Who Was Arius?
The Nature of God, the Identity of Jesus, and the Battle for the Soul of Christianity
“The Father existed before the Son. There was a time when the Son did not exist. Therefore, the Son was created by the Father. Therefore, although the Son was the highest of all creatures, he was not of the essence of God.”[1]
That is a quote from Arius, one of the most infamous heretics in church history and Arianism is the heresy that takes its name from his teachings.
Arius has been called a “crypto-pagan,” an Aristotelian logican with an adoptionist christology, while others see him as an exponent of Antiochene biblical hermeneutics and some argue that his christology was closer to the early church than what became Orthodox Christology.
So what was it all about? To put it simply, Arius’ views on Jesus were controversial because he held that Jesus was divine but not divine in the same way as God the Father.
While Arius’ views were condemned at the Council of Nicaea in 325, many people regarded Arius’ view as rather convincing. In fact, variations of Arianism came to hold sway over much of the Roman empire, it was even imposed by several emperors on the churches, and many of the Germanic tribes of the Goths and Vandals were converted to a form of Arian Christianity.
It was not until 381, with the Council of Constantinople, that Arianism was really given the coup de grace. But Arianism could have won and the future of Christianity would have been far different to what it became if it had.
But who was Arius, what did he really believe, and what difference does it make?
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Who was Arius?
Arius was born probably in 256 and died in 336. He was originally from Libya, he is thought to have studied under Lucian of Antioch. Arius became a popular presbyter in the city of Alexandria in the early fourth century. He was possibly a candidate to succeed as bishop of Alexandria, but lost the election to a guy called “Alexander.” Whether that is true or not, we don’t know, whether the election was fair or not we don’t either. What we do know is that sometime around 318 Arius began to cast aspersions on the theology of Bishop Alexander, claiming that Alexander was too philosophical and not very biblical in his preaching, and accusing him of modalism, the heresy of saying that Father and Son are two sides of the same person.
In contrast, Arius believed that the Son was a creature of the father, like an archangel, he pre-existed creation, but he did not always exist beside the Father. For Arius, the Son was literally the “firstborn of creation,” or like Wisdom in Proverbs 8, he was a craftsman made to bask in the glory of God’s creation. Arius wrote his famous Thalia celebrating his view of the Son of God as a heavenly creature inferior to the divinity and glory of the Father yet still the Savior of humanity. In other words, for Arius, the Son of God was a heavenly deliverer, but he was inferior and subordinate to God the Father!
Arius’ concern was threefold.
First, he wanted to preserve monotheism, that there is one God, not two gods.
Second, he wanted to maintain the monarchy of the Father, that God the Father alone is the source and summit of true divinity.
Third, he wanted to preserve God’s unique attributes of immutability and impassibility.
For Arius, to say that the Son was divine just as God the Father would imply that there were two Gods, or that God the Father was not supreme. Or else, if Jesus was truly God, then that meant that God could change or suffer, which would be injurious to a healthy doctrine of God. Instead, Arius emphasized Jesus as angelic in glory, fully human in his humanity, a perfect creature, who provided a pathway to perfection for fallen humans to follow.
“He is not God truly, but by participation in grace.… He, too, is called God in name only” (Athanasius, Orations against the Arians 1.5).[2]
Controversies and Councils
Unsurprisingly Arius generated a lot of controversy within the church of Alexandria and he was destined for a showdown with bishop Alexander. You have to remember, that a lot of these debates involve local internecine Alexandrian church politics, divisions in the church caused by imperial persecution and its aftermath, and technical theological debates influenced by earlier theologians like Origen on how to understand the nature of Jesus as God and man.
So that brings us to Arius vs. Alexander round 1: the Battle of Alexandria!
Up to this point, bishop Alexander held Arius in high regard as one of the best and smartest preachers in the city. Arius was summoned to a meeting with local church leaders which Alexander chaired. Arius proceeded to outline and defend his position that the Son was only semi-divine, but other clergy, joined by Bishop Alexander, contended that the Son was co-equal and coeternal with God the Father. The bishop commanded Arius to recant his views and to accept the correction of his bishop and his peers, but Arius refused. And so, in 319, Arius was officially condemned and exiled, along with his supporters.
That might have been the end of matter, but Arius was crafty and connected.
Arius fled east to Bishop Eusebius of Berytus (i.e., Beirut in modern-day Lebanon).
Arius fled east and found refuge with a number of Syro-Palestinian bishops who provided him with the protection he needed for his agitation. In particular, he had the backing of Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusbeius of Caesars, the two Eusebii, who will be very prominent in the coming decades of the church.
Eusebius of Nicomedia convened his own council and had Arius exonerated which then led to a rift among the eastern bishops over Arius. At the same time, Constantine had become the unrivaled emperor of the West and East by 324, and he didn’t want the Arian controversy to rip apart the eastern churches the same way that the Donatist controversy had ruptured the western churches.
So, Constantine summoned a world-wide collection of bishops to attend a council to be held in Nicaea in the summer of 325. Constantine’s aim was unity, he didn’t care if it was pro or anti-Arian, as long as there was consensus.
That brings us to Arius vs. Alexander round 2: The Battle of Nicaea
At the council, Arius and his supporters made their case to the bishops and to the emperor. But, much to their dismay, Alexander and his allies held their ground with the result that Arianism and a compromise option were both rejected. In the end, the council produced a creed, the Creed of Nicaea, that insisted upon the Son sharing the same essence with the Father, a view which Arius could not accept.
Arianism Would Not Go Away
At the end of the council Arius’ views were condemned, he was deposed, and exiled to Illyria. A few bishops who refused to sign up to the creed were also exiled. Eusebius of Nicomedia said he would affirm the creed but not the anathematization of Arius. He spent two years biding his time until he was restored and promoted to even more influential positions, eventually become bishop of Constantinople.
Yet that was not the end of Arius. Within a few years, Constantine’s sister Constantia and Eusebius of Nicomedia petitioned the emperor to have Arius restored. Arius met with Constantine and somehow convinced him that he could agree with all the other bishops about the nature of Jesus, so Constantine reversed his banishment and ordered him restored to his church in Alexandria.
But by this time, bishop Alexander had died and his protégé Athanasius had been made bishop of Alexandria and Athanasius made being anti-Arian something of his life’s work. Athanasius would not admit Arius back into the church. After a bit of back and forth, Constantine ordered Arius restored to Alexandria, and when bishop Athanasius refused, Constantine sent him into exile to teach him a lesson. But even when Arius turned up in Alexandria, nobody would give communion to Arius, so Arius went back to Constantinople where, according to rumour, he died on the toilet.
But Arianism did not die with Arius. Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius of Caesarea were broadly sympathetic with Arius’ teachings, and while nobody would be a pure Arian after the Council of Nicaea, there were a lot of semi-Arian views that were espoused and for a time even ascendent thanks to the help of imperial authority. But that’s for another day!
What’s at Stake
Why does any of this matter?
Well, a lot was at stake! Is the Son of God truly God, or just a suped-up angel? That changes how you read scripture, it changes the gospel you preach, and even the type of worship you offer to God the Son!
[1] Douglas, J. D. (1992). Arius. In J. D. Douglas & P. W. Comfort (Eds.), Who’s Who in Christian history (pp. 35–36). Tyndale House.
[2] Thiselton, A. C. (2015). Arius, Arianism. In The Thiselton Companion to Christian Theology (p. 47). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.