THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 067
The Origins of Arianism
5-1. The Origins of Arianism
ARIANISM finds its place in history as one of the four great controversies which have done so much to shape the growth of Christian thought. They all put the central question — das Wesen des Christentums — but they put it from different points of view.
For Gnosticism — Is the Gospel history; or is it an edifying parable?
For Arianism — Is it the revelation of a divine Son, which must be final; or is it something short of this, which cannot be final?
For the Reformation — Is its meaning to be declared by authority; or is it to be investigated by sound learning?
The scientific (or more truly, philosophical) scepticism of our own time accepts the decision of the Reformation, but raises afresh the issues of Gnosticism and Arianism as parts of the deeper question, whether the reign of law leaves any freedom to either God or man.
The Arian controversy arose on this wise. Both Greece and Israel had long been tending in different ways to a conception of God as purely transcendent. If the Stoics made him the immanent principle of reason in the world, they only helped the forces which made for transcendence by their utter failure to shew that the things in the world are according to reason. As the Christians also accepted any current beliefs which did not evidently contradict their doctrine of a historic incarnation, all parties were so far generally agreed by the end of the second century. In times of disillusion God seems far from men, and in the deepening gloom of the declining Empire he seemed further off than ever. But a transcendent God needs some sort of mediation to connect him with the world. There was no great difficulty in gathering this mediation into the hand of a Logos, as was already done by Philo the Jew in our Lord's time, and to assign him functions as of creation; and of redemption, as Christians and Gnostics added.
But then came the question, Is the Logos fully divine, or not? If no, how can he create — much less redeem? If yes, then the purely transcendent God acts for himself, and ceases to be transcendent. The dilemma was hopeless. A transcendent God must have a mediator, and yet the mediator cannot be either divine or undivine. Points were cleared up, as when Tertullian shifted the stress of Christian thought from the Logos doctrine to the Sonship, and when Origen's theory of the eternal generation presented the Sonship as a relation independent of time: but the main question was as dark as ever at the opening of the fourth century. There could be no solution till the pure transcendence was given up, and the Sonship placed inside the divine nature: and this is what was done by Athanasius. There was no other escape from the dilemma, that if the Son is from the divine will, he cannot be more than a creature; if not, God is subject to necessity.
The controversy broke out about 318. Arius was no bustling heresiarch, but a grave and blameless presbyter of Alexandria, and a disciple of the learned Lucian of Antioch; only he could not understand a metaphor. Must not a son be later than the father, and inferior to him? He forgot first that a divine relation cannot be an affair of time, then that even a human son is essentially equal to his father. However, he concluded that the Son of God cannot be either eternal or equal to the Father. On both grounds then he cannot be more than a creature — no doubt a lofty creature, created before all time to be the creator of the rest, but still only a creature who cannot reveal the fulness of deity. "Begotten" can only mean created. He is not truly God, nor even truly man, for the impossibility of combining two finite spirits in one person made it necessary to maintain that the created Son had nothing human but a body.
Arius had no idea of starting a heresy: his only aim was to give a common sense answer to the pressing difficulty, that if Christ is God, he is a second God. But if the churches did worship two gods, nothing was gained by making one of them a creature without ceasing to worship him, and something was lost by tampering with the initial fact that Christ was true man. As Athanasius put it, one who is not God cannot create — much less restore — while one who is not man cannot atone for men. In seeking a via media between a Christian and a Unitarian interpretation of the Gospel, Arius managed to combine the difficulties of both without securing the advantages of either. If Christ is not truly God, the Christians are convicted of idolatry, and if he is not truly man, there is no case for Unitarianism. Arius is condemned both ways.
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Fascinating