Athanasius, Arianism, and the Council of Nicaea: Part Two — The Makings and Context of Arianism and the Arian Controversy

Introduction and Cursory Remarks

Delineating with any clarity a linear and certain path resulting in the formulation of Arianism — as also with Arius himself — and engendering the theological controversy surrounding Arianism is in most respects, while a noble aspiration, simply impossible in light of the multitude of factors, whether societal, philosophical, religious, or ecclesial, supposed with varying degrees of certainty to have been contributive thereto. Of these factors, we will discuss but a few in this work, which, rather than being intended as an exhaustive analysis of the subjects considered, is meant rather to provide an introductory overview of the relevant history. In so doing, we hope to apprise the reader of some important historical information while occasioning, in highlighting the complexities of the subject heresies and heretics, along with their predisposing factors, and with these the sensitive nature of theological contemplation and discourse and the necessity of sound doctrinal transmission and the believers’ preparation for its defense in every generation, edification and a call to careful introspection and critical self-examination on the personal, parochial, and ecclesial levels. 

To that end, in this paper, following these cursory remarks, we will provide an introduction to the various background contexts relevant to the ultimate formulation of Arianism and its namesake, most popular adherent, and the primary catalyst of its clash with mainstream Christianity, Arius of Alexandria, while, in the course of that discussion, elucidating certain of the many factors that together informed and resulted in the rejection of Arianism by the Orthodox believers of the fourth century. 

While engaging in this endeavor, a few important elements must first be noted and carefully considered. 

First, the entire work of researching, reconstituting, and retelling history is by its very nature subjective — that is, the reader must remain acutely aware of biases and presuppositions while reading any historical work. This is especially pertinent in dealing with Christian history, where the reader may encounter the work of historians of various theological traditions, denominational backgrounds, doctrinal views, and even religious affiliations unrelated or even opposed to Christianity altogether.

Second, and this is most pertinent for the purposes of the current work, the sensitivity of engaging with historical data and academic literature for the religious reader is especially heightened when it concerns doctrinal and ecclesial subjects. That is, the believer must exhibit particular keenness, conservatism, and skepticism in handling scholarship that bears implications for religious understandings. This is true for the sources, whether ancient or modern, cited herein — citation to a source in no way implies either its blanket endorsement or alternatively wholesale disavowal, and indeed in each there is invariably that which is accepted as certainly true, considered potentially true, considered potentially false, and rejected as certainly false. 

Third, the honest student of history, and especially of Christian history, must be well aware of human fallibility. Indeed, in every saint there is some element of weakness, and perhaps some example of inadequacy or error in teaching or understanding, and in every heretic or excommunicant there is some element of strength and truth. It would therefore be both lamentable and contrary to sound judgment to err towards considering either the Fathers entirely infallible or the heretics entirely fallible, and the sound Christian thinker ought not dispose of the writings of the heretics. In reading these, Christian readers must ensure that they are properly discipled — to a doctrinally and spiritually sound and experienced teacher —, duly cautious, possessed of a prayerful and humble heart, firmly established in the truth of Christ through active and longstanding scriptural and liturgical experience, and capable, through that experience as well as the necessary study and training, of discerning truth from falsity, lest their understandings be distorted and they be misled by the eloquence of the author or the nuances and complexities of the subject matter at hand.

Fourth, the ever-present danger of anachronism must be well understood. It is both convenient and natural for the modern reader to consider matters of history through modern eyes, deeply influenced as they are by the realities and circumstances of modern life. Through that lens, the nuances and uncertainties of actively unfolding historical events, dynamic and unpredictable as they were in their time, are interpreted and reinterpreted to fit the reader’s own categories, paradigmatic views, and ideals, all of which are of course the product of subjective factors personal to that reader. But to read history in this manner is both intellectually dishonest and profoundly unfair to its subjects. The reader of history is therefore advised to possess a healthy dose of compassion, humility, and respect for those whose lives, thoughts, and stories, with all of their high and low points, are laid bare before our eyes in the annals of history. We would certainly hope that future readers of our own lives and contemporary history will afford us the same courtesy. 

With these limited introductory remarks, let us proceed to the subject examination. 

Backgrounds of Arianism and the Arian Controversy

I. Certain Religious, Theological, and Philosophical Backgrounds and Contexts Relevant to and Influencing Arianism and the Arian Controversy

In order to duly appreciate the doctrinal, ecclesial, and inevitably political situation that arose with the Arian Controversy, beginning in the second decade of the fourth century and remaining ablaze for over sixty years thereafter, it behooves us to first expound in introductory fashion some significant subjects in the history of theological expression, understanding, and terminology in the centuries that preceded our subject period, while, in so doing, highlighting certain contributory factors that most probably worked together with varying degrees of influence, whether directly or indirectly, to occasion the amalgam of theological views that later came under the collective term Arianism. In so doing, we will naturally also discuss various factors that contributed to the theological understandings of the Orthodox who opposed Arianism, and whose conviction, resoluteness, and intellectual prowess enabled the eventual defeat of that heresy, insofar as its general influence and popularity were dealt somewhat of a final blow at the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D.[1]

I.A. Judaism

Among the notable causal factors influencing the Arian innovation, or rather an important, if often overlooked, predisposing factor facilitating both its origination and the receptivity of its adherents and many among the believers to many of its central tenets is none other than Judaism. It is for this reason that the Nicene Fathers, and especially Alexander and Athanasius, exhibit no reservation in immediately and consistently referring to Judaism as the background impetus underlying, and closest theological position to, the Arian paradigm, labeling the Arians in no uncertain terms as Jews, new Judaizers, and friends of the Jews who rejected the Lord. 

That Judaism upholds a god who is confessed and worshipped only as one and denies any distinction of persons within the godhead is perhaps the clearest reason for the immediate association of the Arians with it, in light of their teaching — in their efforts to defend and uphold the oneness of God without falling into the error of a modalistic understanding of the divine essence (that God is not Trinity, but only manifests Himself in different modes at different times) — that the Son was created and is of a foreign substance than that of the Father. Thus, immediately following the local excommunication of Arius in Alexandria in 319/320 A.D. — of which we will speak in the subsequent paper — Pope Alexander of Alexandria issues correspondence to Alexander of Constantinople, wherein he writes: “For since [Arius and Achilles, his follower] call in question all pious and apostolic doctrine, after the manner of the Jews, they have constructed a workshop for contending against Christ, denying the Godhead of our Saviour, and preaching that He is only the equal of all others.”[2] Athanasius himself consistently refers to the Arians in the same manner, as for instance: 

“For if the Lord is God, Son, and Word — and yet he is none of these things prior to his becoming human — then either he was something else other than these things and later acquired participation in them on account of his virtue…or else (may this fall back upon their own heads!) they must say that he did not exist before becoming human, but is simply human by nature and nothing more. But this is not the mind of the Church, but of the Samosatene and of the present-day Jews.”[3]

Thus, in light of the direct implications of Arianism and their identity with Judaic theology, and especially the iterations of that Judaism that had seeped into Christian circles in earlier times, especially among the Ebionites (who, under Judaic influence, held that the Lord Jesus was a man who became the Messiah, and whose teaching echoes in later Adoptionists such as Paul of Samosata, a direct forerunner of the Arians of whom we shall soon speak), the Nicene Fathers are keen to expose the Arians for their impiety by direct reference to the thoroughly Jewish nature of their doctrine.[4]

Centrally, as the excerpt from Alexander above specifically describes, the Arian position was challenged as Jewish specifically due to its inherent denial of the true divinity of the Son, compromising thereby the entirety of the Christian doctrine of salvation. And so, in writing to Adelphius, Athanasius rightly posits: “who would be so impious as to join the Jews who did not understand and say to him, because of the body, ‘Why do you, a human being, make yourself to be God?’”[5] Thus, not only were the Arians perceived as concomitant with the Jews due to their failures with respect to true Trinitarian doctrine, but they were also so associated in their denial of the godhead of the Son and the resulting destruction of the entire doctrine of salvation. 

The mode by which Judaism most probably came to influence the Arians of the fourth century is slightly less obvious. Here, it is essential to recognize the potency of theological, ritual, and moral factors. 

The theological influence of Judaism upon the formulation of the Arian position is traceable to the Judaizing efforts of some documented in the New Testament scriptures, among whom, we learn from history, there arose the Ebionite sect, which persisted in the Church of Jerusalem and elsewhere before, as a distinct sect, gradually fading away. Ebionism held, under explicit Judaic influence, that Jesus was a man, naturally born, who became the Messiah at his baptism, by being imbued with divine power. It denied any preexistence or divinity with respect to Christ, and held fast to Jewish ritual practice and legalism, being “very little removed from Judaism.”[6] The Ebionite insistence upon a deified Christ, we shall find, survived the demise of that sect, albeit in diluted fashion, in the theology of the later Monarchian Adoptionists, who, in view of preserving the oneness of God while maintaining belief in a divine Christ, professed that Jesus was a mere man who had become divine, and so “adopted” by, and into, God. Of these Adoptionists, perhaps the most influential was a third-century bishop of Antioch, Paul of Samosata, whose direct ideological relationship with both Arianism and the School of Antioch, where Arius and many of his fellow Arians were educated, discipled, and imparted their erroneous doctrine, will hereafter be discussed. It was this Paul of Samosata whose teaching, influenced as it was by the Ebionite conception of the Lord, bequeathed to Arius and his fellows a doctrine tainted by Judaic psilanthropism — the denial of the true divinity of Christ. 

