Arian Controversy and Jesus' Two Natures Controversy
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The first few major creeds of the church centered on the most basic and fundamental question in Christianity: Who is Jesus Christ
I. Arian Controversy: The Relationship Between the Son and the Father
II. The relationship of the two natures within Jesus himself
The Arian Controversy: The Relationship Between the Son and the Father
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”
28 You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.
324, the first Christian Emperor Constantine conquered the Eastern half of the Roman Empire. But there was a major issue, the Eastern Church was fractured over a serious doctrinal dispute
Arius (256-336) an Alexandrian presbyter teaching:
The LOGOS, or Son, was a created being—formed of nothing by the Father before the universe was made.
There was once a time that the Son did not exist
The Son was the first and greatest of all that God had created, and then all things were created through the Son
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
Only the Father was truly God, infinite and eternal and uncreated
By teaching this Arius believed he was defending the ancient Old Testament teaching that God is one
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Thus, a belief that Jesus Christ is deity would undermined the clear teaching in Scripture that God is One.
Origen (185-254) Born in Alexandria (but later excommunicated by bishop Demetrius and so he made Caesarea his base of operations).
Helpful in his teaching on God existing in different persons and eternal generation of the Son
But not helpful in applying a pagan philosophical understanding of degrees to divinity
The Father is the purest and greatest degree
The Son a step lower and the Spirit even lower
He also was unhelpful in teaching universalism
Nevertheless, Origins teaching on the Son as a lesser degree of divine was a staple in Eastern Christianity
ARIUS did not like Origen’s teaching on how the Son related to the Father, thinking there cannot be degrees of divinity.
Thus, since God is one, and there are no degrees of lesser divinity, the Son must not be divine
(this Arian view is the view of Jehovah’s Witnesses by the way).
Alexander (bishop of Alexandria from 313)
Where Origen said the Son was slightly less divine;
Arian opposing this saying Son was not divine at all;
Alexander opposed this by saying the Son was fully and truly God, in as absolute a sense as the Father was.
The problem Alexander faced then was to how to answer Arius when he said that would make God to be two
How can the Son being truly God like the Father without making two gods?
The conflict deepened when Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, assembled a council of Egyptian bishops in 320 and deposed Arius for heresy
Arius did not give up without a fight. Leaving to Palestine, he drew up support from bishops in the East
Many who supported Arius did not fully understand his doctrine of the divinity (lack of) of the Son
They did see Arius as closer to the esteemed Origen who made the Son lesser than the Father, since Alexander said the Son and Father are the same in divinity
This was the major split in the East and Constantine felt he had to do something to resolve it, so he called a major council that became known as the first ecumenical council
The Council of Nicaea (north-west Asia Minor) in 325.
300 bishops mainly from the East were there
Interesting story of that council
Survivors of persecution of Diocletian twenty years early were there (eyes gouged, missing limbs)
Constantine, after initial greeting walked to this group, bowed the knee before them and then touched each one of them, kissed empty sockets, touched scars, showing affection and recognition.
Thus the very symbol of Rome is showing reverence to the Church of Christ—Christ himself
33 So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” 35 Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” 37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.
What does Truth have to do with a kingdom…a kingdom consists of power
But it was the gospel of truth that prevailed over Roman power which caused the roman emperor to later bow the knee to the powerless saints in the kingdom of truth
“I rejoice to see you here, yet I should be more pleased to see unity and love among you. I urge therefore beloved ministers of God, to remove the causes of disagreement among you and to establish peace.” Constantine
Thus followed weeks of ugly ugly wrangling, debates and political infighting…back side deals, back stabbing
Ugly politics and Jesus uses it for a much needed and truthful creed....Jesus can and does use ANYTHING
But Constantine was heavily influenced by his religious advisor who was from the West. People from the West held strongly to the deity of Christ and it was Alexander’s side who won the day against the Arians
We believe in one God, the Father almighty, Creator of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the essence of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father (homoousios: same essence), through Whom all things were created both in heaven and on earth; Who for us human beings and four our salvation came down and was incarnate, was made man, suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, and is coming again to judge the living and the dead;
And in the Holy Spirit.
As for those who say, There was a time when He was not; and, He was not before He was created; and, He was created out of nothing, or out of another essence or thing; and, The Son of God is created, or changeable, or can alter - the holy, catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes those who say such things.
All but Arius and two of his supporters signed the creed. These three who did not were sent into exile.
This was not the end of the controversy but rather the beginning of it. For the next fifty years Eastern Christendom would be split into three warring parties:
The Arian Party
Those who thought the Son was created—a small minority
The Nicene Party
Those who believed the Son was equal with the Father in his divine nature and who subscribed to the recently created creed. Another minority in the East.
The Origenist Party
The majority party in the East who accepted the traditional Eastern theology of Origen. They believed that the Son was not a created being - He was uncreated and divine, eternally begotten from the Father’s essence; but the held that He was inferior to the Father in His divine nature - a degree less divine than the absolute divinity possessed by the Father.
The later orthodox Trinitarian view would be a compromise between the Nicene Party and the Origenist Party…the Arian party were the clear heretics here.
The Origenist party did not like how the Nicene party used homoousios to say what the Son and the Father shared together
The Nicenes meant that the Father and Son shared the same divine nature, being or qualities.
