Doctrine of Trinity (Part 7): Arianism

d. Arianism

In our study of the Trinity we’ve looked so far at the Logos Christology of the early Greek apologists and then at Modalism. Now we come to the subject of Arianism.

In the year 319 a presbyter of the church of Alexandria, Egypt, named Arius began to propagate his doctrine that the Son is not of the same substance as the Father. You will remember that according to Tertullian Christ is of the same substance or essence as the Father and therefore fully divine. Arius denied that Christ is the same substance as the Father. Rather, he said that Christ had been created by the Father before the beginning of the world. This episode marked the great Trinitarian Controversy that would occupy the church until the end of the 4th century and give us the Nicene Creed and the Constantinopolitan Creed.

You will remember that Tertullian thought that the Logos was begotten by God the Father at the beginning of creation. By contrast, Alexandrian theologians like Origen held that the begetting of the Son (or the Logos) from the Father did not have a beginning. Rather it was an eternal begetting that had always taken place. Arius thought that the reason that the orthodox theologians were so opposed to his view that the Son had a beginning was because he affirmed that the Son did not exist eternally. In his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia he affirmed, “The Son has a beginning but God is without beginning.” He thought this is why the orthodox theologians were so opposed to him, because he affirmed that the Son had a beginning. But that wasn’t correct. Tertullian himself thought that the Logos was begotten at a certain point in time prior to the creation of the world. What the theologians objected to about Arius’ view wasn’t so much that the Son had a beginning; what they objected to was that this beginning was not a begetting, but was in fact a creation and that the Son was therefore a creature. Arius denied that there was even an immanent Logos or Word or Reason within God prior to the creation of the world. So the beginning of the Logos was not from the substance of the Father; rather the Father created the Logos out of nothing. He created the Son, and therefore the Son was a creature. This is what the orthodox theologians really found offensive.

Athanasius, who became the bishop of Alexandria and was a champion of Nicene orthodoxy, protested that on Arius’ view the Son is “a creature and a work, not proper to the Father’s essence” (Orations Against the Arians [1.3.9]). It was simply blasphemy to affirm that the Son is a work and a creature, not belonging to the essence of the Father. On Arius’ view God the Father existing without the Son lacked even his Word and his wisdom. He didn’t have those immanent qualities within him. This is blasphemous.

In the year 325 the Council of Antioch condemned Arius’ views. They condemned anybody who says that the Son is a creature or that the Son is originated or created or made or not truly an offspring – that is, someone who is begotten, not made. They condemned anyone who said that at one time the Son did not exist. Later in that same year, 325, the emperor Constantine convened an ecumenical council at Nicaea. That is to say, this was not a local council. This was a universal council that drew bishops from all across the Roman Empire to convene at Nicaea and pronounce on the doctrine of Arius.

The Council of Nicaea then propagated the creedal formulation of trinitarian belief in the Nicene Creed. It is worth mentioning that the Arians who were represented at the Council were very few. There were probably only six Arian bishops present at the Council. Then there probably around seventy to ninety of the bishops were in the Semi-Arian camp. What they wanted to say was the Son isn’t the same substance as the Father, but he is similar in substance to the Father. There were thirty bishops who were squarely in Athanasius’ camp – in the orthodox camp. The vast majority belonged to a sort of confused center camp which had around 200 bishops in it and didn’t know what was going on. They couldn’t understand this debate.

The Athanasian camp carried the day and persuaded the vast majority of the bishops to condemn Arianism and to propagate the statement of the Trinity that we confess today.

Let’s read through the Nicene Creed, and then we will comment on it.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through Whom all things came into being, things in heaven and things on earth, Who because of us men and because of our salvation came down and became incarnate, becoming man, suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended into the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead.

And in the Holy Spirit.

So we believe in one God the Father, one Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit – all three members of the Trinity.

Then there are affixed to the Creed these condemnations of Arian propositions:

But for those who say ‘there was when he was not’ and ‘before being born he was not’ and that ‘he came into existence out of nothing’ or who assert ‘the Son of God is from a different hypostasis or substance, or is created, or is subject to alteration or change’ – these the Catholic Church anathematizes.

These Arian propositions are condemned in this suffix to the creed.

Several features of this statement deserve comment.

1. Notice that the Son and, I think, by implication the Holy Spirit, is declared to be of the same substance as the Father. The Greek word for this is homoousios. Homo the word for “same” + ousios from the word for “substance.” So the Father and the Son are declared to be of the same substance. That is to say, they are of the same essence. They have the same divine nature. Therefore the Son cannot be a creature as Arius claimed. Arius wanted to say that the Son has a different nature – heteroousios – from the Father. Hetero meaning “different than,” as in the word “heterosexual” (opposite sex). Heteroousios: a different substance; whereas the orthodox affirmed the same substance, the same essence.

I mentioned the Semi-Arians who were present at the Council. They were championing the word homoiousios to describe the relation of the Father and the Son meaning that they were similar in essence. They feared that by saying they were the same substance this would imply Modalism – that there wasn’t a diversity of persons in the Godhead. So they wanted to say he is not of the same essence or substance, but he is of a similar substance. There was a world of difference that lay in this single iota that distinguished homoousios from homoiousios. On homoousios, the Son is fully divine. He is God. On homoiousios he isn’t divine. He doesn’t have the divine essence. He is simply similar to the Father and therefore just as much (as the Arians implied) a creature and a work, which was blasphemy.

2. Notice that the Son is declared to be begotten not made. The creed says that he is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made. This is the vestige of the old Logos Christology of the Greek apologists which held that the Logos is begotten in his divine nature from the Father, but not created.

