ARIANISM AND NICEA I

Explain how Arius suggested that the distinctions among the three persons are external to God, and hence that in the eternal divine nature, God is one and in no way three. How did the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea in 325 affirm the full diety of Jesus?

Many of the Christological controversies of the first two centuries of the Common Era had direct implications for later thinking about how the human and divine are related within the person of Jesus.

Within the early church Christological positions known as Arianism and Ebionitism were held by some, which argued that Jesus was an ordinary mortal. Other groups, including Gnosticism held Docetic views which argued that Christ was a spiritual being that only appeared to have a physical body. Tensions within the Church between Christological positions that stressed the humanity of Jesus and Christological positions that stressed the divinity of Jesus lead to schisms within the church in the second and third century, and church councils of the fourth and fifth-century were convened to deal with the issues. They affirmed that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human, making this part of orthodox Christian declaration/creed.

1. Only divine?

Docetism taught that Jesus was fully divine, and his human body was only illusory. At a very early stage, various Docetic groups arose; in particular, the gnostic sects which flourished in the second century AD tended to have Docetic theologies. Docetic teachings were attacked by St. Ignatius of Antioch (early second century), and appear to be targeted in the canonical Epistles of John.

The Council of Nicaea rejected theologies that entirely ruled out any humanity in Christ, affirming in the Nicene Creed the doctrine of the Incarnation as a part of the doctrine of the Trinity.  That is, that the second person of the Trinity became incarnate in the person Jesus and was fully human.

2. Only human?

The early centuries of Christian history also had groups at the other end of the spectrum, arguing that Jesus was an ordinary mortal. The Adoptionists taught that Jesus was born fully human, and was adopted as God's Son when John the Baptist baptized him (Mk. 1:10) because of the life he lived. Another group, known as the Ebionites, taught that Jesus was not God, but the human Moshiach (messiah, anointed) prophet promised in the Old Testament.

Some of these views could be described as Unitarianism (although that is a modern term) in their insistence on the oneness of God. These views, which directly affected how one understood the Godhead, were declared Heresies by the Council of Nicaea. Throughout much of the rest of the ancient history of Christianity, Christologies that denied Christ's divinity ceased to have a major impact on the life of the church.

Let us now consider how Arius suggested that the distinctions among the three persons are external to God and how did the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea in 325 affirm the full diety of Jesus?

Arius Christological heresy:

The Son was not therefore to be identified with the Godhead, He was only God in a derivative sense and since there was once when he did not exist He could not be eternal. Arius stressed the subordination of the Logos to such an extent as to affirm His creaturehood, to deny His eternity and to assert His capacity for change and suffering.

This teaching of Arius drove the distinctions outside the Deity and thus destroyed the Trinity. It meant solving the difficulty of the One and the Many by proposing a theory of One Supreme Being and two inferior deities.

This began with Arius himself in 318C.E. At this time Arius began to speak about the transcendence of God and God’s inability to share the divine being. This was the fundamental principle behind his position. The absolute uniqueness and transcendence of God, hence the divine essence cannot be shared or communicated. From this position, Arius then argued that Jesus of Nazareth was not God, for he did not share the divine nature- but neither was he a human being like us, for he did not have a complete human nature made up of soul and body, but only human flesh, with the logos functioning as his soul. He proposed four thesis to this position:

·                       The Logos or Word or son is a creature Formed, generated out of nothing by God’s mere flat. Generated means merely made.

·                       The Word as a creature, had a beginning, even though before time, even though he may have created time, thus “there was when he was not”

·                       The son can have no communion with, nor direct knowledge of the father. The son is not the  “Word” that  belongs to God’s essence, he is alien from and utterly dissimilar to the father’s  being

·                       The son is subject to change and alteration, and even to sin. He is not God truly but by participation in grace; he is called God merely in name only.

 

NB: Arius was a monotheist. According to him God is God and all else is not God but God’s creation.  He confessed one God alone or unbegotten. The result of Arius’s teaching was to reduce the son to a demigod. As such Christ is neither fully God nor fully man. So for Arius, the Logos is not eternal and the logo neither sees nor knows the father completely. The titles “God”, “son of God” applied to him are really courtesy titles.

The teachings of Arius were counter- attacked by his bishop Alexander. This divided the Alexandrian Church and assumed serious problems such that by 324 Emperor Constantine felt necessary to intervene. Thus the first ecumenical council of the church was convened in may/June 325 C.E not by the pope nor by any bishop but by the Emperor Constantine. There were 318 bishops present mainly from the East. The bishop of Rome, Sylvester did not attend. Arius too was present, Alexander and the young Athanasius.

Arius’ position that the Son was created from nothing was countered in Nicaea by adding the phrase “begotten not made” to the Creed and this ruled out any position of the Son having a beginning. The Creedal statement “true God from true God” was an affirmation that the Son was really truly God against the Arian position. The most important statement in the creed that affirms that the Son share the same being as the Father and is therefore fully divine was the phrase “of one substance (homoousios) with the Father”. Thus, the Nicea council solemnly tried to solve this problem by affirming strict divinity of the son of God, the “only-begotten” one.

By this the council proclaimed Jesus as “one in being (homoousios) with the Father. ‘ God from God, light from light, true God from God, begotten not made” Nicea clearly maintained against Arius that the human being Jesus of Nazareth is divine. Jesus shares “consubstantiality” with the Father. The creed was thus drawn up by the council of Nicea especially by Bishop Eusebius of Ceasarea and required to be signed by the bishops present. It runs as follows. 

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 ism from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one substance with the father, through him all things came into being----------------.

As a direct response to Arianism on this point, the Council added the phrase "the Son is

Begotten from the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made." This last statement was added to define the idea that the generation of the Son was an Internal, necessary, and eternal act of God.

By this creed the council affirmed that Jesus is of the same essence with the father (homoousios). It qualifies the fully divinity of Jesus and also shares the same substance with the father, he is of the same being with the father. He is fully God. The positive achievement of the council was to affirm the son’s divinity and equality with the father, without attempting to tackle the problem of the divine unity.

Against Arius, the Creed of the Nicene Council made statements about the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus, thus preparing the way for discussion about how exactly the divine and human come together in the person of Christ (Christology).

The teachings of Nicea was not immediately accepted (Two bishops, Theonas of Marmarcia and Secundus of Ptolemais had actually been trained by Arius and had same ideas) and over the next 40 years met with a lot of resistance and opposition. Athanasius was the uncompromising defender of Nicea and eventually won over Nicea’s opponents. The essence of his teachings was ‘only God can save us. Christ is surely our saviour, so he must be of the same substance as God. What has not been assume has not been healed”. He offered an explanation of what it meant to say that the son was “homoousios with the father. It meant that whatever you could say of the father you could say the same about the son and vise versa. Except what is proper to being father or being son. Thus if you can say that the father is eternal, so also is the son. But if you can say that the son is the only begotten you can not say the same of the father. Being begotten is only proper to the son.

The Council of Nicaea insisted that Jesus was fully divine and also human. What it did not do was make clear how one person could be both divine and human, and how the divine and human were related within that one person. This led to the Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries of the Christian era (Referring to the Council of Chalcedon)