In tandem with this theological influence, it is important to recognize ritual practice and moral life as similarly formative and informative with respect to theological belief. In relation to Arianism, “the existence of Judaism in the Church of Antioch” is suspected to have occasioned, through “an observance of the Jewish rites,” “a tendency to derogate from the honour due to Christ.”[7] Indeed, “in the obsolete furniture of the Jewish ceremonial, there was in fact retained the pestilence of Jewish unbelief, tending (whether directly or not, at least eventually) to introduce fundamental error respecting the Person of Christ.”[8] This was especially the case in Antioch, where “[Judaism] was perpetuating the obstinacy of its unbelief in a disparagement of Christ’s spiritual authority, a reliance on the externals of religious worship, and an indulgence in worldly and sensual pleasures.”[9] Especially there, worldliness, carnality, and self-indulgence prevailed among the Jews in the third century, and through them influenced the Christian School of Antioch, which, besides its insistence on a literalistic interpretation of the Scriptures, came to adopt “in its most odious form the doctrine of the Chiliasts or Millenarians, respecting the reign of the saints upon earth, a doctrine which Origen, and afterwards his pupil Dionysius, opposed on the basis of an allegorical interpretation of Scripture.”[10] This preoccupation with the world and sensual life among the Christians of Antioch, derived from contemporary Jewish societal influences, caused to be “formed around the Church a mixed multitude, who, without relinquishing their dependence on Christianity for the next world, sought in Judaism the promise of temporal blessings, and a more accommodating rule of life than the gospel revealed.”[11] And so, as Newman observed:

“When the spirit and morals of a people are materially debased, varieties of doctrinal error spring up, as if self-sown, and are rapidly propagated. While Judaism inculcated a superstitious, or even idolatrous dependence on the mere casualties of daily life, and gave licence to the grosser tastes of human nature, it necessarily indisposed the mind for the severe and unexciting mysteries, the large indefinite promises, and the remote sanctions, of the Catholic faith; which fell as cold and uninviting on the depraved imagination, as the doctrines of the Divine Unity and of implicit trust in the unseen God, on the minds of the early Israelites.”[12]

As is true in every generation, then, ritual and moral practice was the immediate mechanism by which non-Christian and anti-Christian principles and paradigms became internalized by Christian believers and entrenched within a Christian context in third-century Antioch, giving rise to a generation of believers whose theological understanding was distorted, unsound, and ultimately, a grave danger to the teaching of the Church as it had been received, practiced, and delivered until that time.

Whether in its unwavering commitment to a strictly monotheistic god, or else its rejection of Christ as the incarnate God, or otherwise in the influence of Jewish ritual practice and contemporary morality upon the Antiochian Christians of the late third and early fourth centuries, Judaism and Arianism were viewed by the opponents of that heresy as at least affiliate positions and at most causally related. And in fact, it was not only the Orthodox who intimated such an association — the Jews themselves are found siding with the Arians in the popular demonstrations that arose in both Antioch and Alexandria in support of Arianism.[13]

Judaism, then, was the first force tacitly contributive to the Arian position.

I.B. Monarchianism and its Constituent Iterations 

While the earliest Christian believers were to a great extent unconcerned, and had no pressing reason to be especially preoccupied, with the nuances and complexities of specific theological expression, the spread of Christianity and its resulting interaction with heretical and philosophical competitors brought about an urgent and consequential need for such considerations. The second-century controversies with Gnosticism and Montanism, for instance, forced the believers, and especially those among them who had received philosophical training, to clearly discern the primary spirit and tenets of the Apostolic Tradition and express doctrinal principles in more formal terms than had previously been necessary. In this process of formalization and its accompanying ecclesial expansion, the Church’s inevitable engagement with ancient and contemporary Greco-Roman philosophy provided language, terminology, definitions, and categories that were, to varying degrees of success and with some unfortunate and, to some extent, unforeseeable subsequent implications, adopted, incorporated, or modified as needed to express principles of Christian theology to a societal and philosophical audience in need of these translational methods. 

Thus, in the second century, those who rose to the challenge of representing the Faith to inquirers, and defending it against political, religious, and philosophical opponents — the Apologists, as these defenders became collectively known —, utilizing the aforementioned borrowed philosophical terms, tended to present the Christian God — the Father — to their hearers and readers in light of the God of philosophy, as the transcendent, ineffable source of all being — unbegotten, uncreated, inexpressible, and ultimately, entirely inaccessible. In tempering this abstract conception of God, and in view of the incarnation, these Fathers appealed to the Logos: the “visible God,”[14] God from God, a necessarily subordinate being projected by the Father’s will,[15] who acts as the divine agent in creation[16] and who, in borrowing from Stoic philosophy, was envisioned as existing first as logos endiathetos (immanent word) and then as logos prophorikos (spoken word).[17]

In this manner, while the Apologists’ methods were undoubtedly necessitated by the challenges and circumstances of their time, and indeed one perhaps cannot envision a viable alternative to their chosen course of action when considering the understandings and conditions of their day, and their intentions were entirely pious, borne out of a heartfelt desire to defend the truth of Christianity and translate that truth into terms comprehensible to their hearers, their approach nonetheless introduced unintended tensions. Thus, for instance, in adopting the cosmological categories to which they appealed, Christ’s mediatory role was emphasized at the expense of His full divinity, with the implications of their impassioned defense of the oneness of God being that Christ, while divine, is not the One God, but rather a subordinate being: a philosophical mediator. 

As the Church ventured into the latter half of the second century, the principles formulated by the Apologists had begun to bear unintended fruit. For instance, and most pressingly for the purposes of tracing the roots of the Arian heresy, in conceiving of the divine Logos as a subordinate, intermediary being, the natural question arose: how can this Logos be God? And this — the need to reconcile the divinity of the Logos, especially the incarnate Logos, with Christian monotheism — marked a significant theological concern of the late second century that persisted throughout the entirety of the third. 

In addressing this problem, various theological views arose, of which Monarchianism is for our purposes most relevant. The Monarchians, as they came to be called, stressed the absolute unity and singular personhood of God, and so denied the Trinity, rejecting any notion of hypostatic distinction or subordination within the Trinity.[18] Monarchianism developed in two distinct forms. Modalistic Monarchianism, or Sabellianism, identified the one God with Christ, treating the Incarnation as a mode of divine manifestation. Dynamic Monarchianism, or Adoptionism, on the other hand, as we have said above, followed the Ebionite model in holding that Jesus was a man who had become divine by adoption, through the indwelling of a divine power.[19] Thus, while Sabellianism, also called Modalism, emphasized the divine identity of Christ, Adoptionism emphasized his humanity. In turn, two trends of Sabellianism developed: “the Patripassian denied that the Word was in any real respect distinct from [the Father],” to the end that, in this view, it was in fact the Father — rather, the one God devoid of distinct hypostases, or persons — who was incarnate, suffered, and died, while “the Emanatist, if he may so be called, denied that [the Word] was a Person, or more than an extraordinary manifestation of Divine Power.”[20]

Significant efforts emerged in the subject period with the hope of providing some degree of clarity and reconciliation among these competing theological factions. For instance, Tertullian, in line with his predecessors Irenaeus and the Apologists, attempted to uphold the unity of God while affirming the distinct roles of the persons of the Trinity.[21] Despite such attempts, including by Tertullian, Hippolytus, and several others, the factionalization that had occurred could not be remedied. Throughout the Christian world, proponents of all the foregoing schools, as well as offshoots thereof, could be found, and the influence of these ideas persisted throughout the ensuing centuries to varying degrees and in a multitude of iterations. However, over time, the Trinitarian theology upheld by Hippolytus and Tertullian was recognized as most in line with the Orthodox teaching of the Church, with Novatian — to his credit, despite his schismatic legacy — effectively synthesizing Tertullian’s theology in his work on the Trinity, maintaining a sort of shared divine substance, or essence, between the Father and the Son (and so anticipating the later Nicene Homoousion).[22]

For the purposes of our discourse, however, it is Sabellianism that ultimately came to facilitate to a great extent the formulation of the Arian position — not in that the Arians concurred with its modalistic position (to the contrary, Arius and his Arian colleagues rejected Sabellianism outright), but because the Arians seized upon expressions formulated by the opponents of Sabellianism to defend their own teaching and lend support to their own position, opposed as it was to what they perceived were Sabellian theological assertions. 

As noted above, the Sabellians denied “any distinction of Persons in the Divine Nature.”[23] This principle was first maintained as a distinguishing characteristic by a school supposed to be an offshoot of the Gnostics, established in Proconsular Asia towards the end of the second century, of which Noetus was the most noted master.[24] About the middle of the third century, Sabellius, from whom the heresy thereafter took its name, a bishop or presbyter in Pentapolis, is found advocating that erroneous conception of the godhead. “Other bishops in his neighbourhood adopting his sentiments, his doctrine became so popular among a clergy already prepared for it, or hitherto unpractised in the necessity of a close adherence to the authorized formularies of faith, that in a short time (to use the words of Athanasius) ‘the Son of God was scarcely preached in the Churches.’”[25]

In responding to the Sabellians of Pentapolis, Pope Dionysius of Alexandria formulated his judgment on the relevant issues, “insisting on the essential character of the Son as representing and revealing the Father” by arguing that “on the very face of Scripture, the Christ who is there set before us, (whatever might be the mystery of His nature) is certainly delineated as one absolute and real Person, complete in Himself, sent by the Father, doing His will, and mediating between Him and man; and that, this being the case, His Person could not be the same with that of the Father, who sent Him…”[26] However, his response was misunderstood by some as representing an assertion “that the Son of God is made and created, distinct in nature from the incommunicable essence of the Father, ‘as the vine is distinct from the vine-dresser’ and in consequence, not eternal.”[27] Thus, charges were brought against him to Dionysius, bishop of Rome, and he was forced to explain the intended meaning of his expressions: 

“he observes first, that his letter to the Sabellians, being directed against a particular error, of course contained only so much of the entire Catholic doctrine as was necessary for the refutation of that error; — that his use of the words ‘Father and Son,’ in itself implied his belief in a oneness of nature between Them; — that in speaking of the Son as ‘made,’ he had no intention of distinguishing ‘made’ from ‘begotten’ but, including all kinds of origination under the term, he used it to discriminate between the Son and His underived self-originating Father; — lastly, that in matter of fact he did confess the Catholic doctrine in its most unqualified and literal sense, and in its fullest and most accurate exposition.”[28]

In his letter, Dionysius “even recognizes the celebrated Homoousion (consubstantial) which was afterwards adopted at Nicaea.”[29]

The misunderstanding between Dionysius of Rome and Dionysius of Alexandria arose from the ambiguous use of the terms “essence” and “person,” which each interpreted differently than the other. Dionysius of Rome saw hypostasis as the divine essence itself, while Dionysius of Alexandria viewed it as the essence of each distinct divine person, leading one to fear tritheism and the other to insist on distinct persons in the Trinity.[30] Nonetheless, in light of Arian reliance upon certain of Dionysius’ expressions, later writers complain of Dionysius as having “sown the first seeds of Arianism,” if only accidentally, “occasioned by his vehement opposition to the Sabellian heresy.”[31] Athanasius, however, ever faithful to the teaching and memory of the Fathers who came before him, specifically takes up the defense of Dionysius in his work On the Opinion of Dionysius, where he provides a clear and detailed defense of Dionysius’ orthodoxy. 