Unfortonuately the heretical group Sabellians used the same word to teach that the Father and Son were the same person. Thus the Father took on flesh and became Jesus.
So when the Origenist heard homoousios from the Nicene party, they thought they were saying the same person, not just essence.
So the Origenist misunderstood the Nicenes to be Sabellians and so went along with the real heretics Arians to counteract them.
And so the Nicenes mistook the Origenist to be Arians
The Origenist emphasized that the Son was a different person than the Father, but their language of the Son being less divine than the Father made the Nicenes uneasy.
What needed to happen (and eventually did) was that the Nicene party needed to influence the Origenist to lose the lesser deity talk, and the Origenist needed to influence the Nicene to appreciate fully the different persons of the Father and Son
That would happen after some Empire drama that caused both parties to be persecuted by an Arian empire that drove the two parties together in compromise.
In 328, Athanasius (296-373) became bishop of Alexandria
Remember, the East was mainly Origenist but Alexandria remained a stronghold in the East of Nicene teaching.
And Athanasius is known as the champion of Nicene teaching and powerhouse behind proper trinitarian teaching at a time when this stuff could go either way.
When he was fleeing in a boat from the soldiers of the Pagan emperor Julian the Apostate in 362, he came to a bend in the rive. He turned his boat round, and rowed back towards the pursuing boat of the soldiers. They did not recognize him (it was dark) and asked him if he had seen Athanasius. “Yes, you’re quite close to him,” Athanasius replied, then rowed calmly pat them and escaped while the soldiers went on ahead.
The Arian party convinced Constantine to banish Athanasius under false charges. But in 337 Constantine did and the Empire was divided between his Christian sons - Constans in the West and Constantius in the East (Constans was pro Nicene, Constantius was pro Arian).
Being pro Arian, Constantius exiled Athanasius again but this time he went to Rome to appeal the bishop of Rome now with a title “Pope” Julius I. The pope declared at a local council in 340 that Athanasius had been wrongfully exiled.
The Eastern bishops reacted by calling a council in Antioch in 341 where they:
rejected the pope’s right to judge the case
and drew up a creed which they replaced the word homoousios with homoiousios
The Son was not the same essence but similar essence with the Father
The Arians could agree to such language but the Nicenes could not
An ecumenical council was attempted at Sardica in 343 but it failed to happen, instead the West had a council and the East had their own where they both succeeded at hurling insults at each other.
Things got a bit better between the two sides and Athanasius was even able to go back to the East to Alexandria but things came to a boil when Constans was killed by a rebel in 350 and the pro Arian emperor Constantius defeated him in 353 to become the sole emperor over all of Rome.
This would kick off serious persecution from the Arians against the Nicenes and the Origenists.
Constantius, after persecuting died and in came Julian the Apostate because he left the Christisan religion for neoplatonism.
He had the idea to bring back all exiled bishops back with the hopes that the fighting between these parties would destroy each other
Athanasius returned a hero to Alexandria and suggested that the Origenist and the Nicenes join forces against the heretical Arians who say that the Son was created. He said if its just a problem with the word homoousios then they could overcome that difference.
Julian not expecting that exiled Athanasius again.
Julian died fighting the Persians in 363, Athanasius came back from exile, but the new emperor Valens was an Arian who persecuted Nicenes and Origenists; Athanasius was exiled again.
The next generation of Arian persecution and the unifying of Nicenes and Origenists continued until a full agreement was made
Such an agreement was influenced by the next generation of influential theologians all from the Cappadocia area in Asia who became known as the Cappadocian Fathers
Basil of Caesarea (330-379)
Gregory of Nyssa (335-394)
Gregory of Nazianzus (330-390)
The hang up that hindered unification was over the terms
ousia
Hypostasis (hypo-stAsis)
Both groups were using these terms but in different ways
Nicenes said the Father and Son were the same ousia and hypostasis to denote their common nature
The Origenists said they were different hypostasis and ousia to denote their different persons
An agreement was made:
ousia would denote the Father and Son’s shared nature or oneness
Hypostasis would denote the different persons of Father and Son
Also, the Origenist stopped the lesser divinity talk about the Son thus unification was made
The conflict finally ended when the Arian emperor Valens died fighting the Goths in 378
A Nicene emperor, Theodosius took his place in the east and he said the only legal Christian religion was that of Nicene
In 381, Theodosius sommoned an ecumenical council at Constantinople. The council of constantinople produced a new revised form of the Creed of Nicaea, known as the Nicene Creed, which reaffirmed and extended the teaching of the Council of Nicaea in 325:
I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
The Nicene creed confirmed the doctrines of the council of Nicaea including the word homoousios.
It also extended Nicaea’s belief in the deity of the Son to include the Holy Spirit as well, by calling him Lord and the life-giver, saying he is worshipped and glorified. Although it does not call him God explicitly since it made certain people uncomfortable since there was no explicit statement of that sort in Scripture
The Nicene Creed became so highly prized over the next 100 years that by the end of the 5th century, Eastern churches had started reciting it in their worship as a public declaration of their faith. Western churches began using the Creed in worship towards the end of the 6th century.
Thus the Council of Constantinople brought an end to Arianism within the Catholic Church, although it would live on for several centuries in the Germanic tribes. But the belief within the Catholic church was secured under a proper Nicene understanding of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.