continued the controversy, and a number of views vied for acceptance, including monophysitism, which held that Jesus had only a divine nature and that he had passed through his mother, Mary, “as water passes through a tube,” in the words of Gregory of Nazianzus. One question of particular importance throughout the controversy was whether Jesus had actually suffered. Answering the question affirmatively seemed to suggest that God himself had suffered; answering it negatively seemed to undermine Jesus’ full humanity—and thereby his ability to redeem humankind.
Apollinaris the Younger (c. 310–c. 390)—bishop of Laodicea, Syria, and a student of Athanasius—addressed the question of “how two perfections can become one.” One of those perfections, the Godhead or the humanity, must yield, and Apollinaris concluded that it had to be the latter. Nestorius of Antioch (died 451), concerned with affirming the full humanity of Jesus, asserted that he possessed two natures. When Nestorius spoke of Jesus’ “one nature,” he actually meant a juxtaposition in which the human nature is progressively attuned to the divine; God had not really become human but had united with a human. “Christ was one,” he said, “but as if with two eyes, separated into the human and the divine nature.”
Late in the 4th century, the Church Father Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330–c. 389) and his brother Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c. 394), a theologian and mystic, affirmed the Nicaean decision. Meanwhile, Emperor Theodosius (347–395) convened the Council of Constantinople (381), also known as the Second Ecumenical Council, which reaffirmed the Nicene Creed and once again condemned the Arians. Notwithstanding those efforts, much of Christendom during that period was Arian, including the Vandals in North Africa, the Visigoths in Spain, and the Lombards in Italy. Although much has been written about the subject, the reasons for the eventual decline of Arianism remain elusive. Undoubtedly, however, they include the fact that the Arians were never a united front and the fact that the Athanasians, using Greek philosophy, devised cogent rational arguments to support their position.
A compromise position formulated following the Council of Ephesus in 431 stated that Jesus is “our Lord” who was
perfect God and perfect man, of the same substance with the Father according to his divinity and of the same substance with us according to his humanity. For a unity of two natures took place.
But that concord did not survive. In 449 the third of the councils of Ephesus favoured monophysitism, thus reaffirming that Jesus had only one nature. At that point Pope Leo I, who called the gathering a “Robber Synod,” intervened with an epistle known as Leo’s Tome, which argued against the notions that Jesus had only one nature and that his two natures did not fuse into one person. In 451 the Council of Chalcedon adopted Leo’s position, thereby resolving the Christological controversy. The council concluded that Jesus was
Oct 20, 2021 · The presence of God in history is clearly stressed as the central tenet in Athanasius’s faith, which is why he perceived Arianism to be a significant threat to Christianity. He opposed the priest Arius (256-336) who taught that the Jesus who had come to save humanity was not truly God, but a lesser being, a creature. As Arius taught, “If ...
But those who follow the heretics, though they have innumerable successors in their heresy, yet anyhow bear the name of him who devised it. Thus, though Arius be dead, and many of his party have succeeded him, yet those who think with him, as being known from Arius, are called Arians.
The controversy began as a local matter. However, the fury of the Arian controversy, as it has become known, was to dominate imperial, ecclesiastical and civic policies for more than 200 years. As we shall see, it resulted in the first two ecumenical councils of the church, the Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E. and the council of Constantinople in ...
May 9, 2016 · Athanasius’ Life. Athanasius was born in the city of Alexandria sometime in the 290s. The city was a culturally vital city for the Roman Empire, being both a major focal point for education as well as the breadbasket for much of the East. It is one of the rare cities that had intellectual leaders from paganism, Hellenistic Judaism, and ...
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Aug 19, 2020 · He required Arius to submit in principle to the creed, which he did, though Athanasius and others believed he was lying and stood in his way. The Bible’s teaching on Christ’s atonement requires a mediator who is fully God, with the holiness to make a perfect offering for sin, and also fully human, one who truly represents those to be reconciled to God.