It was not only Pope Dionysius, however, to whom some blame may be ascribed in contributing, albeit unintentionally, to the formulation of Arianism. Gregory of Neocaesarea, venerated as the Wonder-Worker (Thaumaturgus), can likewise be said to have shared in that unfortunate outcome. In opposing Monarchianism in the East, Gregory occupied a central role in the first Council held against Paul of Samosata, who in his own right, in his Adoptionistic Monarchianism, is credited with contributing to the development of the Arian heresy to a considerable extent, as we shall discuss below. There, it is likely that a Synodal Letter was addressed by the assembled bishops to Paul (although some critics ascribe it to the second Council held against the same heretic, and others reject it as spurious), which illustrates the line of argument utilized there to refute the heresy. To counter the claim that the Son was merely an impersonal divine presence with no real pre-existence, it pointed to His active role in creation and His appearances in the Old Testament as the Living and Personal Word. It therefore affirmed the belief in the Son as the eternal Image and Power of God, “the living and intelligent Cause of creation,” while citing His pre-incarnate manifestations to figures like Abraham, Jacob, and Moses as descriptive of His “ministrative office.”[32] These arguments, however, could be, and ultimately were, weaponized “to favour the hypothesis that the Son is in all respects distinct from the Father, and by nature as well as in revealed office inferior to Him.”[33]

And so, the Arians of the fourth century found in notable earlier ecclesial authorities support for their own theological innovations. In themselves disdaining the heresy of Modalism, the Arians tended rather to the other end of the theological spectrum, aligning more closely with the Adoptionists, of whom Paul of Samosata — who was, uncoincidentally, bishop of Antioch in the mid-third century — was especially influential. 

I.C. Origen and Origenism

Concurrently with the issues of Monarchianism summarized above, in the late second to mid-third centuries, Origen of Alexandria quickly establishes himself as an influential and revolutionary force in the world of Christian theology. With Origen emerge the earliest true attempts at expressing a comprehensive theological system, intended to find its foundation in the Church’s Rule of Faith while harmonizing contemporary philosophical concepts with Christian teaching. In this effort, Origen maintains at the center of his system the Lord Jesus Christ, approaching Him soteriologically — as the Savior — rather than metaphysically, as the earlier philosophers had done. Thus, he affirms the distinctiveness of the persons of the Trinity while maintaining the oneness of God, positing that God is known through the Incarnate Word — the divine and the human natures being hypostatically united in the person of the Lord. Regarding the Son, Origen expresses that He was eternally begotten (not created) of the Father, sharing in the divine nature (homoousios), but subordinate in role and derivatively divine.[34] The unity between Father and Son is moral, not modalistic, and their coinherence (i.e., the mutual indwelling of the three hypostases of the Holy Trinity) underscores divine oneness while preserving personal distinctions.[35]

While Origen’s theology was in many ways in line with, and terminologically facilitative of, Orthodoxy as understood and formalized at Nicaea, his system simultaneously incorporated various speculative components.[36] Thus, Origen proposes an eternal creation opposed to the perfect God — who was always creator — and arising from “the estrangement of Will” from God, and therefore conditioned by evil, with materiality being the penalty and measure of evil.[37] Souls, also being preexistent, suffer embodiment when they lose their original integrity, or purity, and so are subjected to materiality and become needful of redemption, occasioned when the Logos united with an uncorrupted soul in the incarnation.[38] The Word thus unites, hypostatically, the natures of God and Man in the person of Christ, and “deifies” Human Nature — “first His Own, then in others as well.”[39] For Origen, the redemption of the soul in this manner, which comes about through the redemptive sacrifice of the incarnate Word and a resulting right apprehension of the Logos by the redeemed person — that is, the reorienting of that person’s will to the true God — is a reality with a definite temporal end: the second coming of the Lord, when all of creation will be recapitulated in the person of Christ, and so “God shall be all in all” in eternity, having reconciled Will forever after its initial estrangement. 

With these speculative, and in some ways purely hopeful and somewhat theoretical, ideas — many of which having likely been interposed for the sake of hypothetical exploration and examination rather than as affirmatively held beliefs and thereafter perhaps repurposed, magnified, or recontextualized by Origen’s adherents and opponents to serve their respective ends —, Origen unwittingly occasions in subsequent theological thought and discourse a wide spectrum of further philosophical inquiry and theological confusion. Indeed, “if the subtle presupposition [in Origen’s system] as to God and the Universe is withdrawn…alternative and inconsistent Christologies” emerge.[40] Nevertheless, Origen’s own framework, taken as it was, was internally consistent to an overwhelming extent, and in fact relied upon these speculative assertions not for the sake of novelty or mere speculation, but in order to preserve and maintain that harmony. Thus, for example, for Origen the immutability of God is preserved by asserting an eternal creation, which itself requires an eternal mediation by the Logos, who is therefore eternal with God and so uncreated,[41] being instead begotten of the Father (who Himself is also eternally Father, which itself necessitates the eternal Sonship of the Son) and of the same essence (homoousios)[42] as the Father, “morally” united to the Father (and so truly existing in union with the Father, and not, as the Monarchians held, only apparently existing, as a mode of the one non-Trinitarian god’s self-revelation) and having no unlikeness whatsoever with respect to the Father.[43]

Origen carries this doctrine of the Logos further, insisting — in attempting to preserve the monotheism of the Christians, as the Apologists had done before in their own time — that the Logos is God, but derivatively and not absolutely: a “second God,” the Father alone being “the God” while the Word is “God from God” — of one essence with the Father, but still, when compared to the Father, who is ingenerate, the head of the series of generates, between the nature of the unbegotten and the nature of the generated. Thus, like the Apologists, Origen insists on the subordination of the Son to the Father, as also he does the subordination of the Spirit to the Son and the subordination of “created spirits”[44] to the Spirit. In this manner, Origen’s “doctrine of the Person of Christ hangs together with his philosophy of Religion and Nature.”[45] But it is, importantly, “the philosophy of his age, and must be judged relatively. His deeply religious, candid, piercing spirit embodies the highest effort of the Christian intellect conditioned by the categories of the best thought of his age.”[46]

As noted above, the sheer magnitude and complexity of Origen’s system, along with its fundamental reliance upon speculative and essentially non-doctrinal tenets, produced in subsequent generations not only vehement opposition and rampant controversy, but also, in those among his students and admirers who either lacked his intellectual brilliance or sought to whittle away the speculative components to preserve only the doctrinally sound elements, a porous and easily misunderstood framework which was internally inconsistent and in the end quite different from that formulated by him. The fallout following Origen, if it may be so termed, is therefore quite varied. His disciples and intellectual students in subsequent generations, even those who modified or selectively adapted his framework, were instrumental in the extermination of Monarchianism in the East — for instance, Dionysius of Alexandria in his aforementioned refutation of the Sabellians of Libya, and Gregory Thaumaturgus in his aforementioned role in opposing Adoptionism and ousting Paul of Samosata from his position as bishop of Antioch. Further, even those who opposed his views, as for instance certain teachers of Asia Minor, “where the traditions of theological thought…were not in sympathy with Origen,” such as Methodius, who, like the adherents of the Antiochian School, including the Arians, held especially to the literal meaning of Scripture — as opposed to Origen and the Alexandrians’ incorporation of an allegorical interpretation —, were “not uninfluenced by him,”[47] especially in their doctrine of the Logos.

In the end, what emerges from this period is a theological spectrum among Origen’s followers and sympathizers — an Origenist ‘right’ and an Origenist ‘left’ — which raises difficulties and challenges in, and proves instrumental to understanding and addressing, many subsequent theological controversies and questions. Thus, some Origenists, as they came to be called, are found to express some uncertainty, or lack of clarity, as to how to reconcile the eternality of the Son with a non-eternal universe, and so experiencing difficulties in soundly conceiving of the essential relation of the Son to the Father. Of this Dionysius of Alexandria, as we have noted above, has been accused, even despite his affirmations and clarifications as to his thoroughly Orthodox position. Others, including many of Origen’s own disciples, especially among the bishops, “started from the other side of Origen’s teaching, and held tenaciously to the coeternity of the Son, while they abandoned the Origenist ‘paradoxes’ with regard to the Universe, matter, pre-existence, and restitution.”[48] These included Gregory Thaumaturgus and later Pope Peter of Alexandria and Pope Alexander of Alexandria, who is found initially opposing Arius’s innovations. 