Notice that this is said with respect, not to Christ’s human nature, but with respect to his divine nature. In his very divinity he is begotten from the Father. Therefore just as offspring of natural generation which are begotten share the same nature as their parents – cats beget cats, dogs beget dogs, people beget people – so the Son and the Father share the same divine nature because the Son is begotten from the Father, not created by the Father.

The Nicene statement is based upon a draft of a creed that was proposed by Eusebius of Caesarea. This isn’t Eusebius of Nicomedia to whom Arius wrote whom I quoted before. This Eusebius is from the coastal town in Israel called Caesarea Maritima. You can still visit this town today on a trip to Israel and see the ruins of this great port city of Caesarea Maritima there on the coast of the Mediterranean. This is where Eusebius of Caesarea flourished and worked. In his initial draft of the Creed he used the word Logos instead of “Son.” So whenever you see the word “Son” in the Nicene Creed, in Eusebius’ draft he was using the word Logos. The Logos is declared to be begotten of the Father before all ages. That is, as I say, the legacy of this old Logos Christology of the Greek apologists.

Notice similarly in the condemnations which are affixed to the end of the Nicene Creed, they reject the view that this begetting had a beginning. The begetting is eternal. They condemn those who say there was a time when he was not or before being born he was not. They anathematize anyone who says that this begetting of the Son or the Logos in his divine nature is not eternal but had a beginning.

Athanasius, in his treatise Four Discourses against the Arians, uses a very subtle and interesting word play to differentiate between the Father and the Son in this regard. It is really a pun. He says that the Father and the Son are both agenētos (agenētos means uncreated or unoriginated – it never came into being). He says that the Father and the Son are both agenētos. By contrast he says that only the Father is agennētos with two “n”s. This is a different word, and this means unbegotten. Only the Father is agennētos, with two “n”s, unbegotten. The Son is gennētos with two “n”s – he is begotten. Just as there was a world of difference with that single iota between homoiousios and homoousios, so there is a world of difference between agenētos (with a single “n”) and agennētos with a double “n.” The Father and the Son are both agenētos in the sense of being uncreated, never having had a time when they came into being; but only the Father is unbegotten in the sense of agennētos. The Son is gennētos or begotten of the Father.

3. Notice the condemnation at the end of those who say that Christ is a different hypostasis or substance from the Father. This clause occasioned great confusion and controversy within the early church. Hypostasis is a Greek word which is etymologically similar to, and therefore synonymous with, the Latin word substantia or “substance.” You can see that etymologically – hypo means “under” like a hypodermic needle (it goes under the skin). Or hypothermia – your temperature goes down. Hypo means “under.” It means the same thing that sub means in Latin, like a submarine that goes under the water. In Latin sub means the same thing as hypo in Greek. Stasis and stantia are the Greek and the Latin words respectively for “standing under something.” A hypostasis is something that stands under something. A substance (substantia) is something that stands under something in the sense that these are property bearers. They exist in themselves. Properties exist in these substances. They are possessed by these substances. A hypostasis and a substance would seem to have the same meaning. These two words just seem to be the Greek and the Latin of the same thing.

Although the Nicene Creed is drafted in Greek, the meaning of its terms is Latin. It is in Greek but the authors take hypostasis to mean the same thing as substantia. Therefore they condemn those who say that there is a plurality of hypostases in God. There is only one substance in God, right? God is one substance. So they condemn anyone who says that there is more than one hypostasis or ousia – substance – in God.

The problem was, for native Greek-speaking theologians from the eastern part of the Roman Empire where Greek was the common language, not Latin, they didn’t take hypostasis to be a synonym of substantia. For them, a hypostasis just meant a concrete individual. So, for example, Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great Greek church fathers, explains that a hypostasis, “is what subsists and is specially and peculiarly indicated by a name.” For example, Paul. Paul is the name of a hypostasis, an individual. This individual is in contrast to ousia in Greek in the sense of the essence of something. So they would say that Paul and Jim and Cindy all have the same ousia – they all have the same essence – but they are different hypostases – different individuals exemplifying that essence or having that nature. Therefore to say that there are not distinct hypostases in God is to endorse Modalism. It is to say the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all the same individual. That was obviously wrong. Clearly there are distinct hypostases in the Trinity because they have different properties. For example, only the Father has the property of being unbegotten, whereas the Son has the property of being begotten. So there are different individuals in the Trinity. They have different properties. To these eastern theologians the statement of the Nicene Creed that condemns those who say that the Son is a different hypostasis from the Father sounded like Modalism – that they were all the same person.

This led to enormous confusion and debate. Finally after decades of debate the confusion was finally cleared up at the Council of Alexandria in 362. At that council they affirmed the doctrine of homoousios – there is one substance, one essence, in God – but they allowed that there are three different divine hypostases. They recognized the Greek understanding of what a hypostasis is. It is not a synonym to substance. Rather, a hypostasis is a concrete individual who bears or exemplifies a nature.

Eventually the church came to recognize that in God there is one substance with three hypostases – three individuals.

The Nicene Creed that we affirm today is not the same one as the original that condemned those who say there are more than one hypostasis. The one that we affirm was promulgated later (the Constantinopolitan Creed) and affirms that there are a plurality of hypostases.

With that we come to the end of our time. What we will want to do next time is examine more closely exactly what these hypostases were that were affirmed to be in the Godhead. There is one God, one substance, and then there are these three hypostases. What were those? That is what we will look at next time.