“It was this ‘wing’ of the Origenist following that, in combination with the opposition represented by Methodius, bequeathed to the generation contemporary with Nicaea its average theological tone.”[49] Thus, at that time, while “the coeternity of the Son with the Father was not (as a rule) questioned…the essential relation of the Logos to the Creation involved a strong subordination of the Son to the Father…”[50] Sabellianism “was the heresy most dreaded,” including by Arius and his compatriots, and “the theology of the Church was based on the philosophical categories of Plato applied to the explanation and systematisation of the rule of faith.”[51] This theology essentially affirmed the true Sonship and coessentiality of the Son to the Father, while the later Arianism, while more logically definite (and that to its own detriment), held to an entirely different conception of God in its denial of that coessentiality and true Sonship.[52] Thus, the Orthodox in the time of Arius, believing, as the Church always did, that the Son was truly Son, of one and the same essence as the Father and begotten from eternity of, yet not created by, the Father, could not accept the Arian assertions that the Son was a creature, not coeternal with the Father, and alien to the Father’s nature. To them, this was a plain “novelty, and wholly abhorrent.”[53] In this manner, “[i]n theological and philosophical principles alike Arius was opposed even to the tempered Origenism of the Nicene age. The latter was at the furthest remove from Monarchianism, Arianism was in its essential core Monarchian; the common theology borrowed its philosophical principles and method from the Platonists, Arius from Aristotle.”[54] This is despite the fact that Arius himself, along with his co-adherents, “undoubtedly derived some support from the dangerous language of Origen, who had ventured to represent the Logos as [a ‘second God’]…[and] made use of expressions which favoured Arius’s statement that the Logos was of a different substance to the Father, and that He owed His existence to the Father's will,”[55] as we have noted in brief above. 

And so, on either side of the theological debates of the fourth century, Origen is found influencing in some capacity the various opposing interpretations and paradigms, and being invoked — often, especially by the Arians, selectively and unfaithfully — by each side in support of its views. Such, then, is the influence and import of Origen and the Origenists with respect to both the Arian controversy and the Orthodox opposition thereto. 

I.D. Aristotelian and Sophist Philosophy 

Yet further influence upon Arius and his fellow Arians can be found in the Aristotelian and Sophistic philosophical traditions. In the Sophist school and approach, the goal is to “baffle an adversary, or at most to detect error, rather than to establish truth.”[56] It was in that tradition, especially in its emphasis on dialectics, the art of argumentation, and the proclivity to debate — which, unlike the Aristotelian school (which employed similar strategies), did not consider as the aim of such dialectics the arrival at truth —, that Arius and his fellow Arians were educated[57] and to which they owed their penchant for disputation.

While in the various Schools of the early Church, this approach was utilized by teachers in their educational curricula, invariably in a controlled setting, after the requisite preparation of mind and heart, for instructive purposes, and among a carefully selected group of students, and also by friends in intimate settings of private intellectual discussion and philosophical and theological dialogue, Arius and his fellow innovators capitalized on it in carrying it beyond the sanctity of either the classroom or private friendship and into the public sphere, intentionally disregarding setting, audience, and the spiritual or intellectual preparation of either the participants or the hearer in order to openly challenge and inquire into the received creed, having learned the strategy from their Antiochian predecessors, especially Paul of Samosata.[58]

As we shall see, Arius is documented as openly and boldly challenging his diocesan bishop, Alexander, as he lectured on the mystery of the Trinity to the clergy of his diocese.[59] He further invites support for his theological formulations in the form of popular songs composed by him and collected in his work, the Thalia,[60] and openly teaches his doctrine to crowds of congregants, especially women, who flocked to hear him for his ascetical and elderly appearance, eloquence of speech, and charismatic personality. Arius’ co-heretics, whether his predecessors, or his contemporaries, or those subsequent to his lifetime, moreover, possessed the same disputatious and cunning qualities.[61] It was therefore not without reason that “[t]he two Gregories, Basil, Ambrose, and Cyril, protest with one voice against the dialectics of their opponents,”[62] and that Epiphanius, in the fourth century, calls the Arians the “disciples of Aristotle” while lamenting their abandonment of “the harmlessness and meekness of the Holy Spirit” by “taking up Aristotle and the other secular dialecticians” and seeking their fruits rather than having the “fruit of righteousness” or “the gift of the Holy Spirit within them.”[63]

This Arian strategy of irreverent and unguarded public disputation, it must be said, was quite effective in not only garnering support from all ecclesial ranks to the Arian position, such that the majority of even the ecclesiastical hierarchy had at some point come to sympathize with and support the Arians — it was not without reason that Athanasius perceived himself as being “against the world” —, but also opening up even the most sacred and nuanced of theological subjects, which necessarily require preparation, carefulness, humility, and piety of spirit to properly appreciate and discuss, to public, and necessarily unqualified, consumption, amusement, and concern. Thus, Gregory of Nyssa records that at the time of the Council of Constantinople in 381, the whole city was stirring with theological argumentation: 

“the squares, the market places, the cross-roads, the alleyways; old-clothes men, money changers, food sellers: they are all busy arguing…If you ask someone to give you change, he philosophizes about the Begotten and the Unbegotten; if you inquire about the price of a loaf, you are told by way of reply that the Father is greater and the Son inferior; if you ask ‘Is my bath ready?’ the attendant answers that the Son was made out of nothing.’”[64]

And so, Gregory of Nazianzus warns, at the outset of his first Theological Oration: “Not to every one, my friends, does it belong to philosophize about God; not to every one; the Subject is not so cheap and low; and I will add, not before every audience, nor at all times, nor on all points; but on certain occasions, and before certain persons, and within certain limits.”[65]

With this disputatious approach, the Arians succeeded, especially in the absence of any universally accepted formal statement of the Church’s belief, such as would be formulated at Nicaea — not that there was not before this time a creed, but that such creeds until that time were local, varied, and in any case not universally or authoritatively affirmed as applicable to the entire Church and setting forth the official position of the Church on the subjects therein discussed —, to baffle, amuse, and manipulate the believers at all levels, and that in a very short period of time, such that within a mere five or so years, the Arian issue became so widespread, rampant, and dangerous as to be perceived by the Emperor as a threat to the unity and stability of the Empire, and so necessitating a universal council officially convened by the Emperor himself and attended by representatives from throughout the Christian world. No prior heresy, regardless of its influence or specific threat, had ever, throughout the Church’s history until that point, occasioned such an urgent, political, and comprehensive response. 

I.E. Paul of Samosata, Lucian, and the School of Antioch 

We now come to the immediate local precursors that acted upon Arius and his ideological partners and sympathizers, of which we have already referenced several in passing, but which will now be expounded to a greater and more detailed extent, as perhaps the most closely influential and immediately predisposing factors giving rise to the Arian teaching. 

I.E.i. Paul of Samosata

The Church of Antioch in the third century, as we have seen, was ideologically afflicted by a strong Judaic influence. The Scriptures were, particularly in the School of Antioch, interpreted in a strictly literal sense, as opposed to the allegorical interpretation permitted in Alexandria; various Jewish rites were observed and upheld, and that on their own merit, and not rather as re-contextualized so as to have a Christian meaning, purpose, or point of reference; and the contagion of the moral laxity of the Jews of that locale exerted not an insignificant influence upon Christian spirituality. These influences acted upon the Church of Antioch perhaps no more directly than through its mid-third century bishop, Paul of Samosata. 

Paul of Samosata was selected for the bishopric of Antioch in 260 A.D. By 272, he had been tried at three separate councils, found to espouse heretical views (representing an Adoptionistic Monarchianism), and successfully deposed. Within the short tenure of his episcopacy, however, he had caused immeasurable damage to the Church in Antioch, which would subsequently, in Arius and his contemporary Arians, spread to afflict the whole Church. Paul had in this period founded “a school rather than [] a sect,”[66] encouraging “in the Church the use of those disputations and sceptical inquiries which belonged to the Academy and other heathen philosophies, and as scattering up and down the seeds of errors, which sprang up and bore fruit in the generation after him.”[67] In his insistence upon Adoptionistic theology, open practice of ceremonial Judaism, including the Jewish rite of circumcision, and even the Quartodeciman observance of the Paschal Feast on the day of the Jewish Passover that persisted within his diocese even following his deposition, Paul exemplifies and proliferates in the Church of Antioch the Judaic beliefs and practices that so strongly influence the theology of the Arians in the subsequent generation.[68]

What is more, Paul had embodied and brought about in the Church of Antioch a scandalous and spiritually detestable model of ecclesial administration and spirituality. He is described by the bishops who deposed him as:

“haughty, ostentatious, vain-glorious, worldly-minded, a lover of pomp and parade, avaricious, rapacious, self-indulgent and luxurious; as one whose manner of life laid him open to grave suspicions of immorality; and as a person originally of humble birth, who had adopted the ecclesiastical career as a lucrative speculation, and, by the abuse of its opportunities and the secular office obtained by favour of the queen of Palmyra, had amassed a large fortune.”[69]

He was notorious for conducting himself with “the pomp and parade of a secular magistrate rather than the grave and modest bearing of a Christian bishop”[70] including by engaging in elaborate processions wherein he was thronged by attendants who made way for him and by causing praises to himself to be sung in the Church by a choir of women instead of the psalms in praise of Christ as God that were until that time chanted in his Church.[71] His unabashed exploitation of secular and ecclesial power, combined with his use of flatteries and gifts, persuaded nearby bishops and presbyters to “adopt his form of teaching and other novelties,”[72] including at Paul’s explicit encouragement. His private life was further cause for scandal. He “indulged freely in the pleasures of the table, and enjoyed the society of two beautiful young women,”[73] such that many were caused to stumble. Yet, because of his flatteries and intimidation, including by threats and violence, almost no one would agree to witness against him.[74]

In these ways, Paul was but symptomatic of “a corrupted state of the Church. The history of the times gives us sufficient evidence of the luxuriousness of Antioch; and it need scarcely be said, that coldness in faith is the sure consequence of relaxation of morals.”[75]

Despite these spiritual ills, however, the cause of Paul’s ultimate excommunication was, in any case, as previously mentioned, his heretical views concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. In line with certain heretical predecessors, most especially Artemon, Paul professed Christ as being purely human, not preexistent in any sense except for in God’s foreknowledge and plan. He perceived no difference between “the indwelling of the Logos in Christ and in any human being,” except in “degree, the Logos having dwelt and operated in Him after a higher manner than in any other man.”[76] That indwelling in Christ, moreover, was only of a quality, and not of a person, or hypostasis. Although “he called Christ God, it was not as God by His nature, but by progressive development. The Deity of Christ grew by gradual progress out of the humanity. He was convicted, according to Eusebius, of asserting that Christ was mere man deemed specially worthy of divine grace [].”[77] 

As we have previously noted, Pope Dionysius of Alexandria was personally and zealously concerned with opposing Monarchianism in his day. Secondary to these efforts, along with those of the other eminent anti-Monarchians, Paul was tried, due to his insistence upon an Adoptionistic theology, at a series of synods in Antioch: first in 265 A.D. (to which Dionysius was invited but could not attend due to his health, dying in the same year), then another sometime thereafter, and finally in 269. At the first two of these councils, Paul was able to escape condemnation through his manipulative and evasive use of disputation and argumentative cleverness — which tactics, as we have noted, he had adopted from the philosophical schools of Aristotle and the Sophists, and which he encouraged and popularized in Antioch. However, at the third synod, in 269, Paul found present Malchion, an Antiochian presbyter who had presided over the School of Antioch for a period of time. Malchion was himself a skilled dialectician, possessed of wisdom and great intelligence, and so those assembled selected him to conduct the proceedings. Malchion therefore proceeded to thoroughly refute Paul’s heretical views and to best him at his own method of persuasion, resulting in Paul’s excommunication and his deposition from the episcopacy.[78]

In dealing with Paul’s theological views, the synods in Antioch involved one particular issue which bears much relevance to the proceedings and debates of the Council of Nicaea. Specifically, among the primary reasons for the deposition of Paul at the synod of 269 A.D. was his misuse of, or agreement with those who had used, the word homoousios in expressing “the relation of the Father and the Son.”[79] As we have seen, in the controversy that had previously arisen in connection with Dionysius of Alexandria’s refutation of the Sabellians, homoousios was in the subject period thought to have a Sabellian tendency, and to have in any sense been so ambiguous as to permit overly broad and unspecific interpretations. In light of Paul’s logical cunningness and deceitful argumentation, it is not unsurprising that the Fathers assembled to try Paul in 269 objected to the term and deposed him for either his misuse of it or his agreement with those who used it improperly in his time. 

In view of Paul’s popularity and influence upon the Christians and secular authorities in Antioch, his deposition was frustrated by popular uprisings and the political support of the aforementioned Zenobia. Thus, Paul retained possession of the cathedral and of the bishop's residence attached to it for two years following the council, refusing to submit to the council’s decrees. It was not until 272 A.D., when Zenobia suffered defeat by Aurelian, that the Orthodox were finally able to successfully oust Paul from his post. 

Paul’s influence on the Church in Antioch cannot be said, however, to have ceased with his deposition. Rather, it persisted with some strength, not only among the Arians, but more generally, even until the time of the Council of Nicaea, necessitating the promulgation of certain canons at that convocation to address issues concerning the baptism and ordination of the “Paulianists,” or “Samosatenes.”[80] With respect to his particular import as to the Arians, however, we must proceed to examine another important figure of the third century, who may well be considered “the father of Arianism” — Lucian of Antioch. 

I.E.ii. Lucian of Antioch

Lucian of Antioch was born around 240 A.D. at Samosata, and was discipled in Edessa by an elder who was known to have been a knowledgable interpreter of the Scriptures. He subsequently relocated to Antioch, where he was likely associated, or at least possibly acquainted, with Paul of Samosata, and became the head of the theological school there. In that capacity, he instilled a method of scriptural interpretation that was thoroughly opposed to an allegorical sense, insisting instead on the literal meaning of the inspired texts. 

After Paul’s excommunication, he himself was also — most probably due to his agreement with Paul’s theological views — separated from the Church, remaining so under the episcopacy of the three immediate successors of Paul. During the bishopric of the third of these successors, Lucian was, for unclear reasons, restored to the Church, and ultimately suffered martyrdom in 312 A.D. He was known to lead an ascetical life, which, along with his learnedness and eventual martyrdom, seems to have garnered for his memory a sense of honor, and for his disciples significant common-spiritedness, personal inspiration (Arius was himself known for his ascetical disposition), and a popularity to which several of them owed both their ordinations to the clerical ranks and appointments to several of the most influential dioceses and parishes in the period shortly after the Diocletianic persecution.[81]

It was in any event in the School of Antioch under Lucian that “the leaders and supporters of the Arian heresy were trained.”[82] In light of this fact, Arius refers to his fellow Arians as “co-Lucianists,” and he, along with several leaders of the Arian cause, appeal to Lucian as their authority. 

As to Arianism, Lucian’s ideas proved most influential, particularly in its characteristic “compromise between the Origenist doctrine of the Person of Christ and the pure Monarchian Adoptionism of Paul of Samosata,” which it accomplished by utilizing Paul’s Adoptionism as the foundation for the Origenist identification of Christ with the Logos, or “cosmic divine principle.”[83] However, Lucian “could not bring himself to admit that [Christ] was thus essentially identified with God the eternal,”[84] instead insisting upon the notion, also held by Paul of Samosata, that Christ attained to divinity through “progress.”[85] What is more, he “distinguished the Word or Son who was Christ from the immanent impersonal Reason or Wisdom of God, as an offspring of the Father’s Will,”[86] which he may have derived from Origen but interpreted in a different manner.[87] In fact, it was viewed as a violation of Lucian’s system if among his disciples one was found to hold that the Son was “the perfect Image of the Father’s Essence.”[88] Nonetheless, “Origen’s formula, ‘distinct in hypostasis, but one in will,’ was apparently exploited in a Samosatene sense to express the relation of the Son to the Father.”[89]

In all, it appears most likely that Lucian largely maintained Paul of Samosata’s theological model, but for two distinct areas: firstly, while to Paul the Logos was some impersonal power from God, Lucian considered the Logos a hypostasis; secondly, while Paul considered Jesus to have been a mere man, Lucian believed that the Logos, or Wisdom, of God, was sent into the world “clothed in flesh” and replaced the soul in the person of the Lord.[90] From this point, Lucian regards the “lowly words” of the gospels as being applicable to the Logos, rather than any conception of the one incarnate Logos, such that “the inferiority and essential difference of the Son from the Father rigidly followed.”[91]

This was in brief Lucian’s theological framework as to the points relevant to Nicaea, which arose from a process, whether intentional or accidental, of amalgamating between aspects of the Adoptionistic and Origenistic views. Both to it and to its namesake, Arius and his “Co-Lucianists” expressed adherence — an important point, insofar as the Arians were not, and expressly denied being, dependent upon or somehow followers of Arius himself, the term Arianism being rather utilized to capture in the broadest terms those who espoused these views, varied as they were even among themselves, by reference to the immediate catalyst behind the clash of this heresy with Orthodoxy that arose in 319 A.D. and occasioned the Council of Nicaea. 

It must be said, moreover, that among the Arians and those who were sympathetic to them, or held views harmonious with them to some extent, in the fourth century, there were others who did not owe their theological positions to Lucian. Certain of these, such as Eusebius of Caesarea, while not themselves disciples of Lucian, held views that aligned to some extent with the Arians — for instance, “left wing Origenists” who held fast to a theology of the Son’s subordination to the Father, and who, in vacillating “as to the eternity of the Son, would find little to shock them in Arianism…”[92] Meanwhile, there were those who, while “essentially Arian,” such as Asterius, “made concessions to the ‘conservative’ position chiefly by emphasising the cosmic mediation of the Word and His ‘exact likeness’ to the Father.”[93] In this manner, even apart from Paul of Samosata and Lucian of Antioch, whose influences on the Arians were, as we have seen, immense, the shockwaves of Origenism persisted throughout the subject period and its characteristic debates, itself also coloring, informing, and in many ways both underpinning and contributing not a little confusion to the competing theological understandings. 

II. Certain Societal Conditions Relevant to and Influencing the Arian Controversy 

We have thus far discussed what may be considered spiritual and ideological influences which combined together, and undoubtedly with other factors beyond the scope of our discourse, to give rise to the Arian position. In so doing, we have also touched upon the theological challenges, concerns, and controversies that preceded the Arian Controversy, and which likewise contributed the language and methods used by the Orthodox in their response to the Arians, faithful as that response was to the teaching of Christ as it was handed down in the Church and to upholding and enunciating the principles of the Faith in the face of a new, and yet, as we have seen, neither entirely original nor truly novel,[94] theological threat. But ideological factors cannot logically be considered the sole progenitor of the relevant theological positions. Indeed, ideology never operates apart from its societal context, as we saw briefly in our discussion of Judaism and its influence upon Antiochian Christianity. What, then, was the societal context in which Arianism emerged and by which it was influenced, and what were some societal conditions relevant to the Arian Controversy? 

Here, we must first consider the significance of the Diocletianic Persecution. Diocletian rose to the emperorship in 284 A.D., and, while committed to upholding the religion of the Empire, remained indifferent towards the Christians for the first twenty years of his reign. In 286, he divided the Empire in two, appointing Maximian to rule over the Western hemisphere while retaining the Eastern portion for himself. Then, in 293, Diocletian and Maximian appointed Caesars to serve as their respective assistants in the governance of the Empire, with Maximian selecting Constantius I, the father of Constantine, for the West, and Diocletian selecting Galerius for the East. 

Maximian and Diocletian initially maintained the Empire’s official position as to Christianity, which, since 259 A.D., had remained a permitted religion in the Empire under the force of an Edict of Emperor Gallienus. The most trusted and influential eunuchs of Diocletian’s household were Christians, and were excused as a matter of course from attending the pagan sacrificial ceremonies.[95] Even the wife and daughter of Diocletian were suspected of having adopted the Christian faith, refraining from attending pagan religious ceremonies but not publicly declaring their conversion — engendering the circulation of rumors and public suspicion.[96] Over time, public propaganda against Christianity recommenced with the publication of new anti-Christian texts, and within the imperial court, especially with Galerius, Diocletian’s Caesar, frustrations arose due to what was perceived as an abundance of tolerance towards the Christians. And so, following a series of events not unreasonably considered attributable to direct Satanic influence — pagan oracles attributing their failures to the presence of Christian soldiers, the mother of Galerius forcefully advocating for persecution against the Christians, and even, reportedly, a pagan god himself declaring to his priestess, from the darkness of his cave at Branchidae, that the presence of the “just ones” on the earth “made it impossible for the oracles to speak the truth”[97] — Diocletian commenced, initially reluctantly, persecuting the Christians, including with the destruction of churches and religious books and art, stripping Christian officials of their ranks and civil rights, and demoting those who were not ranking officials to the rank of slaves, thereby subjecting the Christians to lawful torture and execution. 

Not long thereafter, a fire at the imperial palace was blamed, notably by Galerius, upon the Christians, and another subsequent to it was interpreted in the same manner. Diocletian, compelled by his fears and encouraged by his Caesar, unleashed yet further fury upon the Christians — killing his once-trusted Christian servants, forcing his wife and daughter to offer public sacrifice to the gods in order to quell public suspicions, maintaining persecution of the Christians throughout the East, and issuing a second edict ordering all Christian clergy to be imprisoned, without even the opportunity to sacrifice to the gods. He further issued correspondence to his Western counterpart, Maximian, urging him to adopt like measures, which he appears to have been eager to do, while his Caesar, Constantius I, despite being more kindly disposed, nonetheless had no choice but to uphold the official policy. 

That lamentable year, 303 A.D., did not end before Diocletian had fallen severely ill, and in 305 he and Maximian resigned their posts, with Galerius and Constantius I taking their places as Augusti. The persecution that he had commenced, however, would persist intermittently until 311, when Galerius issued an edict of toleration, admitting that his efforts to exterminate Christianity had been a failure, and subsequently died of a horrid illness. While his successor, Maximinus, briefly revived the persecution in the East, in which Pope Peter I of Alexandria was martyred, this would not persist, for in 312, a second edict of toleration was issued, and in 313, the Edict of Milan was promulgated by Constantine I, the son of Constantius I, and Licinius, legalizing all cults and religions, and among them Christianity, in the Empire. While certain persecutions subsequently arose, such as under Licinius until 323, when Constantine defeated Licinius and became sole emperor of the entire Roman Empire, these were local, limited in severity, and quite short-lived.

It is obvious even to those largely unfamiliar with Christian history that the Diocletianic Persecution, as it came to be known despite Diocletian’s short-lived tenure during its span (303-313), wreaked havoc upon the Church. The believers were subjected to the most gruesome of tortures, churches were confiscated and destroyed, and large numbers of believers, including the populations of entire towns and villages, especially in Upper Egypt, were massacred. The Christians were rendered enemies of the empire, and forced to retreat to the tombs, catacombs, and secret meeting places in order to find refuge and gather to celebrate the Eucharist. Countless martyrs witnessed to Christ with their blood, and those who survived this gruesome period knew firsthand its immense tribulations, with some even suffering as confessors themselves. Of these martyrs, Athanasius knew some, from whom he had learned in his youth, and of the confessors some were in attendance at the Council of Nicaea, and participated there in defending the Faith. 

The cessation of the persecution, however, brought about certain unintended consequences. The faithful, whose resilience was during those turbulent years so tested, and whose convictions led them to expose themselves to significant danger in order to carry out their Christian duties, suddenly found no need to maintain the same degree of intentionality in the practice of their Faith. There was now no perceptible opposition between Christianity and the world, and no personal cost to be paid in order to identify as a Christian. With this, the general morality of the Christians, which had in times of persecution been so distinctive of them — such that in the time of Tertullian, he was so bold as to declare to the Emperor that if he found any Christian in the prisons who was there for any reason besides being a Christian, he should kill not only that person, but the Christians altogether — declined, and the faithful, in beginning to indulge in the pleasures of the world that were now accessible to them once more, experienced a commensurate spiritual weakening. This was, indeed, among the initial motivators giving rise to monasticism, with those among the Christians who were alarmed at this general spiritual decline flocking to the deserts, to Antony first and then also to his fellow monastic elders at their respective locales, in order to rediscover the asceticism, seriousness, and consecration of heart which they once knew and which had deteriorated among their fellow believers following the persecution. 

It was during the period immediately following the persecution, in the context of this general spiritual decline, that Arius is found being ordained to the priesthood by the immediate successor of Pope Peter, appointed to shepherd and teach the flock of one of the largest churches in Alexandria, the Baucalis — which was in fact the first public church established in Egypt, from which Saint Mark was forcibly removed during the Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Resurrection and dragged in the streets of Alexandria until his death in 68 A.D., and where Pope Peter I was martyred — and attracting substantial excitement and interest in himself and his teaching by the Christians of Alexandria. With the cessation of the persecution, the believers were once again able to enjoy the pleasures of not only philosophical interest, but also worldly luxuries and leisurely entertainment, all of which, in similar fashion to the state of affairs in Antioch in the third century, of which we have already spoken, provided fertile ground for Arius to carry out his theological campaign, especially with the use of public disputation, liturgical instruction, and folk songs composed, taught, and published by him in written form to propagate the tenets of his doctrine — for which singing and melody, of course, the Christians now had both time and interest. 

The persecution, therefore, proves to have been, along with the victory of Constantine and the legalization of Christianity, the most important societal condition influencing and in fact in many ways conducive to the Arian Controversy. Indeed, without these factors, there may well have never been an opportunity for the Christians of the time to engage in the sort of drawn out theological debate that ultimately took place secondary to Arius’ dissension. The issue perhaps would have fared no differently than the theological contentions of earlier centuries — local factions emerging, perhaps certain writings being formulated for and against each position, and at most one or more local synods to address the question at hand. Yet, after 313 A.D., conditions were ripe for a theological crisis as did ultimately arise: there was no longer mortal danger to the believers, the disciples of Lucian had been sponsored and promoted to influential ecclesial positions throughout the Empire, and the emperor, while not baptized — he would be baptized on his deathbed in 337 by Eusebius of Nicomedia, a confessed and explicit Arian and one of Arius’ chief sponsors — was sympathetic towards the Christians, attributing his political victories to their God. The stage was set for the various theological undercurrents extant throughout the Christian world, especially in central Christian episcopates such as Alexandria and Antioch, to clash, and Arius, brazen as he was in openly teaching his doctrine and opposing his bishop, provided the spark of ignition. 

III. Certain Ecclesial Conditions Relevant to and Influencing the Arian Controversy

Alongside the societal conditions discussed above, there were concurrent ecclesial circumstances to which we must now turn in order to traverse the final step in duly contextualizing for our purposes, in brief terms, the setting in which the Arian Controversy arose. Here, we must briefly discuss an unfortunate episode in the history of the Church — that of the Meletian and Donatist Schisms. 

With the Decian Persecution in 250 A.D. — the first organized, formal, empire-wide persecution of Christians in history —, there arose a new sort of contention among the Christians, not theological, but rather administrative: the manner by which to deal with those who had denied Christ and sacrificed (or commissioned another to sacrifice in their name, or even purchased by bribery a receipt attesting to their having sacrificed without actually sacrificing) to the Roman gods, or else somehow betrayed the Church — the lapsed, as these were collectively called — during the persecution. A spectrum of policies emerged as to this matter, ranging from free and unreserved readmission (often, unfortunately, promised to the lapsed upon no ecclesial authority by confessors and eventual martyrs), to readmission following some period of penance, to outright refusal of readmission. While the Church generally came to apply the middle way, several of those who opposed this stance proceeded to establish their own schismatic sects — importantly, not on the basis of theological disagreement, but on purely administrative or disciplinary terms. The first such schismatic church was that of Novatian, in North Africa, which arose in the mid-third century as part of the ecclesial fallout of the Decian Persecution. Additional schismatic churches — namely, those of the Meletians and Donatists — were established during and immediately after the Diocletianic Persecution, and proved quite relevant to the Arian Controversy not only in the Meletians’ support of Arius and his compatriots, and in Arius’ possible association with them during the papacy of Pope Peter, but also to the Empire’s foray into involving itself with ecclesial affairs, beginning with the Donatist Controversy and setting a precedent that would directly lead to Constantine’s direct intervention in the dispute between Arius and the Church of Alexandria, and, thereafter, his convocation, attendance, and participation in the Council of Nicaea. 

III.A. The Meletians and their Schism

We shall first address the Meletians, in view of a chronological approach as to the establishment of the subject schismatic sects. History bequeaths to us two alternate renditions as to the origin of the Meletians, one sounding in a disagreement between Meletius, the bishop of Lycopolis, and Pope Peter of Alexandria during the Diocletianic Persecution regarding the means by which to deal with the lapsed, with Meletius objecting to Pope Peter’s canons on the matter as being too lenient, and the other account, the more likely of the two, portraying Meletius as a rogue bishop interfering in foreign dioceses, including Alexandria, and ordaining clergymen there without clearance during the Persecution, out of a purported concern for the pastoral needs of the believers in those dioceses, whose bishops had either fled or been imprisoned (with those imprisoned having in fact written to Meletius to object to his intrusions) and would eventually be martyred. 

Irrespective of which origin account is accepted, or whether there may be some truth to both, it is beyond dispute that the Meletians ultimately arise in the early fourth century, perhaps around 306 A.D., as a distinct schismatic group, with Pope Peter writing a letter from his place of refuge during the Persecution to denounce Meletius’ conduct and warn against the Meletians’ activities, and subsequently convening a synod which convicted Meletius “of many crimes, and among the rest of offering sacrifice to idols”[98] — an interesting note if the account attributing rigorist views to Meletius as to the lapsed is to be believed (the evidence suggests it to have been a later invention — the letter of Pope Peter himself only mentions Meletius’ interference and illegal ordinations in Alexandria) — and deposed him and his followers. 

Following Meletius’ deposition, he and his adherents continue to operate a schismatic church in Egypt, which they called the “Church of the Martyrs” and which was supported by 28 other bishops, at least some of whom he had ordained himself, as well as several presbyters and deacons, and are found siding with the Arians throughout the Arian Controversy. In fact, Sozomen, a fifth century historian, tells that Arius himself had sided with Meletius, leading to his own excommunication, and the Acts of the martyrdom of Pope Peter assert the same point before proceeding to discuss Peter’s vision regarding Arius having torn the robe of [presumably, although not explicitly stated] Christ and his advice to his disciples, Achillas and Alexander, against readmitting him to communion. If in fact these accounts represent accurate historical data regarding Arius’ alliance with Meletius, this would lend yet further credence to the historically troublesome and divisive character of Arius, although it would not explain how Arius is subsequently reconciled to the Church, ordained to the priesthood by Pope Peter’s successor (he had been ordained to the diaconate by Pope Peter sometime before being excommunicated by him), Pope Achillas, and even appointed to serve at one of the largest and most ancient parishes in Alexandria.[99] Nevertheless, the possibility that Arius was associated with the Meletians, challenged as it has come to be in modern scholarship, remains, and would not only correspond well to the character of Arius that emerges only a few years later at the outset of the public clash of his heresy with the Church, but also explain to some degree why the Meletians were so eager to side with his theological position despite their dispute with the Church having been one of an administrative rather than a theological nature. 

So troubling were the Meletians, including in their support of the Arians, that Abba Antony warns repeatedly against any association with both groups, mentioning them together in his cautionings to his disciples. Athanasius, moreover, describes their base spirituality and insincerity, lamenting that the Meletian bishops had not even undergone ecclesial training and education before being taken from their prior positions and ordained to the episcopacy, and that they bore worldly dispositions, treated the episcopacy with loftiness and pride (“considering the Church as a civil senate, and like heathen being idolatrously minded”), and were ready to do all things, including frequently siding with the Arians, to win the favor of the people (“they are hirelings of any who will make use of them. They make not the truth their aim, but prefer before it their present pleasure”).[100] In any case, their spiritual insincerity, political motivations, and lack of conviction undoubtedly contributed to their alliance with the Arians, ultimately leading them to pile sin upon sin by not only harming the Church by their schism, but also contributing a great deal to the harm Athanasius and his fellow defenders of Nicaea suffered at the hands of the Arians and their allies and sympathizers. 

III.B. The Donatist Schism and Imperial Interference in Ecclesial Affairs

Of additional relevance to the Arian Controversy, albeit to a lesser extent, is the Donatist Schism, of which we will speak here only briefly. In about 311, at the election of Caecilian to the bishopric of Carthage, a cohort of dissenters arose to object to his ordination due to their qualms with his and his predecessor’s oppositions to the trend in their diocese of disproportionate and fanatical magnification of martyrdom. These protestors thus objected to Caecilian’s ordination, arguing that he had been ordained by a traditor (one who had handed over the Church books or Church property to the authorities during the Persecution) and proceeding to elect their own bishop of Carthage, establishing the schism that persisted long thereafter under the name of the Donatist Schism. Both sides appealed to Constantine, who convened a council in Rome in 313 to investigate the accusations, which found them baseless and affirmed Caecilian’s ordination. The dissenting cohort again sought review, which was provided to them at another council in Arles in 314, attended by 200 persons, which likewise cleared the accused bishop of having been a traditor and therefore affirmed Caecilian’s legitimacy. The following year, the bishop of the schismatic faction died, and another, Donatus, was appointed, with the schismatics thereafter bearing the name Donatists after him. Still adamant in their position, the Donatists once more appealed to Constantine, who heard the matter personally in Milan in 316, at which proceeding he “confirmed the previous decisions of Rome and Arles, and followed up his judgment by laws and edicts confiscating the goods of the party of Majorinus, depriving them of their churches, and threatening to punish their rebellion with death.”[101] In light of this ruling, the Donatists suffered even death at the hand of the Empire for their resistance, which, for its part, emboldened them further in light of their fanatical obsession with martyrdom and the martyrs. Upon learning of their suicidal resistance, Constantine halted the use of deadly force against them, in 317, and from thence largely ignored them, even as they increased in numbers, such that only a few years later, in 330, a synod of the Donatists was attended by 270 bishops.[102]

For the purposes of contextualizing the Arian Controversy, however, the significance of the Donatist Schism is in its inauguration of formal imperial involvement in ecclesial affairs. Indeed, the appeal of the Donatists to Constantine brought him “directly into the heart of church controversies, and was the first occasion of his gradually growing interference.”[103] With this involvement, both helpful and quite harmful results accrued to the Church. The force of the Empire proved most useful, for instance, in the convocation of a universal council in 325, that of Nicaea, for the first time in history, to judge the theological contentions there relevant and, as it happened, to condemn Arius and his fellow heretics, lending authoritative and persuasive support to the Orthodox position in its decades-long opposition to Arianism. The same force, however, represented a double-edged sword, for later, the Empire’s license to interfere in ecclesial matters led to an ever-increasing worldliness in the Church and the use of imperial authority to persecute not only the Donatists, but also the Orthodox and the Arians, pursuant to the Emperor’s sympathies and the lobbying efforts of whatever parties or persons possessed influence over the Emperor at any particular time.[104]

With the Donatist Schism in such recent memory, and its tensions still in many ways ongoing, when Arius initially interposed his objections in Alexandria, in 318 or 319, Constantine was understandably quite troubled, fearing lest this debate bring about yet another schism, thereby endangering the unity and peace of the Empire. Thus, as we shall see upon our future discussion of the beginnings of the Arian Controversy, Constantine sent correspondence to Alexander and Arius wherein he, citing the Donatist Schism and its divisive outcome, exhorted them to unity, believing the dispute between them to be of “a truly insignificant character, and quite unworthy of such fierce contention,” and to represent “an unprofitable question.” 

III.C. Additional Notable Schismatic Efforts in Alexandria

The foregoing is perhaps a sufficient outline of the ecclesial conditions bearing especial import upon the development and infancy of the Arian Controversy. In the interest of yet additional clarity, however, we will provide some further notes as to additional schismatic concerns in Alexandria at that time.

Besides Meletius, another schismatic, Colluthus, had arisen in Alexandria in the early fourth century. While a presbyter, Colluthus claimed to himself episcopal authority and ordained bishops, apparently in opposition to Alexander’s initial patience in dealing with Arius, which he may have interpreted as weakness.[105] Despite his temporary schism, Colluthus is apparently readmitted to communion only shortly thereafter, and in fact is found first among the names of the presbyters who anathematized Arius in the council of Alexandria which deposed him in 324. While that council defrocked his ordained clergymen and restored them to the laity in light of the invalidity of their ordinations, certain of them proved problematic for the Church in subsequent years, including in the Church’s dealings with Arianism. 

Finally for the purposes of this discussion, a brief dealing with Hierax (Hieracas) of Leontopolis must be set forth. Ascetical by reputation,[106] Hierax was learned, trained in Greek and Egyptian literature and science, and a prolific writer in both Greek and Coptic. His many gifts included art, poetry, astronomy, medical knowledge, and calligraphy. Among his dogmatic and scriptural errors, he denied the existence of a physical Paradise, disdained and forbade marriage, and denied the physical resurrection of the flesh at the last day. Arius contrasts his own doctrine with that of Hierax, and alleges that Hierax held faulty tenets with respect to his doctrine of the Trinity, especially in holding Melchizedek to have been the Holy Spirit and in viewing the Father and the Son as having being akin to “one torch from another, or a flame divided into two.” In any event, Hierax established a sect in Alexandria, which continued for a short time thereafter. His significance with respect to Arianism and its rise, however, is in further elucidating the tensions and factions existing in Alexandria in the early fourth century, and in evincing the very real possibility of various heretical and unorthodox beliefs to exist and persist in Alexandria under the authority of an ascetical and charismatic clergyman and without reference to the bishop of the diocese at that time.

Concluding Remarks

The foregoing, despite its length, remains in every respect an overview — a mere introduction into the complexities, tensions, and theological history of the first centuries of Christianity. In that context, as we have seen, Arianism arose in some manner as both a direct progeny and an unfortunate chimeric consequence of a tapestry of interwoven philosophical trends, intellectual and doctrinal influences, spiritual defects, and historical accidents coming together to constitute in Arius and his compatriots a defective belief system — if one might so, loosely, designate it — so centrally concerned with countering, in their own estimation, the Sabellian heresy as to compromise in the other direction the sound Christian understanding of the Holy Trinity. And so it is with countless examples throughout Christian history — the disease of heresy springs forth as much from unbridled ambition and deficiencies of wisdom and humility as it does from reactionary opposition to contrary, and yet, ultimately, equally heretical, positions. 

In this light, as we have also seen, the threats of subtle theological innovation, the formative potential of societal morality upon ecclesial life, and the dangers of errant teaching and philosophical exploration, especially by those whose scriptural familiarity is lacking, discipleship is unsound, and beliefs deviant, real and destructive as they are in the Church, are all the more intensified and rendered significantly more potent when exhibited and carried out by those in positions of ecclesiastical authority. In contrast, the necessity of theological education, sound discipleship, and requisite preparation among those who teach, disciple, and shepherd the flock of Christ cannot be overstated, and the value of humility and submission to the pure teaching of Christ and the Scriptures cannot be overlooked. Doctrinal deviance, moreover, remains in every generation inextricably intertwined with vice, moral laxity, and spiritual weakness, and the believers must in that light take great caution regarding who is entrusted with teaching in the Church, the setting of discussion of theological matters, and the preparedness of the hearers to receive, appreciate, and comprehend sound doctrine. 

Arius and his compatriots, destructive to the Church as they were in their time, were not by any means the last of those who have ailed the Church with their indecencies and deviance. Indeed, the student of history knows well that in every generation, even from the time of Christ Himself, there have arisen those who offend the flock, assail the Church, and devour those whose spiritual and doctrinal weaknesses, along with perhaps the confusion and inexperience of their shepherds, render them the most vulnerable of prey. Nevertheless, God remains faithful in every generation, working in the Church, through those who, with humility, love, wisdom, and conviction, strive to uphold the teaching of Christ and embody the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. It is therefore to the work of God, in and through these faithful disciples and Fathers in every generation, that the Church which has adhered to the Faith of Christ until today owes the purity of her teaching, spirit, and manner of life. 

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[1] “Somewhat of a final blow” insofar as Arianism never truly died, remaining alive and being represented in history thereafter to varying extents and among various groups, including, most significantly, Islam, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and several other religious systems.

[2] Alexander of Alexandria, Letter to Alexander of Constantinople, 1.

[3] Athanasius of Alexandria, Orations Against the Arians 1.38.

[4] See Alexander of Alexandria, Letter to Alexander of Constantinople, 9.

[5] Athanasius of Alexandria, Letter 60.3.

[6] Henry Wace, A Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century A.D., with an Account of the Principal Sects and Heresies, 458.

[7] John Henry Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century, 18.

[8] Ibid., 20.

[9] Ibid., 114.

[10] Ibid., 114.

[11] Ibid., 11.

[12] Ibid., 18-19.

[13] See Ibid., 23.

[14] Tertullian, Against Praxeas 15.

[15] See Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 128.

[16] See Ibid. 61, 129.

[17] See Theophilus, To Autolycus ii. 10, 22.

[18] See Newman, 123.

[19] See Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Athanasius: Select Works and Letters (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers II.IV), xxiv.

[20] Newman, 127-128.

[21] Nonetheless, Tertullian himself advanced a form of subordinationism, describing the Son as an “emanation” from the Father yet sharing the same divine substance (e.g., “river and fountain”) (Against Praxeas 8–9).

[22] Novatian’s work is also notable for softening Tertullian’s subordinationist expressions.

[23] Newman, 227.

[24] See Ibid., 120.

[25] Ibid., 121.

[26] Ibid., 128-129.

[27] Ibid., 130.

[28] Ibid., 130.

[29] Ibid., 130.

[30] See Wace, 426.

[31] Newman, 131.

[32] See Ibid., 131-132.

[33] Ibid., 132.

[34] Origen of Alexandria, De Principiis 1.2.12; Contra Celsum 5.39.

[35] See Schaff and Wace, xxvi.

[36] “[I]t is not sufficiently remembered that the speculations of Origen should be regarded as pioneer work in theology, and that they were often hazarded in order to stimulate further inquiry rather than to enable men to dispense with it” (Wace, 78).

[37] See Schaff and Wace, xxvi.

[38] See Charles Bigg, Bampton Lectures, 190-220; Schaff and Wace, xxv-xxvi.

[39] Schaff and Wace, xxv (citing Origen, Contra Celsum iii. 28).

[40] Ibid., xxvi.

[41] cf. Origen of Alexandria, De Principiis i. 2, iv. 28.

[42] See Schaff and Wace, xxvi.

[43] Origen of Alexandria, De Principiis i. 2, 12.

[44] “[W]hose goodness is relative in comparison with God, and the fall of some of whom led to the creation of matter” (Schaff and Wace, xxvi).

[45] Schaff and Wace, xxvi.

[46] Ibid., xxvi.

[47] Ibid., xxvii; see Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 6.13.

[48] Schaff and Wace, xxvii.

[49] Ibid., xxvii.

[50] Ibid., xxvii.

[51] Ibid., xxvii.

[52] See Ibid., xxvii.

[53] Ibid., xxvii.

[54] Ibid., xxvii.

[55] Wace, 78.

[56] Newman, 30.

[57] See Ibid., 30.

[58] Ibid., 28-29; “[T]he argument by which Paulus of Samosata baffled the Antiochene Council, was drawn from a sophistical use of the very word substance, which the orthodox had employed in expressing the scriptural notion of the unity subsisting between the Father and the Son” (Ibid., 35).

[59] Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 1.5.

[60] See Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 1.5-6, 9; Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 1.5; Epiphanius, Against Heresies 69.7-8; Philostorgus, Ecclesiastical History ii.2; Athanasius, de Decretis 16.

[61] See Newman, 31.

[62] See Ibid., 32.

[63] Epiphanius, Against Heresies 71.1.

[64] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Deity of the Son [Patrologia Graeca xlvi, 557b].

[65] Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 27.3.

[66] Newman, 6.

[67] Ibid., 6.

[68] See Ibid., 22-23.

[69] Wace, 1298.

[70] Ibid., 1298.

[71] Ibid., 1298.

[72] Ibid., 1298.

[73] Ibid., 1298.

[74] See Ibid., 1299; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History vii.30.

[75] Newman, 9.

[76] Wace, 1299.

[77] Ibid., 1300.

[78] For a helpful discussion, See Ibid., 299-300.

[79] See Ibid., 76.

[80] “For ye yourselves are taught of God, nor are ye ignorant that this doctrine, which hath lately raised its head against the piety of the Church, is that of Ebion and Artemas; nor is it aught else but an imitation of Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, who, by the judgment and counsel of all the bishops, and in every place, was separated from the Church. To whom Lucian succeeding, remained for many years separate from the communion of three bishops. And now lately having drained the dregs of their impiety, there have arisen amongst us those who teach this doctrine of a creation from things which are not, their hidden sprouts, Arius and Achilles, and the gathering of those who join in their wickedness. And three bishops in Syria, having been, in some manner, consecrated on account of their agreement with them, incite them to worse things. But let the judgment concerning these be reserved for your trial” (Alexander of Alexandria, Letter to Alexander of Constantinople, 9).

[81] See Schaff and Wace, xxviii.

[82] Wace, 1068; See Newman 7.

[83] Schaff and Wace, xxvii-xxviii.

[84] Ibid., xxvii-xxviii.

[85] Ibid., xxvii-xxviii.

[86] Ibid., xxvii-xxviii.

[87] “…to Origen Will was the very essence of God; Lucian fell back upon an arid philosophical Monotheism, upon an abstract God fenced about with negations (Harnack, 22, 195, note) and remote from the Universe” (Ibid., xxviii).

[88] See Philostorgus, Ecclesiastical History ii. 15; Schaff and Wace, xxviii.

[89] Schaff and Wace, xxviii.

[90] Ibid., xxviii.

[91] Ibid., xxviii.

[92] Ibid., xxviii.

[93] Ibid., xxviii.

[94] “Arianism was a novelty. Yet it combines in an inconsistent whole elements of almost every previous attempt to formulate the doctrine of the Person of Christ. Its sharpest antithesis was Modalism: yet with the modalist Arius maintained the strict personal unity of the Godhead. With dynamic monarchianism it held the adoptionist principle in addition; but it personified the Word and sacrificed the entire humanity of Christ. In this latter respect it sided with the Docetæ, most Gnostics, and Manichæans, to all of whom it yet opposes a sharply-cut doctrine of creation and of the transcendence of God. With Origen and the Apologists before him it made much of the cosmic mediation of the Word in contrast to the redemptive work of Jesus; with the Apologists, though not with Origen, it enthroned in the highest place the God of the Philosophers: but against both alike it drew a sharp broad line between the Creator and the Universe, and drew it between the Father and the Son. Least of all is Arianism in sympathy with the theology of Asia,—that of Ignatius, Irenæus, Methodius, founded upon the Joannine tradition. The profound Ignatian idea of Christ as the Λόγος ἀπὸ σιγῆς προελθών is in impressive contrast with the shallow challenge of the Thalia, ‘Many words hath God spoken, which of these was manifested in the flesh?’” (Ibid., xxix).

[95] See Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History viii.1.

[96] See Lactantius, Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died, c.15.

[97] Wace, 411.

[98] Athanasius of Alexandria, Apologia Contra Arianos 59.

[99] The Synaxarium of the Coptic Church narrates that Arius was excommunicated by Pope Peter for spreading his Arian teaching, while making no mention of the Meletians or his association with them. So too, the Antiphonarium praises Pope Peter for opposing the Arians, but does not mention the Meletians.

[100] See Athanasius of Alexandria, History of the Arians 8.78-79.

[101] Wace, 229.

[102] Ibid., 444.

[103] Ibid., 340.

[104] See Ibid., 340.

[105] See Schaff and Wace, xvi.

[106] Epiphanius, Against Heresies 67.1.

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